#i like thinking about AUs where ash is a little less dense

[mezamun]

Girl-crazy.

[gallickingun]

last chance || b.k.

SUMMARY: After All Might’s demise at the hands of an unlikely hero-turned-villain, the world unfurls into chaos. Villains run rampant, heroes are dying in the streets, and you are left with a rowdy group of renegades to seek out the legendary Ground Zero, a vigilante that you’ve only encountered through ghost stories. After narrowing down his sightings to one central location, you are sent out to beseech him for help, if he even truly exists in the first place.

PAIRING: Apocalyptic Pro Hero!Bakugou x Renegade!Reader RATINGS: M/E+ WARNINGS: language, violence, smut, etc. WORD COUNT: 7.3k+

FOREWORD: For all intents and purposes, we’re going to pretend that All Might hasn’t lost his power, even after handing it off to Deku!

LINKS: ao3 | masterlist | mobile | writing tag

Author’s Note: This is my submission for the bnharem nsfw collab, apocalypse edition! I was shocked that I was able to snag Bakugou on my first round of collaboration, and I’m so stoked to read all of the other fics! The masterlist can be found HERE. This might feel a little OOC, but hopefully it makes sense by the end. It is an AU after all. 

“The Symbol of Peace is dead.”

You pull the bandana further up around your mouth and nose, the ash in the air seeping into your lungs, clouding your vision as the debris strains your breathing. Your ankles ache, mile after mile threatening to grind your bones to dust.

“It would seem we never knew the true power of All Might’s quirk, now known as One for All.”

A thickness swells up in your throat, your eyes blurring with tears, and yet you keep walking. You push through the thickets of overgrown foliage, slashing away with the machete you usually keep tucked against your hip. Crying will do nothing to help you, not now. Tears are for the weak.

“He had passed on his power to a successor, a young student named Midoriya Izuku.”

The darkness of night helps to hide you from those who want you slain where you stand. Your black clothing keeps you but a shadow amongst the trees, concealing your identity to anyone who might gaze upon the horizon. Even though you are alone, your mission keeps you company.

“The young boy became an amazing Pro Hero, climbing the charts quite fast once graduating from Yuuei High. And then, something happened.”

You grit your teeth when you see your destination ahead – a large cliff, covered in moss and dense, lush kudzu. There is a cave carved into the side of it, hardly able to be seen from the distance with which you are currently separated from it. And yet, you’ve been dreaming about this place for years, ever since the overture.

“It would seem that young Midoriya Izuku, also known as Deku, has killed the Symbol of Peace.

All Might is dead.”

The weight of the world settles on your shoulders at the memory of the news broadcast. It is like this new path you’ve gone down has formed you into some sort of Atlas, a woman in charge of holding the world together from the shadows, as if it may fall apart if you falter for even the slightest of moments. Your knees ache and your back is slick with sweat, but somehow you manage to shoulder the burden and keep walking, galaxies treading in your wake.

After all, finding Ground Zero is your responsibility.

“We need him.”

You brush your hair from your eyes, looking down at the map strewn out in tatters on the tabletop, “No one has seen him, not really. He’s practically a myth, a legend. Even if he’s real, what makes you think he’ll help us?”

The redhead beside you slams his fists together, the echoing sound of stone impacting stone reverberating in the room. You wince at the sharpness of it, but combined with the determined expression rooted within his features, you feel a renewed sense of purpose settled into your spine. You straighten up, curling your hands to fists, and match his manifestation of conviction with a grit of your teeth and tilt of your head.

“You’re right, Kirishima,” you point to the central location on the map, the one you’ve been investigating for what feels like years, “Ground Zero will be there. And I’m going to convince him to help us.”

The stone bites into your blunt nails, drawing blood that makes it even more difficult to scale the side of the structure. You knew this would come, so the makeshift climbing gear strapped to your waist keeps you secure as you continue to lower yourself down.

At the mouth of the cave, you see a small overhang, just far enough past the opening for you to land. Once you’ve gotten close enough that you know you won’t fall to your death into whatever disastrous demise may greet you thousands of feet below, you drop onto the ledge. Your knees wobble, ankles turned at just the right angle that they absorb most of your fall.

The opening of the cavern is dark; ominous smoke leaking from the front of it, furling around in midair. Your body shudders, a chill sending a fresh wave of goosebumps over your skin, and for a moment you wonder if you should retreat.

Kirishima’s crimson eyes, hard set and piercing, are all you can see when you close your eyes. His voice rings in your ears, reminding you that this is what you must do, you have to find Ground Zero. He is the only one capable of taking down Deku.

You swallow, bracing your spine and curling your fists, forcing yourself to take the first step forward. There is a curtain of vines separating the inside of the cave from you. You reach forward, curling your fingers around the thick, verdant tendrils, and push them to the sides so you may walk through.

Every single nerve within your body vibrates with the knowledge that you may die here in this cave, alone and forgotten. Your lower lip wobbles, but you stamp down the negative emotions and rather channel them into something akin to confidence. Once you’ve passed through to the other side, you release the vines and find yourself shrouded in darkness.

It takes a moment, but your eyes adjust eventually. You can make out the walls of the cave, glistening and jagged, and you use the reach of your arms to press against the rocky surface, guiding yourself further down the winding path. It is strange when you feel a substance much more powdery beneath your touch, and when you pull your hand away to smell it, the scent reminds you of soot.

Sweat rolls down your spine, tickling your skin, but you do not have the patience nor the ability to redirect your attention to it, for fear of what might happen when you refocus to something less important. You hold your breath, trying to listen as best you can for any and all sounds echoing within the walls of the cave, but all you hear is quiet.

Your imagination begins to wander as you take each step, furthering the horrific ends you’ve conjured up for yourself within the confines of your mind. The chill of the cave in tandem with your sweat creates steam from your body, rising high and bringing forth a bout of humidity that gives your lungs more difficulty.

Turning a corner, you feel the air begin to get warmer. You force yourself to take short breaths, bringing oxygen to flow back through your blood as it rushes through you, thundering in your ears. The sound does little to quell the panic rising in your throat, like a billow of smoke suffocating you as it rolls through your body.

Fear grips your heart when you hear the first sound.

You stop, turning your feet in case you need to bolt in the opposite direction. Your eyes are widened, pupils dilated in the dark to try and accommodate. It does not repeat itself, but rather alters, when you hear it again.

“Tch.”

The human-like nature of the sound brings about a whole new level of anxiety, lightning strikes underneath your skin as reality settles in. You lick at your lips, the dryness of your mouth ever present when you prepare yourself for a speech. You continue down the cave pathway, the faint glow of orange beginning to color the walls, giving you more light to see your feet in front of you.

Eventually you are able to stumble through the cavern on your own now, without the guide of your hands on the rock on either side of you. Shallow breaths fill your lungs, erratic breathing making your shoulders shake in anticipation. You lick at the seams of your gums, begging your mind to call forth a beautiful string of words that will convince this legendary vigilante to once again rise up, with the backing of your renegade fighters, to take down the villainous once-hero Deku.

You come up on the furthermost part of the cave, the base of it opening up and rounding out to provide the hideaway with a spacious enough cavity to serve as a living space.

Your eyes are drawn to every inch of the room, starting with the wall where weapons are strung up like trophies. Chiseled into the stone are hollows in the shape of guns and knives and grenades, acting like shelving for the tools of destruction. Beneath it is the fire pit, burning high with flames, licking up at the air and peeling away what little oxygen remains. You find it harder to breathe here, mostly in part to the depth of the cave and the ongoing fire, stealing the breath from your very lungs.

Then your eyes find him, his back to you, settled on a log that will most likely be used for firewood at a later date. Your tongue feels like a sandbag in your mouth and you can’t force yourself to produce enough saliva to make up for the smoke in your throat.

And then he rises.

He is every bit as beautiful as they said he would be in all of the stories. Tales of bulging muscle and tall stature, hands that save the world with each flex of his knuckles, scars littering his body like a map, or like veins of pain running through slabs of chiseled marble.

He turns, and his eyes seem familiar.

You take a hesitant step forward, captivate by his serious stare. The rivulets of crimson and amber swirling in his irises make you want to drown in a lake of fire, burned at the stake for the sake of his cause. Your body cannot resist him, so you draw closer, further into the heat, begging yourself to become a slave to it so long as it means you can continue to find him in the flames.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

You are fumbling for words when he speaks again, “You’re wasting my time, baka. I’m not sure what about the sight of a secluded, secret cave gave you the idea to waltz in here like you own the damned place, but I’m kind of busy. So leave.”

The way your eyes roam around his abode, settling on each small space and dissecting it for everything that it is worth, unsettles him. He steps closer to you, blocking your vision with his wide shoulders.

“It doesn’t look like you’re very busy.”

The words are blurted from your mouth with little forethought, but they have you both reeling, your hands slapped over your lips as if you could take them back with simple action. The man stood in front of you shifts into some sort of attack position, hands curled into fists and the air begins to smell sickly sweet.

“Fucking bitch,” he bites the words as they exit his teeth, narrowing his eyes to you until they are but slits, “Get the hell out!”

“No, no!” You are flailing now, the impending doom of your failure to bring him back with you turning your stomach into knots. You shake your head, reaching out to press your hands to his chest, “Listen, please, you are Ground Zero, are you not?”

The sound of his own name echoing in the cave gives him pause. He tilts his head, ashen locks falling over his line of sight. You notice his head is buzzed at the base, nothing but blonde stubble left behind, however the top of his head is covered with pale locks of spike hair, as if he himself is a bomb ready to be blown at all times.

“I don’t know who the hell told you where to find me, but I’m not the guy you’re looking for.” He smacks your hands away with the back of his wrist, turning to stalk back to the fire. Once he settles on his stump again, he pulls another skewer of meat from a pack off to the side, rotating it over the fire to begin roasting it.

All you can think is how much of a let down this entire trip has been. You have walked for miles, for days, in order to hunt him down. You have hidden in jungles and abandoned buildings, and almost been caught by several villains with quirks you almost could not overpower on your own.

“Kirishima spoke so highly of you,” your voice is faraway, like you are on another plane of existence, looking down on him from above, “I thought you’d be more heroic than this.”

At the sound of your friend’s name, the man’s head tilts, eyes shifting as he looks over his shoulder at you, “Kirishima? Eijirou?”

“Y-You know Kiri?”

You take a cautious step forward, unsure of whether he believes Kirishima to be a friend or a foe. His eyes are lost, somewhere between here and there, unable to focus on any one thing as he rolls the name around on his tongue, tasting the distant memories there while they play out against the cavern walls for only his eyes to see.

“Kirishima was my-” he pauses, gritting his teeth together as his knuckles turn white around the skewer, “…he was my friend.”

The man stands to his feet, discarding the half-cooked slab of meat into the fire, “If Kirishima sent you, then things must be bad.”

You nod, striding forward until you are just close enough that his body heat is intoxicating, and the scent from earlier, the one that makes your head spin with saccharine promises, fills your nostrils until you cannot make out anything else.

“We need your help,” you say, voice wavering in the middle, “Deku has started to search for every hero, every renegade, and he’s murdering them. I came to bring you back to the rest of those who are still fighting. You are a legend, if we have your help, there’s no way we’ll lose.”

A wry smirk adorns his mouth, quirking his lips upward, “Kid, I don’t know who told you I was a legend, or that I’d be of any help, but I’m out here for a reason.”

“Just come back with me,” you plead, resisting the desire to wrap your fists around his tank and pull, “we need you.”

There is a hesitant look in his vermilion irises, something that tells you he is still hiding something. But, he straightens his spine anyway, a deep breath puffing out his chest, “I always did like to kick Deku’s ass.”

You cannot contain the beaming smile on your face, even when you turn on your heels to begin walking out of the cave and back to the light.

Which keeps you from seeing the dejected look in his eyes.

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

Weeks of planning the perfect attack have brought you and Ground Zero closer.

Although now you know him as Bakugou Katsuki.

When he first reunited with Kirishima, and his presence was made known to your rag-tag team, you were shaken at the realization that legends are people too. Even in his vigilante times, Bakugou still held that same spark that lit his flame throughout the duration of his time at Yuuei, much of which he spent with Kirishima by his side.

“Holy shit, man!” Kirishima reaches around his shoulders for a hug, which Bakugou hardly reciprocates, “I can’t believe Ground Zero is you!”

There are moments where you catch his gaze lingering on you – when you are cooking dinner, when you chop firewood – and of course your eyes find him too. He trains shirtless most of the time, body on display as the sweat rolls down his body. His knuckles are bruised and his body is battered, and yet he continues to get up every day and start all over again.

You do note that you have not seen him use his quirk, not since he arrived at your renegade hideaway. It seems to be in reverie of everything going on, but from what you remember, Bakugou Katsuki was not a shy man, never one to keep himself from the spotlight. It is why he is the only one who pushed himself hard enough to compete with Deku, and to stay as his rival.

When you ask Kirishima, he just shrugs it off, “He probably doesn’t want any attention. Would you, if you felt like you had run away when the world needed another hero?”

So you co-exist. He near you, and you near him. Always orbiting, but never colliding.

There are times where you allow your affections to slip. When you’re passing him by, a gentle palm on his hip to alert him of your presence. When he reaches above you to pull a weapon off the shelf, his hand finds purchase at the base of your spine, as if steadying himself even though he is one of the sturdiest men you have ever seen.

There is a moment, a drunken haze, that leads you to believe he might even kiss you, however it is gone before it has the ability to flower into anything more.

Time passes, months that feel like years, of tracking and sleuthing and killing. There is murder on both sides, and you have both suffered losses.

One night he finds you, sitting on the beach, your tears glittering like starlight on your cheeks.

“This is war,” he says, squatting in the sand, “none of us is innocent.”

You sniffle, rubbing your arm against your face to rid it of your transgressions, “And what about those who want to be?”

Bakugou reaches forward, a careful palm gliding over your cheek as a new bout of tears springs forth like a leak. You can’t see the sad smile on his face through your tears, your vision glassy and clouded, and he is thankful that you cannot spot his weakness. He brushes the tears away and turns your head with the gentle flick of his wrist, “We’ll get there when we get there.”

You want to crumble, to falter and fall into a million shards of glass, and he knows this. He must, because there’s no way that the pressure of the lives of the rest of the world does not eat away at one’s soul until there is nothing but barren earth left. You circle your hand around his wrist, leaning your cheek into his palm so you can feel the heat of him and find comfort in his touch.

“What if we never get there?”

You can’t look at him, not when your scars are on display. Your heart wrenches in your chest and the pain is like a thousand cuts littered across your body until you are nothing but bleeding wounds. In your mind, you’ve succumbed to the sea of red, drowning in it, choking on it.

Bakugou does a strange thing then. He presses his other palm to your waist, drawing you forward so he can kiss the smooth skin of your forehead, “Don’t be an idiot.”

And then he turns to leave.

Your forehead burns like a blister with the echo of his affections.

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

The time finally comes.

After months of research and loss, there is a plan.

“We know where he’s hiding,” Kirishima points to a central location on the map, releasing a breath as he looks up to Bakugou, “the guards will change shift at midnight, and that’s when you’ll attack. We’ll be on the ground to distract any other, smaller threats, but we’re counting on you to take him down in the end.”

Bakugou shoves Kirishima, but he falters himself, eyes unable to focus on any one thing, “I know, idiot. You didn’t bring me all the way out here to take my victory from me.”

You smile at the scene, catching his gaze as he turns to look back at the rest of the room. There is a crack in his armor when he sees you, confidence melting into something else, another emotion you can’t quite pin down. And you’re not sure if you really want to.

The rest of the meeting is all logistics, something you have already heard a dozen times, so you find yourself wandering along the coastline, the night air washing like a balm over you, sea salt in your lungs when you breathe. Your feet are barely in the water, but enough for it to lap up around your ankles with foam when the waves crest to shore. You hold yourself around the middle, as if you might be able to keep your broken pieces from shattering if you squeeze tightly enough.

Tears of salt match that of the ocean as the droplets roll down your cheeks, hanging on your jaw until they are too weighty, and then they fall into the seawater, melded together as if they belong. Your fingers ache, digging into your biceps to give yourself some sort of anchor while you watch the moon and stars shift in the night sky.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

The words are reminiscent of the first time you met, all those months ago. They make you smile, a gentle huff of a laugh escaping your lips, even if the gesture does not quite reach your eyes. You turn to look at him over your shoulder, arms still wrapped around your torso, the jagged edges of your soul sinking in deeper the more you try to hide your faltering pieces.

“Thinking,” you answer quietly, soft voice almost overwhelmed by the waves.

Bakugou is drawn in closer, as if you are the sea, a siren calling to him from the beyond, and he strides forward until he is parallel with you. His eyes watch the waves, but the pull is to you, and he can only resist for so long.

“It’s just Deku,” he is trying to reassure you, reaching out to rest his palm on your neck, sifting fingers through the hair at the nape of it. “I won’t lose to him, not again.”

This brings your attention to his eyes, your body turning so you can approach him head-on, fear wracking your body like a storm. You gaze up at him, jaw quivering under the stress of your teeth grinding against one another, “Why did he do it?”

His hand glides from your neck to your jaw, tilting your eyes upward so you cannot look away from him, in spite of how difficult this conversation might be to have. He has not spoken of his childhood rival for what feels like an eternity; airing out his burdened confessions is but a foreign concept. He would rather keep them bottled away within the cage of his ribs, until the poison slowly dredges through his veins and he can fall away into some deep sleep brought on by death.

“No one could have expected it,” Bakugou starts, thumb tracing the curve of your jaw as he speaks, like the ministrations may give him the groundwork to have the conversation, “but One for All had too many wielders, had grown too powerful. Deku’s body couldn’t contain it and still stay sane.”

Bakugou looks frustrated, his brow tugged so his forehead wrinkles. You reach up to brush your thumb over the creased skin, “I’ve heard the stories. That the call to power was too strong, and he never told anyone because he was afraid of being weak.”

“Izuku has never been weak.”

His voice is ragged, as if glass has been lodged into his throat to inhibit his speech. Bakugou turns his head so you cannot see the emotion welling up in his eyes, “All Might should have seen it, but by the time he caught it, Deku had already gone mad. He snapped All Might’s neck on live television, the fucking bastard.”

The heaviness of the situation sits on your shoulders and you wonder if Bakugou has ever felt the burden of Atlas; you recall the significant burden weighing you down when you were first sent to retrieve him. Your mortal body wanted to crumble beneath the importance of your mission, you can’t even begin to fathom the overwhelming guilt he must be riddled with every day from the moment he wakes until he falls asleep.

“Then he came after the rest of us, one-by-one. Todoroki was next, then Uraraka.” Bakugou swallows the thick, pent-up emotion settled in his throat like barbed wire. He steels his gaze, even though it is only focused on the moon. “Kirishima was able to take a group of heroes and hide out when Deku came for me.”

You recall the fight like a movie playing on the backs of your eyelids. Bakugou and Deku fighting head to head, lightning and explosions igniting the swirling storm the unfurled around them. Pouring rain and debris flying, small tornados brought on by the use of Deku’s quirk, destroying the nearby buildings until there was nothing left.

Bakugou’s voice is heady, hands fallen from your face as if he no longer deserves to touch you. He takes a step backward, the roaring of the ocean giving him a pause, as if he were listening to the water for some sort of encouragement to continue his tale, to keep fighting.

You can’t help but wonder if losing the proverbial fight against Deku has tarnished his soul much deeper than he would ever admit, if his body has been at war with itself for years, unable to choose a side, unable to relent.

“I fought him for what felt like hours. Whatever One for All had done to him, corrupted his mind, broken his spirit,” Bakugou shakes his head, a snarl on his lips, “that wasn’t Deku that I was fighting. That was someone else.”

His breath hitches, “I-I’m not sure what the fuck possessed him to do what he did next, but he took-”

Bakugou’s throat bobs and his eyes flit from you to the water, unable to look at you in the face as he gnaws on his lower lip. The words must be too harsh, a pain running much further than skin deep. You know that his soul must be bruised, the very core of him broken beyond recognition.

“Took what, Katsuki?” you ask gently, reaching to tug his chin back so he is looking down at you, “You can tell me.”

Bakugou’s breathing is labored, quick, a mixture of frustration and anguish pressing down on his throat like a pair of hands, encasing his esophagus in a tight grip. He shakes his head, “He, uh- he let me go.”

It sounds disingenuous coming from his mouth, as if he’s forcing a lie through his teeth, his voice grating against his gums like metal. You reach out to touch his arm, but he sloughs you off with a quick movement, taking a step and pushing you further. Tears glisten in his eyes, but he does not let them fall; he cannot lose the battle with his body too. He looks up to the moon and lets loose a feral growl, crumbling to his knees and digging his hands into the wet sand, like tearing into it might provide him some sort of release.

“And then I tucked my fucking tail and I ran. Like a goddamn coward.” Bakugou’s jaw is rippling when he snaps his attention to you, eyes ablaze with red fire, “And that’s the hero you all claim to have needed. I wasn’t a hero, I was a fucking pussy. I was weak.”

Bakugou rises from the water, a murderous glare in his eyes, “And now I’m done being weak. I’m going to finish what I couldn’t before, I’m going to kill the bastard.”

You have let him vent his personal failures into the air, but now it is your turn to speak. Circling your fingers around his wrists, you pull yourself closer to him, as if the two of you are bound by an invisible thread.

“You’re not going alone,” you tell him, voice sure. You stand rooted in the ground, feet dug deep in the sand, “I won’t let you.”

He rolls his eyes, blowing a breath out of his nose, “And you think I’ll let you? No fucking way.”

The words sit on your tongue, burning like embers, syllables you’ve been stoking for months as you’ve grown closer to him. Your body rises up on your toes on instinct alone, eyelashes fluttering shut as you take him in one last time. You grit your teeth and a breath shudders from your lungs, shattering your heart like glass.

Your fingers traipse up his torso, climbing over the mounds of muscle that he has worked so hard to perfect. You feel the heat of tears well up in the back of your eyes, your vision blurred as you try to memorize everything about him in the short time you have left. When your palms reach his cheeks, fingertips dancing against warm, tanned skin, you can’t help but to tug yourself closer.

He can barely protest before you have melded your mouth to his, arching your back so your chest is flush with the broad plane of muscle in front of you. Bakugou hesitates, but just as you are about to pull away and profusely apologize, his arms snake around your waist to yank you closer. Your hips roll into his reflexively, finding the hardened length of his cock almost instantly.

Bakugou’s kiss is bruising, a heated ferocity driving him forward to part your lips at the seams, delving his tongue between your teeth at the first chance he receives. You moan at his affections, your hands threading through his hair, pinkies finding the stubble of his undercut while the others sift between blonde locks.

Tears are pushed from your eyelids, and he feels them against his cheeks as he kisses you. Bakugou slips his hands under the thin fabric of your tattered shirt, warmth spreading from the base of your spine outward to every extremity.

“I won’t lose you,” you manage between breaths, forcing the words out despite the possibility of his rejection.

Bakugou does not stop loitering affection over you like it were his job just because you show a moment of vulnerability. Rather, he’s spurred on by the admission, his hands digging deeper into your muscles now, most likely leaving bruises in their wake, and his teeth and tongue are merciless on your mouth.

The palms of his hands slowly drift down until he has cupped your thighs, his body folded just enough to give him a better angle to pull you up into the air. You hold in a squeal, unwilling to alert the rest of the camp, quickly wrapping your legs around his waist.

He breaks the kiss as oxygen begs his airways to open up once more, heaving breaths making his chest expand with sharp inhales. Through gasping breaths, he shakes his head, “I’m not going anywhere.”

You’re not sure how best to beg him to take you for all you’re worth here on the beach, but somehow you must silently communicate it, because he finds a secluded place and lays you down there, your back dug into the ground, but you are rather uncaring to it all. Your hands can’t find enough of him, insatiable in your efforts to map him out to memory, burning the impression of him into your mind so you may never lose him, even if something tragic were to part the two of you forever.

Bakugou’s fingers make quick work of the button of your shorts, delving his hand inside to brush at the bare folds of your core, already slick with arousal. He chuckles, nudging his nose over your neck, “Prepared for this, were you?”

A laugh is cut short by a whine, his teeth sinking into your jugular, sucking harshly on the skin there. Your hands find his shoulders, blunt nails bludgeoning the skin of his shoulders so he is seething into your body, curses flying from his lips as if they might brand your flesh if he whispers them hotly enough.

You whimper his name as he sheathes his fingers within you, two knuckles stretching your inner walls, scissored fingers making you throw your head back. Your body does not feel like your own, every wanton moan and twitch of your muscles in response to his salacious ministrations, reactions that you cannot fight, even if you wanted to.

Giving in, you reach down desperately, clawing your nails at the waistband of his cargo pants, uncaring as to how you get your palm underneath his underwear. Bakugou uses the hand not buried in your pussy to grab you by the wrist, pinning your hand over your head.

“You’re a needy little slut, hah?” Bakugou tightens his grip and speeds up his pace, earning him a wriggle from your body as you try to fight back. He smirks, teeth and gums on full display as he glowers down at you, “Don’t you worry, baby, I’m gonna give you my cock. Be patient.”

You whine in response, tilting your head to try and capture his lips again. Bakugou finds you halfway, his mouth parted so you can begin mapping out the curves of his teeth with your tongue. You kiss him as if your life may depend on it, like the time you are sharing may end at any moment.

You kiss him like he may die tomorrow.

There is fervor and passion and admiration conveyed with each smacking of your lips, your noses brushing when you try to angle yourselves to become closer. All the while, his middle and fourth fingers are working you forward into the throws of pleasure, lightning striking your core whenever his fingers brush up against your glutinous walls in just the right manner.

“Katsuki, please,” you beg of him, dragging your nails over the corded muscle of his shoulders. You can feel yourself slipping already, the impending doom of what is to come giving your body more urgency.

Bakugou growls when he feels your cunt clamp around his fingers, the thought of his cock within your tight hole making him dick twitch. You buck up when the head of his length brushes your thigh in his arousal, seeking him out despite the fullness you already feel from his digits pumping up into your heat.

Your whole body is shaking with the threat of your impending orgasm on the horizon, brought on by his disastrous fingers urging you forward. You cry out for him, wanton and begging as you pant his name repeatedly, rocking your hips with the rhythm of his fingers. Bakugou’s eyes roam your body as he leans back from you, gaze immediately drawn to the bounce of your plush chest. With each thrust of his fingers, your body quivers, and he knows he won’t be able to last apart from you for much longer, regardless.

As his fingers slowly peel from you, a whine tears your chest wide open. Tears drip down over your cheeks, a mixture of emotion and erotica giving the sound much more conviction. Bakugou feels the reverberations of your voice in his chest, stirring him to brush your silken slick along the length of his cock, pumping his shaft a few times before repositioning himself above you.

Bakugou rolls his wrist so the tip of his dick butterflies your pussy lips. You pant at the exhilaration of it all, your cunt fluttering as he pulls himself away from you only to bring it all back. His teasing strokes make your head spin, eyes barely able to peel open to look up at him. Your tongue lolls out of your mouth, and Bakugou leans forward to tug the muscle between his teeth, earning him an animalistic howl from the back of your throat.

The plea from you gives him the last push he needs to rut forward and claim you in one fatal stroke.

Your hands sink into him like hooks, eyes screwed shut as he starts to suck on your tongue. Bakugou’s breath spills over you like a wash of heat, sending a shudder down your spine. He uses his hands to grip you by the thighs, yanking you closer so your hips are flush as he sinks all the way into you all over again.

“Ka-” you can barely make a sound with the way his mouth has destroyed yours, suffocating you until you are lightheaded with the thought of him. As you struggle beneath him, Bakugou releases you in favor of leaning back to watch as his cock separates your walls and fills your cunt until it stretches to fit his thick girth.

You are a blubbering mess the moment he allows you space to breathe. Your hands can’t find enough of him to paint with your touch, nails dragging thin, angry red lines into his thighs, and your throat only knows how to say his name.

“Good girl,” he chuckles, watching you come undone beneath him, “I can’t wait to feel you come all over my cock.”

His dick is rutting into you at an impeccable pace, the tip of his cock brushing against your walls as he twitches from your tight pussy. Bakugou digs his fingers into the skin of your thighs, likely bruising them with the intensity of his grip, pushing your knees back until they are pressed against your chest so he can fuck into you from above.

You lick your lips, thin rivulets of drool seeping out of the corners of your mouth, “Please, Bakugou, I-I wanna come.”

The desire to rip your arousal from you until you cannot speak in full sentences gives him a fiery drive, his hips slamming into your ass as filthy words fall from his lips. You can feel his cock bottoming out within your cunt, thickening with each stroke of his hips as he grows closer to the end himself. You beg for his spend, for him to coat you until you are dripping with his seed, the mixture of your arousal and his pre seeping from your lips and furthering the wet sounds that echo whenever his balls slap against your ass.

“You wanna come on my cock, yeah?” he asks, voice dithering the longer he’s within you. You are begging him now, your back arched forward so you can seek him out with wide eyes and pleading palms. He soaks in the affections, your hands on his face and in his hair, your lips finding purchase on whatever part of his body you can reach.

A snarl makes his throat shake and, if possible, he rips into your even further, growling voice speaking into your ear as you fall back against the ground at the sheer force of his hips, “Then fucking come, slut.”

His words are all you need to push you into the next plane of existence, where a shattering orgasm racks your body. You convulse around his cock, the newfound tightness as you milk your own release pushing him over the crest as well. He drives his cock as deep into you as he can, your hips flush at the juxtaposition of your sex as he spurts up into your core. You feel the heat of his release, the twitch of his cock, and your limbs grow numb from effort.

Bakugou leans forward so he is balancing himself on his forearms, nosing over the swell of your chest and the column of your neck, small, chaste kisses littered over your skin like stars. He sighs, nudging your collarbone, “You’re not coming with me tomorrow. I won’t lose you too.”

Your heart sings at his admission, and your spirit wants to argue, but when he kisses you again, you can’t find it within yourself to tell him otherwise.

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

“All right, man,” Kirishima claps him on the back, leaning against the brick wall of the alleyway.

You can tell that there is much more he wants to say, but Bakugou has never had much patience for any sort of sappy confession, so all that passes between them is a nod of understanding. You, on the other hand, are careless in your affection, launching yourself forward to wrap your arms around his neck and kiss him full on the mouth, uncaring for the onlookers unbeknownst to your time together.

When you pull away, there are tears in your eyes, but you force the words between your teeth regardless, “Don’t die on me.”

Bakugou’s eyes are sad, holding such a dark color in his usually bright irises, “A real hero always comes out on top, no matter what.”

Usually it is said with much conviction, but this time, it sounds like he is trying to convince himself more so than anyone else. Your hands palm over his face, committing him to memory one last time before he turns his back to you, headed towards the end of the line, unknowing as to which side he may end up on this time.

As soon as he steps out onto the pavement, he’s greeted with the familiar laughter of an old friend.

“Oi, Kacchan. It’s been too long.”

Your heart leaps into your throat and Kirishima has to hold you back, hidden away in the shadows. You look at him over your shoulder, eyes blown wide as your pupils swallow your irises, “H-He was supposed to be alone.”

The look in Kirishima’s eyes is haunting, a desolate gaze turned on his best friend. He tightens his jaw and breathes heavily through his nostrils, an answer never given as he watches on in horror at the scene in front of him unfolding.

“I thought I told you to get lost,” Deku speaks, voice confusingly innocent despite the feral look in his eyes. A cackle parts his lips and you’ve never seen Bakugou this quiet during a fight, “But, then again, wouldn’t a fight between the All Mighty Deku and a Quirkless Kacchan be entertaining?”

Your whole world turns sideways.

Bakugou’s words from the very beginning replay on loop in your mind as your breathing corrupts your own lungs, shattered and shaking as your body coats itself in sweat.

“I fought him for what felt like hours. Whatever One for All had done to him, corrupted his mind, broken his spirit,” Bakugou shakes his head, a snarl on his lips, “that wasn’t Deku that I was fighting. That was someone else.”

His breath hitches, “I-I’m not sure what the fuck possessed him to do what he did next, but he took-”

Bakugou’s throat bobs and his eyes flit from you to the water, unable to look at you in the face as he gnaws on his lower lip. The words must be too harsh, a pain running much further than skin deep. You know that his soul must be bruised, the very core of him broken beyond recognition.

“Took what, Katsuki?” you ask gently, reaching to tug his chin back so he is looking down at you, “You can tell me.”

Bakugou’s breathing is labored, quick, a mixture of frustration and anguish pressing down on his throat like a pair of hands, encasing his esophagus in a tight grip. He shakes his head, “He, uh- he let me go.”

Bakugou Katsuki is quirkless.

Now more than ever you want to dart out into the street, to throw yourself down like a sacrificial lamb for the slaughter. Whatever it takes to keep Katsuki safe. Tears blur your vision and anger scars your heart, marring up the organ until you cannot feel it beating within your own chest.

Bakugou turns his head, vermilion eyes seeking you out in the darkness of the alleyway. He smiles, for the first time in full, and offers you one final look at his body completely intact before he returns his gaze to his childhood rival, hands turning to fists at his sides as he gets into his fighting position.

“So pathetic, Kacchan.” Deku looks Bakugou in the eyes as he ignites his quirk, green lightning dancing around as a storm begins to brew. 

He holds up his hands, palms open-faced as his skin crackles, the sweet smell of saccharine turning to ash in the air. Colors of orange and yellow cast frightening shadows along the length of the street, a familiar power exploding on the cusp of Deku’s fingers.

“And now you die.”

-

a/n: i don’t think that went how anyone thought it would! it’s a lot different from anything i’ve ever done, and i’m not fully happy with it. but thank you for reading, if you got this far!! 

[drwcn]

chengqing au idea: Before the Wens died at Jinlintai, Wen Qing gave A-Yuan to Jiang Cheng. This action had its consequences.

~

Wen Qing led her clan for exactly a day and a half, from the early dawn they departed from Burial Mount to the dusk of the next day when they arrived at Jinlintai. Even in the beginning, as she took her first step away from Wei Wuxian, from the man who had given up everything to protect them, she knew it was to their deaths. 

Too many had died, too many will die still. She was taught her whole life that when it was impossible to save, first do no harm. Yet, her existence alone had become a sin, a burden onto others. Jin Zixuan was dead, his young wife a widow, his infant son fatherless. 

Wen Qing held A-Yuan on her hip, walking at the front of her clan’s death parade. Wei Wuxian would not awaken for some time yet. The child was too young to be left alone in a place like the Burial Mount. There was a buddhist temple on their way to Lanling, not far west from Yiling. She had plans to leave him there with the zhu’chi. A letter was already drafted and tucked safely in the child’s robes along with the remainder of what little money they had made selling produce. Buddhist monks were known for their charity and detachment from worldly longings, but Wen Qing knew that a little donation went a long way, especially for a child bearing a past like theirs. 

Everything was planned. If their deaths meant Wei Wuxian could finally find peace, then so be it... And yet, fate would have it otherwise. 

At the foot of Mt. Yiling, a familiar figure in violet robes marched towards them. Wen Qing did not think after she had returned him the dark mahogany comb that she would ever see Jiang Wanyin again in this life. 

“What are you doing here?” She asked him, brows furrowed. Had he come to seek revenge on behalf of his widowed sister? But no, he came alone without his men. He must’ve heard what happened by now. Perhaps... 

“Where are you going?” He only asked in response. 

Jiang Cheng glanced at the throng of old men and women behind Wen Qing, and then at Wen Ning with his head bowed in shame at her side. Zidian crackled as his fist tightened around Sandu’s sheath. “You’re turning yourselves in? Wei Wuxian agreed to this?!” 

She shook her head. “No. He doesn’t know. I left him unconscious back at the Burial Mount. Why have you come?” 

“I came to -” Jiang Cheng gritted his teeth, a red flush beginning to overtake his face. “I came to check on him, for my sister. The Jins said he made your brother,” he cast a glare at Wen Ning, “kill Jin Zixun and Jin Zixuan. Is this true?” 

Ah, so he was here on Jiang Yanli’s behest. She truly was a saintly woman; even now, her conviction in her foster brother’s innocence never wavered. 

Wen Qing felt she had no more energy left to lie or fight him. These were her last days, and she ought to live it honestly. “It is. We’re not sure what exactly happened. They seemed to have lost control. Wei Wuxian...he is your brother; whatever happened, it was because of us. Now it’s time for us to go. Lanling asked for the Wens to submit before the law, they didn’t ask for him. If there’s a chance for him at all, Jiang Wanyin, take your brother home.” 

At her words, Jiang Cheng’s frown twisted into an angry scowl, “You think he would come back to Lotus Pier after you die? If he learned that you -” 

“Then what? What other road is there for us to take?! Which clan will accept us?! Yours?! ” Wen Qing did not mean to raise her voice, but she did anyway. Disturbed from his sleep, A-Yuan whimpered unhappily against her shoulder. She tightened her hold on him and smoothed a hand down his back. “Shhh, it’s okay A-Yuan.” 

Jiang Cheng finally allowed himself to look at the boy. His voice was without heat when he spoke again. “What about him? Is he to submit before the law too?” 

Wen Qing stared up at the man who in another less unforgiving life might’ve meant something entirely different to her. Theirs was a hopeless path. Whatever spark of 'maybe’ that might have existed was extinguished the day soldiers of the Wen Clan pillaged Lotus Pier and murdered his parents, and was rendered entirely impossible when she cut open his brother and transferred his golden core to him. Wei Wuxian may think of it as fulfilling his duty, but to do this to Jiang Cheng without his knowledge and consent, even if it was to save his life, meant that Wen Qing had broken the sacred oaths she took as a physician. But what was done could not be undone, so this secret, this transgression, she and A-Ning would just have to take to their graves. 

For all Jiang Wanyin could never do for her, Wen Qing could not deny that she understood him, and knew deep down that he was a good man. For Yunmeng’s sake, he couldn’t help her. His sect, his responsibilities, came first, and she could not fault him for it. After all she was much the same. 

But...

“Jiang Wanyin, at Nevernight, you said if I ever needed anything, I could come to you. I returned your comb, but if the offer still stands, I have but one thing to ask. Not for myself.” Wen Qing turned so Jiang Cheng could see the little face that was pressed into her neck. She stared him straight in the eyes. “Will you take him?” 

Jiang Cheng stared back at her for a long, long time. The silence that hung between them was dense and heavy with all the ‘couldn’t, ‘wouldn’t’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ that eroded away their youthful dreams and made their life what it was. Finally, when Wen Qing had all but given up, Jiang Cheng raised a hand and placed it on A-Yuan’s back. 

“What’s the boy’s name?” 

Wen Qing let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Today, it’s Wen Yuan. Tomorrow, it can be whatever you want it to be. Keep him safe. It’s all I ask.” 

The only children Jiang Cheng ever held before this moment was his nephew Jin Ling, and only for less than a minute before Jin Zixuan ushered him aside to take his place. Nevertheless, his grip as Wen Qing passed A-Yuan to him was gentle and firm.  

Her worst worry alleviated, Wen Qing lowered her eyes. There was no good in goodbyes, so she merely said what was necessary. “Thank you.” 

He said nothing. 

Taking A-Ning’s hand, Wen Qing walked away. 

“Wen Qing!” Jiang Cheng called out her name, the first, last, and only time. Was he really going to just stand there at the foot of Mt Yiling and watch her walk towards her death? Was this really the kind of man he was? The heroes in the stories would not have chosen as he had chosen. Wei Wuxian would not have chosen as he had chosen. 

But Jiang Cheng was not Wei Wuxian. He was not a hero. He was just a man. 

“I can’t help you. I can’t.” 

He did not apologize, but Wen Qing’s smile across the dusty winding road was forgiving. 

“I know. I know.” 

~

Jiang Cheng stood rooted to the earth beneath him as Wen Qing's figure disappeared slowly into the mountain fog.

Jiang Cheng held A-Yuan tight.

And if Jiang Cheng cried, well...no one has to know.

~

All of Yunmeng knows Sect Master Jiang returned one day with a boy from nowhere. When the bravest Jiang disciple finally mustered up the courage to ask him who the child was, all they got in answer was a curt ‘xiao’shaoye’ followed by an angier ‘piss off.’  

The next day, it was said that Sect Leader Jiang travelled to Jinlintai to witness Wen remnant’s execution but was late by half n hour. It was said he stood by the ashes of the Wens until the sun was gone and the sky was dark. 

That night, Sect Leader Jiang pleaded his case with Sect Leader Jin to remove his sister from Lanling on grounds of her ill health so that he may care for her in their ancestral home in Yunmeng. As well, since Jin Ling was still an infant, he stipulated that the boy ought not be separated from his mother. At first, neither Jin Guangshan nor Madam Jin was in agreement, especially since Wei Wuxian was sighted fleeing from Jin Zixuan’s funeral hall. But Jiang Cheng could not be dissuaded, stating that his sister’s health could not withstand the forty-nine days of shouling that was Lanling’s custom, and that for his love of his wife, Jin Zixuan would not have wished for Yanli to suffer. She would mourn in private, as was the ways of Yunmeng. Eventually, Jin Guangshan acquiesced, not wishing to fracture ties with an ally over trivial matters of ceremony. A month was the time he gave Jiang Cheng, which the younger man accepted with graciousness that was more show than sincerity. 

If Jiang Yanli seemed too eager to leave, people chalked it up to grief. What Jiang Cheng said to his sister in private, that was not for anyone else to know. And yet, the consequence was this: when Wei Wuxian died at Nevernight not a week later, Jiang Yanli was safe at Lotus Pier with her son and the boy the servants referred to as their ‘young master’. 

It was said that Wei Wuxian, driven to madness by demonic power, had lost control and gravely injured his foster brother Jiang Wanyin. Assuming he’d done the unimaginable, Wei Wuxian had given in to death over the mountainous cliff, witnessed in its entirety by Hanguang-jun himself. Some claimed Lan Wangji had attempted to save the monstrous Yiling Laozu but was too late. This claim was largely deemed unsubstantiated.

Sect Leader Jiang lived, as unlikely as it had seemed at the time. Most attributed his survival to the quick combined efforts of Sect Leader Lan and Sect Leader Nie, who were the firsts to arrive at his side, but the healers who tended to him would tell you that Jiang Wanyin’s escape from death had at least been partially due to the strength of his golden core, a specimen most rare in its purity and tenacity. 

As for the boy, he was given the name Yuán 圆 (togetherness, reunite) and the courtesy name Wu’Guo 无过 (without fault), as was insisted upon by both Jiang Cheng and Yanli. And if others assumed Jiang Yuan - Jiang Wuguo - was Jiang Wanyin’s illegitimate son, the Jiang family did nothing to dispel such notions. Certainly, the boy referred to Jiang Cheng as “a-die” and to Jiang Yanli as “gu’gu”, so really what else was the cultivator realm to think? The greatest speculations were pertaining to the identity of the boy’s mother, but no rumour or gossip ever held any real weight. The only thing anyone knew for sure was from the lips of a handmaid charged with tidying Sect Master Jiang’s personal quarters. She claimed that Jiang Wuguo’s mother must have died and that Jiang Wanyin must’ve been very in love, for he still kept a mahogany comb wrapped in lilac silk at his bedside table. The maid’s claims were widely accepted in Yunmeng’s circles when all candidates put forth by matchmakers were rejected by Jiang Cheng. As the years went on and Jiang Cheng remained a bachelor, it went without question who his heir would one day be. 

Jiang Wuguo grew and was loved. Of those that cherished him, perhaps the most surprising was Gusu’s Hanguang-jun, who visited him often, so much so that Jiang Yanli suggested perhaps it would not be against courtesy for Lan Wangji to accept Jiang Wuguo as his godson. Everyone expected Jiang Cheng the hothead to be offended, but for once, he defied their expectations. 

Then, some thirteen years after Wen Qing laid A-Yuan in Jiang Cheng’s arms, Jin Ling came to Lotus Pier with the news that Mo Xuanyu was evicted from Lanling for reasons not entirely clear. 

A few months later, at Dafan Mountain where once another group of youths had fought the stone fairy, Jiang Wuguo turned to Jiang Cheng and asked, “A-die, yi’fu who is that man in the mask?” 

=====

[ zhu’chi 住持 ] - the abbot/head monk of a buddhist temple. 

[ xiao’shaoye 小少爷 ] - young master  

[ shou’ling 守灵 ] - to keep vigil at the funeral altar. 

[ yuán 圆 ] - circular, or togetherness. It is intonation-ally different but similar enough to his original name yuàn 苑 or the name Lan Zhan would’ve given him yuàn 原.

[ wu’guo 无过 ] - without fault, but also an echo of WWX’s courtsey name wu’xian 无羡 (without envy). 

[ a-die 阿爹 ] - dad 

[ gu’gu 姑姑 ] - auntie, sister of father. 

[yi'fu 义父 ] - godfather

[angrylizardjacket]

self-same mettle

Summary: "I love my sister more than anything in this life; I will choose her happiness over mine every time."

A/N: BIG WARNING; August Reid, who you may remember from the main story, child groom tw, though nothing comes of it he's still creepy and predatory. Okay so I just wanted to write a little something from Oscar's perspective in the High School AU. Let me know what you think!!

{AYDTD}

----

Oscar's always been a romantic at heart, always wanted to be the star of his own Mills and Boone novel ever since he was sixteen and found his mother's stash while hunting for Christmas presents. It had been painfully straight, right when he'd been discovering the delightful world of loving men, but he was invested enough in the romance that he didn't care.

In 2017, at the tender age of 19, he discovers the author Chuck Tingle, and despite the fact that he's technically now a literature student, this ridiculous, gay erotica makes his heart happy in ways he can't quite articulate.

The point is, he knows August Reid, because he's his dad's drinking buddy and fellow professor, but Oscar doesn't think of him much until he takes the man's class. Ash, who's fifteen and who spends weekends at the local art gallery down the road, has always been far more artistically minded, Oscar's always been more drawn to words, but he takes August's Art History class on a whim.

There's a certain draw to the whole teacher/student fantasy, and August looks kind of like an older Richard Madden, still angular and defined, but greying at the temples, the prelude to an extraordinary silver fox. So Oscar let's himself daydream, and take the follow up class, and look forward to the weekends where his dad's friends would come over to smoke cigars and play cards. August Reid was nothing if not polite, always smiling and kind and happy to see Oscar, answer his questions. Oscar knew he was married, thinks he probably has a kid, and so he was happy to keep his daydreams to himself. He thinks there's something romantic about quietly unrequited love.

However, it takes a year, once Ash has matured more, not a lot, but enough to catch August's interest, for the rose-coloured glasses to be ripped off. August takes an interest in her; when he and the rest of their father's colleagues came over, he would make a point to stop and check in with Ash, encourage her interest in Art, both physical and theoretical, and even suggest research for her, or upcoming exhibits he thought she might like. It's harmless, at first.

Talk of art turns to compliments, her taste in things, her outfits, how she wears her hair, the colour of her eyes. Ash seems to start looking forward to his visits, and something about it doesn't sit right with Oscar.

"He's just, Oz he's so cool," she was smiling, blushing a little; she had a crush, it was plain as the nose on her face, "and he said he could get us tickets to the Renaissance exhibit in Glasgow next month, how awesome is that?"

August starts calling her Miss Ashley, a joke that started since she still had a habit of calling him Mr Reid - because she's a fucking highschooler, it's how she's been taught to address teachers - Ash delights in it, straightens her posture a little when he says it. August makes a habit of petting her head fondly when she does. It makes Oscar's stomach turn just a little. August shouldn't be looking at his little sister like that, she's just a child.

Their father seems blind to it, tells Oscar 'don't be ridiculous, he's just being kind' and when he goes to mum, she just brushes him off, insisting that August is lovely, that he's so in love with his wife, and that Ash is just excited to have someone who understood her.

"A little schoolgirl crush is harmless, Oscar, dear; weren't you singing his praises not too long ago?" It's meant with a wink and a nudge, like perhaps Oscar's jealous, but his mother can be so dense; it's not the same at all. He's an adult, and Ash is a child, and yet he's not the one August is giving leering looks to when he thinks no-one's looking.

It's not that their parents don't love them, it's just that they don't particularly care. They're trapped in a loveless marriage, too self absorbed to care about those that can take care of themselves.

So Oscar takes it upon himself.

Oscar's never understood art like he's understood literature, never been able to make it make sense in the same way, but that doesn't matter. The point is, on Sundays, when his father's colleagues come over for tea and cigars and cards, Oscar's started taking Ash to art galleries across the country.

"But August is-"

"It's the impressionists, Ash," Oscar takes her hand with a grin, practically begging her, "come on they have the Water Lilies," he enthuses, and Ash's expression softens.

"I do love the Water Lilies."

Because he can't tell her what he's really doing, because she's sixteen and thinks she knows everything and the idea of telling her that August has any sort of feelings towards her, even if he explains why that's creepy and wrong, is probably the worst thing he can do to discourage her. So he distracts her, and is careful to never mention him if he can help it, or steer the conversation away if she brings him up.

She's his best friend. She's always been his best friend, but in an abstract, sibling sort of way, but it doesn't take long for the two of them to become legitimate best friends. He listens to all the drama of her highschool career, and her ideas for sculptures, and anything else she wants to talk about, and in turn he tells her about whatever he's reading that week, whatever poetry ideas he's been riffing with lately, and complains about pretty straight boys in his lectures.

Oscar may be a poet, but neither he nor Ash could hold a tune to save their lives, and so of course they sing along to Ash's Spotify playlists at the top of their lungs whenever they're driving. There's three weeks where she plays the Hamilton cast recording on repeat, and Oscar finds himself muttering it under his breath in class.

He works nights, and Saturdays, to afford all these day trips, and his family think he's so diligent, studying and working so hard, and on his day off he spends it with Ash. He keeps local for a few weeks, a few months actually, and surprises her with a trip to the West End for Christmas.

She talks about August less and less as time goes on. Though she does ask about it, in a roundabout way.

"Why're you spending so much time with me?"

They're having lunch in the park across from a gallery somewhere in Ireland. Oscar packed jam sandwiches.

"I don't understand this art shit like you do, but it's good to find inspiration from all mediums, you know?" Oscar smiles, takes a big bite of his sandwich, and watches Ash wrinkle her nose.

"You sound so pretentious," she snorted, shaking her head, "but whatever, I'm not gonna complain, you're the one paying."

"And I like spending time with you, biscuit." His voice turned overly sappy, as did his grin, "I love you." Oscar reached out and ruffled her hair, and Ash squawked, batting his hand away.

"I love you too, ya muppet, but if you wanna hang out we can just do something lowkey, or like, close to home."

She takes him at his word, which is good because he's being honest, but she seems content with their routine. Sometimes they go bowling, or to the library, sometimes they go op shopping, or to the movies, but they never miss a week.

She's his cheerleader at poetry readings, his tour guide at art galleries, and his favourite person at all times. His father's a literature professor who stopped truly engaging with her about her love of art once he stopped understanding her, and his mother was a Type A accountant who was just disappointed she wasn't interested in something employable. So Oscar was her cheerleader at art competitors, her enthusiastic student at art galleries, and ends up being her best friend and quietly, her favourite family member.

August asks about her, according to their father, but Ash's brief infatuation with him seems to have died down.

"Do you have a problem with me, Oscar?" August asks almost a month after Oscar's started spending Sundays with Ash, and maybe their father's told August what's happening, maybe he's noticed Oscar glaring at him whenever he saw the professor, but either way, he's so painfully kind when he asks that it's a dead giveaway; August knows something's wrong.

"Stay the fuck away from my sister," Oscar, kind-faced, bright eyed Oscar, snarls. He's 6'3" and never more thankful for his height as he towers over August.

"I'm simply showing an interest in her, she's an art enthusiast, I'm an art professor, don't worry-"

"I don't give a shit; look like the innocent flower but be the fucking serpent under it, right?"

"I don't understand what you mean? Does your father know you feel this way? Does Ash?" And it doesn't sound like a threat, it sounds like a very genuine question, but Oscar wants nothing more than to punch him in his stupid, angular nose.

"Does your wife know you spend weekends ogling underage girls?" Oscar fires back, and August's expression sours considerably, his mouth closed in a tight, humourless line. "Yeah, dad knows, not that he gives a shit," Oscar sneered, "but if you go near my sixteen year old sister again, you smarmy creepy -" his voice dropped very low, expression dark, his hands balling into fists by his side.

"If your father's not bothered by it I don't see why you should be, I haven't done anything wrong, but you're throwing around some serious implications here," August gives a blithe smile, "Ash is an incredible young woman I'm simply encouraging her passion."

"August Reid, I need you to know that I'm not threatening you," Oscar said calmly, "I'm promising you; I'll fucking kill you."

And maybe he doesn't believe Oscar would legitimately harm him, but he sees it's not a fight he's going to win. August leaves Ash well enough alone after that.

At the start of their Summer break, before Ash is due to start her second last year of high school, their father gets a job in England, their mother gets an excuse to leave her loveless marriage, and Ash and Oscar get a choice. Oscar knows without even having to ask that Ash will stick with him. He also knows that in two years, if she's still here, she'll end up studying under August and his father's other creepily complicit friends. Oscar's playing the long game to keep his sister safe when he announces he'll be going to England with their dad.

He lies, says he doesn't mind transferring courses and maybe retaking some classes at this new university, makes sure he's nothing but positive when he talks about the move, and Ash, add expected, joins him. It hurts to leave the life he's building himself, but he knows it's what's best for Ash.

Adjusting to a new life is difficult, and some weeks they don't end up spending Sunday together. Oscar let's himself relax, takes time for himself, and starts to build new relationships, new connections in this new situation he's found himself in.

Here, he didn't have to worry about Ash so much. She was still his best friend, but now she could just be a teenager without a creepy professor leering at her and grooming her. Though quietly, Oscar was just glad she still wanted to spend time with him; she still goes to his poetry readings, still wants to go on day trips with him, and she's starting to get to know his new friends little by little.

Meeting Freddie is like getting hit by a freight train; they're both taking a Creative Industries subject as an elective, and they get partnered together. Freddie is intense and warm in equal measure, a lover of cats judging by the pins on his bag, he's always drawing or doodling something on his notebook, and he writes songs. Oscar adores him from the moment he meets him. He's always busy, always on the move or at band practice, but he seems to like Oscar well enough, so the two of them start having lunch together a few times a week.

Freddie thinks Oscar's selfless when he learns about everything that had happened back in Scotland.

"Picking up and moving your whole life just to make sure she's safe," Freddie shakes his head, "you're a Saint, you know that?"

"She's my sister, I couldn't not do it," Oscar laughs a little self consciously, but Freddie just seemed endeared.

They're messaging almost every day. Freddie sends draft song lyrics and selfies with his cats and Oscar will send bits of poems and shitty angled selfies or photos taken by Ash. They both live busy lives, but they keep up with each other without even trying.

[I've got a cat named Oscar, you know?]

[I didn't actually. You really like me well enough to name a cat after me 😂😜]

[har har I've known the cat longer. sorry to disappoint. 😘]

He's so caught up in his new life and his new friends, and Ash seems so happy with her new school, especially their art program, that it takes Oscar a while to realise how painfully lonely Ash was. She's always been introverted, always focused more on her projects than on the people around her, but when Oscar realises that person she talks most about is her physics tutor, it hits him that she doesn't actually have any friends her own age here. She likes his friends well enough, one even got her a fake ID if she might ever need it, but she had none of her own.

"How was school?" They've been here for about three months, and finally things have maybe started to look up.

"Fine; we're starting sculpture making in art," Ash said offhandedly, rolling her eyes; she already spent time outside of school making sculptures, the idea of being graded on it now seemed trivial, "this one dumbass spent like twenty minutes negotiating with a teacher about whether he can also make a second sculpture for fun." Ash's voice was flat, unimpressed.

"Sounds like someone you'd get along with-"

"He wants to make a dick."

Dick Sculpture Guy turns to Fucking Roger, and Oscar starts to hear more about him, because Roger's always seemingly causing a scene and Ash is endlessly annoyed with him, though she once let it slip that she thinks he's rather hot, and Oscar, though he's never brought it up, will never forget it.

Until he gets a call on Friday afternoon, from Ash, in tears, asking him to come to the school.

She's surrounded by the pieces of her broken major work when he arrives, and there's a tall, dark haired guy checking up on her. This is Brian, the tutor he's heard so much about. He's thankful, but comforting Ash is his first priority.

Brian leaves, and together the siblings piece together her work. The school gets locked at five, and they're there until the very last minutes. Once the bust is sitting up on one of the desks at the edge of the room, Ash sniffles only a little bit.

"I'll paint the cracks gold."

"Kintsugi," Oscar adds, nodding sagely and Ash actually beams at him, "see, I listen to you, biscuit."

He suggests they go to Freddie's gig to take her mind off of it, though it's also because she's been asking to meet Freddie for a while now, but he's always been busy. However, things don't go as planned when not only is Ash's tutor part of the band, but Fucking Roger is too. Fucking Roger who's sculpture exploding made Ash cry.

Ash is adamant she's going to kill him. Oscar doesn't stop her. She disappears around the end of the bar after Roger, while the rest of the band - Freddie, Brian, and some kid called John - hang back.

Ash decidedly doesn't kill Roger, and actually ends up enjoying her night, which Oscar's glad for. That being said, he's a little bit distracted; he's quickly discovering that Brian might be the loveliest person he'd ever met. Brian's an astrophysics student, a guitarist, a tutor, and he took the time to check up on Ash; Oscar hasn't been seriously romantically interested in anyone since high school, and he's only met Brian today, but damn if there wasn't definitely a crush forming.

They play good music, and Ash seems to have a good time, and he tells himself that that's all that matters.

Days go by, weeks go by, the siblings keep going to Queen's gig's, and Fucking Roger turns to just Roger. Oscar messages Brian and Freddie that Ash might have a crush and Freddie sends back a wheezed voice message saying that Roger probably does too, but that he's stubborn as hell and would never be the first to admit it. Something warms in Oscar's heart at that. Slowly but surely, between Roger and John, Ash is finally making friends her own age.

Ash deserves a normal-ish crush on a normal-ish boy, and Oscar will do anything to encourage that crush. So they go to gigs, and Oscar wiggles his eyebrows at her when Roger's got an arm around her between sets, and Ash turns as red as her hair. But Brian's got a hand on his thigh where they're sitting near the door, and it feels weirdly normal, and kind of the best.

To see Ash smiling and happy, everything was worth it. It's all worked out, though he knows he'll never stop worrying about her, not that he'd want to.

[pocket-luv101]

Summary: Mahiru, a phoenix, hides in Kuro’s forest. (KuroMahi, Fantasy AU)

The grass was burnt beneath Mahiru who was making a nest for himself. He flapped his wings and loosened the leaves from the branches above him. Mahiru collected them the best he could and sat down. He had made the forest his new home but he wasn’t certain how long he could stay. Since he was a phoenix, many people hunted him. His fiery feathers were essential to create powerful potions.

He placed his hand on a tree trunk and burned a small mirror into the wood with a spell. He used its reflection to brush his wings and straighten his feathers. His sharp senses told him of a presence behind him before he saw the bushes shake in the mirror. Mahiru summoned a ball of fire in his hand and he turned to face the person approaching him.

He let out a breath of relief when he saw that it was only a black cat. He didn’t sense anyone else so he let his flame dwindled in his hand. Mahiru approached the small animal and reached out his hand to it. “I’m sorry for almost attacking you. I’m a little jumpy. How about I treat you to dinner as an apology? I should have dried fish in my bag.”

Mahiru took out a fish to feed the cat but he noticed how hesitant it was to approach him. He understood why it was cautious all too well so he placed the fish on the ground. He sat against the tree and gave the creature some space. The cat picked up the fish in its mouth and climbed on his lap. When he patted the cat, he noticed that it had a small scar over its right eye.

“Did someone hurt you? I’m sorry you had to go through that. I can understand why you’re so cautious because we are similar.” Mahiru spoke softly to the cat so he wouldn’t scare it away. He couldn’t remember the last time he had someone to talk to. “Maybe we can be friends. My name is Mahiru. What is your name?”

Predictably, the cat only purred in response. He smiled but his expression was rather solemn and lonely. Mahiru tilted his head back to look up at the night sky. The cat yawned on his lap. “I should give you name. How about Sleepy Ash? There is a full moon out tonight. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“I guess the moon is pretty but it’s nothing special since I see it every night.” Mahiru stiffened when he realized that it wasn’t the cat who replied. He stood sharply and he scanned the trees for the voice. He heard the voice behind the tree so he burned it to ashes. A tall mirror stood where the tree once did but Mahiru had to be cautious of it.

He circled the mirror and saw that there was no one. He couldn’t sense a presence either. Yet, Mahiru couldn’t deny that he heard someone speak. He noticed Ash scratching on the glass and he walked around the mirror. Mahiru gasped when he found a man in the mirror. The man wasn’t a reflection though. Cautiously, Mahiru touched the mirror but he could only feel the glass beneath his fingers. It didn’t seem like the mirror was a portal.

“Who are you?” Mahiru had to ask.

“I’m Kuro, the guardian of this forest. I don’t mind if you’re making a home here but please don’t burn down any more trees.” Guilt passed Mahiru’s face and he apologized. Kuro shrugged and said, “It’s partly my fault for surprising you. You’re a phoenix but you act more like a stray cat with how skittish you are.”

Mahiru folded his wing around himself and brushed his hands over the feather. It was impossible to deny that he was a phoenix with his wings. He looked back to Kuro but he couldn’t see any judgement in his red eyes. He was surprised he didn’t immediately force him to leave considering how dangerous phoenixes were. As a forest guardian, he had the power to do so. “You’re not going to tell me to leave?”

“You already made a nest here and it’ll be troublesome to regrow all that grass.” Kuro said. Mahiru still appeared wary and he wondered what he had been through. He explained, “It doesn’t seem like you’re dangerous. My brother says everyone deserves a home and I agree with him. This forest is large enough for a phoenix. As long as you promise to not burn any more of my trees, you can stay.”

“Thank you.” Mahiru smiled for the first time since they met. It was as brilliant as the sun. Kuro’s hospitality and kindness touched Mahiru. He reassured Kuro, “I will be careful with my fire. Honestly, I don’t like fighting and I tend to fly away whenever I can. But, if a hunter comes, I’ll help defend your forest so no damage will ever come to it. This is my home now, after all.”

Mahiru held out his hand to shake Kuro’s but then he realized that there was a mirror between them. He chuckled and placed his hand on the glass. “Let’s be friends, Kuro.”

“Kuro, look at these flowers I picked. Aren’t these daisies beautiful? Daisies don’t usually bloom at this time of year but I found a cluster of them on the edge of the forest.” Mahiru stopped in front of Kuro’s mirror and held out the flowers to him. “You’re the forest’s guardian so you probably knew about these flowers already. It’s a shame we can’t see them together though.”

Most forest guardians were spirits who don’t have a physical body. Spirits could only communicate through enchanted objects like the mirror. Despite that, they became friends over time. Mahiru had lived in the forest for a week now and his days were peaceful. He had to admit that it was easier to trust Kuro than others. As a forest guardian, he didn’t have a reason to betray him to hunters.

The forest was dense and not many people venture inside. Mahiru felt like he found a safe haven. He sat down and made a small fire so he could cook dinner. Ash pawed at the fish he recently caught and Mahiru had to lightly nudge it aside. “Be patient, Ash. I need to season and cook this properly. Thinking simply, it’ll taste better if I take my time. But you can have a taste test.”

Mahiru ripped off a piece of fish and fed it to the cat. It nestled against his side and Mahiru petted it fondly before he returned to cooking. He told Kuro about his day and their pleasant conversation filled the night. He enjoyed talking with someone over dinner after spending years running. The only thing he wished he could do was let Kuro taste his food but he was a forest spirit.

Once the fish was cooked, he slipped it onto a large leaf. He placed it in front of Ash before he made a plate for himself. He bit into the fish and hummed happily. “I found some spices near the daisies and used them for the first time. I like it. It’s less spicy than the seasoning in the region I’m from. I used to live in the mountains to the east.”

“I heard the air in the mountain is very fresh.” Kuro sat against the mirror and he leaned his head against the wooden frame. Mahiru nodded and nostalgia softened his smile.

“It was a great place to fly too. There’s a lot of open air and I could stretch my wings for miles.” Mahiru spread his wings and laid down on his back. He stared up at the starry sky and stretched his hands towards them. They seemed so far away. He had to admit that he missed flying but it was too risky to be seen.

He curled into a ball and used his wing as a warm blanket. Ash made its way under his wing and went to sleep. He felt his eyes become heavy due to the late hours. He felt safe in the forest. Mahiru turned onto his side and smiled at Kuro, “Thank you for letting me stay in your forest. Sleep tight, Kuro.”

“Goodnight.” He whispered back to him. He could hear Mahiru’s breathing slow as he drift to sleep. Kuro waited until he was certain that Mahiru was asleep before he stepped out of the mirror. He rubbed his stiff neck and groaned. Guilt stabbed his heart when he saw Mahiru sleeping on the ground. He never told him that he wasn’t a mere spirit but a guardian dragon.

Mahiru was the one who assumed he was a spirit but Kuro didn’t correct him. It still felt like he was lying to him. When Mahiru first entered his forest, Kuro could see that he was scared and he didn’t want to frighten him further. Now he didn’t know how he would tell Mahiru the truth after listening to his story. He decided to think it over as he took a walk. Every night, he would walk through the forest and see if anyone needed his help. It was his duty to help maintain the forest and protect its residents.

He found that he had a lot less work lately. Mahiru would stop conflicts within the forest and tended to injured animals during the day. For someone who controlled fire, he was very gentle. Kuro looked up at the sky and his thoughts returned to Mahiru. He wondered if he missed the sky. While he said he was happy to have a safe home, he was a phoenix.

Kuro sighed and walked back to the mirror. When he walked past the nest Mahiru made, he took off his jacket. He folded it and then slipped it beneath his head so he would have a pillow. Kuro understood and sympathized with Mahiru’s loneliness so he wanted to help him. He was careful not to wake him up as he returned to his home in the trees.

“You seem tired, Kuro. Did you get enough sleep last night?” Mahiru asked when he saw him yawn for the second time that morning. He was tending to an injured bird he found and talking with Kuro.

“I’m always tired.” His response made Mahiru laugh softly. In the mirror’s reflection, it appeared like they were sitting next to each other. He wished that was true and they could spend time together like normal friends.

Mahiru held a split against the bird’s broken wing while Kuro helped bind it. He used his powers to wrap its wing with a leaf. The bird chirped happily as Mahiru gently rubbed its heard with his finger. On the other hand, Ash was purring for attention. It forced its head into his hand and snuggled against his palm. Kuro chuckled and thought of how much the animals liked Mahiru.

“Ash, let me take care of this bird. I will play with you afterwards.” He gave the cat a friendly pat on its head. Mahiru lifted the bird slightly and placed it on a branch. “You need to rest while your wing heals. I know it will be difficult but this is for the best. It’ll only be temporary until you’re better.”

“Do you miss flying?” The expression Mahiru made answered his question. Kuro stepped to the edge of the mirror and placed his hand on the glass. “I think I know a way you can fly without people finding that you’re a phoenix. But there’s something else I need to tell you first. I don’t know how you will feel about it though. Mahiru, I...”

“You can tell me, Kuro. We’re friends.” Mahiru placed his hand over Kuro’s on the mirror. He smiled reassuringly at him and it made his heart flutter. At the same time, Kuro still felt hesitant because he didn’t want Mahiru to feel betrayed. He thought he deserved the truth though. He started to tell him but he was interrupted by an arrow striking the ground near his foot.

Mahiru’s instincts began to scream and he jumped to his feet. He turned around and saw hunters surround him. He was so distracted with Kuro that he hadn’t noticed them sooner. Usually, he would fly away but he didn’t want to abandon Kuro. He couldn’t fight them with his fire though. His mind started to race for a solution as he slowly backed away from them.

“My feathers!” Mahiru exclaimed to stop the hunters. After facing so many, he knew it would be difficult to negotiate with them. “I know my feathers are valuable. If you want them, you can take the ones that have already fallen out. There’s more than enough in my nest over there. You must leave this forest peacefully though. No one needs to be hurt. Please.”

The man leading the hunters didn’t lower his weapon. Even if he did agree to his peaceful terms, it would only be a temporary solution. More hunters would come now that they knew he made a nest in the forest. He didn’t want to fly away but leaving seemed to be the best way to keep the forest safe. He bit his lip and resigned himself to leaving.

Low hissing caught his attention and he looked down at his feet. Ash was growling at the hunters and trying defend him. The cat couldn’t do much when a hunter kicked it away and grabbed Mahiru’s wing. His anger flared to life when he saw Ash hurt and the hunter holding him was burned. Mahiru raised his hand and melted the sword the hunter was holding.

“I don’t want to fight but I will defend my home and my friends. Leave and never return to this forest!” While some of them ran, a few remained behind to fight. Mahiru stepped in front of the mirror to protect Kuro. His back was pressed against the cold glass but he knew that he couldn’t do much without his fire. A hunter aimed an arrow at him and Mahiru gathered flames in his palm.

The glass suddenly became warm behind him and Mahiru was pushed aside. He was too surprised to react or process what happened. Kuro jumped out of the mirror and controlled the trees to block the arrows. He also restrained the hunters with thick roots. Shadows circled Kuro as he spoke in a firm voice. “This forest is under my protection. Trespass again and you will face my wrath.”

The hunters ran away when they felt Kuro’s power. He was glad that the fight ended quickly and they didn’t need to fight. Kuro turned around and held out his hand to help Mahiru. The shock and confusion in his brown eyes stopped him. He lowered his hand and said: “I’m sorry, Mahiru. This wasn’t how I wanted to tell you.”

“You’re not a guardian spirit?” Mahiru’s voice shook. His wings unfolded slightly, as if he was about to fly away. Kuro couldn’t blame him if he did since he broke his trust.

“I’m a guardian dragon.” He explained. “I thought you would freak out if you knew the truth right away. Dragons are seen as dangerous creatures. But I was going to tell you eventually, I swear.”

Mahiru remembered the memories they made together. If Kuro truly intended to betray him and take his feathers, he would’ve done so sooner. He stepped closer and hesitantly placed his hand on Kuro’s cheek. His fingers stopped shaking when he felt how warm his skin was. Neither of them moved or spoke for a moment.

Finally, Mahiru spoke: “You said you knew a way I could fly without people discovering I’m a phoenix. Were you going to tell me that you are a dragon?”

Kuro slowly nodded and gathered shadows around him. The dark mist kept Mahiru from seeing his transformation but he could feel scales appear beneath his hand. After the shadows dispersed, he found a majestic dragon before him. His scales were as dark as the night sky. Mahiru looked into his crimson eyes and any fears he had disappeared.

“If you sit on my back, people won’t see you flying.” Then, Kuro asked. “Do you want to fly with me?”

“I would love to.”

[peerless-soshi]

Title: Hearts in reflection Fandom: Boku No Hero Academia Chapter: Prologue Relationship: Momo Yaoyorozu/Shouto Todoroki  Setting: Snow Queen AU Genre: Romance/fairy tale retelling  Word count: 824 Links: AO3, FFN Summary:  “…And so the castle turned into a mirror; if a good heart looked at the lustrous surface of frozen walls, then they would see the Snow Queen and nobody else, forever and ever…”

Being raised among books, Momo remembers these words by heart. Every year, along with the arrival of first frosts, the girl was forbidden to look in the mirror for fear of the Snow Queen. But her childhood days have finally come to an end. Momo goes to celebrate the Winter Solstice, but instead of the queen in the white sleighs, she meets a boy with ice powers who turns the town into ashes. The line between tales and reality becomes less clear as Momo delves deeper into the books and notices inaccuracies in popular interpretations.

Does the Snow Queen kidnap children? And does the boy really have a shard of mirror in his heart? To find answers, Momo is walking on very thin ice.

The first page

"suddenly the mirror shook so terribly with grinning, that it flew out of their hands and fell to the earth, where it was dashed in a hundred million and more pieces"

This fairytale started with ice.

It was everywhere; under his nails, around his breath, in her hair, inside her mouth, on a soft like fluff carpet that used to be scorching black but now became white. The frost left wavy fingerprints on the windows facing the garden. It had been covered by flowers once; they were all dead by now.

He was kneeling on the carpet, the not-soft carpet bristling with the sharp crumbs of ice and broken mirror, watching his hand. Red… He cut himself when he fell; the scarlet drops were running down his fingers and soaking into the fluff, marked it with stains as beautiful as spring roses.

But it was winter. And it was beautiful. This red, touching the ground, made him understand how white her ice was… His ice was turquoise, like the cave carved in the glacier where they had hid in the past.

And now the room was white - like snow, like her dress, like winter, like her skin, like hellebores she loved so much. A foolish thought – he wanted to lay down flowers on her knees even though he couldn’t. Light coming through the window was stopped by the icy glass, and the wind was singing between the empty garden alleys.

The flowers will not bloom.

The mere sight of her face, as absent as if reflected in the mirror, stuck in his heart. Would hellebores make her smile? He knew the answer and still wanted to ask: why did flowers stop whitening? Why was the carpet covered with black, then white? Why…

“Why?”

She didn’t say a word. Instead, she looked off in the distance - she always did it, didn’t she, always so close to him, always within reach, got through life with her eyes closed on him. Why– he slammed his fist against the icy wall and left a poppy bud of blood.

“Why did you do that?”

She was sitting across from him, leaning against the white ice as if it was a bed, and she refused him last words. Two tears glistening in the cool light crystallized on her cheek.

At the second time, he touched the ice gently. His trembling fingers run along the smooth surface, feeling biting kisses of frost, and his skin adhered this cold, hugged it, missed it. Only coldness… He didn’t feel crying warmth on his face - it was stony and serious, made of ice. But his hands trembled, stubborn. He trembled like a child.

Calm down. It’s not like you. Think about it. You have been left on your own many times. Now you can handle it, too.

His whisper was quieter than the wind outside, “What should I do? Tell me, one more time.”

She always knew what to say. The question was answered by the blueing lips. She was right; this ice was clear, too clean, too much like a glass coffin… And what she loved about winter was the sun taking a look in the frozen lake; the glow of aurora that crossed the polar sky like a sleigh with bells! Only these long and dense winter nights teach you the beauty of dawn on the snow-covered hills, she told him in silence. Do you remember cocoa with marshmallows, fire cracking on the fireplace – he did – me and you, our sledges and reindeers, us immersing in sunlight and snow, like angels…? Do you remember?

If she didn’t love light…

“I remember,” he said, “I remember everything. And I will do what I need to do."          

Flowers waiting for spring to bloom. Her needing fire to smile. Ice demanding a flame to melt away.

Spring’s far away.      

A new thought broke his heart – the Winter Solstice was coming. The snow would move to the four winds and bury the green, envelop shorter days like a shroud. The little white hellebores would bloom soon on the dead earth. How tragic, but he was lucky. It all happened tonight, and he was lucky on this December night.

Before leaving, he looked at her calm face for the last time, trying to remember every small detail. He saw everything as though a velvet curtain of white; everything was white. She still didn’t look at him, no; until the very end, she avoided his eyes, lost in her own world, together with the frost bringing out the beauty of her eyelashes.

This made him want to scream. Do you see what you did? Do you know, you know that you turned your back on me? First he, now she… He could understand him, but you… The Snow Queen took everything from him.

And it was all his fault.

But soon it should change. The red fire would melt the ice of the Snow Queen.

When he crossed the threshold of his house, he felt her stroking his hair, her touch like a breeze. But it was the wind that pushed him out the door.

[the-orion-protocol]

prologue / chapter 1 + 2

Prologue

People are going to die on Mars.

But then, they're supposed to.

It's almost arguable that that's the entire point of sending people to colonize the Red Planet---to make a new place for humans to live their lives to their ultimate conclusion; to create a foundation for generations to follow. The first pioneers, the people who will beget life on another planet; all of them are supposed to die on Mars.

By their bones buried or their ashes scattered, human lives, ended and spent, will be a measurement of the success of the colony's efforts. Earth is a planet rich in ghosts, where the dead outnumber the living tenfold. But the dead are not a native commodity on Mars, and the Red Planet has no ghosts of its own---until the day it does.

As of November 19th, 2061, there are just shy of ten billion people alive on Earth. There are 400 people alive on Mars.

There are meant to be 401.

1.

"Astronauts don't murder people."

By the tone of Lady Penelope's answering sigh, Scott gets the idea that she's not really interested in treading over this particular patch of philosophical ground. He sees Penelope so often in hologram that it's easy to forget just how arrestingly pretty she is in person. She's no less so than usual today, today being a chilly English afternoon in late November. But it's possible that there might be the slightest hint of strain, tension, just around her eyes. And they narrow, just slightly. The way she lifts her teacup to her lips somehow makes it plain that it's an act of mercy that she does so.

His brother probably doesn't hear the whistle of a bullet, dodged, as Penelope takes a sip of lightly sweetened Earl Grey, instead of tearing John in half, conversationally, for the capital crime of interrupting her.

But then, John rarely sees anyone in person, so perhaps it's understandable that he wouldn't pick up on it. Penelope's got a particular subtlety about her when she's especially annoyed, and when John really gets riled up about something, he doesn't always realize when he's being annoying.

And he must be really riled up at this, because he's being especially annoying---almost belligerent---as he takes note of Penelope's frustrated sigh and Scott's deliberate lack of comment and insists again, "Well, they don't."

Scott reaches for the double espresso parked just beyond the edge of his plate, lately emptied of a dense and buttery scone, complete with clotted cream and jam. At his elbow, his brother still hasn't touched a flaky piece of pain au chocolat, nor his cup of Orange Pekoe, probably gone cold by this point. This might be down to the fact that what was meant to be a friendly rendezvous with Lady Penelope has instead turned into a secret meeting about a secret murder on Mars, and now into a moral debate about the likelihood of a specific subset of humanity to commit said murder.

Being the only astronaut at the table, John seems to feel as though he's obligated to mount a staunch defense of the character of his colleagues. Scott's inclined to think he's taking it a little personally.

But then, maybe that's understandable, too. Not seeing John in person nearly as often as he should, it's easy to forget that off the clock and on the ground, John's more than capable of a certain vehemence. Maybe the death of a fellow astronaut is just an item on the very short list of things John will take personally. Something that seems like just a shame to the rest of the world might be something more like a tragedy, for John.

The news is a few days old by now, and it's not like Scott hasn't heard about it. Everybody has; the first colonist to die on Mars, and only four months after the initial wave of settlers had arrived with the transport ship Helios. Details as reported Earthside are limited by the relatively narrow availability of communication with the Martian Colony. There've been memorials and tributes to the colonist in question, though the cause of his death hasn't publicly been described as anything other than the result of a technical mishap. Media speculation is predictably ugly and rampant, but it's still just speculation, and generally held to be in extremely poor taste. Lady Penelope's usually well above influence by such forces.

After all, strictly speaking, from over a hundred million miles away, there's no way to know that it was murder.

Or what it's got to do with International Rescue if it was.

The bottom of Penelope's teacup hits her saucer. Blue eyes lock with green across a windowside table in a quaint, charming little tea room in the nearest village to Creighton-Ward Manor. The fact that the place is virtually empty, Scott suspects, has more do with the secretive, knowing smile that Penelope had offered their hostess, and the heavy looking envelope she'd laid on the counter before they'd taken their seats. This is saying nothing of the fact that Parker stands outside, staunchly guarding the door. Aside from the initial service of tea and homemade sandwiches, scones and pastries and jam on cheerily mismatched china, the staff have been curiously remote, none of the usual hovering attention of waitstaff to their patrons. Scott gets the idea that this is an arrangement Penelope's made use of before.

And her voice is as sweet and smooth and chilled as the cream on the tea tray as she begins, "John, darling. For the sake of your apparently intractable sensibilities, I shall henceforth make the distinction that it was technically a colonist who's committed the act aforementioned, and not, if we're being strictly technical, an astronaut per se. Regardless, the facts of the matter remain, there has been a murder on Mars."

Before Scott can even raise an eyebrow at this, John's retrieved a slim silver tablet from his pocket and laid it atop the table, his fingers flickering across the surface to pull up relevant details. And he answers back, still waspish and defiant as he elucidates what he must think is a blindingly obvious truth, "People die in space. Space is dangerous. Accidents happen."

Scott watches his brother skip past a handful of news articles about the incident in question and then discard these in favour of something else. What he projects up into the air above the detritus of their afternoon tea is nothing like the sensational coverage that most of the media had been preoccupied by. What John's brought to bear on the argument at hand is the actual incident report, complete with the holographic WWSA encoded seal in the top corner. "And this was an accident," he asserts.

Penelope appears utterly unsurprised by the appearance of what are probably highly classified official documents from the World Wide Space Agency. Scott is slightly less than unsurprised, and can't help a groan in his brother's direction. "Are you supposed to have those?" he asks.

"I got curious. I called in a favour," John replies glibly, with the sort of easy avoidance of the question that doesn't actually get past his older brother, so much as it's temporarily permitted to slide. John taps a finger on his tablet again and pulls up a complex electrical schematic. "There was a technical failure of an airlock on one of their habitation pods, one engineer was killed by sudden depressurization. Personnel investigated and put it down to an isolated equipment malfunction. The appropriate steps were taken to verify that it was an individual fault and not a systemic problem." He glares at Penelope, plainly irritated with their London agent as he goes on, "It wasn't a murder, it was an accident. And it's an insult to every last person who undertook this mission---not to mention the man killed in its course---that you'd suggest otherwise. Maybe you've let yourself be taken in by the sensationalism in the media coverage, Penelope, but this is the actual report. And I thought better of you than to believe you'd settle for anything less."

Scott's been on the receiving end of enough of John's categorical shutdowns to feel like this must necessarily put an end to the matter. But Penelope hasn't even blinked and doesn't seem surprised in the least by the official version of events.

"That," she corrects, with an icy gleam in her eyes as she pulls out her own tablet and hands it across the table, "is the official statement as relayed to the WWSA via the World Wide Space Station. It is explicitly intended as a cover up. This is the report that was encrypted and embedded within the same, along with a missive from the Mission Commander---submitted to WWSA high command under the Orion Protocol."

Whatever this means to John is lost on Scott, but he doesn't miss the way his brother's eyes widen slightly. John takes the tablet and starts to skim through its contents. Scott watches as his younger brother sits back in his chair, lapsing into what seems like a fairly troubled silence as he reads the provided report. For lack of another likely opportunity, Scott takes advantage of the distraction to steal his brother's pastry. Penelope takes another sip of tea. And a long minute of silence creeps by, as John does what he does best.

While John assesses the situation, out of the corner of his eye, with his mouth full of puff pastry and French chocolate, Scott covertly assesses his brother.

Scott doesn't spend a lot of time in John's company. They talk to each other every day and some days it seems like every hour, but as far as time spent together---John's actual presence is a relatively scarce commodity in Scott's life. Still, he's known John for a quarter of a century and even in spite of their usual distance, in person, Scott's got an innate sense of when his brother's been rattled. And something about this is getting to him, though at first blush it's not entirely clear what or why.

For lack of information, Scott swallows, and clears his throat in a silence that's slowly growing awkward. There's an obvious question that needs asking and he feels a little dumb for being the only one who needs to ask it, "...what's the Orion Protocol?"

"Break glass in case of mutiny," John mutters absently in answer, not looking up from poring over the provided report.

Penelope sighs again and from the way she glares at John (and goes ignored), it's possible she considers this a rather shallow interpretation of the actual facts. "Essentially. The Commander has reason to believe there may be an extant threat to her command of the mission, and in this case a threat to her life. The Orion Protocol is a means to covertly request urgent intervention from those in authority."

"What's this got to do with you, though?" Scott asks, and refrains from asking what this has to do with him, by extension. He can probably guess what this has to do with him, because it's bright red, fifteen stories tall, and he's one of the few people in the world who know how to fly it. More importantly, it can reach the Red Planet within the span of twenty-four hours. "This is something that happened over a hundred million miles away, Lady P. Kinda seems like it must be out of your jurisdiction."

"I haven't got a jurisdiction." Lady Penelope's tone remains vaguely peevish as she corrects him on that point. "In this case, the WWSA reached out to the GDF, and the GDF reached out to me, to discreetly request your services. Not---and this is an important distinction---International Rescue's services. Not Thunderbirds One and Five. Your services, as Scott and John Tracy. This is an incredibly sensitive matter and it needs looking into. Therefore, this is a liaison. I'm liaising."

That's a new one. It might be the double espresso, but in spite of himself, Scott feels a flutter of something like anxiety. He glances at John, hoping to gauge his brother's read on the situation, but John's still transfixed by the information he's been provided. Scott clears his throat a little awkwardly. "Uh. Well, Virg and Gordon are a bit more on model for Frank and Joe Hardy, as far as mystery solving brotherly duos, but---I mean, it's not really what we do, Penelope. If somebody official needs a lift, we can try and hook them up, but I know for a fact that the WWSA has at least a couple spacecraft capable of making the trip at comparable speeds. We'd save them a day or two, maybe---or a week if it's the bureaucracy of an unplanned launch that's the holdup. I guess I'm not sure why you're talking to us at all. Why can't they sort it out themselves?"

John's capacity to pay attention to more than one thing at once is one of the reasons he's Thunderbird Five in the first place. He's apparently been listening well enough that he glances up at Scott's question, but he looks to Penelope as he answers, "Because they don't want to admit that it's happened. They can't. 'Murder on Mars' sounds great on the front of a tabloid, a hundred and forty-four million miles away, but on Mars, it's basically a nightmare scenario. A death this early in the colony's history---an accident is bad for morale as it is, but that's still just life in space. Accidents happen. But if that tiny pool of colonists has to contend with the notion that one of their community is a murderer?" John shakes his head and repeats himself for emphasis, "Nightmare."

Penelope's nod is brief, but there's no denying the triumph in her smile as John comes around to her view of the situation. If she were less than a lady, it might even be somewhat smug. "See? John understands. I knew you'd get there eventually, darling."

John's always been a big picture kind of guy. That's just another reason he's Thunderbird Five. In spite of the fact that it's a rather impersonal reading of the scenario, it's always been something Scott appreciates and admires about his brother; that John can see the whole of a situation, and doesn't let his heart rule his head.

Still. Sitting next to his brother, Scott's getting the distinct sensation that this scenario might present an exception to the rule. Nightmare is a strong sort of word, from John. Scott's curious why he'd use it.

If Penelope notices, she doesn't seem unduly diverted, and there's a certain intensity to her as she continues, "Someone's deliberately made this look like an accident, and it's too great a risk for Commander Travers to acknowledge it was anything but, even if her suspicions are otherwise. The implication inherent in the Orion Protocol is that there's someone within her command structure that she believes she cannot trust. If she were to force the issue, or if the WWSA turns up out of the blue to investigate, they risk panic amongst the colonists, and could potentially force this individual into taking drastic action. She needs help. And that, after all, is the essence of what you do. By several degrees of separation, on behalf of the citizens of Mars, I'm asking if you and John would be willing to look into the matter."

Well. There it is.

And if Scott's honest with himself, he can't pretend he doesn't feel a little flicker of excitement at the intrigue of the idea. There's no question that what's happened is a tragedy, but tragedy is more or less their family's bread and butter. His family's uniquely suited to tragedy. Penelope's not wrong---helping people is the essence of what they do---but more than that, this is a matter of a question to be answered, a problem to be solved. Both of these are things that John excels at. Big picture, there are plenty of reasons why he and his brother are perfect for this job, and they're starting to stack up at the back of Scott's mind; just the same as they must have stacked up for Penelope. And if the big picture is obvious to Scott, then it's gotta be obvious to John.

But before Scott can say so, John surprises him. He puts Penelope's tablet back down on the tabletop and gets abruptly to his feet, his chair scraping on the hardwood floor of the almost empty tea room. "No," he says, in a voice that's just a little too loud for the space that they're in, "That isn't what we do."

Then he pulls his coat off of the back of his chair and makes straight for the exit, without a further word.

2.

It's not often that John wishes he knew less about a situation.

It's not often he completely shuts down someone asking for his help, either.

And especially not when that someone is Lady Penelope, but what's done is done and the fact remains; John's walking away from this one.

Literally, in this case.

Just to make sure his position is absolutely crystal clear.

He pushes through the front door of the tea room and out onto the high street of the small village. Parker doesn't stop him, apparently more concerned with keeping people out than keeping them in. Beneath grey skies, the day is cool and damp with the threat of rain. Nodding to Parker as he pulls on his coat, John picks a direction, and heads down the sidewalk at a brisk pace, before Scott can follow.

The breeze is chillier than what could strictly be considered bracing, but John still pretends he's only stepped outside because he needs a breath of fresh air.

He does, anyway. Need some air. And Scott won't follow him. Not right away, at least. They know each other better than that. John's aware that he's got time to walk this off. And he needs to walk this off.

The high street is narrow between tightly packed buildings, white walls beneath dusty red shingles, with one edifice or another occasionally framed in stark black timber. John's not really paying attention, and he walks quicker than he probably needs to. It's not like he's running away, or anything. It's just that he needs time and space in order to collect his thoughts. The road slopes gradually upward and curves away in a subtle arc. At the speed he walks, it's not long before the inner track of it takes him out of sight of the tea room.

He slows down slightly, then. Shortens his long-legged stride to half the length of the paving stones on the sidewalk, deliberately pacing himself. And then shivers in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

John wishes he didn't know about the murder on Mars.

It's an ugly enough thought that it makes him feel a little bit sick inside, almost dizzy, like a sudden attack of vertigo. Although, in fairness, it's hard to say how much of that is down to the gravity of the situation, as opposed to just plain old, actual gravity, up to its usual malicious tricks. He's only been down for a couple days. The nausea might just be some latent jet lag, the result of jumping halfway across the world from the island, when Scott insisted they should to pay a visit to Penelope. Well, now he knows what that had been about. Really, he shouldn't be jet-lagged. TB5 runs on the same timezone as England, GMT, Coordinated Universal Time. Theoretically, this is his own timezone, but that doesn't seem to matter. Practically, he's been awake for something like a full twenty-four hours, and hasn't eaten much more than a chicken salad sandwich in the past eight of those. Realistically, there are plenty of reasons for the way he feels ill.

Instinctively, though, John thinks it's probably got to do with the murder.

John's always been capable of a certain personal detachment from the sort of work he does. It's part of the reason he excels at it. He's able to consider any number of objectively horrifying scenarios calmly and in the abstract, as questions to be answered and problems to be solved, objectives to be met. If they're the sorts of things that keep him up at night later on, that's just because he's only human. What matters is that in the moment, he's reliably capable of keeping a handle on everything.

This, though. This is something that drills down through all his hardwired composure and abstraction; breaks through to the bedrock of what he does---and a not insubstantial aspect of who he is---and leaves a great, gaping crack. And it exposes a deep, dark void of terror, something he's always known was there, but which he almost never taps into. He hadn't realized something like this could touch on such a fundamental fear.

This is something he needs to walk off. So he keeps walking.

There aren't many people out on the high street, between the weather and the time of day, he doesn't pass anyone on the sidewalk. His pace is growing brisk again; his anxiety tells in the way he walks a little too quickly, and he has to slow down. Not that there's anyone around to notice. Further up and on the other side of the narrow street there are a few cars parked, but for the most part, he's alone. John glances back as he stops to turn up the collar of his coat against the wind, blustering between the buildings as they start to space out a little bit---but he can't see anyone following him past the curve of the road behind him. Every passing minute increases the likelihood that FAB1 will come prowling down the street, and then he'll have to explain himself, but for the moment he's still alone with his thoughts, and he's not about to turn back. He keeps going and keeps thinking.

It's just that it's abhorrent, is what it is.

That's what makes his stomach twist and his chest tighten, what makes him have to swallow against the pressure in his throat---the sheer horror at the very thought of it. Murder. On Mars.

A tornado or an earthquake---or a Martian dust storm---that's just nature. The most important thing to know about natural disasters is that they're just natural. They just happen, there's nothing like discretion or discrimination in a tsunami or a mudslide. Industrial accidents, equipment failures, hell, even just plain old, run of the mill stupid bloody idiocy---those sorts of things are worse, in most ways, but they're usually still accidents. They're nothing like this.

This is cold-blooded, deliberate murder, with malice aforethought. John had read Dr. Sandra Travers' plea for help and felt cold starting to creep up his spine. He'd read her secret report of the truth of the incident, and then he'd read it again, and by the third time he'd expected to be able to detach himself from the feeling of numb horror, but he just couldn't quite shake it. The words still cut down to the bone, struck down to bedrock. Evidence of expert tampering. Something made to look like an accident. The sort of thing that would have passed for an accident, except some quintessential sixth sense had told her to look closer. Her suspicions were roused mostly on the grounds that the place where the airlock had failed had been a place where she was meant to be, and that it was instead an innocent and unlucky engineer who'd fallen victim to a trap, made all the more horrifying by its essential cleverness.

Caught up in his thoughts, which circle and spiral around words he'd read too many times, John stumbles a little on a crack in the sidewalk. He puts it down to a fifty-fifty split between vertigo and existential horror, and then looks up and back again, trying to work out how far he's come.

The buildings around him have turned from the prim white-paint exteriors of the main drag to the rusty reds of exposed bricks and mortar, a more residential part of town, already near to the outskirts. John slows down as he comes to a cross street, and realizes he's gone further than he meant to. He stops and, catching himself a little bit out of breath, sits down atop a low brick wall edging up on someone's front garden.

This is ridiculous.

He doesn't know how the hell they're supposed to "look into" a murder without anybody realizing it's a murder, anyway. He doesn't even know what Penelope wants, exactly, or why she's asking, or why this should be his problem, or his brother's. It's not what they do. It's just not. And they're not going to do it, anyway, so that's that. Someone else can deal with it, and he can go back to believing the cover up, and given time, perhaps he can convince himself that it's what's actually happened.

He's still trying to talk himself past the niggling little voice of his conscience, when Scott turns up about ten minutes later, and by then it's started to rain.

Scott's got an umbrella, a big black domed thing that looks like it'll stand up to whatever dolourous old England has to throw at it. Probably on loan from Parker. Probably John should've thought of that. Because raindrops patter stubbornly on black nylon, but Scott stays perfectly dry. By contrast, a drop of icy water falls squarely down the back of John's neck.

Scott's also got a scruffy old bomber jacket, formerly their father's. Rain would run off its smooth leather surface even without the umbrella. Its lining is plush and thick and fleecy, and thus Scott's turned up collar does substantially more against the cold and the wind than even John's good winter trench coat, in its navy blue cashmere.

And Scott just stands on the sidewalk, doesn't make a move to offer his umbrella, or join John where he sits on the low garden wall, because with a ratio of 4:1 vs John's 3:1, Scott's got him soundly beat as far as asshole-big-brother cred. That's just math. And whatever the scenario, John's always well-aware of the math. Eventually Scott clears his throat and breaks his silence.

"I told Penny you're probably just jet-lagged," Scott announces cheerfully, his voice just as warm and dry as he looks beneath his umbrella.

The way he feels isn't jet-lag. "Did she believe you?"

Scott grins, because they both know the answer. "Not even a little. So I said it was probably some astronaut thing, and that we'd both get some fresh air, walk it off, talk it over, take the rental car and meet her back at the manor."

It's starting to get clammy on the inside of John's collar and he shivers again; and this time it's because of the cold. "And you left the rental car ten minutes' back up the road because...?"

"John, if you wanted to sit and talk in the rental car, your melodramatic ass could've waited by the rental car."

"I wasn't about to ask for the keys."

"And ruin the high drama of your sudden and extremely rude little exit? No, of course not. You'd have had them in the first place if you hadn't let your driver's license expire."

Embarrassed now, John shrugs and pushes a hand through his hair, sweeps it off his forehead as the rain starts to weigh it down. "Yeah, maybe."

He doesn't know what else to say and so he doesn't say anything else.

Initially Scott just peers at him, and though he's broken the ice with the usual brotherly banter, he's plainly at least a little concerned. Probably with good reason. After a while he scuffs the toes of his boots on the sidewalk and then clears his throat a little awkwardly. "Hey. Uh, real talk for a minute, though, John---you okay?"

John deflects the question as a matter of reflex. "I'm wet and cold."

Scott rolls the handle of his umbrella lightly back and forth in the palm of his hand, the shaft of it resting against his shoulder, and his other hand tucked snugly in the pocket of his jacket. "Yeah, well. That's because when something rattles your cage, your standard M.O. is 'leave immediately and go as far away as possible.' You've been doing this since you were four. I'm just lucky gravity kept you from hauling your scrawny ass up a tree. C'mon, John, talk to me. I didn't know this would bother you so much."

John fidgets slightly and pushes his hands into his own pockets, mirroring Scott. His shoulders hunch a little bit against the rain and the cold, and he's aware that he must look miserable as he answers, "I guess I didn't either."

"What's wrong?"

What's wrong is the fact that John wants to wind his life backward by an hour, to before he'd been confronted with the notion that someone at the bleeding edge of humanity's best and furthest efforts into space exploration so far could be possessed of the will and the capacity and the desire to commit murder. That one of the best and brightest examples of humanity beyond Earth would willingly jeopardize the integrity of an entire colony, could be willing to take the life of a fellow colonist. John wants to pretend that it isn't true, and that if he doesn't acknowledge it, it just won't be.

But he can't exactly admit that to Scott.

"I don't think we should do this."

Scott scoffs and just about rolls his eyes clean out of his head. "Really? Funny, that hasn't been even remotely evident in the way you're carrying on. Not at all. Nope. Would not have guessed."

The sarcasm is what gets John's own natural defenses to kick in. In spite of himself he starts to dig his heels in a bit, starts to push back against Scott's probing. "Well, I don't. We're not...this just isn't what we do. We shouldn't be involved, we can't handle this. We've got no business---"

"See, I disagree with you there," Scott interjects, but he makes the charitable move of coming a little closer with his umbrella and holding it at such an angle so as to deflect the worst of the wind and rain. It also forces John to look up at him, as Scott goes on, "Someone needs our help. Penelope's right; that's what we do. Knowing someone needs us and knowing we're able do something about it, whatever the circumstances, I think we've got an obligation to get involved. And Penelope makes a pretty compelling case for why we might just be the only people who can handle this."

"We're not---"

Scott cuts him off again, "We're not WWSA. We're not GDF. If we're not Thunderbirds One and Five, then we're Scott and John Tracy: the two eldest sons of the first man to walk on Mars, surrogate nephews to Captain Lee Taylor, lately retired to the Red Planet, and known eccentric multi-billionaires. We've got the means and the motive, if you'll pardon my phrasing. The opportunity is just a question of 'we're richer than a small country; we do what we want'. We're the sort of people who would go see Mars. I'd argue that as far as people who could, we're kind of the best possible option."

John makes a minor hypocrite of himself as he says, "The WWSA are the best possible option."

Scott gives him a look. This is another hand-me-down from their father. John's very rarely on the receiving end, and gets the reminder of just how spooky it is---just how much Scott looks like Dad, in moments like these. "You were the one who laid out the reasons why they aren't, actually, so I know you know that's a lie. And you left before she could say so, but Lady P says if we don't do this, then the GDF wants her to reach out to Francoise Lemaire."

This is the sort of statement that brute forces John into a spontaneous revision of his assessment of "The Worst Things That Could Possibly Happen on Mars."

And "Murder of one Martian colonist by another Martian colonist" is just narrowly edged out by "Murder of one Martian colonist by another Martian colonist necessarily investigated by That Insipid Fucking Moron Who Tried to Land a Yacht On Haley's Comet".

Which is horrifying to the point that John doesn't want to believe that could ever happen, either.

So it might be he sounds a little more incredulous than he means to as he says, "You're not serious."

"Dead serious." Scott pauses to make sure John's been appropriately annoyed by the tastelessness of the pun, and then primly corrects himself, "I mean, if it makes you feel better, technically Penny'd be talking to Madeleine Lemaire---but husband and wife, you know, they're kind of a package deal. And you just know that the unfortunate other half of that partnership is gonna rock up to the Martian surface, park another big dumbass yacht on top of our dad's monument, and disembark wearing a deerstalker cap and brandishing a magnifying glass the size of his stupid face. He'll vlog the entire thing. Almost as good as being there yourself."

John glares at his brother, because by this point it's clear that Scott's being deliberately flippant in order to get a rise out of him. "This isn't funny."

Scott rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet and nods his agreement. The rain's let up, just a little, but the arrhythmia of raindrops on his umbrella still runs in counterpoint to their conversation. "No, it's really not. This is a very unfunny, shit-awful thing that's happened, and a hell of a complicated situation it's put these people into. But you're the smartest, unfunniest bastard I know, and so I can't imagine anyone better to help deal with it."

Dealing with it is the last thing John wants to do. But Scott's not going to let up, either. So he should probably at least try and explain the reasons. He's just not sure where to start.

Scott cedes the last bit of ground and takes a seat on the low stone wall, finally sharing his umbrella properly. It's too little too late, but the gesture still has its meaning. "I feel like you and me have faced up to worse things than this before, John. Hell, I know we have. I guess I just don't get why you're freaking out."

John still doesn't have an answer. He shifts uncomfortably where he sits and privately laments the fact that the hard edge of the brickwork coping is particularly painful when you're not someone who spends much time sitting down. The astronaut's equivalent of taking a load off is just drifting in neutral posture, floating in zero-G. He wants to make a remark to defuse some of the tension, some offhanded comment about how this is a literal pain in the ass, but it's an astronaut's joke, and it'll be lost on Scott.

It suddenly occurs to John that this might be the greatest part of the problem.

"...You told Penelope you figured this was 'probably some astronaut thing'?"

"Is it?"

John nods and scuffs the toes of his oxfords on the cement of the sidewalk at his feet. "Yeah. Probably more than you'd understand, since you're not---I mean, it's just how you aren't---like, you're space-rated, sure, but that's...I mean, that's just not---" he trails off, not sure if what he wants to say would be insulting, and despite Scott's occasional obnoxiousness, not actually wanting to insult his brother.

But Scott has him covered. "I moonlight," he supplies, with another situationally inappropriate grin. "I'm not a real astronaut."

"Right. And...there's just a lot to unpack, here. About all this, and the way it happened, and the fact that it happened at all. And the history of humanity on Mars, and the context...it's complicated. It's really complicated. It's bigger than it seems, it's more than just tabloid headlines that say 'Murder on Mars' and it's more than just the WWSA's reputation---it's...it's even more than the fact that one person's dead and that another person's in fear for their life. It's more than just a murder."

He's rambling, and Scott knows it, because there's the pressure of his elbow against John's ribs. It's not a reprimand so much as it is an acknowledgment that Scott's listening. He goes on to cough pointedly and affirm, "Yeah, I kinda got all that. Gimme some credit, John. I know this is a big problem, but we're not exactly strangers to big problems. You especially. So I guess I'm asking---what is this for you?"

John takes a deep breath, and does what he does best. He drills his way down to the bedrock, gets to the heart of the matter, and renders the situation into its fundamentals. "This scares me," he admits. "This really scares me."

[gracewithducks]

It Only Takes a Spark (Luke 12:49-56; preached 8/18/19)

My family has just returned from a week at one of our church summer camps, a week of retreat and learning especially for pastors and their families. In past years, we clergy have invited teachers to help us better understand church finances, and plan sermon series, and manage clergy finances, and offer resources for balancing parenting and marriage with fruitful ministry. These weeks always send me home reminded that we are not alone in ministry – that there are lots of other pastors and churches out there doing good work and proclaiming the good news – and I often come home with new tools, new ideas, for our church’s work going forward.

 This week, however, our theme was a little bit different, because we spent this week learning how to better care for our souls. You might think that pastors and their families would be naturally good at this stuff – but too often, for too many of us, we spend our whole day working to care for other people’s families and other people’s spirituality, and preaching good news and forgiveness and grace… but we forget to drink from that well of grace ourselves. These are tumultuous days to be in ministry. Our spiritual disciplines can fall by the wayside, because they feel like more work – prayer and bible study and service are just a few more items on a very long list of good things Jesus tells us to do… but we were reminded this week that God calls church leaders, too, to immerse ourselves in God’s love, which is not tied to any of the numbers on any of the reports we file very year, but which is unconditional – even for pastors! We are invited to be grounded, and strengthened, and to find ways to be renewed through solitude as well as relationships and community. This week, a whole bunch of pastor-parents rediscovered the spirituality of washing dishes, folding laundry, taking naps, going to meetings, eating ice cream, and riding hospital elevators… because God is in it all. And it’s not work: it’s love.

 So I start today by saying thank you. Thank you for praying for us; thank you for loving us; thank you for offering time and space for my family to return to that source of grace, to be ministered to and restored this week.

One of the holy things that happens at Christian camps is the spiritual discipline of making s’mores. I truly believe there is a holy sacrament in gathering around a glowing fire, in squishing gooey marshmallow between graham crackers and chocolate, and taking a bite… and you can hear God say, “It is very good.” And I do wish all of us, after partaking in sacraments of baptism and communion, after spending time in worship and prayer – I wish we all wore the evidence of God’s love as clearly and visibly as children wear marshmallow and chocolate on their faces. God’s grace is supposed to stick to us, to stay with us, and to be revealed in us to the world.

 There is something holy about a s’more; just like people, those different ingredients are so much better together. But before you even take your first bite, before you put that treat together, the first thing you have to do is toast that marshmallow… which means, to make a s’more, you need to start a fire. I remember back when my mom heard a rumor you could make a s’more in a microwave… and it was fun to watch the marshmallow puff up as it heated, but the resulting “s’more” wasn’t the same. To get the right taste, to get that gooey goodness, you really, really need a flame.

 Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever gathered around a campfire with dozens of overexcited kids – many of whom are five or younger, and many more who are teens and tweens eager to show off for their friends… and I don’t know if you’ve ever stood near a campfire surrounded by a swarm of children and worried not only about the open fire but the fact that all those kids are armed with long and pointy sticks… but I can tell you, my life may have flashed before my eyes. So we started with a safety talk. One of the parents laid down the rules: no sword fighting, and no dueling with light sabers, and no running with pointy sticks, and no stabbing your friends, and no stabbing your siblings either. And – and this is very important – if your marshmallow catches on fire whatever you do, don’t wave it all around trying to put it out. If you do, we will end up with a flying burning marshmallow torpedo, and whether it lands in a tree or in your mom’s hair or on a baby’s lap, no matter where it goes, flaming flying marshmallows are never fun.

When I used to camp as a kid, we would often sing, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going” – and that’s a heartwarming sentiment when you’re speaking metaphorically about the power of God’s love, but it’s less comforting when the burning marshmallows start to fly.

 This summer, I’ve spent a lot of my free time exploring some of the history of our state, and the various places in it I’ve called home. And perhaps it comes as no surprise to you, but in many ways, the history of Michigan is a history of fire.

Back in 1871, the nation was rocked by the Great Chicago Fire. And we’ve all heard the legends blaming poor Mrs. O’Leary and her careless cow, but the reality is that fires had already been burning fast and furious throughout that hot and dry season. Those fire fighters were already worn out and exhausted even before the big fire began.

But while Chicago claimed the headlines, that same night and in the day that followed, there were more fires, even more devastating fires – in northeastern Wisconsin, and in the Upper Peninsula, and across the water, fire burned all the way across the state, from Lake Michigan to the Lake Huron shores. Peshtigo, and Manistee, and Holland, and Bad Axe, and so many other towns and cities burned.

The great fires of 1871 weren’t the only ones. Ten years later, the Thumb of Michigan burned again. The Upper Peninsula was a dangerous place where fire often raged; logging towns were easily turned to ash by just one careless spark or flame. And while I was serving in Oscoda, Michigan, in 2011, I was one of several pastors invited to lead the community as we gathered on the beach to remember the 1911 fire, which wiped Oscoda and her sister city Au Sable off the map. Survivors fled to the cold waters of Lake Huron, where they could only choke on smoke and watch their homes burn.

 So many lives and communities in our state have been changed dramatically throughout our history by fire. Why were there so may terrible fires? Well, for one thing, our state is covered by trees – and was even more so back in the logging heydays. In hot and dry seasons, the forests just smoldered, waiting for a single spark that would launch a raging inferno. And those sparks came often: sometimes from a lightning strike, but more often, humans sparked the flame.

The early Michigan forests were almost unimaginably dense. Homesteaders used fire to clear their plot of land in order to build and farm and make a life there. Logging companies burned piles of waste and left sawdust and tinder in their wake. Rail workers started fires in order to clear a path for train tracks to be laid, and once they were, flying sparks from passing trains were frequent and often started fires that quickly got out of control. The railroads would actually employ workers whose job it was to walk the tracks, looking for sparks and putting fires out.

 In this week’s gospel, Jesus talks about fire. He says, “I have come to bring fire to the earth – and how I wish it was already kindled!” And again, those words make sense when you want to make s’mores; those words are fine when you’re talking about hearts strangely warmed by God’s love… but for people who still today live in wood houses surrounded by trees, raging fire is in fact a nightmare we pray against, not something we ask God for.

Jesus goes on to say, “You hypocrites! You think you’re so smart when you predict the weather; why then can’t you read the signs of what is to come?”

 In all those stories about all those fires, there were always a few prophetic voices – a few people who could read the signs, who saw the writing on the wall, who warned of the risks of fire, and who dug trenches and readied buckets and stopped burning their land, who stayed up all night watching for sparks – and some who even chose to leave all together before the inferno began. There were always a few, just a few, who could read the signs. But the majority of people ignored the smell of smoke on the wind – after all, it always smelled like smoke; others ignored the heat, sure that rain would surely come soon… and so they were unprepared when devastation came.

 And what stuns me the most is that, even as fires where threatening communities and homes and taking lives, even as the weeks without rain dragged on and the forests themselves flickered with strange fires smoldering below the surface, even as news of the burning of other cities trickled in, as loggers reported seeing tongues of flame suddenly springing from the earth and snaking around the trees…

 Even with all those warning signs, people still kept setting fires. The railroad companies were determined to lay new track. Settlers were determined to clear their land. Owners of logging towns – sometimes from many states away – sent orders to keep cutting trees, keep burning the waste, keep creating the sawdust that settled everywhere. It was fire that destroyed cities, fire that killed hundreds and thousands of people over the years – but fire didn’t work alone. Our own human overconfidence, our own human greed, paved the way and sparked the flame.

Jesus says, “You hypocrites! You see clouds, and you plan for rain. The wind shifts, and you know the weather will change. Why then can’t you read the signs?” When the air is full of smoke, stop setting fires. No matter how much money you hope to make, none of it is worth the cost of human lives. And it seems to me that’s a lesson we need to hear over and over again: when the air is full of smoke, stop setting fires. When you’re surrounded by sawdust and kindling, be very careful of sending out a spark. It’s why the words we use matter. Our society is a powder keg, and racist hateful violent words are sparks that lead to racist hateful violent acts. It’s why there is no excuse for ignoring that the greedy and destructive ways we treat the earth and treat other human beings mean that real lives – hundreds of thousands of lives – all of our lives are at stake. Greed is no excuse for careless and wanton destruction. We need to read the signs. We have to do better. Fire is dangerous. But Jesus also speaks of fire as a good thing: “I come to bring fire to the earth.” And this is the enigma of fire: fire can destroy life, but fire can save it, too. Fire can help us: giving heat through long hard winters, purifying water, bringing light, warming food so it’s safe to eat, removing impurities from metals… fire can even help an overgrown and dying forest to be reborn, as the dead and dry debris is cleared away and new life is able to begin. Fire can be a powerful tool for good. And maybe what we really need to consider is what kind of fires we are starting, what kind of sparks were sending into this very flammable world. Are we carelessly showering sparks of hatred and fear and greed and indifference and leaving devastation in our wake? Or are we using fire to bring light in the darkness? To clear away the dead weight and impurities and shed light on the truth? To make space for new life to begin? Are we creating sparks of God’s grace and God’s love? Because just as powerfully as a wildfire can spread and change the landscape, God’s power can spread quickly and transform the world, too. One act of kindness. One gentle word. One hopeful soul. One voice of truth. One person standing in the face of injustice. One single spark can kindle a flame that will change the world. My dad’s favorite campfire song was always the one that says:

“It only takes a spark to get a fire going, And soon all those around can warm up in its glowing. That’s how it is with God’s love, once you’ve experienced it: You spread God’s love to everyone; you want to pass it on.”[1]

God, help us to be mindful of the power we have, the power you’ve given us, to spark a fire that can change the face of the world. Forgive us for the times when we’ve been careless, when we’ve sparked anger and hatred, and the words we’ve used and the things we’ve done and left undone have caused others to suffer. Forgive us for the times when we’ve hidden our light and left others to stumble in the dark. Give us wisdom and courage so that goodness and mercy will follow in our way, so we might kindle fires of truth and justice, wildfire of grace, transformational and renewing fires that burn away what doesn’t matter and clear the way for your love to bring new life. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

  [1] “Pass It On” by Kurt Kaiser (1969), United Methodist Hymnal 572.