#he probably would have seen the fourth doctor the most or started watching when four went into five

[kattitude130]

wait, the doctor who movie was released in 1996! axl could have seen it!

[captains-simp]

Hey!! I was wondering if there’s a chance you could write Angst 4 with situation 4, with Wandaxfem!reader? Thank you so much anywho, I hope you have a great day

I absolutely can and you have yourself a great day too

"Wake up, dammit!"

Warnings: injury detail, near death, thoughts of death and me once again not really understanding how the human body works

2k words

[ masterlist ]

Buy me a coffee ☕

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Being an Avenger required a lot of skills. Practical, physical and mental. You excelled at most of it, your life and that of your teams depended on it. But you had a tendency to let personal matters get in the way.

You weren't the only one guilty of that. You were pretty sure you could name a time it had happened to everyone on the team at some point.

But you and Wanda were much more liable to let that get in the way than the others. You had both made a couple of bad decisions in the past to protect one another's safety. It was hard to control. Your first instinct would always be to protect your girlfriend, as was hers for you.

That was when things were good between you. Things being bad was a new concept, especially the way it affected a mission.

"Clear on the fourth floor C corridor." Wanda said through the comms. You jaw clenched tightly as you withheld the urge to role your eyes.

"I just confirmed that, Maximoff." You said back. Wanda didn't respond to that, not that you expected her to.

You were both working your way up a building that Hydra agents were supposed to be hiding out in. Wanda took the left side and you took the right, there were times where you met in the middle with no exchange of words.

"Thanks anyway, Wanda." Natasha said in an attempt to ease the obvious tension.

You continued to up the stairs to the next floor and tried not to think about the fight you had had the night before. It was a blur the next day, the reason it all started was unknown to you both. You had both been in a bad mood and things had soon escalated...badly. You had both said hurtful things, things you wished you could take back more than anything. The pair of you had formed a habit of giving each other space before apologising, but you had been forced together on the spontaneous mission that has thrown you both off, even more so by the fight being the worst one you two had ever had in your four years of dating. You had no idea where you stood with Wanda.

When you arrived in the center of the fifth floor you and Wanda rounded opposite corners into the main hallway at the same time. You paused when you saw her, she did too.

You were about to say something to her. Something that wasn't bitter or tense. You had the sudden urge to spill out an apology but she spoke first.

"Clear on the fifth floor corridor A." She didn't spare you a second glance, continuing through the building. You nodded to no one and hastily blinked back the tear that threatened to spill.

Focus on the mission. Focus on the mission. Well you didn't have much luck doing that.

"Going on to the next floor." You said steadily. You hadn't done a proper sweep of the floor, but nothing in the building showed any signs of people being there and you needed to put more distance between yourself and Wanda.

You should have waited for her. You knew that. She knew that. No one protested.

As soon as you were on the second floor you let your guard down and leant against a wall to take a moment to gather your thoughts. That was a mistake. A significant one.

You weren't in the right head space for that mission. That become so much more apparent when you when two bullets hit you.

Whether it was shock, panic, being distracted or a most likely combination of all three, you barely registered the first bullet. You saw who shot it though. One single Hydra agent who made a break for the exit behind you.

Just as you raised your gun to fire the second bullet hit you and sent you falling to the ground. You registered him jumping over your immobile body towards the stairs but before he could put one foot on them red swirls surrounded his body and threw him against the wall, knocking him out cold.

Wanda emerged from the hallway and skidded slightly in panic as she stopped to turn your way. Her eyes widened at the sight of the blood covering your clothes and hands. You were shaking violently while trying to put pressure on the wounds, but you didn't know where exactly they were. You couldn't feel any pain. Just numbness. And that was terrifying.

"You...no, fuck. M-medical assistance- now. Y/n's...been shot." Wanda stammered in panic as she knelt down beside you.

Natasha was giving Wanda instructions but you weren't paying attention to anything except your girlfriend.

"It's...okay." You struggled to say. Your breathing was laboured and speaking was even harder. The distinct taste of blood was in your mouth but you had to ignore that.

"I shouldn't have let you come up here alone." Wanda scolded, tears trailing down her cheeks as she found the two wounds. She ripped some fabric from her shirt into two pieces and held them against your stomach.

"I probably...would have...bitten your head...of if...you tried to." You laughed, instantly regretting it as pain shot through you. The shock was wearing off and the pain was taking its place in the most unmerciful way.

Tears fell from your eyes and your head fell back against the hard ground as you gasped, struggling for air. Wanda moved behind you and placed your head in her lap while she continued to apply pressure.

"I'm sorry." Your voice broke as you spoke. "I'm... so sorry for...last night." Wanda instantly shushed you and shook her head. Her left hand stayed on your stomach and her right combed through your hair to calm you.

"We both said bad things."

"I didn't...mean it...any of it." You tried to lock eyes with Wanda through your tears.

"Neither did I, we'll talk about this when you're better." Wanda promised, nodding her head to assure herself that you would be fine.

But just as she said that it became increasingly difficult to stay conscious. It was as though there was something in the dark calling to you, urging you to let go. It would be so easy. There would be no pain. But Wanda wouldn't be there.

You put your hand weakly over hers, wanting her to be the only thing on your mind incase it was the last. The feel of her skin against your own, her soothing voice and the accent she tried to conceal but you loved, the way she cared for you like no one else ever had. The thought that you may never experience that again made your heart drop.

The shaking was getting worse and you felt so cold.

Go to the dark. Don't go to the dark. So easy. No Wanda...Wanda.

You couldn't help it. You couldn't stop it. It washed our you like a wave. The sounds around you became distant, as though everything was far away. You couldn't make out what Wanda was saying. She sounded desperate. You couldn't see her either. Everything was blurred. Then it was all gone.

*

The recurring beeping from the monitor was the only sound in the room. Wanda had always thought she would find them annoying, but the Sokovian never wanted to hear it stop. Not until you didn't need it anymore. Until she didn't need it.

It had been a week since you were shot. A week since she had seen your bright y/e/c eyes. The doctors were skeptical. Wanda vaguely remembered them talking to her about your injuries, the severity of them and how they would effect you if you woke up. Once you woke up. They said it was a slim chance.

Wanda sat curled up in the chair next to your bed watching you, wondering if it felt peaceful to be in that state. She wore your favourite hoodie and had a blanket from your shared bed over her, it was the only thing that brought her comfort.

"Wake up, y/n." She whispered, as though trying to secretly communicate with you. "Please." She raised her voice slightly, thinking it could make a difference. It didn't.

"Y/n." She leant forward in her chair and took both of your hands in her own. All she had been able to think about was your fight. It had been stupid, so so stupid. You hadn't fixed it, not properly. Wanda needed more than than the brief moments on the mission. She didn't get to apologise. She couldn't let you go before she got to apologise. She had done it over and over to your sleeping form. But it didn't count. She needed you to wake up. To look at her again. To smile. To speak. To go on another date. To share another kiss. To sleep in the same bed...to get married. There was so much left to do. Wanda wasn't prepared for it to be cut short. It wasn't fair.

"Y/n please wake up. I'm so sorry." She pleaded as she gripped your hands like a lifeline. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pleaded over and over.

"Wake up, dammit!"

*

When your eyes finally flickered open you shut them again instantly. It was bright, far too bright. You gave a soft groan at that and tried to shield your face with your hand but found no energy to do so.

Your throat was dry and scratchy and your eyes were stinging from the exposure to the light.

You became aware of the beeping and glanced at the monitor as you tried to adjust to your surroundings, taking a for moments to remember how and why you were even in a hospital bed.

In the corner of your eye you saw movement on your left. You slowly turned your head in that direction and had your breath caught in your throat at the sight of your sleeping girlfriend. Was she still your girlfriend? Your heart dropped at the possibility that she might not be, but you hastily pushed it to the side and appreciated her company.

You had missed her. You had no idea how long you had been out. You had no memory of what it was like. All you knew was the familiar feeling of coming home deep in your chest.

Wanda's slim hand was resting on the bed next to yours and out of pure instinct you laced your fingers through her own, still unable to get over how perfectly they felt entwined together. Would she pull her hand away when she woke up? Would she shout at you more?

Fortunately you didn't have to wait long to find out. Wanda stirred from her uncomfortable looking position on the chair and blinked a few times before her eyes fell to your hands.

She furrowed her brows in confusion at the sight, not remembering putting them together but one look up told her all she needed to know.

"Y/n." She said as a sigh of relief, sitting up straight and gleaming at you.

"Wanda." You croaked with a weak but genuine smile. She picked up on that and with one flick of her tinted red wrist a small cup of water came floating towards you.

"Thank you." You said gratefully and took the cup with your free hand, wanting to hold Wanda's for as long as you could. You gulped the water down quickly and placed it on the bed side table before looking back at Wanda.

"You scared me." She admitted, concern prominent in her shimmering eyes.

"I'm sorry." She shook her head and was quick to speak.

"No, no more apologies from you. I'm sorry. For everything. I-" You cut her off by placing a finger to her lips with a smile.

"Stop."

"I really am though." You knew that, you could see it.

"I know you are." You said genuinely. "And I am too. I don't even know how it..." You trailed off as you opened and closed your mouth, not knowing what you were even trying to say. Wanda laughed and nodded, you had missed that sound so much.

"Are we...are we okay?" You asked timidly, fearing the response so much you couldn't look her in the eyes, only staring at your entwined hands.

Wanda lifted your chin with one of her fingers, wanting you to look at her as you spoke. Her warm smile greeted you like a treasured friend.

"We are. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you."

"Well then that's going to get confusing really quickly because I'll be doing the exact same." You declared. Wanda laughed again and brought your hands up to her lips to place a soft kiss on them. A smile spread easily across your face at the gesture.

"Come here." You muttered as you moved over to the edge of the bed and pulled the duvet back for your girlfriend.

She eagerly accepted the offer and slipped in beside you, instantly wrapping her free arm around you to bring you close while her other still held your hand.

"I love you." She whispered as she kissed your forehead.

"I love you too." You smiled and held onto her loose clothing and...how the hell did you miss that? "Is that my hoodie?"

[killing-all-joy]

Sometimes Having Terrible Aim Is Worth It

Pairing: Analogince Word count: 4,492 Logan uses he/they pronouns cw: swearing, snowball fights, mentions of murder, implied bad parents, i might have made lore for this at 1am while bored whoops

Overall, Roman and Logan were happy with their neighborhood. The location was convenient for both of their works (the theatre and the high school) and the environment was very lax. It was a low-crime, middle-class neighborhood with people who seemed very nice.

Roman, the sociable one, had made friends with many of the people on their block, only leaving a couple of houses alone. He had told Logan that all the people he had talked with were amiable people worthy of their friendship. So, Logan had accompanied his boyfriend during conversations with their neighbors on occasion, despite being an introvert with a general disappointment in the human race.

It wasn’t with ease that Roman was able to leave the house on their right alone. He had been warned not to bother the man who lived there as soon as he had moved in and started to make friends with his new neighbors. A blonde woman who Roman guessed to be about twenty years older than him had knocked on the door the evening after the two had moved in and given them the gist of the neighborhood. Her name was Janet, and she had told them about which houses had kids (as well as which kids were the best or quietest), how many people lived at each house, what each resident was like, and finally, about the man who lived next door.

Apparently, he was introverted and creepy, didn’t have friends, had the scariest Halloween decorations, worked at an age-old psychiatric hospital, and was rude and disagreeable. Janet had sufficiently discouraged Roman and Logan from interacting with him, but even if she hadn’t, the reports from their other neighbors would have done the job.

One kid said she had knocked on his door on Halloween, and he had opened the door and snarled at her with a realistic vampire outfit on, laughing evilly as she ran away. One mother said she had gone to his house to ask for a cup of sugar, and he had given her a cup of salt instead. Three kids all said they had seen him near the haunted house on Fridays. There was a rumor going around that he had killed the previous owners of the house Roman and Logan now resided in because their cat had made a small scratch on his car (Logan and Roman were less inclined to believe that last rumor; it was evidence-less, unlike the others).

But, other than the next-door neighbor they were both terrified of, Roman and Logan liked their living situation very much.

It was January, right in the middle of winter. The weather refused to let their area forget this fact; the week had started out with a snowstorm and after one day of pause, it had snowed every day for the next four days. It was now Friday, the fourth consecutive day of having snow, and the neighborhood kids had calmed about the state of the weather. Earlier in the week, Roman and Logan would often look out their window to find kids playing in the snow. Now, the excitement had dialed down and the kids were exhausted. The couple figured that sometime in the middle of the next week, the kids would be back to causing snowy chaos, but there was still almost a week until that hypothesis would be put to the test. At the current time, the block was quiet.

Roman appeared next to Logan, who was reading. He perched himself on the armrest of Logan's armchair and put an arm around his boyfriend.

"Hey, Logan?" Roman asked, taking a lock of Logan's hair and twirling it between his fingers.

"What is it you want, darling?" Logan replied, not looking up from his book.

Roman frowned. "I never said I wanted something."

"You called me Logan," he explained like it were obvious, "so, you want something."

Roman rolled his eyes, wishing his boyfriend wasn't so observant. "I want to have a snowball fight outside."

Logan raised an eyebrow, keeping his eyes on the novel in his hands. "I assume that you want me to join?"

Roman nodded. "Who else would I fight?"

"I also imagine you will annoy me about this subject until I acquiesce, or the snow melts?"

Roman nodded again.

"What's in it for me?"

Roman furrowed his eyebrows in thought. "Well...maybe, after the fight, we can curl up next to each other on the couch in our blankets, hot chocolate in hand, and we can watch Doctor Who or whatever while we snuggle."

Logan bit his lip.

"You know you want to."

Logan rolled their eyes. "I most certainly do not."

Roman grinned at him cheekily. "Bullshit," he said sweetly, "now come with me."

He took the book from Logan's hands and set it on the table. He grabbed a receipt from nearby and put it on the open pages, before slamming the novel shut and pulling his boyfriend to his feet.

Logan made a noise of surprise as he was dragged to the door by his boyfriend.

"Roman, wait!" Logan exclaimed, putting a hand on Roman's arm. "Let me get my gloves and hat on first."

Logan, who was already in a blue patterned sweater and dark purple scarf, dashed to his and Roman's room. He opened his closet and picked out his navy blue beanie and red gloves. He put them on quickly, not wanting to have to deal with Roman's manhandling once again.

He raced back to Roman who was waiting for him at the door impatiently. When he saw Logan, his expression brightened to one of adoration.

"Oh my gosh, mi querido, you look adorable!"

Logan huffed. "I am not adorable."

Roman laughed. "Yes, you are."

Logan knew that arguing was hopeless.

They took the accusation to heart for a moment. "What if the neighbors see our fight and it ruins my reputation and they never take me seriously again?"

"One, they will be too far away from us to recognize you. Two, they won't care. Three, I'm going to be annoying you for the next two months about a snowball fight so if you refuse, they'll judge you for choosing someone as loud and annoying as myself as your boyfriend."

Logan nodded. "Fair enough."

The two exited their house. Logan put his arms around his torso and shivered, the sudden change in temperature shocking his body, but Roman ran ahead. He immediately crouched down to the ground and formed a snowball, aiming directly for Logan’s stomach, and missing by a couple of feet. Logan gave him a disappointed look.

Roman huffed and returned to building a snowball. Logan shivered again, watching the small flecks of white flutter down from the clouds above and land on their suburban neighborhood. Logan was removed from their thoughts when a snowball collided with his stomach.

He stumbled back half a step, but steadied his stance and glared at his boyfriend. Another snowball was thrown his way, but Logan dodged and watched it disperse against the door.

“You might want to join me in the yard, Specs, if you don’t want me to break a window.”

Logan followed his suggestion, running to the front yard and immediately forming a snowball. They threw it at their unsuspecting boyfriend who was in the process of making another snowball. It hit him square in the chest, making him fall backwards.

“Oh, you’re in for it, mi luz.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “You’ve hit me twice, I’ve hit you once. I’m hardly the-”

A snowball to the lungs effectively shut them up.

---

Roman and Logan were hiding behind their respective walls of snow. Throughout the fight, they had been creating their own walls to hide behind to avoid getting hit. The fight would continue until either surrender or unconsciousness occurred, and both knew the former would be the hardest to achieve.

Since the two were both overachievers and never half-assed anything, their respective snow walls were two and a half feet high, roughly four inches in thickness, and approximately two feet wide. Roman had drawn an ‘R’ into his for dramatic effect, and Logan had hit the ‘R’ purposely with a snowball twice.

Neither knew how much time had passed, nor could they sense just how cold they were. All they could think about was demolishing their beloved in a violent war of snow, where only one could be crowned victor.

They were so unfocused that they didn’t notice a door opening and closing. Their eyes were so zeroed in on each other that Logan couldn’t see anything but his weapon and his target.

Logan knew the second the snowball left his hands that he would not land the shot. They were off by at least a couple of feet. They paid it no mind, however, and focused on evading Roman’s next attack.

The snowball landed with an audible smack.

That was unusual; dodged snowballs normally landed soundlessly on the ground.

What was also unusual was the yelp accompanying the sound.

Two shocked heads turned and watched as an unfamiliar man was thrown off his balance from Logan’s ruthlessly packed snowball. He didn’t fall to the ground, no, he was too scary and intimidating for that kind of humiliation to ever befall him. But, he was inconvenienced just enough so that Roman and Logan were terrified for their lives.

Logan hadn’t hit any old neighbor that lived on their block. He had hit the man who lived to their right.

The man who was evil, scary, probably a serial killer; the person that even the adults were scared of. He overdid Halloween, had no friends, and worked at a psychiatric hospital. He could probably kill them if he wanted to. According to the rumors, he had killed for lesser motives.

His eyes locked with both of the men at once, and Logan and Roman had never been more scared in their time together. He was terrifying.

With a black shirt, black jeans, black and purple hair, and a black hoodie, the man next door with tattoos creeping up his neck and black eyeshadow under his eyes looked very much the part the rest of the street had cast him as.

Logan and Roman were truly and undeniably fucked.

When the neighbor stopped glaring at them and walked to his car, Logan and Roman simultaneously craned their necks back to face each other, a terrified look in both of their eyes. Suddenly, all their competitive fire was extinguished and they looked at the snow on the ground with fear and regret instead of devious fun.

Their neighbor got something from his car and returned inside, casting sideways glances at Roman and Logan as he passed them. He slammed his door shut, causing both men to flinch.

From day one, the couple had been warned by kindergarteners and middle-aged women alike that they were unfortunate to be neighbors with the man next door. It was today that this was proven. All they could do was wait for their demise.

Roman threw a snowball at Logan’s face in anger at his actions and bad aim. For the first time in this fight, he wished he had been hit by that snowball.

There was a four minute period where the two were internally debating their options of either going back inside or apologizing to their fearsome neighbor. Occasionally, they would make eye contact with each other, but no words were actually spoken. Roman, the extrovert, considered knocking on his door to make a quick and hasty apology while Logan, the introvert, thought about writing an apology letter and sliding it under his door.

Neither of their ideas needed to be put to action, however, since the neighbor exited his house once again.

The two resisted the overwhelming urge to cower in fear. They had never seen him before, and now they had seen him twice in less than ten minutes? Clearly, they had ticked him off.

In an effort to not make it look as though they were staring, Logan and Roman stuck their gazes on each other. Each could tell that their partner was resisting their instincts telling them to run as far away as they could as fast as possible. But they couldn’t be rude—not when that man lived right next to them and could approach their house at any time. The serial killer rumors suddenly seemed more plausible.

What greeted them (or rather, Logan) instead, was a snowball to the back.

Logan, who was tenser than a taut rope, stumbled from the harsh impact. When he was able to regain his stance, his head whipped around to look at his attacker.

The neighbor had on, of all things, a smile.

He had discarded his hoodie for a fluffy black sweater with purple bats on it. He was now in a black beanie and had on midnight blue gloves. While his winter attire was surprising considering he already had a hoodie and didn’t seem to leave his house much, the mischievous smile was the most perplexing of all new things about their neighbor. Neither Logan nor Roman could make sense of it, except that it let them see the infamously creepy stranger in a new light.

Logan huffed out a bemused laugh, staring at the neighbor (who looked to be similar in age to them) like he was a gripping plot twist in a novel that unexpectedly ended happily. He shook his head a bit, but crouched down and formed another snowball. He made sure not to throw it as hard as the first one he had thrown at the stranger.

The man dodged it with ease, running closer to the snow-covered couple’s house. He swiped some snow off the porch rail and quickly packed it before throwing it at Roman, who was too busy being bewildered to do anything to dodge. He gasped in offense and coughed when the snowball collided with his sternum, and directed a playful glare at his attacker. He threw a snowball at him in return.

The neighbor easily dodged that one, but wasn’t able to dodge the snowball Logan had thrown his way. His attention switched over to the bespectacled assailant, looking at them just in time to see him throw another snowball at his boyfriend.

“How the hell did you make a snowball that quickly, cariño?”

“I have a snow wall, Ro. What do you think I put behind it? Action figures?” Logan retorted sarcastically.

Roman rolled his eyes and formed another snowball, sending it through the air and smack into Logan’s wall. “Every man for himself!”

The neighbor laughed at that, and the snowball fight continued.

---

As it turned out, Logan and Roman were at a disadvantage from already being out in the snow before their neighbor joined in. He was able to make them both surrender eventually, but not before Roman had aimed a snowball at a precise place on the back of his neck where the snow fell down the back of his shirt.

Logan was the wiser out of the couple and had surrendered first (not without a fight, though). He figured he deserved it; he had been the one to disturb the stranger, after all. This made him able to watch as both Roman and the stranger started to shiver more and more as the fight had continued.

When Roman finally did surrender, Logan laughed in his face and then put an arm around him. Logan took one hand in his and was able to tell his fingers were numb.

“You just never know when to quit, do you?” they sighed fondly.

“I did eventually!” protested Roman indignantly.

The stranger chuckled from beside him. “Would’ve been easier for your poor body if you’d surrendered when you knew you were gonna lose.”

It was the first time they’d heard him speak; snowball fights weren’t exactly the best place to start a conversation. His voice was low, about as deep as expected from a scary man in all black. However, it didn’t hold any fearful qualities or scratchiness like the kids had described. The couple thought it sounded like coffee on a cool winter’s morning (which didn’t make sense since coffee wasn’t a sound, but it was all that they could use to describe it, nonetheless).

“And when would that have been?”

“The second I joined in.”

Logan hid a laugh behind their hand. Roman glared at him for encouraging their neighbor.

“No idiot surrenders the second another person joins,” Roman muttered.

“Exactly,” the man said with a wink. Logan was able to spot him curling his arms around himself, probably from being cold.

Roman gasped loudly when he finally realized what the stranger was saying. “How dare you!”

He stumbled out of Logan’s arms and collected more snow off the porch railing, making it into a large, messy ball and chucking it at the stranger.

It hit his face. Not hard in any shape or form; no harm would be done, but it was still a bunch of cold water shoved in his face and falling into the front of his sweater.

The stranger furiously batted at the snow on his face.

“Serves you right,” Roman mumbled.

Logan rolled his eyes. “Sorry, that must’ve been freezing.”

The man nodded.

“Come on in,” Logan invited, opening the door. “We can make you some hot chocolate.”

Roman rushed inside, running to the storage closet that had extra blankets.

“A-are you s-su-re?” the stranger said, syllables separate and repetitive from his shivering. The snow in his face caused his teeth to chatter.

“Of course,” Logan said, “it’s our—well, mostly my fault, that you got cold anyway. I’m Logan. He/they pronouns.”

Virgil chuckled. “L-log-an, h-uh? Was st-st-starting to thi-nk y-you were j-just gi-v-ven a b-bunch of p-pet names at b-birth.”

Logan blushed furiously, but laughed. Roman referred to him with Spanish terms of endearment more than he did his legal name.

“At this point, I might as well have been. I tend to respond to any unfamiliar word that vaguely sounds like Spanish now.”

They ushered the freezing stranger inside. Roman had returned from the storage closet with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and another under his arm. Logan took the blanket that wasn’t shrouding his shivering boyfriend and wrapped it around the stranger’s shoulders, who tugged it tighter around himself eagerly.

Logan went to the kitchen, putting three mugs of milk into the microwave and setting it for two minutes. They then returned to Roman and their neighbor who were shivering in silence.

“Thanks for joining us,” Roman said, “that was fun.”

“It was,” he agreed, shivering starting to calm down. “T-thank you for letting me p-participate.” Not fully, however.

“Of course,” said Logan, putting an arm on Roman’s shoulders. “I totally meant that snowball as an invitation. Fully intentional.”

The other two laughed, knowing that was a lie. The microwave beeped, and Logan left them to take the mugs from the microwave. He put the hot cocoa powder in and stirred the mugs, before picking them up.

He entered the living room to see that Roman had sat on the left of the couch and the stranger in the middle. Logan put their mugs in front of them and put down a mug for themself. He sat down next to the stranger.

“Might I ask your name, oh Master of the Snowball?” Roman asked.

The stranger snorted. “That’s much better than my name. My name’s Virgil. He/him.”

Logan smiled to himself. “Not at all, that’s a very nice name.”

Virgil choked on the hot chocolate he was sipping. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Fits your aesthetic,” Roman remarked.

Virgil opened his mouth, looking offended. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

It was obviously a joke, but Logan and Roman knew they had to tell Virgil of the rumors and his reputation. Especially now that they saw him as a good guy.

“Halloween,” Roman started to list, “everyday-is-spooky-season aesthetic, seems like the type of guy to work at a haunted house.”

Virgil scoffed. “Those places are stupid; not scary at all. If you want to go to a haunted house, make your house the haunted house.”

Well, now they had the Virgil-goes-to-a-haunted-house-weekly theory debunked.

“You do have ghosts on your sweater,” Logan supplied, taking a sip of the hot chocolate.

“They’re cute ghosts, though,” Roman said as soon as Virgil opened his mouth to argue. He pointed at one on his sweater. “See? Look at the lil’ faces.”

“My sister got it for me for Christmas.”

“If I knew your sister, that would probably explain the cute faces.”

“Oh, believe me, it would.”

Logan chuckled as he watched the two exchange conversation. He took another sip of his hot chocolate.

“So, um, I heard moving trucks outside your house about a month ago. Was that y’all? You new here?” asked Virgil.

“Affirmative,” Logan confirmed.

“Yeah, it’s our very first house together!” Roman said happily.

Virgil smiled. “That’s sickeningly adorable.”

“I am sickeningly adorable,” Roman said like it was a badge of honor.

“I agree,” Logan said.

A comfortable silence befell the group.

Virgil fidgeted, looking at Roman nervously. “Bit awkward question this far into the conversation, but I never caught your name-”

“Roman~” sang the man in question. He would have held the note out for an impressively long time if he didn’t take a sip of hot cocoa.

“Cool,” said Virgil awkwardly. “And I suppose, Roman and Logan, oh wow y’all’s names rhyme that is so romantic, anyway-”

Roman gasped, covering his mouth. His eyes lit up. “They do!”

“Are you just noticing this, Roman?” asked Logan.

“Of course!” Roman exclaimed in reply. “If I knew our names rhymed, I would have already written many a rhyming poem about our love.”

“That’s very nice, Love.”

“Don’t be snippy, mi cielo, you know you’d love it,” Roman huffed. “Virgil, don’t you think he’d love it?”

Virgil just rolled his eyes fondly, not wanting to get caught up in the middle of a lover’s spat.

“Don’t bring Virgil into this, Roman. You should put the subject aside, considering he was in the middle of saying something before you interrupted.”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask. Did our neighbors happen to...um...tell you what they thought of me? Ruin first impressions? It would explain your terrified expressions when we first saw each other.”

Roman and Logan looked at each other worriedly.

“...Maybe?” Roman asked quietly.

“There’s a small possibility...” Logan whispered.

“Y’all, I’m not mad if it happened, I just wanna know.”

Logan sighed. “Yes, yes they did.”

“What’d they say?”

“Multiple people said different things,” Logan began. “Janet talked to us first. She’s the blonde, short-haired, blue-eyed-”

“-Used to be a soccer mom, baby blue house?” Virgil asked. Logan nodded. “Met her when I first moved in, and once after that.”

“Her, yes. She told us, quite frankly, to not come near you.”

Virgil started to close in on himself. “Like how?”

“Said you were creepy, rude, introverted, no friends, freaky-as-all-hell Halloween decorations, apparently knew where you worked,” Roman told him, then noticed Virgil’s shrinking and stopped with the accusations. “I doubt almost all of that now, since you’re obviously not creepy and definitely have friends with that personality, but she may have been accurate with Halloween decor.”

“She was,” Virgil confirmed. “Go big or go home.”

“I believe you are normally home during Halloween, are you not?” asked Logan, confused.

Roman laughed. “Of course, mi amor.”

“Where do I work, in Janet terms?” asked Virgil, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Some old psychiatric hospital out of town.”

Virgil doubled over in laughter. He put his mug on the coffee table so it wouldn’t spill and held his head in his hands.

When he regained himself, still giggling, he replied.

“That’s inaccurate,” Virgil said plainly. “I don’t have a degree for that. See, there’s an old abandoned psychiatric hospital two miles away from the airport that is on the same road as the airport. It’s out of use, so that’s a stupid assumption to make. I guess I could maybe see why she made it though; I work at the airport.”

“Oh?” asked Logan, intrigued.

“Yeah, I’m an air traffic controller,” said Virgil with a shrug. “It ain’t that interesting. I recently got fully certified, though, which is cool. It pays well, I’m good at paying constant attention to things that could potentially end badly, and the high-stress comes from having to give my unwavering and full attention, which is something I can do well.”

“Less stressful than home and college, I guess, huh?” Roman guessed.

“Exactly, it's a spa compared to my parents,” Virgil said with a laugh. “But yeah, that’s hysterical. I definitely do not work at a psychiatric hospital.”

“I suppose what the kids said is untrue if what the adults said is false,” Logan mused.

“Oh dear lord, what did they say,” Virgil groaned.

“One girl told us about the rumor that you killed the people who used to live here,” Roman said, and Virgil immediately laughed. “Her mother said she asked for a cup of sugar and you gave her a cup of salt instead.”

“I hadn’t slept in five days and realized my mistake two hours later,” Virgil explained immediately. “I remember that one.”

Logan snorted. “One boy said you go to the haunted house on Fridays, which is obviously untrue.”

“Yeah. One, they’re stupid, two, that one’s only open in October and November, three, that one ain’t even scary. It has a good and free parking lot, though, and I volunteer at an at-risk youth center every Friday a couple blocks down that has really shitty parking.”

Roman shook his head. “Wow, we really got you wrong.”

“You were misled,” Virgil corrected. “It’s not your fault.”

“You know what, you’re right!” Roman agreed. “We were robbed.”

Virgil raised an eyebrow. “Of what?”

“Of friendship,” Logan said, taking a sip from his drink. “Roman would have been banging on your door two days after moving, wanting to get to know you. But, after a momentous amount of ‘rude’ and ‘disagreeable’—” Virgil frowned, “—he was persuaded not to. Our loss, especially considering you are neither of those two adjectives.”

Virgil smiled. “Thank you.”

Logan looked into Virgil’s chestnut brown eyes, and was able to spot the specks of gray in them. They gave Virgil a warm smile. “For what? It is our pleasure to be given the chance to know you.”

Roman groaned. “I try 24/7 to be dramatic and you do it without trying.”

Virgil, blushing, giggled. “You’re both good at it.”

Roman beamed at him. “I’m thrilled you think so, Nico di Angel-o.”

“Nico’s surname can be interpreted to mean ‘of the angels’ already, Roman, I don’t think you need to emphas-”

“Shhhh, Specs, let me shower our guest with compliments.”

Virgil’s face was on fire. “Do y’all have any movies?”

~

Taglist: @somehow-i-got-an-account @justanotherhumanstuff @fander-fic-recs @neo-neo-neo

~

I wrote most of that when I went into a blur for three hours and looked at the time after I finished the draft to see that I had wasted all the time I had to do homework. It was worth it. I don’t know why but I’m really attached to this AU? If you want to see more of it please tell me. I hope you liked it!

[myenterpriseisparked]

The Voyager Bunch

Or, Rascals: Voyager Edition

-----

Based on this post

This is dedicated to @jellybeansarecool @bizships @emilie786 @joyful-voyager and @subtle-spock for providing ideas, encouragement, and for generally being really awesome people. Also they are the nicest folks ever. Go follow them.

This ain’t my first fanfiction rodeo, but it is my first Star Trek fanfiction rodeo so I beg for your patience. Also, I am perfectly aware that there are some plot holes in here. This is because I am an animal scientist, not a Starfleet physicist/biologist/whateverist. Swiss cheese also has holes and swiss cheese is good so please consider that.

Click here to read on AO3, if you prefer. Thanks for reading!

-----

Despite having only been a captain for a few years, Kathryn Janeway had seen more unusual occurrences, courtesy of the Delta Quadrant, than most Starfleet captains combined. Some days, she felt a little overwhelmed by the summary of the last three years of experiences. Other days, she was grateful for the callouses such challenges had built over her nerves, preparing her to face even the strangest incidents without panicking.

Today was a day to be grateful, because without having seen everything she had seen, the prospect of her Chief Engineer, Chief of Security, Head Helmsman, and most brilliant Ensign being reverted into child-like versions of themselves would have launched her straight into a spiral of panic.

“How-” Janeway paused for a moment to pinch the bridge of her nose, “how exactly did this happen?”

“Well, ya see, ‘Lanna and Harry and I were in that shuttle and then this big black thing showed up and we flew into it and there was a big flash and-”

Janeway held a hand up, cutting off the shockingly fast string of prattle. “I think I understand that part, Tom, thank you.” She spoke as gently and patiently as possible. “What I don’t understand is how Tuvok got into this.... predicament.”

She turned toward the tallest of the four children, who stood with his hands behind his back in a way that would have been exactly like Tuvok, if the pre-teen boy weren’t fidgeting with the hem of his shirt and looking around the bridge, open mouthed and starry-eyed. “Tuvok?”

The Vulcan turned toward her. “The shuttle was stuck in the anomaly and the tractor beam wasn’t working, so I rammed my ship into theirs to dislodge it.” Tuvok nearly smiled, which was jarring to see on his features, no matter how much younger he looked. “It worked, but I got sucked into the anomaly too. When we came out the other side, we looked like this.”

He motioned to Tom and B’Elanna, who were standing next to him, both of which appeared to be around the age of 5 or 6. Harry, who looked to be about a year old, was currently tucked into Chakotay’s arms, playing contentedly with the rank bar at the large man’s throat.

Janeway looked the group over, ignoring the humored smiled playing at her first officer’s lips. With a sigh, she turned to the members of her senior officer team that were not currently under the age of 13. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“I would like to run some experiments first, but I am wondering if I can age their DNA back to the correct age in a process similar to the one I used to turn you and Mr. Paris back into humans after the, ah, Warp 10 incident,” The Doctor said.

“That might put their bodies back at the right age,” Kes said, brow furrowing, “but their minds appear to have reverted to their new biological age as well. Will the DNA reversal process fix that?”

The Doctor tilted his head. “I’m unsure. I need more time to research and run simulations.”

Janeway nodded. “Get started on that right away. In the meantime,” she turned back to the children and her commander, “let’s get you four something to eat.” 

Neelix jumped to his feet, practically lighting up the room with his enthusiasm. “I’ll fix you kiddos up something real nice!” He dashed over to the door with a wild grin. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll have the best grilled cheese sandwich you’ve ever smelt!” He saluted the whole room and practically bounced out the door.

Janeway glanced over at Chakotay who, for the first time since he had picked up baby Harry, looked nervous. His worried glance met her own and he tilted his head.

“Well,” Chakotay sighed, “hopefully these guys aren’t as picky of eaters as I was.”

-----

As unappealing as Janeway found Neelix’s cooking to be, it was, apparently, perfect for kids, as evidenced by the unrestrained glee with which Tom, B’Elanna, and Tuvok devoured their sandwiches.

The captain couldn’t help but smile as Tom downed the second half of his sandwich in a few bites and think how the older version of Tom would have been appalled to see himself eating Neelix’s cooking with such enjoyment.

As the older children ate, Janeway found herself spooning some kind of mashed vegetable mix into Harry’s waiting mouth. At first, she was a little uncomfortable with the idea of feeding one of her best officers, but, once she was able to get past the strangeness of the entire situation, she found herself enjoying the funny expressions and eager attitude of the baby in front of her.

“Gosh, he’s such a cute baby.” She said with a grin for the fourth time.

Chakotay leaned over, his shoulder brushing hers as he smiled at Harry. “I’d like to agree with you, Captain, but you keep hogging him so I can’t get a good look.” He turned to look her in the eye, raising his eyebrow teasingly.

She shoved him playfully with her elbow. “You got to hold him earlier in the conference room. It’s my turn.”

“I think your turn ended about ten minutes ago,” he grinned.

“I think I can find something else for you to do if you’re going to take Harry away from me, Commander.” She returned his grin.

“Fine,” Chakotay shook his head with a chuckle, “but I get him later.”

-----

Several hours had passed since lunch and, much to Chakotay’s disappointment, baby Harry was still firmly in Janeway’s possession, perched on her hip and looking for all the world like he belonged there.

Chakotay tried not to think too much about how naturally Kathryn had taken to caring for Harry as he watched her pace the bridge, checking on various scanner readings and flight paths, from his position on the floor by their command chairs. Beside him, Tom and B’Elanna rolled a ball back and forth between them, excitedly chattering about... well... everything.

“Do you think the whales were really THAT big?” Tom spread his arms out to the side.

“Yeah they were!” B’Elanna exclaimed loudly enough that the entire ship could probably hear it. Despite Chakotay’s best efforts to get her to lower her voice, the young girl seemed to only have one volume. “I saw a big fake one in a museum once and it was HUGE!”

“Whoa!” Tom’s eyes widened. “Bigger than this ship?”

B’Elanna tilted her head. “I don’t know, but it was definitely bigger than me!”

The two kids laughed, rolling the ball back and forth faster.

“Hey Tom?”

“What?”

“You’re my best friend!” B’Elanna suddenly reached forward and gave Tom a hug.

Chakotay glanced up at Kathryn to exchange a look of awe before he turned back to the kids on the floor. “But B’E, I thought you just said a few minutes ago that I’m your best friend.” He raised an eyebrow, hiding his smile.

The young girl gave him a look that he had seen far too many times on her older counterpart’s face whenever he said something particularly dumb. “I can have two best friends, duh.”

He laughed. “Fair enough.”

Suddenly, he saw Kathryn’s purposeful walk stop out of the corner of his eye. 

“Chakotay,” her voice was even and tense, “where’s Tuvok?”

Eyes widening, Chakotay glanced around the bridge. Tuvok was no where to be seen.

“Chakotay to Tuvok.” He stood as he tapped his commbadge. “Tuvok, please acknowledge.” They waited a moment and, upon receiving no response, moved simultaneously toward the turbolift. 

“It’s possible he hasn’t figured out how to use his comm.” Janeway tucked Harry closer to her side as they stepped into the lift. “Computer: locate Tuvok.”

“Unable to comply.”

Janeway gave the ceiling a glare. “Why?”

The computer did not respond.

“Maybe the de-aging effect has made it difficult for the computer to locate him.” Chakotay rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure he’s alright; he’s probably just exploring the ship; you saw how amazed he was by everything in the conference room earlier.”

She nodded tightly. “Let’s hope so. Where do you think he’s gone?”

“Maybe to the holodeck?”

“Or his quarters.”

“What about the mess hall?”

“He just ate.”

They both paused, mulling it over.

“Alright.” Kathryn straightened. “I’ll check holodeck one and his quarters, you check holodeck two and the mess hall.” She turned back to the lift door. “Holodeck one.”

Chakotay swallowed around the lump in his throat, trying not to think of all the ways a small child could get hurt on a spaceship like Voyager. As the turbolift began to move, Janeway’s badge chirped.

“Kes to the captain.”

Her brow raised as she tapped the emblem. “Go ahead.”

“I think I’ve found something you’re missing.” Kes’s usually lighthearted tone was even lighter, clear amusement seeping through.

Kathryn turned to look Chakotay in the eye, a hopeful smile brightening her face. “I’m on my way.”

-----

Honestly, Janeway was a little ashamed of the fact that she didn’t think to go looking for her best friend among the orchids and other plants in the aeroponics bay, considering his horticulturally-related hobbies. As she and Chakotay stepped into the room, smiles crept onto both of their faces as they watched Tuvok carefully transfer one of Kes’s sprouts to a bigger pot. After patting the soil around the plant firmly, he wiped a hand across his forehead, smearing dirt on his face to match the dirt on his uniform.

Kes smiled up at the command team. “He came down and asked about a hundred questions about our system and then offered to help me with my work while we talked because its ‘more efficient to talk and work than simply talk.’” 

Janeway chuckled at Kes’s approximation of Tuvok’s speech pattern. “Thanks for letting us know, Kes.” She reluctantly handed Harry to Chakotay, who flashed his dimples, and crouched next to Tuvok. “Hello there.”

Tuvok glanced up quickly before resuming his work. “Hello, Captain. Did you know that these Talaxian green beans take only a week and a half to reach maturity?”

“I did not.” Janeway raised a brow and tilted her head. “That’s very impressive.”

“I thought so too when Kes told me.” He patted the soil around another plant and set it aside, retrieving another sprout.

“Tuvok,” the captain reached forward and rested a hand on his shoulder, “I’m glad you’ve found something to do, but you have to tell someone where you’re going before you wander off. We didn’t know what happened to you and Chakotay and I were really worried.”

Behind her, Chakotay’s heart flipped. There was something rather... intimate about the way she had referred to both of them being worried about a child.

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Tuvok nodded his head. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good.” Janeway smiled and stood. “Why don’t you help Kes down here for a while and then come back up to the bridge when you are ready?” She looked at Kes. “That is, if Kes is alright with that.”

The young woman smiled. “Of course, I’d love some help.”

Janeway nodded and turned back to Tuvok. “Be sure to let us know when you’re on your way back up.”

“Of course, Captain.”

She patted him one last time on the shoulder and turned back to Chakotay. They fell into step beside one another and entered the elevator.

As the doors whooshed closed, Janeway turned to Chakotay with the intention of reclaiming Harry, but stopped. A smile grew across her lips as she watched Chakotay bounce Harry gently, allowing the little boy to palm his tattoo in curiosity. Even as one of Harry’s chubby fingers poked him in the eye, Chakotay simply chuckled and took the tiny hand in his own.

He finally turned to look at her. “What?”

Kathryn just shook her head, grinning wider. “I was going to take Harry from you, but I can’t bear to break up this cute little arrangement.” She motioned to the two of them with a long finger.

The corner of Chakotay’s mouth kicked up a little higher. “Captain, did you just imply that I’m cute?”

Her brow arched, but her smile didn’t diminish. “It would be hard for anyone to look unappealing with a cute baby in their arms.”

Her heart stopped suddenly as she realized what she had just said. From the look of Chakotay’s face, he had caught it too. Implying that he and the baby were cute was one thing; calling him “appealing” was another. Before she could say anything else she might regret, Kathryn turned back to the lift door, schooling her features back into the face of the Captain.

If she had turned but a half-second later, she would have seen a wide smile break across Chakotay’s face.

-----

“I’m sorry, Captain, but I need more time. I won’t deactivate myself until I have a solution, but this situation is very delicate and I can’t risk rushing my tests. You’ll need to find somewhere for the children to sleep. Hopefully I’ll have a solution tomorrow.”

Kathryn nodded. “Of course. Thank you, Doctor.”

With a grim smile, the feed from sickbay switched off, leaving her to look at her dark reflection in the black screen. Something like relief swept over help alongside a touch of regret. On one hand, she could really use her senior officers back in functioning shape. On the other hand....

Her eyes drifted back down to Harry, who had pulled a bit of her hair out of it’s ponytail and was curling it around his tiny fist in unbreakable fascination. A smile tugged at her lips as she cuddled him a bit closer. 

She could get used to this.

The thought struck her before she even knew what she was feeling and, as soon as she admitted it to herself, she took that feeling and shoved it as deep into the recesses of her mind as she could. She was the captain of a ship that was constantly in danger and she shouldn’t dwell on things she couldn’t have.

Kathryn sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. “Well, Harry, looks like we need to find you a place to sleep.”

Turning back to the computer, she moved to set him down so she could use both hands to search the crew quarters layouts for a suitable place to keep the children overnight. As soon as Harry’s feet touched the ground, a wail rose from the back of his throat and his face scrunched.

Kathryn quickly scooped him back up. “Harry? What’s wrong?”

The boy’s cry of protest faded into whimpers and he buried his head in her shoulder, clinging to her tightly.

A warm feeling washed over her. “Ah,” she smiled, “I see.”

She pulled him closer and turned back to the computer, tapping buttons with one hand. “You can stay up here with me, then.”

The door to her quarters chimed.

“Come in.” 

Before she could turn to greet her guest, mischievous giggles rose from the door. Eyebrow raised, she whirled around to find Chakotay standing in the doorway, a stack of PADDs in his hand, a tiny engineer on his left leg, and a tiny helmsman on his right.

He stepped forward with far less difficultly than she would have expected, given the extra weight on his legs. He crossed the room quickly and passed the PADDs to her. “The crew reports you requested.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, glancing down at the still giggling forms. “Not to alarm you, Commander, but it would seem that you have a couple of lifeforms attached to you.”

Chakotay’s eyes grew wide in mock surprise. “Really?” He turned his head and shuffled around, as if to look at his back. “Where?”

Tom and B’Elanna’s laughter grew. Suddenly, Chakotay leaned over and scooped the two of them off his legs, lifting them both up over his shoulders as their shrieked in delight.

He turned back to Kathryn with a wide smile. “Not to worry, Captain, I’ve apprehended the life forms.” 

She smiled back with a soft chuckle. “We need to find a place for the life forms to stay tonight.”

Chakotay’s smile faded into a more serious, but not displeased look. “The Doctor doesn’t have a solution yet, then?” He lowered Tom and B’Elanna to the ground. They scampered off to the viewport, excitedly chattering about the stars.

“No, he needs a bit more time.”

Chakotay nodded. “Maybe I could take them for the night, that way someone is there to keep an eye on them.”

Kathryn shook her head. “I have no doubt in your babysitting abilities, Commander, but four children is a lot for one person to watch alone and your quarters are not big enough for Trouble 1 and Trouble 2 to run around in.” She gestured to the kids at the window. 

“Fair point. Maybe I should take Harry and Tuvok then, and you could take Tom and B’Elanna?”

She turned Harry away from Chakotay. “Trying to take my boy again, are you Chakotay?” 

He chuckled and shook his head. “Do you have another idea, then, Mom?”

Her breath caught in her throat, but she managed to smirk at him and continue speaking without any indication that his previous sentence had impacted her. “My quarters are the largest on the ship. If we set up cots here in my living room we could easily both keep an eye on the children overnight.”

“Sounds good to me.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “How about I go collect Tuvok from aeroponics and some food from the mess hall while you get the cots set up?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He gave her one last lingering smile, which she returned, before heading out the door and down the hall.

-----

Apparently the lunch they had shared earlier that day had been misleadingly easy. Supper was, to put it lightly, a challenge.

“B’Elanna, eat your own food and stop taking from Tom’s plate,” Kathryn said firmly.

“But Tom isn’t eating it!”

“I was going to eat it! I’m just a slower eater than you are!”

“Well eat faster then!”

“B’Elanna!” Chakotay set down the spoon he had been using to feed Harry and fixed her with a stern look. “That food isn’t yours, and Kathryn already asked you to stop taking Tom’s food. You won’t be asked again.”

B’Elanna mumbled out an apology and stuffed another bite of her own meal into her mouth.

Kathryn shot Chakotay a grateful smile and turned to Tuvok, who was holding up one of his vegetables to the light. “Tuvok? What are you doing?”

“I’m looking at the xylem and phloem of this plant.”

She bit back a smile. “I appreciate your curiosity, Tuvok, but I need you to stop studying your food and start eating it.”

The young Vulcan turned to her and nodded. “Of course.” He politely chewed and swallowed his food and turned back to the captain. “Did you know that this particular plant is a distant cousin of Terran broccoli? You can tell by the-”

Chakotay smiled as he watched Kathryn listen to Tuvok’s fourth lecture of the evening on plant biology. Neither of them were certain of what he was talking about most of the time, but his enthusiasm for the subject was nearly infectious and neither of them minded listening.

“Chakotay?”

He turned away from the scene across the table and looked at Tom next to him. “Yes?”

“After dinner, will you read to us?”

“Of course.” Chakotay smiled and ruffled Tom’s hair. “Anything particular you want to hear?”

“I want to hear about your missions with the Maquis!” B’Elanna bounced in her seat, all of that barely-contained Klingon energy starting to spill over. 

“Or perhaps you could read to us from a classic story,” Tuvok raised a brow. “I’m fond of the works of Tolkien, maybe Tom and B’Elanna would like ‘The Hobbit’ too?”

“What’s a hobbit?” Tom’s face scrunched in confusion.

“Maybe,” Kathryn interjected before Tuvok could give a detailed recounting of the beloved childhood book, “Chakotay could tell us a story from his tribe.” Her eyes met his across the table. “He is pretty good at recounting ancient legends.”

Heat crept up the sides of Chakotay’s face as he held her stare. “Maybe.”

“Nah,” Tom’s voice broke through the pleasant tension between them. “I wanna know what a hobbit is!”

Chakotay chuckled. “Alright, ‘The Hobbit’ it is.”

-----

It took some time to get the older three to settle into bed, but finally, they began to yawn and snuggle deeper under their blankets. As their heads grew heavier, Chakotay wrapped up his story telling and the command team began to tuck their young companions in for the night.

As Chakotay wished Tom and Tuvok a good night’s rest, Kathryn carefully extracted B’Elanna from where she was snuggled into her side and took her over to her cot. As she got the small girl settled, she suddenly reached up and captured Kathryn in a tight hug. Surprised, Kathryn’s eyes widened, but she returned the gesture in earnest.

“Kathryn?”

“Yes, B’Elanna?”

“You’re my best friend.”

Kathryn blinked and pulled back to look B’Elanna in the eyes with a small smile. “I thought Chakotay and Tom were your best friends.”

“I can have more than one best friend.” B’Elanna’s voice was filled with deep confidence, despite how sleep-laced it was.

“Fair enough,” Kathryn chuckled, pulling the blankets tightly around the girl. “Goodnight.”

She met Chakotay in her bedroom, Harry still in his arms.

“Any time I try to set him down he starts crying.” Chakotay grinned sheepishly. 

She grinned back. “I had a similar experience earlier today.” She reached up and brushed hand over the boy’s soft, black hair. “Its a good thing he weighs next to nothing.”

At Kathryn’s gentle touch, Harry stirred. His dark eyes found Kathryn’s and he reached out for her. With a look of mock hurt, Chakotay transferred the boy to his desired location.

“I’m trying not to be offended right now, Harry.”

Kathryn simply grinned and bounced the baby in her arms gently. “It’s alright, Chakotay. He has excellent taste.”

Chakotay shook his head, dimples flashing. “I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

She turned toward the bed and settled herself on one side, her back resting against the pillows and Harry resting against her chest. “Let’s see if we can get this one sleepy enough to not notice if we set him down.” She looked back at Chakotay, who was still standing, rather awkwardly. She patted the bed next to her with a smirk. “Come on, Commander. Get some rest. We’ve has a big day, wrangling the kiddos.”

He smiled and crossed the room to the other side of the bed, gently sitting next to her, his legs stretched out. “It has been a long day,” he said with a sigh. “But, I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed it.” He tilted his head to look at Kathryn, who was already looking up at him.

“Nor I.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Suddenly, Chakotay was very aware of how close their faces were. He watched as Kathryn’s eyes slid down to his lips. Before he could do something he couldn’t take back, he took a deep breath and turned away.

“Well,” Kathryn cleared her throat, sounding more like the Captain now, “it’s been fun but we should get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on Harry here and take him to his cot in a few minutes. You should go ahead and rest, Commander.”

“Of course.” He tilted his head and gave her a small smile. “Goodnight, Kathryn.”

She grinned back. “Goodnight, Chakotay.”

-----

Apparently, Kathryn didn’t stay awake long enough to take Harry back to his cot, as evidenced by the weight on her chest as she stirred awake the next morning. She slowly became aware of her surroundings and the previous day’s events came flooding back to her.

She also became distinctly aware of the warm, comfortable presence beside her. As she opened her eyes, she realized that her first officer’s arm was settled around her shoulders and that his shoulder was currently her pillow. His head rested atop hers and the hand that was not draped around her shoulders was resting on top of Harry’s back next to her own.

The situation was all rather snuggly and, were it not a violation of every professional barrier Kathryn had erected between her and the commander, she would have had no issue in savoring the moment.

Then again.... maybe she could allow herself just a few moments to pretend that the baby in her arms wasn’t her star technical officer and that the man holding her close wasn’t her XO and that this was a perfectly normal situation.

Before she could get too far into her fantasy, however, Chakotay stirred next to her, his dark eyes fluttering open to find her own.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice huskier than her own as sleep clung to it.

“Good morning.” 

They looked at each other for a moment before Chakotay carefully extracted himself from her side, helping her up so she could carefully place Harry in his cot in the living room without waking the boy or the other children who were still sleeping. Without a word, they quietly prepared breakfast and coffee, steeling themselves for another day of handling the kids.

-----

“I’m afraid I’m a bit.... stuck,” The Doctor ground out with obvious difficulty.

The captain raised an eyebrow. The EMH admitting that he was struggling to solve a problem was a rare instance indeed. “How so?”

With a huff, The Doctor turned back to his desk, flipping through experimental results from a stack of PADDs. “Kes was right; the DNA reversal process I initially thought might work will not account for the de-aging of the officers’ brains, so I decided to look at the type of radiation that might have caused this and, to be completely honest, Captain,” he turned back to look her in the eye, “I have absolutely no idea how this even happened. There’s no evidence of radiation, the temporal energy around them is unidentifiable, and I can’t figure out how their cells and their minds were reversed.” He lowered his head. “I’m unsure of how to even proceed from here.”

Kathryn nodded, taking the emotions that were beginning to tumble in her chest and stuffing them as far down as she could. “Very well, Doctor. Take a rest and we can all come back to the issue later once we’ve had time to think.” She rested a hand on his shoulder, causing him to look up. “Don’t despair yet; there’s a lot of other brilliant minds on this ship besides your own. We’ll figure it out together.” She smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze before heading into the turbolift.

As the doors slid open, she found Tuvok waiting in the lift for her. She smiled down at him and stepped inside, calling for the bridge.

“Chakotay to the captain.”

She tapped her badge. “Go ahead.”

“We need you on the bridge, there’s a bit of a situation.”

She raised a brow, glancing down at Tuvok, who was gazing at her intently. “On my way.”

-----

“So they want to.... interview us?”

“They want to interview you specifically.”

“To see if we are worthy of going through their space.”

“Something like that.”

“And going around their space isn’t an option?”

“It would add another 7 months to our journey, so this interview is our ideal option.”

“No pressure, eh, Commander?” Janeway shifted Harry from one hip to the other with a long sigh. “Alright. Hail them.”

After a moment, a blue and red humanoid alien appeared on the screen.

“Greetings, Ambassador.” The Captain flashed a polite smile. “I’m Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager.”

The alien woman inclined her head. “Hello, Captain Janeway, I’m Ambassador Tel Parah of the Doonian Delegation.” Her eyes swept the bridge. “You’re ship is heavily armed, which, according to the laws of our people, requires that we do a personal interview of the commanding officer to ensure that violence or other manners of chaos will not be instigated as you pass through our space.”

“Of course, I understand.” Janeway smiled again. “What questions may I answer for you?”

Over the course of the next 30 minutes, Janeway was grilled on their purpose in passing through Doonian space, the types and numbers of weapons they carried, and the journey they had made so far. Just as Janeway thought there wasn’t possibly anything more she could tell them, Ambassador Parah paused and looked up from the computer device in her hand to study Janeway. After a moment, she spoke again.

“Just one more thing, Captain Janeway,” a slow smile slipped onto her face, “What’s your son’s name? He’s absolutely precious.”

Janeway raised her eyebrows in surprise and glanced down at Harry, who she had nearly forgotten was still in her arms. At some point, he had removed her combadge and was currently turning it over and over again in his tiny hands, taking a moment here and there to bite parts of the object he must have found particularly interesting. Kathryn exchanged an amused glace with Chakotay, who shrugged off screen, before turning back to the ambassador. 

“This is Harry.” Janeway smiled, turning the boy so the ambassador could see him better.

The other woman smiled widely. “How adorable. He has the brightest eyes.”

“He does.” Kathryn smiled back down at him.

“You know,” Parah leaned back in her chair, “I usually don’t allow anyone through our space that isn’t from a system or planet we are already know and trust and so I wasn’t planning on letting Voyager pass. However, when I saw your baby and how well-cared for and happy he seems, I felt that I could trust you somehow.” She smiled again. “We value children highly in the Doonien Delegation. Children are often a reflection of a parent’s character. I can tell by Harry’s disposition and curiosity that you are of a fine character, Captain.”

Janeway cuddled Harry a little closer, heart warming. “Thank you, Ambassador, I take that as a high compliment.”

“As you should.” Parah leaned forward again. “You may pass through our space. We will have you stop at three checkpoints on your way though which I will send you the coordinated for in a moment. Have a safe journey.”

The screen went blank and Kathryn turned to Chakotay.

“Should I feel bad that I let her believe Harry is my son?”

Chakotay chuckled, stepping close enough and lowering his voice enough that the rest of the bridge could pretend not to hear him. “Are you saying he’s not?”

Her gaze grew softer. “I guess he’s sort of been like a son to me since we got on board.” She looked back down at him. “I feel very protective of him.”

Chakotay rested a hand on her shoulder. “I know.”

They smiled at each other again. Chakotay opened his mouth to say something more but, suddenly, there was a tug at Kathryn’s elbow.

“Captain? Now that the negotiations are over, I think I have an idea about how to fix Tom, B’Elanna, Harry, and me.” Tuvok’s eyes were bright and eager.

“Alright,” Captain Janeway smiled down at him. “Let’s get The Doctor up here and we’ll hear your idea together.”

-----

Chakotay exchanged glances with The Doctor and the Captain over the table as he bounced both Tom and B’Elanna on his knees. “Could that really work? It seems almost too easy.”

“Well, if this is a phenomena that’s inexplicable and is tied only to the anomaly the shuttles passed through, I feel like sending the children back through isn’t our worst idea.” The captain rubbed the back of her neck. “Doctor?”

The holographic man continued typing into his PADD for a moment before stopping and reading. “I- I honestly think this could work.” He slid the PADD over to Janeway. “It’s hard to predict, since we have no idea what exactly caused this, but if we send the shuttles through the anomaly opposite of the way they first went through, I think it just might turn them back to their usual ages.”

“How do we know it won’t just make them even younger?” Chakotay watched as B’Elanna slipped off of his knee, pulling Tom along with her to go play in the corner.

“We’d have to run some tests to be sure that they don’t. Perhaps we could send a plant through first, or some other organic life form.” The Doctor took the PADD back and made a note.

“We would also have to make sure that, if the tests show some promise, Tuvok can take the shuttle back through the anomaly.” Janeway turned to the boy sitting at her right. “Well, Tuvok? Do you think you could pilot the shuttle?”

He shook his head. “Since I don’t have my older self’s memories I don’t think I could.”

“We could use the tractor beam to send the shuttle through,” Chakotay said. “If we give them enough of a push to go through the anomaly, they should be able to pilot themselves back to Voyager once they get out the other side and have returned to their normal ages.”

Janeway raised her eyebrows. “Well, it’s worth a shot and I don’t have any better ideas. Commander, set a course for the anomaly. Doctor, prepare the experiments.”

-----

Tom and B’Elanna seemed to sense that something was up as they suddenly became even more clingy. The whole trip back to the anomaly, B’Elanna shared the captain’s chair with Kathryn, insisting with all of her Klingon passion that the older woman tell her more stories from earlier in their journey through the Delta Quadrant. At the helm, Tom hung on to Chakotay’s arm, watching the stars go by and asking Chakotay a hundred questions about piloting starships. Tuvok sat in Chakotay’s usual seat, interjecting with questions of his own here and there, and Harry sat on Kathryn’s knee, chewing on her jacket sleeve, her combadge still clutched tightly in his left hand.

After they reached the anomaly, it took a couple of hours for The Doctor to complete his experiments and, once he had declared that plants that had gone through the anomaly twice were returned to the same age the started as, they began preparing the children to enter the anomaly themselves. 

“Will it hurt?” B’Elanna asked in the smallest voice she had ever used in her life as Kathryn tucked the small Starfleet uniform that she had come through the anomaly with around her shoulders.

“It won’t,” Tuvok said. “It didn’t hurt when we came through the first time, did it?”

She shook her head, but didn’t look very reassured.

“It’s okay, ‘Lanna!” Tom grabbed her hand. “I’ll be right beside you.”

Kathryn stood and took a step back, feeling almost as if someone had filled her chest with some of Neelix’s heavy stew. She had to let them go, of course, this wasn’t the way they were supposed to be, but she was certainly going to miss seeing the level of innocence her officers had now. B’Elanna was unburdened by trust issues, Tuvok was passionate and bright, and Tom - well, she supposed he hadn’t changed all that much, but at least he seemed to be genuinely happy, not just putting up a front of humor to protect himself.

It would be hard to see them go back, but maybe, now that she understood how the world and time had changed her friends, she could help them.

She was shaken from her thoughts by a tug at her collar. She looked down to see Harry pulling at her pips, completely enamored by the gold metal.

“Oh, Harry.” She nearly choked on his name. Since he was so young now, she didn’t have any insight into his personality after having seen him as a baby, but she was going to miss his innocent curiosity and familiar weight on her hip.

Before she could think too much about it, she handed Harry over to Tuvok. The younger boy scrunched his face up and whimpered at the change of hands, but Tuvok bounced him gently and he settled down, reaching for the pointed tip of Tuvok’s ear.

Kathryn took a step back, feeling Chakotay step up behind her so that they were nearly touching. “Best of luck, you four.” She gave them her most reassuring smile. “See you on the other side.”

She and Chakotay hurried up the bridge and gave the go ahead for the ensign who had taken over Harry’s post to begin using the tractor beam to move the shuttle out into the anomaly. They stood side-by-side on the bridge and watched the shuttle go through. At come point, they grabbed each other’s hands and squeezed each other tightly.

There was a flash as the shuttle passed through the anomaly. After a few terrifyingly quiet moments, the shuttle came bursting out of the other side and a voice crackled over the comm.

“Cochran to Voyager,” confusion leaked through Tom’s voice. “What the hell just happened?”

Kathryn and Chakotay smiled at each other in relief. “What’s the last thing you remember, Tom?” Chakotay asked.

“B’Elanna, Harry, and I were coming back to Voyager when we- wait a second, how did you get here, Tuvok?”

Janeway laughed. “Why don’t we get you four back on board and then we’ll explain everything.”

“Copy that. See you in a few.” Tom’s voice grew quieter, like he was leaning away from the comm. “I have a feeling this is going to be one heck of a story.”

-----

After everyone had been debriefed and left to process the last two days of strangeness, Chakotay found Kathryn in her favorite spot; on her couch and staring wistfully out at the stars as they drifted past. She had shucked her jacket and taken her hair out of it’s clip, leaving her in her grey turtleneck with her hair falling around her shoulders and face.

“Got a lot on your mind?”

She turned to smile at him, a note of sadness in her eyes. “It’s been an interesting couple of days.”

He settled on the couch a ways down, turning to face her. “It sure has.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to miss our kids.”

“Me too. It was fun having little ones around, playing at being a parent.” She fidgeted with the seam on the couch. “It was different and they sure did give us some challenges,” she chuckled, “but I loved it.” 

“Have you ever thought about having kids of ou-” he coughed, “your own?” 

Her crystal blue gaze caught his. “Yes.” She smiled and looked out the window again. “I always thought someday I would be a mother.” With a snort and a smirk, she continued; “Of course, I never thought I’d be mothering my helmsman, security officer, engineer, and technical officer.”

Chakotay laughed softly. “I think you were mothering them before they were turned into actual children.”

“Perhaps.” A pause. “What about you? Did you ever think about being a father? Outside of the whole instance with Seska, of course.”

He nodded. “When I was in the Maquis, no. My life was too fast-paced to be a proper father. If I was going to be a dad, I wanted to do it right and I couldn’t have done that from a Maquis ship.” He took a deep breath. “After joining this crew, though.... I’m in a better place now, and I think I’d be thrilled to be a father.” He looked over at Kathryn to find that she was already looking at him with something like wonder in her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment and, finally finding a bit of courage, he said: “I’m more at peace.”

A smiled played at the corners of her lips, and her eyes looked a little like they were silver-lined, though Chakotay couldn’t quite tell for sure in the low light of her quarters.

“You were really good with the kids. You would make an excellent father, I have no doubt.”

He smiled. “You would make an excellent mother. You’re a natural.”

“Thank you, but I barely felt like I knew what I was doing.” She chuckled.

“You could have fooled me.” He grinned for a moment, before his countenance grew more serious. “I hope you get your wish someday, Kathryn. I hope you get to be a mother.”

She was quiet for a moment, and Chakotay suddenly felt his chest tighten. Had he said too much.

Before he could fall too far into his panic, her hand slid over to his, giving it a squeeze. He looked up into her eyes, which definitely had tears in them now.

“I hope you get to be a father too Chakotay. Someday.”

He squeezed her hand back and they both fell into a comfortable silence, enjoying the view of the stars outside Kathryn’s window.

[cheri-translates]

Headcanon - woes of your children

This work, 小朋友的碎碎念, was originally written by 君兮耶君兮 on Weibo, and she has given me permission to translate it 🌸

[ VICTOR’S SON ]

Sometimes, I suspect that I’m not my dad’s child.

It’s common knowledge (well, maybe not), that my dad is the manager and chef of Souvenir. Anyone who has eaten the pudding my dad makes will agree that his skills are superb, and I think so too. My friends at kindergarten are envious that I have such a gentle mum and a dad who’s incredible at making desserts. 

But I think they have misunderstood the meaning of "gentle” and what my dad is really like.

I shan’t start with how my mum is always bursting with energy. Let’s start with my dad. He makes desserts frequently, and the house is often filled with the fragrance of pudding, souffles, cookies and little cakes. 

But... they’re all for my mum. 

Indeed, I’m unworthy of dad’s desserts. 

“It’s not good for your teeth if you eat too many desserts,” says my mum while she eats one of dad’s desserts.

“As a man, you have to work hard to get what you want,” says my dad when I ask him for pudding. I admit that what he says isn’t wrong, but I just had my fourth birthday... 🙃

Normally, dad is very stern with me. He doesn’t let me sleep beside mum, doesn’t let me cry, doesn’t let me lose my temper at mum... It’s as though mum is dad’s child instead.

Actually, I think my mum is the true king of the house. She can get dad’s pudding, can openly challenge him, can act coquettishly with him, and has much more pocket money than I do...

Forget it, the more I think about it, the more I feel like crying. Looks like I should squat next to the dustbin and see if anyone would pick me up. I might be am definitely the most miserable kid in the world. 

[ GAVIN’S SON ]

Dad says that boys will naturally want to protect the girl they like.

My dad is the Commander of Loveland City’s Special Task Force. He’s normally the type who’s cold-hearted and merciless, not even letting plants off. Sounds cool, right? But what his subordinates don't know is that at home, my dad is a henpecked husband.

Even the slightest frown from my mum causes him to worry for the entire day. Sometimes, when mum discovers that dad is injured, she’d cry until her eyes are red. Dad would repeatedly promise that he wouldn’t conceal any injuries from her the next time, and would kiss and hug her, oblivious that there’s a child at the scene.

Oh, I forgot to mention something. In my dad’s eyes, I have no standing at all.

The most precious treasure is always my mum. I don’t disagree though. After all, mum loves me very much, and I love her very much too. It’s only right that I protect her.

“When you have someone you want to protect, you’ll think of ways to make yourself strong,” dad once said to me. “First, you need to learn to sleep on your own, and not stick to mum.”

Although it does make logical sense, I suspect my dad has his own selfish reasons. But I have no guts to say it aloud.

Dad and I have agreed that next time, we’ll protect mum together. I said that when I’m all grown up, I’ll ensure mum can walk on the streets without worrying about getting disturbed by anyone or anything, just like what dad used to do.

After hearing this, dad asked where I heard it from - of course it was Uncle Minor. I watched dad make a call, arranging to meet up with Uncle Minor. After telling mum that he’d be gone for a while but will be back for dinner, he left. 

So what exactly are dad and Uncle Minor planning to do?

[ LUCIEN’S SON ]

In my dad’s eyes, I might have always been an accident.

According to what I heard from the professor uncles in Loveland University, when my mum did a check when having me, the doctor said that I might be a girl. Back then, my dad had grinned so widely. 

When he saw that I was a boy, his face was just as dark as how happy he was back then. I heard that before I was born, everything prepared was pink. Sigh, I didn’t realise that that was just the beginning of my route to more accidents.

Normally, dad looks refined and cultivated, and sometimes dotes on mum a lot. Why do I say “sometimes”? Because I’ve seen dad bullying mum, pressing her down on the bed. Mum even cried. 

Then again, dad is a 180m man, and is so heavy. If he presses down on me too, I’d definitely cry too. Furthermore, mum is a girl.

Dad seems to turn a blind eye to my existence. For example, when we eat dumplings, he’d hold onto mum’s hand, and occasionally hug her and kiss her and things like that. I also want mum’s hugs and kisses...

He can’t even fold a dumpling properly. Even till now, he hasn’t learnt how to make a nice-looking one.

Normally, other people’s parents would address each other by name, or words like “wife” or “husband”. But my dad always calls mum “Little Butterfly”, “Silly Girl”, “Little Sweetheart,” “Greedy Cat”... It’s even more unbearable than how Torvald calls Nora “my little skylark” in “A Doll’s House”.

Despite my complaints, my dad is very incredible. He’s a university professor at such a young age, and even has a research centre named after him. Dad says that in the future, I have to do equally well or even better. I think so too. After all, I need to take care of mum in the future.

It’s pretty late, and I haven’t finished the test paper Dad prepared for me. I’ll stop here.

[ KIRO’S SON ]

My dad treats me pretty well. That is, if you ignore how he often makes me a scapegoat.

My dad is a widely known celebrity, so it’s necessary for him to manage his weight strictly. But my dad fails in this aspect. Quoting what Uncle Savin says, “Kiro, the only thing you know how to do is eat, eat, and eat!”

He doesn't eat alone though. He brings my mum along. That’s right, only my mum.

If Uncle Savin does a sudden check and finds snacks in the house, my dad would lack a conscience and assert that they belong to me. Although I’d feel maligned, I won’t rat him out.

Dad likes calling mum “Miss Chips”, and he says chips are a symbol to their love. But I’ve never seen other married couples eat the symbols of their love.

Apart from snatching snacks from me, he likes snatching toys as well. He’s always the one to open the presents mum gives me. He says it’s because he’s afraid I can’t open it given my young age. If that’s the case, why doesn’t he give it to me once he has opened it?! What a liar. 🙃

Everyone says that I look cute, and I think so too hehe~ My mum enjoys kneading my face and ruffling my hair. I think the only time I’ve won against my dad in my four years of existence is when my mum commented that I’m cuter than he is.

Every time my dad bullies me and doesn’t let me get close to mum, I’ll think of what my mum said. A man has a magnanimous heart, so I won’t hold it against him. When he’s 70 or 80 and balding, while I’m in my wise 40s or 50s, mum will definitely like me more. 

Forget it, I shan’t hold it against him. Apple Box is barking at me to take him out for a walk. His golden hair really reminds me of a certain someone!!

[ SHAW’S SON ]

I think my dad and I get along pretty well.

He likes taking me out skateboarding, and I like it too. But if I were to accidentally fall and injure myself, my dad would be scolded by my mum, and I won’t be able to escape her wrath either.

My mum looks really fierce when she scolds us. Every sentence from her is stabbing. According to her, it was a skill she developed from bickering with my dad when they were younger. Thinking about my dad’s sharp tongue, I do agree that it’s a possibility.

Although my dad looks like a bad citizen, he’s really good academically. According to my mum, he was the only graduate student in Loveland University archaeology department at the age of twenty. He’s the teacher’s pet, a model for his male juniors, and the target of females... I digress. But back then, it was true that many people tried to woo him, but he was only interested in mum.

He loves giving mum nicknames, like “Liu Chun Mei or “Guo Xiaoyu", and "Qing Tingyan". I’m so glad my mum threatened my dad for the privilege to name me. I can’t begin to imagine if my name was coined by my dad, I’d probably be too embarrassed to meet anyone.

[Note] These are the fake pseudonyms Shaw calls her in the Chinese version. In EN, the pseudonym he gives her is “Mary Sue”.

My dad has a unique way of drinking beverages. According to the uncles in his band, my mum used to love drinking bubble tea. But eventually, her tastes got strung along with his strange ones. They’re both pretty compatible hahaha.

His taste buds aren’t the only strange things. His aesthetics are strange as well. Wearing Buddha beads with leathers gloves, a jacket with rivets... My mum says she kept his leather jacket when she was pregnant with me. But once I was born, he took it out again.

It’s 11pm, and dad and I have planned to sneak out to do spray painting on the streets behind my mum’s back. We’ll continue next time.

--

More translated and original works: here

--

[ Permission to translate ]

君兮耶君兮: You can - just note the source of the author

[glompcat]

You've seen all of Doctor Who, right? Not in this latest season, but in 13's first & second seasons, was the Doctor getting hurt/injured like, every other episode?? I can't tell if 13 is actually written to be in pain more often than previous regenerations or, probably, if I'm just imagining it!

I have seen all of televised Doctor Who (but have not heard *all* the audios nor have I read all of the comics or read all of the books etc), and the Doctor does generally get injured fairly often in Classic Who, which is the model for the show Chibnall has been moving back towards more (with a more ensemble approach to the cast, less emphasis on the Doctor as The Person With All The Answers About Everything, less of the whole ~everyone in the universe knows who the Doctor is~ thing Moffat in particular built up etc)

The First Doctor for example was injured in just about every serial, to the point where in several of them they are fully taken out of the story fairly early on and have to go have a lie down. Hell one story is literally about a bad toothache he has.

The Second Doctor got injured less than One did, but he did still wind up in his fair share of sickbays. With one of his more iconic scenes (the one where the John Smith cover name is used for the first time) taking place in one.

Despite starting his existence laying in a hospital bed as a patient and breaking out of said hospital in a wheelchair, the Third Doctor was generally an action hero star who was fit as a fiddle as he ran about Earth grappling foes, having car chases and doing tons of martial arts. His regeneration of course involved him being in an intensely painful situation for multiple days and holding out so he could get back to the TARDIS and pilot it to Sarah Jane's side so he could regenerate in her arms, but aside from that he mostly was an action hero with all that entailed.

The Fourth Doctor was a klutz and a fool who was constantly falling over and directly into traps. He got knocked out, would wake up about to be sacrificed to some entity or another, find himself tied up in straight jackets and the like in cells following being knocked out, and just generally needed to be rescued by Sarah Jane or Leela or Romana constantly. He also got shot at a whole lot. He wasn't as good at fighting as his previous incarnation, so when he got into physical fights it was pretty memorable. For example he once was in a physical fight scene so violent the producer got fired because of it. It involved someone holding his head underwater while choking him, and since Tom Baker has an actual phobia around water it's really pretty intense to watch as he's legit freaking the fuck out there. Of course that was in the Matrix, so the various scenes in that serial of the Doctor getting hurt and bleeding were all in his head. The scene where the Gallifreyan cops tortured Four however was def. out of the Matrix.

The Fifth Doctor was, as a friend of mine loves to point out, a total whump. He has a story set on Gallifrey where he gets chased by the cops and shot at as soon as he arrives, only to be told moments later that he is to be executed because someone is doing shit to his biodata and the Time Lords don't want to have to deal with any of that. To say nothing of what he watches his companions go through, the whole diseased Dalek story, the drowning (Turlough declaring him dead and drowned as soon as he touches the water will never not be funny), the way he keeps dealing with stuff like the destruction of the TARDIS or the loss of the sonic or Adric's death or Kamelion's death, you name it. His final and most defining story is very much a break the cutie affair where he is in intense physical pain and literally dying for most of it, and yet forcing himself to keep going until he can be sure his companion is safe (and then as soon as she is safe in the TARDIS and has had some poison antidote he promptly dies and regenerates)

Six.... shit Six has a whole serial all about violence on TV where among many many other things a hangman's noose is put around his neck and he is going to be hanged for the enjoyment of people watching live on TV. Plus there is stuff like that redic scene with him tied down and rolling down a hill in Mark of the Rani. To say nothing of the whole Trial and his own journey into the Matrix chasing after the Valeyard, not just stuff like having his brain scrambled in the stories we see on screen but also stuff like getting pulled under sand by what look like Moffat's handmines. His audios of course stand out to me the strongest, as there is lit. one where his limbs get chopped off.

Seven was a crafty little asshole who was real good at manipulating situations so if anyone was getting hurt it was Ace in her efforts to always be the best companion possible/live up to his literally superhuman expectations. That said he did get injured on occasion, to say nothing of that time he got gunned down in San Fransico while stepping out of the TARDIS in an alleyway.

Eight is just a whump. The guy goes through hell and back every other moment.

Admittedly once you get to New Who the Doctor becomes more of an untouchable figure, but even then they still have their moments, such as when Nine is tortured by Van Staten. Every Doctor has them, it's literally part of being an adventure hero type. You get into scrapes.

That said, I can see why someone who has only seen New Who might think it is odd for the Doctor to not be infallible and occasionally get injured doing what they do.

Yet even with that said, you have things like Ten getting shot by a Dalek or Twelve going blind due to an injury sustained while adventuring and staying blind until his alien biology bullshit took care of that (that said I personally hate that the Doctor was blind for a few episodes like that, it was fully treated like nothing more than his horrible secret he was keeping/a real danger to those around him, and then once that was done and was more a joke and they moved on it just was fully healed up and never had any lasting consequences at all after that. I feel the same way about the plot around Leela's blindness in the Gallifrey audios. Also the whole bit in The Brain of Morbius where Sarah Jane is temporarily blinded. It is really quite the ableist trope and I hate that storylines around blindness and then regaining sight keep cropping up again and again and again Doctor Who).

As for Thirteen, I don't think she's hurt all that super often????

I mean she has regen sickness in her first ep, sure, but Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Ten and Twelve all have stories about the intensely debilitating effects of regen sickness (Some of the Classic Who stories about it are INTENSE. The Doctor keeps forgetting who they are or winds up almost entirely taken out of the story or forgets who their companions are or is easily convinced an enemy in a wig is actually their companion or even on one occasion tries to strangle their companion to death because they are so confused due to regeneration)

Then she gets injured in the The Tsuranga Conundrum protecting her companions with her body but.... errrrr, honestly I am struggling to really think of more times she really seems injured rather than just inconvenienced by what is going on?

I mean obs there is The Timeless Children where she is captured by the Master and has a brief physical altercation with him in the Matrix and is then mentally and emotionally exhausted when she finally gets out of there, but.... I could be remembering wrong but for the most part it to me has felt like normal hero getting in physical scrapes type stuff more than any actual focus on her being in pain (Like say what Four experiences instead of say how Five or Eight's stories trend towards or the way it is at the center of One's stories)?

Can you name other examples of her being really hurt and that being a focus rather than it just being part of adventuring she shrugs off? Because I really am drawing a blank here.

Like I am even struggling to think of times when she's been knocked out to be tied up or assumed dead/seemingly killed etc. Hell I can't even think of times when parts of her outfit get destroyed, like how Four's scarf got all singed in The Arc in Space? All I can really recall with regard to the show really focusing on her being injured is Tsuranga where she shielded her friends and had a large injury as a result and spent a good deal of the rest of that ep dealing with it?

Like, overall it feels like normal adventure hero getting into scrapes stuff to me?

Of course I could be forgetting things, it has been a bit since I rewatched all of S11 and S12, and even if I just had I don't have a photographic memory or anything like that, just a horrible hyperfixation with this dang show rn.

[fangirl-everythang]

Happy Father's Day Part 3

Summary: 3/3 Well, its the last part.

Warning: Sad, Mentions Death.

Word Count: 2269

"Harry? " I answer the phone.

"It's not Harry but glad you know your numbers." that high pitch annoying ass voice squeals. Rubbing my stomach, the baby's in go position and any day now my oven will be done baking. And of course, this bitch is answering his phone.

"Well bye-bye just thought you should know where he was at. " In the background, I hear Harry's voice going on about something so it must be true. Hanging up I sigh letting the hot tears roll down my cheeks. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I blame myself really, I let him back into my life and this doesn't surprise me. I gotta pee.

Waddling over to the bathroom door a gasp leaves my mouth feeling the surge of liquids fall between my legs. Holy shit. My water broke! Fuck gotta go. Thankful my bag was already in the car. Harry had insisted once I hit the 36-week mark claiming Styles's are either early or fashionably late.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. My knuckles turning white as I grasp the wheel. Nope, I'm not pushing anything out of my vagina. Can't do it. I refuse.

The contraction going away after a few brief moments of completely unreasonable pain. Dialing the numbers, I know by second nature, thankfully she picks up on the fourth ring.

"I don't think you should drive y/n"

" Just call 911. I'm almost there! " Gemma ecstatically shouts. She's just like her brother, "Where's Harrold? "

I put the seatbelt on and wince. It's just 28 minutes I can do this. "He's with his whore."

I can hear an audible gasp, "he wouldn't he's so excited for Athena"

"Well I just called him and she answered. " I grunt keeping my eyes on the two lanes ahead of me. Fuck I hate merging lanes people don't know how to drive.

"I'll be at the hospital as soon as possible but my phones gonna-" the line went dead. She did say she was on like 10% oh well.

I can do this just focus y/n. "Hear that baby girl we're almost there, hang on okay Hunny. " I say as a reminder to myself that soon I'll be leaving with another human with me.

6 miles to go that's what I'm talking about, another sharp pain spreads throughout my abdomen while waiting for the light to turn green. "OH COME ON. FOR FUCKS SAKE!" they're getting closer by the minute. Shit. Arriving at a four-way intersection. I'm relieved to be at a red light, the contractions are longer and much more frequent. "Almost there Athena, this is the last light and a straight shot from there."

Abruptly my car is jerked forward with a sharp impact pushing to the oncoming lights. All I see are lights from both directions colliding with my 3,000-pound piece of metal. Sounds of shattering glass and sirens are the last thing I hear before it all fades to black.

||||||||||||||||

Harry's POV

"Has anyone seen Mr. Style's phone?" The helpful aid asked around the dressing room. I could've sworn I put it down for a moment. Y/n could go into labor any minute now and how I am supposed to know. Fuck. I'm stupid.

I was supposed to be here to perform and list nominees and then go back home to y/n. I can't wait to propose to her, she's all I could ever want and she's giving me the most wonderful gift I could ever ask for. Running a hand through my damp hair, the lights really build a sweat, I hear a familiar voice. "Looking for this lover? " she asks slipping my phone into my pocket.

"Good luck at home. " she smiles and winks. Before I could question it she walks away.

Looking down at the device my heart skips a beat, I have 146 missed calls. And I've been gone for 5 hours. Seeing Gemma's name on the screen again I swipe to answer.

"Hell-"

"Harry," she says sniffling.

"Gemma what's wrong? did I miss it? Oh my god I hope not"

"I think it would be best if you came now Harry." she breaks her voice cracking.

"Gem what?"

"Listen Harry, she needs you right now so please." she cries. Not needing another word, I tell Jackson the address and that I need to be there as fast as possible, 45 minutes later we're pulling into the Labor and Delivery section of the hospital.

"Congrats Harry!" Jackson says letting me out at the door. "Thank you!" I beam back at him.

Seeing Gemma, her eyes are puffy with tears still flowing. "Gem what's wro-," a sharp pain to my right cheek stings. Never has Gemma hit me like that, well not since I cut her prom dress. "How could you Harry? Cheat on her again WITH TAYLOR for Christ sakes!" She yells.

"I didn't cheat," I explain to my sister as calm as I can.

She looks at me with wild eyes pulling me into a hallway with fewer people, "Then what happened Harrold?" I clench my jaw instead of speaking, how dare she accuse me of cheating on my pregnant soon-to-be fiancé. Y/n Styles has a great catch don't you think?

"Is she here yet? Gem where are they?" I ask ready to see my new family.

She begins crying again "Harry there was an accident." Those five words make my breathing come to a halt. My heart shatters in a million pieces "Is Y/n okay? What happened?" She begins walking me to a door. "This one," she points. Looking through the glass I see y/n with bruises and cuts to her beautiful face, her stomach nearly deflated from when I last saw her this morning, a cast on a swollen leg of hers, and a sling holding a very damaged arm. Tears brim at my eyes looking at my love on that hospital bed. "She's awake." Gemma walks past me running to the outside.

I gently knock on the door, waiting for a response which I don't get. "Y/n?" I approach her almost as If I were going to help an injured puppy. "Hey love" I smile at her which she glares at me and then turns wincing in pain. "You wanted this didn't you Harry?" I look at her confused. "This is probably great for you, a way out. Well leave." She states using whatever energy she can find.

"Baby I didn't want- I want you and Athena" She breaks down in uncontrollable tears.

"You were with that her and couldn't even bother to pick up your phone!" she screams. "Y/n I wasn-" a knock at the door interrupts my sentence, "Come in" She says glaring at me as a nurse opens the door.

"Hey there Mama, we have a visitor." the nurse wheel in a tiny cart that has a bunch of equipment coming from it. She looks at me and asks Y/n, "Is this dad?" she nods and rolls her eyes. "About time you made it!" She smiles my way. Placing the beautiful baby in front of us. She's so small and fragile. "The doctor will be in shortly to talk to you." She states picking up the tiny child and putting her in Y/n's arm.

"Hi pumpkin," Y/n coos into her ear. "Guess who decided to show?" She smiles, a tear falling from the corner of her eye. She nods her head towards me as I go to hold her. She's so soft and precious. Her small eyes have a gorgeous mix of both mine and Y/n's. She has such a cute round face, I couldn't imagine her looking any different.

"Hi there angel, I'm so sorry I was late." I see a spot dampen on her blanket that surrounds her, knowing that I'm crying. Her small eyes shining like twinkling stars. So small I can feel her fragile body between my large hands.

Another knock before the door opens when several doctors walk in. "Mrs. Y/ln, unfortunately, we have some bad news,"

"Oh, hello there Mr. Styles." They state acknowledging my existence. One of the female doctors places a black and white image on the lighted board illuminating the small figure.

"Unfortunately, due to the accident, Athena has suffered from what we call a fetomaternal hemorrhage."

"What exactly are you saying?" Y/n ask looking at the child still in my arms.

The slightly shorter male doctor points to the image. "This is an abscess of blood in the brain. Unfortunately, the risk is too large to operate. I'd give her another day at most."

"You m-mean," Tears start pouring down her face" I was so scared she was hurt. I-I promise I saw the light it was red, and I-I stopped but," She began heaving losing more air with each word. I gently rub her back as I cradle Athena with one arm.

"She's still being monitored but I'm afraid she won't have much longer." The first doctor breaks the silence. "According to the police report the car that struck you from behind happened to be a drunk driver, Gage Joyce." I can feel the anger surging through me. "I remember the clashing of metal, glass breaking, the sirens but it all went b-black." She mumbles, seemingly remembering the awful experience. I grab her hand in hopes of comforting her but it doesn't seem to work.

"After striking your car at 72 mph it had ample force to push your vehicle into the opposite traffic. Your vehicle took the most impact and was hit by four other cars. On scene, EMT's said you were in and out of consciousness mumbling about a baby. Taken and brought to the L&D." he finishes.

"Fetomaternal hemorrhages are often caused by trauma and sometimes can be revered but in this case, we've done all we can do." They all frown looking at the small girl still in my arms.

"No, there's got to be more you can bloody do! We're in a hospital for Christ sakes!" I exclaim, passing my daughter to the love of my life. She gently caresses her soft skin. She's literally a perfect combination of us. I cannot lose my family.

"You can leave, thank you all for your help." y/n says quietly, they oblige by her wishes and leave us with our daughter.

"Harry," she wipes a tear from her face cautious of the IV placed on her hand, "If what they say is true, I just want to spend time with her." She sniffles. I nod understanding. She looks back at the small being in her arms, "Hi pretty girl, Mommy's so happy to meet you," she unfolds the blanket from her. I sit next to her on the small bed in the room that smells of sterilization. Placing my finger near hers' she wraps her small hand around my thumb, her grip so tight for someone so small. Y/n kisses her forehead, "Harry," she runs her finger along her small legs.

"Can you sing the song?" nodding and softly singing Isn't she Lovely by Stevie Wonder, in the small hospital bed as our new life falls asleep. All night I watch her little chest rise and fall allowing y/n to get some rest soon following my two loves.

By the early morning, nurses are rushing in because of the loud beeping from the monitor, waking y/n and I. It feels like everything is happening so fast but in slow motion right in front of me. Those three words are the ones I didn't want to hear. "No! no. I have to take her home. She's gotta go home..." Y/n screams, not being able to see her face due to the tears in my eyes falling and rebuilding themselves faster than the speed of light. "Call it." One of the nurses shouts.

"Time of Death 6:18 am March 7th, 2019"

As they cleared out the room, I see her small lifeless body curled into a blanket, almost as if she were sleeping, but no longer do breaths fall from her small heart-shaped lips.

//////////////////////////

Y/n hasn't said a word since we got in the car. It's been four days since we lost Athena. She slowly climbs into the car, still sore from the accident and birth. I go to the backseat holding back my emotions and putting the empty car-seat in the trunk of the car that should have been holding three of us.

Starting the silent journey back home she continues to look out of the window, a frown etched on her mouth, tears rolling down her cheeks as she instinctively touches her somewhat deflated stomach. What kind of sick joke is this?

"Harry why were you with her?" she asks me looking down at what used to be her baby bump.

"I wasn't love, she took my phone while I was on stage." She just nods and remains silent until we pull up to the flat. She begins walking up the stairs as best she can. "Y/n wait, let me help."

"No Harry!" She yells. Pain evident in her voice, ignoring her I open the door and help her inside. "Harry I can't do this." I stare at her confused, "What can't you do y/n?"

"Us Harry. I can't look at you and not think of her." She sobs.

"Y/n we can-" I try to reason with her.

"No Harry, please just go." She whispers.

"I'm not losing both of you," I state holding back my own sobs. I feel like everything feels like it's getting smaller around me, suffocating in grief.

"You already have."

A/N: What can I say I have a thing for dark endings. Anyways I really appreciate the support loves. I hope you enjoy these! Right now I've been working on a Loki piece, I'm so excited for it. I changed the writing style tho, so it's not 1st person per usual. I think it's going pretty well so far.

xoxo Janelle

[90spumkin]

A Case of the Supernatural

Next

Summary: Can Spencer move past your death? What happens when he starts to see your ghost?

A/N: Not me starting another series when I haven’t finished the first. This is a crossover between Criminal Minds and Supernatural. I wrote this mainly because I am denial that either show ended. This will be a slow updated series because of finals next week and it took me four days to write this because I want it to be perfect. I hope you all enjoy and please leave your thoughts in the comments. Don’t forget to like and reblog! Also thanks @criminalmindzjunkie for the banner inspiration!

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem! Ghost! Reader

Warnings: criminal minds talk, supernatural talk, swearing, some angst... I think that’s it

Word Count: 3028

Numb. That is all Spencer felt as they lowered your casket into the ground. With every shovel of dirt tossed into the whole in the ground was like stab to his heart. He accepted every pat on the shoulder and heard every ‘I’m sorry for your loss’, but he couldn’t feel any of it.

You were never going to be a mom, you were never going to have the chance to finish all those crazy art projects that scattered your shared apartment, and you were never going to hear Spencer tell you how much he loves you ever again. Hot tears stung his eyes and began to run down his cheeks.

“Reid it’s time to go.” JJ’s voice brought him out of the spiral his mind had started to descend into. He looked around and realized everyone was gone and your final resting place was now filled with compacted earth. He nodded in agreement but could not seem to move his feet.

You were really gone, and Spencer blamed himself.

-----

The BAU team was taking the loss of a valued team member and a precious friend extremely hard so Emily gave everyone a few days off to mourn. Spencer was a different case; it had been almost three weeks since your funeral and he had yet to leave the apartment.

He looked around at all the carry out containers and laughed to himself as he imagined what you would say: Spencer you’re living like a damn cockroach. At least you’re cute.

Spencer began to clean the three weeks’ worth of mess when he saw the bag containing your items from the coroner. He had been wallowing in mourning and self-pity that he completely forgot JJ had dropped it off.

Spencer disposed of the trash and sat down at on at the bar in the kitchen. The bag laid in front of him and all he could do was stare down at it. He took a deep breath: Okay Spencer you can do this.

Spencer slowly opened the bag taking deep breaths as he did so. He pulled out your phone, your set of keys, your… Spencer’s breath caught in his throat. In his hand on a silver chain was the engagement ring he had given to you three months ago. He smiled at the memory of you explaining why you wore it on a chain to work. You simply shrugged your shoulders I don’t want to lose it while chasing down psychopaths. Plus, this way it’s closer to my heart. You kissed him on the cheek ending the discussion there.

He placed a hand on his cheek while he wished he could feel the softness of your lips one more time. Spencer took a ragged breath and clasped the chain around his nick. He smiled at the thought of having something that was once close to your heart now close to his.

The good doctor decided then that he should probably put your things away and get some rest before his first day back at the BAU. As he was going through the apartment turning out lights, that he had not realized he had even left on, Spencer could have sworn he saw someone walked into the hall.

Spencer grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter and crept towards the hall. With his back pressed against the wall, he turned the corner quickly ready to take down the intruder. But what Spencer was faced with was nothing but his empty hallway. Spencer ran a hand through his hair and thought to himself: Well genius you are officially losing your mind.

He made his way into his bedroom and laid the kitchen knife on his dresser deciding he’ll just put it away in the morning. He walked to his window admiring the lights from the height of his apartment when he heard a laugh. He spun around so quickly he was sure he’d give himself whiplash.

There you were. You looked exactly the same as the last time he saw you, the moment you both decided to split up out in the field. Spencer was in absolute shock.

“I honestly doubt the knife would have worked. I am kind of already dead. It would’ve been funny to see what happened though.” Y/n joked as though this was all completely normal.

Spencer just screamed. Once he ran out of breath and gasped. There was stomping from the apartment above and very unpolite things directed towards Spencer. But he could care less, you were here. You were… a ghost?

Y/n looked bored and asked, “Are you done?” Spencer didn’t trust his voice, so he just nodded. “Good because I was expected a little more class from you Mr. 187.”

Spencer tripped over his words as he tried to run every logical explanation through his mind, “How the actual hell are you here? Am I dead? I’ve lost my mind, haven’t I?” Spencer began to pace the floor, running his hands through his hair.

“I think the term is ghost and no you are still perfectly sane. For the ‘how am I here part’ I am not quite sure. I can’t remember anything past the last 5 minutes.” Y/n shrugged her shoulders at that.

Spencer’s mind seemed to stop trying to apply logic to the situation and just except it. Because he began to relax, and tears brimmed his eyes. “Y/n I’ve missed you so much. I am so sorry. I should never have left you. If I would have stayed with you then maybe you’d still be alive.” Spencer choked on a sob which caused y/n’s no longer beating heart to break.

“Oh Reid. My death was not your fault at all.” She reached out a hand to caress his face, but it was like putting your hand through water. Her whole body glitched as if she was part of a malfunctioning video game.

“What was that? What’s happening?” Spencer’s face was pinched in confusion and worry.

Y/n seemed almost frantic, “I’m not sure. I feel like I’m being pulled away.” And with a blink of an eye she was gone. It all happened so quickly Spencer could almost say it was a dream, but it had been so real. Had felt so real.

-------

To say Spencer was tired was an understatement. He could barely sleep with the hope you would appear going through his heart and mind. It was around 4 am when exhaustion won, and he fell asleep gripping the ring that lay against his chest.

He was on is fourth cup of coffee for the day and he had only been there for one hour fifteen minutes and thirty-six seconds to be precise. He was stirring his mountain of sugar into the dark liquid when he felt a heavy hand clasp his shoulder and the smell of expensive cologne filled his nose.

“Kid you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Rossi told the young doctor as he leaned against the counter. Spencer snorted at that comment and just took a sip of his coffee, accepting the burn in his throat.

Before Spencer could even attempt to continue a conversation there was a loud gasp and the clicking of heels as his favorite human rainbow rushed towards him. He was instantly pulled into a bone crushing hug and it took every ounce of the little coordination he had not to spill his coffee all over his friend.

“Hi Penelope.” He simply said with a chuckle at the woman’s urge to always show her love in the most dramatic way.

She pulled away and started on one of her fast-spoken rants, “Oh my God you’re here! I missed you! I know I just saw you a couple of days ago when I visited your apartment, but this is different. Why didn’t anyone tell me you were coming back today? I should know these things!” Penelope slapped Spencer’s arm at that last part which drew an ‘ow’ from him and a light chuckle from Rossi who was watching the whole interaction.

“I’m sorry Penelope. When I got here, I went straight to Emily’s office and then dove into the paperwork required for my return.” Spencer explained.

Penelope smiled and let out a little huff, “Oh the love of paperwork. I will let this slide boy wonder, but it will not be forgotten.” Penelope gave Spencer’s arm a squeeze before making her way to her bat cave.

Spencer turned to Rossi, “I honestly expected that to be kind of worse.”

Rossi chuckled, “Luck my friend, luck.”

Spencer was about to launch into a rant about the statistics of how much of something good happening has anything to do with luck. That was stopped short when Spencer saw you perched on his desk like you use to do every morning waiting for him to bring you a cup of coffee. He gasped which wasn’t missed by the profiler who had been keeping an eye on him since he walked through those glass doors.

“Kid you alright?” Rossi asked with his voice laced with confusion.

Spencer didn’t take his eyes off you or the spot you had been when you glitched and disappeared just like the night before. “Huh? Oh. Uhh... yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be right back.”

Spencer sat his half drunken coffee down and walked as fast as he could towards the bathroom hoping not to draw any attention towards him.

Once he was safely in the bathroom and the door was locked behind him. He stood in front of the mirror and took a deep breath.

“Well that was interesting.” Spencer jumped and whirled around to only be met with an empty bathroom. He turned to splash water on his face and when he looked up again, and saw you behind him through the mirror.

H returned to look at you and whispered, “What the actual hell y/n? Where have you been?”

“I’m not quite sure. There were times I could see you, but you couldn’t see me which was very aggravating may I add. The rest is just blank.” Y/n seemed very unphased by everything as she spoke. This made Spencer feel uneasy.

“Why couldn’t anyone else in the bullpen see you?” Spencer’s brain was still trying to put science behind it all.

“I’m not quite sure. I don’t exactly have this whole ghost thing figured out. Being a ghost is hard.” Y/n pouted, and it made Spencer’s heart twist into a what felt like a knot.

“I- “Spencer was cut off by a knock on the door. When he looked back at y/n she was once again gone, and Spencer had an overwhelming need to try and understand a part of the world his brain rejected every day. He needed to understand the supernatural.

------

Spencer had been to three different libraries and five different bookstores, all within a week. He would read any chance he got. The concerned looks he got from his team didn’t go unnoticed, and any time y/n would appear she would let her opinion be known that she believed no one could really understand the supernatural of the world.

Emily pulled up a seat next to his desk causing Spencer to glance up from his book that was only repeating what the last three books had said but in a different language. The look Emily was giving him convinced him it would be a good idea to put the book down. So, he closed the book and placed it on his desk, giving Emily his full attention.

“Spencer what has came over you? You’ve been nose deep in this folk lore and demonic looking books for days now. It’s just unlike you.” Emily’s voice was soft, and Spencer could hear the worry in her voice.

Spencer thought of a lie when he first started digging into all this for this exact reason, “I’m writing a paper on how science and physics can prove that the supernatural does not exist. I’m reading all of this so I don’t miss anything in my paper”

That simple explanation made the tension in Emily’s shoulders completely disappear. She huffed a sigh of relief before saying, “               Ahhhh I see. Well Rossi invited us all to dinner at his place. He’s going to attempt to show us all a new recipe.” This mad both Emily and Spencer giggle.

Spencer knew if he turned down the offer it would only cause suspicion to arise once again. “Yeah sure I’ll be there.”

Emily smiled and patted his shoulder as she stood, “Great I’ll see you there.”

Spencer hadn’t realized it was the end of the workday till Emily said that. He hadn’t seen y/n all day so maybe he could get through this dinner with little to no awkwardness… well more than usual.

He was the last to arrive at Rossi’s. He sat in his car and took a deep breath. He had to convince his team that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. Just when he was about to get out of his car all the lights came on and the alarm started blaring.

“What the he- “Spencer was cut off by the appearance of y/n in his passenger seat. She looked so sad and before Spencer could say anything else, he heard her say a quiet “sorry” and she was gone. The alarm and the lights stopped all at once, just in time for his team to come out to see what all the commotion was about.

Spencer got out of the car and quickly made his way to them, “Sorry about that. I really hate cars.”

This made his friends laugh and usher him inside. Once they were all in the kitchen surrounding Rossi and all his steaming pots and pans Spencer relaxed slightly.

Rossi tends to talk with his hands when he is demonstrating what to do while cooking. So, when he accidentally knocks over the saltshaker it’s not a surprise to anyone.

“Ah don’t want any bad luck.” Rossi says as he tosses some salt over his left shoulder. Spencer was about to launch into a spill of how salt was once believed to ward off evil spirits, but he didn’t get the chance. He was caught off by the appearance of y/n and her yelling, “What the actual fuck Rossi!” The salt seemed to arm y/n, but Spencer wasn’t able to dwell on that fact long due to the chorus of gasp throughout the kitchen. Luke was the first to speak, “Y/n? Is that really you?”

“In the fl-… well spirit?” Y/n laughed at her joke; she was the only one. Everyone just stood there staring until Rossi yelled “My pasta!” and rushed to save their dinner.

Everyone turned to Spencer, they all started talking over each other. He could make out a few questions and a few other statement. They all came to the same realization though: Spencer was definitely was not writing a paper.

It took Spencer ten minutes to get everyone quiet enough to even attempt to talk and then fifteen minutes to explain everything while they all stared at y/n dumb founded. Y/n just stood there smiling the whole time Spencer talked.

“So, what does this mean exactly?” JJ asked tears in her eyes and a sad smile playing on her lips. Your death hit her hard, not as hard as Spencer or Penelope but still hard. He saw you move closer to her but stop knowing that you wouldn’t be able to show her any physical comfort.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Is all Spencer was able to say.

-----

It took a few weeks for the initial shock of y/n being a ghost to ware off. Spencer would sometimes see members of his team jump at the sudden appearance of her. It was hard for them not to talk to her while in the office. Especially since she seemed to finally have gotten better at the ‘whole ghost thing’.

Spencer was nose deep in another book on folk lore when y/n appeared sitting on his desk. He looked around to make sure no one was paying him any attention.

“Hello love. Who’ve you been haunting today?” They always joked and laughed about how easy it was for her to scare Luke. Spencer was pretty sure JJ, Emily, and Tara had a bet going on about it.

Y/n didn’t laugh though instead she looked more ghost like then ever and said, “Spence, somethings wrong.” Then she was gone.

About that same time two men walked in the bull pen. He saw them ask Matt something and then made their way to Emily’s office.

Spencer watched through the window as Emily and the two men talked for a few minutes and then shook hands. She led them back out to the bull pen to introduce them to everyone.

“Everyone this is Agent Smith and Agent Jones from the New York branch. They have asked for our assistance on a case that has brought them here.” Emily explained.

The shorter gruff man spoke first, “You all can call me Dean and him Sam.” The taller one gave a tight-lipped smile and a wave that matched Spencer’s own very similarly.

“It’s an honor to work with you all.” The taller one, Sam, said.

After a few more greetings and polite conversations they all started to make their way to the round table room for debriefing. Spencer was just about to get up from his desk when words started to appear across the paper scattered on his desk: ‘They’re not FBI.”

Spencer looked up to see the two new agents whispering quietly. They noticed him staring and gave him a nod and smile. Spencer had an unsettling feeling in his stomach as he made his way towards them.

He debated between bombarding them with questions till they broke or just watching them knowing their behavior would tell eventually. He decided on the later because he knows he’ll do anything to make sure he can keep y/n around and if these two men were a threat to that then they wouldn’t be able to conceal that truth for long.

*

*

*

Taglist: @criminalmindzjunkie​ @brooklynxnicole​ @hendersonsshadow​ 

[smallblueandloud]

dude… i’m thinking about starting doctor who… give me your thoughts lmao

AAAAAAA

okay. okay. i'm gonna be reasonable about this. i'm not gonna bias you against perfectly good seasons.

I'M TRYING SO HARD HERE I'M GONNA TRY TO NOT HATE ON THINGS THAT YOU MIGHT ENJOY. most of this is under a cut because i apparently have a LOT of thoughts about this, the show i was hyperfixated on for two entire years. go figure!

okay. first thing: don't skip nine. some people might tell you to, and like, you do you and all, but s1 of nuwho is one of my favorite seasons and i don't think anyone should skip it.

(for clarity's sake -- you probably know all this, but you asked for my thoughts, so -- there are two "kinds" of doctor who. classic who is doctors 1-7 and mostly in black and white. it started in the 60s and it's wild and i haven't seen ANY of it, but i know a few people who are super into it, so it appeals! then the show got cancelled. then they did a few movies with the 8th doctor. then they rebooted the series in 2005 with the 9th doctor. that show is still ongoing and it's what i mean when i say nuwho. it's all i've seen, so it's gonna be what i have opinions on lol. nuwho starts on 1x01 "rose", so you can make sure you're watching the right season.)

PERSONALLY, my favorite era of the show is RTD's, which are the first four seasons of nuwho and showrunned by Russell T. Davies. my favorite companion is donna, because her dynamic with the doctor is PERFECTION, but i also really really love rose and martha. the season arcs are kinda all over the place but they're really fun! the show has HEART, okay, it's all about kindness and helping people and solving mysteries and i love it. it doesn't treat its characters of color (martha and mickey) very well, which is my main issue with his run. it makes it hard to enjoy whole episodes of s1, so just, be aware.

then there's the moffat era, from seasons 5 to 10. he. sure wrote a tv show. many people have written about how much they love that era, which i would direct you to rather than trying to write it myself, since i'm... not a huge moffat fan, lol. a lot of people liked how elaborate his plots were and especially how he wrote 11 and 12! (also the master during his era is super popular, but i don't want to spoil much so i'm trying to avoid talking about them lol.) (i will concede, he wrote "blink" in s2 and i LOVE that episode, it's one of the more famous ones for a reason.) bill potts, the fourth (and final) companion of his era, is the first regularly appearing queer companion, and i haven't watched all of her season but i love her.

and right now we're in the chibnall era, which has had two seasons (11 and 12)! honestly i can't articulate what he's about yet, since it hasn't been very long, but his doctor is a DELIGHT and i love her companions. also spyfall was literally everything i've wanted out of television, ever, so i'm kinda legally obligated to enjoy his stuff.

okay, that's eras down. now for shipping: i'm a huge doctor/rose shipper. i can't tell you how popular it is in the fandom at large, but a quick glance at ao3 tells me 10rose has more than two times as many fics as the second most popular doctor who ship (11/river). so do with that what you will! the age gap is weird in the first season, which is why i don't usually headcanon that they're together then, but in s2 it's much more of an... equal partnership? idk if i'm wording this right, i have SUCH a soft spot for 9rose that it's hard to strike the right balance lol. the point is: if 9rose doesn't appeal to you, don't write off doctor/rose entirely, at least not until you've seen s2.

(can you guess which part of the doctor/rose ship appeals to me the most. Can You Guess. hint: there's a reason why s4 is my favorite dw season, and possibly my favorite of television ever.)

i'm also a HUGE fan of random femslash ships between the companions. rose/martha has stolen my heart, but rose/clara is popular (and very sweet) and also What If Yaz And Clara Dated. literally pick two female companions' names at random and i will be extremely into whatever ship that makes.

(sidenote, i'm looking at the ao3 ships again and PROPS to 13yaz shippers for having more fics than doctor/master?? Good For Y'all.)

oh okay and also the master exists. uhhh without too many spoilers: the master is another time lord who grew up with the doctor, and they're kinda... best enemies? (ignore me, i spent two hours today watching sarah z's video on a certain webcomic.) there is one certainty in the doctor's life and it's that they will always have to kill the master one more time. obviously that's the kinda angst that appeals, and they always have Delicious tension when they're both onscreen, so just like. yeah. if you want tortured gay time lords, stay tuned, because that'll be there.

(RTD is gay, i believe, so his storylines are. queer. you will not be surprised that he created jack harkness. the doctor's first onscreen kiss in the reboot, ever, was with a man. Thanks RTD!)

uhhhh that was a lot of words. one more thing: people are gonna tell you you Have to watch This Episode, or This Season, or whatever, and here is my advice on that. do whatever you want! listen to whoever's recommendations you want. it is perfectly fine to skip episodes or entire seasons if you're just not feeling them. i stopped halfway through the s8 finale and still, to this day, have not started s9, and it's fine! watch whatever you want. skip s1 if you're not feeling it! the show is pretty disjointed between doctors, which is disappointing if you want them to reference a long-gone companion, but makes it super easy to skip around.

okay, NOW i'm going to wrap this up. i was hyperfixated on doctor who for YEARS so i have SO MANY THOUGHTS. i keep meaning to get back into it and... hmm, is this a sign? should i go rewatch doctor who? i'm crying PREEMPTIVELY about [redacted episode that features a white wall, for all the whovians reading this] so obviously that is a yes and i will get on it immediately. PLEASE PLEASE let me know how it goes, i'd love to hear your thoughts as you watch!! good luck and enjoy the ride!

[aelaer]

Inspired by the X men ask: instead of Donna, what if Stephen's mutant powers manifest after she drowns? It's definitely writable with movie-only knowledge! (I think Stephen would have some scary strong powers).

This prompt is nearing a year and a half old and is my second to last prompt from 2019 so I wanted to try to get it out of the way as I attempt to do at least one prompt fic a month to clear my inbox of those remaining.

After being stuck on trying to figure this out for so long, I decided to approach it quite differently than I thought I would, and this is my first fic writing from this character’s POV. I made Stephen's age the same as Ben's for ease. I also prove, yet again, that my ability to write short things is very much lacking.

My interest in geography 100% leaks through, and I'm not sorry.

My thanks to nemmy for helping me decide the direction of this story.

Fate Won’t Compromise Fandom: Doctor Strange, MCU Genre: Gen, canon divergence Chars: The Ancient One, Stephen Strange, Donna Strange Word count: 5k Warnings: Minor canonical character death, near drowning

In the summer of 1995, The Ancient One felt a ripple in the fabric of reality.

Such ripples, while uncommon, were not unknown to her in her many centuries serving as Sorcerer Supreme. They happened as major events within their reality shifted from the threads found in similar realities across the multiverse. While change was inevitable between realities, commonalities often brought them back to follow the same paths, to hit the same major events, to survive the same catastrophes. Reality and time were excellent in creating situations that balanced the flow again and brought them back to their natural parallels across the majority of universes.

But sometimes, sometimes the fabric of reality and time was disturbed. It happened with a change, unexpected in its improbability and big enough that it diverted the parallel lines the majority of the multiverse followed to create a timeline that diverged, crooked and uncertain. If the ripple was small enough, the powers surrounding reality often fixed itself with countermeasures—new actors, new probabilities that helped bring time back to its parallel path. But some ripples, some ripples required intervention.

And this one? Well, this one absolutely shattered reality with its ripple effect.

Hmm. It was time to consult the Eye of Agamotto and see what changed.

— — — — —

Her time with the Eye was long in her search. With such a significant ripple, The Ancient One first looked at the immediate months coming, searching for change in the most important of events for the remainder of the year.

There was nothing different. Interesting. Then this was likely an event that changed the course of the life of an individual, an individual who was very important sometime in the future. She scanned the years following more broadly after that, coming upon the events of the new millennium, both mundane and arcane, that would change the course of Earth's future forever. They all came as expected, one after the other.

It wasn't until her search took her to 2016, the year before her own inevitable passing, that she finally came across the anomaly: Stephen Strange never made it to Kamar-Taj.

The Ancient One pursed her lips; this was not meant to happen. While her sight beyond 2017 remained veiled, her experience and intuition as well as glimpses across the multiverse gave her an insight into the likely path of Stephen Strange. And from what she had seen, he was meant to be the best of them all.

So what had diverted him from the path that was written in the course of time, so much so that its lack of manifestation caused such a ripple in reality? Surely it didn't change her death; she had accepted the inevitably of that decades ago.

(She first discovered her death after the chaos of WWII, where the Masters of the Mystic Arts fought their own war against demonic invasions looking to take advantage of the chaotic time. She looked to prevent such a thing ever occurring again, then found her death. At first she wasn't concerned, and made plans to avoid it, just as she had several times before.

But it was different this time. With the Eye of Agamotto in the past, she was always able to find a route that allowed her to survive and the world to remain intact within a dozen attempts of altering her actions. It took her over a thousand attempts over the next year to realize that, no, no matter what, she was going to die before the fourth month of 2017. She never lived further than that.

And in the course that seemed most sound to her, the most consistent, she was always by the side of the unsure, amateur, but potentially great Stephen Strange.)

The Eye confirmed for her that, yes, she still died in early 2017. However, the manner of death was completely unacceptable, as it led to Dormammu eating their reality. She had not seen that possibility since she stopped trying to find a solution to her death several decades ago.

(She wondered how Stephen Strange managed to defeat him. She did not sense the end of reality after her death, so it was with confidence that she knew he found a solution. What the solution was, however, remained unknown to her. It was most intriguing. He had such potential.)

The Ancient One finally withdrew from the encompassing powers of the Eye and allowed herself a frown. She hoped Stephen Strange was not dead. It would mean finding another like him, and quite soon so she may prevent the terrible future she just saw.

Still, the ripple she felt did but not necessarily mean death; it meant change, for good or ill.

The first thing to do was to check on what was, and what would hopefully remain, her future pupil. She directed the Eye to review the timeline of Stephen Strange, going to the moment just before the ripple in reality occurred.

As she searched for that moment, flashes of memories not belonging to her flipped through her mind's eye: the first was a pair of hands on the wheel of a car, left side, as it turned off the paved road to a bumpy gravel-filled spot of driving, then quickly smoothed out to a road less rough. A large brown sign with yellow, capital letters read "Lewis and Clark State Recreation Area", with a smaller "Nebraska State and Park Commission" underneath. "Weigand - Burbach" was spelt on a separate plank just below the main sign with the same dark brown backdrop and bright yellow lettering. In the backseats was excited chatter from two others, women. Surrounding the road were tall trees of various species, all different colors of green.

Another flash, and she was now watching a small motorboat being backed up into the water from its trailer by a young man—barely a man—into a wide lake. Beyond the water the distant shore was all but flat, with only a small ridge of hills giving the horizon any distinct shape. A shrill voice shouted behind her, "Don't crash it!" and the man in the boat shouted back, "Shut up, Melissa!" Giggles followed, and then a voice came from the soul she watched, a deep baritone that said, "But seriously, if you crash it, my dad will kill you." The young man in the boat retorted, "Fuck you, Stephen!" in return, and Stephen's body shook with soft laughter. The man successfully maneuvered the boat into the water, and a short cheer sounded behind her.

Then another memory, and she was now on the motorboat, far out on the water which shone as bright a blue as the sky above. A young woman—a teenager, as they said in English in the 20th century, now—was doing some sort of sport she was unfamiliar with, letting the motorboat drag her along as she hung on by a rope with a handle at the end. Perhaps this was surfing. The teenager completed a short jump on the waves, and from her point of view, the memory's host shouted, "Nice, Donna!"

Another flash, and she was the one at the end of the rope. She quickly passed through it to the next memory. 

Time had passed; it was late afternoon, perhaps an hour or so before sunset. Her host was looking at the boat's controls. A female voice—Melissa—behind them said, "Okay, Aaron's ready to go. Start it up." As the boat motor roared to life, another voice—Donna—said over the noise, "We should get out of the water after this. It'll be dark soon." The soul behind the memories, Stephen, shouted back, "That's why we have navigation lights on this thing!"

The memory shifted again, and all four were on the boat now. The sun was set behind the horizon and the sky was painted a soft yellow before it melted into blue, then black. Stars were already appearing in the sky. Surrounding her were the other three, Aaron and Melissa and Donna, and there was a strong feeling of content within the memory. "We should get back to camp," Donna said, and she heard Stephen sigh and say, "Yeah," in reply. "Your turn, Aaron," he added. Aaron said, "Dude, I'm wiped out. You do it." Stephen retorted in return, "No, you."

Then it shifted again, and she was looking up at the darkening sky when Melissa said, "That boat's going fast." Her point of view changed as Stephen straightened himself, and she saw another motorboat running straight towards them. "Stop!" Stephen shouted as he got to his feet, and a second later, Aaron called out, "Jump!" and Stephen did, hitting the water and diving just as their motorboat was hit and destroyed. He was facing down into the murky, black depths of the lake as suddenly something hit his back, and at that moment some sort of rope or netting caught his leg and its weight started dragging him down. She could feel the alarm running through the young man's head and the Ancient One wondered if she was going to be seeing his death, now. A strange pang of regret went through her at the thought.

But then a sudden glow encompassed Stephen's body, subtle but in the blackness of the water, quite, quite clear. Confusion joined his panic but before any other thoughts came to his head, he was suddenly out of the water and on the shore of the lake. He collapsed the moment he went from liquid to air, falling on his back before turning to his side to cough up water from the lake.

The Ancient One stepped back from Stephen Strange's memories and blinked again back in the normal passage of time. As the green glow of the Time Stone's powers faded from her body, she considered the last memory.

She knew, from all her viewings of the future, that it was about this time that the mutation that came to be known as the X-Gene started popping up in the population. It would eventually have an impact on the future of Earth. But Stephen Strange was not meant to have it—or perhaps, rather, it was never meant to activate. Not if the flow of reality and time considered this an anomaly in the general course of the multiverse.

His appearance within the order of the Masters of the Mystic Arts seemed to lead to the event that prevented Dormammu's entrance into their reality, so he—or someone of his caliber—was necessary to have under her tutelage. And as he was not dead, she needed to see what had to happen to work him again onto a path that was the best for the universe's survival, regardless of this unexpected development in his life.

It was time to consult the Eye once more to determine the right path.

—————

Using the Eye worked outside the flow of time, and so all the Ancient One's endeavours, though seeming to her to take several hours, in reality only took her about twenty minutes since she first felt the ripple. She had passed through various scenarios and glimpsed at various extensions of those scenarios as needed until she had an outcome that had her satisfied with her decisions and, more importantly, made it very, very unlikely that the universe would end to Dormammu in 2017.

(Her own future, strangely enough, grew blurry and uncertain the closer she got to that year, which she found quite intriguing. She would pursue the matter at a later date.)

For now, though, she had a job to do. And so she created a portal that led her to the north shore of the lake, at the beach where the small hills lay. At this point of time it was nearly dark, and so she conjured a lantern—one of the elegant ones that they used to craft in Japan, the ones she preferred—and placed a small, magical light within the illusion. It would reveal its true nature soon enough. Despite the rockiness of this part of the shoreline, her footing was sure as she made her way along the edge of the lake.

In a couple minutes, a voice, expected and now familiar, called out to her. "Hello? Is someone there? I need help!"

In all her experience of using the Eye of Agamotto, the Ancient One had gotten very good at differentiating all the viewed possibilities to the experienced reality. Reality was sharper in every way, and the auras of people's spirits shone brighter without the power of the Time Stone to stifle them. And in the night surrounding them, Stephen Strange's aura shone very, very bright.

Interesting.

When she came close enough for him to see her clearly, his eyes widened as he took her in. She knew her resemblance was considered odd by late twentieth-century standards, but the memory of centuries of lice infestations made hair still undesirable and robes were infinitely more comfortable than jeans. But she was aware of its oddness, and as he stared, the Ancient One took the time to also observe him beyond the fuzziness of the Eye of Agamotto.

The gangly boy sitting in the sand in front of her hardly resembled the arrogant, talented man she had come to know through her past use of the Eye. Just breaking the cusp of manhood, his hair was still fully dark brown, and he wore a sleeveless blue shirt with long swim shorts, all still wet despite the time out of the water. His cheeks were fuller with the last remnant of youth still remaining, and the look in his eyes was wild and unguarded. Filled with fear.

Quite different from what she was used to.

"Who are you?" Stephen Strange whispered.

"A friend," she answered. She placed the lantern on a rock before settling down in the dark sand near him, about five feet away. "I mean you no harm."

He continued to stare at her, then looked at his leg. It was bleeding sluggishly and would need stitches. "Can you please help me? I—I'm not sure how I got here, but there was a boating accident and I—I need to find my friends and my sister. It's on the lake, I swear, I don't know why we can't see it from here but the accident just happened and it can't be that far."

She let him finish before she broke the news. "You are about seven kilometers west from the site of your accident, on the north shore of the lake. I believe you call this part of your country 'South Dakota'."

Stephen's eyes somehow widened even further, then he quickly shook his head. "No, that—that's impossible. That's completely impossible."

"Just as impossible as finding yourself drowning at the bottom of a lake one moment and being on dry land in the next," she said agreeably.

The wide-eyed look seemed it would remain a permanent fixture on his face. "Wha—how—how do you know about that?"

"It is my job to know of such things," said the Ancient One. "It is also how I know that, if you are found so far from the site of the accident, you will draw unwanted attention upon yourself."

Stephen visibly swallowed and looked around them, as if the unwanted attention was already watching. "What—what do you mean?"

The Ancient One offered him a benign smile. "You are not the first to perform the impossible. When figures of authority learn such things exist, they pursue them. And your story would draw their attention. Historically, your country has been known to use extraordinary people as assets when needed. Many kingdoms and governments throughout time have."

A soft wind blew in from the south, causing Stephen to shiver in the oncoming chill of the night. Regardless of his discomfort, his wide eyes narrowed into something more calculating and thoughtful. "Why are you telling me this? What do you get out of it?"

"A future ally, hopefully," she answered truthfully. "I have no interest in taking you from your studies, Stephen Strange—yes, I know who you are," she said, the benign smile coming again as he startled. "Your name is the least I know about you."

He stared at her once more, mouth hanging partially open. As the wind blew through again, he snapped his mouth shut and rubbed his shivering arms. "And why—why should I believe you aren't part of these secret government groups, or part of something that wants to use me? Why should I trust you?"

She kept that slight smile on her face as she answered, "Because I offer my assistance and ask nothing in return. I will guide you to the shoreline just north of the accident, and show you where you may find help. I recommend a forgetful memory between the crash and you reaching shore, which is quite common in times of traumatic events. No one will suspect anything different about you, Mr Strange."

The boy fidgeted at the name, as if not used to it. He really was a young thing, wasn't he? "You can get me there? Do you have a car nearby?"

The Ancient One smiled and lifted her lantern. "Remember what I said, Mr Strange." She let the lantern disintegrate, leaving only the glowing ball of light. Stephen's mouth dropped. "You are not the only person who can do the supposedly impossible. Can you walk unaided?"

Stephen snapped his jaw shut at the question and looked down at his leg. He pressed his lips together, and then with a grunt, he slowly shifted his weight under his legs, most of it on his good leg, before he pushed himself up into a standing position.

She offered another slight smile and held her hand forward to create a portal further east along the lake. "Follow me." The Ancient One did not bother to look at his reaction to the gateway, but had the ball of light follow her through. When she turned, Stephen was limping just through the portal, and after he got through she allowed it to close.

They were on the shore again; to the south in the water, a mile or so away, she could see the distant pinpricks of shiplights at the scene of the accident. Stephen, too, stared in that direction. But she forced his focus elsewhere when she pointed to the northeast, to the pinpricks of light beyond the trees. "Do you believe you can make it to those lit buildings? It is perhaps two hundred meters away. They should have a phone."

He offered a nod. "Yeah. My leg's not so bad."

"Good," she said. "Then I recommend you go that way; it may be some hours before authorities search the shore for you." She looked back at him. "I would not tell anyone of what truly occurred to you; such tales have an unfortunate habit of getting out, no matter how private the story is meant to be."

Stephen frowned at her, and she offered him another one of her benign smiles. "I will come to see you again, after you have had some time to recover. Good luck, Mr Strange." With that, she let the glowing ball beside her fade out, and created a portal into one of the darker rooms of Kamar-Taj and left the young Stephen Strange on the shore of the lake.

—————— 

Two weeks later, the Ancient One created another portal to the midwestern United States, landing underneath a narrow strip of trees that bordered a small creek that made its way through wide fields of agriculture. The nearest field beside her was corn, and just beyond it was a half-harvested wheat field. The trees bordering the water were a mix of oak and pine, specific species she was not familiar with but that she could broadly identify due to the commonalities found within their relatives in the Eastern Hemisphere. It was just after midday in this place known as Nebraska, and the summer sun was pleasant in this corner of the world, with a soft breeze taking off the edge of the dry heat.

She saw no one at first, but if the sling ring brought her here, that meant Stephen Strange was also nearby. A faint trail followed the bend of the creek and she paused in consideration before her instincts led her to go southwest.

In a few minutes, she came upon him. While her step was soft, the silence of the trail around them should have alerted Stephen to her arrival. But his back remained turned to her as he sat beyond the narrow trail and on the slope that led into the creek bed. His chin was propped on his knees and, since he had not heard her approaching, the Ancient One knew his mind was quite far away.

"Mr Strange," she said in greeting.

The young man violently started out of his daze and nearly lost his seating as he twisted around to stare at her. It seemed to her that he had aged some years in the last two weeks; his eyes were dark and sunken with lack of sleep, and his entire expression appeared drawn and pinched. His lips tightened for a moment, then he said, "It's you again."

"I did say I was going to return," she reminded him. She approached the sloping hill beside the creek and sat down beside him.

From the corner of her eye, she saw his expression tighten again. She remained quiet as he gathered his words. "Did you know?" Stephen asked after several passing seconds of heavy silence.

The Ancient One kept her gaze on the small creek. She knew what he was asking, and she would not play any games pretending otherwise; it wouldn't serve her purpose. "I knew that, by the time I came to you, your sister had died."

The tenseness beside her did not lift; if anything, it grew heavier. "Did you know Donna was going to die?"

An interesting question. She considered her answer; a multitude of answers would lead to an acceptable outcome, but this was reality. "We don't get to choose our time," she started. "In some probabilities, the question of death is split between a thin line that sways from one option to the other depending on the reality. In other instances, death is all but certain." She spared a glance at him; Stephen's grief was now layered with confusion. "I am sorry to say that, in the wide expansion of possibilities, your sister's death was largely unavoidable. All points led to it."

The young man's face contorted in anger. "I don't believe in fate or whatever the hell you're talking about."

"Some may call it fate," she answered, and looked back to the creek. "I call it probability. You may have been told, at some point in your life, that there are random events in life that are unpredictable. This is untrue, at least on a larger scale. Each event of consequence has a set probability in occurring, with the powers balancing reality and time ever trying to keep them as consistent as possible in the grand scheme of the multiverse. Certain people are always born. Certain events always occur. Certain items are always invented. Around people of consequence, events play out so that they may help play the part that they are meant to play."

In the corner of her eye, she saw Stephen run a hand over his face. "Look, lady, like I told you: I don't believe in that bullshit. And if you're trying to tell me that my sister was meant to—" He cut himself off and turned his head away. She saw his knuckles tighten to the point of turning white with the strain.

She slowly exhaled and closed her eyes. She had not spoken with youth who did not know her for who she was in some many years; she could not remember the last time a young person had spoken to her with such disrespect. But she had to keep in mind that Stephen was grieving, and that he was absolutely clueless.

Perhaps if he saw a small glimpse of what she saw, he would understand.

"I would like to show you something, if you would allow it," said the Ancient One as she opened her eyes and looked at Stephen.

His eyes darted to look at her with a side glance, though he did not look at her fully. "Show me what?"

"What my powers allow me to see," she said. His eyes narrowed. "It won't hurt or leave any lasting effects."

She saw the internal struggle, but one thing she knew well of Stephen Strange: his curiosity always got the better of him. And as she expected, he relented and said, "Okay, fine. How do you do that?"

A slight smile appeared on her lips. "Like this," said the Ancient One, and she placed her thumb upon his forehead and connected her third eye to his unused, undeveloped one. She picked from her memory a set of images gained by using the Eye of Agamotto in conjunction with the Cauldron of the Cosmos to explore the realities across the multiverse, the images she picked up some years ago as she looked into the man known as Stephen Strange and what he became in other realities.

And the images she chose were specifically referring to his sister's death. As she let him see various versions of himself (some with slightly different physical features, and a couple further in the past, but so very much Stephen Strange), she said, "The multiverse is a strange thing in its consistency. Donna Strange was not born only to perish at such a young age in every reality, but the probability was stacked against her. And many named Stephen Strange have experienced the grief you feel now. It is not your fault that the universe stacked probability against her survival."

She removed her thumb from his forehead and Stephen collapsed, rolling down a couple feet down the slope before catching himself. Laying on the ground now he panted heavily, trying to gain his breath.

When he finally raised his head, tears were streaming down his face. "It should've been me," he choked out. "She didn't deserve to die! None of those—" He cut himself off and shook his head, then angrily wiped at his face. "I—I don't know what the fuck you were doing—"

"I was using my powers to show you what I have seen," she interrupted, cutting him off for the first time. "After what you managed to achieve at the lake, are my abilities really so hard to come to terms with?"

Stephen shook his head again and pushed himself off the ground so he was standing. The Ancient One remained sitting and kept her expression neutral. "Okay, fine, so you have some crazy-ass powers that—that make no sense. I get it, you did physics-breaking things at the lake, too. What the hell does that have to do with me?"

She offered a benign smile. "Surely you haven't forgotten your unusual journey from the lake to the shore. Or have you been telling yourself that it was all a hallucination?"

By the look on his face, it appeared that that was exactly what he was trying to do. That would do no good.

"Unfortunately for you, your powers aren't just going to go away," the Ancient One said. "Whether they will manifest under physical or emotional stress I do not yet know, but they will return if you do not know how to control them."

"And what, you can teach me how to control them?" Stephen asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

"Yes," was her simple answer.

Stephen's eyes remained narrow, then he cut off his stare to run a hand through his hair and shake his head. "And what would you want out of me in return?"

"Nothing you are unwilling to give," said the Ancient One. "You can continue your studies as you wish. Go on to become a doctor."

"How did you know—" He paused, cutting himself off, then shook his head. "You know what, never mind. Go on." 

She offered her smile again. "All it would require is some of your time to discover the extent of your powers and to learn ways in which you can best control them. Consider it an extracurricular activity, if you would like."

"And what do you get out of it?" he asked.

"The knowledge that those with unusual powers remain hidden from those who would exploit them," is what she answers, but in truth, it was so much more. Still, it was not yet time to tell him that; he was too young. Too green.

Stephen looked down and crossed his arms as he considered her words. His expression was stone, but she knew what he was going to answer. If there was one thing predictable about Stephen Strange, it was his curiosity and his hunger for knowledge. It was his ambition to be the best at whatever he set his mind to, and a new ability suddenly within his hands was one meant to be conquered for him.

He then nodded jerkily, just once. "Okay. Sure. When do we start?"

The Ancient One smiled and stood. "How about now?" She opened a portal to one of her private rooms in Kamar-Taj, where she was rarely disturbed. It would not do to show him everything of the compound immediately, but it would come in due time.

He hesitated. "I need to be home for dinner at six."

"That is quite doable," she answered, and waited.

A couple seconds of hesitation passed, and then Stephen Strange lifted his chin and walked directly into the portal to Kamar-Taj, over two decades earlier than expected. The Ancient One followed him and closed the gateway behind her, leaving behind the quiet creek to flow under the bright green leaves on a sunny Nebraskan summer day.

— — — — — 

The big happy moment for me in writing this fic was that the town I chose for Stephen to grow up in and alluded to in another story is pretty close to this lake, so that worked out great. The most disappointing discovery, on the other hand, was that the Google Maps car only got like, the major roads in Nebraska. That does not include annnyyyyy of the roads near the Lewis and Clark State Recreation Area. And their promotional video didn't help in determining the details I wanted.

But then *the best thing* happened and on the camp's location on Google Maps, some beautiful, beautiful person took a photo of the entrance of the campgrounds, which was the exact detail I needed. So I dedicate this fic to Denis F. and their photo. (We're gonna pretend that the road and sign's 100% been like that since at least 1995). As much as I'd like to make an excuse to go to a lakeside attraction for boating fun, I'm sadly not a millionaire and cannot throw away thousands for the sake of fic accuracy. Alas. Once I win the lottery, though, 100% will commit to this. (Also, it's January and freaking freezing in Nebraska right now.)

FYI, Donna was not surfing, but wakeboarding. I just doubt that the Ancient One has bothered to learn all the new sports that popped up in the latter half of the 20th century - especially as one as young as wakeboarding was in 1995.

Hopefully the emotional roller coaster in the last bit worked. I've had conversations that just went all over the place like that before—crazy emotional subject to another crazy subject that just shook you to the point that the emotional subject was put on the back burner for processing—so hopefully people can relate.

[yeonchi]

Kisekae Insights #24: GJ Club - how a spinon became a spinoff featuring Kyōya and Kasumi Shinomiya

(Art by 結城辰也)

The Kisekae Insights series has allowed me to bring the spotlight back on Waifu Network animes that I haven’t posted much about in the past due to lack of fanart or lack of interest. Like Hidamari Sketch in the last instalment, GJ Club will be no exception until I continue posting the usual content in my anime posts. Honestly, it was good while it lasted.

While Hidamari Sketch is a fairly popular and notable anime, GJ Club, sadly, isn’t. The anime was adapted from the light novel series written by Shin Araki and it only received one 12-episode season in 2013 and an OVA in 2014. Since it is a slice-of-life series, not much is known about the characters’ histories, which made it very easy to adapt into my personal project. All these factors coinciding with it being the 50th anniversary year of Doctor Who made GJ Club the perfect anime to adapt and expand on.

Background information

For some reason, the light novel has been a bit hard to find. In short, while you are able to read it online, the sources are unfortunately scarce.

From 2013 to 2015, NanoDesu Translations posted translations of the light novel. They published a PDF and EPUB of the first volume (which is available on archive.org) and translated up to Chapter 17 of the second volume. It was then abandoned for two years before Haraguro Scanlations picked it up. As of September 2018, they only finished up to Chapter 3 of the third volume (with the first chapter being translated by Shadowys on Baka-Tsuki) and there are no further updates after that, with the exception of a one-off chapter released in November 2020.

As of August 2021, however, all the original translations by NanoDesu seem to have been deleted from their site. All the translations are available on AsiaNovel, but there are no illustrations because the reader doesn’t seem to support images. If the images weren’t discarded in the code of the novels, then all they would need to do is add support for them and then they would appear.

There are 9 volumes and two special volumes for GJ Club along with 8 volumes and a special volume for its middle school spinoff. It’s honestly telling how popular the series was when the translators have all but abandoned it.

Shin Araki also wrote an additional spinoff to GJ Club, namely GE: Good Eater, and a sequel, namely KB Club. GE is set in a fantasy world with the characters being based off the characters of GJ Club, while KB Club turns everything meta by having both series be the creations of a high school light novel club, with the characters of GJ Club being based off the members of said club, right down to their names. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of that approach given how I’ve adapted GJ Club into my personal project. In the end, I guess we’ll never really know what happens in the novels, but at least we have this.

Watching the anime and listening to the character music was how I first realised that anime was sexist to males because of the female-centric focus in most animes. Kyōya only gets one character song in the series, and even then it’s a duet with Megumi. If that isn’t sexist to you, then I don’t know how I can convince you that a lot of animes are sexist.

In January 2015, I published two posts outlining my idea for an English dub of the series that also fits with GJ Club’s depiction in my personal project. The setting would be changed to London, England, specifically the areas of Chiswick, Ealing and Acton (where their school is located) and the characters would speak with British accents. The images in the original post are dead because I idiotically copied the images from the site instead of saving and reuploading them to the post, but since I’m grubbing for content anyway, I’m going to repost my character details as follows:

Kyōya: The protagonist of the series. When he started Year 10, he was kidnapped by the girls when he walked into an old school building, hoping to find the Culture Club. He moved to London from Manchester just before he started Year 7. His best friend outside the club is someone named Tesshin Yokomizo (横溝徹心) who is a local and not seen in the anime. In the GJ Club, he is nicknamed “Kyoro” and despite his spinelessness, he seems to have talent in dealing with the girls around him. His birthday is December 18. Due to a crisis involving his family during his childhood, he and his sister Kasumi were left in the care of a family guardian just before they moved to London, but she left when Kyōya started Year 10. It might have been that childhood incident that emotionally scarred him and left him spineless…

Mao: The Year 11 president of the GJ Club. Her family is rich and they live in a mansion in Ealing. She has a habit of biting and picking on Kyōya when she is bored or angry. She always reads books and watches shows without kissing scenes.

Shion: The only daughter in her family, Shion is an expert chess player with many brothers, all experts in some kind of activity. She speaks in a Birmingham (Brummie) accent because her mother and a few of her brothers were born in Birmingham. It is unknown if Shion was born in Birmingham herself.

Megumi: The calm and nice middle sister of the Amatsuka family. She likes knitting and she is always seen making tea and cakes in the club room. In the same year level as Kyōya.

Kirara: Born in Swansea, Wales, Kirara is the tallest and strongest member of the club. She speaks English in simple, monotone sentences. Welsh is her first language. Kirara can be seen eating meat, sometimes sharing it with Kyōya, but not with anyone else. She is afraid of spiders and has little tolerance to alcohol.

Tamaki: (voiced by Karen Gillan!) The newest member of the GJ Club when Kyōya becomes a Year 11 student. Like Kyōya, she is kidnapped and forced to join the club. Her nickname is “Tama”. Her family is from Glasgow and they run a Shinto shrine in Acton. She has several younger siblings.

Kasumi: Kyōya’s younger sister, who was born in Manchester. After a visit to the GJ Club, she becomes inspired to start a middle school division when she starts Year 7. She has a brother complex and she mistook Mao for being a primary school student when she met her. Her proficiency in Welsh is better than her brother’s, who can probably speak at a beginner level.

Geraldine: Shortened to “Jill”. She moved to Chiswick from Swansea to be with her sister, Kirara. She first met Kyōya at Ealing Broadway Station when she had difficulty buying a Tube ticket. She didn’t really understand how to use the ticket machine, so Kyōya went to help her. After this, Jill considered Kyōya her “samurai master”. Jill doesn’t speak English fluently, so she relies on her whiteboard to communicate with the others. She is as strong as her sister and she joins Kasumi’s GJ Club when she starts Year 7 in Chiswick.

Seira: The youngest sister of the Amatsuka family. Though she speaks in a typical London accent, she sometimes talks through her cat clip in Received Pronunciation (the Queen’s English/RP) using ventriloquism to state her true feelings to Kyōya, who she has a grudge against.

Mori: The maid of the Amatsuka family. She likes to ride a motorcycle.  A running gag is her twirling before Kyōya much to his pleasure and annoyance to the rest of the club members. Sometimes, her mother takes her place without the family even noticing due to their identical appearance.

Kyōya, Kasumi and Momoka: The Brother, the Child and the Yandere

Normally in previous instalments, I would have described each character separately, but because their backstories are heavily intertwined, I will introduce them all at once in this section. Most of the backstory takes place around the Battle of Koshi Castle in December 2013 and during the Manchester Campaign of 2005-2013, which I have already covered in #15.

When Hiroki Ichigo’s twelfth incarnation was killed at Koshi Castle, he managed to escape in his TARDIS, where he regenerated into his new prototype, namely a four-year-old Kyōya. The TARDIS crashes outside North Manchester General Hospital on 11 December 2005.

Earlier, Hiroki and Akari’s gametes (along with those of Hiroki’s brothers and their families) were taken by Reona Yukawa and placed in the Progenitor so that they could breed super-soldiers out of them. When Takumi Kamijō and Kyōko Sakura manage to escape from their cells (saving Nodoka Manabe and Azusa Nakano in the process), he changes the destination of the baby about to be released into the Progenitor’s time portal. That baby was Kasumi, one of the super-soldiers grown from Hiroki and Akari’s DNA. She ended up at the same hospital as well and was about to be taken home by a couple when Girl Power killed them, resulting in Kasumi being taken by Akari and Shaun.

What remained of Hiroki was contacted by the spirit of Walpurgisnacht. Making a deal with her, Hiroki regenerated into his thirteenth incarnation, the female Momoka Mizutani. No, Momoka is not an OC for GJ Club, but she is based on the character of Apple Lam Chung-yan from the TVB drama A Great Way to Care II, played by Tavia Yeung. Momoka takes Hiroki’s TARDIS and heads to Salford, where with the help of Walpurgisnacht, she establishes a cha chaan teng café in the middle of a trading estate and hires a group of red drone Daleks as her workers, hiding their identities by having them disguise themselves as humans.

Over the next eight years, Momoka gets close to the new Shinomiya family by influencing them through Kyōya’s dreams to come to her café. Eight years later, on 11 December 2013, the Fourth and Fifth Doctors come in with their companions. When the Shinomiya family come in, a confrontation with Ayaka Kikuchi and her army ensues before Momoka transmats the Shinomiya family to a Dalek spaceship, where she prepares to execute them using the Yashio’ori. However, the Yashio’ori is sabotaged by the enemy army so that the laser beam would not charge.

As Ayaka and her army attack the Dalek ship, Momoka uses the Dalek-enhanced machine guns to fend them off. While two Doctors confront the Master, Momoka is killed by Girl Power officers, resulting in Walpurgisnacht taking over her body as she regenerates, maintaining her current appearance. Read #15 to find out what happens after this.

Once the Battle of Koshi Castle and the Manchester Campaign conclude, the Fourth Doctor helps Kyōya and Kasumi move to Chiswick in 2008. Five years later, the events of the GJ Club anime take place. During his time in Chiswick, Kyōya gets a job at the post office there and later, studies a double degree in Japanese Studies and Politics at SOAS in the University of London while also learning Cantonese, Mandarin and Welsh in weekend and evening courses (apparently he also wanted to learn Taiwanese but they weren’t running any courses, but that’s alright, he can always learn it somewhere else, which he presumably did).

On a side note, I volunteered myself to be Kyōya’s English voice actor, so I’ve practiced my Mancunian accent by watching actors like Christopher Eccleston, Stephen Tompkinson, Karl Pilkington and maybe a bit of Peter Kay as well. The only problem was that I’m not even sure that my accent is even Manc because I can’t tell if I’m getting it wrong and sounding like someone from Liverpool, Yorkshire, Newcastle or even Scotland. Oh well, that’s what happens when you really get into things.

I don’t buy expansion packs, I make my own (budget allowing)

So as I said, GJ Club only got one season and an OVA to go with it. Do Kyōya and the GJ Club make further appearances in the series? You bet your ass they do.

After being absent for much of the Next Gen Series in 2014, Kyōya and Kasumi receive a letter from their aunt, Narutaki, asking to meet in Hong Kong after their mother, Akari, went missing following the Siege of Ōsaka, only to be followed by Mao and the rest of the GJ Club, who learnt where he was going and managed to get on the same flight as them.

Narutaki, who had taken her Girl Power friends and established a rogue faction separate from the main group, takes the GJ Club to Nijō Castle, where she explains the background behind the Manchester Campaign and the events of Series 8 and 9. Soon after, Girl Power’s commander, Daniel, sends his brother, Nathan, out to find Narutaki. Kyōya tries to contact Hiroki, but he is unable to get through to him. Luckily, the TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Hiroki help Angela and the others repel the attacking Girl Power forces. Some more things happen and by the end of the story, we learn that Kyōya and Mao are dating.

That Christmas, Kyōya and Kasumi head up to Manchester, but the Doctor briefly takes them and their friends back to Hong Kong for a picnic with Hiroki and the rest of the Zhuge family.

A few years later in 2018, the GJ Club and Momoka get a cameo at the start and end of the Gokaiger TV movie special. By this point in time, Momoka’s café in Manchester has expanded to many other branches around the UK and in Hong Kong.

The next year in 2019, Kyōya, Kasumi, Mao and Megumi are featured in a four-part adventure in Soulbound Series 3, helping the cast solve the mystery of Parker’s past and Shinbu’s origins. Two years after in 2021, Kyōya and Kasumi move to Hong Kong (along with the GJ Club) and join the Superhero Project as the new ShinkenRed and ZyuohTiger. You’d think Kyōya would be against violence given his harmless tendencies, but I suppose his character has developed over the years despite having abandonment issues.

So this has been the involvement of GJ Club in my personal project. It’s a shame the series wasn’t more popular or it could have gotten a second season, a manga, more (and frequent) translations of the light novel or hell, even a licenced release. This series is just like Sea Princesses in how popular it was, but despite the number of episodes the anime got, at least Shin Araki hasn’t abandoned the series (by putting it in a spinoff no less) unlike Fabio Yabu, who hasn’t made anything new for Sea Princesses since 2010 after getting more animated episodes than GJ Club did. On the other hand though, neglected series with little material has been good development fodder for my personal project as it allowed me to bring awareness to the existence of those series while also developing backstories and afterstories for them.

[sugaryyangs]

you're my 't-h-i-n-g'

taeyong × fem!reader

warnings: mature language and themes

genre: floof but i think theres a good amount of angst shoved in there im really sorry im bad at these things dhvehej

tags: pining, bestfriend!taeyong, badboi(?)!taeyong, jellybelly!taeyong

characters: you, taeyong, yuta and johnneh make a brief appearance, seventeen's yoon jeonghan is mentioned like twice

words: 3.6k

Do you remember back when you were a child? Do you remember meekly holding onto the object of your affection and feeling safe, desperate for it to stay by your side forever?

Whether it was a stuffed toy or your parents' big, warm arms, do you remember the sense of security only your 'thing' could make you feel? Knowing that no matter what, you were protected against all the evils your brain could muster back then?

Well, I guess it would be presumptuous of me to assume that every single person would remember their 'thing', mostly because some people just didn't get to experience having one at all.

Lee Taeyong was one of those people.

He'd grown up in a place he never spoke about once in the four years I've known him. Not willingly, anyway.

It was almost at the end of our sophomore year of college when I had finally managed to push him into opening up about his past, and boy was I taken aback. Not to exaggerate or anything, but anyone who knew Taeyong had the basic idea about his background, and what he told me still managed to shock me out of my wits.

I understood after that why he didn't talk about his past. If I were him, I wouldn't either. I was surrounded by absolute guilt for making Taeyong relive it through his words and vowed not to ever bring it up again.

Another thing that made sense to me after that conversation was why it was so hard for him to commit to relationships. Not just romantic ones, just relationships in general. As far as I know, apart from me, he didn't trust anyone.

Well, apart from me and them.

Taeyong never really let me get close to the guys at the tattoo shop, now that I think about it. He kept me completely separated from his other friends the first year and a half of knowing me. Not even a mention about what his day was like at work. I was honestly amazed by how efficiently he could swerve around the subject for so long.

After a while, he started mentioning their names but that was pretty much it. He rarely ever did that, though. But it wasn't like he was cutting off another personality of his from me or anything like that. I had a general idea of what they did. Even if Tae managed to keep me completely separated from all of that the best he could, he still was the same Lee Taeyong to me. He was still my best friend, so he obviously couldn't hide everything from me.

The first time I ever interacted with them (that too, only two of them) was a few weeks ago, during my fourth year of knowing Tae. It was a... questionable encounter. Now that I think about it, the highlight of that day wasn't even meeting Taeyong's friends.

Whoever fought with him that day had probably put up a good fight, because he was so hurt that day that he had no choice but to come to my apartment for help; and he hated having to be seen by me when he was hurt.

I was utterly terrified when I saw him, to be honest. The slash on his arm was long and it looked really deep. He had a lot of bruises on his leg, and those, too, only the ones I could see through his ripped jeans. There were scratches on his face as well. Tae told me that he'd only walked for around five minutes or so, but I was honestly surprised he'd managed to make it to my place in his state.

After my frantic attempts to clean up his injuries in a mixture of panicked questions, teary eyes and messy bandaging somehow made the bleeding stop (not completely, I could see the bloodstains on the bandage), I demanded that we head to the hospital immediately.

He refused to budge, claming that he "didn't need to", and I was near punching him square in the jaw.

"What the fuck do you mean, 'I don't need it'? Are you fucking insane, Tae? We're going. Now."

Now, I may not be the scariest person in the world, but I do know how to take my stance when I need to. No way in hell was I going to agree to let him bleed on my fucking couch for goodness knows how long before he passed out.

I stood in front of him, my arms crossed over my chest. He was watching me intensely, his piercing eyes looking straight into mine. I didn't know why, but for some reason, they always managed to make me weak.

This might not be the best time to bring this up, but yes, I possibly had feelings for Taeyong which weren't exactly platonic, per se. And yes, it was terrible, because he depended on me for love and support. It was wrong of me, and I was trying to stop.

But at that moment, I wasn't going to cave. Hell if I wouldn't try my best to battle his gaze, no matter the way it made me feel.

"Get up," I said, shoving every bit of authority I had inside me into my voice. "Now."

He parted his lips slightly and held the tip of his tongue between his teeth. His eyes flitted down from my face. Relief bloomed in my chest. The fear of the possibility of Taeyong's injuries getting worse flickered away slowly.

A doctor will look at him and he'll be fine, I told myself.

That was short-lived, though. Not more than two seconds later, he looked back up to meet my eyes, with a much darker gaze this time. The way he looked at me was so intense that I almost lost my breath. And then the realization hit me.

I was in a dress. Tae knew I only wore dresses on dates. Tae liked to know about who I was going out with. I hadn't told him about this one.

The anxiety was ten times harder this time than the one I had felt before. I looked away from his eyes to the couch behind him and, seeing his jaw tighten through my peripheral vision.

He shifted closer to me so that our knees were touching, taking me by surprise. I looked down at his arm, concern clawing at my chest as I saw more blood seep through the white bandage wrapped around his forearm, probably because he moved so suddenly.

"Tae, let's— let's not do this right now—"

"Who were you out with?"

My breath caught in my throat. I felt awful doing this. I felt awful knowing that he cared so much. I hated that I hoped that he didn't just care as a friend. I hated that I liked Lee Taeyong, a person who sought comfort in me.

And that's exactly why I wanted to move on. I couldn't just cut him out of my life, so I tried to busy myself with other people. He made it so much more difficult, though. It was hard enough for me to agree to go out with someone without having my heart shatter into pieces at the constant reminder that it was Taeyong that I truly liked by itself. The fact that Tae rarely ever approved of my dates made it even harder. That's why I chose to keep Jeonghan hidden from him.

But being dishonest to him was what hurt the most.

"Tae, please. You're not listening, we— we need to get you help—"

He cut me off, opening his legs and shifting to the edge of the couch so that I was standing between his thighs.

"I asked you a question."

I could feel tears prick at my eyes. Sucking in a shaky breath, I tried to compose myself.

"That isn't our priority right now, please, let's just go—"

"I said I'm Fucking Fine. Will you answer the God damned question now?" He raised his voice and I flinched slightly. Slowly, I could feel anger bubble at the back of my throat. Why did he have to yell? I never got this mad when he went out with someone I didn't like.

"That isn't any of your business," I mumbled, taking a step back. His hand immediately came to stop me, palm resting against the back of my knee and pulling me closer. It felt warm against my skin, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"What did you say?" He spat. He sounded livid.

I felt myself get aggravated, too.

"I said that it isn't any of your business," I repeated, pushing his hand off. I looked into his rage-filled eyes, intimidating to the core.

But I wasn't going to back down. Tae had no right to be this mad at me for going on a date, even if he cared. It wasn't like I had ever stopped him from going out with someone. Besides, he hadn't been completely honest with me about his life either.

"It very much is my fucking business," He mocked my tone from vefire as he stood up, towering over me slightly. I looked up at him as he leaned down to level our faces. My heart went to beat fast again, but I didn't let that affect me. We were having this argument now, no matter the way he made me feel.

"Yeah?" I challenged. "How come I never get to hear about who you're hanging out with, then?"

He looked taken aback. I couldn't believe him. Did he honestly think I was never going to bring up his friends, or rather, the fact that he entirely hid them from me? I didn't know them personally, but I knew they weren't the best people. Not with Taeyong coming home hurt like this.

"That isn't the same thing."

I scoffed, looking away. "How is it not the same thing? You've known me for four fucking years, Tae! Four! You thought I wouldn't question you hiding what seems to be an entirely different world from me? For all I know, you could—"

"It isn't the same thing because they won't try to get into my fucking pants!" He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "Those guys, that ask you out, they're — they're dangerous. All they want to do is fuck you, and they'll pounce on you the first chance they get-"

What the hell was he talking about?

"Then why the fuck do you keep your friends hidden from me? Don't you want to keep me locked away from them because they're dangerous as well? Like all my dates supposedly are?" I was shouting now, and I was sure my neighbor could hear me.

Taeyong rubbed a hand over his face in frustration.

"Fine. If you want to meet them that bad," he pulled his phone out and typed for a few seconds, before shoving it back into his pocket, "I called them over right now."

I stared at him in shock. If it was that easy, why didn't he just let me meet them before?

"W-What—" "Now will you tell me about this secret date of yours?"

He was still angry, it was obvious. But I calmed myself down, reminding myself that he was, in fact, hurt.

"Sit down first," I instructed. I'd managed to lose the ability to meet his eyes again. I took the glass he'd drank from when he arrived and filled it up with water, waiting as he settled on my small loveseat.

I tried figuring out a valid excuse for not telling him about Jeonghan. I knew it wasn't right for him to control who I dated, but I knew where he was coming from. He was Lee Taeyong, and this was his way to show that he cared.

I handed him the glass of water, motioning him to drink it, but he shook his head.

"You drink first. Your throat must be sore."

I complied, lifting the glass to my lips and taking a few sips. My throat felt a thousand times better. I filled it up again and went to sit next to Tae, watching the glass as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

"Here."

I turned my head slightly to look at him while handing him the tumbler and I instantly regretted it. He was watching me again. I froze.

He took the glass from my hand and drank, strongly holding my gaze. The glass made a quite thud when he placed it on the table, reminding me that we still had to talk about this.

I turned my attention to his fingers which rested on his thigh. Slowly, I inched my hand closer to his until they touched. Tae instantly interlocked our fingers and I immediately felt better. No matter how much he might have been making my heart race, holding his hand always made me feel comfortable.

"Your arm," I said, "it stopped bleeding."

He smiled, squeezing my hand. "Told you I would be okay."

I didn't know what to say. My heart felt as if it would combust at any given moment.

"Tell me," he pleaded, tugging at my arm slightly. I sighed, trying to come up with something which didn't sound completely stupid and was somewhat honest. "It's just that you— I— you rarely ever like the guys that ask me out and I really liked him, so I just thought that— that it would be better not to bring it up and so I—"

"Calm down." He leaned down to whisper in my ear, "Tell me slowly, it's okay."

I paused for a moment, trying to calm myself down. "You know Jeonghan from the— that ice cream place downtown?" I felt him stiffen. His lips ghosted over my ear and he let out a short "hm". It made me shiver and I prayed he didn't feel it.

"We just, um, went to get dinner. Nothing special."

Tae suddenly pulled back, completely serious. "Would you go out with him again?"

My eyes grew wide. I looked at our hands again. "Honestly? No."

That wasn't a lie. Jeonghan had offered to go back to his place and "spend the night" as soon as we finished our dinner which had immediately made me uncomfortable.

He tilted his head, asking me to tell him why. I looked up at him to find an unamused expression on his face.

"You have to promise me you won't do anything to him." At this, he cursed under his breath and looked away, already knowing that whatever was about to come next would make him want to punch the guy.

"Promise me," I repeated. He looked at me and nodded simply.

"I want verbal confirmation."

He let out an annoyed grunt, but he promised me, anyway. I told him what happened and his jaw clenched.

"Taeyong—"

"This is why I tell you to not date them." He closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them and looking at me again.

"Is there ever a problem when you go out with guys I like?"

Yes. Yes, there is.

"I— well, I mean I guess not."

I didn't even know if he could read me like an open book right now or not, I was in a daze. I prayed to everything holy that I wouldn't accidentally out my feelings for him.

He looked at me, and his eyes softened. Suddenly, he pulled my arm and lifted my leg, positioning it so that I sat on his thighs, straddling him. My thighs were on either side of him and my dress rode up.

What was he doing? I couldn't react, nor could I move. He was way too close to me. Lee Taeyong was mere inches from my face and I was sitting on him.

"T-Tae—"

"Then why do you go out with them?" He asked, looking at my cheeks. I couldn't think, my mind had gone blank.

He pulled me closer to him. I could see the scratches more clearly now.

"Because I— I," I attempted to speak but I couldn't. Not with him this close to me. He looked down to my lips, his tongue coming out to wet his own.

"Can I tell you a secret?" He whispered. My heart picked up it's pace. His voice sounded different when he was this close. I just nodded nonchalantly.

He wrapped his arms around my waist, trapping me in his hold. "I like you."

My breath hitched.

Who said that? Did I say that? No, I wasn't in a state to talk, I couldn't have. Was I hearing things, then?

I blinked in confusion.

"Don't leave me hanging," he chuckled nervously, making me realize what just happened.

Oh. Oh.

Taeyong said that?

I couldn't understand. He looked uneasy but he still wore a small smile on his face. Oh, that smile. Was this even real?

"I—" Again, I fumbled with my words, trying to speak. I couldn't. Oh my god, did Lee Taeyong just tell me that he likes me?

"Hm?"

I couldn't say anything. I couldn't. The feeling in my chest was unexplainable and it had completely wiped out all of the vocabulary in my brain. So I just nodded.

Tae let out a small giggle, and my heart melted. Oh my god, this was real.

"What do you mean by that, baby?"

I swooned at the name. He'd called me that name once before, and that was two years ago when I had caught a really bad bug; but God, I could never get enough of him calling me that. I lifted my arms and gripped his shoulders, bumping our noses.

He hummed again, encouraging me to go on.

"I like you too," I blurted. I still couldn't believe it. I was in Taeyong's lap, confessing to him.

He beamed, lifting his head to kiss both of my cheeks, sending butterflies down my stomach with each. He went up and kissed my forehead, hugging me close against him.

"Thank you," he smiled, breathless. He lifted his hand to hold my cheek, and honestly, I could've burst out into tears right then.

"Are you two done now?"

I jumped. Scrambling off of his lap, I heard someone clear their throat. Taeyong clicked his tongue in annoyance, getting up as I smoothed my dress down.

Two men stood at my doorstep — one had an eyebrow raised and was having a staring contest with Tae, and the other, much taller one was tapping away at his phone.

"H-Hi," I said bowing slightly. Good God, the first thing Tae's friends saw me do was probably the weirdest thing they'd ever witnessed.

" 'Sup. I'm Yuta, nice to finally meet you." The one that was having a staring contest with Tae said, breaking his eye contact with him and stepping closer to shake my hand.

"I got the whole thing on video! The others are gonna' be so jealous that I got to see this in person." The tall one said, finally looking up from his phone. "I'm Johnny."

I looked at Taeyong in panic, and I saw him sulking and scratching the back of his neck.

"You what—" "Introduce us!"

Taeyong cringed, "Well, you two already know who she is, so—"

"Yeah, yeah, we do. Do you still need a ride?" Yuta asked, not seeming interested at all.

"Actually," Tae said, his eyes finding mine for a split second before he looked back at Yuta, "I think I'm gonna stay the night."

"Well, okay. John, let's go." Johnny kept making a weird face at Tae, and to be very honest, I was unsettled.

"Would you guys like some water or anything? You're welcome to stay and rest for a bit if you'd like—" "No you're not, go away—"

"Shut up, Tae. Anyways, you need anything at all?" I asked, shushing Taeyong. Yuta looked at me, and let out a laugh.

"No, thanks. We've already seen enough, we wouldn't want to interrupt anything el—"

I was about to pass out then and there, but thankfully, Johnny dragged his friend away before he could finish.

"oKay bye bYe, it was nice meeting you!"

They shut the door behind them and I locked it close. I heard Tae sigh.

"Your friends are weird." I turned to face him, only to find him walking over to me.

"Yeah, I know." He engulfed me in a hug, burying his head in my neck. "They're such weebs, I don't want the rest of 'em to meet you. You might turn into one of them."

I let out a laugh at that, wondering what he meant.

"I'm sorry I yelled."

I sighed, hugging him back. "It's okay. I yelled, too."

I felt him smile against my skin. "I promise I'll work on the yelling. And on not getting hurt," I let out another laugh. "You'd better." This wasn't a dream, was it? "Or you can go to your tattoo buddies for help next time."

"You're so mean to me," he whined. "Can we sleep now, please?"

"You don't want to change?" I asked, pulling away and leaving him to grab some of his spare clothes I'd taken from his place some time ago. He hummed, following after me.

"I've waited for non-platonic cuddles for four years, so please, hurry up." He said, coming up to hug me from behind as I took out a sweatshirt and a pair of pajamas from the dresser.

"What are non-platonic cuddles?" I laughed, and he mumbled something random as a reply.

There in his arms, after four years of knowing him, I realized that even if Taeyong didn't get to have his 'thing', he had become mine. And there was a feeling of utter joy, happiness knowing that he would be here for a while.

I smiled, scared to wake up the next day, and have it all be a dream. But it wasn't. This was real.

Lee Taeyong was my 'thing' and I hoped that somewhere along the way, I would become his.

[lady-divine-writes]

Good Omens - I Was Given Four Rules to Follow ... I Broke Every One: Chapter 3/3 (Rated PG13)

Summary: When Warlock Dowling is summoned to the old South Downs cottage of Aziraphale and Crowley to help clean out their attic, presumably after their deaths, he is given four rules to follow.

... He breaks every single one.

Read on AO3.

January 15th –

He opened his eyes!

He opened his eyes and looked at me!

After hours of waiting in the dark and in the cold, despairing every second and wishing I was dead myself, he opened his eyes.

But it came close to being all for naught because I almost died myself right then and there.

It was good to see him with his eyes wide open, but the golden eyes I loved so much are gone. 

These new eyes are white on white, the pupils infinitely dark, the irises torn. They stare without blinking. They look into me, into my soul, it seems. They connect to the love that runs deep within me, to every touch he has ever left on my skin, to every promise we both made. 

But they do not recognize me. 

Am I, at all, familiar to him?

I don’t want to reject him, whether he knows me or not. But those eyes unnerve me.

There’s so much about them that’s innocent and frightened.

So much about them that’s desolate and dead.

We literally spent the morning just looking at one another.

I would give anything to know what’s going on in his mind. 

What does he see when he looks at me? 

I want to reach out and touch him, but I’m afraid. I know it won’t be the same. He won’t be warm, won't be comforting. What could be worse than a dead copy of a once alive and loving creature? I don’t know. 

But whatever this is, it might be. 

He won’t smell like Crowley. He won’t have his cheek, won't have his soothing voice. It’s almost as if I adopted some wild animal and decided to make it my husband.

What have I done?

***

January 16th –

All day long, he tried to move, grunting with the effort of struggling to stand up and get out of bed. He didn’t speak words; he just groaned. I wanted to help him. I wanted to pretend that he was simply convalescing after a horrible illness. I wanted to bathe him and dress him. I wanted to sit him down in front of the television, prop up his feet, and feed him brandy and ice-cream. I wanted to put this chapter behind us and get on with our lives.

I wanted to make believe him dying had never happened.

But I’m not that good an actor.

He behaves exactly the way the old woman warned me he would. He reminds me of a child.

I never wanted children.

This is the ‘in sickness and in health’ part of the marriage package, which I agreed to without hesitation.

Never mind the ‘till death do us part’ portion.

This comes with my vows, and I will honor them.

My love will help him. I know it will.

…

Can I really do this, or am I fooling myself?

***

January 17th –

I’m trying my best to take the bad with the good.

I managed to get him to the living room sofa. His legs were stiff, and he couldn’t seem to bend his knees.

He had been declared dead-on-arrival because of the injury to his neck. But I wonder if anything else is broken. I wasn’t really paying attention to the doctor when he went over the extent of Crowley’s injuries. After I heard the word dead, I tuned out.

I should get a copy of Crowley’s hospital records.

But if his legs are broken, how will I deal with that? Will the potion magically fix everything? It brought him back to life. Could fixing broken legs be more difficult than reanimating a corpse? What is the extent of the potion's effects? Do I need a secondary potion of some kind to repair internal injuries?

Maybe I should call the shopkeeper back and ask.

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

He stumbled numerous times and fell on me. I did my best not to cringe at his touch or accidentally drop him. But those eyes, so close to mine, were like looking into a nightmare. I could see through them to the veins and arteries behind, the blood inside them black and unhealthy.

The fourth time he stumbled, though, I got the feeling that maybe he was falling on purpose so that I would be forced to catch him.

I even thought I saw the shadow of a smile cross his lips.

I watched him as he sat in front of the TV and renewed his passion for The Golden Girls. That show had been one of his favorites since he was a small boy.

He sat so still. 

He didn’t swallow. 

He didn’t appear to breathe.

The only time he moved was when he looked over to where I sat, I think, to make sure I was still there.

He sat for hours and watched TV. 

There was nothing else for him to do.

I fed him salad for dinner, let him stay in front of the television instead of making him go to the dining room table. I didn’t see any reason to move him. He leaned down and sniffed the cold lettuce leaves, but he did not eat.

Neither did I.

***

January 19th –

After a full day of limping him around the house, Crowley is surprisingly steady on his feet. He can make it from the bedroom to the living room sofa by himself. It takes him a while, but he can do it.

His body is still in rigor, but he seems to be getting more comfortable with it.

I should be jumping for joy at his progress. The more mobile he becomes, the less dependent he will be on me. Every day that he improves, even a little, he is closer to becoming the man he was.

But I don’t know how comfortable I am with that anymore.

***

January 21st -

He doesn’t sleep. And now that he doesn’t rely on me to get around the house, neither do I. I know he sees me as a parent-figure, so he won’t hurt me. But he’s such an alien creature. Not like the old Crowley at all.

It’s strange having this version of him around the house.

When Crowley was

Before the accident, Crowley was so independent. He didn’t need me, didn’t need my help with anything.

But now, he needs to be near me all the time.

I understood there would be a change in our dynamic, but it’s such a striking change that it’s difficult to get used to.

I took a shower for the first time in days. I left him in the living room watching TV, but when I finished and opened the curtain, there he was, standing there … staring.

I fell asleep for about an hour afterward, and when I woke up, he was kneeling beside me, again staring at me.

He’s always staring.

What does he think about doing when he stares at me?

***

January 22nd –

I finally broke down and gave Crowley a shower. He didn’t stink, but there was something about him, something that smelled … well, I can't seem to find the words to describe it. 

I just wanted it gone.

I’ve seen the injuries to his chest numerous times, but I haven't paid much attention to his back.

When I saw them, I almost threw up.

And he noticed. 

He heard me gag. 

I gasped, held in my urge to be sick.

He turned to face me, and for the first time, he had an expression on his face different from his blank one … but also different from that smile I thought I saw when I was helping him walk around the house.

He looked hurt.

***

January 27th -

Each day that he improves, I debate telling our friends that he's here. I know they miss us terribly. But in the end, it would be too cruel. He’s not himself anymore. He never will be. Most days, I curse myself for doing this to him. My motives were selfish. I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself when I made the decision to bring him back. 

I wasn’t even thinking of him.

Our lives are unrecognizable. We’ll never travel the world like we'd planned. Who knows if I’ll make it back to my bookshop? Should probably shut it down and have my books transported here. The way things look, the rest of our days will be spent in this cottage. 

I have to be okay with that.

But what about Crowley?

If you asked rational me if I think he wants to live this half-life, with no potential to be anything other than a human puppet, who only barely resembles the man that was Anthony J Crowley, I would have to say no. Absolutely not.

But I can’t turn back now.

What am I expected to do? Poison his tea? Smother him in his sleep?

Would attempting to kill him even work?

And what about his soul? 

If there is a Heaven, I surely pulled him out of it with my cock-eyed plan. What if there is no going back for him? 

I can only hope that my love for him is enough to keep him from hating me when he’s able to comprehend what I’ve done to him.

***

February 1st –

I’ve finally gotten him to eat – bits and pieces mostly, bites of vegetables and corners of bread. It doesn’t seem like he likes it, but he eats it, and that’s good. He eats because I tell him to. It shows that he trusts me.

He’s more self-sufficient now. 

He showers and brushes his teeth on his own. He picks out his pajamas and dresses himself. Sometimes he tries his hand at making the bed. He is attempting to be more vocal, but he has yet to say a single thing that isn’t a grunt or a moan.

I’ve been looking up the subject of speech delay on the Internet, trying to find ways to help him learn. I came across one website in particular with fun, creative ideas. I started making flashcards of consonant blends and one-syllable words. I felt so accomplished, so hopeful, like I was actually doing something positive toward the goal of moving us forward. I felt confident that after a little work with them, everything would be all right. I was so excited to show them to him, but then I realized …

… I have no idea if he can read.

***

February 3rd –

I tried calling the old woman at the antique shop in Soho to ask about the effects of the potion, but the phone has been disconnected.

I guess they went out of business after all.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing appears to be broken. Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t feel pain.

I was teaching him how to cook, hoping it would bring a bit of the old Crowley back. We used to cook together all the time. Honestly, we weren't all that good at it, but that didn't stop us from trying. We had just gotten the hang of a decent souffle before ...

Anyway ...

I started him small. 

I had him grating cheese. 

Seemed simple enough. The grater stands on its own, so not much to juggle. But he pressed too hard, ran the grater over the backs of his fingers, scraped off skin. He didn’t so much as flinch. I think it bothered me more than it bothered him. I bandaged it up and, without thinking, I kissed the wound. I looked at him in utter shock …

… and he smiled.

My heart leapt.

It’s so nice to see him smile again. 

I never thought I would.

***

February 4th –

I took off Crowley’s bandage, and his wound from the cheese grater is gone! There’s not a trace of it left!

I guess that answers that question.

I should be relieved, but it bothers me, and I don’t know why.

***

February 21st –

Today was the most unexpectedly intense, depressing, and wonderful day all at once.

It started when Crowley woke this morning. He got up before me and tried to make me crepes. I had no idea why. He hadn't tried to cook by himself before, didn't even show an interest in cooking without me. He burned them, himself, and the stove all in one go. The fire alarm woke me, blaring in my ears. I managed to get to the extinguisher in time, but poor Crowley looked heartbroken over his ruined pan of blackened food.

Then, before lunch, he wanted to go outside. I think he was trying to sneak out, but I caught him jiggling the front doorknob (he has yet to master the bolt - thank God). When I caught him, he slammed his hand on the door in frustration and sprinted for the back one. I followed him, knowing it was locked and that he wouldn’t be able to open it. When I reached him, he was trying to wedge his way out of the old cat flap. (Note to self - board up the cat flaps! I don’t know why we kept them. We’ve never owned a cat.) 

I patted him gently on the shoulder and asked him what he needed. He stood up and groaned, moving his mouth and wiggling his tongue, making nonsensical sounds. When he couldn’t say what he needed to, he pointed out the window to the garden. I assumed he wanted to check on his dahlias. I’m a disaster with flowers, and, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to keep them up the way he could. 

Of course, it's one degree outside. The poor things are frozen solid. They're not even flowers any longer, I don't think, but the frigid remains of what they once were.

But he’d had yet to show any interest in them, either, before today. 

I shrugged, repeated that I didn’t understand. He pointed more forcefully, jabbing at the window with his index finger.

“I don’t know what you're trying to tell me, my dear,” I said. “Do you want to go for a walk?” 

I've taken him walking around Soho a few times. I've been trying to tie up loose ends, decide if selling the bookshop is the road to take. I wrapped him up in a full-length coat and scarf with just his eyes peeking out. I guess he enjoyed it, but he’d never asked to go outside. He shook his head and pointed again, this time at the dying rose bushes that I hadn’t had time to deadhead. I didn’t get it. I shook my head, and he stormed off to the bedroom.

I followed him there, but he blocked the door.

I could hear him inside, moaning. It was horrible. It sounded like pain and embarrassment and frustration, all rolled together. And I couldn’t help him.

He wouldn’t let me.

I tried to lure him out several times, but he didn’t come out till dinner time.

And when he did, he was dressed in a black Bergdorf suit.

Crowley has dozens of expensive black suits, and he looks stunning in all of them.

But this suit.

This suit in particular.

This suit had been hanging front and center in his closet.

Because it was the suit I had planned on burying him in.

It threw me for a loop, dragging me kicking and screaming back to that day I found out he had died, before I’d decided to try bringing him back, before I knew that I could. I took out the suit to air it. I guess I hadn’t put it back with the others because there it was, standing before me with the living corpse of my husband inside.

The sight took all the air out of my lungs.

“Take it off,” I said quietly, trying not to alarm him, but how was I supposed to explain to my somewhat dead husband that I didn’t want to see him dressed in the suit I had planned on putting him in the ground in?

He looked confused and shook his head, opening his mouth and groaning.

“Please, Crowley,” I begged, hoping he would hear my anguish and understand, “take it off.”

He stomped his foot and shook his head, the way a petulant child would. It should have been cute, but I couldn’t handle it. I've had issues getting used to his looks lo these many weeks, but for the first time since he came back to me, he looked dead.

“Take it off!” I screamed. I ran at him, grabbed the lapels, trying to tear it off his body. He held me, pinned my arms, and I could feel his renewed strength. I hadn’t really let him touch me before, but now I knew that if he wanted to, he could probably hurt me.

I stared up at him, realizing that he was hovering above me, and I was lying on my back on the floor. My heart stopped. He had never looked menacing before. Even in death, he seemed so innocent. But now, he looked like a monster. He had a piece of paper balled in his grasp, and he tried to make me look at it, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from his face – pale and cold and lifeless, regardless of the fact that he was my Crowley.

He stared at me, trying to speak.

It hit me like a pile of bricks.

Speak.

That’s exactly what he was doing. 

His lips were moving in exaggerated, grotesque ways that shouldn’t be able to turn sound into words, but they were.

“A … Az … Azi …”

Crowley blinked and shook his head.

“Azir …”

“Aziraphale?” I asked in awe that he was trying to say my name.

Crowley laughed. It was a glorious, hollow, frankly frightening sound, but I couldn’t help smiling when I heard it. He put his fingers to my lips. 

I guess he didn’t want me to steal his thunder.

“Azzzir-uh-phale,” he said, smacking his lips. “I … lo … I lov …” Crowley swallowed again, closing his eyes, trying to make the words in his head match the movement of his lips. “I … love … you … Azzzir-uh-phale.”

Crowley tapped again at the paper on the floor. This time I did what he wanted and looked. He had torn off the current page from the calendar and was poking at a box circled shakily in red. I peered down at it.

I could have cried.

“Our ... our anniversary?” I asked, looking into his broken eyes. He sighed, nodding.

It was our anniversary.

He’d wanted to make me breakfast in bed … for our anniversary.

He’d wanted to get me roses … for our anniversary.

My husband had wanted to do something nice for me … for our anniversary.

My husband had spent all day teaching himself how to say, “I love you, Aziraphale,” because there was nothing else he could do for me.

My husband remembered our anniversary ...

... even when I had not.

***

June 4th -

Five months-ish later…

I can’t believe it! 

I cannot believe it!

Five months later and we’ve made it! Despite the odds. Despite the difficulties and the heartaches. Despite every time I thought about giving up, here we are.

Happy.

Together.

We spend our days wrapped in each other’s arms. We watch TV. I read books out loud - he sits and listens. Crowley is re-learning how to drive, and I’m on the hunt for a new Bentley. Our lives might not be what they were before, but they’re perfect for us.

We’ve managed to go to the city more, spent a few glorious nights at our flat in Mayfair. We've even interacted with one or two of our old friends. It's a wonder what some foundation and blusher can accomplish! I told them it was a medical miracle, and they believed me.

Because that's what Crowley is.

A miracle!

Okay, maybe I am tempting fate. But maybe fate needs to be tempted from time to time! 

His vocabulary has expanded immensely, and a hint of his old suave confidence has come back, along with the muddy accent I so often teased him about.

I am finally at a point where I am optimistic about the future.

Because I’m beginning to think that there might actually be one for us.

***

August 13th –

I woke this morning to a strange squealing noise. At first, I thought it might be the smoke alarm again - odd since we got the cooking situation sorted, I thought. The longer I listened to it, the more I realized it wasn’t the smoke alarm. It didn’t sound familiar at all, so I didn’t worry too much about it. As long as an errant sheep didn’t get hit by a car, there was really no reason to jump out of bed and investigate. After a few minutes of listening to the goings-on outside, I determined that wasn’t the case, so I considered going back to sleep.

But then I noticed that Crowley wasn’t laying beside me in bed.

That isn’t too unusual. He’s normally the first one up on any given day. I just curl back into a ball holding his pillow to my chest until he returns.

He always returns.

The squealing wasn’t really that weird. I’ve thought for the last few months that we might have rats. Or squirrels. Or possums. I’ve heard that same squealing a few times before. But seeing as I can’t find any evidence of rodent-caused destruction anywhere in the house, I haven’t been too aggressive about hunting it down.

My stomach began to growl. I guessed I had been asleep for longer than I thought. Instead of returning to bed, I decided to make some waffles for breakfast. So I got up and went out into the kitchen.

That’s where I found Crowley.

He was crouching on the floor …

… covered in blood …

… biting into the spine of what used to be a raggedy old Maine coon …

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

He grinned his old, sly grin, licked his bloody lips, and said, "Hello, Aziraphale. Can I get you a cuppa tea? I know just how you like it."

He winked at me, and my heart stuttered.

…

I may have a problem.

***

Those are the last words on the page.

A page where the ink is smeared from tears, and the edges crusted in blood.

I haven’t seen Aziraphale or Crowley in decades. They used to send the occasional letter, but those stopped a while ago, and they never call. But something tells me neither of them ever left this house alive.

I’m afraid my time, too, has run out. I came to this house alone. But huddled in the darkest corner of the attic, I hear footsteps coming closer, a sour voice on the wind calling my name …

Ka-thunk …

“Warlock …”

…

Ka-thunk …

“Warlock …”

…

Ka-thunk …

“Warlock …”

…

KA-THUNK!!

***

“Warlock Dowling!” Crowley calls, barging into the attic, footsteps heavy on the worn floorboards. “Are you recording another one of those Clip-Clop thingies again?”

“It’s TikTok, Nanny,” Warlock replies, rolling his eyes, “and no. I’m reading a story for my YouTube channel.”

“Well … you done getting a costume together or wot?” Crowley asks, changing the subject, saving face that he actually understands anything Warlock just said. “Adam and his hooligans are gonna be here in a minute. Aziraphale is gonna have kittens if you’re not ready to go Tricks or Treats!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Warlock says, gathering up his camera. He loves Halloween with a passion, but he’d been eyeing this one journal in Aziraphale’s bookshop for some time now. This video he’s been putting together promises to be epic - the crowning achievement of his burgeoning story channel. Most horror story channels get their material from the Creepypasta Reddit, but he has a unique source of original material … when he can get out to Soho, that is. “I’m coming.” He pulls the lapels of the leather jacket he’s borrowing for the evening together in front to tighten it up. 

It’s slim fit as it used to be Crowley’s from back in the day, but thirteen-year-old Warlock still swims in it. 

Warlock marches to the door under Crowley’s watchful eye. Before he can make his way through, Crowley stops him, slipping a hand underneath the jacket and rescuing an extraneous prop - an antique journal.

“Have you been snoopin’ through Angel’s old manuscripts again?” Crowley asks, wiping the cover clean. “You know how he feels bout that.”

“I know,” Warlock admits sheepishly, “but my audience loves them! I get thousands of hits off his stories! Besides, I put my own twist on them, freshen them up a bit.”

“Do you now?” Crowley asks with an unamused eyebrow notched.

“Why didn't he get them published?” Warlock shifts gears before the lecturing can start. “He’s an amazing writer!”

“He had his reasons,” Crowley mumbles, flipping through the pages. After skimming a passage or two, he puts it down on a pile of similar journals, a shiver sliding down his snakey spine. “Oof! Those things’ll give you nightmares.”

“They should terrify you. He’s murdered you in every single one!”

“Ah, but he does it with love.” Crowley grins wide enough to swallow his whole face. “It’s an honor.” 

[whittakerjodie]

Blind Date (Dhawan!Master X Reader)

Prompt (s) 1.  Could I request a Dhawan!Master x reader fic where they go on a blind date during the master’s time at MI6 and they hit it off really well but the reader is one of the doctor’s companions and he doesn’t find out until the reader starts talking about their travels and he starts to piece things together? requested by @theaussietimelord​

2.  Would you write something dhawan master X reader? Something like the reader falling for him (and that gorgeous hair of him) and he falling too (and maybe getting flustered and confused or something)? Thanks! Also, let's appreciate his hair, because it stopped my heart. requested by @therustictea​

Authors Note: I combined two because I’ve been busy haha! Thank you both and I hope you enjoy

Words: 2k 

   The Master knew that his plan would pay off eventually. Every grueling day of pretending to be human, doing paperwork,  and putting up with the idiots who were employed at MI6 would give him the reward he was always desperately chasing: the Doctor. It just seemed to be taking a remarkably long time. It was also getting incredibly boring. 

“I know we’re supposed to be secret agents and all, but I know nothing about you” One of his coworkers pointed out to him one day. Yes, because all I want to do is reach over this table and strangle you. He thought to himself. But that wouldn’t do- he was the lovable, geekishly-charming O! O didn’t strangle people. At least, not to the public's knowledge. 

   He took a sip of his tea, thanking whatever force in the universe had arranged for him to have, at the very least, access to good food and drink at work. 

“Just busy.” He said with a smile. “Things to see, research.” 

Another one of his coworkers scoffed. “Chasing after the aliens again, O?” 

   The Master gripped his fork a little tighter, resisting the urge to stab the woman with it. That was another downside of his current facade; None of the apes he had the displeasure of being near seemed to care or believe about any of his research, even when the signs of alien invasion were right under their noses. It drove him mad to the point where cracks would appear in his disguise; he would have to kill either to cover up the slip or to temporarily quiet his rage. 

   He would still mess with things when he could, causing enough damage to send the world spinning but not enough to alert the Doctor of any wrong-doing. Every time his coworkers would grumble and run around trying to fix the mess he’d created for them. It was a nice bit of revenge, even if he couldn’t take credit for it. 

“Still chasing after aliens.” He confirmed. 

“You’ve got to give it up, man. Focus on other things. There's Torchwood and UNIT for that, isn’t there? Tell you what, you should come out with the boys and I. Meet someone nice, instead of staying cooped up inside all day. What d’you think?” 

He stared at the man blankly. He couldn’t be serious. 

   It took him four days of pestering before he finally entertained the idea. Each day the offer changed. First, they wanted him to join them on a night out. Then, they wanted him to try and flirt with the computer analyst, making bets to see if he would do it. On the third day, they joked about him getting off with aliens. Finally, on the fourth day, they slipped him a piece of paper across the canteen table with smirks. 

His eyes glanced over the folded note, processing the information. There wasn’t much- just a date and a place. 

“What is this?” He asked, trying to make his tone innocent as opposed to annoyed. 

“It’s a blind date. “ He moved to protest but his coworker cut him off, waving a hand. “Don’t worry, man, she’s a nice girl. Works here, too.” 

“I am not going on a ‘blind date’ “ He grumbled. Everyone at the table groaned. 

“Come on, man. You’re going.” 

_________________________________________________

   The Master tugged on the hem of his suit, smoothing out any of the rough edges. It felt nice to dress up, even if he was half-dreading the night that lay ahead of him. He’d entertained humans before in other bodies, even marrying one despite being disgusted by the idea. He didn’t plan on taking things that far at all, seeing as it no longer served purpose, but if the date helped ease his boredom for a moment he would allow it. 

   Even after days of interrogation he still couldn’t determine the identity of who he was meeting. According to the rules of ‘Blind Dates’ you didn’t know you were meeting him either. The small bit of chaos was the only thing that he was looking forward to.

   He flicked his wrist and glanced at the fancy watch placed on it, noting the time. He arrived outside of the restaurant 15 minutes before the dinner began. Men like O tended to be anxious and arrive early. He pushed open the door and smiled at the waitress, resisting the urge to ruin the night for everyone in the building. “Reservation for...Simmons? I’ve got a blind date” The waitress nodded, walking down the aisle.

“She’s already arrived, but she hasn’t been waiting long. Menu’s and wine list are on the table.“ She stepped aside to gesture to one of the chairs, and his eyes landed on his date for the evening. 

_______________

   When your friend brought up the idea of a blind date, you had laughed. She’d been pressing you to be more involved “in the real world’ for months, not knowing that you were involved, just in a different context. It was kind of hard to keep up with gossip and pub trivia nights when you were busy saving the universe. 

   It wasn’t until the Doctor accidentally disappeared for ten days that you became hyper aware of just how lonely your real life was. You’d missed so much during your time on the TARDIS. The silence and awkward conversations finally got to you and you asked your friend about the blind date that she’d mentioned. 

“I know him, he’s great. You can’t know him, though, that's the point, but I do think you’ll hit it off. “ 

   You were sitting alone at the restaurant, getting more anxious every minute you spent alone despite showing up super early. Would he be nice? Would he even show up? Would you really hit it off? If you did, how would you explain to him all of your absences? Maybe the was a mistake. 

    Your worries temporarily subsided, though, when the waitress led a man over to your table. He was gorgeous. You nearly choked on the water you’d just sipped from your glass, eyes scanning over him. His hair was a dark fluffy mass laying neatly combed to the side, framing his (dare you say) adorable face. His smile was wonderful, bright, and all too charming for someone you’d just laid eyes on. 

He sat down and the waitress left, giving you both a small smile as she went. You shifted in your seat, unsure of what to do next. 

“I should say,” He began. “I’ve never done this before.” 

You laughed, and he joined you. “Shall we shake hands or something?” He suggested. You laughed again, feeling yourself start to relax immediately. You reached your hand across the table and he shook it briefly, grinning. “So. Names next, probably.” 

“I’m Y/N” You told him. “You?” 

“O.” 

“Oh?” You said, eyebrows raised. He paused. He’d gotten so used to everyone at MI6 referring to him as such he’d forgotten to maintain a proper ‘real’ name. 

“Sorry, O is a bit of a nickname, something everyone calls me at MI6. My real name is… Harry.” 

“That’s a nice name” You tried. The conversation was a little hard to pick up on at first, so the two of you mainly focused on ordering your food and drinks. When that was settled, you excused yourself to the bathroom to quickly google conversation starters. He seemed nice; the last thing you wanted to do was bore him. 

When you came back, he was swirling his wine, looking bored. Great, you’d failed already. You sat back down, smoothing your dress. 

“So, Harry, what do you do at MI6?” 

He set his glass back down, as if just noticing you’d come back. 

“I dabble, but I specify in researching extraterrestrials” You perked up at the final word. 

“Aliens, do you mean?” If he was researching aliens… talk about a coincidence. Not that you could unload and tell him all about the Doctor, though, even if it was incredibly tempting. He nodded. 

“Aliens, yeah. Not exactly the most popular man at MI6” 

“Why not?” You asked, frowning. He blinked. 

“Well, everyone there isn’t exactly keen on the idea of aliens. They write me off as a mad conspirator.” 

“Well that’s stupid,” You giggled as you took a sip of your wine. Harry watched you for a moment, then grinned broadly. 

“Yeah, yeah it is. You believe in them?” Believe in them? You’d seen them. Fought with them, against them. Traveling with them. But you couldn’t say that, so you nodded eagerly. “Good that's uh, that’s good. I haven’t talked with someone who does in quite a while.” 

   The conversation seemed to flow much more easily after that, snowballing into a night full of sharing and theorizing. You hardly touched your food when it came. 

   It was nearly 10 at night when you started to feel tired and a bit dizzy from the amount of drinking and talking you’d done. Despite the alcohol, you’d managed to properly dodge most of Harry’s questions like “what do you do for fun?” with vague answers like ' ‘I travel” It felt really nice. You felt like you’d found the best of both worlds in Harry: the fun outlandish bit and the normal life bit you’d been trying to reconnect with it. 

   At the end of the night, phone numbers were exchanged and you promised to meet again. Thankfully, the promise was fulfilled. Leaving the TARDIS no longer felt like you were going in for a long day of work. You had something- or, more accurately, someone- to look forward to. 

_____________________________

   The Master’s blood was boiling with a mix of odd emotions. He could feel himself growing quite appreciative of the time he spent with you, but that appreciation made him irritated. You were human; you were a distraction. Yet you felt like much more. Then, he felt angry with himself for being conflicted in the first place. 

   It was nice, though, to have company that didn’t treat him like garbage. He really enjoyed going on dates with you. Sure, sometimes he was completely lost during the movies, but if he had survived Frozen he could survive anything. He much preferred the ‘dates’ that were spent at your flat where you would read and talk about aliens. 

   It took roughly three months for him to start to get suspicious. Well, that was a lie- He was always on the lookout for problems and deception, but he had just started to believe that you were lacking in those departments. It began when his coworkers asked why you hadn’t made things “official” yet. He frankly didn’t care how you wanted to define your relationship, but it made him consider a lot of the inconsistencies he’d ignored. 

   You were rarely reachable by cell and texts were always answered hours after. Even the Doctor answered Whatsapp messages quicker than you did. Then, there were times when you’d been gone for days at a time. Dates where you’d show up out of breath and in a different outfit then you’d been in all day- even if you were arriving to your own flat. 

   Slowly but surely, he started to notice things during your talks as well. You knew a lot more than you were letting on about aliens. He began to include facts that couldn’t possibly be known by any human scientist or historian. You were so absorbed you didn’t even notice yourself nodding along and even adding some of your own. Silly human. 

   You had fallen asleep on the couch 45 minutes ago, curled up into his side. His eyes didn’t leave you. He was disappointed. Not only in you, for being one of her pets, but in himself for somehow getting attached to you. How could someone so wonderful be such an inconvenience? With a sigh, he brushed your hair behind your ear and connected his fingers to your temple. 

Sure enough, his suspicions were confirmed.

    He sifted through memories of meeting the Doctor and exploring the universe with her. Facing all kinds of villains no matter the fear  you felt. Meeting him for the first time, quickly falling for his charms. He smiled lightly and pocketed a copy of that memory for himself. It would be difficult, he supposed, when he finally got the Doctor back on Earth and enacted his brilliant plan. But with time, and a little effort, he could get you on his side where you belonged.

[emachinescat]

The Casket of the Armadillos (by Edgar Allan Nope)

A Psych Fan-Fiction

by @emachinescat

@febuwhump day 9 - buried alive

Summary:  When Shawn confronts a grad student turned murderer, he learns a very important lesson a very hard way: Don’t piss off English nerds - especially the homicidal ones. 

Characters: Shawn, Gus, Juliet, Lassiter, Henry

Words: 5,924

TW: panic attacks, buried alive, claustrophobia

Note: If you liked this classic lit-inspired Psych fic, you can always check out this one I wrote, inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird: The Finch and the Mockingbird 

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

If you enjoy, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging, and you can follow me for more content like this! :)

I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up.  Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones.  For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them.  In pace requiescat!

- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”

Her name was Olivia Hale, she was a twenty-three-year-old grad student at UCSB, and she was working on her doctorate in American lit.  She was attractive in a cute librarian sort of way - short and petite, with long, curly auburn hair she kept in a bun and oversized glasses with thick lenses, and a smattering of freckles across her slightly upturned nose.  She knew a little bit about everything when it came to literature as a whole, a rather impressive amount about American literature, and absolutely everything there was to know about the life and works of one Edgar Allan Poe.

She was also batshit crazy and currently pointing a .22 pistol directly at Shawn’s head.

“Don’t move,” she growled, disengaging the safety.  

Shawn did a cursory glance around the empty classroom, looking for anything at all he could use to his advantage, to distract her or attack her with or - worst case scenario - to use as a shield.  But Olivia had found him snooping around on the tiny fourth floor study room that she’d been given to use by the department chair as her thesis headquarters.  She’d really made herself at home here, piling books and journals and what seemed like hundreds of loose sheets of paper on every available surface.  

But he was stranded in the middle of the room, with nothing close enough to use as a weapon, and so Shawn used the most powerful tool he had, one that had saved his life and many others, wooed women all over the country, and ordered more chili cheese dogs than he could count.  

He started talking.

“Look, Olivia, I get it,” he said soothingly.  Slowly, in the most non-threatening  manner possible, he lowered his hands.  Olivia gripped the pistol tighter but didn’t shoot.  “I know what happened.  You didn’t mean to kill him.”

Her eyes were wide and fierce, her lips pursed into a thin line.  “No,” she admitted.  “It was an accident.  But he was going to--”

“Yeees,” drawled Shawn, slowly raising his left hand and putting it to his temple, very well aware that he was probably pushing the limit with all of this movement after she had expressly ordered, at gunpoint, for him to stay still.  “I see it.  Dr. Graves was feeling guilty, wasn’t he?  A fifty-five-year-old professor with a fancy PhD and tenure, and a devoted wife and three kids and two grandkids, to boot.  The perfect life.  But oooh, it wasn’t enough for him, was it?”  

Shawn immediately answered his own question, something that he had become exceptionally good at over the years since he was usually the only one who could keep up with himself.  “Of course not!  What’s the perfect job and family when you’ve got a smokin’ hot, super smart student in her mid-twenties who thinks you’re the most impressive man on the planet?”

She sneered, and Shawn noticed with some trepidation that the hand holding the gun trembled just the tiniest bit.  When she spoke, her voice warbled with rage.  “My age and appearance had nothing to do with it - and even if it did, there was nothing wrong with our relationship!  We were perfect for each other, intellectual equals.  We were on each other’s levels - he was my soulmate!  So don’t you dare belittle what we had like that!”  

Ah.  So he had hit a nerve.  This could now go either one of two ways, in Shawn’s extensive experience in being held hostage: Either she would get fed up and send a bullet screaming through his body, Garth Longmore style, or she would let her emotions distract her, and cause her to make a stupid mistake.  Obviously, Shawn hoped for the latter.  

Now Shawn had to make a choice, because he could proceed in one of two ways: Either he could back off and try from another angle, or he could further antagonize her into (hopefully) making a mistake.  Naturally, Shawn went with the latter.

“Sure, sure,” he agreed airily.  “Older men and younger women do it all the time.  But to say there was nothing wrong with your relationship?  The man was married, and you were his student.  I’m not the headmaster here -”

“Dean,” she corrected sharply, and this further proved that Shawn had pegged her correctly as a know-it-all literature wunderkind who had to be right one thousand percent of the time.  “This isn’t Hogwarts.”

Shawn gave a tiny shrug.  “To be honest, all big schools look like Hogwarts to me.”

“Because you have the mind of a child.”  The words were accusatory and patronizing, but Shawn flashed a dazzling smile.

“Thank you,” he said.  Before she could respond, he continued his earlier thoughts, “Even though you were the ‘perfect couple,’ you were furious with him for even suggesting that you stop seeing one another.  The affair was too risky, and he missed his wife.  He wanted to tell her the truth, fix things.”

“It would have ruined everything!” Olivia hissed, and the sound of her voice sent shivers down Shawn’s spine.  There was an unhinged quality to it, something raw and dangerous that he hadn’t sensed before.  He fought the sudden urge to backpedal as far away from her as possible.  “We were perfect together!  And if he told his wife and she let it slip, I would be kicked out!  All my research, all my time and work here, everything would be gone!  He had no right to make that decision for me, to take away my future!”

“Maybe,” said Shawn, and it was like he was watching from outside his body, because he knew that what he was about to say was a big mistake, but he was helpless to stop the words from tumbling from his lips, “you should have thought more about your future before you pursued your married Shakespeare teacher.”

Fury etched itself into every feature of her face, turning her from a beautiful librarian to a feral monster, but her voice was slow and measured as if it was taking every ounce of self-control she possessed not to shoot him where he stood.  “He taught Southern. Gothic. Masterpieces.”

Shawn tried to backtrack, to undo whatever damage had been done by his unpredictably big mouth.  “But,” he pressed.  “Killing him was an accident.  You didn’t mean to push him down four flights of stairs.”

She considered this.  “No, I didn’t mean to kill him,” she reaffirmed, and then an odd calm smoothed out the angry crevices between her eyebrows - the peace, perhaps, of having come to an important decision that she knew was absolutely right.  Shawn recognized the look because he’d seen it on others’ faces before (very rarely, if ever, had he seen it upon his own).  “And I don’t think I will kill you, either.”

Whatever Shawn had been expecting, this wasn’t it.  Everything about this woman screamed insane and vengeful.  If Shawn lived, he would turn her into the police, and she would go to jail for a very long time.  She was incredibly intelligent - surely she knew this!

And then she clarified, and the world started to make sense again - though Shawn would have honestly been perfectly content in this alternate reality where the bad guy suddenly has a miraculous change of heart.  “Well,” she amended, “I won’t kill you directly.  I’ve never shot anyone before - I only have this little guy here because I’m a young, pretty girl on a big college campus, and I have two night classes.  Besides, your death shouldn’t be so easy.”

Shawn swallowed.  “Olivia, you don’t have to do this.  You haven’t intentionally killed anyone yet.  If you turn yourself in now and cooperate, your sentence will be a lot shorter than if you kill me - directly or not.  Because make no mistake, even if you kill me, you will still get caught.  The SBPD has some damn good detectives, and they’ll bring you down even if I don’t.”

She didn’t respond to him directly.  Instead, her expression was flat save for the dark gleam in her eyes, and she intoned words that in and of themselves had no meaning to Shawn, but that still managed to strike a chord of fear deep inside of his soul.  “‘The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.’”  Shawn was utterly unnerved by this point; it was like she had been taken over by something both sinister and incredibly well-spoken.

And indeed, in many ways she had, as Shawn soon found out, she was quoting the beginning of a story by Edgar Allan Poe.

Presently, however, Shawn had no context for her strange words or sudden shift of demeanor.  His skin crawled and his heart pumped with more get-up-and-go than he’d ever been able to muster in his whole body before.  “Uh, Olivia…”

“Move,” she ordered.  

This time, though it was contrary to his nature, Shawn did what she said without arguing.  This side of the student, with stolen words sliding evilly from her mouth, was a million times scarier than the enraged Olivia who had very nearly shot him between the eyes.

She marched him out of the room and down the three flights of stairs to the main lobby of the English building.  It was dark outside, nearing midnight, and Shawn kicked himself for thinking he was clever for coming to investigate this late.  He’d thought she’d be at home sleeping.  He should have realized that as a grad student, sleeping was the one thing she wouldn’t have time for!  And now he was in very deep trouble, alone, and no one knew where he was.  He should have waited until morning, until the building wasn’t deserted, should have at least called Gus and told him what he was doing.  But it was a college campus, and she was a tiny little literature nerd - it should have been safe!

As she forced him down one flight of stairs, then two, then three, and finally, into a stairwell off the beaten path that had to be unlocked with a key card - which she had - she continued to encant, her voice slowly losing its flatness and growing into something twisted and sing-songy with every word.

“‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat.  At length I would be avenged; this was a point, definitely, settled - but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.’”

“Olivia--”

It was as if she hadn’t heard him as she shoved him into the basement, and now her voice stilled from a chant to a slow, measured whisper..  “‘I must not only punish but punish with impunity.’”   

Shawn wasn’t sure what impunity was, but it sure as hell didn’t sound good.

Their final destination ended up being a small, partially finished storage room near the back of the basement.  Dusty boxes and rusted cabinets and archaic old computer monitors lined the walls and cluttered most of the walking space.  Shawn was reminded grimly of a school supply graveyard.  

Olivia stopped him when they came to a brick wall that had been busted through to fix some issue with the pipes - Shawn saw the water stains on the concrete floor near the break in the wall, and there was a brand new water pipe joined to an old, yellowed one at about eye-level in the small open space between the bricks and the drywall beyond.  Shawn also noticed that the new bricks had been neatly piled up near a sealed bucket that almost certainly contained mortar, right outside of the hole.  Someone was in the process of walling this section back up.

“Nice wall,” Shawn joked, relieved that Olivia had finally stopped her creepy recitation and desperately trying to lighten the mood and bring things back to some sort of normal - honestly, he’d take being threatened with the gun again to the horror movie stuff he’d just witnessed.  “I bet all the other walls are jealous of it.”

It was a lame joke, but her eerie dramatics had him all kinds of messed up.  He expected her to tell him to shut up, or to threaten to shoot him again, or to actually shoot him, but instead she asked him a question in that same cold, calm voice as before.  “Have you ever read ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ Shawn?”

Shawn blinked.  “I make it a point not to read anything that’s not a magazine from the 80s or WikiHow articles on ‘How to Escape from Dangerous Forest Animals.’”

The corner of her lips lifted in a mockery of a satisfied smile.  “Good.  Then you’ll get to experience it for yourself, first hand.  Just wait until you get to the ending!  You’re going to love it.”

Somehow, Shawn doubted that very much.

Still holding the gun on him with one hand, she reached her free hand into the cross-body bag she wore and pulled out a pair of handcuffs.  Shawn groaned.

“Come on!  What college student just carries handcuffs in their school bag?”  Then he remembered that this particular student had until recently been having a passionate affair with her teacher.  “Wait - never mind.  It makes perfect sense.”

She laughed, even though what he said wasn’t even remotely funny.  The sound of it was strange and discordant - light and tinkly with a threatening undertone that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.  Then she gestured at the hole in the wall and ordered, “In.”

Shawn had known it was coming, but had tried to shove that knowledge into the corner of his mind - something that was quite difficult to do for someone with a photographic and eidetic memory - in an effort to convince himself that even she wasn’t that cruel.  He tried to appeal to her one last time: “Olivia, it’s not too late to stop this.  I mean, are you really going to do this to another human being - seriously, look at this place - it’s dusty and moldy and I’m almost certain there’s no room service!  If you’re going to chain me to a pipe, why not do it in a five star hotel?”  When she nudged him with the gun, eyes gleaming with something dark and triumphant, he reluctantly stepped into the small space and implored, “I’ll even settle for a seedy motel off a poorly lit backroad.  I’m not too picky.”

She didn’t answer him as she stood on her tiptoes and handcuffed Shawn’s wrists around the pipe, cinching them so tight that the metal dug into his skin and he doubted that even his dad’s lessons on escaping handcuffs wouldn’t be much help here.  Already he could feel his fingers going numb, and his shoulders and back had started to ache from the hunched position he was forced to take due to the height of the pipe and the awkward angle of his arms.  

Well, Shawn thought glumly as she smiled at her handiwork and carefully backed out of the small space, maybe all wasn’t lost.  Surely someone would come down here and find him. This place was dusty, but it couldn’t be abandoned - work still needed to be done down here, after all.  And he could always yell for help once he was sure Olivia was gone.  She was booksmart, but maybe she wasn’t criminally minded.  He might be in for an uncomfortable night, but in the morning someone would find him and he could have his vision and the cute little psychopath would go to jail for a very long time.

He waited for her to leave, but instead, she used a crowbar to pry the lid off the bucket of mortar, and the pit in Shawn’s stomach became a whole-ass trench.  He should have seen this coming - his heart pounded madly against his rib cage as if trying to free itself, with or without him.  He couldn’t blame it.  “Olivia, please,” he said, and this time, there was no joke, his voice imploring and terrified.  “You don’t have -”

Again, she cut him off.  “How would you like to hear a story before you die, Shawn?” she asked in a tone so casual that she could have been asking him if he wanted to grab a taco.

“How about you tell me a story and then I don’t die?” Shawn bargained weakly.

“Mmmm… If you stay alive, my whole life will be ruined,” Olivia reasoned.  “And I have worked far too hard to allow that to happen.  So.  You just stand there - quietly - and I’ll tell you the story of Poe’s most beloved tale of revenge.  I won’t tell you word for word, of course - we don’t have time for that - but for posterity, I do have it memorized.”  She sounded grotesquely proud of that fact.  “It’s my favorite of his stories, after all.”

And so, as she slowly began to brick up the hole in the wall, with Shawn trapped, helpless and in a dissociative state of panic, she told him the story of two men with really stupid names that Shawn somehow managed, despite his raging fear, to file away for later as possible nicknames for Gus.

“Our story starts in Italy, during the carnival, and our narrator is a man named Montresor, who has a grudge against his once-friend, now-foe, Fortunato…”

The story was an interesting one, even to Shawn, who preferred watching over reading and especially over listening any day.  And as it turned out, Olivia was a really good storyteller.  If he had been in any other position, Shawn might have actually enjoyed the suspenseful tale of revenge.  

But as he stooped there and was forced to listen, all he could think about was about how terrified this Fortunato guy must have been, and then he started wondering how long it had been before the man hadn’t been able to hold his bladder or… other things… anymore, and then about what had happened when he was too tired and dizzy to stand up, if the manacles on his wrists had pulled so hard against his flesh that they cut into him, and if lack of water or oxygen killed him first, all the while he knew that he wasn’t asking these questions for the sake of the fictional character.  He was asking them for himself.  Olivia had made it exceedingly clear - for a literature scholar, she was surprisingly un-subtle about any underlying meanings or motives - that Fortunato’s story was now to be his story.

It wasn’t until she had begun discussing with rapture the brilliance of Poe’s use of the Italian carnival as the setting of a story about murder (because of its abandonment of social order, whatever that meant) and had built up all but the last two bricks, leaving a hole around Shawn’s eye level, that came to the most horrifying realization yet.   He’d been so focused on his own thoughts and fears with Olivia’s words washing over him like an acid bath that he’d barely registered that the dim light in the hole had been darkening incrementally with each new brick placed.  Now he came to the bone-chilling understanding that once she placed those last two bricks, he would be completely in the dark.

He was going to die, alone, terrified, and in utter darkness with fear as his only friend.  He thought in that moment that he might die of a heart attack before he could even think about dehydrating or suffocating.  Honestly, it sounded like an easier way to go.

“Well,” said Olivia finally.  “I can’t say that it’s been a pleasure to meet you in any way, Shawn, but I suppose I should thank you.  Ever since I found out about this unfinished wall down here, I’ve had this unscratchable itch to recreate the titular scene from my favorite Poe story.  You gave me the means and justification to do it!”

Shawn was so overcome by the surging sea of fear and early-onset claustrophobia that he couldn’t even muster up the gumption to make a joke about the word titular.  Instead, as Olivia knelt down next to her bag, rooting around for something, he jerked madly against the handcuffs, desperately searching for any give in the metal or the pipe he was handcuffed to (or even his wrists, at this point he wasn’t picky).  But the pipe was new, and it was sturdy, and so was the fitting that connected it to the old one, which itself didn’t seem too keen on budging, either.

A sick grin teased at Olivia’s parted lips.  “Oh, Fortunato tried that too.  But then he stopped crying and struggling and chose to die with a shred of dignity.  But I highly doubt dignity is something you’re capable of.”  

And then, with the finality of fitting a lid to a coffin, she slapped a piece of fluorescent pink duct tape over his mouth and a fresh wave of panic ravaged Shawn’s everything.  He didn’t remember this happening in her retelling of the story!  Then again, the Fortunato guy had been sealed into catacombs deep underground.  Shawn was in the basement of a heavily trafficked university building.  Someone would actually hear him if he called for help, so she took his voice away from him too.  He couldn’t even sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” to pass his time or distract him from the inevitable.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that he would die in the dark, he would die in the quiet too - and silence was, as his incessant need for chatter plainly proved, Shawn’s worst enemy.

“Goodbye, Shawn,” Olivia said, and she added one brick, layered on the mortar, and then gave her captive one last satisfied glance before adding the last brick and leaving Shawn in total, impenetrable darkness.  He would never forget that last, terrible look in her eyes before his world went black - she was no longer human; she had elevated herself to the level of the storytelling gods and she relished in the twisted power she held over the life of another human.

As her footsteps clipped away, her voice, obscenely gleeful, called out, “In pace requiescat!”

***

The next ten hours were the worst of Shawn’s life, and they consisted of five main elements all bundled together into a nightmare that would stalk him for the rest of his life.

Cold.  It was the middle of January, and though it couldn’t have been less than forty-five degrees outside, the basement - especially behind the walls - was chilly, and with the musty smell and the dust and the pitch black, Shawn was reminded far too much of a grave and knew that he might as well be in one, because this was going to be his.  It was the kind of cold that bit deeper than the skin and wormed its way into the very core and dug its icy fangs in and refused to let go - the chill of death, an open invitation from the dead to join them in their home beneath the ground.  He shivered a lot, but he couldn’t be sure if it was the cold, or the panic.  It was probably a little of both.

Dark.  The darkness that surrounded him had an unreal nature that could easily trick the eyes into thinking that they were already closed.  It was oppressive and thick, pressing in from all sides, inky black water dredged from the depths of the sea.

Shawn had never been a fan of the dark, but neither did he exactly fear it.  That changed the second that the last brick was put into place and he found himself in a darkness so severe that were in not for the feeling of floor beneath his feet he could have been suspended in the depths of space so remote that not even stars could reach.  The darkness swarmed his senses - it had a physical presence, and it didn’t lessen, never permitted Shawn’s eyes to adjust to it in the slightest.  It just hung there, surrounded him, assaulted his mind with its infinite arsenal of nightmares.

After experiencing true darkness, Shawn would never sleep without a nightlight again (which unfortunately meant he couldn’t judge Gus anymore for using one, either).

Pain.  At first it was just the pull of his shoulders, the ache in his back.  Then, about five minutes after he’d been sealed up, he realized his wrists were screaming with agony - he must have torn them badly when he fought to get away, but the adrenaline staved off the pain until now.  He vaguely wondered how deeply the cuffs had cut - it felt like the skin on his wrists had been flayed - but quickly remembered that it didn’t matter where he was going.  

Then there were the hunger pangs, and they mingled with the cramps from holding his bladder longer than he ever had before, and at some point muscle spasms in his arms and chest and legs joined the choir of suffering.  At one point, he shed a few tears, but they could have just as easily been from anxiety or exhaustion, which itself produced its own kind of pain - he longed to sleep, but his body refused to allow him even that comfort until the very end, right before he was rescued, as if he were being forced on pain of death to endure the pain of death right up until the very moment of his painful death.

At least he didn’t have too much trouble breathing.  There must have been a crack somewhere in the wall in front of or behind him, because fresh air was entering somehow.  He did, several hours into his imprisonment, begin finding it difficult to pull in a full breath, and by the time he was rescued he was giddy with light-headedness, but he didn’t know if it was from the air quality or exhaustion or panic or from being forced to breathe only through his nose for hours, but he really didn’t care.

Quiet.  Even worse than the cold and the dark and the pain was the quiet.  The tape over his mouth prevented him from doing the one thing that could bring him comfort in even the most difficult of situations.  Talking was what Shawn did - he utilized mindless prattle to distract bad guys, to make people underestimate him, to quell fear and panic in himself and those around him, to annoy and wheedle those whose opinions meant the most to him (and who he was most afraid to be real with), and most importantly, to distract himself from all the pain and baggage that his exceptional memory had filed away for him throughout the years.  Talking nonsense meant that he wasn’t thinking about or acknowledging the parts of himself that arguably needed the most attention, those bits that were scared and unsure and hurt and vulnerable.

Shawn had always detested silence, and now it had invaded so intimately that even he could not drive it out.

And all of these culminated in a constant, agonizing state of absolute, unrelenting fear.  

Panic attacks are horrific things that take your natural instincts in potentially dangerous situations and turn them against you in the cruelest of ways.  They suck the air out of your lungs and make your heart pound so fast and so hard that you are convinced it’s going to give out in pure fatigue and never make it to that next beat.  It makes your skin crawl like there are thousands of spiders nesting there, and your chest hurts and your breath is short and stunted and you know you are dying, that the next breath will be your last, but it isn’t, and the fear just continues and sometimes you curl into a ball or rock back and forth or scratch at your skin.

Panic attacks generally last anywhere from five to twenty minutes.  Shawn was stuck in a state of raw, unfiltered panic for ten hours.  When the EMTs at the scene took his heart rate, it was 160, had been the entire time he’d been buried in a collegiate tomb, knowing that he was going to die.

Put simply, Shawn Spencer spent ten hours in his own personal hell.

***

It was nearly three in the afternoon when Detectives Juliet O’Hara and Carlton Lassiter, with the help of a frantic Gus and a worried Henry that tried his damndest not to show how worried he was, made the final connections in the case and tracked down the woman who had slept with and then killed her lover like a hyper-intelligent, book-loving black widow.  Juliet and Gus remained on the college campus to continue investigating while Lassiter and Henry went on to the station to question Olivia.  She had refused to say where the missing psychic detective was, however, and only offered one bitter phrase, spoken in another language that sounded to the questioning party like a curse being placed on their heads: 

“Nemo me impune lacessit.”

It was Gus who figured it out after Lassiter related the cryptic saying over the phone.

“I know that phrase!” he exclaimed to a swell of raised eyebrows.  “It’s Latin! It means no one wounds me with impunity!”

“You speak Latin?”  Juliet seemed impressed.

“Not much.  But I recognize that particular saying, because it’s from a story that gave me nightmares my entire sophomore year of college.”  He shuddered.  “It’s from the second-most terrifying Poe story.”  He didn’t elaborate on what the first-most terrifying one was, largely because he didn’t want to give the others fodder to use “The Tell-Tale Heart” against him like Shawn already did.  Then the full implications of the words sunk in and he gasped, “We have to find Shawn, now.”  The horror in his expression sent a chill down Juliet’s spine. 

“Gus - what the hell are you talking about?”  Henry was no longer trying to hide the panic in his voice.

“It’s from ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ Gus clarified, his own panic making it difficult to express himself clearly.

“Guster, this is hardly the time for you to have a glass of wine,” Lassiter barked.  “Now stop talking in riddles and just spit it out!”

But Juliet had now made the connection as well and answered for Gus.  “Oh my gosh - isn’t that the one where the guy is sealed into a wall and left to die?”

The dread in Gus’s eyes said it all.

“He’s got to be somewhere on campus,” Henry reasoned, and his voice shook the tiniest bit.  “Lassiter and I are on our way back to you now.  In the meantime, check with the school and see if there are any places that are easily accessed and under construction.”

No one said it aloud, but the possibility that her words hadn’t been a hint at all and that Shawn was somewhere else entirely hung in the air amongst them.  It was funny, Juliet thought - though it wasn’t funny at all - she urgently needed Gus’s theory to be right, because otherwise they would have no leads, but at the same time, she was terrified of the implications if it were true.  

Her heart felt as sick as Montresor’s when he placed the last brick as she and Gus raced to the administration building and prayed they weren’t too late.

***

When they broke through the wall, the sight that greeted them was one that would never leave them - any of them.  Even Lassiter, who made it his sacred duty to remain unfazed by anything his job threw at him was visibly disturbed.

A moment of silence, a beat where time stood still and everyone was afraid to move, and then - 

“Shawn!”  The four rescuers surged forward as one, but Henry got there first, his trembling fingers groping for a pulse - thank God, but it was racing, dangerously fast, and in the background he heard Lassiter radioing for an ambulance.

Shawn woke up as Henry gently peeled the hideous pink duct tape (an affront to all duct tape everywhere) off of his mouth.  It wasn’t a gentle waking, a flutter of eyelashes or the murmuring of a name - it was violent and erratic, fueled by terror.  

Henry had had to deal with panic attacks before - mostly Gus’s when he took the boys camping together, but once or twice when Shawn was really young and he’d had a bad dream.  This one was the worst that he’d ever seen - Shawn woke with a muffled yell, panting through his nose, writhing, tears streaming down his face, eyes squeezed shut against the trauma he’d been subjected to, and he threw himself against the handcuffs so fiercely that Henry feared he’d break his wrists.  

Soon his wrists were freed, though, and Henry, with the help of Lassiter, helped a weakened Shawn out of the wall and into the basement and lowered him to the floor.  Henry sat with him and rubbed his back and spoke quietly to him, Juliet took his hand, and Gus reassured him while Lassiter ran up the stairs to check on the ETA of the ambulance.  

Twenty minutes later, Shawn had been placed onto a stretcher and carried up the stairs and out into the sunlight - sensing the warm rays, he opened his eyes only to pinch them shut again as the brightness after so many hours in the dark nearly blinded him.  He had been given something to calm him down, and he would be going to the hospital to be checked over and observed overnight, and a psychiatrist would be sent in to evaluate him in the morning, and everything was moving so fast that Shawn leaned over the side of the stretcher and deposited the remnants of the last thing he’d eaten, nearly twelve hours before.

“There’s one thing I still don’t get,” he gasped as he was eased back onto the stretcher.  “Where do the armadillos come into her plan?”

The EMTs exchanged a concerned look at the stretcher, probably wondering if there had been some carbon monoxide poisoning after all.  Gus, however, just rolled his eyes.

“Amontillado, Shawn.  It’s a kind of wine.”

“The story is called ‘The Casket of the Armadillos,’” Shawn argued stubbornly, going so far as to cross his arms over his chest, pulling at the IV in his right hand.  

Gus was going to argue, to insist that he’d actually read the story (and why the heck would someone fill a casket with armadillos?), but then Gus saw the plea in Shawn’s hazel eyes, that need for jokes and silliness, and understood that his best friend was clinging onto his last shreds of control.  

“You know what - I forgot,” Gus corrected, shaking his head and giving himself a light smack on the forehead for good measure.  “It is ‘The Casket of Armadillos.’”  He glared out at Henry, at Lassiter and Juliet and the EMTs, defying them to challenge his claim.  No one did, but they all shared a similar baffled expression.

Well, they could deal with their confusion, Gus thought protectively as he watched Shawn and Henry disappear into the ambulance.  Shawn had been through a night of unspeakable horror, so if it was armadillos he wanted, then it was armadillos he was going to get.

[eat0crow]

Jasonette first meeting please?

I’ve written a couple Jasonette first meetings already but I was scrolling through a prompt list and -You just snuck into my apartment and wait is that blood-stuck out to me. Hope you enjoy!

This fic was beta-read by the lovely @the17thtearoom

Is That Blood

Kwami knows that Marinette is a scatter-brained mess no matter what time of day it is. She would like to deny it, but really, no one would believe her. She blames Tikki, even if she was a disaster before the little fortune god came into her life. Nino has the proof, and has justly been sworn to silence.

There is never a need to relive the fourth grade. Never.

There’s a general swirl of chaos that follows Marinette wherever she goes: Paris, London, New York, now Gotham. It’s one of the reasons, maybe even the reason that despite desperately needing someone around to help out with the rent—Gotham charged way too much for a studio apartment, how the hell is it more expensive than Manhattan—she’s never looked for a roommate. Not after spending a month bunking with Alya, and driving the girl insane.

Alya hadn’t been the one to ask her to leave, she’d claimed Marinette was fine. Marinette had seen the way her eye twitched after the fourth time, in a week's span, she had come home tracking some dark, vaguely sticky substance behind her.

For the sake of their friendship, Marinette had moved out a little over a week later.

With this in mind, Marinette thinks she’s being overwhelmingly okay with the situation when her first question, upon stepping foot back into her apartment, happens to be, “Is that blood?”

Not, “how did you get in here”, or “who are you?” Is that blood? When did her life get this weird? Oh yeah, when she—a newly turned fourteen-year-old girl—was entrusted with guardianship over some of the most powerful deities in creation. That’s when.

It’s only after watching the man for an uncomfortable amount of time that Marinette notices the sickly crackling of unnatural magic clinging to the air around him. There’s a pool of dark magic sitting in her living room. It’s coating him, clinging to his very being and dripping, toxic, onto the pale beige carpeting.

God the carpeting, blood stains are a bitch to get out. At least he had the sense to push back the coffee table, and not sit on the couch that Marinette’s fairly sure, has been in this apartment since before she was born.

The stranger pauses his stitching mid-action, needle freezing halfway through the gash on his leg. Marinette is concerned.

“No, it’s cranberry juice,” he says sarcastically, even as he presses a towel, her pink bunny towel no less, against his leg. It’s clearly an attempt to hide the murder scene she just walked in on, but honestly, the towel is turning a disgusting shade of rusty brown.

Marinette takes one fortifying look around her living room, paying particular attention to the sticky wet spot her home invader is sitting in. He had better not have touched her one true love. If the coffee maker is broken she will break him.

“You should finish stitching that up before you bleed to death all over my carpet.”

“I’m not going to bleed out in the middle of your living room.”

Marinette grabs her emergency first aid kit, the one she keeps tucked safely in the umbrella stand. It’s a beast, and maybe Marinette had been a little obsessive when it came to putting it together, but she had spent a good portion of her life fighting. She liked to be prepared, even if being prepared meant carrying around a walking pharmacy.

Delicately, Marinette did her best to avoid mashing the blood further into the carpet. “I have a tourniquet in here just in case, but it doesn’t look like we need it. You did remember to disinfect the cut before you started stitching, right?”

She’s close enough now, knelt next to the man, to really make out his features. The pressure she forces down on the wound makes him wince, and Marinette blinks. Green eyes, there’s an aura to them that reminds Marinette distinctly of Tikki’s magic, a faint light just barely visible—Lazarus light. Well, that explained the corruption clinging to the air.

“I didn’t think you would be too thrilled with me poking around your bathroom,” he hisses out, sharp and very clearly in pain.

Marinette would usually let a lie like that go, but her patience is getting dangerously thin. “You could have spent another minute grabbing the peroxide from the medicine cabinet. It’s not like I can’t see your bloody footprints marking your trail. You grabbed my favorite towel, but not the one thing that prevents a staph infection. Who taught you first aid? Honestly! ”

A dark brow raises upward, clear interest taking over the strangers face. “You’re remarkably calm for someone who just found a random stranger dripping blood all over their apartment.”

“I’m more than a little pissed over that. You owe me a carpet cleaning.” Marinette grabs the travel-sized bottle of peroxide out of her kit, along with her sterilized needle, lighter, actual stitching thread—why the fuck is he using dental floss? Why?—and a roll of gauze. She’ll probably need more later, but for now, this is good. “You’re giving yourself way too much credit. This isn’t even close to the strangest thing I’ve seen this week. Now, this is going to sting like a bitch, but you broke into my apartment so, you deserve it.”

He lets out a long string of curses, biting down hard on his hand as Marinette pours the disinfectant over the wound. It’s a good three inches long and at least a centimeter deep. He needs a hospital but, seeing as his first choice was breaking and entering, Marinette’s probably as close to a professional as he’ll see.

“Fucking shit,” he grounds out around clenched teeth. Marinette has to take out the stitches he’s already done. They’re uneven and sloppy, probably because he’d been using the needle from her sewing kit. She slips her surgical scissors, the fresh pair she just held under her lighter, against the floss. His face loses all color as she carefully works the four rows he made out. “I know you’re pissed, but I don’t deserve this.”

Marinette casts him her most deadpan expression as she lights the curved stitching needle on fire. “Who's the dumbass who didn’t disinfect his—what? Stab wound? It looks like a stab wound, do you have any idea where that knife could have been? You’re lucky I’m nice enough not to let you get a blood infection.”

A smirk tugs at the corner of his lips. “Nice enough. You’re a regular ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”

“You’re the one who broke in.” Marinette takes satisfaction in stabbing her needle into the skin and watching as his smirk turns into a grimace. “How did you get in here anyway? The front door was still locked.”

“I kicked in the back door,” he admits, with just the faintest hint of shame. “It was hanging on by a bolt and a decades worth of rust.”

“You’re lucky you’re already bleeding.”

“I was in a hurry, okay,” he says defensively. “My friend lives in the same apartment number one complex over. I apparently was off a bit with my directions. I promise, I don't usually break into random people’s homes.”

“Guess I’m just special then.” Marinette has to hide her smile by occupying herself with cleaning up. She’s angry at him, damn it!

“I’ll fix the door for you if you want? And I’ll pay for one of those rug doctors Walmart rents.” He carefully stretches out his leg. He’s a bit unsteady on his feet. A mix between pain and blood loss no doubt. Wordlessly she offers up a bottle of Tylenol.

She regrets handing it to him a nanosecond later when he takes a double dose and then, throws back a third for good measure.

“Oh, you’re going to be paying my cleaning bill all right, but the door can wait,” Marinette says, getting up, and heading over to her kitchen. There is no problem in the world food doesn’t make better. “You look like you could really use some breakfast, and I’ve had nowhere near my daily dose of caffeine. We can figure everything out after we’ve eaten.”

The man follows her over, leaning heavily against the wall to support his weight. It’s a sorry sight. He makes an aborted move to help her before deciding that nope, he really can’t stand for all that long. “Did I tell you how weird you are yet? I feel like I should have.”

“Would you rather I call the cops and kick you out?” Marinette asks, pushing the coffee maker to the very edge of the counter. He can reach it if he tries. Marinette fully plans to make him. With a bit more force than necessary, she slams down her jar of coffee mix. “Clearly you’re lucid enough to make some coffee while I fry up some eggs.”

There’s a spark of amusement in the stranger's eyes. His smirk is back, and he watches Marinette with something like glee. “Sure thing, firefly.”

“It’s Marinette,” she corrects, not bothering to turn away from the stove. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I’d say it’s nice to meet you but...you did break into my house.”

“That’s fair,” the stranger agrees. Reaching for her phone instead of the stack of coffee filters. The bastard, doesn’t he realize how thin her sanity is stretching? “Jason Todd. You mind if I use your phone for a minute. Roy can stop by Home Depot, and get you a new door. So we won’t be reinstalling something that was already on its last legs.”

Marinette feels a headache coming on. “I’ll make enough for three then. Just have him pick up some kind of cleaner so the stain doesn’t set in.”