#for once don't let go

[snowbellewells]

Self Promo Sunday: "For Once, Don't Let Go"

This week's re-run is a Modern AU one shot I wrote for the @cssns event in 2020. I had not ever written much of anything supernatural involving ghosts before, and we were all dealing with the effects of loneliness and being more alone/lonely than normal during that time. Those were the themes I was exploring here. I'd love to hear what you think - if you're revisiting it, or if you're reading it for the first time. Enjoy!

*My artist for the story was @hollyethecurious and she created a stunning picset that I am still in love with!! *

Summary: In some ways, Emma Swan has always been a ghost - alone and floating through life without much to tie her to anyone or any place. However, when she wakes up in an unfamiliar old house and realizes she is stuck haunting the last place she went while alive, it takes a while to reconcile the fact that she is an actual ghost and that there must be something keeping her in the world after all. Then she learns she isn’t the only lost soul in the house. And that changes everything.

Also available on AO3, if that's your preference...

by: @snowbellewells

In some ways, she has always been a ghost. Never fitting in, never belonging anywhere. Abandoned, and so closing her heart on the need to be accepted before she could be denied. It was for that reason, on the first morning of her afterlife, as she blinked awake in a chilled grey dawn that seemed just like any other, Emma Swan did not at first realize she was no longer part of the living world.

There was a strange quiet surrounding her, as she sat up from the bed, which strangely felt much softer, plusher than hers usually did at the end of an exhausting day or the morning after when her bones still ached and her mind never felt quite rested. It was those two things combined - the unaccustomed silence and depth and comfort of the sleep she’d emerged from - that put Emma off balance. It was never that still in the heart of the city, no matter how early in the morning. There was a constant humming undercurrent, a long-accepted background noise accompanying her life in Boston: sirens, horns, the grating and beeping of constant construction, the hubbub of voices, sounds unending. If she were deeply honest with herself (which she didn’t often allow) it was part of what she loved most about the large city on the eastern seaboard; there was so much noise that she could ignore her own thoughts. She didn’t like to dwell on or analyze her motivations for choosing a job where she tracked and found deadbeats who skipped out on those they should have stayed to support. She didn’t acknowledge - not even to herself - that each skip she hauled into the nearest precinct and collected her reward for gave her a sense of satisfaction that almost dulled her unanswered questions about the runners she hadn’t ever found - the parents who left her just after she was born.

So, she was already on edge as she found her feet and moved through the room she was increasingly aware did not look at all like the one in the loft apartment she currently rented, nor were any of her things scattered around as she usually left them. Moving from the room into the hall beyond, and then down a staircase into an entry hall that she knew her small apartment didn’t possess, Emma’s mind struggled to fully wake and understand where she was and how she came to be there.

It wasn’t until she reached the front door - tall, solid wood, but nondescript and standard, nothing too out-of-the-ordinary - that two more revelations struck her almost at once. Reaching out her hand to turn the doorknob, step outside and see if the outside of the house or its surroundings jogged her memory, Emma was shocked to find that her hand wouldn’t grip the metal knob at all, instead passing straight through both doorknob and door itself, sending her sprawling forward with a yelp of startled disbelief. No matter how impossible it seemed, the rest of her followed her outstretched hand, passing through the wooden door as if it simply didn’t exist.

Blinking and stunned from where she had landed on the top step up to the porch outside the strange house she’d woken up in, it was more than a bit hard for Emma to put together what had just happened. She knew her mouth was hanging open, “catching flies” as one of her more affectionate foster moms along the way had playfully called it, but somehow her surprise only increased when she took in the place’s exterior. She did know where she was, despite being at a loss for why she would have woken up there. This was the place where she had tracked her most recent skip last night.

Furrowing her brow in concentration - and admittedly trying not to consider how she had just slipped past a solid barrier and what that might mean - Emma attempted to pull up more from her memory than that. This newest skip had proven pretty slippery; both Ruby and her seductive honey trap skills which Emma didn’t even try to match, and Mulan with her fighting ability and clever moves worthy of her Disney namesake, had failed in previous attempts to bring the guy in and moved on to more productive marks before Emma took on the case. However, she was just stubborn and competitive enough to have wanted to bring in the skip who had become a thorn in the agency’s side; plus, as he kept evading them and the court date grew closer, the price for bringing him in kept climbing. Emma had been thinking just how she might enjoy the whole week off she could afford to take once she caught this scumbag as she’d sidled up next to him at the seedy bar’s pool table and batted her eyes. She’d still been thinking it even as the jerk brushed her off and left soon after, and so she’d followed him - quite stealthily, she believed - to this place later that night. Fine, if he wanted to play hard to get, she wouldn’t play gently either. She welcomed a challenge, and this avoided the awkwardness she had to extricate herself from once honey traps were sprung anyway.

Emma was realizing now, however, that maybe she had been a little too obvious, a little too preoccupied to see that her skip might have been onto her. Had he been suspicious of her from the start, and that was why he didn’t take the bait? Or, had he known what she was truly after the whole time?

The evening dark had been falling in that strange hour where one could still see outside but surroundings were obscured, shadows lengthened and a person sometimes had to squint to find her goal. She had almost hung back, after watching her mark slip in through the unmarked door of the abandoned house at the end of a rather quiet and rundown street in an outskirt suburb. But she’d spent too long tracking the loser - and she wasn’t about to admit any hesitance or unease. Clearly the guy now had either breaking and entering or squatting in his extensive repertoire, and he needed bringing in before he expanded to something more dangerous.

That was what she was telling herself after waiting an interminable twenty minutes and then climbing the rickety steps as she’d watched her perp do. She wasn’t trespassing anymore than he was, the house wasn’t in his name, and if anyone asked… here she tried the door to find it unlocked and opening as she quietly tried it - yep, she could say it was open.

Emma had just taken a steadying breath and inched the door open enough to enter, when she caught movement in her periphery. She tried to duck, wondering wildly if the culprit had been lurking behind the door, when something long and solid swung towards her head too fast for her to avoid. It felt as though the air cracked, then crumbled around her, and everything went black…

That was all she could bring up, no matter how doggedly she tried to remember what came next. After that shattering impact was simply… nothing. And with that sickening fact, Emma knew. She was dead. Some lowlife bail jumper killed her to keep himself from getting caught. Whatever she was hit with, it was done viciously enough to mean her end.

Feeling a tremble begin throughout her legs and arms, up into all her extremities, Emma tried to fight back the swell of emotion - anger, injustice, hurt, loss that clamored to the surface. If there were any justice at all, she ought to at least be free of feeling all the painful emotion she had spent her entire adult life roughly tamping down. But really, she shouldn’t even be surprised. This wasn’t the first time she’d paid the price for someone else’s wrongs - though apparently it would be the last. The blank unfairness of it was what truly got under her skin. Was she always doomed to end up this way? Sprawled out with a cracked skull in the entryway of some old, empty house, punished just for trying to make a living and her own way in the world while exacting a little much-needed justice? No one would even miss her or know she was gone until she didn’t show up to work Monday morning, ready to gloat and collect congratulatory muffins for bringing in the mark her colleagues lost.

As she passed back through the door (and no, that weird sensation of sliding without feeling past a solid barrier did not become any less upsetting or disconcerting) Emma saw the rough wooden board on the floor where her killer must have tossed it afterward and the dried blood - her own, she recognized with a shiver - that she had missed before. She didn’t want to stay there, but she felt pulled back to the upper floor where she had awakened. As if she was not meant to leave yet. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she just had nowhere else to go…

Head bowed in resignation, she mounted the stairs, but instead of going back into what had seemed a nondescript bedroom on her first glance, she moved on to the end of the hall. She seemed to have all the time in the world to rattle around this place, reflect on her loneliness and why she was still there. It couldn’t hurt to put off that depressing train of thought and find out what else was there.

Bypassing the room she’d exited earlier that morning, Emma moved toward the end of the second floor hall. Clearly the place had been empty awhile, dust tickled her nose more the more she moved throughout the house, but the color of the rich, deep wood floors, the tall ceilings and eye-catching nautical knick-knacks and framed pictures on the walls showed her the place was once well-loved and lived in with care and pride. By the time she reached the furthest door on the left, almost tucked into a corner of the house, Emma was curious in sprite of her strange situation and uncertainty.

Upon stepping in the room, Emma felt her mouth drop open once again, immediately captured by the sight of four walls of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, interrupted only by the large, cushioned windowseat under a huge picture window in the wall facing the door. There were books piled on the floor near the windowseat as well, as if to be in easy reach of whomever had sat there to read. Heavy, larger leatherbound tomes that appeared to be atlases or maps also rested on the impressive cherry wood desk in the room’s center. While all of this was stunning, with an air of warm invitation that had Emma blindly inching forward, none of the furnishings were what truly stunned her one more time in a past hour full of riveting surprises. Standing behind the desk, with back turned to the door and studying the wall of books with concentration was a tall, quite formally dressed, man. 

At Emma’s rather stunned noise, the figure turned to look over his shoulder, looking at her with dark arched brow. The gasp that had just escaped her was sucked rather inelegantly back up her throat. The man - well, fellow ghost apparently, as she could hazily see the spines of books lined up through his broad-shouldered form - was the most handsome specimen she had ever seen. His stunning bright blue eyes threatened to again steal the breath the she supposed she shouldn’t possess to begin with.

Wow, that changed things.

~~~*~~~~*~~~*~~~~*~~~*~~~~

Surprised in the large library that had stood silent and empty for so many long, uncounted days, Killian Jones couldn’t help scrutinizing the fair haired lass standing on his carpet. The strange haze around her let him know she was a spirit, much as he had been forced to accept he was himself. Still, some nearly forgotten and rusty echo of his former flirtatious nature rose to the surface and her surprised gaze clearly studied him up and down.

“Well, hello there, beautiful,” he murmured, a crooked smile crossing his face as he drank in her blonde hair, sparkling green eyes, and generous curves in equal measure. “You aren’t some marvelous hallucination are you?”

Those sharp eyes rolled in exasperation, the stunned look finally leaving them as she shook her head and shrugged off the compliment. “Hardly,” she snorted, taking a few steps closer to him. “Apparently, I’m a ghost.”

Her words startled a huff of laughter from him with their droll humor. Reaching up to scratch behind his ear, he managed, “Not quite what you’d pictured, I wager?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” she allowed, seeming to understand her welcome and meandering over to sit facing him on the cluttered windowseat’s edge.

Killian allowed a wry grin of his own and nod of agreement. There wasn’t much else to say, but he did understand where she was coming from. It had been rightfully upsetting, earth-shattering, and confusing when he realized he was no longer living and breathing but still wandering the rooms of his house. He was sure there had been a lot of ranting, questioning, and items thrown against the walls before he had accepted his new reality. By that measure, this lovely woman before him was handling her sudden entrance to the afterlife quite well in comparison.

She looked up to capture his eyes with her own and he found he couldn’t look away again. Her face was open, searching, almost as though she were trying to take his measure and decide if he were trustworthy. When she seemed to make a decision and smile warmly at him, Killian found himself swaying closer to her almost unconsciously, rounding the desk to stand before her as though pulled by a magnet. Dipping his head in a sort of playful bow, he offered, “Forgive me, where are my manners? I’m Killian Jones. And you are?”

She reached out her hand to shake, unaccountably grateful that she was able to feel his larger fingers clasp hers without passing through, that she somehow still felt warmth and a zing of awareness at the contact, even if none of it made any sense. “Emma…” she replied, her voice going lighter and more thready than she’d like, “Emma Swan.”

“Hmm…” he murmured lowly, a rumbling hum that she felt along her arm as he brought her hand up to place a kiss on the back of it. “And just who are you, Swan?” he mused.

Swallowing hard, she dove in with the plain truth. “Just a stubborn bail bondswoman who went after the wrong skip this time,” she sighed.

His eyes registered the sadness, the disappointment and melancholy, the resignation to this fate slowly settling over her. He wanted to say it would get better with time, but time was now a funny, nonexistent sort of thing that was impossible to measure and not much help. Instead, he took in her features with understanding and tried to offer what comfort or cheer was possible against the self-doubt, blame, and ‘what-ifs’ beginning to hover. Not only that, they zeroed in on the broken skin, dried red and the purpled bruising at her temple, clearly the killing blow that had been dealt her. His hand reached up of its own volition to touch the soft hair above the wound, a tender brush of fingertips that Emma closed her eyes and leaned into with a relieved sigh. Almost as if he knew how very rare such concern had been in her life - maybe because it had been the same for him. Whatever the reason, they lingered there, two ghosts in the golden morning light through the picture window, drinking in the first real contact either had felt in far too long.

Something linked within them in that very moment - and everything changed again.

~~~*~~~~*~~~*~~~~*~~~*~~~~

It would have been funny; in fact, Emma would have laughed in the face of anyone who suggested - even a week before - that she would be killed on an assignment, end up a ghost, and then meet another ghost who would soon know her better than anyone had in life. And yet, within days she and Killian had shared more than she had ever allowed with co-workers, her handful of casual friends, even foster siblings when she’d still been a kid. Granted, she didn’t have much to lose, but it was more than that. She came to learn that Killian was more like her than she could have thought possible; orphaned as a child except for an adored older brother, that brother then killed in service of the British Navy just as Killian had been preparing to finish secondary school and join his elder sibling in service. Apparently the death had been some sort of accident during a routine exercise, and Killian had been awarded a healthy settlement as his brother’s only living relative, but naturally he hadn’t wanted the payout, just his only family back. Since that wasn’t the choice before him, he had taken the money, gotten out of England, and vowed to do something with it that would honor Liam and help someone else - even if it could do nothing for his own shattered heart.

That was how he’d come to befriend a frightened young mother and her infant son not long after he reached Boston. He’d been renting a motel room on a weekly basis until he figured out what he planned to do in the long run. He took a lot of long, aimless walks in the sharp, chill wind off the Atlantic, and one late afternoon he had stumbled into the public library, hoping to warm up, maybe distract himself a bit, and instead had found Belle sniffling as she attempted to read to a fussy Gideon where they were huddled in the children’s section. It hadn’t taken long for them to become friends; easily one of the best friendships he’d ever had. And in short order, Killian had known this was how he could use Liam’s money for good. He’d found a house, invited, then wheedled and cajoled, her to move them into one of the unoccupied wings and stay with him there. It was much too big for him alone he’d argued, and he needed the company, noise and bustle of even the smallest bit of family in his life. Belle had been hesitant, feeling it was too much, too good to be true, but trying to find a living and make a good, safe home for herself and her boy, while also staying unnoticed and under the radar of her wealthy and well-connected ex-husband was becoming more and more impossible. She’d assured Killian that the man had never been physically abusive, but emotionally and mentally he had left his mark. He had been a master of manipulation, had known the law and its loopholes, could afford the best attorneys money could buy and Kilian had not needed psychic abilities to see the woman was terrified he would come to haul her back - or at the very least take her little lad away from her.

That last admission had been uttered some weeks on in their acquaintance - or at least Emma thought it had been weeks, time was hard to measure when one was no longer on a clock and the days flowed from one to another in a similar stream - one night as they sat by a crackling fire in the hearth of the long unused den. Emma had shared a fair amount of her own scars by then. She had been curled up on the opposite end of the sofa, thinking that this would be the perfect occasion for a hot cocoa with whipped cream and cinnamon, what had been her favorite way to unwind in the evening, and marveling at the good heart this man before her possessed, be it beating still or no. Not just anyone would have done so much, given so much of himself, to help a person he barely knew. Nor kindly helped a complete stranger like her adjust to her new reality beyond the pale either.

Suddenly it seemed like there was nothing else to do but to scoot across the sofa to the other end where Killian Jones sat still as a statue. The pain in his eyes, and blame she could see that he carried, broadcast over every line and shifting shadow of his face. Emma couldn’t help but bring her hand up to touch his cheek, to trace along his tightly clenched jaw as his eyes slowly dropped to follow the path of her fingertips, watching her intently as they continued to brush softly over his skin. Emma had wondered numerous times why she couldn’t physically make contact or grasp other objects but she could touch him. Why could they feel each other so strongly? Was it because they were both ghosts? On some other plane together? Or was it something else, something a less jaded person might call Fate or magic?

Whatever the reason, she was grateful for it as she held her breath, catching her lower lip between her teeth awaiting Killian’s reaction. She found every nerve alive and anxious as she watched him, caring more than she ever had about what someone else thought. Was that the key? For so many years in group homes, with foster families, even for a time homeless on the city streets, Emma had shut the world out. She had been born and grown up without the unconditional love and care all people should know, and the natural childish illusions about people’s selfishness or the world’s indifference had been stripped away far too early. Life had turned its back on her, and she had done the same in return. She had closed herself off from emotion and learned all too well that putting her trust in others made it easy to get hurt.

But now, in this old house, with this wonderful, vulnerable spirit before her - all the feelings she had shut off for so long were breaking free. She couldn’t hold them back, and she didn’t want to. She couldn’t really be harmed, wasn’t hustling to get by, and maybe that allowed the fear to recede enough to peak over the top of her walls. Maybe it was just that - despite only knowing him for a short time - she had never met anyone like Killian Jones when she was living. If only she had, she wouldn’t have been lost for so long.

He was blinking away a tear when her focus turned back to his face in that moment. Smiling back with a tiny, empathetic quirk to her lips, Emma brushed the escaped droplet from his skin, whispering, “He found them, didn’t he? Her ex?  Even though you tried to keep them hidden…”

Killian’s head of thick, dark hair bowed, his eyes falling to their laps instead of holding hers. Running her fingers through the coarse strands, Emma ached to comfort him, to somehow lessen the weight he had lost hope of lightening. Whatever had occurred, it couldn’t have been his fault. He had only tried to give them shelter.

His voice was muffled when his forehead had come to rest on her shoulder, and she wrapped her arms around him, cradling him closer in an embrace more binding and intimate than any she had ever experienced. “I don’t know for certain, Swan,” he sighed, his words rough and coming forth in choppy fragments. “It has always seemed so…  Both being expats, Belle and I came to enjoy tea… in the afternoons… I had come home early that day...had a new toy for her Gideon...and I - I couldn’t wait to show it to him. ...When I walked through the front door… I knew immediately….something was wrong… too quiet.. I walked into the kitchen… and the table was all set for tea.  But the plate of biscuits was… strewn across the table… broken crumbs everywhere… and her - her favorite teacup was shattered on the floor…”

Emma tried to take in the devastation he must have felt, the panic and helplessness, all while making soothing noises, almost sorry she’d asked him as the story was wrung from his lips bit by bit. She kept holding him, hoping that her hand stroking over his back and her fingers brushing the hair at the nape of his neck could give some solace. She had never longed to fix someone else’s hurt more than her own. It was frightening in the desire’s intensity, but all she could do was hang on.

“I failed them both…” Killian husked, his voice even more soft and ragged than before. “Of course… I reported them missing… but the case came to nothing… no leads turned up.  He got to them… just as she feared... “

She wished she could tell him otherwise. Her own unshed tears stung in her throat - both for the poor woman and little boy she felt as if she knew through Killian’s stories, and for his pain. Her chest ached with the anguish he had harbored for so long, feeling it as if it were her own. If she could take his pain onto herself and give him peace at last, she would do it without hesitation.

As if in response to her thought and the desire to lend her strength, Emma saw a starling light, nearly blinding her as it appeared over Killian’s shoulder.  She didn’t pull away, but she squinted trying to understand what had materialized from thin air right in front of her. It looked like...yes, it was a door. There, where an archway normally lead from the den to the kitchen, was a simple grey door, but for the brilliant white light emanating from around its edges. It couldn’t be ignored for all its radiance, and it almost seemed to beckon her near, drawing her in.

Her eyes widening, Emma forced herself to turn away, breathing in Killian’s scent from against his neck, hoping that the masculine, spicy aroma he somehow still carried, even in his ethereal state, would reel her in as it had before. She knew what must be making itself known before her, and she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge what it meant.

Up until that very second, she would have sworn she wanted that door to appear, to pass through it and leave the cold bitterness of Earth behind. She wanted that door opening up for her to move on, but she just as surely wouldn’t leave Killian as she had been left so many times. She couldn’t abandon him.

For the first time Emma could remember, she didn’t want to change the way things were.

~~~*~~~~*~~~*~~~~*~~~*~~~~

She shouldn’t have thought the open door would escape Killian’s attention. The man was ridiculously intuitive and seemed to read her like the pages of a favorite book. She had not said a word, had turned back to him, focused on the muscle in his jaw working as he brought his emotions back under control, and managed to ignore the blatant signal beckoning to her until the glow dimmed and the door faded back out of existence. The archway between kitchen and den was just a curve of plaster and paint once more.

But as days passed, Emma coudn’t help worrying occasionally in unguarded moments if a person only got one door. Had she missed her only chance to move on? It wasn’t that she never wanted her peace and rest, or to know what was waiting on the other side. Yet, she couldn’t truly regret her decision either if the alternative had been leaving Killian alone, even if the consequences did trouble her mind.

So she wasn’t sure how Killian had figured it out the morning she came down the stairs to find him already in the kitchen gazing out the window over the sink and bathed in the rising sunshine. Maybe the man was genuinely able to read her mind. He was always able to tell when she entered a room, she conceded as he turned to face her, even before she stepped from the last stair. She felt him the moment he drew near her as well: an awareness, a prickling along her skin, the buzzing sensation of need and desire she had always resisted in life electrified by his presence. Maybe there was no hiding when someone was that close.

With the window and the sunrise at his back, Killian seemed almost outlined by a halo of gold. He came to stand at the counter facing her, and Emma moved to meet him, smiling easily. “Morning,” she offered in greeting, still fighting years’ worth of habitual impulses to start brewing coffee and digging throught he cupboards for cereal - sustenance that she no longer needed.

“Swan,” he’d spoken gently, calmly, but in a way that drew her up and demanded her focus. Reaching out his own larger hand to cover hers where it rested on the countertop, he went right to the heart of the matter. “Emma… what were you thinking?”

She shrugged, trying not to meet his eyes fully as she pretended she didn’t know exactly what he was talking about. “What do you mean?” she asked blankly.

He sighed, that apologetic depth of sorrow in his eyes making her swallow hard when he spoke again. “You saw the light at the end of the tunnel, didn’t you? Your door appeared… The evening we spoke of Belle and Gideon’s disappearance…” He paused, spearing her with the intense blue of his gaze and not allowing her to look away. He cupped her chin between his thumbe and forefinger, stroking along her cheek as he did so, the expression on his face begging her to help him understand. “Why didn’t you step through, Love… and go on to your reward?”

The worry and fear on his unfairly beautiful face showed that he already new exactly why she hadn’t, but he deserved the truth. Emma couldn’t give him anything less. Placing her hands over his, squeezing tightly with feeling, she leaned forward until their noses almost touched. “Killian, don’t ask question you already know the answers to,” she breathed shakily, trying to keep the tremble from her voice long enough to speak. “You must know, surely… it was you.”

His head back as he heaved a deep, rattling breath - breaking away from her as he did so. “I hoped I was wrong,” he admitted. “I don’t want to the reason. You shouldn’t be held back from your paradise because of me.”

For a moment his eyes wouldn’t meet hers as he struggled to regain control of himself. Then, he reached out to wipe the pad of his thumb over her cheek and brush the solitary tear she’d shed away. Not letting him have an out, Emma caught his eye once more. “Paradise, huh?” she tried to tease weakly, desperate to make him smile. He was breaking her heart. “You think an awful lot of me, Buddy. We both know I was no saint.”

A huff of air escaped him that might have been a disgruntled laugh in spite of himself, but he pulled her into him, almost clinging to her for several long minutes before finally breathing in her ear, “Nonsense, Emma. You were meant to be an angel. Don’t give up your peace on account of me.”

She hugged him back, but made no such promise. They would have to disagree on that, and he knew it too. They were both too stubborn to change their minds, so days went on and they went back to almost-normal without speaking of it again. Emma simply had to hope he understood. She didn’t want to argue with Killian, or to ignore his wishes. And she did want to go through her door as well, but when the time was right. She realized now that would have to be when they could both go throught it together.

~~~*~~~~*~~~*~~~~*~~~*~~~~

It had been March when she’d met her fate in the quiet old house, and she and Killian had drifted through the spring and summer and early autumn, growing ever closer to each other. They had sat on the porch for long hours talking without getting too hot or worrying about bug bites or sunburn; spent evenings curled together under one quilt in the large windowseat of the library watching lightning flash across the sky and thunder roll on August nights. As September came, they snuggled under the comforter on the bed, her head resting on his chest, her ear over his heart as though she could still heart its beat. If she had thought before that she couldn’t leave him, there was no way she could even imagine it again.

There was a chill in the air the September afternoon a thick, cream-colored envelope landed on the front porch, addressed with Killian’s name and a Ms. Belle French scrawled in top left corner. Emma heard the soft sound of the thick paper landing on the proch slats, and didn stop to question how it had gotten there, why the ghost resident of an supposed abandoned house was receiving mail again, but had hurried to where Killian reading in the library, letter in hand.

A more lovely autumn day had never been than when a slant of later afternoon sun lit Killian’s face as he scanned the letter’s contents, a smile dawning over his countenance as if he coudn’t believe the words before him on the page. “They’re alright,” he murmured, half to himself and half to her. “They got away… thought I should know.”  His eyes continued to skim over the handwritten lines quickly, but his beckoned her close, and stunned smile on his face and light in his eyes that did Emma’s heart good. She could see the guilt and the hurt he had carried lifting from his shoulders with each passing second as she came to perch on the corner of the desk at his elbow.  “They didn’t want me to have to harbor a secret… just missed the people who trashed the house that day, and didn’t want to continue putting me in danger…”

He shook his head in disbelief and then stood to sweep her up in his arms, spinning her around as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe, finally, he didn’t.

It was only as Killian set her back on her feet again, as he picked up her hand to kiss the back of it tenderly, and she hummed in contentment, swaying closer to him that a warm inviting light touched the side of both their faces. Turning as one, Emma recognized the sight that had graced her vision once before, but Kiliian’s eyes widened before turning to hers.  “Is that…?” he breathed, hope and uncertainty and awe blending in the question as it trailed off on his lips. 

She nodded, no words coming to her that she could speak past the lump in her throat.

“Well, then, Swan,” he smiled with the beauty and joy of a man whose heart was free at last. “What do you say we embark on a new adventure?”

“I’d follow you anywhere,” she said with a certainty she felt to the bottom of her soul. Clutching his fingers in her own tightly, she walked with him toward the door wreathed in light that had appeared in middle of the bookshelf. As long as she didn’t have to let go of Killian’s hand.

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[frenchublog]

kosovo miku

[bluerosefox]

Phantomish Rogues

Team Phantom get ripped from their home universe into the DCverse. With no money or real ID's in this world. Now thats a problem.

Another big problem is that Danny is badly injured and his core kinda put him into a deep cryo sleep. He needs to rest and gather ectoplasm.

Bigger problem Team Phantom have no clue how to get home because they don't know how to decode the Fenton Portal blue-prints, not even Jazz who at the time didn't pay attention to her parents portal work anymore by the time they finished it. The only one who does have an idea is Danny!

Biggest problem, they landed in a place called Gotham that seems to be overrun with actual villains and heroes? (vigilantes). And for some odd reason many of them seem to find them no matter where the Team goes to hide.

Until they can get their hands on a safe space, tech, and money, Team Phantom might have to go a bit Rogue/Villainous if they wanna keep Danny safe until he wakes up.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

finally at that age where i'm thinking i should get a tattoo. not bc i feel strongly about it, just seems like a waste not to. i've got so much skin i'm not using

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[zuzu-draws]

Trolling aside, i think there is some great importance as to why Gege chose this specific manner of panelling for the Yuji-Sukuna confrontation in JJK 264. We can't help but think that Gege's trying to show us some sort of a parallel between Gojo and Sukuna in this situation.

In JJK, there's this interesting notion of one's decision to go "North" or "South" as explained by Nanami during Gojo's death Flashback:

And we all know, that chapter of Gojo's death is titled as "Go South", which highly implies that Gojo chose to stay as who he was, as opposed to starting as something completely anew.

Now the interesting point in the Yuuji-Sukuna confrontation is that apparently...

....the destination for the supposed train within Yuuji's domain...is "North".

Which means that Yuuji's taking Sukuna towards the North.......

They're heading towards the North.....do you guys understand what that means?? For BOTH of them??? Q C Q

[anipgarden]

Things to Do that Aren't Related to Growing Plants

This is my second post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps! 

Some of us just don’t have much luck when it comes to growing plants. Some of us simply want to aim for other ways to help that don’t involve putting on gardening gloves. Maybe you've already got a garden, but you want to do more. No problem! There’s a couple of options you can look into that’ll help attract wildlife in your area without even having to bring out any shovels!

Provide a Water Source

Oftentimes when I see ‘add a water source’ in informational articles about improving your backyard for wildlife, it’s almost always followed by an image of a gorgeous backyard pond with a waterfall and rock lining that looks expensive to set up, difficult to maintain, and overall just… not feasible for me. Arguably, not feasible for a lot of people. And that’s okay! There’s still ways to add water in your garden for all kinds of creatures to enjoy!

There’s tons of ways to create watering stations for insects like bees and butterflies. A self refilling dog bowl can work wonders! Add some stones into the receiving tray for insects to land on or use to climb out, and you’ve got a wonderful drinking spot for all kinds of insects! You can also fill a saucer or other dish with small stones and fill it, though it’ll likely need refilling daily or even several times a day during hot times. 

I've seen people online use all kinds of things to make water features. Some go with terra-cotta pots, pebbles, and a cheap pump to get a small and simple fountain. Others use old tires, clay, and a hole in the ground to create an in-ground mini pond system. If all else fails, even a bucket or watertight box with a few plants in it can do the trick--though do be wary of mosquitoes if the water isn’t moving. In situations like these, a solar-powered fountain pump or bubbler are great for keeping the water moving while still making it a drinking option for wildlife (it not even more appealing for some)--and these items can be obtained fairly cheap online!

Bird baths are an option as well--a classic way to provide for birds in your area, they can be easy to find online or in a gardening store! The only downside is that a good, quality bird bath can be pricey up-front. However, a nice stone bird bath should last a long time, be easy to clean and refill, and be enjoyed by many birds! I’ve also seen tutorials on how to make your own with quickcrete! Bird baths will be a welcome sight to birds, as they provide a space for them to drink and bathe to regulate the oils in their feathers for flight and insulation. Putting a stone in the middle will also help insects to escape if they fall in, and provide a place to perch so they can get their own drink. You’ll want to change the water and clean the baths regularly--as often as once a week, if you can manage it.

If possible, it’s highly encouraged to fill and refill water features with rainwater instead of tap water. Tap water is often treated, so instead of using hoses or indoor kitchen water, collecting some rainwater is a great alternative. Collecting rainwater can be as simple as leaving cups, bins, or pots outside for awhile.

Butterflies and other creatures will also drink from mud puddles. If you can maintain an area of damp soil mixed with a small amount of salt or wood ash, this can be fantastic for them! Some plants also excel at storing water within their leaves and flowers (bromeliads come to mind), making them an excellent habitat for amphibians as well as a drinking spot for insects and birds.

Bird Feeders and Bird Houses

Some of the fancy, decorated bird feeders are expensive, but others can be pretty low-cost--I got my bird feeder from Lowe’s for around 10 dollars, and a big bag of birdseed was around another 10 dollars and has lasted several refills! If you don’t mind occasionally buying more birdseed, a single birdfeeder can do a lot to attract and support local birds! If you’re handy, have some spare wood, and have or can borrow some tools, you may even be able to find instructions online to make your own feeder. You may not even need wood to do so! Even hummingbird feeders, I’ve found, are quick to attract them, as long as you keep them stocked up on fresh sugar water in the spring and summer!

An important note with bird feeders is that you have to make sure you can clean them regularly. Otherwise, they may become a vector for disease, and we want to avoid causing harm whenever possible. Also keep an ear out and track if there’s known outbreaks of bird diseases in your area. If local birding societies and scientists are advising you take your birdfeeders down for awhile, by all means, do it!

Bird houses are naturally paired with bird feeders as biodiversity promoters for backyard spaces, and it makes sense. Having bird houses suited to birds in your area promotes them to breed, raise their young, disperse seeds, and generally engage in your surrounding environment. Setting them up takes careful selection or construction, preparation, and some patience, but sooner or later you might get some little homemakers! Keep in mind, you will need to clean your birdhouses at least once a year (if not once per brood) to make sure they’re ready and safe for birds year after year--you wouldn’t want to promote disease and parasites, after all. But they could be a valuable option for your landscape, whether you purchase one or construct your own! 

Again, do make sure you're putting up the right kind of boxes for the right kinds of birds. Bluebird boxes are some I see sold most commonly, but in my area I believe they're not even all that common--a nesting box for cardinals or chickadees would be far more likely to see success here! And some birds don't even nest in boxes--robins and some other birds are more likely to use a nesting shelf, instead! Research what birds live in your area, take note of any you see around already, and pick a few target species to make homes for!

Solitary Bee Houses

A bee house or bee hotel is a fantastic way to support the solitary bees in your area! For a few dollars and some annual cleaning, you can buy a solitary bee house from most big box nurseries. Alternatively, you can make one at home, with an array of materials you may already have lying around! You can even make them so that they’ll benefit all kinds of insects, and not necessarily just bees.

Though you don’t even necessarily have to break out the hammer and nails, buy a ton of bricks, or borrow a staple gun. Making homes for tunneling bees can be as simple as drilling holes in a log and erecting it, or drilling holes in stumps and dead trees on your property. You might even attract some woodpeckers by doing this!

Providing Nesting Area

There are tons of different kinds of bees, and they all make different kinds of homes for themselves. Not all of them make big cavity hives like honey bees, or will utilize a solitary bee house. Bumblebees live in social hives underground, particularly in abandoned holes made by rodents--some others nest in abandoned bird nests, or cavities like hollow logs, spaces between rocks, compost piles, or unoccupied birdhouses. Borer, Ground, and Miner bees dig into bare, dry soil to create their nests. Sparsely-vegetated patches of soil in well-drained areas are great places to find them making their nests, so providing a similar habitat somewhere in the garden can encourage them to come! I do talk later in this document about mulching bare soil in a garden--however, leaving soil in sunny areas and south-facing slopes bare provides optimal ground nesting habitat. Some species prefer to nest at the base of plants, or loose sandy soil, or smooth-packed and flat bare ground. They’ve also been known to take advantage of soil piles, knocked over tree roots, wheel ruts in farm roads, baseball diamonds and golf course sand traps. You can create nesting ground by digging ditches or creating nesting mounds in well-drained, open, sunny areas with sandy or silty soil. However, artificially constructed ground nests may only have limited success. 

Providing Alternative Pollinator Foods

Nectar and pollen aren’t the only foods sought out by some pollinators! Some species of butterflies are known to flock to overripe fruit or honey water, so setting these out can be an excellent way to provide food to wildlife. You may want to be cautious about how you set these out, otherwise it can help other wildlife, like ants or raccoons. Butterflies may also drop by to visit a sponge in a dish of lightly salted water. 

Bat Houses and Boxes

Big or small, whether they support five bats or five hundred, making bat boxes and supporting local bats is a great way to boost biodiversity! Not only will they eat mosquitoes and other pest species, but you may also be able to use the guano (bat droppings) as fertilizer! Do be careful if you choose to do that though--I’ve never had the opportunity to, so do some research into how strong it is and use it accordingly.

Provide Passageway Points

If you want your area to be more accessible for creatures that can’t fly or climb fences, allowing or creating access points can be an excellent way to give them a way in and out. Holes in the bottom of walls or fences can be sheltered with plants to allow animals through. 

In a somewhat similar manner, if you’re adding a water fixture, it’s important to provide animals a way to get into and out of the pond--no way in, and they can’t use the water. No way out, and they may drown. Creating a naturalistic ramp out of wood beams or sticks, or stepped platforms out of bricks, stones, or logs can do the trick. 

Get or Keep Logs and Brush Piles

I’ve already mentioned logs a good handful of times so far in this post. To be used as access ramps, or as nesting areas for solitary bees. But they have value as much more than that! Logs on the ground provide shelter for all kinds of animals, especially depending on size--anything from mice, reptiles, and amphibians to things like turkey vultures and bears will use fallen logs as shelter. Inside of a decaying log, there’s a lot of humidity, so amphibians are big fans of them--meanwhile, the upper sides of them can be used as sunning platforms by things like lizards. Other animals can also use the insides of logs as nest sites and hiding places from predators too big to fit inside. Fungi, spiders, beetles, termites, ants, grubs, worms, snails, slugs, and likely much more can be found inside rotting logs, using the rotting wood as food sources or nesting places. They can then provide food for mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. They can also be regarded as a landmark or territory marker as wildlife get more familiar with your space.

So how do you get logs for cheap? Try Chip Drop! I talk about them more in a future post, but you can mark saying that you’d like logs in your drop, so they’ll give you any they have! In fact, you may even get a drop faster if you're willing to accept some logs. You may also be able to approach arborists you see working in your area and ask for logs. There may also be local online listings for people selling logs for cheap, or just trying to get rid of them. If there’s land development going on near you, you may be able to snag logs from trees they cut down to make space. Do keep in mind, you don’t need to have huge gigantic logs laying around your property to make an impact--even small logs can help a lot.

If possible, creating and leaving brush piles on the edge of your property can be a great boost to biodiversity--even if you may not see the wildlife using it. They’ll provide shelter from weather and predators, and lower portions are cool and shady for creatures to avoid the hot sun. The upper layers can be used as perch sites and nest sites for song birds, while lower layers are resting sites for amphibians and reptiles, and escape sites for many mammals. As the material decays, they also attract insects, and as such they’ll attract insect-eating animals too. As more small animals find refuse in your brush pile, their predators will be attracted to them as well. Owls, hawks, foxes, and coyotes are known to visit brush piles to hunt. Making a brush pile can be as simple as piling branches and leaves into a mound, as big or as small as you want. You can even use tree stumps or old fence posts near the base, and keep stacking on plant trimmings and fallen branches. Do note that you don’t want to do this near anything like a fire pit.

Don't forget, with all of these, your mileage may vary for any variation of reasons, so don't worry if you can't take all of even any of these actions! Even just talking about them with other people may inspire someone else to put out a bat box, or leave a few logs out for wildlife!

That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to get seeds and plants as cheaply as possible. For now, I hope this advice helps! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt in Memes 6

Let's make it some in-world memes this time :)

[royalarchivist]

Mine: Refer to me however you want!

Mike: Yeah, for me too. I think I use all pronouns too.

[They high-five and fist-bump each other]

Mine:

[via @barbmine]

[deeva-arud]

Walk walk fashion baby

[mobius-m-mobius]

#ep 2 is for their very particular form of dating 😉

Loki 1x02 // 2x02

[inkskinned]

it is all chaos and entropy. the thing is that the chaos and entropy make it beautiful and lovely.

yes, it's true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is terrifying. i have lived through some of the unfairness - i got born like this, with my body caving into itself, with this ironic love of dance when i sometimes can't stand up for longer than 15 minutes. i am a poet with hands that are slowly shutting down - i can't hold a pen some days. recently i found a dead bird on our front porch. she had no visible injuries. she had just died, the way things die sometimes.

it is also true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is wonderful. the sheer happenstance that makes rain turn into a rainbow. the impossible coincidence of finding your best friend. i have made so many mistakes and i have let myself down and i have harmed other people by accident. nature moves anyway. on the worst day of my life she delivers me an orange juice sunset, as if she is saying try again tomorrow.

how vast and unknowing the universe! how small we are! isn't that lovely. the universe has given us flowers and harp strings and the shape of clouds. how massive our lives are in comparison to a grasshopper. the world so bright, still undiscovered. even after 30 years of being on this earth, i learned about a new type of animal today: the dhole.

chance echoing in my life like a harmony between two people talking. do you think you and i, living in different worlds but connected through the internet - do you think we've ever seen the same butterfly? they migrate thousands of miles. it's possible, right?

how beautiful the ways we fill the vastness of space. i love that when large amounts of people are applauding in a room, they all start clapping at the same time. i love that the ocean reminds us of our mother's heartbeat. i love that out of all the colors, chlorophyll chose green. i love the coincidences. i love the places where science says i don't know, but it just happens.

"the universe doesn't care about you!" oh, i know. that's okay. i care about the universe. i will put my big stupid heart out into it and watch the universe feast on it. it is not painful. it is strange - the more love you pour into the unfeeling world, the more it feels the world loves you in return. i know it's confirmation bias. i think i'm okay if my proof of kindness is just my own body and my own spirit.

i buried the bird from our porch deep in the woods. that same day, an old friend reaches out to me and says i miss you. wherever you go, no matter how bad it gets - you try to do good.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

and! barbarian!fig! its her

[gravidwithlore]

The young lord of the land in a favored outfit and the young lord in the same outfit (well, close enough anyway) after the people's revolution.

See also: The haughty young lord cruelly reprimanding "the help" while 6 months pregnant and the young "lord" laboring and sobbing as he begs the revolutionaries to untie his legs so he can give birth to his big overdue babies.

[stevieharringtonwifeguy]

ovulation being a hell of a drug that ends up getting steddie together like

eddie and queen bee stevie harrington who have a weird kind of friendship where they share like. Everything. not a single secret between them. like eddie's got stevie's cycle pretty much memorised and she knows about every inappropriately timed boner he's ever had. and they're talking one day, smoking, shooting the shit, and there's a second of silence before stevie's like. oh my god. im so horny im gonna die. and eddie's like huh what. and stevie goes like there's a stain on your wall that's kind of shaped like a sperm and that made me think about cum and now im all bricked up. my vaginas haunted. fucking sperm shaped stain.

and eddie's like. wait girls- ok you know what im saying this in my head and im realising this sounds dumb but like. i thought girls didn't like. Get Like That. like i thought random horniness at a stiff breeze was a guy thing

and stevie snorts like nope girls get it too we just get to hide it bc we don't get boners. swear to god there's like a week of every month where i get fucking possessed or some shit. robin says it's like a period thing

but you're not on your period?

and stevie's like no it's like. the opposite of a period. like your period is your uterus being like hey you fucked up you're not pregnant but Horny Week is your uterus being like okay im ready let's get a baby in there time to get pregnant you know what to do. it's called like. oval. something. oval something. im all fertile and my body's trying to trick me, the fuckn prick.

and eddie just kinda goes huh and then there's another second of silence where he tries very hard not to think about stevie being pregnant. and then stevie throws her arms up with a frustrated sigh like god DAMN it now im thinking about being pregnant and eddie's internally like well at least it's not just me

and anyway another joint later this obviously devolves into stevie shoving eddie's hand down her pants and telling him please it'll be so quick he doesn't even have to do anything and she just ruts against his hand while he stares at her bc he's so high and the girl he's basically in love with just told him how fertile she was and then started rubbing her incredibly wet pussy against his hand and he feels like he might pass out

they do this and more about once a month for like a year until stevie does actually get pregnant. her stupid uterus successfully tricked her 😔✊

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Arendelle