#he’s just been repairing his bones in space for two decades the man needs to get with the times

[theaxolotlkween]

This might be from my nextgen fanfiction but in my heart it is canon.

[inscribed-in-asteroids]

AN: Took a while but here’s chapter six! Make sure to reblog and like, or leave comments and kudos on AO3, which is still the best place to read it.

Title: The Ripple Effect

Characters: Hordak and Entrapta, feat. Glimmer, Bow, Aurora and Eon (OCs)

Rating: M (for smut)

                                            Repairing Harm Done

Hordak walks through the center of their new home away from home. Entrapta and he share their enjoyment of space, and going on adventures with her has been some of the greatest years of his life; however, Beast Island has been transformed into a multicultural landscape, where anyone could come here if they wanted, and stay here if they chose. While Odessa has been away with her friends, they opted to expand the lodgings here to accommodate growing numbers. Talon and he weren’t the only ones with children, and even without offspring, his siblings were finding life partners, and to add on top of that, visitors from nearby planets come to Etheria as well and, sometimes, like it so much they wish to remain.

Upon this realization, they made an organization to discuss blueprints, schedules and funding for such a project. The funding was no issue: Glimmer and Bow were more than happy to aid them, and have visited the island several times now to see what else was needed. It wasn’t necessarily money they needed, either, as everything on Beast Island was based on a trade system and very loosely; they have utilized the technology on the island well, and created elaborate new machines for daily living. Glimmer and Bow, simply put, love being involved. They offer their expertise, Bow on his own inventions and Glimmer with her magic, but they were enthusiastic to be present at all.

He notes his brothers above him in the trees, connecting large trunks with man-made bridges, where a community of apartments will be launched high above them. The groves are to be interconnected this way, allowing for more freedom of development and making use of every inch of the island, eventually establishing long pathways that will join all shores of the island. This will be the new dwelling place for many of the citizens on Beast Island, while the area he’s moving through will serve as the marketplace, with recreational centers, hospitals, schools and restaurants lined throughout the ground floor. They have been constructing it for a while, but high demand has allowed for a speedier process to take place. Underground it will be primarily used for laboratories, as he and Odessa have the largest ones. It’s also their excavation site for First Ones tech, which they still continue to find more than twenty years later, the deeper into the earth they go; it’ll also serve as their mausoleum, for when those days come.

Animals chirp in the branches, shadows moving along his frame. Looking up, he meets the eyes of his brothers hammering boards into place, and they wave down at him. Being in a good mood, he waves back—

A sharp pang goes up his shoulder. Wincing in surprise, Hordak holds his hand up for a moment. Confused, he shakes off the sensation and continues toward the direction of his residence. Opening the door, Hordak steps inside.

“Entrapta? I’ve returned,” Hordak announces.

No answer.

She must be out. Maybe he’ll go check up on Emily and Imp. The latter has been growing, which came as a surprise to everyone. No one believed Imp could actually get bigger. It’s about the time Imp needs to have tests run to check if he’s still healthy as his body develops, Hordak muses, beginning to climb up the steps—

His legs suddenly lock, and they buckle, causing him to sprawl on the floor. His palms and knees slam into the hard stone, sending waves of pain up his frame. Another shortly follows, stabbing through his body. And it’s never one type of stab—it’s sharp, a knife slashing through; or painfully dull, akin to being jabbed with a worn, flat spear. It may not cut, but it’s relentless. And he can’t ever tell which is worse.

Trying to stand, he finds himself unable to. He pushes up with his hands, and the pain stings up his nerves, all the way to his neck.

Hordak lets out a breath of shock, of anger, of fear.

No.

No no no no no no no—

He looks down at his hands, and the color recedes—the blue drains, melting from elbow down, streaks forming along his wrist, and he can feel them weaken at the shoulder.

Hordak yells out loud, hunched over from the agony, watching as his forearms split in two without warning right down the middle until they’re merely the width of bone within the muscles thinning blood flow slowing unable to move or feel or sense or know why—

Hordak lets out a cry of shock, jolting himself up. Breathing hard, he turns to his right. Moonlight cuts through the dark of his bedroom, the blinds never being tightly sealed enough for his liking. But for once, he’s relieved to see it.

His head falls into his hands, and he breathes in. Breathes out. He withdraws to look at them. His forearms show no signs of disease, stark in the dim room. His shoulders move as they should, and he rotates them to be sure. He claws the air with his fingers, two quick movements. Then he lets them go toward his palm, slowly, pinky first as the rest follow, moving in synchronicity. He repeats this motion four more times, and none of them hurt.

Entrapta shifts beside him, her arm reaching out for his body. Automatic. When she finds only the pillow, Entrapta opens her eyes. She props herself up on an elbow, reaching out to touch her husband.

“Hordak? Are you okay?”

Blinking, Hordak turns to look at her. Her hair is loose about her body, draping across her shoulders in long strands. She doesn’t wear clothes to bed, finding it more comfortable. She followed his example on that one. After decades of being in pain, he didn’t want to be constricted as he slept. It reminded him too much of how often he had to be bound in place by something or another to keep from falling apart. His body was attached by sinew and muscle, like anyone else, but it never felt like that. It always felt like one small gesture would render him incapacitated, and his shoulders would fall from their sockets.

Entrapta sits up, touching the small of his back, “Did you have a bad dream?”

Hordak sighs, “I… did.”

Entrapta brushes the side of his face, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Hordak reaches up to take her hand in his, “It… It was the usual dream.”

Sidling next to him, Entrapta lays her head on his shoulder, “I know. It’s scary.”

He lets out a breath, unable to disagree. Adora had fixed him, permanently, in that other lifetime. Horde Prime wouldn’t allow something defective in his midst, so his body had been healed at the expense of his mind’s free will. But when Adora expelled Prime out, he was released from the confines of both mental and physical anguish.

He knows this.

His body has not known that pain in many, many years.

But there are days when he’s walking, sitting, breathing, and his thoughts turn to anxiety. Anxiety about the day, the moment, when his body will fail him again. He exercises every day, relishing in the activity he had been denied. The strength and power and agility that he long forgot about and wishes to keep. He makes sure to have that routine set out for himself, to have those thoughts at bay, to stop worrying him. He recalls how nervous he��d been when Odessa had been born—to have his daughter in his arms, and he would panic about the pain coming back and he can’t grab her in time before she collapses onto the floor and she dies. In a second, just like that.

Pulling his knees up, Hordak stretches his arms out onto them, giving a heavy sigh.

Entrapta rotates a bit, brushing his hair out.

“Entrapta?”

“Yes?”

“Can you check?”

Without further question, Entrapta moves forward, inspecting his back first. She notes the perfect coloration of his body, from neck to fingertip. Drawing aside the covers, she makes similar mental notes from his hips down to his feet. She looks up at him, smiling, “You’ve never looked better!”

Hordak sighs, relieved.

Entrapta lays her cheek on his forearm, “And I do mean that.”

He meets her eyes, and she wiggles her eyebrows.

Hordak laughs, allowing the anxiety to leave him, “You’re a pervert.”

Entrapta’s grin widens, “Can you blame me?”

Hordak leans forward to kiss her forehead. And she tilts her head back so their mouths can touch. Her hand caresses the side of his cheek, and he relaxes.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” he whispers, after a good while.

“Don’t worry about it,” Entrapta says. She pushes him onto his back, brushing her thumb along his mouth. “You’re not alone, you know.”

Hordak nods, staring up at the ceiling. Entrapta lays next to him, and she taps her chest.

Without a word, he turns, burying his face into her collarbone. Warm and inviting.

Her hands play with his hair, humming quietly. Stroking her fingertips down his neck, careful of the port located there. Entrapta doesn’t stop until he’s taking measured breaths, long and deep; once he does, only then does she fall back asleep.

                                                              -

Hordak steps out into the bright outdoors. Everything is in place. From the new construction in the trees, to the bustling shoppers around him, and, below, he knows Imp and Emily are taking ownership of Odessa’s lab while she’s away, as they tend to when she’s absent. Her friends are missed as well, and he will admit to himself, it’s good for her to have them.

Tristan’s general apathy tends to keep him anchored, but it lifts away as soon as he knows she’s back home, becoming more involved and energetic. Hydrangea’s eagerness to keep peace always stays in place, but she defers to Odessa’s knowledge and skill more often than with anyone else. Hordak knows that there could be no better allies to his daughter than those two.

They’ve been her friends since childhood, and they gravitated toward one another in a manner he found interesting. Despite being born a clone, he knows who he is, and he tends to keep to himself, save for Entrapta’s presence. His brothers tend to be more gregarious, which baffled him at first on how willing they were to interact with Etherians, and he surmised that, even among replicas, he stands out as incredibly reclusive. There are a few who took to his more stern and introverted nature, of course, he isn’t unique to averting social events, but he continues to have the shortest temper, if pushed enough, and is withdrawn. Talon is one of those individuals to match it, as he tends to be around his wife alone, but he doesn’t mind the spotlight, and that’s their difference.

Hordak’s gotten better at being around others, but he finds it exhausting after a while. Entrapta says that’s okay, and she wouldn’t change that about him and has outright stated to prefer it. Large groups are only ‘fun’ to watch, not be part of.

Odessa, meanwhile, enjoyed company, and Tristan was the first person she brought home. Hydrangea and Odessa liked each other very much, which delighted Entrapta and Scorpia; however, Tristan’s addition caught them by surprise. Mermista wasn’t the warmest woman when it came to who associated with her son. Hordak knows that his actions from the past were to blame, but she hasn’t done anything to damage his child’s relationship with her companion, so he says nothing.

Hydrangea’s mother, Perfuma, is no different, though she tends to have a lenient grip. Which he knows is due to her bohemian attitude, rather than an acceptance of Odessa. She wouldn’t stifle her child, as she has asserted that children should be allowed to do as they please and grow up how they will. It’s not a sentiment he disagrees with—he gave Odessa all the freedom she wanted. Entrapta was the one to spoil her, and he took on the disciplinarian role, for when it needed to be done, but overall, he and his wife encouraged Odessa’s desire to do what she wanted. Sometimes, her strong personality could be overpowering for others, but she’s not a bad person.

Despite what others may think.

“How are you doing, hon?” Entrapta asks, getting up to his level.

“I’m doing fine,” he responds. “Did you need something from me?”

“No,” Entrapta smiles. “You always ask that.”

“Ask what?”

“If people need something from you.”

He pauses in his tracks, “Do I?”

“You usually ask that when I’m looking at you, or wondering how you are,” Entrapta states. “And when I say people, I mean just me. You don’t do it with others.”

Hordak looks at the ground, silent.

“That’s not a problem, Hordak! It’s an observation,” Entrapta assures him.

He doesn’t question it further, for now.

“Oh, hi, guys!” Entrapta says.

Hordak faces behind him, finding Glimmer and Bow waving at him. For a flash of a second, he’s stricken with concern, but remembers that they’re supposed to be here today. That must be why they were in his dream, and it has nothing to do with premonitions of impending doom.

“Hey! Hope we’re not late,” Bow says.

“You’re right on time!” Entrapta replies.

Glimmer smiles, “Good! I hope you don’t mind—we brought Aurora today.”

Hordak looks past them, their daughter standing near the portal. Utterly disinterested. Without thinking, he says to Glimmer, “Was it wise to bring her?”

She looks at him, surprised, before waving her hand and laughing, “Oh, Hordak, she’s fine! She’s a big girl. Aurora, come here please!”

Aurora’s expression belies her unwillingness to be present, a polite smile on her face.

He doesn’t want to be rude— Well, that’s not true, he wants to be rude. It just isn’t prudent. Aurora isn’t a person who tends to be engrossed in what’s going outside of her social circle.

Glimmer looks up at Hordak, “I brought her because as future queen, she needs to participate in what’s happening throughout Etheria. You and I are working on this together, so I figured she would benefit from learning how things work with other kingdoms outside of a council meeting!”

Hordak nods in understanding. Makes sense.

Entrapta looks at Aurora, “Hello!”

“Thank you for welcoming me,” Aurora curtsies.

“What’s first on the agenda?” Bow asks.

Entrapta laughs, “We’ll go up into the trees first! We’ve designed a mode of transportation that takes us all to the top!”

Hordak silently walks behind the group. Entrapta leads them to a lift that operates when people enter into the rectangular container, made of nearby materials, predominantly the wood and bark of trees, as they’re the sturdiest thing at the moment. It’s in its rudimentary stage, Entrapta explains, and hopefully it will be changed into solid metal soon, since they didn’t want to waste resources at once. They had to see if it worked first, and they needed to design a glass case to hold it. All of them are elevated toward the top, allowing them a view of everything below.

Glimmer looks over the side of the box, “Wow, where did you come up with the idea?”

“Remember Horde Prime’s ship? He had this sort of thing aboard. We figured it would help get people around easier,” Entrapta says.

“So, you took the contraption of someone deplorable and used it for yourself?” Aurora asks.

“Yep!” Entrapta says.

Glimmer stares at her child, and Bow’s brows rise an inch.

Hordak’s arms remain folded, glaring at the back of Aurora’s head. Not liking her tone.

She doesn’t approve of it. And while he may not like owing Prime anything, it isn’t conducive to advancement as a group to ignore advantages simply because it came from a heinous individual. Good people have bad ideas, and bad people have good ideas, it depends on how it’s used.

“I don’t see how this is sensible of your time,” Aurora says.

Entrapta laughs, “Not everyone can teleport like you and your mom! We have people who can’t jump and climb the way we can.”

Aurora gives a delicate sniff, unimpressed with the explanation.

Glimmer claps her hands together, “Well, I think it’s a phenomenal idea. Prime was a monster, but his ship was incredible.”

“Mama—” Aurora begins.

Bow points at the distant grove, “Oh, look, pookas! Aurora, these were the animals that I met with Adora while looking for Entrapta.”

“The very things that would’ve eaten you all, and my grandpa, alive. You don’t say,” Aurora dryly answers.

“They’re friendly now!” Entrapta corrects, hair morphing into a hand with a forefinger pointed up.

Aurora grimaces when a pooka chitters at her, stepping away.

Hordak comes forward, unable to deal with it any longer, “Perhaps, it would be better for Aurora if she went and explored on her own. There is a plethora of activity in the market, and the main thing we would all be discussing is infrastructure.”

Bow turns to him, “Oh, I don’t think it’s necessary for her to leave.”

Glimmer nods, his suggestion more than welcome, “Actually, he might be right. Sweetie, why don’t you go down and check things out?”

“Thank you, I will,” Aurora says, giving another polite smile. With that, she teleports to the ground.

Entrapta yells over the side, “Byyyeeee!”

Bow and Glimmer share a long glance at one another. Aurora is a pleasant young woman, and now at eighteen, she should be engaging with more outside of Bright Moon. Neither Glimmer or Bow could imagine not wanting to go out of their comfort zone, whether it’s irritating or boring. But Aurora had never been quite as easy with ventures toward the unfamiliar.

Aurora is a creature of habit and routine, so she tends to stick with people that she knows, which is why they gave Marlena and Clawdeen the day off, both to allow Aurora to expand her horizons on her own, while giving their goddaughters well-deserved rest. Adora and Catra serve, too, as Aurora’s respective godparents, for they had all promised to be the guardians of each other’s children. And it’s why they decided, when Aurora asked if she could visit her extended family on the outskirts of the Whispering Woods, they pushed her to join them on this trip to Beast Island.

Aurora’s behavior since arrival was troubling Glimmer; she’s sure it wasn’t obvious, but her daughter radiated displeasure. Aurora is normally so genteel, with impeccable manners, which were inherited from Angella, and nurtured more by Bow and his relatives. Glimmer, even as she gets older, could never get rid of her fire to engage with every little aspect of life as much as she could. There was so much to do and see and experience, and she likes to believe that Aurora’s the same, even with her personality being softer than her own: mellow, caring, even shy. She knows her daughter is a good person.

Everyone always says so.

Bow and Entrapta have gone ahead, chatting animatedly about inventions and the latest in revolutionary designs. Addressing Hordak, Glimmer murmurs, “I’m sorry about Aurora.”

Hordak looks at her, “I don’t see the need for an apology. She doesn’t have to hide her disdain.”

Glimmer pokes him lightly in the arm, teasing, “Why? Because you’re the same?”

“Exactly,” Hordak replies, giving a light chuckle.

Sighing, she holds up her face with her hand, “Still, I don’t know why she’s upset today. I know kids don’t like to be with their parents after a certain age, and want to be with their friends—I was definitely that way—but I thought maybe she would have fun, you know? Engaging with the people, the mix of culture. Beast Island is so grand now!”

“I’m glad to hear you approve of what we’ve accomplished thus far,” Hordak says.

“That lift contraption is useful, but nothing will ever overshadow the day we got indoor plumbing in the palace.”

Hordak smiles, letting himself relax in the easy conversation.

                                                              -

Aurora walks through the throng of individuals bustling around. She didn’t expect so… many clones. She knows this is one preferred habitation, along with the kingdom of Dryl, and they are sporadic in other parts of Etheria. But to have so many of them present is a sight to behold.

She doesn’t approach any of the shops, but watches closely. Etherians, too, are wandering from stall to stall, store to store, and she ponders why any of these citizens would want to leave their kingdoms. Do their leaders not provide enough for them that they feel the need to come to a place still in development? She has heard of Beast Island’s many, many changes from childhood to adulthood, but she doesn’t see the appeal of coming to a location that isn’t as established as the rest of Etheria. New Chelicerata is an exception, since restoring a ruined kingdom isn’t a simple task, and that was in no part thanks to the Horde destroying the land and water.

To add on top of that, Aurora notes the strange carts being driven around the area. Compact metal transportation vehicles that are hovering above the ground, or whizzing through the canopy. An invention from Entrapta, no doubt. She tends to be the mind behind the majority of the designs. Those cannot possibly be safe.

Aurora treads lightly along the ground, a little dash of levitation magic that she’s been practicing. A gaggle of children, both Etherian and mixed, run past her, and she sidesteps out of the way. None of them are paying attention to where they’re running, almost doing the same to a couple of people. She quietly shames their parents for not teaching them respect better.

“Hey! You all have to slow down!”

She recognizes the voice, stopping in her tracks.

“Aww, but we wanna run!” chime youthful voices of reckless abandon.

Her eyes shift back and forth from either side, not risking looking behind herself, wondering if she can slip into a nearby building.

“You want to run? Go that way into the woods and return after a while. Whoever’s fastest wins and gets bragging rights.”

“What if one of us gets lost?”

For a moment, she wonders if she could master the invisibility spell this very second—

“Your parents didn’t tell you, but that’s the price of being fools running around without a care: you didn’t get to learn map reading. It’s a curse, so it’s inevitable you’ll die in the jungle.”

The children laugh, “What? No way!”

As the conversation turns to protest, Aurora darts behind a wall, letting out a breath. Crisis averted.

“You know, I heard that if you run like mad back to your homes, and don’t get lost, the curse is lifted! But you can only try when the moon’s half full.”

A gasp comes from one of the children, “Oh my gosh! It’s half full tonight!”

“I guess you kids better practice for this evening!”

Aurora peers around the corner, listening to the children fall for the outlandish lies, while unable to see anyone.

She’s startled when the next sound is that of quick steps coming her direction, darting past her—

Instinctively, she teleports, narrowly avoiding collision with a child. She closes her eyes and sighs.

Why can’t she go home?

“Aurora? What are you doing here?”

She tenses.

She didn’t plan where she’d wind up.

Slowly, Aurora tilts back her head, giving her signature smile, “Eon. I didn’t expect to see you.”

Peering down, Eon quirks a single brow, “You didn’t expect to see me where my family is? Do you not know how visitation works?”

Aurora withdraws, realizing with embarrassment how her head had been resting on his chest. He stands there, nonchalant, several stacks of flour levitating above his palm. He wears Mystacoran attire, deep, noble colors of purple with the usual white or gold accents replaced with his signature black.

Standing out as much as her, if she’ll admit anything. She attends any event wearing dresses, colored soft pink with whites trimming her sleeves and the hem of her skirt. She smoothes out her outfit, looking at the fabric, “I know how visitation works. Normally, you’re locked up in your room.” She side-eyes him. “Doing nothing to better yourself.”

Eon gives a cocky grin, “At least I don’t fake being busy to drown out the monotony enveloping my life.”

Decorum be damned, Aurora’s expression turns mocking, “I happen to like monotony. Schedules keep things together.”

“Another way of declaring you’re uptight,” Eon retorts, sauntering past her.

Aurora emits a light scoff, teleporting beside him, “I am not uptight! I appear that way to the lethargic. It wouldn’t hurt you to make an effort.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Your Highness,” Eon replies, spinning on the ball of his foot and giving a small bow with his head. “I forgot that commoners like myself need your example to show us how we could improve ourselves.”

Aurora tosses back her hair, “That’s part of being a princess—leading by example.”

Eon rolls his eyes, continuing his path, “Of course. I wouldn’t want to contradict you.”

“But I would contradict you,” Aurora replies. “I don’t understand why you’re carrying the sacks like that.”

“Like what?”

“Magic isn’t something to do menial tasks with. Did your muscles atrophy from being bedridden?”

“I happen to enjoy using my magic for all my needs,” Eon says. “If it makes things easier, why not do it?”

Aurora shakes her head.

“So, what are you on the island for? Did your family finally admit you were found among the beetles, and that’s why you have those wings?”

“Are you insinuating I’m a pest?” she questions, annoyed, folding her arms.

“Beetles happen to serve a very good purpose,” Eon tells her. “I wouldn’t imply such malicious concepts about you.”

Aurora gives him a pointed glare, “If you must know, I happen to be tagging along with my parents. They wanted to check on how construction is going for your people.”

“Ah. That’s nice,” he says, sincere.

“For you, maybe.”

Eon resumes being distant, “Well, I thank you for showing you care. Your presence graces us.”

“I suppose this will do as I’m waiting for them to be done,” she replies, looking around with annoyance.

Eon stops in front of his destination, setting the cargo carefully on the ground. He waves at an uncle, who nods his thanks before continuing to help a customer.

“Why don’t you take it inside?” Aurora asks.

“They know where it is.”

“It’s nicer to put it inside,” Aurora insists.

Eon grunts in annoyance. Levitating them back up, he goes around the corner. He halts, turning to her, hiking a thumb in his new direction, “Are you coming?”

Blinking, Aurora glances behind him. “This job doesn’t require two people.”

Eon leaves the sacks floating, pivoting around, “If you’re going to make demands of me, the least you can do is watch me do it.”

“But—”

He gestures to the building, “Would you rather loiter outside this public establishment?”

Aurora concedes, following him to the back door. She supposes it’s better than being out in the open.

                                                             -

Hordak lets his mind wander as his companions take rein of the conversation.

The nightmare threw him off more than he’d care to admit. He has had this sort of dream before, however, he was shaken to his core with this one. It was the most vivid he had ever experienced, and an aspect of slumber he’d care to not go through again.

Bow and Glimmer head to a group of his brothers who are in the midst of adding beams together.

He took it upon himself to take a break in a home that was under development. It needs a little more work left, but it’s otherwise complete and ready for furnishing. No one will bother him here.

Entrapta looks into the house, noticing his posture. He’s staring out a window that overlooks the trees, the drop going straight down, hands behind his back. His thinking position. She swings over to where he stands, closing the door behind her, “Are you still holding up?”

Hordak’s brow twitches. He doesn’t tell her that it’s a poor choice of words, because he knows he’s a little more sensitive to this matter than usual.

But Entrapta touches his shoulder, “Oh, I’m sorry! I meant to ask if you’re fine.”

“That is not something you need to concern yourself with. They’re mere words.”

“Words that are insensitive,” Entrapta replies. He doesn’t give a reply. She sits on her hair, gazing right at him. Unmoving.

Hordak’s eyes flick over to her for a second. He continues to stare straight ahead. “Entrapta, you needn’t apologize or feel responsible.”

“I believe you when you say that,” Entrapta says, not removing her eyes from his features. Suddenly, she gives a bashful smile, “I just care about you.”

Heart twinging, Hordak stiffens. He knows that her concern is sincere, and he appreciates it. He raises a hand to her cheek, brushing it, “I know.”

Entrapta flushes, his gaze intense. She can’t help but look down then, soft giggles leaving her lips. His finger traces the shell of her ear, and a shudder snakes along her spine. Body growing warm from the attention. He always knew how to make her feel special. After Prime’s defeat, Hordak had layers of emotion to sift through. He had been angry for many years, and she knows there’s parts of that residual rage underneath the calm. But one aspect of his nature that blossomed was a sensitivity that left her speechless. Hordak doesn’t believe it, but he can be very romantic by simply being honest with her.

“Hordak,” Entrapta whispers, touching his hand.

He tilts his head, “Yes?”

“You know I love you,” she says.

“Yes, I do,” Hordak replies, surprised. “And I love you too.”

Entrapta gives a breathy laugh, turning her face into his palm, hiding. She peers up at him with one eye, “Really?”

“More than you could comprehend,” Hordak tells the truth.

“Aww!” she coos, pressing his hand into her cheek, slightly muffled as she buries her face into his palm again.

A light blush tints his face, and he gives a soft laugh, “Entrapta, what’s this about? Are you upset that you cannot help me with my problem?”

“A little,” Entrapta holds his hand in hers, kissing the inside of his wrist. “I don’t know what to do sometimes, and I don’t know if me being around helps at all.”

“You’re a great help,” he assures her, thumb stroking her cheekbone. “Don’t doubt your affect on me.”

Entrapta grins, “I know some of the ways I affect you, silly!”

Hordak steps closer, smile widening along his lips, teeth flashing. His voice lowers, “Do you?”

“I like to think so,” Entrapta teases, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, fingers moving into his hair.

Her lips touch his, and he pulls her close. Her body curves against his, and even after decades of being near her, he’s always amazed at how she feels. Hand angled behind her head, his other one shifts down her back, sliding down her thigh.

Entrapta moans into his mouth, and she realizes that she’s been wanting to do this all day. His breathing grows ragged, moans interspersed with her name, sounds that she never gets tired of, because he only makes them with her.

Hordak pushes her against the wall, and he feels her hair slacken through her frame. Her legs wrap around his waist, allowing herself to be held up by his hands. Entrapta gives a soft groan, pulling him close. Her mouth caresses his neck, causing his body to shiver. Her hands glide down his back, grazing over exposed skin.

His hand snakes up her frame, and angles between her legs. Against the fabric, he begins to rub her clit, and Entrapta gasps in welcome surprise. Grinding against his fingers, she gives a small bite to his ear lobe, hot breath tickling his skin.

Hordak presses harder with his fingers, and he knows she’s growing damp. He captures her mouth with his, swallowing a moan she emits, flushed and excited. She grins against his chin, giving a small chuckle.

Encouraged, Hordak stops petting her. He looks at her, “Entrapta, remove your clothes.”

“Ooooh!” Entrapta does as he says, discarding everything but her shirt.

With ease, he lifts her back up, pushing her securely upon the wall and placing her legs over his shoulders. He has no hesitation as he leans in, breathing in, and glides his tongue up slick folds, rubbing over the clit with the end of his tongue.

Entrapta gasps, closing her eyes in pleasure. His tongue moves slowly, taking his time. It moves through the sides, around, teasing the clit, but never going in. Entrapta’s hands caress his hair, brushing through dark blue locks. His moans vibrate into her skin, mouth burning hot on burning flesh.

Hordak’s tongue suddenly darts in, and Entrapta’s back arches, mouth parting open. Groaning deep in her throat, Entrapta’s fingers grip his hair harder. Hordak pushes her legs further aside, nails digging into tender skin. He pulls away, giving her a brief glance, as his teeth graze along the delicate skin of her inner thigh.

“Hordak…” Entrapta whispers.

“Hmm?” he hums, mouth covering her clit, sucking hard.

Her moan escapes in a staccato, trembling. Biting her lower lip, Entrapta forgets what she’s supposed to ask. Lost in the sensation of his mouth on her clit, tongue dragging along swollen lips. His fingers squeeze the sensitive flesh of her backside, his ears twitching when she says his name. Soon, she’s soaked, unable to think or speak, overcome by physical touch. His arms, once the most obvious area of his defect, don’t waver from the weight, keeping her steady without qualm.

She would love him no matter his appearance, but she’s happy that he has the body he lost before. It brought him so much pain and agony, leaving him enraged and bitter. Entrapta would watch him suffer every day in the Fright Zone, even with her modifications. He felt inadequate, pathetic and alone. She would never think of him this way—he was the most brilliant mind and kindest heart she’d ever met, valuing her for who she was. Loving her despite her own imperfections. She never gave a thought to her physical appearance. What she always worried about was how her mind, her personality, her feelings would be perceived.

He accepted all of it.

And she wants to help him overcome whatever fears remain in him. That the imperfections of his body wouldn’t ever be the only thing of him she’d accept—it would be the doubts, the worries, the anger. He was her friend and husband. He, and he alone, would always be enough.

The heat in her stomach spreads throughout her body. Growing feverish, sweat shining on her skin, her toes curl into his back. Hordak’s ministrations are relentless, breaths muffled as his tongue moves back in, deeper than before, making circular motions within her body.

Shaking with incredible force, it bowls Entrapta forward, clamping her hand over her mouth. Eyes shut closed, brows knitting together, she trembles from the orgasm rocking through her every nerve and muscle. Slowly, her eyelids open, finding him staring up at her.

“Wow…”

Hordak smiles, pleased at such a reaction.

As he wipes up his chin, Entrapta brushes aside his hair, tugging strands over his temple. “Oh... I remembered what I was going to ask…”

“Yes?”

“I was going… to ask… if you think anyone will notice us gone…”

“Perhaps. But I don’t believe there’s a problem, so long as we begin going back now.”

Entrapta gives a gentle pat to his shoulders, and he sets her down. Beginning to dress, she grins, “I think this house is ruined.”

“Nonsense,” Hordak returns, waving a hand. “We need only open a window.”

Cackling wildly, Entrapta leaps up into his arms, nuzzling his neck, “You’re so bad!”

Hordak kisses her cheek, “I try.”

“I can be bad too,” Entrapta says, leering down at his groin.

“I don’t think we have the time,” Hordak replies, arm wrapping around her waist. “As favorable as that outcome would be.”

“Awww… You don’t want to make an attempt?”

“I believe, unfortunately, we have been gone long enough to arouse suspicion.”

“That’s an understatement,” Entrapta replies, wiggling her eyebrows, hand stroking over his clothes. “We definitely can’t hide that.”

A boyish grin and light blush changes his normally stoic demeanor. The expression staggers her mind to a halt, mystifying her on the rare moments it occurs. He’s so pretty...

“Entrapta?” he asks, smile still in place.

Finally recalling what needs to be done, Entrapta moves toward the door, grinning, “I’ll go on ahead, okay? You take your time!”

He nods, and she blows him a kiss that he, on reflex, pretends to catch.

Squealing at his playful attitude, Entrapta bounces out the door.

Hordak hears her voice grow distant, and he notes the faint replies from their friends. Hordak looks back out the window, catching his reflection in the glass. He looks down at his arm, touching it where he can remember missing bone and sinew. He takes in a breath, feeling the air move through his nose, into his chest. The power in his body undeniable.

It’s an odd feeling. Being afraid of nothing.

                                                             -

Aurora follows Eon throughout the market. He, apparently, was needed today. His magic lent significant help to his people, restoring broken objects, fixing machinery, and taking deliveries to several places. She won’t admit it, but it was a welcome relief from simply milling about by herself. Granted, these are tasks servants would be doing, but it made her feel normal, like she was accomplishing objectives at Bright Moon.

Eon looks down at her, “Don’t you have other places to be?”

“If I did, I would’ve left,” Aurora replies.

“Are you bored?”

“No, not at all,” she shakes her head. A little surprised she means it, too.

Eon takes her word for it. He hadn’t expected her to trail after him the entire time, and he would catch her standing by, occasionally offering unwanted critique, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. Early on, he certainly did. But the day has been long and he’s hoping to rest soon. She always does what she wants.

“Are you almost done?” Aurora asks.

“Yes,” he replies. “This is my last spot.”

Aurora looks at the sparse appearance, not even a sign put outside. Eon opens the door, singing its soft chime, and Aurora steps in after him. She’s struck to find rows of jewelry arranged along the four walls, painted navy blue, with cases planted into the middle of the floor. Though empty, they are meant for future displays.

Eon heads over to the case closest to the back door, tapping a bell resting on top.

Aurora joins him, “Is anyone present?”

“Should be,” Eon replies, turning around to face the front. He puts his hands in his pockets. “It’s not an issue if no one is—I can come back later.”

Aurora peers at the glass case, looking at dazzling necklaces, bracelets and rings aligned on vermilion velvet stands. She didn’t expect a store of this magnitude on Beast Island. The quality of the items are beautiful, with delicate designs.

Eon watches her from the corner of his eye. Her expression is intrigued, perusing the case with calm interest. He closes his eyes, waiting for the merchant to arrive. He listens to the faint tread of Aurora’s feet on the ground, the soft tap of her fingers on the surface of glass. He lets his mind wander in peace, glad to have a moment to himself.

Aurora eventually returns to his side, “Are you sure they’re here?”

“Yes,” he answers, not opening his eyes. “If you prefer, you can go find your parents.”

Aurora turns around, skirt slightly shifting about her feet. She stares up at Eon, debating whether to take him up on the suggestion or not. Her parents might be done, but if they’re not, she wouldn’t be able to leave again as smoothly as before. Staring at each side of the room, she says, “This is rude.”

“Uh-huh.”

“This wouldn’t happen in Bright Moon.”

Eon gives an exasperated sigh, “No, of course not. Nothing bad ever happens in Bright Moon.”

She ignores it or doesn’t hear. Aurora boasts, crossing her arms, “Right! Glad you see it my way.”

“Your Highness,” Eon scoffs, turning to face her. “If everyone could see things your way, we’d have a greater need for service animals.”

She blinks, “Why is that?”

“Everyone would be blind,” Eon answers.

Aurora says, tone clipped, “Oh, what would you know?”

“A lot more than you,” Eon replies, feeling vigor return.

“I doubt you possibly could!” Aurora’s head tilts at an arrogant angle. “The only thing you’ve proven today is that you make an excellent mule.”

Feigning injury, Eon clutches his chest, “Ah! You hurt me. But I could’ve sworn that you were fine with loyal, hard-working creatures. Unless that only matters when it’s useful to you.”

Aurora crosses her arms, huffing quietly.

Eon has known Aurora his entire life. Aurora has proven time and again that she has an elitism that tends to push her away from most people. Her parents are open-minded, cheerful individuals, and together they tend to liven any situation. Aurora can be charming, but she lacks sincerity. While not brash, her keeping an absurd distance from the folks around them during his errands proved that she was around him because he was the one thing she knew, rather than any intention toward actual civility.

Aurora inspects her shoulder, finding a loose thread. She points at it, and it dissolves in the air.

“I thought magic wasn’t a toy,” he says, taunting.

“This isn’t the same,” she snaps.

Before Eon can retort, the door opens behind them. The two turn around and find a woman standing there. Full-figured, with brown hair, hazel eyes and pale skin, the merchant is dressed in Bright Moon garb. Silver arm bands go up to mid-forearm, and she removes a light blue cape to hang on a coat rack.

“Eon, hello! I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. My meeting ran late.”

“No worries. I thought as much,” Eon replies.

The woman stares at Aurora for a moment, stunned, then smiles, “Your Highness! Welcome to my shop.”

Returning the warm greeting, Aurora nods at her, “Hello, I’m pleased to meet you. What’s your name?”

“Minette, Your Highness. If I may ask, what are you doing on Beast Island?”

“Royal duties,” Aurora gives a dainty laugh. “It’s been lovely!”

“I’m glad to hear that!” Minette says, walking over to a desk.

Eon bends down, giving Aurora a deadpan stare.

Aurora shoos him back, returning it with a glare.

“So!” Minette begins, causing the two to stand upright before she can notice. “Eon, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

“What is it?”

With an excited skip in her step, Minette returns to the chair behind the larger collection of jewelry, “I needed a model for some of my jewelry, and using you would be really helpful!”

“Really? That’s it?” he asks, a bit surprised. “I don’t need to patch a hole in your roof or magic up boxes?”

“Sorry! I understand if you’d prefer to do those things instead,” Minette jokes.

Eon takes his seat, a little relieved that this is the easiest job he’s had today. Aurora sits in a chair nearby, crossing her right ankle under her left, hands in her lap.

“Your Highness, you can scoot closer,” suggests Minette.

Eon gives Aurora a brief glance.

“No, thank you, I’m comfortable where I am,” Aurora says.

“Nonsense! You can try anything on too!”

Aurora is about to decline when Eon rises to his feet and stands behind his seat. He indicates to it with a quick motion of his head, and Aurora elects to accept it. He pushes the chair under her, before levitating the one she’d been in next to it.

Minette smiles, bringing out her first batch, “How is Nyxia?”

“She’s doing well,” he informs her. “She’s likely in a meeting herself.”

“Your mother isn’t usually doing business with other people, correct?”

Eon peruses the jewelry that she places out on the table. Picking up a silver-banded ring, a crimson gem laid in its intricate center, he says, “I suppose she isn’t. But she will occasionally meet up with someone. I think she had to discuss matters with the council on Mystacore.”

“No doubt causing a stir of some sort,” Aurora adds, slipping a white bracelet onto a delicate wrist.

Eon glances at her, “You would know how to do that, wouldn’t you?”

Aurora gives a demure grin, “Whatever do you mean?”

“Playing coy only works on the dim, Aurora," he tells her with a smirk. "But I don’t blame you for being outside of familiar company that you think it’d work on me.”

“Ha ha.”

Minette watches with curious fascination, beaming at them, “You two must be good friends.”

Aurora and Eon turn to her at the statement.

“Am I wrong?” Minette asks, unsure now.

Aurora gives an awkward smile, a little odd on her lips, “Oh, it’s not that! We’ve known one another for years.”

“For how long, if I may ask?”

“A long, long time,” Eon replies, trying on a bracelet as well, shining black. “My mother knows her aunt.”

“Ohh, I see! I wasn’t aware that you knew the royal family, Eon.”

“Not many do,” he answers.

“How do you know Eon?” Aurora returns the question to the other woman.

“He lived near me at Bright Moon,” Minette explains. “I was a resident of the complexes there.”

“Really?” Aurora asks, shocked. “Why did you move here?”

“I always liked to engage in the unusual,” Minette tells her. A happy smile grows on her face, “It was delightful having Eon move in next door. I had become acquainted with his family when they would visit, and they informed me that my designs might strike a chord with a different crowd too, so I decided to set up shop outside of Bright Moon. I’m going to live here permanently, but I’ll be keeping my place over there to be in touch with my family.”

“Oh, I see…”

Minette notes the slight change in Aurora’s disposition. She sets down a narrow container on the table, “Do not misunderstand, Your Highness! Eon and I had been neighbors for a good few years, and he talked to me about the changes occurring on Beast Island. It seemed like a good opportunity to try my business out here too and build a second location. I grew up in Bright Moon, of course, but a change of pace now and again doesn’t hurt, right? I love my home, but knowing that Beast Island had potential was exciting!”

Eon gives Aurora a brief glance, “Surely, you understand what she means.”

Aurora goes quiet, not wanting to look at him. The two enter a chit chat that doesn’t involve her, to which she finds relief. She doesn’t fully… understand Minette’s motivations. He, unfortunately, is correct. An overachiever herself, Aurora can comprehend pushing toward her goals. But her ties to her home are so valuable, that she can’t help but feel a little slighted that a subject of hers decided that it was better to live here, in an underdeveloped metropolis. She can’t disconnect that success is tied to her kingdom and all its facets. It figures that Eon would be capable of convincing someone that, an idea they’d never considered before, might be what they want. He was always good at that.

It has been… ages since they’ve been in each other’s presence. They don’t interact often, but when they do it can be rather... tense. Tense is how she describes her relationship with Eon. His personality is both sardonic and frigid, which can lead to frustrating discussions. He has been more than pleasant thus far—even with his tendency to argue with her. She attempts to be cordial when she can, but she finds his quips to cut to the quick bothersome.

Then he does things like hold out chairs for her, or open doors and allow her to enter first, and she’s a little confused how someone can hold her with contempt and yet high enough esteem to do favors.

Maddening is also how it can be expressed being around Eon.

Aurora’s curiosity rises when Minette pulls out another box, dark and smooth, with a simple crescent moon latch on the front.

“These are my latest earrings!” Minette says, opening it. An array of different sets are revealed, but Aurora’s eyes hone in on a simple pair: pink tear-drop shaped earrings, not looking like anything special, but they have a soft sheen to their color that’s appealing.

“Your Highness, you seem taken with these,” Minette pulls them out. “Would you care to try them on?”

“Oh! Um, yes, thank you,” Aurora holds them in her hands, delicately pinning each one through her earlobes. Minette places a mirror in front of her, and Aurora discovers that she not only finds them pleasing, but she’s enchanted by it. They dangle as she moves her head, and she smiles. Genuine and delighted. “These are beautiful.”

“Thank you!” Minette turns to Eon. “And what about you?”

Eon stares at Aurora, and he pulls himself out of his reverie before Aurora can turn to face him. He looks down at the velvety interior, checking the selection. He does find his eyes trained on a similar pair, but in lovely lavender rather than the rosy pink she chose, their diameter wider a bit at the tip before becoming more rounded at the bottom by comparison as well. He picks it up, staring at it for a moment.

“Try them on, try them on!” encourages Minette.

Eon does as she says, and he checks the mirror too. He gives a light chuckle, the side of his mouth tilting up, “You do know how to win a man over.”

Minette claps her hands excitedly, “Good! Do you two like them enough to get them?”

Aurora nods, beaming, “Yes, absolutely!”

“Yes, I definitely want them,” Eon begins. He reaches for his pocket, “How much is this, Minette?”

“Eon, you silly boy,” the older woman giggles. “Consider them a gift from me to the both of you, hm?”

Aurora waves a hand, “Oh, that’s sweet of you, but you should be paid for your work!”

Eon nods in agreement, taken aback, “It doesn’t feel right to have them handed over. I can pay for Aurora’s set as well.”

Aurora, a little flattered despite herself, coos, “Aww, really?”

“Yes, really,” he answers.

Minette wags a finger, “Ah-ah-ah! I won’t hear of it. It really is my way of saying thanks to Eon for helping out today and times past; and Your Highness, I’d be honored if you wore them!”

Grinning, Eon shrugs, reclining in his seat, “Well, who am I to turn down a free present?”

“Thank you very much, Minette,” Aurora says. She looks at the mirror again, enjoying herself for the first time today.

                                                            -

Glimmer stands next to Entrapta, looking over a couple of blueprints that the engineer created with a team of clones. The day has passed with little event, and Glimmer was glad about that. She addresses Entrapta, “How is Odessa, by the way? Will she be home soon?”

Entrapta nods, widening her smile, “Yes! She will be home in a month.”

“Ooh, that’s exciting!” Glimmer says. “I bet you’ve missed her.”

“I knooooow!” Entrapta flips in place through the air. “I told her if she found anything interesting to bring it back!”

“Where did she go again?”

“She went to visit our family in Inicos. It’s a long journey, but the return trip is much shorter.”

Glimmer nods, then glances at Hordak. She leans in, whispering, “Do you think Hordak is excited?”

Entrapta picks up the cue, and whispers back, “Yes! Hordak doesn’t show it, but he misses our baby too.”

“That’s so cute!” Glimmer says.

“I know!”

From where he stands, Hordak’s ears twitch a little, looking over his shoulder at the women. They simply wave at him, and he resumes conversation with Bow.

Glimmer turns her attention toward the darkening sky. It’ll be about time to head back to the castle. She’s been enjoying herself since she’s arrived. Even with all the experience she has now, she cannot help but feel unsettled when she’s in the palace for too long, and it has been an overdue time in regards to going out. Beast Island may not be what individuals think of for relaxation and enjoyment, but without all the technology trying to kill you, it’s fun. Bow can attest to that.

The sound of the elevator is familiar by now that none of them turn to it. But a moment later, Glimmer hears, “Hi, Mama!”

She looks over Entrapta’s shoulder, and she rises to greet her daughter, “Aurora! Hi, honey. Did you have a good time?”

The princess gives a delicate shrug of her shoulders, “I suppose.”

“Are those earrings?” Glimmer asks, pointing to her ears. “You didn’t have them on before.”

Aurora touches one, “Oh, yes! Do you like them?”

“I adore them! They’re such a compliment to your face—” begins Glimmer, when her eyes slide over to the left. She lets out a loud gasp, “Eon!”

Eon continues his strides, giving a salute with his hand, “Hello.”

Glimmer, despite being dwarfed by the younger man, teleports over the remaining four feet and crushes him to her. “Oh my gosh, how’ve you been?”

“Not broken,” he remarks.

“Oh, I know you’re fine!” Glimmer laughs, releasing him. She holds his wrists in her hands, appraising him. “By the moon, you’ve gotten tall.”

Eon brushes his hair from his face, grinning down at her, “Thank you, it’s genetics.”

Entrapta bounces over, giving him an affectionate pat on the back, “And your strict diet!”

“That too,” he agrees. “I’d kill to have a slice of cake.”

“Were you with Aurora just now?” Bow asks, walking over to them with Hordak.

“She accompanied me all day,” Eon informs the couples. “She performed good samaritan duties.”

Glimmer can’t help her astonishment. She looks at Aurora, “Really?”

“He happened to be walking by, that’s all,” Aurora explains. “He worked, I watched.”

Bow holds his daughter by the shoulder, pulling her to him, giving her a happy shake, “You learned a thing or two though, didn’t you?”

“Sure, Papa.”

Eon leans down to Glimmer, “You know, she actually got dirt on her.”

“For once, huh?” Glimmer jests back.

Flushing, Aurora crosses her arms, “Mama, please…”

Hordak turns to Bow, “Will you three be returning to Bright Moon now?”

Bow nods, “Since Aurora is here, and it’s getting late, we likely should.”

Glimmer turns to the clone family, “Would any of you be interested in coming back and having dinner? The cooks don’t mind that!”

Entrapta shakes her head, “As much as I’d like to ask for tiny food from your chefs, Hordak and I have a previous engagement to attend to, so we’ll have to say no!”

Hordak nods at them, “Perhaps another time.”

“Got it!” Glimmer says, looking up at Eon. “What about you? You can have that slice of cake with us!”

“I got something to finish up here, but thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Eon, please, it’s Glimmer!”

“Sorry, Glimmer.”

Bow adds, “You should come by the next time you’re around!”

“Thank you,” Eon says, glancing at Aurora. “I’ll consider it some time.”

After a few more pleasantries, Eon bids farewell first. Hordak and Entrapta accompany the family to the portal about halfway before they veer off to their own place.

Glimmer stares up at her husband, “This was a great outing, wasn’t it?”

Bow stretches his arms toward the sky, “You bet! It’s good to get out of the stuffy meetings now and then.”

Aurora purses her lips, “I think we could’ve gone home sooner.”

Glimmer looks at her daughter, “Didn’t you have fun with Eon?”

“I had as much fun as one could while watching someone do menial labor,” Aurora replies.

“It’s good to get out regardless,” Bow says.

“I did always like that boy,” Glimmer tells them.

Aurora sighs, not understanding how he can win her parents over. He can be charming, to be sure, and he surprised her today by how useful he was to others. Even thoughtful. But he doesn’t have anything else going for him. She finds it to be a lucky thing that he enjoys being distant from her too.

Today was a fluke.

After all, he is a clone’s son.

                                                             -

Entrapta holds Hordak to her chest, brushing his hair as he falls asleep, “Did you have fun earlier today?”

“In the house or with our friends?”

“Both!”

Hordak smiles at her. His fingers slide up to touch her face, “I did enjoy myself.”

Entrapta leans forward, kissing the bridge of his nose. She puts their foreheads together, “Are you sure you don’t want me to do anything?”

“You can return the favor to me later,” Hordak says. “I’m comfortable.”

Entrapta continues petting his scalp, finding that she is also in a cozy position, and maybe they will just have more fun tomorrow. She yawns, voice getting drowsy, “Are you happy Odessa is coming soon?”

“Yes, I am,” he replies. “There’s much to discuss with her.”

“There is…”

Hordak’s eyes drift to his wife’s collarbone. Breathing in the scent of her skin, Hordak pulls her closer. His thoughts begin to pick up in the quiet of the room. Churning. Once his mind finds something to think about, he can have as much a difficult time letting it be as Entrapta could. And their daughter was, for better or worse, the same.

He asks, with unusual hesitation, “Is Odessa keeping something from me? She has a strong wanderlust, and she enjoys visiting family but... she doesn’t feel like herself. When she left, it seemed as if she was unsure of how to approach me. That she didn’t want to inform me of any event she experienced. Am I imagining it?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Entrapta?”

The question receives light snores as a response.

Sighing, Hordak kisses the column of her throat before settling into her chest, unable to stop thinking of his dream from earlier. The sense of unease he has balled in his chest.

He is curious what this odyssey would entail for his daughter and her friends.

And he is worried what the outcome may be.

[glorious-spoon]

That Which Remains

Title: That Which Remains Fandom: The Old Guard [movie] Pairing: Nile/Andy pre-slash Warnings: none Other tags: broken bones; grief/mourning; immortality angst; scars Summary:

“This is what we get to keep. This, and each other.”

Or: Andy and Nile talk about scars and mothers and what remains.

ON AO3

*

When she’s nine years old, Nile breaks her arm for the first time.

It’ll be the first of countless broken bones, and injuries far more gruesome than that, but she won’t learn that for another twenty years. In that moment the pain is a sudden shock that jolts her so hard that for a moment she can’t even breathe. Jamal Henry, who was laughing in victorious glee a moment ago, spins around at the noise that leaves her when she hits the pavement, his eyes going wide. He lets the ball go to bounce off the side of the building as he scrambles to her.

“Nile? Nile, oh shit, Nile—somebody get her ma—”

Nile drags a breath in, then swings weakly at him as he falls to his knees next to her. Her knuckles glance off his shoulder; he doesn’t even seem to notice. There are footsteps in the distance, the other kids scurrying across the courtyard for her building.

“Don’t go thinking this means you won,” she says.

“That’s what you’re thinking about?” he asks incredulously. “Really, that’s it?”

She starts to lift her other arm, and a stab of blinding pain whites out her vision. On the heels of it is something else, though: a kind of warm pulling sensation that doesn’t hurt at all. Nile blinks through the tears clouding her vision, but then Jamal is helping her to sit up and telling her that she’ll be okay in a tone that sounds even more upset than Nile feels, and she’s too busy trying not to cry from the pain to think about it anymore.

It’s not until her mother comes storming out of their building like an avenging angel in yoga pants and a purple head wrap and gathers Nile up into her arms that she bursts into tears. By that point, somebody’s already running around to the back lot to get their car and her mom is petting her back and rocking her, and Nile nuzzles her wet snotty face into her shoulder for the familiar, comforting smell of menthol lites and drugstore perfume.

It’ll be years before she remembers the double-take that the ER doctor does at her X-ray. Years later, when ancient, unbreakable people are pulling her from the wreckage of a car and what used to be a man’s body, she’ll watch her joints re-align, broken bones repairing themselves with that same strange pull, she’ll wonder what the image showed.

At nine years old, though, she’s just happy with her bright blue cast and the way Jamal writes ‘SORRY’ in huge letters across the top. She’s happier two weeks later when the cast comes off and she’s able to dribble the ball neatly past him and into the goal three times in a row.

*

“Did we heal faster before?”

Andy lifts her head from the couch cushion, then pushes herself upright in a quick graceful motion. There’s no sign of pain, but that doesn’t mean anything. Nile was the one who helped her change the dressing earlier. She knows it’s got to be hurting like hell, but Andy doesn’t give anything away. “What?”

“Before we died the first time, I mean.” Nile gestures vaguely into the dim space of the apartment, which overlooks a pocket of green and a small concrete-lined brook in central London. Technically, it belongs to Nicky and Joe, but they’ve made themselves scarce today, and it’s just her and Andy here. Nile has been spending the time reading, and resting, and… just, coping, or trying to. Andy has mostly been sleeping. Eventually, it’ll probably feel stifling, but for now there’s a sense of timeless peace to the place that soothes her.

Nicky and Joe probably know that, too. Or Nicky does, at least. He’s the gentlest of them, in his way.

“Why do you ask?” Andy says.

“I don’t know,” Nile says, which is a lie that Andy calls her on with a silent, skeptical arch of her brow. Nile sighs. “Okay, I’m trying to distract myself. Copley called earlier. He said—he said that my mom was notified today.”

She’s trying very hard not to think about that. About her mom opening the door to the uniformed Marine, about her brother coming home from school to the news. It’s only now, at the point of it, that she can accept what a cruel thing it is that she’s done. And it doesn’t really help that she could catch a flight back to O’Hare tomorrow and walk up to the door of the apartment that she grew up in and tell her mom that it was all just a big mistake—

That would be even crueler, in the long run. But it’s very goddamn tempting right now.

“Oh,” Andy says, on a soft breath.

“So, yeah. Do we heal faster when we’re still, you know. Human?”

Andy snorts but doesn’t protest the wording. She looks past Nile for a moment, one of those strange distant looks that Nile is starting to recognize as Andy sifting through the layers of her impossibly long life, digging for memories. After a little while, though, she shakes her head. “I don’t remember anymore. You could ask Joe or Nicky, or—”

She breaks off before she can say ‘Booker’. Nile doesn’t acknowledge the slip. Of the four of them, Booker is maybe the only one who would remember for sure, but it’s not like asking him is exactly an option now.

“I broke my arm when I was nine. We were playing soccer outside my building, and my friend Jamal knocked me down—it was an accident. He’s a sweet guy. We dated for a hot minute in high school, before he figured out he was gay.” She doesn’t even know why she’s telling Andy this. Why she’s thinking about it at all, when it’s a life that’s been cut off as surely as if she’d died for real in Afghanistan. It feels like she’s mourning her own self. In a way, she guesses she is. “Doctor said I’d probably need physical therapy, which was not great since we were pretty broke, but… it healed. Couple of weeks later I was fine. It could have just been luck.”

“Or it could have been something else.”

“Yeah.”

Andy is silent for a while. Nile just watches her, her sharp profile drawn against the dusk coming in through the closed curtains, her strong shoulders and hands and the fall of her short dark hair. She’s in a sports bra and sweatpants that leave her torso bare, the dressing taped against her side where Booker’s bullet nearly did what millennia of warfare couldn’t and killed her for real.

Finally, she stretches her hands out, palms down, into the space over the coffee table that sits between them. “Here. This was from a fish-hook. This—” she waves one hand to gesture at the knuckles of the other. “This was hot grease from helping my mother at the cooking fires. I don’t remember how long it took to heal. But I remember that I cried.” There’s the brief flash of a smile. “I was very young. I cried, and she rocked me in her lap and sang to me. I don’t remember her face, but I remember that.”

“Oh,” Nile says, softly. It feels like the word has been punched out of her. She leans forward, and sure enough there’s a pale vee on one hand where she can imagine a fish hook digging in and tearing back through flesh and skin; on the other is a discolored mark across the knuckles. Mundane scars, the kind of childhood scars that anybody ends up with. That anybody’s mother might rock them in her lap and sing to them over.

“This is what we get to keep. This, and each other.” Andy looks up with a faint smile. “At least for a while.”

“Yeah,” Nile says softly. She feels like she might cry, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. “Yeah, okay.”

She runs her thumb over the old scatter of pockmarks where her elbow hit the hot pavement in a Chicago summer now decades gone. It’s proof of something. Proof, maybe, that she’s still real.

[aperfecttimeforscreaming]

AN EXCHANGE OF MEAT

Late valentines day ZADR drabble, extremely nsfw, takes place in the #izspacetrash universe NSFW 18+ Warning: Petplay, Zussy, Choking, Power play, Power theft, Over-stimulation, flirtatious bullying 

Back on Irk, coupling is illegal. It’s a big deal for humans because they can’t name a rock without forming an emotional attachment, for Irkens however, there’s no reason for the law to even be in place. As a species we have evolved past the need to interact with others. Every individual in the empire has the potential to be a sturdy, self sustaining island unto themselves. We’re built better than every sentient stain in all the known everything!! We have YET to encounter anything that even compares to our size and MIGHT. The last fertile cluster of Irkens died out a thousand decades ago. Every irken is cloned and easily replaced if not functioning at maximum capacity.

So, the desire to do more than indulge yourself is...low. There’s no reason to involve another irken in the matters of ones…..self congratulation.The practice of an EMOTIONAL and spiritual coupling fell out of favor long before we learned to control our natural impulses. 

If this is all true (and it is), how can I feel so much for the vicious neanderthal that calls me his? Dib was working on one of his drones as I sat in the dark pocket of the lower bunk bed, the bed itself built into the wall of a home on wheels. Dibs white rectangular fat assed Arr Vee was parked behind a dunky doughnuts so that we could stay out of the sightline of main roads and siphon power to recharge the vehicles battery. See, the outside of Dibs roaming home looks like any other shitty old caravan. In fact, it is more like Dib’s own mobile base. The battered shell outside the chrome and black and blue innards of the crisp sterile mobile lab are no more than a clever disguise. An infuriatingly smart trick. It’s a trick wrapped around stolen Irken technology and it’s to our collective benefit that everything stays hidden. It’s more comfortable being a prisoner, knowing that Dib has become secretive of his most prized belongings. Legs crossed, back pressed to the wall, chin in hand I was thinking my thoughts. 

My hand drifted down my neck to trace the soft top edge of the lined matte black metal collar locked around my neck. I felt at the difference in texture between the soft barely there fuzz on my skin and the smooth cool metal. It had been locked there for thirty one days, ten hours, six minuets and eleven seconds. It’s some fluke of nature that Dib is as smart as he is. At one point in my career as an invader I theorized that as  humans grew taller, their brain shrunk to make up for the increase in body mass. With Dibs lineage, this is less so. As an adult he is only more cunning, more dangerous, more cloyingly obsessive, more driven. He neglects his sleep to work. He works with the single minded diligence of an Irken researcher. His drive to excel in his field transcends the greasy smelly differences between our kinds. The efficiency he commands my own technology with rivals that of a practiced PAK technician. He’s studied the things I left behind on earth for 14 of his years, and it shows. With a single steady bare claw I traced the shape of the emblem embossed onto my collar tag. Dibs skull shaped symbol, displayed in shiny silver across the front of my neck at all times. An unnecessary humiliation that marks me as one of many stolen treasures. I feel its shape on the bare pad of my finger and silently kiss my teeth, stung by the reality that Dib thought of it first. If the world was just, if things made sense, things would have been flipped, things should have been different. If I really am the more advanced life form, I have no excuse for his subjugation. Thirty one days, ten hours, seven minutes and forty fucking seconds.

From my dark hideaway I could see him, hunched over his desk with the posture of a scoliosis king. A bright white desk light illuminates the front of him and reflects off the cobalt blue shine of his protective eyewear. The blue strips of emergency LED light that mark out the floor area catch the underside of his form, and stripe the wrinkles of his sloppy mechanics smock in toxic blue slivers. Through the gap in the curtains in front of him, I could make out a flickering yellow street light. Dibs sigh broke through the silence. He set down his tool and leaned back in his chair, away from the open shell of the drone he’d been repairing. I watched him drag a long fingered skeletal hand back through his greasy weird hair, and watched the unruly sprig of bone and black people fur spring back up as his hand passed it. “You’re quiet.” The human announced, obviously. Before he could twist the rotating chair around to face me I let my hand fall into my lap and folded both hands neatly together. “My brain is loud.” It needed no explanation, but Dib had demanded the cause. Slouched back in his chair, I watched him copy how I had my fingers folded into each other. His eyebrows arched high on his forehead and crinkled his sweaty brow. “You’re thinking? You’re capable of thought?” He’d lick his loathsome incisors and grin. “Damn, I’ll have to correct my notes. I thought the metal parasite on your back did all that for you.” “IT’S NOT A PARASITE! I TOLD YOU! It’s as ME as the rest of ME!” The corners of Dibs eyes crinkled with delight as he watched me retrace the fact. “MY PAK stores the thoughts of my brain jelly- it’s not responsible for my depthy, nuanced original thoughts. It’s all to my benefit. Your simple animal mind can’t BEGIN to perceive the archives of information, understanding and theorizing, locked away between my two magnificent thought centers.” On my knees at the side of the bed, I pointed to my skull, illustrating the thing Dib wished to understand but could never fully unravel. He reached up to peel the lenses of the goggles from the hollows of his eye sockets. As Dib deftly replaced them with the large circular frames of his glasses, he spat noise at me. “You’ve beaten that dead horse to a pulp, Zim. I don’t think your PAK is any different than a circuit board hardwired to the brain of a roach. You’re just as animal as I am. Only, your issues stem from being part evil cyborg, and mine stem from trauma.” Sunny as a blistering summers day, he grinned at me. Smugness radiates from him like pulsar blips, and my innards are assaulted by tight gripping trembles. I tense my core muscles to keep my tymbal from rattling at the slightest provocation. With my antenna pitched slightly forwards, I can smell the pheromones on his sweat. I crossed my arms over my chest, raised my chin, curled my lip at him to flash fangs. “Tch. Zim is no creature. You’re the animal here. You have the technology to advance yourselves into a race of space faring monstrosities, and yet all you want to occupy yourselves with is the pursuit of earthly pleasure. Your kind construct elaborate rituals just to try and rutt against each other. It could be so much simpler!!!” Dib scratched his chin, nonplussed. “Yeah, I never really got all that either. We do have dating apps and that can simplify things if you don’t account for catfishing, and people who straight up lie about themselves just to get their dick wet.” I grimaced at the mental image of a wet human phallus. I re-contextualized the image in my head and imagined the organ as Dibs. I bit the inside of my cheek. “Sooooo… what? As you get older you stop exchanging meats, and instead swap false personal information?” Dib laughed, quick and dry, brimming with unearned superiority. “Oh, fuck- what you mean like what we did back in grade school?” He sat up, leaned in closer to me. Elbows folded on his knees he hunched closer. I could smell his breath on my antenna. Coffee and sugar and bacteria filled my senses and the stalks flicked quickly backwards at the olfactory intrusion. “Yeah I don’t really know why we did that. I have a theory it’s all metaphorical, some kind of mind manipulation game the government was playing with kids to get them to associate “love” with “flesh”. I mean, you know what “meat” alludes to, right?” My face screwed up as I searched my brain for obvious answers. “MMHhn. HHHMN. Pain? Obviously, pain. Emotional...badness.Maybe hormone tampering. Disease?” Dib was already getting out his phone, snickering to himself as he does when he knows something I do not. I kept going. “Death? Blood? Salt? Disgust? The inevitability of the cycle of consumption? How you’re all doomed to be slaughtered by a greater predatory force?” “No. No- what?” He cocked an eyebrow as he looked back up at me. I wanted to rip the piercing out of it. “No. Shut up and look at these.” Dib held out his portable telephone slab to me and on it I saw a digital gallery of meat related memes. The phrase “beat my meat” was prevalent. There were photos of hammers pounding sickly off grey slabs of deceased pig muscle, and a man dusting a sprinkling of salt or spice over a carved rib of bovine corpse.

My head pulled back, giving me the appearance of multiple chins of disgust. My gut churned as I turned my head away. “Why would you show me those??! THEY’RE REVOLTING!!”  

Dib frowned, irritated, and put his phone away. “The “meat” those memes are talking about? It references human JUNK- y’know, genitalia? The memes aren’t talking about actual dead farm animals. And, that’s what I’m saying.” He put his large warm hand on my shoulder and continued, sure to hold my eye contact as he put the curl of his thick broad thumb against my cloth covered collar bone. I tensed my guts to keep my tymbal from rattling. “The government has skool children trade literal meat, so we get the idea early on that we’re supposed to exchange our "meat" with people we're attracted to. So that way, we learn to breed, and the men in power get more workers and soldiers and grease for the wheels of their self destructing machine.” My eyes flicked to look at his hand- the long pale olive fingers, the beaten fight scarred knuckles. My gaze then returned to Dibs humorless expression. “That’s a… problem?” Dib groaned, he rolled his eyes, he took his hand off my shoulder. 

It slid down to my hip, his free hand mirrored the motion  and I was lifted up from the bed and onto my humans lap. He held me there and growled at me in frustration. “YEAh! Zim! It’s a problem! If people are going to have sex it should be their own choice to do so, it isn’t something we should be culturally brainwashed into accepting! And we don’t NEED to do it! Some people are asexual- some people don’t want children and-” Dib rambled, on and on, laying out the injustices of an archaic capitalist system reliant on the breeding whims of its workers. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the argument was fueled by Dibs xenophilic leanings and revulsion towards his own kind. I gave less than a quarter of a shit about the very political tangent my human was going off on, but I did like how Dibs lap made for a nice sitting surface, and how the heat of his angry body felt against my skin. As Dib spoke I smoothed out the front of his damp black wife beater absentmindedly, my expression unmoved. As my hand rested in the center of Dibs chest, I patted him, I then mock pouted at him. “Poor Dib, how he’s been rejected by his own kind at every turn. How hard it must’ve been for you! Brainwashed into needing the fuck, harassed by the need for fuck with noooo options for how to obtain it!!”

That got him to glare at me, and my spine tingled for it. I grinned as he countered; “You’re missing the point.” And I kept going. “Addicted to the unknown feeling he can never hope to attain, his vile monster meat might have shriveled up without the wetness- like an unwatered flower! Like a rotting length of carrot! Like a bundle of seaweed on a beach, growing drier and nastier the longer it’s left alone, collecting nothing but mold and botfly eggs and-” Dib grabbed me by the throat. His hand closed around my throat. He gave a warning squeeze as he told me to shut up and I peeped in response. 

Lowly, my tymbal rattled. 

Dibs narrowed angry eyes softened as he caught the surprised chirp of arousal. 

The words on my tongue stalled at the tight curling of his long fingers as they overlapped my neck.

“Even if that was how things worked, I’m not at risk of that anymore, am I?” 

Dib looked at me with a gaze that implored an answer, and I shrugged coyly. As he frowned and squeezed harder I gagged, my stomach fluttered and a chirp rattled out of me far clearer than the first. 

"Mhhn. That's what I thought."

Dib hummed, his human purr was deep and infuriating. He used his free hand to shift my placement on his long thigh, so that I straddled his thigh as he choked me. My eyes began to water as he raised up his knee and gently bounced my vent against his leg. 

There is nothing playmates can do for eachother that a squidgyblit cannot also achieve the end goal of. However, being choked while your nemesis grinds your pleasure center against his leg hits differently. 

I moaned with a grimace. I scowled at him as he drew another choked out squirm from my body. Unpleasant as the sensation of constriction around my throat was, we both knew the short term strangulation wouldn't kill me. It was a comfortable routine and Dib continued his gloating games. 

"You think you can resist all this? You think you can resist the urge to get absolutely wrecked- by someone who's going to lovingly put all your pieces back together when he's done? You need me as bad as I need you, you fucking moron."

He’s wrong. I don’t need him. But, his games are so amusing, they’re so entertaining. It’s such a thrill to be obsessed over. If he ever knew that, it would all go to his head. As bad as he already was, there was ample room for things to get worse. Dib pressed his fingers up underneath my jaw and held my mouth shut. My growl came out as a choking sound, I tried to open my mouth wider and he put his free hand on my shoulder as a threat. “Shhh. You don’t need to talk right now. Why don’t you show me what you want?” I glared, I tried to hack out a rebuttal, but he didn’t want that. Pink heat spread across the skin of my face plate, I chirped and ground my slick vent slowly against the black jean fabric of his thigh.  In doing so, I inspired an unhinged smile to pull across his gaunt snout.

He released my throat and my posture bent, towards him as I gasped. My throat opened back up, and my PAK hummed softly as it began to replenish its oxygen reserves.

Dib patted my warm cheek with his hand. “That’s a good boy.” He mocked softly. I was well within my right to bite him. His hands settled on the bone of my hips, I watched his eyes pass over my head and point towards the bunk behind me. The curious gentle twitching of my antenna caught the heat of his words as they stood on end, and I lifted my chin to glare up at him. “Is that really what your brain was being so “loud” over? You’re still angry about our arrangement?” My lip twitched, it’s downwards arch could not have been more dramatic. “HOW could I not be mad about it? You know better than ANYONE what a powerful beacon of mayhem my existence is- that I can be controlled by someone as misshapen and weasley as you is a blistering amount of shame for Zim- full offense.” As I spoke his fingers laid over the small of my back, he rubbed along my tense lower spine and his gentle ministrations forced my aggressively postured antenna to lower. “Oh, full offense taken. But I know you’re happy about it. Deep down, somewhere in your cold blooded brain, there’s a tiny Zim just glowing over how it feels to be fully appreciated. You’re a hideously evil space terror, I can’t take that away from you by loving you. And I wouldn’t want to.” The heat in my face wouldn’t stop, the fluttering sickly feeling in my guts wouldn’t go away. Like knotted strings being unwound or spider web being gently tugged by a trapped fruit fly, the vibrations of his words unwound my nerves. I had to look away from him to speak, the weight of his useless human affection was too heavy to bare the brunt of head on. It was blasphemy that something a horny ugly alien said to me could mean more than the approval of any tallest. “MMMhhNNG. Stop making words.” I growled politely. Dib chuckled without malice, he curled in over me to press his lips to the crest of my skull. “You love serving me.” “Phheh. Zim loves nothing.” “You love what I’ve done to you, Zim. And I can prove it.” Dib lifted me up to move us onto the bunk bed, and bumped the front of his proportionally massive head against the shelf of the top bunk. “Fuck-ow,” “HAH!”

I reached up to hit the button on the bottom of the shelf, and the top bunk folded up against the wall behind it. As the mechanical components hissed, Dib rubbed his five head. “Yeah? That’s funny? You think your master getting brain damage is just hilarious don’t you?”

“If my “master” (I used my fingers to make mock air quotes) is dumb enough to turn his brain to garbage when we aren’t even under attack, he’s not showing mastery over anything, is he?” Dib dropped me out of his arms and onto the bed, I landed with a yelp of surprise though the impact came painlessly. “HEY!”

With his teeth clenched and his eyes narrowed Dibs hands flew over my body, grabbing and groping, pulling off boots and leggings, striping me of the new uniform I’d been given, replacing dark blue cloth with an expanse of green skin. There was ample evidence to suggest Dibs need was as urgent as my own, from his feverish actions to the telltale tenting at the front of his tight emo boy pants. He needed me. I gave a quick shiver twitch at the feeling of air on my exposed skin, and hissed at him. He pinned my chest down with one hand, and sneered at me as the other cupped over my pelvis. “Your standards are way too fucking high for someone who screws up constantly.” I grinned at him with challenging eyes as my legs folded up and opened. “Where would your challenge be if I lowered them, Dib?” His middle finger split the wet slit of my vent open. He traced the sensitive pink interior and I had no choice but to draw in an afflicted breath. The finger slid deeper, he brushed the base of my wriggling dwarf ovipositor, and the distraction sent my antenna fully back. “You, crave conquest.” I crooned, distracted. Sensations continued. I felt the shivers of pleasure in the back of my teeth, my tymbal rattled with quick twitching clicks each time his middle finger teased the inch length of my pink wiggly hot button. “You don’t know what I crave, Zim.” I cackled, light and airy and I gripped the blankets beside my face. I bit my lip and looked at him. His thumb slid into my slit and he gently pinched his fingers around my “dick”. I gasped sharply. I kicked out a heel as he pressed firmly enough to make me whine. I could not help how my eyes wanted to roll back into my skull at the continued friction, but I swear I caught the reddening of his cheeks before vision became meaningless. I do know. I chirped, I moaned, I rubbed my cheek into the soft blankets stained with floral detergent as the tingling feeling of goodness rolled from my loins up the rest of my body. I felt good, and I made it LOOK good. Dib likes to watch me writhe, and in return he  rubbed over and over, again and again he rubbed, till it seemed I was breaching a new level of tingly bliss with every passing second. “But, I know what you want, don’t I?” I groaned in disagreement, his fingers stalled on my sex, then his thumb rubbed small twitching strokes at it’s base. I trembled all over at the teasing agitation, and breathed out hard. “MHn, you’ve… got AN idea, of it.” Dibs motions were less practiced as he set out to release his tube steak from it’s denim cage, but he didn’t move his hand from the source of my sultry keening sounds. He wouldn’t, I had been so SO fucking good to him. Letting him work uninterrupted without a single complaint of boredom. I hadn’t tried to attack him in DAYS. It was a personal best record at the time. I was overdue for a reward.

“UHM, EXCUSE YOU??” Dib took his hand out of my vent and I sat bolt upright on my elbows, glaring at him in a sex flushed daze as I watched him inch the clothing down his nearly non-existent ass. “I WAS BUSY. Who said you could STOP?”

He pushed me back down, grabbed my leg and sharply fixed himself between my open thighs. “I’m not stopping, you know I’m not stopping you shrill shitty bedbug.” It spiraled into more routine. In the act of copulation I could always count on the sensation of his fingers sliding into my orifice to pull it’s tight walls steadily open. I could feel all the bumps and ridges, the rough calluses, the finger pad curling around my core and pulling delicious sensation from the thing inside me that made my guts twitch and tremble and rattle like a sack of angry crickets. It didn’t take much. I didn’t need long, and he wasn’t willing to hold off from indulging in the ambrosial clutch of a wanting Irken tunnel. I groaned as he withdrew three of his fingers from me, pulling with them a thin strand of pinkish slick that broke and collapsed over my cleft. I trembled, I hissed in disgust with myself as Dib aligned the head of his extraterrestrial shaft with it’s destination. As he looked down on me, he commanded. “Beg.” “What?” My head cocked, one antenna lifted while the other lowered, my hand reached up to wipe the pearling sweat from my brow. “Really???” He ground his length into the gooey mess he’d left my vent in, I grit my teeth as my tymbal rumbled. “Yeah. Really Zim.” “Mhgghh.” Eyes closed I tensed as the friction of dick on dick action swayed my compliance. “ Plleeeeeaaaase.” “Please what?~” I tried to scowl at Dibs goading, but his grinding made me bite my own tongue. “You have to say it, pet. I won’t give it to you unless you ask properly.” The nickname is a scorning stinging wound that burbles and pops like a pollution born wound, it feels like a hot sudden burn, it catches me the way his fingers do when they clamp around my most intimate points. In the most pathetic of tones and volumes, I answer my mate; “Please, please fill me with your cum, master Dib.” I was rewarded by a hand coming to stroke across my skull. He cradled the dome of my head and caught one of my antenna stalks between his fingers. With the same care he gave my cock, he gently strokes the black hairs to reward me. “Good boy. Good bug.” When the rutting commences sense tumbles out the window in a broken screeching fury, like an escaped chimp on meth, like a rat on fire making a break for water. I lose my fucking mind to the reactions of my body. The vehicle rocks under us with the power of Dibs mighty  thrusts.He fills me so deeply with his oversized ovipositor, I can feel his pulsing want bulging against the skin of my stomach at full hilt. When he finally spills in me I am so wound up that I have already hit my climax twice over. I snarl, I lean into him and the lips I have put to his salty skin part so I can taste his sweat on my tongue. My jaws open wider, and as Dib grunts, at the height of his peak, I bite hard enough to puncture his fragile skin on the edge of my teeth. The red taste of metal is smeared over my lips, on my tongue, over the pasty tan palette of his shoulder muscle. Dib hisses air in through his teeth. “You couldn’t- you couldn’t help yourself, could you?” His panting breath stalls his words, a red tinted smile spread across my fuck drunk face. I licked my lips as I replied, and watched a thin trail of human red meet up with the black fabric of his shirt and diffuse into it. 

“No, no I couldn’t.” I hummed back at him. In the state of high endorphine swing I am not fully myself. Everything was brighter, lighter, more exciting. A hazy happy drugged exisence takes hold of me and sways me to Dibs whims. As he pulls out of me, he sighs with a shivering buzz. “Then, you’re not done yet.” In a matter of minutes Dib is redressed while I remain naked, wrists and ankles shackled to the four rectangular points of the bunk via metal shackles that the walls of the Arr Vee spat out. I was only just beginning to come out of my fogy mental state when my human retrieved a black blunt vibration wand from a drawer of tormenting devices. Over the following hour I grew more and more delirious as Dib wrung my body out for increasingly mind crushing orgasms. Things stopped having meaning, Dibs taunting words lost their sense, and I rattled straight through to my bones. That I could not pull my limbs in towards myself and protect my body from the assault of sensation had at one point been disquieting, but then and there, it encouraged me to let go of my resistance. I had let go of my fruitless delusions, I had given myself up to Dib, and Dib did not stop till I was crying with the intensity of multiple peaks.

It made up for everything else that had happened. The blinding beacon of his smothering affections absorbed me in it’s garish embrace as he unshackled me from the walls. He cleaned me, he held me in a folded blanket  till the shaking of my overwhelmed body stopped. My prickly insults bounced off him like harmless pebbles of sand.  The Dib stroked over my antenna, groomed them with the sex scented oils of his fingers, the Arr Vee reaked of the smell of our sins. Accepting Dibs terms of affection is illegal, but I’m defective anyways, aren’t I?

[iristhepladsen]

Trust is a Two-Way Road Pt. 1

Pairing: The Mandalorian x OC

Read Last Part here, Next part here

Summary:

In which the Mandalorian and Xola learn that trust is not granted, but earned.

Warnings: None

A/N: This is now the exploration of the thing we all find the most difficult in our relations. Whether you have known them three days of three decades, trust does not come easily to the best of us. Especially to those whose literal job is not trusting a soul, and the other betrayed one too many times. I am going to enjoy unfurling this important facet of a relationship, please stay tuned!

It was friendlier than any place that Xola had been in a long, long time. Although there were kind words and soft interactions, the compound lifestyle had not exactly been the easiest of places. Her position as a translator of the Jawa dialect had allowed her the luxury of hot water allowance, vegetables, and the occasional fruit instead of constantly eating freeze-dried rations, but this was different. A hot broth with a sharp yet deliciously spiced drink. A friendly waitress with easy-going chatter surrounding her.

"I...can pay you back." She offered.

"No thank you."

"I don't like to be indebted, Mandalorian." Taking another sip of the thin broth, she rubbed her neck. "Just give me time to think of how I might be able to."

"I understand."

There was not much to interact with. She understood, she did. It was as new to him as it was for her. 

 From their interactions, it was glaringly obvious that he had not spent much time with people. She was curious if he had friends within his clan. People he had met here and there that he befriended. Were there lovers amongst his acquaintance?

"The broth. How is it?"

Shaken from her thoughts, she nodded. 

"It's very nice. I'd offer you some but..." Huffing an uncomfortable laugh, she motioned vaguely in his direction. "I hope that you're finding times to look after yourself, even when I am...here."

"I do." Pausing, she felt a tension rise in the air. "Stay here." 

"What?" 

Hearing his chair scrape, his shadow had fled.

"Mandalorian?"

Looking amongst the shapes and hues of brown and grey, she could not make out his shape.

He had said stay. But, could she? What if the Mandalorian was leaving her on the planet with no means? 

"No...I trust him." Xola whispered.

But, she didn't. She didn't trust him. She didn't trust anyone in particular.

Rising, she made her way to the brightest light source, indicating the presence of an exit. Breath rising and falling, she looked around, ears straining for the sound of the engines of The Crest.

Hearing a warrior's yell, she ran in that direction. What happened?

"No, stop!! Stop!" 

Feeling a weapon push into her neck, Xola stepped back.

"What are you doing?" Xola snapped. "Stop!"

"Could ask you two the same." Hearing a woman reply haughtily as Xola's hands raised slowly.

"You don't need to do that," Cara sighed. "I won't hurt you. Or him."

"You want soup?" The Mandalorian offered hesitantly.

"Yeah."

As they walked back, he guided Xola in the right direction with a touch between her shoulder blades.

"Why didn't you stay?"

Because I was afraid you were about to leave me behind, never to return.

"I was worried for you." She lied. "I'm glad you're alright, however. Who is she?"

"A former soldier."

After they resettled down, Xola relieved that her food had not been cleared away yet, Cara put her drink down with a firm clink. 

"How'd you get here?"

"Just laying low. Ex-shock trooper, getting into things here and there...look, you're a bounty hunter. Thought you had a fob on me, that's why I fought you."

"I get it." He replied with a nod.

"So...why're you two here?"

"Laying low."

"Unless you want to go another round, you'll have to lay low somewhere else. One of us is going to move on, and I was here first." Finishing her drink, Cara made her exit.

 No longer hungry, Xola took a tentative sip of the lukewarm broth before rising.

"Well...planets taken." The Mandalorian replied.

Feeling along the floor with her foot, she made her way to the brightest light in the room. Hearing the Mandalorian walking behind her, she felt disappointment settle in hard. 

"Where are we in the galactic system?"

"Sorgan is on the southern outer rim." 

Eyes downcast, her hand absentmindedly drifted to where her cloak once rested. This was the only quiet planet in the area. Could they risk traveling to a place with a higher population density? 

"We'll leave at dawn, but first, I need to make a repair on the Crest."

"Can I help?"

"Sure."

Switching on the power light, he removed part of the outer grating.

"What does the sky look like right now?" Xola asked, holding out the wrench for him.

"Dark, cloudy."

"The sun must set fast here then." Xola replied, crouching on the ground.

"Another medium bolt?" Freezing, she sat up slowly.

In the distance, was the sound of a machine of some sort. 

"They're okay. Don't worry." 

***

"And so...we will be going to 'nowhere', to deal with some local bullies." 

"Pretty much. Stay, and get some things. Find the first aid, the blanket, and the yellow-no, the heavier rectangle like box that is right next to the hangar door. We're leaving as soon as I get back."

"Okay. And, where are you going?" Xola called out to his disappearing voice.

"To get a friend."

Walking up the hangar, she knelt to the ground, feeling for the rectangle box. There was a lever, a leather-like sack...feeling the cold and metallic box, she picked it up, accidentally hitting her head against the corner of the hangar.

"Damn!" She hissed, rubbing her forehead.

"You alright lady?" One of the men cautiously called out.

"Yeah, yeah. Just...load that, will you?" 

After a considerable amount of time, the items were all successfully located and on the cart.

Sitting, she waited for the rest of the company. Once the cart dipped temporarily in weight, she knew it was time to go.

As the cart began its slow and steady space, she stared out into the dingy air. 

"...It's nothing an ex-shock trooper can't handle." The Mandalorian was saying.

"Or a Mandalorian. And, what are you?" Cara asked, jerking her head at Xola.

"A...I worked on the warships."

"Which side?"

Should she say? It was hard to know who stood where these days. 

"The New Republic."

"...We all end up the same, don't we? Some New Republic this is turning out to be." Cara remarked, bitterness lining her voice.

"We all do the best that we can do," Xola responded. 

"And sometimes, our best just isn't good enough." Cara yawned, stretching out.

Tell me about it. Xola silently agreed. 

Had I just made it to that escape pod...would I even be in this mess?

Feeling the Mandalorian's eyes sharply on her, she absentmindedly wiped the sweat at the back of her neck with her hand. 

"Anything on your mind?" Xola found herself asking him.

"I..." Faltering, he shifted down. "Is your head okay?"

"Hm? Yes, it's fine. Is there a bump?"

"Yeah. But if you're not hurting too much..." Fingers ghosting on her temple, they returned promptly to the Mandalorian's side.

"Better settle in. It's a long ride."

"Mhm." Xola hummed in reply. 

Whatever he wanted to say, wasn't going to be vocalized. It seemed that he'd never say what he really thought of anything. 

Feeling a tired irritation, Xola leaned into a corner of the cart, grimacing at the splinters pressing into her tailbone.

Closing her eyes, she imagined herself in the compound. The sound of echoing metal, the familiarity of every cough, cry, and snarky Jawa tongue that passed through those corridors. The ease of moving from room to room within the metallic walls. Five years in one place would grant the steady rhythm of a safe lifestyle, albeit a boring one. The coming and going of the refugees, feeling that she was the only permanent resident. Only to be ripped away. Registering a thin blanket of some sort being draped across her legs and stomach, she squirmed further into the cart, trying miserably to ignore the sound of the low murmurs of the men above her.

"You think they can pull it off?"

"It's a Mandalorian and a veteran. If they can't...well...we got no choice, now do we?" 

The next thing Xola knew, the Mandalorian was shaking her shoulder.

"Wake up."

Breathing in the warm and humid air and the feeling of the soft morning sun kissing her eyelashes, the sound of children laughing, and the sloshing of water, Xola's feet cautiously sank into the moist earth.

"I brought them!" The villager shouted.

Crowding the three, the chattering grew to a near frenzy as the anxious inhabitants eyed the trio, dubious wonder filling their features.

"You must be exhausted," A woman broke in, hand resting on Xola's shoulder. "Come this way."

Letting herself be led, the woman who introduced herself as Omera showed them to a small barn.

"We don't get many visitors...I'm sorry, but this is all we can offer for you two."

"You're most generous. Thank you." The Mandalorian said, looking around.

"Blankets are over there, and a washbasin at the door." 

"Thank you." Xola said, smiling in her direction.

Hearing her footsteps walk away, she picked up the soft and old smelling blankets, folding it out to be a bed.

"It's been a long few days. You should get more rest." The Mandalorian said, forming his bed across the room.

"No...if it's alright, I want to walk around. I feel that I haven't walked around for a long time."

"Your nasal bone is broken, and...you..."

"Trust me. A walk will do me better than a nap ever could."

"There...there are a lot of ponds. You'll fall in."

"Not if someone is there to guide me. Or, if I had a stick of some sort." 

"I can't guide you now. But...soon."

"Alright." 

After an hour or so, the Mandalorian frowned. Someone was watching. Blaster at the ready, he whirled, producing a panicked cry from a young girl. Seeing the child, his shoulders relaxed, the blaster slowly landing at his side.

"This is my daughter, Winta." Omera warmly interjected, placing her hands on her child's shoulders.

"This nice man is going to get rid of the bad men. We'll be safe." Omera murmured comfortingly to her daughter. 

"Nice to meet you." Xola said, the Mandalorian giving her a nod. 

Glancing nervously at them, Winta clenched her mother's skirts as her voice began in a soft whisper.

"Sir, I wanted to know if I could show that...I don't know your name, I'm sorry. But I want to show 'her' the village. We'll stay in the village, won't go into the forest, I swear it. Can I show her around?"

"I don't think-"

"It'd be wonderful," Xola interjected. "Please do."

"Um, I-don't think..."

Turning his direction, Xola smiled. 

"I'll be fine. I will see you shortly."

Hand raised reluctantly, the Mandalorian craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Xola and the girl scampering out, a nervous yet delighted grin on the child's face.

"She'll be fine. Don't worry." Omera assured him. "We take good care of people here." 

***

It felt liberating, in a way, being seperate from the Mandalorian. Some people hated humidity, the way it made their hair puff up, the fabric clenching onto the small of the back, the near suffocating weight of moisture in the air. To Xola, it was as welcome as the first warmth that springtime brings. From the cold and recycled ship air, and the dry emptiness of the compound, the vitality of the humidness was welcome.

Cooking over the fire, Xola was delighted to hear that the fish were, in fact, a cornflower and turquoise color. 

From sun up to sundown, the villagers would approach Xola and Winta for an inquisitive glance or remark. 

After spending what seemed hours in the village baths, Omera joined the townswomen.

"The time!" She called out. 

"Girls, get dried off and go home, I know there were some mothers and fathers looking for you!" Scampering off, the girls all whispered their goodbyes, leaving the women to enjoy the serene stillness in the bath.

"Xola, are you doing alright today?" Omera spoke up.

"Yes." Eyes crinkling, Xola ran her hand across the water's gentle surface. "It's a lovely place. And a shame that it's being seized."

A tension resonated within the house as the recent events remained an open gash in their hearts. When it had been silent for some time, Omera sighed, piling her long hair atop her head. 

"Well, it is our home, and beautiful. Anything that is of value in this galaxy must be protected and cherished. And by your 'friends' being here...we are in great debt to you all." 

"We will help in any way we can." Xola found herself promising. Frowning, she pulled herself out of the stone tub.

"What time is it?"

"The sunset nearly two hours ago." Someone mentioned, mirth in their voice.

"I had better retire. Thank you all!"

"Oh, do you need someone to help you get back?" Omera asked, beginning to rise.

"No, no! I know the way. Enjoy your time, and thank you!"

Hastily dressing, she squeezed the water out of her hair as she was introduced into the cold and humid air. Shivering, she rubbed her arms as she felt her way along the walls. How did the cold come so quickly? 

Knocking cautiously on the barn door, she felt for the glass and threaded beads on the gate, affirming that she had reached the correct residence. 

"Mandalorian...?" Cautiously poking her head in, she awaited confirmation. 

In the nighttime, shadows, shapes, or any light was impossible. Just the empty and still ebony of night.  

"I'm here." Hearing his voice on the opposite side, she walked in his direction. "Enjoy yourself?"

"Yeah. Very much. And you?"

"Yeah."

At the irony in his tone, she raised an eyebrow slightly.

"Work cut out for you?"

"In a matter of speaking."

"Then, you should try and rest, Mandalorian." 

Hearing the slight clinking of Beskar, she sensed anxiety over this idea coursing through his spine. 

"If you're worried, I will listen for the sounds of an ambush, so you can sleep. You need to. I mean, I am assuming you're human of some sort? But, maybe you can't tell me that."

She assumed he was human, but one could never really tell by appearances, making her least qualified to confirm this.  

"Tomorrow, I will be gone for a long time." He said, the sound of footsteps approaching her. Feeling a crude wooden stick being pressed into her palms, she leaned back instinctively. "You'll need this."

"A rod?" She queried, rising. 

"Try it out."

Holding it out, she noticed he had shaped the length for her height, even the weight. Locating the wicker chair, the door frame, and even his calf, she felt a relieved sigh escape her. She hadn't realized just how much she had missed this assistance.

"Thank you..."

Xola had known he watched her struggle, even more so with the loss of her rod. But, making her one so she might be free to wander on her own. It was a kind notion. 

"Now I can have something sturdy to beat people with, if the need arises," Xola said dryly, giving it a light pat.

Hearing a huff under the modulator, she tilted her head at him. 

"Was that a cough or a chuckle?"

"Your guess."

Hearing rustling, she knew he was under the covers.

Finding her way to her bed, she lay the staff on the floor, slipping underneath the soft bedding. Tucking the blanket under her chin, she stared out into the darkness, not even shadows or colors present. 

Settling, Xola felt excitement buzz from her toes to her hair as she held the staff feeling the weight of it press down.

"Do you sleep every night with the helmet on?"

"Not usually."

"Isn't it uncomfortable?"

"Yes."

"Then...why don't you take it off?"

"I can't."

"I've heard a bit about Mandalorians. Here and there. But...I don't understand."

"We are one. One face. Anonymity is a crucial aspect of Mandalore. This is the Way."

"I can't see you. At all. All I know is your armor is some sort of brown color."

"It's silver."

"Oh. Well...point taken. I can't see. I am sure it'd be fine."

Hearing him sigh tiredly, Xola chagrined. She was keeping him from blessed rest. 

"I'm looking at the wall."

"No. Other way."

Turning she reached out, fingers brushing the old wood walls.

"I'm about to sleep. So after I am...why don't you take it off? You might get an awful crick in your neck if you keep it on even when you're sleeping."

"Goodnight." Was all she got.

"Goodnight."

Pulling the blankets over her head, she felt a gentle breeze brush through the room.

"If you covered the door and that small window in the barn, if you slept like that, it wouldn't be as risky!"

"Xola-" He began, irritation fighting its way into his tone.

"-I know, no more, good luck tomorrow, wishing you the best, goodnight!"

"Goodnight, Xola." He retorted, a slight exasperation in his tone.

"Goodnight."

Fighting the strange urge to chuckle, she felt the weight of sleep press down lightly on her thin eyelids, the gentle rustling of the bed covers across the room lulling her into a dreamless sleep. 

Tag List: 

@tr1na

@kaelyn-lobrutto24​

@sinon36​

@angelcvsmic​

@the-3rd-percent​

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(Let me know if you want to be tagged, or if I missed your request!)

[timebird84]

🎄 PotO Advent Calendar ‘19 🎄

The Christmas Rose

by @a-partofthenarrative​

"Papa!

The small, shrill voice startled him out of his focus and Erik lay aside his quill with a defeated sigh. “In here, ange.” A curly brown head and two sparkling eyes appeared in the doorway of the music room and the Opera Ghost suppressed a smile. “Shouldn’t you be in bed, Ariane?”

Those eyes blinked up at him as she drew closer, chewing thoughtfully on a lower lip. “Maman said I could have a bedtime story first.”

“Ah, did she now?” Erik straightened the pages of sheet music on the piano before leaning down so he met this new gaze at eye-level. “And does Maman plan to deliver on this particular request?”

A fierce shake of her head sent brown curls flying. “She said you would tell me one because your’re more dramatic.”

“Is that so?” he replied with a touch of wry humor. When he received another affirming nod, he could not stop the affectionate chuckle that fell from his lips. “Well, then I suppose I don't have any choice in the matter, now do I?”

HIs daughter only shrugged, studied him for a moment and then flounced from the room. Erik watched her go, then rose from the bench, ignoring the protesting creak and snap of his bones. He spotted his target as she rounded the corner into her own bedroom and followed suit, entering the small space as she hoisted herself onto the bed.

She met his gaze with a grin as he took a seat beside her, toeing off his shoes before stretching long legs out before him and his heart threatened to burst as it did every time she snuggled trustingly into his side. “Comfortable, ma belle?” When she nodded, he settled himself against her enormous stack of pillows- a habit encouraged by her mother, no doubt - and asked, “Very well then. Which type of story will suit your flight of fancy tonight?

Ariane looked thoughtful for a moment. "A romantic story." she said dreamily

Behind the mask, Erik arched a brow. "A romance?"

She nodded eagerly. "Yes Papa! A romantic story!"

His knowledge of those stories appropriate for a five year old was severely limited. "Alright. What would you like me to tell you? Cinderella, perhaps? Or would you prefer to hear Sleeping Beauty once more." HIs mind raced as he attempted to take inventory of other stories he had told her in the past.

Ariane shook her small head vigorously, ace scrunched in distaste. "Not those stories. A romantic Christmas story!"

"A Christmas romance on Christmas Eve. How unoriginal." Erik grumbled, but nonetheless pondered her request for a moment before a sly smile spread across his features. "Ah, but then I think I know just the story."

Ariane’s smile was brilliant. "What is the story about, Papa?" she asked as she yawned, but quickly covered it with her hand, hoping her father wouldn't see it. “Is there a princess?”

He had, but pretended not to notice. "No princesses, Aria. But there is an Angel," he began. "Now, this is a story passed on to me by a very reliable source. I say that because in all of my life, I have found very few of them. Therefore they few that I do meet, I trust with my very life. They have told me that this is a true story, full of magic and surprise, much like the fairy tales you love so much.” Pausing for dramatic (ha!) effect (Far be it from him to disappoint the girl, after all), he finished with a theatrical wave of his hand. “The story of The Christmas Rose"

"Tell it to me!." She gazed up at him with rapt attention in those deep amber eyes, so much another pair he adored.

He chuckled. "I am about to, my love." Mollified for the moment, Ariane relaxed against him as he closed his eyes. "Let me see now. How do most of your stories begin? Oh, yes. 'Once upon a time…'"

….......................

Once upon a time there lived a Man. This was no ordinary man, mind you. No, this man was an outcast upon the people. Abandoned at an early age, he had been forced to fend for himself, stealing when necessary for the sole need of survival. As he grew, he had been many places and seen many things, yet longed for the one thing that would make his life whole. The only thing he ever wanted or cared for in his life. He wanted to love and be loved in returned.

Hardly a request to yearn over, you say. Surely it was fulfilled with no remorse, you think. You are wrong. No one, not even the Man's own mother had ever shown him one shred of affection. Because of this, the many marvelous things he saw and experienced held nothing for him, for he had no one in which to share their beauty. 

Therefore, the Man became a recluse. He made his home where no soul would ever dare to look. He went without human contact for many years, relying on one person alone to maintain his knowledge of the outside world. In many ways, she became his mother and only friend and although he would never admit it to a living soul, he came to trust her implicitly."

……………..

"Pa-pa?"

A new voice caused both sets of eyes to fly open as a third member of the party toddled into the bedroom, pausing by the bed to pierce each of them with her best attempt at Erik’s menacing glare. “I wanna story too!”.

Ariane huffed while her father simply chuckled. “My humblest apologies, Sabine, ma fleur. How very foolish of me to begin without you.”

“Maybe I want to be a flower too.” Ariane huffed from his left side.

“Ah, but you are both the most exquisite of blossoms,” Erik soothed, lifting his younger daughter to join them. “And as there is plenty of room in the garden for a multitude of blossoms, there is also room for both of you at my side.”

Ariane blinked up at him as Sabine settled herself happily between Eriks knees. “She’s in your lap, Papa,” she deadpanned.

“All the same, my darlings,” he replied. “Now, as I was saying…”

……………………………..

Years went by. Many things changed, yet the Man's life remained exactly as before. Until one day, that is. 

 One day, something happened that would change his life forever, both for the good and the bad; Something that he would never forget.

The Man fell in love.

How could that possibly be bad, you ask? I will tell you. The Man did not fall in love with just anyone. He fell in love with an Angel with a heavenly voice. The Man trained her voice, becoming her teacher and eventually her friend. Their relationship continued for some time, the Angel never knowing the depth of the Man's love for her. Perhaps it was his own mistake that he never told her, but as time went on, she found herself in the company of a handsome Prince.

The handsome Prince was fine indeed, blessed with wealth, beauty and influence. The son of a nobleman, he held the world at his beck and call. Surely he was perfect, much to the ire of the Man. The Prince was everything the Man was not and he was certain he could feel his Angel slipping away.. As such, the Man realized time was running out. 

Mustering all of his courage, he brought her to his home once more, where they had spent countless hours lost together in their world of music, he made his feelings known to her at last.

The Angel knew she had a choice to make. She held the hearts of two men in her hands. One she would take for herself, the other she would crush forever. Should she choose her handsome Price and live in luxury all her life? Or should she choose the Man, her teacher and friend who had given her his greatest gift he had to give? Oh, how she agonized over the choice, but she knew it had to be made and finally, it was.

She chose her handsome Prince.

…...........................................................

“I don’t like this story.”

Erik glanced down only to be met with Ariane’s disapproving frown. “That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”

When she only shrugged, he shifted attention to his youngest. “And you, Sabine? Will you also pass judgement so quickly?” 

Gemstone eyes under a mop of black curls in his lap tipped up to look at him, then found the sour face of her elder sister, sealing her opinion in the like. “No good, Papa,” was her solemn reply.

“Perhaps the both of you have a few too many of my genes” he muttered, sotto voce before forcing the brightness back into his voice. “What if I were to tell you that this is only the beginning?”

Ariane ached a brow. “Then there is a happy ending?”

“I’ve yet to find a Christmas romance that did end that way.”

She waved a careless hand, a gesture that should be well beyond her half-decade of life. “Then keep going. I trust you, Papa.”

Erik pressed his lips together, just for a moment. “As you wish.”

…...................................................

Needless to say, the Man's heart was broken beyond repair. The one chance in his life he had ever found to love and be loved had been ripped from his hands and with it, his hopes destroyed. Unable to stand the thought or sight of the Angel with her Prince, he left the country at the first available opportunity and went as far as he was able in order to forget any shred of hope he may have once had.

As is its way, time passed. The Man, unable to stay in one place for very long, had spent that time moving from place to place, finally beginning to heal from his emotional wounds. He still loathed human contact of any time, unable to trust anyone after what had happened. After months of aimless wandering, he finally returned to the country where he had spent most of his life and was shocked at what he found upon his arrival.

A new scandal had arisen- the talk of the town, if you will..The Angel had left her Prince! Some said his family drove her away. Others said she was in love with a ghost. Still others said she had led him on from the beginning. The rumors were everywhere. For a split second, hope sparked somewhere in the depths of the Man’s icy soul. Could he have a second chance at what he had longed for all of his life? Could he risk his heart again? The questions hounded him as he walked through the streets.

Upon reflecting on his past, the Man decided against it. He had been burned before; he would not be burned again. He shut himself away just as he had in the early part of his life, not that he was old now. He turned away anyone who attempted to see him, including the Woman, his sole friend who had been his contact to the outside world. His heart could not take another rejection. He would surely die if it were to happen once more and it was not a risk he was willing to take.

….................................................

“...Are you absolutely sure it gets better?” Ariane’s tone indicated she was not holding out much hope for her promised happy ending and even Sabine looked doubtful as she peered up at him.

“Trust me, bel anges” he murmured, working very hard to suppress the smile that seemed almost second nature these days. “Have I ever disappointed you before?”

Ariane tossed another doubtful glance at her sister, but blinked up at him expectantly. Erik sighed, knowing that was as much of an answer that he was going to receive and continued...

…............................................................

The Man had a visitor one day. It was the Woman who had been his only friend the majority of his life. At first, he would not allow her entrance to his home, but she stood her ground, threatening to bodily break in if necessary. Not wanting to be responsible for the injury of an old woman, he finally relented and allowed her to enter.

She seated herself in his parlor and asked him where he had been all of those months. He did not reply, but she was not swayed. You see, this Woman had the ace in the proverbial card game. She was also like a mother to the Angel. The girl had been orphaned at an early age and the Woman and her daughter had taken her into their lives and now, their home. The Woman smiled at the Man and invited for Christmas Day as it was the next day and he had no where to be.

At first the Man balked at her invitation, flatly refusing any and all offer of hospitality. The Woman let him rant and sulk, staring at him with pursed lips and calculating eyes. It was only when he fell silent that she seized the opportunity to play her ace.  She proceeded in inform him that the Angel would also be present for the holiday festivities. Again the Man refused, knowing that the sight of her would only deepen the pain in his heart that he had dedicated his life to forgetting. To see her again would be his undoing. 

Once again, Woman listened quietly before giving her reply. Once he had finished, she took the opportunity to verbally thrash him within an inch of his life. She told him of the Angel. How she thought that the Man was dead, how she had only ever really loved him; that being the reason she could not bring herself to marry the Prince. 

The Man had not weakened. If she had truly loved him, why did she choose the Prince? The woman was quiet for a moment. She then answered that the Angel had been horribly confused in her situation. A heart cannot be forced to choose, nevermind choosing wisely in the short amount of time that she had been given.

With a glare, the Woman stood, ready to take her leave, but advised him at this point in the road, he had two choices. He could put his foolish pride on the shelf and take a chance of love again or he could feel sorry for himself, stay put and rot away with no one to share his life with. The choice was his and his alone. 

He sat in silence as the Woman brushed past him and left his house without a word. Her words had left him speechless. Had she truly cried when she thought him dead? She loved him enough to leave the prince, even with him supposedly dead? He knew he had to make a choice. He wanted to be with her, yes, but he was a proud man. Not someone to easily admit his mistakes.

And yet...

With a resigned sigh, his choice was made. To hell with his stubborn pride. All that mattered now was getting to the Angel. 

Bursting from his chair, the Man made his way to the desk. Sitting down once more, he took out a piece of paper and penned a letter to the angel. Securing his cloak, he made his way to the Woman's house and sought out the Angel's room. It was late at night and he knew she would be sleeping. Very quietly, he snuck into her room and placed the letter and a snow-white rose on the vanity and took his leave.

…………….

“Papa, down!” Sabine’s slaps to his thighs broke the spell. “Milk!”

“You want milk?” Erik clarified as her small head bobbed vigorously. “Very well. Let me just..”

“No, Papa” She stopped him with another light slap to his leg. “I get. Be right back”

“Oh…” He watched, stupefied as she carefully slid out from between his legs, off of the bed and scampered down to the kitchen. 

At his side, Arine let out an impatient groan. “She always has to run off during the good parts!”

“I’m sure she’ll return in no time,” he placated, taking the opportunity to squeeze his oldest a bit tighter. “But it is good to see I’ve managed to win you over, hmmm? Ah, here she is now.”

“Hurry up, Saby,” Arine whined, but took the cup so her sister could settle herself again. With the younger girl sipping contentedly and the older nearly bursting with anticipation, Erik allowed himself a knowing smile as he brought his story to its conclusion.

………………...

The next morning, the Angel awoke. She was not very cheerful, as it was Christmas, yet she had no reason to celebrate. She stretched and her gaze fell on her vanity, where she saw what the man had placed there the night before. She leapt from the bed, ran to the vanity and carefully picked up the rose. She breathed in its scent, closing her eyes to savor its sweetness. The Angel then picked up the letter, searching and scanning every line for his words until she saw his instructions directing her to the parlor.

Quickly throwing on a robe, she flew down the stairs and into said parlor where Woman and her daughter sat, their faces bright with conspiratorial smiles. The Angel blinked, perplexed. She knew the handwriting of the letter, yet saw no one else in the room. Her eyes flicked around the space for a moment before questioning the woman as to the purpose of the letter. The woman did not answer didn't answer, only handed the Angel another letter bearing the same seal.

The Angel quickly tore open the second missive, eyes moving furiously over the parchment. This one instructed her to go into the garden. Not even thinking to change out of her nightclothes, the Angel threw on boots and an overcoat and hurried as fast as her legs would carry her. She reached the garden, panting heavily from the run. Glancing around frantically for any sign, her gaze finally settled on the willow tree at the far end of the yard.

Under the tree stood the Man, waiting patiently for the Angel- his Angel- to take notice to him. The Angel's face broke into a large smile as she raced to the Man, launching herself into his embrace. To a casual observer, it was quite a contrast: she in her nightgown, he in the finest of evening wear, yet neither cared. 

The Man gently set the Angel back on her feet and reached into his coat. Out of his coat he pulled a rose as red as blood and her eyes widened. He told her it was a very special rose indeed: A Christmas Rose that would bring a great happiness to whoever received it- if it were accepted with an open heart. Speechless, she took it from him with tears in her eyes.

Before she could embrace him again, he reached once more into his coat and withdrew a small box. Inside that box was the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. Right there in the snow, the Man dropped to bended knee and asked for her hand. The Angel’s reply was to leap into his arms, knocking him flat on his back in the snow. As she kissed him, then and there he knew his life had at last changed for the better. And oh, yes. What is that you say? They did indeed live happily ever after."

………………………....

"And that, my dears, is the story of the Christmas Rose. It is a fantastical tale of pure love with no-" Erik stopped mid-sentence when he failed to hear the twin sighs of happiness that usually accompanied one of his stories. “Girls?” It was only then that he glanced down to find both of his daughters sprawled against him, fast asleep and looking quite content. 

The masked man chuckled and, after carefully extracting himself,  pressed a kiss to her Ariane’s forehead as he tugged the blankets to her chin. "Good night, ma belle.” Lifting Sabine into his arms, he carried her across the room, where he deposited her in her own bed, repeating the process as he had with Ariane.”And to you as well, ma fleur. Merry Christmas, mon chers."

Slipping silently from the room, he had barely set foot in the hall before he felt two small slide around his middle and a slight form settle against his back with a sigh. His long fingers twined with the smaller ones as if by magic and he chuckled slightly before advising. "Well played, mon ange.They’re finally asleep."

Christine’s soft smile was brilliant as he turned in her arms, enfolding her and knotting large hands at the base of her spine.. "It's about time. What kept you so long?"

Erik’s hold on her tightened. "Ariane insisted I tell her a story. An idea, I might add, which you aided those tiny imps in hoodwinking me.  But I suppose it is Christmas Eve."

She nodded, ignoring his jibe. "What story did you tell them.?"

He could not keep the wry grin from his face. "The Christmas Rose."

A secret smile spread across Christine's face. "Ah, I’ve always liked that one...and rather fitting if you ask me." 

Erik chuckled leaning down to steal a kiss from that upturned mouth. "As you say, love." Still, he followed her gaze to the shadow box that hung on the wall next to their wedding portrait- a dark mahogany framing Venetian glass that held two pieces of paper, written in a scrawled hand, as well as a handful of rose petals, a beautiful duet of blood and snow.

Christine glanced up at him, then tipped her crown against his shoulder, giving his waist a squeeze for good measure. “How long do you think it will be?”

Erik caught her meaning immediately and gave a helpless shrug. “Who can say?” he mused. “But something tells me the girls will come to realize, much sooner than either you or I could ever believe, that truth is stranger than fiction.”

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Supercorp True Crime AU, Pt 2

(continued from Part 1)

We don’t see Lena’s experience, focusing instead on Kara’s increasingly desperate search for her. Luckily, Lena’s struggles in her apartment leaves them evidence– blood and hair and fibers. They rush it through the labs, plug it into VICAP, and anxiously wait for a hit.

Meanwhile, they pore through CCTV footage of the building and the surrounding streets, anything to try and get a lead as to the unsub’s identity– or his location– as the deadline ticks closer.

They’re too late. The fourteenth day comes and goes, and something in the room snaps, the tension giving way to despair. But they keep looking, waiting for the alert of another body found.

The call never comes.

Before they have time wonder what it might mean, VICAP gets a match to a registered sex offender who’d apparently kept himself clean in the decades since his release from prison– and had inherited an isolated cabin up in the mountains.

They rush to the address listed, and soon find the reason for the lack of body. The man is lying dead in the grass just off his front porch, with an assault rifle in his hands and a kitchen knife buried in his thigh– the cause of death apparently a severed femoral artery.

A search of the cabin uncovers nothing but a hidden room Kara wishes had remained unseen– the only trace of Lena are her shoes tossed carelessly inside a closet.

Their profile indicates the man worked alone, so the only conclusion they can draw is that Lena somehow got her hands on the knife, struck low and hard, and then bolted into the surrounding forest.

It’s soon apparent that the rifle had at least been somewhat effective in its purpose before it’s user had bled out: they find a trail of blood that leads them deep, deep into the woods. There’s no path, and even in daylight the foliage casts such shadow they can barely see the speckles of blood. Eventually, they lose it entirely at a stream.

The search party fans out, and Kara strikes out with her thoughts full of Lena. The unsub has been dead for days, and if the timeline held true, then Lena likely made her escape when he tried to move her to the final kill site. Which means she’s been out in the wild for days.

Alone. Wounded. Terrified.

She’s so deep in thought that she almost walks straight off a sheer drop to a stony riverbed below. Only a quick grab onto a tree at the precipice keeps her from going over, and her ears roar as she stares at the bottom of the ravine.

And then she freezes when one shadow on the rocks below doesn’t match the speckled shade of foliage.

Blood.

Without a second thought she slides down the steep embankment, nearly breaking her neck in the process, but her heart doesn’t truly start to pound until she spots the trail of blood that leads off into the glade beyond.

“Lena? Lena!”

Her voice bounces off the leaves and stones, making her feel very small she picks her way through the brush, following the blood-smeared trail.

She finds Lena at the wide base of an oak tree, curled tightly to conserve heat.

“LENA!!” Kara slides to her knees at Lena’s side, searching for a pulse. Her bare feet are battered and bloody, and the back of her shirt is dark with blood that has slowly pooled against the bark. Kara’s fingers hit metal before they find a pulse– handcuffs. Battered and smeared with blood and dirt, but still intact.

Kara can’t find a pulse beneath the chill skin of Lena’s wrist, but relief floods her when Lena’s chest lifts in a ragged breath.

“Lena! Lena, hey! Can you hear me?” Kara pats gently at an ashen cheek, earning a flutter of eyelashes. “That’s it, Lena open your eyes for me–”

Green eyes peek through dirty lashes, and Kara’s heart lifts for the first time in weeks as she twists to bellow over her shoulder.

“I’VE GOT HER!!”

The radio crackles at her hip, and she scrambles for it to relay their position, even as distant voice lift in response to her shout.

“We’ll need a medical team and travois,” Kara says, her voice still shaking as she stares at the broken bone poking out of Lena’s thigh– no doubt a result of the sharp drop at their backs, which Lena likely wouldn’t have been so lucky to avoid.

There’s something awful about a simple misstep being the thing to render Lena so helpless, after escaping a monster, and a gunshot wound.

“She’s in bad shape.”

A response crackles over the radio, but it doesn’t register over the sound of her name rasping from Lena’s lips.

“Kar…”

She doesn’t quite make it, her eyelids drooping shut as her eyes roll ominously. “No, no, no, hey! Hey, stay with me, okay?”

Kara strips off her pack, immediately digging through its contents for the mylar emergency blanket she’d brought with her. When she settled it over Lena, she saw Lena’s shoulders relax ever so slightly at the instant warmth.

“D'you get ‘im?” Lena asks, unable to muster more than a whisper through lips numbed by exhaustion and shock.

“You got him,” Kara corrects, as the first of the medics comes scraping down the slope. “He’s dead.”

She isn’t sure Lena hears her, but when Kara slips her hand into Lena’s, she feels the slightest pressure answer back.

—-

Kara visits Lena every day– she wouldn’t leave at all if the nurses didn’t enforce their visiting hours with an iron fist.

But the time away from the hospital gives her time to tie up the loose ends of the investigation, and to rest and clean herself up so that she resembled something human the next time visits. Best of all, it gives her a chance to see Lena’s features lift into a smile every time she walks in the room.

“They got you on the good stuff then?” Kara asks the first time it happens– the first time Lena is conscious and lucid and pain-free.

Lena’s eyebrows shrug in muted amusement. “Must be.”

With a concussion, a broken wrist, a compound fracture of her right femoral shaft, and not one but two gunshot wounds, she’s in far better spirits that she might have a right to be. Her leg would stay in traction until she’s well enough to undergo surgery to repair it, and tubes were hard at work draining the fluid that had gathered in her chest cavity courtesy of the bullet wounds.

Kara sets her vase of flowers on the small counter across from the bed, and herself in the visitor chair, passing a large, plush teddy bear to the bed bound patient. Lena accepts it with a thin but genuine smile.

“Thank you.”

“Figured you could use the company when I’m driven away every night.”

Lena hugs it gently to her chest. “It’s soft…”

“And cute,” Kara teases. “Just like you.”

She earns another little smile, but it quickly fades as Lena’s features grow solemn. “I owe you an apology, Kara.”

Kara shakes her head no. “Lena…”

“Please let me finish,” Lena insists, hugging the bear that much closer. Kara’s jaw clicks shut. “I had a lot of time to think in there, knowing I was probably going to die, and… my biggest regret was how I’d left things with you.”

“But you were right, Lena. About everything–”

“Which you admitted a long time ago.” A thin shoulder lifts under the hospital gown. “When you tried to get me to back off, it felt like a power play. I resented your attempt at control, and I was so angry that you turned out to be just like…”

She trails off, pressing her lips together as she searches for new words.

“It’s been so long since anyone cared about me, in that way, that I didn’t realize you said it out of worry. And by the time I did…”

Lena’s gaze falls to the the bear in her arms, her fingers combing through its soft fur.

“By the time I did… I was afraid of much I missed you.”

Kara stares at her, speechless. Lena swallows thickly, and she wipes sharply at her bruised cheeks to dry the tears starting to gather.

“I’m sorry I let it go so long. You deserve better–”

Without thinking, Kara pulls the bear from Lena’s arms and fills the emptied space with herself, leaning awkardly to wrap her arms around Lena with the utmost care. Lena clings to her in an instant, her tears dampening the collar of Kara’s shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Lena murmurs. “I’m so sorry…”

“I’m sorry too,” Kara returns softly. “But I’m so, so grateful to have a chance to fix it.”

When the hospital releases Lena with the caveat she have someone on hand to assist, it’s Kara she goes home with.

By the time Lena’s able to be on her own… neither of them make any effort to leave.

[takadasaiko]

Clever Minds and Strong Wills (a Captain America fic)

FFN II AO3

Summary: Steve and Howard have a late night chat in the labs in which Steve learns more than most about Howard's family and his past. WWII fic.

Clever Minds and Strong Wills

There was rarely any warning when they showed up at the command center in London. Word filtered through the ranks that the Howling Commandos had arrived and the lab went into overdrive. It was a race to get the equipment repaired and upgrades implemented, often just in time to shove them right back out the door with only the Hydra tech they left behind as proof that they were there at all.

Today was different, though. They still hadn't had much warning, but at least they had a few days to work with the team to make sure everything functioned as it was designed to when they were out in the field. It was a shame that it took half the team in the medical wing to keep them there. From what Howard had heard, Gabe Jones, Dum Dum Dugan, and Steve took the brunt of the hit. Cap was, of course, already back on his feet like nothing had happened by the time they'd arrived back at HQ, but the others would need a few days minimum of time away from the chaos they functioned in.

Howard had thought that he'd have to drag Cap into the labs to stake claims on even just a few minutes, but Steve had stuck around longer than he'd expected. As the hours stretched on and the others filtered out for the evening, the two men sat in the quiet of the space. The conversation started and stopped, ideas bounced around for a bit before Howard lost himself in the work only to be pulled out of it by Cap's voice after an undetermined length of quiet.

"You know, last time I got any say in the designs was from a few thousand feet in the air."

Howard's hands stilled and his lips twitched into a lopsided smile. "Last couple. I snag the time when I can get it."

He heard Cap snort a soft laugh. "I always got the impression you offered to fly us when no one else would because you like the thrill."

"I have been told I get bored too easily," Howard chuckled and reached for a wrench.

"Do you always stay after everybody else is gone?"

Howard glanced around, realizing that they were the last two left in the lab. "Most nights." By accident, most of the time. He'd dive into a project and forget to surface until the wee hours of the morning.

He heard a soft acknowledgment from Cap, but then nothing more for a long moment. Finally he glanced back before swiveling around in his chair to look directly at him. "I doubt you need a lot of sleep, huh?"

"Not since the serum."

Howard tilted his head, studying him. "Had to have been a hell of a turn around. I saw your records before the procedure. Looked like you had every health complication in the book."

He wondered if the question was a step too far as he watched Steve expression shift. With the exception of the occasional conversation about Peggy Carter, they really didn't discuss personal matters, much less Cap's life before the serum. Slowly, though, the other man's tense expression softened a little. "It's amazing how little I think about it now. You'd think I would, but one mission to the next, I don't really have time for it."

"Your buddy Barnes doesn't give you hell about it?"

"Only when the other guys aren't around, which isn't much."

Those sharp blue eyes were fixed on him and Howard had to crush the urge to squirm. He wasn't used to being the one under careful observation.

Finally, Cap drew in a breath, settling back in his chair a little more. "What about you?"

"What about me what?"

"You've seen everything in my file, probably know my whole life story, but about all I know about you personally is that you have a successful company, you're the best pilot I've seen yet, and I still can't place what part of New York you're actually from." He stopped, amusement flashing through his eyes. "Oh, and you hate being called Mr Stark."

"Mr Stark's my father," Howard answered automatically, not liking where this was heading. He liked Steve. Respected him, but he had found out a long time ago that letting people get too close - letting them learn too much - was a dangerous business. He'd stuck his foot in it by bringing up the other man's past though, hadn't he?

"Is he still around? Your father?"

Yep. Up to the kneecap and sinking fast. His own curiosity had gotten the better of him. "I imagine so."

Howard saw Cap's face twist up like he was trying to find the missing piece. "Don't you talk to him?"

"Not if I can help it." He risked a glance over, a frustrated sigh escaping at the expectant look he was on the receiving end of. Yep. This was on him. Never should have brought it up. He waved his hand in the air, doing his best to keep his time casual. "We never saw eye-to-eye."

"On what?"

"Anything."

There was a long, likely thoughtful pause before, "He has to be proud, though? Everything you've accomplished? Everything you've done."

Howard wanted nothing more than to dive back into his work and ignore the question. He could kick him out, true. Come up with a semi-reasonable excuse or just be an ass to ensure Cap got the hint. He had no problem handling others around him that way, but there was something obnoxiously honest in those blue eyes. Rogers wasn't an idiot - far from it. He might not have had the same training or scientific leanings that Howard did, but the man was clever and one of the quickest learners the engineer had ever come across - but he was naive in a lot of ways. Sheltered. Fathers were proud of their sons. Families were close. That was just the way his world worked. Must have been a nice place to grow up. Safe.

"Nah," he answered at last. "He thought I was lazy. Wasting my time."

"That can't be true," Steve managed, almost as if hoping he'd misunderstood something.

Howard glanced around, re-confirming that they were alone. He spun his chair so his own dark eyes met those bright blue ones. "My earliest memories of my old man are of him chasing me out of whatever hole I'd found to tuck myself away in to read. Thought I was lazy and useless because I wasn't just like him. My guess is he's still selling fruit from the same overpriced vendors from the same rickety old cart on the same corner in the Lower East Side."

He risked a glance to see Cap soaking in more information than Howard had shared with anyone in a decade. Strange. That overwhelming honesty that Abe had seen in him was apparently contagious. He needed to watch himself there.

Rogers loosed a long breath, settling a little deeper into the chair. "We didn't have much when I was growing up either but… all I wanted was to be like my folks. They always did the right thing, even when it cost them. Especially when it cost them."

Howard didn't mean to snort. Not really. "I hate to break it to you, Cap, but no one's perfect." Even Captain America's perfect parents had a skeleton or two Cap just hadn't found. Everybody did. Idolizing then just because they were blood was a luxury Howard had never known. Never wanted to. It was t like he could have ever been what his father wanted anyway. He'd have sooner thrown himself off the Brooklyn Bridge.

"When's the last time you spoke to him?" Steve asked carefully.

"I left home at thirteen. Went to school and didn't look back." He'd left in the middle of the night without even a change of clothes with him. He'd lied his way into the prestigious school, but if his father had had half a notion where he was going he would have found a way to shut his plan down. The senior Stark has come to America at the same age looking for a better future, but instead had settled into society's expectations and had tried to teach his son to be complacent with the same. Howard hadn't had it in him. He didn't have a complacent bone in his body.

"Do you have contact with your mother?"

"A little. Usually get a letter from her once a year or so. Last time I was in the same room with her I had the audacity to offer money. I thought the old man was gonna come after me with his belt like I was ten years old again," he chuckled, shrugging. "Guess that was actually the last time I saw him. She's never without him, so we don't see each other. Her choice. She knows I'd cover the fair uptown."

Cap stared at him like he'd broken him. That look was exactly why he didn't like to discuss it. A look like he'd lost something. Couldn't lose something you'd never had, though, so what was the point? He did well enough. Hell of a lot better than if he'd stayed put.

Howard loosed a long breath and rolled his shoulders back, trying to straighten them out of their increasing slump. "Don't make a bigger deal of it than it is," he muttered. "And, uh….keep it between us, huh, pal?"

"Not a big deal, just a secret?" Steve asked, a quirked eyebrow accompanying his amused tone.

"You know how people are." From the look he received he wasn't entirely convinced that he did. "Born on the wrong street, wrong side of the tracks, you gotta be running a scam of some kind."

"Can't possibly be the fact that honesty isn't exactly you're go-to."

Well huh. Okay. With the physical changes that the serum caused, it was easy to forget that clever, observant mind that drew Abe to Rogers in the first place.

"Lessons learned," he said instead, shrugging.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's life. Coulda been worse, and I came out of it."

"Maybe he'll change his tune after the war's over."

"You never lose that damnable optimism, do you, Rogers?"

"I try not to."

Howard snorted, the sound amused more than not, and stood. Three in the morning. If he wanted even a couple hours of sleep it was time to call it a night. It was probably the easiest way to end this increasingly uncomfortable discussion as well.

"He should be."

Cap's voice startled him a little and he looked over. "Should be what?"

"Proud. You know, Dugan's only alive right now because the body armor you sent with us this last time took the brunt of the blast we were caught in. You've gotten us in places that no one else would touch and make sure we're ready to face whatever tech Hydra throws at us."

He paused and Howard found that he couldn't break the gaze that held his. He'd become accustomed to - and even expectant of in many cases - the high praise that accompanied his work by those around him, but Roger's words dug in deeper. He wasn't one for idle flattery and, unlike so many others, there were no strings attached to this. No quid or quo that exchanged praise for whatever the person wanted in return. No. Cap was just honest. Absurdly honest. Howard wondered if he'd ever get used to that.

The engineer cleared his throat. "Thanks, Cap," he mumbled, not entirely certain that was the right response, but it seemed to work out okay. Rogers flashed that grin that went all the way to his eyes.

The blond didn't leave as Howard packed his equipment away, but he also didn't press any further on the other man's family. They chatted about upgrades and design flaws and an upcoming mission that Steve wanted Howard to fly them in on. When they finally parted ways to catch as much sleep as they could before the next day officially began, Howard felt a strange sort of ease that he never found after his father found a way to bully his way into his thoughts. He had always been a stranger in that man's world and an oddity in the one that he wanted to belong to, but here - surrounded by soldiers and danger and tech he could only begin to unravel - he felt at home. Sure, Cap was right. He did plenty of good around here, but in the end he was fond of the people that surrounded him. Clever minds and strong wills. The Steve Rogers that wouldn't be told he couldn't enlist and the Peggy Carters that would be put behind a desk. The Abraham Erskines that wouldn't bend to oppression. They weren't pinned down by what society wanted to make them.

And to think he almost passed up the opportunity to join the SSR at all.

End.

Notes: I feel like there must have been so much more behind Howard and Steve's friendship for Howard to be so, so obsessed with finding him. You don't develop a life-long obsession like that for an acquaintance, even if you were involved in the experiment that changed their life. I can't help but think there was a piece of Howard, that kid from the Lower East Side, that found a connection with the kid from Brooklyn.

Might be more to come.... We'll see.

[blankdblank]

Loki Baby Pt 9

special thanks to inca for helping me brainstorm ideas for this. More of the ideas to come :D

@sdavid09​, @theincaprincess​, @himoverflowers​

Nearly a week Thor had been in and out of the apartment while you focused on your repairs and in the lull of your being needed at work you took to cuddling up and reading through your old stack of unread books. It truly was odd for you to have to spend every day at work and you were glad to be back to your reclusive state to ease the travels you hoped to have when your Tardis was repaired. Staring up at the stars had begun too painful to bear since being grounded here. And in this new timeline you had managed to catch up on their varied history since the wormhole you had led Gallifrey and the Time Lords through after stealing your Tardis to help change the Time War had spat you all out in this altered dimension.

Creatures mainly were the same with only in this timeline the three Starks to die in that car crash now was dropped to two leaving a son in a very dangerous situation. True there were worse than Stark in the old dimension you had to stave off and in place of a few invasions you knew of these Avengers and Mutants had risen to fill the void with equally as devastating effects now making your existence here a tad bit more believable. Time travel truly wasn’t that unbelievable anymore, especially not now that Steve Rogers had launched himself into the past in hopes of finally getting the girl.

All the same between bouts with Thor when he would get called back to the Tower to aid Stark in some unspoken diagrams the snuggle prone Prince would slip into your apartment to crawl into your reading nest and enjoy the peaceful breaks sharing all you had been studying. Yet today you were off to another event, a simple garden party for a high up General’s daughter who you had helped to protect her new penthouse apartment and the building around it, somehow meaning she felt indebted to invite you and a guest along to her party for the pompous to mingle.

“Why History?” The question jolted you from your thoughts on how today was meant to go and you flashed the Prince a grin catching his gaze when his chin propped up on your shoulder.

“If you don’t know the past you’re doomed to repeat it. Plus it is interesting to see how the public history matches HYDRA and SHIELD’s records.”

“What does it say about you?” He asked playfully with a goading smirk.

“Nothing. What did you expect it to say? Decades of me facing off against Starks?”

Making Loki chuckle and ask, “Something, anything after how Pietro spoke about you.”

“Little hands Loki, little hands and little names make the world go round,” spreading his smirk curiously as you brushed a stray strip of hair out of his face, admiring the gentle spirals his hair twisted in proving he was slowly showing you more of his hidden self. The thought in private leading you to assume he had a natural poof of hair similar to yours he straightened explaining his usual slicked back style most likely to fit the styles of his homeland. “We don’t all get to be Alexanders the Great and Einsteins. However, to pass nameless through the fabric of it all,” your head tilted a moment making his shift in an adoring glance over your face, “You can see it all, feel it all, and even change and Alexander, Einstein, or even a Stark.”

“Fascinating,” he hummed out absolutely enamored with the notion of your idea, traveling the world and possibly universe nameless to see everything and change the world. None of this without you however, inside his heart swelled imagining all the places he could show you, all the incredible things to have you in awe of what he alone had discovered expanding the world he had grown in from what little his people had taken the time to see. Mostly he wanted you. Floating through all of space, holding you while you soared between the stars, kissing you on the ruins of civilizations who had abandoned their homes to explore the stars once you had discovered all the secrets they had to tell. He wanted you, and maybe, just maybe, if you never stopped exploring and learning, and he never stopped discovering new adventures time would be kind, just this once, and let him keep you. Let you stay. Let him be yours always.

Fingers raked through his hair and again his grin deepened in your giggling, “What?”

He shook his head, “Nothing.”

Out you giggled again, “It is a tad ridiculous of an idea, however most discoveries are half mad notions to begin with. So if you are coming up with something to tease me,”

Tightening his arms around your sides your voice broke off in his head resting on your shoulder burying his forehead against the side of your neck, “No teasing. Go on, tell me what secrets that book holds.”

Shifting your leg he held his position hoping you wouldn’t move him and all you did was slide one leg farther under his hips while your other leg went over his to draw it out more to line him up as your arms draped across his back you covered to help prop up the book making him close his eyes at the position. To the sound of your voice and the sound of his own slowing heartbeat he drifted off holding you closer, and if he hadn’t dreamed it he could have sworn when you set the book down to wrap more around him for another nap in return, a kiss was left on his forehead. Something simple, innocent and fast where his lips planting drowsily in return on the end of your collar bone did nothing but swell up a surge of dreams making it near impossibly difficult to remain just snuggling with the drowsy Prince you now ached to wake up to break every rule you had set for yourself.

 *

Fixing his tie Tony passed through his office again, “Now Vision, we are heading for the exhibit today and I have a special task for you. I would like you to keep an eye on Miss Pear, find out something, anything. You’re more observant for small ticks and clues we might be missing.”

Vision flatly stated, “I promised Wanda we would tour together.”

Tony, “Well you can do both. Not be right hovering behind her, but check in, you know, subtle.”

Vision, “I am many things Tony, subtle is not one of them.”

Tony turned and patted his shoulder, “I have faith in you.”

Then strolled away for Vision to mumble, “Your ill gotten faith will land me in another argument with Wanda.” Turning to fix his cape over his suit in the mirror.

 *

Mint green shirt for Loki and a peach flowing dress for you settling around your knees making him imagine some sort of flower blended in his place in the car, out of your days of snuggling his place at your side had leapt forward. Out of habit his arm had extended and with a hint of a dopey grin you leaned against his side with his fingers sweetly tracing shapes into your skin just under the layered sheer strip of fabric stitched to the thin shoulder strap miming a sleeve. He didn’t have to come today, you had told him, this would probably be the dullest event yet possibly flooding you with more questions possibly taking you from his attentions for a time but he insisted, he lied, said Thor would be there to distract him, the whole Avengers team would, he had people to talk to, people he barely knew even after living together for so long, but people none the less.

The arrival of your car didn’t go unnoticed and in your slide out he got to take in each detail of you cast in sunlight to find his feet and take your hand for the walk inside. Subtle and not to subtle glances were cast as in a sea of whispers and flashes you entered the building and handed over your purse to be scanned and chatted with the awed man behind the xray arch you passed through that in his distraction flashed as your pen was being scanned from your scan to a doctored one leaving only one with such acute eyesight and neurological speed to have caught it. Sure as day Vision had seen what he could not believe, the woman Tony had set him after had two hearts.

Loki was next exposing etchings on his bones and ridges across his scalp and  shoulder blades, signs that jotuns like certain animals used to have spikes there to help deter predators in the youth of their people. Straight to mingling you went and seeing a flood of people in a whisper by your ear Loki excused himself to fetch your drinks. Up to the bar he went and that was where he found Sam, “You seem cozy.” He said halfway leaned back against the bar holding the base of his sparkling water refusing to drink at one of these events after having seen how rowdy Bucky would get trying to correct every piece’s history as if he was the expert for having been in the 40’s, even if the subject piece was far from that time period.

“Miss Pear and I are getting along famously, yes.”

Sam chuckled, “Oh you’re famous alright. Can’t switch on the tv without seeing some update on your coupleyness. Now they’re sketching possible babies since you guys holed up in your place all week.”

“Hmm,” he turned to the now attentive bartender who had recognized him and jumped to service and turned to fix the order he was given, “Well I suppose if there is nothing to gossip over people will create it.”

Sam smirked, “So no baby making going on?”

“There are tradition and ceremonies to be had before children will be brought into this world.”

Sam, “No, I mean-,”

Loki said, “I know what you meant.” Locking his eyes on Sam’s, “However alluring Miss Pear is to the masses of this planet I would never betray her trust by discussing our trysts.”

That had Sam smirking as Loki raised the colored mixed drinks in martini glasses he strolled off with to smirk to himself as Sam said, “So there are trysts?” In a shake of his head the smirk dropped and Sam hurried of to pull Bucky away from the curator of the event seeing the tell tale signs he was about to start arguing.

.

From your side even to Peter Parker’s he strode after handing off your drink casually greeting the slightly wide eyed teen at his side, “It is a lovely day, Parker.”

Peter nodded, “Yes,” in a quick sip of his drink his mind reeled and he asked, “So, you like Mayan art? I have a project due on it, Tony thought it would help to bring me.”

Loki shrugged, “I suppose, this however is not Mayan.” That made the teen peer up at him wide eyed only to listen and join him to a small table where he grabbed a stack of unused napkins to start sketching proper symbols and even hinted that he knew just where the Mayans had gone to leaving the teen on the edge of his seat as he brought up information from books available from the database on the phone you had given him.

..

In a relieved sigh you found your way out onto the balcony thankful for the breeze and allowed slip away. Finishing off your drink you eyed the glass almost pitifully wishing you knew what concoction Loki had chosen for you so you might order another. A passing waiter took your glass with a grin and you strolled to the edge of the balcony to look out into the distance only to glance back at the sound of a billowing cape. Grinning softly you eyed Vision and turned to face him on his approach, “Hello Vision.”

“Miss Pear. It has come to my attention a question I must ask you.”

“Sounds serious.” You said holding your pleasant grin.

“It is, rather, a life and death question,” that had your head tilting slightly wondering what he could mean, “From my research it is most common for humans to in fact have one heart to power their bodies.”

“True.”

“And yet for a millisecond on your scan it revealed you have two. I have been scouring my databases and I have not found any records of humans surviving with two hearts.”

“No, you wouldn’t,”

“I do not understand then-,”

In a sigh you started your bold faced half truth, appealing to his logic and notions of fear, “My parents did what they could to keep my condition hidden. People with two hearts don’t survive once discovered because there is often a good chance those who find them take one to donate them to others in need of a heart.” That parted his lips, “I hide my past not because I have an ulterior motive or some evil plan, but because if some heartless scientist discovers my secret they will cut me open and it will kill me. My body cannot survive on one heart, and no matter how selfish that may seem when there are those in need of one, I deserve my full lifespan as much as they deserve theirs.”

His eyes looked you over, “You have been hunted in the past for your heart?”

“All my life people have been trying to work me out. The only reason SHEILD isn’t all over you is because Stark has showed them everything, down to the last bolt. They’ve tested each of the team, even Wanda, only Thor and Loki are able to skip the tests because Asgardians are deemed allies. One of the few examples of other races landing here where they didn’t end up on an autopsy table. I’m alone here, I understand your curiosity, but I can’t imagine what Stark would do-,”

“I will not tell him.” Your eyes looked over his, “You have my word, I will not betray your trust. I did not realize how much danger you felt yourself in.” Somehow he straightened up a bit more saying, “This is what I will research, a way to create artificial organs, so butchers will not attack innocents.” In a nod of his head he said, “Do enjoy your day, I must return to find Wanda.”

Turned around he scanned the crowds and strolled off leaving you to glance at the door seeing Loki stroll through with a refill in hand. “Everything alright?”

You nodded accepting the drink with a grin saying, “You have to tell me what this is.”

In a smirk he replied in a purr, “Ah, but then I wouldn’t be able to fetch them for you now would I?” Making you smirk in return lifting your glass as he did for a sip.

…

Two more days of hiding and burrowing away again you dolled up for Thor’s birthday party. A simple sundress was in store for the poolside affair where the golden haired Prince took the chance to bring you in closer to get to know you better. Loki however was a bit more preoccupied with the odd heartbeat he heard waking with his head on your chest. While you showered and he changed for the party he had a double scouring the internet for heart condition in mortals leaving him only grim outlooks for each the more he dug meaning he would have to find some way to get you to Asgard to have his healers look you over and hopefully find a way to repair the illness you were hiding.

Lounging by the pool you answered questions and shared in the conversation the Princes were holding with Peter about the show they had been binging on brightening his mood as his friends from before the snap were off at colleges across the country while he studied at NYU.

Even Sam and Bucky came closer to join in the conversation only to break into an argument with Loki about his comments on the Mayan Empire. A trip to the bath and when you exited you found Vision floating outside the door, “Miss Pear, I would like to show you my models.” With a nod you joined him to the sitting room where he pulled up on his tablet the holographic designs yet when Wanda asked for help with the drinks you agreed to talk later and returned just in time for Bucky to turn and face you still confused about your father.

Bucky, “Any word from your father?”

“He’s around, why?”

Bucky, “There’s a funeral and a sort of reunion after for one of our poker buddies.”

You nodded, “Yes, Timothy, good lad.”

Bucky’s head tilted, “You knew him?”

“I’ve met a lot of my dad’s friends. Heard all the stories. Even the ones about you and your buddy Steve.”

Bucky, “Your dad never met Steve past that once.”

“No, but my friend Pietro went to basic with him. Determined little thing. Wonder why you lot ever let him go back there.”

Tony, “How do you know about that?”

You looked at him with a smirk, “You mean how did I notice that five years ago that Stevie boy ceased to exist then one day shows up in the States again reusing his information and decides to settle down and have a family saying screw the fabric of time?”

Tony’s eyes narrowed, “What is that supposed to mean?”

Bucky, “No, what makes you think Steve would do anything wrong by settling down?”

Your brow arched up, “You know Steve a great deal better than I do. So you don’t need to take my word for just how stupid your fella can be.”

Sam’s lips pursed and he said, “She’s got a point.”

Tony, “Oh and I assume you might do better if you went back in time?”

After a quick giggle you said, “Well I certainly wouldn’t do anything for my own gain past curiosity. Certainly wouldn’t be bringing people back from the dead and taking other people’s children.”

Tony, “Other people’s children?”

You nodded, “Unless you forget your old goduncle George before Steve took the place.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed, “George?”

“Exactly my point.” You looked to Bucky, “You remember Georgie, climbed that tower to help take out a sniper trap, that was how he met Peggy, fell broke his collarbone and got saddled to a desk. Spent days together just talking, commiserating. Waited two years for her to be ready to date, and because of Steve Georgie never got to meet Peggy, cuz Steve took her dancing and moved her back to the Brooklyn with him. Very, big, hole.”

His eyes narrowed again and Bucky said, “I remember Georgie, always tried to chat her up. Always flopped.” Looking you over he asked, “What else has changed?”

“You could fill up fifty encyclopedias with the drama your fella’s stirred up.”

Bucky, “I’m gonna have to talk to your dad when he gets here.”

That had Loki stealing a glance at you wondering what your father would be like while hoping that they came soon so he might get to know your family as well. Wishing he might make a good impression on them.

…

With a giggle you turned from your kitchen looking at the teas you had your head turned at the knock at the door making Loki glance at you asking, “I thought guests had to be buzzed in?”

The smile spreading across your face had him grinning curiously, “That would not be a guest.” Following after you to the door he watched you excitedly approach it to open it wide and squeak at the man smiling just as brightly on the other side of it.

“There you are Pumpkin.” Tightly engulfing you in his arms chuckling as you giggled clutching you tightly, “You didn’t think I was going to leave you stranded here, now did you?” When you pulled back you nipped at your lip watching him reach into the satchel at his waist and pulled out a curious looking knob making you squeak again, “Can’t leave everything to the usual routes and leave our Bluejay on the ground. Need you up in the air.” In a twitch of his brows he said, “Got you a whole bag. Now, grab your shoes and we can get to tinkering.”

After another squeak you turned around glancing between your father and Loki and said, “Oh, Daddy, this is Prince Loki. He lives across the hall.”

“Jack Harkness.” When you strolled around him their hands clasped and your father grinned widely looking him over, “Anyone tell you that you have stunning eyes? Glad someone finally earned the apartment.” His eyes followed you and while you were still in earshot he asked, “You two look ready for a party.”

Loki nodded and their hands released, “My brother’s birthday, just got back.”

Nodding again and seeing you were out of earshot your father said, “Prince Loki, I’ll make this simple, you break my little girl’s heart and I’ll tear you in half.” With a pat on his shoulder Loki couldn’t help but smirk in his step back when he stepped through the door in your return closing it behind him to join you in the sitting room where he pulled on the top of the spine on a book and said “Sasquatch,” the password signaling the bookshelf to sink into the floor.

Joining the group Loki couldn’t help but admire the man who had threatened him, well deserved for how incredible you are. Slowly the bookshelf sank and he looked between you two trying to gauge your ages only to see you step on top of the bookshelf your father joined you on then smirked at Loki, “Going down Handsome?”

Rolling your eyes you nodded your head, “Come on, show you how we get to the Swan Club.”

Your father smirked at you, “Ooh, Swan Club, fun times, fun times. Do I get to come?”

When Loki stepped onto the shelf by your father he eyed the cylinders the otter bots were sleeping in pulsing with lights recharging them and keeping them afloat while they held their tiny cubs on their bellies in a sharing of programming for the new batch while their personality chips melded randomly to form each cub to their own quirks based around their basic jobs they were formed to do. The sight making him grin as your father said, “Aww, you found out the coding to get them to reproduce. How cute.”

“Well they kept turning on the discovery channel and bringing me to it. They wanted the fuller families to completely embody otters and their social lives. Besides, they are adorable. Couldn’t resist.”

Past those Loki’s lips parted as the bookshelf came to a stop in a bare stretch of wall and a rolling staircase from the bookshelf to the right rolled over to stop in front of you. Down the steps you led the way with Loki curiously looking over the shelves of books and trinkets parting his lips at the Asgardian globe and the tip of a spear supposedly lost by his grandfather. Down behind your father he trotted and drew closer to that section of shelves.

“Here you go Pumpkin.” The sound of a lock shifting had his head tilting slightly in a reluctant turn, “First, we get your girl off the ground then you can help me with my vortex manipulator.”

“Bout time you let me get my hands on it. Bouncing around like a ping pong ball.”

At that Loki turned his head and his mouth fell open seeing your Tardis surrounded by boards with Gallifreyan symbols and notes with racks of tools far beyond this planet’s capabilities. Inhaling sharply he crossed the room following your giggle through the open door of the box in the rising of the bookshelf again and ceiling closing when it had passed through.

Stepping inside the doorway he peered upwards at the thirty foot tall entrance hall to your Tardis with hardwood floors and walls randomly spotted with round lit cutouts lighting the room. His view ahead leading up to a pyramid of stairs right in the center of the hall topped by the power and steering center. Tall pillars stood going through the balcony above showing more bookshelves reached by a spiral staircase. Arched beams up above met in an observation deck above under an amber colored dome. Five halls were closed by doors etched in differing scenes of Gallifreyan tales.

Around the control panel you and your father stood with tools at your feet while you opened the top panel to remove the worn knob using your sonic screwdriver you had brought from upstairs. A swipe around the tip and you saw the wires from inside you trailed the crystal tip of your screwdriver across for them to release you quickly secured and pressed down to swipe again to lock it in place. Grinning up at the rising column of light from the center console you said, “There you are, Precious.”

Turning your head you saw Loki and his smirk asking, “You’re a Frey.” Inhaling again it clicked in his head what he knew of the Frey, time travelers whose past were entangled with the Asgardians, very old Guardians who were a key role in stopping Hella and the path his people were on before him and Thor were even born. A race with two hearts known to live centuries and blessed with regenerations. Instantly all his worries of losing you to the mortal coil faded away and everything you had joked about with Pietro started to make sense, how you had known him and saved his life when he was in the war.

Looking up at him you smirked asking, “Where did you hear that name? Haven’t heard that in ages.”

Stepping up the steps to you looking over the open panel while your father replaced a few more singed out components clearly fried in a battle saying, “That’s the name my mother taught me belonged to your race.”

In a giggle you said, “We’re Gallifreyan, from Gallifrey.”

Smirking himself your father said, “Though most people call them Time Lords.”

Loki looked at him, “Them?”

Jack grinned saying, “Oh I’m human, well, sort of.”

Loki looked to you and you clarified, “Dad got,  regenerated by a human entangled with a Tardis core before I was born and is immortal now.”

Jack, “The Frey side comes from, her mother.” The last two words nearly were growled making Loki glance between you.

Leaning n you whispered, “Dad and Mum don’t really talk. She never mentioned him she was the one behind trying to take over the universe that one time and he never really got over it.”

Jack, “73 years!” he shouted and you closed your eyes a moment, “We set up house for 73 years, raise our baby girl and one day over coffee starts giggling and is all blasé about the time she kept the Doctor in a dog house!” In a huff he goes to grab another tool a few feet away grumbling to himself.

Looking down at you Loki smirked again and you said, “The Doctor, my Godfather, another, Frey. Mum’s long time nemesis, though she used to be the Master, no Mistress back then.”

In a glance around he said, “Hmm, so it is true, you can change genders.”

“Gender is a subjective notion.” Following his gaze to one of the hallways you said, “Feel free to look around. Repairs shouldn’t take long.”

He nodded and like a kid in a candy store he hurried off to the hall, turning around you heard the creak of the door and went to join your father only to hear a second making you shout out, “Careful of the po-…” A distant splash and pants between the sound of water shifting had you finish, “-ol.” A chuckle from your father had you turning around trotting to the door and off to the open door on the right with a puddle in the doorway you entered with a quick grin seeing Loki brushing his curling hair out of his face as he stood after his climb out. “Sorry, I really should put a sign up but I rarely have guests.”

Loki shrugged lowering his hands saying, “No, I should have anticipated the pool starting three inches from the door.”

In a soft giggle you offered him your hand saying, “Come on, let’s get you dry.” Resting his hand on yours you lowered them and turned to guide him down the hall naming each room you passed until you got to a guest bath you led him into and pointed, “Up on the tiles,” he looked you over and you giggled again, “It’s a dryer. Takes three seconds.”

Up he stepped and then he turned his head and pressed the blue button you pointed to with the hand he let go of yours with and his lips parted at the warm gust of wind rippling around him drying him completely. Though in his step down his hands rose to his hair at your smirk up at his poof of curls you turned to pull a comb out of the medicine cabinet you brought back to him handing it over with a giggle. “I’ll let you fix it, the other doors are safe, just mind the pink cabinet in the card room, it tends to scream on occasion if anyone but me opens it.” His brow inched up, “It was a gift from the fourth Doctor.”

“There’s more than one?” In your smirk he nodded, “Right, fourth life.” He wet his lips, “How many is that, for the Doctor?”

“Well, I’ve met 12, though the council mentioned 13 few months back in a conference call.”

When you reached the door he asked, “What about you?”

Turning back you smiled saying, “Just the one so far. And I’m only 1200, one of the oldest first lives for traveling Frey on record.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Easy, I’m far too stubborn to die.” You said with a giggle stepping out of the doorway to return to the repairs. In a chuckle he turned to the mirror and began to comb his curls back while you exited the hall and grinned at your father.

Chuckling to himself he asked, “First time down here?”

“Well you have to keep a bit of mystery up front, don’t you?”

Looking you over he asked in passing you another part you would be helping him swap while he unhooked the connectors and lifted the floor panel and shifted the backing for it, “How did you meet this Prince Loki?”

“First time, he saved me from being snatched by a SHEILD agent, but I don’t think he remembers that.” His eyes looked at you for a moment seeing you using your screwdriver to loosen the part and wiring attached to it retracting the completely fried circuit sheet. “Couple months back I talked to him at a party at Stark Tower, offered him the apartment.”

“And the watch?” He asked with a smirk making you smile again, “You never make just anyone a watch.”

“He has a kind heart and a troubled past.”

“Ooh, knew it. So tempting.” Making you giggle in his chuckle, “Certainly has eyes for you.”

In a sigh you replied, “He is fantastic.”

“I can imagine he is.” Looking at the panel he lifted again he added, “Nice ass too,” making you giggle again. “So, Asgardian, what are they like?”

“Well I’ve only met the two Princes, ooh and apparently he’s a Jotun raised by Queen Frigga.”

“Jotun.. Where have I heard that?”

“Also called Frost Giants,”

“Ooh,”

You giggled again, “Mhmm, bright red eyes, though Loki can shape shift and make doubles and levitate things and can shoot these odd green energy blasts out of his hands.” You secured the wires for the new circuit plate, “Oh, and he has this trick, he can call his daggers from home, something about enchanted sheaths or something.”

“Love a man with an endless arsenal.” He said lowering the panel you sealed again and he said when Loki reentered the hall, “Ah the living arsenal himself.”

Loki glanced between you and you giggled saying, “I mentioned your dagger trick.”

Loki nodded and flicked his hands when he got closer making your father stand and inspect the daggers he offered him hilt first, “Here you are.” After wetting his lips he pointed at the door he had passed through, asking, “I am curious, there is a door marked ‘Keep Out’ you put a sign on that but not the pool?”

Your father glanced at you as you said, “Oh, that, ya, few decades back there was something growling in there, just decided to wait it out.” Both of them ticked a brow up at you and you said, “Hey, that back end of the wormhole saving Gallifrey fried my control panel, I was a bit distracted trying to steer for a safe landing than worrying about what’s hiding in that room. Couldn’t be Dalek or it’d break the door down. Cyber Men are fairly patient, but even they would get bored. Can’t be biological or I would have gotten a warning. I wanted to check it out, my favorite scarf is in there, Doctor gave it to me.”

With a nod your father looked to Loki lifting the daggers, “Gonna borrow these.” He glanced at you, “Keep working. I’ll call if I need my plasma ray.”

Up the steps Loki timidly inched closer and crouched beside you eyeing the lever you were calibrating listening as you shared what you were doing with him. Down the hall however your father pressed his ear against the door hearing a soft growl making him tentatively grab and turn the knob easing the door open.

A quick flip of the switch and the room lit up bringing the silver robotic dog rolling out from under a chair to his attention. In a pleased chuckle he entered the room, “Oh! K9! There you are!”

“Affirmative.”

Moving to crouch greeting the singed and dented metal dog hurrying over to him, “This is where you got to. We’ve been looking for you. Left a nasty mess back on, oh, well doesn’t matter now. Tried to dig you out but I guess they weren’t lying. Whoops. Well, come on then, sorry bout that Jaqi didn’t know it was you in here.”

At his feet K9 happily rolled with him out of the room wobbling every few feet making Jack look down at him saying, “Just through here, Jaqi will see you right.”

Into the main hall he wobbled and his ears wiggled seeing you look up and smile, “K9!” Loki’s head tilted seeing the clearly damaged robot you scooted to the edge of the stairs in his hurried roll over to you.

“I have missed you, Bluejay.”

When he reached you, you asked gently patting his side, “How did you get in here?”

K9, “Doctor ordered me here when I took fire.”

“I am so sorry you’ve waited so long in there.”

K9 slurred out, “That is alright, I have been relaying my chess memory grid.”

Crouching down more you eased the panel off his side and drew your head back at the waft of smoke you fanned away then you said, “No wonder you’ve got the wobbles, you must have taken a phase blast. All this circuitry will need to be replaced.”

K9, “If repairs are beyond completion I might initiate my self destruct sequence, Mistress.”

After a nip at your lip, “No! None of that now. Just curious, I’ve come up with some designs for an upgrade if you would like to run through them?”

K9, “Affirmative.” With a grin you brought over a tablet from the control panel you brought up the plans on that he flipped through the diagrams for as you and Jack went back to finish the adjustments on the console allowing the Tardis to run through its usual checks and sweeps before being able to travel. Softly it began to hum when you moved to K9’s side hearing his eager humming.

“Do you approve of the schematics?”

Excitedly he replied, “Affirmative!”

Widely grinning you led the men back upstairs and helped Jack carry him up to the office in your apartment where you began to remove his casings and to his delight Loki set up a chess game on a tablet for the pair to play while you began to assemble the parts you had already forged for his skeleton. Here with those you had lost and the one you so painfully hoped would remain part of your tattered family your mind wandered back to your precious box. More trapped than you had been for all these years. Finally soon she could finally be free again, she had reborn hope and again her song began to grow dreaming of what was to come when she could take flight again. It was a word she thought she would say again. “Home.”

Pt 10

[salaciouscrumpet]

Whumptober Day 1

Whumptober Day 1: Prompt “Shaky Hands” + Bonus Prompt “Wake Up”

I know, I know, it’s October 4th, and that’s why this prompt fill is almost 4 pages long and I’m putting it out now with only a cursory editing job. I am not cross-posting to AO3 because I’m using my own original characters, from my own original work in progress (an urban fantasy/horror series set in northern Ontario). The prompt fills will all be original content (i.e., will not feature in the actual finished series), so you get to meet the characters and see the world in a non-canon context because ... I’m effectively writing fanfiction of ... my own ... fiction ...?

Content Warning: Reference to past torture; implications of abusive parent/child relationship; self-harm ideation (with no on-page follow-through); some F-bombs

Characters: Luke, Bear (the dog)

There was a warm, heavy weight on his legs when Luke startled back to wakefulness, and for a brief moment the panic from his nightmare bled over into reality and he thought he was still being pinned down. Before he could start fighting off his would-be attacker he heard a low whine and the weight shifted until he was able to discern individual paws. Massive, incredibly heavy paws – but familiar paws, nonetheless. 

Dazedly he threw one hand out from under the quilt until his fingers sank into Bear’s thick fur. The dog shifted again, moving off of Luke’s legs until he was lying on the bed beside him, his great big head on the pillow and a waft of deadly doggy breath right in Luke’s face. As wake-ups went Luke had had better, but he’d definitely had worse, as well, and he suspected Bear was waking him up because the massive Leonberger had heard him having a nightmare. Bear wasn’t, strictly speaking, a service dog, but he was certainly well-attuned to the humans (and cats) in his life, and whatever qualifications or certifications he lacked he made up for in sheer enthusiasm. His presence had pulled Luke back from a panic attack on more than one occasion, and he served to ground Luke now. 

“Hey, buddy,” Luke rasped out, his voice hoarse in a way that suggested he’d probably been crying out in his sleep. Bear licked his arm, his heavy, fluffy tail thudding on the quilt. Luke thought about reminding the dog that he wasn’t supposed to be up on the bed – three people in a king-sized bed was more than enough, especially considering that he and Charlie were both more than six feet tall (Kate was tiny but somehow managed to take up more than her fair share of space). Toss in three cats and a dog that weighed nearly two hundred pounds and things got a little crazy. He kept the thought to himself, however, because Charlie was picking up an emergency shift at the clinic and Kate was out on patrol, and Luke’s heart was still beating far too hard and far too fast for him to be alone in bed. 

He sat up and Bear let him, although he whined a little. Luke didn’t get out of bed, however. Instead, he shifted into a cross-legged position and cradled his head in his hands, working hard to get his breathing under control. It should have been easy: he’d been trained in focus techniques his entire life, it should have been second nature to drum up a simple breathing exercise to calm himself down. 

It wasn’t easy. He didn’t have the nightmare often, but whenever he did have it, it felt like an eternity before he calmed down. 

Of all the horrible things that had happened to him in his life – and the list was long – the thing that led to his worst nightmares was just a blip on the radar, comparatively speaking. Just one moment, out of an entire thirteen-day period, that came back to haunt his dreams. Technically speaking it wasn’t even the worst moment in that thirteen-day period. The worst moment – the most painful moment, the moment he was certain his life was over – was when his captors had used magic against him. The Scions of the Unforgiven didn’t consider blood magic taboo, unlike literally every other magic-user out there. It was perfectly acceptable to them to use their enemy’s blood against them, or to use their own blood to power their spells. It made them powerful and dangerous, and it served to reinforce to everyone else why blood magic was evil. 

As if anyone needed the reminder. 

It would have made sense, then, for Luke’s worst memory to be the moment he felt his own blood ignite in his veins as his captors used their magic to burn him from the inside-out. It was terrifying, and horrible, and he’d never experienced pain so bad before or since. And that loss of sense of self had made the experience worse, because of course the Scions had started with his right hand, his dominant hand, and along with the pain had come the knowledge that this wound could cripple him for life – assuming he even made it out of there – and then what would he do? There were no retired Knights of Oberon. You either died gloriously in battle or … Well, that was it, there really wasn’t an “or.” 

Luke let out a painful, shuddering breath, dropping his hands into his lap. Bear whined again, licking his fingers, forcing a shaky laugh out of Luke. The bedroom was dark, the blackout curtains doing their job, but he knew the shape of his own flesh well enough that he didn’t need light to know what was there. His left hand, now somewhat wet and sticky with dog spittle, a faint smattering of scars over his knuckles. His right hand, the skin silvery and tight, but the muscle and bone underneath perfectly healed: function over form, and thank all the gods that Charlie was as practical as he was talented, because that injury should have crippled Luke. Even the best surgeons in the world wouldn’t have been able to repair that damage – but Charlie, with his healing magic, had done that, and for a man he had barely known as anything more than his best friend’s mopey boyfriend. 

And thinking about Charlie and Kate in relation to his injuries and captivity brought him back to the crux of his nightmare. The moment he’d woken up bound and gagged in a musty old barn he’d known he wasn’t going home again, especially not when he’d realized who his captors were. The Scions hated the Knights; the only reason they’d taken him was so that they could torture him to death in the hopes of gaining information about his own people, or so that they could try and ransom him back to the Knights – and the Knights of Oberon did not negotiate with the Scions of the Unforgiven. The enmity between their two groups went back centuries, and the Knights were proud and firm in their beliefs. Luke had grown up hearing tales about Knights who had gone bravely to their deaths rather than spill their order’s secrets, and that was exactly what he’d expected to happen to him. 

So no, it wasn’t the mutilated horror of his right hand that kept him up at night, and it wasn’t the beatings, or the damage to his feet, or any of the other painful, humiliating indignities his captors had thought to visit upon him. What haunted his memories was the moment one of the Scions had woken him with a bucket of cold water and a folded scrap of paper. The water had been dumped over Luke’s head. He’d woken, sputtering and freezing, to an angry man urging him to “Wake up, you Fae-blooded bastard!” before thrusting the scrap of paper in Luke’s face. 

Luke’s hands had been bound behind his back – this had been before they’d used blood magic on his arm – so the paper had fluttered into his lap, where the freezing, stagnant bucketful of water made it stick to his torn and bloodied jeans. The paper had managed to land face up, and he’d immediately recognized his father’s handwriting. Of course his father had been the one to reply to the Scions’ demands: he’d been the Knight in charge while the regular commander had been away on business. Just one sentence, in Daniel Kandarian’s familiar, spiky script: There is no Knight Lukas Kandarian. 

Not only had his own people – his own family – written him off, but the Knights of Oberon had also stripped him, in absentia, of his title. He was nothing to them. 

More than a decade ago, and he still had nightmares about that fucking note and his father’s handwriting. 

“Shit,” Luke huffed out, noticing the way his hands were shaking. He was supposed to be calm. He was supposed to be strong. He wasn’t supposed to let a decade-old nightmare mess him up like this, especially when he knew how the story ended: after the Knights of Oberon had literally written him off, Kate had done what Kate does best and came after Luke herself, like the crazy badass wrecking ball she was. The Knights hadn’t wanted him but the Alliance was more than thrilled to have him, and Kate had pulled together a team to rescue him, because she wanted him and Kate just saw “impossible” as a challenge. Luke had been saved, Charlie had healed him, and the Scions of the Unforgiven could go fuck themselves and so could the Knights of Oberon. 

The knowledge that he was far happier with his life now than he ever would have been had he stayed with the Order did little to slow his racing heart or make his hands stop shaking. He kept seeing that piece of paper falling into his lap, only in his mind’s eye his father’s dismissal was written over and over again, the words overlapping until the page was completely covered in harsh, jagged lettering. 

He wasn’t going back to sleep, and he knew himself well enough to know that if he got up and wandered the house alone – even with Bear’s steady, good-natured presence by his side – his mind was going to take him someplace dark. There was an old straight razor hidden away in the bathroom that had his name on it, or failing that there were dozens of knives and other sharp things in the house. His skin crawled and his hands shook with the need to do something, anything, to carve out the pain and frustration those six words had burned into his soul years ago. 

But he’d made a promise to Charlie and Kate. 

Scrubbing his scarred hand over his face, Luke leaned over the dog – who immediately tried licking his chin – and snagged his cellphone off the bedside table. Charlie was at work and since he was covering a shift for a sick co-worker there likely wasn’t anyone else who could cover for him if he needed to get away in an emergency. Kate was out patrolling for literal monsters in the woods. Her team needed her. 

But Luke had made a promise. 

Luke pet Bear with one hand while he texted with the other, the texture of the dog’s thick fur soothing to his rattled nerves but not enough to bring him out of his spiralling headspace. 

I need you to come home. 

A few seconds later – not even a full minute – Luke’s phone buzzed in response. He lifted it to his face and saw Kate’s picture pop up on the phone’s screen. He checked, and sure enough there was a text message reply. 

On my way. 

Luke’s shaking hand clenched in Bear’s fur as he let out another ragged exhalation, the phone dropping to land facedown on his lap. He pet the dog with the hand that wasn’t gripping on to Bear like his life depended on it, and used the slow, steady movement to keep himself from going into the bathroom in search of his straight razor. Kate was on her way.

[eldunea]

buckle up, kids, let me tell you a bit of history.

[TW: Mentions of racism + racial violence, politics, murder and body horror.]

there is an urban legend in the united states about a native american man who tried to assassinate andrew jackson—the man responsible for the trail of tears, who built his political career on taking indigenous lives. the story goes that while andrew jackson was giving a speech, he threw a dagger at him from his vantage point, perched on top of a tree; the dagger just barely missed, nicking jackson’s ear and embedding itself in the stage wall behind him. suddenly, all eyes were on him, a dark-skinned man dressed in european clothes—including the eyes of the guard. some say he had yellow eyes with catlike slits for pupils. others say he had a tail, and that when he opened his mouth they saw glistening fangs. in any case, it was time for him to make his escape.

according to the story, he let out a yowl like a cat. he then leaped out of the tree and hit the ground running despite being shot two times. he sprinted down the city road, pursued by men shooting at him on horseback, but he managed to outrun them all, not even slowing his pace as the holes in his back continued to bleed. finally he ran into a residential area, leaped the fence into a backyard, and disappeared into the woods. dogs were sent to track him, and spurred by his scent they did so with an unusual ferocity—but they lost the trail in an open clearing.

the dagger remained with the u.s. government, where it was inspected by officials. they assumed that the hilt was made of some sort of bone, and the blade was made of iron. they also assumed that the creature carved into the hilt was a being from native mythology. but there were several things wrong with this picture: for one thing, the carving was too intricate and detailed to have been done by human hands. for another, the feathers that dangled from the hilt were not identified as the feathers of any known bird species. moreover, no native american identified the dagger as one of theirs, nor could they identify the creature or the feathers as belonging to their mythology. lastly, soon enough, the government realized that the blackness coating the outside of the bone was not paint at all. rather, the bone itself was black on the outside and white on the inside (which had allowed the carving to look so striking)—a feature not found in the bone of any species on earth.

the dagger also showed a downright magical stubbornness to never remain with one person for longer than a day. anyone whose hands it passed into would find it lost the next morning, and if they took it back, it would display the same result. mysteriously, no matter how far away it was moved, it always seemed to be trying to get closer to the white house—where andrew jackson lived. and when jackson’s second term was up, the dagger immediately switched course, doggedly pursuing him to his new home.

those who were still loyal to him panicked. they insisted that some sort of “indian curse” was trying to kill their beloved former president. they tracked down the dagger’s location, seized it, locked it in a lead box, sailed out as far as they could go and dumped it in the ocean. and there it lay, allowing itself to become lost and forgotten, ready for the day when it could once again emerge and fulfill its purpose.

earthlings say that america’s seventh president fell victim to lead poisoning from the two bullets that remained embedded in them. but a more apocryphal addition to the legend of the man and his dagger suggests a different end. they say that jackson did not succumb to poisoning symptoms, but met a more grisly fate. instead of peacefully asleep in his bed, they say he was found there on june 8, 1845 with a stab wound in his chest, his face twisted into a scream of agony and fear—after decades of being moved from place to place, the dagger had finally found its mark. chillingly, however, the tale does not stop there: it also adds the detail that his body looked desiccated, dried out, as though the very life essence had been sucked from him. his hands, which reached out for a help that would never come, looked leathery and tough like the hands of the pharaohs laid to rest in egyptian tombs.

here is where the story ends. and here is where my story begins.

the dagger’s magical properties, for its part, had long since been passed off as an idle myth. several decades after it had disposed of the ex-president, it allowed itself to resurface in a collection of indigenous artifacts. those who rediscovered it faced the same problem as those who had initially attempted to pry into its mysteries. if this belonged to a native american nation, then why could no actual native people identify its imagery or its craftsmanship? what sort of animal had bones that were black without and white within, and what sort of bird had originally carried the feathers in its hilt? however, the ignorant americans paid these issues no mind. they classified it as “native american; unknown origin,” when they stuck it in a museum.

for decades more, the dagger did nothing. its purpose had been fulfilled, so all it had to do was wait for its master to show up and recollect it. silently, tamely, it sat there behind the glass, the dried blood of the fallen president long since wiped off its blade. it sent out messages that it knew its original owner would be able to pick up on; humans who looked at it often got the feeling that it was calling to them. it became the most popular item in the exhibit due to the supernatural experience that one received just by looking at it—until one evening in 1945, when the object began to beep.

the security guards alerted the curator, who was just about to go home for the night. curiously, he took the dagger from its encasing and stole into a back room. once there, he tugged at it and figured there must be some way to open it, as the beeping was probably created by something inside. he thought he would have a struggle, but surprisingly, as soon as he pulled on the blade it came out into his hand.

attached to the knife blade was a panel of intricate circuitry in need of repair. and attached to that panel was a vial of a bright blue-white liquid—the drained quintessence of president andrew jackson.

the curator gave it to one of his scientist friends, who immediately recognized the technology for what it was: the invention of a civilization advanced beyond human comprehension. the scientist, who was well aware of all the myths surrounding the dagger, felt as though everything had been made clear. the feathers and bone hilt must have come from extraterrestrial species. the carving must depict either a real species somewhere on a distant planet or a creature from an alien mythos. the dagger’s repeated pursuit of its target must be the result of some sort of artificial intelligence. and the “native” man with catlike eyes who had thrown the dagger, then managed to outrun horses and avoid dogs even after being shot twice--he was obviously an alien in disguise.

immediately he contacted the united states government, which took lotor’s dagger into its possession. everything the government did to test the blade confirmed the scientist’s theory. but what the government was most intrigued by was the quintessence sample; they easily deduced that the quintessence powered the blade, and they wanted to see if it could have any application for humans. they soon discovered its miraculously energy efficient properties: simple machines could run on just a few drops for years on end with no decline in functioning. when NASA was created, its scientists were thrilled to hear the government secret that they had found a miracle substance that far surpassed the capabilities of fossil fuels: this was just what they needed to power their proposed rocket ships, just what they needed to get ahead of the russians. naturally, it wasn’t long before russian spies found out about this secret. the galaxy garrison was founded and started developing quintessence-based weapons and technology, and the russians made their own equivalent soon after. the race was on.

this is the story, my friends, of how lotor sincline attempted to assassinate andrew jackson—which then launched humanity into the space age.

he was indeed the man who perched in that tree and threw the dagger—if he walked around dark-skinned in the united states, most people mistook him for native, black or latino. galra instinct had driven him to climb that tree to get a better view. he already loathed the man in front of him, but hearing the way jackson spoke about native americans pushed him to the brink—it reminded lotor of how his father spoke about his own people, the moon elves, and it didn’t help that he felt that moon elves and native americans had a lot in common. violently triggered, struggling to even think or act with the force of his lived experience and his blood memory coursing through him, he took the concealed “smart dagger” from under his sleeve and snarled, “kill president andrew jackson.” once commanded, the blade would not miss its mark—nor would it rest until its objective was fulfilled.

there was only a one in a million chance of the blade malfunctioning.

somehow, jackson still lived.

in the end, though, lotor’s weapon gave him the death it thought he deserved. when it finally found him in his home, it not only stabbed him, it drained him of quintessence—it had been running low on battery and needed a brand new dose of energy, and the quintessence in jackson’s body would power it for the next 7,000 years. with the new energy, it then consumed him with visions of its master’s intensely traumatic life. moon elvish smart daggers take on their master’s feelings and even their memories, and lotor had bonded with his strongly enough that it was aware of the many traumas he had suffered. as andrew jackson felt the sensations of lotor’s life wrack his body and watched the scenes of the alien’s ordeals flash by, he learned what it was to experience the sort of oppression that he had inflicted on the native americans--and he experienced ten thousand years of it within the span of a mere thirty seconds. the shock of it killed him before the blood loss did.

fast forward to the mid-1900s. the american government kept many secrets from its people. the existence of extraterrestrial life was one of them. the existence of quintessence was not—but they certainly lied about their method for harvesting it. for a time, they were satisfied in taking it from animals—there was a farm outside washington d.c. that raised livestock specifically for quintessence draining. but they soon realized that the quality of the energy drained from the livestock was not as good as the quality of the quintessence within the blade itself. once more recalling the story about how andrew jackson had been found dead and seemingly “drained,” they quickly deduced that the purest source of quintessence available to them was from human beings.

and so it was. the american government got their quintessence fix from people sentenced to the death penalty. capital criminals were told they would get the noose or the electric chair, but instead, they were violently stabbed to death so that the life energy could be drained from them. the united states would never have invented the level of technology depicted in the voltron series if not for the discovery of jackson’s quintessence inside lotor’s dagger; humanity’s incredible progress was thus forged in the blood of the guilty. NASA had no idea that any of this was happening, that the technology they used was being powered by murder--but the galaxy garrison, whose scientists had come to the conclusion that human quintessence was superior to that of animals, did.

spacefaring aliens across the universe have had mixed reactions to this, especially because it’s a common cultural practice for them when they encounter non-spacefaring races to leave no trace of their presence. some of them praise lotor for indirectly getting revenge on an oppressor, and point to how the decades-later result of that helped the human species attain greater technological advancement; these people also tend to be pro-contact. the opposite side points to the fact that the humans harvested criminals for their quintessence, and say that lotor should have been more careful with the use of advanced technology on a “primitive” planet. these people are among the sort who believe that leaving behind even the most seemingly inconsequential of materials can change the course of another species’ history. either way, after being separated from his weapon, lotor figured it was time to go get it back.

when the paladins returned to earth during the events of my canon divergent season 7, lotor told galaxy garrison officials that they had something that belonged to him. he asked to be shown to area 51, where his dagger was giving off the last of its weak calls to be found by him—many of its systems including its system of communication had malfunctioned and were slowly breaking down, which had caused the beeping back in 1945. he was easily able to track it; he took it out of its box, smiling down at it gently. pressing the flat part of the blade to his cheek, he was granted a vision telling him that the item had completed its mission.

“well done,” he murmured. “welcome back, old friend.”

[purkinje-effect]

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 45

Table of Contents. Second Instar, Chapter 12. Go to previous. Go to next. TWs: Unreality, paranoia, a vague sense of body horror.

__________________

“Dismount before we go any further.” Sticks gestured down the way to a small red brick Federalist building on the embankment which led up to the reservoir. “Angel, it’s best you stay with us regardless. If I mistook you so easy for Rust Devil craftsmanship, anyone here could jump to the same conclusions.”

The Mister Handy scoffed. ‘Choly complied, though the reasoning eluded him.

“Mister Carey is far more adept than those curs.”

“Ohh, I know, buddy. Same goes for you, compared to those things they make.”

“I simply feel just awful that the robots likely don’t recall whatever model they began as. They’ve been stripped of their sense of self, and gain only greater capacity for violence in the exchange.”

“Violence, unfortunately, goes a long way these days.”

“Hasn’t it always?”

“Hasn’t it always,” ‘Choly mumbled in detachment, ignoring the strange attempts at compliments. As he took to his cane, he at least hoped there wouldn’t be too much walking. The persistent vague sense of claustrophobia from being surrounded by people with masks clung fast to the roof of his mouth. He couldn’t tell if it tasted like irony or hypocrisy on his part.

The Furrier standing outside the reservoir house wore long dark green and brown coat with a fur collar, and a simplistic skull mask with dark eye sockets, sunken cheeks, and yellow teeth painted on.

“They’re expecting you.” She pointed across the way from her dwelling.

Sticks nodded and led ‘Choly up to a non-geometric mudbrick dwelling which had incorporated sections of a farmhouse at odd angles and placements, more for structural purposes than as any functional openings. The cave-like hole in the front reminded of a mud swallow’s nest. Lacking windows, series lighting embedded in the mud ceiling illuminated the somewhat subterranean space. ‘Choly wondered how they had electricity. The owner wore a leather witch mask with a draped satin hood, and they sat on a dilapidated love-seat as one would an armchair. They didn’t even need to stand for ‘Choly to know this Furrier would tower over all three of them by at least a full head height. Their coat collar folded down in a broad plush dusty grey fur, and they wore royal purple leather gloves. Green fabric that seemed to once have borne semblance to a dress shirt wrapped their torso, and one of their arms made use of a single full sleeve. The other arm used one coat sleeve, but it wasn’t until the Furrier stood that ‘Choly deduced that they didn’t have both arms through the coat sleeves because their coat didn’t quite clear both their shoulders.

Sticks set down his flamer and offered his gloved left hand for a handshake. The Furrier chuffed and instead lurched forward to bear hug him. ‘Choly recalled the ghoul’s caveat not to let them touch him, and would have intervened had the Furrier not let go. Only once they patted Sticks on the shoulder did it click that three arms had comprised the Furrier’s grip, and ‘Choly sputtered into a coughing fit.

“The General needs help again, Reese.” The ghoul did his best to ignore the chemist’s tactlessness.

“She knows the price.” Reese’s voice sounded both difficult and effortless, and ‘Choly could not tell if it belonged to a man or a woman.

“And you won’t agree to anything less?”

The more ‘Choly eyed Reese, the less confident he felt that he regarded someone with standard bone structure in any sense of the concept. Were they standing in a way to face him and Sticks, or were they standing facing away from them, and the mask obscured this? Was the third arm a real arm? A prosthetic? Did the third one sprout later, and if so which two were the originals? He nearly couldn’t follow the conversation between his ex-roommate and the Furriers’ leader, too beset by that mask which he knew he couldn’t ask them to remove for his own sake. Reese zeroed in on ‘Choly and stepped toward him to hunch down and get a better look at him. Up close, the eye holes on their mask didn’t feel like they matched up to the Furrier’s eyes, and ‘Choly squirmed with that long crooked leather nose in his face.

“Well...” they mulled, “she did provide a tribute.”

“--TribUTE.” ‘Choly frowned. “She sent me to get help. She didn’t say anything about--”

“--He’s not going to unfold with you.” Sticks slouched at Reese. “That’s not why we’re here.”

“Unfold?” ‘Choly looked to Sticks, then to Reese, then back to Sticks.

“You’re a fresh recruit, then,” Reese deduced. “She taught you nothing if she did not tell you about The Unfolding. You’ve much to learn about the history of the place you wear the uniform of.”

“The Rust Devils are pushing deeper into Back Central,” Sticks continued, trying to shepherd the conversation on track. “They’ll take the Acre and Downtown Historic at this rate. Belvidere’s at risk as well. You don’t want that kind of a neighbor just a stone’s throw across the river, now, do you?”

“We’re well aware they’ve been expanding their territory quickly as of late. Are you certain they’re spilling into the Acre?”

“As certain as my nose spites my face. She wouldn’t have sent after me if it wasn’t serious.”

Reese noticed that ‘Choly couldn’t stop staring meaningfully. They sidestepped Sticks to entertain ‘Choly’s confusion.

“A greenhorn doesn’t know what he’s looking at, does he? That base used to be ours...” they leaned in to inspect his nameplate, “Carey. A nice touch, that she’s promoted you to captain already. Surely, the masks unnerve you. You can’t stand not knowing the consequences of history, can you?”

Before ‘Choly could choke out some half-intentioned alarm that Reese might have the same unusual skill as Missus Murphy, Sticks stepped between them with an uneasy glance.

“I’ll talk to her about another batch of the original X-Cell if you’ll stop giving my friend here a hard time. ‘Choly is definitely... new around here, no question.”

‘Choly mouthed the word ‘original’ to himself in shock, but Sticks’s attention lay squarely on Reese, who wrung their hands together with slow delight.

“It’s been over a decade since we last had an Unfolding. We’re eighty-seven today. She’s to consider the rite our preparation for the task. Bring one hundred. I believe we’ve all been negligent to let this trouble get so close to us before quashing it flat.”

“Then it’s agreed,” the ghoul asserted. “Two factions against one. You’ll help the General set up against the Devils?”

Reese nodded.

“What stands after The Unfolding will help you. Go speak to Bones, and cement the year’s collective. Tell her I’ve appointed her Mistress of Ceremonies.”

“Admit you don’t mind having the General around as much as you suggest.”

“She has but one purpose in the Commonwealth.”

“We’ll return by the end of the week.”

“We anticipate your arrival.”

‘Choly’s ears rang as Sticks picked his flamer back up and they exited to cross the road back to the reservoir house. Was Sticks the reason Jared had assumed ‘Choly would know of X-Cell from his Deenwood ties? Or had the chem simply been spread around like so much petrified ribbon candy?

“She said not to give away the farm,” the chemist uttered with hushed punctuation. “I... I don’t understand.”

“Like I said before. You’ve only been walking around this place a few months, Mindy. You can’t even fathom the candy you can put your hands on these days. The base is the best house on the street to fill up your sack... if you can handle a little Hansel and Gretel.”

The comparison wouldn’t quit his recollection of Reese’s witch mask. His face drooped in a mental surfeit.

“And me without a pumpkin pail.”

Sticks entered the open door of the reservoir house first, then ‘Choly followed. Angel remained in the doorway of the small space, which was well lit midday by large windows facing the waterfront. The skull-faced Furrier had resumed her eponymous bonecraft, carving out sewing needles. All manner of taxidermy, including the twin heads of a mounted radstag with at least fifteen points, adorned her wall. Bones could barely sit still, and flew to stand and pace when the pair entered her house.

“M-- Miss Bones,” ‘Choly started, “we’ve got some... news of interest.”

Sticks wrenched him back by the shoulder and stood between them. When the ghoul tightened his grip, it was the first time ‘Choly could truly feel the ghoul’s gloved left hand, and he could recognize hard mechanical parts. The chemist flinched, recalling the personal space caveat, and took the gesture as a more insistent warning.

“What can we provide the Mistress of Ceremonies?” The ghoul forced a grin.

Immediately, the Furrier squealed with delight and clapped with all four gloved hands, each a different rich color. Once she flung off her coat to free her range of motion, ‘Choly could tell she had two functional pair of arms, one at her shoulders and another atop her hips. Her attire was a mixture of straps and strips wrapped around her as her limbs would allow it.

“Oh, no no...” Bones scrutinized a variety of ledgers strewn about the various desks and tabletops, retrieving baskets from drawers on occasion. “No! That won’t do. If we’re to unfold anew, we’ve got to have fresh textile resources. We’ve done all right the past few years, repairing what we have, but ohh!” She squealed again. “To have a reason to completely replace it all again! How time sensitive is our end of the bargain this time?”

“I’d give it a week, tops. The Rust Devils are moving in on your territory and the General’s both. We’re here to ask Reese to lead you all against them.”

She stroked at her collarbones in thought.

“Ick is still grateful for the last time. I’ll have you know, he’s told me to carry along the message, next you stepped foot in Voire: You really must see him.”

“I’m sure he would love that.” Sticks boiled frustration down into a stupid smile. “Are we talking a Downtown recon? Shouldn’t we secure the city from the bad element before we go getting more comfortable?”

“You wouldn’t see us stripped in The Unfolding.” She lurched forward with all hands tented. “You are to bring us The Unfolding, yes?”

“--What is this ‘Unfolding’?”

‘Choly shrank when Sticks scowled at him.

“It is our everything,” Bones moaned. She languored on a chair that clearly had been reshaped for her odd shoulders, then looked to guarantee she still held their attention. “You’re free to spectate... or even join... However you like. The more, the merrier. Isn’t that right, Sticks?”

“That was fifty years ago, Bones. Stop making this weird and be specific, or I’ll tell the General that you just want a case of Sugar Bombs.”

She gripped the armrests, aghast.

“Oh you awful, awful ghoul. You wouldn’t threaten such as this unless you really did mean to follow through with your promise.” She melted back into anticipation. “Retrieve for us a crate of ballistics fiber from Boott Mills. We must be unburdened in this task.”

“Ballistics fiber,” ‘Choly mumbled in understanding. “You’re going to make some new armor?”

“Many of us cannot wear armor,” she replied. “Our bodies unfold in unpredictable ways. We must instead rely on garb alone.”

“And you’re sure you can’t go retrieve it yourself?” the ghoul asked rhetorically.

“The crabs are in mating season.”

“I would ask what your point was, but you know what? I don’t know what’s worse: the hatchlings, or the Rust Devils.” Sticks picked up his flamer again. “Yeah, we’ll get it.”

“I’ll name your compensation once you bring me what I’ve requested.” She slapped the nearest desk with three hands, and went back to work. “Until then, I have many needles to carve out for the preparations ahead of us.”

“Thank you, Miss Bones,” ‘Choly called back behind them as he followed the ghoul out of the building. She waved at him as though he were a child, and he smiled anxiously.

The ghoul led them down the street and to the right, following the block of field which had been turned into a man-made body of water before the war. A large windmill stood at the Southeast corner across the water. Housing had been re-erected on all four sides of the field in the same fashion as Reese’s dwelling, remnants of vehicle and farmhouse plastered together with dark mud brick. To the Northeast, a ten-foot-high wall reinforced Voire against the woodlands.

“So we might have to encounter some crabs after all, hm?” ‘Choly laughed sheepishly. “It’s a good thing you brought fire.”

“Don’t act like I’m positive you turned down the General offering you incendiary materiel.”

“She outfitted me with a specialized laser,” Angel corrected.

‘Choly’s ears burned. Sticks rolled his eyes at them both.

“We’ll make it work. Not like we’ve got much other choice.”

“...Aren’t the textile mills in Downtown?”

“Ick lives up here. Two men and a robot isn’t enough. Can you keep your mouth shut this time?”

The chemist frowned, trying to keep pace enough to lower his voice.

“Are we pretending I’m new blood for a reason?”

“To be honest, if they find out you were one of the General’s coworkers? I’m not entirely sure what they’d do to you. There’s a few who honor the Deenwood Project, but there’s a good few more that only tolerate its continued existence for what it provides them.”

“So the whole damn world knows what Deenwood was for, then.” ‘Choly shifted into a stifled snarl. “There was never a breach of DIA intel.”

“Are you still going on about X-Cell?” Sticks squinted at him. “A lot of prewar secrets aren’t secrets anymore, 'Choly.”

“No. You don’t understand. A raider. In Lexington.” He grew winded at Sticks’s pace. “He knew Psycho and X-Cell both originated here in Lowell. How did he know? And you’re trying to tell me that these mutated trappers just use a fuck ton of a top secret military prototype chem?”

When Sticks wouldn’t answer him, he grabbed the ghoul and made him stop.

“No. You’re going to talk to me,” the chemist snapped. “Raiders can’t get a hold of that stuff. It’s bad enough that they’ve been appropriating Lowell’s robots.”

Sticks shrugged out of ‘Choly’s grip with a curled lip, then continued walking.

“Goods go to the highest bidder.” He motioned to the dwelling on the left ahead of them, containing blue housing bits. “The Furriers have always been the highest bidder.”

Go to Next »»»

[kivaember]

could you answer all the character flaw questions? i just -clenches fist- love aza

ahdjaa oh goodness, I’m glad you like him that much…!!!!! okie i will answer the character flaw questions remaining, though they’ll be under the cut because they’re so long… 

Thanks for this, I really enjoyed writing these out ;;w;; 

🙊what would my muse say their biggest flaw is?

Aza tends to be very aware of his shortcomings, albeit in a very self-deprecating manner, so he would say his biggest flaw is his fear. His fear of everything. He gets frightened very easily, but he covers it up with a mean poker face or aggression, depending on the situation, and it does mean sometimes he tends to lash out or be overly harsh without meaning to. He hates being so fearful, so it’s a flaw he utterly despises within himself. 

⧱ what really is my muse’s biggest flaw?

Being eager to please. This is linked to his fear, so Aza has the right of it that it is his biggest flaw, but his desire to be likeable and useful to those he deems his friends and family, as well as being fearful that he’ll be left behind if he isn’t likeable or useful, means he neglects his own health, mental or physical, at times. 

With Bluebird, Atani and Aruci, it’s not as bad, because they see through that shit and make sure he doesn’t say ‘yes’ just to keep them happy (and, because, deep down, he’s fearful of being ‘too troublesome’ and being tossed out, a fear that he knows is irrational but one he has anyways). With the Scions in ARR, he had it BAD, trying to twist and cram himself into the role of Warrior of Light, to the extreme detriment of his own comfort and happiness, just so he measured up to these expectations that the Scions were beginning to have in him. Things are better with the Scions since SB, but yeah, if he likes someone, or wants to be liked by someone, he almost becomes a doormat. He’s gotten better since SB though. 

🤳name three physical imperfections my muse has (birthmarks, gray hairs, muscular definition, etc).

1. Heavy scarring all over his body. They’re stark, thick and pull across each other from time to time, and Aza thinks they look a little ugly, but also gets a dark thrill at ‘ruining’ the ‘beautiful body’ he was coveted for in his earlier years. With his body so scarred, he feels no one would want him like that ever again, which is a comfort…

2. His hair is beginning to prematurely grey, much to Aza’s dismay. So at the moment he has grey streaks in his hair, which are very obvious, and he can’t stop it at all. He hates visible signs of his age. 

3.  Poor joints and bone health. His childhood, with its rough living and malnutrition, coupled with the stress of living under Master Musa, then growing up on the Steppes and moving into mercenary life in his 20s, mean his body is just fucked. This is linked to the scarring, but Aza does have early onset of osteoarthritis as well as cartilage degradation that White Magic just can’t cure. His body is just close to done, and it’s highly likely that he will end up retiring from fighting in his forties, unless he wants to permanently cripple himself for good. 

🙈what’s my muse’s biggest blind spot?

Bluebird. Holy crap Bluebird is his biggest blindspot ever. Even though he’s aware Bluebird can be a massive asshole, especially to him and his friends, he fucking loves the hell out of her and thinks she can do no real wrong. Be petty and annoying, maybe, but not any real wrong. It does mean he can kind of be swept up in her energetic wake, and get dragged into stressful situations because of it…

😰when my muse is stressed, how do they act out?

 As mentioned above, he tends to get aggressive if he’s stressed out or scared. He finds comfort in projecting a show of strength and viciousness, and especially if that gives him space, because when he’s stressed he hates being crowded or fussed over even more. However, he knows that snapping at his loved ones is a bad habit to get into, so he tends to isolate himself and wallow for a while. He used to also drink himself into oblivion, but Aymeric put his foot down on that, so now he tends to wander to the closest Chocobo stables to let the birds calm him down, or do something with his hands like crafting or repairing his gear, or something. 

💚what does my muse get envious over?

People having their shit together, or carefree lives. Like, he’s so fucking jealous of Bluebird being so confident and fearless, and it burns him so bad that he’s still this frightened, jumpy little boy that he never really grew up from. He wants to be confident without an edge of terror of failing dogging his steps, he wants to be fearless just because it seemed so stress-free… so yeah, he gets jealous of that really badly. 

🚫what is one thing my muse wouldn’t want someone else to know about them?

His past. Holy fuck his past. It took over a year for Aymeric to learn about Aza’s past, and even then he doesn’t have hard details and Aza had been forced to tell him because of exceptional circumstances. The Scions? No. Nope. He’d sooner die than tell them. He has intense shame over what happened with Master Musa, as well as his hand in his sister’s death (that he still remembers unreliably…), and he’s terrified that if they know, they’d think him lesser, or deficient in some way… or pity him. 

If he could, he’d carve out that past from his history and burn it into nothing. But sadly, he’s gotta carry it, and only a scant handful of people that he can count on one hand, know about his past. Which he’ll keep that way, thank you very much. 

✍️does my muse have a learning disability?

Not a disability as such, but he does have a mental block when it comes to writing because of his past experiences. He struggles to write, and while he’s bullied himself into being able to scrawl very messy, short and poorly spelled words, he’s barely as literate as a young child. He finds this incredibly embarrassing, so he tends to go through convoluted ways to make sure he never gets shoved into a situation where he needs to write. 

🎒what was my muse’s worst subject in school?

He never went to school, which… is probably why he’s so academically apathetic about things. 

🙅‍♂️what does my muse feel insecure about?

EVERYTHING, practically. He’s insecure about his position in his relationship with Aymeric (”am I too troublesome? too high-maintenance? I can never do most of the things he wants me to do, my body is scarred and ugly, am I just chaining him down, etc, etc”), he’s insecure at his ability to live up to the expectations of Warrior of Light (”what if I fail? what if someone else I love dies? what if, what if, what if…”) and he’s insecure at just… being able to live. 

Like, all he’s wanted is to achieve happiness, feel secure and safe and be strong. But with everything happening in ffxiv, he sometimes feels he’s constantly backing off from that goal…

👾what was my muse’s childhood bogeyman?

MASTER. FUCKING. MUSA.

Even nearing his forties, with a good two and a half decades put between him and his experiences with the man, even mentioning or remembering him makes him break out into a nervous sweat. It’s why he hates Kugane, and Doma to a smaller degree. Everything there reminds him of Master Musa, and it makes him sick to his stomach and constantly teetering on the edge of terror and anxiety. 

He keeps thinking, even now, he’ll pop out from the shadows and be there. Even though Aza is old enough and strong enough to snap him over his knee, and even killed him himself before, the fear is still there. He still features in a lot of Aza’s nightmares, even now…

[hiraeth-doux]

A Road Paved In Gold (5/?)

Summary: In Steve’s memory, the seconds, and minutes, and hours of that day blurred into one endless moment of aching uncertainty and bone-chilling fear, but if his calculations were correct, his watch stopped ticking at the exact moment when his plane had gone up in flames.

Steve Trevor was never meant to die in the sky above Belgium for the reasons much bigger than he could ever imagine, and when he didn't, it seemed like a miracle.

However, surviving came with a price that changed the course of his life, making him wonder if he deserved it.

A/N: You guys are so amazing! Thank you for all the love :) I do hope you’re enjoying the ride so far; I have some insane stuff planned for this story, so... I’m doing my best to keep the updates frequent, I promise. Dig in and please let me know what you think ❤ ♡ You’re wonderful!

AO3 |  Fanfiction.net

The fire in the sky is the brightest thing she’s ever seen. It hurts to look at it but she can’t turn away. She watches it grow bigger, brighter, consuming the darkness of the night. Trapped under several sheets of metal pressing her into concrete, she can’t breathe, can’t move, but it’s her fear that truly paralyzes Diana, the terror that keeps her captive.

Her chest tightens. She wills herself to wake up. Sure this can’t be real.

Above her, the air is frigid. It smells of acrid smoke. Somewhere to the right from her, she hears panicked yelling. Ares is close by – she can feel him rather that see him, and for a moment, she remembers why she is here. Yet, the thought is short-lived, fleeting. Her gaze is locked on the fire far above her, and somewhere there—

A scream pierces the night, deafening, full of pain, inhuman. Nothing like anything she’s ever heard before, and the sound of it rips her soul in half, splinters her heart, tears right through her. It takes Diana a moment to realize that she’s the one who is screaming, her vision blurred with tears and smoke. She can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t be.

“Let me do it. Whatever it is, I can do it.”

She closes her eyes and turns away, struggling to inhale, her chest heaving under her metal trap, her ribs protesting every move.

“There’s more to the world than this, you know,” Steve told her the previous night, gesturing vaguely around them, his voice soft, mellow somehow. She’s never seen him like this before.

He pulled her closer, running his hand along her spine, and her whole body angled to curve around him. She smiled, leaned into him, listening to his heartbeat, her fingers tracing the lines of his body in slow, possessive touches. There were questions she wanted to ask, so many of them. And it wasn’t just her curiosity that kept her awake despite the weight of the day and the warmth of Steve's body lulling her to sleep – they needed to get some rest; she didn’t know what time it was, the very concept of tracking it still alien to her, but the dawn wasn’t far away, and there was another battle on the other side of it. Yet, she didn’t want him to stop taking, the sound of his voice washing over her in soothing waves.

She can still hear his whisper, feel the electric touch of his fingers to her skin – careful, gentle, but not at all unsure. Can feel his hands in her hair and the taste his mouth of hers. And that bright dot in the pitch-black sky can’t be him, can’t be, can’t be…

---

Diana came to with a low groan, her body pressed down with something rough and heavy, a sharp edge digging into her shoulder-blade, holding her body in the kind of angle that made it hard to move. She tried to take a breath, but her ribs screamed in protest and she squeezed her eyes shut with a sharp gasp, waiting for the pounding in her skull to recede. Her ears were ringing, softening the sounds of the world like she was trapped underwater.

Someone was crying, a sorry, aching sound. A siren broke through the fog in her mind, but it was too far away, too—

Steve.

No.

Her fingers curled into fists, scraping over brick wall that was nothing but a piece of rubble now, a sob rising in her throat – pain and panic mixing together into something hot and consuming.

“Steve…”

She strained her arms, pushing herself up, brick and stone falling back, making everything around her shake, echoing somewhere beneath her as a pile of what had once been a building shifted. Diana shook her head, her vision clearing, the throbbing in her body slowly ebbing back.

The dust hadn’t settled around her yet, stinging her eyes, clogging her throat.

She inhaled sharply and coughed, calling his name.  

There were people gathering around, the sounds getting louder like a blurry picture zooming into focus.

She stood up and looked around, first in confusion, then more frantically, more urgently, trying to see past the destruction, shaky on unsteady feet.

A man with a crushed skull was the first one she saw, her chest caving in momentarily. But his hair was darker, and even though she couldn’t see his face, it wasn’t him, not Steve. Relief mixed with guilt flooded her mind. Surely it was wrong to be glad about someone else’s death, but in that moment, she didn’t care.

The police were already there, ordering everyone to stay back. More soldiers, too. They were calling for her, but Diana ignored them, too busy looking for—

Steve.

He was lying under a block of concrete, half-hidden, and it took her a minute too long to locate him, her mind swimming by the time she finally spotted him.  

Diana fell on her knees next to him and rolled him carefully to his back, cradling his head in her lap, hands running over his arms, his chest, skimming over his bronze skin, taking in the new scrapes and bruises, as well as the old scars that she knew better than anyone else.

“Steve, please…” Her trembling fingers touched face, running over his dust-covered cheeks. “No, you can’t--” her throat closed up. “Wake up, Steve. Please…” There was a bad-looking gush on his forehead, dark blood starting to cake over it, its metallic smell permeating her senses. “You have to.”

A scream bubbled up deep inside her, the pain wanting out, but her throat constricted and it came out as a low whimper. She felt like she was about to crack and fall to pieces, and maybe this time they wouldn’t fit back together. There were only so many times one could be hurt until they could no longer repair themselves, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, again, not after everything they’d been through to get where they were now.

“Steve… stay with me. Please, stay with me.” She leaned closer to him, her tears falling on his face, leaving streaks on his skin as she felt her very soul tear to shreds. Her fingers pushed his hair back from his forehead, carefully, gently. “You can’t—we made a deal, Steve Trevor…” The words tumbled out of her mouth as she brushed a kiss to his temple, her voice nothing but a hushed, broken whisper laced with tears.

How many times could she watch him die before she herself ceased to exist?

“And a deal a is promise,” Steve echoed faintly, his eyes fluttering open with effort. “And a promise is unbreakable.”

Diana froze, her eyes snapping open. He winced, blinking away the dust and coughing, her palm on his cheek and his chest moving, struggling to take a proper breath.

“Steve…”

“God, what happened to—” He grimaced and raised his hand only to drop it back down with a surprised hiss. “Have you noticed… that we never use the doors anymore? It’s either windows or—” he coughed again. “Or this.”

She laughed, a short, choked sound, disbelief mixed with relief, and pulled him closer, her heart beating somewhere in her throat.

“Ow!” Steve stiffened, his face contorted with pain.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Diana murmured, kissing his brow, her fingers stroking his face, his hair, unable to stop smiling through tears. “Don’t move. It’s going to be okay, you’re okay. I promise you.”

“You know, we need to stop meeting like this,” he muttered, slipping into blackness again.

---

He was dreaming.

For the first time in two decades, he was dreaming not of blood and loss but of a young boy with perpetually skinned knees and a gap-toothed smile whose hair was always tousled by the wind. There was an old biplane on his grandparents’ farm, broken beyond repair but too heavy for the truck for haul it off to a scrap yard. The very same one that his father flew until he could no longer kick the life into it.

The biplane was rusty, the yellow paint peeling off its cabin and wings, and by the time Steve Rockwell Trevor was old enough to climb inside, all the controls had gone missing as well, taken out to replace something or other. Steve loved it more than anything else in the world - not just the sum of its parts that formed the wings and tail and a slippery fake-leather seat but all the places inside his head where the plane could take him. All the places that weren’t middle-of-nowhere rural Midwest where he was stuck every summer. The places that mattered.

Sitting inside that rusty thing that was good for nothing, not even to hide from the rain, his feet too short to reach the space where the pedals used to be, Steve would imagine soaring into the sky and circling over the barley fields and the endless expanse of flat land, peppered with farm houses and barns and herds of apathetic cows and sheep, all the way toward the cities on the horizon. He would touch the sky and let the sun decide his course. And he would be free.

There was an attic in their house – a dark, eerie place with low, sloped ceiling, stuffed with boxes and broken furniture his grandfather never got to fixing, and it was the one place where no one could find him if he wanted to escape. On the dusty floor, Steve would make paper planes, and imagine, imagine, imagine that one day…

He woke up slowly, his mind foggy, the dream clinging to his brain like a cobweb, pulling him back in and pushing him out.

“Angel,” he rasped, his mouth too dry to speak, when his eyes focused enough to see a woman with black hair spilling over her shoulders sitting beside him, looking more like an apparition than anything else.

Diana.

“They told me you might be delusional,” she shook her head, smiling softly.

“What…” he licked his dry lips and swallowed, trying to find his voice, his throat raw and every inch of his body aching. “Paris.” His heartbeat stuttered, sprinting into a race as his memories came rushing back in. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He tried to sit up, but the room tilted and swayed around him, a jolt of white-hot pain shooting from his shoulder and down his arm. Steve clenched his teeth, stifling a groan.

“Don’t move. Steve, I’m okay. Everything is fine.” Her hands were on his shoulders, pushing him back into the pillows, her face hovering over his. He relaxed under her touch, soothed instantly.

She smoothed down his hair and stroked his cheek, her skin pleasantly cool against his.

“Where are we?” He asked quietly as Diana sat down on the chair next to his bed, his eyes darting from her face to the ceiling to her face again, and to the window, and back to Diana as his mind started to clear, somewhat.

He was in a hospital.

The realization was surprising, almost shocking, the pieces of a puzzle not quite fitting together. And yet, the ever-present smell of disinfectants mixed with the whiteness all around him and the rumble of voices that buzzed like a beehive on the other side of the plain door were unmistakable and impossible to ignore.

“London,” she responded.

His eyebrow quirked in curiosity. “London,” Steve echoed. “And… how did we get here?”

She let out a short laugh, and it was pretty damn hard not to notice that even though she was putting effort into keep the smile in place, her lips were quivering ever so slightly as worry pooled in her dark eyes that looked like she hadn’t slept in a long time. Or like she cried. Neither thought sat right with him.

“You probably don’t want to know,” Diana said, clasping his hand between her palms and kissing his fingers. There was a tiny frown creasing her forehead, and his hands itched to smooth it away. She was so beautiful.

He missed her, too. Missed her the way he tended to even when she was right there next to him, even when he didn’t know that he did. And seeing her now was the only thing that mattered, her gaze tired, but also full of start. Infinite worlds and the entirety of the universe in the eyes of the woman who saved him in more ways than one.

Steve offered her a crooked smile. “I probably don’t,” he breathed out. God knew he would find out eventually, but right now it felt like too much. “Are you really okay?”

She rested her cheek against the knot of their hands. “I am, I promise.”

She’d swapped her armour for a much less conspicuous skirt and blouse, and the feeling inside him was trepidation mixed with panic. There was a gaping hole in Steve’s mind between the morning in Paris filled with softness and the warmth of her body against his, and now, and he couldn’t look away from her. Losing her became such a natural thing it started to terrify him to the core.

He wasn’t joking when he admitted to not sleeping much because he feared he might wake up without her – there was an even-present undercurrent of fear coursing beneath his skin, a constant tug in the pit of his stomach that she was going to – POOF! – disappear. She’d always felt like a dream, like something entirely unattainable. A mirage that could disappear before his eyes. Even before, in the time right after the first war, he would lie awake at night as Diana slept next to him, unable to believe his luck and whatever providence made their paths cross.

His chest felt tight at the thought of not having this. Her. Them. Even now, he almost expected her to vanish like a billow of smoke.

“I love your smile,” Steve murmured, his voice dropping to a whisper and his fingers running over her knuckles. “You have the most beautiful smile in the world.”

“I thought I lost you.” Diana’s whispered. “When I couldn’t find you, I thought…” She swallowed and pursed her lips together. “There was a man there. A dead man, and it thought it was you, and--”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled their hands to him and brushed a kiss to her fingers. “A promise, remember?” There were words, perhaps, to describe how hollow he felt for doing this to her, to making her feel this way, but he didn’t know them, and all he could do was to hold on and hope that she understood. “What happened?” He asked after a few moments to break the silence that felt like it could shatter and cut them with its sharp edges if they allowed it. “It’s a bit fuzzy.”

She relaxed momentarily, leaning closer to him a little, propped on her elbows on his mattress, her features softening. “The bomb… You got lucky when one of the walls didn’t collapse, it sheltered you.”

“And, ah…” Steve’s gaze shifted to the newly noticed bandage running across his chest. He looked at her quizzically, trying to grab a hold of the thread of reality that seemed to be slipping away from him.

“Your collarbone is broken,” she added, which probably explained the way everything was so blurry around him and why the words that he meant to keep locked deep inside him were tumbling out of his mouth without his say in it. Morphine, he guessed. It made sense. “And you have--”

“A concussion,” another voice finished for her.

Diana turned around, and Steve’s gaze shifted past her shoulder.

It wasn’t that much of a surprise to see Etta standing in the doorway, a busy hallway bustling with commotion behind her back, regarding him with mild exasperation. She was in her late 50’s now, if Steve was not mistaken, but her eyes were the same, sizing him up in that odd way that was somewhat apprehensive but not as shocked as he expected, and Steve wondered in the back of his mind just how long she’d been around, what Diana had told her.

“I can’t believe you never said anything me,” Etta threw her hands up, stepping into the room, and his lips quirked a little.

She must have had to hold it back for quite a while.

Still. He gave Diana a reproachful look.

“I had to call her,” Diana said, nonchalant.

“You’re impossible,” Etta rolled her eyes, and just for a second, Steve thought she would smack him. God knew he probably deserved it.

She didn’t, though. Instead, she gave him a long, contemplative once-over, curious now more than anything else.

“I didn’t think--” Steve started, still finding it pretty hard to keep his thoughts from scattering around.

“Obviously,” Etta interjected with a snort. She huffed through her nose, and shook her head, making Steve feel like a naughty child who got caught stealing cookies from a jar before dinner. “Well,” hands on her hips, she regarded him without much sympathy, “now that you’re awake and quite clearly not dying, your girl here needs to eat something.

“Oh, no, I don’t,” Diana started to protest.

“No, go,” Steve insisted, his eyelids already dropping and his brain feeling uncomfortably heavy in his skull.

“Poor thing was stuck here for ever,” Etta added, and muttered, “God only knows what you’ve done to deserve such devotion.” And then, as an afterthought, “Not that I want to know anything about that.”

“Go,” Steve repeated, his grip on Diana’s hand loosening. “I’ll be right here.”

---

He was asleep when Diana returned, her heart feeling lighter by the moment when he eyes fixed on his form, his chest rising and falling slowly under the blanket, his hair ruffled and his features relaxed. The early evening light coloured the room in hues of purple, softening the edges of reality.

She lowered down on the side of the bed and reached over to brush his hair back from his forehead, careful not to wake Steve up. He didn’t stir, though. Didn’t so much as move aside from leaning a little into her touch, aware of her presence even in his sleep, and this smallest tilt of his head filled her with so much affection she could barely stand it.

Earlier, she didn’t have it in her to tell him that when she found him, his chest was crushed, his pulse barely there, his body broken beyond repair. The wall that she claimed saved him had actually crushed him under its weight.

When she found him, he wasn’t breathing.

Until he was.

Until they were here and the men in white coats who claimed being the best healers around were promising her that he wasn’t in any danger. That there was nothing that they couldn’t fix about him. And she didn’t know what to make of it.

Until she was calling Etta, unable to find the words to explain what happened.

He didn’t need to know that. Diana wished she didn’t either, the image of it still raw and fresh and frighteningly vivid in her mind.

You’re fearless, Steve told her once, a long time ago, and at the time, she laughed it off, insisting that everyone was scared of something. At the time, she didn’t quite figure out yet that the one thing that terrified her the most was the chaos of his world. There were so very few rules – to life, to war, to anything, really. She was not used to experiencing loss. She was not used to how fragile lives were.

Not as far as he was concerned.

His eyes fluttered opened slowly; he blinked a few times, waiting for his vision to adjust. “Hey.”

Diana smiled and shook her head. “Sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” Steve slurred, making something warm unfurl in her chest.   

“Liar.”

He chuckled. “Never. Not to you.”

She refused to think about being one now.

“I found this.” She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out his watch.

It was in the pocket of his jacket that she found in the rubble later on when she went looking for her shield and the lasso buried under a pile of brick and concrete, trying not to think of how breakable everything around her was, how there could still be bodies trapped under the collapsed building. There was nothing she could do for them now, but the pain for the loss was squeezing her chest still. Merely thinking of losing Steve was unbearable, and her heart ached for those who the deceased – killed – left behind.

Steve’s good hand closed around the watch, his thumb running along the leather strap and over its white face. “Still ticking.”

Diana leaned down to press a kiss just below his hairline, where the cut that had been bleeding so profusely a few days ago that she thought it would kill him was nothing but a pink line that would turn into a scar before he knew it. His cheeks were covered with 2-day stubble, and he looked tired even when he was asleep, world-weary in a way she hadn’t seen him before.

But so very familiar. So very hers.

All her life, she’d known only one home – a place that held the memories dear to her heart. But no one told her before that a home didn’t need to have walls. Sometimes it needed to have a crooked smile and a heartbeat and the eyes so blue she was drowning in them every time she allowed herself to forget to hold on. Sometimes, it was that simple.

Still ticking, she thought as he drifted off again.

---

“At least here… I’m free.”

Steve’s jacket held the warmth of his body and smelled faintly of male and soap and smoke, and Diana wrapped it tighter around her shoulders as she watched the Chief poke at the fire, sending handfuls of sparks into the air, his posture relaxed to a degree. As much as it could be in the middle of something that was tearing the whole world apart.

The Evening Hate was a very appropriate name for the midnight fire, she thought if a little absently, equally dumbfounded and awed by the men’s ability to sleep when the ground was shaking beneath them. Charlie wandered off to cool down but Sameer was snoring quietly, and Steve’s breathing was deep and even, his face relaxed in a way she didn’t remember.

Diana tore her gaze away from him and studied the Chief, his face streaked with shadows.

“So you’re not afraid to die for this, then?” She asked, gesturing toward the tent behind her, curious.

He looked at her, his eyes glinting with amusement. “I will not die in this war.”

Diana’s eyebrows arched. “How do you know that?”

“I just do,” he shook his head, chuckling under his breath.

“What about them?” She nodded toward the sleeping men, her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and her head tilted to her shoulder. People, she had learned quickly, were very easy to read. Even the notorious spy let his guard down when he didn’t know anyone was looking. But this particular person sitting in front of her allowed nothing to betray his thoughts, which left her intrigued and more than a little wary. Not alarmed, though – Steve clearly trusted him, and she was learning to trust him. And yet...

The Chief glanced at the swaddle of coats and blankets that moved slowly as his friends slept, his brows coming together as his eyes lingered on Steve for a brief moment longer. He looked Diana square in the face then, the gaze of his black eyes piercing her with its intensity.

“None of them will,” he responded softly after a few moments, and she knew that he meant it. “I know who you are. What you are.”

“What I am…?” She echoed, not quite certain how to take it.

His chin jerked toward Steve. “He does, too. He’s just doesn’t know it yet.”

“How can he not know that he knows something?” Diana smiled, thinking that he was teasing her.

The Chief added another log to the fire. His face grew serious. “Sometimes, it takes a lot of bravery to believe something that you don’t understand.”

---

The only time Steve had ever been to a hospital was after his first tour, back in the States still, when he stupidly dislocated his shoulder and was sent to the infirmary. The one thing he remembered from back then was a heavy smell of everything that was the damned hospital that seemed to haunt him for weeks on end after he was discharged. It was like it lodged itself into his throat and seeped into his skin, and no matter how many times he bathed and washed his clothes, he couldn’t help but feel like he was carrying an entire ward on him.

And it was that again, but so much worse, too. It turned out that a person could only sleep for so long, and once the medication started to wear off and the fog had lifted, he found himself bored out of his mind. Reading was giving him a headache, and the crackling radio at the end of the hallway was hard to hear, and being bedridden for most of the day was driving him insane. And worst of all, he wasn’t allowed to shave. Apparently, they were not trusted with any sharp objects – the logic he didn’t quite understand, but even his barely edible lunch only included a fork and a spoon.

It was ridiculous, really.

“Get me out of here,” he begged Diana two days later.

“I will, as soon as you can stand without swaying,” she gave him a pointed look, remaining unmoved.

He flashed a grin at her. “I thought you liked swaying.”

She adjusted his pillow. “Nice try.”

He hated the time when she wasn’t around, when the minutes stretched endlessly and the nights were unbearably long and his thoughts were so loud he could hardly stand it. There was only so far a man could run away from himself.

Etta came over, too, although she was worse than Diana in that she didn’t want to tell him anything about the outside world. He’d heard the snippets of the conversations between the nurses about the Germans leaving France for good, about the overall panic among the troops, about the shift in power, the allies gaining some leverage at last. They promptly ignored his questions though when he asked them to elaborate.

“All I can do is stare at the ceiling,” he told Etta when she managed to kick Diana out ‘to get some fresh air’, taking her turn in babysitting him.

“Beats being dead,” she pointed out without much sympathy, making him smirk. “I can’t believe you never told me,” she said once more, and Steve flinched a little. “You could trust me.”

“I know,” he admitted. “It wasn’t about that. I didn’t want—” he cleared his throat. “It didn’t seem fair to put something like this…”

“You really are a moron,” she interjected, shaking her head. Then glanced toward the door to make sure that no one was there, and dropped her voice. “Just so you know, the British Intelligence appreciates your invaluable input.”

Steve’s eyes widened. “The letters… Did you…?” The ones that Diana must have salvaged, he figured.

“Delivered where they belong,” she promised. “Just keep it between us. You’re not supposed to be thinking about any of this.”

His smile softened. “Thank you, Etta.”

“You always have to do it the hard way, don’t you?” She muttered with a hint of exasperation.

Man, he missed her, Steve thought.

He got a ward-mate, too. A 60-something Irish colonel called Hector who spoke excessively in monosyllabic words or grunts and who slept most of the time – so much so that Steve didn’t even know what was wrong with him that he needed to be here at all. He tried to entertain himself by playing the guessing game but it grew old pretty fast.

Suffice it to say, he hated this place.

“Stay,” he asked Diana on a Friday night, feeling like a few more hours in this room, and he wold start climbing walls.

Leaning against a couple of lumpy pillows, he was half-sitting in bed, his fingers playing lazily with hers as he cradled his left arm to his chest in a sling.

“I think it’s against the rules,” she pointed out.

Steve caught her gaze and held it. “We can make our own rules,” he suggested quietly, letting go of her hand and wrapping his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him until their noses were almost touching and her eyes were the only thing he could see. Her breath was falling on his cheek, and Steve grinned when she failed to bite back a smile.

“You have an awful lot of those, don’t you?” Diana murmured, and his mouth went dry.

“You can’t blame me.”

Someone cleared their throat loudly behind them, and Diana pulled away just as Steve's roommate shuffled into the ward, walking toward his bed and deliberately not looking in their direction. He continued to ignore Diana entirely all through the past two days, much to her general confusion and Etta’s outrage. Not that either of those things made much difference.

Diana bit her lip, and Steve tried to hide his chuckle behind a cough.

“And now Hector here is scandalized,” he muttered, his hand finding hers again and his thumb running discreetly over the inside of her wrist where Diana’s pulse stuttered a little under his touch.

Her brows pulled together. “Why? We’re not doing anything.”

And what a shame it is, Steve thought – couldn’t help it, really.

“Because there’s a beautiful woman visiting me and not him,” he replied loud enough for Hector to hear, but the other man only snorted in response. “And maybe it’s making him a little uncomfortable,” Steve added softly, only for Diana.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” She inquired, clearly entertained.

“Well, um…” Steve shifted under the thin blanket and glanced away, the tips of his ears turning red. “I wouldn’t call it that,” he responded vaguely, finding it hard to keep a straight face.

She laced their fingers together. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

“And bring back my shaving cream,” he grimaced, scratching his scruff.

Diana smiled, her voice dropping when she spoke like she was telling him a secret, “I like it.”

“I wish you didn’t have to leave. I already miss you,” he rubbed her knuckles with his thumb and kissed them.

She ran her hand through his hair and leaned it to brush a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Tomorrow.”

---

She did not come back in the morning.

Or in the afternoon.

And by the time Etta showed up in the evening – and after Steve had already learned just how dedicated the hospital was when it came to keeping the people from getting out – he started to feel like he was losing his mind, his stomach clenched into a tight knot and his heart about to shatter his ribcage. There was something disturbing about thinking that the worse case scenario was her leaving, but he couldn’t shake that idea, his mind stuck, running through their conversation from the previous night, dissecting it piece by piece, turning the words inside out to see if he’d missed anything.

She wouldn’t, he thought. She wouldn’t just leave because—

Because what? Because he wanted to believe that she wouldn’t?

The thought made him feel sick, made the walls spin around him for the reasons that had nothing to do with his damned concussion.

She promised, he thought desperately. She promised…

And so when Etta stepped into the room, he was on the verge of jumping out of his skin.

“Steve--”

“Where is she?” He demanded, all too aware of the edge in his voice and not giving a shit about it.

“Look, if you would just--” she started, “—calm down, first of all.”

His shoulders slumped and he stopped his frantic pacing, freezing in the middle of the room as the world fell back somewhat, like someone pulled a bag over his head, making it hard to breathe and impossible to hear anything outside of his own mind.

“What happened?” He asked, so very close to actually screaming.

Etta’s eyes flickered toward the other man in the room before she grabbed Steve by the elbow and dragged him unceremoniously into the hallway and toward the fire escape staircase that seemed to be the only relatively secluded place in the entire building.

She pushed him through the door and shut it behind them, cutting off the voices of the doctors and other patients, and thank god the god-awful medical smell that was the real nightmare of this place.

“It’s the Germans,” Etta hissed as if someone could still overhear them. “Something’s—something’s up, they’re panicking.” She swallowed uneasily. “They’re burning down the camps.”

“Oh god.” His insides dropped, air wheezing out of him. “Did she go there?”

“Steve…”

“How did she even know--” he started but cut off abruptly when the realization dawn on him, nudged by Etta’s suddenly evasive gaze.

“Well…” She drawled. “How was I supposed to know that she would—Okay, I probably should have.”  She admitted. “There was a letter… the British intercepted a letter, and I—I’m sorry.”

“I’ve gotta get out of here,” he muttered, and ruffled his hair, running his hand over the 3-day stubble on his chin. Then leaned closed to Etta and whispered urgently, “Please. I can’t stay here. Not when Diana is—out there, somewhere. I can’t.”

Etta shook her head vigorously and even took a step away form him for good measure. “She will kill me. Really kill me. With a sword.”

“I can’t stay here,” he repeated, half frustrated, half pleading.

“You have a head trauma, Steve,” she reminded him. “What are you planning to do, exactly? Swim across the Channel? Do something smart that would get you killed?”

“I mean, I don’t know--”

“Well, maybe you should start with that.” Her voice wasn’t harsh but it wasn’t particularly kind either, and her gaze was daring him to protest.

She had a point, Steve had to admit that. He hated it when she had a point.

Etta’s expression softened and she let out a slow, steadying breath when he wisely remained silent. “You trust her, right?”

---

He did. He trusted Diana more than he’d ever trusted anyone. It was himself that he didn’t know what to do with.

For the sake of well-being of the patients, the hospital limited the war news for their charges to a minimum, and the old radio was often tuned to one of the music stations that were of no help to him. He could feel the shift in the air, something was stirring, but Steve couldn’t put a finger on what it was, and the time stretched painfully, one agonizingly long minute after another.

Even Hector who had no idea what got Steve looking like a caged animal seemed to have tuned down his displeasure over the unwanted company – anyone’s company, for that matter. Granted, it would feel like a victory only if he bloody cared.

As it was, however, he chose not to.

His broken bones ached dully, making him aware of every move he made, every breath he took, distracting in the way that he didn’t find welcoming. Pacing the room left him dizzy, sitting on his bad was akin trying to rest on a bed of sharp nails. Nothing was right, nothing felt comfortable, and he regretted more than anything not convincing Etta to help him leave. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to help – hell, he had no idea where she was, but at least he wouldn’t feel so helpless and useless, and everything about him itched to go back home where even the walls offered comfort.

He was stretched on top on his blankets sometime after midnight the following night, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, his mind on fire, while his neighbour snored peacefully ten feet away from him when the door opened, revealing a familiar silhouette that made Steve’s heart trip over itself standing in a rectangle of light.

For a moment, he thought he was dreaming. It was late, the lights long out on the entire floor, and he had worn himself thin with worry.

But then Diana crossed the room in two swift strides, graceful and soundless as ever, and was lowering down next to him. Steve met her halfway, pushing up to sit and reaching for her, wrapping his arms around her, feeling so light with relief that he thought he would float away if he let go of her.

“Thank god,” he breathed out.

She was shaking ever so slightly, small tremors that reverberated into him, and she smelled of smoke and blood and all the things Steve didn’t want to think of. Yet, she was here, warm and real, and he couldn’t catch his breath because until this very moment, he was thinking he would never see her again.

Steve kissed her temple and buried his face in her hair, breathing her in. The cold of the early winter was clinging to her skin, her armour, her lips, and he seemed to not be able to hold her close enough.

“Are you okay?” He asked softly once his heart was no longer lodged in his throat, nearly choking him.

She nodded and took in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you hurt?” Steve pulled back just enough to see her face, make sure she was real. He smoothed down her hair, ran his thumb over her cheekbone.

“No,” Diana whispered, touching her fingertips to her cheek. “I shouldn’t have left… like this.”

“It’s okay,” he shook his head, smiling faintly before he pulled her to him again. “I thought you…” He swallowed, unable to utter the words that were coursing through his system like some vile disease. Now that she was back, the idea seemed ludicrous, impossible, and he was suddenly overcome with guilt over doubting her. Steve exhaled slowly. “I’m glad that you’re back.”

“They really wanted to do it, to burn everything to the ground,” she muttered into his shoulder, her voice breaking.

“Shhh.” He kissed her hair, his hand running soothing over her back.

“The way they were talking about those people… They called them ‘meat’, ‘disposable’. They said--”

“Diana…”

“I don’t understand how...” Her words were barely audible, soft in the night, and he could feel her heart bleed like it was his own. Steve’s eyes dropped shut as he willed her pain away. “They were saying those awful things about real people, and they talked about them—How could they be so cruel? How could they… how could you be like this to one another?”

Steve let out a long breath and leaned back against the pillows, taking her with him, cradling her to him like a child who was lost and sacred, careful to be quiet, less concerned about the comfort of his neighbour and more about losing this moment if the other man woke up.

He wanted to ask her questions about where she went and what happened and whether she really wasn’t hurt because it scared him to see her life this. It scared him to know that he couldn’t make it go away for her, make it better somehow. But there were answers that no one wanted to hear, and moments no one wanted to relive, and maybe in another lifetime they would be luckier not to have to go through either.

“Because it’s not Ares. It’s not gods that make us this way. Sometimes, it’s what we are.” Steve said softly, not sure if she was listening or not, the words finding it hard to claw their way out of his throat. “But there are good people, too. So many more of them, and they’re worth fighting for, you know?” She was crying now, soundlessly, his shirt damp with her tears, and all he wanted to do was keep apologizing over and over again, I’m sorry you only get to see us at our worst. I’m sorry we’re not as good as you thought we were. I’m sorry the world can be ugly sometimes, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… “It’s over now. I promise you it’s over.” His bad shoulder screamed in protest, but he couldn’t bear the idea of letting go. “I can’t fix it all. I don’t think anyone can. But we’re doing what we can, and… you saved them all, you saved so many people.”

“I don’t understand… I don’t understand why there must be so much pain, why you would choose to cause it to one another,” her voice was soft, and muffled by her uneven breathing.

In the darkness of the room dispersed only by the strip of light under the closed door, everything looked smudged somehow, the sounds swallowed by the shadows, and yet at the same time, everything about his moment felt impossibly clear. He could smell his soap and the sun of Themyscira on her skin, his thumbs running over her back, their faces almost touching. Steve swallowed hard when she took in a shuddered breath, acutely aware of every point where her body was pressed to his.

“We’re not perfect, but we’re not that bad,” he continued, more out of need to fill the silence than anything else. It was hard to think when she was this close, so close he could no longer feel the numbing bone-chill settled deep inside him. “So long as we don’t give up on each other.”

For all he knew, they were not talking about the war anymore.

Her breathing evened out eventually, falling in sync with his.

“Don’t go,” he muttered when she stirred.

“I should let you rest,” Diana responded softly.

He chuckled under his breath. “I’ve been stuck here for five days. I think I’m done with resting.”

She stayed quiet for a while, her fingers closed in a fist around his bunched shirt, flexing with every inhale and exhale.

“I was thinking… Will you come with me?”

He pecked the top of her head. “Anywhere.”

“To Themyscira.”

He went still when her response landed on him like a punch, knocking him off-balance, the unexpectedness of her words leaving his mind reeling momentarily.

“Are you going back?” He asked in a strained voice, wondering what the right answer was. Was she planning on leaving regardless of his decision?

She lifted her head to look at him and then shook her head after a short pause, her words nothing like what he thought they might be, “I don’t have the answers you’re looking for. But they might.”

To be continued.... 

[perditaalottachocolate-blog]

“Retired”, ML Reveal Week - Day 4: Comedic

Day: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

(AO3 / FFnet)

It was a relatively peaceful afternoon at the [Classified] House for Retired Heroes in [Classified].

Queen Bee, a golden glitter surrounding her royal figure, was lazily watering her flowers and humming with her worker bees, instructing them on such important matters like which flowers were next in line to get pollinated and how much honey they should prepare this year.

At the pool Vixen lay stretched on a sunbed bathing in the sunlight and murmuring appreciatively, while Jade Turtle brushed her long silver tail, gazing at her affectionately and entertaining her with a playlist of his personal choice.

In the shade, at one of the small tables Gambit was losing a game of chess to a very content Aquaman.

Here and there you could spot other elder heroes relaxing, doing exercise or passing their time with leisure activities of the wide variety offered at the House.

There were however two exceptions.

A lean yet muscular figure, despite the obvious years it accumulated, was making it’s sneaky way to the meeting spot. Although he was casually steadying himself on his staff, there was a spring in his step that would put to shame most of the residents and some of active heroes out there too. The tight black suit was complimenting his feline posture, which is quite an achievement when you’re 99 years old. A white mane of wild hair was adorned with two cat ears, that were twitching excitedly in sync with a long tail, as the man neared his destination.

Another person, a female judging by the pleasant curves under the red suit, was silently tiptoeing from the opposite direction, the only telltale of her presence was a swishing sound of a yoyo string. She limped slightly, her hip apparently giving her some trouble. Her hair was almost white too, but with deep blue strands weaved into the silver bun.

They reached their spot – a small but spacious green alcove, embellished with pink Cobaea flowers – at about the same time, giggling excitedly at the sight of the other one.

Chat Noir bent in a bow, although he finished it rather stiffly with a slight wince at the pain that shot from his lower back. He wasn’t as flexible as he used to be 10 years ago.

‘My Lady is as charming as always,’ he purred with a saucy wink.

Ladybug bopped him on the nose without even bothering to look. She had 85 years of practice and could find Chat’s nose with her eyes closed.

‘Easy, Chat,’ she giggled lightly, like she was 14 years old again. ‘I still have a husband and from what I recall you too are still married, hmmm?’

‘Ah, yes,’ Chat’s grin dissolved into a love-struck smile. ‘The love of my life, my charming wife of the last 80 years.’

Ladybug scratched her chin thoughtfully. ‘80 years you say? She surely preserves well,’ the heroine nodded appreciatively but then added with a sly smile, ‘or did you replace her and didn’t tell me?’

‘My Lady, you wound me!’ Her partner put a clawed hand on his chest as if she shot him with an arrow. ‘How could I ever replace my better half?!’

He noticed her lips quirked in amusement, and quickly added. ‘But I still can compliment a fine lady when I see her, right?’

‘I suppose…’ Ladybug’s smile widened.

‘In that case… Your hair is as white as fluffy clouds, your teeth as perfect as 70 years ago, your skin is flawless like silk, ekhm-ekhm, sorry-‘ he had to pause because of a fit of cough, as he forgot again to breathe through the string of compliments.

The heroine blushed lightly and shook her head at his antics. ‘Ah, perks of owning a miraculous for more than eight decades.’

‘Now that you mention it, I do think my exceptional form may come from other sources than the ridiculously healthy regime my lovely missus enforc- I mean encouraged me to introduce all those years ago,’ Chat gnawed at his lower lip thoughtfully. Maybe he could win some pastry privileges back with that reasoning?

‘By the way, where is she?’

‘Who?’ Chat whipped his head, brutally detached from his daydream of a pile of croissants that years ago got banished from his diet because of such trivial reason as copious amounts of butter used in the baking process, which supposedly was causing his abs to expand outside of his belt.

‘Your wife, silly kitty!’ Ladybug’s laughter sounded like pearls.

‘I’ll have you know I’m a full grown cat now, Bugaboo,’ the 99-year-old kitty replied in mock hurt.

‘Old tomcat, you wanted to say,’ her sass was like wine and she had 85 years to hone it.

‘Rude!’ was all he could think of, still dribbling slightly at the earlier reminder of baked goods. ‘Anyway, she’s somewhere in our condo. Said she needed to be alone, and after 80 years a man knows when to give his woman some space,’ Chat casted his partner one of his most sly winks. ‘So I decided to sneak out and meet you, my lovely Lady.’

He unconsciously started to swish his tail under the bench, disturbing a little cloud of dust and leaves in the process.

‘How about your hubby?’

‘Oh, he’s taking his nap,’ Ladybug said dismissively. ‘And believe me, you don’t want to stand between my husband and his nap.’ Was there a hint of irritation in her voice?

‘I think we would get along just fine then,’ Chat grinned at her, aiming on lighting the mood. He wasn’t opposed to naps at all. Poor Mr. Bug definitely would not receive any nap-shame from this cat.

‘Probably,’ she casted him a strange look. ‘So. What do you want to do today?’

‘I thought I’d give that yoga thing a try,’ he said yawning discreetly. That nap actually sounded very tempting, with all that sunlight out there and the bees humming calmly in the background. ‘They say Nightcrawler is a pretty good instructor. Care to join me?’ Please say no, please say no, so that I can actually have my catnap.

‘Meh, not really my thing.’

Phew.

‘Then maybe you could-‘

‘No thanks,’ Ladybug interrupted his frantic search of an activity that would give him an opportunity to nap inconspicuously. ‘I think I’ll just practice with my yoyo.’

Chat’s lips stretched in his most impressive grin. ‘Is that so?’

‘Yup,’ his partner replied, a model case of innocence.

‘My Lady,’ he murmured, not having fallen for that trick in the last 50 years or so, ‘remember what happened last time you did that?’

‘I may be 99 years old but miraculously I don’t have dementia yet,’ Ladybug giggled.

‘Oh, so you do remember we had to call for firefighters to get you down from that roof after – and I quote - a tornado took you but thankfully you were able to jump onto that lovely roof just in time?’ Amusement dripped of Chat’s voice like treacle.

‘Oh. Yeah. That,’ Ladybug was totally unabashed by his teasing, but responded in kind. ‘In my defense I was hoping my knight in shining black armor would save me.’

‘At your service my Lady,’ Chat bowed his head, ‘but this cat is grounded and you know it. Jumping doesn’t agree with my bones anymore.’

‘Well, Superman did try to help me,’ she pointed out accusingly.

Chat casted a glance and the freshly repaired roof. ‘Yes and look, they already managed to patch the hole he made when he forgot to speed down,’ he snickered and Ladybug also gave a little laugh. That had been quite an afternoon.

‘Do you really want to do yoga?’ she asked when their giggles had died out.

‘Nah,’ the feline hero shook his head. ‘You know, I think your husband actually had the best idea.’

‘Catnap?’

‘Catnap,’ he confirmed with a satisfied smile. She knew him too well. ‘Care to join me?’

‘Kitty, if you see me taking a nap in the middle of the day, call a doctor,’ she nudged him in the ribs, then unhooked the yoyo from her hip and with a small wave she disappeared in the direction of the stables.

‘Cooeeee, Ladybug!’ Chat’s voice boomed over the greens of [Classified] House for Retired Heroes.

‘What is it, Chat?’ Ladybug replied from her spot on the top of the leisure center roof. Her yoyo was wrapped around a chimney of the stables, good few hundred meters away, while the end of the string was tangled somewhere in the trees surrounding that building.

‘I thought we agreed you’re not supposed to climb with your yoyo,’ the feline hero pointed out reproachfully.

‘Ugh,’ the red-clad heroine tried to stomp her foot, but remembered just in time that it wasn’t a good idea while perched on a narrow space of a rooftop. ‘This isn’t what it looks like. I’m just… I’m just enjoying the view is all,’ she explained nonchalantly, as if she didn’t spend the last two hours stuck three stories above ground level.

‘Really? Enjoying the view?’ Chat quirked his brow sarcastically, thought the gesture was lost under his mask. ‘You know my shower excuses when I was a teen were more convincing than that,’ he replied with a smirk.

‘Oh, shuddup Chat and help me get down,’ his partner replied exasperatedly.

‘How?’

Ladybug looked around, confused. ‘Can’t you just use your baton or something?’

‘Anything for my Lady,’ he grunted. ‘Even if my back is going to hurt for a week.’

‘Stop whining,’ the silver-haired heroine actually had the nerve to scold her rescuer. ‘I’m sure your wife will be more than happy to soothe that pain.’

‘She will,’ Chat grinned at the thought of his missus rubbing some herbal ointment onto his back and purred at that image alone. ‘But that’s beside the point.’

‘Are you coming or what?’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ he grumbled and extended his baton.

‘Why did you do that, Kitty?’ he heard Ladybug’s half amused half disappointed voice, the source located about two meters above his current position.

Unfortunately he couldn’t see her, because his head, as well as the upper half of his body, was currently stuck in a large hole, the rest of him – tail and all – dangling hopelessly over the roof surface. His baton rolled to the attic floor and out of his reach.

Ladybug was still perched on the top of the roof, not daring to move.

‘I think they didn’t do a good job on that super hole after all,’ Chat complained from the depths of the attic.

‘Maybe you could try to cataclysm yourself out?’ the heroine suggested.

‘Well it is worth a try,’ her partner agreed. ‘But just a little catastrophe this time. I don’t think the management would appreciate us destroying the leisure center. And you are still on the roof,’ he pointed out.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked after slight readjustment of his position. ‘Here it comes,’ he warned.

‘Cataclysm!’ Ladybug heard a muffled cry she knew so well.

A large crack appeared between the tiles and sped its way to the top of the roof.

‘Well, that went smooth,’ Ladybug commented sourly. She was trapped from waist down in the floor, after the cataclysmed roof gave in and she dropped to the attic.

Although there was one improvement – as now she was inside the leisure center, she gained an unlimited view to the upper half of Chat, because he was still stuck in his hole.

And his ring was beeping.

And even though there was no doubt that someone would finally notice their absence or possibly a pair of legs dangling from the roof, this could take a while. Chat didn’t have a while. He had exactly three pads left.

‘Well my Lady, I guess that after 85 years the time has come to show you my unbelievably handsome face,’ the black-clad hero said conversationally, anxiously peeking at his ring. ‘You know, I wonder why haven’t we actually done this earlier?’

‘Tikki said it was dangerous,’ Ladybug replied bluntly.

‘Yeah, 85 years ago?’ Chat’s thoughts were galloping now. Distract her with something, maybe help will come in time. Ah, who are you kidding, have you ever had luck in such cases? his inner Plagg snickered at him.

‘So? She’s old. She knows what she’s doing, right?’ Ladybug was also nervously looking around. She felt gravity making a claim on her, as she started to slowly slip to the second floor.

‘It’s been almost nine decades,’ Chat noticed. ‘One would think after Hawk Moth…’ he trailed off when his ring gave the fourth warning.

‘After Hawk Moth there was LucySphere. And Gwydlien. And Hydra. Ugh, she was awful,’ Ladybug shivered in repulsion at the reminder of one of the meanest and ugliest villains in human history, at least according to Tikki. That had been when Vixen, Bee and Jade had come in handy. ‘Plus a handful of minor mind-controlling, magic-wielding, powerful-as-hell creeps.’

Somehow in all those years there never seemed to be a good moment for a reveal.

‘Yeah,’ Chat’s eyes glazed with memories of their epic battles. ‘Those were great times, my Lady.’

They both casted a glance at his ring, where the last pad was about to flicker.

‘Are you ready?’ the black-clad hero asked. ‘Here it comes!’

Green light filled the attic, temporarily hiding Chat under miraculous glow, but its fade was inevitable.

Ladybug blinked a few times before taking a good look at the figure immobilized in the hole above her, for the moment choosing to ignore the black, snickering kwami that settled on his holder’s head.

‘Eeeeek!’ she screeched in recognition.

‘Hi there, my Lady!’ silver-haired, green-eyed, bespectacled Adrien Agreste waved at her hopefully.

‘Unbelievable!’ she burst out. ‘How can you still look this handsome after being stuck in a freaking hole for so long! Life is so unfair,’ she sulked and crossed her arms over her chest huffing angrily. It proved to be not the best move considering the circumstances.

‘Wait? You know me?!’ Adrien exclaimed. ‘Hang on, you’re slipping!’ he warned, but it was too late.

By crossing her arms Ladybug shifted her center of gravity, which sealed her downfall. Red in the face, she involuntarily dropped down from the attic.

‘Hey, don’t leave me here!’

‘You know,’ the heroine seeped glaring up at him through the hole in the floor, ‘you should have just taken that nap, Adrien!’

With that she released her transformation. Adrien gasped at the familiar fierce blue stare piercing him with daggers, while Marinette continued.

‘And if you think I will rub anything onto your back tonight, better think again, honey!’

If you liked it, check out my other stories on AO3 or FFnet.

[thecosywriter]

The Afterglow (Yondu x OC) C2

Soldat was the next destination for the Ravenger team. X'antia and six of the other crew members had been dispatched to the wasteland to carry out a deal in the no man lands. This was neutral territory – ideal for the sale of weaponry and the suchlike. X'antia always carried out the weapons deals, Yondu would secure the deals as Captain and then X'antia as head engineer and a small team of the mercenaries would make the trade-off. On most occasions, the deals would go through smoothly – however when they did not…it was easy to assume that the unfortunate second party did not live to see their side of the bargain fulfilled.

Soldat was a barren desert wasteland comprised mostly of steep sandy hills and the more than regular sand storm which left the faces of the crew sore and raw from the friction. A number of the group that had been blessed with common sense had their bodies covered with layers of clothing and rags, covering their faces and any skin which could be on show and open to the elements. Others were not so smart, never the less the team always collected their money regardless of the situation.

On most occasions, the deals would go through smoothly – however when they did not…it was easy to assume that the unfortunate second party did not live to see their side of the bargain fulfilled.

Collect the money at all costs.

That was the aim of the game. X'antia knew this as much as the rest of the team. She had been making these trades for over a decade – as a child she was more nervous about the transactions; happy to be kept in her room on the ship making the weapons. The yellow haired alien was not a fan of the violence at first – she got used to it quickly.

During one less than pleasant transaction, a punter left the young alien with a nice scar to remember him by. A deep scar edged into the otherwise soft skin of the Valkurian; the then teenager had once made a joke of how she would lose all her punters thanks to her new scar ruining her nice skin.

It was too hot on this planet, the team groaned in unison as they each made their way up the sandy peak pushing and pulling the three large wooden boxes back to the ship. Ideally they thought they would leave the weapons with the trader and made their way back up to the ship with little to no effort. However, plans did not necessarily go as previously thought.

The punter asking to buy X'antia off of the crew did not bode well with the Valkurian and her team, amongst the entire Ravenger crew X'antia did have some allies – a few but they were still there in situations like this. The Ravenger team had locked horns with the trader and his team leading a nice brawl which left the Ravengers with a nice amount of money and a collection of weapons to haul back to the ship.

"Almost there boys!" X'antia panted heavily as she struggled to pull one of the boxes back up the sandy peak. "Just a few more meters to go…" She puffed looking up at their small ship which sat proudly at the top of the peak. All they needed to do was get to the top of the hill and load the weapons up and return to the mother ship. Not that much trouble.

"You do realize Cap'tn is gunna kill us?" Grunted of the company who carried one of the large boxes on his shoulders, the aliens large hulking form allowing him to walk up the hill almost nonchalantly next to his companions.

"Yeah you wasn't supposed to be killin' the trader X'antia – that weren't orders." Groaned another member of the company; X'antia chuckled as she watched the green alien use his two spare arms to propel his box up the hill at a steady pace.

"Oh, we got the money that's all Capt'n cares about – he will be fine!" She chuckled between grunts as she continued to pull making her face go a darker purple than her usual milk lavender.

"You can explain it to 'im then." The bigger alien chuckled as he watched his teammate struggle until she was purple in the face.

"Fine, you bunch of pussies!" X'antia snapped as she pulled her box onto the top of the hill, falling down onto the sandy ground with an exasperated gasp as she looked up at the sky.

"We will just leave you to pack up Tia." One of the aliens chuckled as he sat down on the edge of the loading bay pulling off the layers that concealed his chiselled physique.

"I hate you all." X'antia breathed heavily as she closed her eyes and stretched her tired muscles earning a howl of laughter from her team as they took hold her the boxes and began to load them onto the ship.

"I really need to make lighter weapons…" She commented dryly to herself as she sat up slowly and pushed herself off the floor and went to help her team load the cargo. "Or you could try not killin' the buyers?" An alien commented with a chuckle.

"Yeah, maybe that too."

X'antia POV

Living on board the Ravenger main ship had its perks; it was a huge vessel with multiple rooms and areas which were always fun to explore. The benefit of being the only female crew member meant that I was able to turn my laboratory into a make do bedroom.

The other crew members had large mixed sleeping quarters; really it was only Yondu and a few of the higher ranking members of the crew that had their own rooms. The others made do with hammocks and bunk beds in the bigger rooms – I for one was glad that I never needed to mix in those quarters. I could deal with manly smells as good as anyone but having over sixty Ravengers sleeping in one room….that was all too much for my senses.

My 'room' was my safe space – on a ship full of rowdy men a lady needs one. I had managed to get the Captain to agree to let me convert some of my engineering lab into a bedroom. I had managed to install a pull down bed on the wall and had some thick fabric curtains which separated off my sleeping area from the working area. Not that the curtain was drawn at any point – I was always tinkering around with my toys in bed. Much to the annoyance of some of the other engineers, they couldn't understand how I could sit in bed and focus on work at the same time but it was comfortable and productive for me none the less.

As I sat on my bed tinkering away at one of my new weapons I felt my ears give a twitch, listening closer I could make out the sound of footsteps, light ones belonging to the little Terran boy walking down the hall to my laboratory.

"Hey little Terran. What's up?" I mused out loud as the footsteps stopped.

I looked up from my work to see the thirteen year old Peter Quill sulking in the doorway. His face was red and blotchy, I could tell he had been crying – he was never one to admit to crying, not aboard the ship but I had known the child since he was picked up five years ago. He had been crying, my guess was that the other crew members had been messing with him again. I sighed, looking over at the kid, I knew bullying built character and it was known that Ravengers needed thick skin but I still felt for the poor boy.

"They did it again…" Quill sniffed angrily as he gently pulled out a smashed up music player from his pocket. "Your music box?" I sighed as I stood up from my bed and made my way over to the kid who held out his cassette player for me to take.

"Damn it." I groaned as I examined the smashed up piece of machinery. Terran technology was basic at the best of times – I had offered to remake a better music player for the child but he would hear none of it. He had a strange attachment to the music player; his late mother having given it to him was my understanding of the situation. I never knew my parents so I had no such connections to another person but I could sympathize with the child who had moved over to sit in my chair by my work table.

"You can fix it can't you Tia?" The Terran boy asked with a deep breath as I looked the device over. I had repaired the cassette player a number of times before, I thought I had made it clear to the vandals that if they fucked with the music box giving me anymore hassle I would hurt them…badly.

Placing the cassette player on the worktop I nodded smiling over to Peter as I pulled out a few tools and spare parts that I would need and lined them up on the table.

"Thank you Tia…" Peter sighed, relieved that I was there to help him keep the last few traces of his mother alive.

I shooed the preteen off of my chair and began work on the small device; undoing the small broken pieces and placing them down on the side before I examined the extent of the damage.

"What does this do?"

The Terran asked as he looked around my workshop, I cast my eyes over at the teenager who had picked up one of the weapons I had been working on.

"Put it down kid." I chuckled. "That gun generates a blue flame which can scorch to the bone in ten seconds." I could feel the smile spreading across my face as the little Terran slowly placed the gun back down where it came from and backed up.

"What about this one?" He asked as he rushed over to one of the other boxes I had stored near my bed. "That is an energy dagger. Be careful with that one you could lose an arm or a leg with that!"

I laughed to myself as the boy turned to me with an open mouth. "This is one of my favourite little weapons." I said as I made my way over to Peter and took the weapon from his hand.

I examined the weapon, all it was to the naked eye was the black hilt of the dagger and I pressed a small button on its side and a glowing translucent white flame shot out from the hilt of the dagger.

"Woah! It's a lightsaber!" The teenager exclaimed in delight, I had no idea what a 'lightsaber' was referring to, tiling my head to the side I tried to image what possible reference this child was making about my weapons. I hoped it was not some kind of Terran insult…

"A what?" I asked as I cut off the power to the dagger returning it to the box making sure it was out of reach of the teenager.

"You know? Star-Wars! The Jedi – the lightsabers?" I blinked at the child in confused, I knew there were many wars in the Galaxy. My home planet had been invaded during one of the old wars. I did not see however, the relevance or link to my creations…

"Can you make me something? I am the only one on this ship without a weapon…" The teenager sighed as he sat on the end of my bed. I sighed and made my way over to my work chair and continued working on the cassette.

"Hasn't the Captain taught you to shoot yet?" I asked as I tinkered away at the device. I thought that it was common for the new recruits to be drilled in weaponry when they were taken aboard the ship.

"I have been shown a little about the weapons; all I am really good for is –"

"Getting into small spaces?" I finished with a chuckle, noting the excuse which was used nearly every other day. The only reason the Captain never delivered the kid to his father was because he fit into small areas to turn on and off switches and Terran children were notoriously quiet and hard to track even with my enhanced hearing.

"Yeah." He sighed sadly as he looked at some of my blueprint sheets lined out on my walls. I felt bad for the kid, I had to admit – I was lonely when I was brought onto this ship but it was nicer than the life I had before…I knew nothing of the life of the teenage boy. I suspected by the state the child was in when he was picked up that his life was better on Terra.

"I will make something up for you but something that will suit your size." I sighed at my own softness; I knew I would get a wrist slap from Captain about this. I should really run the idea with him first….but there is no fun in that.

"Something cool?" Peter asked jumping up from my bed and rushing over next to me making me chuckle at this enthusiasms. I couldn't fault the Terran for that.

"Yes, something very cool. Now run along, I need to get some work done; I should have this fixed by tomorrow." I chuckled as I shooed the boy off out of my workshop.

3POV

The canteen area was busy was usual, the Ravengers who were stationed aboard all sat in their groups eating their meals, with less than hospitable manners. It was something the Valkurian had become accustomed to over the last decade, it disgusted her at first but now it did not make her look twice. Between the belching, farting and general rowdiness the company wasn't bad per say – just cultured in a different way.

X'antia sat at her usual spot next to her fellow engineering buddies, as the conversation and banter flowed across the table the neon haired alien caught site of one particular crewmate – one she knew all too well was to blame for the extra workload tossed at her today.

"Did you see the tits on that Kree girl?!" The scaled aquatic alien bellowed, his voice echoing through the main canteen making the yellow haired alien grit her teeth as she slowly stood up and moved over to the loud alien.

"I would have been a happy man if I could have buried my head in –"

An eruption of gasps filled the hall as X'antia walk up behind the alien and took a firm grasp on his three testicles through his trousers making the larger alien emote a noise that could only be described as a plea for help.

"Alright Scales, listen here!" X'antia snapped as she tightened her grip on the large aliens privates making him whimper. "You want to teach the kid how to harden up – I get it –but I have fixed that damn music box of his three times since he came on board. " She shouted as she tugged downwards causing the rest of the room to gasp in empathy – a couple of crewmembers cupped their own privates in empathy for their fellow crewmate.

"I have shit I need to do. I have weapons I need to sell. I can't be fixin' that box all the time. Ya' here!?" X'antia shouted as she shoved the alien back into the table releasing his testicles in the process.

"I thought that was the reason you were 'ere woman?" The scaled man spat back at X'antia as he regained his composure, standing up towering over the smaller alien. His large grey hulking form intimidating to the other members of the crew; Scales was a bully – it was known on the ship – he was only good for the sheer force the shark-like alien brought to the party.

"No wait, I remember you are here as the captain's live in whore." He chuckled darkly as he grabbed hold of the younger aliens shoulder and shoved her into one of the tables with a loud crash as she toppled backwards over the table onto her feet.

"You take that back!" The young Terran shouted from the food cue, slamming his tray of food down onto the side he ran over to the fight and tried to grab hold of the shark creatures arm but was swatted away into the far wall.

"Fuck off you little imp!" Scales shouted as Peter stood up from the floor wiping his bloodied cheek, looking over he watched as the alien grabbed a hold of X'antia and slapped her across the face much to the horror of some of the crew and the joy of the others.

Turning on his heel Peter Quill ran out of the canteen and through the main rooms of the ship up to the Captain's office. He knew better than to burst in unannounced but this was an emergency with a gulp the teenager pushed into the office with a crash.

"Captain!" Quill exclaimed out of breath, grasping onto the nearest table to catch himself. Yondu stood in his office facing a collection of holographic screen which displayed the shadowed faces of two men.

"Get out of here boy!" Yondu shouted at the teenager before turning back to the screen to continue the meetings. "We gon' bring ya the stuff by the end of the week." The Captain said gruffly, trying to ignore the panting teenager behind him.

"Captain!" Quill shouted again trying to get the Captain's attention much to the latter's irritation. He was not a fan of being interrupted during a deal he was slaving over.

"Get outta 'ere I am busy boy!" Yondu exclaimed as he threw a book at the teenager who managed to dodge the projectile with a gasp.

"You got my money?" Yondu snapped at the screen as he turned away from the boy, the shadowed figure nodded slowly before his distorted voice came over the monitor. "Deliver the cargo and you shall have your money Ravenger." With that the screens cut off and the meeting was over.

Yondu let out a grunt as he turned around to Quill with a face like thunder. The kid new better than to disrupt a meeting with a punter. "Boy, this better be worth ma' time! Interrupting me during a deal, you know better than tha'!" He exclaimed as he leaned onto his desk crossing his arms.

"There is a fight!" Yondu raised a brow, there were always fights on the ship – they were Ravengers, they were not known for the sunny dispositions not their manners or etiquette.

"There is always a fight boy. We're Ravengers!" Yondu exclaimed tired of the commotion the teenager was causing.

"But Tia is fighting Scales!" Quill exclaimed, expecting some reaction from the Captain but none came. The blue alien sat down in his chair and picked up one of his small figurines from his control console and looked it over.

"That ain't my concern boy. Girl shouldn't be causing fights with bigger folks." Yondu said without looking up from his figurine, he waited a moment for a reaction from the Terran but none came the room was quickly vacated and the door slammed on the Captain who let out a groan and cracked his neck, spinning his chair around and brining up footage of the canteen on one of his screens.

Yondu watched the fight over his monitor and couldn't help but route for the female alien. He had taken a liking to the girl, not that he would ever admit it to himself or his crew. The former sex slave had managed to carve her way into the depths of the Ravenger's mind. Yondu took no interest in her when she was a child but as she grew it was harder and harder for the Captain to not pay attention to her feminine form.

He let her get away with more than he should, he knew that – but he also knew that the young alien would never see him as anything more than the old Ravenger that bought her for a price from her former master. He wasn't the type to settle for one dish anyway – he enjoyed dipping his fingers into all of the dishes the galaxy had to offer. No, he could never settle for just one dish – he let out a groan as he shook his thoughts from his head and watched the screen in front of him letting out a howl of laughter as he caught sight of the position the two aliens were in.

"You fucking bitch!" Scales exclaimed as he lay face down on the floor with X'antia on his back, legs wrapped around his head chocking him, whilst her whip tied his arms and legs in place. A group of Ravengers had circled the two cheering for their respective team.

"Apologize to me before I turn you into an entrée." X'antia hissed as she tightened the grip on the shark's neck.

"Valkurian whore!" Spat Scales as he tried to wriggle free but to no use, the bonds grew tighter and the Valkurian's legs wrapped tighter around the aliens airways making him choke.

"Apologize, Scales." X'antia said as she tightened the grip making other Ravengers wince a little.

"I ain't apologizing too no slave whore!" Scales gasped as much as he could, making the yellow haired alien chuckle.

"3…2…."

"Alright X'antia he is sorry just him go." One of the other Ravengers exclaimed as they watched their friend choke slowly beneath the female. "Are you going to break it again?" X'antia snapped as she tightened her grip pressing down on the gills of the alien.

"No…" Scales gasped as he tried to gain some air into his lungs to no avail. "I can't hear you…" X'antia sang as she looked over to her friends with a smile. "No, I won't!" Scales exclaimed.

"Promise?" X'antia chuckled knowing she had gone too far she let up some pressure on the sharks gills letting him breathe. "I promise." He growled as he took in as much air as he could. X'antia quickly jumped off of the alien and landed next to him brushing herself down.

"Good now fuck off!"

Yondu couldn't help but laugh as he watched the large hulking alien leave the room – clearly shamed by the public display. Yondu knew that Scales was one hell of a sack of muscle, that was the main reason he kept him in the crew, he was pure brute force and intimidation which was good during certain dealings.

However, Yondu had also watched X'antia over the last decade, she was street smart when she came to the crew as a teenager – as she grew she trained alongside the others and she learned her own style of combat. Yondu had seen it in action – she was smaller than the other crew members, she was more agile and faster – this would often beat over sheer force. Her agility and frame combined with her energy whip made her quite a little firecracker.

Looking back at the screen Yondu raised a brow with a smile, young Quill was making his way down the corridor to the canteen with one of X'antia's guns.

"X'antia I am here to help you!" Quill exclaimed as he ran into the canteen pointing the gun at the group of Ravengers making them step back a little. X'antia let out a roar of laughter as did a number of other Ravengers all clocking onto the big problem which the young Terran had not noticed.

"You're laughing at me? I came to save you and you're laughing at me…." Quill exclaimed in despair.

"That works better when you have the ammo clip in." X'antia laughed as she made her way over to the teen and took the gun off of him and placed it over her shoulder with a smile bending down to kiss the teenage boy on the head in thanks. Quill let out a mock disgust noise as he wiped his head and then sat down to finish his meal.

"Thanks Little Terran."