#imagine my own (retrospectively unwarranted) surprise when it turned into an excuse for me to write all the kinds of love??

[confetti-cat]

Each, All, Everything

Words: 6.5k

Rating: PG

Themes: Friendship, Self-Giving Love, Romantic Love

(Written for the Four Loves Fairytale Retelling challenge over at the @inklings-challenge! A retelling of Nix, Nought, Nothing.)

The giant’s daughter weeps, and remembers.

—

She remembers the day her father first brought him home.

It was a bit like the times he’d brought home creatures to amuse her while he was on his journeys, away on something he called “business” but she knew was “gathering whatever good of the land he wanted”. Her father had brought back a beautiful pony, once—a small one he could nearly carry in one huge hand. One for her, and not another for his collection of horses he kept in the long stables. She wasn’t as tall as the hills and broad as the cliffs like he was, so she couldn’t carry it easily, but she heaved it up in both arms and tried nonetheless. (And—she thought this was important—stopped trying when it showed fear.) She was gentle to it, and in time, she would only need speak to it and it would come eat from her hand like a tame bird. She’d never been happier.

(The pony had grown fearful of her father. Her father grew angry with anything that wasted his time by cowering or trying to flee him. There was a terrible commotion in the stables one day, and when she sought her pony afterward, she couldn’t find him. Her father told her it was gone, back to the forest, and he’d hear no more of it if she didn’t want beaten.)

(There was a sinking little pit in her stomach that knew. But when she didn’t look for the best in her father, it angered him and saddened her, so she made herself believe him.)

The final little creature he brought one day was so peculiar. It was a human boy, small as the bushes she would sometime uproot for paintbrushes, dressed in fine green like the trees and gold like her mother’s vine-ring she wore. He seemed young, like her. His tuft of brown hair was mussed by the wind, and his dark eyes watched everything around him, wide and unsure and curious.

When he first looked at her from his perch on her father’s shoulder, he stared for a long moment—then lifted a tiny hand in a wave. Suddenly overwhelmed with hope and possibilities (a friend! Surely her father had blessed her with a small friend they could keep and not just a pet!), she lifted her own hand in a little wave and tried to smile welcomingly.

The boy stared for another long moment, then seemed to try a hesitant smile back.

“This,” boomed her father, stooping down in the mist of the morning as he waved away a low cloud with one hand, “is what I rightly bargained for. A prince, very valuable. The King of the South—curse his deceitful aims!—promised him to me.”

“He looks very fancy,” she’d said, eyes wide in wonder. “How did the king come to give him to you, Father?”

“How indeed!” the giant growled, so loud it sent leaves rattling and birds rushing to fly from their trees. He slowly lowered himself to be seated on the weathered cliff behind him and picked up his spark-stone, tossing a few felled trees into their fire-basin and beginning to work at lighting them. “Through lies and deceit from him. When he asked me to carry him across the waters I asked him for Nix, Nought, Nothing in return.”

The little boy shifted, clearly uncomfortable but afraid to move much. Her father scowled, though he meant it as a smile, and bared his yellowed teeth as he laughed.

“Imagine his countenance when he returned to find the son he’d not known he’d had was called Nix, Nought, Nothing! He tried to send servant boys, but I am too keen for such trickery. Their blood is on the hands of the liar who sent them to me.”

Such talk from her father had always unsettled her, even if he said it so forcefully she couldn’t imagine just how it wasn’t right. Judging from the way the boy curled in on himself a little, clinging meekly to her father’s tattered shirt-shoulder, he thought similarly.

“Nix, Nought, Nothing?” She observed the small prince, unsure why disappointment arose in her at the way he seemed hesitant to look at her now. “That is a strange name.”

Her father struck the rocks, the sound of it so loud it echoed down the valley in an odd, uneven manner. He shook his head as he worked, a stained tooth poking out of his lips as he struck it again and again until large sparks began alighting on the wood.

“His mother tarried christening him until the father returned, calling him such instead.” He huffed a chuckle that sounded more like a sneer, seeming to opt to ignore the creature on his shoulder for the time being. “You know the feeling, eh, Bonny girl?”

The boy tentatively looked up at her again.

The fire crackled and began to eat away at the bark and dry pine needles. A soft orange glow began to creep over it, leaving black char as it went. With a sudden, sharp breath by her father, a large flame leapt into the air.

“It is good that she did so. He is Nix, Nought, Nothing—and that he will remain.”

—

Nix Nought Nothing grew to be a fine boy. Her father treated him as well as he did the prized horses he’d taken from knights and heroes—which was to say that the boy was given decent food and a dry place to sleep and the richest-looking clothes a tailor could be terrified into giving them, which was as well as her father treated anything.

Never a day went by that she was not thankful and with joy in her heart at having a friend so near.

They spent many days while her father was away exploring the forest—Nix would collect small rocks and unusual leaves and robin’s-eggs and butterflies, and she would lift him into high trees to look for nests, and sometimes stand in the rivers and splash the waterfalls at him just to laugh brightly at his gawking and laughing and sputtering.

Some days she wished she was more of a proper giant. She wasn’t large enough for it to be very comfortable giving him rides on her shoulder once he’d grown. She was hesitant to look any less strong, however, so she braided her golden curls to keep them from brushing him off and simply kept her head tilted away from him as they walked through the forests together.

He could sit quite easily and talk by her ear as they adventured. Perhaps she would never admit it, but she liked that. Most of the time.

“I’m getting your shoulder wet,” he protested, still sopping wet from the waterfall. He kept shifting around, trying to sit differently and avoid blotching her blue dress with more water than he already had. “I hope you’re noticing this inconveniences you too?”

“Yes,” Bonny laughed. “You’re right. I hope there’s still enough sun to dry us along the way back. Father won’t be pleased otherwise.”

“Exactly. Perhaps you should have thought that through before drenching me!” he huffed, but she could hear the grin in his tone even if she couldn’t quite turn her head to see it. He flicked his arm toward her and sent little droplets of water scattering across the side of her face.

Her shoulders jerked up involuntarily as the eye closest to him shut and she tried to crane her neck even further away, chuckling. Nix made a noise like he’d swallowed whatever words were on his tongue, clutching to her shoulder and hair to steady himself.

“You’d probably be best not trying to get me while I’m giving you a ride?” Bonny suggested, unable to help a wry smile.

“Yes. Agreed. Apologies.” His words came so stilted and readily that she had to purse her lips to keep in a laugh. As soon as he relaxed, his voice grew a tad incredulous. “Though—wait, I can’t exactly do anything once I’m down. Are you trying to escape my well-earned retaliation?”

“I would never,” she assured him, no longer trying to hide her smile. “I’ll put you in a tree when we get back and you can splash me all you like.”

Somehow, his voice was amused and skeptical and unimpressed by the notion all at once.

“Really? You’d do that?” he asked, sounding as if he were stifling a smirk.

She shrugged—gently, of course, but with a little inward sense of mischievousness—and he yelped again at the movement.

“Well, it would take a lot of water to get a giant wet,” she reasoned. “I doubt you’ll do much. But yes, for you, I would brave it.”

He chuckled, and she ventured a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Bonny and brave,” he said, looking up at her with a little smile and those dark eyes glimmering with light. “You are a marvel.”

It would probably be very noticeable to him if she swallowed awkwardly and glanced away a bit in embarrassment. She tried not to do that, and instead gave him a crooked little smile in return.

“Hm,” was all she could say. “And what about you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m Nothing.” The jest was terrible, and would still be terrible even if she hadn’t heard it numerous times. “But you are truly a gem among girls.”

If by gem he meant a giantess who still had to enlist his help disentangling birds from her hair, then perhaps. She snorted.

“I don’t know how you would know. You don’t know any other girls.”

“Why would I need to?” His face was innocent, but his eyes were sparkling with mirth and mischief. “You’re the size of forty of them.”

The noise that erupted from her was so abrupt and embarrassingly like a snort it sent the branches trembling. She plucked him off her shoulder and set him gently on the ground so she could swat at him as gently as she could—careful not to strike him with the leaf-motifs on her ring—though it still knocked him off his feet and into the grass. He was laughing too hard to seem to mind, and she couldn’t stifle her laughs either.

“Well, you are really something,” she teased, unable to help her wide smile as she tried futilely to cast him a disapproving look.

That quieted him. He pushed himself to sit upright in the grass, and looked out at the woods ahead for a long moment.

“You think?” Nix asked quietly.

She smiled down at him.

“Yes,” she laughed softly. “Of course.” When he looked up at her, brown eyes curious, she held his gaze and hoped he could see just how glad she was to know him. “Everything, even.”

A small smile grew on his own face, lopsided and warm. He ducked his head a bit and looked away from her again, and embarrassment started to fill her—but it was worth it.

It often weighed on her heart to say that more than she did. She supposed she was the type of person who liked to show such things rather than say them.

She had a cramp in one of her shoulders from trying to carry him smoothly, but the weight on the other one—and on his—seemed far lighter.

—

She remembered the day her father came home livid.

She couldn’t figure out what had happened. Had he been wounded? Insulted? Tricked? He wouldn’t say.

He just raged. The trees bent under his wrath as he stamped them down, carving a new path through the forest. He picked up boulders and flung them at cliffsides, the noise of the impacts like thunder as showers of shattered stone flew in all directions.

She was tending to the garden a ways off—huge vines and stalks entwined their ways up poles and hill-high arbors made from towering pines, where she liked to work and admire how the sunset made the leaves glow gold—and suddenly had a sharp, sinking feeling.

Nix was still at his little shelter-house at their encampment. Her father was there.

Dread washed over her.

“Riddle me this, boy,” her father boomed, in the voice he only used when he wanted an excuse to strike something. “What is thick like glass and thin as air, cold but warm, ugly but fair? Fills the air yet never fills it, never exists but that all things will it?”

There was silence for a long moment.

...Silence. The answer was silence. Her father was trying to trick him into speaking.

Her hands curled around the bucket handle so weakly it was a surprise she didn’t drop it. Her father could crush him if he felt he had the slightest excuse.

Hush, hush, hush, her mind pleaded. Her hands shook. For your life and mine, hush—

There continued to be silence for a moment—and then, Nix must have answered. (Perhaps in jest. He tended to joke when uncertain. That would have been a mistake.)

There came the indescribable sound of a tree being ripped from its roots, and the deafening thunder of it being thrown and smashing down trees and structures.

Her whole body tensed horribly, and all she could see in her mind’s eye was nightmares.

No, she thought weakly.

Her father kept shouting. But not just shouting, addressing. Asking scathing rhetorical questions. She felt faint with relief, because her father had never wasted words on the dead.

I should have brought him with me. The thought flooded her body and left room for nothing else but dread and regret. I could have prevented this.

The stables were long and broad and old. Once, they had housed armies’ steeds and chariots. Now, they were run-down and reinforced so nothing could escape out the doors. The roof was broken off like a lid on hinges at intervals so her father could reach in to arrange and feed his horses.

Her father had seen no reason to keep the stalls clean. When one was so packed with bedding it had decomposed to soil at the floor level, the horse was moved to the next unused stall. There were so many stalls that she barely remembered, sometimes, that there were other ways of addressing the problem.

“The stable has not been cleaned in seven years,” her father boomed. “You will clean it tomorrow, or I will eat you in my stew.”

She couldn’t hear Nix’s response, but she could feel his dread.

Her father stormed away, more violently than any storm, and slowly, after the echoes of his steps faded, silence again began to hang in the air.

That night, it was hard to sleep. The next morning, it was hard to think.

She did the only thing she could think to do in such a nervous state. She brought her friend breakfast. His favorite breakfast—a roast leg of venison and a little knife he could use to cut off what he wanted of it, and fried turkey-eggs, and a modest chunk of soft brown bread.

When she arrived with it, he was still mucking out the first stall. There were hundreds ahead of him. He was only halfway to the floor of the first.

“I can’t eat,” Nix murmured, almost too quietly to hear and with too much misery to bear. “I can’t stop. But thank you.”

The pile outside the door he’d opened up was already growing too large. Of every pitchfork-full he threw out, some began to tumble back in. He was growing frustrated, and out of breath.

Why would her father raise a boy, a prince, only to eat him now? Her father was cunning; surely he’d had other plans for him. Or perhaps he really was kept like the horses, as a trophy or prize taken from the human kingdoms that giants so hated.

Was this his fate? Worked beyond reason, only to be killed?

Pity—or something stronger, perhaps, that she couldn’t name—stirred in her heart. A heat filled her veins, burning with sadness and a desire to set right. Would the world be worthwhile without this one small person in it?

No.

This wouldn’t end this way.

She called to the birds of the air and all the creatures of the forest. Her heart-song was sad and pure—so when she pleaded with them, to please hear, please come and carry away straw and earth and care for what has been neglected, they listened.

The stable was clean by the time the first stars appeared. When she set Nix gently on her shoulder afterward, he hugged the side of her head and laughed in weary relief for a long while.

—

She remembered the lake, and the tree.

“Shame on the wit who helped you,” her father had boomed. He’d inspected the stable by the light of his torch—a ship’s mast he’d wrapped the sails around the top of and drenched in oil—and found every last piece of dirt and straw gone. Had he known it was her, that she could do such a thing? She couldn’t tell. “But I have a worse task for you tomorrow.”

The lake nearest them was miles long, and miles wide, and so deep that even her father could not ford it.

“You will drain it dry by nightfall, or I will have you in my stew.”

The next morning, soon as her father had gone away past the hills, she came to the edge of the lake. She could hear the splashing before she saw it.

Nix stood knee-deep in the water, a large wooden bucket in his hands, struggling to heave the water out and into a trench he’d dug beside the shore.

When she neared him and knelt down in the sand, scanning the water and the trench and the distant, distant shoreline opposite them, Nix fell still for a moment. She looked at him, hoping he could see the apology in her eyes.

“Can I help?” she asked.

He shook his head miserably.

“Thank you. But even if we both worked all day, we couldn’t get it dry before nightfall.” He gave her a wry, sad smile, full of pain. “The birds and the creatures can’t carry buckets, I’m afraid.”

It was true. They could not take away the water.

But perhaps other things could.

She stood and drew a deep breath, and called to the fish of the rivers and lake, and to the deep places of the earth to please hear, please open your mouths and drain the lake dry.

With a tumult that shook the earth beneath them all, they did. The chasm it left in the land was great and terrible, but it was dry.

Her father was livid to see it.

“I’ve a worse job for you tomorrow,” he’d thundered at Nix as the twilight began to darken. “There is a tree that has grown from before your kind walked this land. It is many miles high, with no branches until you reach the top. Fetch me the seven eggs from the bird’s nest in its boughs, and break none, or I will eat you before the day is out.”

She found Nix at dawn the next day at the foot of the tree, staring up it with an expression more wearied than she’d ever seen before. She looked up the tree as well. It seemed to stretch up nearly to the clouds, its trunk wide and strong with not a foothold in sight. At the top, its leaves shone a faint gold in the sunlight.

“He is wrong to ask you these things,” Bonny said softly. Her words hung in the air like the sunbeams seemed to hang about the tree. There was something special about this place, some old power with roots that ran deep. “I’m very sorry for it.”

“You needn’t be,” Nix assured her. His countenance was grey, but he tried to smile. “But thank you. You’re very kind.”

She looked up the tree again. Uncertainty filled her, because this was an old tree—a strong one. Even if it could hear her, it had no obligation to listen. “Will you try?”

He laughed humorlessly. “What choice do I have?”

None. He had none.

He could not escape for long on his own—he could not be gone fast enough or hide safely enough for her father not to sniff him out. The destruction that would follow him would be far more than he would wish on the forests and villages and cities about them.

She, however, bit her lip.

She slipped the gold vine-ring off her hand, and rolled it so that it spiraled between her fingers. It was finely crafted, made to look like it was a young vine wrapping its way partly up her finger.

“This is all I have of my mother,” she said quietly. “But it will serve you better.”

Before he could speak—she knew him well enough to know that he would bid her to stop, to not lose something precious on his account (as if he weren’t?)—she whispered a birdlike song, and pleaded with the gold and the tree and the old good in the world to help them.

When she tossed the ring at the base of the tree (was it shameful that she had to quell a sadness that tried to creep into her heart?), it writhed. One end of it rooted into the ground, and suddenly it was no longer gold, but yellow-green—and the vine grew, and grew, curling around the tree as it stretched upward until it was nearly out of sight.

Nix stared at her with wide eyes and an emotion she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it made her ears warm.

She smiled slightly and stepped back, tilting her head at the vine.

“Well?” she said. He was still staring at her with that look—some mix of awestruck and like he was trying to draw together words—and it made her fold her arms lightly and smile as she looked away. She quickly looked back to him, hoping faintly that her embarrassment wasn’t obvious. “You’d best hurry. That’s still a long way up.”

He seemed to give up finding words for the moment. Nix glanced up the tree, now decked with a spiral of thick, knobby vine that looked nearby like uneven stairs.

“Give me a boost?” he asked with a bright grin. “To speed it up.”

She laughed and gently scooped him up in both hands. “A boost, or just a boost?”

He beamed at her. “As high as you can get me,” he declared, waving an arm dramatically.

She laughed and shook her head. ”Absolutely not. Ready?”

Nix nodded, and she smiled thinly and poured all her focus into a spot a good distance up the tree. With a very gentle but swift motion, she tossed him upward a bit—and he landed on his feet on the vine, one shoulder against the bark, clutching to the tree for support as he laughed.

“A marvel!” he shouted down to her as he climbed. “Never forget that!”

The sun was nearly setting when he descended with the eggs bundled in his handkerchief. He was glowing.

He triumphantly hopped down the last few feet to the ground.

A moment after he landed, a soft crack sounded. He froze.

Slowly, he drew the bundle more securely into his arms against him and looked down. There, by his foot, was a little speckled egg, half-broken in the grass.

She put a hand over her mouth. Nix clutched the rest and stared.

A grievous pain and numbness slowly filled her heart, and she knew it was filling his too.

His shoulders began to shake, and his eyes were glassy.

“Well,” he laughed weakly. ”...That’s it. That’s... that was my chance.” The distress that overtook him was like a dark wave, and it threatened to cover her too. He only shook his head. “I’m so sorry. Thank you for—for helping me.”

For everything, she didn’t give him a chance to add. He was looking at her with the eyes of one who might say that. She couldn’t afford to be overcome with the notion of saying goodbye now.

��No,” she said. Her voice was quiet, at first, but it grew more resolute. “It won’t end this way.”

He blinked up at her, still clutching the other eggs to his chest. She looked down at him, then across the stretch of forest to their home.

Without a word, she gently picked him up and set him on her shoulder. Her jaw tensed as she strode quickly through well-worn paths of the forest, walking as fast as a horse could run.

Once home, she set him down. He was still looking at her questioningly. Her heart beat faster in her chest, and she hoped he couldn’t see the anxiousness rising in her and battling with the excitement.

“I will not let him have you,” she announced firmly. The trees and hills all around were witness to her promise. “Grab what you need. We’ll leave together in the hour.”

—

She‘d barely had time to fix her hair, grab her water flask, and decide it would be best this time of year to go south.

Her father’s footsteps boomed closer across the land.

—

They fled.

They ran, and ran, and struggled and strove, and she called for the help of anything she could think of that would have mercy on them.

Her comb grew into thorns, her hairpin into a hedge of jagged spires. Neither stopped him. Her dress’s hem was in tatters and sweat poured from her brow when they were finally safe.

Her flask lay behind them, cast down and broken, its magic used up.

Her father—her father—lay stretched out motionless in the flooded plain behind them, never to rise again.

—

There was a tiny spark of hope they had that they clung to. A hope of a future, of restoration, of amending the past and pursuing peace—of a life worth living, perhaps far, far away from things worth leaving behind.

(“I’ll go to the castle,” he’d said, his voice brimming with nerves and hope and uncertainty and sadness and an eager warmth. It made her heart try to mirror all those emotions alongside him. “I can tell my mother and father who I am. I’d still recognize them, even if they don’t know me. They’ll take us in, I’m sure of it.”)

He set out into the maze of village streets, assuring her he’d ask for directions and be back promptly. She stayed back by the well at the edge of the town so not to alarm anyone, too exhausted to go another step, but full of hope for him. She would wait until he returned.

(And wait. And wait. And wait and wait and wait and dread—)

The castle gardener came to draw water, and—as if she weren’t as tall as the small trees under the huge one she sat against—struck up a conversation with her about the mysterious boy who’d fallen unconscious across the threshold of the castle, asleep as if cursed to never wake up.

(The spark didn’t last long.)

—

She remembered when he could move.

“Please,” she whispered, as soft as her voice would go. “Please, if you can hear me. Wake up.”

(“Oh, dearest,” the gardener’s frail wife had murmured to her when the kind gardener brought her home to partake of a bit of supper. “I’m afraid they won’t let you in as you are. Would you let me sing you a catch as you eat?”)

The gardener’s wife was frailer by the end of it, but her heart-song could change things, like her own. Instead of towering at the heights of the houses, she was now six feet tall by human reckoning, and still thankful the castle had high halls and tall doors.

(Their daughter, a fair maiden with a shadow about her, had watched from the doorway.)

Nix Nought Nothing lay nearly motionless in the cushioned chair the castle servants had placed him in. His chest rose and fell slowly, like he was in a deep sleep.

He was still smaller than she was, but not by much. He seemed so large, or close. She could see details she’d never noticed before—his freckles, the definition of his eyelashes, the scuffs and loose threads in his tunic.

The way his head hung as if he could no longer support it.

She held him gently—oddly, now, with both her hands so small on his arms and an uncertainty of what to do now—and wept over him. She sung through her tears, her heart pleading with his very soul, but to no avail. He did not wake up.

He didn’t hear her—likely couldn’t hear her. All around him, the air was sharp and still and dead. Cursed.

Still, her heart pleaded with her, now. Try, try. Don’t stop speaking to him. Remember? He never stopped trying.

“You joke that you are nothing," she said, with every drop of earnestness in her being. "But I tell you, you are all I had, and all I had ever wished for.”

There was power in names. She knew that. But was his even a proper name? It really wasn’t—though it was all he had.

It was all she had as well. She had exhausted everything else close to her. There was nothing left to call on, to plead with, but him.

“Nix Nought Nothing,” she said softly. “Awaken, please.”

Her voice, no longer so resonant and deep with giant’s-breath, sounded foreign in her ears. It was mournful and soft like the doves of the rocks, and grieved like the groan of the earth when it split.

“I cleaned the stable, I lave the lake, and clomb the tree, all for the love of thee,” she said, her voice thickening with tears. A drop of saltwater fell and landed on his tunic, creating another of many small blotches. “And will you not awaken and speak to me?”

Nothing.

—

She didn’t remember being shown out of the room. Her vision was too blurred, and her mind was too distraught and overwhelmed. The next thing she could focus on enough to recall was that she was now seated on a stiff chair in the hall. Someone had been kind enough to set a cup of water on the little table beside her.

The towering doors creaked softly behind her, and at last, someone new entered. She looked over her shoulder, barely able to see through the dry burning left behind by her tears.

A man and a woman stood in the door. They were dressed in fine robes, and looked like nobles.

"What is the matter, dear?" the woman asked, looking over her appearance with eyes soft with pity. She came close, and her presence was like cool balm, gentle and comforting. "Why do you weep?"

The gold roses woven in the green of the woman's dress swam in her vision as she dropped her gaze, unsure what to say. These people seemed kind. But were they? Would they send her out from here, unable to return to him?

They would be right to do so. She was a stranger here, and Nix could not vouch for her like he'd planned.

"No matter what I do," she finally said softly, "I cannot get Nix Nought Nothing to awaken and speak to me."

In one moment, only the woman stood there—in the next, the man was beside her. The air was suddenly still and heavy like glass, and it felt as though there was a thread drawn taut between them all for a moment.

"Nix Nought Nothing?" they asked in unison, their voices full of something tense and heavy and sharp. When she looked up, nearly fearful at the sudden change in their tone, their faces were slack and pale.

Something stirred in her heart. Look. What do you see?

Green and gold. Their wide eyes were a familiar warm brown.

—

Now, things are changing.

According to the servant who'd been keeping an eye on him, all from the kingdom had been offered reward if they could wake the sleeping stranger, and the the gardener's daughter had succeeded. It was a mystery how it had happened—by whom had he been cursed? Her father? Then why could she not wake him, but a maiden from the castle-town here could?—but now, with the King and Queen hovering beside her and unable to stay still for anticipation, no one cared.

The gardener's daughter was fetched, and bid to sing the unspelling catch for the prince. (Prince. He was a prince, while she was a ruffian's daughter. She kept forgetting, when she was with him.) It was a haunting one that grated on her ears, as selfishly-written magics often did—and as if bitterness still crept at the girl's heart at the sight of all who were here, she left as soon as it was finished.

Nix Nought Nothing awoke—he awoke! He opened his eyes and sat up and looked at her as if seeing the sunrise after a year of darkness, and how her heart leaps high into her throat at the sight—and true to form, only blinks a few times at her as he seems to take her in before coming to terms with it.

"You look a bit different," he remarks, tilting his head slightly. "Or did I grow?"

She chokes on a snort.

"Hush," is all she can say. What had been an attempt at an unimpressed expression melts into a wavering smile. "Are you done napping now?"

He opens his mouth to retort, but a grin creeps onto his face before he can. He snickers. "Have I slept that long?"

"Nigh a week," the Queen says—and when Nix turns his head and sees her, his eyes grow wide. The Queen's smile grows broad and wavers with emotion, and the King's eyes are crinkled at the edges, and shining. "It has been a long time."

Her own father had never shown love like this—like the way Nix tries to leap from his chair at the same moment his parents rush to hold him, all of them laughing and sobbing and shouting exclamations of love and excitement and I-thought-I-would-never-see-you-agains. So much joy rolls off of them that she thinks she could have stood there watching forever and been content.

The first thing he does, after the first surge of this, is turn and introduce her to his parents, who had barely finished hugging him and kissing him and calling him their own dear son.

"This is the one who helped me," Nix says, already gesturing to her in excitement as he looks from her to his parents. "She sacrificed much to save me from the giant. Her kindness is brilliant and she blesses all who know her."

She tries not to look embarrassed at the glowing praise as Nix comes and stands beside her as he recounts their blur of a tale to his parents.

"Ah! She is bonny and brave," says the King. By the end of Nix's stories of their escapes, they're smiling warmly at her with such pride that she dips her head and smiles.

Nix Nought Nothing glances sideways up at her and raises a brow, a knowing smirk tugging at his lips.

"I've tried to tell her that," he agrees. "I don't think she's ever believed me."

She purses her lips and glances down at him. "I'll believe it the day you believe you are not nothing."

"Alright." Simple as that, he folds his arms and raises a brow at her. "I believe it. Fair trade?"

"Fair enough," she decides, with a crooked little smile. He beams, as if she's done something worth being proud of, and looks to his parents, who indeed look proud of them both.

"We would welcome you as our daughter," the King declares heartily, and both the Queen and Nix brighten, which makes her too embarrassedly fixated on the thought of family? Starting anew? to register what comes next. "Surely, you should be married!"

Nix looks at her, arms still folded, his eyes twinkling. There's something hopeful in his eyes that makes her certain this diminutive new heart of hers has skipped a few beats.

"Should we? Surely?" he asks, as if this is a normal thing to be discussing.

She works her jaw and swallows a few times, unable to help how obviously awkward she still likely looks. A flush tickles her face, and the queen seems to put a hand over her mouth to smile behind it.

"I... don't... suppose... I would mind," she manages, and—with those bright eyes so affectionate, and on her—Nix starts snickering at her expression. It's rude, but so, so warm she can't mind. She only discovers how broadly she's smiling when she tries to purse her lips and glare at him but is unable to. "Oh, go back to sleep!" she chides, too gleeful inside to truly mind, even as she makes a motion as if throwing one of the chair-cushions at him.

"Never!" he declares, pretending to dodge the invisible pillow. He makes broad gestures that she presumes are meant to emphasize how serious he is about this. When he stands straight and tall and sets his shoulders, she thinks that the boy she's explored the forest with really does look like a prince. "I have my family and my love all together in safety at last. We have much to speak of, and much time yet to spend with each other." He's a prince, but of course, he's also still himself. He immediately gets a mischievous glimmer in his eyes and puts a hand to his chest nobly as he does what he's done for as long as she's known him—jokes, when his emotions rise. "I shall never adhere to a bedtime as long as I live!"

My love, her heart still repeats every time it beats—as payback, likely, for her calling it diminutive. My love, my love, my love.

She doesn't let it out, for she doesn't know what it will do. But the words weave a song within her, so vibrant and effervescent and strong, brighter and clearer than any she's had before.

"I am glad to see you are certainly still my dear son," the Queen says, her own eyes twinkling. "I'm certain you both need fed well after such a journey. Come, perhaps you both can tell us more of it as supper is prepared."

They fall into an easy tumble of conversation and rejoicing and genial planning, and her heart is so light she thinks it must be plotting to escape her chest.

On the week's end from when she brought him here, Nix Nought Nothing and his family welcomes her into their home. It feels natural. It feels warm, and homey, and so pleasant and right that she often has to stop tears of weary joy from welling up as she considers it all.

Once upon a time, she thought she'd known happiness well enough without him. She had known what it was like to be without a friend, and without love.

Now, it’s hard to remember it.

[supergirlimaginesfic-blog]

Lena Luthor x reader (Yesterday, our history; today, for now)

Request:  Lena x reader : lena gets jealous after seeing someone kiss you at one of her gala 

a/n: guess which garbage monster decided to make a little childhood friends to present time drabble. THIS garbage monster decided to make a childhood friends fic, because I want it and I think it kinda fit this particular scenario. You’re a little bit of a big time fairtrade coffee mogul, it’s obscure and I’m craving coffee currently, so naturally this is what I come up with. Forgive me if it seems like I’m just spouting out terms... it is most definitely because that’s exactly what I’m doing LOL

For SOME reason I was in some grand mood to write something a little angsty and piney... for what reason? I truly could not tell you. Apparently I’m due for one of those again. Thanks for reading y’all!! :D

- - - - -

If you were to be candid and outright, you would readily admit that you resented the business world. You’re self-aware enough to understand the privilege of working hard and watching it pay off, and living comfortably is something that’s never been foreign to you.

You weren’t born into all the wealth you had now - you were proud to say you toiled for what you could call your own. In spite of the leg up you knew you got from certain family members, it humbled you and you never took your gains for granted.

As you found yourself standing in a giant room among the people who you should consider your peers, it went without saying you were jaded and unimpressed.

Where you could, you tried to withhold judgement; after all, not everybody was insufferable and irritating with their prestige, though you also knew a lot of them believed they were destined for it.

Self-worth is a subjective commodity, and where one person draws motivation could be quite strikingly different from the next. Still, you had enough interactions (far too many, you concede) with these kinds of people to be intimately aware of a certain unspoken but commonly held truth: if they’d lost all their money and power in an instant, it would be more than their net worth that’s lost.

Even so, you didn’t necessarily loathe the wealthy elite so much as you just can’t find many people worth respecting despite the all-encompassing competitiveness to have the unwarranted abundance of it.

Life, you know, is saturated with this mentality in general, and it only aggravated you now because you knew you were intended to befriend these people and maintain good rapport.

You wish it wasn’t so easy to give in to the sentiment of othering yourself whenever you contemplated your fortunate circumstances, yet you could count on your one hand the number of true allies you could rely on and vouch for personally.

When you glanced at the L-Corp gala invitation that you found in your mail, it was not your first thought to dread another night of reluctant obligation, but rather of one old friend you were much too aware of not having seen in years.

You wouldn’t say you were avoiding her - not entirely, anyway. You were simply distracted with the course of your life and needing to better it for yourself. You had a never-settling unease about not being good enough, and though this was a noble insecurity to have, it proved relentless and omnipresent.

Throughout your boarding school experience, Lena Luthor was as unassuming as she was brilliant. Though now, you surmise, she entertains the facade of grandeur, and you’ve still yet to put together how to reconcile what you know of a young Lena and what you’ve seen of her now.

You’ve always admired her from afar; that much wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise, however, was the inexplicable draw that possessed the two of you and created an otherwise unlikely alliance of mutual understanding.

You were the new kid of freshman year, having missed three months of the beginning of school to relocating with your aunt and her family from Central City. Lena was the youngest acquisition of the Luthor family, and that particular news followed her like a shadow.

Still, you watched as she prospered in spite of it and just as you felt yourself falling into her gravity, you also somehow caught her in your orbit.

The two of you were an anomalous pair, you in your modest willingness to remain indeterminate and ordinary and her with the effortless dancing on the precipice of obscurity and greatness.

Even then at that young age, you had the distinct notion of not wanting to hinder her in any way you possibly could - even then, she would scoff at your foolishness. For as much as a friend could love you, she did. And for as much as you were pining for her successes and happiness, you did.

You dreamed often and you played often together, and as much as you did you also studied and philosophized and aspired. The adventure of youth was indeed a journey, and you would never change the reality of having Lena in your corner for those formative years if you were faced with the decision to start over.

You hadn’t thought much of it then, but the only time you ever stood up against anyone or anything was when someone by the likes of Veronica Sinclair gave Lena trouble; and there is much that could be said about that now in retrospect.

Lena gave you loyalty as fierce as your own, and though it often went unspoken, you knew you’d both felt it.

It was only with little sadness that you watched awe-struck and proud as she walked to the podium to receive her diploma, and you knew she would be heading off to MIT.

As for yourself, you would charter the route that just like any other wide-eyed, hopeful teen your age imagined for themselves would most benefit from in the long run. Your aunt, with her modest conglomerate of companies in a wide array of sectors, only asked of you to do what you could do best.

You’d graduate from an Honours International Development Studies program and sought after your pipe dream to not change the world, but to merely help it.

For years, you would hear stories from the wind of the Luthor scion and Jack Spheer trying to find the ever elusive cure to cancer, and you’d heard that they were making breakthroughs with their nanotechnology.

Even then, you’d felt rather inadequate, and much to your displeasure you found that in a room full off big business moguls and politicians you still felt just as small as you always had.

It was with great bemusement that you remember you’d finally accepted an invitation from L-Corp as you looked around you at the filling ballroom, and you’re usually not so absent of mind.

You begin to realize just how out of place you feel as you watch pairs of people filing through the entrance, all figures of prominence and varying levels of affluence trying to take up the most space in the room. You feel so very unprepared and not at all in your element and you almost regret your decision to go about this event alone.

It’s only for a few hours, you concede, and you’ll take your leave the very second it’s socially acceptable to do so. You wonder if you can even evade Lena again, though it’s becoming more and more evident how unlikely that will be. You don’t have the excuse of being in another country altogether to justify your absences.

Perhaps you’ve made a big mistake by coming here tonight.

You don’t have the time to ponder it further, however, when you feel a presence sidle up beside you.

“Now, I don’t usually act so brash and forward, but I must simply know why exactly it is you are without company this evening.”

You don’t recognize the woman when you turn to face her. At first glance you see she is conventionally beautiful with her dark brown eyes and an angular face.

She’s wearing a deep green gown and she seems the epitome of refinement. She seems rather young, perhaps only a few years older than you, and somehow much more... everything.

“That is, unless it’s only a matter of time before she makes her appearance and I learn yet another lesson regarding my presumptuous inclinations,” she adds.

You smile politely and already feel yourself get reluctantly pulled forward into the game of social obligation. Still, you are curious.

“Well, Miss... you would be correct in your observations. I’m afraid I don’t recognize you, and if I ought to then I apologize-”

“Beckett, and it’s absolutely divine to make your acquaintance.”

You have exactly milliseconds to both process and react to her moving in close to kiss you just near the corner of your mouth, and if there’s any look of astonishment and utter confusion on your face, she’s ignorant to the display.

You’re left stuttering and stumbling on words, and you’re vexed at just how out of touch you are with how to behave in these events and how to deal with such forwardness in general.

“Miss-”

“Oh, please, call me Alona, we can allow ourselves to be on a first name basis.”

“Right, yeah- okay-”

“I confess, I know quite a lot about you, (Y/N). You’re making rather significant waves that are crossing into my circles. I am most curious about your story.”

You’re still silent, standing before a woman and her force of nature as she glides easily from thought to thought, almost taunting you in a way to keep up.

“It’s the most inspirational anecdote. Your aunt, Theresa Everett, she’s such a character too. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing her while she was still active and the most prominent in 2013. And now, you’re an entrepreneur! You’ve really separated yourself from all that, haven’t you?”

You inhale shakily as you scramble to recollect your thoughts - there’s very little reference points you can bounce off of, but you force yourself to believe it’s enough. Having to talk about your work, at least, is something you enjoy and you don’t have to think too hard about that.

“Well, I wouldn’t necessarily word it like that. It’s not so much of a rebranding as it is just really focusing and cutting back the excess of resources at my disposal. I’ll take what I need and no more or less, and it’s proven to have worked out if the exponential growth of the farms I’ve overseen is any indication.”

For her part, Alona looks attentively at you, and if you weren’t so overwhelmed by her larger than life introduction you would perhaps be more than willing to indulge her conversation and speak in depth of your work.

You think there’s a hint of impudence to her when she smiles at you, but the observation is moot by the time you’ve detected it.

“I’ve always thought so highly of you, and it is so refreshing to see I’m not wrong in my high regards. What is it now, you have locations in Peru, Guatemala, Colombia if I recall correctly?

“I truly, truly commend you for your upholding the ethical crusade. It’s apparent that every single one present in this room has something similar in common with another, and perhaps this is what you and Ms. Luthor share; the unfailing resilience to chase a simple dream.”

Your eyebrows furrow slightly in contemplation and you regard the woman carefully. There’s an agenda hidden somewhere - there always is, and you’re just about close to scratching the surface of it. You’re suspicious, and part of this game is to do everything you can to make sure you don’t show it. You consider your next words as carefully as you can, but you’re just steps over the edge.

“And still I wholeheartedly believe a simple dream is the one distinctive catalyst that provides solutions where there might be questions, and curates possibilities where there are only hypotheticals.”

You inhale sharply and feel the broiling of your intensity and mild agitation. You think to try to reel yourself in - you’re well aware of the flurry you become when you get going about correcting people who are just so very wrong.

“But respectfully, I decline your belief in my upholding some crusade of ethics - as far as I’m concerned it’s pretty rudimentary that we treat every individual involved in our business relationships with the same amount of respect as we are given by default as the ones with the monetary resources. Business is a mutual give and take. It’s our responsibility to foster all aspects of the whole to benefit from the sum of all the little parts.”

Alona smiles at you again, and you’ve no doubt now it’s positively devilish in its scheming.

“I am so awed by your passion, how remarkably you guard your tenets. That tenacity should be harnessed. If you need any assistance in the form of governmental influence, which I’m sure you will no doubt encounter if you haven’t already, I will personally see to it that I have some sway in your favour.”

“Thank you so much, Miss Beckett, I can assure you we are quite self-sustaining at this time and it’s actually beneficial that we’re on the fringes of politics-”

Suddenly, you think you feel the air escape your lungs and your eyes widen almost comically. There’s a far off part of your brain that’s mostly shut off currently, but you can hear a distant echo of this is some bullshit movie moment, come from the depths of your mind when you finally see her.

You begin to think just how wrong you were to ever have stayed away from her. You think you should be rewarded for your ability to have ever done so at all.

Lena is so much more than you ever remembered of her. You’re only minutely aware of being cut off mid-sentence before you realize it was you who stopped talking altogether. You think you feel your jaw go slack, and Alona at least takes note when she acknowledges the new presence.

“Lena, you’ve outdone yourself as always.”

“Alona, your attendance always pleases me,” she says in greeting.

You can feel the distinct tension of various things left unsaid in your little trio, and when neither woman broaches the physical boundary tethering you all together, it’s Lena who decides to start severing the tie.

“How is Mr. Conroy? I’m sure Johnathan is doing well?”

“Yes, quite. He almost didn’t want to make it today, I’m sure you can understand, what with the last L-Corp event being quite the target for trouble.”

Alona smirks mischievously in delight and you can only watch in slight horror at the show you’ve inadvertently become an audience for.

“Of course, that’s justifiable. I almost thought it’d been best if we all just stayed home,” Lena says cuttingly.

“Oh, but here we are. Your bravery has always impressed me, Lena.”

Lena just smiles sweetly and she’s a considerable distance away from you - at least, as much as what you perceive suggests. You can just feel the tug of her and not a single part of her body is touching yours, and yet you feel the fire of your skin ablaze by her presence alone. She might as well have been playing matches on your being.

Somehow, and this has always amused you, watching people recognize the notion that they’re not wanted anymore becomes potent enough to become an entirely new entity, and you love watching how they react.

Alona decides to take her leave, but not before she kisses you on the cheek in departure and bids you a good evening, and you really wish you’d learned to expect the unexpected as if you hadn’t experience this same conundrum just several minutes ago.

You barely register that Lena’s sweet smile falls into a scowl. You’re not quite sure why exactly it is she has such a disapproving glare. You refuse to indulge the possible reasons why it would be there.

Even after Alona is gone, you and Lena don’t share a word for the next few moments.

When she finally looks up at you, she’s no longer glowering at some inconsequential woman you happened to have encountered, and you can see the imperceptible widening of her eyes as if she’s really taking you in.

You wonder if you should assure her that your presence isn’t a trick of reality - you can hardly believe it yourself, but Lena breaks the silence.

“You’re a lot taller than I remember,” she mutters teasingly.

“And you’re more radiant than ever.”

In spite of the long years absent from each other’s lives, the familiarity of Lena makes you feel both parts nostalgic and something akin to a return - like a conversation that picks up where you’ve left it as if it never ceased at all, and in a way, that’s exactly what you two are.

“It’s good to see you’re just as much of a kiss-ass as you’ve always been.”

You smile at her remark, and it’s decisively more than you can ever say you’ve had as of late; this alone should be cause for alarm.

“Naturally,” you grin. “To what do I owe this pleasure of your exclusive attention?”

“Don’t you know I only ever host these events to draw you out of whatever cave it is you’ve hidden in all these years? I should be asking you that same question.”

You see a flash of something like hurt and hesitance in Lena’s eyes. You know it because you felt it yourself. You think perhaps she can see it in you too.

There’s a compulsion in you to apologize, but for what, you couldn’t even begin to articulate.

There’s just too much and all the same, there’s very little to answer for at all. You wouldn’t change the way your life has turned out. Though, you can’t speak for Lena.

“I’ve been away,” is all you supply, and you marvel at your uselessness.

Lena smiles at you in a way that you can very much tell says, well no shit, but the fondness that’s there regardless has distracted you.

“Of course,” she says, and then, “how’s Theresa doing? She’s well, I take it?”

You’re thankful for the cop out and you take it.

“Yeah, she’s thriving as always. She asks about you often still.”

You barely register what you’ve said before you can even think to take it back.

Lena looks rueful when she replies, “I’d almost be shocked if she hasn’t kept up with the news as everyone else has.”

It takes everything of your being to will yourself not to hug her.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“No, I do.”

You begin to realize the depths of your struggle, and the profoundly evident lack of knowledge you once had of your best friend’s life makes itself ever present all in one booming crash in your chest.

You grapple for something, anything to reach out to her.

“So... how’s Jack?”

Lena inhales sharply and her lips purse slightly, “he passed away.”

You feel it more than you hear it - the fall of something in your gut hanging in suspension in your lower torso.

“Fuck, I’m sorry-”

“It was either him or Supergirl,” she states softly.

You fiddle with your hands awkwardly. You’re becoming painfully aware of just how invasive your entire body feels in relation to Lena, and you wish you could just disappear or at least transport your being to some other timeline that has nothing to do with the current one.

You think to blame yourself entirely, of course when you concede that Lena has finally found someone worthy of her, the universe decides to muddle it up eventually.

You worry about just what that could mean for you.

“That must have been almost half a year ago. Often I wonder just how much more I can be put through the wringer before I snap. It feels like it’s simply a matter of time before I become everything I’ve always feared.”

You snap out of your reverie of contrite at Lena’s admission.

“You know you’ve always been above that. Plenty of times, you could have done just that, but you never have. And I think it’s because you’re just not capable of it. I’ve never once seen something you weren’t capable of handling.”

Lena sighs deeply, “I don’t think I want to find that breaking point.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to,” you say affirmatively.

You’re both silent in contemplation. Lena looks softer, and you wonder about it as you parse through the memories of the Lena you once knew and what you’re getting now.

Even if you didn’t know her as you did, you still believe entirely that she looks absolutely magnificent. She can fill an entire room without a single word, and you realize then with sneaking suspicion this is just how she’s managed to infiltrate every corner of your life you thought you’d abandoned.

The familiar sensation of pride swells in you again, and a sort of daze falls on you as you smile at the contentedness it gives you. It’s almost enough to distract you from the sad exhaustion you can see hiding just barely veiled within her eyes.

“So, coffee is it?” she asks.

“What?” you think you feel your entire body snap into another awakening as you hurl back into the conversation.

You see the slight uptick of her lips form into a smirk, and you don’t bother to resist thinking about how much you’ve missed it.

“Your business? Fairtrade coffee now, I suppose you never really intended to succeed your aunt?” she prompts, slightly teasingly.

You think you can smack yourself for your misgivings.

“Yeah, that- yeah. Right. I mean, I wasn’t always so deeply taken by what she had her companies’ shares in. It could be said that I’ve rebuilt, but really I’ve just tried to involve myself in areas that interest me and I can invest entirely in; not just monetarily either. My whole heart’s in it, and it’s much easier that way.”

Lena looks contemplative as she deliberates your words, and then, “it seems if it becomes personal that the stakes are so much more higher and there’s so much more at risk, do you find that to be the case?”

You tilt your head in consideration, you try to not give credence to the inexplicable longing you suddenly feel at having Lena so close, yet so very far.

“Arguably, maybe people’s expectations of me have deviated. The risks are only as substantial as the reward. The company’s interests may be refocused, but mine, at least, remain unchanged.”

Lena studies you meaningfully and you feel your body come alive under the weight of her gaze.

“I have always admired your determination to chase after your aspirations. I’ve also always envied your freedom to do so,” she says wryly.

You give her a small smile, “it took me a while to get where I am now. I haven’t always gone after what I really desired.”

Lena glances at you, and when you catch her eyes you hurry to distract yourself with more words, anything to keep you from falling apart for just a little bit longer.

“It takes a lot of trial and error, and without a doubt it’s taken its time... though it goes without saying that the answer sometimes has been right in front of you all along.”

At some point, you think your words have stopped having a singular meaning and you think they’ve become latent with more complex, underlying feelings you feel the least bit prepared to address.

You add hastily, knowing you ought to say it if it weren’t already evident, “for what it’s worth, Lena, it seems as though you’re doing great for yourself.”

Perhaps, you believe, she’s always appreciated your uncanny ability to understand what she needs to hear, to listen to what goes unsaid for her. Even now, you think you’re not just imagining it anymore and you can see the vulnerable adoration in her eyes.

Lena smiles at you, muted with the quiet tones of a lament for time lost and of time yet to lose. Still, you see the endless gratitude that goes unuttered but entirely indisputable.

“When will you be flying off again?” she asks.

“Not for another few weeks.”

I missed you, goes unsaid.

“If it weren’t already plain, it should be mentioned just how much my evening has been made now that I got to see you.”

I’m proud of you, goes unsaid.

“Well, rest assured I feel exactly the same way,” you say earnestly.

I thought I’d lost you, goes unsaid.

There’s a tension palpable enough to cut through, and you feel it stifling you quickly, filling you like concrete.

You’re tired of the feeling of having unfinished business with Lena - for as long as you can remember, your story has never felt quite finished, and you don’t suspect either of you are willing to let it get to that.

“(Y/N), this doesn’t have to be farewell.”

The sentiment doesn’t help in maintaining your pretense of composure.

“No, I don’t want it to be.”

Not again, goes unsaid.

“Then why waste any more time? We may not know the future, but at least we have now.”

I won’t give in to the fear of having lost you wilfully again, goes unsaid.

Lena’s eyes make a slow descent from your eyes to your lips, and you can feel the slow drag of them trail to your bowtie. She lifts her hands and fixes it, taking gentle care in lingering more than a stranger would.

Lena’s not a stranger though, not entirely.

She’s grinning fondly at some secret joke.

“You always refused to wear just a regular tie. You thought it was too conventional.”

You grin at her observation, “I was a pretty pretentious kid.”

“Well, that’s quite alright, you looked much better in these anyway,” she smirks.

You feel the rising warmth of a blush rushing to your cheeks. Somehow, you think you’ve experienced equal parts death and renewal all at once. Somehow, you know you’ll both do better this time.