#if I don’t??? then I have these memories that are so joyful and vibrant

[secondstar-acorn]

can’t think of anything to say other than it was everything I could have ever expected and wanted and hoped for. seeing them perform truly is an electric experience and I am so, so grateful I got to be there. I’ve never felt such overflowing joy and love in one room before and that truly is down to what a one-of-a-kind group Starkid is. I’m so happy and a little emotional that it’s over but like it’s sung in days of summer, “don’t wanna see you go but it’s not forever, not forever” ⭐️💜

[indeedcaptain]

Regulatory Relations, chp. 13: The Children of Tarsus Redux

Hello everyone!! I hope you're having a happy Threshold Day!! Here is the big ole honkin monster of an installment for Regulatory Relations that has taken over my whole brain.

social media dry january was so much easier last year when i wasn't actively in a fandom. i just want to look at star trek memes so badly. see you all in two days!!!

Some things:

thank you so so so so much for reading. the response to this fic has been so joyful and supportive.

this story has gotten deeper and darker than originally planned, so I've officially changed the rating from "archive warnings not needed" to "graphic depictions of violence".

on that note: this is The Tarsus Chapter. content warnings for descriptions of violence, starvation, and death.

i wrote a song about Kirk and Kodos post-Tarsus :) if you're into that sort of thing I've reblogged it to this blog and the link is available here.

☆☆☆

At first, everything was dark. His room, the bed beneath him, even Spock’s hand in his--- all of it had vanished, replaced by the warm black nothing. He could not feel his body. He was not sure if he had one, here. But then he heard his name. 

Jim? 

Hello, Kirk said, or thought, and he sensed something that felt like Spock out in the darkness. It felt like his dry humor, his curiosity, the fierce energy of him coiled into waiting stillness. Can you hear me? 

Yes, Spock said, and he sounded--- felt--- closer now. Are you in discomfort? 

No, Kirk said, after a moment. But it doesn’t feel like the other times we’ve melded. 

I guided your mind through what was necessary in previous circumstances. Here I have created space for you instead. Kirk felt the gesture of Spock’s mind, sweeping out around them. What you show me, I will see. 

Cautiously, he thought of somewhere to start. Kirk cringed in anticipation of the nausea, the choking panic, but it did not arrive. He was uncomfortable, unhappy, flayed out and vulnerable, but he could physically continue. The Iowa farmhouse appeared, rippling out in vibrant color from the point that he thought he inhabited in this strange in-between space. The faded white wood paneling, the wide porch with the swing and its rusty chains, the windbreak row of trees, and the cornfield, stretching out as far as Spock’s mind allowed, were replicated as faithfully as if they were physically there. And then they were; Spock materialized at his side as his own body appeared beneath him.  

Spock looked around. Is this where you were raised?

Yes, Kirk said, and as they watched, a child with sandy brown hair flung open the screen door, flounced down the stairs, and vanished into the cornfield. An older boy came out more slowly, accompanied by an adult woman with the same sandy hair. They talked on the porch, staring in the direction that the younger one had gone. 

That was me, he said quietly. This is the beginning, I suppose. He had laid out in the cornfield for hours, watching the clouds pass through the sky as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes into the dirt beneath him. Kirk closed his eyes and pushed the memory forward, and when he opened his eyes again the sky had darkened and Jimmy was trudging out of the cornfield back to the farmhouse. He wiped the back of his nose with his forearm and let the screen door swing shut gracelessly behind him. 

Akin to the strange logic of dreams, Kirk and Spock stood in the kitchen of the farmhouse without having moved. Jimmy sat at the wooden table, arms crossed protectively across his chest, as Winona Kirk pulled brochures out of a Starfleet-issue duffel bag. 

“I don’t want to go to Mars,” Jimmy said. 

“You don’t have to,” Winona soothed. 

“I want to go with you and Dad.” 

“I’m sorry, baby,” Winona said. “For this posting, that’s just not an option.” Jimmy crossed his arms more tightly across his chest. 

“Can’t I stay here?” 

“Not by yourself.” Winona found the brochure that she had been looking for, the glossy paper reflecting the warm light and fluttering with the movement of the ceiling fan, and pulled the chair out next to Jimmy. “Look at this one,” she said quietly, and placed the brochure on the table in front of him. He turned away, staring out the window over the sink. “It’s not like Sam’s school. It’s all hands-on, all learning by doing. You’d get to be on a farm, just like here, with other kids. Dad and I could come visit you when we get leave.” Jimmy kept his gaze locked on the window, and Winona stood after another silent minute. She kissed him on the forehead and exited. When she was gone, Jimmy turned to the brochure. He frowned at it, but he picked it up and opened it.

Kirk knew what came next. He had been enchanted against his will by the promise of the experiential Farm School, and it would become his home for two beautiful years. 

I wish I could just show you the good things, Kirk said. There were good things, too. 

I believe you, captain, Spock said. Show me whatever you need.

Kirk crossed to the table where Jimmy--- his younger self, and it was hard to remember that he had ever been so young--- sat, flipping through the brochure. He looked down at the shiny pictures. They didn’t do it justice. I just need--- I need you to see what I saw. I think that’s what all this is about. Spock crossed to him, standing next to him, and even in the meldspace Kirk felt the comfort of his presence.

Kirk laced his fingers through Spock’s and remembered. 

☆☆☆

Tarsus IV was the fourth planet in a small system in the middle of nowhere, Beta quadrant. It was Class M, with mostly mild seasons, and by the time Jimmy arrived, it was populated with eight thousand others, entirely human. It was not a highly developed colony; humans had only been there for twenty years, and it was technologically delayed--- no replicators, no transporters, only one government-owned high-speed comms relay to the rest of the Federation. Those who lived there were agriculturalists; scientists and farmers looking to conduct their research or make a living selling crops to the traders who passed through on their way to the further-flung starbases. After Jimmy had set his narrow shoulders, gritted his teeth, and taken the brochure upstairs to his parents, they had bought him a physical copy of a traveler’s guide to Tarsus IV. He read it back to front, over and over, until the spine crumbled in his hands and they replaced it with a digital copy on his padd. Six months after he had stormed from the kitchen and into the cornfield, the shuttle containing a newly twelve years old Jimmy Kirk touched down on Tarsus. He was met at the shuttle pad by two women in their twenties. Their names were Madeleine and Natalya, and, as Starfleet Academy graduates who had elected to take elementary teaching posts instead of a commission on a ship, they were impossibly cool and rebellious to a child whose parents rarely spent more than eight months anywhere. They took him to Farm School, where he was given three rough-spun jumpsuits to wear on outside days and a tour of the grounds. There were fields, a big house that doubled as a cafeteria and dormitory, a school building with classrooms and a gymnasium, and a contingent of laboratories built for little scientists with child-sized hands. 

“Do you know what you might want to study?” Natalya was tall, blonde, and strong, and she and Madeleine both had been science track at the Academy. She led Jimmy through the different buildings, wandered through a wheat field with him, and then took him to the highest point on the campus so he could look out and see the sprawl of Farm School and the town beyond.

“Everything,” Jimmy said. For the first time in his life, Jimmy was judged by his own actions and interests and not by the reputations of his family. He could raise his hand in class and be called on by a teacher who had never taught his brother. He could take extracurriculars in engineering and make mistakes without being asked, “Didn’t your mom explain this to you?” He could shadow his tutors and tell them that he wanted to be a scientist without any of them assuming that he would be a captain, like his dad. For almost two years, he learned and grew and made friends with kids who cared more about his first name than his last. 

For almost two years, he was happy.

Jimmy’s second summer on Tarsus IV was the driest on record. The swimming hole where he and a few of his friends spent most afternoons after their classes were over had shrunk considerably since the spring. The sudden thunderstorms that he had grown accustomed to the previous year were few and far between. 

In late August, when they were on a break from their classes, Jimmy snuck into the patch of field that they had given him for his summer project to check on his crops: a small growth, only a few square yards, of yellow corn. He had hoped to have enough to make cornbread for his classmates once it had all reached peak sweetness. He walked slowly though the fields, brushing his palms carelessly over the purple amaranth that was his friend Laika’s project, one eye on keeping his feet in the walkways and one eye on the clouds above him. The formerly teal-blue sky had darkened considerably, and though he didn’t mind the rain, the teachers got nervous when any of them were out in a storm. The soil of Tarsus had a considerably higher metallic content than Earth, and they weren’t keen on testing the survival rate of lightning strikes on the children in their care. He walked faster. 

His corn had grown to the right height, but as he brushed his hands against the stalks, they bent in a way that was unfamiliar. He frowned. He had spent the first twelve years of his life running through farm fields; he had long understood the way that the laws of physics exerted themselves on the stalks of late-summer corn. The stalks moved ponderously, with less structural resilience than he was used to. The ears swung heavily and drooped down more than he had expected. Jimmy reached out and grabbed one, thinking to pull it off the stalk and peel back the silk to peer inside, but he froze when it landed in his palm. Rather than the bumpy firmness of corn, it felt as though there was goo trapped inside the shell. He hefted the mushy ear in one hand and poked at it with a finger. His finger left an indent, meeting virtually none of the expected resistance. A single drop of a deep, metallic, mercurial blue liquid oozed out of the top and dropped to the soil below. He dropped the ear, and it hung morosely from the stalk, dripping blue ooze onto the dirt. 

Jimmy turned and ran for the safety of the main house as the sky broke open above him. By the time he got inside, Natalya was standing in the foyer with a towel for him. 

“My corn melted,” he said, confused, dripping rain onto the pale wooden floor.

“We can check it out when the storm is over,” she said, scrubbing his drenched hair with the towel. But it was movie night, and one of the littlest kids got overtired and set off a giggling fit that derailed everyone’s attention, and by the time Jimmy laid down in his bunk bed he had forgotten about the corn entirely.

Ten days later, during their first class after the break, Madeleine took them outside to check on their summer projects. Jimmy had fallen to the back of the group, play-fighting with Tommy, when they heard a dismayed scream from the front. 

Laika wailed, “What happened?” She knelt in what remained of her amaranth. The proud purple bushels had veered decidedly towards blue and lay in mushy puddles, the flower heads shedding off the stalk in her hands.

“Laika, don’t touch that, get out of the mess,” Madeleine said, and stepped away from the group to flip her comm open. She said something quietly into it, out of Jimmy’s hearing, but her face, normally split by her wide smile, was pinched with concern. Laika stood, wiping the remnants of her summer project off her hands and the knees of her jumpsuit, and frustrated tears glinted in her eyes. 

“My corn,” Jimmy realized, remembering, and took off running. He heard Madeleine shout behind him, but he couldn’t hear what she said and therefore didn’t have to listen. He skidded to a halt in the dirt after a few more seconds anyway, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The stalks still stood, half-bent, and the ears were still attached, in the loosest sense of the word. But whatever might have been growing inside had melted out, dripping down into the soil into noxious blue puddles. 

Madeleine appeared over his shoulder and gaped at the oil spill that had been his summer project. “Let’s go, Jimmy,” she said, and steered him away, back towards the main house. They passed Natalya, standing with their biology teacher, Mr. Park, and the chemistry teacher, Mr. Lopez, talking next to the remains of the amaranth. Madeleine took them all inside and they played dodgeball in the gym until they were released for the afternoon. After dinner, Jimmy and some of the older kids played cards in the dorm until Madeleine called for lights out, and even Laika was pulled out of her mournful shell to play with them by the end of the night. 

That was the last normal day. 

One of the best parts of Farm School had been the food. There were no replicators on Tarsus, and Jimmy didn’t like the fake chemical aftertaste of most replicated food anyway. They bought food from the town and the other farmers, and got shipments from the traders that stopped through every month or so, but the majority of what they ate came from the farm itself. Over the next two weeks, the farm-grown food stopped appearing at mealtimes. Halfway through September, Natalya pulled all of the older children, thirty or so out of the one hundred at the school, aside before dinner. 

“I think we all know that it was a very dry summer,” she said, and one of the boys started sniffling immediately in the back of the classroom. They had known that something was wrong after all their summer projects had died horribly, but Madeleine still showed them old Earth movies when they scored well on math tests and Natalya had taught the more flexible kids some of her gymnastics moves. The school schedule had marched on, and so, they had reasoned, things couldn’t have been too bad. But now Madeleine was here, her wide smile replaced by an unfamiliar strict line, talking to them without the littles present. It became impossible to ignore the changes that they had silently agreed not to discuss.

“Please, do not worry. We will take care of you. We’ve already talked to the governor, and help is coming, but until it arrives things are going to have to be a little different.” 

The older kids voted to join the teachers in hiding the worst of the situation from the littles, and though it was not mandatory they joined the teachers in accepting limited rations to give the littles the last of the fresh produce. Jimmy sent a holo of his lab station to Sam with the caption, “still cooler than math school!!” and a message to his parents that said, “i miss you.” Over the slow civilian comms relay that the school had, neither of his messages would be received for a month at least. By then, Madeleine had said, Starfleet or one of the trade ships would have arrived and things would be back to normal. But it made him feel better to know that his messages were out in space, soaring from beacon to beacon towards his family. 

“Summons from the governor,” Madeleine said cheerfully when she woke up the boys in Jimmy’s dorm room on a morning in late September. “Personalized invitations, too! Jimmy, your parents aren’t in the quadrant now, are they?” 

Jimmy yawned, stretching, the morning sun warming the room through the white linen curtains. “Nope,” he said, half-asleep. “They’re still in Delta for a while, I think.” 

Madeleine hummed, but she tapped something on her padd. “You and Tommy are coming with me and Natalya today.” Tommy hung his head down from his place on the top bunk. 

“Me, too?” 

Madeleine ruffled his hair, fluffy with gravity. “Better dress nicely. No holes in your jeans.” 

“But they’re cool!” 

“You say that now,” Madeleine said. “And in thirty years you’ll look back at holos of yourself and say, why was my clothing falling apart all the time?” She chucked him on the back of the head gently and left them to get ready. They rose, and dressed, and breakfast was sparse but Natalya snuck them each a cup of coffee and it helped to cut the hunger. 

Farm School was on the side of a mountain, set above the main town, and its farmland was surrounded by forest. Someday, Jimmy thought, more people would live here, and there would be less forest, and Tarsus would feel less isolated from the galaxy as a whole. But he was glad to live here now, because Mr. Lopez sometimes led them on hikes deep into the woods to identify each of the birds by their song, and it was easy to forget that there was anyone else in the universe at all. Madeleine and Natalya led their parade of fifty down the hill, down the packed dirt road from Farm School that would meet the paved road that led into town. It was a familiar road; when there were holidays, or after the harvests, the governor’s office would put on festivals and the students would run down the road in packs of four and five to spend their credits on sweets and new books and clothing. The littles skipped between them, holding hands, but Jimmy and the other older kids didn’t want to waste their energy, not when they’d have to walk back up the hill in the autumn sun later. 

They followed Natalya and Madeleine to the town hall. There was an auditorium there, in a drafty old hall towards the back of the brick building, where sometimes the local players would put on shows or traveling troupes would stage concerts. Today it would be nearly at capacity--- it sat almost five thousand people, and it was over half-full already. Madeleine narrowed her eyes at the presence of the governor’s security force, wearing their forest green uniforms, lining the walls and standing at the entrances, but she led them into a few rows near the back of the hall where they could all sit together. She and Natalya talked quietly with their heads close together while Laika pulled a deck of cards from her back pocket and dealt Jimmy and Tommy into a game of ratscrew. One of the littles, Kevin, stood over Tommy’s shoulder and asked too many questions, and two others, Ellie and Mira, slid themselves into Laika’s lap when it became apparent that Madeleine and Natalya would not be distracted from their conversation by their pleas for attention. The game devolved quickly from there, but the littles could be convinced to play Go Fish instead of the faster slapping game as long as the older kids pretended that it was cool. The other kids had distracted themselves similarly; a padd with books, a holofilm between two girls sharing a set of headphones, one of the younger kids with his ever-present sketchbook. The auditorium filled up around them, until the enormous wooden doors banged shut and Madeleine pulled them all to their feet to pay attention. The crowd fell silent. 

A small door to the right of the stage opened, and the governor stepped out, flanked on either side by his green-shirted guards. Jimmy had seen him before, at the winter festival and harvest celebrations. He had wavy silver hair, and uncannily light brown eyes that Jimmy could see flashing in the stage lights even from where he stood in the back. Governor Kodos climbed the stairs to the waiting podium, and with a nod to someone offstage a microphone buzzed mechanically to life. 

“Good morning,” he said, and gazed solemnly at them. “I appreciate every one of you taking the time to join us here today. It was short notice, but the community we’ve built here never shies away from pulling together for each other, does it?” Madeleine and Natalya exchanged glances over the heads of the kids lined between them. Madeleine rolled her eyes. Kodos continued, but Jimmy had a hard time focusing on his words. The auditorium was hot with the trapped body heat of four thousand others, and he wished that they had all sat before Kodos started talking. His attention drifted.

“...grateful for the sacrifices you have made thus far, and grateful for all those to come,” Kodos said. Madeleine’s head snapped up, and her eyes met Natalya’s. Jimmy saw, in the laser-focused line between them, that they had heard something that he had not, and the skin on the back of his neck crawled. Around them, the quiet listening stillness of the crowd shivered into an animal intensity, a predatory waiting. Natalya glanced around, and a muscle twitched in her jaw. She and Madeleine passed something invisibly, silently, through the air between them.

In the space between one breath and the next Jimmy watched as his teachers shed their masks of civility to reveal iron ferocity beneath. They might have been science track at the Academy, but they were still soldiers. The crowd’s discontented energy began to boil over. Natalya grabbed one of the littlest kids, hefted her into her arms, and marched straight at the nearest guard, standing in front of an exit. Madeleine swept backwards as she shoved Jimmy towards Natalya and the door. 

“Start walking,” she hissed. “Get the littles, get to the exit, and get out!” Jimmy turned, on autopilot, and shoved at Tommy’s shoulder. Madeleine doubled back to push the second row of students towards the door, putting herself between them and the guards lining the back wall.

“Move,” he whispered to Tommy, and they shuffled towards Natalya and the guard. 

“She had an accident,” Natalya said, smiling. “Excuse us. I need to change her before it starts to stink.” The little girl in her arms hid her face in her neck under the scrutiny of the guard. Their line bunched behind Natalya as the crowd behind them started to yell out. 

“Quiet!” Kodos’s voice boomed out through the auditorium, and for a moment everything went perfectly still. “I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV.” There was one heartbeat of pure silence.

A phaser whined and discharged on the other side of the room. Someone screamed. Then five, seven, twelve other phasers fired. Bodies dropped to the ground. The crowd surged forward, out, away from the guards or towards them, yelling and crying out. Natalya kicked her guard in the knee, grabbed for his phaser as he fell, and shot him point-blank. Even as two other guards from the back of the auditorium ran towards her, she shoved the auditorium door open, revealing the cement hallway beyond. 

“Go!” Natalya roared in pain as she staggered forward, a phaser burn eating through the shoulder of her jacket and revealing the muscle fiber beneath her scorched skin. She shoved the little girl in her arms at one of the older kids pushing by and turned, raising her phaser. As Jimmy passed through the doorway, running after Tommy, his heart in his throat and the cacophony of phaser fire filling his ears, he turned back--- to look for other kids left behind, or to look for Madeleine and Natalya, he wasn’t sure. He saw the bodies of his classmates, unlucky enough to have been in the last row and in the direct line of fire of the guards lining the back of the hall, curled together on the floor by their seats. Madeleine was sprawled over them, covering them, unmoving. There were piles of people, twisted together in awful ways, in front of the guards still holding phasers. And at the head of it all, Kodos onstage, hands clasped together, watching over the scene with a terrible calm. 

The last time he saw Natalya, she stood in the open doorway between her fleeing students and the advancing guards with a half-charged phaser in her hand, blood dripping down her useless arm from the hole in her shoulder. 

She screamed, “Close the door!” as she fired at one of the guards. Jimmy grabbed the door and slammed it shut, and he felt the reverberation of impact as something--- phaser discharge or Natalya or both--- hit it from the other side. He backed away, watching the door, but Natalya held the line. The door didn’t open. He turned and sprinted in the direction that Tommy and the others had gone as muffled screams faded behind him. 

The backstreet behind the town hall was bizarrely, unsettlingly quiet. Natalya was gone. Madeleine was gone. Half of the students that they had come down with, maybe more, had been lost to the chaos in the auditorium. As Jimmy pulled the last door shut behind him, he saw Laika’s little gasp of relief. There was a question in her eyes, but he shook his head. There would not be anyone coming out behind him. They were on their own. Jimmy wound through the crowd to stand with her and Tommy, brushing his hand over the head or shoulder of a sniffling little as he passed through them. 

“We can’t stay here,” Laika whispered, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Where…?” 

“We have to get out of the town,” Tommy whispered back. Jimmy stared at the plain white door that separated them from the slaughter in the theatre. He saw Madeleine sprawled protectively, uselessly, over the bodies of his classmates, Natalya’s broad shoulders filling the last doorway like she could protect them all. His heart thudded painfully against his ribs. Inside his head, he was screaming and screaming and screaming, but it didn’t come out. He felt his soul splitting into two. One part of him shrieked and beat his hands bloody against the white door. The other part was as cool as porcelain, utterly disconnected from everything he had seen, unfeeling but for the desire to stay alive, to keep the last of his friends alive. 

“We’ll go through the woods,” he said. Laika and Tommy looked at him, but he couldn’t meet their eyes. The white door burned in his vision. “We probably know the forest around Farm School better than anyone else. If we get into the trees we at least won’t be seen. Then we can go home and find Mr. Park and he’ll know what to do.” He finally looked at his friends, and when he met their eyes, they nodded. 

“Hold hands,” Laika said. She raised her voice slightly. “Ten and ups, grab a little. Buddy system.” Their little crowd--- only thirteen of them left, out of so many more--- shifted, reaching for each other. Jimmy felt like his bones were vibrating with the effort of keeping himself steady, but a tiny hand slid into his, grabbing onto three of his fingers with a chubby grip and anchoring him. He looked down. 

Kevin stared up at him with enormous brown eyes, and it was the first time that Jimmy had ever seen him at a loss for words. He squeezed, feeling the fragility of the younger boy’s hand, and settled his shoulders back, the way he’d seen his dad do, the way Sam did. If they could get back home, then Mr. Park or Mr. Lopez would be able to fix this--- whatever was still fixable. All they had to do was get home. They could do that. 

“Ready?” Jimmy’s mind shut everything else out--- his own screaming, the white door, Natalya’s bloody braid, the bone of her shoulder--- except for the only thought that mattered, singing through him in time with his heartbeat: get home, get home, get home. Laika nodded. Tommy nodded, gripping the hands of twin girls who had only arrived on Tarsus a few months prior. “Let’s go.” 

They ran down the back alley that stretched along the back length of the auditorium, and their footfalls echoed eerily in the silence after the deafening phaser fire. Laika, who had arrived on Tarsus before any of them and knew the town better, took the lead. They followed her sure, quick steps, and she zigged down another alley that would take them out of the town, away from the main road, into the forest. Jimmy could feel the effects of a month of rationing in the burn of his lungs and heart, the empty energy of his cup of coffee making him jittery on his feet. When Kevin lost his footing on the uneven stones, Jimmy hauled him up onto his back and stumbled on. 

It was as Laika led them onto the narrow plain between the edge of town and the start of the forest that they heard shouts behind them. Jimmy whipped his head back, searching for the source, and the flash of a hunter green uniform made his stomach leap into his throat. “No, no, no, no, no,” he whispered, in time with each footfall, and sprinted as hard as he could after Laika and the others. Kevin’s arms were clenched around his neck, and he could hear the younger boy’s muffled cries against his neck. He was almost across the plain, almost to the safety of the trees, when he heard the whine and discharge of phaser fire. He flinched to the side, but he was still on his feet. He was still running. Phasers discharged again and again, and the dry grass around him caught fire as he ran haphazardly towards the trees, trying to make them both a moving target.

Jimmy flung himself and Kevin behind the trunk of the closest tree. Pieces of bark exploded around him as phaser fire hit the other side. Jimmy slid Kevin from his back, pressing him to the ground. 

“Are you okay?” 

Kevin nodded, eyes wide and face completely blank. Jimmy thought that his own face might have looked the same. He wanted his parents--- but, no. If he thought about them, or the farmhouse in Iowa, he would never survive. He couldn’t think about anything but getting to Farm School with the littles and finding Mr. Park. Far-off phasers fired again and again, but his tree still stood. He looked up, and Laika was there, and Tommy and two other littles. 

“Where is everyone else?” Jimmy’s voice was hoarse, scratching against his dry throat. His lungs still burned from the exertion of their flight. Laika’s eyes flicked reluctantly over his shoulder, out to the bare stretch of earth behind him. He dared one look over his shoulder. There were a handful of the guards from the auditorium, their pursuers, pacing the outskirts of the town with rifles in hand, and a trail of seven little crumpled bodies between the last of the buildings and the first of the trees. 

Jimmy’s stomach heaved, but nothing came up. Stomach acid burned his throat. Tears stung his eyes. He heard a thin wailing, coming from Laika. He didn’t think she was aware that she was making noise. He closed his eyes and let the stony, unfeeling half of his brain take over. 

“Get home,” he said, and Laika stopped wailing with a hiccup. “All we have to do is get home. We can do that.” He took Kevin’s hand in his again and held Laika’s gaze, before holding Tommy’s. “We’ll get the littles home. Mr. Park will know what to do.” 

For a moment they stared at him, and Kevin sniffled. But then they nodded, and Laika turned to look at the sun before turning back to the woods. 

“You know the way best,” he said. Laika loved to go birdwatching with Mr. Park. She had spent almost every weekend wandering through the woods, even when it was cold or rainy. “You can do this.” She nodded again, and she took the hands of one of the littles, and she led them up the mountain. Far from the main road, every step took them deeper into the trees until they couldn’t hear any sound but the wind through the reddening leaves and their own unsteady breathing. 

They walked for two hours, taking a meandering route as Laika cast nervous glances in the direction of what Jimmy thought was the main road. As the sun started to slide down towards the opposite horizon, Jimmy caught her eye. 

“All good?” 

She chewed her lip nervously, glancing over his shoulder, but then her eyes snagged on something. She nodded decisively and pointed. Behind him, high up in an enormous tree, was the Farm School treehouse. “We’re close,” she whispered, and she led them on. 

Farm School was as silent as a grave when Laika led their pack of six through the back entrance to the campus. They glanced around, but there was no one in sight. 

“Maybe they’re hiding,” Tommy said. “Should we split up to look?” 

“No,” Jimmy and Laika said, in unison. Jimmy shook his head as Laika said, “We should stay together.” Tommy nodded, and redoubled his grip on Mira and Ellie’s hands. 

“Big house first,” Jimmy said, and they scuttled across the campus, through the empty fields. The grass had been trampled down, and any remnants of the ill-fated summer projects had been ground underfoot. They slipped into the main house silently, through an unlocked backdoor. The big industrial kitchen was empty, with the cabinets and closets thrown open like someone had rummaged through.

Jimmy pushed ahead to cross into the cafeteria, but Laika slowed, considering the empty shelves. “Someone took everything that was left here,” she said. “I don’t think the teachers would have done that. There’s not even salt left.” She was right, but there was nothing else they could do. They continued on.

There was no one in the big house. Not even bodies. Half the students had stayed behind that morning; those who hadn’t received a specific invitation to the day’s event. Jimmy’s brain reared back from the implications of that idea, and he put it from his mind. One thing at a time. They had gotten home. Now they had to find Mr. Park. 

But he wasn’t in the big house, and he wasn’t in the classrooms or gymnasium. Jimmy turned in a circle under the dying sun, considering the shadows sinking over the campus. “The comm system is in the labs. It was in Mr. Park’s office, I think. Maybe he’s there.”

Laika nodded. She and Tommy looked at each other, and Tommy said, “I’ll stay with the littles in the big house. We’ll be in our room. You guys go look.” 

Jimmy opened his mouth, ready to stop them from separating, but Laika shook her head, almost imperceptibly. They left Tommy with the littles and stole across the darkening campus to the laboratory building. 

“I thought we said we weren’t splitting up,” Jimmy hissed, as they pushed open the door into the building. Laika considered him for a minute before she said, “Just in case there’s something we don’t want the littles to see.” Jimmy’s stomach dropped. 

The labs were as silent as everywhere else was, but Jimmy’s ears still rang with the echoes of the phaser blasts. They tread carefully, fearfully, but every lab was empty. Mr. Park’s door, at the end of the central hall, was ajar when they reached it, and they exchanged uneasy glances. Mr. Park was quiet, and private, and his door was never open. But the comms unit--- an enormous, outdated, clunky thing compared to the sleek Starfleet one that Jimmy’s parents had kept in their Iowa house--- was on a table within. 

Laika pushed the door further open. Jimmy crept in first. There was no one visible, but the comms unit was on. The front screen emitted a soft green glow. Jimmy approached it and tapped the playback button.

Mr. Park’s voice, harsh with his labored breathing, filled the room. They both jumped. “This is Lieutenant Commander Ashton Park, retired, sending an SOS from Tarsus IV. Something--- ah--- has gone terribly wrong. At first it was just a food shortage--- they said it was some fungus, but it was nothing I’d ever--- god! I’d ever seen.” Mr. Park’s breathing grew heavier, his breath hissing between his teeth. “Kodos has the only real comms relay, and he said he called for help, but I don’t think--- I don’t think he did. I don’t think anyone’s coming. And they took the kids. God, his guards took the kids. They had a list.” Jimmy turned to look at Laika, horror building in his chest, stealing his breath, but she wasn’t looking at him or the comms station. “He’s doing something. Kodos is up to something.” Mr. Park wheezed horribly, something wet rattling in his lungs. “This is it for me, but if anyone’s out there, monitoring any of these frequencies… get to Tarsus as fast as you can. While there’s still anyone to save. Park out.” Jimmy turned around to look where Laika was looking. A pair of dirt-stained work boots and two denim-clad legs poked out from behind Mr. Park’s desk. Laika shook her head, mouthing, “No, no, no, no,” and Jimmy grabbed her by the arm, towing her backwards. 

“We have to get out of here,” he said, and she let him turn him from Mr. Park’s body and away from the office. Jimmy left the comms relay on but shut the door behind them. 

“We can’t stay here,” he said, as they crossed back to the big house. “Some of the guards saw us running. They’ll come back for us.” 

“The treehouse,” Laika said. “We’ll take the camping stuff and stay there. We can--- there’s probably some stuff we can still forage, at least for a few weeks, and drink from the streams. We can stay out there until help arrives.” Jimmy nodded. 

“We can keep the littles safe. That’s what Madeleine and Natalya would do,” Jimmy said, and Laika’s lip trembled, but she nodded too. 

The sun had set by the time they returned to the big house. They told Tommy what they needed to do, took all the camping supplies that they could carry, and left Farm School behind. As the six survivors headed back into the woods, towards their treehouse, their former home receded into shadow and was gone. 

The four in-between weeks were fuzzier in Kirk’s memories than the beginning and the end. Most of the days blurred together in a mess of hunger and sleep, of stripping the bark off of trees with a knife and digging out the soft wood inside to eat; of telling the littles that collecting acorns was a game and whoever found the most would win; of the bright sharp days after stealing something worth eating from the town when they were brave or dumb enough to risk getting caught by the guards who still hunted runners on the streets. Kirk let most of those memories spin by them in blurry streaks, waiting for the memories of the days that mattered. 

There was the day that the littles were too weak to climb the rope ladder anymore, and the big kids were too weak to carry them up. Jimmy packed up their sleeping bags and iodine tablets and tossed them down out of the treehouse, and Laika led them to an old animal warren that she had found while scavenging. Whatever large creature had created the den in the roots of the tree was long gone, and they crawled down into it gratefully. If Jimmy was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure how many more times he could have made it up the ladder before eventually falling--- the exertion made him dizzy, and his hands were too weak to grip the rope ladder. The den was more dangerous than the treehouse had been--- closer to town, closer to the ground, and every once in a while they heard deep voices of adults echoing through the trees. But they didn’t say so out loud. 

In the beginning, before there was only the hunger and then the numbness, Laika and Jimmy and Tommy had harsh, whispered conversations about trying to save their classmates. What had they been taken from Farm School for? If terrible things were happening to them, shouldn’t they try to help them? They had no weapons, no help, no way to fend off an army of Kodos’s murderous guards if they tried to free their classmates, but talking about taking action kept away the urge to lay down and die. 

Then, three weeks after the massacre, Laika came back with one expired can of sweet potatoes and a haunted, ragged look that Jimmy hadn’t seen on her before. He dragged her down into the den, catching her when she stumbled on her feet. Tommy leapt up to grab her other arm, and even with both of them holding on she trembled so badly that Jimmy thought she would vibrate out of her skin and into a puddle. They set her on the ground, used one of their hunting knives to wedge the top of the can off, and split the meager amount between the six of them.

“I saw Gemma,” she whispered, later that night. Jimmy sat, back against the wall of the warren, watching the tunnel entrance. Tommy lay with his back to it, one of the littles curled up against him for warmth. Laika sat cross-legged between them, no longer shaking but with a thousand-yard stare that seemed to burn through the wall of their safe hidey-hole, like she could see all the way back to the town. “There was a house with all the doors open, and I could see the kitchen… I thought I might get in and out, that there was no one inside.” 

“Gemma was in the house?” 

“Her parents live here,” Laika said dully. “Or, lived. They were all dead.” 

Tommy closed his eyes. Jimmy said, “Starved?” 

But Laika shook her head. “I don’t think so. They didn’t have food either, like I thought they might, but there was something else wrong with them. Their skin was all gray.” Jimmy shivered. “I looked everywhere, but that was all they had,” Laika said, lifting her chin at the now-empty can. “But they weren’t going to eat it.” 

They sat in silence, listening to the quiet rustling of the trees outside, until Tommy unscrewed the lid to one of their bottles of stream water and offered it to Laika. She shook her head. “I drank enough out of their faucet,” she said. 

“Fancy-pants,” Jimmy said, and he took the bottle when Tommy passed it to him. Laika laid down where she had been sitting, between Tommy and the wall, and Jimmy squeezed both of their hands before moving to lay between the littles and the entrance to the den. His bones pressed uncomfortably against the ground, but he curled up next to Mira and Ellie and fell asleep. 

Jimmy woke up a few hours later. It stunk of warm skin, of sickness and rot. The earth was hard beneath his body. It felt like his hip bones, his tailbone and shoulder blades, each of his knobby vertebrae, were pressing a bruise against the inside of his skin where they rested heavily against the ground. It was mostly dark out, no sunlight to illuminate the rabbit-warren tunnel, only the faint light of a waxing moon providing any visibility. The shadowed bodies of his pack lay alongside him in gentle repose. He counted them off: one was him, two was Ellie, three was Mira, four was Kevin, five was Tommy. At six, he jerked to a halt. Something wasn’t right. Before he was aware that he was moving he had scrambled across the dirt to her: Laika, her brown hair a rat’s nest of dirt and leaves, unmoving. 

“No, no, no,” he whispered, and shook Tommy’s shoulder. “Tommy, wake up!” Her unnatural stillness had caught his attention: now that he was next to her, he could see more clearly the graying waxy pallor of her cheeks and lips, the immobile smoothness of her eyelids. Tommy woke with a jolt, rolling over immediately. He pushed himself up with one hand and shook Laika with the other. 

“Hey,” he said, his voice growly with sleep. “Wake up.” 

Jimmy grabbed her other shoulder, shaking her, the other hand coming to rest against her gaunt cheek. “Hey. Laika. It’s not funny. Wake up.” But Laika did not wake up. Her eyes did not open. Her chest did not rise. 

“Jimmy, what happened?” Tommy whispered. 

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said, disbelief raising his voice high like one of the little’s. “I just woke up, and I saw that---” He gagged, overwhelmed by the smell of dirty skin and death, sickness and rot. “Laika, wake up!” God, he was so tired, and so hungry, and there were only five of them now, and what would they do without her? She had been so brave, had stolen for them, had known the woods and the way around town better than anyone, and now she was so still and silent, and they couldn’t drag her back from wherever she had gone without them. He closed his eyes, and the cold, analytical half of him rose up and drowned the half of him that cried out at how unfair it all was.

“We have to move her,” Jimmy whispered as Tommy whimpered to himself, hand still mechanically rocking Laika’s shoulder. 

“What? No! Why?” Tommy whispered back.

“We can’t let the littles see her like this,” he said. 

“Where are we going to put her? We can’t bury her!” 

“Down the mountain. Near the town. They won’t notice another body.” Jimmy hated the words as they came out of his mouth: practical, useful, awful. He wanted to lay down next to Laika, close his eyes, and follow where she had gone. But he couldn’t--- not with Tommy and the littles still here. Not with his last holo to Sam and his message to his parents still soaring through space. Tommy sniffled, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and nodded. Jimmy nodded back and shoved Tommy gently. Tommy got up, stepping carefully around the sleeping littles, and gingerly picked up Laika’s ankles. Jimmy wormed his hands under her shoulders and bent his arms under hers, picking her up off the ground. They backed up to the entrance and Jimmy went as slowly as he could, arms burning with the strain of Laika’s weight, until he felt the cool air of the night outside of their den on his back. 

Together they carried her down the mountain in the worst parade of two Jimmy had ever been a part of, and they left her on the outskirts of the town. Tommy kissed her forehead and cried. They held hands as they stole quietly back to their safe hole. They crawled back inside, each refusing to let go of the other’s hand, and fell asleep curled together. 

When the littles woke up the next morning, and Jimmy pulled them all into the circle of his arms and told them that Laika wasn’t coming back, they were too tired to cry. But he felt their shoulders deflate, sinking further into themselves, and he held them closer. Tommy leaned against him, keeping Jimmy from tilting over, and their broken family of five slept most of that day away, letting the sun rise and set without them. 

The next day, Tommy left them in the den to scavenge acorns. He came back as the sun slipped down below the horizon, staggering with exhaustion, his empty, distended stomach painfully visible as he held his bounty in the bottom of his shirt like an apron. Using two rocks and all the strength left in their arms, he and Jimmy cracked them open and scraped the meager meat out of the shells to distribute between themselves and the littles. The underbrush had died with the changing of the seasons, and Laika had held most of their knowledge about what plants were edible. Without her, they would have to survive on acorns and tree bark and water. 

The morning after that, Mira cried and wailed and refused to open her eyes, curled around herself. Ellie moaned in sympathy, and Kevin sat next to them and talked incessantly about anything that came into his mind, just to distract them. But his eyes were dim and glassy, and more often than not his sentences trailed off before he finished them. The morning after that, all three littles refused to sit up and curled together with heavy-lidded eyes.

“I’m going into town,” Jimmy said. For a second, it seemed like Tommy would argue with him, to ask him to stay. But in the end he just nodded and pulled Mira against his chest, rocking her side to side. Jimmy left them like that. If Laika was right, and something other than starvation was killing the colonists, there might be something left for them to scavenge. He would find it and bring it back to them, and the littles would sit up and talk to them, and they would survive another few days. 

The leaves had begun to fall from the trees. If he had counted the days correctly, and there was no guarantee that he had, October would start soon. Last year, that meant harvest festivals and a gourd that was certainly not a pumpkin but could be carved like one to be set out on every doorstep. Gemma had won the carving contest--- but he wouldn’t think about Gemma now. He dragged his legs, step after step, down the mountain to the town.

He didn’t see another living soul, but the bodies of the colonists were everywhere. On their front stoops, laying behind houses, on the main street, their graying, decaying corpses bloated and stinking. Some of them looked emaciated, their skin shrink-wrapped to their bones. But Laika had been at least partially right: not all of the dead looked like they had starved. Jimmy felt the knobs of his own knees knocking together as he passed the grayish-blue body of a man who looked like he should have been in the peak of health, except for the fact that he was dead. 

He stole from doorway to doorway, peering around corners, moving as quietly as he could. But for the first time since the day in the auditorium, he didn’t see the green-shirted law enforcement agents prowling the outskirts of the town, nor guarding the waist-high iron fence that circled the governor’s house. He ducked around another corner, closer to the center of town, and stumbled over a pair of legs in dark pants.

He reared back, his heart in his throat at the forest-green jacket on the torso, before he registered the sickly gray pallor of the body’s skin. This guard looked like Jimmy imagined he did; sunken cheeks, deep circles under his eyes, and the bones of his knuckles jutted out of the skin like mountains. “Not even guards get fed,” he muttered to himself, and he felt a savage relief that those who had not been sacrificed, who had done the sacrificing, had not been spared the horrors that they had endured. He moved to continue onward before pausing. The guard’s phaser was still tucked into his holster.

Jimmy held his breath and bent over the body. It was stiff, unmoving, as he reached with shaking fingers to unclip the strap and slide the phaser out. He watched the body nervously, but it did not awaken to grab him. He glanced at the settings on the phaser, but he didn’t know what they meant, so he left them as they were and stuck the weapon in the waistband of his ratty jeans. 

He had only taken one step away from the body when there was a crackle. He spun, horrified, but the guard still hadn’t moved. The crackling noise came again.

“My chosen ones,” Kodos rasped. His voice came through an ancient portable radio, clipped on the other side of the guard’s belt. Jimmy froze as that voice pierced through the fog of hunger and exhaustion, lighting up his brain with fear and anger. Why had so many people died, why had Laika died, and Kodos still got to live? Kodos coughed. “The grand experiment must end here. There is no path forward. Forgive me.” He wheezed again, voice quieting. Jimmy hunched next to the corpse and the radio, ears straining. “If anyone is out there, heed me. We must burn it down.” He reeled back. 

“Burn it down. Destroy the evidence. Cleanse this place.” Kodos coughed, and then the crackle of another radio breaking through the static interrupted him. 

“I hear you, sir,” someone else’s voice muttered, weak and ragged. “I can do it.”

“I owe you… a debt of gratitude,” Kodos said. Then the radio went silent. Jimmy froze on his haunches, consumed by his anger, replaying Kodos’s message in his head. Then something clicked, and he staggered to his feet. Blood dribbled slowly back into his weak limbs, but he forced them into movement. He turned back the way he had come and heaved his starving body back home. Kodos had called to burn it all, and someone had responded. 

It had been a dry summer. It hadn’t rained in weeks. His friends were in the woods. 

Lungs aching, muscles cramping, swollen stomach pinching in pain, he ran. Against the wishes of every bone in his body, he ran as hard as he could, straight down the center streets of the remains of the town, back towards the den and Tommy and the littles. He had to warn them. The woods were going to light up like a matchstick after the summer they’d had. They couldn’t have starved and survived for so long for Kodos to kill them like this, impersonally, anonymously. Madeleine and Natalya didn’t die in the auditorium so that Kodos could have the final word. Jimmy broke from the town and sprinted flat-out for the cover of the woods.

Stealth didn’t matter anymore. He screamed, “Tommy!” He sucked in huge, gasping breaths as his stomach threatened to rebel and his legs cramped and his knees ached. “Tommy! Get up!” He staggered through the woods, his vision going black at the edges as his body tried to collapse, but he shoved himself up and kept going, screaming for his friend.

Finally, up ahead, the enormous tree that had sheltered them--- and from the roots of it, an addled Tommy and littles emerging into the sunlight. 

“Jimmy?” Tommy rubbed one eye, dizzy in the sudden brightness. “What happened?” Jimmy opened his mouth to respond when they heard it. Further up the mountain, something snapped and popped, then rustled, then roared. The fire caught.

“Run,” Jimmy said, grabbing Kevin and swinging him onto his back as Tommy grabbed Mira and Ellie’s hands. “Run!” His body protesting every step, his spine bending under Kevin’s weight, Jimmy and Tommy fled. Something cracked, and a hot gust of wind pressed them forward, singeing their hair and burning their backs. Mira started to cry. It was still somehow better than her half-dead silence from that morning.

“What---?” Tommy gasped out, footsteps pounding in time with Jimmy’s. 

“Kodos,” Jimmy spat. “Fire.” Tommy moaned with fear, but when Ellie stumbled at their speed he hefted her onto his back. Behind them, the woods that had been their shelter and salvation erupted into an inferno. The flames caught the few leaves that hadn’t fallen and spread in a crown fire over their heads as they pelted out of the forest. Out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy could see it racing down the hill, almost even with them. Tears streamed down his face from fear and the smoke, which caught in his lungs, stung his skin. He could see similar tracks running down the dirt on Tommy’s face.

They had the littles. They had each other. They broke from the cage of the treeline as the fire leapt at their heels and caught in the dry autumn grass of the open plain between them and the town. The grass blazed up immediately, and Jimmy’s legs, his hips and back and shoulders burned with it. Tommy cried out and swung Ellie up too, away from the fire, her screams drowned out by the roar of the crown fire above. 

Ahead, there was one patch of unburned safety that Jimmy could see. He cut towards it. “The road!” Tommy followed him, coughing as he ran, and they covered the distance to the hard-packed dirt as fast as they could. They staggered onto the dry earth as the plain behind them sparked and hissed.

Mira moaned, and the pathetic little sound broke through Jimmy’s panic as the pain of their exertion set in. He let Kevin slide to the ground, and the friction of the little boy’s clothes against his scorched skin was like being burned all over again. Ellie had gone very, very pale, the only shock of color on her skin the angry red of her legs and feet. 

Tommy wobbled, and Jimmy grabbed his elbows, keeping him upright. 

“Stay with me, okay?” 

“It hurts, Jimmy,” Tommy said, and Jimmy didn’t dare look down over his shoulder to his back. His clothes were sloughing off of him, destroyed. Kodos couldn’t have him like this. 

“Just a few steps more,” Jimmy said. He took Kevin’s hand in his and gently picked up Mira. “Can you walk with me? Just a few more?” Tommy wavered on his feet, but Ellie slid her hand into his and he nodded. 

“It’s just a little further,” Jimmy said. “Then you’ll feel better.” There was a reservoir on the other side of town; even the farm’s irrigation system had been hooked up to it. Jimmy had never prayed as hard as he did that moment for there to be water in the reservoir still. Step by excruciating step, he led them down the road for the first time since the massacre day. Tommy fell silent and his eyes sometimes slid shut, but he held Ellie’s hand and walked on. Jimmy lost the feeling in his legs, but Mira let him put her down after a few minutes and she limped alongside them. The fear of guards or Kodos never really went away, but they didn’t see another living being on the road. The fire burned on the other side of the town, its roar muted by blessed distance and halted by the paved roads. Minutes later, or maybe hours, he was peering over the stone lip of the reservoir. The drought had done its damage, but there was a few blessed feet of water within. He found the stone steps leading down into it. 

Jimmy walked the littles down into the water. They stood still and quiet as he stripped their burned clothing away from them before stepping into the water with them. Then, once they were carefully ensconced in the water where it was shallow enough for them to stand, he stripped his own clothing away. The phaser he had stolen, somehow still in his jeans despite his pell-mell flight, got dropped on top of his pile of clothes along with his t-shirt before he followed the littles into the water. He didn’t know if it was clean, but he couldn’t bring himself to care: it was cool, and there was enough to stand in, and it felt like heaven. Tommy’s clothes dripped off him, shredding as he pulled his shirt over his head, and his back was a mess of dirt and singed skin. But he sloshed into the water, eyes closing in relief, and the five of them drifted as the fire burned itself out on the other side of town. Smoke billowed overhead, clouding the teal sky with the angry black smog of organic matter. The ash fell like dirty snow. They still didn’t have anything to eat, but they filled their bellies with water, and it almost felt like being full. As the sun slipped down behind the horizon, they piled together on the day-warmed terrace steps and slept. 

A high, distant droning woke Jimmy from his restless sleep, early the next morning. It wormed into his dreams, filling his mind, before his subconscious recognized it and he jolted awake. Kevin tipped away from him as he shot upward, scrambling for his jeans. Tommy’s eyes opened slowly. 

“Where’re you going?” His words were slurred, but Jimmy didn’t have time to wait for him to wake up. If he was right, it wouldn’t matter. 

“Shuttle!” Jimmy grabbed the phaser and his t-shirt, jabbed it into the waist of his pants and dragged it over his head. “I’ll be back!” His whole body felt alight with something he almost didn’t recognize--- hope, a hope so big that it hurt to breathe. He sprinted up the terraced steps, cocking his head to one side and scanning the sky as he ran. It was just past daybreak, the true teal of the sky still warming up from the inky black of night. He ran towards what he thought was the source of the sound, straight up the road from the reservoir towards the town. Maybe he could shoot the phaser in the air and get the attention of the pilot? They had to be looking for the colonists: whether it was a trader or a rescue shuttle or even just a random traveler, they had to be looking for the people who lived here. It must have already landed; he didn’t see anything in the sky. He followed the high humming of an active engine through the town square, past the cursed town hall, past the burnt husks of houses unlucky enough to be built from wood instead of brick. The land to his right was scorched black earth, ash as far as the eye could see. Eerie black fingers of burnt trees reached for the sky. He tore down the road towards the song of the engine. 

“I’m here! I’m over here!” He hollered as loud as he could until his throat burned, but he didn’t see anyone. There was no movement, but the roar of the shuttle was growing so loud that it was vibrating the air around him. A shuttle meant people. People meant help. 

Jimmy skirted the outer fence of the governor’s house, running along the northernmost edge. His hand brushed the iron of the latticework, and it trembled with the force of the engine. It had to be closer. He passed the back edge of the house and skidded to a halt. 

The governor’s backyard was an enormous expanse of burnt grass and bushes, and parked in the center was a black shuttle. As Jimmy’s heart pounded and he cried out in outrage and disbelief, he registered three details in stark relief. 

The first was that the Kodos’s guards had exchanged their hunter-green uniforms for black ones. Two of them held up a sagging gray body between them, and a third circled them with a plasma rifle in hand. 

The second was that the shuttle door was open, and a fourth guard leaned out of it, reaching for the body. 

The third was that the body was staggering to its feet, lifting its head. It was Kodos. He was alive. His horrible uncanny eyes were alight in his gaunt and crevassed face. 

This was a mistake. This had to be a mistake. Help could not have arrived for him, after what he had done. What about the littles? What about Tommy? What about him? 

He screamed out, “Hey!” The procession of guards and the devil himself paused, all four of their heads turning to look at him. “Help us!” 

Time slowed as the guards looked at him, on the other side of the fence, then looked at each other. Jimmy grabbed the fence between them, shaking with the force of his hope and disbelief, and watched as they looked away from him and kept walking. 

They kept walking. They were going to put Kodos on the shuttle and take him away and leave them here. Fury like Jimmy had never felt before rose like a tsunami within him, drowning out all reason and leaving only the knowledge that Kodos did not deserve to be rescued from the ruins of the colony that he had destroyed. 

There was a phaser tucked into the back of his jeans. The cool metal of the barrel dug into his back. He took it out and, like he was shooting skeet back on the farm with Sam, sighted along it. He saw Kodos’s fine gray hair and craggy face on the other side. 

He fired. 

The head of the nearest guard snapped up at the whine of the weapon. He locked eyes with Jimmy and, without hesitation, stepped directly in front of the bolt of energy meant for Kodos. Jimmy watched in frozen horror as the phaser fire hit the guard and tore him open. He spun and dropped to the ground. Kodos glanced blankly at the body on the ground, just another sacrifice for him, and allowed the guard in the shuttle to grab his arm and haul him in. The guard with the rifle pointed it directly at Jimmy. 

He had shot at Kodos and missed. The shuttle and the people on it weren’t going to help them. Jimmy stood his ground, phaser still raised, and glared at the guard, refusing to look at the rifle aimed at his head. He was going to die, but he was going to do it without flinching. In his periphery, he saw the last guard drag the body of his comrade into the shuttle. The blood from the wound glinted against the dirt in the early-morning sun. 

 The other guard came back around and pushed the barrel of the rifle down. “Leave it,” he said. “Look at him. He’s almost dead anyway.” With a final sneer the rifleman turned away. They swung themselves into the black shuttle, and the door slammed shut behind them. 

Jimmy watched numbly as the shuttle lifted off vertically, soaring higher and higher until it was just a black dot against the blue sky. Then it was gone. He looked down again, and saw the blood of the man that he had killed drying on the hard-packed earth. 

He threw the phaser as far as he could away from himself and, turning from the scene of his violence and failure, vomited up all of the water left in his stomach. He leaned back against the sharp metal of the fence and slid to the ground, staring blankly at the blackened edge of the prairie beyond the town. He didn’t know how long he sat there for before Tommy’s voice broke through his reverie. 

“What happened?” Tommy was shaking him, panic on his face, and Jimmy felt guilty. He had meant to go back to them, but he couldn’t seem to shake the whine of the phaser out of his ears. It was hard to hear anything else over it. The littles hovered over his shoulder, their drawn faces pinched with worry. 

“Nothing,” Jimmy said, with a glance at the littles. He coughed, stomach acid burning in his throat, and let Tommy help him up. “I think this house is empty now, though. Let’s see if there’s anything in there to eat.” 

“Isn’t this the governor’s house?” Tommy dropped his voice low as the littles straggled behind them in a line. “You don’t think he’s…?” 

“He’s gone,” Jimmy said, and his own voice was rough and unfamiliar. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I’ll tell you later,” Jimmy said, and glanced down at the littles as Kevin snagged two of his fingers in his weakened grip. He led them into the empty house, and they walked quickly past the rooms where the bodies of guards decayed on couches and seated against walls, until they arrived in an enormous kitchen. It seemed to be made entirely of ceramic and aluminum, with two huge ovens set into the wall and a stovetop built directly into the counter. It was so different from the industrial-sized kitchen at Farm School, which managed to feel warm and cozy despite being built for mass production. This kitchen was cold and clinical. They opened all the cabinets and drawers, finding only utensils and pots and pans, before Tommy noticed a narrow door set back in a corner. He opened it, and revealed stairs leading down into a darkness that smelled like soil and rot. They both looked mistrustfully at it. 

“I’ve got this one, Jimmy,” Tommy said finally, and left him standing in the kitchen with the littles. Jimmy continued to open cabinets and drawers, finding nothing but kitchen utilities, until Tommy climbed back up the stairs, wiping his hands on his already horrible pants. 

“It’s awful down there,” Tommy said, but he clutched a can in his hands victoriously. “Like the summer projects all over again. But I did find this.” He wiped oily blue smears off the label, revealing a label for baked beans that had expired the year previous. They heated the beans up in a pot on the stove, reveling in the warmth from the electric burner, and the five ate directly from the pot with wooden spoons, just because they could. They dumped the pot and spoons in the sink without cleaning them. 

They scavenged through the house, stealing blankets and pillows off of couches that were unoccupied, and found a room that didn’t stink too badly of decay--- a sunroom near the back of the house, through the windows of which Jimmy could see the flattened, desiccated grass where the shuttle had been. As the littles slept, their bellies not empty for once, Jimmy told Tommy, quietly, shamefully, what he had done. The sun was setting by the time he finished. 

Tommy considered what he had said, turning the embroidered edge of a blanket over in his hands. Jimmy picked at the burned skin on his hands and tried not to think about the blood against the dirt.

Finally Tommy looked up, eyes flashing in fading light, and said, “Fuck ‘em. He probably deserved it.” Something in Jimmy’s heart unclenched. He and Tommy fell asleep facing each other, with a roof over their heads and the littles between them. 

He awoke the next morning to shouting and movement, adults in red and blue and gold swarming into the room with phasers and comms. Jimmy flung himself upright, crouching over the littles, baring his teeth at the intruders before he recognized the familiar uniforms. 

“Oh, my god,” the closest Starfleet officer said, a whirring tricorder in her hand. “You’re alive.” 

The memories of the next month were a blur of pain and space. Jimmy and Tommy and the littles were beamed up together to the U.S.S. Valiant, where they were poked and prodded and tied to biobeds with IVs of fluids and nutrients. They were scanned with every machine in Medbay, it seemed, while the doctors spoke quietly to each other and refused to tell them anything about what the scans said. Not a single one of them stopped shaking for the first seventy-two hours.

After living feral for a month, adjusting to the sterility of a starship was excruciating. The littles screamed shrilly when Jimmy or Tommy were out of their vision. Jimmy ate a meal from the replicator and threw it up immediately. Tommy had to be sedated and restrained after the doctor tried to put him in the metal box of the dermal regenerator for his back. They refused to sleep apart from each other, and the whirs and beeps of the unfamiliar ship made it impossible to pretend that they were in their treehouse or the den. Jimmy whispered to Tommy that he was afraid of Kodos coming to find him, and Tommy held his hand in the dark of the room that they all shared. Under the harsh lights of the starship and after the dirt and blood and soot was washed away, their skin was an unhealthy gray, and every day medical staff took their blood and patted their heads and made nervous eye contact when they thought the children weren’t looking. 

In the end, the captain and the first officer told Jimmy and Tommy, it was Lieutenant Commander Ashton Park’s last desperate call that got the Valiant to Tarsus in time. Kodos had never used the government relay to call for help, not even when the harvest first started dying. 

Then there was the journey back to Earth. Tommy and their littles were shipped off to what remained of their families, and no one would tell Jimmy where they went. Jimmy’s own parents were waiting for him when he got to Earth. A week after he arrived home, Sam kicked his hospital door open and set up shop next to his bed while he slowly ingested three months’ worth of nutrients through an IV and finished regrowing his skin. Every night, he woke up screaming Kodos’s name, and his parents looked nervously at each other, and Sam stopped going home with their parents and instead dragged a cot into Jimmy’s hospital room.

Then Dr. Johns replaced the familiar Iowa family doctor that he had been seeing. Jimmy confessed that he wasn’t sleeping, couldn’t bear to be the only person breathing in a room, and he told Dr. Johns that all he could think about was Kodos coming back for him. 

“Kodos is dead, Jimmy,” Dr. Johns had said kindly, reading the screen on the machine hooked up to Jimmy’s arm. 

“You found him?” Jimmy sat up so suddenly he got dizzy, the hospital room swirling around him. Dr. Johns gave him an odd look. 

“Governor Kodos died on Tarsus, Jimmy. In the fire that claimed everyone else.” 

“No,” he said. “No, he didn’t. I told you, and I told the doctor on the Valiant. There was a shuttle! It came and got him!” Dr. Johns sat on the edge of his bed and pushed him back against the headboard with a gentle hand. 

“Please, calm yourself,” he said. “You are very upset. You survived something awful. It is only natural that your thoughts are confused at this time.” 

“I’m not confused,” Jimmy had insisted. “I know what I saw. And he got out.” Dr. Johns had a conversation with his parents outside his hospital room, and through the little window set into the door he saw his mother stare haughtily out the hallway window as his dad wiped a hand across his devastated face. Sam held his hand and said, “I believe you, Jimmy.” But Sam couldn’t convince their parents or Dr. Johns, and then Jimmy woke up from the same awful nightmare to find his old friends from his elementary school in Iowa standing behind his mom with balloons. They sat around him as he tried to sit up straight and felt the weakness in the muscles along his spine, and then after a painfully awkward hour they left, and he did not see them again until he started back at school the following year, when he only had to check in at the Dr. Johns’s clinic once a week for blood testing and dialysis. They said hi, and they signed each other’s yearbooks, and Jimmy skipped the school dances and football games and a lot of his classes to climb up to the roof of the high school and stare at the stars instead.

Then he got to the Academy, and he met Elise. 

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you,” she said to him during their first meeting, her eyes twinkling. “We knew you were going to be special.” He talked about Kodos and Tarsus, and it helped, until it didn’t. She taught him how to hide the parts of him that the IVs and dialysis and dermal regenerators didn’t fix. He met Bones, and made friends, and he was surrounded by people who didn’t know where he had been and what it had done to him, and he was happier than he’d been in years, despite the nightmares and the panic attacks and the grief. He missed Tommy and the littles, but Elise said that she’d checked in on them and that they were doing well, and at the Academy he got to learn by doing and experimenting for himself the way he had at Farm School. Then he’d graduated, and worked his way up the ranks despite the ceaseless fear that Kodos would hunt him down someday, and eventually he became a captain and was given the Enterprise. The ghosts of Tarsus lived in him, but he had bricked them behind a wall that got thicker and thicker with every passing year. 

It wasn’t until he had gone and fallen in love that he had been forced to reckon with the fact that he still carried those ghosts at all. 

☆☆☆

The memory-stream faded, leaking away into the abyss. Kirk stood in the black of the meldspace. His whole soul ached with grief and remembrance, but there was a clarity to it. There was still a wound in him, one that had healed poorly, but in the telling, some of the rot in him had been finally cleaned away. 

Jim, Spock said, and it was with a slight jolt of surprise that Kirk remembered that he wasn’t alone. Spock’s voice was ragged. I grieve with thee. 

Kirk bowed his head, and he sensed Spock’s mind curled around his, protective, comforting.

I will take us from the meld now, Spock said. You will rest. And then we must talk about what you showed me. The rough edges of Spock’s voice were smoothed over as he reasserted his control, and Kirk felt a flicker of unease at his words. He had tried to convince the rest of the world that Kodos had escaped, and had failed each time. But then Spock said, without preamble, I believe you, captain, and one more piece of Kirk’s anxiety melted away. There was a sense of rising, as if coming up from the bottom of a deep pool, and the blackness lessened until Kirk felt himself reemerge from a very long tunnel back into his own mind. 

He still lay on his side, Spock’s hand pressed to his face and clutched between his own. His arm was numb beneath him, and his eyelids were sticky with stillness. He opened his eyes as Spock pulled his hand back from his face, extending and clenching his fingers. Spock’s eyes opened as the familiar noises of the Enterprise around him floated slowly back into his awareness: the hum of the warp drive, footsteps in the corridor, faint beeping from far away.

“That’s what I saw,” Kirk said. “That’s what I did.” He rolled over onto his back and stared up at his familiar ceiling. He was tired, all the way down to his bones. He felt as though someone had wrung his brain out like a sponge. “Can we discuss this in the morning?” 

“Certainly,” Spock said, after hesitating only for a second. His voice was deep with disuse. Kirk closed his eyes and waited for him to get up. 

He did not get up. 

Kirk opened his eyes and turned his head. Spock still lay on his side, watching him. Rather than the pity or disgust Kirk expected, Spock’s face was open and warm.

“What?” 

Spock hesitated, before reaching across the space between them and resting his hand on Kirk’s bicep. “I am disquieted by the possibility of you having died before I knew of your existence in our universe.” His fingers flexed, tightening on Kirk’s arm. “I have never been more grateful for your refusal to submit to the law of large numbers.” 

Kirk closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of Spock’s palm on his skin. He brought his other hand to cover it, his fingers brushing the back of Spock’s wrist. They lay next to each other, their breathing slowing until they were inhaling in tandem. The post-meld exhaustion pulled at Kirk’s mind, the gentle rhythm of Spock’s breathing lulling him to sleep. 

“Jim,” said Spock quietly. Kirk forced his eyes open again, fighting the weight of his eyelids. “Would you like me to stay?” Kirk looked at him, trying to read his expression--- the Vulcan’s face was neutral, watching him in kind. But his arm was still stretched across the distance between them, his hand steady against Kirk’s arm. Spock had walked unflinchingly beside him through every memory of the worst days of his life; he did not think that he would begrudge him his company now. 

“Please,” Kirk said. Spock’s hand pressed against his arm before he sat up swiftly and stood. 

“I will return momentarily,” he said, and Kirk nodded. Spock crossed the room, retrieved his clothing from his half of the closet, and vanished into the bathroom. Kirk heard the air recycler kick on at his entrance, and he pressed his hands to his eyes. 

Despite everything, despite his grief and trauma and the ghosts and his failures, he felt the irrepressible start of a crooked smile forcing its way onto his face. He felt lighter. He felt free. He had shared everything that Elise had told him could never be shared, and Spock had not run screaming from the room or removed him from duty. He had told Spock about Kodos and the shuttle, and Spock had believed him. Showing Spock what he had done, what he had failed to do, hadn’t been the end of the line. It was only the beginning of the conversation. And then Spock had reached out to touch him. He wasn’t alone.

Spock reentered in the tunic and pants he slept in, with his makeup gone and smelling faintly of mint. Kirk sat up. Spock met his eyes.

“You know,” Kirk said, before he could chicken out. “That couch is not the most comfortable piece of furniture to sleep on.” 

“I did not object to it,” Spock said, but he clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head slightly. 

“It’s not awful, but the bed is better for a proper rest.” 

“Indeed,” Spock said slowly, and Kirk saw a hint of that daring steal into his eyes, glinting in the half-dark. “What do you propose, captain?” 

“I think the most logical course of action is to share the bed,” Kirk said. “It’s been a long night. And we’ve got a big day tomorrow.” 

“I had assumed the day would be the same size as all other days, but I am curious to hear why you think otherwise,” Spock said, and he crossed the room to the bed. Kirk scooted backwards so he could slide beneath the comforter, and Spock joined him. 

“Computer, lights to zero,” Kirk said. He tried to steady his breathing, sink into the sleep that his exhausted brain wanted, he couldn’t. Though his brain unhelpfully, unsurprisingly supplied him with the image of the shuttle taking the governor away again, and he could still feel the lingering dread and exhaustion in his limbs, the fear that Kodos would hunt him down had lost a little of its strength. Even if Kodos did find him out here, he was only human, and there was a Vulcan laying in Kirk’s bed. Spock would tear Kodos apart if he came anywhere near him again. The thought was comforting, but he still couldn’t convince his mind to rest. His memories were too close to the surface. He lay in the darkness instead, listening to Spock breathe. 

“Jim.” Spock’s sudden voice spooked him. 

“Yes?” 

“You are unable to sleep.” 

Kirk huffed out a laugh. “Something like that.” He heard Spock shift, the sheets rustling against his sleep clothes. Then a long, hot arm snaked around his torso and pulled him backwards, until he was pressed with his back to Spock’s chest, Spock’s arm over his waist. 

“You find physical contact soothing,” Spock murmured, and his breath ghosted over Kirk’s ear. 

“But you don’t,” Kirk said. He should pull away, allow Spock his space, but---

“I do when it is you,” Spock said, and Kirk was shocked into silence. “I appreciate the confirmation that you are near and safe.” The warmth of Spock’s chest, the steady beating of his heart against Kirk’s spine, and his even breathing against his neck was doing more for him than Bones’s sedatives ever did. His eyelids grew heavy, and the whirling images through his mind slowed and dimmed, losing their sharp edges, as he breathed in time with Spock. 

“Rest now,” Spock said softly, and he did. 

[dragon-of-timeless-blue]

Haruka Nanase, a list of his character songs to listen to on his birthday 💙🐟🌟🌊

I love Free!'s character songs so freaking much, and I couldn't let this day go by without sharing Haruka's songs (not counting duets and STYLE FIVE's songs)

Ao No Kanata :

🎶I know a place I can call my own

No one’s voice can reach me here, wo-oh

It’s something much more precious than victory or defeat

This scenery that always occupies my thoughts

The blue yonder forever etched into my memory🎶

JOY :

🎶I feel so free and joyful in the blue water

I will always be fine here, if nowhere else

I feel so free and joyful in the blue water

Here, I have the answers🎶

Deep Moment :

🎶In this moment, let’s be freer, until the moment when we’ll set off

If we go with all our might, we can go anywhere

That day, my friends helped me see the scenery of a new start

And the joy waiting ahead🎶

Navy Tomorrow

🎶Don’t follow someone else’s dream, but the dream you want to see come true

Don’t take standstill as freedom but find the freedom in moving forward

You’ll surely start aiming for a farther place

Than anything you ever imagined🎶

Mirai e

🎶I definitely understand that beyond the radiance of the vibrant Future Vision

Is a place that I cannot return from

The streamline continues towards resolve,

And with a sure passion I’ve now dived into the world that I watch intently🎶

Im Free

🎶So Free!

My heart is filled with blue,  rippling and sparkling

So Free!

I'll keep heading to the other side of that dream, always as myself, without wavering

Kicking at the pleasant blue 

As I stroke through the waves of harmony,

I'm Free 🎶

[translation by @kudouusagi ]

[dessola1]

🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️🖲️👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏿👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽👸🏽🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶 .

Hi Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman . Adesola Stephanie Adepoju wishes you a Merry Christmas .

300+ Merry Christmas Wishes, Messages and Greetings

Christmas Wishes: Christmas brings every heart together. It’s the perfect time of the year to greet others from your heart. Everyone dear to you including your friends, family, spouse, lover, relatives or colleagues, expects some sweet Christmas wishes from you. Don’t miss this great opportunity to show the love and warmth your heart holds for them. Spread and share the spirit of Christmas by sending them a Christmas wish. Pick the one you like and send it as a text message or social media post or use them in your Christmas wish card this year!

WISHES GREETINGS ROMANTIC RELIGIOUS FRIENDS FAMILY PARENTS WIFE HUSBAND BOYFRIEND GIRLFRIEND SISTER BROTHER COLLEAGUES TEXTS BIBLE VERSES QUOTES

Merry Christmas Wishes

Merry Christmas! May God shower your life with unlimited blessings on this day.

Wishing your holiday season be filled with sparkles of joy and love. Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Merry Christmas! May this festive Christmas season brings all the success for you.

merry christmas wishes

May your Christmas be graced with peace, joy, and blessings! Merry Christmas to you! ❄️🎄

Stay safe and stay blessed this holiday season! May all your wishes be granted! Merry Christmas to all.

Hope this festive season will bring good luck and good health to you and your family. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas {PUT NAME} 🎅🎄 May the Christmas season bring only happiness and joy to you and your beautiful family.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for a healthy, happy, and peaceful New Year. Love from the (insert your name).

Merry Christmas! May your days ahead be as vibrant as this festive season. May you shine as bright as the Christmas lights because you deserve it all. Have a great year and a wonderful life ahead!

I hope this Christmas season will take you closer to all those that you desire in your heart. Wishing you and your family good health, never-ending happiness, peace, and prosperity this Christmas and in the coming years. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas to all my friends and family! It’s a time of the year to love and feel loved. A time to rejoice with genuine pleasure and a time to feel blessed for everything I have.

Have a blessed Christmas and a memorable year ahead. Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Merry Christmas! I pray that God keeps you free from every trouble and helps you achieve great things in life.

Wishing you a joyful time and a lot of pleasant memories of this season of love and magic. May all your dreams come true.

Merry Christmas! I wish happiness surrounds you all around on this happy occasion. I hope you’ll have a great time with your friends and family!

I hope these Christmas wishes will bring a special kind of warmth and joy to your heart. Wishing you all the best this holiday season! Merry Christmas!

You’re the reason why this Christmas feels so special to me. So grateful for having you in my life. Merry Christmas 🎄❄️

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Merry Christmas, friend. Wishing you this Christmas will bring so much fun and happiness for you.

To all the amazing people who dwell in my heart, I wish all of you nothing but infinite joy and immeasurable happiness this Christmas brings! Merry Christmas to you all!

I love you with all my heart and I want you to know that there is no one in this world who can make me happier than you. Merry Christmas sweetheart!

Merry Christmas, mom and dad. Thanks for your support, guidance, and care. You two are my inspiration and motivation. May God always keep you safe and sound.

Merry Christmas Mom! Spending this day with you is a blessing! Love you!

Merry Christmas Daughter. Sending my warm wishes to you in this lovely season. May God keep you happy and healthy.

Merry Christmas my love! You are the biggest blessing of my life and I cherish you every day!

Merry Christmas, son. I hope you have a blissful Christmas. May the blessing of the Christmas season surround you throughout the year.

Merry Christmas, dear brother! May the spirit of Christmas be with you all around the year!

Warmest greetings to you on this festive season and best wishes for the coming New Year. You are the best gift I’ve ever had in life!

Wishing a merry Christmas to the best life partner. The love and support that you keep giving me are beyond my imagination, and I am so proud to have you. Enjoy the holidays!

May every little thing from your Christmas wishlist come true. Have a magical and blissful holiday season this Christmas!

Thanks for brightening my life with your love and support. I want you to know that you are everything that I have ever dreamt of. Merry Christmas!

I wish this holy season brings abundant happiness to your life. Merry Christmas to someone so special! 🎄🎄

May you receive all that you desire and dream for. May this Christmas bring you all that you need in life. Merry Christmas!

May you feel all the love and joy throughout the day and all year round. Sending you the warmest greetings of this festive season and best wishes for happiness in this New Year.

May this Christmas end the year on a cheerful note and make way for a fresh and bright New Year. Wishing you a magical and blissful holiday.

May this Christmas be full of surprises, gifts, and greetings for you. Embrace the joy this wonderful occasion brings to your home. Merry Christmas 2022!

May the divine love of God descend into your home to make it a piece of heaven. This Christmas, I wish you find peace and prosperity in every sphere of your life.

Wishing you a happy Christmas and a fulfilling year ahead. May you be showered with unimaginable peace and prosperity. Merry Christmas!

May the unconditional love of God be with you the entire time. Here’s to a season of blessings and beyond. Merry Christmas to you and your family!

On this merry day, I wish happiness surrounds you all around on this happy occasion. May God shower your life with unlimited blessings. Make some amazing memories this Christmas!

Merry Christmas Greetings

Everything good this season has to offer; may all be yours this Christmas! Merry Christmas!

You make each of my days as cheerful as Christmas. Happy holidays and a lovely new year to you, honey.

Wishing you all the best this holiday season! May this Year bring lots of love and joy to our home! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Nothing is more peaceful and joyous than spending the happiest time of the year surrounded by the ones you love and adore the most. May you all have a lovely Christmas with your family and friends.

I hope this festive season will bring good luck and good health to you and your family. Sending you a very warm wish for Christmas!

Wishing you the most amazing Christmas of your life and praying to the Lord to help you be a better person than ever. May God always bless you. I love you so much.

Wishing you everlasting joy, love, and peace on this spectacular occasion. Merry Christmas! 🎄

May your Christmas be merry and bright! Wishing you all the best for this holiday season. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Let this festive season make way for a better and brighter tomorrow for you. Enjoy the magic around you! Merry Christmas!

Here’s a wish for you right from the deepest corner of my heart. May you have a joyful year ahead. Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! May you receive the nicest gifts from your family and enjoy a big feast tonight!

Christmas season is brighter and warmer only because of you. Thank you, my love, for being in my life!

I am the luckiest person on earth to be spending this beautiful day with you. Merry Christmas, babe.

It always feels great to spend Christmas with such a friendly neighbor like you. It’s truly a great pleasure to have you as our neighbor. Merry Christmas to you!

I am forever thankful to God for having you in my life, and I wish you a joyful celebration of this holiday season.

I wish nothing but your sweet company throughout this holy season. You make me feel alive and special all the time. Merry Christmas 2022!

I pray that Christmas comes with many more opportunities, happiness and blessings in your life this year. Wishing you a merry Christmas and a happy new year full of love and good memories.

Your smile is the best gift I can ever wish for on Christmas! Wishing you a warm and joyful Christmas ❄️

Wishing you a pleasant time throughout this Christmas season. May you find countless successes and glory in the coming years. Happy Christmas!

May the sparkle of Christmas touch every aspect of your life this season. Wishing you love, laughter, contentment and harmony! Merry Christmas

May the spirit of Christmas bring much rejoicing to your heart, and may it give you the pleasure of reconnecting with your loved ones. Merry Christmas!

Read:

Christmas and New Year Wishes

Romantic Christmas Wishes

As Christmas is at our door with its full glory, preparation, and decorations! Exchanging Christmas presents with loved ones is an irreplaceable custom for Christians, but Romantic Christmas Wishes are what make your significant other feel more special on Christmas Eve! Slip in one of these romantic and sweet messages along with your gift and make your loved one smile the brightest!

Wishing you a Christmas holiday filled with love and joy. I can never think of a Christmas without you by my side. I love you!

Our love shines brighter than the brightest of the stars in the sky. May this Christmas and New Year be the best of our life!

You are my sweetest dream come true. I love you more than I love my life. Merry Christmas, love. Have a warm and wonderful time in this cold season!

Merry Christmas to you, sweetheart! Your existence itself is a blessing for me, as you are the reason for my smiles and the anchor to my sorrows. Your presence feels like a long-lasting Christmas of my life, baby! Thank you for lighting up my life every single day. I love you to the moon and back!

Merry Christmas honey. This Christmas, I would like to confess that you are the best thing that happened in my life. May god grace you with all the best deeds in your life.

I have so many reasons to be thankful on a Christmas day but you are the one that comes first in my mind always. Merry Christmas!

It doesn’t matter if we are together or far apart; we’ll always be in each other’s thoughts every Christmas there is and there will be!

If I’d have to choose between good moments on a Christmas and you, I’d choose you. Because I know good moments will come following you!

Nothing is more beautiful in this world than a Christmas Eve spent with you. Your presence is what makes my Christmas more enjoyable and awesome.

My joy of Christmas doubles when I see you smiling. You have a permanent place in my heart and I’m not letting you go anywhere! Wishing you a happy Christmas!

Santa will have a hard time picking the perfect gift for me this year since the best one out there already exists in my life! Merry Christmas, my love!

Thank you for making my Christmas special. I look forward to spending some quality moments with you on this beautiful occasion. Sending my love to you!

With you, all my Christmas is bright and jolly. I’m so happy to be a part of your life. Merry Christmas, love!

Can’t wait to meet you and see your beautiful face this Christmas eve. You fill my heart with so much joy and pleasure. Merry Christmas my love!

Sending lots of Christmas kisses to my wonderful sweetheart. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, babe.

This Christmas, the most precious thing I have to gift you is my heart. I hope you’ll keep it safe through the years to come!

Christmas for me, is a time to gather and celebrate God’s gift to us. As I think of the things I’ve been blessed with, YOU always come first. Merry Christmas!

Read More:

Christmas Romantic Messages

Religious Christmas Messages

The true spirit of Christmas lies in the act of sharing one’s goodness of heart with others and following Jesus Christ’s heavenly guidance in daily life. Religious Christmas messages hold a special significance in this regard, so share these beautiful, spiritual, and uplifting Christmas blessings with your dear ones! Let these wordings ignite the values of Christianity in our hearts!

Merry Christmas! May your holy wishes be heard by God and your life be full of his divine blessings!

I wish you find serenity and delight in the celebration of this holy day! Have a blessed Christmas!

May God enlighten your heart and help you stay on the right path. Merry Christmas and best wishes to you.

May the Lord Jesus fill your life with eternal joy and never-ending happiness. I pray for a Christmas full of love and peace for you and your family!

A Christmas is a reward for those who believe in Christ. It comes with a promise that Christ will never abandon his dear followers. Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you! Today, we celebrate the birth of our Pioneer with love, respect, and devotion. May the morale and values of this auspicious day stay evergreen in our beliefs, words, and actions. Hope we can remember the beauty of Christianity through this commemoration and unite the hearts of the believers!

Let the lights of Christmas guide you toward true Christianity. May the teaching of Christmas enlighten your soul with heavenly wisdom! Merry Christmas!

May this holy season of Christmas bring the lord’s blessing to your home. May all your wishes come true and your desires are fulfilled! Happy Christmas!

As you celebrate the birth of our sweet Lord Jesus, I want you to know that my prayers are always with you and you’ll always have Christ’s blessings in life!

May the spirit of Christmas harbor the love for Jesus in our hearts and allow us to live upon His divine teachings. Merry Christmas!

Christmas brings about a bounty of joy and messages of hope. May the spirit of Christ ignite within our hearts forever! Merry Christmas!

May the gift of serenity and true love surround you like a shield of God. I wish you find the meaning of your life through the prayers you make. Merry Christmas!

May the miracle of Christmas bring you the utmost joy and happiness. May God give you contentment and peace among you and your family. Have a jolly and Merry Christmas.

God is always watching over you, so don’t chicken out. May your Christmas sparkle with moments of love, laughter and goodwill. I wish you all the good things. Merry Christmas.

Also Read:

Christmas Thank You Messages

Christmas Wishes for Friends

Life would be so bland without the constant presence of our friends! Friends really deserve a special place in our troublesome lives because of their support, care, and guidance. Christmas is the best time to spread some extra love towards your besties and express our undying love for them! Wish your dear friends a Merry Christmas with some lovely Christmas wishes, or some funny ones!

Merry Christmas dear friend! May this holy season be filled with true miracles of love for you. May the colors and cheers of this hoy festival be with you forever.

Your friendship is the best Christmas gift that I’ve ever received. I want it to last forever!

Wishing you a blissful season filled with joy and all the best things in the world. May this festive season of sharing love bring you peace that lasts throughout the year.

I’m so thankful to God for having you as a friend this Christmas and all year round. May the glow of the Christmas candles brighten your day. Happy holidays, dear.

Merry Christmas, dear friend! May this Christmas bring about good fortune, hopeful opportunities, and precious memories in your life!

Hope this Christmas brings you new opportunities and gives you great ideas. Let Christmas also bring you wealth and happiness. Have a great time with friends and family. Merry Christmas!

I wish Santa to be just as good to you as you are to me. I hope he fills your socks with your favorite candy. Merry Christmas, dear friend!

You’re one in million to me. A friend like you is all that I need to feel special on Christmas eve! Thanks for always being there for me!

Merry Christmas, buddy! This cold holiday season always feels warmer when spent among loved ones. I hope you can spend meaningful time with your family members, feast to your heart’s content with them, and exchange not only gifts but also laughter and love! Here’s to a Christmas full of nostalgia, peace, and unity!

Wishing you a happy, healthy, and colorful time this Christmas. Enjoy every moment with your family, friends, and loved ones. Merry Christmas!

Let the warmth of this holiday season bring happiness and comfort to your life. May all your stress go away, and all your dreams are fulfilled. Merry Christmas!

Let the wonders of this holy season brighten your life and gladden your heart. Wishing you a Christmas filled with the love and care of your dear ones.

Wishing my dearest friend a fun-filled, cheerful, and memorable Christmas season. May all your prayers be answered and your desires are fulfilled.

I would like to send a million thanks to you for being my best friend in life. I hope you’ll have an amazing time this Christmas!

It breaks my heart to know that you’ll not be here to spend the season with me. But I’m wishing you the happiest Christmas ever. Merry Christmas!

Your friendship is the firework that makes my every Christmas a memorable one. You deserve a box full of blessings this Christmas!

I may not always say how important you are in my life. But I just want to know, the joy of Christmas is incomplete without you!

The warmth of your friendship and the charm of your presence is the best Christmas gift for me. Let’s make this Christmas full of sweet friendship moments!

Thanks for the support and care you have always given me. May this festive season strengthen our friendship so it can endure any difficulty life throws at us!

Merry Christmas to my best friend forever! Here’s wishing you a season full of fun parties, beautiful experiences, soothing challenges and all the new memories you are waiting to create!

I wish that your Christmas season shimmers with love and kindness. May the faith and serenity descend on you. Have a safe and Merry Christmas dear friend.

Merry Christmas to my best friend! I’m so glad to be able to spend another Christmas with you in my life.

Merry Christmas, buddy! May the coming year bring you tons of beautiful memories and blissful moments. The fun has just started!

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Christmas Messages for Friends

Christmas Wishes for Family

Our families are the most valuable to our hearts, and Christmas might just be the perfect occasion to acknowledge their presence! We cannot imagine a Christmas without the grand feasts in our homes, the warm conversations between family members, and the laughter exchanged with our loved ones. So this Christmas, make sure to take special care of your family and tell them how much you appreciate their unyielding love and support through some unique Christmas wishes!

Merry Christmas! I am lucky to have been born into such a caring, joyful and lovely family!

There is nothing more special for me than being able to spend some good time over good food with you all! Merry Christmas, my dear family!

Merry Christmas to you and your precious family! May your bond expand and your family remains the happiest.

Merry Christmas to my precious family! You are what makes Christmas special and delightful!

May all your moments be filled with tremendous happiness and astounding cheerfulness. Wishing all of you a remarkable Christmas season!

Thank you for giving me the best memories of my life I could ever ask for. Wishing a magical Christmas season to the most adorable family ever.

The best thing about Christmas is that it gives me so much time to spend with you guys. Wishing you all the best things in this world this Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone! I feel blessed to spend this holiday surrounded by the love and care of my favorite people!

Having a family like you is the best Christmas gift there ever could be. May your heart and our home be filled with all of the joys the festive season brings. Here’s to toast a Merry Christmas.

Warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful Christmas. I truly am grateful to be blessed with such a wonderful family. Merry Christmas.

I am blessed to be able to celebrate this meaningful occasion with the people I love most! Merry Christmas to my loving family! May we be blessed with success, health and protection!

Every Christmas is a time to be in touch with so many wonderful people under the same roof. I’m really proud to be a part of this family!

Favorite foods and favorite faces are the reasons why Christmas is my favorite festival. I love all of you! Merry Christmas!

It doesn’t matter how far away from each other we are the whole year, we’ll surely unite under the same roof every Christmas! Happy Christmas!

Wishing each and every one a Christmas this year full of laughter, joy, and contentment. May all our wishes come true. Merry Christmas!

May the advent of Christmas invite good health, prosperity, and fortune in our house. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Merry Christmas to you all! No matter how much I grow up, Christmas always feels better when I am surrounded by my family members!

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100+ Christmas Wishes for Family

Christmas Messages for Parents

Merry Christmas, my wonderful parents. You are my greatest joy in this world.

Wishing a merry Christmas to my lovely parents. I would be nothing without you two, and I am so lucky to have parents like you. Stay blessed and enjoy the festivities!

Thank you for all the love, care, and guidance. I love you more than you can imagine. Merry Christmas dear mom and dad.

Christmas is all about family and love and care. Thank you for making me understand the worth and meaning of life. Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad. Love you.

Wishing you the best holiday season, my parents. I hope Christmas fills your day with lights and love, comfort and compassion, happiness, and hugs.

Throughout life, I have always wanted to be a person like you! I admire you for being such a kind-hearted person. Merry Christmas, thank you for always loving me so well.

Christmas with you two is the happiest time of my life; Merry Christmas, mom, and dad.

I’m thankful to God for blessing me with the most supportive parents. Without you two, I’m nothing. Merry Christmas.

Dear Mom, Merry Christmas. Thanks for getting me even when I cannot express myself. Thanks for being my savior. Have a great life. I love you so much.

For all those years, you helped “Santa” to make the holiday season perfect, so grateful to you. I love you more than you can imagine. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Christmas Wishes for Wife

I love making some amazing memory with you every Christmas. Wishing you a Merry Christmas, my wife.

Dear wife, I want to thank you for being my biggest supporter. Words can never express my deepest affection for you, but you are the only one for me. Merry Christmas!

My love for you shines bright like the Christmas lights. Merry Christmas, love ❤️

All I want this Christmas is hugs and kisses from you. Merry Christmas.

You are the perfect angel that I asked for. Thank you for saving my life when I was drowning in loneliness. Wishing you Merry Christmas with love and hugs!

My life would be incomplete without your love. Thank you for making my life amazing. Every Christmas seems more colorful to you. Merry Christmas, wife.

May our bond be blessed with love and affection. May it last forever and may we enjoy a happy and healthy family life. Merry Christmas to you!

Dear wife, Christmas comes and goes each year, but my love for you will remain forever. I love you, darling.

You are not just an excellent wife but also a loving mother. I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t feel lucky every day for having you. Merry Christmas!

I had no idea how happy this day could be until I spent it in your arms beside you. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas.

Christmas Message for Husband

You are the best present I could have for Christmas. Merry Christmas, husband!

Dear hubby, you have made my life heaven full of peace and happiness! Thank you for everything! Merry Christmas!

Our marriage is made in heaven and you are the best gift from God. I want to be with you during this Christmas and many more Christmas after this. Merry Christmas ❤️

When you hug me with your arms around me, I feel the safest. Nothing can make us apart as long as God’s blessing is with us. Merry Christmas my love!

When I look at you, my heart fills with happiness. Your smile makes my days worth living. Thank you for being there for me in all my good and bad times. Merry Christmas!

Let us pray that God showers his divine blessings upon us on this Christmas and makes our bond last forever. Merry Christmas to you darling!

Only your presence in the house makes my holidays so special. I want to spend every second of this Christmas with the one I love most and that’s you. Merry Christmas!

Our marriage grew stronger every day since the first day of it. The only reason for this is the more I spend my days with you, the more I fall in love with you. Merry Christmas!

You are the most beautiful gift that I never want to take for granted. I earned you and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you happy. Merry Christmas my love!

I’m not sure what I did to deserve a husband like you. On this holy day of Christmas, I would like to thank God for you.

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Romantic Christmas Wishes For Husband

Christmas Love Messages for Girlfriend

No one can ever love me the way you do. Thank you for being the lighthouse that gives me hope and strength in life. Merry Christmas to my beautiful girlfriend!

As long as you and I remain together, there will always be love in the air. You are the sparkle of joy and the lighthouse of hope for me. Merry Christmas ❤️

From the very first day I met you, you became the meaning of my life. Today, I wish you a blissful Merry Christmas and hope that you have great fun!

You are my dream to come to reality. Merry Christmas. I love you.

May our bond be blessed with love and affection. May it last forever and fill each other’s life with happiness and positive vibes. Merry Christmas, dear girlfriend. Have a great holiday.

None of my Christmas presents could ever compare to how valuable you are to me. You are the most precious present I have ever received. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, my love. May God send you my share of happiness as well.

Merry Christmas to my sweet lady! I want to share every moment of my life with you!

Merry Christmas, baby! You are a true gem and I am so lucky to have you in my life. You are everything I ever wanted!

May the Lord give us so many wonderful memories to treasure for the rest of our life. May the spirit of Christmas always protect the bond our hearts share.

Spending time with you is the only wish on my Christmas Wish-list this year. I always carry the thought of you in my mind and in my heart. Merry Christmas!

Christmas holiday is always fun and more charming as long as you are here with me. Thanks for always making everything worth it. My sweet angel, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Romantic Christmas Wishes for Boyfriend

My love, I hope all your Christmas wishes come true. Merry Christmas.

I have never met such a charming, loving, and caring person as you. The love you have given me is priceless and unimaginable. Merry Christmas darling!

As long as you are with me, this Christmas holiday season for me will be full of fun, happiness, and love. Let’s celebrate the amazing kind of love that we share this Christmas!

This Christmas, I’d like to thank God for sending me such a wonderful human being as you to love. Merry Christmas.

Sweetheart, you are my Christmas miracle. Sending you hugs on Christmas.

You are the most loving and loyal boyfriend I could ever ask for. Everything you do makes me feel lucky and blessed to have you in my life. Merry Christmas to you!

Your smile brightens my Christmas like a Christmas tree. Bless me with your presence this Christmas and I don’t want anything else. Merry Christmas!

Before Christmas was about lights and presents, now it’s all about you! Merry Christmas!

Christmas becomes more enjoyable and colorful with a man like you. Being with you is the most wonderful thing in the world. Merry Christmas, my love ❤️

All I want this Christmas is your love. Your love keeps me warm on this cold night. Merry Christmas to my man.

You hold my heart and make everything feel at ease। Thank you for being my person. May this holiday get you closer to achieving your dreams and new opportunities. Merry Christmas, Love.

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Christmas Wishes For Boyfriend

Christmas Wishes for Mom

Merry Christmas, mom! Thank you for always being there for me through thick and thin. I hope you know that I am always grateful to you. Love you so much.

All I want this Christmas is hugs from you, mom. Merry Christmas.

Wherever I go and whatever I do, I carry in my heart the memories of you. Thank you for being the best mom ever. Merry Christmas!

Jingle bells rang and snow is on its way to wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I love you so much, Mom. Miss you.

You make the season merry and bright, mom! May you have a blissful holiday. I love you so much. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2023.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas, mom. You taught me the value of family time during the holidays, and I am grateful every day for it.

Merry Christmas, mom! Thank you for making this day more joyous with your love and dedication!

Because you put so much care into everything, our lives are so wonderful. Dear mom, you have a heart that glows like a thousand diamonds. Merry Christmas to you!

Mom, I can never express my love for you, just like how I can never express my love for Christmas. Stay safe and stay happy this holiday season! Wishing you a joyous Holiday season.

I am really grateful to have such an amazing and supportive mother. Merry Christmas, Maa! Many good wishes for the holiday season and the coming year.

Christmas Wishes for Dad

No words can ever hold up the value you hold on my life, dad. I am glad that God has blessed me with the best dad ever. Merry Christmas and have a great holiday.

Dear dad, Merry Christmas. I pray to God every day for your good health and a good mind. You have always made sure that we were doing okay. Thank you for all your sacrifices.

Merry Christmas to the best dad in this world. I love you, dad. Keep smiling!

May all the peace and joy of Christmas fill your heart the whole year through, dad. Wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. I love you so much.

Dear dad, I hope you know that you mean a lot to me. I wish you a joyous holiday season with every bit of happiness in the world! Merry Christmas and a happy new year, dad.

Merry Christmas to you! You deserve to enjoy this season to the fullest for all you do for the family!

Thank you, Dad, for always knowing exactly what I want and need for Christmas and fulfilling my wish before I even say it. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, dad. I love you more than Santa Clause. I really do.

May the wonders of Christ’s love surround you always and bring joy to your heart. Merry Christmas to the one person who always keeps us strong and united.

You make the season merry and bright, daddy dearest! May you have a blissful holiday with your heart lifting up with joy. At Christmas and always, what an amazing blessing you are!

Thank you for shaping me into the person I am today. Thank you for always being my no.1 supporter. Wishing you nothing but all the joy that Christmas brings. I love you so much.

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Christmas Wishes For Parents

Christmas Wishes for Sister

Having you as my sister is the biggest blessing from God. Merry Christmas and happy new year, sis.

Merry Christmas to my lovely sister. May your holidays be filled with blessings, love, and happiness. I hope the warmth of Christmas stays with you forever.

Wishing a merry Christmas and a splendid celebration to you and your family, my sister! May this occasion mark the beginning of your triumphant life and bring you an abundance of happiness.

I love how you make everything so funny and comfortable around you, sister. Merry Christmas. Here’s to never growing up and having lots of fun.

May God shower you with unending blessings, my sister. Merry Christmas.

I hope the warmth of this holiday season stays with you throughout the year and brings you joy and happiness. I miss you more than you can imagine. Merry Christmas, dear.

You’re so special to me that I can never think of a Christmas holiday without you. I hope you will not deprive me of your charm this Christmas!

It’s difficult to put into words how important you are to me. But you should know that yours is the most blissful presence in my life. Merry Christmas to you!

Christmas Wishes for Brother

May this festive season bring you good health and prosperity, brother. Wishing you a very happy Christmas.

Merry Christmas, brother! I hope the Christmas lights get you into the festive mood and add new sparks to your life. I hope life keeps showering you with delightful presents, not only on Christmas but also throughout the year.

Merry Christmas, brother. I hope your Christmas is filled with laughter and joy.

Wishing you good luck and good health during this festive season of the year. May you find many reasons to celebrate Christmas!

In this holiday season, I wish nothing but good health, a good mind, and prosperity for you this year! Hope you have a great holiday. Merry Christmas, Bro!

I hope you know that I love you so much and we are always together in my heart. I’m so thankful to have you in my life! Merry Christmas.

No matter what you do throughout the year, Santa will always be good to you because my prayers are with you. Merry Christmas to my sweet brother!

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Christmas Wishes For Loved Ones

Christmas Wishes for Son

Dear son, wherever you go may God’s blessings always protect you. My love and prayers are always with you. Merry Christmas.

The pleasure of having a caring, kind and strong son is beyond words. You’re no doubt on the ‘nice’ list of Santa for being such an incredible son. Merry Christmas!

Dear son, I’m wishing you a beautiful Christmas season filled with love, joy, and peace. May this Christmas bring many memorable moments to cherish for a lifetime.

Christmas holidays will always be merry and bright for you because my God’s love and prayers are with you. May you have a great time this Christmas, dear son!

Among the many blessings I have received in life, you are the best one because only you can fill my heart with joy instantly. Merry Christmas!

Wishing you the best that Christmas can bring. Fill your heart with Xmas songs, candies, and cakes and soak in the beautiful snow. Merry Christmas, my beloved son! I love you so much.

Christmas is a very special time to enjoy each and every moment of it with your close ones. Thanks for being the best son I could have asked for. Dad loves you so much. Merry Christmas.

On this holy night of Christmas, I pray that God sends his angels to look after you. Merry Christmas, my son.

My Christmas wish is to make all your Christmas wishes come true, my little angel.

Christmas Wishes for Daughter

My princess, I wish you a very Merry Christmas. May you be surrounded by love.

Wishing a blissful Christmas season to my adorable little daughter. You are the best thing that happened to me.

Wishing you the very best for today and every day in your life. May this holiday season bring you lots of excitement and happiness! Merry Christmas!

Hope you receive everything you desire for this Christmas. Have a great time and know that you mean so much to us. Merry Christmas!

You are one of the most precious gifts from God. May your holiday be as amazing as your smiles. Merry Christmas, beautiful daughter.

Merry Christmas to a fantastic lady I raised. My little daughter, you’ve given me so many memories to cherish, yet I wish for you some more this Christmas!

My Christmases have become so much happier since I have had you. Merry Christmas!

The best present one can hope for this year is to spend time together. Thank you for making my Christmas special with your presence. May God bless you today and tomorrow.

You are the best gift that I could have asked for from God. Thank you for blessing me with your existence. I love you so much. Eat, drink and be merry on this festive season, my dear.

Christmas Wishes for Colleagues

A good amount of time is spent every day at workplaces and a close bond is shared with the coworkers of offices. Work partners and colleagues can sometimes feel like a part of our own family as well! So during Christmas, remember the supportive and diligent colleagues and send some love and care on their way! Wish your colleagues and their respective families a meaningful, enjoyable holiday with these amazing Christmas wishes below!

Sending my warmest Christmas wishes for the coolest colleague ever. May you have the time of your life this Christmas!

Merry Christmas, dear colleague! Hope this blessed holiday opens up the path of your glory!

May this magical season fill up your home with happiness and light up your life with your desired opportunities and success! Merry Christmas!

Very few colleagues can cross the boundary and touch the deepest place in the heart. You are one of the few. Happy Christmas!

Wishing you the happiest holidays of your life this Christmas. May your life continue to be filled up with joy and pleasure. Happy Christmas 2022!

I hope the day brings happiness and fortune to your house. Merry Christmas to you and your family!

It’s my pleasure working with you. You worked hard this year, so you deserve a fantastic holiday. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, dear colleague! May this divine celebration bring merriment, calmness, and relaxation to your hectic life. Savor the warmth of home, relish the delicious home-cooked meals and enjoy the good laughs with your friends!

Merry Christmas to the superb colleague I have ever worked with. May this Holy Season bring you the happiness and blessings you wish. Enjoy your Holidays, mate!

Your guidance and support always helped me in my work. I’ve never seen such a supportive co-worker like you. Merry Christmas.

You have always been a supportive and caring colleague. This Christmas is incomplete without your presence in my home. Merry Christmas and you’re invited!

Colleagues are part of one’s job life. But never knew they could be a part of actual life. Merry Christmas! You’ve become a friend of mine!

Your support and inspiration are the reasons why I feel relaxed even when loads are heavy. Thank you for being such a helpful co-worker. Merry Christmas!

Because of a co-worker like you, works seem so enjoyable. Thank you for bringing so much joy into my life. Merry Christmas dear colleague!

Merry Christmas. May this Christmas provide you with opportunities to create lasting memories with your family and friends.

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Christmas Wishes for Colleagues

Christmas Wishes for Boss

Merry Christmas, boss! I hope the holiday lights fill your day with joy and wonder.

I wish you all the wonderful and amazing blessings this Christmas that God has stored for you. Wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year, sir.

Merry Christmas to our amazing leader. Working under your supervision is a blessing. May you have a wonderful Christmas.

Merry Christmas, boss. I sincerely hope that this holiday season brings you as much joy as you bring to our office every day.

May this Christmas bring you a bundle of joy! Have a blissful and merry Christmas, Sir. May God bless you and your family. Merry Christmas to your family from mine.

Sending my warmest Christmas greetings to you and your family, boss.

Thank you for always keeping on inspiring and motivating me, dear boss. May God bless you in the holiday season. Wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Thank you for your leadership and guidance throughout this year. Enjoy this Christmas to the fullest. Merry Christmas, boss.

May this great festive season bring you nothing but joy and success which will last throughout the upcoming year. Merry Christmas, Boss. Happy holidays!

It’s a lifetime opportunity for any employee to be able to work for such a visionary leader like you. I feel really lucky to be one. Merry Christmas!

No one can run a business quite as successfully as you. I am lucky to be an employee of yours. Merry Christmas, dear boss!

Christmas Wishes for Clients

I’m so fortunate to have a client like you who has been so supportive in hard times. Merry Christmas with thanks for all you do!

Merry Christmas to you and your family. May happiness reach every corner of your home.

You’re not only my client but also my best benefactor. May this grand occasion enlighten your life with success and merriment. Merry Christmas!

It is so wonderful to work with you and I would like to celebrate more Christmas with you as same as this. Let’s buckle up and enjoy the Holiday.

The magic of Christmas never ends and its greatest of gifts are family and friends. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

You make my gloomy days brighter and the cold days warmer just by being my most supportive hand. Celebrate the joy; may you feel this happiness all year round. Merry Christmas!

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Christmas Wishes for Clients and Customers

Short Christmas Wishes Text

Be a school-goer or a working person, Christmas remains the most anticipated festival for people of every age! Christmas is meaningful in its way of spreading love and warmth among the near and dear ones, so it is a lovely gesture to send Christmas wishes to one’s peers! Whether you prefer text messages or special cards, our compilation of Short Christmas Wishes is here to meet all your needs!

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

May God shower your life with unlimited blessings. Merry Xmas!

Wish you peace, prosperity, and a better tomorrow. Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas from the core of my heart!

The magic of love, friendship, and brotherhood, may all these be yours this Christmas!

May you find comfort in the warmth of love I am sending your way. Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you and your family! May this holiday season wrap you in warmth and joy!

May Santa shower you with everything you ever wished for. Merry Christmas!

Here’s to an occasion of magic and mystery. Have a Merry Christmas!

All I want for Christmas is your happiness, health, and prosperity! Merry Christmas!

Let the festival bring joy and laughter to your home. Merry Christmas!

May your joys be everlasting and your pains are momentary. Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Thinking of you during the holiday season and wishing you the best in all things.

Merry Christmas! May you receive amazing presents, fond memories, and abundant love from your dear ones!

Wishing you a warm, bright and charming Christmas ahead! Let the feast and fun begin!

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Christmas Bible Verses

“Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.” – Jude 1:2

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16”

“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him…” – John 1:9-10

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:19”

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” – Ephesians 1:3

“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is the Messiah, the Lord. – Luke 2:11”

“But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” – Galatians 4:4-5

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:7

“Every good gift and every perfect gift are from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” – James 1:17

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” – Isaiah 9:6

“And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” – 2 Corinthians 9:8

“May He grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!” – Psalm 20:4

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.” – Philippians 4:23

“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” – Numbers 6:24-26

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” – Romans 15:13

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” – 2 Corinthians 13:14

“And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you obey the voice of the Lord your God.” – Deuteronomy 28:2

“May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts! May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him!” – Psalm 72:10-11

Funny Christmas Wishes

I hope you’ll have so many gifts this Christmas that you’ll get tired of counting them. And then you’d wake up and realize it was a dream! Merry Christmas!

The best thing Christmas teaches us is that you can be fat but still can be happy about it. Just look at Santa Clause! Merry Christmas!

Christmas is surely a wonderful night – until you wake up the next day to stumble upon the mess of last night and your credit card bill makes you blind!

I hope to see you with a big present box and a lovely smile on Christmas morning. Have a cheery Christmas.

Christmas is a very spiritual time, and in order to keep your spirit high, you need vodka, gin, and whisky!

I can’t imagine a sentence without the ‘F’ word when I’m talking with you. But today, my Christmas wish for you is going to be full of the ‘M’ word. Merry Christmas!

Santa has really done his homework on the ‘who’s been good all year’ list. Hope you get a good present. Merry Christmas.

Funny Christmas Wishes for Friends

All I want for Christmas is to pass our classes with good grades! Merry Christmas to you and me too!

Who needs a Christmas gift when they have a friend like me? I know you feel lucky all the time. Wishing you Merry Christmas dear!

I decided to spend time with you rather than buy something with the money. Because TIME IS MONEY anyway. Merry Christmas!

Nothing in life can be gained without a promise to be returned. Even Santa comes with a clause in Christmas! Have a fantastic time!

All my dreams came to reality when I married you. And now I know why reality is always so hard to accept. Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

What a perfect time for you to be grateful for having me in your life. You may not always admit but I already know you’re so lucky. Merry Christmas!

If you’ve never been to our house around Christmas, you know nothing about having fun at Christmas. Hoping to see you around this season!

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100+ Funny Christmas Messages

Christmas Card Messages

May this Christmas bring your way plenty of reasons to smile. I wish you and your family a very Happy and Joyous Christmas.

May the joy and peace of Christmas be with you all through the Year Wishing you a season of blessings from heaven above; happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas!! I wish you a warm and fun-filled holiday season! I hope your holidays are as bright and cheerful as you are!

May this Christmas bring you an abundance of happy moments that become forever sweet memories. Enjoy every bit of this wonderful season. Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas {put name}. May the candles you light this Christmas take away the darkness inside you and warm your heart with joy and pleasure.

I wish on this Christmas and onwards, we carry Christ’s love that lives in all of us and cares more about giving than receiving. Merry Christmas!

Here’s to hope the Christmas season fills your home with the warmth and joyfulness that you and your family deserve. Best wishes at Christmas and always!

I hope Santa is good to you this year just like he was every other year. Merry Christmas to you and to that sweet family of yours.

Christmas is the time to count blessings, and you are one of the greatest blessings I’ve ever got! Merry Christmas.

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow. Wishing you lots of love, joy and happiness. Merry Christmas!

I wish this Christmas to end the present year on a cheerful note and make way for a fresh and bright New Year. Here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Embrace every moment with gratitude and be thankful for everything and everyone you have to spend this joyous season with. Wishing you a delightful Christmas.

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Christmas Wishes for Teacher

Christmas Wishes Quotes

“It’s Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.” – W. T. Ellis

“Christmas is joy, religious joy, an inner joy of light and peace.” – Pope Francis

“I wish you a joyful and enjoyable Merry Christmas! I hope your wishes come true!”

“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.” – Roy L. Smith

“Christmas magic is silent. You don’t hear it – You feel it. You know it. You believe it.” – Kevin Alan Milne

“Merry Christmas! Wishing you one of the best Christmas celebrations ever! Sending bags full of heartfelt wishes to you and your loved ones!”

“What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.” – Agnes M. Pahro

“Merry Christmas! My heartfelt wishes to you on this joyous occasion. Feel the love, bonding, and happiness among your near and dear ones!”

“May the hope, the peace, the joy, and the love represented by the birth in Bethlehem this night fill our lives and become part of all that we say and do.” – Rev. Richard J. Fairchild

“Christmas can’t be bought from a store. Maybe Christmas means a little bit more.” – Dr. Seuss

“Christmas is a time when you get homesick — even when you’re home.” – Carol Nelson

Quotes About Christmas

“Don’t let the past steal your present. This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone.” – Taylor Caldwell

“I really hope you have the best Christmas of your life! Wishing you a heartfelt Merry Christmas and moments of infinite joy.”

“God never gives someone a gift they are not capable of receiving. If He gives us the gift of Christmas, it is because we all have the ability to understand and receive it.” – Pope Francis

“Christmas is a piece of one’s home that one carries in one’s heart.” – Freya Stark

“Peace on earth will come to stay when we live Christmas every day.” – Helen Steiner Rice

“Christmas is forever, not for just one day. For loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away.” – Norman Wesley Brooks

“Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.” – Dale Evans

“Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.” – Hamilton Write Mabie

“Christmas isn’t about candy canes or lights all aglow, it’s the hearts that we touch, and the care that we show.” – Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas

“Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy is to have the real spirit of Christmas.” – Calvin Coolidge

“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.” – Norman Vincent Peale

“Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.” – Oren Arnold

“Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.” – Washington Irving

Christmas and New Year Wishes

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Wishing you lots of fun and cheers and of course a glorious year to come!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May all the happiness of this world find its way to you!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May your holiday season be filled with joy, love, and happiness.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May the spirit of Christmas is with you always.

wishes for christmas and new year

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year from the core of my heart. During this holiday season, I want to let you know that you’re the best person I have ever met. Thank you for being so supportive!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Have the time of your life with everything you do this holiday season and embrace all the new excitement it throws at you!

I wish for you to have a holiday season that is as joyful as you are, my friend. I hope you have a healthy and prosperous New Year!

This Christmas, I’m sending you joyful greetings wrapped in love and cheer. May you have a memorable Christmas and a marvelous new year!

Christmas is a time to keep your spirit high and your smile bright. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Wishing you nothing but unlimited joy through the holidays and straight through the year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas Captions

Let love fill the hearts of your dearest ones! Merry Christmas! ⛄❄️🎄🎅

Merry Christmas to you and your family! May the holy blessings of your life never run out!

Merry Christmas everyone! May your Christmas season be filled with warmth, love, and laughter!

Merry Christmas and New Year 2023! I hope you find peace, joy, and happiness in the coming year!

merry christmas captions

Let the essence of Christmas reign in our hearts and dwell in our homes. Merry Christmas!

I hope your holiday season is as joyful as it can be and you can spend quality time with loved ones. Merry Christmas

#MerryChristmas2022 🎄🎅 Praying for Jesus Christ to shower you with His holy miracles and fortune!

Family is all that we have, and I wish all my family members a merry Christmas and a wonderful life ahead.

Wishing you all the happiness your hearts can hold this holiday season! May your holiday season be merry and bright!

Experience the wonders of this wonderful holiday season and make some memories to cherish. #MerryChristmas ❄️🎄

On this wonderful occasion, I wish you good luck and great health. Merry Christmas to all of you! 🎄🎅

May the joy of Christmas touch the deepest core of your heart and you keep shining the way Christmas lights do.

Christmas is not an event, but a feeling. And every feeling needs sharing.

Rejoice, reflect and reinvent yourself amidst the endless magic of this Christmas!

Let the love flow from the heart to heart and soul to soul this Christmas!

Christmas is the biggest holiday for Christians. “This the season to be jolly” – they call it. And they are very true to say so. Christmas brings a full package of joy and laughter to everyone. It is the day that Christ was born. It is the day to celebrate love, gratitude and the spirit of giving, sharing and spreading happiness. Merry Christmas is a season of magical occasion that brings us lots of enjoyment, happiness, love and heartwarming moments to us. This is also a season of making good memories and reconnecting with friends, family and every relationship. Christmas is always about spending time with your loved ones. Whether it be family members, friends, or close ones, it’s a festival of joy, happiness, cookies, roasted chicken, and decorations. It doesn’t feel like Christmas if you don’t get a text or wish from your close ones.

So, be there for your loved ones and send them beautiful Christmas greetings. The holidays won’t be the same without doing this for sure. So, find meaningful and sweet Merry Christmas wishes for your beloved ones and celebrate Christmas and the bond you guys share. Nothing is warmer than holiday wishes from dear ones, so what are you waiting for? Choose your favorite Christmas wishes, and you are ready to go! Share the love and joy – Christmas truly holds value for. We hope you have a blessed Christmas with your family and friends!

Adesola Stephanie Adepoju .

Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman .

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Date : Sunday December 25 2022 .

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[dreams-of-yunho]

o, swear not by the moon

yunho x princess reader

rating: m

genre: smut with a dash of angst

wc: 2.7k

warnings: sex !!!!!!! just kinda sex stuff idk

summary: you fell in love with the enemy and he breaks your heart

:( but in a sexc way

______________________________________________________________

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, who monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

If the days were forgiving, you did not know. If there was love in this life, you could not feel it.

But, the day you met him, among the tulips, everything seemed to shine more brilliantly. Everything felt more warm.

~

Water coated your feet as you glided through the rain soaked grass, returning to your promised place. Dense mist hung in the cool night air. Drops of water hit your face as you slid through the leaf covered branches which concealed the forest alcove.

You had met him during the vibrant summer months, when the forest was at its fullest. When the leaves were green, bright moss clung to the sides of trees, shade living flowers thrived. But now, an eastern wind ran over your skin and the leaves turned brown and fell to a cold ground.

Blush coloured silk brushed across your goosebump covered skin as the breeze caught the hem of your dress. Lily Pads and their flowers shifted across the pond’s surface. This place, once a great temple, had been built by the ancient elders of your empire for the forest deities. And, as the old gods were lost to time and the first age passed, the once glorious house of worship became a forgotten forest alcove; a great willow tree grew, tall and proud, from the ruins of the marble temple. A murky pond who’s bottom seemed limitless and was concealed by delicate flowers, swayed around the stone foundation. Honeysuckle vines climbed towards the forest canopy across the decaying and crumbling pillars.

War had drained your spirits and left you cold and alone. You could barely remember the days before, when you were so young and ignorant. How the palace was alive with music, parties, and love. How your father and mother would kiss you goodnight and bid you farewell to the realm of dreams. Then, one day you woke and they were gone; that warmth drained.

The warrior princess, your mother was heir to the throne of the empire and, in a scandalous affair, married her younger brother’s best friend and general of the eastern army. They both died in battle, their bodies never returned to the royal capital for burial.

With the war came the clouds; heavy and gray. The sun seemed to disappear, die. So did the spirits of your people. Food became scarce, fathers and brothers were sent to war, and the raging fire of hope doused in an ocean of fear.

After years of brutal and unforgiving warfare, a caravan rode into the capital. Believing they had thoroughly gutted and drained your empire of all it was worth, the enemy came to commence talks of peace.

The son of the chief diplomat-- he came with his father to the palace and, now, sat at the edge of the half submerged temple stairs, kicking his feet in the chilly water.

“Yunho,” you called, the pond standing between you and him.

He glanced up and smiled, waving a beckoning arm.

He had been at the palace for nearly three months now though, you’ve only known him for one. He came from an empire in the south where the sun knew no night and, even in the white light of the moon, his skin glowed golden. Long nights you spent under the star scattered sky as he told you of his coastal home; blue waters and warm winters. How you longed to sink your feet into the white sand of his palace beaches, to feel the sun on your skin again.

Though, as you came to sit next to him on the cold, stone stairs, felt the warmth he generated, the golden light he seemed to produce-- you realized that you didn’t miss the sun as much as you used to.

“I have news from the negotiations,” his voice echoed through the ruins. “This foul war is over; there will be peace again.”

These words could not be true. With the joyful memories of your childhood not even shadows in your mind; a waring state was all you knew.

He seemed to sense your reluctance to believe as he said, “it is true, my love. Our armies have been told to stand down and will be pulled from their posts come next week. It’s all over.” Warmth spread over your cheek as his hand met your face, a gentle smile across his red-wine lips.

“This is glorious news,” you cheered, mind lost in a cloudy excitement. Yet, his words seemed to pull you down to earth; all over. “Yunho,” you raised your head to meet his deep brown eyes, and you couldn’t help but see sorrow in them. “What’s wrong? This is a time of celebration but you seem to mourn.”

He removed the hand from your cheek and returned it to his lap. “I ride south with my father at first light. There is news that my sister has given birth to a boy and, with his work here done, father does not wish to wait any longer to hold his first grandchild.”

“No,” was all you could manage to speak.

He wasn’t supposed to leave; he was your life. Without him, you would sink into the darkness again.

“N-no,” you didn’t know what to do, how to act. Your hands began to shake, acting upon their own volition. Your shoulders followed. Suddenly, you couldn’t breath; the weight of the world crashing down upon your lungs.

“y/n,” Yunho reached for your hands, eyes widened in concern.

But you began to wheeze harder as his warmth spread throughout your body. What would you do without him? What would you become?

Your world shifted as he pulled you into his arms, your head falling against his shoulder. “I’m here,” he spoke into your neck. “I’m here.”

Crisp air filled your lungs again as you became limp in his arms and your mind swam in his words. He was here now, you thought. These were his arms which held you and his lips which spoke and soothed.

Your fingers reached for the lips you’ve loved before, thumb brushing against the plush curves as he comforted you. The fall of his nose, arch of his brow, sweep of his eyelashes, angle of his cheekbones; sharp yet beautiful features, a face you could never forget-- the face of your soulmate.

“Will you forget me?” your arms wrapped around his neck to bring you face-to-face with him.

“We won’t be apart long enough for a single strand of your precious hair to disappear from my memory.” His breath danced across your jaw. “As the moon joins us each night,” sweet whispers fell from his lips and fell to the shell of your ear. “I will return for you. I promise you, my love.”

“Kiss me,” you told him. “Love me while you’re still here.”

Tears began to well in the corners of your eyes as he looked at you, unmoving, just staring. “If I love you now,” he said softly. “It will hurt more while we’re apart.”

“I want to remember the feeling of your lips on mine; your gentle touch.” You held his face in your sorrowful, needy hands. “Please, Yunho.”

“I don’t want to hurt you more than I already have.”

“Yunho,” you swiped a thumb across the apple of his cheek. “You could never hurt me. I love you -- now and forever.”

His forehead met yours as his eyes dropped and he released a shaky breath. “Now and forever,” he repeated, lips moving to meet yours.

His hands fell to your hips as your lips moved against his. Your hands running through his dusty brown hair as he gently sucked on your bottom lip. You grabbed his hand and brought it to the intersection of your neck and shoulders, wanting to feel his warmth on your bare skin.

Lips separated with a quiet smack and he began to press gentle kisses to your cheeks, nose, and the corners of your eyes. Slowly, his lips traveled down to where his hand rested on your skin, causing hushed whispers to leave your mouth. “C-can,” he pulled his lips away from your soft skin. “Can you kneel back?” He asked, running his hands across your curves with great desperation.

Your hands dropped from his hair to his shoulders as you raised yourself to rest on your knees. Wide eyes stared up at you as he sat, a hand reaching up to move your hair back. His hand rested on your cheek and you nuzzled into the warmth. The other ran behind you, tugging at the laces of your dress.

Shivers ran over your skin as the silk of your dress pooled around your legs leaving you in nothing but a thin slip. You kneeled before him as he stood, a finger tracing over your jaw. “Come here,” he called, hand leaving your face to extend the invitation.

You stood and immediately collapsed into his arms. “I love you,” he cooed. Soft hands grazed your shoulders as he slid the straps of your slip and dropped them down your arms. His tongue ran over his top lip as he looked down at your exposed flesh. A shaky hand reached out to touch you but pulled back slowly.

“What’s wrong, Yunho?” You asked worriedly. Did he not like what he saw? Were you not his type? Were you not like the other girls he’d been with? Not pretty enough?

“Nothing,” he sighed and smiled down at you, a hand finally caressing your goosebump covered frame. “You’re just so pretty; I-i don’t deserve you.” He pressed his lips against your forehead.

But he did deserve you. He deserved you and more.

“Take your clothes off, Yunho.”

His head flew up having not expected such an order from you. But, nonetheless he obliged. Nimble fingers worked the ties of his coat and buttons of his shirt. As the last piece of clothing hit the stony ground, you took a step towards him, your palm coming to rest on his toned torso. “You deserve the world and more,” you said, slightly more shaky than you had anticipated.

He chuckled and wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you impossibly close. “You’re perfect, y/n.”

You sighed at his words.

Wet lips suddenly met the side of your neck, sucking until a dark purple mark appeared. His tongue ran down the valley between your breasts causing you to gasp. Air left your chest again as he swept you off your feet, laying you gently on your discarded gown.

“So perfect,” he barely whispered, staring down at you.

His gaze was painfully intense. You couldn’t stand it. It was like he was looking at a meal.

“Yunho,” you whined. “Please, don’t look at me like that.”

“You’re just so beautiful.” His knees landed in between your parted legs, preventing you from closing them as you would instinctually.

Slowly, he lowered himself onto you, his lips dancing with yours. An elbow supported him as he entangled another in your soft hair.

An aroma of rose petals surrounded you, as if he bathed in rose water. Roses were a rare and exotic flower which weren’t native to your empire. You would miss it. The scent of roses having become a constant in your life.

The kiss deepened and your hands grabbed at his broad shoulders. His tongue entered your mouth, brushing against your front teeth.

Reluctantly, you pushed him away, desperate for air. But, he didn’t stop kissing your body, his lips sucking softly on your neck. Your hands ran up his neck into his hair and his sweet lips returned to yours.

Tenderly, a hand ran down your side and to the inside of your thighs. Your heart raced as no one had ever placed a hand there before.

“It’s okay, my princess,” his lips fell to your collar bones. “I’ll make you feel good.”

Warm fingers traced the lips of your pussy, becoming slick with your wetness. Softly, they came to press against your clit and you shifted your hips, having never felt something like this before.

“Relax,” he cooed, his hand parting to encouragingly rub your hip.

You nodded, signaling for him to continue and he returned to gently rubbing at your nub. The warm feeling coming from his fingers quickly turned into a flaming heat. Deep in your lower stomach, something began to stir.

“I,” you didn’t know what to say, the feeling totally foreign.

“Relax, love,” he repeated, his fingers quickening.

The feeling in your stomach grew tenfold; a tight, knot like feeling.

Then it snapped.

Tears streamed down your cheeks and glued your hair to your neck. It all came crashing down on you at once and you sobbed as you came. He was going to leave you. The scent of roses would disappear. His warmth would fade. He wouldn't make you feel like this again; like you were swimming in the pools of heaven--bliss.

“Y/n,” his hands left your body and flew to your face. “Are you okay? Are you in pain?”

“No,” you tried to steady for breath as you came down from your orgasm and grief. “I just love you so much.”

His eyes melted from worry to tenderness. “I love you more than you could ever know.” His lips pressed gently on yours.

You matched the slow and passionate pace of his lips as you caressed his neck and shoulders. You shifted and your thigh brushed against the angry tip of his dick, causing him to moan into the kiss.

He broke the kiss to press his forehead against yours. “Can I make love to you?” He asked, his breath shaky, desperate, and, almost, pained.

“Yes,” you moaned, feeling something brush against your swollen clit.

“Ack,” you watched him wince as he grabbed his cock in his hand, pumping it quickly. His face contorted in pleasure so beautifully; you wondered if you looked like that when he touched you.

“This will sting a little,” you felt his tip at your hole. “But it will feel so good.”

He watched your face as his tip entered you. And, it didn’t hurt you at all, so he pushed further in. He was immense, stretching your tight walls impossibly.

You tightly clenched your jaw, feeling like you were being torn in half.

“It’s okay, y/n, my love,” he brushed your hair lovingly. “It’ll feel better when I move.”

“Move,” you choked out, your body incredibly tense.

He pulled his hips back and pushed back in slowly. He repeated, rocking his hips back and forth until the burning turned into pleasure.

“That’s it, princess,” his pace quickened as your walls clenched around him. “You're so beautiful, princess.”

He started to push deeper into you, his hips meeting yours with wet smacks. Your hands desperately gripped his shoulders in need of stability.

It was rapid, the growing of the lustful knot in your stomach. All you could do was moan out as he thrusted into you.

His mouth enclosed yours in a breathy kiss as he felt his own release approaching, the thrusts becoming faster and increasingly deep. Your orgasm threatened to slam into you as his tip grazed a deep spot, causing you to see stars.

“You feel amazing,” he breathed.

The praise encouraged you, your hips coming to meet his, pushing him impossibly deep.

“Y-yunho,” you continued to moan out his name like a credo.

“Come with me,” he kissed up your neck. “Come for me, princess.”

Your second orgasm was even more wonderful than the first, crashing down upon you like a waterfall. Your nails dug into his muscular shoulders, legs trembling around him.

The feeling of his cum painting your walls was like a third orgasm. His warmth completely filling you to the brim.

“I love you, y/n,” Yunho peppered your face with light kisses as he pulled out of you. “Now and forever.”

~

The sun shone above your free nation, beating down upon you, kissing your skin red as you stood in the field of tulips but, you couldn’t feel it. You were cold, frozen, alone.

Do not swear at all.

[yourstruly-caycay]

20 Years Later

A one-shot base of the art from  @ris-lunas.

Disclaimer: none of this will be accurate to the mythology, and this won’t follow the Record of Ragnarok storyline.

Ganesha and Shiva have a best father-and-son relationship. Beside being a father, Shiva is also like a brother to him, everyday is like a holiday whenever Shiva is around.

But lately, as Ganesha grow up, Shiva has been really busy with lots of work. They spend less time, and even Shiva immediately go to sleep after work sometimes — it can be lonely to Ganesha.

On the other hand, Shiva actually want to spend a family time with his wives and Ganesha, but the work can be stressing to him even though he always never show his stress expression. Although, he still able to spend times with his family, even if it’s only a little amount of time; he wish to go back to that day.

20 years ago~

“Papa!”

“Ganesha!” 

The elephant jump into his father’s hug with a laughter that’s pleasant to heard it, “Happy Father’s day, papa. Look at the chocolate cake I made for you!”

He excitedly showed it to his father, shiva smirked at the messy drawing of Shiva, his three wives, and Ganesha together by using a cream— it flattered him. 

“How creative you are, Ganesha, good job,”  he continue,“Now that your school is over, where do you want to go?”  

Today is actually an unusual day for Shiva to wore clothes and jacket, let alone a sandal too—it made him looked like an ordinary father picked up his son from school. 

“How about carnival? Let’s ride roller coaster together.”

“Great idea then, let’s go.” Shiva still carried his son with a smile on their face, anxious to spending time together, plus it was a right day to went to carnival since it’s sunny.

Well... not really, on the way to the carnival, the weather somehow turned into cloudy. The wind was slowly getting harsh, and suddenly a droplet of water dropped to Shiva’s head as another waters dropped from above clouds — it had became raining, and they’re disappointed.

“Screw the rain, who even dropping this rain?” He silently glared, immediately ran to find a nearest shelter, Shiva used his jacket to covered Ganesha from the rain. 

Fortunately, it’s a relieved for Shiva that it’s not took a long time to found a bus shelter to stayed for a moment, he put Ganesha on the seat as he sat too. Now, the only thing they should do right now was to waited for the rain to stopped.

Shiva noticed that Ganesha was shivered because of today cold weather. He shoved Ganesha unto his jacket to covered him from the cold — not much of a help, but Ganesha hugged tightly to his body, Shiva took a glance at his son who yawn and eyes exhausted. 

“If you’re tired, just go back to sleep, I’ll wake you up once the rain stopped.”

“I can’t sleep papa, it’s really cold here.”  

Shiva sooth the little elephant’s back, “Well, just rest, this might take a long times to stop.” 

Suddenly, a growled can be heard from both of them as Ganesha had a blush on his face, then a bigger growl came from Shiva that both of them glance awkwardly to his stomach. 

The awkwardness turned into a laughter, it's ironic that both stomach were begging some foods, happiness filled within them even in this cold harsh rain.

They almost forgot about the rain as suddenly a thunder clap make them scream in surprise. 

Ganesha hide his face with Shiva’s jacket, not even wanted to saw the rain as he could felt the slight shiver of coldness. Meanwhile, Shiva held his son tightly to comforted him.

“Just close your eyes and cover your ears, Ganesha.”  The trembling little elephant nod his head within the jacket, Shiva was seeking for an indoor place where they can stay for a moment.

Fortunately, there’s a restaurant that’s only across the bus shelter. It could be saw from the light and blurry figure. How excited Shiva was when discovered it, he carry Ganesha while covering Ganesha and himself with his jacket.

“Papa, what are you doing?”

“We’re going to restaurant, it not far from here.”

“But isn’t this too dangerous, papa?”

“just trust me on this one, son, we’re gonna make it without getting wet.” Confident can be saw on Shiva’s face, his smile that always reassure Ganesha that his father can go through anything — even troublesome one. 

Shiva scanned the road to make sure there’s no vehicle driving, him and his son held the jacket tightly as the wind was getting harsher. In this empty road, he countdown and ran to the road. Both father and son were scream either in panic or fun, Ganesha held the jacket tightly with his other hand while the other clinged into Shiva’s body.

As they finally reach to the restaurant, and got inside. Shiva put Ganesha down — he’s completely dry from the rain, amaze that not a drop of rain was on Ganesha. “We did it papa, We’re safe.”  

"See? Told you that your papa can go through anything." Ganesha rolled his eyes while chuckled, Shiva sometimes can be a bit too confident.

The restaurant that they stumble in is actually a WcDonald, it's Ganesha's first time in here.

“Well, let’s order a food, unless you want your stomach to complain.” Since Ganesha doesn't knew much of this place nor the foods, he just let his father order anything for him. They wait for the meal to be served, and it only took a few minutes as they received the meal. 

It felt new for Ganesha to saw a burger and french fries with coke since he live in a luxury life. He found the shaoe of a burger to be funny and the smell was pleasant to made his stomach growled.

Taking a bite of the burger curiously, he freezes at how tasty it is, his wide smile could obviously be seen as he take another bite. 

Shiva just laughed at how Ganesha devoured the burger excitedly, however it’s not long until Ganesha cough from eating a big bite, Shiva immediately gave him the water as he drank it. 

“Be careful when eating, just slowly.” He patted Ganesha’s back, then as they begin to ate again, a waitress came to them and asked. 

“Sorry to interrupted you sir, but if you don’t mind, may I take a picture of you and your son for the Father’s Day?”

“Sure, why not?” 

“Thank you, please just eat your food while I take your picture.”

 She thanked Shiva as she took the picture of them, Shiva just continue ate the food with Ganesha happily.

After the waitress took the picture twice, she gave one of them to Shiva and leave them. 

“Wow, we look great in the picture, don’t you think so Ganesha?” 

“We are!” 

Shiva looked at the outside and disappointed that the rain is still pouring, it’s a shame they can’t go to a carnival, plus he have other works to do after this and he can’t spend the rest of the times with his family. “Ganesha, sorry that I can’t take you to the carnival, seems like the rain won’t stop soon.”

“That’s alright papa, beside I’m happy that we get to hang out together,” Ganesha continue, “I know that papa have work to do, and maybe after this papa can’t play with me, but I’m happy that you try to spare a time for me.”  

Shiva was out of words, didn’t expected that sentence to came out from his son. It’s quiet for a moment until Shiva finally smiled, proud to know his son understand him, both of them continue to ate the foods.

A hour later, the rain had stopped and they order another WcDonald’s foods for his wives.

Once they reach their house by evening, the wives were concerned with Shiva wearing his jacket that’s wet from rain, wasn't he feeling cold the whole time?

In the end, Shiva gave each of them the foods as an apoligize for making them worried. The wives were also impressed when they heard that Shiva kept his son dry during the rain, and adored the picture and the cake that Ganesha showed them.

Present day~

One of his wives, Parvati, found a certain picture in the attic. She didn’t expect this to still be in here — it’s actually a cute picture. Parvati come to Ganesha as she show him, “Ganesha, I found something from the attic.” 

His eyes gaze at the picture and become wide in surprise — a picture of him and Shiva eat together in a fast food. “How? I thought it’s already gone.” 

“I don’t know how, but I think it’s the best if you keep it. You and Shiva looks really cute in this picture."

Ganesha smile at the memory from twenty years ago, this was back when he’s only grade 3. "You're right mama, I will keep it."

"I'm home!" A sound of door open wide revealing Shiva with his joyful expression.

"Welcome home, Lord Shiva." One of his wives, Kali, approaching him and kiss him.

"Kali, look at what I got for you guys-"

"Papa, you come home early!" Ganesha approach him along with Parvati and Durga. Ganesha hug him as Shiva hug him back, the atmosphere has become warm and vibrant with him. Then, he embrace his other two wives, everyone always got a turn. 

“By the way, I’ve got something for you guys while I was on my way back home.” He handing out the bag of food, Ganesha immediately recognize the bag as if a memory come back alive. “Papa, isn’t that from WcDonald?”

“Correct, I’m surprise you still remember it, let’s eat this together for dinner.” 

The end~

Author’s note: I’m so sorry that it got delay, but I hope y’all like it. Thank you for being patient with me. >////<

[robotslenderman]

Sascha! :3

:DDD

SPECIAL INTEREST TIME, BITCHES

How I feel about this character

I used to not give a shit but then you sucked me into them how dare you

They are baby

Mass murdering horrible torturer baby

They've... been through a hell of a lot of trauma and have to process it. They were stuck in that trauma for centuries. Now Ilias is apparently back but he died in their arms, they saw him turn to ash and they have to be dealing with the trauma of that, too.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Ilias cel Frumos, Beckett (but like in a snarky enemies to lovers kind of way), and ofc my own OCs Rose and Nastasya. Wasn't sure about Nastasya/Sascha for a while but suddenly something seemed to click the other night and I think they'd actually work very well together -- their personalities complement each other, I think. Ilias is warm to Sascha's cold, extroverted to Sascha's introvert, but Nastasya is playful to Sascha's seriousness, joyful to their solemnity, vibrant to their reserved nature.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Even before Rose became a romantic partner I shipped the two of them nonromantically too.

Also I like the idea of Sascha being a tsundere Vitriolic Best Buds with Beckett.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I think that they would have responded far, far worse to the appearance of Elias Athanasios than I see fandom talk about (sorry, Ry XD). Like, not even as bad as I've mentioned before -- way worse.

(SORRY RY I'M HAVING A SPECIAL INTEREST MOMENT)

To start: there is no way in hell they're not dealing with hella trauma after the Dracon. That everyone agrees on, but lemme go into detail:

Like imagine not just seeing your lover die in your arms but being unable to really process it because your consciousness just got smooshed with someone else's, with someone who's mourning his own lovers and didn't really care about yours. Oh, and that person's a suicidal but also sadistic psychopath.

So you spend a few centuries torturing people, shit you wouldn't have done before except in extreme circumstances (if at all) and quite enjoying it, and then --

And then you get separated from the part of you that was okay with it because oh, it was actually the other guy who was cool with that stuff, and you were trapped with the brain of the guy who enjoyed everything you did and you felt everything he did as you did it and thought you wanted it, thought you enjoyed it, thought it was you who decided it, but because you were so enmeshed you don't know that you DIDN'T, maybe it WAS you, can you really blame the Dracon?

And maybe it was really you who made those decisions, because after that long fused together... sure, you're separated physically.

But are you really?

You've been together for centuries. After that long you can't have known where one of you began and the other ended, and it must have influenced your true personality. I mean, stick people in a room of people different to them and they adapt their personality and beliefs pretty quickly, like weeks to months, without outside influence.

Like, how much fucking worse would that be if you were actually stuck inside their head, for CENTURIES???

You're apart now, but in a sense you'll always be together.

Stick the both of you in a room and you'd probably talk like a pair of Creepy Twins. You'll finish each other's sentences because you'll both be on the same wavelength, you'll have the same idiosyncratic habits -- scratching your nose with the same finger of the same hand, tilting your head the same way when you think somebody's being annoyingly obtuse, tapping your fingers the same way on the desk when you're thinking.

You've been intertwined for so long that you probably have the same impulses now, the same thoughts, with only the most foundational aspects to the both of you separating you -- the Dracon's still got his sadism, and Sascha is still introverted, so that'll influence subtle differences.

But it'll be buried under seven hundred years of habits you developed together, opinions and thoughts and aversions and passions you developed together, working in sync for every second of existence, dreaming the same dreams, moving the same hands and fingers, doing the same deeds.

You were a gestalt. Are you no longer one just because you're apart? Are you really separated when you were one for so long? Are you even two people any more, or are you just one person with two bodies, now?

It's going to take decades to bring yourself back to a functional level after the identity crisis that causes, and that's not even counting the trauma of the Eldest, or the Dracon's trauma that you remember just as vividly as if it were your own, or the trauma of what Symeon did to you.

You will probably never, ever recover.

There's traumatic events people went through that follow them for decades that only happened over a few hours at most.

How can you come back from seven hundred years?

In a way, it would have been emotionally better for them to have stayed fused to the Dracon forever. At least they would have thought they were themself, then. At least they were used to it. At least they didn't have a conscience. At least they didn't feel as used because half of them was doing the using, if initially unwillingly. They were one; there was no conflict, just two people so in sync they may as well have been one.

Then to add insult to injury, right after the Dracon's pulled from you, a guy identical to the lover you witnessed die in your arms shows up trying to get your attention. That timing is suspicious AF, and any hope Sascha might have had of coming to terms with Ilias's death on their own time comes crashing down as this redhead just casually waltzes on in and just mashes Sascha's trauma buttons by existing, by looking just like him and acting like him and sounding like him and having the same interests as him and and and --

And now half of them is gone. But also -- not gone, never going, never leaving, who are they now? They're missing half of themself but also probably feeling like they'll never be their real self again. Were they ever really Sascha, when that was a name they took on side by side with the Dracon? But how can they be Myca when Myca is seven hundred years away, when he died the moment Ilias did?

Maybe it was Myca who died in his lover's arms, not the other way around.

I think on the outside Sascha would pretend to be furious at Elias Athanasios for posing as their lover, for having the gall to pose as someone they saw turn to ash, but deep down?

I think they're fucking terrified of him.

Because of the traumatic memories he brings back. Because he knows so much about Ilias and Sascha can't figure out who he "really" is and what his true motivations are.

Because after everything Symeon did, after everything the Dracon and the Eldest did, after the evidence in front of Sascha's eyes that Ilias was dead, dead, dead, how can they not be terrified that this isn't another attempt to manipulate them and put them at the complete and utter mercy of another Methuselah or Elder or worse for another few centuries, when they were only JUST set free?

Their nights as the Angel of Caine are done. They've been manipulated so long and now there's someone else using the person that they loved the most as bait to draw them out. Someone they know for certain did not survive. For their own survival, they can't do anything but disappear because given the forces that has had power over them before, they can't take any risks with this one. Sascha keeps trying to find out who he really is and if he's working for someone, what his angle is, but this time their brilliance is getting them nowhere and they cannot find a single scrap of a clue who Elias Athanasios really is, because all evidence points to him being the real thing but he can't be because THEY SAW HIM DIE.

And here Athanasios is, continuing to try to lure them out.

He's convinced Beckett, one of the smartest people Sascha knows, that he's the real deal.

He's convinced Rose that he's the real deal.

He's convinced Sascha's dumbass Vykosovich descendants that he's the real deal -- particularly the descendant that's their biographer, the descendant whose made it her life's work to know everything there is to know about Sascha Vykos. And Athanasios has direct access to her.

He's getting closer and closer to Sascha.

The walls are closing in again.

So, my unpopular opinion?

Sascha Vykos is the most terrified they've ever been in their existence.

(Second opinion, which I don't know if it's unpopular or not, but -- since they used their deadname for centuries before changing it I reckon they'd actually be pretty fine with Ilias still calling them Myca. But, you know, only Ilias, and anyone else gets turned inside out. Not even Rose would get that privilege.)

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Not exactly answering the question but I am dreading the release of the V5 Sabbat book because I'm so scared they're going to completely ignore what BJD did with Sascha and go back to making them a villain.

Also worried that Sascha's canonically followed the Beckoning. I reckon they'd nope the fuck out of it after what happened in BJD. Something strange trying to manipulate them again? Fuck no.

[soulmate-game]

Part 1 … Part 2

“So, How was your first day of school in America?” Lois asked as her small family all sat around the table eating dinner. It was almost painfully ordinary, traditional. A married couple and two kids eating a normal dinner and talking about their day.

All of them appreciated that one piece of normalcy in their worlds of superheroes and villains and PTSD.

Marinette snorted, almost choking on her forkful of food. After managing to somehow swallow without causing herself discomfort, she smiled at her mother figure.

“Honestly? I know Jon could fly and I could teleport to school in practically no time at all, but somehow Damian still manages to seem more impressive.”

“Right?!” Jon agreed emphatically, leaning over the table towards her and almost getting his whole plate of food smashed against his chest. “Probably because helicopters are huge and look awesome, but we’re still just us when we use our powers.”

Marinette nodded sagely at that reasoning as if it was something actually serious. Tikki, who was sitting next to her plate with a half-eaten cookie, giggled.

“That makes sense. But be careful Kaalki doesn’t hear you referring to them as ‘not impressive—‘“ Marinette was cut off before she could even finish her sentence.

“Too late, I already heard that blasphemy,” the other Kwami’s voice carried down from upstairs, making Lois and Clark’s lips twitch up in amusement. “I’m a god, dear, I have even better hearing than Kal-El,” for some reason the little horse god always referred to the boys by their kryptonian names, but they didn’t seem to mind much. “Not as impressive as a helicopter, hah! See if I let you use my fabulous powers anytime soon, Guardian or no Guardian.”

Marinette just rolled her eyes. Technically she could just command Kaalki, but that was against her morals and the horse god would never keep her from responding to an Akuma attack anyway. This was just harmless teasing.

And it was really nice in contrast to everything they were used to dealing with.

“Okay, but besides the helicopter,” Clark pressed gently after everyone’s chuckles quieted down. His face was open with genuine curiosity, and a little bit of worry that Marinette caught onto instantly. “I know Damian isn’t always the easiest person to get along with or understand. Did the rest of the day go by alright?”

Marinette actually set her fork down on her plate, her smile turning a little gentle. “Actually? Yeah. When we first spoke I thought he was a stuck-up jerk like some of my ex-friends and a bully of mine from Paris. But he’s just not good with people,” Marinette’s smile turned even softer as she gazed down at the table, at some memory nobody else could see. “It reminds me of my friend Kagami, from Paris. She acts pretty similar. Really impersonal and prickly on the outside, but once you get to know her she’s the most loyal friend you’ll have. Her mom is really strict though, and Kagami never got to interact with a lot of kids her own age, so she still has issues figuring out how to behave around others sometimes,” Marinette actually ended up laughing a little, rubbing the back of her neck. “We uh, we actually had a crush on the same person back when we first met and it sparked a pretty rough rivalry for a while. Once we got past that though, we ended up being best friends.”

Jon snickered, trading knowing glances with their parents. They had already agreed that, unless Damian or Bruce told her themselves, Marinette would have to figure out the Bat’s identities on her own.

“That sounds very familiar,” Jon stated with a little nod. “Me and Damian fought when we first met, too. Legend has it that Dad and Bruce, Damian’s dad, didn’t get along right away either.”

It was Clark’s turn to snort. “I think it’s just a Wayne thing,” the man agreed, amused. “They don’t like getting close to anyone right off the bat,” Lois kicked his leg under the table for that pun, but Clark cheerfully ignored it. “It is pretty funny that you have a similar experience with someone completely unrelated, though. Maybe we should invite her over sometime? Do you know when her school’s next break is?”

Marinette sat up straight in her chair, her smirk wide and almost blinding at the prospect of seeing one of her closest friends in person again. They video chatted and called often enough, but it wasn’t the same. “Actually! Kagami told me that she’s going to Gotham next month for a fencing competition. She’s an Olympic hopeful, you know. She has to make a good enough impression in different national and international competitions to be selected,” Marinette was almost bouncing in her seat, looking like a female version of Jon for a moment with her vibrant blue eyes shining with rare unhindered excitement and her body unable to stay still from the energy.

“I heard that Gotham was holding the World fencing finals this year,” Lois remarked, but kept eye contact with Clark for a moment as the two communicated silently in a way even telepaths couldn’t copy. Marinette recognized the hesitance in their faces, and her bouncing stopped immediately. She knew why they would be reluctant to let her go.

“I know Gotham is dangerous and I still have attacks pretty often,” Marinette’s voice was suddenly soft, but firm in a way that the rest of their little family hadn’t heard from her much at all. It made Clark and Lois look at her, waiting for her to finish making her point patiently. “But self defense isn’t really an issue. Even without any powers, without transforming, I…” Marinette took a breath to steel herself before continuing. “I learned martial arts from Maman. And I’ve used the Miraculous so long that all the combat experience of the previous Ladybugs is mostly muscle memory by now. And Kagami is more than just a fencer, her mom’s trained her in all sorts of sword fighting her whole life. Trust me, nobody messes with Kagami and gets away with it easily,” Marinette actually looked down at her hands, watching as she essentially had a thumb war with herself to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.

“I don’t think physical attacks are what we’re worried about,” Lois admitted slowly, frowning. “I mean, yes, it’s a concern. But if I remember the dates for the competition correctly, I’ll be out of town for my first long distance job since you came to live with us. Clark will be at work during the day on the weekend, though maybe he can get a day or two off,” Lois gently worried her bottom lip with her teeth for a second. “I suppose, if Jon wants to go with you, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if something happens…”

Oh. They weren’t worried about people attacking her. They were worried about her own mind. Which, after the last few months? Was perfectly fair.

“I don’t mind if—“

But, as life usually ended up, they were interrupted from their peace. Everyone jolted in their seats as the door was unceremoniously kicked down, and a man in his early twenties walked in carrying a mountain of boxes in his arms. Marinette blinked, no longer on guard since the rest of her new family immediately relaxed. But still, she was confused. Nobody said anything about having a visitor today.

“I know, I know. I haven’t been in touch for way too long, give us a little forewarning, blah blah blah. I brought presents this time though,” the man said, cheerful and casual and blasé. With the boxes on the center of the dining table, Marinette could finally get a good look at him.

He was probably about twenty four or twenty five, if Marinette’s ever-sharp eyes were correct (they hardly ever weren’t), and his hair was spiked up with a bit of gel, but not too much. Just enough to give it kind of a tousled-rebel look, and it was cropped close to his head on the sides. He had on a black leather jacket with spikes on the shoulders and slightly down the arms, with slightly baggy black jeans and a plain, worn red shirt. Dark black sunglasses rested on the top of his head, even though the sun had been down for a while.

He did not meet the usual Kent aesthetic of a charming, traditional nuclear family. He was more of an… oddly joyful punk. It actually gave her slight Luka and Jagged vibes, and made her relax a bit into her chair. Contrary to what most might think, Marinette had a bit of a soft spot for the punk rocker look. Most people, that she had met at least, who wore it on a regular basis were amazing people with great senses of humor and large personalities.

“Old man, I got you socks,” he called out with a lazy smirk, chucking the first small box over at Clark. The man caught it with a fond eye roll.

“You always get me socks.”

“Maybe if you stopped being boring, I’d get you something better,” the stranger mocked with good humor. “Lois, jewelry that you’ll never wear,” he handed the box over to the woman with significantly more care, before sliding over one of the bigger boxes to her as well. “And a new camera that you will actually use.”

“Hey, Wait a second, you know you don’t have to—“

“And for the squirt,” the man interrupted without letting Lois finish saying that there was no need to spend so much money. He tossed the last big boxes over to Jon one at a time carelessly, smirking the whole time that Jon playfully scrambled for them. “Video games, geeky shirts, and inside jokes,” he stated happily.

With the table now clear of boxes, he finally noticed the extra body. He blinked, making silent eye contact with Marinette for a tense moment.

“Okay, she’s too old to be a secret child. Did someone make another clone? Did Jon get a girlfriend that looks freakishly like a long lost Asian family member? What did I miss?” He asked, never taking his eyes off Marinette. Clark grimaced.

“If you didn’t break your phone so often, maybe we would have been able to tell you sooner,” the man said slowly, cautiously, with his eyes never straying from the stranger. “This is Marinette. Marinette, this is Connor. He’s… Jon’s brother,” the pause there was a bit odd, and Marinette frowned at the look on Clark’s face. It was like he didn’t know what to say at all, or how to say it. “Marinette is living with us for the foreseeable future. If we get the chance we might officially adopt her, so she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

“Woah woah woah, what?” Marinette’s voice came out a lot squeakier than intended, the girl thoroughly whiplashed by this situation. It was hard to think straight. “I— we never talked about adoption.” Clark’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Well, not in as many words,” he conceded slowly. “It would be incredibly hard, and we wanted to give you time to settle in before asking. But… well, you’re officially an American citizen and we all feel like you’re family already. So…”

“You wouldn’t have to change your name,” Lois was quick to interject, watching Marinette’s face worriedly. “And you can say no. You’re already a Kent. We would just like to make it official legally, if and when you’re ready.”

“Okay, stop making the poor girl freak out,” Connor interrupted, eyes also on Marinette and gentle in their concern. He gave her a lopsided smile. “Ignore them. Clark never had great timing that wasn’t related to legitimate danger. So, sorry I didn’t get you anything,” he leaned back casually, thumbs hooked on his jacket pockets lazily. “Didn’t expect I’d have a new sister when I came back to visit.”

Marinette calmed down a little, but emotions still overflowed in her head, her chest still tight and the air feeling too thin. She offered Connor a shaky smile before standing up, looking over to Clark and Lois. “Um, I— can I— I’m tired.”

Clark sighed, nodding even as his face fell at Marinette’s state. “Yeah. We’ll talk about the competition some more in the morning, get some rest.”

The girl only nodded before making a hasty retreat up to her room, even forgetting to take care of her only half-empty plate. Tikki did her best to calm her bolder down from her place hidden in the girl’s hair, but it wasn’t doing much good. She just needed space, and time to try and process everything.

—*—*—*—*—*

“Aren’t you cold?” Connor’s voice made Marinette jolt, looking over at him with wide eyes. Nobody had ever followed her on her post-nightmare trips before. She wasn’t even transformed. She just sat, in her pajamas, on the empty terrace of her old home. It hadn’t been sold yet so she wasn’t worried about scaring anybody.

“I… should have expected you to be the other Superboy, honestly,” Marinette deflected with a weak smile before turning to look over the city again. She licked her lips, trying to calm herself down. “And yeah, I’m a little cold, but it’s no big deal. I’ll just go back home before it gets too bad.”

“You’re trembling,” he pointed out casually. And she was, her whole body was practically vibrating against the terrace railing. Marinette only gave out a pitiful laugh.

“That’s not from the cold.”

Connor only sighed, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall behind them. Gave the girl a little space.

“What did… What did Clark and Lois tell you? About me?” Marinette decided to ask tentatively. Connor raised one brow, honestly a little surprised that she didn’t also have super hearing to go with her powers. It was slowly becoming more and more obvious that Marinette was not exactly like the other Kents, and Connor only liked the jumpy little girl more for it.

“As much as they could without feeling like they were crossing a line,” Connor admitted. “That they took you in after an accident during a metropolis attack a few months ago, when you had nobody else reliable enough to take care of you. That you’re not Kryptonian, but still special and knew about all of our identities already. But strangely enough they didn’t mention teleportation or the fact that you were a Parisian superhero, not that I’m really all that surprised.”

Marinette smiled, snickering a bit at that last part before sobering again. “Is it… weird?”

Connor silently examined the girl for a moment, she probably expected him to ask what she meant. And maybe if he was anybody else, he would have.

“To suddenly come home to a new person that I’m suddenly supposed to accept as a part of the family? Not really. In fact, you’re probably the most normal surprise I’ve dealt with in years.”

“But,” Marinette looked back at him, eyebrows furrowed and blue eyes swimming with uncertainty. “But I just show up out of nowhere, and you really just accept me? Just like that? I mean, you’ve known me less than a day and you just saw me teleport to Paris in the middle of the night— you aren’t worried at all? Or suspicious, or— you really just accept me just like that?”

Connor couldn’t help but chuckle, pushing himself off the wall to lean over the terrace railing with her. “You know, technically I’m only eight years old.”

Marinette flinched with surprise at the subject change, eyes wide. “Huh?”

Connor laughed at her confusion, rustling her hair a bit. “I’m a clone. I was made with Superman’s DNA, and that of another asshole we won’t mention. Don’t tell Lois I swore. Anyway, I was ‘born’ as a teenager,” he used finger quotations to show that he wasn’t exactly born normally. “With all the mental development and knowledge of a sixteen year old. Pretty much, anyway, but I was still a newborn,” he shrugged. “Clark wasn’t exactly thrilled. Jon was eight at the time, which is why Clark can never decide if I’m the older or younger brother, and he wasn’t exactly planning on another kid back then. Not to mention the whole ‘created in order to kill Superman if he ever went bad,’ and ‘might be a spy because I was made by his arch nemesis’ thing,” Connor waved his hand as if this blasé info dump didn’t actually matter. Marinette just gaped at him, which made it hard for the guy not to smirk. “Point is, Clark was suspicious. Didn’t exactly want anything to do with me. Can’t say I completely forgive him, but it’s mostly water under the bridge nowadays. Especially when we found out that I did have trigger words, and I was unknowingly dangerous. Don’t worry, those trigger words were erased ages ago. Anyway, Clark eventually got his act together. Gave me the Kryptonian name Kon-el, had me live with him for a little bit. We worked it all out,” Connor turned back to Marinette, taking his sunglasses off so he could look her in the eye properly. “I really don’t think a Ladybug is exactly threatening in comparison.”

Marinette was silent for a moment.

“You know I could throw you off this balcony, right?”

“Eh, I can fly.”

Another moment passed before Marinette couldn’t help it, and started giggling. Those giggles turned to laughs, which quickly turned into joyful bellows. Connor joined in, smiling as he laughed alongside her.

“But… you like it with them, right?” Connor suddenly asked, looking over at her. “I know Jon can be a bit overexcitable, and Clark is an annoying boy scout.”

Marinette just shrugged. “Well, it’s not too bad,” she said softly. “I mean, at least neither of them can die by getting crushed by falling debris. So that’s an improvement at least.” Marinette instantly went pale at her own words, slapping a hand over her mouth. Connor snorted, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“Yeah, that’s the exhaustion talking. C’mon, let’s get you back in bed before Clark accuses me of corrupting you.”

Marinette just nodded, doing the world’s quietest transformation before opening a portal back to her room. She was already detransformed, Connor having one hand on her doorknob, when she spoke up again.

“Uh, Kon?” She fidgeted, not able to look up at him. “Thanks.”

The man just smirked, shrugging his leather-clad shoulders. “That’s what family’s for, right?”

Marinette smiled, huffing out a tired laugh. “By the way? I’m glad at least one of you Supers has a sense of fashion.”

“We heard that!”

Connor and Marinette broke back out into guffaws, and the girl couldn’t help but think that she was really grateful for her new family. Maybe she wouldn’t call Clark dad or Lois mom anytime soon, those wounds were still too raw, but maybe eventually. And she’d never had brothers before.

Yeah. This was nice.

—*—*—*—*—*

Part 4

I don’t think this ended up as good as the others..? But this is the best way I could write this part. Why is this story turning out longer than expected? Geez I need to learn self control. At least this one was actually kinda fluffy.

@fantasiame @thestressmademedoit @amayakans @resignedcatservant @too0bsessedformyowngood @chocolatecatstheron @mooshoon @jeminiikrystal @bigpicklebananatree @thezestywalru @bugaboosandbees @ironspiderstark @mikantsume @marinettepotterandplagg

[celestialpearls]

➱ love in seasons

➱ Yoon Jeonghan x reader

➱ slice of life, fluff

➱ 2288 words

➱ Love is reminiscent of the four seasons. It blooms in spring. It shines bright under the hot sun. It offers comfort in the winter. It is nurtured in shades of yellow and orange. 

➱ Happy birthday to the 🍓 strawberry🍓  lover! Hanniehae to all of you! 💗

Fondness covers its earnest arms around you, with growth and various colours making their welcomed appearance. Surrounded by blooming plants in many colours and shapes, it should be a given for visitors to have their sights trained on teeming nature. It is partly true in your case at least, as your boyfriend is incomparable to these things. You couldn’t stop thinking about the childlike glow in his gaze regarding the botanical garden, hand rubbing his neck. 

“Let’s see it together,” his voice was soft, uttered on a still afternoon at your shared apartment. And how could you say no? 

His legs are clad in navy blue, a loose beige shirt floating delicately on him. His hair has grown quickly and the onyx strands are in slight waves. Your thumb swipes across the photos you’ve taken of him and you place your phone inside your handbag. The sun’s rays wash the garden in butter yellow, enhancing the allure of your boyfriend. 

You wrap your arm around his waist as you put your cheek on his back. He rubs circles on the skin of your hand and gently pulls it apart so he could have you in front of him. He takes you into his arms, your ear pressed against his chest as he kisses your forehead. Jeonghan pulls away for a moment, an eyebrow raised, “where were you?” 

“Was taking photos of flowers while you were preoccupied here,” you respond.

“So, your phone is filled with photos of me then?” Jeonghan cups his face, and your full laugh causes his heart to stutter. Causes his heart to cartwheel in utter joy. He loves seeing you like this and being one of the reasons for your tinkling laughter. As much as he wants you close to him, he opts to intertwine your fingers together. But you don’t budge as you only tighten your embrace. Another kiss is placed on your forehead. 

“Let’s go, angel. We have more to see,” he plucks the eyelash under your eye.

Your mouth forms an ‘o,’ eyes brightening at the sight behind him. He turns his head, a pebble-grey waterfall standing proud in the middle. It is surrounded by seaweed-green bushes trimmed to a circle, bundles of snowdrop flowers lining the bottom of the bushes. Behind the waterfall displays a floral wall, flowers in its variety spelling out ‘ROYAL’ and butterflies residing on petals. A circular, umber bench is placed a meter away from the waterfall, as he asks, “you want to take a photo?”

You nod eagerly, “of us.”

A grin paints his lips at your apparent enthusiasm and he takes out his phone from his front pocket. Jeonghan reluctantly approaches a couple to take your pictures, to which they agree with. He guides you to stand in front of him as he dangles his arms loosely from your neck, your fingers filling the gaps flawlessly between his own. Unaware, the couple with Jeonghan’s phone share a smile at your interactions as one of them counts down to take the photo. They know that the finished product can only capture a part of the genuine and tender love that is clear between both of you. But at least these photos will serve as a cherished memory formed during the season of bloom. 

“3, 2, 1. Smile!” 

You snort at the nth exhale of impatience that came from Jeonghan as you walk out of the bedroom.

 “Y/N, I’ll literally freeze without you!” 

“I’ll be quick!”

You chuckle and reprimand yourself to get everything that’s needed so you don’t have to go back out. Just as he was about to press play on the TV remote, you had shot out from bed because you forgot the hot chocolate. Disbelief had carved itself on his face as you wiggled away from his embrace. You add the marshmallows for the finishing touches and make your way back to the bedroom. Jeonghan is cocooned under the thick, olive green duvet and the sleeves of his hoodie are pulled to his fingertips. Your heart is close to imploding from how effortlessly handsome your boyfriend is.

The soft thud of your footsteps makes him look up, forgoing his phone as finally - well hopefully - you won’t be getting up from the bed any time soon. You give him his mug as he places it on his bedside table and he opens his arms, kissing his cheek as you cuddle up to him. The heater is on but the shared body heat does wonders to satiate the cold settling on your figure. Jeonghan taps your nose, mirth lacing his tone, “you’re not going to shoot out of bed again, are you?”

He takes a sip of the hot beverage and it takes you a while to answer for him for two reasons. Firstly, the sunrise orange that is emitted from the standing lamp next to him gives him a delicate glow. It highlights his eyes, swirls of gold and soil that catch your attention. Secondly, he was just too attractive for your own good in his most casual clothing.

Jeonghan notes your silence, a soft grin pulling at his lips at your gentle gaze. He sits up and leans close, his gaze trailing from your eyes and down to your lips. His tone is low and soft, “can I kiss you?” And you don’t need to be told twice, the duvet falling away as you sit up, your hand cupping the underside of his jaw. He tasted slightly of the warm beverage, all sweet and warm as he gently lifts you on to his lap. You pull away, albeit hesitantly as you peck his upper lip, foreheads pressed together. 

He kisses your cheek and ushers you back on to your side of the bed. He lifts up his arm as you lean your head on to his chest. Before Jeonghan could press play, your lips softly touch his again and the love in his heart spills as you giggle at his surprised expression. He chuckles at your actions and presses play at your urge that both of you should finish the drama soon. Winter brings the both of you closer, and it does nothing to tamper the warmth you both share. 

“Hurry up, angel! Cheol already saved a bench.”

You huff as you check that the power outlets are off, feet about to take you into the kitchen only to recall Jeonghan has already placed the stuff for the picnic in his car. Jeonghan looks up from his phone when the door lock clicks into place and smiles at how you look cute in your outfit. You scrunch your nose when he places his red snapback on top of your head, the brim facing backwards. He puts his arm around your shoulder and adjusts his hat on you, “ready to go?”

You take the elevator, aware of the time and the food that was prepared. The car ride to Serenity Park was smooth and the conversation would lapse into comfortable silences. Jeonghan would occasionally take your hand while driving only for you to reprimand him to concentrate on the road. But of course he doesn’t listen, and instead says holding your hand makes him feel good. And whenever Jeonghan says anything of the sort, you can’t really deny him of anything so you intertwine your fingers together. 

He parks the car and you open the boot to grab the picnic blanket plus the woven basket of food. Jeonghan takes the basket in one hand and goes to grasp your hand, but he feels a slight wind when you run.

“Soonyoung!”

He sees Soonyoung stagger back in surprise, but the latter returns your hug. Nina waves at Jeonghan with Seungcheol, Seokmin and Chan shouting his name.

 “There they go again,” Seungcheol sighs. 

Jeonghan follows his best friend’s gaze directed at you and Soonyoung. The blue frisbee flies through the air and into your hands clumsily as Soonyoung teases you. Your laughter is clear and joyful, the sun giving you a vibrant glow. 

“Whipped,” Seungcheol mutters.

“Maybe if you confessed to Nina…” Jeonghan trails off, a yelp escaping him when his best friend slaps his arm.

Seokmin calls you and Soonyoung over to eat, with Jeonghan scooting over on the bench to make room for you. You feel your boyfriend’s arm snake around your waist and though you’re sure you won’t fall backwards, his gesture still makes your heart flutter. Jokes and laughter fill up your conversations, and it was fun despite the day slowly starting to heat up. You and Jeonghan exchange glances as Seungcheol fills up Nina’s plate first before his. 

After everyone eats, you’re left on the navy blue picnic blanket laid out on the grass. The other five start a game of frisbee while you scroll on your phone, very content with just laying down. The smidge of sunlight that was protected by your sunglasses is completely blocked by Jeonghan. You lift up your glasses and raise your eyebrow, “can I lay on your lap?” 

You grab the pink towel and place it on your lap, tapping it so he can lay down. “Tired already?”

He makes a sound in assent and guides your hand to his chestnut brown hair. Your eyes look pretty, eye makeup enhanced by the sun. You look at him with so much gentleness, then and now, and his heart can’t help but quicken. Jeonghan brings your other hand above his heart, where it beats just for you. Your fingers brushing his strands cause his eyes to droop and he feels you poke his cheek. 

“Sleep,” you state. You kiss his forehead and continue to brush his hair back. The slightly cool breeze makes up for the golden star, her rays making your boyfriend more enchanting. He kisses the inside of your wrist, “like it when you brush my hair. Keep doing it, please.” 

Summer keeps the love between the both of you bright, alive and tinged with light. 

“Y/N!”

You’re met with soft, chestnut brown hair against your cheek as Jeonghan’s younger sister hugs you. He pokes his sister’s forehead, “excuse me. I’m your brother, remember?” 

You and her share an eye roll but your heart warms up when she kisses his cheek. You hang up your black coat on the stand near the door, Jeonghan holding you steady as you take off your shoes. She loops her arm through yours, making her way to the dining area where Jeonghan’s parents are. His mum lights up seeing the both of you, taking the bag of food from you and ushering you to take a seat. 

“Are you sure you don’t need help, Mrs. Yoon?”

“I told you to call me mum, sweetheart,” she corrects you and waves you away, her smile cheeky. 

You hug his dad, his eyes crinkling at the sides and he excuses himself in case his wife needs help. Jeonghan calls your name, dragging out the syllables and you find him in the living room. He pulls you to sit next to him on the couch, your arm around his waist and his as a pillow for your neck. 

“My sister is forgetting that she has a brother now because of you,” he rubs circles on your hands. 

“She likes me more than you,” you tease. 

You really should be used to his unexpected, yet sweet remarks by now. After all, you’ve been together for three years. But to no avail because your heart flutters away from you. He smiles softly and the look in his eyes is loving, “impossible. I like you more.” 

The door opens again and Jeonghan squeezes your hand before he stands up to greet your parents. You do too and you grin instantly with the way your parents treat your boyfriend. Your dad pats Jeonghan’s back while your mum cups his face in her hands. Your mum’s gesture is identical to what you do when he’s sulking and he notes the similarity fondly. 

You hug both of your parents and they go straight to the kitchen to greet the hosts. Jeonghan places his chin on your shoulder, arms around your waist as he sways the both of you.

 “You and your mum do the same thing with me,” he says. 

You turn in his hold, putting your arms around his neck as you raise an eyebrow. “Do what?” 

“You both like cupping my face.” 

You mirror your mum’s action and reassure him, “that we do. It’s because my mum and I are fond of you.” 

The smile that paints his lips is beautiful, radiant; the light in his eyes from your comment radiant. You being one of the most important people in his life telling him that your family likes him makes him feel inexplicably joyful.  He strokes your cheek, “I’m glad that that’s the case.”

Mrs. Yoon’s voice is clear when she calls the both of you for dinner. Everyone catches up and his younger sister makes you promise that you both should go out soon. Just you and her, she emphasised to Jeonghan who overheard your conversation. Conversation is easy and smooth, with Mr and Mrs. Yoon being amazing hosts. The gathering wasn’t planned for anything grand, both families had wanted to catch up, hence here you are. 

Jeonghan feels incredibly lucky that his family loves you. Just like him, it was only a matter of time before they warmed up to you and he was over the moon. You were charming, kind and easygoing - it’s not hard for anyone to fall for you. Falling for you was was as natural as the attraction of butterflies to colourful petals.

Autumn colours your love in honey yellow and bronze; it’s refreshing and thrives in growth. 

[travellvogue]

Honeymoon Coast- Anyone You Like

it’s a long one, and one of my faves. i hope you love it (wordcount: 4.1k)

He’s trying his best not to stare, the dress you had on complimenting your skin tone so well. Body glowing under the rays of the sun, his own little ray of sunshine sat right next to him. The delicate pattern of his thumb brushing strokes back and forth over your hand painted a perfect picture of tranquility. 

“Y’know, the view over there is better” you whisper gently with a side smile, nodding towards the staggered chocolate box buildings, painted in an array of blush pinks, dusty yellows and cotton creams. The rolling waves a vibrant blue against the calmness of the sand. 

“No it’s not” he answers so effortlessly, a flirtatious wink making you giggle and blush under his compliment. “My views much better” he hums, twisting his fork around a clump of spaghetti, scooping it into his mouth, tongue wiggling around to beckon the stray piece that flops out of his mouth. 

Two glasses of white wine twinkle under the sunlight, tracing your finger round the rim of the glass over and over again, picking at the olives in your salad, regretting eating all the mozzarella balls already. Knowing you should have gone for the pizza, but your breakfast of croissants and fresh fruit filled you up this morning. Smiling at the recent memory, how you laid in bed, tangled under the crisp white sheets, his naked body next to yours feeding you strawberries and chunks of melon, giggling when he leaned forward to kitten lick the fruit juices off your chin that had dropped down from your mouth. 

It was the perfect start to your honeymoon. He’d remembered how you told him you’d love to get married in Italy and travel around after your wedding day. So he made it happen. First stop was Positano, where the two of you sat right now. A quaint little café tucked away in the peaks of the hillsides, a lemon tree hanging over your heads shading you from the afternoon sun. The calming noise of the waves rippling into shore partnered with the locals deep in conversation. Fresh plates of pasta and pizza filling the air with the most gorgeous aroma. The strings of a guitar being strung somewhere in the far distance playing a relaxing tune. 

Yet, all you could focus on was him, how his hair was supporting natural highlights from the sun's rays, the tip of his nose slightly sunburn despite you packing factor fifty on his face every morning, “stops you getting wrinkles” you’d tell him every time he complained about the stickiness. He’s dressed in loose navy swim shorts, the toggles hanging unevenly, a thin white shirt thrown over his sun kissed torso, the top four buttons undone so you can admire his muscular chest, dark rimmed Ray-Ban glasses pushed onto his hair, droplets of salt water staining the lenses. 

“What time is the boat ride?” you ask gently, leaning over the small circular table, stabbing your fork into his bowl of pasta, helping yourself to a mouthful as he giggles, well aware that the salad just wasn’t cutting it for you. He’d planned a boat ride for the two of you today, something you’d both desperately been looking forward to since you arrived in this perfect location. Wanting to sail around and explore the surrounding beauty. 

“Two o’clock I believe madam” he answers playfully, tapping the screen of his phone to check the time. Quarter to twelve, plenty of time to head down to the dock. With a few more mouthfuls of food the two of you were stuffed. Laid back on the wooden chairs comparing your food babies. Laughing when the waiter comes over and gives you an odd glance. 

“No don’t pay baby, my treat” you insist, grabbing at his hand before he puts his card on the table, unable to hide your smile when you feel the cold metal of his wedding ring against your palm. It was yet to sink in that you officially shared the same surname as him, for years he’d introduced you to people as ‘the missus or ‘my girlfriend’, now you held the title of his wife loud and proud. 

The wedding had been very small, only fifty guests. An abundance of florals, pampas grass and bubbling champagne, and as the sun went down you fell asleep to the sound of waves greeting the Italian sand. 

As you snap out of your daydream he’s already paying for lunch, giggling when you give him a harsh stare, unable to stay mad at that dimpled smile for long. He takes your hand and leads you out of the cafe, waving goodbye with a joyful ‘grazie’ to the staff. The warm air hits you instantly, a muggy breeze fluttering the bottom of your dress. Now away from the breeze of the sea front the temperature had seemed to pick up, his hand growing clammy in yours. Arms swinging back and forth in unison as you carefully walk down the steep roads towards the peninsular, the uneven cobbled roads under your sandals let you feel every rock and grain of transported sand from the nearby beach.

“I know we’ve just eaten but…” he holds his hand up to point at the shop you’re approaching. A quiet bakery hidden between a grand hotel and a small beach shop selling the usual ‘tourist tat’ as he likes to call it. The smell of warm freshly-baked bread billowing from its grand wooden doors, painted neatly with golden details. Newly bloomed bougainvillea flowers creating an arch over the entrance. 

“How can I say no to that?” you smile. Squeezing his hand once, twice, three times. Your sandals slap against the tiled floor of the bakery, overwhelmed with the amount of choice, smiling widely when you’re greeted with a friendly “Ciao!”. The two of you opting for a baguette and a loaf of ciabatta. He stands behind you, arms wrapped around your body, pressing a kiss to your cheek whilst you wait for them to package it up in crinkly brown paper bags. And once again he uses his rusty Italian skills to bid them farewell. Reaching for your hand instinctively and squeezing it gently, unable to wipe the smile off his face. He’d never felt happiness like this- of course on your wedding day his happiness was unmatchable- but the sense of complete contentment and tranquility was so overwhelming.

***

“Where are you taking me?” you giggle, holding his hand tightly as he leads you along a rickety old boat dock, the wood swaying slightly with each gentle wave that washed into shore. “Was this your plan all along?” you laugh, “To marry me and then drown me in the sea” he chuckles and shakes his head at your ludicrous imagination.

“You gotta stop watching all those murder mystery youtubers babe” a blush appears on your cheeks at his words, remembering how you made him watch endless videos with you on the plane journey out here, secretly you knew he was enjoying himself, the way he gripped your leg as he told you a theory he had about where one of the missing people might be. “We’re here baby” the snap back into reality couldn’t be more perfect, almost feeling like you were dreaming as he holds an arm out to beckon to the large yacht docked up in front of the both of you. The sea twinkling around it and the staff giving you a welcoming wave, offering you a hand to help you onto deck. 

“Are you serious?” you breath, walking onto the ship. When he mentioned a boat ride this morning you didn’t realise he meant a million pound yacht, something for someone in your position to just drool over as you pointed them out whilst your feet stayed firmly on the sand of the beach. But now your feet touched the decking, every step becoming completely overwhelming, not only was there two floors to this boat, there were several seating areas, your very own private chef, and a hot tub at the very front, giving you the perfect views of the bobbing ocean. “My love, this is insane! I thought you meant like… a little dingy” you giggle, pinching your fingers together to explain how small you thought the boat would be. All he can do is smile and shake his head. Something he’d always loved about you was the way you always stayed so grounded, cherishing every penny of your own and of his, never wanting any gifts or treats- despite him buying you quite a few over the years- you were happy with a chinese takeaway and a movie night, never expecting anything from him other then love and honesty, money would, and could, never buy your emotions. So a yacht, this was certainly something you’d never dreamed off. 

“You deserve this, my wife” he whispers gently, coming up behind you as you look out to the sea, the cool breeze blowing a strand of your hair against his jawline, gently leaning back against him, feeling his arms wrap tightly around you. The way he referred to you as his wife still hadn’t sunk in yet, the butterflies still coming to life every time he used your new title. “Plus…” his voice drops to a whisper, leaning in closer so his lips brush against your ear, “you’ve always wanted to have sex on a boat” despite not seeing his face you can picture his smug smirk, of course there was a deeper reasoning to such an extravagant choice of boat. You shake your head playfully and push against him, probably not the best choice of action because he can’t help but let out a little groan at the feeling of your ass brushing against his crotch. 

He manages to control himself for the majority of the boat road, smiling proudly as he watches you take pictures of the beautiful settings you sail past. Your beauty still shocked him, even after years together and a big diamond ring on your finger, watching your hair blow in the salty air, sun kissed skin and lips painted with your strawberry lip balm- that quite frankly he can’t stop himself from wanting to taste- he finds that he’s falling in love with you even more in that moment. He’d never realised home could be a person until you held him in your arms. 

“We should come here every year” you whisper gently, cuddled up on the sofa-like sunbeds at the top of the boat, the air slightly cooler now the sun was setting, half empty plates of fruit and nibbled at bread resting beside you, the sea still holding the same glimmer and shine it had this morning, reflecting the orange and pink hues off the waves. You’d thrown one of his shirts over your bikini, the thin white material rustling in the breeze, tickling at your bare skin, your hair fluttering into his face every so often, wafting the familiar smell of your apple scented shampoo into his nostrils. 

He only hums in response, leaning in to take the chunk of pineapple you were offering him into his mouth, too caught up in absorbing the beauty in front of him, with both the view of you and the never ending waves it was an overwhelming sense of content and happiness. “You don't want to?” you ask gently, not convinced by his response. A frown and a quick shake of the head convinces you a bit more.

“Of course I do” he whispers, lips pressed to your temple. “But I also wanna make love to you all over the world” he smirks, watching you playfully roll your eyes and desperately try to hide your giddy smile. 

His fingers trace the side of your jaw, angling your head so he’s got perfect access to your lips, the moon seeming to match the mood of the moment, the sky becoming a thick pink, waves gently crashing against the boat, rocking your bodies unwilling against the sun beds. “Why don’t we start now?” you almost whimper against his lips, trying not to sound like a desperate beg but it was hard when all you’d been thinking about since stepping foot on the boat was the thought of him fucking you to the view of the rolling waves. 

“Hmm right here?” he smirks, “I knew you were naughty but to have me fuck you whilst anyone could see… my wife’s a little minx huh?” he teases, brushing his hand down the side of your body, already getting to work with pushing off the oversized shirt you had on, the material falling off one shoulder, exposing your bare skin for his lips to attack. 

“Everyone’s below deck” you whimper, aware that he wouldn’t care either way, there was no way he wasn’t going to make love to you on a private yacht to the view of the Amalfi Coast- no one could pass up that opportunity. “Plus… you’re little friend seems to like the idea” your thigh pushes against the growing bulge of his shorts. Your giggle splinters off into a moan as he bucks against you, continuing to suck and nip at the skin of your neck. The wet patch in your bikini bottoms continues to grow, pawing at him desperately for something more. 

“Open up” he taps two fingers at your lips, doing as you’re told you part your swollen lips to welcome him, he watches your hooded lustful eyes whilst you suck on his digits, tongue skillfully twisting and licking. His other hand cupping firmly at the mound of your ass, helping you rub yourself against his thigh, slowly moving towards the front of your body. “Take ‘em off” he instructs, pushing at the material of your bikini bottoms.

“So demanding” you tease, humming around his fingers, a trail of spit connecting your lips to them as he pulls away, watching intently as you shuffle out of your bikini, pussy growing sensitive at the exposure to the cool air. Of course he wastes no time pushing his fingers against your entrance, skillfully tracing both digits along your folds, gathering your arousal at the tips. “Baby please” you whine, not wanting to be teased today, not when someone could walk up to the top deck and interrupt the moment. You cling on to him tighter, feeling his fingers push into you, slow and steady, your tight wet walls snug around him. You seem to clench around him in time with the waves rocking against the boat, the cool breeze helping control your body temperature, not wanting to leave sweat marks along the sun beds to give away what the two of you are up to. 

“Wetter than the ocean” he teases, scissoring his fingers inside of you, your arousal dripping against him, curling his digits upwards to brush against the spot inside you that has you squirming against him. He rests his forehead against yours, noting how your body heat radiates onto his skin, your cheeks flushed, steady whimpers falling from your lips. “Moan for me baby, let the whole of Italy know who’s making you feel good”.

An orgasm was quickly approaching you, a pinch-me moment overtaking your body as you look out to the shore line, sandy beach only entertaining the last few remaining people of the night, the orange glow of lights gleaming through the windows of the chocolate box houses, praying none of them are owners of binoculars or take a keen interest in boats- because they’d certainly get an eyeful if they wanted to examine the one you were currently laid on (or getting laid on to be more accurate.) 

“Cum on my hand” his words seem to resonate with you, your body obeying to his instructions. Legs becoming jelly-like as the knot bursts in your stomach. And the moan that was trapped in your throat pings into the air of the night, loud enough to make the staff downstairs freeze and listen out for a call, wondering if you were calling them for extra champaign. All you needed right now was right in front of you, poking you in the thigh. Whimpering at the empty feeling when he pulls his fingers out of you, clenching around the vacancy. 

The wind picks up a little, brushing through your hair and rocking the boat to the right. Both of you bracing for the captain to rush to the top deck, blowing your cover. Giggling a little when the boat straightens out and the rocking stops. “Fucking cockblock” he groans, making you laugh, tucking your head into his neck. Your blushed cheeks would certainly blow your cover. “Gotta be quick” he whispers, “Wanna fuck on the Mediterranean sea”. The ocean seems to talk back to him, a large splash and spraying droplets of water falling against your calves. 

He leans forward to catch your lips in a messy, clumsy kiss. Pushing himself out of his swim shorts, cock slapping against his toned torso, freckled tanned skin pressed against yours, your fingers drawing little hearts against his back, the outlines seeming to freeze when the tip of his hard cock brushes against your entrance, easily slicked with your arousal that stills lingers from your previous orgasm. His body hovers over yours, slightly leaning to the side to both keep his balance and to try and make it less obvious that he’s making love to you on top of a boat. Your hand wraps around his length, guiding him in the right position as if he hasn’t done it thousands of times before, but he can’t complain at the sight, something so beautiful yet filthy about your wedding ring sparkling in the light as you pump your hand up and down his cock. “That ring looks great whilst you wank me off” he moans, smirking when you let out a shocked gasp at his vulgar words. 

He can’t quite believe his luck when he sinks into you, in that moment he thanks god, his lucky stars, and everything in between. His beautiful wife, the love of his life, moaning his name in the middle of the Mediterranean sea. A dream brought to life. “God you feel good... every- fuck- everytime” he praises the feel of your tight walls wrapped around him, warm and wet, just like how they always are for him. No time is wasted, his hips moving in a perfect rhythm, you’re quite impressed that he can keep himself balanced with the boat swaying in unison with the waves. His cock was enough to make you a moaning mess, reminding yourself you can’t be too loud due to the company downstairs. Instead sinking your teeth into his shoulder to try and silence yourself. 

Pain is always something that turned him on, having a kink for anything involving spanking, choking, and hair pulling. So it’s no surprise when he throws his head back in ecstasy at the feel of your teeth grazing his skin, certain he’ll have a mark in the morning to remember the moment. It’s like you’ve read his mind, fingers pushing through his hair and grabbing a fistful, tugging at the roots with each thrust. With the pent up feeling of you wrapped around him as well as the added nipping and tugging he could nearly cum right there and then. But he’s learnt over the years of being together how to control himself, wanting to elongate sex with you, rinsing every second of being inside you.  

“Cum for me again baby, give me another one” he encourages, watching you feebly mutter something inaudible, pleasure messing with your words, sweat growing on your collar bone, rising up the skin of your neck and painting your cheeks a darker red. The rapid clenching of your pussy tells him you’re approaching your second high, thighs slick with arousal, painting his skin damp with each thrust. “You’re boobs look great” he says under his breath, hearing you let out a little giggle and whisper “so romantic”, quick to change that when his mouth trails down to your right boob, leaving a wet trail of kisses to your breasts, nipping one of your nipples between his teeth and grazing it gently. Against your boobs you hear him whisper; “you’re close, I can feel it baby, c’mon” with three harsh thrusts, shaking your body with each one. 

And just like that, with a loud whine and a cry you’re giving in to his words, pussy convulsing around his length, squeezing him towards his own high. His hand clamps over your mouth before you can scream his name for the whole of Positano to know, surely by now the captain and the staff must have an inkling about what you’re up to, they’d seen the eyes you were giving each other all day. The little slaps to your ass from him as you prepared to dive into the emerald sea, or how you sat on his lap whilst he fed you watermelon, his tongue licking playfully at your chin to capture the juices. 

Now his favourite juices soaked his cock, his baby scratching lines into his back- far less innocent than the hearts that were drawn on his skin earlier. Your bikini bottoms on the floor and your bikini top flooded by your boobs and they hang over the edge of the material. In that moment you’re both so free, nature housing such pleasure. 

He’s not far behind you, he couldn’t possibly be when your pussy grips at him with such force, dirty words encouraging him to coat your walls with his seed. “Cum for me hubby” it’s more the new title that does it for him. This was his life, married to a filthy little goddess, making love to you where anyone could see, yet in this moment it was only you and him- just like it’ll be for the rest of your lives. 

He frantically slaps his hips against yours, the overwhelming sensation to cum washes over him quickly, feeling the fire in this pit of his tummy grow bigger then it ever had before. “I’m gonna cum baby” he chokes out, the grip on yur hips becoming tighter, thrusting into you as he rapidly chases his high, “it’s gonna be so much, it’s- fuck- oh god” you can’t seem to string a sentence together, stuttering and shaking with each word. 

“Fill me up baby” you whisper, scratching at the back of his neck, “Drown me” you can’t help but let out a little giggle, “pardon the pun” he scoffs at your attempt of linking being on the sea with your pussy ‘drowning’ in his cum. Trying to hide his smirk, tongue licking his top teeth as he shakes his head. 

“Still making stupid puns whilst I’m balls deep inside ya… I married an idiot” he laughs, pulling you even closer to him, soon to choke on his own moans, hitting his high and spilling his seed sloppily inside of you, the sensation making your walls clench, draining him of every last drop of cum he can give you. Riding out his high with a few more lazy thrusts, pushing his cum deep into you, his rhythm faltered by the rocking boat, nearly losing balance when his wobbly legs push himself off of you. 

Now you’re a sight to behold, breathless, glowing with that freshly fucked look. Eyes watching him intently as he pushes himself into his shorts and lazily looks for your bottoms, knowing if his cum dripped out of you there would be a hefty fee for leaving ‘bodily fluids’ on the sun lounger. 

***

The stars start to poke through the dark sky, sailing back to shore in a comfortable silence, chests still rising and falling in a quicker manner then usual, regaining the normality of not being caught up in each other's bodies. His finger plays with your ring, yours plays with his. How a simple gold band could look so flawless on his hand. 

As the waves say one last goodbye, now twinkling under the light of the moon, the boat moors into the dock. Hand in hand walking back to land, still feel the rocking sensation as you get used to the solid floor beneath your feet.

“So…” he whispers, aware it’s late at night, a buzz of nightlife coming from the restaurant nearby, your arms swinging in unison.  “This time again next year?” he smirks, this certainly couldn’t be a one time thing.

 “See you then” you wink playfully, voice laced with sleep, ready to head back to the villa and be held in his arms for the rest of the night.

[mrsalwayswrite]

Too Late To Hold My Heart (Joe Liebgott x Reader)

Alright, i’m not 100% sure about this but here ya go. Just something that came to mind. Lemme know what y’all think! I usually shy away from writing angst...

Warnings: ANGST, a couple swear words, a tiny bit of fluff (I’m so sorry for all the feels)

 Words:2600

Tag List: @happyveday @sydney-m​ @saritanotserena

  Joe Liebgott reclined on the cushioned chair, open bottle of schnapps in hand. Watching. Unable to tear his gaze away. He should have been ecstatic. He should have been shouting from the rooftops, running around, causing mayhem like the others. Joining in the revelry surrounding him with abandon. Drinking from the cup of life handed to him and the other paratroopers. 

 The war in Europe was over. 

 VE Day. 

 Everyone was getting drunk off their asses in celebration. They had somehow survived and made it to the end. Alcohol flowed freely. Laughter and exclamations, the background of the town they were currently occupying. Luz and Christianson were loudly singing in the next room over, the radio drowned out by their voices. Even Martin was belly-laughing across the room, a bottle in hand. 

 Yet instead of getting drunk to celebrate, Joe was getting drunk to forget. 

 To forget you. 

 He could still remember how you felt in his hands, the way your sighs tasted on his lips. The hopes and dreams you confessed to him in the nights you shared a foxhole. How you whispered his name, the sound rolling off your lips. How you held him so tightly as he sobbed in your arms the night after Tipper got hit. Intoxicating memories that threatened to drown him now.

 The worst part. 

 He could see you across the room, laughing openly with your head tipped back and hand over your mouth, as if to contain the beguiling sound. In the glow of the surrounding lamps, you were a vision of true beauty and carefree joy. 

 The problem?

 Floyd Talbert's arm, possessively around your waist, pulling you closer into his side on the couch you both were sitting on. 

 Joe took another swig of the schnapps, grimacing at the taste. Those around him continued to talk and laugh, oblivious to his simmering anger. 

 He could still see it. Just a few hours ago as they got word of the Nazis' surrender, everyone had been cheering and running around like children set loose on a playground. Joe had hurried to find you, to see your smile, to embrace you. For so long you two had talked about this moment. The end of the war. 

 Instead, his feet stuck to the cobbled road, trapped as if in cement. Shock and anger colored his world in vibrant hues, the joy around him turning into dull grays. For there was Talbert running to you, scooping you up in his arms, swinging you around without a care in the word. And as he set you back on your feet, he kissed you as if you were the very air he needed. 

 Those who witnessed it either laughed or stared in shock. A couple wolf whistles sounded amongst the cheering. 

 But Joe felt like a white-hot dagger had been stuck into his chest, burning his heart. 

 For you had kissed Talbert back just as passionately. 

 So here he sat, surrounded by revelry, surrounded by his fellow paratroopers celebrating the war's end in Europe. Only that joy seemed to bypass him, leaving him to wallow in confusion and anger. 

 The way you breathed out his name as he kissed you, like he was the only thing keeping you tied down to this world. Your hands in his hair, holding him against you. Your soft skin in the moonlight. The quiet laughter as you stared into each other's eyes after. The teasing about not getting caught by the others… He could remember it all. 

 Now though, it was someone else who laid a kiss to your temple, making you giggle sweetly. Someone else who had their arm around you. Someone else who you were gazing up at like they put the stars in the sky. 

 It was supposed to be him. It was always supposed to be him. He planned on changing your last name to Liebgott. He had thought of your future together so many times. The only thing that kept him sane through the past several months. 

 Now this tasted like betrayal. 

 And he was not sure who he was furious with- himself or you. 

 Eventually, he watched you bid goodnight to those around you, giggling as your feet swayed slightly. You had always been a lightweight. A quick peck on the lips to Talbert; then you disappeared into the back and up the stairs where your room in the house was. 

 Without a second thought, Joe drained the rest of the bottle in his hand. Not even paying attention to the taste anymore. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, dropping the bottle on the ground.

 And he followed you. 

 *****

 You pulled the pins out of your hair, letting it down from the chignon it had been in. Bubbles danced in your belly, both from joy and from the champagne you had been sipping on. VE Day. A part of you never thought this day would ever come. Next, you took off your OD jacket, tossing it onto the bed next to you, leaving you standing there in your white undershirt and OD trousers and socks. 

 Wait?

 You giggled as you stared down at your sock-clad feet. You remembered wearing your boots earlier. At some point you must have taken them off. Well, you might remember throwing one at Luz. Hopefully Tab could help you find them in the morning. Or someone with the least severe hangover. You giggled again thinking of poor Gene who was going to be dealing with all these hungover paratroopers coming to him for pain meds. Maybe you should volunteer to help him. You did not drink that much to be affected in the morning. It was better for the company that you remained mostly sober. 

 The door to your solitary room opened behind you. Surprised, you turned around, ready to tease whoever came in. Was someone bringing up your boots?

 When Liebgott stepped through, the words froze on your tongue and all the joyful bubbles popped, leaving you feeling hollow and nauseous. 

 He stood just inside the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. His hair was messy, as if he ran his hand through it too many times. Eyes slightly glassy but obscured by the fire burning in them. "So, you and Tab, huh? How long has this been going on?"

 "Joe…I think you should leave." You turned back around and ran your fingers through your hair, preparing to braid your hair like you did every night. 

 "What? Was it before or after us, huh?" Even without looking at him, you could imagine the sneer on his face. His voice that at one time used to be so gentle and kind to you, now was harsh and grating. 

 "I don't wanna talk about it."

 In a couple steps, he was behind you, gripping your arm to whirl you around violently. "Answer the goddamn question, y/n!"

 "There was never an 'us'." You spat out, surprising yourself with the venom in your own voice. 

 He took a step back, eyes wide in shock. Then as what you said sunk in, the fire burning in his eyes turned into an inferno that threatened to burn you both in its wake. "What the fuck are you talking about? Of course, there was an us! We fucked in Mourmelon! We talked about our futures! About life together after the war!  Even in Albourne, there was always an us!"

 "And then you shut me out!" You yelled back at him. 

 Chest heaving, you covered your mouth with your hand for a moment, trying to force back the flood of pain and emotions clawing desperately to escape. When you continued speaking, you kept your eyes on his dog tags hanging over his shirt, your voice low as if confessing a sin. "We used to talk about everything. I thought that if we both survived this war, we might--" You stopped yourself from finishing that sentence. "It doesn't matter now. In Bastogne, you cut me off. You wouldn't talk to me. You ignored me. I got injured and needed you, but you weren't there. Even in Haguenau, it was like you never saw me. I was suddenly invisible to you. What was I supposed to think?"

 His eyes were wide, mouth open slightly, as if now recognizing the effects of his actions. He licked his lips, then reached his hand out like he meant to cup your cheek but thought better of it and dropped it back to his side. "I... I didn't want to hurt you anymore. I made you cry and that-- SHIT! I'm not a good man. I'm a selfish asshole. I just… I wanted to be better for you."

 "Joe, don't-" 

 "No, damn it." He interrupted you, grabbing a fistful of your loose hair and tipping your head up, forcing your eyes to meet his. "I didn't want blood on my hands the next time I touched you, held you, kissed you. I needed to be a good man for you. What you fucking deserve. But I couldn't do it. Not there. I just thought...after. When the war was over. We could try again."

 "Why didn't you tell me?"

 "Did I mention I'm a selfish asshole yet?"

 You chuckled, placing your hands on his chest. His rapid heartbeat under your fingers matched your own. His fist loosened in your hair, fingers running through it like he knew you loved. A subtle sigh escaped your lips without permission at the gentle touch. How long had it been since he touched you like this?

 "Please, y/n, please." He begged, voice cracking at the end. "Give me another chance." 

 You shook your head, dropping your gaze. "You had it, but you pushed me away when I needed you. I can't...I can't go through that again. It hurt too much."

 "Was there ever really a chance? For us?"

 "Joe… I… I can't…" Tears flooded your eyes; you desperately fought to keep them from falling. 

 So slowly, he ran his hand through your hair one last time then took a half step back. "And Tab?"

 "He has always been a friend, even in Toccoa. He looked out for me. And in Bastogne, he was there for me. We took care of each other, especially after I got injured but couldn't leave the line. He helped me pick up the pieces of myself after. It wasn't supposed to happen. We were only supposed to be friends. But...things changed."

 He nodded, then rubbed the back of his neck while looking out the window. He tugged his lower lip into his mouth for a second, before staring at you once again. "Can I kiss you? One last time?"

 "No. That would only hurt us both."

 "Yeah...well if it means anything… I'm sorry. For everything."

 "Me too." You covered your mouth with your hand, physically suppressing the sob that felt lodged in your throat. Peeking through your watery eyes, you could just make out the tears in his own as he stared at you longingly. 

 You two stood there gazing at one another, a million unspoken words laying on the ground between your feet. Words you both wished you had said in the past, but it was too late now. Too late to pick them up, dust them off and share them. Like your hearts. Hopes, dreams and desires that pulled on you two, keeping you together. Those strings were cut. Severed by the hatchet of insecurity, war and pain. It was too late to try and save those strings. 

 It was all months too late. 

 How you wished it was different. 

 "Everything alright here?" Talbert asked, standing in the doorway. His gaze jumped rapidly between you and Liebgott, still standing only a step apart. His jacket was unbuttoned, pieces of hair sticking up haphazardly like someone tried to give him a noogie. 

 "Yeah, yeah." You met Tab's eyes, taking another step back from Liebgott. Quickly, you wiped your eyes with the heel of your hand. "Just talking about home. Hopefully we can see it soon."

 "Oh yeah, I forgot you both are from San Francisco. Small world, huh?" He smiled, leaning against the doorframe. 

 "Small world. Well, I should probably get to sleep. Good night, Joe." 

 "Yeah." Liebgott stared at you like he was burning your image into his mind permanently; you could feel his eyes caressing your cheeks and lips. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked out with a quick, 'see ya, Tab' over his shoulder.

 Pushing off the doorframe, Talbert approached you. He scanned you like he was looking for an injury, then gently pulled you into his warm embrace. He kissed the top of your head once you burrowed into his arms. "Hey, you alright, baby?"

 "I'm fine. I promise. I just...I'm ready to go back. To go home, you know?"

 "I know. I am too. But don't get too comfortable in California. You're gonna come live with me in Kokomo."

 You giggled, tipping your face up to look at his smug expression. "Oh, I am? What if I want you to stay in Cali with me? You did say you've always wanted to live near the ocean."

 "I did, didn't I?"

 "Mmm...we could get a little house near the bay. Not too close to my parents though. My sister will probably fight me to try and snatch you up."

 "Well, that would be the first time I've had sisters fight over me before."

 You swatted his chest but he only laughed, pulling you against him again. 

 "You don't have to worry about your sister. I've only got eyes for you. Been that way for a while." He lightly kissed your lips, a tease of affection. "Alright, you've made a valid argument for California. I think I might be persuaded to change my mind."

 "Good. As a reward, we can get a dog. Maybe call him Trigger?"

 He smiled brilliantly, "Have I mentioned how much I love you, baby." He tucked your head under his. The feeling of being fully surrounded by his comforting embrace, released the tension you carried. His hand skimmed up and down your back as you just held one another. No matter the circumstances, you had always been able to find a semblance of peace while in his arms. 

 With Liebgott, your affections for him had felt like a shooting star. You could not help but get caught up by him, struck by the power and beauty, wishing for it to always continue on. Now though, you knew. Shooting stars never last forever. They eventually have to come down.

 While with Talbert, he was your lighthouse. In your darkest moments when you did not think you could continue, he whispered words of comfort in your ear, held your bloodied hand in his. He drew you out of the quagmire of darkness, guiding you, encouraging you to keep going. Something he did every day, even now. With a soft smile, a gentle touch, he reminded you that you were not alone. From day one in Toccoa, he had stood in your corner. He was safety and stability amongst chaos. You fully trusted him, with more than just your heart. 

 You happened to turn your head, peeking towards the doorway. Only to see Joe staring at you, looking like he had been gutted. You met his gaze while in the arms of the man you loved and trusted. He must have lingered or came back. It did not matter though. He had heard. The idea of a place by the bay, a family dog...those were things you two had talked about before. Now they were dreams you shared with another. 

 After a long moment, he tucked his hands in his pockets and turned away, disappearing from view. You turned your face back into Tab's chest, heart fraying at the seams. 

 How was it possible for love to be the best and worst thing you had ever experienced?

[orangeflavoryawp]

Jonsa - “From Instep to Heel”, Part 16

Yes, hello, it’s me again. Boo Boo the Fool. Clearly, I’ve underestimated my capacity to word vomit, thus the chapter count has been updated. It’s for real this time, though, I promise, guys. I’m not fucking crying wolf again, I swear.  Only one more to go after this.  Crazy, huh?

“From Instep to Heel”

Chapter Sixteen: Splinter

“Perhaps he really is a Targaryen – to the bone. But he’s finished with apologizing about it. If this is what they’ve made him, then this is what he’ll be.

If treason is what they expect, then by the gods, he will give it to them.” - Jon and Sansa. Like the curve of the horizon, when the moon breaks from beneath its bow.

Read it on Ao3 here.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 fin

* * *

"Here." Jon tips the cup toward Bran's lips, wiping up the spill of water at his chin when he pulls it back, and Bran nods appreciatively, his hand still at Jon's wrist.

"I'm alright," he says, urging Jon to set the cup back down.

Jon settles into his seat at Bran's bedside, the cup forgotten along the side table.

Bran settles more comfortably into his furs. "Thank you," he says, wincing slightly at the tug on his bandaged leg when he adjusts.

Jon only nods, swallowing tightly, his eyes glancing over to Sansa's prone form along the bed beside Bran's, tucked securely beneath the furs. It's been nearly a day and a half she's been unconscious. Jon sighs, rubbing a hand down his face in exhaustion. "She should be here – helping you with this. She should be here," he gets out tightly.

Bran sighs. "And she will, when she wakes."

Jon clenches his jaw, shaking his head. His eyes bead with wetness instantly. He drops his head into his hands, elbows resting along his knees and he lets out a ragged breath, a worn exhale. "Gods, she nearly – I nearly – " He doesn't have the heart to finish such a sentence.

Nearly lost her.

He hasn't the heart to even imagine it.

He remembers rushing to Measter Gregor's before the man could even make it to their chambers, Sansa's unconscious body terrifyingly light in his arms, the bloodied seat of her dress soaking through to his sleeve, and how he sobbed, how he tore through the halls screaming for the maester, chest aching, throat raw, muscles quaking as he ran with her in his arms. How lifeless she'd been when he dropped her, as gently as he could, onto the cot in Gregor's clinic, backing away to let the old man and his acolytes do their work, watching, always watching, and gasping, crumbling – begging her to just open her eyes please gods just open your eyes open your eyes Sansa please please OPEN YOUR EYES –

Jon closes his eyes at the memory, keeps his head in his hands, tries to focus on the faint sound of her breathing, the slow intake, the shallow exhale. Over and over. In and out. Over and over. This becomes his constant, his world.

He doesn't know what he'll do if it should ever stop.

"Jon."

He takes a deep breath, lets it rattle against his palms. He pulls his head up just slightly, fingers stilled splayed over his cheeks, eyes meeting Bran reluctantly.

Bran keeps his gaze resolute. "She will be here. When she wakes," he repeats. And he sounds so sure.

Jon lets out a rueful chuckle at the tone, his hands slipping from his face, hanging limp between his knees now. "I don't..." The words crack, shutter away.

"She's stronger than you think."

"Stronger than poison?" The question sounds harsher than he intends, but it's not her brother he intends his ire at. His gaze softens at the reminder. "A person can be strong, sure, they can be willful and passionate and all these things and still – poison does not discriminate. It does not care about character. It kills. That's all it does. It just... it just kills." His words hollow out at the end, a bitter sigh, his hands returning to his face.

A heavy silence pervades the air.

(Over and over. In and out. He listens for it, always.)

"Poison," Bran says, seeming to mull the word over as he says it. "And you're certain?"

He scoffs then, rearing back, hands leaving his face once more. "This wasn't simply an accident. This wasn't simply a miscar – " He stops then, the vehemence lodged in his throat. He glares at Bran, eyes still wet. His jaw ticks, teeth aching where they clench. He tears his gaze away finally. "No, this was poison. That amount of blood? That sudden and that violent? No. Someone did this to her," he snarls, head shaking.

Bran curls his hands along the edge of blanket at his waist, looking down at it a moment. He purses his lips, takes a breath. He looks back up at Jon. "Was she with child?" he asks softly.

Jon blinks at him, breath stilling in his chest.

'Was'. Not 'is'.

Jon's face crumbles instantly, breath hitching on a cry, shoulders slumping in on him with the weight of it. His hand goes over his face, as though to hold it in, as though to slow the tide, but it washes from him instantly, without reprieve, without end. "Oh gods," he croaks out, shaking with it. "Oh gods, how am I supposed to tell her?" he cries. He buries his face in his hands, tries to bite back his sobs, his head shaking back and forth. Disbelieving. "How am I supposed to tell her we lost it?" he wails.

In a way, he'd known. Before Maester Gregor pulled him aside, with Sansa slumbering in the next room, dosed with more than a few of the maester's herbs – he'd known.

"I think she'll make it, if she can pull through these next few hours. But my Lord, I must tell you. The babe... there was no saving the babe. I'm sorry I couldn't do more."

Jon had stared at the man with unseeing eyes. Just listening. Standing there. Wavering. Taking it all in. His eyes had shifted toward the bed where she laid, her brow sweat-lined, her body limp. And he'd nodded. Just nodded. "I understand," he'd said.

He'd sat down at her side then, took a wet towel to her chin, cleaned the blood from her as though it had never been. He did his best to feed her the tonic Maester Gregor gave him, slipping it between her chapped, parted lips by the spoonful, wiping the drizzle that escaped down the side of her mouth. And then he smoothed the hair back from her face, tucked the furs around her, sat there watching her for an immeasurable amount of time, before he drew in a sharp, long breath, his lungs quaking with it, and everything seemed to come down at once. He'd reached for her hand, crying, crying for her, holding her hand to his face, nuzzling into it, pleading, and crying, crying, crying.

But there will never be enough tears for such grief.

"How do I tell her?" he manages on a shaky exhale, fingers curling over his brow.

"Jon," Bran tries to comfort, his hand rising, and falling on nothing. "I'm so sorry."

It repeats. Over and over.

I'm sorry.

In and out. Over and over.

I'm sorry.

It repeats.

(But Jon only wants it to stop – just...stop.)

Just then, something does stop.

Jon stiffens at the realization, going still. His ears strain for the familiar sound of her steady breathing. It doesn't come. He glances up when a hoarse sigh breaks along the air instead, ragged and disused. His eyes land on Sansa as she stirs.

Jon nearly vaults over Bran's bed in his haste to return to Sansa's side, stumbling into the seat at her bedside, hands grasping at her own, eyes wide and wonderous on her face as she blinks once, twice, moans lowly beneath some hidden pain. And then she opens her eyes.

Jon meets her gaze ardently, brows cinching together in a painful hope, the tears still hot on his lids. "Sansa?" he asks, hardly daring to breathe the word.

She moans again, shifting slightly, blinking back the haze. Blinking again. Eyes focusing in the late afternoon light. She stares up at him. He stares down at her. Her mouth begins to tremble.

"Sansa," he tries again, barely more than a whisper, the name caught in his throat like the edge of dusk, like water-logged wood. It splinters away – sodden and heavy. "Sansa," he cries, and something joyful slips in just then – unintended. He gasps beneath the force of it, a disbelieving laugh breaking from him.

She furrows her brows, blinking furiously. And then she smacks her dry lips, tries for words, swallows back that uneven breath, that quake in her lungs. "Jon," she manages, a fierce, brilliant smile catching at the ends of her lips, tugging further, further, until it spreads wide, before it cracks at the edges, weighted and tear-stained, her face falling with the remembrance, her arms going wide, ignoring the heavy ache of them and the exhausted lull of her body and the still vibrant rack of pain through her limbs, simply reaching, for him – for him, for him, for him.

Jon reaches back, winding his arms around her, tugging her up into his chest, letting her sigh into his throat, hands firm at her back, along her neck, bracing her to him, cradling her.

"Jon," she cries.

"I'm here," he says into her hair, swaying with the weight of her.

She starts to shake, her fingers curling into the tunic at his back. "Jon," she says again.

"I'm here," he hushes. "I'm not going anywhere."

How does he tell her? he had wondered.

But when she grips at him tighter, when she sobs into his chest, when she quakes beneath him, when her wail breaks through the air like something wounded and raging – he thinks maybe she knows.

But Jon can only hold her.

In and out. Over and over.

(His constant.)

"I'm not going anywhere," he croaks again, hand trembling in her hair.

He thinks surely she knows.

* * *

"Do you need anything?" Jon asks, his fingers tracing the length of her jaw.

Sansa burrows further into the sheets, eyes slipping shut. "I'm alright."

Jon lays beside her, hesitant at first to encroach on her space, but when she had tugged him onto the cot in a needful fervency, hands curled tight in the tunic at his chest, curling into him when he stretched out alongside her, her forehead falling to his chest, his arms winding round her, well –

He's fairly certain he couldn't deny her anything at this point.

Sansa sighs, lashes fluttering. A heavy scoff leaves her, fingers curling tighter along his tunic. "No, I'm not alright," she corrects.

Jon's hand retreats from her jaw, reaching around her back instead, cradling her to him. "I'm here."

"Yes, but here is exactly the problem."

Jon clenches his jaw, his hand smoothing down her back. She's so pale. So utterly pale. Her lips are chapped, dry. Dark rings settle beneath her eyes like half-healed bruises. He barely manages not to tremble at the sight of her.

"I'm scared, Jon," she manages through a quake. "I'm scared, and I can't stay here. Not anymore. In this keep, in this family. I can't do it." She buries her face in his chest, heaving a tear-laced sigh against his collar bone. "I'm sorry, Jon, I can't... I can't do it anymore."

"I know," he gets out roughly, holding her tighter. "I know."

"What are we going to do?"

"I'm going to get us out," he says.

She stills in her shaking, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes, brows furrowed sharply. "Jon... how can you...?"

"I'll get us out. I swear to you. Aegon will have to let us go," he says, a measure of surety seeping into him that hadn't been there before.

Sansa's eyes darken, her mouth tipping into a frown. "I don't trust him. I don't trust any of them," she bites out.

"Do you trust me?" His hand slips up to her hair, cradles the back of her head. His eyes are imploring on hers.

She shifts her eyes back and forth between his, her mouth parting. "You know I do," she whispers.

Jon swallows tightly, taking courage at the reminder. "Then trust that I will get us out."

She stares up at him, red wisps of hair matted to her forehead with sweat, a permanent etch of pain along her features.

Her body is still fighting. Still weak.

It lights a fury in him that is unspeakable. And yet, the hand he holds to the back of her head is gentle beyond measure.

Sansa stares up at him for long moments, her lip pulled between her teeth. She looks down to his chest, keeps her gaze fixed there, takes a long and slow breath.

His hand slips back down to the small of her back, curling there. His voice is rough and uneven when he finally speaks. "Sansa, the babe..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Jon swallows tightly, looking down at her. Her gaze is harsh on his chest, unblinking. Her hand stays curled in his tunic.

"Sansa..."

"I don't... want to talk about it." She releases a shallow breath. "Not now, at least."

Another bout of silence eases between them. Jon sighs into her hair. "Okay." His hand slides smoothly up and down the length of her back. "Okay."

Some of her stiffness eases out at his answer. "Thank you."

Her voice is so small. So tired and worn. Jon keeps his grief tucked securely behind clenched teeth. "You should rest."

She has very little left in her to say otherwise, and so she only nods, her hand uncurling from his tunic to bunch in the sheets beneath her.

"Rest," he says, starting to pull from her.

Her hand snaps back to his tunic, holding him there, her eyes blinking widely up at him. "Will you stay?"

He hates the tremor of fear in her voice. "Aye, I'll stay," he gets out gruffly, easing back down.

She sighs in relief, eyes slipping shut once more, shoulders easing out their tension.

Jon brushes the hair from her sweat-lined temple. "I'll stay," he promises lowly, watching her.

And he does stay – until she is asleep once more. And then he stays a while longer, just watching her, fingers trailing from her brow to her cheek, down the line of her jaw, clenched in her worried sleep, then down the length of her arm, and back up, tracing the lines of her, committing it to memory.

When he is sure she won't be disturbed, he disentangles from her, easing himself off the cot beside her. He releases her hand reluctantly, tucking it back beneath the furs. He takes a breath, lets it to air. And then he stalks toward the door.

Bran glances up from his lean along his propped-up pillows, hand stilling over the parchment he'd been writing on. "Jon?"

Jon ignores him, a singular focus coming over him. He pulls the door back, dark gaze meeting the startled guard that greets him outside the threshold.

"M'lord?"

"Has Maester Gregor sent any word of his findings?" The question is low and terse, nearly a bite.

The guard shakes his head. "No, m'lord. He's still convening with the other maesters."

Jon nods, brow furrowing. "Summon Theon Greyjoy." he says, eyes flicking to the guard opposite him. "And no one else, aside from him and Maester Gregor, gets through this door, do you understand me?" The words are even and low, a quiet ferocity to them that keeps the guards muted, only fervent nods sent Jon's way. Jon releases the door and stalks back through the clinic to the threshold on the opposite side of the room leading to Measter Gregor's adjoining solar. He passes Bran and Sansa's beds swiftly.

"Jon, what are you going to do?" Bran asks urgently.

"What I have to," he snaps, making his way into the solar and settling at the vacant desk. He finds Maester Gregor's parchment easily enough, dips his quill into ink, and sets to writing. He's nearly finished when he hears a knock on the door, peering up to find Theon lingering in the threshold, eyes falling to the missive beneath Jon's hand.

But Jon returns to his work, scribbling out the last of his message, leaning back to look at it. "Greyjoy," he greets, gaze never leaving the desk.

"I am summoned," Theon gets out testily, a sneer to his voice.

Jon lets the ink set a while longer, his silence a practiced, terse thing. He glances up finally, fingers folding around the ends of the thin parchment. "Yes. I have a task for you."

Theon laughs, a dark, rueful sound, clipped at the end. "Forgive me, my lord, but I'm not particularly inclined to serve you at the moment."

Jon settles his dark stare on him. "Your inclinations are inconsequential at the moment. And regardless," he grinds out, folding the ends of the parchment over, and taking the spoon of hot wax from its stand to pool over the closed edges, "This serves the Lady Sansa, not myself."

Theon pushes off the threshold and walks further into the room. "Oh, serving the Lady Sansa now, are we? Last I checked, you weren't doing too grand a job of that."

Jon shoots a swift glare his way, returning his attention to the letter, pressing his seal into the hot wax. "Your concern for my wife is touching, improper as it is."

"Well, at least one of us is concerned."

"You overstep your bounds, Greyjoy," he says lowly, rising from his seat.

Theon sneers at him, stalking closer. "If you recall, my lord, it wasn't you that saved her life in Stannis' attack."

Jon grinds his teeth, fingers curling into fists at his side. "I'm well aware." And it takes everything of him to say it.

"Then perhaps you can tell me how she ended up here, hmm? Perhaps you can tell me where you were when she was nearly killed? Again! Tell me how you were serving her?" he barks, arms stretching wide. "Because I've yet to see it, my lord!"

Jon storms around the edge of the desk, closing in on him. "You have no idea what I've - "

"She trusted you!" Theon yells, a finger raised toward him. "She trusted you to protect her and she nearly died for it."

"Don't you think I know that?" Jon bellows.

Theon stops, staring at him, his chest heaving.

Jon barely manages not to shake in his fury, his fists still held tight to his sides. His nostrils flare under his deep breaths, eyes narrowed on Theon. "Don't you think I fucking know that?" It comes out clipped and ragged at the end and he must tear his gaze away from Theon's before the break can overtake him.

Theon rears back slightly, brows furrowed over his sharp eyes.

Jon moves his heavy stare to the far wall, stepping off to the side, trying to rein in his labored breaths. "She's out there in that bed – alone and in pain, because of me. Because of me," he gets out on a croak, mouth clamping over the words. And oh, how they sting. To say them to a Greyjoy of all people. To admit to it before a Greyjoy.

Jon didn't think he could sink any lower. And yet here he is.

"What are you going to do?"

"What I have to."

Jon's eyes slip shut. It's a sour slice of shame that lights his tongue. But he will swallow it. He will swallow it back for her. And he will do what he must.

"Do you think me so unfeeling?" Jon asks him, a coarse whisper.

Silence greets him. A long stretch of it. Jon opens his eyes to glance at Theon at his peripheral.

The man is glaring down at the floor, hands bunched into fists at his side. "No, I do not, my lord," he gets out roughly, at length, as though the words were a pain to utter.

And perhaps they are. As much as Jon's.

He turns fully to Theon then, stepping before him. "I will never be comfortable with the feelings you clearly harbor for my wife. I will never be comfortable knowing she still cares for you in some regard."

Theon looks back up at him then, gaze narrowed.

"But I am not ungrateful." It's like gravel in his throat. Jon swallows thickly, trying to get the words to air. "When you saved her, when you..." He stops, dips his head down, eases some of the tension from his trembling fists. "I will never forget it," he vows softly. He looks back up, meets Theon's gaze. "Which is why you are the only person in this city I trust to save her now."

Theon blinks at that, mouth parting. Hesitation wars across his features, his eyes flicking between Jon's.

Jon lifts his chin. "So," he begins, lips pursed tight, "Will you help me?"

He thinks about that day in the courtyard, looking across the field of bodies to where Theon stood, bow in hand, arm still pulled back in release, his own chest heaving, eyes wide.

He thinks about the relief that flooded his chest at the sight, at the weight of Sansa in his arms, at knowing there were those in her life that would not see her fall. No matter the cost.

And he thinks he can live with Theon Greyjoy being in love with his wife, if that's what it means. Perhaps it's selfish of him. Perhaps it's just another way he's learned to manipulate, to use one's emotions against them. Perhaps he really is a Targaryen – to the bone.

But he's finished with apologizing about it. If this is what they've made him, then this is what he'll be.

If treason is what they expect, then by the gods, he will give it to them.

"Will you help me?" he asks again, more a demand than anything.

Theon continues staring at him silently, shoulders pulling back. He lets out a shallow scoff, hand wiping over his mouth, eyes lifting to the ceiling, and then drifting back down to meet Jon's. His mouth is a harsh frown. "What is it you want me to do?" he grinds out.

Jon doesn't give him a chance to rethink it, turning swiftly back toward the desk, grabbing the sealed letter. He turns back and hands it to Theon. "Ride to Winterfell. Ride now, as fast your horse can carry you."

Theon looks down at the letter, taking it with tentative fingers. His brows bunch in confusion. "And this is...?"

"My treason."

Theon's gaze snaps up to Jon's. "What?"

"Every two days, you will receive a raven from me. If ever you do not receive that raven, then you are to hand this to Lord Stark to read," he says, motioning toward the letter in Theon's hand.

Theon cocks a brow at him. "What does it mean if you do not send a raven?"

"It means I am dead."

Theon lets out a disbelieving laugh, stalking away from him, and then stalking back. "My lord, this is..." He shakes the letter in his hand. "What are you planning?"

Jon winds his hands behind his back, head tilting as he looks at Theon, an even stare to his dark eyes, unblinking. "You will receive a raven every two days while Sansa and I make our way North. So, until we are safely at Winterfell, you will guard that missive with your life."

Theon swallows thickly, eyes drifting back to the ominous letter.

Jon sighs. "Pray to the gods Lord Stark will never have need to open it."

Theon shifts his gaze back to Jon, appraising him. And then he stuffs the letter into a pocket, nodding once, swiftly and decidedly. "I will do this," he says simply.

Jon doesn't let the flutter of relief he feels between his ribs rattle him any further. Instead, he reaches out for Theon's shoulder, urging him toward the door and back through the clinic. "Good. Now, you must – "

"My lord, I've returned."

Jon glances up at Maester Gregor's announcement, finding him in the doorway as the guards shut the door behind him. Jon nods his greeting, turning swiftly back to Theon. "You must go – now. And you must go unseen. Lady Sansa's life depends on your urgency and your secrecy, do you understand?"

Theon nods once more. "I do." He glances over to Bran, who's looking between the two with a plaintive expression.

"What is going on?" the boy asks, exasperated, as he drops his quill and parchment back to his lap.

Theon clenches his jaw, looking back to Jon. "She asked me to protect him."

"If you succeed in this task, then it will save them both," he assures him.

Theon blows a shaky breath from his lips, steeling himself. "This treason of yours better be worth it," he gets out on a sly laugh, a reluctant smirk tugging at his lips.

"All successful treason is," he swears, low enough that only the two of them might hear.

Theon keeps his gaze a moment longer, seeming to search for something, and then he's turning away, back toward the door with a polite farewell for Gregor and Bran, eyes lingering only a moment longer on the boy in the cot.

Jon gives Gregor an uneasy smile then, ushering him toward the solar. "Maester, what have you discovered?"

"Am I not to be included?" Bran asks sharply from his place in his bed.

Both men glance back at him. Jon humors him with a tender smile. "Bran..."

"She's my sister, you know. As much as she is your wife. And I deserve to know who did this to her just as well as you," he says, eyes demanding on Jon's.

Jon can't help the chuckle that leaves him, even when there is no mirth behind it. Because yes, the boy is right. How simple of him to think otherwise?

Gregor looks to Jon, a reluctant expression crossing his face. "My lord, this is a delicate matter."

Jon nods, turning them toward Bran's bed instead now. "All the more reason her family should hear it." They stop just on the side of Bran's bed, and Jon helps the older man into a seat before taking his own.

The maester sighs, shaking his head. "My lord, after examining her blood, and her symptoms, I must tell you that the lady has most certainly been poisoned."

"Yes," Jon scoffs, "I figured as much when she started coughing blood." At the Maester's grave look, Jon shakes his head, grinding his teeth. "Apologies, Maester. Please, do go on."

Gregor sighs, winding his hands before him. "We've been able to ascertain the poison as Red Ausmothis. It's a plant some maesters use, in small doses mind you, to help clear the bloodstream. But in large amounts, it can cause a patient to bleed excessively, as it also thins the blood, see."

Bran peers up at him from the bed, brows sharpening down over his intent eyes. "Yes, but how was it administered to my sister?"

The maester gives a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Ingested, I assume. Through food or drink."

Jon's mouth purses into a tight line, his gaze shifting away. "And how quickly does it act?"

"Rather quickly, my lord. I would wager she'd been dosed that very morning."

Jon keeps a tight clamp on his fury, curling and uncurling his fists. "I see." He blows a shallow breath through his teeth, eyes flicking over to Sansa's sleeping form. A pain ricochets through him, his chest constricting at the sight.

"But my lord," the maester begins, his hands wringing themselves as he glances between the two of them. "There is something more troubling."

Jon's gaze whips sharply to his. "What is it?"

He sucks a breath in, face twisting into uncertainty. "I've said that some maesters use this plant, yes, and well – you see, I myself have used it."

Bran leans forward just a touch, eyes riveted to the maester. "What are you saying?"

"My stores are emptied of it, my lord."

Jon blinks at him, head rearing back. His ire flares hotter, sparks an unease in his chest. He shifts his weight in his seat, gaze hard on the man. "You think..."

Maester Gregor swallows. "I think whoever did this stole from my stores, yes. And recently. Very recently."

Jon takes a long, slow breath in, mind reeling. He stands from his seat, paces away. He braces his hands to his hips, a heavy exhale leaving him. He wipes a hand down his face, paces back toward the two of them. "What are you trying to say, Maester Gregor?" The words come out strangled.

Because no.

No, he will not think it.

The maester's eyes drift down to his hands as they wind around his chain in thought. A worried sigh leaves him. "The peculiar thing is, my lord, only two people have been under my care here, aside from the Lady Sansa, of course. Only two people, as were Prince Aegon's – apologies, His Grace's – orders."

"Yes, of course," Jon spits, a hand raked through his hair. "Only members of the royal family."

Can't be seen by outsiders, of course. Can't make their weakness known. Shut them up. Lock them away. Everything is safe behind closed doors, right?

Right?

Jon seethes where he stands, a quiet, thundering rage seeping between his ribs.

The old man looks up at him with concern. "Yes, exactly. Only Lord Bran here," he says, motioning to the nearly immobilized boy, "And..."

"Rhaenys," Jon hisses.

His fury is a silent, bone-gripping beast.

Bran is shaking his head, eyes frantic. "Wait. Wait, I think..."

"Rhaenys," Jon says again, a shaky hand wiping over his mouth.

No. No, he cannot think it.

"But my lord," Gregor begins, twisting in his seat to look up at Jon, face drawn in concern and perplexity, "What reason could the Princess Rhaenys ever have to harm Lady Sansa? Or your unborn child?"

A red haze overtakes Jon. A quiet stillness. His jaw aches where he clenches his teeth, nearly rattling in his skull. Nearly frothing at the mouth with it. This thundering rage. This rancid hate. "Yes," he seethes, already stalking toward the door, overcome – and undone. "What reason shall she give, I wonder," he snarls, a violence coursing through his veins, rioting in his blood.

It's shockingly welcomed – how his hands itch for her throat. How he yearns to smother that vengeful, resentful pulse beneath his own palm.

"Jon, wait!"

But Bran's voice is already distant in his mind, already drowned out by the rushing in his ears.

Because this is what they've made him.

So, this is what he'll be.

Fire and blood, it is, then.

* * *

When Sansa wakes, it's with eyes peeled swiftly and widely toward the ceiling. She blinks. Blinks again. Lets the breath shudder through her.

And all at once she remembers. Bloodied sheets. A crippling pain. The desolate cry falling from her lips. The inexplicable hollowness that follows.

Her mouth parts, a soundless gasp breaking from her, her hands gripping the sheets beneath her in trembling fists.

All at once she remembers.

Before she can let the cry overtake her, she narrows her gaze on the high, grey ceiling, finds a spot where the arches meet, focuses on it. Glares and glares and glares at it. Breathes in. Breathes out. Keeps her eyes fixed to that far, grey spot.

Lets the grief bleed from her bones.

She reminds herself that she isn't safe here. She will never be safe here.

Later, she tells herself, nearly biting through her lip to keep the pain at bay.

Cry later, she swears, even as the tears bead at the corners of her eyes.

(Cry when you are safe. Until then...)

Sansa sucks a sobering breath through her lips, stirring beneath the furs, her body aching from its recent fight. Her vision swims when she tries to sit up.

"Sansa!"

She flicks her gaze to the bed across from hers, meeting Bran's worried eyes instantly.

"Bran," she croaks, throat dry from disuse. A hand goes to her pounding head.

"Thank the gods. I've been calling to you," he says urgently, still bedridden.

Sansa blinks at him in confusion, drawing her hand away from her forehead when the pain dulls into a vague ache. She draws further up, braces her weight on her elbow as she looks at him. "Calling me?"

Bran nods. "Sansa, I think... I think Jon is in danger."

She narrows her eyes on him, pushes up from her elbow, body heavy, until she can swing her legs over the side of the bed, hands braced along the edge to hold her. "What do you mean?"

A worried look crosses Bran's features. "I don't want you to over-exert yourself," he mutters.

"Bran," she says, taking a smooth, even breath to steady herself, "You wouldn't have tried to wake me if it wasn't important."

He gives her a sigh, face drawn tight.

She offers an encouraging nod, straightening somewhat. "So, what do you mean?"

"You were poisoned."

"Yes," she says through chapped, pursed lips. "Yes, that wasn't exactly hard to deduce."

"But Sansa, Maester Gregor is sure it was the Red Ausmothis from his own stores, recently stolen. Very recently."

She can only nod, teeth clenching. "As in..."

Bran hesitates a moment, turning more fully toward her, as much as he can. "Jon thinks it was the Princess Rhaenys."

Sansa glances away, wipes a stray strand of hair back behind her ear, a short, shallow breath leaving her. "When she was here, after...after the attack."

"Yes."

Her eyes slip shut. She'd considered it after all. How could she not? The way Rhaenys had looked at her as she wiped the blood from her hands in this very room, the cold, detached way she'd glanced to her stomach, the dark, unblinking stare she'd sent her away with.

"To kill a living thing – it's not so hard, after all."

The words lodge in her chest, the terrifying remembrance shaking her. But then –

"She was right."

Sansa stops, breath hitching in her throat. Her eyes snap open along the far wall, slipping slowly back toward her brother. "Bran," she gets out tremulously.

"But I saw her," he says, head shaking.

Sansa stares wide-eyed at him, barely breathing. "What?"

His words are fervent, feverish, rattling off his tongue like an avalanche, like a mountain coming down on her. "I thought it was a dream. Some drug-induced dream in the night, still drunk off that milk of the poppy, but I woke after dark at some point, saw a figure across the room, for just a moment, just a moment before sleep overtook me again, but I saw her, I know it, I wasn't mistaken. That white hair – "

"Bran," she chokes out, the breath stealing from her.

He meets her gaze. "I saw Daenerys."

Sansa feels sick. Her head swims. She braces a hand to her forehead, palm settling over one eye. She bends over, eyes squeezing fiercely shut. "Bran, I..." There's bile at the back of her tongue.

"You see, Lady Sansa, I was a Targaryen before I was ever a wife, before I was ever a princess or a mother. I will always be a Targaryen, a dragon. But you will never understand this."

The bile rises high in her throat, choking her. "Oh gods," she moans out, pushing herself to her feet shakily, wavering at the sudden vertigo.

"Sansa!" Bran warns, hand out-reaching. "Sansa, sit down. You're still not well."

"I have to go to him," she mutters lowly, almost to herself, a hand reaching for the cot to steady herself.

"Dammit, Sansa, I didn't tell you this so you could hurt yourself trying to do something foolish," he admonishes, trying – and failing – to reach for her from his position in the bed.

"Don't you see, Bran?" she hisses, whirling toward him, stumbling slightly. "He thinks it's Rhaenys."

"I know," Bran grinds out. "I know but – "

"If he hurts her," she says, head shaking, hand falling from her face as she straightens, vision easing back into focus, "If he hurts his sister, Bran, he will never forgive himself for it. Never," she swears, already gathering her skirts in her hands.

"Sansa, please, wait," he pleads, face overtaken in worry.

"I have to go to him," she whispers, turning for the door, gait slow and measured, taking her strength where she can. She braces a hand to the threshold.

"They will always be the stepping stones to my glory."

Sansa snarls beneath her breath, swinging the door wide.

She will never be but a blight beneath another's shadow, this she swears.

* * *

"Tell me you did not do this," Jon urges brokenly as he lets the door to Rhaenys' solar settle closed behind him.

His sister rises from her seat at the window in an unearthly calm, watching him.

He stares at her, long and hard, chest already heaving, fury already staining his lungs. "Tell me it wasn't you," he seethes.

Rhaenys cocks her head at him, lips pursed tight. "Is Lady Sansa... unwell?"

He thunders toward her suddenly, upending the side table he passes in his fury, the crash resounding in the room, and she blinks sharply at the sudden motion, spine straightening, chin lifting when he stops just before her, half-reeling, the anger of his heaving breath painting her cheeks. "Don't you even say her name," he snarls, eyes wild on her.

Rhaenys lets out a breath, looking up into his face, and something flickers over her features, faltering. But she swallows it back quickly, squares her jaw.

"I didn't think you could sink so low," he gets out, disgusted.

She glares up at him. "Oh, 'low' am I? Low?"

"Yes," he seethes, eyeing her.

She shakes her head, glare never diminishing. "That's rich, coming from you. You have all you've wanted now, don't you?" she throws at him, arms branching out, encompassing. "A place in this family. Acknowledgement. A pretty little wife. A babe." And then she scoffs, features screwing into something ugly, arms dropping back to her sides. "Except not a babe any longer, huh?"

"Don't you fucking – "

"And yet I still have nothing!" she screeches suddenly, stepping into him, eyes wide and dark and smoke-lit. Her hot breath pants from her, her own fury taking root.

Jon's fists shake at his side, his whole body a tight, rigid line, a quaking fury, boiling just beneath his skin. "Sansa was never a threat to you – never a threat to the love I held for you," he spits at her, the words rancid on his tongue, and he watches her blink fiercely at him, her jaw quaking at the ring of his words. He curls his lip in distaste, his chest constricting. "You killed that love all on your own," he chokes out.

She swallows tightly, chin still lifted, but she cannot stop the tremor from lighting across her skin, or the way her brows dip together in pain, or the instant sheen of wetness over her eyes.

(Perhaps moons ago, such an image might have stricken him.)

An ache burrows into his chest – an ache of years and years and endless, relentless years. The ever-long ache of loneliness.

(All of them, just grasping blindly in the dark, missing each other by miles.)

He wishes now, that he remembered what it was like to hold affection for this woman. He wishes he remembered what it meant to need his sister.

"Had you any love for me at all, even in the slightest," he grinds out, throat constricting at the words, eyes already tearing, "You would not have done this."

Rhaenys rears back, face still pinched tight. "I have done nothing unwarranted."

Jon snarls in her face, chest heaving. "My child is dead because of you. My wife – "

"I have done nothing," she hisses, voice cracking at the end, a hand pressed to her head, a shuddering breath leaving her. "Nothing," she whispers.

Jon scoffs – harsh and jagged and ugly. "You're a vile woman, Rhaenys."

Her head snaps up at his words, face blanking out.

And it's just so sharp in his chest, so cutting and bitter and inescapable. It claws its way up through his throat, hooks its claws at his ribs, anchors there like a foul thing – ready to bleed him from the inside out, from heart to tongue, from lungs to mouth – so that he can barely bring the words to air. "And I regret ever having loved you." he manages through grit teeth, ignoring the instant, painful remorse that lances through him at the words.

Rhaenys stares at him, still as stone. She licks her lips, takes a breath, tries to smother the quake of it with a laugh. A dark, mirthless laugh. She squares her jaw, tears hot on her lids.

(It is the shift – the rupture. Years from now, they will look back on this moment and they will know.

They will know.)

"Yes," she says, low and even and breathless. "Yes, paint me your villain. Your tormentor. That's what I am, aren't I? The source of all your struggles. The cause of all your grief. So then strike me down, brother," she says, arms stretching wide, voice a quiet hiss of air. "Take your revenge," she urges, eyes narrowing intently on him. "I imagine it hurts, doesn't it? To have watched it bleed out of her?"

Jon blinks back the hot wetness at his eyes. "Stop," he growls out, teeth clenching.

But she only advances, closing the already narrow distance between them. "It's not easy to watch what you love being torn away from you, is it?"

"I said stop," he warns lowly, chest heaving.

She glares up at him, lip curling. "You're a damn fool, Jon. You should have always known how this would end."

The rage is smarting along his tongue. "I swear I will – "

"I hope it hurt."

"Rhaenys - "

"And I'm glad it's dead," she spits.

(The rupture.)

His hand snaps toward her throat before he even realizes it, and then he's rushing her back with a roar until she collides with the wall, gasping, eyes blowing wide, hands grasping at his wrist.

"Shut your mouth!" he snarls in her face, fingers clenching at her throat as he leans in. "Shut your fucking mouth!"

Rhaenys arches against the wall as she tries to pull back from his grasp, a choked cough breaking from her lips, nails digging at his wrist. "Get off me!"

But it's a white-hot rage that rushes through him, keeping her pinned there against the stone, unrelenting, unforgiving. He bares his teeth in an ugly snarl, hot breath splashing over her cheeks. "You nearly killed her!" he bellows, pressing her into the stone, voice rattling with the force of his fury.

"I didn't," she grits out, a hiss of air, eyes glaring hot and accusatory at him.

"I said to shut your fucking mouth," he bites out, eyes shifting wildly between hers, and his fingers flex over her throat – just barely. Just enough for him to feel the warm rush of blood beneath his grip, to feel the thrum of her strangled words beneath his hold. Enough to wonder what just a little more pressure would do – if maybe he could crush her windpipe beneath his palm.

His eyes flick down to his hand over her throat, breath still raking violently from him, snarl still tugging at his lips. And then he glances back toward her face, panting, quaking – consumed.

Her eyes flick between his, widening just a touch, a flash of fear crossing her features, a wet croak leaving her, and then she's shaking, clawing at his wrist, mouth parting in silent alarm.

(Just a little more pressure, and – )

"Jon," she whispers, eyes tearing. "Jon – "

"Jon!"

The door slams open behind him. He whips his head back to find Sansa braced against it, panting, sweat dotting her brow.

Her eyes blow wide at the scene before her, and she stills instantly, mouth parting.

Jon nearly releases Rhaenys entirely in his surprise, straightening as his eyes take in Sansa's weakened lean against the threshold. "Sansa," he chokes out.

Her eyes shift frantically between them, and then her face draws into hardness, pushing off the door to stalk toward them. "Jon, don't do this, please."

A quiver of regret ricochets through him, his hand loosening around Rhaenys' throat. He swallows back the shame on an uneasy inhale. "You should be resting," he gets out in a dark whisper, turning back to face Rhaenys. His rage isn't quieted so easily.

His sister glares back at him, fingers still locked around his wrist.

"Jon, please, you're scaring me," Sansa urges, finally making her way to him, hands wrapping around his arm, tugging him away from Rhaenys and toward her. "Jon, please."

His tears gather in earnest now, lip trembling as the breath catches along his tongue. "What she did..." He cannot even manage the words, his throat constricting, his vision blurring from the tears.

"I didn't!" Rhaenys snaps, huffing and impatient.

And all his rage, all his years-long heartache comes tunneling down into a pinprick focus. "I'm tired of your lies. Your manipulations," he bites out, voice rough.

Sansa's hands grip more forcefully around his arm, one of them gliding up his chest and then to his cheek, urging him to look at her. "She didn't," Sansa gasps, head shaking, her own tears hot at the corners of her eyes. "She didn't, Jon, please, just – just listen to me."

Jon tears his gaze back to his wife. He blinks at her, his hand slowly opening at Rhaenys' throat, releasing her completely. He staggers back from the motion, and Rhaenys slides down the wall instantly, hands going to her throat. She drops to the floor unceremoniously, coughing through her curses. "Gods, Jon," she spits through clenched teeth, indignant to the end.

But Jon is staring at Sansa now, body trembling, taking in the sight of her, struck suddenly at how small and weak and pale she looks. His hands go instinctively to her arms, cupping around her elbows as he tries to hold her up. "Sansa, what..."

"Listen to me, Jon, she – she's your sister, and... and you don't want to do this, trust me, you – "

"She is nothing to me if she hurt you," he swears vehemently, hands going for her face now, cradling her jaw in his hands, thumbs brushing at her cheeks.

She nearly crumples into him at the motion, eyes wet instantly, mouth parting.

The fierceness of his admission scares him and yet anchors him in equal measure. Because it's the truth, after all. It's the most unquestionable truth he knows.

Rhaenys goes quiet on the floor beside them.

Jon peers at Sansa with imploring eyes, the rage dulled in him suddenly, only a vague heaviness keeping him rooted there before her. Just the sight of her. Just the sureness of her, there in his arms, at the edge of his fingertips. Just the knowledge that she's here – here, with him. Alive.

Just breathing her air –

The fury that had displaced him only moments ago settles into a low hum at the back of his mind, an uneasy but needed calm wrapping itself around his bones, thawing him out.

Sansa's hands wrap around his wrists, holding him tenderly. "I'm alright," she gets out on a whisper, voice clogged with tears. "I'm right here. I'm alright."

Jon's face crumbles at the words, at the fissure of pain he still recognizes crossing her features. And he knows she's still hurting. Knows her body's still fighting. "But you're not," he croaks out, thumb grazing against a fresh tear sliding down her cheek. His eyes rove her face. "You're not," he says brokenly.

Sansa swallows thickly, jaw clenching. She nods at him, taking a single, solid breath in. "I am, Jon. I promise. I'm not going anywhere."

His own words from earlier, reflected back. He curls in on her at the thought.

Jon's eyes drift down to her stomach instantly, a drop in his gut, the breath catching along his throat. He chokes out a sob. "But the babe..."

Her hands go for his face instantly, dragging his gaze back to hers, and then she's pressing into him, peering up into his face – fierce and fervent and yet still tear-lined. "We can try again," she promises him, brushing the curls back from his face with a tender touch. She offers a trembling smile. "We can – we can try again, Jon, because I'm okay. I'm okay and I'm right here, do you understand me? I'm right here. I'm not leaving you." She nods at him again, eyes shifting between his, sniffing back the tears. "I'm not leaving you, okay?"

A ragged breath leaves him, the force of it nearly winding him, and he drops his hands from her face to wind around her back, tugging her into his chest, sighing as he buries his face in her shoulder. Her arms link intrinsically around his neck, one hand buried in his hair, holding him to her.

"Sansa," he chokes out, and then there's an instant wave of revulsion rushing through him, pulling him from her, his eyes snapping to his sister. Realization at what he'd done, at what he'd let his anger do to him, branches through him like the slow pooling of ink in water. His tongue is heavy with the sickness, eyes widening. "Rhaenys, I...," he gets out hesitantly, arms slipping from around Sansa's waist.

She's staring up at him from her place on the floor, mouth a tight line, eyes wet. It's a face he's never seen before.

"Rhaenys - "

"What is all this ruckus?" Aegon demands suddenly, throwing the doors to Rhaenys' solar wide and stalking into the room. Daenerys strides in just behind him, silk skirts in her hands, an expression of annoyance flitting across her features.

"Your Grace," Jon begins, but never gets to finish.

Sansa slips from him like a ghost. She's all the way across the room before he realizes what's happening. And then her hand goes flying, smacking Daenerys across the cheek so hard her head whips from it, the loud crack resounding in the still room.

The following silence is deafening.

Jon stares wide-eyed at his wife, at her trembling shoulders, her barred teeth, her furious gaze. Aegon stands in a similar stupor beside his own wife.

"Sansa," Jon croaks out, hands reaching emptily at air.

Daenerys' head lolls back to glare dangerously at Sansa, not even bothering to reach for her cheek, to hold the smarting, reddened flesh beneath her soft palm. She just glares at Sansa.

Jon feels his breath break into a million jagged pieces in his throat. "Sansa," he gets out hoarsely, stepping toward her.

And then Sansa's swinging again, a bone-splitting shriek escaping her as she launches herself at Daenerys, eyes red-rimmed and glinting. "You monster," she screeches.

Everything snaps back into motion at once – Jon rushing toward them, Daenerys howling her indignation, Aegon grabbing frantically for Sansa's wildly swinging fists, Rhaenys pushing herself up off the wall, blinking disbelievingly at the scene before her.

"Lady Sansa, restrain yourself," Aegon bellows, a hand closing vice-like around her wrist, dragging her off Daenerys as the other woman tries to pull from her reach, spitting her distaste.

"Your Grace, please!" Jon yells, trying to step between their fumbling forms when he finally makes it to them, one of his arms wrapping tight around Sansa's waist and dragging her back with him.

But she's raging hard now – raging and raging and wailing. "I should kill you!" she screams, grasping at Jon's back as he tries to haul her away, her eyes only for Daenerys. "I should rip that shriveled excuse of a heart from your chest, you wretched woman!"

"Sansa! Sansa!" Jon screams, fighting her fury.

"You are dangerously close to treason, do you understand me, Lady Sansa?" Aegon snaps, chest heaving. "To strike the queen..."

Sansa cries out in Jon's arms, her sudden strength waning, her body shaking uncontrollably. He tries to gather her in his arms, hushing her, reaching frantically for her face. "Sansa, Sansa, please, talk to me."

"She took my child from me!" she wails, eyes finally meeting Jon's - blown wide. Salt-tinged.

"What?" Jon asks, breath winded from him.

Aegon straightens in surprise, his jaw snapping shut.

Sansa slumps into Jon's arms, mouth quivering. She snaps heated eyes toward Daenerys once more. "The Red Ausmothis. It was her. It was her doing, my lord," she mutters darkly, fingers curling in Jon's sleeves as she fights to remain upright, sweat lining her brow again, body clearly weakened from her fit.

Rhaenys stumbles toward them, edging along Jon's periphery. "What did you say?" she whispers.

Aegon folds his hands behind his back, shoulders pulling taut. A crease of worry dips along his brow. "Lady Sansa, let me warn you that slandering the queen will not be tolerated."

Sansa heaves a steadying breath, eyes slipping to Aegon smoothly. "It cannot be slander if it's the truth. Your wife poisoned me, Your Grace."

"She's gone mad from her ordeal," Daenerys mutters at her husband's elbow, shaking her head. And then her face pinches tight, a visage of pity crossing her features. "I know such grief intimately."

"You - " Sansa starts, seething, catching herself on a heated breath, swallowing the rage back down. Her fist quakes along Jon's sleeve.

Jon brushes a loose strand of copper from Sansa's sweat-pebbled temple, his hand trembling. A new kind of rage begins to curl beneath his skin – quiet and cautious.

Daenerys breathes heavily just behind Aegon, her eyes never leaving Sansa.

Aegon swallows tightly, chin lifting. "Explain yourself, before I call the guards in to restrain you."

Sansa straightens against Jon, half-braced against him for support. "Maester Gregor said his stores of Red Ausmothis – the poison they found in my blood – went missing recently. But access to his clinic and his quarters had been strictly forbidden to all but a few, thanks to Your Grace," Sansa explains, gaze shifting to Aegon's for a brief moment.

Aegon narrows his gaze on her.

"It's why you suspected Rhaenys," Sansa continues softly, eyes flicking over Jon's face in concern.

He turns his head slightly, catching Rhaenys' form in the corner of his eye, never looking upon her fully. He curls his arm tighter around Sansa's waist in his hold of her.

Something jagged and shameful starts to coil in his gut.

Aegon glances to Jon, and then swiftly to Rhaenys, violet eyes sharp and narrowed. "Is this true?"

Jon nods mutely. Rhaenys stays stock still beside him, hands hanging limp at her sides.

Sansa lets out a rueful laugh, blinking back the tears. "But Rhaenys wasn't the only one to visit Maester Gregor's clinic at that time."

Daenerys scoffs, stepping forward finally. "Yes, I was there. You all saw me," she says, motioning toward the three of them. "I came to collect Rhaenys. It is hardly secret."

"And how convenient," Sansa says through clenched teeth. "That you put in an appearance that could clear yourself of suspicion – with Rhaenys to vouch for you."

Rhaenys steps closer, peering at Daenerys with a watchful expression. Her lips purse almost imperceptibly.

"But that wasn't the only time you were seen in the clinic," Sansa says.

"What other time could I possibly – "

"That same night, my brother saw you."

Daenerys' mouth clamps shut, her eyes narrowing so swiftly Jon almost misses it.

An eerie calm seems to overtake Sansa then, her trembling ceasing, her eyes intent and watchful. "You stole into the stores that night, took the Red Ausmothis, and poisoned me the following morning at breakfast. Perhaps you hadn't planned it to happen so soon. It was rather reckless of you, after, all. But what other opportunity would you have to so easily cast suspicion on Rhaenys? What other chance would you have to so cleanly get rid of a loose end?"

"What are you talking about?" Daenerys snaps, her chest heaving.

"It was the easiest way to silence Rhaenys. Whether the poison was just meant to induce a miscarriage, or whether you truly intended to kill me..." She trails off, her head shaking. "But you knew Jon would never forgive her if he thought she'd tried to kill me. You knew what would happen if Rhaenys was deemed the culprit," Sansa continues.

Jon tries desperately to ignore the sour shame curdling in his gut at the slow realization.

Daenerys scoffs. "This is ridiculous." Her breath comes uneasily though, her head shaking just a touch too forcefully. "Why in seven hells would I need to 'silence' Rhaenys?"

"Because you're the one who convinced her to kill Stannis," Sansa gets out on a dark exhale, swallowing thickly.

Jon glances to Rhaenys then instantly, but his sister is already staring at Daenerys, jaw tight, brows furrowed. It's a painfully hopeful expression.

"Daenerys," Rhaenys whispers.

It sounds almost like a plead. And he knows that voice. Has known it for years. It's a needful voice – lonely and desperate and grasping.

And suddenly everything slips into place – nauseatingly so.

Jon wipes a hand over his mouth, the breath raking from him.

"Whispering your putrid words of vengeance," Sansa mutters, disgusted, "Preying on her fear, manipulating it into a weapon for you, a finely honed blade. It was easy to convince her to kill him, wasn't it? When you saw how distraught she was?" Sansa glares at Daenerys, lip curling.

Rhaenys takes a hesitant step toward them, her hand reaching for Daenerys' silk sleeve, fingers curling unsurely along the smooth folds. "You... you told me I'd have no peace until he was dead."

Jon feels a wave of sickness rushing over him.

Daenerys whips her sharp-hewn gaze toward Rhaenys. "I said no such thing."

Rhaenys stiffens, her hand falling from Daenerys' sleeve, mouth tipped open.

Daenerys clears her throat, seeming to shake the trembling princess' distress off with a hard look. "You were hysterical. I highly doubt you could rightly recount anything said that day." Daenerys turns sharply back to Sansa. "And the same goes for your brother. He was half-unconscious from milk of the poppy, if I recall. How can you trust any account from him? And why would any of this benefit me, hmm? Stannis could have named his conspirator if Rhaenys hadn't taken matters into her own hands. Why would I want him killed, when we could have uncovered the plot against us with that information? You're weaving quite the tale here, Lady Sansa, but I'm afraid it makes very little sense."

Sansa takes in a heated breath at Jon's side, face setting to near stone as she determinedly wipes away a stray tear. She stares at Daenerys for only a moment, only a brief, stilted moment, and then she bares her teeth, nails curling along Jon's arm, chin jutted like a ravenous thing. "You wanted to kill him because you were his conspirator."

Aegon steps forward then, a hand on Daenerys' arm, tugging her back. "That's enough, Lady Sansa," he grinds out, eyes dark on hers. "You're throwing around accusations now with hardly a shred of proof, and I'll not stand for it."

"Oh, you'll stand for it, Your Grace," Sansa bites out, pushing from Jon fully, standing straight-backed and unwavering.

"Sansa!" Jon hisses, reaching for her, trying to tug her back, but she shakes him off, stares the newly anointed king down.

Aegon's brows nearly hit his hairline, a disbelieving scoff escaping him. "You're braver than I thought," he says. And then his eyes narrow. "Or simpler," he scoffs.

But then Sansa's eyes shift quickly back to Daenerys, closing in on her and ignoring the king. "What did you promise Viserys, hmm? What did you guarantee him when you told him to hold his ships back at Stannis' approach? Was it a chance at the crown? Once your brother and husband and bastard nephew were dead, was that it? Or maybe you promised to annul his marriage to Cersei Lannister?"

"You should stop while you can, Lady Sansa," Daenerys mutters darkly.

"Lady Sansa," Aegon warns again, voice low, though it wavers now, just the slightest.

But Sansa can't stop, it seems. Could never stop. She only pushes forward, glare intent on Daenerys, mouth a cutting line. "Perhaps you should have stopped. Before you ever betrayed your own ambitions."

"And what ambitions are those?" she asks haughtily. "What more could I want, but what I already have? I was already deigned the next queen when I was betrothed to His Grace," she says, motioning to Aegon. "Why would I ever plot treason against my own self?" she laughs, head shaking with it.

"Because Father planned to wed Aegon and Rhaenys," Jon says suddenly, the breath winded from him, a kaleidoscope of thoughts assaulting him. "Because you were about to be set aside."

Aegon turns swiftly to Daenerys, eyes wide, shoulders stiff.

Rhaenys opens her mouth, but no words follow.

Daenerys squares her jaw, a hateful gaze lighting her features, a shadow of flame haunting the edges of her expression. And then she smirks, a dark laugh falling from her lips. "Rhaegar would never shame me like that."

"But he did," Rhaenys says suddenly, voice clogged with tears. "He told me. He told me our union would bear fruit. That we would be able to continue the Targaryen line."

"I am the Targaryen line," Daenerys hisses violently, face screwing into an ugly visage, snarl breaking free, a finger jutted into her chest with her adamancy. "Me. And I will not be set aside so easily."

Aegon swallows thickly, eyes flitting between the three women in unease. His jaw quakes, his breath coming unsteady. "I've heard enough," he says on a shaky breath. He turns to his wife. "Daenerys - "

"Rhaenys told me it was easy to kill a living thing," Sansa says quietly, interrupting the king.

Everyone turns silently toward her.

Sansa keeps her gaze on Daenerys, steady and sure. "She told me 'she' said it was an easy thing."

Daenerys' nostrils flare, her fists curling at her sides.

Rhaenys shakes her head, eyes drifting to the floor. "No..." she says in disbelief, voice cracking.

Jon turns to his sister, reaching on instinct, and then letting his hand fall away. It takes all of him to stay still, to stay steady and immovable. To let Sansa speak her piece. It's an unmanageable mess of remorse and resentment and exhaustion that tangles instead him. And somewhere else, somewhere only he knows, a bit of understanding wedges itself into the light.

Daenerys scoffs again, harsh and jaded. "I don't know what you're talking about," she snaps.

But this time it's Rhaenys who speaks, voice wavering and scared. "You told me I would never be safe until he was dead," she whispers.

Daenerys snaps dangerous eyes her way.

Sansa breathes deeply beside Jon, watching the two women keenly.

Rhaenys straightens, hands curling along her silken skirts – like some measure of comfort, some anchorage. "You made me think there was no other way. That there was no other way," she says shrilly, hands shaking now. "You told me it would just happen all over again, if we were to let him live. You told me I would only ever be safe when Stannis was dead!" she shrieks, crumpling in on herself, tears springing along her eyes again.

"Shut your mouth," Daenerys hisses at Rhaenys, sneer brimming along her lips. "You're only embarrassing yourself."

"You used me," Rhaenys gasps, mouth trembling.

A part of Jon aches at the words, at the realization.

"You used me," she cries, closing in on Daenerys, tears already trailing their tracks down her cheeks.

But Daenerys stands spine-straight, chin jutted, undaunted. "You were a blubbering fool," she admonishes, sneer curling along her lips, and Rhaenys stops abruptly. "What would you have done without me all these years, hmm? What could you possibly have accomplished on your own? You think seducing your desperate bastard brother is some grand feat?" she scoffs.

And the acid bites. It bites hard and unforgiving and loud. Jon feels the burn even as he repels from the words, meeting Rhaenys' wide eyes, and then Sansa's.

But Daenerys doesn't stop there. She steps toward Rhaenys, pushing her back merely with her vehemence. "You're a means to an end, dear niece. A means to a rightful, bloody end, but a means, all the same. You've never been more than that, I can assure you," she sneers at her.

And then Jon's rage is vibrant once more, an overwhelming ache coursing through him. A remembrance. A longing. The sister he once loved. The brother he once needed.

He looks at Daenerys and sees nothing but ugliness. Nothing but vile, unkempt selfishness. Not a House, but a Name. Not a home, but a grave.

A place he never wishes to return to.

Rhaenys stumbles back at Daenerys' visceral attack, a hand going to her mouth.

"You said it was easy to kill," Sansa says, as though in reminder. A blunted whisper that edges itself into their awareness. A quiet splinter of recollection.

Daenerys shifts her gaze to Sansa – abrupt and heated.

"I wonder how you came upon such understanding," Sansa says succinctly.

Jon tastes bile at the back of his tongue, an unexplainable queasiness overtaking him then.

"Who exactly did you kill, to know such a thing so intimately?" Sansa asks, voice like a sheet of ice. A deadly calm.

The room settles into another stilted silence.

And then, "Daenerys," Aegon chokes out.

Jon looks at his brother finally, finds him with his face drawn, his gaze on the floor, a sharp furrow to his brow. The sight throws him.

"Daenerys, you didn't..." he manages through an unsteady exhale, eyes drifting up to meet hers finally.

But she has only her glares left, only her spiteful scowls and cold detachment. "Yes, Your Grace?" It is said almost like a challenge.

Aegon stumbles back a step, head shaking, eyes widening in a dreadful realization. "That morning when – that morning Father died. When I woke and you were by his bed and you said – you said he passed in the night..." he mutters disbelievingly, voice trailing off.

Jon sucks in a sharp breath at the thought.

Even Sansa takes in a shuddering inhale beside him, seeming to not have expected quite such a revelation.

Rhaenys moans low and tear-laced, her face pressed into her palms.

Aegon licks his lips, reaching for Daenerys' arm. "Tell me it's not what I'm thinking."

Daenerys lifts her chin, eyes sharp and gleaming. She glances to each of them in turn, gauging, her breath coming quick and shallow now. "Your Grace, this is... this is absurd."

"Tell me you did not kill my father," he urges darkly, fingers curling tightly along her wrist now.

She tries to yank back, but he holds her tight, peers into her face with something desperate and needful.

"Let go of me," she bites out.

"Tell me!" he demands, shaking her.

"I will not be treated thus," she swears, sneering into his face.

"How could you..." He nearly sobs with it.

"Aegon – "

"He was your brother!"

"He was weak!" she shouts, chest heaving with it.

It comes like the first gasp of drowning – the fear and realization bright and sudden.

Aegon releases Daenerys as though burned, recoiling from her, his face screwing into a wounded disbelief, his breaths coming halted and heavy. "You..."

"He was no dragon," she says in answer, voice deadly calm again. And then she glances out over the rest of them, eyes lingering over Sansa, before her gaze shifts back to Aegon. She blinks. Seems to slip into something dark and unnamable, the barely perceptible curl of her lip like the promise of a hook to a fish's maw. And then she smiles.

It takes the sun from the room.

"So yes," Daenerys begins, slow and even. "I took a pillow to his face and smothered him in his sleep. What life would be left for him, anyway, wounded as he was? I saved him."

"You killed him," Jon corrects vehemently. "Your own brother, you killed him!"

"Oh gods," Rhaenys moans, a hand going to her stomach as though sick, slumping against the desk to keep herself upright.

Sansa lets out a tremulous exhale at Jon's side, and he glances to her, sees the paleness of her cheeks, the tremble to her limbs, and he reaches for her, helps her to a chair not far from them.

Daenerys laughs. It halts Jon as he leans over Sansa in concern, the sound sending a chill lancing up is spine. He glances back at her, his vision already blurred with sudden tears. He wipes at them furiously, hardly able to fathom more at this very moment, only trying to shove it all away, to focus, to keep himself from dropping to his knees from the weight of it.

It takes all of him not to barrel into Daenerys with every ounce of rage still left in him.

"Why are you all so surprised?" she asks shrilly, a touch of delirium to her voice now, her smile stretching wide and sharp-toothed as she raises her hands to encompass the room. "Is this not what we do? Is this not what it means to be Targaryen? We take what is ours, with fire and blood. We take it," she says breathlessly.

Jon glances at her over his shoulder, his teeth clenching as he tries to rein in his anger.

She only barrels on though, heedless of their growing horror, drunk off her own righteousness. "But Rhaegar didn't understand that. He'd grown soft – same as you all. He'd rather kowtow to every lowly kingdom, offering marriage and alliances – compromising – rather than show them the strength of our rule, to put them in their rightful places – beneath us." She barks another laugh, mirthless and cutting. "In fact, the only thing my brother knew how to take was women who were never his in the first place."

Jon's shoulders bunch in his vile anger, a hand curling slowly into a fist at his side, his other stiff along Sansa's shoulder. She reaches for his hand in concern, lays her trembling fingers over his. He takes a breath, glancing down to her in reassurance.

"But I will not be so weak. I am the blood of Old Valyria. And I will take what is mine," Daenerys seethes, her delirium sharpening down into a fine focus, a rush of dark ambition – blossoming out like blood in snow. She glares at Rhaenys, who only stares back at her, tearful and exhausted. "I will not let loose tongues set my plans astray. Nor will I allow failure to go unpunished. Stannis has learned that lesson well enough." Daenerys' gaze shifts to Jon and Sansa, her lip curling in distaste. "And I will not allow for bastard blood to ever supersede my own claim. I am more than my womb. I am no less a queen simply because that bitch can whelp."

Jon nearly breaks from Sansa then, stepping toward Daenerys with a dangerous expression, but his wife's hand at his wrist stops him, tugs him back to her in her need, her body trembling from the exertion, and he breathes deep, tries to keep his vision from flooding red, standing stock still beside her chair.

Daenerys smirks in satisfaction, gaze finally drifting toward Aegon. And then her smile slips, eyes hardening, mouth a thin line. She lifts her chin. "And I will not be set aside by any man. Not even my brother." Her eyes narrow, an eerie, sure calm settling over her. "Not even my king."

Aegon stays staring at her, a quiver of pain flashing over his features. Silence reigns in the room once more, and then Rhaenys slumps back against the desk fully, head shaking as she winds her hands into her hair.

"Guards!" Jon barks.

Four men enter the room at the call, with two of Aegon's Kingsguard.

"Jon," Aegon says weakly, shaking his head, but he's still reeling, a hand bunched in the chest of his tunic, words failing him.

Jon gives him only a single, momentary glance of hesitation, a brother's last, lingering concern, and then his face is steeling into determination, his decision long since made. "Take Her Grace," he commands, the title a sneer on his lips. "For the crimes of kin and king slaying."

Daenerys huffs her indignation. "You would dare!" she shrieks.

"Oh, I would dare a lot worse," Jon promises threateningly. His eyes narrow on hers. "You've no idea what I'd dare to do to you."

"Jon," Aegon manages, clearing his throat. "I won't... I won't allow..."

"She killed King Rhaegar," he cuts in, making sure his voice is loud and even – unequivocally clear for all to hear.

The guards shift hesitantly on their feet at the exclamation, eyes shifting between them.

Jon steps toward Aegon, his hand still linked with Sansa's behind him. "She killed a royal babe," he grinds out, just barely managing to keep his voice from quaking. He registers Sansa's soft sob just behind him, and squeezes her hand in his. "She's admitted to these crimes herself. It is the highest treason one can commit."

Aegon glances to his wife, who glares hotly at him, daring a soul to touch her.

"I am a queen," she grits out, nostrils flaring. "You cannot – "

"You will try her, Your Grace, or I will kill her where she stands," Jon promises vehemently, chest heaving. "Make no mistake."

Aegon's eyes widen at the low threat, and he swallows tightly.

Jon thinks he should be surprised at the surety with which he says it, at the fierceness of his rage. But he can't find it within himself to question it.

Because he would, he knows. He would kill her without hesitation, right here. Right now. For what she's done to them. For what she's done to Sansa.

He glances to his sister, still crumpled in on herself, weeping quietly, a hand over her face.

For the inescapable self-disgust he feels when he remembers the frail pulse of Rhaenys' throat beneath his palm.

Jon tears his gaze away from his sister, settling on his brother instead, dark and unblinking. "Your guards have heard her crimes now. It won't be long before the rest of the Keep knows. Or do you plan to silence them as well? To cover up, once again? Just like our father did. You see how well that served us."

Aegon opens his mouth, closes it, squeezes his eyes shut as he shakes his head. "I..."

"I doubt Viserys would keep his silence concerning her part in this," Jon continues, motioning toward a fuming Daenerys, "Not when he could lose his head for it." His gaze sweeps smoothly toward his aunt. "I suppose it was a convenient failsafe for you, to pin the Lannisters with the crime of his turning, when you eventually killed him, too. Just another loose end, I imagine."

Daenerys steps toward them, scoffing. "You baseborn cur," she spits. And then she swings her fierce gaze on Aegon but he shrinks back, a hand going over his face as a ragged breath leaves him.

"Take her," Jon demands once more, ignoring Daenerys.

She shrieks and rushes toward him, but the guards grab her before she can land a fist. She howls as they drag her back.

Aegon croaks her name, hand falling from his face as he watches her struggle.

"You can't do this to me!" she shouts, shoving at the guards, digging her heels in. "I am the dragon, do you hear me? I am the blood of Old Valyria! The only rightful Targaryen! You can't - you can't – "

"Put the traitor in chains," Jon commands, voice booming over Daenerys' threats.

As she's dragged from the room, Jon feels a tug on his hand, and he glances down to Sansa, finds her leaning over the cushioned arm of the chair, her head in her free hand. He kneels down beside her immediately. "Sansa," he urges, a hand going to her cheek.

She smiles dimly at him. "Will you... will you take me away?" she mutters through her pain.

Jon nods, releasing her hand to slip his arms under her knees and around her back, scooping her up into his arms. She winds her arms around his neck, her head falling to his shoulder with a sigh.

Jon turns to look at his siblings, still rocking from the revelations, faces drawn, mouths tipped open. Rhaenys stares at him with a surrendering sadness he has not seen in years. He gulps back his unease, focuses on the weight of Sansa in his arms. "This isn't finished," he says, eyes flitting toward Aegon.

But his brother – his king – can only shake his head numbly, his eyes to the floor, a hand back over his mouth. And at the sight, Jon realizes how small and lowly he is – has always been.

It's not a welcomed realization, he finds. It smarts keenly, in fact. Like a splinter finally torn free.

(It still aches where it was buried, though, and Jon wonders if it always will.)

The last thing he sees before he turns for the door is Rhaenys's tired weight pushing from the desk, walking to Aegon with hands raised, reaching for him, a tear-laced sob escaping her lips, and then her hands slipping round his shoulders as she tugs her younger brother into her arms.

He does not stay to witness more.

He turns for the door, Sansa secure in his arms.

He does not look back.

* * *

"You said you would not be the king that let House Targaryen splinter to pieces. This is how you do it," Jon says lowly, standing before Aegon's desk, hands cupped together behind him. An even, single-minded calm blankets over him as he stares down at his brother.

After making sure Sansa was settled back at Maestor Gregor's, he'd stopped only to ensure Daenerys was still secured in the cells, before making his way to Aegon's solar.

He will not wait another moment. He will not keep Sansa in this dragon pit another second.

Aegon looks up at him, head lifting from where it rested in his palms, his elbows braced to the desk beneath him.

"Execute Daenerys."

Aegon stands swiftly, swaying with the motion. "You don't understand what you're asking."

"I'm not asking," Jon says evenly.

Aegon narrows his eyes on him. And then he shakes his head, rakes a hand through his fine, silver hair, stalks away from the desk. "It's not that simple."

"It is. It is that simple. She's a kinslayer. And a kingslayer. It's as simple as that."

"She's the queen," Aegon protests, voice rising shakily. "She's... She's the queen, Jon, my wife, and – "

"And a murderer." He stays with his hands secured behind him, shoulders pulled taut. He does not give an inch.

Aegon glances over his shoulder at him, a frown marring his features. "She was threatened, you know that."

"By what? An unborn babe?" he sneers, his ire rising. "Or perhaps a dying man?"

Aegon paces back toward the desk. "Do not ask me to execute her," he bites out, a wet sheen over his eyes, a fist jutted into the desk. His shoulders rack with his heavy breath.

Jon blinks at him, the revelation sweeping through him. His mouth parts, a disbelieving breath leaving him. And then the sneer is back, lips tipping down in a foul frown. "Gods, but you love her, don't you? You actually love her?"

Aegon licks his lips, braces his hands along the desk. He shifts his gaze back and forth along the length of it, as though searching. "She is... she is my wife, and I – "

"She murdered my child!" Jon bellows, his hands coming from round his back, a thunderous step taken toward his brother.

Aegon clenches his jaw, gaze still set to his desk. His shoulders are a thin, trembling line. They cannot carry more.

Jon is shaken by the frailty of him then. He swallows back his ire, reaches for that cold-cut calm, that steady severity, lets it wash over him. "You think she has any affection for you?" he asks derisively. And he would be lying if the sudden stricken look on his brother's face hadn't hurt. But he is well past sympathy. So, he continues. "You think she knows love? Understands it?" He scoffs. "She killed our father, her own brother. What do you think she will do to you, when you've ceased to be anything more than an obstacle to her?"

Aegon slumps back into his chair.

"You cannot pardon her."

Aegon looks up at him, breath heaving from him, brows drawn down.

Jon squares his jaw. "You will take her head, or I swear on all you find holy, brother, I will take it for you," he seethes out, glaring down at him. "And I shall not be clean about it," he promises darkly.

His brother closes his eyes, swallows thickly. His face blanks out, features smoothing into stillness, and then he's blinking his eyes open once more, violet gaze fixed to Jon. He brings his hands to the desk, winds them together slowly and meticulously, steepling his fingers together over the wooden table top. "You've grown bold," he says stiffly – alarmingly quiet.

Jon says nothing, continuing to watch him.

Aegon cocks his head. "Where has all this confidence come from, that you can so easily make such demands of your king?" he asks coldly.

Jon barely manages to keep his smirk at bay. "This very moment, Theon Greyjoy rides to Winterfell with my hand-written missive to Lord Stark detailing your part in Stannis' rebellion against the crown, and how his daughter was nearly killed in the process, only to be poisoned by Stannis' conspirators barely a sennight later."

Aegon's fingers press together tightly, a deep frown marring his features. "My part?" he asks incredulously.

"Your part. Or your wife's," Jon says, moving to lean over the desk, hands planted on either side of it, almost a mirror of his brother. "I suppose my little woven tale wasn't very far off the mark. It matters little though. Whether Ned Stark knows it was you or Daenerys who plotted against his own daughter, who killed the reigning king, who treated with rebels and threatened the peace of the realm – in the end, it doesn't matter which of you takes the blame. Because either way, he will raise his armies and march on the capital. Either way, he will avenge his kin. You and I both know he won't stand by again and watch another lady of the North bleed out in the South," he says meaningfully.

Aegon clenches his jaw, his anger clearly visible in the lines of his face, his flashing violet eyes, but Jon is not deterred. Instead, he relishes in the sight, an unfamiliar sort of freedom playing at the edges of his mind, a new kind of thrill, wholly independent and his. Untethered.

"You would bring war upon us?" Aegon hisses.

"Aye. I would bring war upon you. Upon this whole House. Upon every Targaryen that ever threatened me or my wife," he grits out, nails curling along the wood of the desk beneath his splayed hands. "I would bring a war like you've never seen upon all your heads."

Something flashes in Aegon's eyes, and he purses his lips, stares up at Jon. "You can't possibly think I'd let either of you live, then."

Jon keeps his gaze, his glare never relenting. "No," he says evenly. And it's the truth. But here's another truth: "Which is why you have a choice."

His brother cocks his head, lips a thin line, watching him. It's a bare motion to continue.

Jon takes it as the encouragement he'd been looking for. "Execute Daenerys for her crimes against the crown and against the realm. Illuminate her dealings with Stannis, and her manipulation of Viserys. If you're lucky, and if he was smart enough for it, our uncle would have kept evidence of their correspondence. Leverage that for his life. It will solidify the accusation against her – that she tried to eliminate those with claims to the crown, even against you. Let her take the fall for Stannis' attack, for Rhaegar's death, and then let Sansa and I go North, to Winterfell."

Aegon sucks a slow, heavy breath through his lungs, standing stiffly to face Jon. "And why would I ever let you North, hmm? Where you can plan such treason yourself with Lord Stark?"

"Theon Greyjoy has been instructed to expect a raven from me every two days. Should he ever not receive a raven at such time, he is to deliver my missive directly to Lord Stark. But," he says, licking his lips, staring his brother down, "If you should let us North, let me continue my ravens, then my missive will never land in the hands of Ned Stark. And he will never know of the babe she lost, of the poison your wife fed her. He will never have reason to raise his armies against you, to break from the crown."

Aegon's nostrils flare, his hands curling into fists at his sides. "You expect me to trust you? To trust that once I let you North, you will not do exactly that? Once you are safe and out of my reach?"

"I don't expect you to trust anything," Jon says, "Except your own fear."

Aegon's eyes narrow sharply. "What?" he gets out on a sharp breath.

"You can silence us now, kill us, detain us, whatever it is you're thinking of, and you are guaranteed war with the North. And considering our family's fragile hold on the other kingdoms, I'd wager the Riverlands and the Vale won't be far behind the North. Come to think of it, even the Reach has ties with the North now. Do you think they'd bet on your dwindling power? Or that of the House their precious Rose of Highgarden has now tied herself to?"

Aegon's frown harshens into a thin line, his ire clearly building.

But Jon forges on. "Or you can let us go. Take me for my word. I have never broken it. When I tell you we will go North quietly, I mean it. I will live out the rest of my life in Winterfell with my wife and her family. I will not pursue any courtly station or high appointment. I will not stir rebellion or thoughts of independence. I will stay your loyal vassal, and you make keep whatever precarious hold you still have over the kingdoms. Give us your leave, and I will give you peace."

Aegon curls his hands atop the desk, staring him down, a war waging within him.

"But should you threaten my wife or her family, ever – then I will raise such a rebellion as you've never seen before. I will lay our House to waste, once and for all. I will strike you down from that precious Iron Throne with my own hand, do you understand me? I will bring all the continent down on your head and watch as fire and blood takes you," he seethes out, chest heaving. "Test me, and I will demolish you and yours. Test me, and it will be the last thing you do."

Aegon pulls his hands from the desk slowly, watching Jon with keen eyes, straightening as he watches him. And then he looks off to the far wall, takes a deep, soldiering breath, winds his hands behind him in some semblance of grace – what grace he has left, at least. And then he sighs, and it seems to take all of him.

Jon barely allows himself to hope at the sound, staying stock still.

Aegon's frown eases out, a solemn, blank look overtaking his features instead. He flits a resigned gaze to Jon, turned slightly from him. "You wish to go safely North, and have Daenerys executed for her crimes," he says softly, a quiver of regret lining the words.

Jon only nods, never relinquishing his hard gaze.

Aegon's eyes drift down, another heavy sigh leaving him. "Have you any other conditions?" he asks reluctantly.

Jon doesn't let his breath of relief escape him, instead, drawing back from the desk, straightening slowly, evenly. He clears his throat, nods at Aegon. "Let Rhaenys go."

His brother glances up at that.

Jon sighs, shaking his head. "Let her choose her own path," he says.

Aegon says nothing, only shifts his gaze back to the far wall.

Jon wonders if he's remembering that day. That day seven years ago. A half-dead horse. Seventeen arrows. Rhaenys breathing slow and shallowly, slumped in Aegon's arms, Jon's hand gliding over her hair, his other hand fisted in his lap.

It had been a grey afternoon, the hills rolling past them, King's Landing just a hazy shroud over the horizon. Their men, few and trusted, had stood back an appropriate distance, their gazes turned respectfully.

Jon remembers suddenly, as though from a dream, that Aegon had been the first to cry.

The recollection jars him – sudden and unexpected. He hadn't recalled that detail until just now.

Hadn't wanted to, perhaps.

"Rhaenys..." Jon begins, his voice faltering. He clears his throat, tries again.

(A grey afternoon. Her innocence – gone.)

"Rhaenys never had a choice before. Never had the chance to heal," he says, voice clogged with tears. "When Father covered it up, when he silenced those guards to 'protect her honor'," he grits out, teeth clenching, "He'd done her more harm than good."

"She'd have lost any possible marriage prospects, if word got out," Aegon argues softly, almost as though he weren't truly trying. "You know that."

Jon scoffs. "And what marriage prospects has she now, hmm? You?"

Aegon cuts a heated glance Jon's way and it silences him abruptly – the pain in his eyes vibrant and unpracticed. It's not a look Jon's ever seen on him before.

"I would never – " Aegon cuts himself off, swallowing tightly, gaze drifting down to the desk as he shakes his head. "Whether you believe me or not, I just... I don't want to see our sister hurt anymore."

Jon's mouth parts at the quiet admission.

Aegon sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But what can be done for her?" he says brokenly, and it lights a pain in Jon he'd thought long forgotten.

"Let her decide," he says.

Aegon's hand falls from his face, his gaze drifting up to meet Jon's.

Jon swallows thickly, nodding. "Whatever it is – whether that's to marry, to leave this place, to... I don't know. Whatever it is – let it be her choice. Give her back the power to chart her own course, to control her own fate. Stop caging her." Jon swallows back the quake in his voice, his eyes tearing at the words. "This is what we can do for her," he urges.

Aegon looks at him, and suddenly, they are young boys again, each looking to the other for acknowledgement, each hanging on the other's words. He's back in that stable, all those years ago, before he ever loosed his father's horse. Aegon is right on his heels, giddy and reckless as they lead the mare out. And Jon...

Jon has his eyes fixed to the sky – wide and dark and littered with stars.

"I've always wanted to ride Father's horse," Aegon says behind him, his hand trailing the mare's flank, eyes wonderous on the beast.

Jon looks back at him, catching the awe in his features, and his hands loosen around the reins instinctively, suddenly struck with a harsh realization.

For he was never meant to ride his father's horse.

And maybe there's a bit of allegory to the realization, but he's too young to know it just then, too young and earnest and free.

He watches Aegon's hand glide up the side of the horse, a sense of possession to the motion, and Jon thinks he understands then, finally, though it takes him many, many years to acknowledge it.

(A bastard craves and craves, after all. He'd been taught thus, and hadn't thought to ever question it.

Even when he found he wasn't the only one craving.)

"We all have our parts to play," his brother had said, and he had been right.

So, he will be the traitor. He will play the part.

(But the curtain closes here.)

And perhaps this is their tragedy, in two acts. In fire and blood.

(There is no Act Three.)

"Let her go," Jon says again, breathless and winded – exhausted from this struggle, this plight. "Just let her go," he pleads on a hoarse whisper.

Craving has done nothing for any of them. Only reminded them of their loneliness.

(He wants to be a brother, just one last time.)

Aegon watches him with clear eyes, nothing accusatory in them, nothing searching. And maybe he does remember – rolling hills and his sister's breathless, hollow voice –

"Ride."

Aegon clenches his jaw, his gaze swinging away from Jon's. A sigh leaves him, heavy and laden with the past. "I understand," he says, voice soft.

Jon can only nod. They stand like this for many moments, with neither of them willing to break the silence. And then Jon dips his head in a respectful farewell, backing away slowly. He makes it nearly to the door when Aegon's rough exhale stops him, his hand halted mid-reach for the handle.

"How did this happen?" his brother asks brokenly, sinking down into his chair, his head in his hand, and Jon nearly turns back fully then, halting just at the half-turn, still braced for the door and yet – inexplicably tethered to the man hunched behind the desk.

A man he used to know, as a boy. A man who used to be a boy.

(And maybe this is what softens Jon, in the end.)

Aegon brings his other hand to his face, burying his sob in his weathered palms. "How did this happen?" he asks again, voice quaking.

This, Jon thinks. Everything.

This chasm between them, this resentment inside them, this choice before them.

Everything.

How did this happen?

But Jon knows it very well. Has known it from the start, even if they didn't.

He turns fully to his brother, hand falling back to his side. It's alright that he never meets his eyes, his face still buried in his hands. It's alright because, in the end -

"We did this to ourselves," Jon says, a measure of surety to the words – a finality.

Aegon stiffens, his sob choked off on a sharp inhale.

Jon doesn't wait for a reply. He doesn't wait for his brother to tear his face from his hands, to look at him desperately – suddenly boyish and lost. He doesn't wait for anything.

He simply leaves.

That sudden-ripped splinter, that searing hole left in its wake – Jon finds it doesn't sting so much anymore. Because in the end, it is a clean ache.

It is the harrowing ache of freedom – when all the blood has let at last.

[forbidding-souda]

sorry if this is a bit much but can i please request a female reader having a secret crush on souda & putting love letters into his locker? and then souda finds out its her and confesses? tysm!

Kazuichi Souda with fem! Reader that has a secret crush on him

Ya’ll are so creative this is so cute yes yes yes this is gonna get a lil cliche just bc it’s me and i’m outta pocket rn it’s 23:00 deal with me for now

I was gonna americanize it but I really wanted to go with my comfort of calling him Souda instead of Kazuichi - so on that note - does Hope’s Peak Academy have getabako’s????? Does anyone know??? Bc istg those kids wear their outside shoes in that academy.... maybe only the reserve course wears the indoor slippers LMAO.

Also btw am i the only one who liek??? Am I tripping or does my tumblr not notify me when my asks are answered? Bc when I checked the accounts of the people, my ask was posted, but I didn’t get a notification ya’ll am I tripping or.

-Mod Souda

Once again, you spend most of your class time with color pencils, coloring the edges of the paper you wrote on that morning. You shade in hearts, lollipops, and cute things of the sorts.

The writing, in perfect pen, just compliments him on the kind things about him. His beautiful smile, his joyful laugh... oh, just everything you love about him!

Even thinking about him makes your chest all fuzzy, plus a little twing of anxiety.

You have started putting love letters on his shoes in the getabako, which is a fine venting system to get your feelings out directly but anonymously, but when will you get tired of it? 

Putting your love letters in such a dirty area is disgusting on your behalf, too, but it’s better than risking it to try and put them on his desk.

It’s not going to satisfy your need for communication for much longer.

He’s also obsessed with Sonia, which isn’t a plus on your behalf. Just thinking about it gives you a headache. 

Souda, make it make sense!

You sigh through your nose once the bell rings. Pack up the color pencils and wait for him to put on his shoes and leave. That’s easy. 

Just like every other day.

He talks with Tanaka when he walks, passing your classroom. You distinguish his voice immediately.

It’s interesting, actually. The two of you have almost never talked. Well, maybe a bit.

You’re a nice friend of one of his classmates, so when you often get free time after school, you can sneak your way into the bunch.

Every conversation with him is ingrained into your memory. You couldn’t stop being amazed by him! His hair, his smile, his eyes. You complimented it all!

Now, you follow their voices down the hall, waving bye to your peers while slipping the note in your book bag.

Thoughts start to slip into your mind. What if he is going to start waiting by his getabako? Has he planted one of his friends to try and spy you out?

Maybe places them there isn’t safe anymore.

Or you’re just being overly suspicious. Jeez, this is all too overwhelming!

After putting on your shoes, you look over. His locker is void of people after all. 

Again, you put the note on his slippers before walking away.

How embarrassing.

The next morning, you wake up early to get ready for school. 

And then, you take time to start writing your love letter of the day.

Your mind seems to be occupied recently with Souda Kazuichi. Is that really healthy? 

Maybe you should start focusing on other things.

You should paint your nails. Yes, that’ll help!

What color does Souda like? He does like pink, doesn’t he? Pink will do then.

Sitting, with music playing softly in your house, you paint your nails a vibrant shade of pink while the sun begins to open up in the morning sky.

Being slow isn’t exactly your whole deal. So you were cautious enough to paint your nails after getting all ready. And with wet nails, you pack your halfway written letter and head out the door.

You blow on your nails the entire time there, whining once you notice the smudges on some of your fingers. Embarrassing! You should have spent more time to wait for them to dry. 

It doesn’t matter all that much anyways. Not like anyone will notice your nails.

Souda is putting on his shoes by the time you get there. Around the same time, how romantic.

You smile a bit.

“Hey, Y/N!” He greets. You take a short time to scan his person for the note. It’s tucked into his pocket, you can vaguely see. At least he has it.

“Good morning, Souda!” You wave to him.

He pauses for a moment. It draws you back a few steps. Is it not morning? Is that not his name? What did you say wrong?

“Did you paint your nails pink?” He asks, eyes wide with amusement.

That’s a relief. But also not. He wasn’t supposed to notice.

“Oh, yes I did, but I smudged them though so I’m not too happy about how they turned out.” Stepping close to him, you display your nails out.

“You did them this morning?”

Every part of you is nervous. What should you say? What can you even respond with? Will he think it’s weird?

“I had the time.” You just say before turning to but on your slippers. He smiles from behind your back.

In class, as usual, you spend your time decorating the card. And since you didn’t finish it in the morning, you even wrote some of the words in different colors! It looks cute, and it’s definitely a way to waste your time. Nothing really goes on in Hope’s Peak Academy. Who knew.

But eventually, after the school day, you put the letter on his shoes. Hopefully he isn’t cheating by waiting.

That always plagues your mind. But he wouldn’t do that.

The walk home is peaceful. The sky is cloudy again, and if you look up, it’s cellphone wires and a blueish grey hue. Not gloomy as always.

Maybe you’re just happy.

Happiness. It’s such a positive thing. A boy - that doesn’t even belong to you - is making you happy? It seems like such a timeless, fleeting thing.

Hopefully it can be permanent.

The morning comes again, where you eat breakfast and prepare for your day at the academy.

You stare at yourself a little longer in the mirror today. Would Souda like you? 

Your hands run down your shirt. Of course he would! You shouldn’t be so silly.

Packing up the daily note, you make your way to school again.

The sun peers down at you. That’s sweet. Brightening up your day.

It makes you laugh a little.

When you get to school, you don’t see him. He’s probably already in class.

You slip on your shoes before calmly walking towards your class.

Oh?

Souda stands, his arms crossed, looking anxious. 

You almost turn around.

Bye.

But he notices you quickly, his eyes lightening a bit. The deep fear in your gut doesn’t go away, only worsening as he steps closer to you. You’re frozen in place. Your feet have melted to the ground.

“H-Hey-”

“It’s you, isn’t it?” He almost looks excited.

“What?” Unbelievable.

“The notes... it’s you, right?”

Your cheeks start to heat. “Just tell me if you planted someone to wait for me to put them down. Is that how you figure it out? Jeez, I assumed you weren’t going to cheat like that!”

Every possible emotion swirls through his eyes for a second before settling on a soft smugness. He pulls out a letter from your pocket, and twisting it to show the back. “You smeared that pink nail polish on it.”

Honestly, you had assumed that had happened. It wasn’t a big deal until he noticed your nails that morning.

He continues, “But yes! I love the notes you give me, I was looking forward to them every day! I really think you’re cute, S/O... so do you want to go on a date with me... sometime maybe?” 

His confidence drizzles the more he went on.

Your heart levitates. It is like your entire body is surrounded by hearts.

“Oh, of course! That would be lovely!”

The two of you stand there, bewildered by each other. It’s quiet for a second.

“I - uhm... see you after school, then?” He suggests.

“That would be lovely, Souda.”

A blush forms on his face. “You can call me Kazuichi.”

[astrojoy]

CONGRATS ON YOUR FOLLOWER MILESTONE BBY! IM PROUD OF YOU SM! 🥳🥳

~ YOU DESERVE ALL THE LOVE YOU GET!! 👏🏼 you put so much care into your work and it’s always all or nothing, your hard work and attention to detail is greatly appreciated ! I believe you’ll do great things because you’re already so amazing ! I’m so excited to see what the future has in store 😌

~YOUR ENERGY IS OUT OF THIS WORLD !!! You are like everyone’s mood booster that is able to somehow make everyone feel instantly better, I really hope you understand it doesn’t go unnoticed and people truly love you for this, including myself of course🥰

~YOU HAVE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL SOUL!!! I’ve seen you stand up for some blogs you are close to and even though it seems like a normal thing others would do, it’s still so admirable. You take into consideration everyone’s feelings and even though you tell others when they’ve crossed boundaries you’re still kind with the way you present yourself and how you feel. I could feel how protective and patience you are for those you really care about. It’s like you don’t back down and I just love that about you💕

~ YOU’RE SO EXPRESSIVE AND HEARTWARMING!!! You’re reactions and interactions with others is always something exciting to see lol, you’re such a big ball of sunshine and your energy is so contagious. I love how you always show your thanks and appreciation for others and I believe it’s your turn to feel the love! You always go above and beyond for others and it’s crazy- sometimes I feel like we don’t deserve you but at the same time I can’t imagine this place without you. You’re irreplaceable ✨

~ YOUR BLOG IS SO YOU !!!👑 It’s easy to tell you apart from others bc your style is so distinctive. Even the way you talk stands out because you seem so authentically yourself it’d be hard to copy your ways, I bet you were probably someone who struggled with this. Obviously so much people admire you so it’s not surprising you may have a few copycats, it’s not the best thing but that’s how you know you’re truly succeeding. CONTINUE TO BE YOURSELF AND SEE HOW THINGS FLOW, I KNOW FATE HAS SO MUCH PLANNED 🌸

I

Am

So

Moved

You took all that time to type out all of that?

For me?

Let me change the aesthetic up to match my emotional heart right now

🤭🤫🥺

I have no words- this caught me off guard- I had my hands cupping my mouth the whole time. I was so in awe at every sweet and kind detail you said- YOU EVEN ORGANIZED IT AS POINTS WITH CUTE GIFS- You are such a sweet angel 🥺🤝🥺

You say I'm sweet but this act of kindness just can't go unmissed 😭 this was so beautiful, I am so blessed to have such kind souls to talk to. I've seen you interact so much as well and I've noticed it personally. Everytime I see your name pop up it quite frankly makes me happy because it's like seeing a neighbor pass by and wave to say "hello!" 😣

I HOPE I CAN KEEP MAKING GREAT CONTENT AND STAYING POSITIVE, I WILL DO IT FOR THE PEOPLE WHO DESERVE IT! This world lacks it at times. Scales go unbalances. Harmony is foggy. When one person makes another happy, their's a 50% chance the other will pass it on to another, to which this can spread, like pollen in the wind, through a beautiful field of flowers

A butterfly cannot leave it's cacoon without transforming. The world cannot be vibrant without love

To be a caterpillar who goes into a cacoon is stuck, to not break free makes one sad, this means no color

To be a butterfly means you broke out of that cacoon because of the beautiful energy of the kind mother nature herself, you are colorful

Children who seemed to not have a fortunate upbringing are broken. Suddenly you fly by and make them laugh, they run with you staring at your beautiful wings, then you notice the parents take pictures

Memories

The kids grow up. Seeing butterflies randomly now makes them gasp in awe, a joyful memory

They are happy

They then feel positive. They spread this to others who then spread this to more people

Everyone loves being around beautiful energy. Their energy is cured, they spread their own energy. The domino effect

Not everyone will accept this. Some people are born to be challenging. To be stubborn. To be negative. To be a predator in a vast planet of prey

But it's ok because everyone else can have fun without them, to go out and play

After all, as the saying goes

"After a storm their is always a rainbow"

All will be ok

Rainbows are made by reflections of the light/water and atmosphere. Our energy is just the same

And thank you for this beautiful post @angellkisses I am screenshotting it to keep in my phone 😣💖💖💖 this was so sweet I just loved it so much. I hope you have a beautiful day! I send you so much positive energy lovely!