#i named them Morgan cuz it seemed like a solid name for them. i made them last night and theyve already slept w astarion lol

[amygdalae]

my dark urge warlock is so cuuute

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

the branches and the roots

post-Spirit of Justice. Maya, still in Khura’in, looks in old records hoping to learn a little more about her family.

[on ao3]

----

The heavy wooden door, when it creaks open, dislodges pounds of dust from its frame and its intricately carved face. Maya sneezes into the sleeve of her robe. She lifts her face up out of it, stares into the dark windowless room ahead of her, and sneezes again. 

“Just wait a moment, if you think it is dusty now,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says. 

He told her to call him Nahyuta, so there’s a teasing Cuz or Yuty on the tip of her tongue, because family is family however distant, and family she calls things like Sis and Pearly and Nick. But she can’t quite access it. The tip of her tongue hits the back of her teeth and her jaw sticks shut and she’s avoided addressing him as anything. Plus he still calls her Miss Fey so it’s not like he’s figured it out either. 

She covers her face with her sleeve. “Okay,” she says. “I’m ready.”

Prosecutor Sahdmadhi arches one perfect eyebrow. He reminds Maya of what all the hanging scrolls of the former Masters depict; the old portraits are consolidated in the manor, a forest of women whose flaws are brushed away as they are enshrined in traditional inked artistry. He, and his mother, unreal, beautiful, the kind of elegance that Maya was told all her life to emulate and never could. The kind of regal grace that Pearly performed as soon as she was able to walk. 

(Poor perfect Pearl, such a prodigy, but of the branch family, forever damned to be nothing. Morgan was the only one who acted on making Pearl the Master, but Maya knows with the way other elders of the family looked at her when she started spending longer and longer stints down in the city, months at a time with Nick, that they hoped she’d be just like her mother and never come back. That the city would eat her too.)

They step into the darkness, their only light a flashlight that Maya holds, and a lantern Prosecutor Sahdmadhi brought. “I wonder when it was someone last came down here,” he says. His voice is muffled a little by his scarf pulled over his face to shield him from the initial wave of dust. The orange-ish lantern-light turns his skin and his hair and his clothes gold, all gold, and warm and alive, a reminder that this is not a tomb and they are not buried. “I suppose I can get estimate a range…”

He turns to the shelves on the left, closest to the door, and picks up the first scroll-container there. This dusty room in the basement of the palace - Maya kept calling it the dungeons, and Nahyuta didn’t laugh, and she felt a pang of homesickness for the family that laughs at all her stupid jokes, and then she wondered if there are actual dungeons that Ga’ran and Inga used and that’s why he didn’t laugh, and her homesickness turns to sorrow - is an archive, of a sort, but the only information they are keen on recording in here is geneaology. Carefully preserved scrolls sit stacked on shelves around the room’s walls, a number she can’t estimate because she can’t see them all at once swinging the flashlight all around. A solid-looking wooden table stands in the center of the room. Prosecutor Sahdmadhi sets his lantern down there and spreads out the scroll. 

“How did anyone do anything down here before batteries existed?” Maya asks. She shines her flashlight up at the ceiling, almost expecting to find eyes or a face leering down at her, like this is a horror movie and not still part of a very lived-in palace. Much as this room hasn’t been lived-in, or walked in, and certainly not vacuumed or dusted in. 

“There are oil lamp holders on the walls,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi answers. “And candles.” He doesn’t quite sound disparaging but he’s pretty close to it. 

“And risk setting everything on fire?” Thousands of years of the royal line up in smoke because someone was clumsy. Someone like Maya, who makes movements too quick and too big and takes up space in an unrefined manner. 

Prosecutor Sahdmadhi doesn’t answer and moments later he’s murmuring, almost to himself, “So it’s been at least fifteen years since someone cared to come here and update anything,” he says.

“What do you mean?” Maya lowers her flashlight from examining the lamp holders on the walls so she won’t shine it straight in his eyes and approaches the table, to where he is pointing at something. The names are tricky to decipher, even after two years of extremely immersive study of Khura’inese, but one she knows is Ga’ran’s even without the little crown drawn above it, and the other is very, very long, so that must be Inga. A family tree.

Prosecutor Sahdmadhi taps his fingers between the two names, where a line is drawn between them to signify marriage, but no other line extends from that one, no other name beneath theirs. “They never put Rayfa down as their child, or as existing at all. There were rather more pressing matters when kidnapping your sister’s daughter, and forcing your sister to live as a nursemaid and your double, else you’ll kill them both.”

He says it all so dry, deadpan, because he must have gotten used to living with that over his head, become resigned to the reality of that, the way Nick almost laughs when he’s talking about his poker-playing years even if it’s an obviously bitter laugh, and like with Nick, Maya wants to hug him, but she doesn’t think he’d appreciate that. Certainly she would ask first but he’s already saying something else and the time for asking is passed. “This will have to be redone afresh on a new scroll.”

“Why?” Maya asks. “They didn’t write the princess down at all, so you could just add her under—”

Under your parents, but her eyes follow his fingers brushing across the parchment and all the muscles in his hand tighten when he reaches his mother’s name and the blackened, burned holes next to and beneath her name.

“Another reason candles are so practical for this work of genealogy,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says, and this time he isn’t dry or deadpan. His voice is dripping, anger barely contained, not swallowed and barely held in his mouth to stop him from spitting that fury that’s justified if unbecoming of a monk and prince regent. (Unbecoming of a Master, too. Maya’s spent two years in Khura’in trying to learn to be the Master, and she’s a stronger medium than ever but she still only sometimes knows how she’s supposed to act, how to become the Master and not Maya. Maya has too many feelings, Maya has too much righteous indignation to be as calm as the Master is supposed to be, but Her Benevolence Princess Rayfa is also full of fury and still a beloved princess, so maybe that’s okay. To feel things. To be angry.) “Fire right at hand to burn out the sinful heretics.”

“Cut off the branches,” Maya says. Morgan tried to do that literally, with her last plan, pruning the tree violently, and Ga’ran literally used fire to burn the Sahdmadhis out of the royal family. “You were a baby. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were as much the queen’s child as you were Dhurke’s.”

“I’m sure there would have been some contention over my expulsion from the family had I been a girl,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says. “You can’t turn a potential medium loose into rebel hands, after all. But I wasn’t, and so the only blood of mine that mattered was that of my allegedly criminal father.”

“How did you ever become a prosecutor like that?” she asks. She asked to come down here searching for something about their family long ago, wanting to find the place where Khura’in and Kurain broke apart forever, but the affairs of a thousand years ago suddenly pale in importance to what happened a month ago. What happened fifteen years ago, and twenty-three years ago. Living family more important than the dead. 

(Especially since she hasn’t ever gotten the chance to speak with Nahyuta one-on-one before. Not even talk with him and Princess Rayfa and Queen Amara together. Prosecutor Prince-Regent Sahdmadhi seems to be everywhere at once, trying to do everything all at once, the way his brother is trying to take up every criminal and civil defense all at once. Maya’s spent more time with Apollo than she expected to, but she’s got more legal experience than Datz and Ahlbi who are also trying to help him run his law office, and they need someone who knows all about it. Putting on the skin of co-counsel and legal assistant is easier than trying to find the skin of Master. And she wants to help her family, and Apollo is family, two different ways. Via Nick, and via her distant Khurainese cousins.)

“When I emerged from the woods claiming to renounce the rebels and wanting to work as a prosecutor to bring an end to them” - Prosecutor Sahdmadhi snorts, his hands curling tight around the edge of the table - “Ga’ran made a great show of being a benevolent queen willing to forgive the child of her sister’s murderer and integrate him into her regime’s legal system. And then she dragged me out of earshot of her guards and snapped a leash around my neck and told me it would be Rayfa’s noose if I ever dared step out of line.”

Maya thinks of Shelley de Killer. A sword hanging overhead to force the desired result. Her mouth is dry. She nods. Prosecutor Sahdmadhi isn’t even looking at her anyway. “Her claims of forgiveness changed the minds of no other prosecutor, and there is a reason I started prosecuting internationally. Not just because there was no fear of facing my father’s friends on the stand and damning them in this farce of justice, but because my colleagues would not be cruel for my name, and because the leash choked me a little less when I did not have Ga’ran’s eyes constantly on me. Do you know, some of the other Khura’inese prosecutors called it favoritism that she had for me. Special treatment, that she often called me to the palace, tasked me with giving the princess a cursory understanding of the legal system or assisting her at crime scenes - it was all a sick game to her. I could spend time with my sister and no one must ever know it. I imagine she enjoyed watching me try to stay detached. Watching me squirm.”

“She’s a monster,” Maya says. 

“Unfortunately not.” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi rolls the scroll back up, his fingers tight around it crumpling it, because this sheet is already tainted, already wrong, and it doesn’t matter if he ruins it. “She’s human, just as the rest of us are.” He sets the scroll aside, near his lantern, rather than put it back. There’s no reason to put it back when it needs to be redone. She wonders if he’ll burn Ga’ran and Inga out of the tree in retaliation. Like Pearly splattering gravy on the hanging scroll of her mother - destroy the records of the family that some other family didn’t want around. She doubts it, somehow, that Prosecutor Sahdmadhi would do that. 

“Now,” he says, curtly, businesslike, like a prosecutor, “this ancestor of ours who founded your channeling school, how long ago did she live?”

-

There is not necessarily a guarantee that Ami Fey will appear anywhere in the genealogy of the Khura’inese royals. It may have been her mother or grandmother who left for Japan, and simply Ami who once there decided to turn their spiritual power again into real power, not as a queen but as a Master. A wise woman with the wisdom of the dead in hand. Or Ami Fey may not have been known as Ami in Khura’in; it may have been a name she took upon leaving. 

Or she may, as they come to realize, have been a branch burned from the tree for leaving and taking their spiritual secrets with her. 

“I suppose this must be her, then,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says, “as we have been through everything else and…” He gestures at the shelves on either side of them. They have searched the generations that lie around the era that Ami should have lived, finding no trace of her name or a Khura’inese equivalent. What they have found, what Prosecutor Sahdmadhi concludes is the junction where their families broke apart, is another searing burn, blackened edges of a hole through the parchment, the sole person to have been stricken from the family in half a dozen generations on either side. A daughter; in the scorch marks, when they squint, the light right on the page, both of them hunched over it and struggling to keep their long hair out of the way, they can see that this disavowed disgrace was a daughter. 

“Her,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi repeats, “or whoever came to bore her, and taught her of the powers of our bloodline. Perhaps she had only some limited knowledge some mothers before her carried out of our homeland, that she came to make her own.”

Our homeland. Does he mean that Khura’in is home to her? It is tradition in the village for the Master to study in Khura’in; did her mother think of it as her homeland? (Did she keep secret her blood’s connection to the royal family? It would have been Amara’s mother on the throne then. How did she rule - did she lay down a hand of fear that would have left Misty cautious to confess her identity, as Maya had been?) What is home - is it Kurain, or Khura’in, or Los Angeles? Is it the village she grew up in, or the city where she found her truest self? She and Apollo share a fond longing for the perks of the city, of one kind of home, and the confusion of not knowing whether to call that place home, or instead consider home the place in the mountains where each of them formed their first memories. 

“They disowned her for leaving, then,” Maya says. “They - they do that too, in my village. If you’re gone for twenty years, you’re considered dead and stripped of your rank and titles and - everything.” That’s what they say, anyway. No one has actually fully disappeared like that to test it. Her mother almost had, and then Maya would have found out whether the elders truly meant to erase Misty from the halls of the manor and the scrolls of the Masters, or simply, finally, pass her title along.

“Spirit channeling is a powerful tool, jealously guarded by individuals who want to hoard that power for themselves,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says. “For there to be some outsider who know the secret undermines its exclusivity and its power. It does not surprise me that the act of leaving would so be considered a betrayal, enough to leave one little more than ashes.” He touches his fingertips to the parchment. 

“Or gravy,” Maya says. Prosecutor Sahdmadhi’s eyes dart suspiciously toward her. “Never mind,” she adds hurriedly. “So then, um, we read these right to left, when it comes to ages?”

Prosecutor Sahdmadhi nods. He taps his fingers along all of the other names in a row with the burn mark, the siblings of this persona non grata, and then the row up above, their mother’s siblings. “Yes,” he says. “And our subject here was the youngest daughter of a youngest daughter, and each of them with several sisters. Ami - we will presume, for ease of referring to her, that this was your Ami who has been stricken from the tree - had nothing in her future, no position of prestige or power waiting for her.” He sighs, stepping back, closing his bright eyes and pondering for a moment, as though he may begin a recitation. “Our royal line and our country was founded on a story of two sisters - the elder, a medium so powerful she was revered as a goddess by the people she led, and the younger, who lacked the power to channel spirits but nonetheless stood as the country’s loyal and beloved protector.”

His eyes open. “It should be a position of honor, even to be a younger sister, or even to be one who could not channel. But somewhere that was lost, and being unable to channel or become queen became a source of great shame - as though the only worthy and admirable position there ever is to hold is Queen.” Shaking his head, he continues, “My aunt should have been our people’s great protector, our country’s loyal guardian. Instead she nearly destroyed us, out of jealousy, because our family has come to be such a way that for younger daughters such as Ga’ran and Ami, no future awaits.”

The equating of the two of them - Kurain Village’s revered founder, and the evil queen - makes Maya uncomfortable. Yes, they were both the younger sister, as was Lady Kee’ra, and Lady Kee’ra the younger of two as Ga’ran was, but that is all that Ga’ran shares with either of them. And that is all that Ga’ran shares with—

“I’m the younger daughter,” Maya says. Prosecutor Sahdmadhi looks at her straight on again. Honestly, even Maya has gotten bored sometimes - often - with Kurain Village genealogy and whatever else, even while she’s come to be curious about Khura’in. She wouldn’t blame Prosecutor Sadhmadhi for not wanting to hear it. But he appears genuinely intrigued by what Maya has just said, to be waiting for her to continue telling him about her family tree in Kurain. Something in his eyes urges her to continue, but she can’t get more than one more sentence out through the tightness in her throat. ���And so was my mother, the Master of the village before me.”

“What happened?” he asks. She wonders what his guess is. It would be reasonable to assume that they both had older sisters who died - reasonable in any other family, but they are not any other family, the Feys and the royals. If there’s anyone in the world who could make a guess that lands close to the truth of all that Morgan Fey did, it would be Nahyuta. He could know.

And she knows when she tells him, he’ll understand. “Aunt Morgan, my mom’s older sister, wasn’t a very powerful medium. So when the elders convened, they passed her by and gave the title of Master to my mother. And Aunt Morgan had been counting on the power and status that being Master would give, and her husband had too. Her - her first husband.” The implication there tells the rest of that story. It’s exactly what Prosecutor Sahdmadhi can assume it is. “And then my mother was consulted on a murder case, and was disgraced, and she decided that should mean that she should disappear—”

“That was the DL-6 incident of 2001, yes?” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi asks. Maya blinks. “After we witnessed your channeling prowess in your trial, and I returned to Los Angeles, I researched Kurain Village and your family.”

Yes, she was going to tell him about it all - but something about the fact that he already knows it feels like a betrayal of trust. Like she was going to welcome him into her house and then he pushed past her and pulled out a copy of her front door key and used it because he’d stolen it from her a week ago and had a copy made. Except in this analogy her key is a matter of public record. “So you know about all about that ton of murder cases we’ve been caught up in,” she says, and the words still fall out of her mouth bitter. 

“Your aunt tried to frame you for murder,” he replies.

“Guess why.” That sounds bitter as well, but she didn’t mean it to. Morgan’s motive wasn’t part of the actual case as was presented in court, as became part of the transcript. But Nahyuta could know.

“I suppose I may reason that she had, at that point a daughter capable of channeling, whose only path to inheriting the title was through you.” He speaks with confidence, but his expression is puzzled. He wouldn’t know why she has suddenly soured on the conversation. She shouldn’t be mad - it saves her at least ten minutes of explanation if he knows DL-6, and then the incident in Kurain Village, beforehand - but that emotion reared its stupid head anyway. 

“My cousin Pearly,” Maya says, shaking off her frustration. She can’t stay mad at one of the few people who can truly understand. “She’s about as strong as me and ten years younger. A real prodigy. But she was - we call it the branch family, the ones descended from whichever sisters didn’t become Master. And branch family meant, she’d be nothing. She doesn’t care about the titles, but Aunt Morgan sure did.”

“And your aunt was the older daughter,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi muses. “And passed by despite it. She acted as she did because you were the one to inherit the title - yet you are, as you said, the younger daughter, who should not have had that in her future.” He doesn’t ask a question, but his tone and his eyes make it clear that this is an inquiry.

“You said you researched my family,” Maya says. His family too, at a distance. “If you dredged up every court case with a Fey involved, you know why. You know why this younger daughter gets the title, and it wasn’t anything about who was the stronger medium.”

“I am sure I do,” Prosecutor Sahdmadhi says, “but please, I would like to hear from you - tell me about your sister.”

Maya swallows the lump in her throat and blinks to dispel the burning behind her eyes. “She was amazing,” she says. “She was - she left the village, for me. To try and find our mother, and so she wouldn’t have to compete with me to be Master. So we wouldn’t end up hating each other like our mom and Aunt Morgan did.” Her eyes burn again, after a few seconds’ respite. “I hated her sometimes anyway, for leaving me alone, but that was different than hating her like - like our moms and aunts.”

The plural emerges from her lips without really thinking, but when she does think, she realizes she doesn’t know how her mom felt about Morgan. Did she hate her for all she tried to do? Or did she love her older sister with both pity and anger instead? How did Misty and Morgan feel about each other when they were children? Did Ga’ran love her older sister or spare her only out of the practicality of needing a stand-in to channel spirits? 

“She was a defense attorney,” Maya adds, knowing that Prosecutor Sahdmadhi knows it, but now he can hear it from her, like he asked. “She was Nick’s mentor, and she saved him, and she taught him all of his tricks that he used to beat you.” She grins, despite herself. A faint shadow of a smile crosses Nahyuta’s face. He’s glad he lost. She knows that now. “I wish you could’ve met her.”

The smile fades. “Do you?” he asks. “I put you through hell, and that I did it because I thought it the only way to protect my sister is no excuse, one I cannot imagine her tolerating, not when I am sure that she too must so have loved her own sister.”

Maya runs her hand over the beads of her necklace. Mia wore a magatama until the day she died, and every day she returned after; she kept that connection to a home that she abandoned not because she hated the place, but because she loved who remained there. “I’ve been accused of murder a lot,” Maya says. “Like, a lot, you know.” She glances away from him, doesn’t see if he nods. “And you know, some of the prosecutors who did that, tried so hard to get me convicted of murder because they had perfect win records to maintain?” Tried to act as heartless demons like Nahyuta did, because it’s easier that way, easier to turn cold, to never feel. “We became friends. And are, still.” Edgeworth paid for the flight, after all. “I forgave them. I forgive you. I’m sure Sis would too.”

“You think so?” Nahyuta asks. He sounds honestly concerned that a woman who’s been dead for more than a decade wouldn’t like him. 

“Yeah,” Maya says. “She - I mean, she had experience with the blackmail thing. She spent years on a case like that. Building a case against the horrible man who leaked the news of our mother’s involvement in DL-6 to the press, building up evidence of all of the people he blackmailed to suicide and ruin. She knows you have to strike at the top. And she’d know that you loved your sister. That - that does mean something.” 

They didn’t talk about it, really, but Maya knows that, like she herself did, Mia forgave Godot-Diego for his stupid, prideful plan that ended with him killing their mother. People with good intentions and hurting hearts do ugly, painful things for love. People get trapped and can’t see another way out. She’s forgiven Tahrust Inmee for framing her for murder. People do desperate, mad things for love. Khura’in is a country of mountains and on another mountain on the other side of the sea, years ago, Maya learned a lot that she carries with her.

“Did she ever find your mother?” Nahyuta asks softly. She thinks he must be thinking about his own lost mother who he only just found. She imagines the anguish he felt when she was shot, not knowing if he would ever see her again to catch up on the lost years. She remembers lying on a courthouse couch, her sister with Pearly’s robes smoothing Maya’s hair back from her face and telling her that their mother is dead. Maya remembers not knowing how to mourn a woman she never knew and couldn’t recognize. Nahyuta knew his mother for a time when he was old enough to remember; his situation wasn’t the same, and it didn’t end the same, and Maya is so glad for it.

“No,” Maya says, and Nahyuta’s eyes sadden. “She - she didn’t. Sis thought, I guess, that - 

that if she could find out and expose that blackmailer for everything he’d done, then - then our mother would come out of hiding, I guess. Would come home. And instead, that horrible, horrible man murdered my sister, and tried to frame me, and Nick, for it.” 

There it is again, the pain behind her eyes of sharp tears gathering. “Nick and I took him down but it was too late for Sis. And she was so - she was so young, I keep thinking now, because I’m - I’m older than she was when she died. Does that make me not the younger sister, anymore? I’m older than my older sister. Am I - what am I, then, by birthright? Of course I’m going to be the Master someday, because I’m - I’m the oldest daughter now, aren’t I? Only because I’m the one that lived.”

Nahyuta doesn’t say anything. What is there to say? More than almost anyone else in the entire world - more than anyone but Queen Amara herself - he understands, has lived such a same awful nightmare, and there’s nothing to say. There’s no consolation.

“Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have kids,” Maya adds. “Most of the time I think it. And if Pearly didn’t either we could just - put an end to this. Is it worth it? For the world to have this - us, to channel the dead, is it worth it if it keeps ruining the living?” How many more neglected sons and dead daughters will their bloodline see? Why are they the sacrifice for this power to continue to exist? Why should the dead be prioritized over the living mediums who call them back?

“Maybe I’ll adopt,” she says. “If I ever want kids. Like - Nick adopting a kid worked out really well for them both. Then I could get to have kids without perpetuating this - this cycle.”

“Our shared blood spilled again and again,” Nahyuta says.

“One of my cousins, who can’t even channel, still became a nun because our family is so fucked up,” Maya says. And that’s a bit of a simplification of Iris’ choice and situation, but it’s also exactly what happened, isn’t it? Shut herself away to atone for the crime of loving her sister and also those other crimes - willing to do whatever it took to protect Maya from Morgan’s plot because she knew no other way to atone for the sins of herself and her sister and mother. “I don’t know. Am I overreacting to say that we need to swear a pact, like you and me and Pearly and Her Benevolence, to not have any biological children so that we can end the bloodline? Like is that - is that blaming the wrong thing? The blood and not—”

Not us? 

“Is our family always so damned to turn out this way?” Nahyuta asks, rephrasing her fumbling questions so elegantly. “Do we have a choice in what we become? Or say perhaps we should swear to do better - and perhaps we do, for a generation or two. And then what? The Holy Mother and Lady Kee’ra gave us the best example they could of how to protect Khura’in, how to rule and serve its people while loving each other, and look how that became corrupted. Look how Lady Ami left, and her descendants set out across the sea, and still in your faraway village older and younger sisters go to war with each other.” He gives her a sad smile, his eyes even sadder. “Of course it seems the inevitable fate of our bloodline, given what both your branch and mine have lived through, Cousin.”

“Shit sucks,” Maya says. She needs to ask Datz to teach her some good curses in Khura’inese. All she knows is how to damn people to various hells, and sometimes that just isn’t the vibe she’s going for with her swearing. 

Nahyuta laughs softly. “Indeed it does.”

Maya reaches out and pulls the scroll back closer to her. Ami, the daughter who founded her branch of their ancient family, nothing more than a nameless scorch mark. What else should Maya have expected to find? She knows how her family is, home and here. Why not a thousand years ago, the same? She should have expected it, the fire and the pruned branches. Then and now.

“Does that mean you’re on board with the no-kids pact?” She glances back at Nahyuta. “Or do I just like, really not want kids actually and I’m just trying to find justifiable excuses when ‘I don’t want kids’ can be its own excuse?” She’s babbling. The Master is not supposed to babble. “Have you ever thought about if you want—?”

Something dark and sad crosses his face. “I have no idea what I ‘want’,” he says, making a sarcastic quotation mark in the air with one hand, and Maya almost laughs because that’s some of the most informal expressiveness she’s ever seen from him. “Until a very recent time, all I could hope to ‘want’ for the future was that I would die before I was thirty and be freed of this, for no hell in death I’ve ever heard of could be worse than the one I lived.”

Maya regrets asking. “Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“I suppose that is some argument in support of your suggestion,” he continues, like the way Nick talks about being disbarred, where he blithely talks past anyone’s sympathy or acknowledgement of how fucked up it was. “Given that it was a hell my own aunt made for me. Is there anything else you wished to examine down here?”

Nick talks past it because he can’t let himself pause to consider how fucked up it was, because he’s treading water and has to keep moving and if he stops to think he’ll drown. Maya knows this because she’s done the same. She kept a smile on her face and kept moving because she had to keep Pearly’s head above water, again and again. Nick has Trucy. Nahyuta has Rayfa and the entire country of Khura’in. “No,” Maya says, rolling up the ancient scroll to return it to its place. “That’s all I was looking for down here.”

Nahyuta nods. He points her to the spot on the shelves, the carefully ordered archive of their family’s burdensome history, the spot where Ami was excised from. They stand there, after, silently, eyeing the shelves in the gloom, as though both reluctant to leave it. “I suppose,” Nahyuta says softly, barely more than a breath, “that it is not quite true to say that I have never given thought to the matter of children. What I want, I do not know. But that I am regent now, I have wondered too, as we said before, what will be next? Holy Mother forbid my sister ever become a tyrant, but what of her potential future daughters? What of - what, perhaps, of mine? How shall we safeguard our country from our own descendants?”

“I hear democracies work okay sometimes,” Maya says. And sometimes there are the Paul Atishons of the world who commit murder in the course of running for a village council position. Sometimes, there are people - greedy, selfish, ambitious people - and everything goes wrong. 

Nahyuta’s mouth twists in a small smirk. She’s certainly hedging her bets with her phrasing, she knows.

“I guess even if you decided to not have kids so they or your grandkids or great-grandkids can’t ruin everything for everyone again,” Maya says, “you and Her Benevolence would still have to restructure the entire government because—”

“Because our entire line of succession is based on spirit channeling, yes,” Nahyuta says. “Thousands of years of tradition and direct descent, and we stand poised to overturn it all.” He shakes his head. “My most immediate concern has been piecing our legal system back together and undoing all the false verdicts that Ga’ran’s rule has wrought, as you and my brother are well aware, but I have had some discussion with my mother and sister about introducing a parliamentary system.” He folds his arms behind his back, shifting his wait like he is about to start moving, and then he doesn’t, and they remain there in the dark. “Even if our family should play out its bloody feuds again, we may at least limit the casualties. Our people should not suffer from a despot’s unilateral decrees just because one sister so envies the other.”

Envy, yes - it was jealousy, and ambition, and selfishness, and people died. It was Morgan expecting that she was owed her birthright and unable to cope when her more talented younger sister overtook her as Master. It was Ga’ran expecting nothing and wanting it all the same, desiring for herself the admiration that Khura’in’s people had for her older sister, the beloved queen, but only able to make herself feared, not loved. People are dead because one sister got what the other wanted.

Kurain Village teaches that channeling is a gift from the gods, but a gift shouldn’t come with a price to pay. 

“What does Her Benevolence think of that?” Maya asks. She respects Rayfa, the princess wo held too much responsibility at such a young age and now has had her world shattered several times over and stepped up from it stronger, and she never should have had to live any of this. She should not have had to learn that her mother was not her mother and was a monster, and her father who was not her father by blood was a monster, and the other father she could have had was already dead. Like Pearly, if such a tragedy ever had to befall her, why did it have to be when she was so young? Everything Princess Rayfa went through, Maya thinks, might make her understand the same facts that Maya and Nahyuta understand. 

“She agrees,” Nahyuta says, as Maya thought she would. “Lady Kee’ra and the Holy Mother were Khura’in’s great protectors. Perhaps this is what protecting our country means now - protecting it too from the worst of ourselves.” He sweeps a strand of hair back behind his ear and the shiny gold earrings there. “And I owe a great many thanks to Phoenix Wright, and you, for first helping Rayfa on the path to understanding these such matters. For teaching her what I could not.”

“I’m glad we could,” Maya says. “I really am glad. I think Khura’in is lucky to have you both now.”

Nahyuta glances away, like he doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to respond to genuine concern and compliment. How long was he under Ga’ran’s thumb? How many years of being unable to have a heart, because it was his heart that Ga’ran used against him - how many years was he in a pit of vipers with no one who was allowed to care about him? If Maya knew she doesn’t quite remember. 

“I will do whatever I can to support Her Benevolence, and to repair all the wrongs that have been done to our country,” Nahyuta says stiffly, forcing the words out. “I owe - for all I stood complicit in, I—” He is still staring at the far wall, and he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a moment to compose himself. “I owe my father so much more, but this much I am able to do. This I may change.” He blinks his eyes shut again and twists his beaded prayer necklace around his fingers. “I cannot make it up to him, but I will try.”

Maya’s stomach sinks. 

Only once has Apollo ever broached the topic of the three days she spent channeling his father, and that was just to know if she had any awareness of what was going on while she was channeling. The answer is no and a noncommittal vague shrug, because her soul vacates her body but spirits leave behind traces of feelings on their departure. When Tahrust left her she felt at peace, a sense of justice imparted and no regret remaining, for about three seconds until she remembered where she was and that she and Nick might be executed depending on what the high priest did or didn’t say. 

After Dhurke left, she was exhausted, mostly, and a bit confused why he was already gone because she didn’t think he had yet accomplished all he meant to - but more than that sense of unfinished business, there was love. Love for all three of his children, love for his wife, love for his rebels and his country. Everything he did was for love, and for once, the choices made for love weren’t stupid and messy. And still they ended with such pain. 

Talking to Apollo then, she remembered how much Dhurke loved his son, enough that for a moment she couldn’t breathe with it. (She wondered if this was how much her mother loved her.) And talking to Nahyuta now—

“You don’t need to make anything up to him,” Maya says. Nahyuta turns his head so that she can’t even see the pained expression on his face, but she can see his hands curled up to his chest, clutching the dragon tattooed on his palm close to his heart. “He loved you. He forgave you from the start. He understood why, and he loved you.”

“Don’t,” Nahyuta whispers. “You can’t say that—”

“I know he - hey!” 

Nahyuta spins on his heel, heading for the door. Maya runs after him, grabbing onto his arm and hanging firm even as he twists in her grasp and slams the heavy doors behind them with a thunderous thud that makes the floor beneath their feet shudder. Nahyuta scowls at her; Maya scowls back, and when he breaks eye contact first, his shoulders slumping a little, Maya risks releasing her cousin’s arm. He studies his boots instead of leaving.

“I’d channel him so he could tell you himself,” Maya says, “but for one thing, I don’t know if that actually - helps. With getting closure.” Nahyuta looks at her from the corner of his eyes. A question. She goes on, her eyes stinging as she does. “Me and Nick with my sister, that whenever I’d channel her, or Pearly would, I wondered like maybe we were just picking at a scab and it’d never heal because she was here again, but she wasn’t here, not enough. She was always just out of reach, even when I got to hug her and tell her I loved her, I - I don’t know.” 

She never considered asking Pearl to channel Misty so that Maya could talk to her mother for the only time ever in her life. Both because she thought that Pearly would find the guilt unbearable, and Pearly feeling in any way responsible for what happened on that mountain is the last thing Maya has ever wanted, and because she doesn’t know what to say or how to get closure with a woman she never really knew. She had never come to terms with her mother’s disappearance, really, but then just the knowing - knowing that she was dead and no longer somewhere just at the tips of Maya’s fingertips if she reached far enough and looked hard enough - was the closure. Not closure enough, never enough, but the best Maya figures she could ever get in that situation. 

“Ask Lady Inmee if she felt the chance to say a final goodbye to her husband made the loss any less painful,” Nahyuta says. “To hear from him one last time that she loved him, when she knew that, and to tell him one last time that she loved him when he knew such.”

“Yeah,” Maya says softly. When Nahyuta resumes walking, it is to set a pace that she can easily keep beside him as he leads her through the maze of halls. She swallows her nerves, shoves aside the little bit of her mind that is convinced she is overstepping bounds, because when has she ever cared about that, and she already did once this conversation so why not finish it off? 

“And for the other thing,” she says, and Nahyuta turns his head sharply, his hair swinging, to look at her, like he’d forgotten that she started talking in a way that signaled that she had more than one point about channelings and closure, “I don’t think it would really change that much about how you feel, for you to hear your father say he’s forgiven you.”

Nahyuta stops, but doesn’t make to flee. He just stops, waiting for her to finish before they ascend to the ground floor of the palace, out of the records of the dead and back to their living family who still need their help. “I think you need to forgive you,” Maya says. 

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything as they stride through the palace, passing guards in the lived-in halls, and she expects when they reach the front gates that he will throw her unceremoniously out. But he instead steps with her into the sun, out into the colorful, bustling streets of the capital, where here in the land of the living the people they pass have nods and bows of acknowledgement - for Nahyuta, mostly, of course but Maya too, and it never fails to amaze her. She spent two years here coming to know the people while hiding a part of herself, and now they know, and that and so much more has changed.

Nahyuta stops to chat with a sweet bun vendor, and through the quick conversation Maya gathers that the woman was one of the Dragons. They come away with a pastry for each of them, and it seems like Nahyuta has waited for her to take a bite and be unable to speak for him to finally say, “You make it sound so simple. As though it is easy to - how? How am I to...?”

Joke’s on him; Maya can easily talk through a mouthful of bun, even if it’s not helpful. “Wish I knew.”

Rather than stuff it in his face, Nahyuta breaks off a small piece of the bun and pops it into his mouth. The delicate, refined mannerisms he sometimes shows almost make Maya snort when she thinks about him learning manners while living in a shack in the mountains, that chaotic, feral childhood that Apollo has described a few times. Instead of laughing, she swallows her mouthful and says, “No, really, trust me, I do wish I knew.” How to forgive oneself a guilt of the kind so deep and painful it could drive a person to consider choosing death instead - that would be a power far greater than channeling spirits. Maybe that would be a gift that didn’t come intertwined with pain, but it isn’t the one Maya has. “I wish I was any help at all.”

She waits a moment to see if Nahyuta will reply right away, and when he doesn’t, she takes a large bite of her sweet bun again and raises her eyebrows in the best disdainful look she can muster, in response to Nahyuta watching her shove pastry down her face in the most undignified of ways. He rolls his eyes. She is still chewing when he says, “You were. Thank you, Maya.”

This deserves more dignity than talking with her mouth full can merit. The delay is at least two seconds until she can say, “Oh,” a reply that still surely lacks dignity. “You’re - you’re welcome.”

A warbaa’d roars and they both jump. A dog barks, and then another, another layer of noise over the loud bazaar. Maya closes her eyes to take in the ambience, all the voices chattering, catching up with neighbors and bartering for their groceries. “It feels different here now,” Maya says. 

“What do you mean?” Nahyuta asks. 

“I didn’t notice until it wasn’t, but there was always - this kind of tension, in the air, here. Even when everyone was trying to act normal, we were all - not. We were scared and - and hiding things.” Rebels, rebel-sympathizers, secret police, and Maya the spirit medium from abroad. “It feels like I can breathe now. It feels like - well, it doesn’t feel like home. My village is so damn quiet. Not like—” She waves a hand at all the bustle around them, looking over the shop storefronts, and then she is hastily halted when Nahyuta throws an arm out to stop her from walking into the path of a yak. “But it feels like it could be a home, more than it ever did before.” Even when before had the Inmees’ lovely hospitality. How hard as that is to look back on now, with all that happened since. “The thing I miss most though, besides Pearly and Nick and everyone - I wish I could get a burger. And ramen, but mostly a good burger.”

She watches the yak trundle of sight. Nahyuta looks briefly offended on its behalf until he asks, “Have you ever been to Burger Barn?”

“I can’t,” Maya whines. “The lines. I go in and I’m hungry and I smell everything and I’m so much hungrier but then I have to wait so long, and by the time I’d get to order I’d probably have eaten my own sandals, so no, I’ve never actually had one of their burgers.”

The law office comes into sight down the street; Maya has had trouble remembering where it is, and then Datz redid the outer walls yesterday and she barely recognizes it, but she can find her way now by the dragon he painted on the wall, to go with the office sign. Nahyuta’s eyes widen and he comes to a halt, and Maya realizes that he must not have been down here yet. She gives him a moment to take it in; she’s not going to try to get used to this visage yet, not when Datz is talking about redoing the roof too. “So,” she prompts when Nahyuta tears his eyes away and they resume walking, “you’ve been to Burger Barn?”

“I recommend going before you are hungry,” he says. “Then by the time the wait is over you are not positively famished. But I find it surprising that the wait would prove to you a challenge - it should pale in comparison to activities such as meditation beneath a freezing waterfall. The Burger Barn is only slightly cold from too much air conditioning.”

“I cannot believe you went to Burger Barn before me,” Maya says. “I can’t believe this! Was it as good as they say or is it overrated? I guess you probably haven’t had enough burgers to know—”

“I made it a point to visit several other burger joints in the time while I was in America, intending to make such a comparison,” Nahyuta interrupts, and Maya cackles at the thought, remembering Apollo lamenting his brother’s habit of obsessively over-researching anything that may tangentially cross his path. Like all the trials Maya has been involved in. Like burgers. Nahyuta raises his eyebrows at her outburst but continues, “From the samples that I have experienced” - experience a burger, that would be a great restaurant tagline, and Maya nearly laughs again - “I would rate it as the best.”

“Huh,” Maya says. She’s spent years convincing herself that they have to be overrated. “I guess we’ll have to go. And with Pearly too, it can be like another dimension of our training. I can’t believe I never thought of that trick before! Just treat it like training. I’ve been locked in cold mountain caves before, like oh no, the burger line is difficult somehow.”

“Oh Mystic Master of Kurain, cousin of mine, all your wisdom yet you missed this simple fact.” He says it so deadpan, only the corners of his eyes turning up with amusement.  

Maya sticks her tongue out at him. “Nick’s got a challenger - that is the most sarcastic way of calling me wise that I’ve ever heard. But I’ll—” She stops as something occurs to her. “You - you will come back to LA someday, right?” He isn’t running from an evil queen any longer. He has a home to stay in. 

“Of course,” he says. “I have people there I must ask forgiveness of, and I should like to visit your village someday, as well, to meet our cousin Pearly.”

She’s called her that so much that Nahyuta not knowing her doesn’t know that isn’t quite her name. She smiles. Maybe once she goes back to the village, she can convince Pearl that his name is Yuty and watch what happens when they meet. That would be funny. “And I would like Rayfa to be able to meet her, as well,” Nahyuta continues. “And for her to see more of the world beyond Khura’in.”

Pearl is only four years older than the princess, has had her world upended in much the same way to learn that her mother was not what she seemed, and by following her instructions Pearl was not doing right by the people she cared about. “That’d be good,” Maya says. They stand on the doorstep of the office, stare together up at the hand painted sign above the door. “I bet Pearly would love to meet you and show you around. Go to Burger Barn. Have a fun cousins hang-out. Get to know each other a little better.”

See if together they can find a way to do better than their mothers and aunts. Change the fate of their family. 

Nahyuta smiles. “I would like that.”

[calpalirwin]

Difficult and Stubborn

Summary: When country difficult meets rock stubborn there’s bound to be a clash. And there’s bound to be more than one side to the same story.

A/N: So, in case y’all didn’t know, I’m a country music ho! And Morgan Wallen’s Chasin’ You gave me angsty Ash fic vibes so I paired it up with 5SOS’s Want You Back. And I think it worked?

Content: Swearing. Angst. Some fluff because I can’t write bad endings? I dunno. Same shit, different fic.

Word Count: 5,200-ish.

And, (like always) away, and away we go! (Have y’all caught on to this joke yet?)

~~~

March 2019

Y/N’s POV

“You know you gotta perform this song with me, right?” Morgan asked me.

“What?” I asked, my eyes going wide. I was a song writer, not a song-singer. Why did the people I wrote songs for keep rewarding me like this?

“C’mon, we sing it so much better together,” he winked.

I rolled my eyes, patting the man’s shoulder. “I’ll sing with you,” I relented. “But that’s it!”

“Great!” he grinned, hugging me tightly.

I rolled my eyes again and gave out a small laugh.

“Y/N?” a familiar- too familiar really- voice sounded and I ducked behind Morgan, eyes taking in the man strolling down the hall towards me. The brown curls I had spent many a night running my fingers through were now bright red. More tattoos decorated the arms that used to hold me tight. And Ashton Irwin was the last person I wanted to see before I was about to perform the song I had written about him.

~~~

March 2019

Ashton’s POV

“Ash, c’mon, mate,” Calum’s hand pulled on my arm.

“Yeah, right behind ya,” I said, following him down the hallway, before my eyes took her in. I stopped, blinking. It couldn’t be, could it? Despite being in the music business, we had managed to run in different circles. But it was. I would recognize her anywhere. “Y/N?” I called out, before I could think about it. She froze, recognizing my voice the same way I would recognize hers. But, instead of turning, she ducked behind the man she was standing with. 

I was about to call out to her again, but Calum gave me a sharp tug, pulling me along. “C’mon, mate. Don’t do this,” he told me, his voice low.

~~~

March 2017

Y/N’s POV

“You know you gotta perform this song with me, right?” Kelsea asked me.

“Kels, I just write the songs. I don’t perform them,” I said, holding up my hands, declining her offer.

“Oh, c’mon Y/N,” the pretty blonde pleaded. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your songwriting.”

“Just thank me in your speech, and we’ll call it even,” I assured her.

“Kelsea, you’re on in five,” a stagehand directed.

“Get her mic for me, would ya?” she winked at the stagehand, who shrugged and pushed a microphone in my hand.

“No, I do-” I protested, handing it back to him.

He looked at Kelsea, wondering what to do as I tried to get him to take the microphone back. “She’s doing this,” Kelsea smiled brightly at him. “Make sure they announce us both. That’s songwriter Y/N Y/L/N.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, rushing off.

I narrowed my eyes, “I could kill you right now.”

She just turned her bright smile to me, “You could, but then you’d have to perform solo.”

~~~

March 2017

Ashton’s POV

I sunk low in my chair, bored out of my skull. Being at an award show just to show face was the dumbest idea my management had come up with thus far.

“Drink after this?” Calum whispered to me.

“Fuck yeah,” I agreed. “What about Luke, though?”

“It’s an after-party, not a bar.”

“Performing Miss Me More, country music artist Kelsea Ballerini, and songwriter Y/N Y/L/N!” the host announced and our conversation got cut as we clapped politely as two women came out on stage, the blonde perky, the other shooting daggers with her eyes.

“Who’s that?” I nudged Calum.

He just shrugged, “But if looks could kill, yeah?”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on the woman who looked like she would rather be anywhere else in the world than on stage as the music started.

Kelsea sang her way through the first verse of a rather upbeat, ballsy fuck-you country tune, before the other woman joined her on the chorus. Then, when that second verse hit, it was just the other woman alone singing “I put on my old records that I hid in the back of the closet. And I turned them up to ten. And then I played them all again.” She got into it at that point, giving a little sway of her hips as she continued, “I found my independence, can’t believe I ever lost it. What you wanted, ain’t it? It’s what you wanted.” She gave a smug smirk and a wink at Kelsea before they both continued with the rest of the song.

“Thanks, y’all!” Kelsea grinned, taking a small bow to the applause. “Let’s give it up for my talent friend, Y/N!”

I don’t know what compelled me to do it, but I was on my feet, whistling through my fingers, suddenly feeling way better about being here.

~~~

March 2019

Y/N’s POV

“Please welcome to the stage, Morgan Wallen and Y/N Y/L/N and their new hit Chasin’ You!” the host announced and Morgan’s hand took mine as we walked out.

Morgan sang the first verse by himself, and I swayed quietly on my stool, my eyes closed, enjoying the music before I opened my eyes and joined him for the chorus.

“Chasin’ you-ooo-ooo like a shot of whiskey. Burnin’ goin’ down, burnin’ goin’ down. Chasin’ you-ooo-ooo like those goodbye headlights, headin’ west to anywhere out of this nowhere town. Chasin’ that freedom, chasin’ that feeling, that got gone too soon. Chasin’ that you and me, I only see in my rearview. Yeah, I’m layin’ here tonight holdin’ someone new, still chasin’ you. Still chasin’ you.” 

My eyes glanced across the crowd watching us and I found him easily, too easily.

~~~

March 2019

Ashton’s POV

Her eyes found mine as she started singing the second verse, a sad smile on her lips.

“You always used to talk about LA. I heard you got as far as Santa Fe. Oh, wait. You know I tried to track you down, but I only got as far as Guitar Town. Singin’ bout a boy I used to know, used to know. You should know that I haven’t given up, I’m just on your radio.”

I sucked in my breath as her eyes stayed locked on mine. I knew the song was about me. I just wondered how much of it was true.

I got up from my seat, Calum’s arm grabbing my arm in protest, but I yanked from his grasp and strode out, my mind racing.

God, how had her and I gone so wrong, so fast? How did we get back to the people we were when we met? How did anyone come back from a breakup in a relationship you were never sure you had in the first place?

~~~

March 2017

Y/N’s POV

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, clapping a hand over my mouth as the man jostled me.

“Oh, nah, that was my fault,” he apologized. His words were either accented or slightly slurred as he pushed his brown curls out off a set of honey-gold eyes. “Oh, hey! You’re that girl,” he smiled as those eyes took me in.

“It’s Y/N,” I said with a small laugh, offering him my hand.

“I’m Ashton,” he told me, his large hand enveloping mine. “That song rocked. And I don’t even like country all that much.”

“More of a rock band type?” I asked, my brain clicking through the names and faces I knew and not finding his, but recognizing his name anyway.

He tapped a finger to his nose knowingly. “Typical, I know. The drummer of a rock band likes rock music. Go fuckin’ figure.”

“Ah!” I said, my eyes lighting up in recognition. “You’re Ashton from 5 Seconds of Summer. What were you guys doing at the award show?”

“Showing the world that LA hasn’t swallowed us whole,” he shrugged, holding out his arms, the drink sloshing around the lip of the cup. 

“Easy there,” I said, laughing and wondering if he felt the same jolt of electricity as I did when I touched his arm to bring it down. “The booze may seem free, but the cost is gonna be one wicked hangover.”

“Can’t be hungover if I never stop drinking,” he winked, taking a long sip.

I laughed again. The man had some solid logic, even if it was heavily flawed. “C’mon you, let’s see if we can’t sober you up a bit.”

~~~

March 2017

Ashton’s POV

I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t even close to it. But I let her drag me outside anyway. 

“Okay, maybe this was a bad idea,” she chuckled, rubbing furiously at her bare arms. 

“Here,” I said, shrugging off my leather jacket and placing it around her shoulders. 

“Won’t you be cold?” she asked, sliding her arms in, letting the warmth envelope her.

“Nah, I’ll be good in this,” I said, pulling at my long sleeves. The leather jacket, combined with the small buzz I was working on getting, and the way she looked was making me too hot, so I was glad to shed the layer I could, letting the early spring night air cool me down. “So, do you live in LA?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nashville with all the other country folk.”

I nodded. “So you write, but you don’t sing?”

She laughed. I liked it. “I could ask you the same thing, Ashton.”

“I’m a drummer, what’s your excuse?”

“I don’t need my name up in lights. I write music for me, not for anybody else.”

“Sounds a little hypocritical to sell those songs then, no?”

She shrugged. “Gotta make a living somehow. Might as well make money doing what I love. But I don’t need all the glory that goes with it.”

I nodded. “That’s almost a shame, really. Cuz you sound great.”

She smiled, “So do you.”

Maybe it was the alcohol in my system. Maybe it was the way she looked in the streetlight glow in my leather jacket. Maybe it was a combination of the two or something else entirely. But the next thing I knew my lips met hers and her hands were in my hair and mine were on her hips.

~~~

March 2019

Y/N’s POV

“Y/N!” Ashton’s voice called as I walked down the hallway headed for my seat in the theater. 

I stopped and turned, trying not to lose my composure over how nearly two years had only made him more handsome. I’m not sure what I wanted him to look like. Maybe broken like I was? No. I didn’t want that. He didn’t deserve that pain I felt in my chest looking at him. God, it was pathetic. I was pathetic. We were barely a thing when we were a thing. And now we were back to being nothing. Two strangers in a hallway. God, if only that were true. “Ashton,” I answered, keeping my voice level, cold even. 

“Ashton? Really Y/N? That’s how it’s gonna be?” He gave a shake of his head, a hand rubbing at his neck, a breath coming out in a slow, shaky huff.

“What do you want, Ashton?” I asked, the iciness from my tone giving way to weariness.

“To talk?”

I rolled my eyes. “What about?”

His eyes darkened. “Jesus, are you always this difficult?”

“Are you always this stubborn?” I shot back. 

~~~

March 2019

Ashton’s POV

A low frustrated growl ripped through my throat. “I’m stubborn?! Jesus, woman, I’m just trying to talk to you!”

“I don’t have time for this,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “You don’t have time for this,” she added, her eyes locking on my fist that was clenched around the drumsticks. 

“Later then, yeah?”

“Later. Break a leg, or whatever,” she muttered, before walking off.

I watched her, shaking my head. God, even when she was mad she was hot.

“Mate…” Calum’s voice said, his eyes following where I was looking. “I specifically told you not to do this.”

“I’m not doing anything, Cal. She’s the one doing it.”

~~~

June 2017

Y/N’s POV

“C’mon,” he said, his eyes wild as he shed his shirt.

“Ash, you’re crazy!” I laughed.

“Live a little, baby,” he whispered in my ear, placing a kiss on my lips that tasted like the whiskey he took a swig off. Then, he was running down the river bend in the moonlight.

I took a swig of my own, then ran after him. I would chase that boy anywhere.

“You ever gonna chase me to LA?” he asked when I caught him. Okay, I would chase him almost anywhere.

“We talked about this, Ash,” I said, my voice soft, not wanting to have the same fight we've been having for three months.

“You’ll chase me all around Nashville, but not LA? Baby…” his voice begged with a small chuckle of disbelief. “You can still write in LA.”

“You can write in Nashville,” I countered. Then, “Can we not do this? Can we just enjoy whatever this is?”

He pushed his hair back with a click of his tongue and a shake of his head. “Yeah, whatever.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re really going to be mad at me for having a life, Ash?”

“I’m not mad that you don’t have a life. I’m mad you only act like were a thing when I come here.”

“I was in LA last month, and you ignored me!” I shot back.

“I was busy!”

“So what? I have to change for you, but you won’t change for me? How is that fair, Ash?”

“I’m not asking you to change!”

“Then, why are you trying to ruin a good thing, Ash?” I asked. “C’mon, be here with me.”

“In Nashville?”

“No,” I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood, taking his hands in mine. “Here. This moment. Me and you. Nobody else.”

A small smile crept across his lips and I knew we were done fighting. “You drive me crazy, you know that, baby?”

“Honestly, how you put up with me, I’ll never know,” I said, reaching up on tiptoe to kiss him deeply.

“Mmm, it’s cuz you kiss like that,” he told me, his eyes shining in the way that sent shivers down my spine.

“Like what?” I asked innocently, repeating the kiss. “Like this?”

“Just like that, baby.”

“Keep calling me ‘baby’ and there will be plenty of kisses just like that.”

“Baby,” he grinned, placing his lips on my neck to leave his own kisses and marks. “Baby, baby, baby.”

~~~

July 2017

Ashton’s POV

“You never change, do you?!” she screamed at me in the parking lot, the summer rain making it hard to tell if she was crying or not.

I kept my face neutral, deciding to say nothing. I had just asked if she wanted to join me on tour and she was acting like I set her on fire.

“Say something!” she yelled, her voice cracking- yep, she was crying- her hands pushing hard at my chest, enough to make me have to throw a foot back to catch myself.

I dropped my gaze, deciding to take this moment to memorize her before I never got another chance. Her hair was starting to frizz in the light drizzle. Her voice that could be so soft was loud and harsh, ringing out in the parking lot. Her thin shirt- my favorite one, the one with roses on it- clung to her skin. “All I asked was if you wanted to join me on tour,” I said simply. “Didn’t even have to be for the whole thing. Just thought maybe you were in the mood to travel. With me. Your boyfriend.”

“Oh, is that what you are?” she asked with a disgusted laugh.

I blinked, dumbly.

She let out a wild scream of frustration. “I broke up with my ex because I valued my independence. I thought you respected that. We never said what we were, Ashton. You just come around every now and then, shake up my world for a few days, and then leave.”

“I do respect that! But you can’t have it both ways! You can’t get mad at me for leaving, and then turn around and get mad when I ask you to come with me!” I shouted at her, losing my temper the way she had already lost hers.

“Because when I did come, you ignored me!”

“You’re really gonna keep using that argument?!”

“I make time for you every time you come to Nashville! But you couldn’t do the same?! And you think you’re my boyfriend?! God!” Her hands came to rest on her head and I knew what was coming next. “I do- I don’t know how we’ve been working for as long as we have. We don’t work. You and I will never work.”

“Message received,” I said shortly, grateful we each had met up so I didn’t have to endure a hard silent car ride that may or may not led to make-up/break-up sex. I could just leave, here and now. Before I shattered.

~~~

March 2019

Y/N’s POV

“And now, 5SOS with their new hit Want You Back!” the host announced and I clapped politely, but wished for the theater to open up and swallow me whole. I couldn’t hear this song. Not here in front of people.

“Can’t help but wondering if this is the last time that I’ll see your face. Is it tears or just the pourin’ rain? Wish I could say something. Something that doesn’t sound insane, but lately I don’t trust my brain. You tell me I won’t ever change, so I just say nothing,” Luke sang the clean acoustic version, but my eyes were on the man just beyond the blonde. God, how could he make something as simple as snapping look so damn sexy?

His eyes were closed, lost in the music, and I was glad for it. It meant he couldn’t tell that I was watching. It would have stayed that way if he had kept those damn honey colored eyes that I saw every time I closed my eyes shut. But, I wasn’t lucky when it came to Ashton Irwin. No, those eyes snapped open with his fingers and locked with mine. So much for pretending to move on.

~~~

March 2019

Ashton’s POV

I had kept my eyes closed, because I knew that if I looked I would find her and I really didn’t want to break down on stage. But the first verse ended and my eyes opened up, almost without my permission, and found her watching.

“No matter where I go, I’m always gonna want you back. No matter how long you’re gone, I’m always gonna want you back. I know you know I will never get over you. No matter where I go, I’m always gonna want you back, want you back,” I sang into my microphone along with the rest of my band, swallowing the lump in my throat, and the pain swirling in the pit of my stomach.

I wondered if she was sitting there thinking the same thing I had when it had been her up here instead of me. I wish I could tell her that every word of it was true. I would never not want her. But, that confession would have to wait.

~~~

September 2017

Y/N’ POV

I chucked my phone in anger. I needed to stop. God, it wasn’t even like we were a thing to begin with. So why did it hurt so bad? Why was I constantly scrolling through his band account to see whether he looked broken up or happy? Why was I still hung up on him?

I pulled my notebook closer, gave my pen a quick tap, and started writing.

“We used to taste that Chattanooga fray. Couple kids in a Chevrolet. Catch a little air when we hit the tracks. Sipping on something from a paper sack. You hang your shirt on a maple limb. Slippin’ through the moon to the river bend. Wasn’t very long I was jumpin’ in, jumpin’ in. I guess I’m still doin’ now what I was doin’ then,” I sang along, plucking out a melody, figuring maybe putting him in a song would get him out of my head once and for all.

~~~

November 2017

Ashton’s POV

My fingers itched as I clutched my phone tighter. “Don’t do it. Don’t you dare do it,” I whispered angrily to myself.

“Give it to me,” Calum said, his brown hand outstretched.

I sighed in defeat and handed it to him. “I don’t know what to do, Cal. She’d push, and I’d pull. So, I would push, and then she would pull. I never knew what she wanted me to do. Did she want her freedom? Did she want me? Did she want both, and I just didn’t know how to give her that? God, I can’t think straight!”

“Here,” he said, pushing a notebook and pen in my hand. “Get it out. Maybe getting it on paper will clear up your head.”

I offered him a small smile of gratitude. “Thanks, Cal.”

“I’m always here for ya, mate. Now turn this moping into a hit.”

I chuckled for the first time in what felt like a while, the sound strange to my ears. I opened the notebook and the words came easily- too easily.

“I remember the freckles on your back, and the way I used to make you laugh. ‘Cause you know  every morning I wake up, yeah, I still reach for you. I remember the roses on your shirt when you told me this would never work. You know even when I say I’ve moved on, yeah, I still dream for you.”

~~~

March 2019

Y/N’s POV

I got up out of my seat. I couldn’t sit here and watch him up there anymore. It was my own damn fault. I hadn’t wanted a relationship, so I had kept him at arm’s length, and every time he tried to close the distance I pushed. But then I would get mad when he didn’t pull me close anyway. I had wanted him to fight for me and every time he did I balked, scared of risking losing myself like I had in my last relationship.

My wandering in my dazed state led me to the hallway backstage, and as fate would have it, I smacked right into the person I still wasn’t sure about.

~~~

March 2019

Ashton’s POV

“Whoa, easy there,” I said, grabbing her arms to hold her steady as she stumbled back. “You okay?” I asked when her eyes traveled up and I got a good look of her face- broken, struggling to keep her composure.

“I’m fine,” she all but snarled, her eyes hard despite the rest of her face being soft, jerking out of my grasp.

I held up my hands and took a small step back. “Just making sure you don’t fall on your ass, baby.”

“Don’t you dare call me that.”

“Baby, baby, baby,” I taunted, crossing my arms.

“Stubborn asshole.”

“Difficult baby.”

“You infuriate me.”

“Oh yeah? Is that why you wrote a song about how you haven’t given up? Because I infuriate you?”

“That song’s not about you. It’s Morgan’s song about his ex,” she lied.

“Bullshit it is,” I scoffed.

“Oh, like you didn’t just perform a song about me?” she challenged.

“I never said I didn’t.”

“So, I’m the fake betch who treated you really wrong?” she asked, accenting the words like Luke and I had, not realizing she had just admitted to keeping tabs on me.

I laughed harshly. “That’s the part you chose to focus on? The part where Luke and I were dicking around as he tried to make me laugh for the first time in months?”

“I’m not fake, Ashton. I wasn’t faking anything with you.”

“I never said you were.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t even know why I’m trying right now.”

“Trying what? You’re the one acting hostile. All I did was keep you from falling flat on face.”

“If you wanted to keep me from falling flat on my face you should- nevermind.”

I tilted my head. “I’m sorry? I should’ve what?”

“Nevermind.”

“You going to the after-party?”

“Yes…”

“Cool. We’ll talk there, yeah? Maybe without the hostilities?”

“That depends, are you going to be stubborn?”

“Are you going to be difficult?” I asked back.

Her eyes narrowed, but she fought the eye roll. God, all I wanted right now was to kiss that hard look off her face. “Just find me later, Ash,” she finally said, using the shortened version of my name as an act of good faith.

~~~

June 2018

Y/N’s POV

I wasn’t sure why I was watching the video. The last time I had watched a video of him I had cried for hours wondering if he really thought I was a fake bitch who broke his heart like it was nothing. Did he really think I was a monster? Was I a monster? Hell, maybe I was for pushing away a guy who only wanted to hold me together. God, I was so stupid!

I was expecting Ashton to go off on what the lyrics meant to him as I watched the video against my better judgement, but he surprised me by talking about the process of writing the song, rather than what it meant to him personally. Maybe he wasn’t drunk enough yet. Maybe he had written the song to move on, and it had worked for him. Good. At least it had worked for one of us.

~~~

July 2018

Ashton’s POV

“So, you actually wrote this song, Y/N, is that right?” the radio host asked her in the live stream of the video I was watching.

She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I wrote the lyrics anyway. Morgan and his team wrote the music for it.”

“She’s being modest,” Morgan cut in with a laugh. “She had a guitar melody in mind when she showed us the song that we worked with.”

“And yet, you let him sing it?”

She laughed. “Yeah, or I try to anyway. I keep telling Morgan I’m just the song writer, not the song singer, but he can be very persuasive.”

The radio host leaned in, “Oh, so is Morgan the someone new you’re holding?”

She laughed again. “No, Morgan and I are just friends. There’s nobody new I’m holding. It was just a good fit lyrically.”

The radio host leaned back, clearly disappointed that there wasn’t an exclusive scoop for him to exploit. I sighed in relief, as that line had tore me up inside every time I heard it. “Rumor has it the song is about a certain rock drummer you were spotted getting friendly with last year. So, were you and Ashton Irwin of 5SOS dating, and is the song about your breakup?”

She shrugged, and I watched the small flash as her face fell before she kept it neutral. “It’s based on experience, like all my songs are. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s about a breakup, though. Ashton and I…” her voice trailed off as she struggled to find the words. “We had fun. We had potential. And, uh…”

“He’s just a feeling you’re trying to chase?” the radio host supplied.

She let out a breath that held the trace of a laugh. The sound of shoulda/woulda/coulda beens. “Ash was more than a feeling, but uh, yeah. I guess you could say that.”

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

~~~

March 2019

Y/N’s POV

I took a swallow of my water, waving my hand dismissively at the harder drinks being offered my way. I needed to be stone-cold sober for this chat I was mentally hyping myself up to have with Ashton. If I could stop being so damn defensive that was. God, I was the one who had pushed him away. I had no right to play the victim. I forced a smile, that really didn’t feel all that forced, as I saw him shouldering his way through the crowd towards me.

“Found ya,” he said simply.

My smile widened. “You did. So, that talk?” I asked, deciding to jump right in.

“Outside?” he suggested.

I nodded, taking his hand and letting him lead me out to the balcony. I fought against the nostalgia washing over me at finding my hand in his again, instead shivering against the night breeze. I really needed to learn to bring a jacket. I felt his hand leave mine and then the enveloping warmth that was his leather jacket and scent on my shoulders. “Thanks,” I mumbled, thrusting my arms through the sleeves. “You didn’t have to do that.”

He shrugged, his hands going into the pockets of his black jeans. “Didn’t want you to be cold.”

I sighed, looking out over the city. “What are we doing?”

“It’s just a jacket, Y/N.”

“I don’t mean the damn jacket, Asht-” I started, feeling angry at all the emotions I’d kept bottled up for nearly two years. “I’m not talking about the jacket, Ash,” I tried again, keeping my voice calm and level.

“I know. But it’s a good metaphor all the same, don’t ya think? You fighting back against every nice thing I did like the difficult woman you are?”

His tone was teasing, so I didn’t feel too bad when I rolled my eyes and gave his shoulder a small shove. “You mean you fighting me like the stubborn man you are?”

He let out a small laugh and shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve been known to be stubborn, yes.”

“And I’ve been known to be difficult,” I relented.

“So, where does that leave us?” he asked, his honey eyes locking on mine.

“Right about here?” I suggested, reaching up on tiptoe to kiss the lips I had missed kissing more than I cared to admit out loud.

~~~

March 2019

Ashton’s POV

“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” I murmured against her lips, pulling her tight to me.

“I’m sorry,” she was whispering back as her hands snaked into my hair, her lips letting go of mine so she could look up at me. “I didn’t know how to keep you and my independence. But this freedom? It’s suffocating.”

“I never wanted to keep you. I just wanted you in any version you were willing to give me.”

“Keep me. Please.” Her voice was a heartbreaking plea.

“Anybody tell you that you’re difficult?” I asked with a chuckle.

“Anybody tell you that you’re stubborn?” she shot back, playfully. “Ash, I’m finally asking you to hold me close like you wanted. Are you really going to say this isn’t want you want anymore?”

I shook my head. “You drive me crazy, you know that, baby? But, I love it. And you.”

“You love me, huh?”

“I love difficult, what can I say?”

“Good thing I love stubborn, then.”

I tilted my head back, chuckling into the night. “Baby, your love is gonna be the end of me.” 

“You love it when I kiss you like this?” she asked with a playful laugh, kissing me the way she knew I loved being kissed.

“Just like that, baby,” I nodded, my fingers dancing across her waist to hold her tight.

“Keep calling me ‘baby’ and there will be plenty of kisses just like that.”

“Baby,” I grinned, placing my lips on her neck to leave my own kisses and marks. “Baby, baby, baby.”