#either that or she realized early on that she had 'permission to kill' that anyone else didnt have

[extravalgant]

Well done, my champion, my hero, my... dare i say it? My Scion. 

started thinkin about lemuria again and before i knew it i was 4+ hours deep into this painting of calamity . crazy stuff

IM NOT THERE YET ON MY STORM (camera pan to me dead in karamelle) but that wont stop me from getting the story ELSEWHERE... the monitoring stations with the old one always interested me . love how he called us his scion i think thats very fucked up possessive of him

anyways heres one more lil doodle

[lya-dustin]

All is bliss

Chapter 36

Cw:unsafe drinking, intrigue

Gif by @baddie-on-a-mission-xx

Taglist: @darylandbethfanforever9 @mercedesdecorazon @watercolorskyy @aemondx @sweethoneyblossom1 @ewanmitchellcrumbs @alexandria-millie

Aemma drinks a small glass of wine and braces herself as she opens her bedroom door.

She walks with purpose and confidence to her destination and waits patiently after knocking on the door.

Septon Eustace is shocked to say the least as he apologized for taking so long to answer his door.

“What can I do for you, your grace?” He asked, rubbing his eyes from sleep, he had left the feast early as usual. Had to be well-rested for tomorrow when he blesses the funeral procession.

“I need you to perform funeral rites for the dead.” The young queen said the words she has rehearsed ever since she got this idea.

People who were executed were not given funeral blessings or had rites performed unless they were of the noble class and of moral standing.

Either by mistake or for whatever reason Aegon had done it no one, absolutely no one, was giving any sort of respectful burial.

“I can only do so to whole bodies, only the heads remain, your grace.” The Septon said tiredly, as if he too had been against it.

Once you scratched the surface you found Aegon’s reign stood on a foundation of sand.

No one wanted him as king, his only epithet is Aegon the Usurper.

Couldn’t even call him Aegon the Mediocre.

“I do not care, do what you must and allow them to rest in peace.” The young queen stood her ground and the Septon gave in without a second to even give a half-assed argument.

“I can perform a blessing if they are buried, we would need permission to give them a burial.” He said as if that was difficult to obtain.

She is about to whore herself out to get children to stop being sold like chattel in Flea Bottom, a place to bury those who suffered Aegon’s wrath will be easy to get.

“Leave that to me, your holiness.” The young queen said, and the old man looked at her the same way Orwyle and Jena did.

He looked at her with hope.

When she returns to her room, she finds Aemond drinking enough for both.

In the odd turn of events, Aegon had all the cravings she had and Aemond got the nausea she occasionally got.

So far things had been going smoothly, she had gained the right amount of weight and Aemond only had to lie once about why he couldn’t stand the stench of garlic.

“Where were you?” he asked annoyed and yet looking at her like he wanted to consume her body and soul.

To be fair cunnilingus was referred to as eating cunt these days.

And boy did her lover feast on her like a man starved.

“Had some business to attend to.” she said, keeping it vague as she began to undress in her dressing room.

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t approve, but more like he doesn’t care for anyone outside his immediate circle and thinks her caring about others is a little odd.

He humored her, just as the rest do, even mother did.

Otto, Viserys and Alicent had instilled in them that if one gave things like education and freedoms and other progressive things like that, the smallfolk would realize nobility and royalty are merely titles one gives power to.

It wouldn't kill them to end the practice of serfdom or allow trade guilds to include women or make their subjects literate, they just think it will and it was a fucking problem.

Even mother and both her grandfathers thought the same.

Only grandmother thought differently because after her mother died Queen Alysanne and her father raised her and Aemon was of the same mind as his lady mother.

“If you were wondering where your husband is, don’t bother looking for him he fell asleep from the wine.” Aemond is smiling from the sheer luck of it all.

She can hear it in his voice as he comes to help her out of the dress.

“Thank the gods, I felt dirty and used when it hit me that I was whoring myself ---and you---for a semblance of power here.” She admitted avoiding his gaze through the looking glass.

He doesn’t know she only agreed to it because it is the only way they can be together.

“Good, I know you wouldn’t believe it after the things I said at supper, but I would rather take my remaining eye out than have him watch me fuck.” He confessed as he searched for laces or buttons on the back and sides.

The dress was fastened by the silver clasps accentuating her cleavage.

“Am I going to have to cut you out of this dress?” he asked after he gave up.

Once she was literally sewed into a dress, it had been hell to remove, and she knows Aemond took immense pleasure in tearing it off her with his dagger.

“No, dearest, the smith who made the silverwork, had the genius idea of making them clasps.” Aemma demonstrated by undoing them one by one.

If these innovations persist, the handmaidens who dress her will be out of their jobs, the queen thinks as she eased her own clothing off her body.

The shifts she usually wore underneath had been replaced by a red silk petticoat that matched the lining of the sleeves. The ribbon tying it to her waist is familiar enough for Aemond to undo.

And because neither wants to pay the toll, this may as well be the last time they are together.

Only a handful of people are brave enough to come.

“They plan to retake Dragonstone while the Western lords fight by the Riverlords, Prince Jacaerys has a bold plan to end the war.” Mysaria whispered to the young queen who stands there and says all the right prayers as the Septon sends off the innocent into the afterlife.

Her innocent baby boy would have been one and twenty, he would have been named Baelon after the Spring Prince. He would have been a man, a knight with his own keep and lands and would never fear a slaver’s boat or the auction block or the whip of a master.

He would have been the sun to her, and they took him from her before he had even been born.

That night she had wished to kill Otto Hightower herself, but she settled with taking out his eyes and feeding them to the ravens she keeps.

Rhaenyra and Viserys were dead and paid for what they did to her only Alicent Hightower, Daemon and Larys Strong remained.

“And how would they win the war without an army? The north cannot come, the Velaryon fleet has no commanders, and the Lannisters will likely make mincemeat out of the riverlords.” The little queen asked, no longer the same girl she had been before.

The proud little queen had been humbled, and with the right person, she could be molded into someone better than Alysanne Targaryen.

Mysaria could be that person.

She could make the queen and have all those who wronged her begging for her mercy.

Wasn’t it just wonderful?

The woman whose happiness they took making a queen out of the child of the one who helped Hightower and his dog kill her innocent baby.

“They have dragons, more so than your captors. Prince Aemond will be sent to take Harrenhal while Daemon is gone and the Western lords dead, with the Hightower host busy burying their dead, the city will be ripe for the taking.” Lady Misery gives the good news.

If it all went well, the war would be over before the last of the harvests is brought into the city’s storages.

[black-rose-writings]

A post I saw recently made me remember an idea I had like a year ago: The Gaang (from AtLA) as Grishaverse characters.

All of the characters would be aged up by 6-7 years compared to their OG versions, to match up with their stories and the universe better, meaning that Toph and Aang are in their late teens and the rest is in their early 20s.

Also, I firmly support the Darkling and Grisha loyalists, so please avoid leaving anti-Darkling replies or I will block you, because I don't feel like arguing with yall on here. Feel free to send me hate asks if you want, but keep it off of this post.

So, in no particular order:

Toph Kir-Lao: The only daughter of an influential Shu noble family, born blind and a Durast, with incredible talent for working with both rock and metal. Her parents had her recieve some secret training during her childhood, but eventually, at the age of 12, she had enough of their overprotectivness and desire to force her into a life of hiding her true self and conforming to the expectations of a high-society young woman and an heir to an influential family, and decided to run away from home and to Ravka, joining up with the Second Army (as that was the only place she knew where being Grisha wasn't at best a shameful secret). Her parents did eventually find out she was at the Little Palace and though the relationship remains tense, they are in sporadic contact. (If anyone asks them, Toph is studying in Kerch).

Zuko (He has both a Kerch and Shu family name, but doesn't use either because fuck his family, though his uncle gave him permission to use the name Yul-Iroh if necessary): Ethnically mostly Shu, grew up in Kerch. His father is on the Merchant Council and traces his heritage to the Taban family (their ancestors fled to Kerch after an unsuccessful power grab). The entire family are and have been Inferni for several generations, though it is not public knowledge, and Zuko, his sister and cousin were all trained to use their powers from an early age. Zuko got his scar in his early teens, during a fight with his dad. Iroh is his father's older brother who decided to cede his position as the head of the family business after his son disappeared, so that he could fully devote himself to the search/investigation - he would later find out that his brother was involved with the Kerch slave trade (and general gang shenanigans) and arranged for his son to get captured and sold. Though Iroh always knew about the dangers Grisha faced, it was only this that made him realize that being rich and powerful didn't exempt him or the people he loved from that. Combined with Ozai's escalating abuse of Zuko, Iroh decided to leave Kerch and seek shelter with the Second Army, partially hoping that his son had managed to escape and ended up there as well.

Aang (He has a Ravkan first and last name, but only uses his Suli middle name): Ethnically a mix of Suli, Ravkan and Shu, Squaller, grew up at the Little Palace. He comes from a Grisha family that has been part of the Second Army pretty much since its founding. His only living family is his grandfather Gyatso (who teaches at the Little Palace school), both of his parents were killed in the war when he was very young. Both he and his grandfather are deeply religious (to the point of being considered fanatics by most other Grisha) and refuse to kill because of it (which is why Gyatso ended up being a teacher) - despite this, Aang is the youngest known Squaller to have learned the Cut.

Katara and Sokka: They are Hedjut. Though the Hedjut are typically pretty accepting of Grisha, they still live in Fjerdan territory and their mother ended up getting killed in a Drüskelle raid (not decided if she was also Grisha or if she just took the bullet for Katara like in AtLA), after which their father decided to send them both down south to Ravka, as their home could no longer be safe for Katara (not decided if Sokka went with her because he wanted to make sure Katara was safe or because their father suspected he was also Grisha and didn't want to risk him, either). Sokka isn't Grisha, but he did end up joining with the Oprichniki to stay close (he typically is part of the Palace guard, because something-something-Ravka is racist). Katara is officially a Tidemaker, though she does have some Corporalki abilities (Hedjut, much like the Zemeni, don't view Grisha with strict order distinctions, so she didn't realize this was not normal until much later).

I do have some additional ideas for the characters (and for other AtLA (or other universe) characters translated into the Grishaverse), so feel free to ask about those. Or post your own extensions, if you want.

[zenaquaria]

Vess’s Past: Bound for Repentance

A snippet from Vess’s past, wherein she’s awaiting her captors’ decision to let her continue existing, or to kill her outright. 

Vess, before she joined Greymoor’s forces against the country’s King of the Undead, was a maverick vampire with no ties binding her to anyone or any cause. Not only that, but she was a deserter of said king’s forces by virtue of her sire having bent the knee to the man. And she fled. 

Her captors, well-armed and armored undead hunters, found her lost pendant in a tavern one night after she ducked out of her bedroom rental early due to their presence. She realized the loss of its weight on her person a bit too late, and had to chase them down to try and get it back. She did, but in so doing, got their attention and was stopped in her attempt to run by a silvered knife being thrown through her knee. 

She was taken captive, interrogated briefly, and begged them to let her exist and not let her be taken back to King Morvaine. Offering to serve their order, even. The discussions after her questioning were... Not entirely reassuring, but didn’t entirely resign her to permanent death, either.

Do not repost, edit, alter, trace/copy, use/redistribute my artworks without my permission.

[seriouslysnape]

Miscommunication (pt.2)

James Potter x Remus Lupin x Sirius Black x Fem! Reader

Warnings: Language. Poly! relationship. 

A/N: Part 1 is here!

Word Count: 3,376

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”

It had been three weeks since you had stormed out of the boys’ dorm in a scurry of anger. It had also been three weeks since you had touched, talked to, or even spared Sirius a passing glance. As far as you were concerned, he didn’t even exist. Despite your dramatic exit, Sirius was confident that you’d crack soon enough and come running back to him, begging for forgiveness. But the more time that passed, the more that he was beginning to realize that might not be the case.

In a general sense, life continued on as it always had. You walked through the Hogwarts’ corridors with the three Gryffindors, laughing at James’ jokes and blushing red under Remus’ kisses. You gave all your love and time to James and Remus, not offering Sirius a drop of your attention. 

He tried to ignore it. He tried to brush it off like it didn’t bother him and like it didn’t make a difference whether you were with him or not. His attempts to drown you out the way you had been drowning him out were successful at first, but it only took about a week for him to realize how much this was killing him.

In the mornings, you woke James or Remus up (depending on whose bed you slept in the night before) with bubbly kisses and sweet giggles, something that you had always done for all three of the boys’ wake up calls. Sirius had gone almost 23 days (but not like he was COUNTING or anything) since he had any kind of interaction with you.

No cuddles.

No hugs.

No kisses.

Nothing.

The whole situation put James and Remus into a bit of an awkward position. You were on great terms with the two of them, considering they hadn’t insulted you and invalidated your feelings right in your face. This was a difficult challenge to tackle, because they felt guilty for continuing to love up on you when Sirius wasn’t getting his usual share. This was a rather particular arrangement that had taken lots of trial and error to make the right adjustments. Now that the balance had been thrown off, the whole thing didn’t feel right.

James and Remus had both tried to convince you to talk things out with Sirius. They knew that deep down this wasn’t what you wanted, and things couldn’t go on like this forever. James and Remus knew Sirius better than anybody. They were fully aware that Sirius was regretting what he had done and was kicking himself for it...even if Sirius wouldn’t show it or admit to it. 

Sirius was beginning to lose precious sleep over this. He tossed and turned in his bed that had grown so lonely without you. His arms felt so empty not being wrapped around you, holding you snugly to his body. Suddenly, he didn’t have anyone to help him with his Potions homework or someone to remind him about his Transfiguration exam coming up. He didn’t have the girl that completed the complex puzzle that was Sirius Black. He felt so unfinished without you.

He missed you.

But his pride was winning out.

“How’s the brat today?” Sirius questioned dryly, not even looking up from his Herbology textbook in his lap.

“Sirius.” Remus and James echoed, clearly displeased at Sirius’ cold name for you.

Over the last three weeks, Sirius would ask about you when you weren’t around and he was alone with the boys. He would ask how you were doing, but what he really wanted to know was if you had said anything about him or given any indications that you were close to giving in. James and Remus were growing impatient with Sirius. They had tried to step back, allowing both yourself and Sirius to have time to allow your fog of frustration to air out. They had hoped that Sirius would come around to realize that he had been wrong in all kinds of ways, and you both could work it out on your own.

Between stepping all over your feelings like they were a sidewalk and calling you a bitch for being rightfully upset, Sirius had one too many strikeouts on his record.

“What? If she’s going to act like a child, then I’ll treat her like one.” Sirius growled.

James crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in the chair that he was sitting in by the common room’s fireplace. Remus watched the two of them from over the rim of his cup that contained his favorite hot tea. 

“She’s hurt, Sirius. You hurt her,” James snarled, eyebrows furrowed in agitation, “I don’t blame her for not wanting to talk to you.”

“Did you not hear the things she said to me? She was totally out of line.” Sirius argued, his demeanor going rigid and his defensive mode kicking into high gear.

“Because you pushed her too hard,” Remus cut in, “She has every right to be upset.”

Sirius was shocked that they were taking your side over his. You were never allowed to speak to any of them the way you had talked to Sirius that day. You weren’t allowed to talk back, get an attitude, touch yourself without permission, as well as other rules that had been established early on in the relationship. They all took the rules very seriously, and the fact that James and Remus were brushing it off was mind boggling to Sirius.

“I didn’t push her at all. She caught an attitude with me.” Sirius remarked tossing his textbook aside.

“Because you don’t always treat her the way you should,” Remus snapped, “All she wanted was for you to listen and talk to her.” 

“Do I not already do enough for her? I walk her to class, I let her sleep with me, not to mention that I fuck her pretty much whenever she wants,” Sirius pointed out, “And now I’m still not doing enough?”

James shook his head, sighing harshly. He was disappointed that he still wasn’t getting it. 

“She’s our girl, Padfoot. She responds so well to Moony and me because she knows how much we love her,” James explained, “You’ve got to start treating her like you love her.”

Sirius’ hardened features went light at what James was saying. He looked between his two best friends, who were sharing matching expressions of urgency. Sirius felt a sickening feeling creeping into his stomach that he could feel all the way up into his throat. Had you gone this whole time thinking that he didn’t love you like the other two did?

“But...I do love her.” Sirius spoke, almost in a whisper.

James and Remus looked at one another briefly, a bit relieved that he was maybe starting to see clearly now.

“She doesn’t know that. You’re going to lose her for good if you don’t change some things, Pads.” Remus added once he saw that Sirius was beginning to have a serious breakthrough moment.

That surely got Sirius’ attention. That wasn’t something he wanted at all. It made his heart hurt even to think about possibly never being with you again. He had to fix this, no matter what he had to do or say.

He just hoped that it wasn’t too late.

The remorse and the contrition that he was feeling that had been building up in him over the last three weeks was finally seeping through the cracks of the surface. It was like a fire that just kept spreading and spreading until the only thing he could see were the hot, orange flames and black smoke that would suffocate him if he breathed in too hard. It was like a switch had flipped. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He didn’t care about his pride or his image or his dignity. 

He just wanted you back.

So, the boys began to devise a plan. Sirius admitted that he didn’t know how to even begin apologizing to you. He wasn’t great with apologies, considering that even the word ‘sorry’ probably had only fallen from his mouth only a couple of times in his life. This was going to take some calculation and planning to get it right. 

You had been doing a bang up job of ensuring that you weren’t ever alone with Sirius. You made sure that either James or Remus was by your side whenever you were in Sirius’ presence, to avoid being forced to speak to him. Remus and James were confident that they could get you two in a room alone together. That was the easy part. The hard part would fall to Sirius, which came down to the actual apology.

James and Remus knew you’d be suspicious if Sirius apologized first. You’d likely only think he was apologizing because he was touch starved and wanted sex, not because he cared about you and was terrified of losing you. In their eyes though, as long as he was honest and didn’t lose his cool, you’d be able to see his real intentions.

Remus had told you to meet him in their dorm, and that no one would be there until later in the day. That seemed pretty normal to you, so you didn’t even give it a second thought. The dorm was empty when you arrived, prompting you to slip out of your uniform and into one of Remus’ sweaters all while getting comfortable on his bed. Shortly after you were settled, the three boys congregated just outside the door, whispering in their semi-circle formation.

“You got this, mate. Just be normal and be honest,” James instructed, “I guarantee you that she’s missing you just as much.”

Sirius was nervous. Not because he didn’t know what to say or what to do, but because he had half convinced himself that you had already decided he wasn’t worth your time anymore. He couldn’t live with himself if he was the reason you had left him.

“We’ll be out here just in case you need us,” Remus piped up, “It’s gonna be fine, Pads.”

James and Remus gave Sirius reassuring grins as Sirius took a deep breath before turning the knob of the door. He entered the small dorm room, his heart fluttering when he saw you sitting on Remus’ mattress. Your head snapped up, your face full of delightful expectation for Remus, but it faded just as fast as it came when you saw it was Sirius. He definitely noticed, but tried not to take it to heart. Your eyes were locked in with his, and you could already tell something was up.

“Hey.” Sirius said plainly, and in a bit of a squeak.

“Hi.” You replied.

He was honestly surprised that you actually gave him an answer. He thought you might’ve ignored him completely. The joyous relief that he felt from you actually talking to him was almost enough to send him to his knees, pleading for you to give him another chance. 

His gaze did shift to the book that was placed next to you. It was your Herbology textbook, the same one that Sirius had been studying from earlier that day.

“Studying for Herbology?” Sirius asked, but obviously that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.

“Yeah,” You answered, unsure of what exactly was happening, “I was just waiting for Remus.”

Sirius nodded, avoiding the sting that burned in his chest at the reminder that he hadn’t truly seen you in almost a month. You looked so comfortable in the large sweater and the blanket that was draped over your lap. Your hair was slightly messy from the breeze outside that you had walked through to get here. Your skin was glowing from the warmth of their room and the sudden interaction you were having with Sirius.

You looked perfect to him.

He knew he needed to say something now. He needed to kick start this conversation before things got awkward and weird. Although, he never minded silence as long as he had you to occupy his every thought. All the things that he had planned to say were abruptly wiped from his mind. He was going out on a limb here, totally about to wing this. He just had to go for it.

“Can I sit?” He questioned, referring to the slight open space next to you.

You nodded hesitantly, shifting over so he could have a little more room. He sat down just about a foot in front of you, both of you turning to face each other. James and Remus were just outside the door, their ears pressed up against the door to be sure they didn’t miss anything.

Sirius looked at you for a few moments, taking in your curious, attentive behavior. He took a breath, and spoke again, but it came out as more of a ramble.

“Baby, I know I’ve hurt your feelings. I didn’t want or mean to hurt your feelings, but sometimes I just say stupid shit and then I’m too proud to admit that I said something stupid and...” He trailed off when he realized that so far he wasn’t saying anything that you didn’t already know. 

This was yet another reminder that Sirius wasn’t a great talker. But he wanted to let you know the things that you didn’t already know. He wanted you to know that he was truly sorry. He was sorry for ever making you feel like you weren’t worth anything to him. 

He wanted you to know that you were his world.

“I miss you,” He began again, preparing for any possible reaction from you,  “I’m sorry for everything I said. I’m sorry that I hurt you...I never, ever wanted to do that.”

Your silence wasn’t because you weren’t believing what he was saying or because you didn’t want to listen. You were silent because you were floored that this was happening. Never in a million years did you think that you’d be sitting here listening to a real, heartfelt apology from Sirius Black. The thought of you leaving him had really scared him, and you could see it.

“I know I’m different from Moony and Prongs. They’re a bit better at this than I am,” He admitted, “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”

Truth be told, you weren’t really mad at Sirius anymore. You could never stay angry at him. Your whole avoid-Sirius-at-all-costs routine hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park for you either. There were several times where you were tempted to just let it go and forget about it. But now you were glad that you hadn’t done that, because you would’ve lost this opportunity to understand one another a little better.

“All I had wanted that day was to talk to you. I like talking to you,” You explained, “I just get frustrated when you don’t want to listen and the only thing you can think about is fucking me.”

Sirius sighed, his eyes diverting to his hands that were fiddling with the edge of the blanket in your lap. He had known that the other two boys were right, but hearing it come from you made him feel even more guilty.

“I know. I guess I’m just not good at talking. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just...not what I’m good at. I’m sorry that I made you feel like you weren’t important,” Sirius confessed, “But I do love you. And I don’t want to go another day without you.”

Another silence filled the room, one that had Sirius’ heart pounding in his chest. He felt like his entire life was on the line. Like, his entire fate was resting on whatever you were going to say or do next. You had every right to get up and walk out and never speak to him again. He knew he had crossed so many lines so many times that it was a wonder you were still here. He just hoped that you’d give him another chance. He hoped that he deserved another chance.

You were starstruck. You were completely touched and moved by what he had said. Maybe it wasn’t the most flawless apology ever. Maybe it was a little rough around the edges with a couple of hiccups. But deep down it was true, honest, and pure. 

Just like the Sirius Black that you had come to love.

He didn’t have anything else to say, and he hoped that what he had said was enough. Your warm hand came to his face, his head lulling into your palm when you brought his worried eyes to look at you once more. 

“I love you. I promise you don’t have to go without me anymore.” You smiled, accepting his apology and offering your forgiveness.

All color returned to Sirius’ face, his shoulders relaxing and his chest releasing a bated breath. You captured his lips into a needy kiss, one that was nothing short of long awaited. Sirius’ hands came to the side of your neck, his blood pumping in his ears. He had missed this. 

He had missed you.

He was even more thrilled when you crawled over into his lap, his hands guiding your legs around him as he refused to let you go from his lips. Although, when the other two boys came bursting in, your hot make out session was forced to a halt. They came in as if they had no idea what was going on, fake surprised expressions plastered on their faces.

“Well, hello there.” James chided with a smirk.

“Did we miss something?” Remus asked.

You and Sirius only laughed, as the four of you crammed together on Remus’ bed. Sirius continued to pepper kisses wherever he could while you craned your head to look at James as he spoke.

“So, I guess the two of you got things worked out?” James acquired. 

“We sure did.” You smiled, giggling when Sirius’ kisses brushed against a particularly sensitive spot on your neck.

Your lips found his again, Sirius leaning you back onto the mattress and keeping secured there. When your breathing began to get heavy and your noises became a little hungrier, James and Remus announced their exit.

“Well, I suppose Prongs and I will leave you to it.” Remus winked.

Sirius broke the kiss only to respond, but that didn’t stop you from leaning upwards to suck on his pulse point, not even phased by what Remus had said.

“You two aren’t going to stick around?” Sirius wondered, groaning as your hips rolled into his quickly hardening dick through his pants.

James shrugged.

“We’ll let it slide this time,” He said triumphantly, ushering Remus out the door, “Besides, the two of you have some catching up to do.”

Sirius let out a guttural laugh as he took a moment to look down at you. You looked so beautiful sprawled out underneath him; your lips swollen from the kissing and your eyes blown with lustful expectation. He knew he’d never be able to take you for granted again.

“My pretty girl...” He mewled, “I love you. A million times over I’ll tell you that I love you.”

“I love you, Siri,” You hummed, swiping a loose piece of hair from his forehead, “Now make me cum the way I know you know how to.”

Sirius chuckled lowly at your boldness, his pupils dilating at the flush of arousal that sent through him. You knew better than to tell him how to run his show, but he knew this was a special occasion, so he didn’t mind taking an order or two. 

“Well, now, what happened to ‘sex doesn’t fix everything’?” Sirius joked.

“It doesn’t, but we already fixed what needed to be fixed by talking,” You smiled, “Now we just both get something we want.”

Sirius laughed out loud, continuing his shower of kisses and swiping your skirt off in one swift move, your body squirming with anticipation. He felt confident that things would be better now. He was more than thankful that he had another shot at this. He was happy he had you back, and the four of you could go back to normal.

And now things would be even better than before.

***

Tags: @justadreamyhufflepuff​ @satellitespidey​ @blackpinkdolan​ @gubleryum​ @gxtitobxby​ @risingtripletaurus​​

[thran-duils]

Lost In Zero Gravity (P.3)

Title: Lost In Zero Gravity (Part Three) Summary:  Fem!Reader x Mob Boss!Tony Stark x Mob Boss!Steve Rogers.  Reader is a call girl who runs high end parties. She catches the attention of Tony Stark who invites her back to his room with his friend. She might have performed too well because she becomes their new favorite play toy and they don’t like to share. Words: 2,574 Warnings (for the fic in entirety): Smut, prostitution, infidelity, angst, domestic violence, stalking, possessive behavior

Part Two || Part Four || Masterpost (mobile) || Fanfic masterpost

There were hands on you and you tried to push them away, frightened.

A man’s voice said quickly, “Sorry, sorry. I’m here to help. I’m gonna get you some help.”

“I… no, no ambulance,” you got out.

“You do not look good at all, love,” the man said, his hand cupping the back of your head to keep you steady as you tried to push yourself up off the ground. “You should stay down.”

You shook your head, “No… I live close.”

You stumbled getting to your feet, falling back against the wall. You groaned painfully, holding your head and slid back down the wall to sit back down on the ground. Your vision was swimming.

“You can’t walk on your own. I’m calling an ambulance.”

“I—”

“It’s okay,” the man said, and you heard him saying, “Yes, I’m on Newman Avenue—”

<><><>

Tony was calling again. He had called a couple days ago, texted yesterday, and you had not responded. You were too afraid to speak to him; you knew you would probably cry because you would have to explain why you could not meet up with him. It went to voicemail again and you sat there staring at your phone. You did not want to lose him permanently as a customer; you liked his attention. You were actually starting to develop feelings which was a big no-no but you could not pull yourself away.

It had only been a week since Jared had messed you up in the alley and your face did not look great. Your eyes were black from your broken nose and he had left quite a shiner on your cheek. Your ribs were still sore too from where he had kicked you, bruising them.

You crawled off your bed and walked to the door, throwing it open. You made your way downstairs, passing one of the other girls on the way down, who rubbed your arm affectionately. You gave her a small smile before continuing on to Tatiana’s office. You knocked on the door lightly, seeing her through the crack of the open door.

“Yes?” she said, looking up from her desk.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course, stellina,” Tatiana said, sitting up straight at her desk. Her eyes ran over your face and you saw her expression tighten. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit still.”

“I can imagine.”

You shifted and asked, “Can you do me a favor?”

“What is it?”

You held up your phone and said, “Tony called me a couple days ago… texted too. And he just called again. I… I don’t think I can talk to him about it. And I don’t want him to think I’m mad or anything or that I’m done with them. Could you call him and explain?”

Tatiana nodded immediately, “Of course. I have some time now.”

You grabbed a piece of paper off her desk and copied his number down for her. You pushed it across the desk, “Thank you.”

She held up her hand and said, “Wanna sit here while I do it? Just in case… something comes up.”

You hesitated but nodded and sunk into one of the chairs across from her desk.

“You know this is mutually beneficial for me to do this,” she told you. “If they like you as much as they seem to, maybe they will shower you still with gifts.”

“I’m not worried about that,” you cut in quickly.

“Regardless, having them keep up pay possibly in the meantime will help out. Not to be crass.”

You nodded, “I understand.”

Tatiana picked up her desk phone and dialed the number you had written down. “He might not answer,” she said as it began to ring. “Won’t recognize the number.” She sighed, hearing it go to voicemail. Briefly, she left, “Mr. Stark, please give me a call back at this number regarding my employee that you’ve been trying to reach. Thank you.”

She kept it vague. Smart.

When Tony called her back almost immediately, she smirked. “Looks like I was clear enough…”

“Hello, Mr. Stark,” Tatiana said, answering the phone, putting it on speaker. “This is Tatiana Bianchi.”

“Did I get blacklisted?” was the first thing out of his mouth.

Her face scrunched, “No, you didn’t.”

“Then why is Y/N not responding to me?”

“Y/N is not working.”

There was a pause. “Did she leave the service?”

“Kind of. She is taking a break.”

Tony’s voice was rougher this time, “So she’s on vacation? She could have at least told me that.” You flinched at that. “I’ve called a couple times and texted.”

“I don’t know how to put this lightly, but her ex found her,” Tatiana said. And added quickly, “Her asshole of an ex. He left his fucking mark. Broke her damn nose, bruised her ribs. Gave her a concussion. I think he would have done worse if some Good Samaritan hadn’t intervened before he could do anymore damage. Bastard stole her money too and her purse. The job she was working was close to here and he said he had been following her, so he knows where this place is. She doesn’t want to see anyone, understandably. I wouldn’t put her out there either right now. And in regards to her responding to you, she asked me to talk to you about it because she’s upset. Again, understandably.”

Tatiana was watching you across the desk as she spoke. You were chewing on your lip, listening to her explain it to him.

“I wanna see her,” Tony said tightly after a few moments.

“Mr. Stark—”

“I want to see how bad it is. Talk to her about it.”

Tatiana locked eyes with you and she asked, “Can I put you on hold?”

“Sure,” he said curtly.

She pressed the hold button and looked at you expectantly.

“I don’t want him to see me looking like a trainwreck.”

“Y/N,” Tatiana said in a quiet voice. “You know why he’s asking to talk to you.”

“Yeah, he feels bad and I get that—”

“No,” Tatiana cut in, shaking her head. “I think he wants to talk to you about it for a reason. A very specific reason. You know what he does, you know who he is. You really think he couldn’t handle that little dickhead?”

You shook your head, “I… I don’t think that’s what he means.”

She gave you a knowing smile, “Okay. So, maybe he does just want to come and give you flowers. Is there anything wrong with that?” You stared at her for a few moments, and she pressed, “He seems like he’s a pretty stubborn person. What’s to say he won’t just show up anyway? Why not do it on your own terms and permission?”

“Okay.”

Unmuting the call, Tatiana said, “Sorry about that. I needed to talk to her to see how she felt about it. She agreed.”

“I can come early in the morning. Like 5. Before it gets light.”

“I’m sure that would be fine.”

“Alright, I’ll be there. Thank you for the call,” Tony said.

“Goodbye,” Tatiana said to him before he hung up the phone.

“God, that’s so early,” you muttered, slumping back in the chair.

Tatiana quipped, “You better get a good night’s rest then so you’re up and ready.”

You pushed yourself out of the chair and said, “Easy for you to say. You’re essentially a vampire.” That caused her to smirk. You thanked her, “Thank you for doing that.”

She nodded, “Of course.”

<><><>

There was a loud knock on your bedroom door that drug you from your sleep. Your eyes snapped open, and you quickly realized you must have turned your alarm off completely when it went off. You swore under your breath, checking your phone. It was 5:07am. You got out of bed, rubbing at your eyes and walked over to your door.

When you opened it just a crack, you saw Tony and Steve standing there with a couple of their men standing behind them in the hall. You saw their jaws set seeing you, taking in your face. Even if it was just illuminated by the light coming in from the hall, you were sure the bruises were visible enough.

“Um, morning,” you stammered. “Sorry, I didn’t get up in time. I’m still in my pajamas…”

Tony rose his brows, “You wanna let us in?”

You swallowed sharply but opened the wider, stepping back to let the two of them file in. You turned from them and walked over to your bed, flipping on the lamp to give soft light in the room. Their men stayed in the hall and Steve closed the door behind him.

There was no way to hide now, and you turned back to them, playing with the hem of your t shirt, shooting an embarrassed look at them.

“Christ,” Steve muttered upon fully seeing you.

You eyed the large bouquet he was holding but before he could hold it out to you, Tony came up to you. He was staring down at your face and you could see the fury in his expression. He reached up, turning your face gently to get a better look at your cheek.

His jaw clicked before he asked, “He found you on the street, Tatiana said?”

“Yeah. He followed me, I guess. Has been following me it sounded like. I hadn’t seen him in a year and a half almost.” You gestured at your face, explaining honestly, “It’s not anything new. I didn’t leave him for no reason.”

“You wanna give me a name?” Tony deadpanned.

Your heart race increased. Tatiana had been right. “Not really,” you told him quietly.

“A name, Y/N” Tony repeated.

“I just won’t walk alone,” you tried to reason and side step it.

Steve snorted, shaking his head and your gaze was drawn to him. He shook his head again when he saw you looking. “No. That’s not how this is gonna work. This,” he gestured at your face. “is fucking unacceptable at best.”

“I don’t care to give you a name. Really. I appreciate—”

“Y/N,” Tony’s voice was firm as he cut you off.

You were pleading practically now, “I’m serious. I don’t care and I don’t want to deal with him.”

“I came here before dawn to figure out how I’m gonna kill this little prick. I would appreciate it if you would help me out, darling,” Tony told you tensely. “I don’t take lightly to men hitting women. Especially women I’m invested in. And you won’t be dealing with him. We will be you. You don’t have to be involved at all.”

Tatiana was right about him being stubborn, although you already knew that. He was not going to leave without the information that he wanted.

“Jared Easton. I don’t know where he lives now though.”

“Where did he live last you knew?” Steve asked.

“We lived in Chelsea. I don’t know if he’s still there.”

Tony took his phone out of his pocket and opened up his note app. He held the phone out to you and said, “You can put the address in here.” There was no room for a discussion, he was telling you to do it.

Grinding your teeth, you took the phone reluctantly. Your hands shook slightly as you typed in the address of the townhouse that the two of you had shared. When you handed the phone back to him, Tony’s demeanor relaxed. His hand came up to hold your neck, staring into your eyes.

“You don’t have to be afraid of him,” Tony told you softly. You nodded, tears pricking your eyes and you tried to hold them back desperately. Tony sighed, reaching up and wiping away one that escaped with his thumb. “We will see to that. We promise.”

He gave you a hug and your heart skipped a beat as he kissed the top of your head. This was a different kind of intimate than normal. You liked it, despite all the warnings to not get attached.

When he stepped back, he said, “There’s breakfast downstairs for you whenever you get hungry. I know a lot of people don’t like to eat super early. But Steve’s smart, thought it would be good to bring it. He remembered you liked that place in Williamsburg. I think he only remembered because you liked somewhere in Brooklyn.”

That caused you to give a little laugh which is what Tony had been aiming for you guessed.

Tony’s eyes ran over your face and he gave a small smile. “There. That’s better. I don’t like it when you look sad, baby.”

He stepped back and Steve stepped up, holding the flowers out to you. You took them and you thanked him. Steve leaned forward, giving you a kiss on the top of the head as well.

“When you’re feeling better, let us know,” Steve said as they made their way back to your bedroom door.

<><><>

After they left, you brought the flowers out to the dining table, putting them in the center.

Elisha appeared in the doorway and looked around. She was still in her pajamas but she did not look tired; like she had been up. That was odd because she loved sleeping in. But you got your answer soon enough.

“So, they did come.” You nodded. She smiled sheepishly, “Sorry, the knock woke me up and I waited up to talk to you about it. If you want to.”

“It’s fine.”

“They brought flowers?”

“And breakfast.”

“Aww,” Elisha said coming over closer and leaning in to smell the flowers. “That’s super sweet of them. So… did they do what Tatiana thought they were going to do?” You nodded and her eyes widened. “Did you give them anything?”

“They forced me to basically. They weren’t going to let it go.”

“Why are men so goddamn protective of whoever they’re bedding?”

You shrugged, “I hope nothing bad comes from it.”

“You should be happy.” Tatiana’s voice startled the two of you. She walked further into the room, and said seriously, “They’re doing you a favor. You should relish in that type of protection. Not many are afforded it. And don’t worry about them messing it up. They’re professionals, Y/N.”

“I just don’t want anyone dead because of me,” you said. “Even if it’s him.”

“Well, then let them do it for me. Because when I came into that ER room, I wanted to find the little bastard and gut him myself. So, better them than me getting my hands dirty. Assholes like him won’t stop with a restraining order or charges against them, so this is the best course of action.” She paused before forcing you to look at her directly. “Y/N though, my dear… just know what this means. This is big. A very, very big favor they’re doing. Sure, it is going to satisfy them but they are killing someone for you. That is not something to brush off. You need to show appreciation for it. Elisha is right. Men are very protective of whoever they are bedding and they also like to be praised for it too. Do you get that?” You swallowed sharply, giving a curt nod. “Good.”

She clapped her hands, her mood changing quickly. “Now, let’s get you some of that breakfast because I saw what it was and it looks delicious. It’ll cheer you up. Go, go!”

~~~

Forever tags: @coconutqueen21 

Fic tags: @icant-hangout-imdrumming, @oceaniamaddness, @multifandom-superlover

[firelxdykatara]

I would actually be really genuinely interested to read your defence of Makorra. I’ve never really been partial to any of the TLOK ships but I know that one gets a lot of hate (even though I don’t see anything wrong with people shipping it) and I’m just curious to see your take.

I've been sitting on this a bit, because it's been a while since I actually sat down and thought about what it is I love so much about Makorra--the fire/water and slap-slap-kiss/BST energy aside--and it reminded me that I actually rewatched the first three episodes of LoK not that long ago (which is when I had my revelation about Equalist Asami, and how I think that the Equalist Mako and Korra fight in episode three was originally meant to be Asami's true introduction to the show, to be revealed when it became clear she and her father were Equalists), because of this meta by @devildogdemon on episode three that reminded me just how much those early episodes made me love Makorra well before the love triangle crashed onto the scene and everything went tits up.

I've spoken before about how what I really loved about Makorra was the potential:

I personally loved Makorra, but I loved it for what it could have been, not what it wound it actually being in the show–but that’s because the love triangle was sloppy as hell and poorly handled, and it took the place of actual bonding for the krew and development of their individual friendships.

This still holds true, and I think the foundations were all very well laid out in the meta that I linked above.

When Mako and Korra had time alone together, and were in a stressful situation, they worked incredibly well together, despite the way their personalities--Mako a bit staid and stoic, used to shoving down his emotions so that he could be the parent his little brother needed and, as a result, never learning how to process how he felt in a healthy manner, while Korra spent her whole life among adults and as a result never really learned how to just be a kid, or how to relate to others her own age, so she is brash and reckless and does what she thinks is necessary because she's never been around people who had to ask permission before they just Did Things and hey, she's the avatar, shouldn't she be the one everyone is looking to for leadership???--tended to clash, especially early on.

They slid almost effortlessly into the Battle Couple trope when it came time to fight--to try and get Bolin back, and to protect one another--and those scenes in Book 1 feel a lot like Zuko and Katara training together at the end of book 3, covering each other's blind spots and accomodating for each other's weaknesses. This is also, incidentally, the episode where Korra winds up wearing Mako's scarf--the one memento he has from his parents, who were killed when he was a child. Sound familiar?

-insert image of katara's necklace around zuko's wrist here-

And before anyone gets on me about the parallels, I'm not saying that Makorra is the same as Zutara (although if you told me that Bryke intended it to be, I'd believe it--either because they thought they were finally giving the shippers what they wanted or, more likely, they wanted to show why they believed zk would never work), but the parallels do exist, and it's largely because Mako occupies the same position within the krew that Katara does within the gaang. They also have the BST and the banter more than any other relationship in the krew, so of course they're going to wind up paralleled to the relationship in the gaang that had the most narrative tension. They are still, at the end of the day, very different relationships, because Mako and Korra are very different people than Zuko and Katara.

But I'm just saying, the symbolism of one half of the pair wearing the other's only physical link to their dead parents........it's there. I didn't make this up.

They also, again like zutara, have this moment of emotional closeness and vulnerability early in the book--in episode 3, where Mako reveals to Korra what happened to his parents and why he had history with the triads, which casts some light on why he acted the way he did in the very first episode (I've seen people getting on Mako's ass about how 'mean' he was to Korra, but like, a) he was very calm about it, and b) how else would you expect someone who lived hand to mouth on the street for an entire decade to react to someone claiming they had 'nothing' in the same breath as admitting that they'd never had to want for anything in their entire life?), and allows them to become closer emotionally--as friends and potentially more, given the explicitly romantic framing of the interaction and several others throughout the episode.

Ultimately, what initially drew me in to Makorra was that slap-slap-kiss/Belligerent Sexual Tension they had in the beginning of book 1, but what really makes me think of what they could have been is the way their relationship developed in episode 3 and the groundwork that was laid for a slow-burn there, rather than Korra deciding she was in love with him just in time for Asami to crash into the scene and nab him first.

(Incidentally, had Asami been an Equalist like she was originally supposed to, this could all have been part of a larger plot and Korra could have slowly come to realize what Mako meant to her while examining the things she felt when she saw him with Asami--meanwhile, all of their relationships could have been given room to breathe and grow, especially if Bolin's puppy crush on Korra were dropped, and Mako and Korra clashing over Korra's suspicions of Asami wouldn't have been quite so ugly if both of them were proven just a little bit right. And then allow for that betrayal to shake the foundations of the krew before Asami works her way back into their good graces, and Mako and Korra don't get together until they've navigated the fallout from that and discovered how much they really mean to each other.)

Uh... yeah, I rambled for days, hopefully I answered your question adequately! I just. I really love Mako, and I really love what he and Korra could have been to each other, and I really love who Korra could have become if the show let her actually grow organically instead of giving her Character Development Through Brutal Torture, and all of that has I guess kind of sunk into a ball of how the show would look if Makorra were done better to me lol.

[musicfeedsmysoul12]

Headcanon Stuff

 I realized I have a lot of headcanons how hero licenses work and I wanted to share them. Note: Some of this is based on Canada’s driving licenses. As well this includes what I call Quirk Permits.

Quirk Permit 

We see multiple cases of people using their Quirk in public- Inko one of them when she pulls her son’s toy to her. As such, I have thought up what I call a Quirk Permit.

A Quirk Permit is a permit that lets you use your Quirk in specific areas. For example: A learning permit allows children to use their Quirk in training areas to learn how to control them. 

The system goes like this:

Learning Permit: All kids get this. It lets kids learn to use their Quirk in specific areas and also at home.

Training Permit: Kids with unstable or dangerous Quirks or kids who want to be heroes get these. These permits allow the children to train their Quirk in specific areas or in their own home and backyard. 

In Home Use Permit: Inko has one of these. It allows her to use her permit while inside her home. In fact most of the population has these.

Job Specific Permit: Uraraka and Midoriya discuss this briefly. He mentions she can get permission to use her Quirk at her parents’ company which is what this would do. So if you can use your Quirk at your job you get this one.

Public Use Permit: A permit for the usage of Quirk in public. Now, these permits only go to people like Hagakure and Tokoyami- Quirks that are on all the time or those who have Sentient Quirks because they can’t help what their Quirks do.

Hero Licenses

Now we get to the licenses.

Provisional License: I honestly think this is like a learner’s for a driving exam. You only can use it with permission and while under the watch of an older mentor.

Intern License: Like a class 5 GDL (For Americans and others who don’t know- Graduated. Not an actual license yet, but close enough most of us stick with this for a few years or forever), this license is used for Interns who aren’t sidekicks but no longer need the supervision of someone more experienced. (Also, side note- I then headcanon part of the reason Mirio doesn’t take Eri with them is because technically he isn’t allowed to be the mentor for Izuku while he only has a provisional. Like everyone sends interns the first few days of casual patrols but otherwise no.)

Sidekick License: Like a Class 5 license, non GDL, they are a sidekick who doesn’t need to be supervised, and can mentor Provisional and Intern. 

Now this is where I kinda step away from what I’m used to.

Rescue Hero License: Self-explanatory, the licenses that a rescue-based hero uses.

Capture Hero License: A license that a hero based in capture uses (Meaning they restrain villains.)

Intelligence Hero License: A license an information gatherer would use as a hero. Also is known as ‘undercover hero license’ as heroes who work undercover also use this.

Combat Hero License: A hero who engages in combat would have this as a license.

All Rounder License: A license that lets someone work as rescue, capture, intelligence and combat. You can work your way up to this one- you just need to pass each license exam.

Underground License: Just the All Rounder license but you HAVE to get it to work underground. All Rounder License holders enter into the official records for heroes, but underground heroes don’t. This is also the hardest license to get as you MUST take all of the exams at once, as underground heroes have to often do all four at once.

Now- you can have two or more licenses. Most people have combat no matter what. It’s rare that a hero doesn’t. 

Thirteen for example has Rescue and Combat listed on their license. However, they aren’t a good fit for Capture as part of their duties, So when participating in raids they aren’t allowed to work with the capture squad. 

Mt. Lady has Capture, Combat and Rescue on her license. 

Kamui Woods has the Same

Now, then, we get into it more.

Someone can only have an Underground License but also work partly as a limelight hero. This is Sir Nighteye.

Most students who graduate from a Hero High School only have a Provisional or Intern license. It is very rare that people graduate with a Sidekick or Hero license. You can, it’s just rare. 

Some don’t even have a license at all.

 So then, this is where I play with the school system.

Hero School System

You have hero schools and then Hero Universities.

But this is where I really have fun.

Rescue Hero Schools: Schools that are based solely on training rescue heroes.

Combat Hero Schools: Schools that are based solely on training combat heroes.

Intelligence Hero Schools: Schools that are based solely on training intelligence heroes.

Capture Hero Schools: Schools that are based solely on training capture heroes

Now- there are a hundred at least EACH of these schools. They’re not rare.

But then we have the rare type.

All Rounder Hero Schools: Schools that do not focus on only training one type. This is what UA is. As well, typically underground heroes come from these schools and each school has at least one or two on staff to train potential underground heroes.

 UA has Eraserhead and actually another who is a Math teacher for Gen Ed. 

Now, when someone graduates from one of the above but does NOT have a license yet, or only has an Intern or Provisional license, they then typically go to a Hero University where they continue their education.

This is where I really mess with canon.

 As we know, a stat offered about UA is that only 0.2% of people who take the exam actually get in. I in turn call that statistic taken out of context.

0.2% is the over all amount of graduates per year FROM UA that come from the hero course Meaning- out of 20,000 graduates, only 40 come from the UA. 

 And before anyone goes that’s too high, it really isn’t. Japan in 2019 had 126.3 million people.

UA is actually the only hero school that almost always has students graduate who do become heroes. Shiketsu usually is about 50/50.

 Hero Universities are places students continue learning or actually start their journeys. You don’t need to have come from a hero course to enter a Hero University. In fact, some purposely focus on other things first because they A) need more time to work with their Quirk or B) had other reasons they couldn’t enter a hero based course in highschool.

There is also another school. It’s made for students who have the potential to be heroes but have serious attitude issues that cause plenty of problems for others, or they have criminal records (Nothing to serious is allowed, but theft, minor assault cases and the such is allowed. Drug dealer, sexual assault and murder no). This school is special as you are required to go to a hero university before being allowed to get any sort of license at all. 

Hero Licensing Exam Rules and Laws

I made this it’s own section because I wanted to include the Hero University stuff to.

Provisional Licenses are good for fifteen years. After that, you’re done. You don’t get to take the exam again. This is done because you then take the other licenses while you still have it. Let’s say you take the Provisional at age 18- you then have until you are 33 to try and get another. Provisional licenses are ONLY offered if you are part of a Hero Course High School or attending a Hero University. You MUST be either one. Or you must have attended one.

Intern Licenses are good for five years each, and you can retake the licenses four times- make it twenty years you can remain as an intern. You cannot renew, but can retake. You also NEED to have at least three months with a provisional under your belt. If you do not retake before the five years (plus a month in case of time issues), you drop back to a provisional. Intern licenses are handed through agencies or by a mentor hero. You must either have a mentor or an agency vouch for you.

Sidekick Licenses are good for five years, and you can renew. Failure to renew means you drop back to intern. There is NO limit to this. You can remain a sidekick for your entire career- in fact a lot of people do because they can’t get a hero license. To get a hero license is extremely difficult. Sidekick licenses are only offered once you have had an Intern License for a year. 

Hero Licenses are good for five, and you can renew. Failure to do so means dropping back to sidekick. There are no limits to hero licenses, however the test itself can ONLY be taken ten times. After that no more. You can’t take it again. If you can’t pass the test in ten times, they don’t want you to be a hero. You must have had a Sidekick License for two years before taking the test. 

Exceptions to hero licensing are if a student is getting more experience then normal. For example: Class 1A students have villains targeting them, so they might be allowed to get intern licenses early with the potential to land sidekick ones early to, and All Might received a Hero License early due to a lot more experience.

 Hope this all made sense for how I have things set up in my fics!

Heroic Law

AKA Random Laws that might be references (created mostly by @anastasian-dreamer but I use them to)

Hero’s Right To Privacy: Any hero, when not on duty, has the right to stay out of the public eye without consequence or being pressured to otherwise. The following law is the only exception.  

Public’s Right To Knowledge: If someone is suspicious that a hero is performing poorly outside of duty, be it illegal activity or societal indecency (?), the public has the right to demand a publicist investigation. This law can not be abused due to the previous law. 

Hero Executioner: In extreme situations, and only by no other choice, a hero has the right to kill a villain. 

    Note1: the hero must be ready for an intense, publicized inquiry into their actions

    Note2: If the hero uses this law 3 times at any point in their careers, they will be investigated for abuse of the law. 

        Addendum: Due to the Paralisa Inquiry1 in France, the Hero in question will be tested for unknown quirk developments before being investigated for law abuse. 

1: the Paralisa Inquiry refers to when the French hero Paralisa was investigated for Abuse of the Law. An unrelated quirk check revealed that her quirk, a paralysing neurotoxin gas, had increased potency over time and had become deadly. Paralisa was compensated for the trauma caused by the quirk development and the investigation. 

Hero’s Right Of Public Care: If a hero has reason to suspect that someone is being abused, the hero has the right to start an investigation and remove that person from the situation. 

    Note1: The hero must be ready to defend their logic. 

Hero’s Right To Defense: if a hero is attacked, verbally or physically, the hero in question has the right to defend themselves accordingly. 

Public Right of Dismissal: If enough of the public decides that a hero’s actions are sufficiently unforgivable, the public has the right to demand that hero be dismissed from duty immediately as long as the public has not relied on prejudice or gossip for their demand of dismissal.

Hero’s Right To Family: A hero has the right to have a family. A hero cannot be denied the adoption of a child due to their job. A hero has the right to retain custody of their child unless they have proven to be unfit, not because of a dangerous job.

    Note 1: A hero also has the right to marry who they wish.

    Note 2: A hero’s family has the right to remain private unless permission is given to the media to report on the family.

[xiyao-feels]

Hi! May I ask a The Untamed question: Why does Meng Yao return the jade pass? What is it and why is it important? Lan Xichen seemed a bit upset, surprised but also resigned to it simultaneously.

Hi! So—/why/ Jin Guangyao returns the jade pass is an interesting question, and there are various different opinions on the matter. I think it's best if I start with the second part of your question: what is it and why is it important?

The Lan use the jade passes as a security measure; you need one to get in and out of CR. JGY has a pass which previously allowed him access to CR, but LXC changed it; this time, when he came, it didn't allow him in.

I think it's worth taking a fuller look at the jade passes, which in this case means looking at MDZS.

We first see them, I believe, in chapter 11. In MDZS, WWX a) believes LWJ hates him and b) doesn't realize LWJ has recognized him. He pitches a fit outside the gates of CR because he doesn't want to go inside, because without a jade token that allows you in and out, he won't be able to leave:

If he was dragged inside, it would be extremely difficult for him to come outside again. Back then, when he came to study, all of the disciples were given a jade token for passage. Only with the token, would a person be able to enter and leave freely, or else they couldn’t pass through the protective barrier of the Cloud Recesses. After ten years had passed, the security could only have gotten stricter, instead of looser.

After he's inside, he tries to see if he could escape without the token, but no dice:

Lan WangJi went to see his uncle to discuss serious matters, while Wei WuXian was pushed into the room. Right after Lan WangJi left, Wei WuXian also went outside. He strolled around the Cloud Recesses, and found that, as he had expected, without the jade token for passage, even if he climbed up the white walls of a few zhangs’ height, he would be immediately flung off by the barrier, attracting the attentions of the nearby patrolmen at once.

In chapter 65, we see that LWJ is able to detect when someone tried to come through the wards without one:

Wei WuXian slept sometime later. He was asleep until early morning when he suddenly woke up. With a shiver, he crawled forward and looked up. Lan WangJi’s was still dressed, sword was on his back. As he took back the hand that he had put on Wei WuXian’s shoulder, he stared at a white object within his palm, “We have an uninvited guest.”

Wei WuXian squinted to see. The object was the GusuLan Sect’s jade token of passage. He could recall that Lan WangJi’s token was a very high level, able to alert him if others intruded over the barrier of the GusuLan Sect.

This was JGY coming, the very same trip he returns the jade token, because now it's no longer working. WWX concludes that LWJ modified its access at some point in the last couple of days:

Wei WuXian understood now. Since ZeWu-Jun and LianFang-Zun had quite a good relationship, Lan XiChen had given Jin GuangYao a token of passage as well so that he could visit freely. However, it was likely that within the past few days he had either edited the prohibitions of the Cloud Recesses’ barrier or retracted the permission of Jin GuangYao’s token of passage. When Jin GuangYao came to visit, he was refused permission to enter, and thus he voluntarily returned the token.

In chapter 119, LWJ tells WWX that the jade token he gave him can also be used to withdraw money when he needs it:

Wei WuXian, “[…] Oh, right. HanGuang-Jun, I’m out of money. Give me a bit more, won’t you?”

Lan WangJi, “Simply take the jade token to withdraw the money.”

Wei WuXian let out a muffled laugh, “Apart from letting me in and out of the barrier, that jade token you gave me… can also let me draw money?”

“Yes.”

Though I very much doubt that Jin Guangyao ever used it for that.

I can't find reference to anyone other than JGY and WWX being given tokens permanently (like, aside from the visiting disciples), so only Jin Guangyao who didn't live among the Lan. (Although since the damn tokens aren't referred to by a single consistent name, I could be missing something.)

See also this bit in ch 80, from the second siege:

Wei WuXian laughed, “Who said that you have to go inside the Room of Forbidden Books? Wouldn’t it be fine as long as your master can go in at will? The methods of tampering with the sheet music—he was probably also the one who taught you that, right?”

A person of power free to travel in and out of the Cloud Recesses at will. There was no need to say out loud whom Su She’s master was. Everyone knew—it could only be LianFang-Zun!

It's not actually totally clear to me how much of this carries into CQL canon. For example, we don't have the WWX trying to escape from CR plotline in CQL, so from what I remember I don't think we see him testing the wards and being flung off the walls. And more than that: in CQL we don't get the scene where LWJ detects JGY's visit through his own token, meaning Wangxian's presence during the meeting comes across more as something LXC deliberately set up. I think you could read it in if you really wanted, but it's definitely reading against the text.

(Incidentally, to me in CQL LXC doesn't seem surprised when JGY puts the pass on the table, but I think he very much is surprised when JGY says I'm returning it to you; that's not the direction he was expecting this to go. Episode 43, 31:17-31:37, if you want to check yourself.)

Okay, so, now we have all the context. Why does Jin Guangyao return the jade pass? He says that it's because it stopped working, sure, fine—but why did it not working mean he returned it?

To the best of my knowledge—though as ever I could be wrong—we don't get any more information than that in the text, which means it's a matter for meta and speculation. This is where I'd usually tell you what I think and why, except... honestly, I'm not sure. I haven't yet settled on something that feels right to me.

I've seen the ideas that he was distancing himself, or that he was reacting as though it was a complete rejection—it's certainly true that being completely rejected is his usual experience, see NMJ and QS. I can follow the logic, but it doesn't quite work for me? First because it's followed by his reassuring LXC on the subject of LWJ's reputation and the possibility of CR being searched, and then inviting LXC to Carp Tower for a conference about the Burial Mounds, but also...hmmm. Retreating like that is—not really how he usually operates? You see it with NMJ, you see it with QS—he keeps reaching out, he keeps trying to explain himself. In MDZS he stops after the stairs, but at that point he's very thoroughly done with NMJ and I think we can agree he's not there with LXC; in CQL he keeps trying even after he's decided NMJ has to go. Now it's true QS literally just killed herself! so he might not be reacting as usual and all. But...mmm, I don't know. He says it himself (ch 106): “I can’t help it. To seek pity even after doing all the bad things—that’s the kind of person I am.”

Okay, so why the heck /does/ he do it? Welllll...it could be practical considerations—maybe it would be a risk for the Lan if the token got into the hands of an enemy, say, and he's not sure he'll be able to protect it. But honestly that's not very satisfying, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence in the text that I can remember? So I think it makes sense to look elsewhere.

Maybe he actually is trying to respect LXC's boundaries, especially since they don't have time to hash this out. Maybe he figures that—well, we don't know exactly how the second siege would have played out without Wangxian's intervention, but it seems pretty likely that it would have involved damaging the Lan, which is LXC's care and to whom until now JGY has been the staunchest of allies; a way of acknowledging the damage he's doing, even if it won't be understood until later. Maybe he's trying to send a message to LXC: shit is going down, are you in or out? Maybe he's trying to knock LXC off balance; LXC certainly seems off balance for the conversation, reacting rather than acting. Maybe it's to distance LXC from him in like, the potential eyes of the crowd; they've been close and public allies for so long, and now he's trying to help make sure LXC doesn't he pulled down with him if he goes down. Maybe it's a farewell gesture—not so much to LXC, but to the life he's been living, to the precise shape of relationship they had. Maybe it's giving LXC something safe to remember him by—a token, but not something it will look weird if LXC keeps, because he still hopes that LXC will want to remember him. Maybe it's meant as a reminder of the help he has given the Lan. I don't know! I don't know. I do at some point want to sit with the text and seriously work this out, but I also want to get this out for you, anon, so you actually have the information you asked for XP

I think right now I'm leaning towards—some combination of farewell to this part of the life he's been living and the shape of his relationship with LXC (but not saying farewell to /any/ relationship with LXC), and—giving LXC a token of that time. But right now I'm just not sure.

(MDZS quotes all taken from the ER translation)

[may-day-voice]

7 Minutes in Heaven

Eijirou Kirishima's Timeline | 172732014 ft. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu

please do not repost, but you have permission to reblog :)

Happy [early early!] Birthday to Eijirou Kirishima & Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu! <3 I just couldn't wait...

• Watch/ Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/FfH9DvMCSMM

• Read on Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/1111162577-eijirou-kirishima-pro-hero-au-172732014-7-minutes

The city streets were drowned in the noise of traffic from cars and people alike while you walked on patrol, your head muddled with thoughts of that interrogation weeks ago. Seek still sat in your basement, now freed from the cuffs after the odd exchange he willingly offered between himself and the rest of the party. It was a surprise to even see Bakugou agree to the now enacted plan.

However, it irked you to keep all of this from the Commission, to enact actions outside of their jurisdiction and rules. To break the law, even though Shinsou assured everyone they were only bending them a little with ease. The Commission’s history wasn’t painted in gold, but they had learnt from their mistakes during the War. Surely, you thought.

You grumbled under your breath in an attempt to ignore the exasperation you felt, but it still persisted knowing Seek was still on your premises, in your basement. You were holding a fugitive outside of the Commission’s knowledge, and you agreed to it. Anything for Kirishima, you thought. He wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important, and for his friends, people you had grown to know over the course of the year.

And then, another thought crossed your mind. Kirishima’s birthday was soon, grumbling deeper to yourself. You haven’t thought of a gift, or even anything special for him lately. With all that was happening, it slipped your mind, pondering on any small thing that would constitute a birthday gift even.

The city streets drowned your thoughts suddenly catching wind of the panicked cries of the crowd around you, and people running past from something behind. You felt the ground tremble, turning to spot a building crumbling from its foundations. You immediately took off running, pushing through the crowd upstream until you reached the corporate building, watching people flooding out from the doors.

“What’s going on?” You asked, pulling someone over briefly.

“We were told to evacuate, and then something exploded inside,” quipped a woman in a suit before she took off running.

You turned to the peak, finding it swaying from wherever the explosion had blown away a part of its concrete skeleton before you soon landed on any Heroes that were present. You only spotted one by the doors, directing people to leave and flee as fast as they could from the zone. You swore you’ve seen him before.

“Has everyone evacuated?” You asked, aiding people out along with him.

“Has everyone evacuated?” You asked, aiding people out along with him.

“Almost, but you should leave, this building doesn’t have long.”

The concrete began to fall apart, crashing into the ground and crumbling with resounding destructive force, threatening to crush anyone who wasn’t looking. Without thinking, the Pro-Hero ran towards a small crowd, his skin covered in steel before he took the blow of a large chunk of rock, protecting the few from being crushed themselves.

You stared at the man, finally realizing who he was now that he activated his Quirk.

“Real Steel?” You whispered, only distracted momentarily before you noticed more stone showering over the citizens fleeing the scene. With a running leap, you threw a kick or two in the air, sending a harsh shockwave into a few pieces of stone, destroying them into dust before they collided into bodies.

It caught the attention of the Pro-Hero, his steely gaze staring back into yours, curious now of your Quirk until-

“Thumper?”

You turned to find Kirishima, carrying a few elderly professionals in his arms and allowing them to make their way from the building. He had already activated his Quirk, covered in dust and debris from the building inside.

“What are you doing here?” He asked, concerned and confused.

“I… was in the Neighbourhood,” you replied wryly.

“Red Riot, is that everybody?” Yelled the Pro-Hero ahead, reaching the both of you.

“That’s the last of them,” responded Kirishima. “Now we have to-“

A sudden crack caught your ear, the sound of it resonating inside your head when the building itself split in twain. It shattered, its foundations now collapsing and now falling immediately to its demise. You felt your body suddenly collected in a pair of large arms, fleeing from the doors while you watched the building fall. Its shadow grew quickly onto all three of you.

“We’re not going to make it!” Yelled the fellow Pro-Hero while Kirishima turned to find the building edging closer.

With a swing of his arms, you felt yourself crash into the floor, watching Kirishima immediately grow in size, pushing his Quirk to cover himself entirely in stone. His body hovered over yours, watching the building behind him descend closer until the sheen of steel joined him, joining and interlocking their arms to shield you from the crash.

The quiet screamed in your ear. There was hardly any movement while you covered your head with your hands and arms, wrapping yourself into a ball. The trickle of debris echoed around, feeling pressure push against your back and hugging onto you tightly.

“Thumper?” growled a voice from behind, finding a large arm wrapped around your own. You felt Kirishima’s breath on your neck, huddling close.

“I’m here,” you said, reaching your hand to grab his. “I’m okay.”

“Thumper, huh?” Spoke another voice close to you, eyeing the sheen of Real Steel’s arms locked with Kirishima’s that sheltered your head. “I figured that was who you were. Kiri talks about you non-stop.”

“Tetsu, man, shut up,” replied Kirishima.

At this close proximity, you noticed finer details on the man - a toothy grin much like Kirishima’s while you stared into his silver eyes. The steel glinted against what little light cracked through the rubble, but was dulled by the dust. That didn’t help you eyeing his large bare chest through his Hero outfit and the size of him overall. Out of any of Kirishima’s work colleagues, you had yet to meet the Real Steel. At least this close and personal.

“Tetsutetsu, right?” You asked, staring into his silver eyes. “The Real Steel? Wow, I mean, your track record is amazing.”

“Thanks, it’s good to hear some recognition,” he responded with a toothy steely grin. “How’s Fourth Kind? I heard you’re from his agency?”

“He’s doing amazingly, but I think he’s going to kill me after this.”

“Another smack on the head?”

You burst into giggles at his response, agreeing with his sentiment before the rubble shifted on top. Despite the amount of rubble that pushed against the strength of both men, it didn’t seem to phase either of them, now utilizing less of their Quirks and maneuvering a little to compensate for the situation. Each little movement brought all three of you closer in the vicinity you had, finding Kirishima clutching onto you all the same.

“Tell him I said hi,” continued Tetsutetsu. “When we get ourselves out of here, I mean.”

“The Sidekicks shouldn’t be long,” reminded Kirishima while he still protected your head from the rubble. “You called the agency, right?”

“Yeah of course I did,” snapped Tetsutetsu. “What do you take me for? An intern?”

“I was collecting anyone unable to evacuate. Doesn’t hurt for me to confirm. How long ago did you radio in?”

“I don’t know, ten minutes, maybe. Literal concrete was falling from the sky.”

“Guys, hey, the more we agitate the rubble, the less room we-“ Your words were interrupted by the sound of movement amongst the concrete shifting atop Kirishima and Tetsutetsu, forcing Tetsutetsu to move closer in, pushing you into Kirishima and keeping you snug between the both of them. Your hands pushed against Tetsutetsu’s chest, feeling the cold steel across his skin while your body pressed into Kirishima’s, his heat permeating across your back and his breath washing atop your neck.

It was compromising.

“Wow, you really are cute,” voiced Tetsutetsu, staring down at you.

“Tetsu, don’t push it,” warned Kirishima, almost with a growl in his voice that you felt across the hairs on your neck.

“Hey, I can’t help it. It’s not often I get to spend some time with someone cute-looking, even when trapped under massive amounts of rubble.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get any ideas.” Kirishima’s grip tightened around your frame, protecting you from the rubble but hugged onto you almost possessively.

“Kiri, relax, I get it, you talk about them all the time.”

“He does?” You questioned, finally getting a word in.

“Of course, man’s got a huge crush on you, like heavy.”

“Tetsu!” Yelled Kirishima, feeling his grip pull you in.

“I’m only being honest. He really really likes you, like I can understand why,” continued Tetsutetsu with a grin. “I mean, you asked him out, he takes you out, literally every time anyone at the agency spots you for training with him, they can tell how much you light him up. And from what I can see now and from what I saw up there, I feel unlucky that I hadn’t met you first.”

You couldn’t tell if the heat from the tiny space was getting to you, or if you grew embarrassed from that semi-confession of sorts. Your hands still pressed against Tetsutetsu’s chest, feeling his heartbeat calm and steady. However, Kirishima’s arms and hands clutched onto you, still holding you to him while his lips pressed against your neck, unmoving and quiet. You felt his breath against your skin, feeling his embarrassment just as much as you felt yours. It only brought a smile to your lips, imagining Kirishima sharing his life with others and now knowing he shared you with them.

“Thanks Tetsutetsu, that’s very kind of you to tell me how much Eijirou really cares,” you said while your fingers clutched onto Kirishima’s, squeezing his half-hardened hands. “It’s flattering actually.”

Tetsutetsu chuckled while he shifted slightly again, holding his steel arm across your head and clutching onto Kirishima’s shoulders, sharing a bridge of strength upholding the rubble.

“Hey, that’s what bros are for,” he commented with a grin. “All I’m saying is that everything Kiri says about you is true.”

“You okay Eijirou?” You asked, attempting to shift your gaze to turn towards him.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he spoke against your neck, tickling it a little, while his arm protected you from the debris. “Sidekicks should be here by now.”

“Yeah, and most likely digging through the rubble,” continued Tetsutetsu with a stern tone, his eyes scanning around while listening intently to any sounds outside. The shift of rock brought some hope in all three of you, catching wind of the distant yells of people above.

“Hey, isn’t this almost like the first time the both of you worked together?” asked Tetsutetsu nonchalantly.

The question caught both Kirishima and yourself off guard, realising the situation was awfully similar. The mission in Esuha City together was a memorable experience, chuckling under your breath at the circumstances that followed after.

“So, you know the details of that day too?” you asked in jest, slightly turning your gaze back onto Kirishima.

“Who could forget? The whole place came crashing down, and explains how the both of you work well together, oh, and the day Kiri couldn’t stop talking about you,” explained Tetsutetsu, still attentive to the sounds and cries of people through the rubble.

“Tetsu, remind me to only work with you outside of Esuha City,” commented Kirishima in exasperation.

“Huh? Why?” questioned Tetsutetsu, a little offended by his statement.

You couldn’t help bursting out into giggles, still holding yourself close to Kirishima to avoid agitating the rubble any further. Both men looked between themselves and you, soon calming down from their quips to smile. They both shared a look, one that they both agreed upon, while Tetsutetsu returned to listening to the shifting of rubble and concrete above. Kirishima returned to you, hugging you closely onto him while you still shook from laughter at their behaviour. Within this moment, there was an accord. You felt protected between the two, understanding where they both stood as Pro-Heroes and as friends.

“Hey! We’re down here!” yelled Tetsutetsu, crying through the rubble.

The sound of rock shifted and eased on their arms, hearing the clear voices of Sidekicks and emergency personnel yelling back in response. Soon, sunlight breached through the cracks, seeing it glint against Tetsutetsu’s skin, gleaming against his steel. The debris still crumbled around with pebbles and dust until Tetsutetsu’s arm was freed to stretch above, leaving your head shielded by Kirishima’s hardened arm.

“Come on, you first,” ordered Tetsutetsu, his silver eyes staring into yours.

You turned to Kirishima, wanting any sign of confirmation from him before making a choice, only to be given a toothy grin by the redhead, still within the rubble.

“Go ahead Thumper, we’re right behind you,” he reassured, lifting his arm to allow some room for you to shift underneath.

With a nod, you moved slowly into Tetsutetsu’s chest, pressing against him to spot the sunlight above, finding open hands ready to pull you out from the broken debris. You reached out for them, feeling Tetsutetsu’s hands hold you tightly and safely before the sunlight stung your eyes a little. Hands grabbed you from everywhere, pulling you out from the dust until you laid above being examined by medical staff on your condition.

Tetsutetsu grinned at the sight of you being freed before he turned to Kirishima, finding a disapproving look on the man’s face.

“What now?” complained Tetsutetsu with his hand out to Kirishima. A moment passed before Kirishima grabbed hold of his hand, shifting from the rubble and allowing some of its weight to collapse from behind him. He still stared into Tetsutetsu’s eyes with that disapproval until they softened with a small smile on his face.

“Thanks for making me look good,” he spoke genuinely.

Tetsutetsu grinned back, ready to climb out until he felt a harsh tug from Kirishima’s hand, holding him back from leaving.

“But the next time I see you touch Thumper’s butt again, I’ll kill you,” warned Kirishima with that same smile.

“I was helping them get out,” retorted Tetsutetsu, releasing his hand from Kirishima’s before he climbed into the sunlight, being helped by emergency personnel above.

Kirishima soon followed suit, chuckling to himself before seeing the bright sunlight sting his eyes a little. It wasn’t long until he was helped by Sidekicks on his well-being in the aftermath being led to the ambulances on standby. He soon spotted you across the way, already examined by medical staff and being attended by a few Sidekicks from Fat Gum’s agency as well. He caught your smile from afar, noticing your well-being and how very little you came out unscathed from the ordeal. Good. The last thing he wanted was to see you with scars from unnecessary things.

“You okay?” you asked, watching Kirishima approach you after relieving the SIdekicks by his side.

“Of course I am,” he replied immediately, examining your head. “What about you?”

“I’m fine,” you chuckled. “Thanks to both you and Tetsutetsu. He’s a good guy.”

“One of the manliest you could ask for.”

“Manlier than you?”

A stern look crossed Kirishima’s face, causing you to chuckle at his response.

“I’m kidding,” you piped with a chirp. “No one’s manlier than you.”

“Except you,” he quipped.

You sighed knowing to give up on that kind of argument. Kirishima joined you by the ambulance, sitting next to you while watching the aftermath unfold. The building was no more, crumbled to a mass of broken concrete and stone. You leaned your head onto Kirishima’s shoulder, enjoying the calm until-

“Before I forget, I hope you have a happy birthday,” you mulled in passing, catching his ear. “So much is going on and getting my wishes in early is probably the best course of action.”

Kirishima was taken by surprise by your statement, however, you thought it best to send him at least well wishes from you. If a gift was impossible, and finding the time to spend with him was out of sight, it was the least you could do.

“Hey, we’re all going to head back to my agency, how about you join Tetsutetsu and I tonight?” asked Kirishima nonchalantly. “We were thinking of hanging out at Cantina’s. Shinsou suggested it.”

You raised your head to stare into his eyes, surprised by the sudden invitation. “Um, sure, is it a special occasion?”

“Kind of, not really. Tetsutetsu and I share the same birthday, so we decided to celebrate it early together before the actual day arrives. I think it’d be good if we all enjoyed it together.”

You smiled brightly at the suggestion, only to hear a familiar gruff yell catch both Kirishima’s and your ear. Tetsutetsu reprimanding Sidekicks was a sight to behold, lecturing them for the amount of time they took to answer a call. However, Kirishima chuckled under his breath, knowing the kind of stress that was placed on the Hero and close friend. He never intended a crisis to be the first time to officially introduce you to his work colleagues, but the trust was there. He had no worries at all.

[skvaderarts]

Hiraeth Chapter 55: Disclosure

Masterlist can be found Here!

Chapter Fifty-Five: Disclosure

Note: I know you’ve been waiting a long time for the answers, and now you’ve got them. This is the beginning of the end in regards to the secrets surrounding Belial’s Arc and what he hopes to gain. Enjoy… if you can.

(-~-)

It didn’t take long for everyone present in the house to make their way to the living room, especially once it was revealed that information pertaining to them had been unearthed. Despite the fact that Brenowin and Morgan hadn’t known Sirrus for more than about a day, the fact that everyone else seemed to know or otherwise welcome him was really all that it took for them to be willing to at least listen to him. And from what they could tell, he had no compelling reason to lie to them about anything.

Making the executive decision that it was probably best that they all know about what was going on, Dante called Lady and Trish, both of whom were luckily not far away, and seemed to have just finished a job a few hours prior. They agreed to come over and see what was going on despite the fact that it was probably a bit too early for them. They both sounded like they had just woken up when they’d answered the phone. That would surely get him shot in the head later on.

But what was more of a surprise to anyone that knew him was the fact that Vergil had actually made a similar decision. Taking a moment to step aside and make a phone call, Vergil had subsequently disappeared for several minutes to go and fetch Magnolia, something that had gone completely unnoticed until they had come back through the front door together just a short while after. It wasn’t a new notion that Vergil was capable of benign stealthy, but none of them had realized until then that he was able to dip out of a crowded room and just disappear from everyone’s consciousness. Perhaps they had spent too much time actively tuning him out until now? Even Dante hadn’t noticed at the time, more than likely because he’d been talking to Lady on the phone.

Within a few minutes of their return, Lady and Trish came around, and they had brought along Morrison. According to them, they had run into him as they were leaving, the middle man presumably interested in getting in contact with them to offer a job. Or, at the very least curious as to how well the last job they had been on together had gone for them. Dante wouldn’t have been surprised if Morrison had been the one to provide them with whatever work they had been doing lately. He was resourceful like that.

As was Ludwig family tradition at that point, Flora made a fresh pot of tea that everyone was welcome to share. If she was going to sit there and listen to Sirrus talk for goodness knew how long, she wasn’t going to do it without a cup of tea in her hands, especially since Magnolia had brought a tray of macaroons with her when she’d arrived. Vergil’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect, in her opinion.

“Ok, so what’s up?” Nero said nonchalantly as he sat down on the couch next to V. Considering everything that had happened recently, he was pretty sure that nothing Sirrus could say would be particularly shocking to him, and he was hoping that he wouldn’t be proven wrong in that regard. “You said that you had something to tell us?”

Sirrus nodded, watching as everyone settled in and made themselves comfortable. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about repeating himself. The only person who wasn’t there was Nico, but it would have taken several hours for her to reach their location. Or perhaps it wouldn’t, considering her driving skills... 

“First, I’d like to start by making it clear that I have obtained some of this information from Aluta and Willow, so if you’d like more in-depth information, you will have to contact them. I’m just the messenger in that regard.”

Various members of the team either shrugged or nodded in response, silently indicating that they would like for him to continue. He leaned back against the corner of the wall nearest to the window, the warmth from the fireplace licking his subconscious as he tuned its presence out, for the most part, noting its existence, but not sparing much in the way of attention to it. He drew a long breath before proceeding, sure that he was about to ruin several people’s day in the process. Oh, how he hated that sort of thing. Being the bearer of bad news was never pleasant, but in cases like this, it was a necessary evil. One way or another, someone was going to have to tell them. It might as well be him.

Gesturing for him to continue, Vergil sat down in one of the armchairs nearest to the couch. He wasn’t quite sitting next to V, but he was as close to doing to as it was possible to be without actually doing it. The young summoner seemed to silently note this for a moment, allowing his gaze to travel towards how father, but otherwise not reacting. He was clearly anticipating bad news, and considering everything that was going on and the fact that he was locked in a losing battle against a devil prince, that was more than understandable.

“Now that we have that out of the way, I’d like to say that I’m genuinely sorry to always be the bearer of bad news in these instances. What am I, the wild hunt?” Sirrus scoffed and shook his head before realizing that that at least half of the people in the room didn’t have any idea what that even was. He then sighed and folded his arms around himself. “Would you prefer that I get straight to the point, or go into a bit more detail?”

“Considering the implications of what I assume you are here to tell us, I would prefer the former and then the latter,” V said softly, rubbing his arm absentmindedly in an attempt to soothe it. Just thinking about what was going on was enough to make the malevolent ink that coursed his veins tingle from excitement, something that the rest of his biological composition didn’t approve of or appreciate very much.

Putting his arm behind his back, Sirrus nodded in a manner more akin to that of a curtsy than anything else. He glanced over at Morgan who in turn nodded in agreement. She didn’t need him to ask for her to be able to tell that he was awaiting her permission to continue. He then cleared his throat before leaning over and pouring a few sips of wine that he summarily gulped down in the least refined manner possible. He hadn’t spoken a word yet, and he already hated this conversation.

“Fair enough. I suppose nothing worthwhile is accomplished by beating around the bush all day, is there? We all have things to do and places to be.” He went in for another topped-off glass, indirectly signifying to everyone in the room that he almost certainly didn’t want to be here talking about this right now. “The Ludwin family sent some of their family members to go and investigate Belial’s activities and they have found an almost definitive answer as to what he wants with both Morgan and V. I trust that you don’t need me to tell you it’s not to simply spread the good word.”

“No, I suppose you do not.” Vergil wasn’t amused, but he was also keenly aware of the fact that Sirrus hadn’t exactly meant that in a humorous way. He’d clearly been using his cynicism and sarcasm as a coping device. “Continue.”

With a casual shrug, Sirrus turned his attention back to V and Morgan. “V, do you recall what you said about the attack that destroyed Lympha about three years ago?”

To the surprise of no one, they both nodded. Morgan looked as though she would become sick to her stomach at the mention of that place, but she did remember. There was no way that she would ever forget. V looked down at the floor for a moment in discomfort, considering the possibility of speaking. But when he finally did, it wasn’t about the town. “How did you hear about that, Sirrus? You were outside.”

Sirrus nodded in agreement, reaching for another glass of wine but finding that the bottle was a bit too close to being empty for his liking. “Your quite right. I was with Nico. But I have very good hearing, and I am not at all ashamed to admit that I did, in fact, eavesdrop on you. I can see why you’d find that strange, however. My apologies if I’ve upset you or caused you undue confusion.”

V seemed to consider this for a moment before nodding, brushing his concerns aside. He had done nothing to offend him. He would know if he’d done something to cause V any distress to the young summoner. That made sense. After all, Sirrus was not exactly a normal person, and he had several abilities that he knew very little about. “Think nothing of it. But please, what does this have to do with what happened in… that place?”

Leaning back again, Sirrus adjusted his shoulders. “It seems that before Belial disbanded his cult and destroyed just about every trace of it, he had tasked them to take care of something important. And that “something important” was in Lympha.” He turned to Morgan, his focus lingering on her for a moment as he attempted to find a tactful way to put into words what he wanted to say. “You made mention of an old story. Something about a prophecy?”

Morgan nodded. “Yea, it was something about how some settlers were run out of the area a few hundred years back on suspicion of being witches, and the leader of the coven’s son was killed before he could be used as a vessel of sorts of a ritual to bring back their fallen leader. She cursed the town or something like that. I think it was… “ she stopped, clearly unable to remember what all she was supposed to remember in that situation.

“And onto this land, I lay a binding of blood and bone. For never again shall the shadow depart. And the snow shall run red with the blood of the self-righteous until upon the altar of the Lord of the Disquieting the flesh of the so chosen repository is offered and the blood is spilled, melding their beings into one. And so he shall walk the damned soil again and hold dominion over the dominion of humanity as the storm holds dominion over the sky.” Sirrus looked displeased to have had to even speak those words. He didn’t like curses at the best of times, but full-on generational damnation? That was going several layers too far into the depths of insanity. “That is the first half of the actual prophecy. It was quite the thing to translate from Enochian, but I managed to do it on short notice once it was discovered in the Ludwig trove. Aluta deduced from what I shared with her about your story that it was relevant.”

Nodding in consideration, Dante seemed to linger on the words for a while. He clearly understood them, at least for the most part, but he was still at the end of his rope in regards to what that was related to in their exact circumstance. “Yea, that’s pretty metal and all, but what precisely does it have to do with V and Morgan?”

Realizing that he could stand to be a bit more transparent about it, Sirrus looked over at Morgan, displeased about what he needed to say. “The curse was created by a woman named Atropa Lundwick nearly exactly 500 years ago. She was the only survivor of a heinous attack by locals, and she was cursed herself at the time by those same townspeople after the deaths of her family. They apparently enchanted their crops to help them through the hard winter as an act of kindness, and they all nearly starved to death as a direct result of refusing to eat food that was “tainted by unnatural forces.” She was the matriarch of what you now know as the Ludwig family. That curse is the reason that members of the Ludwig family only ever have daughters. The locals incorrectly assumed that that would be a disadvantage to her. Fools.”

Flora and Magnolia both looked visibly horrified by the statement, but not at all angry. A sort of deep sorrow seemed to overtake them as they collectively realized the unintended butterfly effect that this still had on things in so many of their lives even to this day. It was a tragedy that had borne more tragedy, and no one had really emerged the winner in the situation. What a painful and shameful legacy for their ancestor to have left behind. “What does this have to do with V and Morgan, Sirrus.”

Taking note of the pain in Magnolia’s voice as she asked him that question, he sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head in deep dissatisfaction. “For a cause to have any bearing, it has to have a source of anchoring, a natural or unnatural force to draw from. The Ludwin family at that time had dealing with several powerful demons as a result of their somewhat Umbran ancestry. One of the demons they guarded against was Belial, but once tragedy struck, Atropa sought the tutelage of the very devil she had sought to destroy, her grief gaining the upper hand as she mourned the death of her only son. She formed a pack with him, and that pact led to the enforcement of the curse. She used the power he lent her to see forward into a time that had not yet occurred for him, and the prophecy was borne of the outcome that favored him. She promised him everything if he succeeded, and ever since then, his influence strengthened by her curse has allowed him dominion for one season of the year over the town of Lympha to seek out his vessel. Her coven had never intended to sacrifice her son to him, but he had requested as much as he would have been a powerful asset to a devil prince who was physically incapable of crossing over into the human world.”

Morgan looked horrified. “So that’s what was wrong with all the people in the town? They were being subconsciously influenced by a curse and a demon all at once? That’s why the animals and anything else that ventured into the woods disappeared into the darkness? Because he was taking them to the underworld?”

Sirrus made a gesture to indicate that she was half right. “You’re mostly correct. Belial could not bring them into the underworld due to the fact that he could not open a gate, and there were no existing ones in the area. But he fed off of their fear, and he warped them into the horrible creatures that were sometimes seen around the town. Like in the story about the dog that you told V. At night his corruptive darkness changed those weak enough to be changed, and assimilated those who would not bend to his will, making the forest stronger. And it construed in a cycle unending until the day that his cult came to the city… looking for both of you.”

It was Nero’s turn to ask a question now, the young devil hunter clearly displeased by everything he had just learned. “But what did they want with V and Morgan as opposed to literally everyone else in that cursed hellhole of a town?”

The red-haired man gave him a sad smirk. “What did the Order of the Sword want with you in the grand scheme of their master plan?”

Nero seemed to think about the question for a moment before he visibly paled and felt the breath leave his lungs. Oh. Oh no. He didn’t mean that… He couldn’t mean that… 

“On their 20th birthday, every one of the young men in the town was compelled to enter the woods. This was a test on Belial’s part. He is the Lord of Disquieting from the prophecy. Apparently, he was testing the mental resolve of each of the potential vessels in the town. The one who could resist the incredibly powerful and increasingly strong pull of his influence would be the one he would pick. And that is how he located V. V was basically entirely resistant to all but the very strongest of his mental barrages, save for the one occasion with the full moon which was literally the anniversary of the curse being placed from what I can tell. And more importantly, why his cult descended upon the town that day. Their master specifically wanted V. And he wants him alive. But there was another half to that prophesy.”

Brenowin looked ill suddenly. He shared a concerned look with Sirrus and then at his sister, clearly realizing something that none of the rest of them did. But he couldn’t speak of it, and he had a feeling that Sirrus would do so for him anyway. “You don’t mean…”

Much to his displeasure, he nodded. “Unfortunately, I do. I can tell from the ill look on your face that you know of what I speak. The cult must have made mention to it, then?” He watched as Bren nodded and then looked over at his sister, a look of immense concern on his face. He then continued, wanting to get this off of his chest. “And upon the twin thrones of darkness shall sit the vessel of darkness and the eyes of prophecy, she who will be gifted future sight as I was and who shall make material the brood of the machinations of the lord of shadows, Insanity made physical. For only through the union of darkness and foresight can be brought true retribution to cleanse humanity of their petty mortality.”

Everyone in the room seemed to linger on those words for a few moments before slowly coming to the realization of what they implied. And each one of them looked varying degrees of physically ill as they all came to the same unanimously horrifying conclusion. And V especially was mentally kicking himself. Why had he not considered the fact that Belial’s cult could have been the same cult that had killed the people of Lympha a few years ago? Perhaps the devil prince’s dark influence had been what had made him feel compelled to stay in the first place. The demonic part of him could have been drawn to the aura that his influence provided… 

“So you’re saying that… Belial wants to use V as a vessel that he can, what, possess so that he can come to the human world and take everything over, and then he wants Morgan to… so they can… and she’d be… That’s…” Dante looked between his nephews and his brother, noting their stunned silence and the will to live exit V’s body with silent indignation. He’d actually prefer dying to a fate like that.

“Quite literally the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” Nero said breathlessly, looking over at his brother and the horrified shivering young teen girl sitting next to him. He couldn’t tell which of those options was the worse fate. Being used as a meat puppet for darkness incarnate was bad, but the idea of being stuck with him to create descendants of his bloodline purely for the purpose of helping to subjugate the rest of the world was literally too vile for him to comprehend properly.

And with the will of a Devil Lord in the body of a descendant of the great dark knight Sparda, he could undo every safeguard and protective ward your father placed with enough time and the proper know-how. And he could easily gain access to both… after all, who would stand a chance against that kind of power…” Lucia looked mournful and horrified. She couldn’t imagine something so dark coming to pass. No one deserved that, but V? No one could deserved that fate less. And Morgan… 

… Our father’s spell stops the possibility of a demon as powerful as Belial crossing over into the human world, but possession of the movement of power and consciousness into another living being. Only his essence needs to pass over… and in that respect, his horrific and contrite plan is actually entirely possible. And I loathe that.”

“Over my dead body,” Magnolia said, genuinely angry. She didn’t even bother to hold back the tears that were forming in her eyes. “I will not allow the momentary hubris of my one forebearers to lead to the damnation of two children, and by proxy, the entirety of humanity, over the mistakes of a few people nearly a millennium ago. This dies with her, as it damn well should have back then.”

Sirrus nodded in agreement. “And that is why I am here today. To propose the idea of stopping that before it starts. We need to go on a little road trip. And we need to do it now. I need you to see the conduit. And I need you to see it now.”

(-~-)

And there it is, Belial’s horrible plan finally revealed! Let me know what you think in the comments! I had a blast writing this when I got back from grocery shopping today. You all take care. I’ll see you next week on Wedsnday! And for those of you who dropped in on my Tumblr account during DMC OC Week, thanks for the love and support! See you in the comment section, and stay safe out there! Enjoy the nightmare fuel! Bye Bye!

[supernaturallyobsessedchic]

Imagine...Breaking Dean’s Nose

Brother!Dean x Sister!Reader; Brother!Sam x Sister!Reader

Warnings: Mild Angst, some fluff (I think), minor back story, first fic written since [spoilers] Dean’s Death in 15x20 (spn finale)[spoiler].

Summary: The siblings have a minor disagreement that leads to a fist fight. And ends with Dean getting a broken nose and a realization, he has to let her grow.

Mobile Masterlist

a/n: I write and edit all my works, hope you enjoy. This is my first time back writing Dean since the Finale.

~

Y/N sat in the back seat of the impala as they drove back to the bunker from the hospital. Sam driving his brother in the passenger seat, his nose swollen, a black eye swelling his eye.

The two siblings were at a disagreement.

Ever since she joined the brothers, it was after she lost her family. Nothing weird about their deaths. But state officials did DNA tests to find any family relatives. Turns out she’s related to Sam and Dean, as their half-sister.

The pair disagreed on something simple. Going out, but their sister was always careful. But since there was a project due soon and it was a group project. She had to sneak out, without Dean or Sam knowing. And came back to a pissed off Dean. Dean then got on her nerves, hovering over her, always concerned about her over the simplest of things. But she was still 13 years old.

Sam pulled into the garage, parking it and killing the engine, they weren’t as fast as Y/N to get out of the car. She had walked quickly to her room, locking her door.

The next morning, Y/N got up early to shower, and make Dean a big breakfast, Sam too for putting up with their crap. She may not have any idea how to cook, but to anyone’s famous last words before burning down a kitchen, how hard can it be?

She began making the pancake batter, cracking some eggs, adding some oil, and she began cooking them. Flipping them was a whole other story, some looked perfect circular, golden pancakes. But others would look over done or under done. The under done ones, she played the safe card and threw them away. Next were the eggs. She cracked some eggs in the skillet, flipping them once the whites were solid enough, making them over easy. Giving each brother 3 pancakes, 2 eggs over easy. Next was bacon for Dean. Dishing up their plates, giving Dean and Sam their morning coffee’s, and Sam some O.J, she put them on trays and sat them in their rooms just moments before their alarms went off.

Dean woke up to the smell of food in his room, Sam woke to his alarm with the combo of good smelling food. Both with notes from their sister. 

Sorry for being a pain. Was written for Sam.

And the other note, reading, Sorry for breaking your nose. For Dean.

She cleaned up the bunkers kitchen, cleaning the dishes, and then bolting to hide in her room for the rest of the day.

Dean knew she wasn’t backing down, not really. Not entirely.

Their argument, he knew he was stopping her from getting a homework assignment for school and getting it done. But he didn’t want her out where he couldn’t protect her.

“You can’t always protect her Dean.” Sam says. Knowing full well about their argument. Well, he practically, unwillingly, had front row seats to the screaming match and fist fight.

“Just watch me.” Dean challenged.

“Dean.” Sam says in a knowing tone. “She’s got a school project, due Monday, it's Saturday. And she’s going to fail it if you don’t let her go.” Sam explains.

“But what if something happens?” Dean asks. “Like, what if one of the kids is a shifter trying to get at us. Or a werewolf, or a vamp kid, or even--”

“Dean, just stop. We taught her everything she needs to know about hunting. And she knows what to do.” Sam says.

Dean just sat back in his chair, with folded arms, grumbling to himself. But after about five minutes of thinking. Sam’s right. Dean doesn’t want to get in the way of his sister's education. She’s 13, about to go into high school next year. Those next four years are going to be important to her. And she has shown she'll kick his ass if he gets in her way. 

He lets out a heavy sigh. “Fine.”

“Let me go talk to her.”

“Yeah, talk. No yelling. Okay Dean.”

Dean simply waves him off.

He walks to her room, farthest from either of them. And gives it a few knocks. But gets no response. He tries to open it, it’s unlocked. So there’s something. He pokes his head in her room.

She's on her bed, with her wireless headphones on, playing some loud rock music but one ear piece is off her ear and sitting behind it. Doing her homework on her laptop.

“Guys, I gotta go.” She says to the laptop.

“Okay, but thanks for your help on the project. We’ll let you know if we need more info.” Her classmate says from the laptop.

“And, Y/N, go easy. I live with my older brothers too. And he’s just trying to protect you. He’s doing the best he can.” said another one of her classmates. Seeing her nod at them.

“You can do it girl, see you in class on Monday." They said. She gives a small friendly wave, and ends their video call. Taking off her headphones, she gets off of the bed.

“I’m sorry, I really had to get my portion of the project done and to the rest of my team.” she said to Dean, casting her gaze down. Waiting for him to yell at her.

“It’s okay, that’s what I was coming in here to talk to you about.” He says.

She looks up at him, not saying a word.

“I can’t protect you from everything out there. Not even life or the supernatural itself. Deep down, I sure as hell don’t want you hunting.” He explains.

That’s why he doesn’t let me out on hunts. She thought.

“I want you to live the normal life. I want you to get an education, a job, a life you are happy with to call your own.” He continues.

“But what if you guys need help?” she asks.

“Cas can always lend a hand. Same for Jack. but you are off limits. You’re 13, you have a long life ahead of you. And I want you to live it.” he says.

She nods.

“Are you almost done?” he asks.

“Almost, I just have to write my research down so we’re ready to present it on Monday.”  

“Well, finish up. I say, you deserve some you time in the Dean Cave.” He says. She smiles, he never lets her do whatever she wants in the Dean Cave. She has the same gadget and tech know-how like Sam. And with her XBox One, she always wanted to play it on his big screen TV in the Dean Cave.

“Just, put everything back the way you found it. You know how I am with technology.” he says. Making her giggle.

“Sure Dean.”

“Oh, and Uh, thanks for breakfast. The eggs were a bit over hard, and the bacon wasn’t quite done. Maybe one of these days I’ll teach you how to cook.” Dean tells her.

“Okay.” she smiles.

She went back to writing her research essay and he went to his room to chill out. And once she was done she hooked up her console to his TV in the Dean Cave and binge played Fallout 4.

Sam was just happy there was some peace in the bunker, not just that day, but the days throughout.

~

Did you like it? How’d I do? Comment, Like, send an ask, feedback is fuel that keeps me going!

Dean Tags:

@luci-in-trenchcoats​, @supernatural-jackles​, @becs-bunker​, @winchesters-favorite-girl​, @mlovesstories​, @winchest09​

~

Copying and reposting someone else’s content is plagiarism and illegal. This work is property of supernaturallyobsessedchic. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. An electronic reference link to the original posted work may be provided for purposes of promotion or assistance of publication by the readers discretion, if proper credits are given to the author in the re-post. 11/28/2020

[izukuwus]

Floriography 4

First - Previous - Next (Coming soon!)

A/N: DID Y’ALL THINK THE PRO GAMER MOVE WAS A NORMAL UPDATE? PSYCHE! DOUBLE UPDATE TIME! I’ll hopefully end up with a banner for this fic I actually like soon so I can start using that instead. It’s slow going, but I’m toying with a few ideas. In the meantime, a precious fantasy Izu gif will have to do uwu The most important part is that I named both kingdoms now <3

Chapter Summary: Day one of the trip. It Begins.

Warnings: none, I don’t think!

Word count: 3600+

"That was very courageous of you," a voice greets you as you take a moment to breathe, "though I have to say that, were I anyone else, I'd be terrified for you right now."

Your eyes snap to the voice's source, not finding a servant like you'd sort of been expecting. Instead, Queen Inko herself stands before you, looking you over with concerned eyes.

"I can lead you back to where your party is preparing if you'd like, dear. You were probably planning to seek out Izuku again, but it's best that you save your energy, and I'd like to speak with you, if that's all right."

"Oh, um, yes, I'd like that. Thank you, your Majesty." You're careful to soothe yourself back into Proper Mode™ as you speak. "I... apologize that you've overheard me acting so disgraceful. To your husband, no less."

"You don't need to apologize, Princess. Not to me or to anyone, regardless of what my husband thinks. I actually wanted to apologize for his behavior. I know my husband can be a bit... demanding."

You nod. "You don't need to apologize to me, ma'am."

"Please, call me Inko. You're going to be like my daughter soon enough, there's no need to be so formal with me when we're alone."

"R-right. Of course... Inko... Y-you can call me by my name as well, not that you needed my permission."

Moons, she's such a stark contrast to her husband that you have to wonder how they ever married. This woman has the sweetest, kindest smiles and looks so much like her son that you have to relax around her.

"That's kind of you, [name]. Have you been getting on well with Izuku?"

You nod slowly. "Yes, I have. We write each other letters every day, and he's been very sweet to me. Of all the men my parents could have chosen to force me to marry, I'm glad it was him."

Inko smiles sweetly. She doesn’t seem to pay any mind to your comment about your coming marriage. "I'm glad to hear that, dear."

"Um... Inko, you're... A seer, correct?"

"That's right. You're wondering why I told my husband that you would make our son into a more... ruthless king, as it were?"

"Yes, actually. As I'm sure you must have heard me say, I want no part in changing my fiancé, especially not in a way that he begins treating others poorly or exerts excessive power. He wouldn't be Izuku anymore."

"Hisashi and I happen to have... Differing opinions on what makes someone a good king."

Your eyebrows raise in surprise. "So you didn't lie, but you also forewent the truth."

"I told him Izuku would be a wonderful king with you by his side. I did not tell him by whose standards. That's all." Inko smiles softly–every time she does, you swear you can see Izuku in her smile. "I’ve always known that no matter what, my son would go on to do wonderful things. But listen to me carry on—you and the others should be off soon. Thank you for chatting with me, dear."

You curtsy lightly, the movement almost uncomfortably easy in your travel clothes compared to what you’ve grown used to. "Thank you for helping me find my way back, Inko. It was a pleasure speaking with you."

She waves you off with a smile, and you scamper up to Izuku and the knights. "My apologies for the wait."

"It's not an issue, your Highness," Eijirou says, beaming. "We've just finished up the final preparations, so we're ready to go whenever!"

"Great! We should leave early, yes?"

Izuku nods as he approaches. "If you're ready, then we're all set to set off!"

You nod your affirmation, following as the group sets out. The knights are careful to center you and Izuku, and it doesn't take long for Izuku to strike up a conversation. "So, how did your talk with my father go, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Oh, I don't mind!" you chirp. "Actually, I–" You freeze, nearly stumbling as the realization of what you just did finally sinks in properly. "–oh moons, your father is going to have me killed–"

"Woah, what?" Izuku carefully steadies you before you can hit the ground. "A-are you alright? You're white as a sheet all of the sudden."

"It's a little embarrassing to admit, but..." You chew the inside of your lip. You don't want to tell Izuku what his father thinks of him—if he's anything like your own father, Izuku probably already knows, but... "I… I may have, um..." You wring your hands together as you search for the words to convey exactly just how much you’ve messed up.

"My father always did say I needed to learn my place and I think perhaps allowing myself to get properly mad and tell King Hisashi that I wouldn't ever require his approval on how I carried myself as a wife or eventually as queen might be considered strictly within the realm of 'not acting within my place'." Your lips press into a thin smile, eyes blank as you begin to truly comprehend your fate.

Eijirou, walking on the other side of you as protection, promptly bursts into laughter, clutching his sides.

"H-hey!" you squeak. "Don't laugh at me, Ei! Have you no loyalty? I just told the Demon King of Elysia that he had no authority to tell me how I would treat his son!"

"Oh, trust me, your Highness, I'm plenty loyal, but this is easily the funniest thing you've done, maybe ever." 

"I'm going to die,” you whine. “His Majesty is going to kill me, and then because I didn't come back from the trip, my father's going to have Izuku killed, and then King Hisashi will declare war against Flumeria and I'm going to go down in history as the princess who single-handedly kicked off a hundred years of war and ended two lines of royal succession, eventually resulting in the destabilization of the continent as nearby kingdoms battle to claim the land and the deaths of countless.”

"You're probably not going to be killed," Izuku reassures you gently. "At least my father has two weeks to cool down before he does anything rash?"

The fact that it’s a question, rather than a statement, doesn’t reassure you at all. "Two weeks to plot my very public assassination." You drop your head into your hands. "Two weeks to get all my affairs in order. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but perhaps my father was right."

"I don't think you'll be assassinated!" Izuku's hand rests on your shoulder in a meek attempt to comfort you. "We don't even have any royal assassins!"

"So I'm not even going to be killed by a professional? The disrespect..."

His hand smooths over your back slowly. "Seriously, you'll be fine. I'm not about to let my dad kill you before I get to see you in your wedding gown."

You freeze, face going red in record time. "O-oh, that’s comforting.”

Izuku either doesn't notice or blessedly chooses to ignore just how effective his casual comment was on you. Instead, he changes the subject. Soon, you're falling into a rhythm, walking along while talking with Izuku and the knights. It's casual, fun even. Privately, you even think that maybe you could get used to this lifestyle.

~

When you stop to rest and eat a light lunch, you're utterly exhausted. Come to think of it, you don't recall the last time you properly sweat like this. It's midsummer, and moons can you feel the heat. With a wave of your hand, you're quick to remove the layer of sweat sticking to your skin as you rest in the shade of a tree.

Eijirou approaches, holding out a flask that you gratefully accept. "Are you holding up okay, your highness?" he asks as you gulp down the proffered water.

You nod when you pause to catch your breath. "Yes, I think so. It's a little embarrassing how unused to exercise I am."

He takes a seat beside you, resting an arm on one bent knee as he grins. "Nah, it's to be expected, given you aren't exactly allowed to spend your time like this normally. You're doing great so far, just be sure to keep drinking water. His Majesty will have me hanged if I let you suffer a heat stroke out here."

Thumbing the side of the flask, you giggle at his comment. "Thank you, Ei. How do you find the other knights accompanying us?"

"Oh, they're great, your highness! Super manly, too. I'm hoping I can learn a few things from them while we're out here. King Hisashi is really strict with the knights he allows to join these trips, so I'm sure they can teach me a few new tricks!"

"Well," you start, returning the flask with a wry grin, "in the interest of 'owning my responsibility', as my dear father puts it, try not to get too carried away learning new tricks."

"Of course, your Highness! I wouldn't dream of doing something that would let you get hurt."

"Speaking of getting carried away, Princess..." The hilt of a wooden sword hovers in your field of vision. You follow it to its source to find Izuku holding it out to you, one hand behind his back as he grins. "If you're feeling refreshed, I'd be happy to assess where you are in your swordplay and begin teaching you properly."

You reach up with a grin, taking the hilt in one hand. He doesn't let go of the "blade", instead planting his feet and pulling you up to yours. "Let's start by seeing where you are. Show me your stance like you're going to fight against that tree."

You nod, placing both hands on the hilt of the sword and shifting into an approximation of a combat stance, your feet planted. Izuku nods after a minute, stepping up and gently re-adjusting you. "You need to be lighter on your feet, and loosen up your stance. In a sword fight, mobility is everything. You want to be able to turn on your feet easily so you can dodge if your opponent makes a move and counter them, but we’ll get to that later. Ideally, you’d have a shield, but for now it’s best that you just get used to the training sword.”

You hum as you let him adjust your stance. "What should I do with my other hand in the meantime?"

"Keep it tucked away whenever you don't have a shield; you don't want your opponent to go for your other arm."

The rest of your lunch break is spent under Izuku’s teaching gaze and guiding hands as he teaches you the very basics of a sword-fighting stance. Before too long, your group sets out again. There’s plenty more walking ahead of you still.

~

Travelling is hard. Izuku makes it easier, you think—when you're being asked a million questions about how you train your runic abilities and how you manage to execute an idea so effortlessly with your magic, it's hard to think about how your feet ache, how you're thirsty and tired and keep having to magic your own sweat off you so you don't feel sticky and gross. By the end of the first day of travel, you've come to love the sound of his voice as a distraction from thinking so damn much.

You almost consider sitting directly in the dirt when it's finally proposed that you all set up camp for the night to sleep. Laying in it, even. Your mother would be scandalized if she could hear how you're thinking. A wave of your hand removes another layer of sweat, and you eventually give in and sit down with a thump.

You nearly slump into the dirt as you catch your breath. Around you, the knights and Izuku are busily setting up camp. The firewood being collected is piled nearby, and you watch for a long moment before moving to heave yourself back to your feet. "I'm not sure how I can help," you admit. "This is my first time even being outside for so long."

"We need a clear area with no plants or grass to build the fire on," one of the knights says. "But I'm not sure how I feel about asking you to..."

"If it's simply a matter of me not knowing how to prepare the area correctly, I understand, but please don't try to prevent me from helping simply because of my station. I'm not here simply to make your jobs more difficult."

A knight—a woman knight, no less—crouches beside you, offering a container of water with a kind smile. You accept it gratefully. "If you'd like, your Highness, I can show you how we normally set up the fire tonight, and once you've learned how to do it, we can assign that as your job for the rest of the nights that we camp outdoors."

You nod, sighing in relief at the cold water washing down your throat. "I would appreciate that, miss knight. Do you mind if I ask several questions? I'm afraid I'm not exactly educated on matters like these."

"Not at all, your Highness. Ask as many questions as you'd like."

"Well..." You falter immediately. What if the question on your mind is actually really stupid? It wouldn't do to embarrass yourself so heavily, but... "What is the point of setting up a fire when it's already so hot out?"

She gives you a kind smile as she clears away some leaves and twigs from the dirt. "It may be summertime, but we still need to cook our meal for the night, and the smoke from the flames drives away insects that may bite or sting us while we rest. There's plenty of uses for the fire that have nothing to do with its warmth, though you may find it gets much colder once it's dark."

You nod, watching her as she flattens a palm against the dirt. "I see! It's a little embarrassing to admit, but I hadn't thought about the fact that we'd be taking care of our own meals while out here." 

"All of this must be very new to you, your Highness."

"Regrettably, yes. I'm afraid the rules I've grown up under have led me to a very sheltered worldview."

"Well, that's the point of these trips, I imagine. His Highness has been making excursions like this for a few years now, and while he does get to speak to the leaders of towns and cities under his rule, I think it's more useful that he learns about life outside the palace. You can't learn humanity if you spend every day amid stone walls." Stones begin to rise up from the ground, accompanied by the distinct scent of a library. Once she's collected a pile of them, he directs her runes to draw a large circle in the dirt.

You contemplate her words as you watch her work, taking careful mental notes on what she's doing.

"We need to create a ring of stones to make the fire in, about the size of the circle I've just drawn," she explains. "If you'd like, your Highness, you can get started on arranging the stones while I collect some of the wood for the fire."

You nod, turning your attention to the pile and grabbing the first rock to set down on the ring drawn for you. It's easy work, but you take it seriously right up until you reach for the last rock and are greeted with a blast of heat that causes you to yelp and pull your hand back.

You retrace the scent of gunpowder to its source—the knight Kacchan, who typically stays by Izuku's side. He's leaned up against a tree, glaring at you with crossed arms. "Pay more attention."

You glare, affronted. "Excuse me?"

He points at the rock you'd been about to grab, where some... creature with far too many legs now lays dead. "That thing can't cause any serious health issues, but I doubt you would have been very happy with the pain its bite puts you in. Highness."

You brush it away with your runes, not wishing to touch it bare-handed. "Well, thank you for assisting me. If I hadn't known better I'd have thought you were attacking me, though."

He clicks his tongue, turning burning red eyes away from you. Is he not going to help? It looks like he just set up a pair of tents and then decided to kick back and watch you set rings around a fire.

"Is there something you need to be doing, or...?"

"It'd be stupid of us to leave you without one person watching you at all times. You're not used to being outside as it is, and if someone tries some strange magic on you, someone has to be there to save you from getting killed. Or bit by one of the most painful centipedes in Elysia because her Highness can't pay attention."

You try not to let show just how irritating his comments are. Instead, you get back to work on arranging your rocks just in time for Momo's return. 

She continues to walk you through the process—you wave a hand to take notes as she teaches you the different types of firewood, things you shouldn't do, and so on. Before long, you have a pretty decent fire set up, with the help of some magic, and the other knights have returned from their various duties. Still only two tents are set up, and honestly, you're a little afraid to question it.

You do anyway.

"Why are there only two tents, if you don't mind my asking? Surely those two aren't large enough to house everyone for the night."

A broad-shouldered night with dark hair answers your query, waving his hands about as he speaks. "The knights will be resting outside the tents, your Highness! It's not proper for a lady to share such close sleeping quarters with a man she is not yet married to, and it would be unseemly for you to change where anyone could see you. To keep carrying burdens low, only our more royal travelers will be sleeping in tents."

You frown. "I see. Thank you for your explanation, sir..."

"Ah! My sincerest apologies, your Highness. I am Tenya of the Iida family. We have a long lineage of successfully keeping royalty, such as yourself, safe. It was dishonorable of me not to introduce myself sooner, ma'am."

"Oh, you needn't worry yourself so, Sir Tenya. I've taken no offense." Besides, it's not as if anyone could offend you next to Kacchan's attitude towards you and seemingly everything in existence. "Though, I am a little worried at the prospect of all of you sleeping outdoors with no covering. Aren't we at risk of animals or attack?"

"Only slightly more so than the protection a tent affords, your Highness. All of us will be cycling through staying awake for part of the night and staying on guard against that very threat. The weather is a greater threat than any person or animal could be to you, ma'am."

"The weather?"

"Yes. If it rains, even in the heat of summer, it could cause someone's body temperature to drop to dangerous rates if we can't find a place where we can start a fire."

You hum, making a mental note of the information. As the meal carries on and things are handled, you continue to ask questions and receive answers, and before long, you're retiring for the night, more than grateful to finally, finally lay down and get some rest.

Successfully dressed in your nightclothes, you're greeted with the scent of peaches and lemongrass for only a moment before a folded letter lands in front of you, accompanied by a single yellow lily.

You can't help but smile. He sent me a letter when I'm sleeping only a tent away?

As you lay down to sleep, you call forth just enough runes to light your tent for reading. They float overhead, casting a gentle glow as you twirl the lily between two fingers.

My Highness,

Being able to travel with you today and truly speak was a gift. The lily is a thank you for accompanying me on this trip—the long treks are much more enjoyable with you at my side. I know these are all things I could have said to you in person for once, but honestly, [name], I find it easier to sleep when I have written to you. I hope you'll forgive that I don't recount to you the day's events in tonight's letter—I spent the day thinking about the beautiful princess walking at my side, so I have forgotten most of it.

It's said that, and my experiences and reading have both confirmed, one cannot smell their own magic at work. In a literal sense, this makes me slightly sad for you—will you truly never be able to smell the scent of fresh bread and warm vanilla when you work with your runes? Your runes, your soul smells like home in a way you and I have not known, and I pity everyone who will not get to spend their lives smelling it. I imagine love smells quite like the air around you—warm, safe, and inviting.

I hope you rest well and dream of me.

Your Prince,

Izuku

The letter is safely tucked away in your bag, the lily rested on the opposite side of the tent so you don't accidentally crush it. With a few waves of your hand, you acquire the paper necessary to pen the morning's response and rest it next to the lily, to be dealt with in the morning.

For now, you dismiss your light and fall into sleep. Tomorrow is another exhausting day.

Tags: @tooloudarts​ @sapid-rose​ @xxangelpridexx​ @birds-have-teeth​ @icythotsenpai​ @warmchoccymilk​ @wesparklebitch​ @izoodles​ @fujimoribaby​ @my-bnha-things​ @denise-the-death-goddess​ @themerpenguin​  @dragonempress123​ @imabootywarrior​ @the-secret-thief​ @venusianpink​ @chickynn​ @lianatriestosurvive​ @frog-face-wolfhard​ @akariblue​

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Whumptober, Day 6: “Stop, Please!”

CW: Intimate whumper, creepy whumper, abusive relationship (of a sort), slavery, degrading language, hand whump, blood, threats of death, shock collar

Jax Gallagher belongs to @comfy-whumpee and is used with permission

“We could move here.” Savvie points, and the end of her fingernail - perfectly manicured into a rounded tip, polished to high shine - taps against her laptop’s screen. “See, Jax? This is gorgeous scenery, isn’t it? Just for the summers, of course. I’d buy us an apartment to stay in in the winter.”

She shifts, her shoulder resting lightly against his where they sit on her bed, whiling away the afternoon. These are her favorite days, the ones where she finishes her practice time early and they have a couple of hours to spend just being together, here in her room, with the view of the woods that ring her home a beautiful backdrop out the window.

His eyes flicker over the image of what seems like a quaint little cottage situated just a few feet from a river, surrounded by beautifully green trees on every side. “Where… where is it, Miss Savvie?”

His voice is a little hoarse, but that’s his own fault. He’d had some sort of issue the night before, but she’d handled that, and only the occasional involuntary shudder of his muscles gives away that he’s still feeling the effects of the shocks. 

She’d discovered, a few weeks ago, that she could set the remote on a timer, and she’d kept that knowledge a secret, waiting until he did something worth disciplining him for. Last night, after his attitude problem, she’d sent him to his room to sleep, set his shock collar to go off for just a couple of seconds at high intensity every hour and fifteen minutes all night long, and gone to bed herself.

He must have screamed - he had nearly no voice left by morning, and every sip of his coffee clearly hurt him, even as she insisted he finish every single drop. His room is so well-soundproofed that Savvie never heard a thing. Besides, it doesn’t matter.

What matters isn’t whether or not he’s got a teensy sore throat - what matters is that today he’s much better behaved, and Savvie doesn’t mind those circles under his eyes since she knows she was the one to cause them. 

“Russia.” She breathes the word like it’s made of magic, reaching over to take his hand. He doesn’t pull away, but his fingers twitch against hers. If she were any less herself, she might realize it’s because he wants to pull away, but is stopping himself. “This is in the country. I’d get us an apartment in Moscow, too.”

His hands have always been rough and calloused, skin worn red and raw by cleaning chemicals. When he’s good, he gets to wear gloves when he cleans. When he’s not, well, somehow those gloves go missing, and the work still has to be done.

She’s kinder to his hands, these days, though. Not that she minds them feeling a little rough. 

She lifts his right hand up, and he stares steadily at the little house on the screen while she presses a kiss over the platinum band he wears on his ring finger. Ready to move to the left, once she’s certain. Once they’re safe.

Once she takes him so far away his fucking father can’t ever, ever find him and steal him away from her again. Once no one can brainwash him and make him think he doesn’t love her, doesn’t want to be with her forever, for life. She’ll never have to watch him say hateful, hurtful things on the stand. 

Never, ever again. She just has to keep him hidden so far away that no one can find him, until they think he’s dead, until no one is looking, until they know he’ll never come home because his home is by her side, for the rest of her life, where he belongs.

Whether he wants to be there or not.

His eyes scan the real estate listing, empty of emotion. It’s all written in Cyrillic, it might as well be hieroglyphs to him. But the photos tell him enough. It’s a little vacation home for a millionaire, tucked away in the woods. Subtly luxurious, on the inside, with old-fashioned wood-beam detailing but pre-furnished with the biggest, fluffiest-looking bed. Maybe even bigger than her bed here. 

It looks like it had to be built inside the room, just to fit.

“Why-...” His voice catches, and he winces. When she leans over to nestle her head into the crook of his shoulder, she feels him go tense and then carefully, slowly, methodically relax. “Why Russia? France is… probably warmer.”

“You don’t speak Russian,” Savvie says, dreamily, trailing her fingertips along the back of his hand, tracing the blue of the veins she can see beneath his skin. His fingers twitch again, but she ignores that. She’s going to be the only person who sees him cry, sees his faint, soft little smile. The only person who sees him bleed.

“I don’t speak any other languages, Miss Savvie,” he replies, and she wonders if he’s lying to her, then decides he wouldn’t dare. 

“The cottage in the summer,” She murmurs, “and an apartment for the winter. My parents had some friends who own a building in Moscow, full of families just like mine.”

He swallows, hard, staring at the screen like he could light it on fire with his mind, if only he could try hard enough. “Like… yours, Miss Savvie?”

He doesn’t talk much, any longer. Did he used to speak more, the first time? She feels like he spoke more, before. Ever since she made it clear that she wouldn’t settle for less than all of him, he’d gone more quiet, more reserved. Even this was more talking than he did, mostly, now.

Not that she minds. He’s as gorgeous quiet as he ever is when she can drag enough words out of him to call it a conversation. 

“Like mine. Which means they have people just like you.”

He nods slowly, his face a perfect mask of emptiness. His body shakes, suddenly - and then he’s still again.

“Aftershocks?” She slides an arm around his waist, pulling him close.

“Yes, Miss Savvie.” 

“Hm. You deserved it, you know.”

There’s a pause - minute, barely a fraction of a second. “Yes, Miss Savvie.”

“I liked Russia,” She muses, reaching out to click through the photos of the little summer home. One single big bed, for the two of them, just how it should be. The perfect place for them to start all over, somewhere new. “They’re good to classical musicians.”

“What about your ankle… tag?” He glances over at her, and Savvie frowns, shifting uncomfortably so her skirt will cover up the ugly black band she wears around her left ankle, with a box attached that has a small red light on the top. She’s worn it for long enough she barely feels it, unless he draws attention to it, or she thinks about all the places she cannot go, because of him.

Because of his hateful fucking lies he told on the stand, with his father sitting there glaring at her when she tried to tell Jax it wasn’t his fault for being stolen - they called it rescued - and she would make sure he didn’t have to be alone for long.

She didn’t want to be alone, either.

“One day, I’ll get it off,” She says, closing her eyes briefly. “When it’s time to go, Isaac will tell me, and we’ll take off the stupid thing and you and I will be gone before anyone comes here to see what happened. One day, no more ankle bracelet and no more parole. I’ll board Isaac’s plane and you’ll go with me, and we’ll be together forever, in Russia.”

“Miss Savvie-”

Her hand suddenly gripped back onto his, tightening, as she felt the fear of losing him twist up around her heart again. “They’ll never find you,” She says, but it’s vicious, words spat out with furious, all-consuming conviction. “Never, Jax. Not your father, not the fucking police, not detectives not any-fucking-one in the whole fucking world will find you where I’ll take you.” 

“M-Miss Savvie, my hand-”

“You’ll be safe.” She drags his hand up against her chest, over her heart, holding it with both of hers now, squeezing as tightly as she can until she can feel the bones grind together in her grip. “You’ll be with me, far away from anyone who could take you away, and you won’t be able to leave me, not ever.”

“I w-wouldn’t-... Miss S-Savvie, please stop, m-my hand-”

“You won’t ever fucking leave me.” She takes in a deep breath, lets it out in shaky little exhales, and lets him go. He jerks back from her, staring down with slightly wide eyes, and she looks, too.

His hand is reddened from being squeezed so tightly, his fingers splayed open. There are little red crescents dug into his palms, new wounds on old scars, where he sometimes keeps his hands in fists, a nervous habit, he says, nothing more.

Now, there are red marks on the back of his hand, not crescents, but inch-long trails over those same blueish purple veins - blood welling up under the skin where her nails pressed so deeply, so firmly, that they broke the skin as she dragged them down the back of his hand. He rubs at his palm, making the ring he’s wearing glint in the light, and the shine is a reminder, just like the black shock collar he wears around his neck, that he’ll always wear, until she can trust him.

“I would never hurt you,” She says, and even she can’t escape the incongruity of the words when compared to the beads of blood she can see where she’s already done just that, the sore throat that keeps him hoarse and half-whispering after a night spent in screaming pain locked in his room where she could hurt him without having to see or hear it happen. “But if you leave me-... if you try-”

“I w-won’t, Miss Savvie,” He answers quickly, maybe too quickly, his shoulders hunched, staring down at his hand, still.

“If you leave me,” Savvie says, voice flat and sincere, “I’ll make sure Isaac kills your father, and your mother, and your mother’s fucking dogs and I’ll make you watch every single one of them die… but I’ll never, ever let him kill you. Go wash your hand.”

He’s up and in the bathroom before she even finishes her sentence. The door closes behind him, not quite a slam, not quite careful, either. She listens but he doesn’t try to lock her out. He knows better. Last time he tried to lock a door she made him regret it.

She takes deep breaths, centering herself slowly. In through her nose, out through her mouth. In through her nose, out through her mouth. In through her nose…

She clicks through the photos of the little vacation home again. The house tucked away in the woods, the beautiful design, the riverbank and the huge custom-made bed. She imagines Jax, ring on his left ring finger now, making her breakfast. She imagines him wearing a beautiful leather collar instead of the ugly black shock collar. Once she thought he wouldn't wear one, one day - but in her daydreams, he always is.

Maybe she just can’t even imagine him without one, now.

She imagines him saying, I love you, Savvie. She imagines him somewhere where he can never, ever be rescued stolen away from her, ever again.

By the time he comes back from the bathroom, his hand wrapped in gauze, aftershocks running over his skin worse than before, she’s happy again, gesturing him back into bed with her. In a bright, cheerful voice, she asks, “Want to watch a movie?”

He stares at her, blank-faced, before he does… something that’s sort of a nod but also not really a response at all, and climbs back in beside her. 

Russia, she thinks, as she settles back in, feeling him tense and relax when she snuggles up against him, arms around his waist. He’ll be happy, really happy, there, where there will be only the two of them, forever and ever.

He’ll be happy, once he really understands that no one else but her will ever see him alive again.

---

Tagging: @astrobly, @slaintetowhump, @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @moose-teeth, @eatyourdamnpears, @whump-tr0pes, @orchidscript, @whumpiary

[scullydubois]

Only the Light Ch. 14

14/? | AU where Melissa moves in with Scully after Scully’s abduction | angst, msr slow-burn, occasional fluff | currently: early 1995 (Humbug adjacent) | T | 5k | previous chapters | read on ao3 | tagging: @today-in-fic <3

As the new year beckons Scully to put her life back together, she and Mulder share a Valentine's 'anti-date' on the Hoover Building rooftop.

TW for brief discussion of disordered eating.

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

The new year struck Scully with a particular melancholy. 1994 was, to put it plainly, one of the worst--if not the worst--year of her life. Even without her disappearance, it would earn that title. Her father’s untimely passing and the brief but brutal closure of the X-Files wrenched the few good things left from her fingers. Factor in the four weeks in late summer that she has no memory nor knowledge of, and you’ll understand why Scully has taken to calling it her year on the dark side of the moon.

Of course, the aftershocks of her abduction are still felt every day. Flipping the calendar does nothing to remedy that. At her last appointment, Dr. Zapolsky noticed that Scully’s weight had decreased rather sharply from previous visits and made the point that “rapid weight loss can stop ovulation,” which Scully interpreted as kicking her while she was down. That’s not exactly fair, after all. Technically, her period stopped well before she decided to restrict herself. 

It’s odd how it happened. Her weight was fine before her abduction; slender but within the healthy range for her height. Even when she was returned, it had only dropped a couple pounds, as if they fed her...as if they cared. She found that hard to believe. In the months afterward, she sought a physical representation of her mental anguish, and since she and food were never on the best terms to begin with, the choice was simple.

The other day, she had to punch an extra hole in all her belts to hold them steady on her hips. She knows the consequences of this; she’ll live them and accept it. 

There has been some beneficial progress. Dr. Zapolsky started Scully on low-dose birth control around Thanksgiving, hoping that it would balance her hormones and regulate her periods. It has, in fact, brought back her cycle, something that Scully did not expect. She gave Melissa her leftover tampons in October. Now Melissa buys enough for the two of them and insists that Scully doesn’t owe her a dime. Scully is too grateful for this to speak about it.

Her downward spiral reached a snag when she realized that smoking would make her birth control ineffective, shortly after her and Mulder’s Christmas Eve smoke break. She ditched the cigarettes, mad at herself for taking a month to read the disclaimer (she’s a doctor for god’s sake, she should know better!), yet glad to have an out. Smoking was a habit she exercised because she could. It won’t hurt her anytime soon, and millions of others do it, so where’s the harm? That was her thinking. As soon as she had a reason to stop, she did, and it felt a bit like jumping from a runaway train just before it skids off the tracks. 

So she is better, and she is worse. Which really means she is the same as she was. That is the conclusion she carries into 1995’s frosts and thaws. 

There is one thing she is certain of, something that she hadn’t given much thought to until the one year anniversary of her father’s death. She needs her faith back. She’s always practiced in a cyclical pattern, her devoutness orbiting in and out like the moon around the Earth. Sometimes closer and brighter, sometimes farther away, sometimes nowhere to be found.

She has to believe it will come back; it always does. She was made in God’s image, and her father’s. This is both a blessing and a curse.

But no one can be God, and she can’t be her father either. His faith never wavered. If hers was the moon--fickle and subject to doubt--his was the sun, steady and warming everything around it. This was a quality she was envious of, and then guilty in her blasphemy. She has never managed to feel completely content inside the bounds of piety like he could. She’s constantly shaking the devil off her back, then repenting for it, then wondering if it were all worth it. What if...what if...what if...she isn’t fully persuaded in her beliefs, and she knows that this is the worst sin of all. Like Mulder though, she wants to believe, and shouldn’t that count for something?

Imperfection is allowed. Understood, even. Doubt is not as permissible. “He who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind,” the Bible says. Sometimes Scully takes that to mean she should walk into the ocean. Then she realizes that would be blasphemous too. 

Some people believe without trying. Her father was one of those. Mulder too, in a different way. She used to think that she was too. Now she’s not so sure. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” How many times has she read that line? Has she ever lived up to it? She’s seen and still not believed. Certainly that means she’s going to Hell.

Or is she already there?...She wonders that sometimes. Maybe she didn’t make it back from the other side. Maybe the devil just wanted her to believe that she had, and so he’d constructed some kind of diorama of Scully’s life that would go wrong bit by bit, boiling her like a gradually heated bathtub. No resting in peace for the unbeliever.

She can’t imagine a worse punishment than all the potentially good things in her life getting dismantled beyond her control. She’d rather never experience them at all than know their joy then watch them fall apart. Missy would kill her if she heard this, but you can’t please everybody.

It is at this point that Scully embarks on her chosen method of religious self-flagellation: going through the Ten Commandments and determining whether she’s violated them. Count up your sins and God won’t have to; practically the tagline of the Catholic faith.

She thinks she does okay with the first few. She has no idols, she honors her mother and father, and Mulder knows not to call her on Sunday mornings. Of course, the part about not taking the Lord’s name in vain can be tricky, but she’s working on it. 

Number five is where it gets dicey. Thou shalt not kill. She imagines that she wouldn’t, not on purpose, but the circumstances of her job worry her. God makes no exceptions for self-defense. And what if she were ever to be a true doctor? If she couldn’t save a patient, does that mean she killed them? 

Her father was in the Navy. He never killed anyone.

Number six...well, she doesn’t mention that often. Few people know about Daniel. Missy is one. Scully harbors a genuine shame regarding that time in her life, not so much because of Daniel, but because she was complicit in hurting his wife and daughter. It was a young, foolish mistake that she never wants to make again. 

She feels pretty good about number seven. The only thing she has ever stolen is one of Charlie’s matchbox cars when they were kids. She was uninterested in Missy’s hand-me-down Barbies and Raggedy Ann dolls. The boys’ toys were much cooler. She trusted the Lord enough to know that He wouldn’t hold something she did when she was seven against her. Besides, she gave it back when Charlie figured out it was missing. She just wishes he had let her play with him after that.

Number eight: thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. She considers honesty one of her best qualities. She sure hopes God does too. She’s not the most open person, but that’s different from lying…

Nine is a lost cause, considering six had been broken. This was her least favorite part of her family’s religion: the power it had to cause her shame about her own body, her own desires. She had her first crisis of faith over this at age 14. Missy comforted her with something she has never forgotten: “The original sin was the serpent’s deception, not Eve’s desire. Even God pins it on the woman.” She knew her sister could only say that because she didn’t truly believe and wasn’t trying to, but it had stuck with Scully through many moments when she needed it. 

And finally, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. She supposes she did this with the matchbox cars when she was seven, but in literal terms that’s about it. Metaphorically, she does this all the time and struggles with why she feels so inadequate. Her sister’s confidence, Mulder’s tenacity, her father’s faith...The ideal Dana Scully would have all of these. The real one is a work in progress.

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

So it goes that she finds herself prepping a case in the office on Valentine’s Day. Mulder’s scheduled to fly to Florida the next morning to investigate attacks in a community of circus performers. He’s convinced it’s the Fiji Mermaid, she’s convinced he needs to get his head checked; the usual. This is one comfort Scully can always rely on. No matter how utterly twisted her life gets, she will always think Mulder is crazy, and he will always go along with it. 

The occasion of the day goes unmentioned until what Mulder lovingly refers to as “closing time,” which is not a specific time but rather the point that he finally gives up for the day, usually hastened by his partner’s prodding. Scully has learned the signs of his dwindling tenacity by now. She glances at the clock as he pulls his glasses off his head and tosses a sunflower seed in the wastebasket, pleasantly surprised that it reads only 5:15. He catches her checking, his eyes--amber today--meeting hers.

His lips curl in amusement. “You got a date or something?” 

“No,” she blinks, feeling like a child caught taking a cookie from the jar. Her cheeks grow hot, threatening to make a scene. “I figured you did, since you’re finishing up so early.”

Mulder straightens his stack of papers, clinking them against the desk obnoxiously. “Think again, buckaroo.”

He’s taken to calling her that lately. Neither one of them is sure why, it just popped into his mind one day and stuck. It makes her feel like a heroine in some 70s Western shoot-out flick who wrangles all the bad guys and locks’em in the county jail. She’s thankful that someone can see her for what she could be rather than what she is. It helps her see that too. 

He stuffs his papers in a manila folder, then rises from behind the desk and stoops toward the backpack he prefers to a briefcase. (She called him a kindergartener once because of it and he remarked that he’d ‘rather be a kindergartener than an adult.’ She couldn’t argue with that.) “Valentine’s Day isn’t really observed under the Fox Mulder calendar,” he says, unzipping the bag and putting the folder in. “Halloween and Thanksgiving, those are my holy days.” 

“You worship at the shrine of the food pyramid,” Scully smirks. 

“Yes indeed. Wait--” Scully’s gaze flicks to him, genuinely concerned. He dissolves her uncertainty with a boyish grin. “--does the food pyramid include candy?”

She rolls her eyes, but it’s not deeply felt. She misses these flat-lining comedic routines of his, usually at their best when they’re putzing through some tumble-weed town where the bathroom stalls at the gas station don’t lock. He loves being the funniest person in a ten-mile radius, and that’s not a satisfaction he can have in DC. She wonders if he tells these lame jokes to strangers now, or if they were just for her. 

“Speaking of food,” he says, brushing a hand through his hair, “you wanna grab dinner?”

Scully’s forehead creases. “Like, in a restaurant?”

“I mean, I wasn’t gonna be that forward, but I guess we could take it to yours or mine...”

Scully laughs lightly, wrapping her arms around herself, fingers caressing her bony elbows. “We’ve already covered what day it is,” she demures. “Everyone having dinner is going to be on a date.”

“You’re right...the restaurant probably won’t let us in unless we make out in front of the hostess,” he deadpans. 

“Not to mention that we don’t have any reservations…”

“Well, making out might remedy that, depending on the hostess.”

She gives him her ‘last straw’ look--crossed arms, arched eyebrow, stinging glare--and he raises his hands in surrender. “I’ll stick to slipping a twenty, then.”

Scully uncrosses her arms and slinks toward her purse rather languishly. “No restaurants, Mulder. It’s too much trouble on a holiday.”

“I sure hope you didn’t mistake my suggestion as an invitation to Mulder’s Downhome Country Kitchen, cause that place is not Michelin star rated.”

“I’m well aware. I’ve seen the menu.”

“Is Chateau de Scully open tonight?” he asks with an eyebrow raise that his partner couldn’t have missed if she tried--and she did. 

“Well, the chef is celebrating Valentine’s Day with her girlfriend in Oregon, so you’d be waiting awhile for your meal.”

“There’s no back-up chef? I don’t know, someone who may need to feed herself while the chef is away?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t serve the public.”

“Ouch.”

He plucks their respective coats off the rack, folding his own over his arm and throwing his partner’s over her shoulders. She jumps just the tiniest bit--she probably thinks he didn’t notice, so he’ll pretend he didn’t--then slips her arms in the sleeves and pulls it on properly.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, avoiding eye contact.

After he’s put his own jacket on, he hoists up his backpack, fielding off his partner’s near swerve into laughter. She’s barely maintaining a straight face, and even if it’s at his expense, he loves it because unadulterated joy is something she deserves so much. 

“You know what, I’ve got just the solution,” he says as he strolls out the doorway, flipping the light switch as he goes, leaving Scully scrambling in the dark. 

“Hey!” 

He hears her petulant voice, followed quickly by the laugh he was looking for. When she turns to him after locking the office door, her eyes are still shining from the momentary euphoria. He is so happy to know her.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this place is the Smithsonian of vending machines.”

“Mm-hm.”

“And I know a door to the rooftop that never gets locked.” He flashes her a sly look, his intentions pure despite himself. 

“It’s 40 degrees outside,” she counters before he can even voice his proposal.

“Sure, but we can make some fresh coffee, and there’s gotta be blankets in that storage closet of ours.” Ours. Very few things are theirs. She wishes he would say it again.

As much as her instinct is to protest, she can’t quite muster the resolve to. I mean, it checks all the boxes. It’s not a restaurant, she’d only have to eat a snack from the vending machine, and she wouldn’t have to spend Valentine’s night alone, which is a sneaky sadness that had been pressing at the back of her mind.

“Fine,” she bluffs, as if it were a great inconvenience to her. She enjoys the cat-and-mouse game, what can she say? “You find the blankets, I’ll get the coffee.”

Mulder smiles, his lips edging over his teeth in an aesthetically pleasing way that makes Scully feel like he missed his calling as a male model. Of course, this smile isn’t posed. The constant in his life is his partner’s unpredictability. Everyone thinks she’s a stone-cold skeptic, but he knows she’s an uncertain believer, and there’s no one harder to pin down than that. Her yes to his Valentine plans may as well be an admission that Bigfoot exists. 

“Let’s meet by the sixth floor stairwell, okay?” he prompts, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

Flashes of Christmas Eve sabotage her thoughts--her mother’s kitchen, her untidy tipsiness, Mulder just trying to iron things out. He’d touched her, and she’d lashed out at him. Reaction formation, that was the term for the defense mechanism she’d used. He knew it, probably studied it extensively. Concealing an impulse by acting out its opposite.

Instead of mentioning this, she looks him in the eyes and says, “Okay, I’ll use the coffee machine on the sixth floor then,” as if his touch hadn’t brought forth both memory and desire. 

“Great. See you there.” He pulls finger guns, and she thinks that maybe this is already her best Valentine’s Day yet.

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

Five stories of stairs is a long way to go with two hot mugs of coffee. Scully had hoped there would be some styrofoam cups--something she could put a lid on--but the Bureau is stingy, so she had to go all the way back to the basement, grab their coffee mugs, take the elevator back to the sixth floor, brew some dark roast (to Mulder’s probable discontent), then hope that by some miracle, they could make it to the roof. 

Ever the idealist, Mulder takes the challenge in stride. Though his arms are already bundled with some comforters he found tucked away in storage (he shudders to think how old they must be), he takes the handle of his mug, squeezing the blankets snug against his chest. 

“Are you sure about this?” his partner asks with her usual uneven tone. “What if we get all the way up there and the door is locked?”

“We knock and get the snipers to open the door for us,” he answers matter-of-factly.

Scully’s eyebrows shoot up. “Snipers?”

“Oh yeah, did I forget to mention? There’s a longstanding rumor about snipers on the roof that I’d like to get to the bottom of.”

His demeanor is just loose enough to make Scully question whether he is in fact kidding. A conversational casualness permeates all of his sensational soliloquies because to him, the phenomena he’s discussing should be regarded as a fact of the world. If he ever launched into an indifferent lecture on the subject, she’d know he was bluffing.

Having never heard the rumor herself, she decides this is simply a figment of his overactive imagination. She’ll play along. “Well, if it’s anything like the talk of you being spooky, then it doesn’t look good for us…” she teases, her own smirk eliciting an identical one from her partner. 

Masking his impatience by embodying the role of the gentleman, Mulder uses his free hand to prop open the stairwell door, ushering his partner through. The landing of each story has one stray light bulb, there for show more than anything. Most of them are either flickering or burned out, the agents discover as they inch their way up, one slowly taken step at a time. Step, pause for the coffee to settle, hope it doesn’t breach its container, step: that’s the process they adopt for approximately 100 steps in the cold Hoover stairwell. There are many ways to show love; Mulder bets that you wouldn’t find this in any lame self-help book. 

“Do you think Romeo would have done this for Juliet?” he muses.

“Depends on what he was expecting once they made it to the top,” Scully quips, the edges of her lips turning up slightly.

Mulder nods, perpetually amused by her (too) infrequent jaunts into suggestive territory. “My man really got ahead of himself with the whole ‘dying for her’ schtick.” 

“You’re one to talk.” 

Mulder eyes her. “Actually, I think it was you who was going to die for me.”

“Not for you, because of you.” Her statement is neither packed with malice nor free of blame. “There’s a difference.”

She may as well have shot him at point blank range; then at least she could see the bleeding. She didn’t mean to be so blunt, but he gave her the perfect setup. Mulder cauterizes his own wound, disguising his pain as a joke. “Damn, I was finally moving past that!”

“At least one of us was,” she says, her voice fluttering, and he knows she’s just teasing, but god, what if she’s cauterizing her own hidden wounds?

They reach the door labelled ‘roof,’ and Mulder can’t decipher what happens first, him putting his hand on the door handle or her placing a chilly hand on his cheek. Playing it back in his head later on he won’t even be able to figure it out-- it cut time loose from its axes in such a way. 

“Are you okay, Scully?” He’s not sure why this is the first question out of his mouth, but it is.

“I need a hand warmer,” she murmurs. “The coffee’s already cooling off.”

All the while, Mulder is acutely aware that her hand’s still on his cheek and she’s got him propped against the door, and what does she want him to do with that information?

Her thumb grazes his mole, and it becomes clear to him that there are two ways this scenario could go, and if she doesn’t want the second one it’s imperative that she stop rubbing rhythmic circles into his skin.

He clears his throat. “Do you want to...do you want me to check for snipers?” Her touch continues, uninterrupted. 

“Is the door unlocked?” Her voice sounds airy and far away. She probably didn’t even hear his question. 

He pushes on the handle, confirming their freedom. “Yes ma’am,” he answers, fear of a sort edging him into total politeness. He is twelve tiptoeing through the too empty halls of his house, again.

“Let’s have a picnic,” she says, still light and airy, as if that weren’t the plan the entire time. Then, she breaks into sudden laughter, pulling her hand away from Mulder’s cheek in her fit. “We forgot the food!” 

She is back to normal now, his steadfast Scully with a side of joy. 

Half of him mourning for the otherworldly Scully and the moment that could have been, he laughs too. “There may have been some lapses in planning.”

“We can make do, can’t we?” There’s a glimmer in her eyes that suggests the moment is not as far gone as he believed.

“Cold coffee sounds like an enduring Valentine’s tradition,” he affirms.

They choose not to dwell on words like “enduring” and “tradition,” entering the chill of the Hoover Building rooftop on Valentine’s night. 

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

They’re not that far above the city really--the Hoover’s no NYC skyscraper--but their heads are in the clouds, that’s for sure. It’s not the typical dinner date complete with melted candles and overpriced dessert and overly attentive waiters, but as it turns out, they would both hate that. After all, this is not a date, it’s a casual hangout between two coworkers who don’t have dates on Valentine’s Day. If anything, it’s an anti-date. That’s what they tell themselves.

February’s unrelenting chill swirls around them, catching Scully’s hair in playful tantrums and turning the two of them into life-size paperweights atop the blankets. More sensible people may call the night a bust, but not the Prince of Halloweentown and his esteemed guest. This unconventional adventure is exactly what they bargained for.

Scully looks to Mulder, who’s holding his coffee like it’s a beer. She smiles. That is so him.

She exhales, and her breath spells itself out on the air. She tilts her face to the sky, as if the sun might suddenly rise and bask her in its heat. Mulder notices and fixes his attention there too, happy to have an excuse to look skyward. It’s his outlet, like hers is the sea her father dedicated his life to. His preferred escape method is to fly away; hers is to drift off.

He forces himself back into the moment, here, with her, and the expanse of the sky. “I once spent fifty bucks on one of those ‘name a star’ certificates, and I can’t even see it because of the goddamn light pollution.”

“I think that’s really more about the gesture than anything else,” Scully replies, trying to soothe him as if this were actually a pressing problem. “Unless you bought it for yourself...?”

Mulder chuckles. “No, no. It was for an old girlfriend.”

Scully raises her eyebrows in amusement. “Did you name it after her?”

“No, we named it the Rhine star.”

A puzzled look passes between them. It gives him a twinge of joy that his partner is not the encyclopedia she seems to be. 

“After Joseph Banks Rhine, the founder of parapsychology,” he clarifies. “We were both fascinated by the field.”

“Oh.” She turns her face back toward the sky with the feeling of a kid who missed the winning word of the spelling bee. There are times when she is grateful she does not know everything, and times when she is not. Somehow, this is both. 

“I’ve thought about buying another one and naming it after Samantha,” Mulder continues, “but it feels too much like a grave marker.”

“I’d consider it a lovely tribute,” Scully counters, used to doing so. “But I’m thirty and I own my own gravestone, so take that with a grain of salt.”

It’s true--once Dana was returned, her mother couldn’t bear to look at the gravestone she’d had engraved in memory of her missing daughter, so she gave it to Mulder, who saw no logical place for it to go except the woman whose name it bore. Margaret hadn’t wanted her to know that it existed, that they’d gotten so far as considering her gone. While it brought Mulder no joy to present it to his partner, it served as a reminder of the miracle her survival was, and in such bleak times, they had both needed that. 

“It doesn’t scare me--the thought of dying,” Scully says to the stars. Mulder wonders if she meant for him to hear it. He wishes he hadn’t, but he’s met with the realization that she is trying to start a conversation when her eyes look into his.

He doesn’t know where to go with this, so he toes the line between deep and sarcastic. “I thought Catholics were all about that heaven and hell stuff.”

“Yes, but…” where is the line between truth and blasphemy, she wonders? Settling herself, she starts over. “I’ve lived both on Earth, so what have I got to fear?” She turns her glance to the blanket, as if shrinking out of the Lord’s sight. “Besides, sometimes I think I’m already there.” 

“Heaven?”

“No, Hell.”

He should have known. He grips the edge of his blanket, wondering why his parents had prioritized the sex talk but never explained what to do in a situation like this. He has a psychology degree, sure, but he’s as much a psychologist as she’s a physicist. 

“There are periods of life, I think, where everyone feels like that,” he says in the most earnest voice he can conjure. “It’s just that nobody ever talks about it.”

“Did you feel like that with Samantha?” 

Leave it to Scully to turn a personal conversation back on him.

He bites his lip. “Yeah, yeah, I did. Still do, if I think about it too long.”

“How did you...move past it?” The lights of nearby buildings reflect off her blue eyes, galaxies to his black holes. He’d give anything to sluice the pain right from her heart. 

He’ll rely on his words instead, despite knowing there are depths they cannot touch. “I, uh, I didn’t really move past it, I just moved. Kept moving, I guess. I found a place where I could make progress out of my pain. Here--the X-Files.”

Scully swallows hard, knocking back tears. "That’s the issue. I feel stuck. Just completely unable to go forward. There’s a current in my brain that keeps pushing me backward.”

Mulder lets out a deep breath, trying to take both their pain with it. “Have you considered seeing a therapist?” he asks delicately. “It sounds like you may have PTSD.”

“Over what?” she practically snaps. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“That doesn’t mean you have no memories. Regression hypnosis could help recover repressed or unconscious memories, so you could understand exactly what’s bothering you.”

“You think I haven’t heard this spiel from Melissa?”

“I bet Melissa doesn’t have first-hand experience with it.”

“No, she doesn’t,” she murmurs in the tone of an apology. She knew that he had it, she had listened to the tapes. How could she let it slip her mind? It is uncouth of her to look down on his chosen method of healing.

Mulder isn’t bothered. He continues, “It helped me. Both in recalling the details of the experience, and in having a recorded recollection of it. It helped me feel less...insane.”

“Mmm.” If he were just a bit closer, she’d reach out and touch his hand.

“If anything, I wish I did it earlier.”

Scully’s understanding of him sharpens, like an ophthalmologist flipping the lens, making her vision clearer. Her gaze probes him, mutual souls recognizing mutual pain. 

“Hey.” He uses his extended wingspan to touch her shoulder with the care an older sibling would show holding their baby brother for the first time. She turns her head, their faces mere inches away from each other. His eyes are a dopey brown, his breath scented with coffee.

“Yes?” she says with a coquettish flitting of her eyelashes. 

“You should come back out on the road. I could use someone to shoot down all my wild whims.”

She can’t help but smile, though she keeps her mouth closed. “Tired of telling jokes to strangers who don’t laugh, are you?”

He smirks. “Well, yeah, that too.” He leans back a bit, putting enough distance between them to keep the sparks in check. “Of course, if you’re not ready, there’s no pressure. I just think you could use the change of scenery and--you know--companionship.”

She nods, looks out into the night. He’s got the pulse of her problems and the salve that could soothe them. “You’re right.” How often does he get to hear those beautiful words come out of her mouth? “I need to get out of my cocoon, and I think I’m okay enough to do that now.”

“Yeah?” There’s a twinkle in his eyes, something like hope.

She laughs--catharsis manifest--and it’s like a sheen of light coming through a crack in her jagged surface. “Yeah, Mulder. I’ll make the arrangements with Skinner.”

He pumps his fists in the air. “Hallelujah!” 

She hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her. Any stray thoughts she had of him being lonely she chalked up to her own delusions. 

“Florida is probably a lost cause,” she notes, “but after that…”

He nods, pats her shoulder. “After that.”

To have her back meant something like freedom. The X-Files had never been anything without her. He had never been anything without her.