When the world's at stake | Poolverine fic | Chapter 2 preview
New York, 2024, Earth - 10005
“Oh, Peanut!” Wade sings as the back door swings open.
He raises a single eyebrow in acknowledgment while sliding the fresh baked pancake onto Laura’s plate in one smooth movement. “Oh, you’re back.”
The dry drawl earns him a giggle from the cub and a good-hearted chuckle from Althea.
“Like a goddamn cockroach, Logan. He ain’t going anywhere.” She laughs.
“Very funny, Al…” Wade sneers, then gasps as he walks into the kitchen. “Are those homemade Canadian buttermilk pancakes with fucking, genuine maple syrup?”
Wade reaches for the pan and he quickly slaps him on the fingers with the wooden spatula.
Wade squeals in response. “OUCH.”
“Hands off, bub. Either take a seat or beat it.”
“That’s both really hot, and hurts my feelings.” Wade’s eyes trail his form for a moment, a slow smile forming on his lips. “Hmmm, I’m not sure what I like better. The apron or the cook. Bright pink is your color.”
Wade is referring to the apron he’s currently wearing. It’s almost ironic that it reads; no bitchin’ in the kitchen in white letters.
It’s been three months since the party and their lives have finally settled somewhat. The TVA came through in getting him access to the other Logan’s bank accounts and his own ID and driver’s license. Allowing him to get a decent down payment for a mortgage on a four bedroom house in Jamaica, Queens. As far as neighborhoods go in New York, you can do a lot worse than that.
“Are you sitting down or am I stapling you to your chair? Which is it gonna be?”
“Please spank me.” Wade sighs as he takes a seat at the head of the table.
“Gross.”Laura groans, nudging Wade’s chair with a foot until it topples and Wade sprawls onto the kitchen floor. “I’m trying to eat.”
“That was uncalled for, young lady!” Wade springs up and points an accusing finger. An action that earns him nothing more than a raised eyebrow.
He’s definitely not smiling or shaking his head at the domesticity of it all. As if.
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𝑨𝑵𝑶𝑻𝑯𝑬𝑹 𝑳𝑰𝑭𝑬 [𝑫𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒇]
Pairing(s): Dainslief x Lumine(Traveller)! Reader (basically a fem! reader insert)
CW: Really angsty and sad, Dain pushes away his feelings for the sake of his mission.
Dainslief has wandered alone for the longest time. He cold-shoulders everyone and everything unless it appeals to him and his goals. If he sees no pertinent reason to partake in something, he doesn't.
However, ever since he met you at the Angel's Share that fateful day, you have become a recurring topic on his mind-- your origins, your mysteries, and your goals. He'd ponder upon them for hours when his mind could think of nothing more.
The more he saw of you and the more he had been around you, he started to see you in a different light. A bright light, one that his people normally would've looked down upon. Aside from the obvious, being that you're obviously quite literally otherworldly, you shone with the power to maybe even overthrow gods and deities of all kinds.
This "pure admiration of skill" masked what truly lied within. He saw you in all your grace, your beauty, your glory. He wanted to stay by your side and traverse the paths of this world as both a means to an end and a way to pass time with the only person he has felt for in ages.
He loved you dearly. Wonder why you end up running into him so often? He finds you curious. He wants to know more about you and keep in contact with you in whatever way he can. He vowed to himself that he would be there when you needed him like the valiant knight he was once. He would take up that role a million times more for you.
He found himself becoming distracted by this bittersweet, one-sided romance of his. He had finally realized what this admiration was and by that time, he had almost been led astray. This isn't in his best interest, to let you distract him like this. He needs you, you are inevitably a part of his story, but at what cost?
He had brushed off these feelings as he continued his journey, his search for answers, hoping to the merciless gods of Teyvat that, if not in this life, maybe another can be spent together in the way he yearns for. The one time he begs to these powers, knowing very well that they care not for him or his wishes.
For the accursed? It's a miniscule possibility, at best.
And you? You would never know, and it'd be best he made peace with that.
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For some reason I often forget to share with Tumblr that I do, in fact, write things more frequently than I post them here, so here's a piece I still like! A oneshot for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (and some of the rest of the LoZ series).
time immemorial, remembered - (2k)
If he is a hero of anything, it's of a grown-over wild, a land where grasses spring up in fallen garrisons and every breath of wind carries the scent of old rains and new flowers and ancient wisps of forgotten memories.
He doesn't want to remember others. He doesn't want to recall lives that aren't his own.
(It's strange, when he remembers the wrong things.)
Set post-BotW - feat. friendly adventuring, a little bit of Link/Zelda fluff, and Link just wishing he could remember the pieces to his own puzzle. Written before TotK, so no spoilers for it. Enjoy!
AO3 link here!
—
It's strange, when he remembers the wrong things.
He knows he doesn't remember everything. He knows that, Zelda knows that (unfortunately—he tried, he's still trying; she deserves a knight who truly remembers her), Impa and Purah and Robbie know that, and the spirits of the King and Champions know that. He's working hard to regain his memories, and they all know that's the most he can do.
Still, it's hard not to wish his mind would do more when his sense of déjà vu doesn't always work correctly.
They're at the curl of the beach where Akkala overlooks the ocean, and while Zelda is gushing about her Sheikah Slate picture of a new rhino beetle, he's looking at the sand. Something stirs in his head, as he looks at the waves and the palm trees and thinks—you've been here.
The feeling is bittersweet but painful, like a memory of an odd dream. Yet it was clear—he'd woken up on the beach once and cleared caves for kind people and had walked a strange black dog on a chain. A big dog with big teeth.
"When did I shipwreck at sea?" he asks Zelda, because it doesn't quite fit with what he knows of his life in the past. Perhaps his father had taught him to sail—perhaps he'd gotten a small boat himself. Zelda has a clearer picture of his life than he does at this point.
Yet, she stares at him uncertainly, blinking once or twice.
"When did you... pardon?"
A wave of embarrassment rushes over him, because Zelda usually understands him perfectly, and—sheesh, maybe he hadn't spoken clearly. His voice catches in his throat sometimes. He tries not to look so ashamed as he restates his question. "...Didn't I shipwreck at sea, once?"
Zelda blinks at him, thoughts whirring through her eyes, and then she looks out at the beach and the palm trees and the ocean.
"...Not that I'm aware of," she says carefully, and Link reminds himself that they hadn't truly known each other until they were sixteen. "Perhaps it happened when you were young?"
He doesn't know. Something about it doesn't feel quite right, like it doesn't fit. It's a puzzle piece to the wrong puzzle.
So he shrugs and dismisses it, at least for now, though the images don't leave his mind.
It happens again when they're up at Shatterback Point, just in time for the sunset. The Zora reservoir glistens like molten sapphire below, and the mountain peaks all around them have a golden-purple sheen in the late afternoon light.
It's not that, though—it's the way it feels to have the world so far below, and to see wing feathers as eagles make lofty circles in the sky, and he has the silly thought of how maybe this is Hyrule, and everything else so far below is really just Lorule.
It doesn't really hit him until Zelda has found an excuse to poke fun at him, in a playful, friendly way that ends with her smirking at him and his back to the open air, stuck in the few inches between a princess and a freefall that would last ages.
He can't lean forward for balance because she's right there, and he certainly is not leaning backward, so there's really no other option than to cling to balance and try to stand rigidly.
His heart skips a beat, because he suddenly remembers this—staring nervously into the face of a blonde princess who has far too much fun spending time with him, and he knows what will happen. She's going to push him off, like she did when they were in the sky kingdom and he liked wearing tan and she looked a bit different.
But she doesn't push him. Zelda shrinks back a little and laughs in embarrassment at her actions—she was more sure of herself a hundred years ago in the sky, wasn't she? Or was it a hundred thousand?—and allows him to step away from the edge and toward the danger: high dive at your own risk! sign a safer distance from the open air.
(He thinks—and this is really him, the normal him—that if it didn't take so long to get back up here from the water far below, he would show her a swan dive.)
(Maybe they could both—no, no. It isn't called Shatterback Point for nothing. He somehow doubts that she shares his ideas of entertainment out here, anyway.)
"I apologize," this Zelda says in embarrassment, looking away so that he can only see the tips of her ears turning pink. "I don't know what came over me."
His brain is too bewildered by all the déjà vu to mind. He tells her it's fine, because it is—some part of him thinks it feels nice to recognize that they have something friendly and familiar. Even if it is a bit teasing, and even if it does make adrenaline shoot through his veins and his heart pump hard enough to ready him for a freefall.
It happens again at twilight, late after a long day in Hyrule Field. The sky is tinted purple, and flecks of grass and dust float by in the strong breeze.
A wolf is there, in a place Link doesn't usually see any. It's on the next hillside, and it stares at him, eyes reflecting yellow in the dim light of the receding day.
Link's limbs twitch as it turns and leaves, as if reenacting the gait of the wolf—as if feeling the sensation of controlling a wolf's movement, with four limbs pacing and a head turning to and fro. With a sturdy gait and mind set fast on a goal.
When Zelda mutters something nearly irritable at the cooking pot, he half expects to turn his head and see someone who's not Zelda.
It is Zelda, though; of course. He doesn't think he knows anyone else who talks half to him, half to herself. She looks quite frustrated with whatever she's trying to do to improve their meal, and by her muttering, you'd think she was trying to blame him for what he'd put in as the necessary base ingredients.
Well, excuuuse me, Princess, he almost teases to throw her sarcasm back at her, but his mind is suddenly giving him a wildly different case of déjà vu and he vows never to think of saying that again.
They're at a stable, and one of the travelers who loiter by the cooking-fire pulls a little round instrument out of his pack and begins to play a flutelike tune. Something in Link's chest jolts a bit, as if he's only just awoken suddenly, even though the melody doesn't quite feel right. Is it strange that the sound of the little wind instrument feels as though it sends him back to another time?
He tries to ignore the fact that all these nagging lapses in memories ever occur—but they happen again, and again, and again. Always with something strange, something he feels connected to, something he's sure he's never seen before.
He sees things like the Hyrule Forest—a towering, vast area of woods that he knows, even though he's barely been there before. He knows it well enough, at least, to sense that the path isn't the same anymore. Right, left, right, left, forward, left, right—
(He sees the view of Saria's Lake from a patch of grey land hidden deep in a dark forest, shrouded with mist and drained of all color. The lack of pleasant sound here seems stark and wrong to him, and amidst the gaping maws of dying trees, he wonders what's missing from the hollow space that's suddenly prominent in his own chest.)
He sees Zelda sitting cross-legged next to Impa, learning from her, and thinks about how this mentorship feels like something that's been in place for a long time.
He looks at the massive skeleton of a creature called leviathan, and his mind says Jabú-Jabú and Wind Fish and wait—did they die?
He loves the Zora people. He only remembers so much, but it's enough to know he grew up thinking of them like a second family—with King Dorephan as almost a non-Hylian grandfather, and all the young ones as his cousins and friends.
Yet still, when those same Zoras pop out of the river with wide grins to surprise him, there's moments where his heart skips a beat and he's drawn his sword and shield, ready to deflect their attacks.
Enemies! his instincts shout at him—and it hurts, because his heart and mind say friends.
Koroks are strange to him, somehow, and not because they're little plant creatures who can vanish into the wind with ease. He just really feels like one of them should have a fiddle. Hestu's maracas don't quite carry the same emotion in their tune. He finds himself looking twice at the smaller, rounder ones, but none of them quite look right.
(He finds himself standing on a tiny lump of land his slate calls Mekar Island, staring at the piles of bones and the lone dead tree in the middle and wondering why it gives him a vague sense of dread.)
He half expects Beedle to set up shop on a boat in Laurelin, for some reason. Melody comes to mind in Rito Village, when Kass's daughters all come together to sing. (Except melody doesn't sound quite right. Perhaps he's trying to think of something similar?) When he's helping Zelda organize the old library, he can't help but get an odd mental picture when he rereads the chancellor's recipe for monster cake—of a tiny castle official with two horns like a monster. (But how would he hide them while working at the castle? By wearing two hats? Wouldn't that look too silly?)
Except when Zelda is there to study, he avoids the castle's archives like a plague, somehow wary of what he might find there if he gives in and looks for answers to his blurry memories. Perhaps the old rumors of the heroes being the first one reincarnate are true. Or perhaps the physical rigor of fighting through so much malice has messed with his mind. He isn't sure which would be worse.
His memories are... muddled, still; at least where they're not as clear as daylight or so fuzzy they feel nonexistent. The Princess knows this. She tries to help jog his mind, holding the same hope he does that perhaps some of these things will be like a well-placed kick to Robbie's machinery, jostling something back into place that will return it to working order.
But she's left it to him, lately, seeming to perceive that the things returning to him are leaving him uncertain and unsettled. Or at least, she's tried to. Her inquisitive nature seems to eat at her for a week before she finally gives in, looking to him in clear interest.
"Have you remembered much more?" Zelda asks, the curiosity in her bright eyes shadowed only by a faint hint of apology.
Are her eyes blue? Or brown? Were they ever blue or brown? Her emerald-green gaze is making him hesitate, because no, of course they were never another color. The idea is absurd, and he doesn't like that it lingers in his mind for so long.
He doesn't want a wrong sense of déjà vu with her. This is Zelda, the Zelda of now, the princess of a broken Hyrule and the survivor of a calamity. This is a Zelda long removed from the days of Hylia and the first hero. If he is a hero of anything, it's of a grown-over wild, a land where grasses spring up in fallen garrisons and every breath of wind carries the scent of old rains and new flowers and ancient wisps of forgotten memories.
He doesn't want to remember others. He doesn't want to recall lives that aren't his own. The Zelda here is her own, and he is his own—their world may be old, but to them it is something new, and he wants desperately to see it through the eyes of someone who has never lived before.
He can't really answer her question. So he gives her a thin smile, and hopes she can see the look in his eyes and understand.
Perhaps he's clinging too fast to hope, but she seems to.
When he hands her the cooking ladle and the long-awaited meal he's prepared after a long and hungry day, a funny little smile crosses her face, like she's remembering something, too.
"Thanks, Link," she says, and her voice is only a little bit teasing. His heart tugs oddly in his chest, but somehow, he can tell that she feels it too. "You are the hero of Hyrule."
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