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furious-rogue-stuff · 1 year

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Heat Chapter 38: Enough

We’ve officially made it to the conclusion of season 3 events from the series! After this chapter, it’s going to be a whole new Heat world 🥴 Thank you to everyone who has kept up with the series for this long! I hope to see you on the other side in the continuation of Heat as a unique story with no Narcos series timeline or events to fall back on 😅 Wish me luck!

Pairing: Javier Peña x OFC | Javi x Querida

Disclaimer: Written in 2nd person narrative, you can safely assume our heroine and love/lust interest is a Latina, written by a Latina. Here's my philosophy on my writing, for further context.

Rating: Mature/Explicit 🔞

Word Count: 18,000+

Summary: As the fallout of everything finally settles, decisions are made that will reset the course of everything you'd once been striving towards. Will you and Javi be able to forgive enough to emerge from the ruins of what was left in the wake of everything?

Warnings: Mentions of unrequited feelings, angst, allusions to past trauma, heartbreak, revenge, unhealthy copy mechanisms, anxiety, and grief. Remorseful!Javi, Sad!Javi, and Hopeful!Javi. In the vein of Narcos being a bilingual show, and Javier Peña being fluent, I felt it was apropos to include Spanglish and Spanish throughout.

Heat Masterlist

Previous chapter - Chapter 37: Everything

Chapter 38: Enough

Javier had woken up hung over, still in his clothes, and feeling sick to his stomach while the sun beamed down into the bedroom through the unobstructed windows the morning after he'd gone to your place to argue with you – to plead with you to give him a chance.

It didn't hit him until he'd laboriously pulled himself up to sit on the side of the bed and the wave of nausea had dissipated enough for him to think a clear thought.

It's over.

His heart sank as everything came back to him in waves, and before he could help it, he was burying his face in his hands and fighting his acrimony and disgust, self-loathing taking over now, as he warred with catching his ragged breath and staving off the anxiety that was roiling through his guts.

That sick, miserable feeling clung to him throughout the process of packing his things in the reassembled boxes he'd mechanically taped back up after retrieving them from the storage closet, and it sat like a heavy weight in his chest when he booked his flight to Miami. But it really sank deep into his marrow when he packed his bags for the airport, and found your robe hung up on the back of the bathroom door, along with your slippers misplaced underneath the bed. The knot in his throat only got tighter as he placed each into a suitcase, unable to consider discarding them. And when he retrieved all his important documents from the shoebox, he saw the photos.

The two he'd taken in Cartagena, and the one of he and his father from back on the ranch.

He felt dread in having to call him. So…he didn't.

At least not until he was out of Colombia, and not until after several days of being back stateside. Really, the only reason he was sitting on the bed of his hotel room now and dialing the house number was because he realized he'd need to explain why a delivery with a bunch of his shit was getting dropped off without prior notice.

"Peña Residence," his father greets after a few rings.

"Hey, Pop. It's me," Javi edgily greets.

"Mijo, hey! It's great to hear from you. It's been a while, sabes? Wish you'd check in a little more frequently, you know," Chucho exclaims warmly, and Javier slumps, feeling even guiltier now. "How're things?! Your cousins mentioned something they heard on the news about a big bust down there. Was that you?"

"Uh…yeah. It was," he hedges, then sighs forlornly before just blurting, "Pop, I, uh…I'm in Miami right now. I have a few loose ends to tie up on that case, and then I'm heading home. To Laredo, I mean."

"Javier…what's the matter?"

Rubbing his forehead morosely at the sound of worry tinging his father's bass-filled rasp, Javi clears his throat from the lump of emotion threatening to choke him up. "Listen, so…I called just to let you know a few boxes should be getting to the house in a week or so. I'll hopefully be there by then so you don't have to deal with it—"

"Son," Chucho intones assertively, cutting Javi off. "What's happened?"

Exhaling harshly, Javi reaches for his almost empty cigarette pack, and is busying himself with lighting one up as he rumbles, "Things are over in Colombia. I'm done. And…and once I testify on behalf of an informant this week, I'll be done at the DEA."

There's a sobering silence from his father over the line, before he exhales deeply, and asks, "What about her?"

"Pop…I can't," Javi responds dejectedly as he vacantly stares down at the cigarette pinched between the fore and middle fingers of his right hand propped on his knee, watching the ember-like heat burn out from not being puffed on since his initial drag. "I can't get into that. Not right now…"

Chucho hums, tone gravelly and concerned, but he relents, instead muttering, "Alright, mijo. Just…take care of yourself."

Javier squeezes his eyes shut and nods before answer tightly, "I will. Thanks, Pops."

"I love you, son. Be safe."

A week of debriefs, meetings with prosecutors, and many on-the-record statements later, and Javier has managed to shut off his feelings. Compartmentalized them for later self-flagellation once he's away from all the accusations glared like daggers his way from all kinds of jaded officials. But just when he thinks he'll be able to abscond from the soul-crushing need to take public accountability for his actions, a mandatory exit interview appointment that will require him to head up to Virginia in a week is drilled in by the powers that be at the DEA headquarters there. Resignation aside, he doesn't want his actions to detract from the work Feistl and Van Ness did, or taint the agents and the rest of his staff back in Bogotá, so he begins to steel himself for that bureaucratic formality and hopes he can make it a day trip.

Today, though, he's in a federal courthouse, testifying on behalf of Salcedo.

"The danger that he put himself in to ensure the success of our operation is something that cannot be downplayed. Jorge Salcedo put his life, and the safety of his family, in peril in order to do the right thing. He was instrumental to our efforts to capture and prosecute the Cali godfathers, and I believe he's deserving of this plea deal," Javi tells the closed court, making sure to be purposeful in his tone so the stenographer captures it accurately and the prosecutor knows not to fuck Salcedo any more than they have to. It was bad enough he needed to plead guilty to felony conspiracy charges, after all.

Once Javier has left the stand and exited the room's gallery, he's assertively striding out into the expansive halls of the federal courthouse, in a rush to leave and be a couple meetings closer to not having to think any more about Cali.

"Hey, Peña!"

Javi skids in step, just several paces shy of the large staircase, and turns to see Steve sauntering over to him. The wry grin and irreverent quirk of his brows is enough to make the brooding hostility dissipate from his demeanor and for his shoulders not to feel as weighed down as they'd just been by his self-loathing.

"Well, shit. You keeping tabs on me?" Javi quips as he strides over to meet his old partner halfway.

He doesn't expect Steve to pull him into a big hug. "You wish! Nah, I was meeting with a prosecutor on an interagency task force, when I heard through the grapevine that you were pissing off the feds up here," Steve jokes after stepping back from the hug to roughly clap Javi on both shoulders. "You look like shit."

"Hmph, just following your lead, you fuckin' hillbilly," Javi drawls acerbically, earning a scoffed laugh from the other man, so he gives a glib, two-finger shove into Steve's tan-suit-clad shoulder before asking, "How're Connie and Olivia?"

"Doing great! Although, they're both trying to wear me down on getting a dog. Olivia's already cajoling, 'Maybe Santa will bring a puppy,' so yeah, I'm screwed," the blond agent huffs amusedly before checking his watch. "Hey, you free now? Wanna grab a drink?"

Stiffly, Javi puts his fidgeting hands in the pockets of his gray slacks before muttering, "I got one more stop to make."

"Alright, what about tonight? Come over for dinner?" Steve proposes, brows raising in query when Javi starts shaking his head. "C'mon, Connie'll get a kick out of seeing you—"

"Thanks for the offer. I just…" Javi interjects a little sharper than he'd intended, so he clears his throat and scratches absently along his jaw as he diverts his gaze mildly, before musing, "Raincheck?"

Steve can see pushing him won't do any good. "Sure, Jav. Stay in touch, ok?" he remarks coolly before patting Javi on the shoulder.

With a curt nod, Javier gives him a firm handshake and pat on the back before he makes his exit, descending the staircase in a rushed clip while Steve sighs and heads the opposite way.

By the time Javi traverses the corridor towards the deposition rooms, he feels a little less like a shit heel for rebuffing Steve, but not any better about the last meeting he wants to check off his list for the day.

When he's escorted into the meeting space and finishes exchanging introductions, he's then led into the room occupied by an IRS official, a lawyer, and Christina Jurado.

He hasn't seen the woman since she balefully yelled at him after he'd informed her of Franklin's death, and by the stunned look in her eyes, he knows she never thought she'd see him again.

As Javier sits on the opposite side of the deposition table with the DOJ lawyer next to him, and the IRS official adjacent, he listens as the lawyers dispense with the pleasantries, giving quick greetings before detailing the purpose for Javier's involvement.

"—He's willing to go on-the-record that you weren't party to your husband, Franklin Jurado's, money laundering activities, which, I will say truthfully, Mrs. Jurado, would be a lucky break for you. Especially since my office is not inclined to dull out any arrangements with someone who cannot help corroborate our case docket against the Cali cartel. However, this matter with the IRS uncovering some discrepancies on the property attestations under your name, coupled with the joint account they'd frozen since your husband went on the lam, is something that puts you at a level of complicity we're not so sure we can ignore. However, Agent Peña has produced a report detailing your abduction by the cartel and captivity under FARC, and has asked for leniency on your behalf."

The entire time the DOJ lawyer is speaking, Christina stares wide-eyed at Javier. He, however, keeps his gaze fixed to the glass of water sat in front of him. When the lawyer asks Javier if there was anything he wanted to add before signing his statement, he declined, accepted the pen offered to him by the IRS official, and signed, initialed, and dated all the appropriate documents before standing to shake everyone's hands. Still shocked, Christina remained seated while they shook hands, but when Javier made for the exit, he could feel her staring at his back, so he hustled his pace to traverse the long corridor out and practically zoom for the exit.

He came out to the crowded sidewalk of the balmy day and was eager to find a taxi to head to his hotel and decompress, mind already swirling with uncertainty, when he heard the quick clicks of advancing heels behind him.

"Wait!"

Javi felt the cold dread needle in his gut as he got to the curb and was just short of flagging a cab.

His shoulders squared up, but he turns to look at Christina Jurado as she catches her breath after seemingly having sprinted after him.

"Those lawyers didn't tell me you would be doing that," she begins, shifting her purse strap higher on her shoulder as she frets with the cuff of her pale blouse's sleeve while the bustle of the crowded sidewalk and avenue beyond continues as an absent din around them both.

"They rarely do. I'm sure yours didn't either in order to make it clear to the official that there was no improper appeal on your behalf for my help," Javi remarks, and glances down at his shoes as he adds, "Anyway, it should all be resolved soon now—"

"Did you interfere because you thought that would make up for everything?"

Derailed by the icy accusation, Javier looks up at her, perplexed. "No…no that's not it at all—"

"Good, because there's nothing, absolutely nothing you could do to make up for it," the blonde woman levels crisply at him, cheeks flushed and eyes clear with her vindictiveness. "I didn't ask for your help, nor did I want it, so whatever 'good deed' you thought you were going to achieve here? I want you to know it doesn't absolve you of anything—"

The entire time she spoke, Javier felt something loathsome simmer in his gut and radiate mortified, scalding outrage to flare up to the back of his neck, before something sharp pulled at his recollections.

"If that's the case, then I'm sure you told everyone in that room after I left to disregard my request for leniency, right? Told them to forget about accepting any help, and that you'd take the original plea they'd offered for your crafty tax evading?" Javier snaps in a low tone, eyes intensely staring at her now as she wavers in shock, mouth bobbing for something to say. When she finds nothing, he deadpans, "I thought so. Because let's be clear: You were not some naïve, oblivious little wife in this. You knew what kind of man Franklin was, who he was beholden to, and were content to let him charm his way into banks with your U.S. Passport in hand while you hung off his arm and kept your nose powdered in between your extravagant getaways and shopping sprees."

She is incredulous. Javier firmly saying what she knew to be true all along has her floundering for a retort.

When all she can do is fluster a befuddled scoff, Javier levels her with, "You can blame me all you want for what happened, but that doesn't change the fact you were complicit in it, and just as responsible for what transpired."

With that, he turns and heads for the curb, hailing a cab while she's left reeling in the truth that no one had ever hit her so scathingly with before.

Javier gets in the cab, and doesn't spare a backwards glance as the driver nods after being given his destination and heads into the flow of traffic with the rest of rush hour.

As he sits in the air-conditioned backseat, an intrepid part of him reminisces about the time you'd blown your stack at hearing what Jurado's wife had said to him, and that part wonders if you'd be proud of him for how he'd set her straight this time.

As soon as the thought strikes him, though, the miserably loathsome part of him roils. As if she would care jack-shit about anything you've done now, after what you did…

It isn't until several days later, when he's coming out of his exit interview, that the longing pulls at his seams.

He'd gone in and told the exit interview committee made up of a member of each high-ranking bureaucratical department within the agency exactly why he'd resigned, and did not mince words about what he'd intended by giving the interview, on the record. They'd made note, asked a few follow up questions, and then concluded with a canned statement about how his assignment had made a difference.

In an ambivalent fugue state, he'd wandered over to a memorial wall just off from the main lobby. It was an inset wall, flanked on one side by the American flag, and the Department of Justice flag on the other. The words 'These are the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for a drug-free society' was engraved above three rows of over a dozen small frame photos of agents who'd died on assignment. Each had a placard beneath, detailing the agent's title, name, and date of death. As he stares at the photo of a Special Agent at the center, Javier can't help think that if things had gone differently, his photo could've been on this wall.

It gives him little solace to know that he'd been 'one of the lucky ones' to make it home.

Stewing deep in thought, Javier doesn't immediately sense the arrival of Mike Spencer, the head of Operations at the DEA.

"You knew him, right?" the man asks. "Agent Camarena?"

"Of him. My first assignment out of the academy was a task force that searched for him in Guadalajara," Javi answers evenly.

"It all started there. Before him, we didn't even know we were in a war," Spencer remarks. When Javier doesn't say anything or glance over in acknowledgement, he looks sidelong at him and muses, "Another hot one down there for you, huh? You took down the big players in Colombia."

Fighting the impulse to glower at that, Javier drawls, "Yeah, well…we'll make new ones."

Unfazed, Spencer retorts, "Don't turn a victory into a defeat, Javier. The Colombian super-cartels are gone. And whoever comes next are going to be fighting amongst themselves for years. They're still only going to be a shadow of what Medellín and Cali were. And now it's time to take the fight to the real enemy in the war of drugs. Mexico."

That's when Javi spares a glance his way. "'The real enemy'?" he quotes in a dubious monotone, eyeing the man reservedly.

"Let me put in a few calls. I'll make this bullshit resignation go away," Spencer assures confidently, and when Javi stares at him cynically – a hint of equivocation in his dark eyes, he adds flippantly, "What else is a guy like you gonna do?"

When Javier has no rebuttal, Spencer gives him an assured smirk and lopes away.

The question keeps echoing in his mind. It peels away at his dejection, and by the time he's back in his hotel room, pacing the length of the space and smoking a cigarette, he's at a loss for what to do with himself. Frustrated, he pours himself a whiskey from the minibar, and sits moodily at the desk, rubbing tensely at spot between his brows before grinding the heel of his palm into the center of his forehead.

Stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray, he reaches for the phone and dials his father.

He tells him everything. What happened with Cali, how everything was rigged against him, the fallout of his decision to expose the corruption, how he'd resigned from the DEA before he'd gone on the record for the reporter, and that once everything was put in motion, he'd left you in the dark. That you'd found out what happened after it was all done, just like everyone else.

That you'd felt betrayed and hurt by his decision, and that you'd lost trust in him.

"…She doesn't want to see me anymore," he croaks now, eyes watering as he pictures how dismayed and distraught you had been while fighting back tears while you stood incredulously in front of him at his apartment.

Chucho is silent for a beat, before he clears his throat to rasp, "Did she say she didn't want to see you anymore?"

Scoffing, Javier scrubs his hand angrily over his eyes before dragging it down his face in exasperation. "She didn't have to, Pop—"

"You love her, dontcha?" Chucho presses.

Exhaling tersely, Javi shakes his head stubbornly, as if his father could see him telepathically.

Grunting when Javi doesn't retort, Chucho insists, "Unless she told you she doesn't want to see you anymore. That she is through and moving on, and has no interest in continuing your relationship, then it's your responsibility to go back there and work it out. At the very least, you owe her a definitive conclusion, so that neither of you walk away with regrets."

Javier listens to his father, and his mind wracks with recollections of everything said that day, and then a fuzzy recall of standing at your door and pleading with you to give him another chance eclipses the rest. He can picture your angry expression, and his mind strings together the sequence from the drunken daze of that night.

"Just pretend I'm a loose end you can skip trying to resolve."

Your cutting sneer reverberates across his thoughts, and just as the melancholy begins to wrap densely around him, he presses his forehead into his propped palm and leans into the desk.

It triggers a sense-memory.

The cool feel of your door resting against his feverish forehead, and suddenly, the words return to him.

"She matters to me. I love her," he murmurs unguardedly, confiding, "I told her I would keep trying to fix things…to win her back. She'd already closed the door on me because I'd upset her. But I think she heard me."

He can recall the muffled sound of your retreating footfalls, and what he thinks was the sound of you sobbing, and it makes his chest tighten.

"Javier," his father rumbles, pulling him from the mire of his thoughts. In a determined baritone, he asserts, "Go to her. Keep your promise, and see if you can win her back."

"Pop…what if she doesn't want to forgive me. What if…what if she can't, and doesn't want to ever see me again?" Javi mumbles distraughtly as he grips his hand to squeeze at his temples, palm over his eyes dejectedly while his breath catches in his throat.

"Then, you'll know. And you'll come home, take time to regroup, and move on," his father tells him sincerely, without a hint of coddling in his tone. "Now, sleep on it, and let me know, alright?"

His father's sage advice is something he's received often, but hasn't always followed. However, this is one of the few times Javi is intent on following it, so the next morning, he grabs his bags and heads to the airport. He flies out of D.C. in order to go nonstop to Bogotá. Surprisingly, his visa is still active, so he's able to breeze fairly quickly through customs and hails a taxi to a hotel. It's a blustery late afternoon, so he opts to skip lighting up a smoke and pockets his hands into his dark leather jacket while he waits for a cab, and then crosses his arms tightly to stop his hands from fidgeting while he's driven through the bustling traffic.

While he arrived fairly late in the day, it's not near the time you'd typically arrive home from work, so he opts to get a room; not wanting to show up at your door with his suitcase and duffle as if he'd presumed arrogantly that you'd just let him stay without first talking things through.

As soon as he's checked in and has left the bags, he glances at his watch and heads down to grab a cab to ferry him to your side of town, unable to wait any longer. While en route, Javier thinks about how much time has lapsed since that night he'd drunkenly beseeched you to give him another chance. It upsets him to realize how much trauma you've experienced in such a short time, and now he judges himself harshly for having caused any more heartache and hurt for you.

"… I'd never felt so safe – never trusted anyone else so much in my life…"

The words you'd spoken echo in the recesses of his recollections, and now Javi yearns to repair and recover what you had entrusted him with, so the moment the taxi pulls up to the curb, the driver hasn't even come to a complete stop before Javi shoves the fare amount into his hand before he's jumping out of the car and rushing up the walkway to cross through the courtyard. He bounds up the steps two at a time, heels of his boots clanging loudly as he goes and the railing he grips as he ascends reverberates from how forcefully he's hustling to your door.

The sun hasn't set yet, and in his haste, he hadn't noticed if your car was parked out on the street, so he knocks on the door and waits with bated breath.

There's no answer after a few quiet seconds, so he knocks again and leans his hand into the doorframe as he strains his hearing to try and pick up any sounds from within the apartment. Grunting, he knocks again and listens more intently, picking up the way the knocking echoes with more resonance in the interior than he remembers it doing so prior.

Perplexed, he checks his watch before raising his right hand to knock again, when a voice from down in the courtyard shouts over, "Hello up there! Can I help you?"

Confused, Javi turns and peers over the banister of the staircase to the patio of the apartment adjacent the courtyard. He sees your neighbor – the one he's met before, looking up concernedly at him as he clears his throat and greets, "Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to be loud, ma'am. Do you happen to know if she's come home yet? If not, I'll just wait—"

As he spoke, her eyes softened with recognition, but her expression only deepened into a frown. "Doncito… she doesn't live there anymore," the older woman tells him woefully, adding, "She moved out last week, and put up the apartment for rent."

Javier is gripping the banister and staring agape, completely incredulous. "What?! Why? Did something happen?! What about her job—?"

Dismayed that he doesn't know, which makes her worry she shouldn't be telling him any of this at all, the woman absently cups her cheek and assuages, "Nothing bad has happened, no, but she no longer works at the embassy. I'm sorry…"

He balks at this new information and whirls around the balustrade to sprint down the stairs and bound towards her. "Please, if you know where she is, or how I can get in contact with her, I would be so grateful—" he pauses when she looks at him like he's raving desperately, so he collects his composure and plaintively stares at the woman, explaining, "I made a mistake, and I've been regretting how things were left the last time we spoke. I came back to make things right…to try and win her back. So, please, if you can tell me where she is? I just want to fix it."

The woman is touched, but exhales a weary sigh. "The last I spoke with her, she was leaving Medellín, and asked me to forward any mail to her prima's house…" she goes on to tell Javi that movers had come and taken everything out of the apartment, and that you'd gifted all of your potted plants to her, as well as passed over all the canned tuna and the dishes you'd use to feed the little black cat. "…She didn't tell me a phone number I could reach her at besides the house's in Medellín. I'm sorry, but that's all I know for now."

Heartbroken, Javier dimly nods, eyes downcast as he thanks her and apologizes for disturbing her. She watches as he wanders back towards the steps and sits on the fourth one from the bottom before propping his elbows onto his knees and burying his face in his hands. It's such a sad sight, that she leaves her little patio and goes back into her apartment, feeling like a busy-body; like she was witnessing something she wasn't really privy to.

All alone now, Javi reels in the silence of the breezy courtyard, overcome with a tumult of emotions and unsure what to think, let alone how to feel. He sits there and collects his ragged breath, trying to recover from the vertigo of having everything go upside down on him in a matter of a conversation.

The sound of a curious mewl breaks him out of his internal spiraling to look up from where his head was bowed to blink over at the little black cat that had seemingly loped from a hiding spot to come investigate what he was doing sat in her territory. She scampers up two steps and greets him with an affectionate head-butt to the side of his left leg, meowing for him to pet her.

The ache in his chest deepens as he stares into those imploring green eyes, and before he's even registered it, he's picking up the cat and cuddling her into his chest, allowing her to perch on his lap as he pets her gently. She purrs contently and rubs her ears against his midriff, squirming bossily in order to perch up on her hind quarters and knead her front paws into the soft material of his blue button-down beyond the supple leather of his favorite jacket.

"I know, girl. I know," he mumbles to the cat, petting her head with sincere affection.

Apparently appeased, the spritely feline trills a content sound before bopping her head against his chin and vaulting out of his embrace to lope down the steps and hop the patio gate to take a new perch on the neighbor's cushioned chair. He watches her curl up for a nap, and he suddenly feels like he's overstayed his welcome.

With the sun setting, he walks pensively to a more bustling avenue, and decides to make one more stop before returning to the hotel.

It's the end of the shift, and all the custodians who're done for the day shift are filing out the side gate to head towards varying bus stops that will ferry them home throughout the metropolitan city. Javier spots Marisol from where he's been sitting and waiting across the street, and when she looks his way after saying goodnight to one of the other girls, he stands from the bench and waves at her. She looks startled to see him, but quickly shakes the surprise off, looks both ways, and hurries across the street towards him.

"Santo Cristo, Javier, when did you come back?! Where have you been?" she's asking, gripping her tote to her side and haranguing, "You pick a fine time to pop back up here. What on Earth were you thinking to leave without saying a word to her?!"

"I just got back," he assures and escorts her to sit on the bench before he joins her, inquiring, "I told her I would come back once I tied up loose ends on the Cali case. What happened? I went to her apartment, and her downstairs neighbor said she moved out. That she'd quit her job?"

She sighs shakes her head contritely. "After you left, and she found out all the truth, she couldn't tolerate how things were – felt like she'd lost trust and confidence in her work here. Once Mister Ellis left, she made arrangements to strengthen her department, and gave her notice of resignation to the ambassador. Then, she went to Medellín to finish dealing with her grandmother's estate. I called the house there to check in on her, but she'd already left Colombia, so her prima promised to pass along my message to her," Marisol details, and watches as Javi's dark eyes become creased at the edges with his profound sadness.

Right hand fidgeting the anxious energy teeming in him, Javier squeezes it into a fist he presses into his thigh as he bows his head before rumbling, "I'm sorry for showing up like this…for having repeatedly cajoled you into helping me time and time again. I—I'm very grateful for all you've done for us…for me."

She frowns and puts her hand on his shoulder. "You're a good man, Javier. It's high time you realize that yourself," the convivial woman tuts, patting his arm when he exhales a meek huff and nods his thanks to her. "Take care of yourself, would you?"

He ruefully smiles and leans over to kiss her on the cheek. "You too."

Marisol stands, and ambles a few feet in direction of her normal commute, when she pauses, turns, and marches back up to him. "Aren't you going to ask me what my message was?" she inquires bossily, hand on her hip as she gazes down at Javi's surprised look.

"…I figured that was private?" he retorts, but at the wily gleam in the woman's eyes, he sits up straight and focuses more intently on her expression as he asks, "What was the message?"

Triumphant, she smiles at Javi.

"That her plan worked," she retorts, winking as she drawls, "I'm sure you'll find out the details once you get back home, guapo valiente."

With that, she turns on her heel and leaves Javi bemused, albeit flummoxed. What the hell does that mean?

Needless to say, he'd been left with nothing else but to return the hotel, get his things, and head back to the airport.

The trip back to Laredo was a long one.

It's late in the evening when his father pulls up and picks him up at the airport.

The older man had gotten out of the cab of the truck and given his son a fortifying hug, one returned in kind.

However, the drive home was a quiet one, teeming with all the unspoken things the pair knew not to say. Really, it isn't until the following morning, when Javi descends the stairs and finds his father at the kitchen table, reading his newspaper, that the first word passes between them.

"I'm glad you're home."

Right hand ticking anxiously at his side, Javi scoffs deprecatingly and bows his head as he crosses his arms and struggles to find what to say to that.

Lowering his newspaper to peer over at his only son, Chucho sighs and crosses his own arms to lean back into the sturdy chair. When it doesn't look like Javi will decide between coming or going from him, he grumbles and puts his large, calloused hands on the table, drumming his fingers over the folded newspaper as he decides to level with him.

"Look, Javier – everything happens for a reason. I know this is not where you expected to be, but for the time being, it's where you're meant to be until you find your way," he tells him sagely, tone softening when those sad eyes flick momentarily up at him before deflecting to stare unseeingly out the window over the kitchen sink. In that moment, with that simmering frown, he can't help be reminded of how much he looks like his mother, and his heart aches a little. He wishes she was there to say all the things she was better at conveying than him. Instead, he relents, "I know you don't want to hear what I have to say—"

"That's not it, Pop," Javi interjects and snaps out of his faraway stare to look over at his father.

When he sees him frown, Javi huffs and goes to sit at the table with him. The kitchen still smells of the fresh pot of coffee, with a hint of lemon from the lemonade his aunt had made and left for them in the fridge. It also stirs up memories of his mother when she'd make agua fresca, and before he can get towed under by the reveries of a childhood long gone, he clears his throat and looks his father in the eye now.

He proceeds to tell his father what happened. Even goes into the conversation with Mike Spencer, and how he'd been offered to run the DEA's entire Mexico operation against the cartels there.

Chucho listens, but his expression hardens the more Javier tells him, and by the end of it, when his son just moodily props his face in his hands and huffs raggedly, there's only one thing he knows to say that will redirect his course.

"Like I said, mijo. You'll find where you're meant to be. But, for now, I'm hoping you can spare some time with your ol' man, help me with a few things during the week while your cousins finish things on their side?" Chucho remarks as he stands from his seat and pats Javi on the shoulder before grabbing his empty mug and heading to the counter to refill it with more coffee from the pot.

Scrubbing his palms over his clean-shaven cheeks, Javi grunts before retorting, "Sure. Whatever you need."

It's a few days of toiling on the ranch later that Javier finds himself bone-tired and dazedly staring off from the battered fence along the muddy embankment of the shore bordering the waterway that the failures of Cali crest right back up to swallow him under.

Seeing the lanchas ferrying with carefree impunity up the murky water towards points unknown to drop off cargo – to flood more cocaine into the U.S. – right in his literal backyard? It makes something sour become a bitter malaise in his gut. The breeze from the water under the heat of the late afternoon sun only makes him sweat and feel withered.

He's glowering against the blazing glare out at the boat in the distance, simmering with the acrimony of his failures, when his father's voice shouts over the sportscaster on the radio's play-by-play.

"You helping me with this or not?"

Javi snaps from his loathing haze and sees Chucho at the truck, winded but pluckily grabbing from the dense wood piled in the pickup.

"I thought I was getting a partner," is his father's huff just as Javi goes over to help him with the large fence post.

"Come on, Pop. Give me that," Javi grunts as he takes the post up with his bare hands and hefts it from his father's grip. "Porfiado," he mutters as he carries it over to the hole and places it in laboriously.

Chucho lets him when his attention is pulled to the river now as the next smuggler's boat jets on by in the distance.

"You can stand here for an hour and you'll count 20 of 'em goin' by," Chucho comments, none the wiser of how such a fact grinds something lowly into Javi's already battered ego.

"¿Y que? ¿Tienes que arreglar la cerca cada vez que hay tormenta?" Javi asks whether his father needs to fix the fence every time there's a storm rhetorically, pointedly changing the topic.

"Alguien lo tiene que hacer," Chucho retorts, offering Javi a can of beer before remarking aloofly, "Así es la vida."

Someone has to do it. Such is life. The rationale gives him little solace.

When Javi takes the offering but doesn't immediately drink from the can, Chucho pops the tab on his own can and drinks from the cerveza, quenching his thirst before mustering the courage to prod, "You thinking of taking them up on it? Mejico."

Javi doesn't respond or look his way, gaze having wandered back over to the water.

"It's different there," Chucho remarks, getting faraway himself now as he reminisces about life as a young man there, as he muses, "Son, let me tell you—"

"Dad."

They both turn to each other then, and his father gives him his clear-eyed attention at being called 'Dad,' not 'Pop.' Javier only ever called him that when he was being plaintive, or assertive about what he needed to tell him – what he needed him to hear him on.

Javier knows the precipice they're both at. He's been here before with him, and he decides he can't leave things unspoken this time.

So, with a forlorn scowl and unwavering stare, Javi holds his father's gaze as he declares it out loud.

"I've done enough…I'm through."

Looking away from his father, Javi cheerlessly takes a sip from the cold beer, content to wallow in his rumination.

But then, his father rasps, "Hand me that cutter," so, disheveled and worn stiff, Javi puts the beer can down, retrieves the bolt cutters, and hands the heavy tool over before pulling on his work gloves, intending to get back to it himself, but his gaze wanders back to the waterway beyond.

At seeing yet another boat going up stream, he removes his aviators and squints at it in the distance, feeling that demoralizing resentment boil up in him now as a recollection echoes back to him.

"…I've had enough with not being enough…"

Your voice is a thread that weaves around in his head, tethering a haul of memories now strung together to remind him of all the times you'd tactically warned him about the reality of his position within the tumultuous, corrupt, and unavoidable adaptability of this seedy world. How taking out one cartel would only lead to someone else filling the vacuum – to the void being exploited by someone crueler, more savvy, and organized.

That no matter what he did, it would never be enough.

***

It took a lot for you to get to this point.

However, the unspooling of your life was all of your own doing.

After you recovered from the shock and dismay of hearing Javier had moved out, you'd gone home and cried for a long while, until that intrepid little voice had tugged at your recall from the last conversation with him. At first, you're fraught as you force yourself to not compartmentalize. To instead sit in the sorrow and focus on the things unsaid and the things declared with vehemence.

He'd promised to try again…that he'd keep trying to make it work.

You hold onto that for days, but Javier never calls.

Really, you're so overwrought with your heartache, that it makes you sick. And the more time that goes by, the more your feelings wither up, and you endeavor to not keep the torch of hope lit for him. But when the time comes for Ellis and Anita to leave for Puerto Rico, you cave to the weakness of your emotions.

It also helps that Ellis hugs you tight at the airport, and whispers, "As much as I want to kick his ass for you, I think you should call Murphy and demand he track Jav's ass down for you."

You snickered dryly, but on the drive home, the seed he'd planted took soil in your longing heart.

You call early the next day, pulse racing and nerves making you fidget in your desk chair as the line rings.

"DEA office, how may I direct your call?"

Confused, you lean worriedly forward. "Oh, I thought this was Agent Steve Murphy's direct line. Could you forward me to him, please?"

"Agent Murphy is on assignment. Would you like to leave a message?"

Crestfallen, you wilt back into your seat. "No…no message. Thank you," is your response, and once you've hung up, your eyes welled over.

Looking over despondently at the corner of your desk, the article sits tucked tightly into the fold you put it in, having reread it numerous times.

On this next reading, something in you snaps.

It's afterhours days later when Stechner is exiting the elevator on the floor his office is tucked away in. He passes the janitor currently mopping the opposite hall and smugly whistles all the way to the door of his office. When he enters, he notices too late that the desk lamp is the only light on in the ample space.

"Good evening, Bill."

Turning, he seems taken aback to see you sitting casually in the swivel chair behind his desk as you turn to give him a pleasant smile head on.

"…How did…" he begins before clearing his throat and glancing back down the hall, as if something dawns on him. Grunting musingly, he closes his office door and lopes towards the desk, smarmy expression seemingly intrigued. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company so late, director? Or, can I call you—"

You seamlessly pull a thick manila folder from where you'd had it sat on your lap out of sight and slap it down on the top of his desk.

He eyes it, before flicking his blue steely eyes to you, and shoves his hands into his corduroy trouser pockets.

Standing, you flip the folder open onto the first page of a stack of documents. "You've been quite busy," is your remark as you fan out the stack, revealing logs, photos, depositions – a veritable array of documentation sourced from means you certainly shouldn't have access to.

"Now, I'll speak plain: These are not the originals. I've sent those stateside, to a contact at DOD. By now, they've, in turn, sent it along to heads of DOS and DOJ, as well as one of the Senators on the Oversight committee," you state as you walk around the desk to instead lean into the side of it when Stechner's eyes rove over a certain pile.

"Ah, yes. Afghanistan. That took some digging. Most of those Mujahideen warlords became the Taliban, right?" you remark conversationally as you give him a cunning smile, eyes narrowing as he eyes you with the proper level of unease. "That mass grave? It definitely looked like work of the Soviets, sure, but you and your buddies probably should've stacked more bodies over those Marines' corpses. Or, hell, maybe not have buried them in uniform?"

His expression becomes icy as he stands straight and lets his hands fall to his sides. "Where did you get this," is his flat inquiry, and when you cross your arms and snicker, as if it should be obvious, he drones, "…Your father."

Humming, you lean over to glide your fingers over another series of documents to sift them from the pile. "Now, if a bunch of dead Marines doesn't do it for most, this?" You point to photos of a landing strip in the middle of a dense, Central American jungle. "Well, selling arms to the Contras? Using Panama as a backdrop to distribute weapons with drug traffickers so you can have them take the fall?"

Glaring at the not-so-blurry black and white image of himself standing at the top of a plane's entry, with Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo ascending the stairs to meet him, Stechner scathes, "You have no idea what you're playing with here—"

"Didn't that guy go to prison for abducting and murdering a U.S. federal agent?" you cut in in a lilting chime before smiling and plucking another photo up and tossing it towards the front of the desk. "Ah, sure, he doesn't run the Mexican cartel anymore, but this guy? He's basically running all the plazas, right?"

A photo of Stechner standing in front of the gangway of one of Amado Carrillo Fuentes' cargo planes looks like it was taken from the top of the tree line, but it was close enough to get both he and the would-be 'boss of all bosses' of the Mexican drug trade faces clearly.

"Oh, and then there's the police report. I assure you, a lot of this didn't really surprise anyone I recruited to help gather this all, but that police report? And knowing the CIA's station chief sold his daughter out to be abducted, just to send some sort of petty message to her boyfriend?" you remark with irreverence, adding musingly, "Well, my father just couldn't abide that. He was more than happy to reach out to his sources, your superiors – think he even mentioned something about telling the POTUS Chief of Staff? Ah, who knows…"

Looking up at you now, you see it.

Utter disdain and resignation.

You smile.

"You should've stayed in your lane, Bill."

Vacillating to try and recover his arrogant posturing, the balding man sneers, "Conjecture and photos won't be enough—"

"I thought so too! That's why I sent a copy of this little dossier to a reporter for El Tiempo, as well as a copy to the editor of The Washington Post," you retort glibly, patting your hands on the tops of your pencil-skirt-clad thighs as you move from leaning on the side of the desk to standing straight, with a prim look. "I mean, I could've shopped it to The Miami Herald, but I figured this was more fitting for the D.C. crowd anyway."

The look in his eyes is priceless.

With a glance at your watch, you remark, "And if everything went accordingly, you should be hearing all about it, real soon."

As if on cue, his desk phone and satellite phone start ringing. You smile sublimely.

"Well, then. I'm sure you have some explaining to do," you chime affably as you strut past him to head for the door. "You can keep those for your records in case you need to spruce up on what falls under treason versus capital crimes—"

"You think this won't blow back on you and your department? That there won't be repercussions?!" he suddenly snaps and whirls haughtily at you as you are mid-exit. "You were so worried about keeping up appearances? What's to stop your reputation from going up in flames just as spectacularly as your Javier's did?!"

His scathing sneer of a smile dissolves when you turn from the open door and grin.

"The fact I gave a copy to the ambassador a few hours ago, oh, right before I resigned my position at the embassy," you drawl with lancing mirth, enjoying how his jaw drops as the phones ring incessantly. "It was great working with you, Bill."

With that, you strut out of his office and down the hall towards the elevator, triumphant when you hear the sound of him throwing his satellite phone against the wall of his office and swearing a litany over the continued ringing and the drone of the vacuum cleaner down the opposite wing.

Everything had been put into motion before this coup de grâce.

Days before, you'd assembled your staff and told them your plans to resign, effective immediately several days from that point. Aghast, they'd asked why, and you'd assured them it was best they not know, but you wanted to prep them for the transition of things without you.

You made Jackie head of the department and Devon her deputy, then proceeded to caution them on the security breach you'd monitored and isolated. Explaining that the CIA was using the pilot program to syphon data from other agencies and to clandestinely transmit top-secret intel to and from sources stateside, you showed them the credential trail and disclosed how it led back to the CIA station chief.

Before you'd assembled your team for this announcement, you'd made several calls in preparation.

The first was to your contact in Panama.

That first conversation months back with Luke had been awkward. However, he'd promised to look into your suspicions, and when you'd called him in preparation days before, you'd gotten everything you needed. Along with the stacks of documents in the dossier, you had the handwriting analysis of the notes Stechner had left, as well as fingerprint testing that matched with his prints on file with the state department that Luke had sent you prior.

The second call was to Trujillo.

He'd done what you'd asked – logged the police report from your abduction – after you'd called him once you'd found the glass of Colombian soda with the note on your desk. And now, with the documents you had from Luke, you asked him to act as an anonymous source within CNP who could corroborate your story and prove a pattern of harassment on you personally and professionally. It also didn't hurt that he was willing to vouch that Stechner had been the one to approach him during the whole Los Pepes fiasco.

The third outreach, and the most difficult of them all, had been the one you'd known you couldn't avoid any longer.

"—The Vice Admiral is very busy at the moment."

"Please tell him it's his daughter calling."

The seconds you were placed on hold were used to take a deep breath to center yourself.

After that call, and once things were in motion, there was a moment where you wondered what would happen after.

Those concerns were shelved once you'd received everything you needed. After all, you'd decided from the start that you would follow through without a regret.

Crosby had been surprised to see you come in to his office at the end of the day, after Dotty had left, and there was really no one to witness and spread the news.

When you'd handed him the dossier, he'd been stony and reticent as he flipped through the documents and photos.

"I appreciate everything you've done for me in my role as director, sir, and it's been an honor reporting to you, but I can no longer in good conscience and confidence remain at my post, knowing what I know now," you'd told him with unwavering poise.

Frowning deeply, Crosby stood from his desk and circled it to sit in the chair next to you and take your hand. "Darlin'…I'm so sorry. Had I known—"

You shake your head and squeeze his hand. "I'm glad you didn't, because if you had, this conversation would be going a lot differently, Arthur," is your smooth assurance as you give him a fierce look.

He chuckles a raspy sound, eyeing you with an impressed smirk. "I'm sure."

Then, an obvious detail finally leaps up into his realization.

"Wait a minute. Who was he retaliating against?" the glacial look in his eyes softens with confusion.

Giving him a seriously stoic expression, you fold your hands in your lap and level him with, "The same man he had rotated out the last time. And, the man he's been stacking the odds against ever since he recommended him to come back to Colombia to go after the Cali godfathers."

The look on his face is a mixture of disbelieving cynicism before he shakes his head as if the prospect is too ridiculous to say out loud, but at your cool stare, he sobers and looks at you intently.

"This whole time, you and Peña – you've been involved with Javier Peña the whole while?"

"Ironically, we'd been looking forward to disclosing our relationship officially, but then, well…it's a moot point now, isn't it," you reply evenly, crossing your arms and eyeing him with the unspoken accusation.

You all set him up to fail.

To your luck, Crosby agrees to honor your request regarding your plans, and all but gives you his blessing in decimating Stechner. After all, the bastard never reported to him, so there's plausible deniability.

The next morning, you packed up your office while the news spread like wildfire in the building. Without batting an eye, you thanked your staff, wished them well, said all your farewells to those who'd rushed down to see you off, and begrudgingly agreed to the happy hour send off the Mil Group boys insisted on. It was a rowdy, albeit cheerful impromptu party, one filled with only friendly faces and toasts in your honor. You managed to get away with tons of hugs, promises to stay in touch, and 'attagirl' high-fives for doing what no one had been able to do: give Bill Stechner his most-deserved comeuppance.

No one dared remark or ask about the tawdrier detail, aka your no-longer-secret relationship with the notorious Javier Peña, and you were grateful for it, but knew they would all be dishing about it the moment you finished strutting out of the bar to head to your car.

By the end of the night, you drove home, feeling clearheaded, but sad.

When you'd loped into your apartment and walked by the phone, you'd seen the machine list one missed call, so you pressed the button to play the message while you pulled your heels off and leaned against the wall in the hallway.

"Hey, my love! I tried your cell phone, but it just kept ringing. Anyway, I'm flying into town on the 'morrow and can't wait to see you. I'll be staying in the same hotel, so after work, come up and visit. Can't wait to catch up, krasivaya!"

Your heart feels a little lighter at hearing Sasha's voice, and after such a devastating, demoralizing few weeks, you revel in having something positive to look forward to, and when you show up the next afternoon at his penthouse suite's door, he's shocked to see you.

"Ketsele! Wha-Wait, is today a holiday? I figured you'd be working—" he's remarking as he pulls you in and gives you a double-cheek kiss before hugging you tight. His cotton crewneck white shirt, blue-striped linen trousers, and his bare feet make it obvious he wasn't expecting any company, and his hair is slicked back from the shower but curling around his nape – making his relaxed appearance and chiseled features softer.

"Hah, n-no, not a holiday," you simper as you squeeze him back and snicker when you pull away to rub your palms brazenly along his neatly trimmed scruff-covered cheeks. "Whaaaat, what happened to the sexy beard?!" is your jibing whine as you pout at him.

"Ah, it was getting annoying, and now that it's fairly warm stateside, it didn't make sense to keep it," he tuts and squeezes your purple tunic-dress-clad waist cheekily before he ushers you over to sit and have a drink. "So? How're things?! How's work, and everything still great with Javi darling?"

You let out a mordant laugh as you sit and take the champagne flute he's just generously filled to the top before joining you on the plush couch with his own.

Sasha watches you chug the champagne down, before you sigh out and turn to face him fully so you can give him your best winning smile.

"Well, um, my grandmother passed away suddenly not so long ago…" you declare, and when his expression goes from convivial to incredulous, you add glibly, "I quit my job yesterday. And, Javier quit his job couple weeks before that after blowing up his life here. We fought, and I haven't seen or heard from him since."

When Sasha stares in aghast, albeit woeful worry at you, the snarky laugh bubbles up from your throat as you lean over him to snatch the bottle of champagne from the side table, plop back into the couch, and begin to drink brashly direct from the expensive bottle as you kick off your leather flats.

"Blessed fucking hell…what the fuck happened?" his baritone is rough with concern and confusion, and as if absorbing it all out of sequence, you watch as his eyes crinkle and fill with tears, "I-I'm so sorry. Why didn't you call me?!"

You take a long pull from the bottle, hoping the bubbles of the champagne with fill your belly and set you aloft to fly up and never have to look back at your life.

After a hiccup filters out of you, shame washes your glibness away and tows you under. Makes you feel stupid and inane. Especially when it scalds hot up from your gut thanks to how truly upset Sasha looks for you, and before you know it, your consternation flushes up to the top of your head, making your face burn with mortification. The feelings you'd walled off crash over you now as the compartments fail and fall under the weight of everything, leaving you frayed and unable to keep your brave façade up.

"…Everything just…it just all…it all fell apart…" you choke out as your composure finally caves in and the hurt leaps up to ensnare your breath.

Your vision narrows in at the edges as you start to sob, and before you've realized it, you're crying in Sasha's arms, desperately weeping until sobs wrack your frame and have you breathless and keening.

He'd manage to hastily take the bottle and set it down on the floor before you dropped it in your state of turmoil, and had scooped you into his fierce embrace as you lost yourself to the sorrow and heartache.

Tears run down his face as he rubs your back and lets you get it all out, waiting until the hot press of your spent tears cool on his neck and your sobs have quieted down to the occasional tremulous inhale and exhale of breath.

You curl up on the couch together once you start to shiver from the cool air-conditioned chill of the sprawling penthouse, and when you sniffle and hide your puffy face into his shoulder, Sasha scrubs the back of his hand across his flushed countenance and squeezes you protectively.

"I'm here, my love. For as long as you need me, I'll be here," he whispers in a thick, roughened bass, emotion still heavy in his voice.

Eventually, when you are utterly drained and can't shed another tear, you go slack in his embrace and try to scrape your composure together. Once you're sure you won't fall apart all over again, you muster the effort to shift against him so you can rest your head on his shoulder and press your forehead to his scruff-darkened jaw.

In a hoarse, low murmur, you tell Sasha everything that's happened.

He is quiet the entire time, listening and caressing your back as you go through the sheer litany of dramatic events you've been through since he'd last seen you.

When you finally conclude in the recap of everything, and clear your parched throat to sit up and absently wipe at your cheeks with the back of your tunic's bell sleeves, you stare drearily at Sasha with your red-rimmed, watery eyes and frazzled expression.

Letting the cleansing inhale out through his nose, he sits back and gives you a cerulean-eyed squint before blustering, "How in the entire fuck have you not become some novelist's muse for the sheer sweeping expanse of your suspenseful life that could be the inspiration for a world's bestseller?!"

Blinking at him in tremulous shock, it takes you a moment to appreciate how he scrunches his face – crooking his brows exaggeratedly while he opens his blue eyes as wide as they can go and he twists his lips in faux displeasure at you.

You burst into hapless, smoky laughter before it turns into peels of guffawing giggles while he comically grabs your arms and shakes you goofily.

"Tell me, ma chérie!" he growls sarcastically while you playfully tussle with him on the couch until you funnily slap his cheek. "Gauh! Alright, I take it back. I take it back!"

"I can't with you!" you rail and shove him when he pouts at you. "Jesus Christ on the Cross…" is your weary sneer as you sit back and sniffle, busily wiping at your face now with your sleeves. "I'm…I'm so sorry for unloading on you…"

Sasha mordantly grunts. "Stop it," he huffs and pulls you close, kissing the top of your head. "I'm sorry I wasn't here – wasn't able to give you the support when you needed it…"

You both go silent and just sit close while you collect your composure. He doesn't expect you to divulge any more, but you surprise him by murmuring, "I miss my grandmother so much. After Javi just left, I had this longing to call her and vent in that split-second of losing my mind, when I'd forgotten everything else…and then I just wished I could take it all back. That I could rewind to before and do everything all over again."

"…Have you tried to reach out to him?" Sasha asks tentatively.

You nod dimly and sigh, resting your head on his shoulder. You take a tremulous breath.

"He said that he would keep trying. That after he tied up loose ends with that case…that he would keep trying to make it work and we'd talk about what we'd do, but he left and…I don't believe him anymore," is your despondent response, and saying it out loud has your heart going numb. "I didn't trust him…I don't trust him at all now, and part of me wonders if I should've ever trusted him—"

"Hey, don't go down that rabbit hole now," Sasha sits up and cups your cheek. "Don't try and talk yourself out of how you felt. It was real. Don't regret it."

Sighing deeply, you nod and bow your head. "It's a moot point anyway. I…I sort of went scorched earth at work, and without my job at the embassy, I really don't have a reason to stay in Colombia anymore," you mumble before shuffling over to retrieve the bottle of champagne from where it sits before drinking a pull from it. When you exhale and offer it to him, Sasha takes it and chugs several gulps. You end up watching his throat work the bubbly down as you remark, "I have to figure out what to do now with my life…"

Grandly, Sasha plops the bottle down on the side table and lets out a charming grunt as he reaches for something tucked under the glass candy dish. "Well, then. At the very least, you can look forward to this!" he announces boastfully as he turns and hands you an engraved, lavishly detailed envelope with your name on it.

You gasp. "Oh my god, the wedding!" is your exclamation as you admire the envelope before opening it delicately to retrieve the lux lace-patterned and golden foiled invitation to your friend's special day. "This is lovely. Oh, I'm such a shit maid of honor—!"

"Ah, stop your fretting! You can come to New York and make up for lost prattling time with Irina," he scoffs irreverently as he drapes his arm over your shoulders. "You can stay with me. It'll be like old times!"

You feel overcome all over again, but now it's for profound love for Sasha, and how he's always so selfless with his affection and care.

He manages to keep you preoccupied the rest of the day over a bevy of snacks and drinks while you think out loud about plans for Irina's bridal shower, and when you inevitably return to fretting about everything, he tows you back to lighter things.

Sasha's just finished suggesting you just take a sabbatical and come stay with him while you decide what you want to do next when the penthouse door opens and a preoccupied Nikolai rushes in.

"Alexander, that twit of a business manager keeps calling and it's pissing me off, so would you get that infernal phone of yours and—" the grumbling man is sneering in a thick Ukrainian accent before he skids to a halt and sees you peering over at him from the back of the couch with wide eyes. "I—forgive me, I wasn't aware you were entertaining."

"He speaks!" is your cheeky exclamation as you smile at how he's glowering busily at you while Sasha sputters amusedly at your side. "I was beginning to think you had a squeaky voice, or sounded like Donald Duck—"

Guffawing at that now, Sasha folds his arms over the back of the couch and buries his brash laughter into his forearms, but fails to rein his mirth in when you elbow him bossily. "Hah! Alright, alright – sorry," he husks irreverently before clearing his throat and sobering in his goofy demeanor when Nikolai glowers and crosses his arms huffily. "What's Ian fretting about now, then?"

"Something about an art dealer," the sentry of a man mutters before waving it off as he makes to exit for his private quarters. "Let me know if you need me—"

"It's nice to see you, Nikolai," you charmingly chime, smiling when he pauses to nod politely at you.

"Nice to see you as well, miss," he mutters almost bashfully before hustling away.

Reluctantly, Sasha bounds up to go retrieve his cell phone. "I'm sorry, ketsele, this'll only take a few minutes, then we can get back to drinking and being stupid!"

You take the moment alone to nibble on some strawberries from the lavish platter he'd had brought up. You are contemplating gorging on a piece of pineapple when he stalks back in moments later, looking annoyed.

"What's wrong?" you pipe as you clean your fingers on a napkin and sit back in the plush cushions of the sofa.

"Ian just told me that the director of the installation at the art gallery in Miami is getting cold feet now because the dealer who recommended 'Worship' for the residency there is getting prosecuted here for corruption and fraud?!" he seethes, dropping heavily into the seat next to you with a forlorn huff. "If the gallery's board of directors votes on it, 'Worship' might be delayed because of that asshole—"

"Wait…is the art dealer's name Santiago Medina?"

Sasha pauses in his harangue to blink over at you in surprise. "Yes, yes, it is," is his musing drone until he deadpans, "Oh shit, so it's true?"

You're the bearer of bad news. You explain how Santiago Medina is literally at the center of the corruption scandal involving the Cali cartel paying for influence with the current administration running the Colombian government.

For the most part, he takes it well, and you end up agreeing to spend the night together for moral support.

You both make tentative plans to catch back up after he's done with his business regarding the installation at the museum, and the promise of considering traveling up with him to New York is not one he'll let you hedge on, so you assure him you'll think about it.

Needless to say, you feel unable to completely escape thinking about everything that's happened, and once you're back in your apartment the next day, you end up making some decisions.

Firstly, you call your prima and let her know what's going on, and what you plan to do. Secondly, you make the arrangements to put your apartment up for rent, and are surprised when you get a lot of interest. So thirdly, you are relegated to scheduling for movers and getting ready to pack up your life in short order.

By the weekend, you've packed almost all of your personal effects and labeled the furniture that will be getting put into storage stateside versus what will be going to the house in Medellín, and are preparing your suitcases when you remember you need to unmount and pack your phone. Well, you're actually actively avoiding packing up your closet, knowing there are items there that will throw you into a melancholic funk, so you busy yourself with getting the box the phone came in and prep it for repackaging.

Eerily, you're taping up a box for your office things to go into in anticipation of the landline getting packed in it as well when the phone starts ringing.

Rushing down the hall, you answer it and move into the kitchen to retrieve a marker for the labeling on the box. You pause when the friendly voice of the director from the D.C. DOS office greets you jovially.

"—I heard you're no longer at the embassy in Bogotá! I called around and got your personal number, so forgive me for reaching out like this out of the blue—"

You listen to him eagerly give you a sales pitch, and are about to kindly rush off the phone, but he thwarts you.

"—So, I know you're probably not in the mindset to be thinking of your next move, but frankly, there's a big opportunity opening up, and you're my first choice for it."

"…Ok, I'm listening..."

A few days later, you're finishing helping your cousin pack away the decades of belongings and keepsakes collected in the three-bedroom, one bath home once your grandmother's.

It was very difficult to go through things when you'd started, shedding lots of tears and some needed laughs when you'd find family memorabilia. The movers had collected the furniture and houseware you'd wanted to keep and send up to storage, making way for the furniture from your apartment you'd graciously passed over to balance out the home Miguel and your prima would settle in happy matrimony together.

"I got these in last week. I wanted to give them to you when you'd first come up, but…well, anyway, here," your cousin is remarking as she enters the kitchen where you're currently sat sorting through some knickknacks you'd collected from your grandmother's old bedroom.

Sitting back in the seat, you follow her as she walks around to sit at the table with you before she places an envelope with the photographer's name in laminated lettering on the front.

When you open the flap, your breath catches in your chest.

The glossy photos are crisp and vibrant as you pull the stack from the sleeve and marvel at the prints as you shuffle them one by one onto the table.

The wedding photos were mostly candids taken throughout the ceremony, out in front of the church, and at the reception. A lovely shot of the happy couple is the first. The big group photo in front of the iglesia's flower-rimmed fountain is next, and you feel a lump knot in your throat at you and Javi standing on the left of the bridal party as you glance from it to a candid of you, Javi, and your grandmother sitting in the pew, just before the vows. You hadn't even realized a photo was being taken, because you were looking at each other in the moment.

A tear escapes your eye as you notice how happy your grandmother looks, sitting on the other side of Javi, as she sees you both staring lovingly at each other.

"I like this one a lot," your cousin croaks, feeling just as emotional. She points at a photo of you and Javi dancing during the reception, and his smile as you laugh in mid dip has you snickering and sniffling. "But this one is my favorite."

She points to a photo of your grandmother, you, and Javier all posing while sat at your cake-slices-and-drink-laden table in the reception. Your abuela has a bright smile that lights up her features while you look truly content – smiling just as brilliantly while scooted close to Javier, who looks handsome and boyish all at once with that dimple of his on full display.

That's what does you in. You start to sob, and through the tears, you simper, "These are beautiful. Thank you. I love them."

Shuffling closer, you both hug, and share some tears while reminiscing about the wedding.

You manage to get through some more chores around the house that takes you into the early evening.

You're just taking a break at the kitchen table from dotingly polishing your grandmother's santos before you wrap them in the packing paper to be placed with the rest of the knickknacks you plan to take with you, and your cousin is cooking dinner while she chats with you. It's about that time of day when your aunt will be getting home from work, so she's jokingly warning you she's probably jetting over to see the progress on the house when you hear a car pull up on the street before the distant squeak of the gate being opened echoes over from the outside.

Comically looking at each other, you snicker and prepare for the inevitable. But then you're confused when instead of your aunt barreling into the space from the front door, there's a knock that sounds through the house. Turning to stare surprisedly at you, your cousin vacillates on whether she should go get the door, when you snicker and chime, "It's your home now, girl. The lady of the house should answer the door!"

Chuckling, she sets the rice spoon down and covers the caldero on the stove before wiping her hands on a towel and rushing by you with an irreverent squeeze to your shoulder as she goes. You decide to return back to the santos while you wait.

The one you're currently turning over in your hands is a figure of La Virgen Santa María, and your thoughts tug free the recollection of the last time you'd seen an effigy of the Virgin Mary. You picture the prayer card that had been in the shoebox, and the melancholy it plunges you into distracts you from the voices and the clang of the screen door closing.

It isn't until the sound of thick leather soled footsteps echoing over the terrazzo floor nearing towards the kitchen only to stop at the doorway behind you that you're stirred back from your longing thoughts to turn in your chair.

Your father stands in the threshold of the kitchen.

His broad shoulders and tall stature fill the space, looking just as imposing as he did the last time you had argued with him and stormed away, but instead of the dark polo shirt and tan slacks he'd been wearing that day, he's in a black guayabera with navy blue vertical stripes, and light cream-colored pleated trousers. His leather dress shoes are polished as meticulously as always, and his hair is swept back, but there's more pepper-gray shocked through his thick strands of hair than you remember.

You're so disarmed to see him that you don't immediately register how uncertain he looks as he stands there, trying to find something to say.

"Tesoro…" he rumbles in a tense bass-filled tone, hands fidgeting at his sides as he clears his throat and tries to verbalize his thoughts.

Overcome by your feelings coming crashing down around you like a rickety house of cards, the knot that tangles in your throat has a tremulous sob catching in your chest before you rush up to your feet and toss your arms around his shoulders.

He seems surprised, but quickly wraps you up in a hug and holds you tight as you start to weep.

Your cousin stands in the living room and witnesses as your father's eyes get glassy with unshed tears while he rubs your back, holding you tight as he consoles you with deep baritone shushes. Stifling a sniffle, she leaves you both to have your moment and goes out to the walkway to stop her mother from interrupting the emotional scene when she hears her coming up the sidewalk.

You don't even notice, too far gone in your tears and the comforting haven of your father's presence, completely unselfconscious to the need to be held by your Pá after so long – to feel safe in his warm embrace and soothed by his familiar aftershave and cologne.

Truly, you're filled up with relief as he whispers assurances that everything will be all right. And, in this moment, the world melts away, leaving just the two of you.

Right now, you're just a little girl being comforted by her dad, and for now, that's more than enough.

***

The drive back from fixing the fence along the riverbank had been a miserable one.

His body ached in the worst way – muscles strained, cheeks and back of his neck tender from tanning under the hot Texas sun, and feeling completely downtrodden after spending most of the day distracted and fuming with every drug-running boat that cruised by to rub in his face what a failure his time in the DEA had been.

But nothing more demoralizing could've heralded his current state of being – at his lowest low – than the song that came over the radio while his father drove them home.

Esta canción que canto amigos Es una más de dolor Si es que me ven llorando amigos Discúlpenme por favor

At first, he didn't know why it sounded familiar, but then when the second section sung after the instrumental horns blow in the melancholic ballad, he gets hit with a scalding déjà vu.

Traigo en el alma pena y llanto Que no puedo contener Y es que la quiero tanto y tanto Pero me tocó perder

He can't even stop it from happening. Not with how utterly worn down he felt, and before he could even muster the will to pull himself together, tears stung his eyes before escaping to roll down his cheeks.

Y ahora tengo que olvidarla también Y arrancarla de mi alma y mi ser Y de aquel amor que quema mi piel Que no quede nada

"Javier," his father grouses when he spares a glance over at his only son and sees him rushing to scrub his hands over his face with a terse grunt.

Que no quede huella, que no y que no Que no quede huella Porque estoy seguro que tu mi amor Ya ni me recuerdas

Que no quede huella de ti Y de los besos que te di Para convencerme mejor que yo Ya te perdí

Pulling off to the side of the dirt road, just short of the gravel-paved junction he'd need to turn onto to head back to the house, Chucho put the truck in park and turned to face Javier with worry. "Son—"

"I'm fine, Pop. I-I—" he interjected gruffly and exhaled a turbulent breath before reaching over to snap the volume on the radio all the way down. With the silence of the cab, he mustered the composure to clear his throat and stuff his feelings back down.

Looking anywhere but up at his father's concerned expression, he assured, "…Just got away from me for a moment there…"

Frowning, Chucho had reached for Javi's shoulder to give it a fortifying squeeze and pat before resuming the drive home.

The next day, after a fitful night's sleep, Javi had been up and dressed in a worn pair of jeans, soft denim shirt with snap buttons, and his battered work boots. Having pointedly ignored and weaved a path around the boxes as well as his luggage from Colombia still waiting to be unpacked to instead head downstairs, he'd grabbed a belt and slipped it through the loops of his jeans as he went.

Even though his back aches and his knees were protesting as he hustled down the stairs, Javi was getting himself ready for another day of toil on the ranch, even if it killed him. After all, he'd decided to get in the swing of helping with the drudgery he'd grown concerned was getting too much for Chucho to do mostly on his own, even with his cousins lending their time around the busier seasons.

His father was just coming back in from the porch with the weekly milk, butter and egg delivery that got dropped off by his primo before taking the rest to market in town.

It was a tradition since he was a kid, and even though it'd been years since his uncle had passed on, his prima Lucía kept it up. He was about to comment that things must be good over on that side of the family land when the house phone started ringing. Hustling to go answer it while his father stored the items in the fridge, he figured it might be Spencer calling again to "check in" and make sure he couldn't change his mind about getting back to work at the DEA.

"Peña Residence."

"Holy shit, Jav!" the boisterous greeting from Steve has him gritting his jaw and his shoulders squaring up. "You won't fucking believe what I just heard—!"

"Jeez, isn't it a little early to call and ply me with gossip, bud?" he grumbles as he turns to see his father begin to pour himself a cup of coffee.

"No man, listen! I just left headquarters – was there for that task force operation I told you about, and the news is all over the building: That asshole Stechner got bounced out of Colombia and is going up before a Congressional committee. CIA's basically burn noticing his ass for a bunch of shit that was leaked, and word is he got taken down by someone in the embassy—"

Javier's jaw drops as Steve details more, but his mind reverts him back to what Marisol had told him about the message she'd meant to give you. What was it?

"That her plan worked."

She'd said it so triumphantly, before teasing that she was sure he'd find out the details once he got back home. Holy shit.

Steve's boasting stirs Javier back as he smugly twangs, "—It's gone up the chain at DOD and DOJ, so he's finished. Someone said the dossier was filled with unsanctioned covert ops stuff, and supposedly it all got sent over to the powers that be in D.C. by some Vice Admiral, which had me thinking your badass mamacita pulled off the ultimate takedown."

But before he can keep crowing about the gossip, Javi cuts in with, "Steve, I gotta go. I'll call you back when I can, alright?"

He hangs up and bounds out of the kitchen to grab the keys to the truck in the bowl on the side table in the hall. "Pop, I'll be back in a couple of hours—"

"What?! Where are you going, mijo?" Chucho follows him out to the front hall where Javi is currently grabbing for his tan windbreaker jacket in the coat closet.

"I just gotta take care of something. I'll be back," he hastily explains as he rushes out the door.

Thirty minutes later, he's parking in the lot across from a building he hasn't been in since before he'd shipped out to Colombia, and when he comes in the door, even at the early hour, the receptionist looks up and is nonplussed to see him.

"Agent Peña?"

Of course, she'd know his face. He was sure Spencer had sent his DEA badge photo around to every field office since he'd gotten back stateside, and with the glances he'd gotten through the halls at the headquarters building in Virginia, he had no doubt his reputation preceded him – for better or worse.

"I need to see Growman," Javier had ordered, not asked, dispensing with all pleasantries.

Looking tense, she'd began to respond, "Um, well, he isn't in yet—"

"I'll wait."

The steel in his voice is only matched by the iron of his stare, so she'd quickly nodded before reaching for the phone to call the deputy director for the Laredo field office.

A few minutes later, and the man ambles out the security door leading to the offices and waves Javier in, looking surprised but intrigued.

Before they're even completely down the corridor that leads to the office spaces, the man was drawling, "Shit, man. Does this mean that resignation thing was a load of—"

"Are you aware you have boat runners smuggling drugs day in and out across the border, going up the tributary from the river, right along my family's property?"

Skidding in step, the deputy eyes him warily before ushering Javi down the rest of the way to the director's office. "So, this is technically a personal inquiry—?"

"Listen, Todd, I don't really care to discuss it with you, seeing as you can't do jack-shit to resolve it yourself, so I'll wait for Growman," Javi cuts in with finality.

Thankfully, the man in question rounds the corner, and after greeting Javier warmly, he takes him into his office and waves the deputy off.

As he rounds his desk to sit in his cushy chair, he began to remark, "Mike Spencer said you might come in here at some point once you got bored with retirement—"

"Nate, I'm going to be very clear here. I spent all fucking day yesterday watching drugs being smuggled up stream, just a stone's throw away from my property. Beyond the fact that I could go over your head to the brass and tell 'em you're letting these bastards get past you in broad daylight, I'm going to say this once: If you don't stop the drug traffic from going up river in my backyard, I will go to every newspaper from here to D.C. and namedrop you as being asleep on the job, and I'll do it in my personal capacity while still being the guy that took down an entire drug cartel," Javier levels in a terse rasp, voice hitting a low register as he leans forward with his hands on his hips to add gruffly, "Do we have an understanding?"

The director eyes him dubiously before drawling, "So I guess the rumors are true."

He knew what he was referring to. "Check it out: that's Javier Peña, the Crusader," he recalled overhearing in the lobby of the DEA building weeks prior. The sarcasm of the musing and the glances he kept feeling spoke volumes.

It was fine by him to live up to that hype.

"Care to find out for yourself?" Javier contumely challenged, eyes dark and features etched with promise.

Stonily, the other man leaned back in his chair before deadpanning, "…I'll get it handled."

"Good," Javier remarks, turns, and storms to the door to exit before pausing to look back at the man. "Don't make me come back here."

With that, he exits the office and stalks down the hall, out the security door, through the compact lobby, and out the building. He gets in the truck and doesn't look back as he drives off.

A short while later, and he's walked into the Sherriff's department.

The heat from the sun was radiating in the foyer, so he rushed through the vestibule and right up to the information desk.

"I'm here to see Deputy Miranda. Can you let him know—"

"Holy smokes, is that you, Javi?!"

He paused to turn just as a very familiar dispatcher was ambling over at him with a bright smile. Unable to suppress his crooked smirk, Javi drawled, "Hey, Pam."

"Well, as I live and breathe! I didn't know you were back in town," the spry woman exclaims as she pulls him in for a jovial hug. "Come on in with me," she offers as she simultaneously holds up her hand to the front desk rookie and chimes, "No need to fret, hun! This one here's got all the clearance he'll ever need," before looping her arm around Javier's and escorting him back to the bullpen.

"Look what the cat dragged in, boys!" Pam shouts out before kissing Javi on the cheek and leaving him to the room filled with mostly friendly faces in order to clock in for her shift.

"Check it out!"

"It's Mr. Laredo himself!"

A bunch of the fellas catcall tauntingly at Javier as he makes the rounds to shake hands hello, pat shoulders and shake his head wryly at the hazing.

"Hey, hermano!" Manny pulls him into a bear hug, giving Javi no quarter until he relents and hugs him back. "What the hell, y que haces por aquí, güey?! How long you been back in town?"

Clapping him on the back, Javi leans back and rumbles, "Not long. Listen, I need to talk to you. Can we go somewhere private?"

"Ehm, sure. Yeah. Hey, Carl. Can you finish taking this log down to filing for me?" Manny grabs the folder and hands it to one of the other deputies.

"Sure, John. And I'll only charge you one of those pastries Heidi made for yah," the other man chuckles as he goes.

Rolling his eyes, the man nudges Javi to follow him down to one of the conference rooms that's currently unoccupied. As they go, he can't help notice how his uniform accentuates some muscles he hadn't remembered his buddy having much definition in from the last time they'd hung out, but before he can comment, the door is shut and the inquisition begins.

"Alright, what the hell you up to now that brings you over here asking for favors before 8am?"

Yep, John Emanuel Miranda, 'Manny' to his very close friends and family, always was able to read Javier before he said a damn thing. After all, the two had been friends since elementary school, when Manny had come in mid-semester. His family had immigrated from Monterrey, Mexico, and one day when he struggled to find his locker due to the language barrier, Javier had walked up to him and offered to help. When he couldn't find a table that looked friendly enough to go sit at, he saw Javier waving at him enthusiastically from a table at the back of the cafeteria, inviting him to come sit with him. He eventually came out of his shell more, and over time, he and Javier were best of friends, and eventually he learned enough English to befriend Javier's friends, and ever since, they were partners in crime – and extracurricular activities at school – before following each other into the police academy and then onto the Laredo Sherriff's Department.

Javi still remembers the time Manny introduced himself to some of the other kids as John, and how he'd asked what that was about. "My dad told me he named me John Emanuel Miranda so the gringos would be nicer to me. He figured if I had a white-sounding first name, it would be harder for them to be mean. So, to gringos I don't know well, I tell them my name is John. If I like the person enough, eventually they can call me Manny."

He'd just realized he'd told Steve a while back while they'd been waiting for Navegante about his best man John driving him to the chapel before he'd told him to pull over, and is amused by the fact he'd likely referred to him as John because Steve was a hillbilly who hadn't earned the privilege to know him as 'Manny,' when he shakes himself loose of the recollections and clears his throat to answer his friend.

He tells Manny about the smugglers, how he'd demanded that the DEA handle it, and how he'd decided it'd be a good bet to have the sheriff's department aware so if the agency dropped the ball, his guys could be aware and be more vigilant.

"Ni madres…yeah, we'll handle it. I know a lot of people who would happily patrol the waterways more to make sure those hijo de putas don't cross near their land," the man responds soberly as he eyes him reassuringly. "So then, you doing all this because you plan to stay for good, Javi?" he followed up, as he leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms.

"…I'm doing it because I don't want that shit happening in my town. Let alone right in my family's backyard. And I knew you wouldn't either, which is why I'm trusting you with it," Javi responded curtly before sitting in a chair and rubbing his hand crankily across his features, struggling with his cigarette craving hitting hard after trying to go cold-turkey. "For now, though…yeah, I'll be home for a spell. Helping Pop out on the ranch while I figure out my next move."

"Well, excellent! So, then you'll be free to be my best man."

Having not expected that, Javier had lifted his face from his hand to balk at him, mumbling, "What?"

Manny gives him a kilowatt smile, shoulders proudly winding back as he tells him, "I popped the question, and Heidi said yes. We're getting married in a few months, so I'll need you to be my best man."

Stunned, Javi takes a minute to stand and clamp both hands onto Manny's shoulders before giving him a wry shake and pulling him into a hug. "Congrats, huevón! She finally wore you down—"

"Ah, no mames, cabrón," Manny scoffs and shoves Javi comically. "We all can't be eligible solteros forever!"

Javier is in much better spirits by the time he gets back to the ranch, and while his father is peeved with him, he just tosses his tools into the back of the truck and hops in before ordering him to drive out to the northern pasture.

By the end of the day, the dirt and sweat of hard labor actually felt good to him, and Chucho can't help affectionately patting his arm while they moseyed back to the truck.

"Whatever you ran off to handle this morning, seemed to help pick your spirits up, mijo," he'd commented, as he put the tools in the back of the truck.

"Yeah…" Javi retorted as he tossed his work gloves into the back of the flatbed and smirked. "Just making my way while I'm here, until I figure out whether I'm cut out for this ranchero life—"

"Oh, I've given up on that one a long time ago," Chucho cut in slyly, smiling as he got in the truck.

Snorting, Javi got in too. "I'm trying, Pop."

"I know. And this viejo appreciates it, but we both know you'll get stir crazy and find what you're meant to do next," he fondly assures as he starts the truck. "But I'm grateful all the same that in the meantime, while you figure it out, you're spending it here, Javier."

It feels good to hear.

So, he opens up, and tells his dad the news about Manny and Heidi on the drive back to the house.

Once his father parked in the driveway over by the storage garage, Javier was feeling lighter than he had in weeks. He was in such a good mood, that he'd been in the middle of remarking, "Maybe we can go into town for dinner? Haven't been to Jaime's folks' spot for barbeque in a while—" but then he stopped dead in his tracks when he was up the walkway and spotted a big box left on the porch, right in front of the screen door.

"I thought all your things were delivered already," Chucho remarks as he comes up beside him.

"Yeah, they were," Javi mutters as he goes up the porch steps and grabs the box. It's heavy, but manageable, so he'd put it down on the nearby porch chair so he could look at the tracking label.

His heart sank when he saw the sender's address.

Chucho perceived the way Javier deflated, so he quickly opened the screen door and unlocked the door. "Bring it in, mijo," he instructed gently as he held the screen open for him.

Vacantly, Javi picked up the box and brought it through the threshold to be put down in the living room. He hadn't realized he'd been staring at it blankly until his father had retrieved his pocket knife and held it out to him.

It took everything in him to slice through the tape and pop the lids open.

His belongings – the ones he'd kept in your apartment – are packed meticulously into the box, folded and arranged in the most efficient way he's ever seen.

The look on Javier's face was everything Chucho needed to see to know where the box was from, and knows his son is brooding with self-loathing, so he put his hand on his back.

"Son, I don't want you to let this eat you up—"

"It's not. It…it won't, Pop," Javi snapped before easing his tone and diverting his gaze. "I'll, uh…I'll take this up, shower, and we can go to dinner."

With a frown, he nodded and watched Javier pick up the box and make a hasty retreat up the stairs with it.

When he made it up to his room, he dropped the box onto the floor by his bed, and intended to storm off to shower, but he ended up just staring down into the representation of the last vestiges of his life with you, feeling plunged into a sadness he'd been holding at bay.

He'd been distant during dinner at the restaurant, and pensive on the drive back to the ranch, so his father had deliberated about just sitting him down to hash it all out – to insist on him needing to vent and purge his feelings about the whole matter once and for all so he could work to heal from the breakup and not wallow in his despair.

The chance is thwarted when they come into the house to the house phone already ringing.

Mechanically, Javier had marched to the phone and picked up the receiver.

"Peña Residence."

"Hey, Jav. Sorry to call again, I know you said you'd call back, but…uh, well, I thought you should know," Steve is prefacing in a much more sober tone now than he'd had earlier in the day. Javier grunts for him to continue, so Steve explains, "I came into the office straight from the airport to catch up on memos and shit. I had a voicemail message that was just a few seconds of quiet before the person hung up. I thought that was weird, so I asked if anyone had called during the day when the calls to my line were getting redirected. The dispatcher logged one from a woman, who'd called my direct line, but didn't want to leave a message…and I can't help thinking that could've been your girl."

"…When was it?" Javi asks, throat tight as he feels his father's eyes on him from his vigil at the kitchen entryway.

Steve tells him the timing for both calls, and Javier feels an ache behind his sternum.

"—Wish she'd left a number. Sorry, man. Just figured I'd let you know," Steve is remarking, pulling Javi back.

"No, don't worry about it. Thanks for calling, Steve. Give my love to the girls."

As soon as he hangs up the phone, Javi is ruminating, and for some nagging reason, he's compelled to go up to his bedroom and dig into the box now.

"Sorry, Pop. We'll talk tomorrow, alright?" he tells his father as he rushes by and bounds up the steps.

He hears his father shout up a hasty goodnight while he hustles into his room and proceeds to dig through the box, putting every item and article of clothing on the bed as he empties the contents.

Once emptied and tossed aside, he takes stock of everything, trying to mentally itemize all the things he'd ever had at your place, hoping for some elusive clue he has no clue about finding or why, until something that is not present in the bunch jumps out at him.

His gray college shirt is missing.

Leaning on the mattress, he disbelievingly marvels at the missing belonging, and something he wasn't even aware he still had now began to blossom in his chest.

Hope. You kept it, because you didn't want to part with it, because maybe…maybe you still hoped to see him again.

Overcome, he sits on the bed and grabs the shoe box he'd put on his nightstand, took the lid off of it, and retrieved the photos of you among the other items of importance strewn over them: his mother's rosary beads, her prayer card, and the little Virgin Mary glass paperweight she'd gifted him when he'd gotten into college.

Everything held so much meaning to him, and seeing them all together allowed that hope to radiate deeper in him.

And for the first time, he felt like there was enough – that he had enough to go on.

So, as soberly as possible, he did.

________________

Read Chapter 39: Longing

Spanish-English Glossary:

Mijo = short for "mi hijo", a term of endearment akin to "my son/sonny"

Sabes = You know

Santo Cristo = Holy Christ; Saint Christ

Doncito = Slang for gentleman/young man, said in the diminutive

Guapo valiente = Valiant hunk

Agua fresca = A non-alcoholic beverage made of fresh fruits, blended with sugar and water

Lancha = A motorized, boat; dinghy used to go up waterways

Porfiado = Stubborn [male]

Cerveza = Beer

Mejico = Mexico

Prima = Cousin [female]

Iglesia = Church

Santos = Saints; Catholic figurines used in a home shrine/altar

Caldero = Cauldron (old school rice cooking pot)

Guayabera = Traditional Latin American button down/formal dress shirt worn by men; usually worn by men to look distinguished

Tesoro = Treasure; darling

Pá = Short for 'Papá' which means father, or poppa

Mamacita = sexy lady; foxy woman

Hermano = Brother; bud

Y que haces por aquí, güey = And what are you doing over here, dude

¡Ni madres! = Coloquial Mexican phrase, meaning "No Way!" "You're kidding me!"

Hijo de putas = Sons of bitches

Huevón = Dummy; goofball

Ah, no mames, cabrón = Ah, quit fucking around, asshole; akin to "Quit busting my balls, man"

Solteros = Bachelors; single men

Ranchero = Rancher [male]

Viejo = Old man

Song translation: Esta canción que canto amigos This song I sing friends Es una más de dolor It's one more pain Si es que me ven llorando amigos If you see me crying friends Discúlpenme por favor Excuse me, please Traigo en el alma pena y llanto I carry in my soul sorrow and weeping Que no puedo contener That I can't contain Y es que la quiero tanto y tanto And I love her so much and so much Pero me toco perder But I get lost Y ahora tengo que olvidarla también And now I have to forget it too Y arrancarla de mi alma y mi ser And rip it out of my soul and my being Es aquel amor que quema mi piel It's that love that burns my skin Que no quede nada Let's have nothing left Que no quede huella que no y que no Don't let there be a mark that doesn't and doesn't Que no quede huella Don't let it be traced Por que estoy seguro que tu mi amor ya ni me recuerdas Because I'm sure your love doesn't even remember me anymore Que no quede huella de ti Don't let there be any trace of you Y de los besos que te di And the kisses I gave you Para convencerme mejor que yo To convince me better than I do Ya te perdí I've already lost you

The song referenced and translated above is "Que No Quede Huella" by Rodolfo Aicardi. It’s featured in Season 3 of Narcos, and I suggest checking them out on Spotify.

Thanks for reading! Please consider leaving a comment and sharing your feedback. I would be eternally grateful.

#Heat - Narcos fanfic #Javi x Querida #Javi Peña x Latina OFC #Javier Peña #Javi Peña #Narcos #Javi Peña fan fiction #Javier Peña fan fiction #Narcos fan fiction #Pedro Pascal #Pedro Pascal characters

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misarem · 1 month

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Umineko Episode 5 Thoughts: The Part Where I Try To Lock In

I feel the need to just get this out while I have the chance to do this before I start episode 6. I think I finished this episode over a week ago at this point and have since been doing other stuff, been too busy with real life to pour over this vn, etc. My thoughts on the episode itself will be kinda minor but I'll compensate with my current theories on the overarching mystery and the murders. What I'm hoping to do is have preliminary theories ready for episode 6 so that I can develop them while reading it and be ready for endgame. I even started making a physical journal of my thoughts on each murder, character, and rule because after like 80% of my life in the education system this is all I know how to do to retain information, plus! itll be cute. but anyways

Doing what's easy for me and starting at the beginning and just working my way through. I'm still kinda burnt by Beato in episode 3 but I really do wanna believe she's like fully dejected now that Battler isn't matching her as an opponent the way she thought he would. Surreal to see her practically dead but I guess this is signaling that the game is becoming something much bigger than Battler vs Beatrice, to the point where Bern and Lambda are more active and Knox is now involved. Through some meta lens I almost wanna read this as like, an event within the world of detective fiction where a story spirals out of control and the foundations that do exist need to intervene. Feels like commentary on stories as a whole, what has been established as "good" and "reasonable" and what it means to subvert those paradigms, and how far you can reasonably go. And having these larger themes on fiction as a whole run parallel to the events of Rokkenjima, with the ideas of love and trust being established and broken between family mirroring the trust between an author and reader and the love for reading and storytelling, is very satisfying. And if you read the witches as authors and critics of mystery stories, or just stories in general, then the idea of fiction giving our lives fulfilment and meaning also operates on all these levels: the witches weave the narrative on Rokkenjima from a higher plane to stave off their boredom, those on Rokkenjima cope with the dire situation by blaming the murders on witches and demons, and outside of the murders, the people who struggle because of this family cope with fantasy, from Ange and Maria easing their loneliness with the sisters and Sakutaro, to, as we see later, Natsuhi finding refuge from her responsibilities in an imaginary Kinzo and his furniture.

Going off my ideas about black and white magic in the last episode, Natsuhi herself is beginning to resemble a white witch in the same way Maria did. Her and Jessica finally beginning to come to an understanding of one another only in the dire circumstances that were the murders of Rokkenjima was one of the first terrifyingly realo depictions of strained family relationships I latched onto in the game, and I was sorta sad to see her fall to the wayside in the rest of the Question Arcs (altho everyone else getting some focus was important). Very nice to see her in the forefront again here, this time focusing more on her self-sacrificing nature and her sense of duty to the image and wellbeing of the Ushiromiya family that feeds it.

Having THIS be the backdrop of her inner monologue is fitting considering the way everything she faces ends up spiraling into her own guilt and self-loathing, and how she needs to take everything on for her family. I can't even blame her at this point for imagining Kinzo recognizing her for her work cuz idk how else I would live like this. And when she tries to help her husband and he just keeps making the same types of decisions that fail his business ventures and she ends up just acquiescing every time. Wow its just harrowing. They can never make me hate Natsuhi. Also I forget if I addressed Maria's torture of Rosa in the last write up, I don't wanna say a whole lot besides the cycle of abuse within the Ushiromiya family is horrifying, and that it feels like this chapter, Maria's turn to inflicting harm on others to cope feels unaddressed in a concerning way. Like I'm scared

As for the new characters, I like Erika a decent amount so far, I'm mainly just waiting for her to fly off the handle because she was just so dominant here until the end of the episode. Her being an avatar of Bernkastel almost makes me think of her as like a joke on author insert characters in fiction, also makes me wonder just what Erika is, if she's supposed to be like a meta entity like the witches even tho she's meant to be a human? Does she just exist between reality and fiction as Berns fucked up creation? Its interesting to me. Also they keep namedropping Ange when talking abt Erika as a piece and its getting on my damn nerves keep my homegirls name out your mouth. I like Dlanor a lot too and how cordial and nice she can be. even tho formally she's usually an enemy.

Not much changed here besides moving Natsuhi up and Krauss down again lmao. I'll keep doing these just to track my opinions but it might be good to be more nuanced with it, add a few more tiers or find some other way to address the cast overall altho by this point, almost all of them in the okay tier or above are so well established and integrated into the story. If I take anything from this vn its gonna be the cast.

The murders themselves I was like fine with. I hope Jessica died painlessly she deserves a break. Obviously things went way differently but, I thought the way it worked was a little boring and I almost expect episode 6 to be some sort of do-over for it altho that feels unlikely at the same time. Altho I do understand it, this is supposed to be a breaking point for Battler, seeing someone actually be (wrongfully?) implicated but being powerless to fight against it before he has his epiphany moment so it's fine. The court scene also made up for it just in its style alone, the sound design, visual effects and transitions are such a treat and give this game such a strong identity among visual novels. The OST with tracks like patchwork chimera, ACI-L and totemblume is like incredible, -45 does such incredible work and I wish I could have them all on my vgm tag on this blog. I might need to liek stop being lazy and do my own vgm uploads and quit replying on other blogs to do it if i want them on my blog lmao. Still a good episode and it's obviously setting up for greater payoffs but it's hard for me to imagine that Bern and Lambda find this first game of theirs particularly interesting before the court scene.

What I'm interested about thought is Natsuhi's baby, if that will end up being a full-fledged piece of Lambda's, and if its the character who I think it is from the little snippets of him I've seen in the intro. It does kinda tickle me that the first twilight murders were all very deep, clean slices to the neck and there's just a Battler-aged, brown haired dude in the intro with a sword. Considering how hard he implicated Natsuhi by controlling her movements, his presence in the story is cooperative with Erika's sleuthing and I'm curious if they'll end up working together as, I guess meta entities in the story? We'll see.

Like I said before I go into ep 6 I wanted to just get down what I have as the solution so far. Nothing concrete still, and I know the how is super important even tho I kinda only have the who and sorta the why, but again I'm hoping episode 6 will help me develop that.

...

Anyways I really think it's Kyrie. PIOKJHGFHJKL:L I can't help it. I almost feel like I'm approaching it at the wrong angle and that she's a red herring or something, and I keep going back and forth, but at the same time, so much of the movement of the characters makes sense when you think of it as Kyrie manipulating things. Her face being completely smashed in the first twilight of episode 1. Her being the one to rile the other parents up by warning them about Beatrice in episode 2. The details she reveals about herself in episode 3 and the part of her and Hideyoshi's characters tab that alludes to her shooting him (maybe an accident but ???). And the way she positions herself slightly under Krauss when they're in the dungeon of episode 4, letting him take the reins but still having a lot of influence and command as well as watching them all die as they escape, being the only one to make it inside, being "missed" a bunch by the Chiesters and telling Battler in her own words to believe in magic while her version of the actual events as it is given to Battler is glossed over by the narration. The mystery of the code above the parlor in (i think) episode 3 and half of the numbers corresponding to Battler's birthday. And that, as Beatrice said, because of Battler's sin, people on the island die, that the sin feels like it could be connected to his unclear parentage and that the sin, by the fact that it occurred 6 years in the past, was close to Asumu's death, Rudolph's marriage to Kyrie and Ange's birth. Again I could be barking up the wrong tree cuz I really don't have the how or why down like, in a concrete way yet but I don't know it just feels so likely like I just feel it. And she at least has Genji or Shannon in cahoots too, not committing the murders but just helping with keys or acting as certain people. It would be easy to say they're acting on Kinzo's will but he's dead now so idk. But my vague guess is she wants revenge against the Ushiromiya family for how (like how it affects literally everyone elses like a huge trauma abuse machine) it affected her life, her relationship with Rudolph and the birth of her child. Maybe Battler really is hers but was taken at birth because Asumu's child had died or she has miscarriage and the family wanted to save face. And I think by manipulating the situation and her in-laws she managed to create a state of paranoia on the island, which facilitated most if not all of the murders even without her needing to act. Just because of some of the ways she dies, and some of the red truths restricting the possibilities, I don't know right now if it's possible for her to have killed everyone, but I think it's possible for her to have led people like Rosa and Eva to kill.

Kyrie is shown early on to be among the most shrewd and observant people on the island, at least concerning the battle for inheritance, and since her and the other siblings, besides Krauss and Natsuhi, are already in cooperation against Krauss, I don't find it hard to imagine that she could splinter the group further by influencing any one person in it on her own, away from the others, and I feel like that's how she got some things done in the first couple episodes, and maybe episode 3? Like for the first, I can imagine Kyrie taking Eva aside and using her competitiveness and resentment to convince her to go along with her plan to kill all the other siblings, blame Natsuhi to get her out of the way so the inheritance can be enjoyed by Eva and Hideyoshi with Kyrie taking a fraction while pretending to be dead. Eva goes along with it and after the murders, where Kyrie's whole face is obscured (and Shannon's half-face is hidden from George), and after they return to the parlor, Eva implicates Natsuhi heavily while stoking tensions even further by leaving with Hideyoshi and being very overt about setting the chain to their door and only coming out at precisely dinnertime. Going with the idea that Kyrie's still alive, she hides out in the designated guest room and kills the couple, escaping when Genji and Kanon discover it but leave to get help, escaping and resetting the chain from outside somehow, like with some sort of tool perhaps? and draws the magic circle and leaves, or if we believe Shannon is also alive, that her face was obscured for a reason and any confirmation that "Shannon is dead" can be bypassed with a loophole about her real name (Sayo I think I remember but if I google it I'll get spoiled), Shannon makes the circle and when Kanon and Kumasawa cut the chain, enter and move away from the door to one of the bodies, Kyrie slips out. I can't find any specific red text for this specific locked room other than the one for all locked rooms, so I'm guessing the instances where the entrances are unattended are deliberate. Kanon's death, from what I can find, isn't denied to have been with a trap like Natsuhi's is, so I'll guess that and then say the rest of the deaths were committed straightforwardly, with Shannon disguised as Beatrice for Maria and possibly Natsuhi as Kyrie kills them.

Episode 2 is weird cuz I don't feel like I can act like Kyrie can be proven to be alive atm but it feels like she could have been in contact with Rosa instead, potentially starting with the appearance of Beatrice at the "19th guest". Rosa witnesses her and while it isn't revealed in this episode, it's feels possible that this is likely Shannon in disguise having an effect on her because of how she watched Beatrice die as a kid. Kyrie is in the entrance when Beatrice "enters the mansion", and I think she likely pretended to see her to rile up the other siblings, saw Rosa as potentially weak and had her corroborate to seem more convincing. And later that night, at the chapel, Rosa kills the other siblings. No set motive for this, but when I read the red text which specifies that the key to the chapel didn't pass thru anyone else's hands before Rosa took it, it didn't, to my knowledge, specify that Rosa only took it once, so she could have grabbed the key around midnight and let them all in before killing them, forgetting or pretending she didn't, and then locking and leaving. I also think that the reason they were all at the chapel was over the gold, which we see three ingots after the discovery of the bodies. If the gold is real, I think Rosa could have solved the mystery here considering she solved it in episode 3, and brought some gold as proof, or Kyrie could have solved it and not said anything although that somehow seems less likely. Either way, over the fight about the gold, Rosa in a stupor or frenzy or something kills them and leaves. Since Shannon isn't shown here, maybe she pretends to be the Beatrice we see talking to them here and guts the corpses after, also placing the magic circle, but having Rosa return the key for her to find again. I don't know about the later deaths though I still have to work some of them out. Like what we see as Kanon being warped away and suddenly trudging around outside the kitchen might just be him being killed or gravely wounded and the body being taken and laid against that back door for Gohda to find. Stuff like that but I need to work it out.

Eva in episode 3 almost feels so obvious that it seems like a red herring. If Shannon and maybe Genji and mayyyyybe Kanon? are in kahoots then the six part locked room seems more doable. Eva killing the five after that feels really on the nose, I'm wondering if Beatrice losing some of the games to Battler's Eva culprit Hideyoshi accomplice theory was her playing her own game against him. Altho even with that there's still some mystery like the floating gun killing Hideyoshi which the character tips seem to imply was Kyrie's doing. Battler also proposes that Kyrie's idea about going to the mansion was to privately confront Hideyoshi, in his eyes to confirm that Eva was going out because Eva hated his smoke but a cigarette butt was found in an ashtray of the rom, and I think this is likely, but I also think that maybe, potentially like episode 1, Kyrie colluded with Eva and Hideyoshi and she wanted Hideyoshi to explain why Eva was acting suspicious, in the privacy of the mansion as the smaller guesthouse leaves more opportunity for conversation to be overheard. I also wonder if Kyrie knew that Eva found the gold. If Kyrie was with Rosa here the way she might have been in episode 2, Rosa might've told Kyrie that Eva found it, and besides that, I feel like Kyrie is the type of person to be able to deduce that Eva found it, but this is speculation. No clue what was happening as Kyrie's stomach was bleeding out in front of Eva though.

But this kind of is the best I got right now before I go into episode 6. All of this is assuming Kyrie's able to fake her death as a couple key points and that multiple murderers and servant accomplices are even permitted, I don't think I saw anything in red or any Knox rules against these things but that theory just makes things work better. Technically a lot of these murders can have anyone as the culprit with someone like Shannon as an accomplice but this is the most complete idea I can come up with. I don't even know about episode 5. Hopefully ep6 elucidates some things. Maybe Eva knew Kyrie was a killer and that's part of her resentment of Ange. Maybe there is some fucky true identity shit with Asumu and Kyrie. who knows! Also I had to text search and replace every time I called an episode a chapter because I'm barely cognizant of all the names of the individual chapters within the episodes and I'm just thinking of this like a big book god help me

#im getting like little spoilers here and there too cuz this shit is so long and i cant help myself peeking in tags altho #a lot of it is me reblogging something harmless and the tumblr algorith bombarding me but its ok im still figuring stuff out #uwtc #umineko when they cry #umineko no naku koro ni

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ironstrangle · 5 months

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FebuWhump Day 2 - Solitary Confinement - Ed/Stede

CW: Solitary Confinement, Kidnapping and references to canon suicidal tendencies. @febuwhump

“You think you can drive me mad like this?” Ed asked the dark room. He wasn’t restrained, but the room didn’t leave him any room to move. It was dark, smelled like dirt. Obviously a basement of some kind. “You can’t drive me mad, mate, because I’ve already been mad. I went to that place in my mind and back and I will never go there again…”

He didn’t really blame his captor. It wasn’t the English or another pirate. It was the wife of a victim of the Kraken, as far as he could tell. The worst part was that he didn’t even know who her husband was. The things that he had done during that time were a blur of pain and self-loathing and a desire to die so intense that it still choked him to think about it at times.

It impressed him, honestly, that she’d managed to get him down here. She had preyed upon his weaknesses, the softness that he had developed in the past months with Stede. She had drugged him, had her affiliates drag him down here, and now who knew what she was going to do to him? He couldn’t help think about her killing him. Would she make it fast or draw it out?

His mind went to Stede and his heart leaped into his throat. As far as he knew, his husband had made it out unscathed. It appeared, from his knowledge, that the woman had drugged his drink, had her associates bound and take him here and Stede was left none the wiser, since he was in town at the time.

At least he hoped so, with all of his heart. He did not want to think of Stede in a similarly terrified place – fearful that this would be the end.

Ed tried to comfort himself, taking a deep breath to stave off the panic. If this was the end, then at least he’d been able to be truly happy first. His sins on the sea had been purged the moment that he woke up every morning with the ability to kiss Stede Bonnet. He was not going to let go of the man he loved. He would be fine, even if this was the very end of him.

Maybe it was meant to be. He had outlived the life that he expected for himself as a child.

The darkness began to become oppressive. Ed had never minded the dark, but that fear was starting to rise in his heart. He looked around and couldn’t see anything that made sense, just dark shadows and light. He frowned, afraid of what was coming next. “Stede, I love you,” he whispered to the empty darkness. He didn’t really believe in most miracles, even though he had seen things that could be miraculous. Right now, all he was oping was the fact that Stede would know he died loving him. He would know that it was all worth it, even if it came to an end too soon.

The door opened and light flooded the room. Ed stilled himself, knowing that he was probably going to die. He was never going to be a man who faced his death with anything but dignity, as scared as he was to leave Stede behind. He forced himself back to his feet, prepared to meet the woman with a brave expression on his face, to apologize for her husband’s death before she killed him. Or maybe she would have him killed.

It wasn’t that he didn’t think a woman was capable of doing it herself. He had known many women who would gut you before they blinked. Yet, likely this was the wife of some rich naval officer. Maybe she wouldn’t want to get her hands dirty. Maybe it would end at the hands of some hired killer, a man who was both quick and efficient.

The man who entered threw his arms around Ed’s neck.

“Edward.”

It took him a few moments to realize that it was Stede holding him so tight. Stede’s arms were the ones wrapped around his neck and it was Stede who was covered in dirt and blood and crying into his shoulder. He wouldn’t even lift his head to look at Ed, so all Ed had to see was the curls against his cheek.

“Stede?” he asked, amazed, in awe of the man he loved. “Stede, what happened? How did you…”

Stede let go of him enough to let him breathe, at least.

“I saw you were gone and I did some investigating,” he said with a laugh. “I found the people who took you and I got some friends to help me…”

“Who…”

“Let’s just say some of our old friends weren’t too far off the coast.”

Oh god. The others? Really? It seemed too good to be true.

“Is the woman okay? Nobody hurt her, did they?” The idea of someone who had been a victim of his rampage getting hurt made him just as sick as the idea of dying without ever seeing Stede again.

“No, she’s unharmed,” he assured.

At that, something in him released. Guilt. Pain. Fear. He let out a shuddering sob and held Stede as tightly as he could manage.

“Don’t let go. God please don’t let go.”

He knew that he never would.

#febuwhump #febuwhump2024 #febuwhump day 2 #blackbonnet #gentlebeard

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thebramblewood · 6 months

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Caleb finally eats some good food and hears some hard truths. Now shall we join him on a trip down memory lane? 👀

Previous / Next

Grace: Stop snacking! You’ll ruin your appetite.

Caleb: Oh, how I wish that were true.

Grace: I don’t know how you can stand to eat those things raw.

Caleb: By necessity. I’m afraid I still lack any culinary finesse.

Grace: They’re certainly a finicky fruit. Nothing that can’t be fixed with a sprinkling of magic, though.

Caleb: Exquisite as usual, Grace.

Grace: I’ll trust your taste. Even cooked, I don’t quite have the constitution for the stuff.

Caleb: And for that you should be grateful.

Now, I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to lately.

Caleb: Well… [heaves weary sigh] How much time do you have?

Grace: So let me get this straight. You turned her, you passed her off as dead, you dumped her unconscious body in a graveyard, and you haven’t spoken to her since?

Caleb: [mutters weakly] I wrote her a letter.

Grace: Caleb, no! You’re even more dramatic in writing. You probably scared the poor girl to death. And now she’s out there all alone!

Caleb: [defensively] I’d never done it before, and there was no time to plan. I left her some things…

Grace: You know the literature frontwards and backwards! The sire/newborn relationship is vital to the development-

Caleb: It seemed more important to protect her from Lilith.

Grace: [softly] The best way to protect her would be to leave Lilith in the dust. You managed it once.

Caleb: Which ended so well.

Grace: What happened to Morgyn wasn’t your fault, but you used it to justify going back. You deserve better.

Caleb: The difference between us, Grace, is I’m not sure I deserve anything at all.

Grace: God, you and your eternal self-loathing! You’ve risen above what she tried to turn you into. You have more humanity than almost anyone I know. Why can’t you extend a little compassion to yourself?

Caleb: Because I failed to protect the person I loved when it mattered most! Yet I was able to save this girl I barely know. It doesn’t make sense.

Grace: Some things are just senseless, Caleb. There was nothing anyone could have done. I hate how they went out as much as you do. But the Sages had been staving off death for decades. They were vulnerable despite their power, and the universe was eager to take them. This girl is young, full of potential. Frankly, I’m not sure you have moral ground to stand on with your sister or anyone else if you don’t help her.

Grace: You aren’t upset with me, are you?

Caleb: Of course not. You never mince words, and I never take your advice lightly.

Grace: I hope you’ll come by again soon. Emilia and Tomax would love to see you.

Caleb: [noncommittal shrug] They were always more Morgyn’s friends than mine.

Grace: That may have been true at first, but we all grew quite fond of you. I know we didn’t come up with much before, but we could always start looking into cures again if-

Caleb: That’s a conversation for another time. Good night, Grace.

Grace: [crestfallen] Good night.

#ts4 #sims 4 #sims 4 story #ts4 story #simblr #story: hzid #caleb vatore #grace anansi #grace is all of us being deeply (but affectionately) judgmental of caleb's decision making

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showrunnerihardlyknowher · 3 years

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26 for the prompts? perhaps w the cat n mouse lads :3 (also look danny i did it i sent a prompt are u proud)

I...actually don't remember what the prompt was for this one, but I'm 87% sure it was "I'm not that scary, am I?"

So fine since y'all keep asking for 'em, here's more of the cat and mouse bois. Shoutout to @gabbydafurry and an anon for finally giving them names.

“C’mon.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“I said no.”

“I’ll make pollo asado for dinner, we can eat it together while we watch!”

Aaron sighed and rubbed his hands against his forehead, trying to ease the dull throb that had yet to wane over the past two days. His headache certainly wasn’t being helped by the constant badgering of his...roommate, for a lack of better words (as well as being a title so eagerly self bestowed by the cat in question) but much like many of their other interactions, his resolve was starting to wear thin. Usually, he was able to hold his ground for at least a week until he was bribed into giving the other some type of social interaction with the promise of his favorite foods. Today, however, the poor mouse just wanted a moment’s peace free from knocking on the walls or calling through the cracks until he answered, and if that meant watching some stupid movie then fine.

Plus, Lucas did know how to make some incredible Mexican food.

“...fine,” Aaron conceded after a pause, the pressure behind his eyes giving him a sharp pang before fading to its usual ache, almost like his own body was projecting how horrible of an idea this was.

As soon as the mouse slipped out from behind the curio, he came face to face with the massive grin of the cat mere inches away from the opening. Seeing the grin only split wider when he was fully in view of the other normally would have instinctively sent a shiver up his spine, it was kind of difficult to be intimidated seeing how Lucas had strangely contorted his body to lay on the floor between the curio and the bookcase. Most cats seemed to be fairly flexible, so it probably wasn’t too uncomfortable for him to be so bent and curled up, but he definitely lost some of that hunter’s prowess with his back twisted sideways and one leg leaning against the shelving.

In a flash, Lucas had managed to untangle his strange positioning to instead be crouched on his knees, now looming over Aaron in a way he wasn’t sure he would ever get used to. He flinched back when his hand started to reach out towards him, fully intending to scoop him up to dizzying heights without a second thought, but the appendage stopped just short of touching him at all. Instead, he dropped his hand palm side up and waited, smiling all the while. At least he was getting better at remembering Aaron’s explicit request to not be grabbed without permission, though he did always apologize with a sheepish look and some little treat whenever he forgot.

Once Aaron climbed onto the awaiting hand that radiated a delightfully intense warmth into his already aching muscles, Lucas was already jumping up a chattering a mile a minute about how much the mouse was going to love the movie he picked out, how dinner would be ready soon, how he wasn’t expecting him to actually agree to watch a scary movie with him since he never seemed like the type who would be into that sort of thing but--

“It’s a scary movie?” Aaron interrupted, the noise finally registering beyond the headache. Truthfully, he tuned a lot of what the other said out for almost every conversation, not that it ever seemed to make a difference. Yeah, sorry, I’m a bit of a chatterbox, he admitted once, but it’s less weird talking to someone who doesn’t respond than to talk to yourself, right?

Debatable.

Lucas tilted his head and snorted. “Uh, yeah? That was one of the first things I told you about. You know that one actress who’s in almost every one of those Christmas movies we watch, who’s always the jealous best friend?” Aaron has no idea who he was referring to given that he never absorbed anything from those stupid romance movies he was boarderline forced to watch, but nodded anyways, “Right, this is supposed to be her big break out role, or something. It’s the first thing she’s doing as a lead actress, and you know, good for her! I’m glad she’s getting out of that typecast she’s been in forever. Horror probably wouldn’t be my first choice for her, but I guess since she has those singing vocals it could carry over to being a scream queen. Kind of like when--”

And Aaron was out of the conversation again.

Lucas continued to drone on about the actress’s entire film career, or at least that’s what the mouse was assuming he was doing when he occasionally zoned back in to pick up a stray word here and there. The headache he had been staving off to the best of his ability was starting to come back with twice as much force as it often did in the later days. He probably could have just asked the other for some aspirin, maybe even some cold medicine as that was no doubt what this bout of illness was turning into, but asking the cat for anything was always out of the question. Of course, Lucas tried to sway him numerous times into thinking it most certainly was not and that he could always ask for whatever he needed, never to his avail. Aaron was indeed willing to prolong his suffering if it meant not having to stomach the dreadful embarrassment that would come to being indebted to the feline, no matter how insignificant.

Unfortunately, he was only setting himself up for failure in thinking this “agreement” would be providing him any sort of relief. His headache was treading dangerously close into becoming a full fledged migraine and the flashes of light and screams from the television would not be doing him any favors. His only saving grace was that, after he had been settled on the couch and Lucas scampered off to get the dinner he promised, the cat turned off every other light possible to, as he put it, really get them in the spooky mood!

The smell of the food was delicious and nauseating. His stomach both wanted and revolted at the idea of anything filling it, which would only serve to worsen his headache no doubt. Damn it all, he wanted to throttle both himself and this illness, the first for agreeing to watch this stupid movie when he was already feeling under the weather, the second for preventing him from getting his half of the deal. These movie-dinner dates deals were the only reason Aaron continued to stick around, even if he thought the torment of being forced to watch awful romcoms in exchange for a hot, homemade meal was a little unfair. No, that wasn’t entirely true, Lucas was a freaking culinary genius as far as the mouse was aware. It was a wonder why he wasn’t majoring in a cooking field.

“I’m not hungry right now,” Aaron lied when Lucas had asked why he wasn’t eating. “I’ll try some later.”

The cat looked at him strangely before shrugging. “Alright, just let me know. If you don’t like it, I can always make you something else.” There he goes again, offering things he knows the other can’t accept. At least he could let it slide this time as he had no appetite to think of any other dish.

Lucas finished his own meal in silence, completely fixed on the television as the opening scene carried on, introducing the canine main character that Aaron did, in fact, vaguely recognize. This was fine, he figured, the dark apartment coupled with a painfully slow movie, a warm body moving to curl up behind him as it so often did during these deals, he could probably get a few moments of real rest in before the credits rolled. As much as he loathed to admit it, the cat was actually rather...comfortable to be forcefully cuddled by. He wasn’t like other movie goers that needed to make a comment on every character’s decision, steady breathing and the occasional purr helping the mouse slowly relax.

That relaxation was cut short as soon as the romcom actress tore her tiny avian neighbor to shreds by the end of the first act.

Aaron had hardly been paying attention to the storyline up until this point, something to do with the girl being bitten and experiencing insatiable hunger lately. The sudden carnage of the otherwise trusting little prey creature made both of them flinch in surprise, though Lucas was quick to laugh it off. From then on the mouse’s unwavering attention was glued to the screen, but not by his choice. A chill ran through him each time she claimed another unsuspecting victim, always a prey animal, and ripped them apart with her teeth and nails like a starving animal. The way the tiny’s incredibly realistic viscera was slurped into her bloody mouth made him queasy, all too easily imagining himself in their shoes.

Eventually, her hunger became too strong and she began attacking fellow predator species as well. Ripping into throats and soft bellies was far messier than snacking on a tiny creature in three bites, making her feast all the more gory. While the violence still unsettled him, it was a touch more bearable now that he couldn’t picture his own body being mangled between the teeth of a predator he thought he could trust. Speaking of…

The mouse gulped and risked a glance behind him at the other who had hardly moved, save for a few jolts and snickers whenever a particularly good jump scare managed to startle him. It didn’t go unnoticed that every time Aaron had physically reacted to a sudden screech or attack, the cat would curl just a little bit tighter around him, hiding a laugh behind a rumbling purr. He wanted to believe this was meant to be an act of comfort and not something equally as nefarious as the canine plotting her next kill. Regardless, Lucas was equally transfixed on the movie, except he seemed to be enjoying every minute of the horror aspect. His tail would flick in interest during the high tension scenes, even more so when a chase sequence was underway. It made sense, considering that was his favorite game to make Aaron play.

Whatever the case may be, the mouse couldn’t help but be unnerved tenfold that the other had the audacity to enjoy a fictional movie he was interested in seeing. The last thing the mouse wanted was for Lucas to get any more ideas when it came to chasing him around the apartment, much less awaken any sort of primitive instinct to maim his prize after it had been captured. To this day, it remains a deep seated fear in the back of his mind that every time the cat cupped his hands over him, his teeth would be quick to follow. Natural instincts were hard to shake for a reason when it came to prey animals such as himself, he could only hope the same wasn’t true for predators.

His imagination was running rampant, enough so that he completely missed how the movie ended. Something about a cure, something about being put down, whatever. The only thing on his mind was the morbidly hilarious thought that if Lucas were to go feral like the canine, would he eat him raw or would he cook him up in another fantastic dish?

Aaron jumped when Lucas moved to sit up behind him, only now registering the credits scrolling across the screen. He stretched a bit, the quickly fading warmth that had been surrounding the mouse making him realize just how tight the other must have been snuggled around him. How did he not notice?

“Wow,” Lucas said, pursing his lips. “That...was one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life.”

That wasn’t the reaction Aaron had been expecting him to have, but it was certainly better than to hear him go on about how it was a brilliant masterpiece. He got up to flick the lights back on, still laughing as he recounted each poorly written scene and cheesy effects. “I mean, oh my god, right? The mail man saved everyone? Seriously? I actually feel bad for making you watch that, you totally have dibs on the next movie night.”

He turned around to look at the mouse who was still huddled tight on the couch, wide eyes glued to the screen even if it was just names moving along with ominous background music. Lucas gave him another quizzical look, smirking.

“C’mon, even you have to admit those tinies had zero survival instincts. Like, who goes up to a rabid dog and asks for directions? I get suspending my disbelief and all, but they could have made it just a pinch realistic. This is so going to tank her acting career…” The cat shook his head and moved closer to the couch so that he stood right in front of the television, finally drawing the other’s attention to himself. “Hey, you hungry now?”

Oh, absolutely fucking not. An hour and a half of being tensed up gave no relief to his aching muscles and now that the lights were back on, so was his pounding headache. His stomach rolled, the nausea a mix of dizziness and disgust from the special effects. He didn’t even want to think about food, he didn’t want to be out in the open anymore, and he most certainly did not want to spend another minute in the cat’s company right now.

“S-sure…” Aaron finally squeaked out. He just needed Lucas out of the room, distracted somewhere so he could make a break for it. In some instances, he would have just darted off whether the cat saw him or not, but that always resulted in a game of chase that had a 50/50 success rate, the other loving it anyways. All he wanted was some peace and quiet to rest up and heal and not think about how easy it would be for the other to bite off his head whenever he felt like it.

Lucas stood there for a minute, studying him, and just when Aaron genuinely feared he was going to pounce, he flashed an innocent smile. “Cool, just give me a couple minutes to get it heated up.” And with that, he disappeared into the kitchen.

Aaron decided to be bold and waste a few precious seconds of his head start to collect himself. Deep down, he knew he was being ridiculous. Lucas had been nothing but kind to him. Aloof, but still kind all the same. But as a prey animal that spent the better part of his life living in walls and stealing to survive, trust was a risk he simply couldn’t take. There was hardly any benefit to keeping up this con if the end goal was simply to eat him. For all he knew, though, Lucas was nothing more than a merciless sociopath that was willing to milk every ounce of fear he could before chowing down. A sociopath obsessed with romantic comedies and wore an apron when he cooked and had begged Aaron for two months straight to tell him when his birthday was so that he could make him a miniature cake.

...okay, so maybe Lucas wasn’t a sociopath, but that didn’t mean he was trustworthy. Evolution gave him sharpened fangs and agile reflexes for a reason and the mouse was not about to find out what it was like to be on the receiving end of those one day.

With his head as clear as it was going to be for the time being, sans the dull throb behind his eyes, the mouse finally pushed himself up to make his way over to the couch arm. Slowly, as to not overwork his stiff joints, he climbed his way down to the floor and skittered under the couch for a little extra protection. Strangely, he noticed that he didn’t hear any noises coming from the kitchen just up ahead and when he stopped by the doorway, he couldn’t see anyone either. Losing track of the massive cat should not be possible, especially considering this was a one bedroom apartment and there was literally nowhere else for the feline to go without coming back through the entryway. Aaron should have taken it as a blessing, but of course he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

He proceeded to be daring and come out from under the couch completely to peek into the kitchen, confirming it was empty. Again, that shouldn’t even be possible for Lucas to slip out without having to directly pass the living room to go somewhere else. Unless he had, which would mean Aaron missed him somehow. He had been in quite a deep thought process on the couch...but he could have sworn he was only collecting himself for a minute!

The answer became glaringly obvious when the mouse took a few hesitant steps back and turned to retreat under the safety of the couch, only to come face to face with Lucas. He damn near jumped out of his skin, slamming his back against the wall in an effort to gain another inch of distance between himself and the face taking up his entire view. Really, this was nothing too out of the ordinary for the cat, he loved to sneak up and pounce whenever the opportunity presented itself and Aaron wasn’t too obviously close to heart failure. What made his heart stutter, however, was the fact that Lucas didn’t look like...well, Lucas. There was no smile, no warm eyes, no words being talked a mile a minute about nothing.

No, there was just a frowning cat with his ears pinned back and pupils slit, stalking closer with a terrifying rumble in his throat.

Instinct overtook him as soon as he saw the other’s lip twitch, trying to dart under the couch for safety and having his path immediately blocked by a hand being slammed down, claw out. Aaron couldn’t even yelp, the bile in his throat threatening to turn into vomit if he idled around too long. So, he didn’t. Instead, he turned on his heel and scampered in the opposite direction with the cat hot on his trail. He very nearly dodged a swipe, Lucas hissing that his blow didn’t land while Aaron only tried to speed up his sprinting. They circled maybe half of the living room, the mouse weaving under furniture while the cat knocked into them in an effort to jarr his prey into taking a misstep.

It worked, unfortunately, when Aaron took a sharp turn at the bookshelf and caused Lucas to clip it with his shoulder. The small bump did nothing to deter the cat on his hunt, but the two books that came tumbling down were enough to make the smaller skid and trip to avoid being squashed under the novels. He ended up twisting his ankle awkwardly, stumbling flat on his face while the momentum of his running made him roll twice until he landed on his back. Despite being winded and the additional pain in his leg, he knew there was no time to waste, trying to pull himself. It was too late, though. The cat was already on top of him, hand coming down to pin him under his palm while only his head poked free from between his fingers.

That cold, terrifying face came nearer, eyes tunnel visioned on its prize. Oh God, Aaron would give anything to have the other Lucas back right now. He’d watch a thousand sappy movies, do a date night for every meal, actually move into his bedroom like the cat had suggested he do a dozen times. He wanted...fuck, he wanted his friend back. What he thought was his friend, anyways. Not this killer, not this predator who was baring his teeth and was now mere inches away from biting off his face and--

The growling above him broke off into a snort shortly before turning into a full blown laugh. Aaron wasn’t sure when he had closed his eyes in preparation for his certain death, but when he dared to open them and blinked away the budding tears, he saw that smile he had been wishing for again. Kind and warm, just like eyes, and it was like Lucas had never even taken the form of a starving hunter in his life. Like he hadn’t been moments away from devouring his beloved roommate.

“Oh, come on,” he howled with laughter, “You can’t be serious! That movie actually scared you? I mean, I thought you looked a little freaked out by it, but wow!”

The movie...so this...this wasn’t real. Lucas was just pretending, just playing a prank on him. He thought that the movie had simply wound him up and made him jumpier than usual, no different than watching a zombie flick and popping out from behind a bush at your friend later on.

Except it was different. It was different in the fact that zombies aren't real, but predators are. Predators didn’t need an excuse to go feral and maim and consume their tiny cohabitants, they simply could by the laws of nature. And yes, it may be illegal and have several laws in place to protect prey species, but if no body was ever left behind, who could say if foul play was involved? That was the whole plot point in the otherwise dull movie they sat through together, the reason why the woman was able to avoid suspicion of her sickness by feeding on tinies that could only be reported missing at most.

Lucas’s laughter had tapered off, still clearly enjoying himself. “Alright, note to self, no more horror movies.” Finally, he released Aaron from under his hand to sit back on his haunches. “Man, I really didn’t think you would scare that easily, especially from a B-movie like that. Anyways, are you actually ready to eat now? I put your stuff in the oven so it would reheat better, but it should be done by now….Ronnie?”

Aaron hadn’t moved an inch since he was originally pinned, not even after the hand had been lifted off of him. He just stared up blankly at the cat, trembling and wide eyed, unable to do anything as the rapid succession of events sunk in. The cat’s humor died down a little, smile hesitating.

“Hey, look, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t resist, you know?” He shrugged a little sheepishly. “You didn’t even notice when I came back so I thought...I don’t know, it was funnier in my head. I almost broke character and started laughing before you ran!” With still no verbal response, Lucas reached out a hand. “Aaron? You good? Come on, I’m not that scary, am I?”

The reaction he got probably wasn’t what he was hoping for with Aaron suddenly scrambling to push himself away from the outstretched hand that might trap and tear apart his limbs. He gave a sharp squeak, managing to find his footing only to come crashing down as soon as he took the first step, his ankle noticeably swollen by this point. His cry of pain was muffled into a desperate grunt, trying so hard to drag himself away as a last ditch effort to avoid the same fate as the bird and the squirrel and the mole in the movie.

Lucas gasped. “Oh, Ronnie, your leg!” Both hands were reaching for the mouse now, aiming to cup around him and scoop him up before they surely put him out of his misery. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t...oh my God, I hurt you.”

Yes and no. In truth, Aaron had been the one to hurt himself by making his body move in ways it physically shouldn’t. But that didn’t change the fact that Lucas had shown his true colors. Perhaps in hindsight, that wasn’t a fair assessment, as he really did think he was playing a harmless little joke on a skittish friend. The pain came from knowing that the cat could turn feral, though, no matter how genuine he was being. There was still clearly an instinct within him, one that knew how to hunt and bare his teeth and hiss, one that knew deep down where they both ranked on the food chain. It hurt in knowing everything he thought about his friend, everything that kept him from really letting down his walls like the other so desperately wanted, was right. Cats and mice were not friends.

“Get away from me!” Aaron shrieked when the hands came too close. Though they withdrew quickly, he didn’t bother to watch if they would move again as he forced himself up to stumble back to his nook behind the bookshelf.

“Aaron, wait!” It was a fruitless request and Lucas knew it as he didn’t even try to stop the mouse from disappearing behind the furniture back into the walls. It would only make matters so much worse. “Aaron, please, you’re hurt, just...at least let me help you. Please. I...I’m so sorry! It was an accident, I promise!”

The cat shuffled closer, leaning down in hopes that the other could at least hear his pleas better, could hear how sincere he was trying to be. “I would never hurt you, Aaron. You’re one of my best friends. Look, it was a stupid prank and I’m an asshole and I’ll never do it again, just please come out. Just let me know if you’re alright?”

It didn’t matter how hard or for how long he tried, Aaron was long gone within the walls.

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lihikainanea · 3 years

Note

LEIIII, CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT BILL AND TIGER GOING THE THE MET GALA BILL FuCkINg HeR iN ThE ReStRoOm????????????????

FIRST OF ALL, I have this like, weird interest in fashion over the past two years or so. I've never particularly been into it, but now my instagram is mainly fashion inspo and like, who is this person???? I've never considered myself fashionable, much less interested in fashion and now I swear to god I spend Sunday afternoons ~judging people~ and looking up latest fashion trends and how to wear things and I am just LOVING IT. And since nobody asked, I'm going to go ahead and list you my top fucking fashion ABSOLUTELY DO FUCKING NOT pet peeves:

1) Matching pantsuits. Hello, no. I know the designers that are trying to bring this back, and it's a hard no for me dawg. I am in my almost mid thirties and I ain't trying to look like a fucking old maid, thanks. These will never be fashionable. Just stop.

2) Derby shoes. These literally don't go with anything. I'm not sorry. If you're that committed to huge, clunky, ugly fucking shoes, get clogs. I ain't saying you have to wear heels, not at all. But find yourself some nice oxfords, a nice loafer, hell even some mules--and they will be infinitely nicer than fucking derby shoes.

3) Layering. No, kids. Baum und Pferdgarten, I love you. I do. I have a few of your dresses. But ya'll motherfuckers need to stop with this pajama-esque, mixed and clashing pattern, oversized bullshit looks that you call fashion. There is a way to wear slouchy, and babes, THAT AIN'T IT. YOU LITERALLY LOOK LIKE A FUCKING WARHOL PAINTING THREW UP ON YOU. Mixing patterns is cool, we like that, but Jesus Christ it has to have some consistency.

alright, now onto the actual ask.

All of this to say, I kept a keen eye on the Met Gala this year and I was...perplexed. At best. Horrified, at worst.

So like, tiger right? There's little else in the world that tiger hates as much as Bill's outwardly Hollywood side. The parties. The schmoozing. And I mean, she knows it's part of his life so that's fine, but in fairness--Bill also abhors this side. He loathes it. And he's been to the Met gala once, which notoriously never allows a +1 unless that +1 is famous, but low and behold--by some stroke of luck--Bill's invitation this year allows for it.

"No." tiger says immediately.

"You don't even know what I'm going to ask!" he exclaims.

"I know what that is," she points to the invitation in his hand, "And no."

It's a hard no. It takes Bill weeks--because like, tiger ain't Hollywood. She doesn't want to do the dress. She doesn't want the mingling with fucking celebrity guests. She doesn't want the paparazzi. She wants none of it. But like, eventually--after so much begging--eventually Bill gets her to agree. His stylist will get a dress for her. Hair and make up is taken care of. Bill promises her that she can just slip in the back, sit at the table, and have cocktails to her heart's galore while he walks the red carpet. She doesn't have to be photographed--and truth be told, tiger's a nobody so people aren't really interested in photographing her anyway. That's fine by her.

The dress worries her, because tiger isn't exactly celebrity material but the stylist is so kind in taking measurements. Bill handles everything--the flights, the make up reservations, the hair appointments. On the day of, he checks them into the Bowery Hotel and then tiger doesn't have to worry about a thing. He shoves a fluffy robe at her, and then there's just a flurry of activity--massages first. Breakfast after. A stint in the steam room--which they absolutely have sex in. Facials. Manicures--for both. A light lunch. And then the bell rings and in come a flurry of a team ready to glamorize them--Bill's favourite groomer, his stylist, tiger's make up artist, her hair stylist. The primping process is the longest tiger has ever been through--but there's wine, there's snacks, her Big Dude is right beside her looking handsome as all hell. And when tiger puts on a dress that is worth more than she makes in a year, when her hair is all done up and her make up is perfect--she begrudgingly admits to him that yes, Beeeeeel, she does feel pretty.

"You look stunning kid," he praises, pressing a gentle kiss on her cheek. To her slight embarrassment (but secret joy), he hands his phone off to his assistant and asks for a few pictures.

And like, here's the thing right? The Met Gala has a strict policy: no spouses or couples seated together. Seriously, it's a thing. Look it up. And while tiger is mildly freaking out about that, she calms down considerably when she does see a name tag at her table that she recognizes.

Alex. Skarsgård.

Tiger smiles, Bill grimaces.

And that's what starts it, right? Bill is at a table far away but not too far, and right where he can keep her in his line of sights. He knows she wasn't looking forward to this so he wants to keep an eye on her, but then like....why the fuck does she look like she's having so much fun? Alex is cracking the whole table up, being his usual charismatic self. Tiger is laughing, guffawing actually, beyond control--her hand on his, clutching his forearm. Bill barely even makes conversation with his own table, he's staring so intently at the two of them and tiger looking like she's having the best night of her life.

Bill's blood is boiling. It boils even more when he sees tiger make a face at her main plate--her nose wrinkling, her lip curled in disgust--and without missing a beat Alex's fork swoops over, plucks all the green onions from her food, and tiger smiles gratefully at him. Bill slams his napkin down on the table.

"Excuse me," he mutters in response to the curious glances. And then he stalks over, heads right to her table, and he's so silent that she jumps a mile when she hears his voice in her ear from behind her.

"A word, kid?" he says.

"But the food just--"

"Now." he says insistently. He holds a hand out to her, helps her push her chair back and stand. But then he's basically dragging her to a restroom, and poor tiger isn't quite used to heels this high.

"Hang on bud," she pleads, "I'm not that coordinated."

But he doesn't hang on. Instead he reaches back, loops a strong arm around her waist and basically carries her on his side to the bathroom. Tiger's feet don't hit the floor for a good 200 feet. And once inside the bathroom, he locks the door and glares at her.

"If that dress wasn't couture, I'd have you on your fucking knees kid," he threatens. Tiger's eyes get wide.

"What did I do?" she asks innocently. Bill just glares.

"Having a good time, are you? Having the best night ever?" he accuses.

Tiger is starting to get a feeling what this is about, and oh man--she's about to rile her Big Dude up. Dressed to the nines, in a public place, surrounded by riches, and Bill is about to get a bit possessive over her? Tiger is a sucker for it every time.

"Yes," she plays into it, "Alex is being amazing. He's so--"

She doesn't get to finish the sentence, because Bill growls and lunges for her, pinning her back against the cool tile.

"You are mine," he snarls. Tiger just tilts her chin up, bites onto his bottom lip.

"Prove it." she challenges.

The roar Bill lets out is fucking feral. Tiger doesn't even have time to react before her dress is pulled up, he yanks his belt undone, and he's slamming into her. She moans, and he grabs her face in his hand.

"Don't come," he snarls, "Don't you dare come."

And like the good girl she is for him--she doesn't. She grits her teeth, tries to stave it off even as he slams deep into her, growls as his release fills her up, bites her neck hard enough to leave a mark. She whimpers, her knees wobbly, and tries to reach for a tissue.

"No," he grabs her hand.

"But it's messy," she pleads. But another glare is enough to silence her, and he swiftly pulls her panties up, smoothes her dress back down.

"You're going to sit there, full of my come for the rest of the night," he tells her, "And I want you to think of that, I want you to feel it, every time you look at him."

"Bill--" she whimpers. He silences her with a rough kiss.

"Go on," he said, "Back to your seat."

On shaky legs, she turns and tries to walk out as nonchalant as possible. He waits a few minutes before exiting, going to find his seat and sitting back down. He keeps an eye on her for the rest of the evening, but he doesn't even have to--every time he looks over at her, she's already staring at him--her eyes wide, needy, her knees pressed tightly together.

#bill skarsgard #bill skarsgard drabble #BFF!Bill #sub tiger #bill skarsgard fanfic #bill skarsgard fiction #bill skarsgard fanfiction

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pillage-and-lute · 3 years

Text

Eskel is a Fanboy (Part 2, Electric Boogaloo)

This is a second part of this. Which in turn was inspired by this.

Please note, this is less funny and a little deeper than the first part, despite the title. Discussions of FEELINGS, hardcore, but also the trials. Brief mention of hypothermia.

Read it here on Ao3

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Geralt arrived late that year. Vesemir had been pacing the corridors, a worry line between his brows, for the last week. The snows were getting worse and worse and innocent snowflakes joined other completely harmless snowflakes until a very un-harmless amount of snow had piled on the track and the passes.

Lambert, alongside Aiden (another reason for the creases on Vesemir’s brow) lounged in the great hall, completely unconcerned.

“He’s stayed later and later every year,” Lambert said, lazily. “He keeps lingering with that bard of his. Why should this year be any different?” His eyes were half closed as Aiden played idly with his hair.

“If he doesn’t get here in the next two days he’ll be too late,” Vesemir snapped.

“I recognize I’m the outsider, here,” Aiden said. “But I don’t always winter with my troupe, and Lambert occasionally spends winters away...”

Eskel shook his head. The constant bickering was impacting his reading and he’d long ago marked his place in his book and set it aside. “Not Geralt,” he said with certainty. “He always winters at home.”

Aiden levelled a chilly, yellow gaze. “You love him.”

“He’s my brother in arms.”

“He’s special to you.”

Eskel wanted to growl and snap, but Aiden wasn’t saying it in a malicious way. There was no threat or accusation in his words. If there had been it would have been pure hypocrisy, what with the way Lambert currently lay in his lap. Eskel had spent a week pretending not to see the pairs’ furtive kisses.

“He is special to me,” Eskel said at last. “I found him, after his second trial, was given special allowance to be away from training to help him. Whatever happened, with the mutagens, he was deaf and blind for nearly two weeks. And had as much strength as a kitten.”

Vesemir’s pacing gained a sharper edge. “I wish I’d killed the mage that called for that second trial.” He said. Lambert and Eskel made eye contact, they were familiar with the self loathing in Vesemir’s voice. Lambert was angry at the world and his whole situation, but they had all forgiven Vesemir years ago. There was no choice but to mend bridges with a pack so small. Still, they rarely talked about it.

“You killed the mage that called for his third,” Eskel said, quietly.

Aiden’s head jerked up. He’d been a witcher, albeit a different school. He knew the trials, he knew the pain, but three trials... “They tried...?”

Eskel nodded his confirmation. “Geralt survived, and the mages who ran the trials wanted to see how many he could take.”

“So I split his throat on my knife,” Vesemir said. There was no satisfaction in his tone, but just an empty statement of action.

“I didn’t know it was you that killed the mage,” Lambert said. “I just knew one had been killed for the suggestion. I heard they made the witcher drink hemlock as punishment.” There was a warmer light of respect in Lambert’s eyes than usually shone there.

“They did,” Vesemir said. “It didn’t kill me.”

That was it for conversation that night, but Eskel went to bed thinking about Aiden’s words.

He’s special to you.

Geralt was special to him. There was an understanding, something gentle and kind between them. Geralt and Eskel lived their separate lives and had lovers and adventures. But for three months of the year they had each other.

Eskel had sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with him. He never gave his heart to anyone. Sex meant nothing and love didn’t happen, and he could only love Geralt for three months at a time.

Except that wasn’t true at all, because of course Eskel loved Geralt all the time. It was only a softer kind of love than he read about in poetry. He didn’t need fiery passion and desperate declarations of love. He had a steady love for Geralt, as sure as the beating of his heart. It was as good a love story as any, but now Geralt had his bard and a tiny, hidden part of Eskel whispered “If Only.”

If only he and Geralt could lounge like Aiden and Lambert, to pet each others’ hair and share small kisses in the corners. If only Eskel really had Geralt for those three months. He had no doubt that the feelings were mutual, but something in their lives had been built apart, and it would take something powerful to shape them anew.

The next evening brought a blizzard. And Geralt.

It took both Aiden and Lambert to shut the door behind Geralt with the way the wind blew in around him. It curled and flickered shards of ice through the air that melted in the heat of the hall, dampening Geralt’s old, black cloak. Which he was holding around himself like a cocoon. Vesemir took Geralts cloak for him, which revealed what he’d been holding.

Huddled against Geralt, nose red and face pale, was a young man in a blue cloak.

Geralt bundled him in front of the fire without a word, pulling away the damp cloak and hanging it to dry. Vesemir brought blankets as Geralt pried the instrument case from the man’s hands.

A lute case.

Eskel’s pulse picked up. This was obviously the bard. This was Jaskier, Oxenfurt’s most prodigious poet. He’d studied with Rumi and Alighieri and Li Bai. In just a few years he’d reformed witchers’ reputations. They’d all been treated better these past few years. More money, less tar and feathers. Eskel went to sit beside Jaskier to beg him for stories but Geralt met his gaze, smiled softly, and shook his head.

Eskel restrained himself. Jaskier was clearly staving off shock from the cold, as well as hypothermia. Instead of doing what he really wanted to do (lay himself prone at Jaskier’s feet and worship his skill with words) he put on a kettle for tea.

Aiden and Lambert make eye contact with each other, nod to Geralt, and leave. Vesemir also makes a tactful retreat. This time was just for Eskel and Geralt. And the bard shivering on a pile of cushions next to the fire.

“He had a hard time on the Killer,” Geralt said, quietly.

“It’s called the Killer for a reason.”

“He begged me to come, I told him it would be too dangerous,” Geralt whispered. “He followed me and I couldn’t make him leave, that’s why I was late.”

“Vesemir’s been worried,” Eskel said, staring at the fire. He sat on the cushions, beside the bard, without taking his eyes from the coals. Geralt sat on the other side of Jaskier, rubbing carefully over the bard’s chilly hands, pulling off the woolen mittens and gently warming each knuckle.

“I had to go slower for him,” Geralt said. Between the two of them, the bard seemed mostly asleep. His eyelashes flickered on his cheeks, struggling to stay open.

“You can sleep,” Eskel whispered. “You’ll wake up, you’re cold but not in danger.” He took the other chilly hand. “Just sleep.”

Blue eyes slipped closed and Eskel took the kettle off the fire so it didn’t whistle.

“He was so desperate to be here, he wanted to see the Keep,” Geralt said. “And I wanted him to come. To meet you.”

“I did make you promise I’d get to meet him,” Eskel said, sitting back down and resting a hand on Geralt’s shoulder. “I think I’ve read everything he’s ever written.”

“That’s not why I wanted him to meet you,” Geralt said.

Eskel’s breath caught. They were talking about it, sort of. “I know,” he said.

The bard curled up a little, like a nautilus shell. Geralt lay down on the cushions behind him and Eskel made himself comfortable. Sleep and warmth and the smell of the pine fire lulled him slowly to sleep. Just as he was drifting off, Jaskier reached out in his sleep and placed one hand, less chilly than it was, on Eskel’s arm. It stayed there until the morning.

“So True Love’s Waste wasn’t inspired by a person?” Eskel asked over breakfast, mouth full of porridge.

Jaskier shook his head, gulping down hot tea. “No, I was out on a bender with some friends and we saw this washerwoman’s cat trying to catch a soap bubble, right?”

Eskel nodded, entranced.

“It was so totally focused on catching this soap bubble, it’s eyes were all wide and determined, like all it wanted was the bubble, but when it caught the bubble...”

“It popped,” Eskel laughed. “And you wrote a poem that has been deemed the best love poem of the last hundred years about it.”

Jaskier chuckled. “Art is more trite and derivative than people think.”

Eskel reached out and touched Jaskier’s wrist, looking into those heavily-lashed eyes. “Your work could never be called trite, or derivative.”

Behind Jaskier, Eskel saw something flash in Geralt’s eyes, and he stood from the table, clearing his plate, but then Jaskier was telling a story about Rumi, his former professor, and Eskel’s attention was diverted.

The next week passed in peace, for the most part. Repairs to the keep were ongoing, but halted when the snow was heavy. Vesemir kept them training and the library, neglected by all but Eskel, kept Jaskier busy. At mealtimes and in the evenings Eskel and Jaskier chatted about art and music and life on the Path. But Geralt was subdued, something tired and sad gleaming in his golden eyes. He wouldn’t talk about it, and he fled when Eskel tried.

It hurt, that Geralt suddenly wouldn’t talk to him, but Eskel knew the white wolf better than anyone, so he cornered him in the training yard one afternoon and pinned him down.

“Talk. To. Me,” he panted, grinding Geralt’s shoulders into the flagstones.

“Nothing to say,” Geralt grunted.

“Bullshit.”

“Nothing!”

“You keep hiding! It’s not nothing!”

Geralt kicked his feet up, flipping them both over and freeing himself. He stood over Eskel who was still laying on the ground. “You can have him,” he said, beginning to walk away.

Eskel snagged his ankle, bringing his idiot wolf down to the ground without remorse. “You’re stupid.”

“I’m not, he adores you. You have so much in common, it makes sense.”

Eskel remembered the conversation of the year before. Please don’t take my bard.

“I’m not taking your lover boy from you,” he snapped.

“He’s not my lover boy.”

“He would be if you would only ask him.”

“He deserves better.”

“He wants you.”

“He wants you,” Geralt howled. “He looks at you like you got out a ladder and personally nailed the moon to the sky. Every time you talk he hangs on your words.”

“He looks at you the same way,” Eskel said, quietly. “And I...” He paused. This was so close to the thing they never talked about.

“You don’t look at me that way,” Geralt whispered.

“But I feel it all the same.”

The admission rang in the empty training yard, despite it being barely a whisper.

“I want you to have him, to be with him, because the two of you are made for eachother. It was obvious to me before you’d even met. I just wish,” Geralt stopped, his voice growing tight.

“What do you wish?”

“I just hate that it hurts so much. I love you both, I do, so so much, and all I want is you two happy, and you’ll be happy together, but I just wish it didn’t cut me out.”

Eskel rolled over and bumped his forehead to Geralt’s. There were tear tracks in the dirt there. “It doesn’t have to. That’s a silly rule and you made it up for yourself. I love you both and he loves us both, so you can have us both.”

Geralt sat up, bringing Eskel with him, then pulled him into a kiss that burned. It was a simple press of their lips together but Eskel felt like he’d been struck by lightning.

“Oh,” came a quiet voice from the nearby doorway. Jaskier was standing there, cheeks flushed and eyes wide. “I’ll just--”

“Stay,” Eskel said, chuckling. He pulled Jaskier down to sit on the flagstones with them. “I think Geralt has something he wants to tell you.”

Geralt looked nervous. He swallowed a couple times, eyes darting over Jaskier’s face. “I...” He said. “Um, what Eskel means is that... um, I”

“Oh you great big oaf,” Eskel said. “Jaskier, he loves you, he’s absolutely mad about you. He just can’t say it because he loves me too and it’s taken him the better part of a century to tell me.”

Jaskier beamed, his blush growing. “And you?” he said.

“I’m not sure I love you yet,” Eskel said. “But I think I will.”

“I think I will too,” Jaskier said, then he leaned in and brushed a soft kiss to Eskel’s lips, off center, so it brushed his scar and part of his cheek too. Then he kissed Geralt the same way.

“Aiden’s going to be so pissed that he lost the bet,” Jaskier said, as if he hadn’t just rocked both witchers’ worlds with a mere kiss. “He bet Lambert you wouldn’t figure it out until next week.”

“You knew,” Eskel said, touching the tips of his fingers to where his face was still tingling from the kiss.

“They way Geralt talks about you, well...” Jaskier said, smiling at Geralt. “And then the way you talk about him,” he smiled at Eskel. “And the way you both look at me, I knew. I just wasn’t sure you knew.” His smile shifted into something bashful and a little insecure. It was an odd look on his normally confident face. “And it seemed too much to assume you both would really want me, I’m not all,” he gestured at his shoulders and arms, obviously comparing their builds.

Eskel couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle. “We don’t care about that,” he said, carding his hand through Jaskier’s hair and revelling in the way the bard leaned into his touch. “I’ve seen Geralt with a face full of pimples, and I mean full, and that was back when he was calling himself Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde. It isn’t about looks.” He trailed his eyes across Jaskier. “And even if it was we wouldn’t find you wanting.”

“He’s right,” Geralt said, pressing a little kiss right behind Jaskier’s ear. “We find nothing about you wanting.”

“You both are going to leave me wanting if you’re not careful,” Jaskier whined, borderline laciviously. He leaned back against Geralt and pulled Eskel closer, kissing Eskel’s cheek chastely in spite of his words. When he turned to kiss Geralt’s cheek too Eskel nuzzled closer, feeling Geralt’s arms pull him into the pair of them.

“You have to promise to write me into your poetry, after all this,” he said.

Jaskier laughed, head tilting back and eyes crinkling at the corners. “As if I haven’t already,” he whispered.

Three months later the great bard Jaskier debuted his latest poetry anthology. Silver and Steel was praised by academics across the continent, although the line about being eaten alive was highly debated. Jaskier’s sudden penchant for high collars might have answered the questions, but he wasn’t about to give away the secret.

#jaskel #geralt x jaskier x eskel #this is stupid but happy #less funny than the first bit #but more cute #the witcher #jaskier is a famous bard #eskel is his fanboy #geralt loves them both very much

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project-ohagi · 3 years

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Atsuhiro Sako ღ Mr Compress x Reader:

[A/N]: This is a female reader, but I'm not sure how explicit my reasoning is in the story.

-----

Upon the desk lay flowers pressed and kept, accessories to the letters from which you couldn't escape. Surrendering them to earth or flame had been an endeavour of herculean proportion, and each time, your heart had wavered. How could such things be destined for destruction? In them, were written verses so impassioned by romance, that all who read them would surely swoon. And each flower had a meaning, for he understood their language like a scholar understands his discipline. Heliotrope was a declaration of eternal love and devotion, whilst a Red Camellia stood for love and passion. He gave you a Yarrow for lasting love, and a Honeysuckle for your bond. But, the final flower...you loathed to dwell on its meaning.

A Purple Hyacinth. It conveyed an apology, a mind fraught with regret...it asked for forgiveness, but how could you forgive a man of such iniquity? His reign over your heart had been plagued by deceit. But you yourself had been plagued by a graver poison, an ailment most foul, though the layman might stoop to call it love. It was love, but it was also pain and sorrow. Such desperate pain and sorrow.

Your tear-clouded gaze fell forthwith upon a letter.

My darling, your beauty could never be dulled by moonlight, and is only made more desirable by daylight. It yields to no force, natural or otherwise. It remains, and will forever. I will never tire of looking upon it, though for this, I admit I may be admonished. It is such a worthy distraction, but in my field, distractions are rarely tolerated. Know that I apologise with a sincerity that cannot be measured.

- A.S

He wrote with the grace and eloquence of a thousand poets, and at every word, you wept. You couldn't linger on them, although you wished to, or love's splendid doctrine would burden you with hope. But there was no hope, neither of reunion nor of replication with another. You were bound, loyal only to the memories of your lost love. He wasn't dead, but simply...gone. He walked out of your life so easily, as though the plot had, for aye, been beyond a hatchling. You understood nothing. You still felt so lost. Why couldn't love be straightforward? The despair, the dependency...

You clung to those letters, and the heartache they incurred.

Your lips seem a most desirable perch, and I would rest there for eternity, if you allowed.

- A.S

Beside that letter, decorated with the splashes of manifest sorrow, lay another, written by your hand. In the advent of your courtship, you had exchanged many, though of a much merrier tone. This one...he had never received it, for you had never sent it. By the hour of its conception, he was long gone.

I wanted to believe in you. But I was scared. I was so scared! What would they have done to you, if I was captured? How else had you deceived me? Had anything been true, or had I merely been victim to the folly of romance, of an ideal that could never touch reality? Why had you kept from me everything of importance? Why had you hidden your truth? I blame you, wholeheartedly, for my pain. But it was so hard not to apologise, when I'm sorry for everything. The day I lost you, I lost my world...I lost the part of me that made me whole.

- (Y/n)

His was a cowardly departure, unequivocally driven by fear - he had always taken such careful steps to ensure that home and work remained separate, never intertwining. But when all was revealed, he feared retribution, feared the consequence of his own duplicity. So rather than facing you, he fled. He understood the cravenness of the act, but it wasn't something he could help. Not when you finally knew the real him. His most authentic self, although a source of pride, could never be loved. You weren't of equal conviction. You had no dormant streak of villainy. You were so pure of heart, and so gentle of practice. You couldn't be tied to a liesmith, or force-fed a dogma of drivel. Atsuhiro had some morals, even if you were the only beneficiary. He couldn't have predicated your descent into this melancholy longing. Or, perhaps he hadn't wished to consider it. Had the thought chased away the mistress of somnolence, he never would've have been able to stave off his return.

But oh, he wished to return to you, to relive every shiver of romance...to not feel quite so alone. He couldn't, of course. Not given current circumstances, and with the near-decimation of an entire populace.

Deika City played host to his body, but his heart had never left yours. He missed everything - the eyes that devoted themselves to him, that giddy, love-struck smile when he first called your name, and the night you had thanked him for never forgetting it. He heard your name in every love song, and your voice on the wind. He saw your face on every woman, and on every lover, he saw the happiness that he had sacrificed.

May I compare thee to a Dahlia in full bloom? I assume you are familiar with this flower, as a perfect reflection of your grace and strength. Of the latter, that required to grant me access to your most genuine self...it is incomparable. You are incomparable. You are beautiful, and so unequivocally you. I will forever be thankful that you chose to share with me such delicate insight. I swell with pride at the thought of you, and I pray that one day, your mind will allow you that same feeling. You are more than deserving of pride, and of love for yourself. Until then, I promise to love and to cherish you, as if with the hearts of a thousand men.

- A.S

If a single hope, or a dream, could ever reach the stars, then the spirits of love would hasten to reconcile your union. But you were closed to astral influence, and knew nothing of prayers. His alone were inadequate. And although you beheld the same sky, although you gazed at the same heavens...you never found your missing pieces. The stars offered nothing but a torturous truth: that you would never find each other, no matter the breadth of your search.

Oh, curse the wretchedness of love!

[Word Count: 1063]

#my hero academia #atsuhiro sako x reader #atsuhiro sako #bnha mr compress #mr compress x reader #mr compress #bnha x reader #bnha imagines #bnha #angst #romance #fanfiction

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cdyssey · 3 years

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Need

Summary: After Nick arrives at the beach house, Frankie escapes to her studio to process her emotions. Post 7x04.

A/N: I've had such Grace and Frankie brain rot these past few days that I figured I should put it to good use and write another fic. It was really fascinating to try Frankie's POV. Lily Tomlin imbues her with a lot of subtle pathos that I totally wish the show would explicitly explore more.

AO3 Link

—

Frankie excuses herself to the studio for dinner, so she can process her very big, astonishingly inappropriate, and entirely overwhelming emotions without resorting to calling Nick a “wavy-haired, Pierce Brosnan wannabe douche canoe.”

As delightful (and totally true) of a turn a phrase that it is, even she knows that saying it aloud would be trespassing a boundary that she’s sworn herself never to cross: Grace is married.

Unhappily married, maybe.

Complicatedly married at the very least.

But until the day that they mutually say “I do” to divorce papers, there isn’t enough room for three people in the Skolka marriage, however much that Grace—bless her increasingly unthawing heart—tries to ensure otherwise.

So Frankie lets the newly reunited couple have their dinner alone under the guise of a generosity that she doesn’t exactly feel, and she takes leftover pasta into her studio to moodily pick around the bowl until her fettuccine looks less like fettuccine and more like unevenly perforated confetti.

(Woo fucking hoo.)

After a few minutes of this aggressively unconstructive practice, she places her nearly full bowl on a nearby work table and stretches out across her paint-stained couch, staring at the ceiling and resisting the reactionary urge to light a joint. Mary J might help her feel better for the present moment, but tomorrow morning, she’d still wake up and feel invaded in her own home.

Paradoxically, she’d also feel alone, goddammit.

She pulls her shawl more tightly around her shoulders against an invisible and piercing chill.

Frankie hates feeling lonely.

She spiraled when Grace lived in the penthouse. She nearly self-destructed to fill the gaping void that her roommate, her friend, her practical and beloved soulmate left behind. There was a period where she didn’t wash her clothes and ate a lot of admittedly non-vegan takeout. There were nights when she’d lay awake in her awfully huge bed, staring at the empty space where Sol used to sleep, and have the familiar waking nightmare of spending her final years in forced solitude. She was happy with Jack, and then Jacob—sweet Jacob—came around too, and she did something she still feels fucking ashamed about: she hurt both of them, and she lied when she said that she had just wanted to have some fun.

She knows herself.

Intimately.

She‘d been scared of being alone again, so she tried to hold on to two people who were helping her to stave the awful feeling away. Those men wanted her, and Frankie used them. They wanted her, and she pathologically loves to feel wanted because she sometimes and irrationally fears that she might not be needed.

To be fair to her irrational fears, all the people she’s ever needed and felt needed by have hurt her before.

Sol cheated on her for twenty years.

Her own sons stuck her in a nursing home.

Grace just fucking left her.

She eloped in Vegas like a blushing twenty-one year old bride and just disappeared.

She says it was a mistake; she sat across Frankie in a sunlit restaurant and candidly told her that she didn’t like the person she had become when she married Nick.

And to be completely fair to her, Grace has been adamant about not wanting to leave again—so perhaps she never will—but if her husband is here to stay, it's also a distinct possibility that she’ll never have to make the choice to physically leave to… well… leave.

She can perpetually honeymoon with Nick and still call Frankie home.

It could be a happy ending for Grace… and a fresh new hell for Frankie, who'd just started to feel secure again.

God knows she wants her best friend to be happy, but the big man in the sky must also surely understand that she had hoped that she alone could be enough for Grace, that this unconventional life spent together in the beach house—so crazy, so weird, and so inextricably entangled—would be their shared happily ever after.

But even as she thinks it, the vestiges of her clearly misplaced optimism begin to evade her, dregs now at the bottom of an already drained cup.

She and Grace aren't married.

It’s always been an objective fact.

Tonight, it feels more like an unpleasant reality.

When the door leading into her studio suddenly flies open, Frankie barely has enough time to swipe the back of her hand across her eyes before she sits up to find none other than the lady of the hour.

Her collared shirt popped up stiffly around her neck, a martini glass surgically glued to her right hand, Grace looks quintessentially herself as she walks in, even down to the minutiae of her trademark I'm-angry-at-the-world-and-everyone-in-it expression—brow furrowed and eyes Medusa cold. After all but slamming the door, she stalks over within a few clicks of her practical but unmistakably high heels.

“Well, hello to you, too, Sunshine,” Frankie greets wryly, hoping to hell and back that her face isn’t as red as it feels.

It’s a tall order, though.

Alas, she was gifted (or equally cursed) with an exceptionally expressive face.

“Frankie, this is nonsense,” Grace says bluntly, using her martini glass like a pointer and leveling it straight at her head. “Come back to the house—your house—and have dinner with us.”

It’s the authoritarian nature of the demand that rifles Frankie.

Frankly, it pisses her off.

She’s always been a rebel contrarian.

“And by us, you mean you and your house arrested husband, right?” She returns evenly. She betrays herself by raising a single and devastatingly skeptical brow. “The man with whom you should be having a very emotionally honest conversation with right now about the parameters of your jacked up relationship?”

Grace shifts her weight from heel to heel and glances away a little too quickly for the gesture to be entirely natural. Frankie had blatantly stricken a pulsing nerve, and the guilt of doing so immediately swallows her.

She shouldn’t be so hard on her friend.

(She doesn’t know why it’s permissible to be equally hard on herself.)

“Well, I tried to have that conversation, thank you very much, but then I ended up wanting to claw Nick’s eyes out.” The obvious follow up question must shine in Frankie’s face because sighing infinitesimally through her nostrils, Grace adds, “His attorney argued that my advanced age and apparent capability to croak at any moment were reasons enough to grant Nick leniency. They let him out so he could take care of me—whatever the hell that means.”

Her no-nonsense voice never falters as she delivers the brutal words, but her eyes undermine her, seething with emotion, simply roiling. They tell a story of horror and disgust and searing, absolute betrayal; they’re heavy all over with sadness and the indelicate trappings of all her raw and mercilessly exposed fears.

Frankie understands immediately.

Nick used one of Grace’s deepest insecurities as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Being eighty-two years old.

But perhaps more accurately, feeling like it.

“Oh, honey,” Frankie melts. She can do nothing else but melt, to be suddenly overcome with fierce, protective, and terrifying love for the woman in front of her. “That fucking bastard.”

Grace immediately laughs, the sound hoarse and watery and a little unhinged all at the exact same time.

“Tell me about it,” she half-smiles and takes the swearing as a rightful invitation to join Frankie on the couch. With a gentle clink, she sets her half-emptied martini glass on the table next to Frankie’s completely full pasta bowl. “I said the exact same thing.”

When she chooses to sit close enough that their shoulders are brushing, Frankie intuitively knows that this is petty defiance against Nick for daring to intrude upon them and the world they've so carefully created together.

She temples Grace’s nearest hand with her own in an attempt to silently communicate that this right here—whatever this is between them—is love.

“So, please”—Grace squeezes her hand back—“please don’t be angry with me… I… I didn’t want this. You know I didn’t want this. I don’t want him to even be here.”

Frankie stares openly at her best friend.

Wide-eyed and hopeful against her self-loathing, self-centered will, she searches her broken face like it's revelatory.

It's stunningly rare that Grace Hanson ever articulates her wants so clearly. Forty years of an emotionally repressive marriage did their number and toll on her. She pedestalized rigid decorum over every conscious desire.

She played by the rules even if they hurt her.

And drank herself to oblivion on many a night to forget the very fact that she was hurt.

To deny herself the honesty she’d somehow convinced herself that she didn’t deserve.

“… you know this is your husband we’re talking about here, right?” It’s a rhetorical question. Frankie's pretty sure that they both fucking know that it’s insane that this conversation—that this entire situation as a whole—is happening.

“I know,” Grace replies firmly. “Believe me, I'm well aware. But you’re… you’re my partner, Frankie, and if I can’t be upfront with you, then I don’t know who else I can turn to.”

The very word partner sends shivers down her spine, and the shivers collect like butterflies in her already churning belly.

It’s just a word, she tells herself.

She scolds.

Grace doesn’t mean anything by it.

It's a label, and Grace doesn't do labels anymore.

“I... I wasn’t mad at you, Grace,” she finally admits. It's easier to do than questioning the extent to which her roommate would give up the world for her, but all the same, her voice is frighteningly weak, a pale imitation of everything Frankie usually projects herself to be: confident, cheerful, unshakeable, unshaken. Suddenly, it hits her that it’s been a very long time since she’s been so openly vulnerable, too. “I'm not even really all that mad at your jailbird husband either. I was just scared, and when I get scared, I skitter like a nervous little bug."

She shuts down.

She spirals.

She tries to put a smile on her face for the people who love her all the same.

And then she lies awake at night, drowning in the sheets of an empty bed.

Thinking about how she should probably tell someone that everything hurts.

But she’s Frankie, and she doesn’t do that.

Grace perpetually convinces herself that she doesn’t deserve honesty; Frankie has come to fear that no one wants her own.

“Were you scared of me?” Grace asks quietly, her grip so tight now that it almost stings.

“Frankie…” She presses when a few heartbeats of silence stagger by, limping painfully on all fours, pronouncing so many unspoken and profound hurts.

“Of losing you, Grace,” she confesses, the words defeated and scraped raw. She forcefully tugs her hand away from Grace's just to temple her own hands together on her lap, to lick her sundry and shining wounds in a private corner. “I was scared of losing you, of being alone again in this big, empty house… and I don’t like being alone.”

She can’t bear to look at Grace as she says it, staring at the paint-flecked floor without ever really seeing it, her eyes burning.

She wishes they’d stop burning but feels the precise moment when they begin to leak anyway.

It’s all so embarrassing.

And childish.

Frankie is an eighty-year old woman, and she shouldn’t be upset over her best friend having a goddamn life.

She should be happy for her, fucking ecstatic.

And yet, she's—

But before she can complete the miserable thought, her body becomes aware of another sensation entirely—warm arms enveloping her from the side and inexorably pulling her in, turning the space that once existed between two bodies—between them—intangible, negligible.

Grace.

Shock turns into realization, and realization transforms into aching, sweeping relief.

It can only be Grace.

Grace’s soft lips pressed to her cheek.

Grace’s fingertips curling into the fabric of her dress.

Grace’s nose against her neck as she slides her sharp chin across her shoulder.

“I’m not leaving you, Frances Bergstein,” she declares. “Whatever happens between me and Nick, in the end, it’s going to be just you and me in this house that is our damn home. I swear that to you. I’d tell you every day just to prove it to you.”

Oh, these words.

These beautiful, tender, and long-needed-to-hear words.

They’re just words, she could tell herself again.

She could lie.

She could convince herself if she had to.

She could conveniently forget that Grace Hanson uses language carefully, that she employs every sentence with scalpel-like precision.

Or... more complicatedly still... Frankie could believe her.

Frankie could blindly accept these words for what they are, as manifest confirmation that she is loved by another—prioritized and cared for and needed.

She could be Grace’s partner and let that incredible word be electrically charged with so many complex and ridiculous and extraordinary ideas, none of which are traditional, and all of which feel true.

She could believe in her even if belief is not simple, even if belief is a product, first and foremost, of trust.

And Grace has certainly lost her trust before, but goddammit, she's earned it so many times, too.

“Oh, God,” Frankie laughs in such a way that it’s stupidly clear that she’s crying as Grace rubs slow circles into her back with her thumb. “This is all messed up. You’re the one with a house arrested, tax evading husband. I should be the one comforting you.”

“The house arrested, tax evading husband doesn’t particularly faze me,” Grace chuckles, her voice low. “Seeing you hurting and upset does. My priorities are remarkably straight.”

“I’m not sure you know the meaning of that word,” she smiles weakly as they slowly and clumsily begin to extricate themselves from their tangled embrace.

It’s hard to find themselves again.

To be apart.

“But I do,” Grace protests, emphatic and indignant and maybe even a few shades righteously pissed. “You’re the person I wanna share this crazy life with at the end of the day and every day. Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Because every day is an incredibly long time to be with me,” Frankie offers meekly, giving her one more perfect and easily acceptable copout, a neatly packaged excuse.

She can be too much.

She knows this.

“It’s just the right amount of time to be with you,” Grace murmurs, reaching up to brush an errant tear away from Frankie’s cheek, her thumb lingering, her quivering palm. “You’re kind enough to love me, and I’m lucky enough to be loved by you... so let me return the favor, Frankie. Let me be here for you."

And to Grace’s credit in this fleeting moment, she continues to hold Frankie.

It's a promise to never let her go.

#grace and frankie #grace hanson #frankie bergstein #grace x frankie #grace and frankie spoilers #reginianwrites #s: grace and frankie

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 3 years

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Ten Sides (Part 33)

I don’t exactly know how to tag this but a warning on this chapter as I feel like some of the language can be unsettling for mental abuse survivors and, though the chapter doesn’t contain sexual harassment, some of the language might be similar? Maybe the best way to but it would be to say that there’s a CW for objectification.

Normally tears don’t come easily to her, not when she has to induce them herself. It only takes thinking back to the not so distant past to coax them forward. She hates the feeling of his hand on hers as he leads her down the hall. She worries that she is appearing too lucid so she lets herself stumble. The man sighs deeply as though she is an inconvenience. As though that isn’t exactly what he wants. “This way he mumbles.”

She knows the way, he has forced her to walk it so many times now. She knows the way though she hasn’t been down this hall in ages. She didn’t expect to have such a visceral reaction to trekking it once again. It comes like nausea. Her stomach drops and her throat runs dry. This time when she shakes it isn’t drug induced.

He chuckles, “keep walking, it isn’t that hard, we’re almost there.”

Which is all the more reason to come to a standstill but she lets him drag her into the room regardless. He leads her to the surgical table, she can smell the vines, their musky, freshwater odor. It leaves her stomach heaving. Agni, she hates the smell of sea plants...

“Get yourself comfortable.”

He knows well that the chill of the table’s metals offer no comfort at all.

“Since you’ve been a good girl, we won’t use the straps today.”

She waits for him to turn before letting out her sigh of relief. She lays herself back upon the table, staring at the ceiling. The same ceiling she’d been forced to stare at before. She shudders, feeling entirely queasy. For a moment she wonders why she is doing this to herself. For a moment she forgets that this is the only thing that will drive the nightmares from her mind once and for all.

Control. She will let old scenarios play themselves out. They will end the way that she wants them too.

They will if she can stave off the panic that comes with such familiar discomforts. A tear slips from her eye. She hadn’t meant for it to do so.

“You’re pretty when you cry.” He purrs as he fixes the first vine to her forehead. “Do you know that?”

And he will be pretty when he is a smear of blood on the floor.

“You’re better off this way. Trust me, you are. You’re more likable when you’re mindless.” He drums his fingers upon the side of her head. “When I’m done with you I’ll let you go back to your friends. I’m sure that they’ll appreciate my work; they’ll find you much more agreeable.”

It shouldn’t, but somehow it still stings. She realizes then, that she has made a mistake. She has made progress, sure. She has begun to rebuild old friendships and make new ones. But, Agni, she is still riddled with her own innate insecurities and the man has seen enough of her mind to exploit those.

If only she could reassure herself that he is wrong beyond a simple awareness that, even if he isn’t, that she’d rather be resented for her stubborn and unlovable personality than to have it wiped clean to make room for an uncannily sugary one. At least if she is unlikable, she knows that she is still Azula through and through.

“Don’t look so forlorn.” Sangyul chuckles. “You aren’t complete yet. But don’t worry, you will be. I’ll fix you.”

Her breath hitches in her throat. She needs someone to fix her but, spirits, not him. She needs to fix herself. She will fix herself.

“Now I’ve watched the Avatar do this many times and I think that I’ve found a way to use electricity to activate the vines without the Avatar’s help.” He declares. “We’re going to test that on you. I anticipate this hurting.”

She goes tense.

“If you don’t squirm too much, we won’t need the restraints.” He pushes her back onto the table.

She wonders if she should put a stop to this now. But no. No, that wouldn’t be good enough to drive off the nightmares… She can’t keep her breathing level not when lightning sizzles on his fingertips. She hadn’t realized that he was a lightning bender. She hadn’t realized that he could bend at all. Thank Agni, he doesn’t know that she can also bend again.

The lightning surges through the vines, it tickles her head in the most bitingly unpleasant way. She gives an involuntary whimper and his lips curl into a wicked grin. She closes her eyes and works the current away from her head. She hasn’t exactly mastered redirection yet--it still stings terribly. And the vines on her head glow. He sends a few more bolts before withdrawing a long thin metal stick with a clay handle.

“See, this is going to help me guide the electricity. In theory, the lightning will do for me what the Avatar could do with spirit energy…” He mumbles. He presses the stick to her forehead and drags the current along. The sensation is tingling, agonizingly so. She can feel tiny fingers of lightning touching the strings of her mind.

She closes her eyes. Eyes that water reflexively. The charge dancing in her mind is much more chaotic than Aang’s touch. When he had entered her mind he had entered with clarity, purpose, the ability to gauge how the colors of her aura were reacting to him. The electrical charge has no such ability. It is erratic, touching the fearful muted blue strands of her aura and dying them an even duller grey a sad grey--the result is anxiety inducing. It bounces back and strikes a different strand green. Guilt and self loathing trickles in.

She squeezes her eyes tighter. Her breathing becoming increasingly erratic. She needs control. She needs to take it back. The electricity has none of the guilt and compassion that Aang had, had. Aang...he no longer needs to touch the threads to dye them shades of red and pink. She takes several deep breaths. It is hard to relax with currents running through her mind, harder still with an enemy in such close proximity and damn near impossible with her mind left so vulnerable. But her mind is still hers. She lets herself burrow back in her mind, retreat into a familiar place. She can hear the rush of water as it slaps against the side of the boat, can feel the wind tugging at her hair. Mostly she can feel the flame of her chakra lapping at her belly, hear it crackling in her ears… It is hers, her chakra, her fire, her mind...

The lightning dances around in her head, but it doesn’t reach any further. It no longer corrupts. It can’t corrupt. Sangyul withdraws the metal rod and steps back. Her body jerks and convulses. Only twice--maybe it has been jerking this whole time. She isn’t sure.

“Now sit up.” He demands.

Dizzy, pained, she obeys. She tries to shake the daze from her head. Spirits, it hurts so terribly. Sangyul brushes a curtain of her hair out of her face. “Good girl.” He comments again. Her ears are ringing. “Now stand.”

She isn’t ready to stand, she thinks that her legs will buckle if she tries.

“Stand.” He growls.

She forces herself to her feet. It takes everything she has to remain upright. “Now,” Sangyul smiles. “Your hair has gotten quite long again…”

She swallows, her stomach lurches. Her tears are very real now and it only seems to delight him more. She knows what he is going to ask of her next. He presses a blade into her palm, it nips her skin and several dots of blood blossom upon it. But this time when she raises the blade, it won’t be to her own face where her scar is tingling with more fury than ever.

.oOo.

He finds her in the corner of the room, legs drawn up to her chest, cheeks stained with tears. Aang stoops down and touches her cheek, she doesn’t move an inch. Her eyes are hollow, dim. He takes her hand, her bloody hand and squeezes it. He runs his free hand over her locks. Locks that are clumped together with drying blood. It is smeared upon her face, her chest. It soaked through her shirt.

“Azula?”

She looks up, wordlessly. Her lips part.

He knew that this whole thing was a bad idea.

She souches forward and he expects her to begin crying into his shoulder. But she doesn’t, despite the soft tremors of her body, she remains quiet. He rubs her back as he takes the blade from her hand.

“Aang, what’s going on?” Zuko asks.

“It’s over.” Aang replies as he hoists Azula upright. She holds her own weight but still leans very heavily into him. “Sangyul is…” He gestures to the body. Its throat is carved into a smirk as wide as the one that never had a chance to leave his arrogant face.

“Is Azula okay?”

“Azula is fine.” She grumbles.

Zuko clears his throat, “I guess I should have asked you directly, huh?”

Aang squeezes her tighter. “Are you sure that you’re okay you just...you know…”

“Killed a man.” She elaborates. “He needed to die, Avatar. I just…” She pulls back and seems to study his face.

He is fairly certain that he knows what she is looking for and he won’t let her find it; he is afraid but he fights to keep it out of his eyes. He knows what else she is looking for, “I love you, Azula.” His lips brush against her ear.

She swallows and finally she returns his hug. Holding her feels like holding a dragon; dangerous, unpredictable. Unstable. He wishes that he wasn’t afraid.

She won’t hurt him. He knows that she won’t and so he scoops her into his arms. “Are you ready to go home?”

“I can walk on my own, Avatar.”

He wants to remind her that she just went through some sort of hell. Wants to tell her that it isn’t a good idea. But he can’t, not here. Not in this room. “Is that what you want to do?”

She nods.

It is instinctual to ask her if she is sure. But he remembers what she had requested quite a while ago and he resists. Instead he offers, “if you get tired of walking, let me know.”

She nods again. He has a pretty decent feeling that she will end up letting him carry her at least part of the way to the airships.

“I’ll send the imperial firebenders to make the rest of the arrests and I’ll meet you on the airships.” He glances at Azula. “Take care of her, please.”

“She can take care of herself.” Aang replies. He just hopes that she’ll let him help for a change. Her hand tightening around his is it’s own reassurance.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #Azula #Aang #Azulaang #Fanfiction

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lo-55 · 3 years

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Tilt The Hourglass Ch. 12

It occurred to Maul only when they were halfway to the mainland that he should probably tell Jango that they hadn’t died.

Maul didn’t know why he was bothering, exactly. However much Jango might fancy himself a would-be-father for Maul he wasn’t. He wasn’t a father, or a master, or anyone that Maul owed true loyalty to. Maul owed him for patching him up, nothing more. He did not ask to be adopted and he did not need a parent or anyone to take care of him. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He had been for years.

After this job that debt of his should be paid for, and Maul could go on about his life. He could find Kilindi and Daleen, fetch his brother from Dathomir before the witches could twist him into a tool for their use, and start building his shadow empire.

That was his plan, wasn’t it?

"Plans are fragile things, and life often dashes expectations to the ground."

Maul’s head snapped around. He’d heard something again. A woman’s voice this time, one that whispered to him from a space between shadows. In his mind it was painted pale purple and white.

Tiny, pin-pricked claws caught on his sleeve and one of the vornskr’s clambered up to rest on his shoulder, pushing her head against Maul’s cheek before she crawled inside his hood and lay herself around his neck. Her dark body was warm and fluffy with baby fur.

She hadn’t reacted to the voice, nor had anyone else in the ship of freed slaves. Not even those few who stood close enough to hear a whisper away from him where he sat next to a control panel in the galley.

Not a real voice then. Not one from a physical place.

Maul touched his temple, beneath one of his crowning horns, and felt his stomach twist unpleasantly. Was it returning, now, the madness he had spent so long entrenched in? Mother Talzin’s magics had stitched together his fragmented mind with green energy and her own will, and after her death he had been forced to learn to hold it together himself. Sometimes the insanity threatened to creep back in. Sometimes he woke up and it was too dark and he could hear acid rain hissing and see the scratched paintings that a lunatic had put on the wall in fits of rage that kept him living and breathing but not truly there.

It was a terrible thing, the madness.

Being not himself, or worse when he was lucid enough to almost grasp onto concepts more solid than filling his mouth with blood and filling his heart with vengeance but could not quite grab hold of the flitting knowledge of who and what he was, or even what he hated so much that it kept his heart beating when the weaker would have perished.

He’d lost a decade of his life to that haze, in the squalor and the garbage and the fire.

Thrown away like everything else on Lotho Minor.

His nails dug hard into his thigh, biting into the skin there until it threatened to break and grounding him in the fact that he was not there. He had legs. They hurt.

Maul took a breath, slowly, and wove the fear in his heart into a latticed shield that he’d been patching around his mind. It had done enough to keep him safe from the Jedi, but they hadn’t really been looking at him. They’d had no reason to prod his mind for more than superficial surface thoughts.

Sidious had done more damage than Maul wanted to admit, and it would take more time than he had to completely fix it. If he ever could. There were scars in his skull, deep claw tracks that his master had left for him when he lanced through his thoughts and tore them asunder.

He touched the small muzzle of his vornskr. Her companions, siblings, perhaps, found a place on his lap.

The voice did not sound like the mad hissing and the frantic, cloying whispers of his shattered self. For one thing, he had never had a woman's voice. For another, it was not dripping with loathing and desperate pain.

The scars on his palm itched.

Once he was centered again, and sure of the world around him, Maul input Jango’s comm code.

He answered a second later.

“Who is this?” he demanded. His voice was short and sharp and there was the distinct sound of metal being ripped apart in the back ground. What was he doing? Maul had the feeling he’d missed something while he was on the platform with Kenobi.

“Maul,” was all he said.

Jango’s tone changed instantly. “Maul! Where are you? Why didn’t you answer the call?!”

Maul rolled his eyes. Why was Jango so worked up?

“I used an EMP to kill the explosive charges in a bunch of slave collars on the mine I found Kenobi on. It knocked out the comm along with everything else.” Maul wasn’t sure why he wasn’t just telling Jango that he hadn’t felt like it.

“... You know what. I’ll ask when you get back. Where did you get the EMP?”

“I made it.”

Jango went quiet. Then, “Where did you come from?!”

Maul couldn't help it. He actually laughed. A rough, unused sound.

“Orsis,” he said finally. “I trained on Orsis.”

“Orsis. Fuck. That explains a lot. Okay. How did you make the EMP?”

“Battery, door lock capacitor, wire coil.”

“Kriff.”

“Why?”

“Long story short? The di’kut jetii’s wayward student planted a bomb on a timer in the ionite mines. It’s going to blow up the planet.”

Maul looked up to see Kenobi sitting across from him, horror on his face. “Cursed,” Maul said firmly.

“Wait!” Kenobi jumped across the gap to slap his hands next to the ships com, nearly knocking his little lizard askew from its place clinging to his ginger hair. It’s tail slapped Kenobi in the cheek. Maul leaned away from him.

“Ionite! Ionite disrupts electronics, especially clocks and sensors. Miner’s are afraid of it,” Kenobi said quickly.

“Ob’ika!” Jango sounded relieved. “You’re both safe?”

“Yes,” he said, a strange smile on his face, “But the bomb-”

“We’ll handle it,” Jango promised. “Can the two of you meet us at our apartment?”

“We can,” Maul assured, shouldering Kenobi behind him. “And Jango?”

“Hmm?” There was the sound of rocks being thrown against something metallic. Jinn shouted something too far away to be heard. Hopefully he got hit with a rock.

“I have dibs on the dar’jetti.”

“Absolutely not-!”

Maul hung up the com and sat back in the seat to shoot a crooked grin at Kenobi.

“What did you mean by that?” Kenobi asked curiously.

“I mean that Xanatos has royally pissed me off, and I have no intention of letting him go now. If he was at the mines I have a starting point. Go back to the apartment.”

“Not without you!” Kenobi grabbed his arm. “We go together.”

Maul looked at him. His blue eyes were bright and true. Maul’s mouth thinned into a line. It would be dangerous for him but… Kenobi was stronger than he looked. If he had survived this on his own before, he must be. Maul underestimated him.

“Very well. Together, then.”

Maul inclined his head to Kenobi, and ignored the way he burst into a grin. Force, he was so young.

Maul had the newly freed slaves drop them off somewhere where Maul could ‘commander’ and speeder for them. Kenobi sat behind him, holding onto his poncho while the vonskr piled into the front of his shirt and Kenobi’s little lizard hid inside the jedi’s pocket.

Maul turned them suddenly away from the mine. The Force, darkness whispering around his fingers, hissed at him that Xanatos was not there.

“Where are we going?” Kenobi shouted in his ear.

Maul didn’t respond. He sped faster, roaring through the crowded streets of Bando. If Xanatos had set a mine to blow up the planet then he wouldn’t still be around, and Maul had found the landing platform that Offworld used for its corporate members when he’d been poking around Xanatos’ files.

They shot onto the landing platform from the street, bursting past the security teams and weaving between blaster fire until they went tumbling off the bike and directly into the cargo hold of a shiny nubien transport ship. It certain didn’t look like it came through an Ion storm.

Kenobi landed on his feet and Maul at his side in a crouch. He forced the vornskr out of his clothes and shooed them off to the side.

They were like him. Fighters, angry and vicious down in their bones, hunters with sleak bodies ready to grow into muscle and danger. Venom coated their pointed tails.

“Stay,” Maul ordered harshly, pushing them between two boxes for their own safety. He could feel the little female in his mind, upset at being pushed aside. Their bond was already strong.

Kenobi put his little pet in with Maul’s future hunters and the pair turned around right as the door slid open with a hiss and Xanatos came out, his cloak billowing. He was flanked by two assassin droids of a much more basic model than the CIS had used. He moved with a natural battle prowess, and looked down his nose at the children before him.

Maul bared his teeth. Good. It would make it that much easier to kill him.

Maul drew his blaster and fired without warning. Xanatos ripped his lightsaber out of his sleeve and flicked it on with a buzz. The red blade hummed ominous. Maul eyed it derisively. He could sense it from here. The crystal had been bled, but not properly. Xanatos was full of hatred, but not enough.

Maul fired again and Kenobi ignited his own ‘saber. The little Jedi threw himself at the wash out with abandon. He was vicious and fast, the familiar forms he had used in the future nowhere to be found.

Maul ignored the off footed feeling it left him with and kept shooting, careful not to his Kenobi while he was at it. The bolts shot back and hit the walls, scorching them and freeing crates from nets to go falling around them. It gave Maul the leverage to climb higher and hit Xanatos in the shoulder, thoroughly ruining his fine cloak.

Good. It was gaudy anyways.

The assassin droids came after them alongside their master with electro-staves, forcing Maul and Kenobi to fight three on two. Enraged by his loss of fashion Xanatos snarled and launched himself clean over Kenobi to slash down at Maul, who ducked and rolled out of the way. When Kenobi tried to held the droids intercepted him and tried to cut him down, forcing him on the defensive.

He had to dodge and weave the slashes and jabs that Xanatos sent his way. He dropped and swept his foot out to knock Xanato’s feet out from under him.

Maul fired at him twice and had both shots deflected.

“Have you always had such sloppy footwork?” Maul asked dryly.

Xanatos rose to his feet. Kenobi circled him on the other side. Xanatos dodged between the two of them, trying to get them to slip up and strike eachother, but both of them managed to avoid it. The Force curled around Maul as his temper rose and impatience came with it, practically begging to be used.

Maul shot just over Xanatos’ shoulder and steam erupted in the ship, screaming through the hold. The steam burned Xanatos’ arm, forcing a howl out of his mouth.

Pathetic.

Maul caught Kenobi’s eyes and jerked his chin towards the ex-Jedi. Kenobi caught his meaning and abandoned his opponents when he launched himself at Xanatos with a powerful overhead strike.

Xanatos lashed out with the Force and slammed Kenobi into the wall so hard the metal dented. His lightsaber went out and fell to the ground with a clatter beside him while Kenobi’s body fell limp, just behind Maul.

Rage coiled through Maul’s body.

No, absolutely not.

He didn’t hear the speeder roaring closer. He didn’t hear his comm, recovered from the EMP, going off. All he heard was the echoing of Kenobi’s body and his own blood rushing through his ears.

“You shouldn’t have bothered with the Jedi,” Xanatos lectured, his voice slick. His Force slithered around Maul’s skull and tried to poke and prod him into listening. Maul snarled. “They don’t care about anyone or anything. They are cruel, and they will betray you in the end. They don’t understand true power.”

“And you do?” Maul snapped, his voice harsh and echoing through the coiling steam. Xanatos’ smile was a sickening sight. Maul was going to cut his face off and rip the mouth apart.

“I understand it better than any of them. Let me show you!”

Xanatos threw his hand out, intending to strangle Maul, but Maul batted the Force choke away. Xanatos was strong in the darkside, for someone who hadn’t been trained in it.

Maul was born to it.

Raised in it.

Suffered and bled and killed for it.

The Darkside hummed through his veins.

The ships ramp shook and clattered around the ground and the ship itself creaked as power filled it and pushed outwards, away from Maul. He lifted one hand and squeezed a fist to crush the droids on either side of Xanatos into nothing more than balls of scrap metal and wire.

The former Jedi stepped back, his eyes wide. Fear flickered through them.

Good.

Maul touched the barrels of his blaster. He unhooked them from the base and pulled them free. They swung apart, a hinge in the middle keeping them together until the bases met.

Red extended from one side, and crimson from the other. Maul held it in front of him, with Kenobi limp behind him and the darkness raging around the pair.

“You-” Xanatos gasped.

Maul met his eyes squarely.

“You speak of power as if you have it. You have barely scratched the surface of the Darkside. So you covet one scar and one loss above all else? You are weak. Pathetic. The Darkside is born of fear and hate and you seek to control all things. But the Darkness can never be truly controlled. You are weak, ex-Jedi. You were never even a Knight. I have killed Padawan’s, Knights and Masters. I will kill you too.”

Xanatos lifted his ‘saber up to block Maul’s first attack, but he was forced to defend. Each arching strike was powerful and intended to take his head. Each twisted and flash of red launched at his openings and weaknesses.

Over, under, left, right, Maul came from all angles. Xanatos was good, but not good enough. He was no Jinn, no Kenobi, no Tano.

Maul dodged and slash aimed at his shoulder and drove the edge of his ‘saber through Xanato’s chest.

It was quick. Quicker than he deserved.

Maul stepped back and let him fall to the ground with a hole smoking in his chest.

He stood over him, his lightsaber singing in his grasp of vengeance and satisfaction. It had met its first blood with a fallen Jedi of the same lineage that Maul had spent a lifetime battling. Maul’s hood fell from his shoulders and he turned at last to his fallen battle-partner.

He found pale blue eyes watching him. The pupils were dilated and Kenobi only uttered a weak groan. There was blood along his lips and his injured back had certainly been done no favors by the rough treatment at Xanatos’ hands.

Maul walked towards him slowly. He turned off his ‘saber and folded it back in half just as Jinn and Jango came bursting through the doorway in a clatter of armor and boots. Maul picked up his blaster and carefully clicked the ‘saber back in its place before he joined Jango at Kenobi’s side. The Mandalorian was checking him over, testing his ribs and stomach for broken bones and internal bleeding. He head bled sluggishly from a cut along the back of it.

“You found us,” Maul said, surprised.

Jango shot him a look. “I don’t know if you know this, but it’s my job to find people on the run. It doesn’t matter if their petty thieves or corporate hot shots. I’m very good at my job, Maul’ika.”

Jango glanced at Maul’s blaster. So he had noticed after all. He was still acting like everything was the same. Like Maul wasn’t a sith.

“Come on. Let’s get Ob’ika to a proper doctor. And stop shaking the ship.”

Maul hadn’t even realized that it was still trembling under the force of his anger. The ship shuddered and the lights flickered when he draw the darkness back inside himself and tucked it carefully into the ocean of his being.

He spared a glance at Jinn, who was cradling the body of Xanatos as if he hadn’t just tried to kill him and half a planet’s worth of people.

Had Kenobi held Jinn like that after Maul had killed him?

An armoured hand on his shoulder broke him from his thoughts. Maul looked up to see Jango standing over him with Obi Wan hefted onto his back. He still looked dazed, but with the weight of Maul’s anger lifted from him he was much more relaxed.

“C’mon. Let the jetii mourn. I’m trusting you to watch my back on the way to the hospital.”

Maul personally thought trusting a Sith was a terrible choice, but whatever. He nodded once to the Mandalorian before he went over to the shelter he had left their companions in. He came back holding three vornskr and Kenobi’s varactyl.

Jango stopped walking when he saw Maul approach with a bundle of tiny animals.

“... You’re cleaning up after them.”

Maul scoffed. “Obviously.”

The pair left Jinn to mourn his fallen apprentice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jango left Obi Wan to rest in Maul’s bedroom in their apartment before he made his way out to the kitchen, where Maul was feeding their new little guests. Three small feline creatures with puffy black fur and long tails that pointed at the end in a diamond shape.

The three were all equipped with tiny, sharp claws and razor sharp baby teeth.

Jango hadn’t even considered saying ‘no’ when Maul had pulled them out of a small space between crates in the cargo hold of Xanatos’ ship. The boy was a natural born hunter if he’d found the dar’jetii before either he or Jinn had arrived.

Jango hadn’t liked working with Jinn, and he liked even less tripping over him in close quarters combat with a coward who had no intention of fighting them straight. They had done more damage to each other than they had to Xanatos.

In the end it hadn’t mattered.

Jango’s kid had cut him down with a lightsaber of all things.

Jango couldn't say he was surprised.

The Manda had been very loud about the boy, and Jango had seen him building the strange blaster over the last few days. He’d known he’d been up to something curious, but he hadn’t been inclined to ask right off. Nothing had been put together in a way that looked like it would explode, and Maul had seemed to know what he was doing.

Now Jango knew why.

Orsis. Kriff.

He’d heard of the academy there. The headmaster, Trezza, had recruited a Mandalorian years ago. Meltch Krakko may have been Kry’tsad but he was a formidable fighter. When he disappeared for nearly a decade it had been enough to warrant Jaster looking into it and Jango after. Now he was back with the Kyr’tsad and a royal thorn in Jango’s side.

Had Maul been trained by Krakko? He’d been back for three years, and Maul looked much too young to belong to Orsis for that long. Yet, Maul was not a half trained student. He was well trained, a frightening thing. No child should be that good at killing.

It also confirmed… certain things.

Jango came to sit across the counter from where Maul was wrestling one of the felines with his hand, trying to ‘fight’ it for the small hunk of meat he was holding. The little varactyl that Maul said was Obi Wan’s was stretched out in front of a sunbeam that came through the window. Morning had already come and only Obi Wan had gotten any sleep.

Jango set his helmet on the counter and ran his fingers through his hair.

He was too young for this. He was too young for two kids and four animals, and more kids to come. He’d promised to help Maul fetch his brother. That would mean three kids. Four, maybe, Maul had used plural but he’d been vague.

Jango didn’t know that he could raise all of them on his own. He was only twenty two, and he was Mand’alor as well. He didn’t even have a riduur to help him. How could he give the boys all the attention and care they deserved?

Maul and Obi Wan were already independent for their age, and given when little Jango knew of them it wasn’t that much of a surprise. Apparently the jettii sucked at caring for their young. While that meant that he probably didn’t have to worry about making sure they got dinner and washed up it meant that he needed to be more present for other matters.

For the compassion and care they had been denied before. To coax the both of them into trusting him and letting him take care of them when he could. Would it really be fair to ask that they put up with a buir that had so many responsibilities to the Haat’ade?

Jango had been so sure of himself before. And he hadn’t changed his mind. He wanted Maul as his son. He wanted Obi Wan too.

But he had to think about what was best for the boys.

On top of Jango’s own issues there was also the matter of the Force.

Obi Wan had dreamed for so long of being a Knight, and his heart was crushed by the idea that it would never come true. Maul had already proven himself to be powerful in the magic, even more so tonight.

Jango glanced at his blaster.

He didn’t know what he’d expected when he arrived at Xanatos’ ship with Jinn, their alliance held together only by the common goal of ‘stop Xanatos’, but it certainly hadn’t been Maul standing protectively over a downed Obi Wan before he sprung into a fight so fast and vicious Jango hadn’t been able to keep up with it at the time. He’d been a blur of red and black rage that took Xanatos down in the time it took Jango and Jinn to cross the landing pad at a run.

“You are taking this better than I expected,” Maul said suddenly.

Jango pulled his gaze away from the blaster to look at the boy.

“Taking what?” Jango asked, laying his hands on the counter. He’d noticed Maul was more comfortable when he could see everyone’s hand around him. It was just the smallest easing of his shoulders. Jango understood.

“Me,” Maul said bluntly. Jango frowned. His confusion must have shown, or Maul felt it in the Force, because he elaborated. “My lightsaber. And the Force. You felt it there.”

“Well yes,” Jango tilted his head. “I knew about it already.”

Maul’s head snapped up and he sat straight, knocking his playmate on his back. The feline chirped angrily at him and snatched the meat. He went scampering over to his litttermates, and ended up getting knocked head over heels by the female. She was a scrapper, and she adored Maul.

“You what?!”

Jango’s heart softened. Maul hadn’t known. He’d been hiding it this whole time. Had he been afraid? Had he thought Jango was going to punish him for having such abilities?

Jango recalled the scars that painted Maul’s body.

It was very possible that that was what he expected, because that was what had happened in the past. The idea made Jango’s blood heat with anger.

Jango tamped it down so he could speak calmly to Maul.

“When I found you on that ship, the one that you were stowed away in, you lashed out when you were hurt. Every light in the ship exploded.”

Maul grimaced. “I see. Then why didn’t you leave me there?”

Jango didn’t even try to act like he wasn’t horrified.

“You’re a child! I wasn’t leaving an ad alone in the middle of space in a dead ship!”

“You have no obligation to me,” Maul snapped. “I’m not your son, you’ve sworn nothing to me. I’m not a Mandalorian-”

“But you can be. You know you can be.”

The weight of his words betrayed the secondary meaning behind them. Jango watched Maul’s breath catch and his eyes grow wide. His skin paled to pink and grey. Jango winced. He hadn’t meant to scare him that much. He hadn’t meant to scare him at all.

“You saw that,” Maul hissed, scrambling to stand up. Jango made himself stay calm. He made himself stay relaxed, his hands in sight and his eyes open and genuine.

“I did. It was the future, wasn’t it?” He waited for Maul to give a stiff, short nod. Jango stayed very still. “I heard that jetii sometimes see the future, and sometimes they read minds. Mandalorian’s who are more connected to it can sometimes receive information from the Manda, but it’s mostly feelings and intuition.”

“Beskar muffles the Force,” Maul said quietly.

“I didn’t have my buy’ce on when it started. I saw what could have happened, and I saw what you changed it too, with your friends. You’re going to look for the girls eventually too, right?”

Maul nodded slowly.

Jango quietly added two more to his growing list of responsibilities. If it took a clan to raise a child it was going to take the entire Haat’ade to raise Jango’s.

“You knew the whole time,” Maul realized, looking at Jango with new eyes. One of the barriers between them was starting to dissolve. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to scare you. If you wanted me to know you would tell me, eventually. You hate having to make yourself lesser.”

Maul grimaced. “Yes. I do.”

Jango leaned closer across the counter.

“I would never ask you to do that, you know. I would never ask you to pretend to be anything that you aren’t. You’re a feral nexu, and too smart for your own good. You’re a fighter the likes of which I’ve rarely met. Even if I wish that you didn’t have to be. I wasn’t lying, or joking, and I’ve known what you are and what you could be the entire time. I want you as my son, Maul’ika. If you say yes.”

Maul sat back. He looked lost, and confused, but Jango could see a new light in his eyes.

“My brothers. If you take me you take them.”

“I know,” Jango promised. He hesitated. “I wouldn’t try to keep you from family. My buir, Jaster Mereel, took me in. I was a foundling. My parents and my sister were killed by the Kyr’tsad.”

“Oh.”

The door to Obi Wan’s room hissed open and they both turned to see the boy standing there, looking pale and shaken but standing upright. Jango waved him over and Obi Wan came to sit by his side. His varactyle came running off and climbed quickly onto Obi Wan’s shoulder. Obi Wan smiled and pet her head, where a crown of messy feathers was starting to come in.

“It’s good to see you’re up,” Jango said fondly. Obi Wan shot him a shy smile before he sat up straighter. He was far too adult for Jango’s liking.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to inconvenience you like that.”

Jango’s heart broke. He dragged Obi Wan into his side. His armor lay on the corner, so he didn’t smack the boys head on his breast plate.

“It wasn’t an inconvenience, but I wish you boys had waited for us, or at least told us the plan. I would have helped, you know.”

Obi Wan flushed faintly with the simple affection, but he let Jango hug him for a minute more before being released to sit on the stool next to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “But we won! Right?” He looked between the pair. “I.. don’t remember everything. It was dark, and cold, and kind of hard to see…”

“Yes. We won,” Jango assured. “Xanatos is dead. Maul got him.”

Obi Wan looked to Maul in surprise. The zabrak boy hunched his shoulders. Obi Wan’s eyes got wider.

“The lightsaber. The red lightsaber, with two blades. It was real. It was yours.”

Maul nodded, once. His lips curled, ready to bite.

“Yes. It is.”

“But, how? You aren’t a jedi, are you? You’re too young…”

“I’m old enough,” Maul snapped, as he was wont to. Jango privately disagreed. From what he knew of zabraks, Maul hadn’t even hit puberty yet. He wouldn’t have even been eligible for his verd’goten yet.

“But you’re right,” Maul admitted. “I am no jedi. I am… I was, a sith apprentice.”

Obi Wan sucked in a sharp breath. “But the sith are dead!”

“Not dead,” Maul shook his head. “Hiding. A line of Banite sith have been in hiding for a thousand years, passing knowledge from Master to Apprentice.”

“That’s- But- We have to tell the Jedi Council,” Obi Wan said suddenly. Maul lunged across the counter and grabbed his arm.

“No!” He nearly shouted. The lights flickered and Obi Wan’s skin paled. Jango grasped both boys by the shoulders and pulled them apart. Maul spared him a brief glance.

“No,” Maul said again, his voice low and sharp and urgent. “You can’t tell them. They wouldn’t believe you, there’s no proof of what I say and even if there was there’s nothing they can do about it. My- The Master is too powerful politically to be touched, and a religion is not illigal. The Jedi serve the Republic’s whims.”

It was a messy, uneven argument, but it wasn’t wrong either. Besides that Jango had personal doubts about exactly how capable the Jedi Council was. Not just for Galidraan, but for Obi Wan too.

They were fools.

It was still a problem though.

“That’s not all, is it?” Jango pressed, squeezing Maul’s shoulder. He frowned, but nodded, slowly.

“No. It’s not.”

“We can’t let a Sith Lord run free though,” Obi Wan argued. “The Sith are evil! They’ll hurt people.” He faltered and looked at Maul, remembering that he had just called himself a Sith Apprentice.

Maul glared at the table.

“No. We will not let him run free. I will kill him myself. For the pain he caused me. For the life he stole from me. For the people he ripped from my arms and the blood I painted myself in for him. I will kill him for it.”

Obi Wan frowned.

“Revenge is dangerous. Master Yoda says it leads to the Darkside.”

“I’m already entrenched in the Darkside,” Maul said irritably. He tilted his head. “Do you even know the Sith Code?”

Obi Wan frowned. “Well, there’s only ever two of them. And they use that Darkside, and tried to take over the galaxy before. They’d angry and hateful, and evil.”

Again, he winced. Again, Maul didn’t take offense.

“Peace is a lie. There is only Passion.

Through Passion I gain Strength.

Through Strength I gain Power.

Through Power I gain Victory.

Through Victory my chains are Broken.

The Force shall free me”

Maul’s voice echoed with the words of a thousand Sith that came before him. Jango could feel it in his bones, the way the air shifted and the shadows lengthened in the corner of his eyes.

Obi Wan frowned. “That… doesn’t sound that bad.”

Maul inclined his head. “You’re not entirely wrong. My Master is evil. He’s cruel and vicious. And his own master still lives. He has broken the Rule of Two by teaching me. I will end the line of Bane. There is strength in the Darkside.”

“Although,” he added, reluctantly. “The Lightside is not without its own merits.”

“Don’t jetii preach about balance?” Jango wondered aloud.

“They usually mean only for the Light to be prevalent,” Maul said with a grimace.

“But, yes. We do,” Obi Wan said. His face fell. “They do. I’m not a real jedi now. And Master Jinn won’t take me and there’s no one else that would.”

“I told you I would help you, Obi Wan,” Jango reminded him. He hated saying it. He really did, especially given what Galidraan could have been if they hadn’t had the warning from two years ago. “If you really want it, I’ll help you find a teacher too, if you’re willing to put up with us for a while more. There have to be a few Jedi who have less of a stick in their shebs than Jinn does.”

Obi Wan looked at him with such fragile, heartbreaking hope Jango wanted to burn the Jedi temple to the ground. “Really? You think someone would take me?”

If they didn’t, Jango would.

Jango nodded at him with as kind of a smile as he could muster.

“I do. We’ll just have to start looking.”

Maul made a small sound.

“Actually,” he began, “I might have an idea where to start. There’s a reclusive Jedi Master…”

#Darth Maul #Maul #darth maul time travel #jango fett #qui gon jinn #obi wan kenobi #Star Wars #star wars the prequel trilogy #star wars time travel #time travel

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