#cs role reversal

[wholoveseggs]

Hey! Love your work!! Can you please write a sub!elijah fic where the reader edges him?

Following Orders

18+ ---- {Masterlist} {Tag-List}

You decide to reverse the roles for a day, tying Elijah up and having your way with him...

♡♡ Thank you for the request anon! sub!elijah is a dream ♡♡

2.7k words - Warnings: smut, sub!Elijah, dom!reader, bondage, oral sex, riding, teasing, edging, slight overstimulation, aftercare and Elijah taking back control at the end {of course}

{Elijah Mikaelson Tag-List }

@gorgeouslydangerous @starkleila @lydia1369sworld @notleylaaa @vampiresluv

@myanmy @xflowerbombxo @maryvibess @always-and-forever-daydreaming

@spnaquakindgdom @amournoir @meeom @damienmorton @wickedmuse

@cs-please @complicatedandconfusing-25 @youcanhavemybuckanyday @akala6670229 @yeaiamme2

@itsjulzandmydiamonds @spideysbabe @witch-of-letters @elijahstwink @rosecentury

@amanda08319 @starshipcookie @li-da-savage @veggie-eggrolls @spideybv28

@sunkissedebony97 @idk00sblog @savannaounana @sekaishell @b1tchy

@loving-and-dreaming @fancycassie-stayfancy @hcqwxrtss123 @iamawkwardandshy @ziayamikaelson

@absolutemarveltrash @darkened-writer @nina6708 @evasmlp

It was the prettiest view Elijah had ever seen: you in his bed, wearing nothing but a pair of delicate lace stockings. Your eyes were locked onto his as your hands roamed over your body, legs spread with your pussy on display for him. A smirk tugged at the corner of your mouth as you dipped two fingers inside yourself, letting out a little gasp that made him groan.

"Are you enjoying the show?" You asked, pulling your fingers out and trailing them over your clit, teasing him with how slow you were being.

"You look divine," he breathed, placing his hands on the bed next to your ankles. You could tell how badly he wanted to touch you, to taste you.

But that wasn't the plan, not tonight.

He was always so sweet and caring with you, putting your needs first, even in bed. But tonight, you were taking control and seeing just how much he could handle.

You watched his eyes flicker from your face to your pussy, licking his lips as he watched you fuck yourself with your fingers. He leaned forward, attempting to get closer, but you pressed your foot against his chest. "Stay."

A frustrated groan slipped past his lips as he moved back, settling in front of you once again. You knew he was dying to touch you, and it was driving him mad that he couldn't.

You giggled as you sat up, bringing your soaked fingers up to his lips, and he eagerly accepted them. He hummed as he sucked your arousal off of your fingers, savoring every last drop.

"Good boy," you cooed, running your fingers through his hair. His eyes fluttered shut at the praise, and his hands clenched the sheets as he tried to resist the urge to reach out and grab you.

You loved seeing him like this, all wound up and desperate. You could tell he was aching to be inside you, but you had other plans for him.

"Do you want to make me feel good?" You asked, looking up at him with wide eyes as your hands gently loosened his tie.

He nodded, swallowing hard as his eyes roamed over your body. "More than anything," he whispered, his voice thick with lust.

"Good," you replied, pulling his tie free from his neck and working on the buttons of his shirt, leaving it open and hanging off of his shoulders. You ran your hands over his toned chest, admiring the view.

You kissed him slowly, your tongue slipping into his mouth. He moaned into the kiss, his hands moving to cup your face, but you pulled back, smiling at his confused expression. "Hands behind your back."

He bit his lip, his eyes dark with desire. He complied, moving his hands behind his back. You took the tie, wrapping it around his wrists and securing it tightly.

"Sit," you pointed to the plush lounge chair in the corner, and he obeyed.

You stayed on the bed and watched him, his arms restricted and draped behind the chair, his shirt still open, exposing his chest, and his cock hard and straining against his pants. He looked like a work of art, and you couldn't wait to ruin him.

He watched you slowly stand up and walk over to him, his chest rising and falling quicker as you approached. You could tell he was getting impatient, and that was exactly what you wanted.

You stood in front of him, a few inches away, just out of his reach. He leaned forward, his lips inches away from your skin. You could feel his hot breath against your stomach, and you smiled, running your fingers through his hair and pulling his head back, exposing his neck.

His adams apple bobbed as he swallowed, his eyes never leaving yours. You trailed your finger down his chest and over his abs, watching as they twitched under your touch. He was already putty in your hands, and you had barely touched him.

"I want to touch you," he groaned, his voice low and rough.

"Hmm," you pretended to think about it, but the look on his face told you that he already knew the answer. "No."

You saw the corners of his mouth turn up slightly at your response. He wasn't used to this, but he was clearly enjoying it.

You moved away from him and walked over to his dresser, opening the top drawer. He always had everything meticulously organized, and you had no trouble finding what you were looking for.

He watched you return with two more of his ties in your hand, a slight smile on his face. You knew that he was wondering what you were going to do with them, but you weren't going to give him the satisfaction of telling him.

"Close your eyes," you commanded, and he immediately complied.

You leaned in, wrapping one of the ties around his eyes, tying it behind his head. You could feel his breath quicken as you secured the blindfold. You stepped back, admiring the way he looked, bound and blindfolded, his cock visibly straining against his pants.

"What are you going to do with me now, my love?" he asked, his voice strained with desire.

You grinned, leaning in and whispering in his ear, "you'll see," you giggled.

You slowly sank to your knees in front of him, trailing your hands over his thighs, feeling his muscles tense underneath your touch. He let out a low moan as you reached up and palmed his cock, his hips bucking up into your hand.

You pulled his belt loose and unzipped his pants, pushing them down his thighs. You freed his cock from his boxers, and it sprang free, hard and leaking with precum.

You wrapped your hand around the base, stroking him slowly. Then you took the third tie and looped it around the base of his cock, securing it tightly.

A low groan rumbled in his throat, and he shifted his hips, trying to relieve some of the pressure. You chuckled, "now, now, I can't have you coming too soon."

He groaned, tilting his head back against the chair. "That's not fair," he complained.

You stroked his cock slowly, teasing him, knowing that the tie would prevent him from getting off too soon. You looked up at him, his lips parted slightly, his cheeks flushed, and his brow furrowed in concentration as he fought the urge to tear the restraints off of his wrists and take you right there.

You wrapped your lips around his tip, sucking gently, and he let out a guttural moan, his hips bucking up involuntarily. You pressed your hands into his hips, holding him down, and he growled.

You took him deeper into your mouth, hollowing your cheeks and sucking. He moaned and swore, his fingers flexing and curling into fists.

Slowly, you began to bob your head, taking more and more of him into your mouth until you swallowed him all the way down to the base. He gasped, his hips twitching as he fought the urge to thrust into your mouth.

You pulled back, teasing his tip with your tongue. "Fuck, you're so good at that," he groaned, his voice husky and laced with lust.

You repeated the motion, bobbing your head and swirling your tongue, taking him all the way down, again and again, until his breathing became ragged and his moans grew louder. You knew he was close, so you slowed down, taking your time.

"Fuck," he groaned, tugging at his restraints.

"Patience," you replied, pulling your mouth off of his cock with a wet pop.

You tugged on the tie around the base of his cock, making him gasp and moan. You took his cock back into your mouth, bobbing your head in a steady rhythm. His breathing became shallow as he groaned, his thighs tensing, and you knew he was ready to burst.

And then you stopped.

He let out a frustrated groan, his fists clenching and tugging in the restraints. "You're a tease," he complained, his cock throbbing and his body screaming for release.

"Hmm, am I?" You hummed, kissing along his length, tightening and loosening the tie intermittently, driving him insane with desire. He bucked his hips involuntarily, trying to get more friction, but you refused to let him have it.

He panted and groaned, cursing at you, his whole body trembling with need. You loved seeing him like this, all worked up and aching for release. And you weren't done with him yet.

You took off the tie around his cock and stroked him a few times, watching his face contort with pleasure. When you released his cock, his hips bucked up, desperate for your touch.

A small chuckle escaped your lips as you stood up, leaning over him and trailing your hands over his broad shoulders. You straddled him, pressing your warm heat against his member, rolling your hips to create delicious friction.

You removed his blindfold and planted soft kisses along his jaw, rocking your hips. You locked eyes, his mouth parted in a silent groan, and you smiled before you captured his lips in a heated kiss.

He was so desperate for you, his hips grinding up against yours as he pulled at the restraints on his wrists. You dragged your tongue across his bottom lip, and he opened his mouth, allowing your tongue to slip inside. His moan reverberated into your mouth, making your core throb.

"How badly do you want me?" You whispered against his lips.

His reply was husky, laced with desire. "So fucking badly."

"Beg for me," you commanded, slowly rolling your hips, watching him come undone beneath you.

He groaned, his eyes fluttering shut. "Please," he breathed. "I need you."

"Hmm, and what is it that you need from me?" You asked, feigning innocence.

"Everything," he groaned, his voice heavy with lust. "I need to feel you."

You loved hearing him beg like that, his voice dripping with want, his body desperate for you. You moved back, positioning yourself over his cock, looking him in the eye as you took his length inch by inch until he was fully sheathed inside you.

He gasped, biting his lip, his hands tugging at the restraints on his wrists. You moaned at how full he felt inside you, his thickness stretching you. You grabbed hold of his shoulders, your nails digging into his skin as you slowly began to ride his cock.

His breathing grew shallow and his eyes fluttered shut as you picked up the pace, slamming your hips into his.

He leaned forward, kissing you hungrily. You could feel his restraint, his yearning to run his hands over your body, to control the pace, but instead he held back, letting you take the lead, letting you do whatever you pleased.

He moaned against your lips as you bounced on his cock, his hips rutting up into you, meeting your every thrust. You angled your hips slightly, hitting just the right spot.

A low groan escaped your lips as you grasped his shoulders, your fingertips pressing into his skin, holding on to him tightly. "Lijah," you moaned, his name coming out breathless and desperate.

He looked up at you through hooded eyes, a wicked smile on his lips. His eyes were dark with lust, his gaze burning into yours. You knew you wouldn't last long, not like this. He felt too good. He was too much.

You lowered your head, burying your face in the crook of his neck. You nipped at his skin, his hot breath hitting your shoulder as he panted, his chest heaving.

"Fuck," you muttered, grinding your hips into his. "You feel so good."

He murmured something, but you weren't sure what. You were too focused on the intense pleasure building up within you.

You kissed him, nipping at his bottom lip, and you knew he could tell you were close by the way your walls were contracting around his cock. You shifted your hips slightly, raising up and slamming them back down onto him.

He watched you come undone, trembling and bouncing, your eyes locked with his as your climax overtook you. He felt you gush around his cock and a soft cry escaped your lips as you shuddered, your legs shaking.

But your hips didn't falter. You didn't let up, just kept taking him, bouncing and rolling your hips into him, moaning and whispering his name.

He rested his forehead against yours, his breathing ragged, his muscles flexing and straining under your fingertips.

"Cum for me Eli," you whispered, your voice trembling as you continued to ride him.

You brought your hand up to cup his cheek, your thumb stroking his jawline. He was clinging to his last thread of control, but it was quickly unraveling. When your lips met his he snapped, letting out a deep growl as he came, filling you.

He groaned into your mouth, his hips twitching and thrusting up into you as he rode out his high. You could feel his warmth spilling out of you, running down his cock and dripping onto his pants.

You rolled your hips slowly, still grinding against him, despite how sensitive you both were, it felt so good, you just couldn't stop.

You took his bottom lip between your teeth and tugged, not too hard, just enough for him to let out a low moan.

There was a thin layer of sweat covering his chest, his skin hot and sticky against yours. You kissed him slowly, a brief moment of tenderness between the two of you. You rested your forehead against his, your noses bumping against each other as you caught your breath.

You reached down behind him and untied his wrists, smiling at the sight of red marks around them. You ran your fingertips over them gently, watching them rapidly heal.

His arms came up to wrap around you, holding you close, his thumbs tracing gentle circles against your hips. You lifted your head to look at him, drinking in his striking features. He was already looking at you, his eyes filled with admiration and appreciation.

He leaned in and kissed you deeply. You hummed into the kiss as your hands wove their way into his hair, cupping the back of his neck and pulling him closer.

When he finally pulled away, you rested your forehead against his again.

"Come shower with me," you whispered, a small smile on your lips. He nodded, then stood up, still holding you in his arms, making you squeal and laugh. You linked your arms around his neck, kissing him deeply as he made his way to the bathroom.

He turned the water on, steam filling the room as he stepped into the shower with you. You ran your hands over his body, massaging the soreness from his muscles, and kissing him softly.

"How do you do that?" He asked softly, pressing his forehead to yours, his hands resting on your lower back.

"Do what?"

He nuzzled his nose against yours, smiling sweetly at you. "Turn me into a complete mess."

"It's not that hard," you giggled. "I just do the same things you do to me," you replied, slowly trailing your fingers over his chest.

He hummed and turned you both, backing you up against the cool tile wall. He kissed you gently, his hands cupping your face. "Mm, and what if I want to do those things to you right now," he teased, his voice low and husky, his lips brushing against yours.

He pinned you against the tile with his body, one hand bracing against the wall by your head. Your fingers reached up to trace his features, drinking in the sight of him. His eyes were dark with lust and his breath was hot on your face.

"Mmm, well then, I suggest you get to work."

A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he leaned in, kissing you gently, then slowly deepening the kiss, his hand gripping your waist possessively. His tongue found yours and you moaned, your fingers weaving into his hair.

"Sorry for damaging your ties," you whispered against his lips, smiling.

He chuckled, low and soft. "No you're not."

[chutefullofholes]

craving some soft domesticity and romance....do you have any h/cs for the young vets Clegan when they first set up house? who's the cook? who likes to decorate? what's their sunday morning routine? do they bicker over what to watch? who's the little spoon? etc etc etc <3

sweet babies. this is the zillow house i decided they move into once they find somewhere in sheridan and move out of staying with gale’s sister immediately after getting home post-war.

they’re there when they first get josie/convert the upstairs into her room- and then once the adoption is finalized they move somewhere a little bigger.

but that’s all down the line. to your actual prompt,

- gale copes with being back in civilian life by throwing himself head first into it. always cooking, kinda goes full throttle house husband mode for a while while he’s looking for work. john isn’t making him fill that role, it just helps him feel like he has all his ducks in a row. gives him something to focus on.

- not that john is complaining either. he thinks gale is so damn sweet. and loves getting to see that domestic side of him that it wasn’t even really possible to see overseas.

- john has some stuff in boxes that he took from wisconsin when they stopped through there that it makes him feel Good to put around the house. books, photos of him and his sister when they were little, a bunch of throw pillows and blankets and ~homey~ things that his mama kinda unloaded on him to take back to their house.

- the only way you’d know either of them were in the military just by walking around their house is if you were looking close enough to see a challenge coin holder on the tv shelf. the coins stay out because they look nice, but everything else goes into a drawer or a box. it’s mostly john’s doing- but gale is 100% on board. out of sight out of mind (: right (: loud incorrect buzzer

- their neighbors are a very sweet older couple with horses and are always inviting them to church. with the stipulation that we won’t let anyone give you boys any trouble, but they still opt to not go together and just go individually with those neighbors every now and then. they’re good boys and know those folks mean well.

- but if it’s a morning when both of em stay home they just take the morning real slow. sleep in, half asleep wander around in their pajamas. before john’s doing Bad and can’t be left by himself gale will sometimes go out and pick up breakfast from a little local place a couple minutes away to bring back to the house. brings it back home instead of the two of them going out to eat so they can stay in their jammies and eat on the couch and pet each others hair and snuggle <3

- gale is biggg into documentaries but john’s opinion on docs is that there needs to be some good Reenactment scenes or he finds it hard to pay attention lmao (me too buddy). when he has tv control he likes binge watching older shows. gonna project for a minute and say that he likes cheers (: and gets Passionate about how sam and diane’s plot line ends even when he’s seen said plot line like seven times.

- gale is the lil spoon most of the time and once john starts struggling with his mental health more those roles kinda reverse. but before that gale lovesss curling his lanky self as small as is possible for him and feeling john press up against his back. lovesss the sensory input of that. makes him feel grounded and safe (:

[the-sparkling-diamond-satine]

WIP Ask Game!

apparently i haven't played this since august so i thought i'd try and see if it helps kickstart my writing again!

Prompt: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

vampire satine x watcher christian

vampire satine x human nini

vampire satine x slayer nini

a light in the dark

i wanna breathe your air, press your chest against mine (think i know now what life should have been like)

give

take

winter holiday fic! snowed in!!

christian bijou shelter rescue

christian finds satine

maya gift fic

dream

nightmare

bdsm club modern au

satine and bijou escape

satine and bijou balcony

amnesia satine

romance novelist christian

satini andre best friend's brother

cs sex ed

ring rock box

haunted house christian overstimulated

christian and satine and andre neighbors

study abroad hook-up to LDR

massage

stage slap

neighbors au with bijou

childhood friends

off the pier

period

needles

you must've been looking for me (sending smoke signals)

injure

heal

"Please don't hurt me."

All Grown Up

ARFID Christian

i knew i loved her, then and there (i knew i loved her, touched her hair)

take this sinking boat and point it home (we’ve still got time)

reunion

pleasure

preferences

aftershocks

Nini/Satine panic attack

4 am shower

you took it from me (but i would've given it to you)

changing room

tell me you see me

Satine Hamish panic attack

Cold Satine

Bijou: the Sparkling Diamond’s Cat

sexting

if you hold me without hurting me, you'll be the first who ever did

last

first

Makeup Christian

Makeup Christian (Modern AU)

t4t (Modern AU)

Lifeguard AU

Jealous!Satine

OCD Christian

thanks, I hate it

Firework! for maya

to cover the bruises (which ending??)

Christian/Satine/Nini

Friends hear through hotel walls? (Arabia and Ivy)

Arabia/Ivy + Satine/Nini + La Choc x Baby Doll

Arcade trash rat

Missing Tour Hamish

Catsit Switch Up

Exes to lovers costars in a musical

Slower burn romance

gravity will hold us as we're holding on for life (and we're racing to get older)

nightmares

safe

too small to remember/too precious to forget

don't

"Come with me, to the stars!"

moments of tenderness

oral fixation

Hadestown time loop

pregnancy/kid!fic

in her sleep

non-binary Satine

Phone sex line

Coffee Shop AU

Fairy tale doesn't work

Theatre AU

Elevator - piano teacher and porn star

memento mori

Lush

5 moments when it wasn't safe to be himself (and 5 when it was)

Next Time Around

trans Christian childhood

t4t

chronically ill satine ???

first binder

needy

satine/nini kiss

"you're fun to touch"

experimental role reversal

airport crabs

satine as mom of newborn x neighbor christian

teen pregnancy satine

satine can't and christian tries to get her to

satini pregnancy fic

teenage kid!fic

scared to tell him

past baby loss

almost baby loss

chrisatini pregnancy

mom satine x teacher of her kid christian

acting abuse scene

satini exes to lovers

recovery satini

bijou christmas fluff

bijou shelter adoption

bijou piano singing

satine hallway run

satini club burns

satini poto movie

age anxiety satine

@satinechristian @littlelottediamond @elephantlovemedleys @ashleyslorens

@angel-with-paper-wings @mxssyrxcks

[salty-cs]

784280820799143936/hi-i-have-drama-that-isnt

(long read ahead)

im gonna be so honest with you, you should leave that friend alone. i had a horrible falling out w one of my best fucking childhood friends a few years back and i will be so honest, i was absolutely distraught. i stalked their socials because i was so fucking mad at them and just wanted closure/but also them back in my life. they treated me like absolute shit, and while im only hearing your side it sounds like they dropped you without having evidence. if what you are saying is 100% the truth, you really shouldn’t be friends with someone like that. its hard to get over, trust and believe it takes time. it would be best for you to take a step back and not interact with them as they have requested, esp under false pretenses. could you imagine if the roles were reversed? imagine finding out one of your moots was someone who hurt you, you would be pissed. not only for their sake though, for you as well. continuing to interact with them on your alts is only going to worsen the damage and reopen the wound you have. if you truly want their friendship back, you HAVE to start with respect and accountability.

if i were you, i would NEVEEERR tell anyone i multiaccount, not even my friends that don’t play cs. people on here are so quick to petty report (see example emblings drama lmao) its just not worth it.

at the same time, don’t let that exfriend stop you from doing what YOU want to do. am i friends with every person in wermz? FUCK NO! am i friends with everyone in emblings? FUCK NO! continue getting your umas and join emblings on your main, who the fuck cares yk. if they get that bothered by it thats on them, not you. and if your friend is actually your friend they will come back. but lying to them and hiding under a facade isn’t going to help either of you. hang in there, it gets better with time, not every is a 4lifer and thats okay! life is long, and you will always be able to meet people who have your back ❤️ i believe in you and get those umas

.

[arresiive]

you guys wonder why the triplets will never tell yall ab their relationships and truth is it’s bc yall r weird. you don’t want them to have girl friends cs it’s “odd” and they “have to be hooking up”. yall r gonna make the triplets hate you even more & keep everything much more secretive. assuming madison is cheating on austin js cs the triplets hang out at her house is even stranger. i mean what if the roles were reversed and you were in her shoes .. yall would be livid would u not ? cs i would be. first shipping them w their girl friends n assuming things were going on with alanah & madi, now they aren’t in vlogs & who knows if they even still talk to madi. yall trying to isolate them bc you think you ever have a chance w one of them is just humiliating. talking about chris not being sober (smoking weed) and maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but they’re never gonna confirm anything if yall keep this jealousy act up . and to say matt gets no pussy ??? please. the man has millions of followers and he’s extremely attractive. he’s actually probably drowning in pussy just like chris. u guys fr need to sit down, evaluate yourself & YOUR life instead of trying to ruin others for no good reason. this fandom went downhill after 2022, & u guys just make it worse day by day. they do any and everything to make good content for us but yall r still never satisfied. ur ungrateful & demented. the boys are never gonna get w you, stop acting like a bunch of weirdos for some dick ur not gonna get. like ever. grow up!

EDIT ; ALSO ITS A DOG YALL . the man loves animals . GO OUTSIDE

[livetogether--diealone]

Charles being allowed to attack him but no the other way around 😬 I think there'll be trouble. 

I think because now they trust Charles not to make a mess, to me he could have gone a little harder today but chose not to. From the broadcast and few transcriptions i saw Charles wasn't begging to pass or whining about being faster, he just did the racing, compared to Austria this year, or last year from the other guy, well (i don't even want to go back to Cartoon trying to fight his championship contender teammate in a dick measuring contest instead of strategize for the wholw team). I feel the team wouldn't have trusted cs the same if roles were reversed today.

As in there'll be trouble, idk it's Ferrari, they keep their fighting inside a lot (except Cs + entourage), also you can't even talk about real priorities this year where points coming from all angles are good for the team, media will churn this for a bit but I don't think anything will happen inside really

[doedipus]

okay so arcsys confirmed what I had been expecting, and said that the upcoming season 3 patch is gonna be when they start giving new toys to existing characters. since daisuke inexplicably implemented a bunch of shit I had been half-coherently spitballing about and made gio into a viable character again, here's a wishlist for this one:

improvements to existing things:

a) improved frame data all around. on launch, gio's main gimmick was just having stupid frame data. trovao and sol poente were both plus, she was the only character with a plus on block, dash cancellable cs, and doggie toes was very safe on block. this gave her a huge edge at the time in terms of sticking to her opponents on offense, crowding the mental stack, and running unique types of strike/throw and stagger pressure setups. however, since season 2, this edge has eroded a ton. everyone has a plus on block and dash cancellable cs now, and stagger pressure tools like sol poente and doggie toes are more readily punishable.

making her p and k buttons even or better on block and making 2h recover fast enough to tick throw or reset pressure off of would put her in line with similar characters like jam, and reducing the gap between 2k and doggie toes would close up a really glaring flaw in her offense and ability to scramble. and I would appreciate the recovery being improved on sol poente and doggie toes again, but there's no way arcsys is ever gonna just directly contradict a previous patch.

b) give 6h more to do. it's always been the button she presses the least, and now that arcsys has established a niche for everything else she has, it's really starting to stick out. either making it better at being combo filler or giving it a use in pressure would be amazing. for combo filler, something like a comparable knockdown to juggle hit 214k, or better cancel options would make it competitive with other routes, and for pressure, reducing recovery on 6h(1), making any of the hits a high, reducing lower hurtboxes to hop over lows... look, the point is there's a lot of places to take this move, it just needs to go somewhere.

c) give trovao projectile invulnerability sooner in the animation. this move seems to have been really difficult to balance satisfactorily because it's supposed to be both an anti-zoning tool and a pressure reset. in order to be balanced as a pressure reset the startup has to be reactable, but slow startup makes it unable to contest most projectiles even on prediction or during spam. however, adding the projectile invulnerability aspect much earlier in the animation (say, before frame 10 instead of frame ~30) would allow it to play both roles consistently without really interfering with each other.

d) better reward on raw sol poente hits, and faster startup. currently youzansen is unreactable and leads to full combos, so clearly this is a reasonable request. if they hit youzansen this patch then I'll settle for one or the other. also make the momentum control really stupid. like let her do fakeouts.

new toys I want

a) turn the buffs from holding onto high meter into its own resource, I think. idk what I want from this I guess. but giving her buffs directly based on meter limits what they can do with it, in terms of how to accrue it, what kinds of buffs it can give, etc.

b) momentum altering air move. whether it's a divekick or a fastfall I don't really care, but I want to have a move that can be used in air combos which gives gio more grounded momentum after landing for routing purposes

c) oki projectile. something like jam's super puff or one of those stubby kof fireballs would help a lot in matchups (cough, baiken, cough) where meatying consistently isn't an option, or you really just need someone to sit still and guess. the animation should be using rei as the projectile

d) a meterless reversal. sol nascente has a funny frame data thing going on so I would rather they add an h version or something instead of touching it. there isn't a deeper reason for wanting this, I just want it

e) a command throw. every gio player has been screaming and clawing and gnashing their teeth about this one since launch. my dream would be for it to have an effect on tension pulse or a new character specific resource, or to be a full screen kind of deal like eliza's

[vampiriito]

love love love pillow talk i’m a jj girly at heart and for pillow talk i was reading for the intentions of jj but now im lowk a rafe girly for pillow talk cs girl.. fuck jj, if reader and rafe do eventually date would roles be reversed? like he’s watching reader with rafe if the pogues yk find out and are ok with it and he’s kind like guys wtf he would try to kill us and shit and yk he’s inlove with her it’s so confusing especially since you mentioned that he’s bad at handling feelings and jealousy so i’d love to see how that would play out? but again you do what makes u feel best and comfortable babe i loveee all ur work, keep doing what ur doing < 3

love love love you!! as i said before initially pillow talk was supposed to be a jj centric. but then when rafe started looking like the better love interest despite kinda being the antagonist i was like, what the hell, sure. the present parts, like the storyline when they're like 4 months into jj and kie dating was pre written, and the flashbacks i write them before i post them, so the flashbacks helped me with being more #team rafe. jj is shit at handling emotions as stated in the last flashback so in the rafe endgame (which i kinda dabbled in writing) he was to no surprise, a dick. but i haven't gotten to the pogues finding out yet, so i'll probably use this ask as an inspo!💖

[botanyone]

#IBC2024: Why Botany? Why now?

#IBC2024: Why Botany? Why now? https://ift.tt/1pS0MKG This week, more than 3000 plant scientists from around the world arrived in Madrid to participate in the twentieth edition of the International Botanical Congress (IBC) – a scientific meeting that takes place every 6 years (since 1900!) in a different location around the globe and has the authority to modify the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. IBC2024 kicked off on Sunday 21st of July with an opening lecture by botanist Sandra Knapp. Originally from the US, where she got her PhD at Cornell University, she later moved to the UK to start the big project Flora Mesoamericana – an inventory of Central American plants. Since then, she has been investigating several botanical species (mainly belonging to the Solanaceae family) and has become a world-renowned expert in the taxonomy and evolution of the Solanum genus – which includes important plants such as tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum), potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), and eggplants (Solanum melongena). Over time, she created synergies with experts in phylogenetics and phylogenomics to shed new light on the evolution of Solanaceae by incorporating new molecular data obtained through Next Generation Sequencing. Why Botany? In her talk, Sandra Knapp highlighted the crucial role of plants in our unique green & blue planet: it is estimated that more than 80% of the biomass in Carbon comes from plants!   The fact that “climate change”, “crops”, and “food” are the words that are mentioned the most in recently published research articles further corroborates the relevance of edible species for human life. She also emphasized the importance of biodiversity in crop cultivation by recalling the Great Famine that struck Ireland in the 1850s – largely caused by the dependence of the Irish people on a single crop (potato). Vulnerability to blight infection is further increased by the lack of genetic variability associated with the vegetative propagation of cultivars based on the asexual reproduction of genetically identical potato plants. Beyond climate change, the talk focused on the 3 Cs: plant cultivation (crop genetic variation), environment conservation (biodiversity of wild species ), and collaboration as a community to achieve common Sustainable Development Goals. Why now? To counterbalance the huge number of threats menacing our fragile planet, Sandra Knapp presented some initiatives aimed at supporting plant conservation efforts all around the globe. Among others, the World Flora Online  (an online catalogue containing information about almost 400´000 botanical species) encompasses all known biodiversity of the plant kingdom.   Sandra also mentioned the Urban Nature Movement: Since 75% of the human population lives in cities, the majority loses contact with plants on a daily basis … and it’s time to reverse this trend.   “Plants provide food, air, and beauty” she concluded.  The post #IBC2024: Why Botany? Why now? appeared first on Botany One. via Botany One https://botany.one/ July 23, 2024 at 08:54PM

[cstitanium]

Esterification Tower

An esterification tower is a piece of equipment used in chemical processes, specifically in the field of organic chemistry and petrochemical refining. It plays a crucial role in the esterification reaction, which is a type of chemical reaction between an alcohol (or a compound with a hydroxyl group) and a carboxylic acid to form an ester and water. The esterification tower is designed to facilitate the esterification reaction by providing an environment where the reactants can interact, and the reaction can take place efficiently.

Indonesia Project in 2013-T-201B Esterification Tower

Designing Pressure

0.1Mpa

Test pressure

0.41Mpa

Working Temperature

130℃

Material

stainless steel

Net weight

13564kg

Application

For chemical plants to produce ethyl acetate.

Esterification Tower Working Principle

In the process of polyester production, the role of the Esterification tower is to separate the gas phase water and ethan glycol mixture generated during the esterization reaction process, separate the low-boiling water from the top of the tower, and separate the high-boiling ethylene glycol. Currency is condensed at the bottom of the tower, and ethylene glycol, as the main raw material for polyester production, can be re-recovered to reactors for reproduction.

Esterization reactions are a type of organic chemical reactions, which are divided into three types: carboxylic acid reacts with alcohol, or inorganic oxygenic acid reacts with alcohol, or inorganic strong acid reacts with alcohol. The esterization reaction of carboxylic acid and alcohol is reversible, and the general response is extremely slow, so concentrated sulfuric acid is often used as a catalyst. Multi-carboxylic acid and alcohol reaction can generate multiple esters. The reaction of inorganic acid and mellow is generally faster. The typical esterization reactions include the reaction of ethanol and acetic acid, and the generic acetate with aromatic smell is a raw material for manufacturing and medicine. The esterization tower are widely used in areas such as organic synthesis.

[olko71]

New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on https://yaroreviews.info/2023/10/king-charles-iii-new-coins-designed-to-help-children-to-count

King Charles III new coins designed to help children to count

Getty Images

By Kevin Peachey

Cost of living correspondent

Large numbers on an entirely redesigned set of UK coins will help children to identify figures and learn to count, The Royal Mint has said.

The coins will enter circulation by the end of the year, marking the new reign of King Charles III and celebrating his love of the natural world.

The tails side of every coin from the 1p to the £2 will feature the country’s flora and fauna.

Old coins can still be used, with the new set struck in response to demand.

Rebecca Morgan, director at the Mint, told the BBC: “The large numbers will be very appealing to children who are learning to count and about the use of money.

“Also the animals and everything you see on these coins will appeal to children. They are great conversation starters.”

Animals ranging from the red squirrel to the capercaillie grouse are depicted on the new designs. The King’s now-familiar portrait will be on the front of each coin – many for the first time.

Although cash use – and especially the popularity of coins – has been in decline in recent years, the Mint says heritage and need mean this change is still required.

“We know a large proportion of the country are still heavily reliant on cash,” Ms Morgan said.

“It is also tradition to mark the moment of a monarch coming to the throne with a new set of coinage, so it is important that we carry on that tradition.”

Getty Images

The BBC was given an advance viewing of the new coins, the size and shape of which remain unchanged.

Although there have been commemorative coins circulating featuring King Charles, these new designs – officially known as definitives – mark the final chapter of the King’s transition onto coinage.

Definitive coins feature the standard designs seen on the majority of official currency. These designs stay the same for years or even decades.

The previous set featured a shield formation and was introduced under Queen Elizabeth II in 2008, and will still dominate the 29 billion coins in circulation in the UK for some time yet.

The reverse, or tails side, of the new coins will be the matter of most interest to collectors and for quizmasters. They are designed to show the importance, and precariousness, of the natural world:

1p: A hazel dormouse, which has seen its population halve since 2007

2p: A red squirrel, which is expected to blend into the colour of the copper coin

5p: An oak tree leaf, signifying its role as a rich habitat for biodiversity in woodland areas and an association with monarchy of the past

10p: The capercaillie – the world’s largest grouse – found in a small part of Scotland and threatened with extinction

20p: A puffin

50p: The Atlantic salmon, which is at threat from river pollution and habitat loss

£1: Bees

£2: National flowers – a rose for England, a daffodil for Wales, a thistle for Scotland and a shamrock for Northern Ireland

PA Media

Kevin Clancy, director of the Royal Mint Museum, said: “People who remember pre-decimal coins might recall the wren farthing, or the thrift design on the 12-sided thrupence, but it wasn’t lots of natural world.

“What is different about these coins is that they are all about the natural world.”

There are also links to history and the changing of the monarchy.

Cash payments rise for first time in 10 years

Charles joins first Easter coins ceremony as King

Three interlocking Cs feature on the coins, representing the third King Charles, and taking its inspiration from the cypher of Charles II.

The edge inscription of the new £2 coin was chosen by the new King Charles and reads: “In servitio omnium”, which means: “In the service of all”.

It was taken from his inaugural speech in September last year.

The coins follow centuries of tradition with the monarch now facing left – the opposite way to his predecessor. Profiles are alternated between left and right for successive monarchs. As with previous British kings, and unlike the Queen, he wears no crown.

The Royal Mint is based in Llantrisant, Rhondda Cynon Taf in Wales.

New banknotes featuring the image of King Charles are being printed in their millions but will not enter circulation until the middle of next year – some months after the coins.

New notes will replace damaged or worn older ones, but their introduction is slow because machines such as self-service tills need to recognise the new image.

Related Topics

Money

Personal finance

Coins

Cost of living

King Charles III

The Royal Mint

More on this story

King Charles banknotes printed – but not ready yet

7 April

Cash payments rise for first time in 10 years

14 September

King Charles 50p coins struck for the first time

28 October 2022

Charles joins first Easter coins ceremony as King

6 April

[snowbellewells]

MY FICS

“Carolina Moon” (my current main focus WIP from @cssns23)

“Believing Impossible Things” (a Victorian flavored CS AU, with Alice as well, from @cssns22)

“The Lawman, the Thief, and the Outlaw” (a Western-set CS Rio Bravo AU)

“A Year in the Court of Misthaven” (a series of vignettes set in the Enchanted Forest, where Emma grew up with her parents as the princess she should have been, very much Lieutenant Duckling)

“Foot Caught in the Door (This Time)” (a Music Man AU originally started for the @captainswanmoviemarathon but I psyched myself out of getting very far with)

Untitled Reverse Cinderella Enchanted Forest Fic (Krystal’s VERY late birthday gift, with Killian in the Cinderella role)

Untitled Musician/Band and EMT fic (Killian is a musician who meets Emma when she saves his life at the scene of a serious accident)

Untitled Pro Dancers CS Fic (this modern AU has a good chunk started but it’s been so long since I got to work on it - Killian and Emma are paired together for a competition and can’t stand each other at first, but their chemistry on the dance floor…! 🔥

"kick-in-the-pants" writer's game!

Rules:

Reblog this post and put the names/working titles of your wips in either the tags or your reblog. (You may add a brief bio/ship name/any other info if desired)

Your followers can send you the name of one of the wips in an ask, and are welcomed and encouraged to send multiple.

For each wip title you recieve, work for a five minute sprint on writing that wip!

Respond to their ask with one of your favorite lines you wrote during that sprint!

(to encourage community spirit, it is suggested to send an ask to the person you reblogged it from, and whoever reblogs it from you)

[ohmightydevviepuu]

fanbinding:  operation tulips (your two lips should kiss)

a couple of years ago i had the absolute honor to work with @carpedzem​ on this masterpiece for the CS Valentine’s Day Role Reversal:

together, we brought operation tulips to life from this magnificent image that already tells a story.  my job was just to narrate it.

after that, i got a prompt from @katie-dub​ and decided to revisit this little corner of perfection, and that got us before the evening’s gone away.  a little sequel, of sorts.  and--while i was doing that--katie worked up this brilliant little prequel for all of us who have a little tinkerhook in our hearts:  distractions (before she was mine).

so now i bring you this, a first experiment in bookbinding:

it is a dos-a-dos (double-sided) accordion binding with a pamphlet stitch, typeset in Garamond pt 14 and printed on cream vellum (70#). 

[ouatxxxxx]

Fic Masterlist

These are all from 2015 to 2017, but I thought I’d make a post with them all in one place. Enjoy!

Go to Sleep - Emma finds Killian and Hope in the nursery

Finding a Family - A Modern AU with Emma, Killian, and baby Henry

No Bath! - Little Liam doesn’t like baths

Complaining - Killian isn’t the best patient when he’s sick

Winning - Pirate Princess Emma and her Captain have a small competition

(Don’t) Know What I’m Getting Into - Role Reversal, Prince Killian/Pirate Emma

Won’t Let Go - Killian tries to carry Emma upstairs after a long day of work

The Pirate and the Books - Belle and Killian start their own book club

My Hero - Emma runs to her roommate Killian’s bed when she finds a spider in hers

Sharing a Name - Emma tells Killian why she wants to be Emma Jones

Forgotten Modernity - Killian is the one who goes to the Wish Realm in 6x10

Tiny Commands - A fluffy moment of Daddy!Killian with Hope

In My Dreams - Emma keeps seeing a certain blue-eyed man in her dreams

To a New Adventure - A Captain Swan proposal with a twist (CSJJ 2017)

What’s Missing? - A fun frenemies, Coffee Shop AU (CSSV 2017)

A Surprise Visit & Another Crisis - The group gets two surprise visitors from the future after returning from Neverland (Season 3A canon divergence, CSSS 2017)

[capnjay21]

A House is Never Still 6/6

Five years ago, Emma Swan disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Killian Jones’ disappearance, well, not so mysterious – given the denizens of Storybrooke all but blamed him for her murder. Drawn back to town by a series of strange events, he soon realises the story of what really happened the night she vanished is beginning to unravel, and what’s more: it isn’t over.

A/N: and here is the conclusion! I’ll ramble a little more at the end, but for now, please once again accept my repeated and evermore wildly gesticulated thanks for @hollyethecurious​ for this beautiful aesthetic which made the fic - I literally would not have done it without it! also hollering at the kids from the @csrolereversal​ way back when for starting the event that I originally signed up for, it was so much fun to be part of and while I’m a lil disappointed with myself for finishing so much later, life happens! thanks all! 

and now - story happens!

Rating: T

Warnings: mentions of suicide, canonical character death, and some Spooky Business™.

Continuing the teeny tiny taglist - but if you want off this list for the epilogue (pending), just let me know and I promise I will not be offended! <3

@snowbellewells​ @carpedzem​ @kmomof4​ @optomisticgirl​

AO3 | one | two | three | four | five

-/-

6 - when the first man awoke in the night

Present Day

There was a pervading sense of strangeness to seeing them all in the same room again.

It was like listening to your favourite song for the first time in years, but the lyrics were now backwards. Instead of humming along in that easy, thoughtless way, it felt jarring to the ears and forced you to really consider what exactly you were hearing, line by line, word by word.

Killian couldn’t stop thinking about every word he offered up into their shared space now; everything felt permanent, nothing could be taken back. What they said in this moment would mark how every moment after it would come to be. He was sure of it, and he was sure the other three felt the same, which was why very little had been said since Mary Margaret had warily invited he, Regina and David over the threshold and into her loft.

Regina had taken a position nearest the door, arms folded, expression neutral, leaning steadily against the wall. She looked like someone trying desperately to imitate the pose of one unaffected, but the tension in the set of her shoulders gave her away. Killian had perched on the stairs that led up to the upper floor, and David stood in the centre of the room shifting his weight from foot to foot and glaring sadly around him, as if he had no idea where he fit into this room anymore and imagined any of her items of furniture might have been the one to oust him. Mary Margaret sat at the side of her dining table that allowed her to face all three of them at once, hands clasped tightly together over the tabletop.

Mary Margaret had offered them tea and they had all declined.

It was the distance, Killian decided, that was most difficult to take in. It was the closest they had been to each other in five years, but the space between them had never felt wider.

The tape recorder was clutched tightly in Killian’s right hand. It was a little slick with sweat from his palm, but he refused to let it go.

“Is this about Emma?” Mary Margaret asked, and while she asked politely, the edge in her voice was unmistakable. She did not want her house of cards to come down around her. When they didn’t immediately reply she offered with a wry eyebrow raise: “It’s not likely to be about anything else, is it?”

“It is,” Killian said, seeing no point in drawing it out. “It’s about the house.” He and David exchanged a look. “It’s back.”

Something ticked in Mary Margaret’s jaw. “I don’t know how to make this any clearer – I don’t want to know.”

In that moment, Killian couldn’t see anything but Emma in her – except he had always had an instinct for how to scale Emma’s walls, but with Mary Margaret he floundered.

Fortunately, there was someone else in the room who knew how far better than he.

“Hey,” David started, gently, in that tone so earnest and warm that none of them had ever really been able to ignore. “You know who we are, you know what this must be. Just look at us.” No matter what else had happened, there they all were. “This isn’t something from nothing – we wouldn’t do that to you.” He gave her a sad sort of smile. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Mary Margaret stared back up at him, and not for a second did Killian believe their story was as over as they had both claimed it was. “What is it, then?” she asked.

“It’s this.” Killian stood up, opening his palm to reveal the tape recorder inside. It was sturdy and blocky, resembling a clunky child’s toy more than the instrument that had brought them together that night. He laid it on the table, and before she could ask he cut her off. “I recorded this five nights ago, in Brooke House.”

The tape immediately began to crackle and scratch, and Killian fast-forwarded just long enough until it started. It whirred, and it tck-tck-tck­-ed, and eventually there was a voice.

‘Emma?’

His voice. Cutting through the static. There were a few thumps. A rustle as he’d stuffed the recorder in his pocket, some creaks as he climbed the stairs within Brooke House. Through the recording, Killian could relive the second night he had gone to the house since coming back to Storybrooke, the same way both Regina and David already had.

‘Emma?’

There was a crash, and the unmistakable tear of book bindings. Except, where Killian had heard Emma’s voice that night, the tape recorder had picked up nothing. Instead it sounded as if Killian had stood in silence, waiting.

‘Why didn’t you show yourself to Regina?’

Another thud, as another book was hurled against the wall. Otherwise, quiet.

‘Come here,’ the Killian on the tape said, ‘let me look at you.’

Mary Margaret was frowning, and lifted her bemused gaze up first to Killian, and then the others. “What is this?”

“Just wait,” Regina answered quietly from her place by the door.

The Killian on the tape let out a long breath. ‘I’m so sorry.’ A pause. ’All of it.’

Killian bristled at the memory, felt the cold touch of her lips like a steel edge. You couldn’t tell from the recording what had happened, and Killian had not been quick to fill the others in on his actions during that particular interval. But even as the seconds passed, his pulse began to race – he had listened to this recording a hundred times already, listened to Emma’s spectral presence like a non-entity, had initially resigned himself to having caught nothing of measurable value to show she was there at all.

Except right then –

‘Killian?’

Emma’s voice was unmistakable.

Mary Margaret’s reaction was instant, and visceral. She almost bolted out of her chair. In fact, she looked so suddenly pale and faintly ill that Killian nearly offered to fetch her something to throw up in. What were you supposed to do when you heard the voice of your long dead friend, five years after the fact of their dying?

But it was just that one word – then it was Killian promising to help her, and then there was nothing at all.

“There’s more,” he said grimly, but he had a feeling Mary Margaret wouldn’t have been able to form words just yet anyway. Killian clicked a finger on the fast forward.

He had completely forgotten about that recorder after Emma had kissed him – it had sat on those bookshelves for five days, running continuously in the study on the landing. He was fortunate it was such an old, robust thing. Even without attention it had continued diligently fulfilling his purpose, and his only regret was that it had run out of tape after a day and a half.

But in that time, it had caught enough.

Having wound the tape to this point so many times, Killian stopped it once more and let the noises trickle out.

A rustle of fabric, something scratching on old floors. A faint, but tangible sigh.

‘Killian?’

Emma, again. Killian shut his eyes. He let the sound wash over him.

‘Killian?’

There was nothing for a minute or so here, but Killian left it running. They all needed time to process it, and together they listened to the soft sounds of Brooke House murmuring quietly. Ancient wood groaned, the stairs told the bannister that someone was coming, the wind pushed doors open and closed them. But eventually, reverently, they heard her speak again.

‘Yesterday, I dreamed…’

She hissed out a breath. Her voice was quiet, and terribly sad. Killian’s heart seized to hear it, because he knew it was his Emma. This voice wasn’t rich with delighted, dark secrets. It was hollow and resigned and a breath of condensation across frosted glass.

‘I don’t know where I am. I thought I heard your voice.’

Something fluttered, possibly the pages of a book. Then there was only silence.

Killian knew this quiet stretched the tape for a few hours, so again he tapped his finger to fast forward, until they could hear her speak again.

‘It’s – it’s the car. I don’t want to see it anymore. Is David there?’

David dropped heavily down into a seat at the dining table. The Emma on tape continued, oblivious.

‘I thought I heard your voice. We have to finish it. It’s…’ Something scratched loudly, and the four in the kitchen winced at the sudden volume of the sound. ‘Killian? Is that you? I’m so cold. I –’

The recorder clicked, sputtered and stopped. It had reached the end of the tape.  

Then they waited.

It had been enough to convince David; it had been more than enough for Regina to let go of her scepticism about whether Emma needed rescuing. For Killian, it had lit a fire under him. Not only was Emma, their Emma, trapped in Brooke House somehow, but she was cognizant. He had seen it. In those breathless few seconds after their lips had touched, his Emma had bled through like a blot of ink stretching across paper, and she had asked after him.

Now he intended to answer.

But they couldn’t do it without Mary Margaret, not if they needed what he thought they did – three pairs of eyes turned to look at her.

Killian was unsurprised to notice she was crying. Her shoulders shook, and she did not resist David when his hand came over to rest atop hers. In fact, she curled open her palm and allowed him to thread their fingers together as she let out a tremulous breath, her eyes misty and fighting for clarity.

“Please tell me this isn’t real.” She sounded as miserable as she looked.

“It’s real,” Regina answered.

“Our girl is in there,” David urged. “We have to get her out.”

With her free hand, Mary Margaret furiously wiped her face with the back of it. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “How?”

Killian brushed a finger across the edge of the tape recorder, and for a wild moment considered rewinding it and letting it play again just so he could hear her voice.

“The ritual. The same one we started five years ago.”

It had always bothered Killian, had niggled in the back of his mind for years. If the sole purpose of that ritual had been summoning a malevolent spirit in order to control its power, then why had Liam Jones allowed himself to become embroiled in it? Liam was honesty, integrity, and fierce loyalty. It didn’t add up.

“It was never about bringing something evil out – I should have recognised the signs the moment I came back, but I was too busy thinking about Brooke House now to worry about then.” Turning abruptly to the coffee table, Killian plucked a pen and ripped a page from a notebook that had been lying there and brought it back to the dining table. On it, he carefully sketched the five-pointed star he had drawn into the floorboards at Brooke House. “History lesson. One of the earliest known uses of the pentagram is actually as a Christian symbol – its points are supposed to represent the five wounds of Christ.

“Then, as time goes on, you start to see a rise in occult practices, and they pretty much liberally borrow as much symbolism as possible from anywhere they can. Particularly the pentagram – which, if you turn around –” Killian swivelled the image so the tip of the star was pointing down, and the two points jutted out upwards. “—Has been known to represent the two horns of Satan, here. The rejection of heaven and all things spiritual. That’s what I thought I was looking at when I saw it needed to be in the ritual.” He’d spent a few days absorbed in old library books, researching what Liam had written down and left in his toolbox.

He had allowed himself to be influenced by Belle Gold, by all the talk of evil, and as a result had only bothered with one interpretation of the symbol – which was reductive, and a potentially fatal error.

“But way, way before all of that, you have its uses in Taoism, with Pythagoras and the Greeks, in early iterations of paganism. Some perceive it as a representation of the elements, but most agree that it’s about balance. It’s perfection in mathematics, the human body, words; it makes its uses in religious ritual and magic basically inevitable. But by the time the pagan revival begins – well, mostly a re-invention or re-construction of older practices – it’s become so strongly associated with malevolence and Satanism that it’s a little difficult to adopt as a symbol of faith. So, what do you do?”

Killian grinned.

“You turn it the right way up and draw a big fat circle around it.”

He rotated the paper again, so the single point was facing upwards and drew a circle around its points, connecting each one.

“It’s a different symbol. It’s what most modern wicca practices call a pentacle, it’s supposed to represent a physical object used in ceremonial evocation – the act of calling upon a spirit – for protection. It’s a talisman. Liam wanted the circle made from salt, which is a common ingredient in purification spells. There are candles at each point to give energy, but –”

“You should have left one unlit,” Regina cut across him, eyes widening once she’d put the pieces together.

“Exactly.”

David and Mary Margaret, for their part, looked entirely nonplussed by the turn of the conversation. Killian winced internally – perhaps he’d spilt out the word magic a few too many times for them.

David blinked. “What – what are you talking about?”

“One candle should have been unlit to let energy out,” Killian explained. “This isn’t a ritual for summoning or capturing a demon. It’s a ritual for banishing one.”

Mary Margaret dropped her head in her hands.

“Years. Years of therapy. All undone in a single evening.”

“Did you hear her?” Killian pressed, tapping the tape recorder emphatically. “Did you hear her calling out for us? She said it herself. We need to finish this. There’s no moving past it until we do.”

“I can’t. I just – I can’t.”

Killian could feel frustration mounting, but David laid a hand on his arm before he could burst out something furious and likely detrimental to their cause. They could attempt the ritual without Mary Margaret, but without a person sat at every point of the pentacle the spell would be weaker. It had to be her – there was no one else.

“Mary Margaret,” David began. He shifted his chair a little closer. “Mary Margaret.”

Miserably, she raised her head, hands clasped on the back of her neck.

“I think you need a little of something that you used to give all of us,” he smiled. “Hope.”

Her eyes welled with fresh tears, and Mary Margaret shook her head. “Hope – hurts.”

“Only when we give it up.” To Killian’s surprise, it was Regina who had spoken, pushing away from the wall to stand at Mary Margaret’s shoulder. “I thought I could bury this beneath the way the world had opened up. That it was the price for new eyes.” She locked eyes with Killian, offered him a nod of understanding. “I was wrong. And… I’m sorry. We should have supported each other, stayed together.”

“Regina’s right,” Killian continued. “And this is on me, too. I should have been here. I shouldn’t have missed… everything I missed.”

He had missed the service for Emma, he had missed old Henry Mills’ passing, he had missed David and Mary Margaret going their separate ways, he had missed the coda of their friendship with Regina, he had missed Archie leaving town, he had missed the library closing its doors for the last time, he had missed, he had missed, he had missed.

Killian had thought leaving Storybrooke was the best decision he had ever made; that without Emma, all that was left was walking in the dust.

Admitting that he had spent five years missing Storybrooke was like releasing a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding.  

“Emma needs us,” David urged, taking one of Mary Margaret’s hands in his own. “One last time. All of us – together.”

They were all pieces of the same, scattered glass. Some edges sharp, some smooth. All Killian knew was the completed image was soft and golden, and he ached for it so harshly and so tenderly that he couldn’t bear it if the night ended any other way.

Mary Margaret took a steadying breath.

Her fingers clasped around David’s.

“Hope,” she said, and it settled it.

They were doing this.

-/-

The sky above Main Street was a deep, midnight blue, the winking light of stars only clearly visible if you fixed your gaze on it for longer than a few seconds. All appeared still, other than the stirring of crisp and deadened leaves in an unhurried brush down the road, and long shadows cast by the bronze streetlights were black in the way the sky should have been.

In the corner of Killian’s eye, everything seemed to shift. Every few metres it felt like something flashed at the edge of his vision, just out of sight, daring him to turn and look, trying to pull them from their singular focus of getting to the edge of town as quickly as possible. He was sure it was Brooke House. The dagger felt cool against his chest from the inside of his jacket. How did Emma put it? Testing the boundaries? Stretching her limits? A spectre at the edge of Main Street, a shadow at the end of David’s bed.

He could feel her all around them watching, waiting, trying to deter them from coming any closer. Perhaps she knew of their intent. Streetlights flickered overhead, and the groan of steel scarring tarmac could be heard distantly.

Killian felt so exposed. The others had huddled in close, walking swiftly as a unit – maybe they could feel it too.

He was so involved in wondering after the otherworldly, that the reality of a car pulling up beside them didn’t even register until the occupant was already climbing out. The door slammed definitively, purposefully, and it drew them to a halt. Once Killian had identified who now stood there in the gloom, features lit by the fading amber light of the street, he let out a string of murmured expletives.

“I knew it was only a matter of time before the whole gang was back together again,” Sheriff Graham Humbert growled, his voice as melodic and dangerous as it had been when Killian was just seventeen, frightened, and exhausted beyond belief on the night that had started it all.

Killian fought to keep his voice level. “It’s been a long time, Humbert.”

“Long enough that you’re ready to finally give me the truth?”

“Graham,” Regina began quietly, and it was the way her tongue curled around Graham, it was the intimacy of it, the sheer fact that they were on a first name basis that sent Killian’s mind into a tailspin, cataloguing a few more ways the town had continued to tick without him.

They were all adults now, weren’t they? So why not? Why not Graham?

Because he didn’t like it.

“Don’t,” Humbert said shortly. “So where is it you’re off too? The ravine, maybe?”

He looked older than when Killian had seen him last. He had only just been elected the month before Emma had disappeared, gruff but bright-faced and enthusiastic about his future turning over small town misdemeanours. Then he had been thrown into a missing-persons-assumed-murder case, and nothing about Storybrooke had felt small anymore. Had Emma’s disappearance given him those lines, pulled taut at the corner of his eyes? Could the unhappy curve to his mouth, the adamant line of his jaw, be because of Emma, too?

He had only wanted to find Emma, it was all any of them had wanted. On any of the countless nights Killian had lain awake, unable to dream of anything but the night that Emma had vanished, could Graham Humbert possibly have been doing the same?

Not to mention his instincts were correct. The four of them did know something more about it than what they had told him. It must have churned him up inside to know that, and not be able to do a single thing about it.

“We’re going for a drink,” Mary Margaret offered, and she surprised Killian with the smoothness of the lie. “Just old friends catching up.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Humbert snapped. His badge glittered in the dim light. “You were up to something then, and you’re up to something now.” He folded his arms. “I’d like to invite all of you to come down to the station and have a chat, seeing as you’ve got the time.”

At the end of the street, a bulb blew in a shower of orange sparks. Glass rained musically down onto the sidewalk. Killian thought he saw the flutter of white fabric dart around the corner.

Watching, waiting, daring.

“We don’t have time for this,” Regina muttered. “Step aside, Graham.”

“Fine, go. I’ve got no problem with it. The way you all look tonight,” Humbert stared at each of them in turn, scathingly, “I have a feeling you’ll lead me straight to her.”

He had only ever wanted to find Emma. That, Killian reminded himself, they had in common.

Movement flickered at the edge of his vision, and for a moment Killian was certain once he turned his head he’d see another spectre of Emma, dirty white and terrible, but it was David, David had surged forward and his fist was swinging and Killian heard the crack of Humbert’s head hitting the sidewalk before his eyes had even processed that he was witnessing his crumpled form falling backwards. Out cold.

David was hissing with pain, shaking out his hand and wincing.

The other three were blinking, astonished.

“Sorry,” he offered to Humbert’s motionless form. Then, turning to the others and noticing their expressions, he suddenly grew defensive. “We’re in a hurry, aren’t we?”

Inside a convenience store, a radio burst to life. The scattered notes of Only You could be heard scratching across the quiet street.

Killian narrowed his eyes. Yes, they were.

The four of them stepped carefully around Humbert, and continued their brisk journey into the night.

Given their intent, Killian had half expected for Brooke House to be gone by the time they got there, like when they had returned on the first night to look for Emma. After the ritual they had scattered into the trees, tearing off in different directions to try and find where she might have gone, voices hoarse with their continued calls out for her. By the time they had returned to the site of the house to regroup, faithfully following the trail of Killian’s orange string, it had gone. Taking Regina’s Ouija board, Mary Margaret’s scarf, David’s Apollo chocolate bar wrapper and Emma with it. A piece of all of them lost to the maw – some bigger than others. It had feasted on what it could and disappeared into the night.

Perhaps, Killian thought, as he stared at its broad foundations, the beckoning creek of its front door, the gasping cavern of its insides, it looked at them all like an unfinished meal.

It waited, it watched, and it dared them closer to finish them for good.

Killian’s hand tightened on the hilt of the dagger.

Emma needed them. And she had waited long enough.

As one, he and Regina stormed up the steps and headed inside. Behind him, he could hear Mary Margaret whimper, the urgent, hushed tones from David pushing her forward, but he paid them no mind. They each had a job to do here – this was his. Regina immediately pulled out a black marker and began tracing the shape of the pentacle on the floor, while Killian rummaged in the rucksack they had brought for the salt. He started sprinkling it in a perfect circle around the edges, and it wasn’t long before David had coerced Mary Margaret through into the sitting room. She had her palms over her eyes, as if by not looking at the aged walls of the house she might not have to acknowledge she was stood there.

Something crashed upstairs. David and Mary Margaret jerked towards the sound, the latter dropping her hands. Killian and Regina exchanged grim looks.

“It knows,” she said.

“Get the candles.”

There were other loud bangs of protest, like the sudden opening and slamming of doors, and at every noise it brought the four of them closer together, until Killian could feel Mary Margaret’s small hand clutching tightly to his upper arm. He spared her the briefest of glances – in the gloom she looked completely pale, but her features were set into something determined. The house could screech and moan, but she would not be so easily spooked anymore.

This was the girl he remembered. The one who could be both; afraid, and brave.

Killian fumbled with the matches, but not a single one would light. Killian stuck his finger into the packet and found, bafflingly, that the tip of every match was damp, even though they had been tucked away in his pocket. With irritation Killian thought of the damp wall and the wallpaper, and he thought he could hear laughter. It might have been the wind whistling past broken glass, but it was something.

“Here,” David said. He’d pulled a lighter from his pocket.

At four of the five points they set a lit candle, and at the fifth they set a final one – unlit, for the release of energy they had intended. Quickly they took their places behind a flickering flame, leaving the gap between Killian and David where Emma had sat all those years ago.

Killian’s pulse raced, his heart felt jagged and stuttered; hope, that treacherous notion, couldn’t help but imagine that at the end of all this, she might once again be sitting there.

“Ah,” came an icy voice from over his shoulder. Killian shut his eyes, knowing who it was at once. “You finally brought my dagger.”

“Ignore her,” Killian said firmly, refusing to turn around, but the others weren’t paying attention to him. Their stares, slack-jawed and stupefied, were fixed on the phantom that had just entered the room.

David’s voice was hoarse. “Emma?”

“David,” Killian barked. “Take Mary Margaret’s hand.”

“David,” Emma’s voice was honeysuckle and thick. “David, it’s me. Come on, come away from there. It’s time to go, don’t you think?”

Mary Margaret snatched his hand from where it had been hovering near her, and in a daze, David turned his head back towards her.

“Look at me,” she said, fiercely. “My eyes. Only.” David looked torn. “That is not our girl.”

“David,” Emma sang. His shoulders tense, but he did not turn to look at her again. Instantly, Emma’s tone turned nasty. “Get out.”

Killian didn’t care for ceremony anymore; he didn’t care for the weight of it all, for the ritual, for the sense of preserving the past – he felt like he had spent his entire adult life consecrating devastation. Regina’s hand was tight in his, their incomplete circle ready and waiting. The candle flames danced backwards and forwards, and Killian used his spare hand to pull the dagger from his coat pocket.

There was a loud hiss from behind him, like the hum of a cooped-up predator, and something ice cold and hard swung in front of him and gripped his throat.

Killian gasped.

Mary Margaret screamed.

He felt the air being squeezed from his windpipe, the dig of Emma’s nails into his skin so harsh he was sure they must’ve drawn blood –

With effort, Killian raised his hand –

And flung the dagger into the centre of the circle.

The effect was instantaneous. Emma released him immediately and wailed, something loud and drastic and terrible, as the air began to crackle. There was no slow build up this time, a steady gathering of wits as the room began to take in its breath, there was just the rumble of distant thunder, the storm they made to summon forming as suddenly as a tornado. The wind howled through the cracked windows; one of them shattered under the force of it and carried shards of glass towards them, hurtling around them with great speed.

Through the gap between Killian and David, Emma had stumbled backwards into the middle of the circle, and her eyes were black and furious. Right in front of them, she began to curl in on herself but it was impossible, her back had bent at a right angle and the contortions were too much, too strange, that his brain tried to tell Killian that it wasn’t happening at all. The wind whipped away her crown of flowers until it disintegrated, and her mouth gaped open in a silent scream, wide, wider, a yawning arc of darkness.

Something sharp dug into Killian’s cheek – glass, he thought, helplessly – and he reached up his free hand to try and shield himself. Mary Margaret and Regina had their eyes tightly shut, expressions scrunched up with pain and Regina’s lips were moving, but Killian couldn’t hear anything over the roar in his ears.

That was when the lightning struck.

In unison, arcs of obsidian light latched onto both the centre of Emma’s chest and the dagger, tying the two together like an ugly, pulsing artery. Again it flashed, this time onto her back, and again, her left hand, again, her right, until Emma was entirely obscured from view by the opaque jet of the zephyr.

This was where they had lost Emma before – she had thrown herself into the centre of the storm.

Killian tensed, maybe – maybe –

Regina’s hand tightened on his, as if sensing the direction of his thoughts.

Not a chance, it said, and gripped even harder.

Instead he yelled out into the darkness.

“Emma!”

The only response was rage – the door to the sitting room swung off its hinges, dropping heavily onto the floor. The wallpaper was ripped to shreds. A hole the size of a fist splintered into the floorboards behind him. Even so, on hearing him, the others took up the call – screaming for Emma to come through, to break free, to take her place in their circle and complete them.

“I know you’re in there!” Killian hollered, and his throat felt hoarse but he needed to make himself heard. “Emma, you can do it!”

And then – and then – he saw her.

Not the twisted, luminous Emma that the house had been showing him, but Emma, their Emma, staring out from the centre of the tornado. Through jets of black lighting he could see her, eyes wide, palms facing upward as if waiting for the rain to come, her mouth open in a cry that he couldn’t hear.

He couldn’t hear it, but he could see it. When she locked eyes with him her mouth formed the same words that had haunted him from the minute they’d first been ripped from her.

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

Not this time.

Killian wrenched his hand free.

“No!” Regina cried.

If you have to have someone, he thought, furiously, then have me.

Killian hurtled in after her.

For a moment, everything was blindingly white, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

Then he felt the touch of her hand.

It all fell quiet.

There was – nothing.

-/-

His heart was still beating. That was something, he supposed.

Behind his eyelids the light had dimmed, but it was still bright. That was how he knew it was no longer night. The air felt damp, and cold, and smelled faintly of wet moss and pine. The ground beneath his feet felt soft and earthy, and experimentally he wiggled his toes inside his boots. Obligingly, something squelched. Somewhere, a sparrow trilled.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. About a metre in front of him the ground gave way, dropping hundreds of feet below him in stacked and uneven layers of rock, grass and sediment. A distant roar sounded from beneath him, and pitching himself forward a little he could see the crash of the river against the edges of the rockface.

He was standing at the edge of the ravine, he realised. The ravine that Liam had driven into.

“This is what it does,” Emma said from beside him. “It makes you relive all your worst moments.”

His hand was tucked into hers, not unpleasantly. Their shoulders brushed.

“Where am I?”

In the distance something screeched, and he and Emma turned their heads towards the sound. Belatedly, he realised it was the exhausted brakes of a car accompanied by the rumble of an engine, and a wave of nausea began to rise within him. The harshness of the sounds felt dissonant with the relative peace above the ravine, but as Killian turned his eyes to the right he could remember how it had looked in the days that followed. It had rained heavily that afternoon, the police report had indicated that had wiped away most of the evidence, and everywhere mud had been churned over and over, plants ripped from their roots. But at this moment everything was still, undisturbed.

The sound of the motor grew louder.

Killian couldn’t remember how to breathe. He began to feel the light patter of rain on the back of his neck.

Not this, he begged, not this. I don’t want to see this.

“It’s alright,” Emma said, squeezing his hand tightly. “I’ll be here.”

Then the trees exploded.

Liam’s old Mustang burst through the shrub, and although Killian was anxious not to see it, he couldn’t tear his eyes away, tried to fix his gaze on every single detail in the impossibly short space of time between the car careening from the forest and tipping over the edge of the ravine. It was like watching it in slow motion. The windshield had already cracked in two places, and the Mustang swerved dangerously to the left – attempting to wrench itself to rightness before it was too late, but it was too late – and when Killian finally felt brave enough to look into the cabin, he realised something else with a chilling rush of dread.

Liam was not alone in the car.

Someone else – something else – had two hands on the wheel, and Liam was wrestling for control. Acting purely on instinct Killian surged forward, but Emma’s grip on his hand held him back. He knew, with the certainty that you knew things in dreams, that nothing he could do would be able to stop it.

Then he blinked, and Liam was alone in the car, and the Mustang had hurtled over the edge of the cliff. For a few seconds, the forest had earnt back its stillness.

Then, with an almighty crash that made the ground beneath him shake, the Mustang hit the surface of the water.

Killian couldn’t bring himself to look over the edge. On the cliff, just metres from where Killian now stood, someone else watched the car disappear beneath the walls. It was a man – or no, was it a man, his skin looked more like slick bronze, glittering like the scales of a fish – and then he was gone.

Killian reminded himself to breathe in, and breathe out. Emma reached across and brushed tears away from his cheek with a gentle finger, which was how he realised he had been crying. He clutched her other hand tightly in his own.

He couldn’t speak, and mercifully Emma didn’t seem to expect him to. It could have been minutes that they stood there together, breathing in, breathing out, or it could have been hours. It might not have been more than a few seconds. Somewhere, a sparrow trilled again. Killian began to feel a splatter of rain against the back of his neck, which was how he realised it had stopped raining the first time around.

“Careful,” Emma said. “Here it comes again.”

In the distance, he heard another screech of tired brakes.

Alarmed, Killian turned – and realised the treeline looked exactly as it had when he arrived, before Liam had burst through it.

Overwhelmed by the urge to throw up, Killian bent double and retched, but nothing came out. Emma rubbed a soothing hand on his back.

Again, he watched as the Mustang crashed through the thicket, as Liam fought for control of the wheel with the strange man – the same man who stood on the cliff afterwards before vanishing into thin air, he now realised – and skidded over the edge of the ravine. The world fell apart once more as the car pounded into its final destination.

“Where am I?” Killian repeated, in between taking large gulps of air.

The scaled man on the cliff watched the car, satisfied, before disappearing completely.

“It’s hard at first,” Emma sighed. “I watched my parents abandon me on the side of the freeway, like, a thousand times.” Her hand squeezed his own. “The car pulls over, my Mom gets out, she picks me up in my blanket and puts me down. Then she gets back in and it drives away. It was like picking at a scab I thought had already healed.”

It hadn’t, though. He could have told her that. Some scars were meant to stay with you forever.

We’ve all got ghosts here.

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. He began to feel the weak patter of rain against the back of his neck.

“I saw the kid who found me, too,” Emma added, bitterly, “his name’s August. Not that it matters now.”

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang screeched.

Killian was finding it difficult to process what he was seeing with what he was being told.

“They say that’s the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result? I waited for them to get back out, just once, to not just leave me there. But that’s what it feeds on. That hoping. The more you fight it, the more you want something else to happen when it never could, the stronger it gets.”

With a shudder, Liam’s Mustang broke the treeline again. It swerved, splattering mud across the clifftop. Liam wrestled for the wheel and the tail of the car swung out; hope shuddered to life within Killian, this time this time he would pull it back, he’d regain control, he’d turn before it –

The Mustang sped over the edge of the ravine.

“He wasn’t alone in the car,” Killian managed to get out, as his heart seized in his chest. “He didn’t – it wasn’t suicide.”

The scaled man on the cliff stared at the disappearing Mustang, and then vanished.

“That’s what the spirit of Brooke House looked like,” Emma said, nodding at where the scaled man had stood. “When it came to Liam.”

When it came to me, he wanted to cry, it looked like you.

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. He began to feel the weak patter of rain against the back of his neck.

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang screeched.

“It threatened you,” she continued softly. “It said it would kill you if he didn’t help the spirit escape the house.”

“But he didn’t,” Killian added, needlessly. Of course he didn’t.

He thought of the ritual, the one Liam had outlined to banish the demon, and he felt weak. Helpless to stop the chain reaction of Liam’s death – both in the weeks that had led up to it, and as witness to his final few moments as the car crashed into the ravine. He would have died on impact, the coroner had said. The body swept up by the rush of the water below, taken out to sea. Just like everyone had always said. That final, private wish that he had only whispered aloud once, that the lack of a body meant that maybe, maybe something else had happened, was finally snuffed out.

Liam had been in that car. It was small comfort to know he hadn’t done it to himself.

The Mustang thundered out of the undergrowth, swerved, screeched, and fell.

“He tried to banish it, but he was missing one key ingredient.”

Killian knew, with the certainty that you knew things in dreams, what that missing ingredient had been.

“The dagger.”

Emma nodded. “Right. After that didn’t work… he was always a dead man.”

But how had he known? How had he even thought to banish the demon? It seemed with every answer he got, a thousand more questions rose in its place.

“But the dagger… his name was on the dagger. Why didn’t he –?” Look like you?

If Liam had died in the ravine, just like they had always said he had, why was his name on the dagger?

Emma looked out across the ravine, darkly. “That’s just how it keeps score. Its victims. Liam isn’t trapped here, but I’d say he’s still a victim.”

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. Killian began to feel the splatter of rain against his neck.

“Wouldn’t you?”

In just seconds, gone forever. Not trapped, but gone.

Trapped.

For the third time, he asked: “Where am I?”

Emma shook her head. That wasn’t the right question.

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang squealed.

So instead, he asked: “How do we stop the demon?”

“I’ve already told you,” Emma sighed, airily enough that it felt as if he were just disturbing her at work in the library again. Her voice sounded faint. “God, don’t you ever listen?”

Listen.

With the suddenness of breathing, his hand closed on empty air where it had once been holding Emma’s. She had gone.

So had the clifftop.

It was like waking up, when you weren’t sure how long you had been asleep.

He was standing in the single room of the old apartment he shared with Liam, and he had always been standing there. It was smaller than he remembered; just the open plan kitchen-stroke-sitting room-stroke-Liam’s bedroom, attached to an even littler bedroom that had been Killian’s. The kitchenette was in the corner, dark and musty smelling, and Liam’s bed was propped against the opposite wall, impeccably made as always. There had only been room for the bare minimum of additional furniture – a chest of drawers for some of Liam’s clothes, the rest hung on a metal rack like the kind found in a shop, a moth-eaten sofa and a small, boxy handheld television plucked right from the jaws of 1994 perched atop an overturned wastepaper basket serving as a table. It was dark, lit miserably by a single window next to the sofa, and warm in the uncomfortable way that a gym was warm; lived in.

It looked so insignificant. Almost barren, certainly cheap. Nothing to be proud of.

Killian longed for it with something so profound that it was an almost physical ache. This was life before Liam had died.

A key clicked in the lock, and the front door to the flat was flung open with more force than necessary. Killian’s heart sank once he realised what he was looking at.

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

In tumbled Liam, exactly as he remembered him, and a younger Killian – twelve years old, freckled, dark hair askew, and furious.

“—So unfair!” The younger Killian was scowling. “I don’t want to move again! I just started making friends!”

Killian had forgotten what it was they had fought about – it had faded completely from his mind beyond the core sentiment, which had been bloody and foul, in the wake of everything else that had happened that day. Now it all came back to him with startling clarity.

This was the last time he had seen Liam alive.

“Well, tough,” Liam said wearily, setting a plastic bag on the counter next to the refrigerator. “We are.”

The younger Killian rounded on him angrily. “Why?”

“For work.”

“Has all the wood been chopped in Storybrooke, then?”

Liam fixed him with a withering look. “Don’t be facetious. It’s important, Killian. You just have to trust me on this.”

He had wanted them to leave town, he remembered now.

After that didn’t work… he was always a dead man.

He would have known, even then, that Brooke House was coming for them.

It struck the older Killian, then, just how tired Liam had looked – dark circles clung to the bottom of his eyes, and his skin looked stretched and pale. It also occurred to him how young he was. Liam had always been taller, older, wiser; even after he had died Killian had never thought of him any differently. Yet, here, Liam Jones was just nineteen years old – and he already been looking after the brothers Jones for years already. Killian had already outlived his brother’s unfairly short life by almost three years.

The younger Killian threw himself dramatically down onto the moth-eaten sofa. “I bet Dad wouldn’t make us move.”

Liam scowled, busying himself taking a few meagre groceries out of the bag and putting them away. “You don’t know what Dad is capable of.”

“I would if you just told me!” The younger Killian twisted on the sofa so he could look at his brother, bristling with indignation. “What is it that’s so bad? Why won’t you talk about him or Mum?” Liam kept his mouth set in a thin line. How that had infuriated him at the time. “How about you just tell me, and then I’ll go without a fuss. I’ll even pack tonight! How’s that?”

“I don’t like being held to ransom,” Liam replied tersely. The younger Killian let out a cry of frustration, delivering a swift kick to the sofa, then stormed over to his bedroom door. “And a tantrum won’t help. So long as you continue to behave like a child, I will continue to treat you like –”

The younger Killian whirled around, hand on the doorknob and eyes ablaze.

“I hate you!”

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

“I’m not finished,” Liam snapped, “don’t you walk away from me.”

The younger Killian did not listen. He stomped into his room and slammed the door shut behind him.

Don’t, Killian begged, come out. This is it. This is the last time.

Liam had followed him to the door, let his hand hover above the handle.

Open it, he longed, pleaded. Don’t leave it like this.

He watched Liam change his mind. He watched him pick up his car keys. He watched him curtly inform the younger Killian that he was going out for a little while, but he would be back soon. He watched him wait for the younger Killian to respond.

He did not.

Liam left the flat.

A key clicked in the lock and in again came Liam, with the younger Killian in tow.

“—So unfair!”

Like the clifftop, he was apparently doomed to watch the same moment over and over – but Killian refused. Seething, he tried to think himself into being somewhere else. He didn’t know the rules here, but somehow he had moved from the ravine to here, and if that was possible then he could move from here to somewhere that was not here.

Not this time, Killian thought furiously, no more than once.

In part instinct and in part miserable fury, Killian put his fist through the thin plaster wall.

Behind his eyes, pain exploded – but it was not from his fist. No, his wrists were smarting, burning with an agony he could not see, and someone was screaming and he thought it might be him, he was back in the sitting room at Brooke House, the storm raged, a tornado of wanting and longing and hoping and nothing ever changing, and he could feel his left hand clasped around the dagger but his right – his right –

Emma was there, and she was holding tightly onto his right hand.

She looked him squarely in the eyes. “Listen!”

He was in Granny’s Diner.

He knew this because he could hear the quiet lull of patrons around him, and the faint smell of melted cheese had begun to permeate. He could feel the hard, well-worn cushion from one of the booths beneath him, and he could still taste vanilla cake on the tip of his tongue. He knew because Emma’s arms were around his neck and she was holding him tightly, and he could feel her breath on his lips. He knew because he had lived in this moment so many times, and begged a thousand times to have ended it differently. He didn’t need a demon to do that for him

“Thank you,” Emma had said, her cheeks flushed with glorious delight (he had done that, he thought fiercely). “For always knowing exactly what I want before I do.”

“You’re…” he trailed off, because he had become distracted by the bright and welcome jade of her eyes. “You’re welcome.”

All it would take was moving himself closer just an inch. He was suddenly conscious of his hand on the side of her hip, of his desire to move it further around until it brushed her spine, to use it to tug her to him, bridging the final distance between them. Her lips looked soft and pliant, a rosy pink that had spent their lives shaping around his favourite words in the entire world, because everything she said was a gift, and he loved her, God, he loved her, he loved her so much.

The jagged beat of Only You was rattling from the jukebox in the corner, and Killian Jones wanted to kiss Emma Swan more than he had ever wanted anything.

He could feel her unsteady breathing, rising and falling against his chest, and he was sure her pulse would be racing to match his – but fear gripped him. What if she didn’t want this? What if it scared her as much as it bloody terrified him? If he leaned forward and she didn’t meet him halfway he didn’t think he could bear it. He hesitated

He hesitated –

He always hesitated when it was important –

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

Killian had sailed past this moment more times than he could count, he didn’t need a ghost to remind him of all the roads not taken. For the last five years, Only You had been the song he had almost kissed Emma Swan too, days before he had lost her forever. In that moment, he couldn’t think of anything worse than watching himself, feeling himself not doing it over and over for eternity when that had been his only chance.

That’s what it feeds on. That hoping. The more you fight it, the more you want something else to happen when it never could, the stronger it gets.

Is this what Emma had done, for five years? Replay over and over the worst possible pockets of time it could think to show her, wishing ardently for something to be different, praying desperately for some hope of rescue. He thought back to the tape recorder – she had sounded lost, confused. Defeated. Trapped in an unending limbo of nothing ever changing.

It had to stop today.

How do we stop the demon?

Listen.

Emma’s eyes flickered to his lips, he felt her swaying dangerously forward. The air smelt of burnt toast, vanilla sponge and anticipation, and Killian felt untouchable.

Only You trickled out from the jukebox in the corner.

“‘Looking from a window above, it’s like a story of love… Can you hear me?’”

Killian froze.

That song had been following him around for days.

Piss off, ghost.

A taunt, he had thought. A wretched reminder of everything he had almost had. But what if it wasn’t?

I’ve already told you. God, don’t you ever listen?

The tape recorder was proof, Emma had the ability to bleed through the machinations of the demon, to touch her surroundings cautiously, gently, from inside her void of almosts and never-have-beens, and she had been hurling this moment into his path ever since he returned to town.

Maybe something in it had to change.

But if you fight it, Killian thought furiously, that only makes the demon stronger. So what was he supposed to do?

Emma’s arms tightened almost imperceptibly around his neck.

In the space of a steadying breath, he allowed himself another long look at her. Pretty, dainty eyelashes, but fierce and warm eyes of jade, capable of spitting fire and turning his insides into something weak and wanting. Her lips were parted and daring him closer, and as he entertained the thought of leaning in his heart hammered against his ribcage. God, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her more than anything.

The future was only sky. They had all the time in the world.

So maybe he didn’t fight it.

He didn’t want to, not anymore. He was so, so tired of fighting his way through life, Mary Margaret had lauded him over his stamina but that’s not what it was, not really, he just couldn’t remember what life had been like before he’d needed to throw up his fists. So he decided he was done with all that. If giving up meant he could live in the sensation of her breath on his lips, of their almost and their never-have-been, in that half a second before they decided no, then he would happily give up on life outside of this oblivion.

“‘All I needed was the love you gave…’”

Because almost kissing Emma, he decided, was so much better than living in a world where he hadn’t done it.

If you have to have someone, he thought, have me.

It was like waking up, when you didn’t know how long you had been asleep for. Suddenly mobility was possible, and he could feel his own chest rising and falling unevenly, aware of his own breath in a way that made it feel like he hadn’t been breathing before. Once he realised with awe that he could move it, he lifted a trembling hand up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear, cupping her face with the other. As his pulse raced, he just wanted to be sure that she was real.

“Emma,” Killian said, and his voice sounded far away. His thumbs brushed across the shells of her cheeks. “I’d very much like to kiss you now.”

Emma grinned, and he realised she was crying.

“You fucking better.”

Instantly, Killian surged forward.

It was everything he had hoped it would be. Emma was warm, soft, eager, and mimicking the same little sighs he could hear escaping through his own lips – kissing Emma was like kissing air. It was tightness in the top of his stomach; it was saturated mornings under the oaks; it was winter at the door, brushing its feet on the mat; it was the final ten seconds before the whistle blew in a championship game when all that was left was that startling, adrenaline-pumping hope. Kissing Emma was a race that he had been training his entire life for.

Everything was noise.

Wind surged, static hummed, someone screamed but still Killian resisted; he was determined to inhabit this moment, this second, if this was the rest of his life then he didn’t intend to stray too far. If it was just the space of a single exhale then he would breathe out, and he would breathe out, and he would learn to go without oxygen because as far as he was concerned, there was no other possible choice he could make. He heard someone calling his name. A hand scrambled at the hem of his jacket. Something fizzled like a power line coming loose and he could hear the sound of glass shattering –

Emma pulled away.

He could still feel her hands in his hair, though. That had to be something. He kept his eyes tightly shut.

He was cold, and he could smell the forest. Dry leaves crunched underneath a boot. He tasted only velvet, mist, and Emma.

“Killian,” she said softly.

Killian shook his head. He didn’t want the dream to end.

“Killian, you can open your eyes.”

Reluctantly, he did as he was bid. He was standing in the middle of a familiar patch of forest, his hands tracing the edge of Emma’s face – because she was here, and she was solid, and there wasn’t a lot else he cared about other than that – it had to be the middle of the night, as the sky overhead was a black curtain pulled taut, specks of light barely visible scattered across it. The earth looked black beneath his boots but he knew from the crackle underfoot that in daylight it would be a watercolour pad of New England autumn, but that didn’t make his being there any less disorienting.

“Where did – how did we get out here?”

Was that – Regina?

“Oh, oh – Emma!”

Killian felt the wind knocked out of him as someone came crashing into the side of he and Emma, throwing their arms around them – David? – and again they swayed dangerously, but this time someone was crushing him from behind and someone was crying and eventually his knees buckled and they were all tumbling down onto the forest floor. It was haphazard and dizzying, but he recognised their hearts just as clearly as his own; all relief, all love, all fierce, fierce joy.

Emma was clinging to David while he sobbed into her shoulder, and Mary Margaret was holding on tightly from behind and speaking in such a floundering, nonsensical babble that nobody had any idea what she was saying. Killian was dazed, and more than a little confused, but blisteringly happy. He had no idea what had just happened, but since this was the outcome he had been praying for, he chose not to dwell on it.

Regina clapped a hand onto his shoulder, and he spotted her wiping something from the corner of her eye that looked suspiciously like emotion.

“It’s over.”

-/-

Brooke House was gone.

That was what they had managed to surmise after they had finally been able to disentangle from each other. It wasn’t that they had been transported to some other location, it was that the house itself had vanished around them, leaving them sprawled in the dirt feeling more than a little shaken and more than a little relieved. The ritual had worked, they had banished the demon, and the only evidence it had ever been there at all was in their story shared, their hard-won memories, and a curving, silver dagger stabbed blade first into the earth. A close inspection revealed its edge to be flat and smooth. No names. Just a dagger. They left it there, buried in the soil. They were finished with it now.

Killian had tried more than once to explain what had happened after he’d hurtled into the storm after Emma, not just to the others but to himself – but Emma had laced their fingers together and she looked so paralyzingly pained and sweet and sad that he had stopped trying. Some things were easier not to explain.

She hadn’t spoken much on the way back, just tucked herself tiredly into Killian’s side and dropped her head against his shoulder. She was wearing the same outfit she had disappeared in, which made her look oddly like something stitched together from different times – she was a woman now, wearing the old, worn, coat and boots of a girl. David had attached himself to her other side, putting a strong arm around her shoulders and occasionally patting her hair, murmuring tender reassurances and kissing her forehead.

Killian knew how he felt. He thought he might have a panic attack if he had to let go of her hand.

Somehow, they had done it. The demon was gone and so was Brooke House, and Emma had been given back to them.

She had been amazed to discover she had been gone for five years.

“I’ll go to the sheriff station first thing,” Emma said, nodding her head like it would settle everything. “Clear your names.”

Regina looked unconvinced. “I’m not sure that’ll do it.” The fact that David had punched Humbert in the jaw was just now coming back to them, and Killian couldn’t help but agree.

“Why not?” Emma argued hotly. Then she pointed at herself. “Missing girl. No longer missing. Case closed, right?”

Killian squeezed her hand. “We don’t have to settle anything now.”

For now she was here, and it was enough.

As they turned onto Main Street he felt Emma begin to tremble, her shoulders shaking underneath David’s arm. Whether it was fear or relief or anticipation or a combination of all three, Killian couldn’t tell, but after he had asked her she reluctantly revealed that where she really wanted to go was to the Nolan house; to Ruth.

David turned away to hide a fresh wave of overwhelmed, happy tears, but Emma’s attention was fixed on Killian.

She rounded so she was in front of him, her free hand fisted into the lapel of his jacket.

“I want to see Ruth,” she said, looking agitated, “but I –”

She cut herself off, stared fixedly into his eyes. Willed him to understand.

I don’t want to be away from you.

Something warm bloomed in his chest.

“I’m staying at Granny’s,” he offered with a smile. “You could – after. If you want.”

I love you I love you I love you I love

“No, he’s not,” Regina cut in. “He’s staying with me.” When they all turned to look at her she bristled, adding lamely: “I’ll… make lasagne.”

Emma laughed and it was such a beautiful sound. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I want.”

By the time dawn had kissed the sky with streaks of pink and orange, that offer had become too tempting for any of them to resist. Regina and Killian had immediately decided sleep was impossible and had started depleting her stores of homemade cider to try and relax their nerves and carry them until morning. They talked about nothing at all, and although Killian could tell Regina was desperate to ask about what they had done, what he might have seen, itching for a chance to make a comparison to her book of spells, Killian did not give her the opportunity to do so. There would be time for all of that.

An hour or so in, Mary Margaret had arrived at the door. Wordlessly, she had proffered a bottle of Jose Cuervo, and they had invited her inside.

The sky was just beginning to brighten when David and Emma returned, which was how they now found themselves laid out on the floor of Regina’s sitting room, gorged on the perfect lasagne and mellowed by fatigue and Jose, watching the sun come up through the tall, French windows.

Emma was curled in Killian’s lap, her legs slung across his and her head resting against his chest, listening to the steady gallop of his heart. He very much wanted to kiss her again – hell, he wasn’t even sure he had kissed her the first time. But there would be time for all of that, too.

Everything was bathed in golden light. Regina was dozing on a sofa, David and Mary Margaret were talking earnestly in hushed, gentle voices, their foreheads touching. Killian was struck by something so right, so definite, that he wasn’t sure anything he had experienced since Emma had disappeared had been real. This was so clearly how everything was supposed to be that it was inconceivable to imagine it had been any other way.

“Thank you,” Emma murmured against his chest. She lifted her head up so their eyes met. They were a soft storm of emerald, rimmed with a tired scarlet edge along her eyelashes. “For not giving up.”

I love you, her fingers curled into the worn leather of his jacket, danced a pattern across his chest. Tapped a beat to match his aching heart. He could hear her. I love you.  

“How could I?” he replied. “You know where Archie hides the good snacks.”

She kissed him in the dusty light of morning, and it chased the last of his ghosts away, out into the dawn.

-/-

A/N: if you made it this far - THANK YOU! I am honestly so grateful for all of the support I received for this fic, it was my first try at writing something kinda horror/spooky and I’m really proud of how it came out. I’ve honestly been blown away by some of the comments I’ve got, I am SO happy, you guys are so awesome and I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it so far - it’s been a pleasure to make your hearts race and keep you up at night! 

I’ll be posting a short epilogue on Wednesday, so keep an eye out for that! for now, turrah, and thank you so much! <3

[livetogether--diealone]

thoughts on what charles said at sky ita?? like i wanna hope he's just being his charming pr self and he doesn't actually mean it...otherwise i'm done w him lol

You know what at this point I don't know anymore, because obviously this is the answer he should have given to the press ("I knew this was what was asked of me, to help carlos") and he did give them exactly this. But i felt he held back in the first half of the race for nothing, not even to keep his p2? I get being polite, I get protecting the team, but he's getting nothing in return? He'll get slandered anyway, so might as well throw a jab at how Ferrari handled his race. And not that he shouldn't be helping his team/teammate, that's fine he should, but when the roles are reversed he gets no help* and only complains from the other side. I hope he's getting all the reassurance for the future because it's looking bad

* as in last year when he almost lost second place in the championship for all the "help" and austria when cs tried to not listen to team order and got karma-d real quick