#fic: children of blood and bone | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blkkizzat · 8 months

Text

ღ 𝐆𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞!𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐨 ღ

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟏 𝐨𝐟 𝟐

18+ONLY MDNI

kizzatober series: Smooth Criminals

Kinktober Prompts: Clothed Male/Naked Female, Thigh Riding, Knife Play Synopsis: The university campus is being terrorized by a copycat Ghostface killer. As a popular sorority girl with a dumb jock bf, you are a prime choice to be his next victim especially given how he can't stop thinking about you. But you're no ordinary Sorority Girl bimbo, now are you? CW: AU college fic. blood obsession/hematolagnia, bimbo reader, murder, slight DV (from your npc jerk ass bf), unprotected sex, masturbation, slight age gap (roughly 21 vs 28) and dark content. NOTE: If death/killer romanticization related shit triggers you this is probably a fic to avoid because that is happening all through this bitch. I literally wrote a murder fluff smut fic lmfao. WC: 6.5k of 15.4k Lightly black fem coded (reader is an AKA lmfao) but no descriptors.

A/N: This is my first kinktober fic! I'm sorry this took so long y'all but last week been low key hell and I was sick for a lot of it. Also I did struggle with this a bit since this one I decided to do as an whole fic instead of PWP and now its gotten to be so long its definitely going to be in two parts. Sorry there's no smut in the first part, but there is some fluff and some juicy build up. I've never written for Choso before but he's so baby girl omg I'm obsessed with him now but still I'm a bit nervous posting this. sorry if its dog.

Enjoy!

“Ever felt a knife rip through human flesh and scrape the bone beneath?”

Those were the last words a nameless student heard before Ghostface's hunting knife shined menacingly in the air and came down to claim its newest victim.

Shluk! Shluk! Shluk!

Metal slashed through flesh with razor precision.

Gurgled death cries are silenced as the lifeless body collapses to the ground.

A thick pool of blood began gathering around them to fan out and travel around their body down the slanted titled floor to drain.

Choso breathed in deeply.

A wave of calm washed over him.

Peace.

Almost in an enlightened state, he felt the most serene after a kill.

It was beautiful.

Blood was beautiful.

The surging stream of blood that would eventually slow to a trickle, the abstract designs of its splatter and the way it swirled around the body splayed across the ground like paint on a canvas.

Like a painting.

A death painting… and the knife, his paintbrush.

This was his art.

Choso can recall the first time he actually saw blood beyond a minor scrape.

He couldn’t have been more than 6 years old. No doubt trying to impress his younger brother Yuji by balancing on top of the monkey bars. After all this time Choso isn’t certain as to how, but he lost his footing and fell flat on his face onto the unforgiving concrete below.

Screams of children filled the area once Choso pushed himself up onto his feet. He immediately felt wetness rush down his face. However, rather than cry or panic a young Choso cocked his head curiously when he noticed his reflection on the metal jungle gym. A warped view of his face mirrored back at him but he could still make out the bright red fluid cascading down his features staining him in red.

Choso didn’t know how long he stood transfixed, mesmerized by the sight of rouge river that flowed from him until Yuji ran back crying with their parents in tow.

It was how he had the scar across the bridge of his nose till this day, which became unsightly enough he had decided to get a black bar tattooed over it as soon as he turned 18.

From then on he couldn’t deny his growing obsession with blood and seeing it leave the human body. All of which had led him here to this university to attain a PHD in Forensics.

He picked this university, not only for their program but it was the perfect small town playground for Ghostface, a local urban legend from years ago he decided to revive once he felt as he had attained enough knowledge not to get caught.

Choso was meticulous in his process.

Ironclad alibis, no distinctive patterns and no victims with any connections to each other, nor him. Additionally, he had memorized all the angles of the university’s security system (thanks to a security guard he had bribed then promptly killed).

His victims' lives were just his means to an end for his art and most students on this campus wouldn’t amount to much anyway outside of that was how he justified it. Choso did like toying with them on occasion though, fear made the blood pump faster and spray harder once he finally did catch them.

Sadly, he could never admire his creations for too long though before needing to make his own exit.

Almost midnight.

Ten more minutes before campus security makes another round.

He took one last glance at the scene of carnage he had created before disappearing into the night.

☠

In just a mere 2 hours, the news of another Ghostface murder spread across campus.

The university’s students were either scared, scattering back to barricade themselves in their dorms. Or curious, lingering around the crime scene near the safety of the news crews and reporters who had gathered to see who the unlucky victim was this time.

No one however, is likely more curious than you: A third year forensics undergrad, who was just itching to get a real glimpse of your first real crime scene, a Ghostface copycat killer crime scene at that!

You had even left a huge frat party (to be fair it was about to get broken up soon anyway) to trek across campus in the bitter cold of late fall.

“Y/N, let’s go back–,” one of your pledges whined, “–it’s cold and my feet hurt in these heels!”

“Shh, Stassi, shut up! What if this is an initiation test?” another pledge whispered.

Your sorority pledges chatter on behind you and you almost forgot you brought them along. It’s not like you wanted to but, like it or not, they were attached to you at the hip like little ducklings until rush was over.

With a clap you turn on your heel to address them.

“Ladies–”

However you abruptly stop once you see your Forensics TA, Choso Kamo, taking what appeared to be a night jog across the campus quad.

Was he going to the crime scene too? Your face instantly lights up and your pledges look around confused.

“Wait here girlies! I’ll be 5 minutes max…. No, I mean it. Wait right here!”

Your pledges huff quietly, but agree.

They had no choice really as you were already skipping as fast as your not-so-sober legs would carry you in 5-inch pumps over the quad lawn. Truthfully, that was not something they were trying to do too, especially not to chase down what looked like some creepy emo nerd.

“Choso!”

You call out to him and wave, but he doesn’t look like he sees you as you hurry towards him.

“Hey Choooo! Wait up!” You puffed out, trying to maneuver over the grass in your heels.

Choso sighed recognizing your voice, reluctantly slowing his pace. He would have kept on jogging but he knew you would keep calling out to him and draw even more attention that he really didn’t need right now.

Finally catching up to him, you grab Choso’s arm and loop yours through. He flinched slightly at your touch but you knew he always seemed a bit jumpy when it came to physical contact, so this didn’t phase you.

If anything you thought his reactions were kinda cute.

“Where are you going weirdo? All the action is back that way!” You teased with a big grin and pointed in the direction of the crime scene.

Choso tries to ignore how his adrenaline was pumping even faster from you holding on to him than when he was running, especially dressed as you were.

You looked sexy as hell utterly ridiculous.

You were decked out in a sailor costume, which was pretty much just a poor excuse for lingerie at this point. Your white sailor flap collar attached to nothing more than a sparkly navy bra with shiney white and red trims, leaving your midsection exposed showing your cute little belly ring in the shape of an anchor.

This was complemented by a dangerously short yet matching sparkling navy pleated skirt which sat low on your thick hips. Your shapely legs were the most covered part of your body yet still looked overwhelmingly tempting in red glittery garters, attached to white opaque stockings in glittery red heels.

“I’m the weirdo… but you’re dressed like that in 40 degree weather.” Choso retorted, brow raised.

“Duh Choso–”

You released his arm to give him a twirl in your outfit, not noticing the way he nervously wet his lips watching your skirt rise with your little spin.

“–The ‘Get Nauti’ party was tonight silly, where have you been!?”

Oh you know, just casually killing someone. Choso resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Of course he knew about the party.

The campus had been littered with fliers for ‘Get Nauti’ for the past two weeks. Nothing Choso would ever be interested in as he would rather stab himself in the face than attend a mind-numbing party with a bunch of bro-for-brain frat guys.

However, he did take advantage of the opportunity to create another death painting as Ghostface with the rest of campus preoccupied.

He couldn’t tell you that though obviously.

“Gym,” Choso said flatly and shrugged, “Heading back to the dorms n-”

“–You mean you aren't going to the Social Sciences building!? Don’t you remember?!” You cut him off in your excitement.

“The police said they would let us forensic students look at the next crime scene!”

Your face had a warm glow and your movements slightly swayed. You were clearly drunk.

“No Y/N, they said they might let the PhD students, like me, look at the crime scene… and that was only a slim ‘maybe’. You’re still just an undergrad”, he reminded you, much to your dismay as you puffed your cheeks.

But seriously, Choso thought, even the incompetent local police would have enough sense not to let you on the crime scene dressed as you are now, even if you were a PhD student.

“Awe no fair,” you whine dejectedly. “But you should go, Cho! Then you can tell me all about it! Pleaseeee, I’m dying to know what a Ghostface crime scene looks like. I hear it’s kinda gruesome!”

You gazed up at Choso through fluttering long lashes as you poked out your cherry glossed lips. It was a pout that could famously leave any frat boy at your mercy, but it never seemed to stir Choso much (that you could tell at least).

Choso swallowed.

On the contrary, your charms worked rather well on him. His mouth was dry and he unconsciously clenched and unclenched a sweat ridden palm behind his back.

The hell were you doing being this excited over a crime scene? One of his crime scenes for that matter?

Choso really didn’t know what to make of that.

“Y/N it’s late. I still have papers to grade. I’m going back to my dorm now and you should get home too,” Choso said flatly, trying to keep his cool although fatigue was etched into his voice.

He was in peak physical form but still feeling the strain given he just chased his last victim all over the Social Sciences building. Not to mention still having assignments to grade. All which would be fine if he also wasn’t on edge from you right now as well.

“Booooo…Choso yo– ahchoo!” You sneezed from the cold.

The effects of alcohol could only do so much to keep you warm in these low temperatures while you were standing still.

With another sigh Choso unzipped his black track jacket, taking it off and putting it around your shoulders.

He was doing so as much for your sake as his own. Choso couldn’t help but notice your boobs looking like they were going to pop out of your flimsy sailor bra at any moment when you folded your arms underneath them for warmth.

He was really doing his best to maintain eye contact with you.

“Awe thanks Cho, you’re so chivalrous!” You giggled, blushing as you snuggled into his jacket.

You could still feel his body heat lingering on the material but the heady scent of oak and sandwood from his cologne warmed you even more.

You also couldn’t help but stare as the black compression turtleneck he wore underneath clung to his body like a second skin. You had suspicions he was fit but you never saw him wear anything beyond his dark colored button ups and shaggy sweaters when in class.

“Now go home, Y/N. You shouldn’t even be out here alone this late.”

Choso’s stern voice snapped you out of your ogling.

“But I’m not alone silly!”

You pointed to the group of scared and shivering freshmen girls also in various states of sparkly undress all for the sake of ‘getting nauti’ standing on a paved path not too far off.

They looked absolutely miserable.

“I have my pledges!”

Choso gave you an incredulous look. You were too clueless.

“So let me get this straight… You are drunk. You have drunk freshmen with you, who shouldn’t even be drinking in the first place…and you plan on taking them to a murder scene? Where the cops are?” You made an “OH” face and absentmindedly laughed as you came to the realization it probably wasn’t the best look for Chapter VP of the AKAs to take a bunch of drunk and terrified freshmen pledges straight into a recent crime scene. Even if you could put an academic spin on it as it was relevant to your major classes.

Yikes, and on second thought, your house mom would flip her entire shit if she found out.

“Go home Y/N,” Choso said again, shaking his head.

“Besides, you should be more focused on the Chemistry lab midterm on Monday. You know you can’t afford to fail.”

You sulked but relented, he was right. On both accounts.

As your T.A. for that class Choso knew better than anyone just how much your grade depended on passing that lab and you hadn’t even so much as glanced at your notes yet this week.

“Aye Aye, Capitan Choso, sir!” you teased giving him a salute with a wink and lifted knee, your sailor skirt lifting a bit higher.

It was a cute move, or it would have been at least if it hadn't caused your weight to shift all on to one foot. The heel of the sparkly red glitter pump baring your weight sunk into the patch of soft soil beneath you causing your foot to pop out of the shoe as you tumble forward.

You would have definitely ate shit and embarrassed yourself in front of Choso, your pledges and whoever else was walking across the quad at this time of night if Choso’s quick reflexes didn’t catch you.

You let out a squeak and waved your arms as you fell tits first onto Choso’s hard chest.

Shit.

Choso could feel your hardened nipples pressing against him through the flimsyass costume you wore. He tried hard to focus on how cold it was outside. Anything rather than how warm your body felt up against him or how his biceps tensed from the tight grip of your delicate fingers that sought stability from him.

You grinned sheepishly. You thanked him for catching you not realizing the position you were in nor the torment you were putting this man through.

Setting you upright quickly, Choso crouched down to retrieve your shoe.

His plan was to simply place it near your foot but he felt your hand land on his shoulder and you raised your dainty foot up expectantly.

Any attempts to avert his gaze proved futile as Choso couldn’t stop his eyes from traveling up the length of your leg.

Your opaque white stockings practically glowed in the darkness illuminating the shapely calves it covered and thick thighs the tight material cut into. Your hips strained against your garters up until your –he caught himself and his eyes snapped up immediately.

He was a killer, not a perv at least he was trying not to be.

Gingerly making sure to only touch your ankle, you were giggling again as he put your shoe on your foot and placed it on the grass again.

“Thanks Choso! You really are a lifesaver, ya know! I can’t bend down in this skirt.”

“Don’t mention it.” Choso quickly replied, pushing his bangs out of his face in exasperation.

Really don’t.

Choso was trying to forget the flash of red lace he saw that barely covered your plump pu– No he had to stop, you were technically his student even if he was just a T.A.

He would surely have to kill you if he popped a boner right now. He was trying to keep a low profile already and did not need to add ‘sexual deviant' to his name from a student harassment claim.

“For real now, go home Y/N.” Choso silently pleaded you would just listen this time.

He always felt more compulsive right after a kill and didn’t know what he would do if you stayed around him like this much longer.

You finally relented to his relief, nodding and mumbling a sad little goodnight pulling his jacket around your shoulders tighter as you turned to leave back to your pledges.

Choso started to leave as well but your voice stopped him as you looked at him over your shoulder.

“You know Choso…” You smoothed your skirt down behind you and flashed him a pageant winning smile, “I don’t mind that you saw them.”

Before Choso’s short-circuiting brain could even process what you said you were bouncing off back to your pledges. “Okay ladies, now make like Bey and get in formation! Back to the Soro house!”

Your pledges erupted with various replies from–

‘Thank God!’’

‘Did you just go over there to steal that nerd’s jacket? Boss!’’

‘Was that your boyfriend, Y/N?’

‘Y/N’s bf is a starter on the football team, she doesn’t want that weird emo dork.’

‘No, sis did you see his muscles– That emo look is still kinda hot right now, huh Y/N?’

‘Awe, but I want to go back to the frat!’

–all fluttered from the group of chattering girls as you cheerily led them back to the Sorority house.

You laughed at their comments hoping Choso couldn’t hear them though, as they were a bit embarrassing.

Unfortunately for the both of you, there was no way for Choso not to hear your rowdy group of drunk giggling girls, he’s sure the whole quad did.

Choso rolled his eyes as a chill took over him as he started the jog back to his dorms.

He was glad he had given you his jacket though. The way his body had started to respond to you just now the frigid jog back to the dorms would do him good.

He just wanted to shower, grade a few papers then go to bed, he didn’t want to end up fisting his cock to you again tonight.

You had plagued his peace for too long. It wouldn’t do him any good to think of you, it’s not like he could ever have you.

Sure you went to the same university but you might as well have been from two different worlds.

You were a popular sorority undergrad with the attention of virtually the entire male population on campus.

Choso was a PhD student who was used to fading in the background, most avoided him due his looks and academic focus anyway.

He only had an affiliation with you because his scholarships were tied to being a T.A. for undergrad forensics classes.

Also you did have a boyfriend.

An asshole neanderthal football-wide-receiver boyfriend who he would have been tempted to kill already had he not served his own purpose as a reality check and barrier for Choso.

Oh and had an eccentric obsession with blood going for him and was also the Ghostface copycat killer, that too.

He was sure that would go over well with you, Choso mused sarcastically.

☠

Upon returning to his dorm Choso took a shower, graded papers and tried to fall asleep but inevitably jerked his cock off to you.

Twice.

The sounds and images of your ditzy little laugh and skippy little panties consumed him as soon as he closed his eyes. The phantom feeling of the way your nipples felt pressed against his chest and how you clung to him desperately had him feeling near insatiable.

Choso admittedly thinks of killing you often. Just to get some peace of mind.

It wouldn’t be difficult at all to pull off. It’s not like you could put up much of a fight against him.

He didn’t want to break his rule of killing anyone with a connection to him but Choso had also never had anyone stir him the way you did.

You were a distraction and liability to him. If he killed you he could finally stop thinking about you…right?

You would make a beautiful death painting too.

Choso imagines thick red blood splattered across your curves.

The fatal gash from the femoral artery in your thigh oozing out a continuous stream of blood. The cut would have to be considerably deep too considering how meaty your thighs were.

Would the blood streak down your long leg as you desperately tried to hobble away from him in your slutty red heels?

Or would you collapse in fear and surrender to him fully? Landing in such a way that allowed the blood to redirect backwards and soil the flimsy red panties poorly concealing the fat of your cunt as you cried out in fear.

Fuck.

He was hard again.

He reached over to his night stand for his lotion bottle– practically empty thanks to his nonstop fantasies of you.

God, he was pathetic.

☠

The school week that followed was relatively uneventful.

You passed your lab midterms much to Choso’s surprise. Although you always seemed to pass with a relatively decent grade despite how you struggled to get there. Holding firm to your B average in the class and 3.3 GPA in your major overall.

He had to admit you were a better student than he originally gave you credit for. It makes him recall when he first saw you last spring.

You were a late enroll to Forensic Biology 101. Not only that, you burst into the third class of the semester nearly 15 minutes late.

Oblivious to all the eyes your disruption earned, you leaned on your knees as your chest heaved from exertion giving the entire class an amazing view of your tits spilling from your pink crop top adorned with the prestigious “AKA” sorority.

You definitely would have given the class an additional show from bending over in your tight green jean skirt had your ass not been facing the door. Choso eyes couldn't help but travel down the length of your legs, your glossy white painted toes peeking out strappy pink pumps.

You smiled brightly once you caught your breath and apologized for your late entrance but you were newly voted chapter vice president and had just come from your first meeting.

Surely you had the wrong classroom.

“Er– this class is Forensic Biology 101 young lady.” The older male professor had given you a once over also thinking you must be lost.

“Mhm, yup! I’m Y/N! I just changed my major!” you beamed and handed the professor your schedule.

He looked at it and back at you twice.

“Hm, well so it is…but you are already behind, little lady. Go and take a seat next to the T.A. in the back, Choso Kamo, he will catch you up.”

Just his luck. Choso didn’t want to babysit some sorority bimbo who would probably drop this class in two weeks once the labs started.

Your university was famous for the forensics program. If you graduated you were all but guaranteed a job at a prominent lab in a major city but more than two thirds of undergrad students dropped it once the rigorous labs began.

You didn’t look like you would last.

Especially when you told him your interest in forensics came from watching Dexter. You told him how you thought the actor was hott and how his kill rooms were ‘so cool.’ Choso definitely rolled his eyes at that and wrote you off as a soon-to-be drop out.

You proved him wrong though.

You were a bit of a ditz and a huge clutz but Choso came to understand t's more because you had about a billion different things going on in your head at once rather than you just being dumb or careless.

You were also a hard worker.

It was admirable how many activities you were involved in yet still tried as hard as you did in your classes. You always came to his T.A. review sessions and even sought him out at times while he was in the research library to ask him questions.

You were a good student and he was a horrible T.A. for even thinking of you in this way.

The campus bell tower struck noon in the distance and Choso looked down to see that he had only read a single paragraph since he sat down to study thirty minutes ago.

Fuck, he had lost himself in thinking about you again.

Choso put a hand over his face.

He was sitting alone at a picnic table on the outer, less populated edges of the quad trying to read a textbook but every time he heard a high pitched giggle he snapped his head up thinking it was you.

Class schedules were a bit different due to midterms and he hadn’t seen you the entire week other than to administer the lab but that didn’t mean you didn’t still plague his thoughts more increasingly as of late.

It was making Choso a bit reckless.

Needing to relieve stress he had created 2 more death paintings. A mistake as it was rumored the local police would soon reach out to bigger towns for more help and perhaps even the FBI would send an agent soon to campus if this kept up.

He had to move more carefully.

Maybe make it look like there were multiple Ghostface killers for starters.

“3 Victims, One Week: The Copycat Ghostface Reign of Terror Continues!”

You read aloud adding a bit of dramatic flair to your voice as you recite the front headline of the campus paper and jar Choso from his thoughts of you.

Speak of the devil.

You approached Choso at his table and he immediately noticed you were wearing his jacket again, well more like swimming in it as it was clearly too big for you.

This time though you were bundled up in a scarf, leggings and heeled booties. He was glad his face was already a bit red from sitting out in the cold because he couldn’t stop the intrusive thoughts from forming that you looked even sexier cozied up and comfortable in his jacket than in the slutty sailor costume.

“I don’t know why you even bother reading that shit Y/N. They never have any interesting details anyway.” Choso tried to feign disinterest in your arrival but his leg was already slightly bouncing under the table, nervous energy returning.

“Well I have to! You wouldn’t go to the crime scene for me last Saturday, remember?”

How could he forget?

However a part of him did want you to view it though, his masterpieces, his kills.

See how glorious their blood looked sprayed on the walls, the ground, and the general surroundings of his victims.

But he knew you’d never appreciate them the way he did even if you were a forensics student.

“Oh and sorry!”

You interrupted his thoughts once again.

“I meant to give you back your jacket, I’ve been carrying it with me hoping I’d run into you but I ran out today and forgot mine…whoops! I hope you don’t mind me wearing yours a bit longer?”

Your saccharine smile has Choso sucking in a hard breath.

At this point he would prefer you to just keep it, he couldn’t trust himself if he had it back with your scent all over it knowing you had been carrying it around all week.

He would never know any peace.

“Keep it as long as you need.”

“Kay!”

You smile at him as you haphazardly plop your overstuffed tote bag down next to him, which of course spilled all its colorful contents all over the table.

“Oh Crap!”

You lean over to reach for your bag but almost spill the tray of hot coffees in your hand.

“Y/N, Watch out!”

Choso grabbed the tray before it could spill all over his and your belongings and sat it down on the table with a small exhale.

“Oh! Thank you!” You flash him a big grin. “I got this one for you!”

You handed him a grande cup with ‘pumpkin spice dirty chai’ scribbled on it.

Choso preferred his coffee black and he has definitely told you that before but you always just brought him whatever sugary drink you ordered saying he needed to ‘try new things’.

He wasn’t about to turn you down though, caffeine was caffeine and as a PhD student he needed all he could get. Choso also knew it was your way of thanking him for helping you so much in forensics.

“Thanks...” Choso mumbled taking a sip. Shit this is actually good.

You sat down next to him, a little too close for comfort with your spandex clad thigh brushing up against his leg.

“Whatcha reading? Is it for your thesis?” You were perilously close leaning on him as you looked over his broad shoulder onto his textbook.

“Yeah, some forensics texts I need to review for citations. This section focuses on serology and bloodstain pattern analysis,” Choso stated knowledgably.

“Oh! Like in Dexter!”

“Yeah, Y/N, like in Dexter.”

Maybe Choso is growing a bit soft as he can’t resist but to crack a small smile at your kid-like-enthusiasm for the subject, you were incorrigible.

Choso also doesn’t miss the way your eyes sparkle when you ask him to tell you more about his research.

And so he does.

Sometimes Choso forgets how easy you are to talk on the subject. To be frank no one outside his own PHD program ever asks him about his thesis so before he realizes it he’s letting his guard down to indulge you.

You both get so lost in the conversation to the point it hasn’t even phased Choso yet that you are now actually leaning on him.

Your soft cheek rests near his shoulder and your body angles deeper into his as you point to ask him about a passage on the page which he begins to break down.

You try to focus on his words but in the midst of Choso’s explanation your eyes stray from the text up to his face.

You feel your body start to warm.You always thought he was attractive. His dark looks never deterred you if anything they were refreshing from the crew cut preppy jocks around you. Even more so with his piercings in.

Choso never wore any of his piercings during classes or while in the research library. You counted six facial piercings in total from the three on his brows to the septum, labret and finally the black bar piercing through his tongue that darted out exposed with the movements of his mouth.

Studying him further you discover for the first time his tattoo across the bridge of his nose was actually covering a scar. It looked old but like it had been deep.

You couldn’t help but wonder if it had hurt him and why he chose to cover it.

You didn’t even realize you had reached out to touch it until you felt his gaze snap to you.

Stunned and a bit embarrassed, you withdraw your hand.

“Ah, sorry I just noticed your tattoo was covering a scar…” you trailed off hoping he wouldn’t be annoyed with you.

Annoyance was the last thing on Choso’s mind as finally registered how you had melded yourself into his side body.

Although his usual reaction would be to withdraw back, you might as well have him chained down to the table now as he was practically immobilized by you not even being able to look away.

“Uh, yeah it happened years ago when I was a kid...I fell off the monkey bars, there was a lot of blood.”

No one had even recognized it since Choso had it covered years ago. You were the first.

“Oh no! I loved the monkey bars, we used to climb up on them all the time when I was little. I guess those things are kinda dangerous huh? Actually, I’m kinda shocked I never fell, a miracle right?”

You laughed and Choso found himself smiling at you again.

You were too accident prone so it really was a miracle.

“Yeah, good thing you never fell Y/N… It would be a shame to have to get a big ugly tattoo on that cute face.”

Choso swore on his life those last words only were said in his head but from the way your eyes widened he knew he fucked up.

“I- that is.. I meant-”

Choso smacked a hand over his face. He can’t believe he just said that out loud to you. He was really losing it.

“So you think I’m cute?” you teased giggling. You angled your head so you could look up at him from underneath his hand.

“Yeah, about as cute as the blood splatter diagram on this page.” he teased you back. A small smirk on his features as he peeked at you through his fingers.

“Hey!”

Choso chuckled. Little did you know he actually paid you a huge compliment comparing you to something he thought so alluring as blood.

You grab the hand covering his face as your smile widens and you playfully struggle with Choso.

You don’t become aware of your close proximity until you almost bump noses.

Choso locks eyes with you and you feel your tummy tighten as you bite your lip.

You’re still holding his hand and after a while you work up the courage as your other hand comes up to touch his face.

“Your tattoo isn’t ugly Choso,” you breathe out softly.

Choso closes his eyes as you trace the scar beneath his tattoo.

You weren’t sure what you were doing but your hand involuntarily begins to travel across his face and his piercings until they graze over his lips and he opens his eyes again.

Startled by the sudden hungry look in his eyes you pull back your hand but he captures it in his own, him being the one to trap you this time.

If either one of you just moved even an inch forward your lips would touch. You see Choso’s lips part when–

“Yo! Hands off my girl, freakshow!”

“Dean!?” You pulled back out of Choso’s embrace, floored to see your boyfriend and some more of his football buddies heading towards you as you knew they still should have been at practice around this time.

“Oooh he’s in for it now messin’ with Dean’s girl.” Dean’s football friends snickered.

Choso audibly breathes out in exasperation. The moment was ruined and he really didn’t have the patience to deal with your neanderthal boyfriend and his football lackeys who all shared a singular brain cell.

Didn’t they have a ball or something to chase?

“Uh hey, Dean I..”

You stop yourself when it’s clear Dean is ignoring you entirely as he approaches the table. Not even looking your way to greet you.

His aura oozes faux tough guy bully and walks straight up to Choso to size him up leaning on the table to tower over him.

“I’m talking to you, freak. You think you can put your hands on what belongs to me?”

Choso doesn’t look up at him but his grip instinctively tightens on the pen in his hand under the table as if it was Ghostface’s hunting knife.

Dean’s show of bravado going ignored by Choso pisses him off even more that his teammates are with him and the tough guy act is failing to have any real effect.

Tch.

With a swift movement Dean knocks Choso’s coffee over on the table, its half drunken contents falling on both you, Choso and his books.

This has Choso rising out of his seat as he thinks your boyfriend must have an unknown death wish.

Choso’s pen is still in his grasp but by his side now. It would be too easy to drive it into Dean’s neck before the dolt even knew what hit him. A bit extreme, but it could be considered an unfortunate accident of self defense if Dean struck first.

Fortunately, you stepped in between the two in order to diffuse the situation without picking up on Choso’s murderous intent.

You chewed your lip. This was low key, your fault. You technically were dating Dean. Although Dean was always the furthest thing from your mind when you were around Choso.

You didn’t even feel guilty for being caught as you’ve had your own suspicions for a while Dean had been cheating on you anyway, you just couldn’t prove it. You were still dating him more out of convenience than anything else, other jocks and frat boys left you alone knowing you were with him.

The only guilt you actually did feel was for Choso. This wasn’t his problem or relationship but of course Dean was a big enough asshole to make this into an actual issue with Choso since it was becoming clearer how little respect he had for you.

“Dean, what the hell is your problem!? You got coffee everywhere, this isn’t even my jacket.”

“Don’t what the hell me Y/N, you're so fucking dumb you’re going to let this freak get in your pants when– wait you’re wearing fucking his jacket!?”

Dean was yelling now and a small crowd was forming and starting to take out their phones to record.

You could not let this turn into an incident.

“Dean chill the entire fuck out, would you?! It was cold, so he let me borrow it– He’s just my T.A.”

A wave of harsh realization washed over Choso.

Just her T.A.

Right.

Choso is no one important to you, especially with your football boyfriend and social standing on the line.

He’d let whatever the fuck almost happened between the two you just now make him forget that.

Not anymore.

“That’s right. I’m just her T.A. So if you’ll excuse me.”

Choso turned from you both to salvage what he could of his books and leave.

You couldn’t place the emotions in Choso’s words and it made your chest tighten up. But you weren’t trying to write him or your almost-kiss off.

You didn’t mean for it to come out that way but you really lacked the proper words in these kinds of situations.

“Where do you think you’re going, loser?”

Dean grabbed Choso’s shoulder but the intense murderous look in his eyes made Dean release him just as quickly as if he had been burned.

Even his football goon friends unconsciously took a few steps back feeling the very real threat in Choso’s eyes.

Choso smirked as he left. Thought so.

“W-wait Cho–”

You want to stop him but feel Dean’s rough grip on your wrists.

“Whatever, let’s fucking go Y/N. We have an important party to throw later.”

Dean grabs your wrist and jerks you away with you barely being able to grab your bag.

Your stomach twists and you are at a complete loss for words but manage to flash an apologetic look at Choso while you are dragged off.

However when your eyes meet he looks right through you.

The expression on his face is stone cold and it sends a chill up your spine.

© ʙʟᴋᴋɪᴢᴢᴀᴛ 2023. ᴀʟʟ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ ʀᴇꜱᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ. ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ꜱᴛᴇᴀʟ, ᴛʀᴀɴꜱʟᴀᴛᴇ, ᴄᴏᴘʏ ᴏʀ ᴄʜᴀɴɢᴇ ᴀɴʏ ᴏꜰ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋꜱ. ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪɴᴄʟᴜᴅᴇꜱ ꜰɪᴄꜱ, ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇꜱ, & ɢʀᴀᴘʜɪᴄꜱ. ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀʟʟ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ʙʏ ᴍᴇ ᴜɴʟᴇꜱꜱ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀᴡɪꜱᴇ ꜱᴛᴀᴛᴇᴅ. ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ

A/N: I promise it won't take as long for the second part to come out. I'm half way done with it already! I was just going to wait and post it all together but a like 12k+ word post all at once would be insane lmfao. After I am finished with this prompt the next 3 stories I will do will be from Thrilling Ghouls as they are all much shorter PWPs in the 3-5k range and I won't have to stress so much since I'm realizing all my Smooth Criminal prompts are longer fics and it takes me like a week or more to write them.

ღTaglistღ: @callm3senpaii @arxliana @jujutsualy @luxiethefairy @akaza-simp01 @fredswh0re @missphanosaur18 @moon-esque @samicamy-13

comment on m.list to be tagged in future Kinktober '23 stories

Reblog for Ghostface!Choso to come steal your panties although comments and likes are appreciated all the same!

PART 2

2K notes · View notes

bitterkarella · 3 months

Text

Midnight Pals: Shedding

[mysterious circle of robed figures] JK Rowling: hello children Rowling: i have terrible, bone-chilling newsss Rowling: did you know that india willoughby exisssstsss? Rowling: thiss makess me ssso mad

Rowling: i know you're all ussed to me being ssubtle Rowling: you know, talking about womensss ssafety and all that Rowling: but i'm done with that Rowling: now i enter endgame

Rowling: tonight my rage ssshall fuel my final transssformation Rowling: tonight i sshed my ssskin for the lassst time Rowling: gone will be the resspectable normie lib ssspotted patterning Rowling: henceforth i shall wear banded patterning [puts on arm band]

Rowling: now i sshed my ssskin and obsserve my transformation to full blood purity fascism Helen Joyce: but dark lord! it's too obvious! Joyce: what if the rubes notice? Rowling: just point to that old "wear whatever you want" post and pretend i meant it

Rowling: i'll be right back, gonna go shed a sskin Rowling: now before i leave one lasst directive Rowling: you lot don't do anything ssilly while i'm gone Rowling: you know, anything that would make our entire causse look dumb or anything Joyce: you can count on us, dark lord!

[Rowling exits] Joyce: so Joyce: anyone wanna hear this new fan fic i've been working on Jesse Singal: when does mommy get back

Joyce: so Joyce: so my story has draco/hermione otp, noncon, dubcon, cuckolding, underage, lemon, coffeeshop au, crackfic Kathleen Stock: noooo helen! don't read fanfic! don't you know fanfic turns you trans? Joyce: sorry its a risk i have to take Joyce: for science

Joyce: look, i'm going to scientifically prove that fanfiction turns you trans Joyce: luckily i'm built of stronger stuff Joyce: the rest of you just plug your ears Stock: what about you, helen? Joyce: lash me to the mast

Stock: i've been writing a fan fic too Stock: it's about the love between the Unknown, an evil choclatier who lives in the walls, and this mysteriously sexy lady oompa loompa who everybody loves who is named Stathleen Kock [permaberry, leaking juice, enjoyment, enemies to lovers]

Rowling: ok i'm back Helen Joyce: dark lord! how does it feel to shed your lib skin of plausible deniability to don your extremely online skin of blood purity? Rowling: i feel sstrong! powerful! like a new ssnake! Rowling: i feel like i can sssay Rowling: ALL THE SSSLURSS!!!

Rowling: tinktonk! cricklecrack! boofnoggin! i can sssay them all!!! Rowling: no now mudblood can ssstand in my way! Rowling: doess india willoughby still exissst? Joyce: yes dark lord! Rowling: [coiling in rage] the cheek!!!! the audacity!!!

Rowling: ugh, look at india willoughby, performing feminine joy! Rowling: womanhood isn't about joy! Rowling: true femininity is being miserable all the time, posting and also being banned from seeing your grandchildren

#midnight pals #the midnight society #midnight society #jk rowling #helen joyce #kathleen stock #jesse singal

1K notes · View notes

fatesundress · 1 year

Text

⭑ for the love that used to be here. tom riddle x reader

summary. you and tom are the only muggle-borns in slytherin, until one day he isn’t.

tags. angst, afab reader who is referred to as a witch a few times and rooms with girls but i don't think i ever use she/her pronouns or say the word girl/woman, biggest warning is that this is SO long (idk what compelled me to write a year 1 – post-hogwarts fic but here we are twenty thousand damn words later), blood purity and bigotry, dumbledore is greatly offended by the bonding of two orphans until he can capitalise on it, frequent wwii mentions (specifically the blitz), book clerk tom, MURDERER TOM… ministry reader, kissing, smut once they’re 21/22 May all the minors in the room exit at once, more angst, sad ending kinda, me spreading a very personal and very nefarious tom riddle agenda that is canon to ME but probably only like two other people

note. i need a shower and an exorcism after writing this shit. i'm exhausted. i don't even remember half of it. but i'm also SO stoked, this is my little (very large, frankly) 100 followers celebration! i've only been on here for about a month and the love has been so crazy so thank you mwah mwah mwah ♡

word count. 21.8k (i know... i KNOW)

You learn quickly that your shade of green is not the same as theirs. The rest of them are emeralds, even at that age — they glitter with their parent’s polish. You are flotsam, sea-sick, envy green; the putrid boiling stuff that brews in your cauldron when you look away for a second too long, and, really, it’s more of a stain than a colour at all. There is a fraction of a second where you find something powerful in that. You are not an easy thing to remove. And then it’s gone, because they want to so badly.

You learn, with a bit less tact, that you doesn’t actually mean just you; that it’s you and him whether you like it or not.

He evidently does not.

“It has to be completely fine,” Tom says to you in Potions, his voice small then but just as practised.

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

“I said the powder has to be completely fine.”

“I heard you completely fine. I know how to read.”

He stares blankly at you before returning to his own station, and that’s that.

It isn’t unheard of for muggle-borns to be sorted into Slytherin, so you’ve been told, but one glance around your common room and you can see it’s pretty damn rare.

There’s Tom Riddle, there’s you, and there’s a seventh-year girl whose knuckles are always white like she’s spent so long with her hands balled into fists that they don’t know how to do anything else. Tom Riddle is a prat, the girl is too old and unapproachable even if she wasn’t, and you are very good at being alone.

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

Everything is — fine. It’s fine for months; you have no one and need no one and sometimes you catch a jinx in the back of Charms that zips your mouth shut or bends a foot the wrong way (a cruel reminder of how much more these people know than you) and your broom occasionally pivots so sharply the Flying professor has to stop you from careening into a wall and breaking enough bones for a week’s worth of Skele-Gro, but it’s fine.

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

The boy is eleven years old and he speaks like he’s stealing glances at an invisible lexicon between every word, more refined than any of the orphans you grew up with which makes you wonder which sort he’s surrounded by, and you take it upon yourself to theorise in passing if you could ever scare him badly enough his real voice would slip and he might just appear human for once.

Only it becomes clear when you’re stirring awake in the Hospital Wing after a mysterious bout of dragon pox (conveniently, all the pureblood children developed an immunity after catching it young) has rendered you bed-ridden and pockmarked, that you don’t think anything can scare Tom Riddle. He’s suffering just as well in the bed beside yours to keep the contagion to the two of you, and he’s all cold, eddied rage under sallow skin and beetling bones.

“They’re going to kill you,” he says after three days of silence, when the room is dusted in moonlight so thin it’s like squinting through cinema noise or mohair fluff to try to see him.

You blink at the vague shape of him. “What?”

“If you don’t hurt them back, eventually, they’ll just kill you.”

In hindsight, it’s an assumption so hastily bleak only a scared child could make it.

I want to hurt them, you try to say, but for what follows you cannot: I want to hurt them but I’m not good enough to do it.

You roll over and pretend to sleep, and in the morning, you hurt them anyway.

It’s Avery who’s unlucky enough to be the first to test you when you’re three assignments behind in Transfiguration, still a bit groggy from your last dose of Gorsemoor Elixir, and actually, physically green. He tugs your hair and stings your cheek with the promise of “bringing a bit of colour back to your face” and it’s sort of funny how banal it is compared to the other transgressions you’ve been dealt — that this is the thing that makes you bare your teeth, grip your wand in a hand that still can’t hold half of it, and send Avery flying across the room with a Knockback Jinx.

Tom sits with you in the Great Hall for dinner that night, and he never really stops.

You practise spells by the Black Lake between classes and he’s anything but kind about the ordeal, but you teach each other. You end your days with singe prints and sore wrists and you often take more damage than he does, but sometimes, as spring settles in with warm tones (apple and jade and moss — all the greens you’d never imagined), you leave with less bruises than he does. It hardly feels like friendship. It feels much more like purpose.

When summer comes you don’t write to him, and you don’t expect he will either. You don’t suppose you’ve actually written a letter in your life. Instead you try new wand movements under your quilt every night and wait for August’s departure on a big red train.

You sit together when the day does come. He asks you if you’ve been practising. You frown and tell him you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school.

Second year is nothing but monotonous, antiquated theoretics. Most everyone complains. You don’t see why they should — they’re already aeons ahead of you — but that means you finally have a chance to catch up in your less-than-school-sanctioned meetings with Tom while the rest remain practically stationary.

Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration professor Albus Dumbledore is imperceptibly less soft with you than he was last year when you make the apparently poor decision to sit beside Tom on the first day, and you file the subtle shift in demeanour into some mental cabinet to review later.

You find workarounds with the librarian, Madam Palles, inclined to sympathy for the poor, orphaned muggle-borns to grant relatively unfettered daytime access to the Restricted Section so long as you keep it tidy and none of the books leave the library. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tombs and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly.

You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.

It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.

Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.

You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.

Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.

Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.

“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”

“I wonder why.”

He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.

“What, Tom?”

He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”

You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile?

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.

“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up.

Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.

Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about?

You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers.

For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.

He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)

Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.

You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession.

They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.

You’re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.

“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.

He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”

He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.

You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.

But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”

“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”

This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary.

“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”

He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure?

It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.

The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning.

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.

So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.

And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.

The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.

It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with.

You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.

Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.

But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge.

He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.

You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books.

You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.

“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.

Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.

He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”

“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”

You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls.

“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin.

“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.

You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.

You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated.

But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again.

She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.

For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.

Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)

Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.

“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.

But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”

Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —

“A professor?”

“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.

He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.

It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.

He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.

Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”

His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.

“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”

“So?”

It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.

“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”

He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.

“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”

Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.

You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.

You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.

“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”

Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”

You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.

“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”

“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”

“I —”

“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”

You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.

“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”

“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.

You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”

That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.

“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.

“Tom.”

“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”

“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”

Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.

It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.

The day everything changes starts the same as any.

You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now.

Tom has cracked the book.

It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.

He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.

“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”

You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”

“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”

“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”

“I have no need.”

You frown. “You… you already know it.”

“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”

“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”

You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.

“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”

He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”

Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.

He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice.

It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.

“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all. You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.

There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.

“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”

You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else.

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them.

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten.

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.)

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true.

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer.

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t.

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid.

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless.

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, ��and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that.

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately.

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end.

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight.

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes.

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand.

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain, a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him.

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love.

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock.

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly.

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it.

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.)

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish.

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same.

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much.

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition.

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal.

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it.

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

“I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is.

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —”

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant.

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor.

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? Why don’t you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together.

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident.

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be.

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop.

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece.

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that."

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval.

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will."

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis.

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain.

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.”

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back.

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake."

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster.

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating.

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself.

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh.

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes.

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.

You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you.

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle fluff #tom riddle smut #tom riddle angst #(the trifecta)#tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world #ftltutbh

3K notes · View notes

sunboki · 2 months

Text

— ENDLESS WINTER. a Christopher Bahng fiction

Christopher Bahng x f. reader

TROPE. Beast! au, Mage! au, enemies to lovers (she wants to kill him), marriage au, angst

WARNINGS. violence, kidnapping, mention of a past war, descriptions of murder, reader is injured, hyunjin is a bit of a pain, hinted minsung (hehe), blood, kissing (dubcon), cursing

WORD COUNT. 12k words

AUG'S NOTES. if there’s ever been a more spontaneous fic in history it would be this… every sentence is write is purely self indulgent…. (genuinely a written version of the stories i make in my head while laying in bed)

SYNOPSIS. As heiress of the Magus, otherwise, Mage Clan, you find your position ripped from your fingertips when the Beast Clan conducts a raid. Left the only survivor, you make it your priory to stay alive in a ravaged Kingdom. That is, before you’re captured.

alternatively :

Starvation becomes the least of your problems when you meet King Bahng.

Hiding in the kitchen’s cupboard was definitely not your intention.

Neither was the Kingdom getting raided by the Beast Clan or being the (presumably) lone survivor in the castle, but fate would have its way, whether you liked it or not — this one just a bit more severe than usual.

Your mother once told you of the Beast Clan, of their ferocity and inability to handle things diplomatically. In her opinion, Beast were barely able to be considered Human.

Well, these words came after the Mage-Beast War; a grueling, disgustingly brutal dispute that caused what was referred to as the “Endless Winter”, a curse put upon the nation by a Magus overseer bidding every day of every year with, well, “endless winter”.

She told you how the ground used to be a wondrous green. Soft beneath your fingertips like feathers. Now, blankets of snow stretched as far as the eye could see, killing off any remaining expanse of foliage.

Although years had passed since then, your Kingdom was still recovering, still navigating importing routes in order to supply necessary goods.

Yet, everything was rapidly adapting, whether that was the snow-shoe rabbits roaming your vast tundra or the unexpected growth of fur on the bottom of the horse’s hooves.

Growing, learning.

Magus, though a lineage of magic practitioners, had begun to dull over the centuries. There was no need to learn with peace eminent, and the more aged those wielding supernatural abilities became, the less said abilities progressed into your generations.

However, Magus is the hearth of your Kingdom, and for as long as you live, the title shall reign supreme.

A title that, used by enemies and allies alike, had modernized from its ancient form Magus, to Mage.

Dinner held in the customary hall began that night, seat upon seat homing each member of the family adorned in their extravagant clothing.

Your father occupied the upmost chair, his plate stacked full of greasy lamb and pork bones. You, on the other hand, had had your fill chatting the cook’s ear off, slipping sweet potato wedges here and there as you talked.

Ms. Maewether was her name, a sad soul who carried her love in her cherished dishes. A love reserved for her late husband, a Beast himself, who unfortunately passed in The War.

Back then you asked her questions to the moon, about what they looked like specifically — if they really had eight inch claws like all the other children gossiped, if they could feel.

The last one was important, because everything Ms. Maewether told you you believed without a doubt, and the number one thing she pressed was that Beasts can feel, so very deeply. Just like humans.

The War changed that, and tension rose tenfold, especially as each Kingdom recovered from their countless casualties.

Luckily, your life had been peaceful, having been born young enough you could hardly remember.

Had been peaceful.

A scream from outside redirects the table’s conversation, relatives and siblings alike turning their head to gaze out the window.

Your blood runs cold.

Beasts, left and right, are slaughtering. Their clothing stained in blood that certainly isn’t their own, blades in clutch.

Immediately, panic ensues. People are trampling over each other to get out, disregarding every instinct but to stay alive. It’s chaos.

Dodging flailing bodies, you anchor yourself in a secluded cupboard below the countertops, shrinking as close to the wall as possible.

A few moments after everyone evacuates the Dining Hall do you hear cries. Yelling, gargled sounds. You cringe back imagining, stifling your breathing as much as possible.

Suddenly, a thought comes to mind, a thought that might just be responsible for saving your life.

Smell.

Ms. Maewether warned you a Beast’s smell is like no other, like a dogs. Twenty times as heightened as a persons.

So slowly, silently, you fish your hand into the small bit of darkness in front of you, locating a small bottle of cooking grease you wince upon finding — forcing the awful smelling concoction over your body, masking your scent.

Right after sitting down the container does the door creak open, heavy footsteps belonging to none other than a Beast. You can hear it in their sniffing, the clicking of their claws. Chills scatter your arms.

Another enters as the second door creaks, muttering something incomprehensible to its companion. At this point you’re pressed to the other side of the cupboard, both hands covering your mouth.

Your heart thunders in your chest, beating unbearably loud the longer you huddle.

Walking past where you lie, a Beast stops, body ducking down close enough you can hear its labored panting. You wait, waiting for the door to be flung open and for your death to await.

It doesn’t. And you thank whomever above for the echo of its presence fading away into the distance, barely relaxing against the highly uncomfortable hiding spot.

Instead, a blood curdling screech rips through the atmosphere, comparably close to where you hide. Abruptly, it stops, the thump of a body against the floor making you staunch the nausea building like bile in your throat.

It takes three days for you to finally peer out of the cupboard, the entirety of the Kingdom completely void of a soul.

Taking your first few steps around do you notice a woman, obviously slain by the puddle of blood surrounding her and the putrid stench. Her mouth hangs open—horror-stricken, frozen in place. You vomit in the sink.

For about a week do you roam the murder-house of a castle, finding purchase in a non-blood-bathed room and the many, thought to be endless amount of food.

You won’t leave, simple.

As long as the Beast Clan believes they’ve killed everyone, you’re safe.

That reminder was assuring, until your food supply dropped exponentially and a new problem situated itself on your platter.

Worst case scenario you die of starvation, the likelihood high if you stay here. Solution? Hunting.

Granted, you’re not the most skillful hunter, but you’re also not horrendous with a bow. Except, it’s not your aiming abilities you stress, it’s the chance someone sees you, the enemy sees you.

Four weeks in and you’re left with no other choice than to bundle yourself in layers upon layers of clothing and heed the feeble weaponry available.

Blizzard frost permeates your vision, wobbling steps making your hunger evident the more you roam. A horse would’ve been effortlessly useful, but selling yourself into that fantasy had been futile upon realizing they either took or killed all escapades.

A hare catches your eye, pale fur barely divisible from the terrain below. Carefully, you crouch down, elbow stretching the arrow back as far as possible whilst maintaining a solid grip. Steady. Steady.

Shoot!

The arrow flies, puncturing the animal in its chest enough to where it thankfully doesn’t suffer, flopping over rather pathetically instead.

However, your success is short-lived.

Stalking forward to snatch the creature quickly, a shadow looming overhead halts your footsteps. Behind you.

Before you can think to run, you wind back, meager arrow in hand providing little defense against the attacker.

First thing you take in is how huge they are. At least six feet tall if not taller, brilliantly ruby eyes revealing its true identity.

Beast.

With ease the man has your efforts pinned, curiousity overflowing as the animal looks at you. Yet, he doesn’t look like an animal, and apart from those eyes of his, no other factors would’ve revealed him to you but that.

This Beast has a fox-like face. A younger stature and smaller, slanted features.

“Hyung, what is this?” He asks, lifting your petrified frame like you were the rabbit you’d killed earlier.

His older counterpart glances over, and any hope of getting released plummets upon those wild crimson hues focusing in on you—knowledgeable as to what you were.

The cooking grease had long worn off, and your identity was likely as apparent as can be.

Mage.

Older Beast easily roaming through the snow, his fingers tangle into your hair, drawing out a cry when he jerks his hand up, forcing your gaze to meet his through the searing sting of your scalp. The younger grimaces.

His long, nearly white hair is tied into a ponytail, sharp cheekbones and calculating stare beyond intimidating. Beneath his left eye you note a small, distinct mole.

“One remained, huh.”

It’s a fever dream walking into the Kingdom that, compared to yours, looks positively flourishing with life. Beasts of all kinds roam about, carrying on with their daily lives, oblivious to the winds of death they’ve swept your way.

Everything in your body feels as if it’s shutting down, unable to feel the sensation of your legs as you trudge forward, the younger, much kinder Beast ensuring you kept pace.

Freezing temperatures carry on the longer snow falls, gluing strands of hair to your forehead, blanketing your lashes while your nose runs incessantly.

In front of you now lies the castle, far grander than you could’ve ever imagined. Twin spires peek above the low-hanging clouds, stone columns towering above.

From your distance you spot two knights positioned on either side of the entryway, large armored helmets with hawk feathers adorning the ridges.

One knight stops your ascent, the light-haired man rolling his eyes profusely.

“Minho, this is important.”

“Important enough you’re bringing a Mage into the Kingdom?”

His voice smooth as honey, he sports a dominant tone when speaking. Stare observant, he watches the other Beast’s expressions with uncanny precision.

“Because if you haven’t noticed Hyunjin,” He leans forward a bit, whispering. “You have the entire Kingdom’s attention.”

At this, either of the Beasts who escorted you turn around, and upon doing so are met with hundreds, if not thousands of eyes boring into their soul. Whether it’s younger Beasts or aged soldiers, those heinous vermillion orbs seem to see through you.

You gulp.

“C’mon,” Hyunjin harshly beckons, nudging you forward through the gates with the younger quick on his tail.

Every color in the Palace is monochromatically grey, although strikes of royal blue reside in large drapes hung from perched balconies.

Similar guards to those outside sift throughout the room, familiar hawk feathers litter everywhere in sight, paving paths to the core of the room where a throne sits.

Pointed edges flank either side of the massive chair, the ocean blue rug underneath reflecting up and out of the ceiling — a glass design stretching wide across the throne room, emphasizing the dusky weather outside.

According to the younger Beast whose title you learned as Jeongin, the King was currently participating in a hunt with Changbin (the lead hunter of the Palace), so after hasty appreciation of the sheer volume of this breathtaking castle, you’re forced toward the dungeons.

Jeongin wears a pitying frown, promising to return with some food to your chambers in the case the King doesn’t arrive for a while.

At least someone in this Kingdom doesn’t insist you’re beheaded.

“Finally, somebody else is here.”

A voice erupting from the darkening depths to your right make you jump, chained wrists clanging abruptly. Through minimal lighting of the burning lamps hastened upon the walls, you make out the silhouette of a man, face bunching in a sweet manner when he smiles.

Unusually, his hands aren’t chained.

“What’re you in here for?” You begin, gaze narrowed in confusion. The chubby-cheeked stranger smiles haphazardly.

“I would ask you the same thing. I’m the King’s Advisor, he just gets tired of me and puts me in here sometimes,” Your chamber-mate sighs, and once you take in what he professed, the urge to laugh becomes too strong to control.

Laughing for the first time in quite a while is sort of relieving, especially when this new acquaintance of yours begins whining his dismay, aimlessly trying to hush your giggles.

Red eyes. You can see them blinking up at you, gleaming when he grins his pointed teeth.

Quickly pausing, you wait in horror as he gradually sniffs in.

Your stomach sinks.

“Wait… You’re a Mag—“

His phrase is cut off by a loud ringing noise, a familiar echo of keys tunneling down the dungeons stairwell.

Another stranger unlocks the door. He’s burly, with curly hair in disarray. Cuffs of animal fur wraps around defined biceps, his top a tight-fitted arrangement of fur and woven leather paired with small iron spikes studding the shoulder lining.

A scar passes down the corner of his lip, long since healed but remaining faded.

“C’mere,” He ushers, voice gruff and rumbling when he unlocks your shackles, big hand pushing you forward up the stairs.

If anybody here had pure Beast in their bloodline, it would be this man. His demeanor is rough, but his touch on your back is surprisingly gentle whilst guiding you upward.

Again you’re granted with the wondrous sight of the Throne Room in all its historic glory, although your gaze directed at the floor keeps you ignorant to so many heads bowed, so many voices cast to silence upon the click of footsteps approaching.

And when you look up, you meet strikingly blue eyes—perhaps a genetic mutation of a sort.

They’re stunning, enrapturing almost, and you find the need to break eye contact immediate, more dire than normal while staring down at you.

Plump, full lips and perfectly sculpted facial features seem that of a Greek god’s, too ethereal to exist in your reality. A glittering, silver crown sits stark atop a black nest of hair.

Either arm rests on the sides of the throne, and you swore you’d never seen someone look so, King-like. That, and the massive cape of wolf-skin draped over his back.

A devil, dressed as an angel.

“Your Highness, this Mage was found near the L/N Kingdom by Hwang Hyunjin and Yang Jeongin while scouting the territory.” A palace-woman announces, the same guard who lingered outside, Minho, standing to your side.

Your blood boils, disregarding every ounce of amazement once inhabited.

It’s him. The man responsible for the demise of loved ones you couldn’t count on all of your fingers and toes.

Minho, as if sensing your frothing rage, mutters through his helmet a staggered warning—remaining upright and unmoving at attention.

“Do not move and do not look into his eyes unless you’re asking for death.”

Your patience dissipates, lip twitching involuntarily.

You can’t remember the last time you were genuinely angry. You were happy, surrounded by people you loved.

Those people weren’t here now, they were killed.

“You murderer! You’re a—“ Your attempt at lashing out at the King stalled when Minho kicks the crevice between your knees, forcing you down on the carpet below.

“Monster! A bloody— fucking— Monster!”

Palace representatives gasp their bewilderment, some beckoning you away to the dungeons, others urging Minho to end you right here and now.

It wouldn’t matter, would it?

The King’s raised hand stalls the accusations, his familiar clicking footsteps nearing closer till he stands before you.

Shifting down into a squat, the man tips your chin up to meet cerulean again, his head slightly tilted to the side.

“Don’t get it mixed up little one,” He murmurs, the pad of his thumb controlling your movement.

“I did not kill your family. Your family killed themselves.”

Fist sharply winding around for a punch, he catches it before you can even register your predicament, iron grip strong enough you fear he might just snap your wrist in half.

“And I wouldn’t recommend fighting back, otherwise I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Concluding his threat the further he bends your wrist, you whine, face scrunching from the pain until he finally stops, amusedly surveying your expression.

Denying your own enraged shaking, you suck your teeth, focus vehemently pinned onto him.

“Why would you care about my safety?” You snarl, trying to wriggle his hold off to no avail.

“Because,” The King cocks his brows. “I like you.”

About to spit another word, he interrupts you, index tracing the veins of your arm.

“Plus, I could break you any time I wanted, Mage. So behave.”

You shiver.

Your second day and you feel as if you’re officially going insane.

The only person tolerable here is Jeongin, that chamber guard whose name you don’t know, and Felix, the castles cook. You barely see the King, and even when he’s present he’s usually quartered in his study.

What he does there remains unknown, information learned in the mere form of startled maids leaving the room and gossip among those wandering the Kingdom.

“Do you know what he does?”

Felix looks up from the dish he was laying in front of you, wispy blond locks bouncing with the movement.

“Does what?” He piques, ridding a stray piece of hair clinging to your sleeve.

“The King, what does he do all day long?”

One thing about Felix you love, his honesty. Regardless of if most would tell a quick fib and flee, Felix, although occasionally working around a topic, takes the time to actually explain things to you.

Allows you to learn more of the place you’re going to have to call home.

“Hm..” He pulls a chair from your right to drop into, and for a moment, you see Ms. Maewether in that smile of his. Your heart aches.

“Chris— I mean, King Bahng is always busy. He plans trade agreements, oversees the hunts, and basically keeps this castle alive.”

Chris?

“Who’s Chris?”

Felix nearly squeaks, burying his head in his hands. Evidently, you weren’t supposed to hear that part, but an eagerness to know more about this solitary King kept your hesitance at bay.

“That’s his name. Christopher Bahng, but you’re not allowed to call him that and not allowed to tell anyone about us having this conversa-“

“Tell who?”

You quite literally almost fall backwards in your seat, failing to anticipate the pair of hands placed on Felix’s shoulders.

A pair of hands, followed by a pair of ocean blue eyes, boring right into you and the horrified boy in front of you.

King Bahng. In the flesh.

“Oh.. Hey Chri— Hello Your Highness.”

Again he corrects. These two must know each other.

“Tell who, Felix?” He speaks, tone nothing short of teasing—though the boy looks just as startled, practically sweating through his clothing.

Still adorning that flanking wolf-cape of his, his dark hair is slightly messy, expression distorted curiously.

You hate him to admit, but King Bahng is horribly attractive.

“Nothing! Nothing at all, Your Highness,” Felix chirps, fixing you with a ‘Don’t say a word’ glare you cease to argue with.

Rising up from your seat quickly as if you had any duties in this Kingdom to tend to, you find yourself stalling.

You have so many questions. …And the overwhelming urge to slap him across the face.

You’ve received a fair warning on the latter.

“I’ll be off now, Your Highness.”

The last words come out involuntary, used to referring to your own father this way. It made you sick to know you regarded his murderer the same.

And though the King didn’t stand extremely tall (considering how young Beasts were already your height), his hulking stature felt as if it could swallow you whole, pointed canines flashing when he smiled, sending your head reeling.

Pleased.

King Bahng was pleased hearing something nonthreatening come out of your mouth.

Vile.

Yet, you simply curtsied and hurried off, ceasing to notice the immediate growl Felix directed in the King’s direction.

“Good lord, I know she smells good but you’re practically undressing her with your eyes,” The freckled boy grumbles, returned with an uninterested expression from his friend.

Before the King can head off to whatever meeting he has planned, however, he spins on his heel.

“Have you consulted Seungmin about the scent-blocking salve?”

“Possessive, are we?”

His glare shuts the cook up immediately.

“If there is one Mage left, it’s mine. And since she’s the survivor, she’s mine.”

Yeah, he’s not beating the possessive allegations. But if he’s going to gain your trust, and eventually, after much thought, become mates, he’s keeping every other Beast in the Kingdom at a distance from you at all times.

“Jeongin will report when it’s completed. And Chris?”

“Hm?”

“Don’t expect her to warm up to you.”

King Bahng hums.

“I don’t.”

And with that, Felix follows your exit, leaving the King to his own devices, your nectar-sweet smell lingering in his nose.

“If I stare at the same wall for hours and hours, shouldn’t it break by now?”

“You’re a Mage, not telekinetic,” Han replies, repetitively scanning over a piece of parchment assumed to be a guest list.

In the midst of your incessant boredom, you found yourself following the King’s Advisor around, peering over his shoulder at the endless list of haughty names written in languid ink strokes.

Amongst them, you ceased to find your father’s name. You knew it wouldn’t be there, but somehow, you wished if you blinked enough it would magically appear.

King L/N, written in that same, cursive font.

Rounding a corner, you conclude if there’s anyone you avoid more than King Bahng (a.k.a Chris), it was Hyunjin. That man was a serpent in a Beast’s body.

Catching sight of his dreaded ponytail, you hastily retrace your steps, hiding behind a massive doorframe while Han stares at you as if you’re a rodent scurrying at his shoes.

“He won’t bite y’know.”

“If only you would’ve been there when he first found me,” You whisper angrily, practically clawing at the wood desperately till he leaches you out.

Leaching enough, in fact, that you end up right in Hyunjin’s line of sight, who surveys you up and down with a cocked brow to the point you’re sure steam is billowing from your ears.

Mocking. Ruby-red, mocking eyes.

He does bite. He sinks his teeth into the flesh and tears.

You won’t bleed without biting back.

Han’s iron grip tightens on your arm as slowly, oh so slowly, Hyunjin walks closer.

The strategist prowls, edging right up in your face—noses a thread-width apart.

His glower sets your fury alight, lips curled in a deriding notion.

“No need to glare, wouldn’t want wrinkles ruining that face of yours.”

“No need to get so close unless you plan to kiss me, mutt.”

Though, just as Hyunjin preapres to lunge, a big hand holds him back, animal fur cuffs indicating it isn’t the King who stepped in.

The man who had fetched you from the chambers earlier divided either of you. Shorter, but evidently stronger.

“Control yourselves, both of you. For as long as she stays in the Kingdom, she’s The King’s property—“

“I am no one’s property,” You snarl, and the guard turns.

Basked in clear lighting, you can finally see him. Honing dark brown hair hanging above his eyebrows, the same scar resides by his mouth, though, his eyes are much kinder than you expected.

Taking a slow inhale, he reads your conflicted expression like an ornate mirror.

“One mage in the Kingdom of Beasts? Sorry to break it to you, but yes, you are his property. So as long as she’s here, nobody lays a finger on her, understood?”

Glancing to each person, either of them ease their apprehension, the bewildered Jisung next to you stifling a breath, Hyunjin rolling his eyes with a loud huff.

Baiting seconds pass, and in that period of time do you realize you never caught his name. Specifically, the guard’s name.

“Excuse m-“

“Seo Changbin,” Han interjects. “His name is Seo Changbin.”

Ah. Right.

Now on the roster of least-likely to kill you, Jeongin, Changbin, Felix, and Han.

Filled with a need to evade, you stand merely as a spectator as each horridly red hue snaps to stare at you, your heart spiking an alarming rate.

The King’s Advisor’s fingers tighten to the point you’re sure he’s blocking blood flow.

“You need to leave. Jisung, get in contact with Seungmin and see when the salve is done,” Changbin instructs, already shoving Hyunjin away.

Salve. What salve?

Failing to give you any explanation, you’re dragged off, boisterously complaining before the highly annoyed man abruptly pauses, finger nudging your forehead irritably.

“You smell.”

Then he leaves, and you’re left to wonder if you’re still in primary school or the Kingdom of Beasts.

You smell? What’s that supposed to mean?

First thing in the morning, you’re torn from your slumber with a blazing sun scorching your eyes.

Your canopy beds silken drapes doing little to block the attack, you whine to an apologetic Jisung who merely sighs in return.

“Sorry sleeping beauty, but we have an appointment to attend this morning. Can you handle getting dressed on your own?”

You roll your eyes, groggily pulling yourself upright. “I was an heiress, not helpless.”

To which he cracks a miniature grin and slips out the door, allowing you to hurriedly strip off your chemise and messily arrange your stays and petticoats.

Out of all things you’d been deprived of, a part of the L/N Clan unable to be divided was your garments.

Somewhere, in the midst of fabric and citrus scented soap, you swear you can still smell bits and pieces of home.

What this appointment entailed you failed to ask, gingerly hustled down winding hallways barely illuminated with sunlight.

The Kings Advisor expertly winds further and further down, georgian architecture littered in symmetrical golden portraits and decorum, casement glass windows twinkling as you walked past.

Having reached a dead end, you’re pleasantly surprised to watch Han jar a brass doorknob open, paving a breathtaking view of the garden ahead.

Garden had to be an understatement. This amount of foliage was nothing short of a forest.

Flowers of all kind surround your walk to a shrouded greenhouse, abnormally brick relative to it’s stone-castle counterpart. Its walls are overgrown in slithering vines, door nearly invisible without proper inspection.

Jisung, having noticed your amazed expression, chuckles.

Granted, it’s been years since you’d seen any form of green vegetation, your astonishment felt justified.

“We’ve arrived.”

Oh how you wish to stay here forever. Not captive by the Beast Clan, no, but in this garden, hidden.

And if the last door took effort to pry open, this was a new challenge entirely. Through thickets of dense hedge and tangled branches, Jisung had to quite literally ram himself into the chittering wood for entry.

“Knock next time would you?” A voice projects from inside, belonging to a man clad in rounded spectacles, a slightly hooked nose, and cleanly hair parted to the side.

The Kings Advisor, apparently having known him, beams his prize-winning smile upon seeing the man.

“Seungminnnn—“ Han drawls out, excitedly waddling over to wrap him in a crushing hug. Stiffly, Seungmin pats his back, an action you fondly watch from afar.

“Ah!” The more ebullient of the two springs up, turning to you. “This is Seungmin, he runs the apothecary here.”

Nodding stiffly, Seungmin ushers you to one of the many mahogany chairs circling a gateleg table; a vase—likely jade with its pale green hue—filled with indigo hydrangea presides in the center.

“And,” Han’s outburst cuts off your awe. “He’s practically my little brother.”

Now you’re in awe again, but for a different reason. And by the evident frown on Seungmin’s face, he can tell.

“Shocking, right?”

Yes, shocking for certain.

Though, before you can reply, Han slaps his hands on either of the man’s shoulders, expression transformed into one of seriousness.

“About time I left then, yeah?” Was spoken while his form hurriedly retreated out the door, leaving you with more questions than answers to what just occurred.

“..He forgot something again.”

Biting back your laugh, you finally take a seat, given ample time as Seungmin shuffles off to the side to acknowledge your everything to its fullest extent.

Matching the plant-infested interior, verdant drawers scatter the corners, a lone, looming medicinal cabinet left ajar as the chemist poured over a variety of assorted concoctions.

Air stained with a damp smell of earth, you notice, much to your curiosity, the longevity of such a place.

This apothecary, though inside the castle, feels like an entirely new settlement of its own. An establishment existing before the war, rebuilt (inefficiently) enough to where it was only required to stand stable.

From first sighting you’d grown an attachment to it, but this newfound understanding, these newfound details setting the apothecary apart from your predicament let you imagine yourself anywhere else, back to a nostalgia you longed for.

A short term fix.

“This.” You’re handed a phial from overhead. It’s a slightly green substance, thicker in texture that rests heavy in your hand. “Is for you.”

Slipping across from you, he surveys your analyzing, arms crossed over a deep brown waistcoat.

“And this is..?” You inquire, looking up from the cork-sealed glass.

“A salve. You had better not waste it, material is low as is and I’ve been waiting years for this winter to end already.”

Well that didn’t answer your question. You’ve heard conversation about a specific salve for days on end, but no genuine explanation caved in—

‘I’ve been waiting years for this winter to end already.’

Repeatedly mulling over the words, you can practically feel your heart palpitating, head beginning to spin.

..End already? The endless winter.. ending?

“So you’re saying,” You murmur, placing down this special salve in order to truly regard him.

“There’s a way to end the Endless Winter?”

His brows crease critically, seemingly sarcastic.

“There’s an end to everything sweetheart. Life, death. Start, finish. War,” He meets your eyes with a conniving grin, a face you hadn’t seen on the man before.

“Peace.”

Automatically, you roll your eyes.

Peace? Peace when there was no peace left to be made, no kingdom remaining to make peace with?

“And how do you think the nonexistent Mage will make peace with Beasts?”

Seungmin grins.

“Well there is a Mage left,” He scornfully states, flicking your forehead whilst you palm the sting, frown evident.

“And as far as making peace goes, marriage.”

Marriage.

What.

“Wait- so you’re telling me big bad King Bahng could’ve just hooked up with a Mage and called it a day and everything would be fine?”

Seungmin clears his throat.

“One, Bahng doesn’t ‘hook up’. Two, it’s not as easy as that.”

Of course it’s not as easy as that. Why would it be?

You wish to claw your eyes out of your head, anticipating his explanation.

“Because if you weren’t aware before, marriage ties between Mage and Beast are very difficult to establish. Bahng is picky on everything, and even pickier when it comes to mates.”

But before you can argue there were thousands of suitors roaming the L/N Kingdom for him to pick from, Seungmin interrupts.

“Plus, if anyone else were King I’m sure we would’ve had peace decades ago. You’re lucky you’re in the castle right now, otherwise you would be eaten alive.”

Your face scrunching worriedly, he rakes an exasperated hand through his hair, plopping down on the vanity’s chair.

“Your scent.”

Again, you’re reminded of Han’s ‘you smell’ comment. Why is it showing up a second time?

He groans frustratedly, wordlessly praying you understand.

You don’t.

“Mage have specific scents. You can’t smell it since you’re not Beast. But let me tell you, you smell fucking delightful.”

Oh.

That’s what he meant by eaten alive, and the entire ‘you smell’ conundrum.

Seungmin, rather entertained with the shock written on your face, shrugs his shoulders, nonplussed by the crassness of his earlier statement.

“Now you get the use of the salve, right? And why you’re not allowed to leave the castle?”

Your mouth feels dry of response, beckoned toward the exit without so much as a peep passing through your lips.

However, right as the you’re halfway gone, he stops you, brows cocked.

“Do us all a favor and marry him, will you?”

And like that, the apothecary’s door thumps closed behind you.

If only the “him” he was referring to wasn’t King Bahng, you might’ve agreed.

Marriage in the L/N Kingdom had been a sacred event.

An event you’d been prepared for since childhood, fed daydreams of a day you would be married to a prince-like man with perfect features and a perfect personality, every element fabricated from a young age.

Truly, you loved it. Loved visualizing a life shared with your loved one, whoever that man would be.

Little did you know he might just be King of the Beast Clan.

No. You refused. Marrying a murderer, the murderer of your family, was the last thing you would oblige to.

He sent the command, he led the attack, and you’d rather die than give him the satisfaction of marriage.

Although, one problem. Similar to life back at the L/N Kingdom, supplies only lasted for some time before shipments became low, and pretty soon (according to Seungmin) the salve you were given would run dry.

Meaning, your meager chance of protection lay completely exposed, susceptible to any Beast daring enough to try something.

Two sides of a coin remained. Heads, you marry the murderer of a King and spring returns, or tails, you abstain and are eventually left vulnerable.

You’ve always been the person to confront a difficulty head-on, but, in this case, a different, defensive approach crossed your mind.

Run away.

Despite Seungmin’s sensible reminder to not leave the castle, what other option sounded suitable?

Die physically or mentally, pick your poison.

Or maybe, never drink the poison in the first place. Evade.

Three days have passed since you received the salve, and after applying it behind your ears and between your elbows at dawn, you were free to do as you pleased—within the castle walls.

Yet, tomorrow’s dawn would be divergent. Tomorrow, you would be days away from the Beast Clan.

Sneakily roaming around, you managed to find certain outlets to your disposal. Nearby the chambers you’d been kept in was a moth eaten, hooded cloak seemingly unworn for quite awhile. Ideal for an anonymous escape.

Furthermore, amongst the colloquy during a dinner with Changbin and Felix in the Great Hall, you distinctly recall overhearing information about the stables.

If you were to flee, you needed a horse, and thanks to the guard, you knew right where to find one.

Unable to sleep the night before, your dry eyes blink through the dense darkness, sweeping the candlestick from your side table for a minimal source of vision.

Lathering a copious amount of salve all over your skin, you slip down the winding stairwell, grateful for the shadowed moonlight gazing down upon the Throne Room as you venture.

Bingo. There’s the cloak.

Sweeping the fabric over your shoulders, you slip the hood over your head, creeping down the steep steps leading into a surrounding ward.

On your left, across the butcher’s vendors.

Blindly searching, the whinny of a mare alerts your close distance, carefully winding through lead ropes and linked fences to the first horse in sight.

You have to be fast, the sun will rise at any moment it pleases, and it’s impertinent you’re gone by then.

Hoisting a mere saddle pad over the back, you deem the saddle too noisy, slipping the reins overheard and adjusting their length accordingly.

Jogging forwards, you’re brisk to gain a running leap atop the horse prior to the thunder of hooves charging forward.

Closer to the gatehouse you near, a luckily open drawbridge allowing easy passage across.

Faster, faster. You can’t afford to slow down. Daylight is beginning to peer above the horizon, warming your back with rays of sunlight amongst a snowy landscape.

And when the kingdom wakes up, it’ll be as if you were never there.

But, an undecided factor stayed. Where would you go? There was no kingdom left for you, no home to go to.

For now, you needed to prioritize finding a hiding spot, if only for a night, that supplies warmth.

Given the opportunity, too long out here and you or your horse will indefinitely succumb to the frigid conditions.

Veering off sharply, you sidle beneath a barren magnolia tree, its thick trunk barely blocking the unforgiving wind. Pretty soon you’ll have to keep on, but for now, you’ll savor the temporary peace.

Blue skies indicate it must be nearing morning, and you assume the castle will be slowly waking up. By now, King Bahng would likely be awake as well, you’ve been told he doesn’t sleep well anyway.

Scouts. He’ll send scouts most likely. Knights like Minho or Hyunjin.

Ugh, the mere thought of Hyunjin finding you a second time makes you nauseous.

Except, the longer you consider it, King Bahng is the worst case scenario.

I could break you any time I wanted, Mage. So behave.

Those words send an entourage of chills slithering up your spine, and not from the cold.

Because while Hyunjin is a type of spiteful strong you want to avoid primarily due to how annoying it is, King Bahng is a quiet strong, the kind that wouldn’t confess his anger, but have you witness it firsthand instead.

Enough thinking. You have to go.

Using the bumpy roots below you for leverage, you wind a leg around the horse’s back, aiming to reach the edge of the territory before midday.

That was the goal, until you’re pummeling to the ground.

The moment is instantaneous, your horse releasing a shriek as it’s swiped right off its feet, slipping onto hard, icy ground and simultaneously crushing you in its descent.

Almost like vomit you feel the screech of pain building in your throat, a numbness in your right leg along with the warmth of blood soaking your clothing doing little to sustain level breathing.

Then, in the midst of your hysterics, you look upon the visible side of your horse, a pair of claw marks scratched right across its stomach.

Scrambling out to the best of your abilities, you bite your tongue, praying this is one of Hyunjin’s sick, sadistic games and not an obvious ambush.

You refuse to die like this. You’ve survived once and you’ll be damned to give up now.

“I’m impressed. You’re not as weak as I thought.”

A sneering tone speaks from behind you. According to the claw marks, Beast, but not one you remember. And with your current state—being unable to rise to your feet—you’re utterly incapable of ascertaining an identity.

Instantly, your hand reaches up to trace the alcove beneath your ear and neck, any ounce of hope disappearing upon feeling for the salve.

Gone.

“Now, care to tell me what a Mage is doing in Beast territory?”

He’s hiding behind you on purpose, drawing you into a sensory overload, a panicked frenzy of adrenaline and fear.

Deer caught in headlights.

A curved claw unlike those in the Kingdom of Beasts winds your head back, staring straight into the face of something you can hardly deem Beast, more like wolf.

He has this terrifying look in his eyes, and breath that stenches of metal and flesh.

This man is the kind of Beast you’d grown up believing in. Violent, merciless.

Minho, Hyunjin, hell, anyone. Please.

As if second instinct, you assess everything around you, snatching the closest stick to you and jarring the sharp end through the bottom of his chin with all your might.

A gagged, sort of howling sound emits from above you, putrid-smelling blood spraying all over your face.

In split seconds does another form appear in your peripheral, your dread heightening before ultramarine stills the horror in its tracks.

King Bahng.

He’s quiet, expertly slicing the back of the neck, the attacker dropping to the ground motionlessly.

“I could’ve handled it myself.”

It’s a lie. He doesn’t respond.

If the first Beast hadn’t killed you, he certainly would. He said it himself, whenever he pleased, he could break you.

So when King Bahng’s arms extend toward your position on the ground, you prepare for the worst, crawling backwards as quickly as possible.

Surprisingly, he kneels down in front of you, and, as your vision clears, you notice the concern written on his face.

Weird, the feeling compiling in your gut as he looks at you like that. The way your eyes build with tears, lungs finally hacking for as much non-congested air available without a single word said.

Just by his expression alone, you’re a fit of blood and tears, the aftershock hardly helping ease the experience.

Crying, in the middle of a forest, with King Bahng as a witness.

“I know, I know,” Is all he whispers, and you barely recognize when he hoists you into his arms, the searing sting of your leg your only indication of movement.

Smoothly maneuvering you again his chest, he cradles your body close, one hand directing his horse as you ride back to what you assume to be the Kingdom.

Through the aching pain, you can’t even be upset about returning, merely focusing on the subtle warmth of his body and the strength willing you to say something.

“You speak nothing of this moment,” You murmur, the King’s body erupting into a tremor of laughter.

“I speak whatever I like whenever I like, sweetness. No one touches what’s mine, yeah?”

Mine. You hate the effect he has on you.

Yet, your snarky remarks are depleting in tandem with your energy; the soothing, shushing sound he’s making and the repetitive thump of hooves doing little to keep you from sleeps tempting beckon.

Eyes drifting closed, his tightened grip pulls you closer, your cheek smushed into the fabric of his coat whilst lost in slumber.

“Hold on a bit longer for me, we’ll be there in no time.”

Recovery, to your luck, is swift. Either that, or Kim Seungmin is secretly a Mage, because within a week spent off your leg, you’re back to normal.

A little sensitive to weight, but overall, healed.

Initially, despite the agony blazing through your body, you were thankful you barely recalled seeing anyone, swept into the apothecary immediately.

The last thing you wanted to see after returning would be the faces. Plus, what about your friends? Jeongin, Felix, Han? You’re sure they looked destroyed.

Except, it’s all fake. A feign kindness given to you only by sympathy. What do the faces matter anyway?

You gorge that question to the very back of your throat when said Cook walks through the apothecary’s door, utmost apprehension apparent. He grabs your face, brows knit—but not in an angry sort of way, more like staving-down-tears.

“Don’t you ever do something like that ever again.”

Past him, you can’t help but smile seeing Seungmin’s softened expression watching Felix, adoring his preciousness just as you are.

“I promise.”

Nodding curtly, he turns around, leaving you to view the many ingredients scattered across his apron.

He rushed here, cute.

“I’ll bring breakfast down here.”

Craning, you can barely make out his deep voice, lowered to a nearly inaudible decibel. Ears flushed pink, you’re filled with a worrisome amount of happiness seeing Felix’s embarrassment trying to maintain an upset facade.

“Hm? What was that?”

Ah, at this point you’re picking fun.

“I said I’ll bring breakfast down here.”

Precipitously slipping outside, both you and Seungmin are left to stifle your bubbling laughter, graced with the most appetizing platter you’ve had the pleasure of eating a few minutes later.

However merciful those first few days were, dissipated. And in a short amount of time, you could feel the eyes boring into your back, the questions resting on the tip of tongues.

All the same, nobody mentioned it. And if anything, that made the paranoia grow.

It was gradual. The subtle shadow you swore you saw in corners, the terror stopping your heart in your chest when you swear someone breathed down your neck.

Your body may be healed, but your mind certainly isn’t.

To a degree that two weeks later, you’ve found sleep nearly impossible, lingering in the kitchen in the wee hours of morning, teetering on your wits end.

Some occasions it’s Felix who you see first, wiping the sleep from his eyes, loading coal into the furnaces to heat the kitchen for the day. Other days it’s handmaids, shuffling around busily, carrying goods to and fro.

This time, Minho arrives first, for once wearing regular clothing opposed to his usual armor, steaming saucer in clutch.

Perhaps this is an opportunity, he is a knight after all.

“Hey Minho?”

Tired eyes sweep to your figure on the table, the rim of his cup held to his lips.

“I’m too paranoid and at this point I might die of sleep deprivation,” You huff, referring to his raging, bed-headed self . “…Could you teach me how to use a sword?”

He’s staring at you like you‘ve grown two heads, pulling a chair back to settle in, arms crossed over his chest.

No sentences need to be said aloud, merely spectating the gears turning in his head enough to set your nerves on edge.

Yet, in the midst of your waiting, you note a peculiar bruise peeking from his collarbone, another lingering a tad bit lower.

“And you think a sword is going to protect you?”

The question is genuine, lacking the bemused nature you were expecting.

Another thing you’ve noted throughout your sleepless nights was the continuous amount of times you’d watch the King’s Advisor sneak into his quarters, a realization keeping your response baited.

Seems his love life isn’t a concern.

“Hey, those marks on your neck and shoulder, are those from Ha—“

“When do you want to train.”

All lightheartedness vanishing, you have to chew your lip to avoid ticking him off further by giggling.

“Tomorrow?”

Pushing in his chair with an agreeable hum, you merely whisper a hurried “Thank you” he grunts at, rushing off to who knows where and giving you leeway to recover from the hilarity of it all.

Tomorrow, however, came far too early, not anticipating to be woken up at the crack of dawn, grumpy enough the prospect of blackmailing the King’s Advisor became dangerously tempting.

Yeah, good luck. He’s not budging until you’re on your feet.

Seems you underestimated Han Jisung’s stubbornness.

Rushed into a loose gown, you’re led to the Inner Ward, an open sector in the middle of the castle.

Upon being met with a too-smug Minho, you can practically see the word “payback” hovering above his head, busying himself with fetching supplies.

Perhaps this is karma coming back to bite you.

Ouch.

Except, you’re puzzled. You’re being taught how to deul, yet your teacher isn’t adorning armor nor gear of any kind.

At your confusion, the knight chokes a cocky guffaw.

“First, we learn how to properly move.” He hands you a wooden sword. “If I so much as leave a scratch on you I’m as good as dead.”

Again, he may appear snarky, but his tone is nothing short of serious. Minho is hard to read.

Wait.

Seeing past your panic, the Beast seems to answer your unspoken question.

“King Bahng is visiting the villages today, he won’t be back till the evening.”

A wave of relief grounds your bones, standing rather pathetically while Minho aids in critiquing your position, instinctively shifting into his own in front of you.

“Now, there are a lot of things to consider when dueling. I’ll narrow things down. Don’t overestimate or underestimate your opponent, trust your gut, be aware of everything, and lastly, do not be afraid to deceive.”

Promptly, he’s lashing out before you can even process his advice, wooden weapon drawn above his head as your grip tightens, attempting to block the strike only for his foot to press into your stomach, sending you falling right onto the ground instead.

“Isn’t that unfai—“

“Like I said, deception is your greatest weapon. In a game of swords, it doesn’t matter how dirty it’s won, it matters who won.”

He reaches a hand out for you to take, helping you back up again only to both fall back into your stances.

“Keep in mind, your sword isn’t your only weapon.”

Minding his instruction, you continue onward, sparring heartily till the beating afternoon sun becomes too hot to bask in any longer. Amongst the four hours you had been consumed in training, you’ve snagged certain valuable points.

Calmness is crucial. Your mind streams clearer when you parried, void to the opponent’s increasing frustration—given an advantage of both agility and focus.

Two, unpredictability is a gift. Minho is especially good at being unpredictable.

Whether he charges headfirst or aims the forte of his sword toward particularly weak points, you begin to mimic his performance, growing closer and closer to conquering those signature tactics.

Of course, your enjoyment can only last for a bit before it spoils.

Spoiling as in, Hwang Hyunjin’s random appearance, sauntering into the area as if he’s King himself.

“Well look at this, didn’t think I’d see our runaway and Minho here.”

There’s an air between Minho and Hyunjin, one that forbids Hyunjin from egging his superior on, just like when you were first brought to the Kingdom. Lucky for you, you could be degraded as much as he approved of.

Feigning a dramatic gasp, he gestures to either wooden sword held in raw palms.

“No way, you’re learning how to deul?! Don’t tell me you’ve never learned basic attacks? Oh right, you never had to fight, huh, princess?”

You bite the skin of your cheek, minding your composure.

“You know nothing about me.”

“I know enough.”

Now he’s asking for it.

“Say,” He sneers. “Let’s duel.”

Keeping Minho from intervening, you apologetically nod to his disproving expression. He knows it’s stupid, even while fetching his armor and adjusting the metal plating to your body, and you do too, but you can’t afford to back down, you won’t.

Testing your abilities carrying a legitimate sword this time, Minho grants Hyunjin a terse scowl, their own wordless agreement to tone down on anything too harmful.

Somehow, it grates your nerves further.

Straight away, he charges his right foot forward, the metal colliding with a loud ring, narrowing your body to shield your unprotected side.

Hyunjin, though skillful in his wrist mobility, clearly uses his size compared to you as an advantage, carelessly throwing around his jabs whilst relying on form alone.

You shuffle back and forth continuously, the commotion of metal rifle drawing the attention of Beasts alike throughout the castle, stopping their movements to survey.

Lurching himself forward once more, you will your legs to support you, balancing the crushing force of his pushing ascent with as much strength as possible.

“If you win, you get whatever sensible award you want,” He grits, using pure weight alone to gain higher vantage. “But if I win, you marry King Bahng.”

Suddenly, interrupting your stunned reaction to his proposal, Minho’s reminder breaches your eardrums.

Deception is your greatest weapon.

Honestly, you’re bewildered Hyunjin hadn’t played petty thus far, and you have no doubt he will any moment now.

You can’t afford to waste the opportunity.

Maintaining your gaze targeted on his face, you steal the chance, slipping your sword right beneath his feet, hooking the guard just fast enough to cause his legs to buckle.

The tip of your sword centimeters from his neck, you cock your brows, finding satisfaction in the glare he’s boring into your skin from his spot on the ground.

In a game of swords, it doesn’t matter how dirty it’s won, it matters who won.

“If King Bahng wishes to marry me, he will deul me himself. That decision isn’t up to you.”

Stalling his immediate laughter upon nudging the sharp point right up against his pulse point, you chuckle.

“I might have to do this more often, you’re not bad when you shut your mouth for once.”

Dropping your sword, you reach out a customary hand he rejects, either of you following Minho to the side stalls to return his armory before a haunting voice stops you in your tracks.

“One more match?”

You’d been ignorant to the Kingdom’s sudden burst of energy, the trembling chains of the drawbridge dropping onto cobblestone ground, the gates shifting open.

Having appeared through thin air stands King Bahng, constantly arriving at the worst of timing.

He’s clad in traditional armor, though his has fancier plating, cleaner sheen, azure hues hidden within the gorget.

Your stomach ties itself into a knot, piecing together the details.

“If this is about the deal, I don’t think I-“

“Oh please princess, this was never up to you. We did this for the sake of the Kingdom, you think we ever considered your say in this?” Hyunjin interjects, quickly escorted away by a frowning Minho and an additional guard you don’t recognize.

Huh?

What… What is he talking about? For the Kingdom? What does he mean for the sake of the Kingdom?

Do us all a favor and marry him, will you? Seungmin’s words ricochet in your skull, the parts assembling perfectly into place.

But if I win, you marry King Bahng.

Marriage.

They knew all along. They knew you were set to marry him and yet, no one told you.

If your betrayal had been violently inflicted, you would look like a rag doll. All this time, these moments you thought were glee-filled, hopeful.

Lies.

Tearing the King’s chance to speak from his fingertips, you pick up your sword, denying your shaky, white knuckles and replacing those broken feelings with rage instead.

No, you can’t afford to show weakness. You must replace these feelings as quickly as possible.

No weakness, no mercy.

“Fine, let’s duel.”

“But-“

“Pick. Up. Your. Sword. And fight me.”

Releasing a sigh, he cautiously pulls his own sword from its sheath, waiting to be counted off unlike Hyunjin.

However skillful you’d been before had completely vanished. Though, you would give yourself the benefit of the doubt, this fight meant your future, meant the minuscule bit of freedom you’d gotten to experience here.

The last thing you wished was to realize you had been lied to, but even more so to realize you’ve been lied to in front of the entire Kingdom, curious faces peering from the castle’s allures.

Your swings sloppy, you credit the severity of the blows as you attack and defend, evidently dueling with fatal intent.

You’ve lost this battle, you know it. Your senses are too overwhelmed to assess spatial awareness, and every muscle in your arm cries out for relief.

Swept off of your feet in a repeated cycle to earlier, you accept, sitting below the tip of King Bahng’s sword, your defeat.

Almost automatically, the pieces of pride you’d attained after your victory against Hyunjin amounted to nothing.

You may beat everyone else, but you will never beat this man, now matter how hard you try. The odds will always soar in his favor, and you will suffer the results of it.

This is not a game you’ll win. Because from the beginning, you existed as a marionette, enjoying such naivety till the comprehension as to who controlled the play hit you.

This theatre was particularly unforgiving.

He won.

If your insomnia before was grueling, this was an entirely new extreme.

Averaging a meager two hours per night, you’re positive you’ve memorized the guest list by heart, staring blankly at the crinkled parchment, unblinking.

In a matter of days, the congratulatory ball will be held.

You’ll be attending said ball as the bride.

Weeks ago, the guest list had simply been a past time, a mandatory errand for the King’s Advisor, a ball you weren’t aware, and wouldn’t be aware, was meant for you.

Your chest feels.. sad? Empty?

Yes. Empty is the word. An emptiness gutting you from the inside, the ugly drawback of exhausted options and worthless optimism.

There’s a lot of things to ponder on as well, factors you have to analyze, ensure it wasn’t another stage for an audience you so foolishly performed.

No escape.

Tuesday, two days before the ball, Jeongin drops by your door, carrying a package under his arm and that effortlessly adorable smile gracing picture-perfect features.

“This is for you, from.. um..” The anxious boy stammers, placing the binded package on your room’s veneer.

“You can say his name, Jeongin, I’m not mad.”

He exhales audible relief, slender fingers wrapping around your hand before you can bid him farewell.

“He— The King, he’s a good person.”

You force a tight grimace, agreeing despite your contradicting expression.

Perhaps he is, perhaps he isn’t. You don’t know what to believe anymore.

Slipping from bed once the young boy’s footsteps fade in the distance, you gingerly unwind crimson ribbon, allowing the leather exterior to unfold.

Inside lies a gown.

A gown that, investigating how breathtaking it is, should be considered nothing short of a ball gown the longer you stare.

Designed as a mantua, the white fabrics paired with lace neck frill and engageantes add an elegance you’ve never seen before. Light, subtle blue hides beneath ruffles of the skirt, further accented by equally blue lace strings fastening the back together and outlining the seam of your square-cut stays.

You can only marvel at the gift given by your future husband, wishing so terribly you could simply run into his arms and pretend everything was well.

If only it was under better terms, as if nothing had happened. If King Bahng was another man, it’d be possible.

And Wednesday night, the root of your problems bares his face, knocking at your door while you were under the impression it was Han instead.

Acting as if you didn’t care was much easier around everyone but him, especially when you were halfway into tying the laces of your dress, the dress he had purchased for you.

What awful circumstances.

“Don’t touch me,” You hiss, regarding the man across from you with a frown.

Lifting either hand in the air, he seemingly invites you to figure out the impossible strings yourself, cueing a very aggravated, very futile attempt at tightening the ties of your ball gown before (hesitantly) allowing the man to slip behind you.

Of course you had to choose now to try it on.

His touch irritably careful, he ensures the fabric is snug fitting but breathable, each woven thread in its coordinating pattern.

Where he learned this you have no idea, only aware of how horrific this close proximity is, your restlessness growing unbearable.

Running his tongue over his top teeth, he backs up slightly, taking you in with apparent speechlessness.

He clears his throat.

“I won’t apologize because I know it means nothing to you, but please, let me explain. I intended to tell you, I just-“

He sounds timid, like a child.

A sour, bitter fury froths like bile in your throat. You want to explode.

“No. No. I didn’t want this! I won’t!” You wind around, pointing an accusing finger to his chest. “You killed them all, my family, my loved ones, children. I hate you. I hate you!” Your voice breaks, a gravelly, disgusting drawl raking your throat raw. Salty, burning tears drip down your collarbones.

Grievance. An innumerable stage of sadness you hadn’t reached before now, overflowing.

As he tries calming you down, you only grow angrier, pushing from your path to the door, ripping the handle awry.

Instantly, his arms wrap around your middle, hauling you back as you kick and scream, fingernails digging into any available skin, dress puffing as your legs flail.

Catastrophic.

“No- No!”

You’re certain the entire kingdom can hear you, but that’s the last concern occupying your headspace, too focused on escaping, far off as you had done earlier, anywhere but here.

“Stop crying,” He commands, either hand on your wrist pinning your back to the bed, expression morphed pitifully. His calloused hand swipes the storming rivulets from your cheeks.

“Please, Y/n, please stop crying. It hurts.”

Your response shortens into a simple sob, aching.

“It hurts..?” You murmur, eyes shifting over his face. “…You hurt?”

Incessant crying causing your skin to burn, he only blinks at you.

A fit of anger forms just as fast as it disappeared in the pit of your stomach.

“You’re hurting? You’re the sick son of a bitch that killed my family and took everything I’ve ever loved away, you don’t deserve to hurt!”

Sucking in a necessary inhale, you angrily flail, wrinkling your nose at the careful tilt of his head, the distance of his face from yours, every scar, every pore close enough to see.

What happened to the King who threatened to break you? Why is he pitying you, looking at you with such kindness?

Longing to bring up how useless the deal was, how the benefits of the marriage aren’t your responsibility, you simply glare, emotions a whirlwind you can’t explain, can’t say aloud.

And all he does is stare. Staring like you’ve said nothing at all.

You want to cry out, want to curse him for all eternity, curse those blue eyes that seem to pave a pathway through your soul.

But you don’t. He beats you to it.

“..Do you know why my eyes are blue?”

What?

“Because I’m not fully Beast. My mother was a Mage. She turned against my father after I was born, left us, and vowed to do everything in her power to destroy Beasts.”

Your face contorts nonsensically, his tight hold on your wrists loosening the longer he speaks.

“And I assume,” He redirects your head, forcing you to maintain eye contact.

Rearing deja-vú reminds you of your first encounter.

“No one ever told you Mage’s started the war.”

You scoff.

“Or that the Mage planned to cut off all trade supply simply out of spite. And so, I did what I had to—“

“You did what you wanted to. You killed helpless people because of your own problems, my family had nothing to do with it!” Vocal cords throbbing the louder you scream, you try kicking your legs to no avail.

“Your family, Mage, had everything to do with it. My people would have died-“

“Mine already did. So now what?”

A minuscule pinch occupies his brows.

“You weren’t supposed to be alive.”

“But I am, so you might as well let me join them.”

He sighs, a stray, obsidian strand of hair hanging over his forehead.

“You know I can’t do that.”

You test the words on your tongue, wedging your hand out to grab his face, feeling the dip of his jaw as he sucks in a breath.

When you first met, he had told you he’d break you. This change of heart confuses you, grates more anger in your chest.

“And why is that?”

Opening his mouth, he momentarily closes it, then opens again, contemplating the statement with caution.

He’s right, in some way.

You’re not supposed to be alive, not supposed to be saddened. You were meant to be in the ground with them, be one of the many bodies littering the L/N Kingdom, granted an eternal sleep.

Yet, you aren’t.

You survived, and you despise this man with every fiber of your being for that.

But things cannot change. You can’t bring them back, and his situation is just as painful as yours.

You both lost people, or, would’ve lost people.

An explanation or an apology, as he said, isn’t necessary.

So you’ll get what you want, tangibly.

Forcefully grabbing his chin and jutting him closer to you on the bed, your voice drips with venom, noses mere breadth apart.

“Then end this winter and marry me, Your Highness.”

For a split second you swear his gaze drifts to your lips, but you shake the thought away, his sharp canines glinting off the mirrors reflection.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one to propose?”

“You killed my family, no need for formalities.”

“Care to remind me why you agreed to marry him? Weren’t you planning to kill him?” Felix piques, apron woven around his thin waist, skillfully measuring flour that’s dusted over his nose.

You needed to get your anger out, then devise a plan. Show King Bahng you weren’t going to succumb to his charms, tricks. Ever.

You hum from your spot on the counter, conversing just as you’d done back in your kingdom with Ms. Maewether.

Technically, he was your new Ms. Maewether.

“Oh no, I still plan on killing him, I just want something first.”

Except, you didn’t talk about murder in front of Ms. Maewether. That was new.

He raises an eyebrow.

“And what would that be?”

Snapping your fingers, you cheerily tap your heels against the cabinets below.

“I want to see spring again.”

Silence overcoming the kitchen, it takes Felix a full minute to understand your preposition before bursting into unadulterated laughter. Well, until he realizes. Then he pouts.

“Aw, I was really looking forward to seeing Chris rejected at the altar.” The smaller Beast whines, popping a piece of sugary sweet dough his mouth and handing another to you.

“Hey, now that’s just cruel,” You mumble, muffled by the delicacy you’re currently chewing on.

“According to you yesterday, not really.”

Ah. Right.

“We just… have a lot to talk about.”

The phrase sounds stupid, but it’s true. Logically, emotionally it’s true. There is a lot in need of discussing.

For now, you’re indifferent.

“I’ve always thought you two were similar.”

The cook’s outburst catches you off guard.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve always wanted to protect what mattered to you most, and maybe, one day, you can understand why he did what he did.”

Leave it to Felix to be your reasonable opinion.

Nevertheless, an invisible barrier rests between you two. A lie. His lie. The Kingdom’s lie.

“Felix, I will never understand why he did it,” You humorlessly chuckle, hopping from your spot. “So tell me, why did you lie?”

All morning you debated the right time to confront him. Tonight was the night, the congratulatory ball, the wedding. Why wait?

Freezing with his back turned to you, he stops mid-slice, dropping the knife atop the cutting board and gradually facing you.

Oh Felix.

His nose flushed pink, lips quivering, you allow him to race forward and hug you, head tucked into your shoulder while you stand there, motionless.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. It was decided from the start, but we were told not to tell you, not until King Bahng told you himself.”

You want to tell him it’s okay, make some jokes, act like things are normal. Though your arms stay glued to your side.

“I guess Hyunjin beat him to it, huh?”

His arms tighten around you and, with a sigh, you pat his back, gently nudging him off of you where you can hold that sweet face of his.

“But don’t worry about me, alright? I can handle this, and I forgive you, so let’s move on from this, Lix.” Tenderly rubbing the skin of his cheek, he meekly smiles, an action you can’t help but feel relieved seeing.

You’re strong. You have to be strong. For Felix, for Han, for Jeongin, for your friends throughout the Beast Clan, you’ll be strong. You’ll enjoy wearing the gown regardless of who bought it for you, cherish the wedding no matter the man you’re wedded to.

If you’re going to have to live like this forever, you might as well make the most of it.

On today’s occasion, you’re dressed by a hand maid sent to your quarters, polished and puffed to perfection by the time five o’clock arrives and the banquet officially begins.

And when you see yourself in the mirror, you’re not exactly sure who stares back at you.

She’s pretty, yes, but she isn’t Y/N. She’s a Queen, the Queen of the Beast Clan.

Your stomach wrenches.

By tomorrow, you’ll be married. Married to King Bahng. You will be a wife, the wife of a King just as the L/N Kingdom intended.

The thought continues to plague your mind, sucking more and more oxygen from your lungs that as you’re escorted to the ball room.

You can hardly inhale and exhale normally as Changbin, whom you appreciate enormously, walks you down the aisle, past an abundance of people you’ve never seen before. Beasts, business men, acquaintances alike.

Sensing your panic, your linked arms allow him to spare you a meager glance you anxiously return.

It’s fine. It’ll be fine.

All previous calmness long dissipated, when you finally redirect your attention from your feet and take in King Bahng waiting at the altar, your rampaging anxiousness increases tenfold.

As the audience claps and either of you turn with your backs facing the crowd, you scorn your lack of a poker face when the King rests a hand on your back.

“Breathe,” He utters, only a whisper you heard.

Wishing to thank him, you bite your tongue, considering the man you’re referring to in the first place prior to replying.

A sharp nod of your head is enough.

Stifling an exhale, you spin on your heel, both bowing to the public before facing each other and holding hands, an action that shouldn’t cause goosebumps to swarm your arms, but does anyway.

“You plan to smash my face in at our wedding?” He murmurs below the customary vows, acknowledging your fingernails digging into his hand.

“Keep giving me ideas and I migh-“

The retort vanishes when he presses his lips to yours, doubling back in shock before his palm on your back keeps you close.

Granting you breathing room if only for an instant, a slow grin tugs at the edge of his lips.

“Then before I die, let me have this first.”

And he dives right back in again, kiss surprisingly tender compared to what you’d expected. Something bruising, dominating.

Instead, the King was soft. Soft as he held your cheek in a hand, soft when pulling you in by the waist.

Separating if only for a fraction of a second, you reach to hold his face, every instinct beckoning you to push him away dissipating into nothing but the nullified drone of your head and the insistent racing of your heartbeat.

“Are you that nervous, pretty? Your heart is-“

You pull him to your lips once more, hating how easy it is to forget, how his lips numb your thoughts—though unable to get enough.

“Shut up and kiss me.”

The guests hollering in your peripheral the lone sound breaching your eardrums, you can’t help thinking.

He did this for his people just as you would’ve done. As for the Mage instigating the war, some secrets shall remain hidden, unable to be answered. You have to accept that among many things.

The King has done nothing but care for you, and as much as you resent him for it, you respect him, if only a tiny bit, as well.

He’s irritable, and not to mention annoyingly handsome. His sympathy-filled eyes might be the death of you, and those dimples of his are stupidly lovable.

But he’s your husband, and somehow, strangely enough, you don’t find yourself hating the thought as much anymore.

Not when he holds you, and especially not when he kisses you as if it’s your last.

After the many hours spent celebrating, you couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about returning to your quarters.

Joined by King Bahng, you find traversing as easy as ever with the help of the (half) Beast behind you, helping navigate past multitudes of people, oddly comforting touch on your back guiding you through the hallways.

Arriving at your room, he pauses, awkwardly shifting his weight on his heels, bewitching gaze flitting left and right, uncharacteristic to his usually smug attitude.

“…Was the kiss too much?”

King Bahng, asking if his kiss was too much?

You wanted to photograph this moment in your mind forever, debating on whether you should tease him about it, egg the normally stoic King on.

However, you tip his chin down, pressing a chaste, soft peck to his lips, amusedly observing him freeze before melting into your touch.

“Could be better.”

He huffs a sigh in response, and you’re left wondering if this is the same man who threatened to break you, the one who now looks like a pouty toddler.

Although, just as you slip by, he takes ahold of your wrist.

“Goodnight Y/N.”

You crack a smile.

“Good night Chris.”

And, suppressing your chuckle, you close the door behind you.

Hastily undressing into nightwear and slipping into bed, you stare up at the ceiling, hours passing from the ticking of a clock in the corner, echoing around the room.

Then, abruptly, your door creaks open.

“My gods, what are you doing here?” You whisper into the darkness, the door creaking behind his crouched form, King Bahng’s crouched form.

“I needed to see you.”

Ah. Don’t say things like that.

Pulling the covers further over yourself, you squint accusingly at the man as he enters, silencing your urge to reprimand he saw you mere hours earlier, presumptuously sitting opposite to you.

He scans what’s visible, fixating on your hand for a moment.

“You kept the ring on?”

Noting the gleaming jewel on your ring finger, you can’t help but feel slightly bashful. It’s not like you’re really married, but the thought sends a sort of satisfaction spreading throughout your chest.

“If I take it off, will it become winter again?”

He grins, giggling childishly.

“Is that the only reason?”

Debating on your response, you wet your lips, looking back up at his barely distinguishable face shrouded in darkness.

You have no doubt he’s thriving off your hesitance.

Oh how badly you wish to wipe that look clean, but in reality, keeping the ring on feels as if a part of you from your own kingdom is with you, similar to your old clothing.

The part of you that, if not invaded, would belong to someone loved, newly wedded.

“No,” You mutter, though the phrase is barely audible.

He perks up.

“Hm?”

You regret saying that. But he’s already heard, there’s no use lying aimlessly.

“I said no, that’s not the only reason.”

“Care to tell me the other reason?”

Rapidly averting your attention to your hand, you discover speaking is easier when not looking at him.

“Keeping it on makes me feel like I’m really in love. I like imagining that, being married.”

You miss the sad lilt crossing his face.

“We are married.”

Without missing a beat, you meet his stare.

“Are we?”

Unlike before, there’s no waver to your voice, no caution.

Winding around to your side of the bed, he settles beside your feet.

You clear your throat.

“I wanted to see spring again, and to you, I’m simply a present. A playtoy to your disposal. This isn’t marriage, not how I was taught, this is just a business arrangement.”

Nevertheless, the hurt leaks into your voice. So long to a resilient tone.

“Y/N, don’t do this to me.”

Come to think of it, it’s the first time he’s ever called you by your name apart from last night.

Having had enough of his nonsense, you spring for his collar, dragging him below you on the bed. Opposite to earlier, you’re on top this time, you’re in control.

“You don’t deny it.”

A silence passes.

“I would deny it a thousand times, but you wouldn’t believe me. And I don’t blame you for that.”

He sucks in a breath.

“I only ask you don’t doubt this marriage. This isn’t a business arrangement, and I will treat you with as much respect and love as possible, even if you don’t want me too. That is what marriage is, how I was taught.”

It’s your turn to inhale, lost within the confines of this dark space.

“Chris, do you love me?”

You both have people you love, people you want to protect, wanted to protect. It wasn’t his intention to hurt you, not when he found you after you ran away, not when ordering a salve to keep you safe, nor now, as you lean above him.

Like he told you. You weren’t meant to survive. You were supposed to be peacefully asleep, forever.

This man, this Mage, this Beast, is as much a murderer as your savior. You choose how to condemn him.

“I do, more than you could ever imagine.”

How can you stay mad at a guilty man, a man who kept you alive when you were on the brink of death? Who now professes to loving you, wanting to give you a marriage you’d been cheated of, give you everything you’ve been cheated of with everything in his power.

Hovering right by his lips to the point your chests touch, you place a miniature kiss there.

“I hate you, so much.”

Then another kiss.

His arms, wrapped around your more elevated form, drag you down in an embrace. One hand presses your face to his shoulder, another rubbing circles on your back.

“And I’m so sorry, I’m so, so, sorry.”

Raising up, you can’t contain the tremor of your lip, the way your eyes shakily close shut as you steal a third kiss from his lips, a kiss he returns, hands carefully holding each side of your face.

“Chris?” You manage, currently straddling his lap, his body resting against the headboard.

Kindly, he keeps a palm against your lower back, helping you balance.

“Can you show me what it means to be loved?”

You never understood how a person could melt until this moment. He wears that look again, like in the forest. The look that makes you cry.

What love looks like for Christopher Bahng, you don’t know. You have no doubt there will be ugly moments, moments you’ll reconsider, rethink.

You’re both hurt, some wounds still hurting. But for him, for you, you’re willing to take that chance.

“I’d be honored.”

FIC TAGLIST. @stayceebs97 @duhgirl @yourgirljanvi @readr1221 @spearbinnie0327 @hyunjinsartpeice @cheesytangerine @palindrome969 @luminouskalopsia @kiaralynn3838 @chrizztopher97 @starlost-andfound @weeping-angel-in-the-tard1s @zaggprincess2

530 notes · View notes

rineptune · 3 months

Note

Heeeeeyyyy pal

Can we get a continuation of that fic with the pregnant reader who's Lucifer's sister

Like what if her water broke at like, the *least* convenient time and Lucifer is freaking tf out, Alastors chill as usual and readers just like

:) "I'm just glad to be here" while having contractions

Love your work btw 🤗

inconvenient timing.

summary: inconvenient timing for your water to break, but what else could you do?

warnings: foul language, brief description of the horrors of pregnancy and labor

a/n: here it is n tysm!! the second part to devil’s paradise

during your pregnancy, all is well.

regular visits from the doctor became part of the routine, and alastor made the effort to be the one accompanying you to every last one of them, and on the rare occasion that he couldn’t accompany you, charlie—your ever optimistic and kind niece—was the one who came with.

the crew of the hotel treated you as if you were made of glass, not wanting you to lift too much on your plate, so they did their best to cater to your every need and demand (not that you needed much and bothered them often).

you took care of yourself, too.

though your belly had gotten swollen, you were feeling fine, as if you weren’t carrying the unborn child of the feared radio demon in pride ring. you thanked whoever it is you could thank that you didn’t experience morning sickness, however, you were no exemption from the fatigue and discomfort that came with being pregnant.

lucifer’s worry for your well-being throughout all of this still hasn’t completely faded away. you were his only sister! and his brothers in heaven would surely have his head if something did happen to you now that you’ve fallen from the skies and are now under his domain.

everything was going well, until it wasn’t.

•

you went with charlie during another meeting with heaven’s official court in place of your brother. obviously, all eyes wandered to your stomach because, how could they not?

a former angel pregnant? that stirred whispers and disgusted expressions from those who were from the court.

“as you can see, the population in hell is—“

charlie was cut off when the angels gasped in unison. confused, she turned to you, and her eyes widened when she saw the bottom half of your dress soaked.

“oh my go—! aunt yn, your water broke.” she says in a panic.

“i see that, my dear,” you answer with an awkward cough.

“it seems that i’ll be taking my leave early, uhm... excuse me.”

“wait! uhm, i’ll take you back!” she tells you. “we’ll be back another time, sorry! this is very important for us.” charlie tells the angels present at the court meeting.

•

alastor swore you were about to snap his hand into two.

“darling, are you nervous?” he asks smoothly.

“no? why would you ask that, al?”

“hmm.”

he glances at the hand that gripped his, remarkably so tight that he feels all the blood from that particular area stop flowing. your free hand caressed your belly through the hospital gown, taking slow and even breaths to somewhat soothe the contractions.

“i was only wondering,” alastor answers.

you may have a high pain tolerance, but when you’re having contractions, you might as well swear on every god and angel to spare you from the agonizing pain—promising to never think of having any children in the future again.

because, god, it hurts like a bitch.

as calm as you were, lucifer, on the other hand, had no calm bone in his body.

“oh, god. gabriel’s calling,” lucifer says, looking as though he’s about to throw up.

“and the nursery still has renovations that need to be done—“

“i’m going to be an uncle, holy shit—“

“what if something goes wrong? what? no! i shouldn’t think that—“

“should i prepare the gifts—“

“where are the doctors and nurses? they should’ve been here by now—“

“i knew we shouldn’t have taken you to sloth ring, yn—“

“lucifer,” you breathed out. “calm down.”

“i am calm! fucking calm,” he said, wiping away the sweat on his brow.

“you sound like a dying goat, my lord,” alastor smiled.

“fuck you, deerface.”

“ok, ok. no one should be fighting,” you amusedly sigh, groaning when you feel another sharp contraction that had you biting your lip.

this got the attention of the other two, and lucifer asked you if you were okay as alastor placed a comforting hand on your belly.

well, at least they got along when need be.

•

“look, she has your eyes and smile, al.”

after long, painful hours of labor and practically dying on your hospital bed due to the procedure of bringing a new life into this hellish world, a healthy baby girl was born.

she took on alastor’s ears, eyes, and smile, while she had your wings and charm. the little fawn was sound asleep in your arms after almost tragically biting off a nurse’s finger when he was checking for anything wrong with your baby—to alastor’s dismay, he wished his little girl had succeeded.

nevertheless, she is perfect in his eyes already.

“our little fawn is certainly perfect, my dear,” he says. “she has your charm, too.”

“that she does.”

and you best believe charlie and lucifer cried when charlie finally held her baby cousin.

“charlie, dear, are you ok?” you ask, a bit concerned.

“allergies, auntie. allergies,” she sniffled.

nothing would ever happen to her, because anyone who dares even look at the niece of the morningstar fallen angel who was also the daughter of the infamous radio demon, would receive hell served on a golden platter without any remorse or time for rebuttal.

“it may have been inconvenient timing to have my contractions,” you murmur to alastor once you two are finally home and alone with your baby. “but i wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“i’m glad that you’re ok, darling.”

“mm, thank you, alastor.”

“you shouldn’t thank me for worrying about you. it’s only natural for me to do so, no?” he says.

“now, i have to take care of two, but i wouldn’t have it any other way either.”

#classic ໒꒱ ink #alastor x reader #alastor x you #alastor x y/n #alastor fluff #alastor #hazbin alastor #alastor hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel x y/n #hazbin hotel x you #hazbin hotel fluff #hazbin hotel fanfiction

510 notes · View notes

no-droids · 1 year

Text

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long). As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession. You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets. The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it. The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to. You don’t even really feel like a person right now. The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life. It feels sick. Wrong in your bones. Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop. Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops. Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago. Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground. It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception. What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all. You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now. No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams. No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move. The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again. It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence. Silence. You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement. You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are. You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder. You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something. Reality, maybe. A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands. “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows. Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying? They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat. Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy. It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be. Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately. It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances. Oshua Ryler. Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened. A stormtrooper? His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense. What is he doing here? Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them. They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers. “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.” You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done. You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet. You hate looking at his face. It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust. His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat. He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby. You know what needs to be done. Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over. It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.” You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears. “They hold no power anymore. Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!” The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green. “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…” He stares wide eyed at you and gulps. “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now. “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?” He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?” You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side. “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?” The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around. “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!” You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him. Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about. “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!” He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight. “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty! They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling. You could still kill him. You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit. “Who put the bounty out on you?” You ask sharply. It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!” Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it. You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask. Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something. Din was cut off before he finished. Help? Know what to do? You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by. The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice. The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry. “How many of you are there?”

“At the base? Around three hundred,” he immediately spills. “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours. There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,” You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker. “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground. “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of. In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence. That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector. If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon. And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel. “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…” He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands. “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally? Sure. Realistically? You don’t say anything in response. Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do. The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it. They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip. Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you. Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease. It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression. Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood. Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color. Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?” You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder. Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again. “I need as much information as possible about the base.” You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm. Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard. It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest. While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking. Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now. Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission. Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides. What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors. Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger. Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next. His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears. When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much. He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread. If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces. He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind. Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers. Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base. He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man. If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go. With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get. He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat. Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range. Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind. He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl. Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard. Not far from here, three minutes or less. The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers. It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers. “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask. Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible. Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. The turrets, then. “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old. Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel. “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport. TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?” You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got. You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here. Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here. The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here. Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not. He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul. If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator. “Mando?” You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway. Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it. That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to. Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction. Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose. Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily. It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?” Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls. “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit. “You cover your face like one. You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.” Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now. “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he? He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan. All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge. You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood. This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby. In a sense, it still feels that way. The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family. The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch. He’d know, you tell yourself. If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow. Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore. The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response. In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet. These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back. Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms. The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes. Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?” Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter. The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh. “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add. “How were you able to find us?”

Silence. The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now. He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red. Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality. The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead. Useless, then. Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor. Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention. “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon. The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite. It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened. But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it. The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what? This Mandalorian?” The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms. “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.” The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head. “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees. “He must want the beskar. I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive. He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!” A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed. There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury. It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues. “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth. He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize. Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible. You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety. Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually. It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive. Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk. They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost. You’re both long gone by now. They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest. Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response. His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it. How the fuck did he know? He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile. Who’s this, Mando? She’s just darling, isn’t she? Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods. “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides. Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man. The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul. His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun. He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?” The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember. He’s panicked before. He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time. This is different. This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection. There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now. The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat. You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it. Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you. Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out. His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision. For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground. There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about. Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed. It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground. Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him. Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up. Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?” You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on. Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them. If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways. The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge. Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!” You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull. You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door. “Now! We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up. Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel. Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears. The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping. You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense. Deadly tense. Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once. One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life. It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it. All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking. You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before. Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear. Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship. But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap. Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared. They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is. You can’t seem to breathe like he is. It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand. Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh. A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now. Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing. You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you. When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain. You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment. You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through. You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now. However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest. Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline. Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you. His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time. It’s… cold. A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin. Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood. You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word. You can’t find a single word to say. The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones. It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet. There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden. Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement. He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip. It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features. His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to. You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there. He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor. You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves. Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly. Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself. “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly. Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t. Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult. You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive. There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment. One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty. There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t. “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it. Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones. You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands. He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from. It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you. The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood. Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face. The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground. It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet. Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back. Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand. It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang. You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground. The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead. So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state. He doesn’t move. His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last. If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else. Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying. You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him. You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor. Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes. Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done. Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown. Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain. The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert. You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy. If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him. It was… isolating. Lonely by yourself. The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp. Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner. Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath. One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet. You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What? At least what? Comfort you? Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions? What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him? You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically. He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you. You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do. If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself. At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment. Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul. Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover. You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on. You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again. You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand. After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone. After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in. The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings. It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent. You don’t feel anything as you do it. You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm. Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster. The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything. They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower. Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy. Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent. When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls. Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today. You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep. You don’t even try, it’s pointless. The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself. You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking. You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago. You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong… They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation. You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point. In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this. You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure. How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices? Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t. You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him. You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance. You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course. Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been. Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you. A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone. Multiple people, this time. He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done. The end result won’t change. You own this now. You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice. He wouldn’t argue with you. He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them. It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount. You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned. You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive. You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him. If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it. Focus on them both, alive and well together. Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness. It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself. Hours, maybe. Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are. You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways. After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair. He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet. “Don’t say anything. Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes. You did save him. You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent. “I tried. Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself. I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul. Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you. It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up. “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat. They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses. “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out. The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body. “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself. The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking. You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.” Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes. “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold. Again, everything turns numb. It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today. It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it. For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks. “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me. I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger. I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe. And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II. Do you know why I did that?” The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart. “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand. You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up. Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away. But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you. Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying. It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die. You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t. “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones. Especially the trained ones. Anything else was meant to be your last resort. Not your choice. Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself. The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him. Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried. You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen. “I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you. He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words. “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?” You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster. Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care. “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.” It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless. Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against. It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean. Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.” The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child. Never. You’ll die before that happens. “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that. Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing. Not even you.”

Din stares at you. His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant. It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become. You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both. He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet. It happened. What’s done is done, you can’t change the past. He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so. This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child. You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them. Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers. It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak. Broken. “You wore mine once before, and it was…” He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away. “It wasn’t real. It didn’t fit. It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out. I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?” You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad. You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but… Not a Mandalorian, he’d said. Of course not. Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.” Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again. “It was you covered in blood. It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger. You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship. And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too. You…” He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice. “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you. “You don’t fly into war zones. You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me. You said you tried to be brave… like me.” His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand. “I’ll never ask you to be brave. I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight. They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time. Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again. It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside. You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?” He murmurs to you. You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?” You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory. “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that. Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain. You’ll never be able to change it, though. This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else. Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come. You need to tell him. You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?” You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor. “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat. “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.” He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time. He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine. You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before. It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms. His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing. “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today. All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty. You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now. If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer. Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him. “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #mando x you #reader insert #fanfic #star wars #rough day #no-droids

2K notes · View notes

inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 6 months

Text

When The World Is Crashing Down [Chapter 13: Condemned From The Start] [Series Finale]

Series summary: Your family is House Celtigar, one of Rhaenyra’s wealthiest allies. In the aftermath of Rook’s Rest, Aemond unknowingly conscripts you to save his brother’s life. Now you are in the liar of the enemy, but your loyalties are quickly shifting…

Chapter warnings: Language, warfare, violence, serious injury, alcoholism/addiction, references to sexual content (18+), death, angsttttttt, more children than usual, Wolfman!

Series title is a lyrics from: “7 Minutes In Heaven” by Fall Out Boy.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year” by Fall Out Boy.

Word count: 8.1k.

Link to chapter list: HERE.

Taglist (more in comments): @tinykryptonitewerewolf @lauraneedstochill @not-a-glad-gladiator @daenysx @babyblue711 @arcielee @at-a-rax-ia @bhanclegane @jvpit3rs @padfooteyes @marvelescvpe @travelingmypassion @darkenchantress @yeahright0h @poohxlove @trifoliumviridi @bloodyflowerrr @fan-goddess @devynsficrecs @flowerpotmage @thelittleswanao3 @seabasscevans @hiraethrhapsody @libroparaiso @echos-muses @st-eve-barnes @chattylurker @lm-txles @vagharnaur @moonlightfoxx @storiumemporium @insabecs @heliosscribbles @beautifulsweetschaos @namelesslosers @partnerincrime0 @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @yawneneytiri @marbles-posts @imsolence @maidmerrymint @backyardfolklore @nimaharchive @anxiousdaemon @under-the-aspen-tree @amiraisgoingthruit @dd122004dd @randomdragonfires @jetblack4real @joliettes

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoy the finale.🦀💚

In the Eyrie, one of Rhaena Targaryen’s three dragon eggs has hatched at last; the creature is small and pink, and she has named it Morning. When Rhaena’s tears fall onto the scales of her diminutive wings, they glitter like flecks of rose quartz. Deep within the snow-laden labyrinth of the Mountains of the Moon, Nettles is in hiding with Sheepstealer; already the nearby clans are bringing her offerings of meat and treasure, axes and clubs and daggers, hairpins carved from the ribs of enemies and necklaces made of bear teeth. Silverwing is settling into a lair on an island in the Red Lake at the northwestern corner of the Reach. Word of this has travelled back to King’s Landing, and Borros Baratheon implores Aegon II to seize Silverwing for himself; but the king does not want a new dragon. He wants Sunfyre back. That grim truth aside, Aegon is unable to trek across the continent to tame the beast anyway. Some days he cannot even cross a room. At the bottom of the Gods Eye, bodies are dissolving into bones, threads of long white hair breaking loose to flow in the currents like weightless strands of spider webs torn free by cold drafts. And only a few miles from the border of the Crownlands—preparing to cross the icy waters of the Blackwater Rush—the army of Northmen camps under a full moon in a clear, indigo sky heavy with stars like glinting coins.

“There are passageways under King’s Landing,” Clement Celtigar says. He stands by the bonfire with his sword in his hand, his face flame-bright and eager, forever licking up drops of the Kingmaker’s approval, a stray cat lapping milk splashed in an alley. Increasingly, Cregan Stark finds him tiresome. Clement is brash and dramatic, forever swearing vengeance, reveling in his newfound position as the head of his house. The Warden of the North has never had to beg for attention, admiration, acclaim. These things come to him like snow falls to the earth in winter: effortlessly, inevitably. Yet Cregan tries to be patient. Clement is soon to be his brother-in-law, and it is dishonorable to fail to extend courtesy to one’s kin. Furthermore, it seems, Clement has his uses.

“Are there really?”

Clement nods. He wears the banner of his house on a strip of fabric looped around his upper arm: crabs red like blood, a backdrop of white like snow. “That monster’s disciples used them to kidnap my sister from the Red Keep. But she fought hard. When we searched her rooms, all the furniture was upturned and the sheets ripped from her bed.”

“She is brave,” Cregan murmurs in agreement, though he is distracted now. The air tastes like smoke and ice, the wind rubs raw spots into the soldiers’ faces. They are arriving just in time. The depths of winter is no time to wage war. Cregan Stark imagines how you will greet him when he liberates you: a desperate embrace, hands that refuse to let go, whispered gratitude and breathless kisses on his earth-stained knuckles, bones of steel softened by the innate weakness of womanhood. You will love him, of course you will, fervently and entirely. Then when the realm and succession are secured, the Kingmaker will take you North and wed you in the tradition of his people, under the heart tree where the Old Gods can witness it. And then there will be the wedding night. In Cregan’s understanding, women receive little pleasure from the act itself. It is a burden they bear for the men they love, for the children they are divinely tasked with bringing into existence. Cregan Stark intends to alleviate your suffering in this regard as much as possible…yet he has already begun to choose the names of the sons he will make with you. He especially likes the sound of Brandon, sturdy and grounded and thought to mean leader or prince. “This is the last night your sister will ever spend in the clutches of the Usurper.”

“Praise the Seven.” Then Clement adds diplomatically: “And the Old Gods too, of course.”

“It’s the end of the world,” Cregan Stark says, gazing up into the night sky where constellations tell the stories men deem worthy of remembering. “And the start of a brand new one.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“How did you learn to braid hair?” little Jaehaera asks you in her lilting, reedy voice like a bird’s. You are sitting behind her on the floor in Alicent’s bedchamber. Nearby, Autumn is flipping through a child’s book with Rhaenyra’s ever-solemn son, murmuring as she points to colorful illustrations of ravens, dolphins, bears, dragons, crabs. They are learning to read together.

“My sisters taught me,” you tell the princess. Firelight turns her silver hair to gold, her pale skin to flames. Logs crack and pop as they melt to glowing embers. Alicent glances over at you and sighs despairingly. The dowager queen, so thin she might disappear, is hunched in a chair by the fireplace. She has an unshakeable, rattling sort of cough that reminds you of how Sunfyre sounded on Dragonstone when he was near the end. Her long auburn tresses are falling out in handfuls. She will not survive the winter, this is a certainty.

“You have sisters?” Jaehaera says, surprised. “How many?”

You smile faintly as you weave her hair into one thick braid like the kind Aemond once wore when he went to battle. “Three. Piper, Petra, and Penelope.”

“Where are they now?”

“Back on Claw Isle, where I came from. With our mother.” Mourning Father, mourning Everett, writing letters to Clement to keep his spirits high as he and the Warden of the North march towards King’s Landing to slay the Greens’ king and bind me to a different man’s will.

“What’s Claw Isle like?” Jaehaera asks with a child’s clear, boundless curiosity.

“Rocky, misty, grey. But the ocean is beautiful.” You think of Aegon’s eyes, the same as his daughter’s, a murky storm-blue that is deeper than it looks.

“What brought you here?”

You consider this before you answer. You see it, you feel it: cinders like dark snow in the air, Aemond’s iron grip on your forearm. “When your father was burned at the Battle of Rook’s Rest, he needed someone to help heal him. Your uncle Aemond found me.”

“And he asked you to stay with us?”

He would have slit my throat if I said no. “Yes, he asked very politely, as any gentleman would. And of course I agreed. I wanted to make the king strong again. I wanted to take his pain away.”

Jaehaera stares down at her tiny hands, palms crossed with lines that are long and shadowy in the shifting firelight. She does not speak of Aegon. She does not know him, and he frightens her: the burns on his skin, the suffering in his glazed eyes. She has no memories to impress his true character upon her. If she does not make them herself, she will believe whatever she is told. “I miss Aemond. I miss Daeron.”

“I know, sweetheart.” They were formally laid to rest yesterday on two funeral pyres. Daeron’s bloodied, charred, seafoam green cape was burned to ashes on one. All that was left of Aemond—his favorite books, his quills and ink, small leather eyepatches from when he was a boy—were torched on the other. “I miss them too.”

Jaehaera’s braid is finished. You reach into a pocket of your emerald green velvet gown to retrieve what you have brought for her: a thin golden chain necklace with Aegon’s ring as a pendant. He can’t wear it anymore. His fingers are too swollen. “What is this?” Jaehaera says as you place the chain around her neck. She lifts the ring and peers at it, gold wings and jade eyes.

“It’s supposed to resemble Sunfyre,” you explain. “Your father loves you very much, Jaehaera. He wanted you to have this ring and keep it with you always.” Aegon didn’t say that; he rarely mentions Jaehaera at all. Sometimes you think he forgets she exists. But she is a part of him, she is his legacy, and you cannot look at any piece of her without seeing the man you love.

“He gave it to me? Like a gift?”

“Yes. A gift.” A gift, an inheritance, a relic, a reminder.

Jaehaera turns around and looks up at you hopefully, vast wave-blue eyes like winter oceans. “Do you think I’ll have another dragon someday?”

Her own infant beast, Morghul, was killed in the Dragonpit before Rhaenyra fled the city. “Maybe,” you tell her. “There are eggs that could hatch someday. And there are a few unclaimed adults left, Silverwing and the Cannibal. Perhaps you’ll tame one.”

She wrinkles her nose in confusion. “What’s a cannibal?”

Someone who murders, devours, fuels their body to the detriment of their soul. “Someone who eats their own kind. Like a dragon who feeds on other dragons.”

“So just like in the war. Dragons killing dragons.”

“Exactly,” you say, a shiver crawling down your spine. “Now go show your new necklace to Grandmother.”

Jaehaera wobbles to her feet and dashes across the firelit bedchamber to where Alicent is slumped in her chair. “Look, look! It’s Sunfyre!” you hear Jaehaera chirping. Alicent examines the ring—skeletal hands trembling, large dark eyes slick with tears—and dutifully fawns over it, telling the little girl how beautiful she looks, how brave she has been. Then she bundles Jaehaera into her boney arms and holds her like she’ll never let go. Autumn catches your gaze from the other side of the room, and when you leave to return to Aegon she follows.

“What is your plan if the Greens lose the battle?” she says in the hallway under an arc of grey stones. Her tone is urgent, her hazel eyes sharp. Everyone knows the Northmen are within days of King’s Landing. Borros Baratheon—a large, loud, abrasive man, but with a bottomless appetite for combat—and his soldiers will march out of the city tomorrow to meet Cregan Stark’s army on the fields of the Crownlands, sparse and grey with winter. The Lord of Storm’s End has spent hours locked in the council chamber discussing strategy with Larys Strong, Corlys Velaryon, and the misfortunate yet courageous Tyland Lannister, maimed by his months of torture at the hands of the Blacks.

“We won’t.” We can’t.

Autumn slams her palm against the wall behind you; the sick thud of flesh against stone reminds you of the day Helaena died. “Wake up. We might. You’d better have your options figured out.”

And you recall Larys’ words on Dragonstone: I think it’s time for you to consider what your options are if a Green victory no longer appears to be viable. “We’ll run,” you say weakly. “We’ll take Aegon and we’ll escape through the corridors under the Red Keep, just like he did before. Cregan Stark will kill Aegon if he finds him. I can’t let that happen. We’ll have to run.”

“Run where?” Autumn snaps pointedly, pushing you towards a conclusion you refuse to acknowledge.

“I don’t know.”

“Where? Where could we go that is beyond the grasp of your wolf if he seizes the capital?”

“Dorne, Essos. Somewhere, anywhere.”

“The king won’t survive a journey like that.”

You cover your face with your hands, feel the biting cold of snowflakes melting in your hair, see the stains of earth on your thighs as Cregan Stark forces them apart. How can I lie with a man who hailed the deaths of people I loved? How can I spend the rest of my life listening to him being called a hero for killing Aegon? How can I give him children? How could I love a baby that was half-made of him? “We ran before. We’ll have to do it again.”

Autumn scoffs. “You have no idea what it means to be a woman on your own in the world. What will you become without a great house, without protection? A prostitute? A peasant? Will you eat scraps covered with rot or mold? Will you live in a tree? Will you beg some family to take you in? And then when the father who is oh-so-gallant in daylight starts fumbling under your blankets once the candles are blown out, will you let him inside you? Or will you fight him off and risk a blade in your guts, your throat? You have no fucking idea what it’s like out there.”

“I don’t care what happens to me if Aegon’s gone.”

“You would abandon Jaehaera? You would abandon me?” Autumn demands. “You speak for us now. You are the only one who can. Our fates are twisted up with yours.”

That’s true. And I promised Helaena I would look out for her daughter. You can’t imagine a life without Aegon; there was a time when he was only a name—and an infamous one, a terrible one, soulless and monstrous—but now he has broken down the eaves of what you were once resigned to call your life and painted colors in the sky you’d never glimpsed before, never even dreamed of. You ask Autumn with genuine, painful bewilderment: “What is the point of learning that something exists only to have it taken away? Why would that happen? Where is the justice in it, where is the reason?”

Autumn smiles, sad and patient. “Ah, this is an affliction of the highborn. You still believe that there is a design, and that life has some amount of fairness in it. There is no divine judgment being passed, my lady. There is no god weighing the worth of your dragon or your wolf or yourself. Life is random, and it is ungovernable, and it is very often cruel. And that makes it all the more remarkable that you knew the king for the time you did. That you ever met him.”

It wasn’t enough. And I can never go back to who I was before. “I’m sorry. I should not complain to you. Your losses have been terrible.”

“It is no contest,” Autumn replies, weary now. “But I should go back to check on the children. They need me.”

“No. They love you.”

And now she beams, sparkling eyes and copper ringlets. She doesn’t need to say it, you can both feel it in the winter-cold air. She loves them in return. She loves them fiercely. As long as they live, she will have reasons to.

When you reach Aegon’s bedchamber, Grand Maester Orwyle is just leaving. He bows to you and grins, pleased that you have both survived the fall and retaking of King’s Landing. He is haggard from his months in the dungeons when Rhaenyra ruled the capital, but he endured. Who would have guessed at the start of this war that the old man had more years left than Aemond or Daeron or harmless little Maelor? You wait in the hallway for the maester to amble sluggishly by, but then when he is gone, you peer through the slit of the half-open door to see that Lord Larys Strong is speaking to Aegon, who is propped up in bed on a mountain of pillows and wearing only his cotton sleeping trousers. He is thin, frail, ghostly pale with the exception of the scars that are a mosaic of white and scarlet and bruise-like violet. Aegon and Larys have not noticed you. You linger just outside the doorway, watching, listening.

You can take care of Aegon as much as you wish now: feed him, clothe him, clean sweat from his brow, dose him with milk of the poppy, rub rose oil into his scars, stretch his legs, test the heat of his skin for fever. He’s too weak to stop you. He can’t walk, can’t stand, can’t stay awake for more than an hour or two at a time, can’t even pour his own wine or milk of the poppy; the glass bottles are too heavy when full. Yesterday, Aegon had to be carried outside in a litter to see the remnants of his brothers burned on the pyres. And he had exchanged a brief, somber glance with Autumn that you neither anticipated nor understood. He acknowledges her so rarely. And yet her small hazel eyes had been alarmed, knowing.

Larys is saying with a grave expression and his restless hands propped in the handle of his cane: “Lord Borros Baratheon is asking for your assurance that as soon as the war is won, you will take his eldest daughter Cassandra as your wife.”

Aegon stares at him, incredulously, impatiently. Aegon has not called you his wife in the company of others since his homecoming. You do not ask why. You already know. It is not because his intentions have changed; it is because if he is not the victor, your life is in less danger as his captive than as his queen. “Surely even a man as brainless as Borros can surmise that there would not be much benefit for the lady now. I am a worm. Useless, pathetic, deformed, no longer virile.”

“He is willing to take the chance, I gather. And he is placing his eggs in more than one basket. He would like another daughter, Floris, to be married to me.”

“Seven hells,” Aegon mutters. Then he turns determined. “I cannot marry another. I won’t do it. I am claimed already, body and soul.”

“I fear how enthusiastically Borros’ men will fight for you if you do not agree to the match. He is risking his life for your cause. He will expect generous repayment.”

Aegon is quiet for a long time. He stares fixedly at his bedside table: a full cup, a large glass bottle of milk of the poppy. His dagger is still there from when you cut and braided his hair for him this morning; he cannot do it himself anymore. At last Aegon says, almost too low for you to discern from the doorway: “He’s not cruel, is he?”

“Who? Borros Baratheon?”

Aegon glares at Larys. “No.”

After a moment, Larys realizes what his king means. “Cregan Stark isn’t cruel. I’ve heard many whispers from many mouths, but I’ve never heard that.”

“Look at me. Don’t lie to me.”

“He isn’t cruel,” Larys says again. “Perhaps the truth is worse. He is measured, competent, merciful, wise. He is honorable. The Manderlys want to torture everyone and the Boltons itch to sharpen their flaying knives but Stark forbids it. He respects the laws of war. He tries to avoid the slaughter of noncombatants. He forbids his men from burning farms or raping women. He is devoted to the woman you call your wife. He takes no mistresses, visits no brothels. Cregan Stark is not a monster. He’s not soulless. He’s just on the wrong side.”

Aegon nods slowly, then his face breaks into a humorless smirk. “Tell Borros Baratheon that I’ll marry whichever daughter he wants me to when the war is over. I’ll marry all four if that is his preference, and bed them all on the wedding night too, one right after the other. Agree to anything he asks for. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

It doesn’t matter because none of it will ever happen, even if the Baratheon army does win the Iron Throne for the Greens. It doesn’t matter because Aegon does not believe he’ll still be here in a month, or two weeks, or perhaps even days.

But he can’t mean that. He’s not thinking clearly. He’s confused, he’s exhausted, he’s in pain, you tell yourself, before remembering that Aemond said it first.

“Yes, Your Grace.” Larys is subdued, sorrowful. He bows deeply to his king. Then he turns to depart.

“One more thing,” Aegon says, gesturing to something on the side of his bed you can’t see from where you’re standing. “I hate to impose upon you further, but I can’t manage it myself. Can you take that and empty it somewhere? I don’t care where. But you must keep it hidden from my wife. The red-haired girl Autumn knows, and so do the maesters now. They are all sworn to secrecy. Can I trust you to exercise the same circumspection?”

Larys is gaping down at an object that is a mystery to you. He begins to stammer out a reply, stops to collect himself, and starts again. “Yes. Yes you can.”

“Good.”

Larys picks up the object; you are puzzled to discover that it is a chamber pot, white and porcelain. And as he navigates around Aegon’s bed and towards the door where you wait, you see that the vessel is full of blood.

You gasp before you can stop yourself, a razor-sharp inhale of breath that both men hear. They spot you, lurking in the doorway like someone lost, someone far from home. Shock bolts across Aegon’s face, and then frustration, and then defeat, and then profound misery.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to lie to you, I just knew…I knew you’d be upset and I…I didn’t want to hurt you. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

“How long?”

“It doesn’t matter, Angel.”

“How long?” you ask again. “Just since this morning?”

“Four or five days now.”

“Four or five…?” Your mind whirls like storm winds. He’s dying. He’s really dying. His kidneys are failing and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t cut him open and stitch him back together. There’s no wound to scrub clean with vinegar and then bandage with honey and linen. There’s no brew that can restore the rhythm of his blood and bones and nerves. He’s just dying. That’s all there is. That’s the beginning and the end of it.

“Please don’t cry,” Aegon says, reading your face. “Don’t do that, please don’t, I’ve hurt you enough already.”

His hands stretch out to close the space between you, and as Larys slips from the room you go to Aegon, climb into bed beside him, collapse into him as his arms catch you and rest your head against his bare, scarred chest, his feverish skin mottled with the history of wounds you helped close all those months ago. “I’m sorry,” you sob. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let you go after Baela and Moondancer on Dragonstone. I should have stopped you. I should have dragged you inside the castle to wait until Aemond and Vhagar could help you. I shouldn’t have let Aemond go to Harrenhal. I shouldn’t have let Daeron fly south. I shouldn’t have let Autumn go back to King’s Landing, and I shouldn’t have let Everett stay there. I shouldn’t have let Helaena leap from the window. I should have stopped Maelor from being sent to the Reach. I should have stopped Rhaenys and the Red Queen from taking flight to burn you in your armor at Rook’s Rest. I should have stopped this! I should have done something! The only good thing I’ve ever had to offer the world was healing but I can’t save anyone, I can’t stop their suffering, I can’t do anything!”

“None of it was within your control, and none of it was your responsibility. I am the king. The fate of my kingdom and my followers rests with me. I wear their spilled blood, not you. I am so full of red I’m overflowing with it.” And he chuckles, sardonic, exhausted. He’s already battling unconsciousness again; you can hear his heartbeat slackening, the slow laborious expanding and contracting of his lungs.

“Aegon,” you say softly, as if afraid to speak it into existence. “What happens if the Baratheons don’t win tomorrow?”

“They will. They have to. There’s nothing I can do for you if they lose.” Then he winces and groans. It’s his back again, his failing kidneys, overrun with so much ruin—burns and breaks and pressure and heartache—that their cadence faltered and then ceased. You grab his cup of milk of the poppy and tilt it against his lips; and how many times have you done this since you met him, burned nearly to death and half-mad at Rook’s Rest? A hundred? Aegon drinks it down, his arms still tight around your waist. They do not loosen until he’s out like a snuffed candle.

You refill the cup on his bedside table with milk of the poppy in case he needs more when he wakes, pick up the dagger you use to cut his disheveled hair, take it to the dresser. And in the cascade of silver moonlight flooding in through the windows, you practice laying the gleaming blade against your wrists, pressing it to the throbbing arteries of your throat, angling the sharpened point of it between a gap in your ribs and towards your racing heart.

Autumn. Jaehaera. Aemond’s child that Alys carries. I still have promises to keep. I still have tasks that cannot be left unfinished.

Helaena’s words surface like a drowned man dredged from the waves: You must whisper into the right ears.

You set the dagger down on top of the dresser and roam to the castle library where Aemond once spent so many hours. You collect a stack of anatomy books and carry them back to Aegon’s bedchamber. There, before the roaring fireplace, you devour them for any scrap of hope, any last resort. You turn pages until one illustration stops you. It is an unclothed man, his major veins etched in blue and his arteries in red, his nerves a faded yellow, his bones white and unshattered, his body a roadmap of the bricks and mortar used by the architects of nature. You have seen this image before. It is the same page Aegon teased you for studying when you were travelling by carriage back to the capital from Rook’s Rest.

You rip out the page, crumple it violently, pitch it into the fire and watch it burn.

~~~~~~~~~~

At dawn, Lord Borros Baratheon leads his men out of the city. You hear them through the glass panes of the windows, closed against the winter chill and flecked with frost: boots marching, hooves of warhorses clomping against cobblestones. They carry with them swords and spears and bows and morning stars like the one Criston Cole was famed for using. Meanwhile, throughout the city, civilians are arming themselves with anything they can find to ward off an invasion of Northmen, creatures they believe to be bestial and mindless. Men carry kitchen knives and clubs fashioned out of bits of furniture or driftwood. Women hide their young children in cupboards and under creaking wooden floors.

“I should be going with them,” Aegon says. He’s just taken another dose of milk of the poppy and is struggling to keep his eyes open. His long, slow blinks close his vacant eyes for ever-increasing intervals. You’ve changed his clothes and cleaned the sweat from his skin as best you can, but he’s burning from the inside out.

“You’re not able to fight, Aegon. Nobody faults you for that. Everyone knows you were wounded in battle.”

“They must think I’m a coward.”

“No, you inspire them. They love you. I love you.”

Aegon doesn’t say it back. He never says it back. He only offers you the same drowsy, mournful phrase of High Valyrian he always does, not knowing that Aemond told you what it means: To your misfortune.

Autumn is with the children in Alicent’s rooms. The castle is tense and as quiet as a crypt—Alicent weeps soundlessly, Larys paces the halls with Corlys and Tyland Lannister, everyone peeks out of windows constantly to see if bannermen of the victor have appeared on the horizon—but she keeps them distracted with stories and games. You cycle between Alicent’s bedchamber and Aegon’s. He is in and out of consciousness; sometimes you perch beside him on the bed, sometimes you lie curled up against him counting the beats of his heart, sometimes you help Autumn read to Jaehaera and Aegon the Younger. It is just after noon when the city bells begin to toll and screams rise from the streets outside the Red Keep. You and Autumn hurry to a window. In the distance, beyond the city gates, there is a swarming mass of infantry, cavalry, archers. Their banners, when you strain your eyes to decipher them, are not the brazen, vivid yellow of House Baratheon. They are night black and an icy, steely grey. They are the colors of House Stark.

“No,” Autumn says, denial in a protracted, helpless exhale. Alicent shrieks, frightening the children. You grab Autumn’s hand and lead her out into the hallway to warn the others if they don’t know already.

Lord Corlys Velaryon comes bounding up a staircase. “There are soldiers down in the secret passageways!” he booms. “Northmen! Armed! I’ve helped our guards bar the doors, but that won’t hold them back forever.”

Autumn looks to you. “Get the children ready to travel,” you tell her. “Find Larys and inform him.”

“Yes, my lady,” she says, and is gone. You sprint in the opposite direction towards Aegon’s bedchamber. You blow the door open like a strong wind, and Aegon startles awake. You rip through his dresser for things he will need: warm clothes, boots, his dagger, bottles of milk of the poppy.

“Get up, Aegon. We have to go. We’ll run, we’ll flee, there are Northmen in the tunnels but we’ll find another way out, we have to try, we have to, if they catch you they’ll—”

“Come sit with me,” he says from the bed, calmly, like you have all the time in the world. He is reaching out for you with one hand.

“What? No, we have to hurry—”

“Angel,” Aegon says. “I need you to come sit with me now.”

Why isn’t he afraid? Why isn’t he frantic? You cross the room with slow, numb footsteps. When you reach the bed, Aegon takes both of your hands in his own. And suddenly you know exactly what he is going to say. You remember what he told his brother in High Valyrian the last time Aemond left Dragonstone. Your voice is trembling and hoarse. Your throat burns like embers. “Aemond was supposed to be here to help us win. But he’s gone. Daeron, Criston, Helaena, Otto, Everett, Jaehaerys, Maelor, Autumn’s baby, so many people are gone.”

Aegon whispers, smiling softly as tears spill down his cheeks, one scarred and the other pure: “I’m not going to get better this time.”

“No,” you moan. “No, Aegon, no. You can’t say that, you can’t tell me that—”

“I’m not going to get better.” Now his palms cradle your face, forcing you to listen. “I’m not. And it’s okay. I’m not angry, I’m not scared. You’ve done everything you could and you’ve bought me more time and I’m so grateful. But I don’t want it to hurt anymore. I’ve been in pain for so long. I’ve been in pain my whole goddamn life.” He kisses you, like tasting something rare and fleeting. His thumbprint skates along the curve of your jaw, memorizing the angles of your bones, the rhythm of your pulse. “Please, Angel. I don’t want to try to run and die on the side of the road somewhere. I don’t want to die with Cregan Stark’s blade at my throat.”

You shake your head, unable to believe, unable to understand.

Aegon glances to the empty cup on his bedside table, to the large glass bottle of milk of the poppy. Then his eyes return to you. “You know how to do it.”

No. Never. But beneath those cold, dark, stormy waters: It would be painless. “I can’t,” you say, overwhelmed with horror.

“Listen, listen to me—”

“No—”

“Angel.”

“I can’t do that to you. Not to you. I can’t, I can’t.”

“When I’m gone, go to Cregan Stark,” Aegon says. “He is an honorable man, he will ensure your survival. He is the only person who can now. He wants to put his mark on the world. He wants to play Kingmaker. Let him. He can decree that my daughter will marry Rhaenyra’s son and ascend to the Iron Throne. He can end the war. Cregan will keep you safe. Tell him that I kidnapped you, that I forced myself on you. Tell him that I wanted an heir with Valyrian blood. Tell him that I was a drunk, a degenerate. Tell him whatever he wants to hear.”

“You would become a monster?”

“To protect you? I would become anything.”

He’s holding you, he’s pulling you into him until you can feel the fever bleeding from his flesh into yours, until you can number the knots of his spine and the ladder-rungs of his ribcage, counting them with your fingers through the sweat-drenched fabric of his cotton shirt. You draw back to look at him, to really look at him, sunken bloodshot eyes and rasping breaths, scar tissue of the body and the soul. You remember the day you met him, how he’d begged to die and been refused, how you brought him back. You postponed a debt, but you never paid it. It’s not possible to ever pay enough. You stack up gold coins in a vault until they touch the ceiling and still the Stranger comes knocking, jangling his purse sewn with scorched skin and chanting: more, more, more.

Aegon glances to the cup again. “How much?” he asks you, hushed like a prayer.

You don’t answer. Instead, you stand and go to the dresser. You open a small wooden door beneath the mirror. Your reflection is a woman you don’t know, someone who walks through fog and memory, someone made of ghosts. You take four clean cups from the cabinet and set them on Aegon’s bedside table. As he watches—eyes glassy with agony, lungs rattling—you fill them all with smooth, pearlescent, lethal liquid, as well as the empty cup that was already there. “Five,” you say, and it sounds nothing like you. “I think three at once would be enough. Five to make sure.”

He sobs with relief, and only now do you realize how badly he needed this. “Thank you. Oh gods, thank you.”

Your own words come back like an echo: I preserve life, I don’t take it. But that was a different lifetime, a different you. Aegon’s fingers are lacing through yours. He is drawing you back onto the bed, he is brushing your hair back from your face, he is kissing the path of tears down your cheeks so he doesn’t waste a drop of you. He’ll never get another taste, another chance; not in this life, not on this earth.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the end with you,” he says. “I really tried.”

“I know, Aegon.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

He looks down at his left hand, then remembers where his ring has gone. He chuckles, darkly, bitterly, dismayed by all the failings he is built of. “I don’t even have anything to give you.” Then he remembers. “My dagger. Can you get my dagger?”

You are petrified. “Why?”

He grins, dull teeth beneath dazed eyes. “I’m not going to hack off a finger or my exemplary cock or something. I promise. Just get it.”

You fetch the dagger and bring it to the bed, and only then do you realize what he means for you to have. He points to it, then threads it through his pale, swollen fingers: his thin lock of hair that you’ve been weaving for him since the day you met. He wants you to take his braid.

“You’ll have to cut it yourself,” he says. “I don’t think I can.”

You hook the blade beneath the top of his braid, and with a few cautious slices of the dagger it is free. You tuck the braid into a pocket of your gown, thick black velvet to guard against the winter cold. Then you lay the dagger on the bedside table and pick up one of the cups filled to the brim with milk of the poppy. Your tears are scalding and torrential; it is almost impossible to see through them. You smooth back Aegon’s white-blond hair as you pour the blissful, deadly brew through his lips and down his throat, hating yourself, knowing it is the kindest thing you can do for him.

Suddenly, when the cup is half-drained, Aegon pushes it away. “You don’t have to be here. You don’t have to watch,” he says. “I can do the rest. Go, now. Right now. If the Boltons or some other house finds you before Cregan does, they might not recognize you. They might not care. You’re only safe with Cregan Stark. He has to find you first.” Aegon takes the cup with one shaking hand and presses a palm to your shoulder with the other. You haven’t moved. You can’t move. “Go. Leave me. Now. Please go. I love you, but you have to go now.”

“I can’t,” you choke out.

“You have to.”

“I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”

“Angel,” he says tenderly, smiling. “I’ll see you again. Just not too soon.”

“Okay,” you whisper, and you kiss him, traces of milk of the poppy on his lips that deaden the thunderstruck horror faintly, powerlessly, like small clouds drifting over the sun.

“If there’s anything interesting on the other side, I’ll find a way to let you know.”

The dreams, you think. “Okay,” you say again, barely audible.

“Now go. Right now. Go.”

You wipe tears from your face with your sleeve as you turn away from him. You can’t look back; if you do, you’ll never be able to walk out of this room. You take the dagger from the bedside table. Your bare feet pad across the cold floor. As you step through the doorway, on the periphery of your vision you can see Aegon swallowing down each cupful of poison as quickly as he can. It won’t take long to stop his heart. Minutes, perhaps. Seconds. You walk into the hallway. Autumn has just arrived with Jaehaera’s tiny hand clasped in her own. A few paces behind her, Alicent and Larys stand with Rhaenyra’s son. Two orphans without choices, two pawns in a much grander game.

Autumn is panicked. “Where should we go? What should we do?” Then she takes another look at your face. Her eyes go wide with terror. “What? What happened?”

“Follow me.” Your voice is low, flat, dark like deep water. Your eyes flick briefly to Lord Larys Strong. “Keep the boy here. He’s not safe with the smallfolk yet. But the Northmen won’t harm him.”

Larys knows. It’s over. He is devastated; and yet you think a part of him might be relieved as well. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“I’m not the queen anymore. I never really was.” You give him Aegon’s dagger. “I don’t think you’ll need this, Lord Larys, but now you have it in the event of any danger. Or in case I can’t convince Cregan Stark to spare you and you decide you’ve had enough of this world. You should get a say in how your life ends. You’ve earned it.”

Then you break away from them and glide through the Red Keep, Autumn and Jaehaera trotting swiftly behind you to keep up. You pass the rookery where Aemond wrote his letters. You sweep through the gardens where Helaena loved to collect her insects. You gaze down to the beach where Daeron landed on Tessarion under a dazzling sun before winter came like a plague to King’s Landing. From inside the castle, you can hear Alicent wailing as she discovers her last child’s lifeless body. What was all of this for? Why did this have to happen? Why didn’t anybody stop it?

Out on the streets of the city, the smallfolk have flocked with their makeshift weapons to defend their homes from the Northmen. But their eyes are darting everywhere and their faces are uncertain as they clutch their clubs made out of the legs of chairs and their rusty kitchen knives. They haven’t decided if it’s futile. They don’t want to be butchered for nothing.

“That’s Autumn!” they shout and sigh, especially the women. “The mother of the king’s bastard son, the one murdered by the half-year queen!” They reach out to skim their hands over Autumn’s gown, her long coppery hair, as if she is a saint or a spirit who can impart good luck upon them, who can change their fates. They fall to their knees to bow to Jaehaera, their king’s only living child, and she blinks at them with benign confusion.

But the smallfolk have a different reception for you. You hear their venomous chattering: “Is that the Celtigar woman?” “Her family put this city through hell.” “They served Rhaenyra.” “She’s a traitor, she’s a thief.” A few of them venture close enough to tug at your gown, to strike at you. A woman’s knuckles rap against your cheekbone, raising a bruise there like lavender in a dusk sky. You think dully: I wonder if they’ll gouge out my eyes with those knives like they did to Everett.

“Get back!” Autumn hisses, shoving the smallfolk away. And when she speaks, they listen. “She is going to the Wolf of Winterfell. She is my protector. She is your protector now too. She is the best chance you have left.” And the crowds open up and the three of you pass through King’s Landing unimpeded, though cloaked in thousands of fascinated gazes.

The King’s Gate has been abandoned; the guards must have feared the Boltons’ flaying knives or Lord Stark’s dark justice. Autumn instructs several hulking men of the smallfolk to open the gate if they wish to be spared from the wolf’s wrath. They are reluctant at first, but do as she asks. When the massive doors creak open, the people of the capital huddle behind the wall and peer out skittishly as you, Autumn, and Jaehaera advance to meet the Northmen, who are bloodied from battle and now within a hundred yards of the city. Above, the sky is thick and iron-grey and frigid. Snowflakes—the first of this winter to touch King’s Landing—begin to fall and land in your hair, and you are reminded of how embers rained from the smoldering pine trees at Rook’s Rest.

“Can you catch one on your tongue?” Autumn asks Jaehaera, and the little girl giggles as they both try.

The Warden of the North rides an immense, shaggy warhorse at the head of what remains of his army. He recognizes you immediately, dismounts, approaches with determined, unbreakable strides. Clement is close behind him.

“You’re alive!” your brother shouts joyously. “And apparently not pregnant with a Targaryen bastard! Praise the gods!”

Cregan Stark does not act as if he’s heard this. The Warden of the North is not as you remember him; he is larger, heavier and broader from the muscles won in battle, coarsened by weather and war. His hair is long and dark and pulled back from his face. He wears a sword at his belt that is taller than you are when it’s unsheathed. He is entombed in leather and furs. He does not hesitate before he lays his hands you. You are betrothed to him, you are his property, would a man ask before he grabs his horses or his dogs?

The Warden of the North does not seize your forearm roughly like Aemond once did. Instead, his massive palms and fingers clasp your face as he marvels at you. You can feel the stains of dirt and ashes he leaves there. You want to scream when he touches you, but you can’t. You want to burn with rage and heartache until you crumble like ruins. Your life is already over. Your life has just begun.

“You have suffered greatly,” Cregan Stark says, a marriage of shock and reverence.

“You have no idea.” Perpetual Resurrection, you think. It doesn’t mean you come back better. It just means you’re still here.

“You are safe now,” Cregan swears. “The Usurper will never harm you again.” And it ends the same way it began: with a man mistaking your allegiance and beckoning you into a destiny that he wholeheartedly believes is greater than any you could have envisioned for yourself.

“He’s dead.”

This stuns Cregan. “When? How?”

“Today. Of old wounds sustained in battle.”

He looks at Jaehaera, noticing her for the first time. “Is that his daughter?”

“Yes,” you say. “She must always be treated with kindness. She must be protected.”

“You have an affinity for her,” Cregan notes, intrigued.

You hear Aegon’s voice, so clearly it cuts like a blade: Tell him whatever he wants to hear. “We have been through great trials together. We survived the same monster.”

The Warden of the North nods. This is a story he craves to be told. “Very well. If it is your wish that she not be discreetly disposed of as a Silent Sister, I will betroth her to Rhaenyra’s surviving son. They will unite the noble houses of Westeros and end this war.”

“The worst of the Greens are dead already. Those who remain should be shown mercy. Alicent is old and ill and broken from loss. She poses no threat. She should be permitted to remain in the company of her granddaughter. Corlys was loyal to Rhaenyra until she falsely imprisoned him for treason, and he belongs on Driftmark with Rhaena. Larys Strong, Tyland Lannister, and Grand Maester Orwyle, if no pardon can be arranged for them, should go to the Wall instead of the scaffold. And Autumn, my companion there with Jaehaera…she was a true friend to me. I owe her my life several times over. She must be permitted to stay with Jaehaera and Aegon the Younger as a caretaker, and reside in comfort in the Red Keep for the remainder of her days.”

“Who do you think you are, sister?!” Clement exclaims. “You’re speaking to the Kingmaker, not some handmaiden! You do not command him!”

“I am not commanding,” you counter levelly. “I am pleading for mercy on behalf of imperfect souls who showed me kindness during my captivity. If granted, I will consider these my wedding gifts.”

“She is remarkable, is she not?” Cregan Stark says, grinning to Clement and several other men who have ventured closer. They wear the sigils of Northern houses: Bolton, Cerwyn, Manderly, Hornwood, Dustin. They chuckle in agreement, stroking their wild beards with huge filthy hands. “Dauntless but merciful. Clever but obedient.” And then the Warden of the North claims your lips with his, chaste but overpowering, the first of a thousand kisses you never desired, a thousand acts of affection for a woman who isn’t really you, feigned resignation and bitten-back rage, eternal war with the interminable knowledge that there is something more, more, more…you just aren’t permitted to have it. It was taken from you, it was ripped from your hands like stolen treasure.

All your life you will have to murmur in wounded agreement when people recount the terrible sins of the Usurper. All your life you will have to praise Cregan Stark for killing millions to rescue you. And the days will pass, weeks, months, years, summers and winters, the births of your children and their own marriages; and when Cregan’s boy Rickon, born of his first wife, produces only daughters, your son Brandon and his descendants will become the heirs to Winterfell. In the desolate North—so far from the ocean, so far from everything Aegon ever knew—your greatest solace will be letters from Autumn as she learns to read and write, books that your husband orders for you from the Citadel, setting bones and treating burns, a tiny lock of braided silver hair that you keep in a hidden drawer of your jewelry box, dreams that you never want to wake up from.

But one day, decades after you leave King’s Landing, you will receive a raven from Queen Jaehaera Targaryen, and she will ask you: You knew the Greens in your youth, Wardeness Stark. You knew Aemond, Daeron, Helaena, Alicent, Otto, Maelor, Aegon the Usurper. What can you tell me of them? What was my father like? Who was he really?

And you’ll pick up your quill and begin writing.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader

351 notes · View notes