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seasaltmemories · 5 years

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Rosea Puella: Year 8

Rating: T

Summary: He gave it a month. A month to see if there was any room for him in that little house anymore, if Gyoku would give him the decency of disdain, if the eunuch would grow some balls and kill him like he wanted to, if the girl would ever elicit any emotion from him besides plain old fear

Judal paced back and forth as he waited in the backyard.

Patience had never been a virtue of his, but knowing the eunuch, he enjoyed making him wait. Once he had processed that Judal wasn’t some ghost or other shit, he had been quick to return to the sharp-tongued snob he always was.

“What do you want?” Ka Koubun threw the words out like a knife as he cradled the child against him.

In the past, Judal might have adopted the same sharpness, maybe add in a jab just to piss him off some more. But as he imagined how such a scenario would play out, he was overcome with exhaustion. “Just want to talk to Gyoku,” he sighed. Honesty tasted unfamiliar on his tongue, but he swallowed it down all the same.

“You think she wants to talk to you!?” It seemed Judal’s less snarky attitude only made him grow angrier. “After you defiled her purity, burdened her with a child, then abandoned them both?!”

“’Course I wouldn’t be surprised if she hated my guts--” Judal groaned. As unsure as he had been about returning, spite half-tempted him to go ahead and march right into the house as if he had only gone out for a walk.

What kept him glued right in place was the pair of wide red eyes that studied him fiercely.

“--but then why do you expect a monster to care about what others think?” He knew he was showing teeth, but he wasn’t sure if it was in a smile or a snarl. He waited for a reaction, but they only continued to look at him in confusion and that tiredness returned full force.

“If she doesn’t want to talk to me, then I can make sure you never have to see me again.” Judal grew dead serious. “I’m not doing this for myself you know? It’s for her.”

Ka Koubun wavered, eyes darting back and forth as he thought. Then out of nowhere he shoved the child into his arms.

“If you hurt her, I’ll rip your fucking throat out.” There was no heat to the curse, only a deadly chill. Before Judal could react, Ka Koubun had already scrambled inside.

That was what brought him here: waiting as if this was his execution.

The child had stopped playing and simply sat quietly on the steps. Despite having been so full of energy before, she kept to herself, fidgeting back and forth. Every now it then she would glance over at him when she thought he wouldn’t notice.

He always did though, because he kept doing the same thing. Ugh, why did Ka Koubun stick the brat on him? Did he hope mere proximity would get those nonexistent paternal instincts going? It was difficult seeing the use in letting her presence affect him before he had even made it one step back into the house.

But it was even more impossible to keep that nagging feeling in the back of his head from bugging him.

“Oi, kid!” The child sat up straight and her face turned red, as if she had been caught with her hand in the sweets jar.

“Who are you?” Her words were high-pitched and indistinguishable in that way all children sound identical when young, yet there was a quiet fear to them.

Judal chewed the inside of his cheek. “An old friend of your mother’s. What about you, kid?”

“I’m Taohua.” Taohua, now he could remember Gyoku choosing that. It was like her to try and make something good of a situation that had just been plain bad.

“And that was Ka.” Taohua pointed at the door as if she was excited to have finally drifted back into territory she knew.

“Oh don’t worry I know the old bastard.” It only occurred to him then that he probably shouldn’t curse in front of a...two year old? four year old? Whatever the case he quickly dismissed the concern when he considered the actual war crimes he had committed.

“He takes care of me and Mama.”

“I’m sure he does, he even took care of her when we were children.” He had talked with kings and queens, faced down the most powerful warriors in the world, and yet somehow this was the most tense ordeal he had ever experienced.

“Are you Judal?” From the top of his head to the very blood in his bones, he froze. His body was still functioning, he could see her curious expression, but his brain couldn’t put the pieces together to form an actual thought.

Before his terror could show however, the eunuch popped back out of the house with his cold smugness. The mere air around him made Judal annoyed, which at least was better than petrified.

“Gyoku is not feeling well, so you can’t see her today. Still she’s willing to let you stay for the week no questions asked.”

“Guess that will do.” Judal ran a hand through his braid. “I’m gonna wash myself up. Tell me when it’s dinner time, eunuch.” He traced the steps back to his old room yet was surprised when he got there and found that it had been left untouched.

With a sigh he plopped down on the sleeping mat. Was this supposed to be when you said home, sweet, home?

He didn’t get to see Gyoku that evening. When the eunuch called him for dinner, it was only the kid and him sitting at the table.

“Gyoku’s feeling unwell,” was the only explanation that he would give. As simple and logical as it was, his defensiveness made Judal suspicious. When the same excuse was parroted the following morning, it became impossible to contain his restlessness.

“If she didn’t want to see me then why didn’t she just say so? Didn’t have to fake the fucking plague.”

Ka Koubun flinched before his scowl grew even deeper. “Then why don’t you try making her feel better? You’re obviously successful at that aren’t you?”

He had prepared another insult before he had even finished processing the eunuch’s, but as he readied to cast it like a spell, he was struck by the pettiness of it all. It wasn’t as if respectability ever meant much to him, but god were they old. The little vanity he still held had to admit it hardly looked any good on them.

“Have you taken her breakfast yet?” Without thinking, Judal scraped his leftovers onto a clean plate. “Might as well be useful if I’m annoying.”

His bluster managed to carry him out, but as he approached Gyoku’s room, his sails began to lose their wind. So far Xiaoshi had been completely predictable. The eunuch was a pain in the ass, and the kid was terrifying in her normalcy. But there was no predicting what Gyoku would be like. Back at Rakushou she had been uncertain yet blindingly determined. If someone had told him she would later become a simple farmer in the middle of absolutely nowhere, he would have laughed in their faces. Yet could she have changed even more drastically since then? And even if she hadn’t, did she only want him around so she could work up the strength to tear him limb from limb?

Judal shook his head. Questions were useless if you weren’t willing to face their answers. Before he could lose his nerve, Judal knocked on her door.

“Come in,” A quiet voice wisped. And so Judal took a deep breath and did as he was ordered to.

He didn’t know what he was expecting when he entered, but it hadn’t been for the sight to be so familiar. Her room still managed to be somehow bare yet disorganized and cluttered. In the middle of the mess laid Gyoku on her sleeping mat.

“Judal...” As she sat up, her blanket fell back to reveal some things had changed. There was a round softness to her body after having to bear the weight of a child. He didn’t know why he focused on that. Maybe so he didn’t have to look her in the eye.

“Yeah it’s me...” He ran a hand through his braid. “Did the eunuch not deliver the news?”

Silence suffocated the room. He must have lost his tolerance for pain because for some reason he thought looking at her might make things easier. Bad decision. That sad, soft pink managed to hook its talons into his heart and refused to let him look away once their gazes met.

It probably wasn’t the best decision, but if he couldn’t look away he wanted to at least see less of her. He approached her without speaking, until they were face to face. Striking distance, idly he thought. But Gyoku just continued to stare and stare at him, as if she had forgotten how to do anything but that.

“Your hair’s a rat’s mess.” Probably not the best comment to make, but it helped him break eye contact and focus on her unruly tangles. “Do you want me to do something about that?”

He waited for an answer but wasn’t surprised when nothing came. Still he needed some sort of motion to break up his restless energy, so he grabbed her comb and sat next to her all the same.

Tentatively he brushed it through her locks.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry,” From this angle she couldn’t see him, but he ducked his head all the same. “I’ll be more gentle.” Slowly he pulled apart a nasty knot with his hands. After years of keeping his hair neat and presentable, maybe even he could do more than mess this up.

“I’ve done a lot of traveling lately.” The irony didn’t escape him, but those words seemed less crude than the full truth. “You should see Balbadd now, can barely recognize the place anymore.” It wasn’t like him to chatter away, but it was something to fill the room with. The lesser of two evils.

“Your old fiance managed to turn into a somewhat respectable king. Has two little pups with the Fanalis bitch that used to trail behind him. Might be cute if the perfection of it all wasn’t so sickening.” He rambled on like that--telling all he knew of their old friends and foes, of the weird mishaps he got into on the road. He wasn’t sure if she was even listening to it all, but he told those stories for himself first and foremost.

He didn’t mention his third and final trip to a destroyed village that had never been his home.

When he was finished with her hair, he got up to leave, but before he could take even a single step, Gyoku grabbed his hand.

“Judal...” She drew in a deep breath, as if it was taking all her effort to mutter those two syllables. “...I don’t forgive you.”

Even without the influence of magic, her words still felt as cold as Vinea’s iciest of waters. “What reason should you?” He tried to brush her words off, but he was sure if he looked at her again this time he would never be able to move again. Time to be serious for once in his life.

“Look, I don’t care to pretend I’m redeemed or any of that bullshit. Just want to take responsibility for the mess I made for you. Do you want my help?”

He waited for an answer once more, and it seemed even less likely to come. Maybe that is how she would enact her revenge--leave him waiting here until he withered away into nothing but dust and bone. And through it all she’d probably stare without blinking once.

But if that was her plan, she must have decided to save it for later, because eventually Gyoku spoke.

“You can stay.” It wasn’t a complete yes, but it definitely wasn’t a no.

Maybe that was the best they could do for now.

Life in Xiaoshi proceeded from then on, but something about it never felt real.

For one thing, the following day Gyoku was up and running chores. The fact that no one commented that she had been cocooned in a pile of blankets for the past few days would have stood out to him, but soon that observation was eclipsed by an even greater one.

Nobody seemed to react to his presence either.

It wasn’t as if he was a ghost, he was given chores to do and acknowledged and spoken to (although glaringly Ka Koubun never left him alone with the child after that first morning). No it was more subtle than that. They treated him as if he had never left, as if three years hadn’t passed between them.

Well that wasn’t true either. Gyoku didn’t seek him out at night nor scream his name in a fit or whisper it like a love-song. It was back to before they had even knew Xiaoshi existed--when the demon child and whore’s daughter had grown up and were trying to be Kou’s sacred oracle and precious 8th princess. Back then he had welcomed the change, had probably been the first to temper their relationship into something cold and professional in search of people like Hakuryuu. He hadn't needed a sad, lonely girl, just someone who could offer him the power to free himself and burn down the system that had so mistreated him. But here in the middle of nowhere, he couldn’t take Gyoku’s bland greeting and neutral stares.

Tell me how I hurt you. Cry, rage, just don’t act as if I mean nothing to you.

He didn’t know he had cared when during those early Xiaoshi years she had been the one chasing after him. Maybe it was his ego. A monster liked to know they were still feared. And oh he hadn’t felt like one in such a long time. On the road you’re just another face. He had never experienced anonymity before. It was so freeing it made his head spin, and he had thought there would be no greater joy than to die in a forgotten grave.

But then Balbadd had changed everything. It’s funny, that was where he had first remembered Gyoku existed since becoming oracle. In the same streets where she had saved his life, he saw dear old idiot Alibaba wave around his newborn daughter for the world to see. He had been just another face in the crowd, probably wasn’t even noticed by him, yet something about the parade seemed to scream, “Isn’t there some place you belong?” Call it whatever you like, the voice of the rukh or delayed guilt, but those words had stuck with him even after he had left town. Without much thought he followed their call until it took him back to Xiaoshi.

But what was the point in sticking around if that wasn’t the case?

He gave it a month. A month to see if there was any room for him in that little house anymore, if Gyoku would give him the decency of disdain, if the eunuch would grow some balls and kill him like he wanted to, if the girl would ever elicit any emotion from him besides plain old fear.

Things didn’t change. So that morning he packed his stuff and left.

He didn’t even make it out the backyard before Gyoku was screaming her banshee scream and chasing after him.

“Bastard!” He had barely any time to process the insult before she tackled him face first in the snow. “You don’t get to just show up again and then pull the same shit!” She shoved his head further into the ground, her grip against his scalp so tight he wondered if her nails would draw blood.

Hmm, maybe it would be her instead that killed him. It was a dangerous thing to do, yet he couldn’t help but laugh at the thought.

Gyoku’s confusion at his reaction gave him enough breath to choke out a few words.

“Nice to be in your thoughts so early in the morning, princess.”

She grew still at that. From the sound of footsteps, he gather that their kerfuffle must have awaken the others. He counted his breaths quietly and once he reached ten, Gyoku got off him and helped him up.

A sarcastic grin tugged at his lips. There was that endearing softness she had never grown out of. Even in her worst rages, she had always been too good to completely lose control.

The smirk got knocked off his face when her right hook sent him back sprawling against the ground.

“You don’t get to joke at a time like this. You don’t get to call me, 'princess.' And you certainly don’t get to leave right after I got used to having you around.” There was Vinea’s ice again. No, if she could summon it twice, then it must be her own now. Still this time the chill didn’t last because slowly tears melted against her eyelashes. “You don’t get to live in our doorway, half-in, half-out. If you’re going to go then you must leave for good. I told myself I wasn’t going to depend on you anymore.”

It’s funny, that those tears brought him so much relief. At the same time he wanted to wipe them away so bad, yet he knew that would probably earn him another punch. In a sorta compromise, he played with the fabric of her sleeping robe.

“Was just taking a morning walk.”

“Liar,” There was no venom in her voice, just truth. “Make your decision now, but I have a family to look after.” She lacked the fine silks of her old life, yet she had never looked so regal before, baby fat and all.

As if he was the eunuch himself, Judal couldn’t help but stand up and trail three steps behind her back to the house.

As they moved into spring, they slowly but surely reached a sort of homeostasis. For the most part they went through life in the same quiet manner. There were no more beat-downs, no more solitary walks, just preparing the fields and getting through another domestic day. Still now Gyoku and him had landed somewhere between the distance and closeness they had oscillated between. Some days they would simply live and work beside each other nothing more, but the barrier didn’t feel so forced because she was just as likely to spend an evening with him playing card games and chatting about nonsense. It was strange and unfamiliar, but not unwelcome.

“You have such an obvious tell. When you twirl your braid around your finger like that, I just know I have you!”

“Like you’re much better. Your poker face is so weak I’m sure a blind man could read it”

“You know those first few weeks what I missed the most about you was the sex.”

“Eh it was only a distraction for me. Haven’t fucked anyone else you know.”

“Hey don’t think I don’t see you sneaking that card under the table!”

“As if I don’t see the way you scrape your nails against each card before choosing one. You have your tricks and I have mine.”

“I think what hurt the most about you leaving was the embarrassment of it all. I thought you would change and then you left me at my weakest.”

“I had thought I had changed too. But I guess I’m my most evil when I’m at my weakest.”

“King’s Court, I win!”

“Bullshit!”

They didn’t have their old post coitus heart to hearts anymore, never even touched each other anymore. He could only pick up those blunt truths when she deemed to drop them. Gyoku had changed. There was still that same bluster to try and do things right, act as if she was perfectly fine, but it no longer felt so desperate and pleading. She tried to move the stars for no one’s benefit but her own and she would do it whether he liked it or not.

It wasn’t what the selfish beast inside of him wanted, for her to be the pitiful, predictable princess of yesteryears, worried about upsetting him. But more of him could work with it.

Farmwork begun up again, and as they worked side by side, they truly felt like equals for the first time since they had been children. Maybe he had caught her discarded nostalgia, but he didn’t think it hurt too much to savor it when he could.

You can’t hold onto to anger forever.

In another world, it would have been enough. Even if Ka Koubun hated him for the rest of time, navigating a normal life within an abnormal household would have been a fine enough purgatory to land in. Hell, for all the crimes he had committed, it would be a far better fate than he deserved. There was just one mistake holding him back from his content ending. The girl.

He hadn’t been able to avoid her, as much as it seemed to annoy the eunuch, but to say he had really spent time with her was an exaggeration. They existed in similar spaces together. She would mutter quiet “thank you’s” whenever he passed her food during dinner and he’d return a gruff “you’re welcome” as he searched for somewhere else to look besides her face. In theory she knew his name, but despite her question back during that snowy first meeting, he didn’t know what it meant to her. If she saw him as either a terrible demon or a returned god, she didn’t show it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be either of those things, but the fact she already had some preconceived notion of him before he even appeared before her eyes wore on his nerves.

He tried asking Gyoku about it once. It was most likely that she had been the one to bring him up to Taohua in the first place. However, she had skirted the issue with a less than subtle hand.

“You could always talk to her about it.”

“You think a child would be better at explaining things than you are?”

“Maybe not about about everything, but Taohua would know herself the best. It shouldn’t be hard to get her talking, she’s a chatter-box,” Her robe slipped off her shoulder as she wiped the sweat from her brow. He stole a few glances at the scrap of peach skin before going back to work. The summer sun was hot. He didn’t need Gyoku getting self-conscious and wrapping herself up in a bundle of layers. That would only make the work take a lot longer, he told himself.

“It’s your decision to claim her or not, but I will not lie to her about her parentage.” Gyoku’s response was so unexpected, he almost missed it. “My father was just a name. I wanted to give Taohua more than that. I thought you would feel the same.”

Decades old jealousy stirs at her words. Even a name was more than he had. Al-Thamen had deemed things like a heritage and family to be ill-suited for a tool. Hell, even his own name had only been chosen to erase any trace his parents might have left on him. It would take an unusual amount of cruelty even for him to wish that fate on anyone.

Still he didn’t know if his presence would be much better. Even without a father, the girl had two parents in Gyoku and the eunuch. Were they perfect, of course not--years living with them had exposed all their deepest darkest flaws. But they loved her, and that was a gift Judal doubted any of the three of them had ever had.

He wasn’t sure if he could love her though--or if his love would bring anything but disaster. Just look at how it had ruined Gyoku. He thought that he would try to make due with the current status quo. He’d let those red eyes haunt him in exchange for a roof over his head and something like forgiveness.

But then something in the rukh shifted.

Even after losing his command over them, Judal had never lost his ability to see the rukh. It had been a cruel joke, salt on a wound that refused to heal, but slowly he had learned to live with it. Even if their sight sometimes gave him phantom pains in limbs he hadn’t technically lost, he got better at managing the aches. It had been his only option between that or letting the loss consume him, and well somehow he was still here. One of Xiaoshi’s few blessings was that its rukh were quiet and listless. They were rarely ever riled up, so it was easy enough for him to let them fade into the background.

But as he was returning to the house after a full-day’s work, he saw the rukh fly and race like he hadn’t seen in years. Without thinking, he followed them, frantic and half-wild.

Their trail ended in Taohua’s room, where she sat playing with her dolls. She looked up at him, completely confused as if she hadn’t just put together a spell that was only one or two rukh combinations away from freezing the entire house.

“What--” Judal took a deep breath. “--the actual fuck!”

The girl looked as if she was about to cry. With her concentration thoroughly broken, the spell fell apart into harmless individual rukh. Relief flooded his veins, but before he could enjoy it fully, a new problem was upon him.

“Ka!” The girl pushed past him. When Judal turned around he found the eunuch cradling her against his legs as he brandished a kitchen knife.

“What are you doing?” His words were just as sharp as the weapon in his hand.

“What are you doing pointing that thing at me?” After the years of contempt and disdain Judal had suffered from him, his tolerance was worn raw.

“You’re the one I found in an upset child’s room. You do the explaining.”

“God, what delusion did you come up with? That I’d try to eat her or something?”

“I’m gonna give you until the count of three. One--”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”

“Two--”

“She was using magic, goddamnit!” Judal gripped Ka Koubun’s shoulders. “Does your pea-sized brain have any idea of what that means?”

After all his big talk, he seemed to forgot all about the knife in his hand. Bewildered golden brown eyes stared into red. “What? But she’s so young? Were you teaching--”

“If I was teaching her, then why would I be so surprised?” Slowly Judal let go of him. The wheels in his head were spinning at top speeds. If he’s going to be able to convince him of the necessary action they must take, he must appear calm.

Now free, the eunuch was preoccupying himself with the child. “Taohua, what were you doing?” He stroked her head in a comforting manner, but Judal couldn’t tell who it was supposed to comfort.

“Playing,” She muttered, still twirling the doll in her hands.

“What were you thinking about?”

“Kazue needed a new dress--” She wouldn’t look him in the eye. “--and I was hot.”

The eunuch closed his eyes and sighed. He seemed just as pissed as before, but thankfully he put the knife away and turned to address Judal.

“Is she a magi? Like you?”

“Don’t know,” Judal shrugged. He racked his brain for any information Al-Thamen had gathered about the children of magi. It had always been a rare occasion, but in theory there were only supposed to be three of them at a time in the world. You couldn’t just breed an army of them. Still the brat magi had messed things up and bumped the number up to four. No reason the rules couldn’t be broken again. Besides maybe since he lost his magic, he was dead to the rukh. “What I do know is that she needs training.”

The eunuch stiffened. “I will not let her be made a weapon.”

“Do you think I want her to have to suffer what I went through?!” Judal was holding his temper in check by the skin of his teeth. The only thing that was keeping him from fully exploding was the fact that doing so would hurt more people than just the eunuch.

And he was so tired of innocents getting caught in the crossfire.

“Look, I can teach her the basics of the rukh, what it feels like to channel them and how to properly guide their course. It’s better she knows what she is capable of so she can control it.” Judal clenched his fists. “So she doesn’t become me.”

Ka Koubun studied him with those distrustful eyes. But before he could speak, Taohua waddled over to Judal.

“You see the butterflies too?”

By the end of the month, they fell into a routine. Once a week, Judal would sit down with Taohua to teach her a different aspect of the rukh. In theory the lessons were only supposed to be theoretical, but sometimes he would slip in a spell or two when no one else was around--like how to ease the pain of a bruise or produce a light. Such a move might make the eunuch pull out the knife on him again, but he had a rational reason for once in his lifetime.

It gave him a chance to observe the child and see what she would do with the material she was given. If when given power her baby fat and pudgy hands would melt away to reveal a monster beyond imagination.

And as autumn fell, he pulled together all the information he had gathered, and judged.

The child was perfectly normal. Sweet and energetic, but flighty and stubborn at times. She really did chatter away any spare moments of silence she came across as Gyoku said. She didn’t like being told what to do, but hated to see others upset. She loved to use ice magic, just like him when he was younger, and laughed and laughed and laughed without a single ounce of shame.

And with every smile of hers, a bit of the fear faded away.

Judal was just getting used to things when Gyoku had another episode.

The eunuch and child didn’t seem at all surprised by it, going about their routine as usual, but for Judal all the regrets and worries of winter returned full-force.

Your presence is a poison. Go before the child catches it. It doesn’t matter how much you try to change, you will always be a monster.

But for some reason he didn’t run, and the next day Gyoku came out after lunch to sit next to him and bask in the sunlight. They didn’t speak for a long time, just watched the day pass by in one peaceful breath and out the next. Despite the pleasant atmosphere, dark clouds in the distant signaled that a cold front was on its way. While such weather was normal around this time of year, it still unnerved him all the same.

Will you still be tolerated after they are forced to see the real you?

“Will you comb my hair?” Gyoku’s words were such a surprise, Judal did a double-take to make sure he wasn’t imagining them. While her gaze was trained firmly on the horizon, there was a certain tautness to her shoulders that seemed to demand she be acknowledged. “I’m so tired...but you always look so good no matter what. I figured you would do a better job than me.”

Judal took a deep breath. “Sure, no problem.”

Carefully he brushed through her red locks. He was almost certain he’d end up pulling too hard at some point, perhaps accidentally rip out a chunk of hair, but as they fell into a rhythm, Gyoku gave a content sigh.

Perhaps she is lying and--

“I thought I was doing so good--” Gyoku’s voice brought him back down to the real world. “--but I guess the cold always brings the voices out.”

“I didn’t know what I would find when I returned.” Judal spoke slowly, feeling around for the right response. “In the back of my mind I always wondered if you might give up on living.” He was glad she hadn’t, but such affection felt dangerous in this no-man’s land they cohabited.

“Oh I thought about it a lot--” Gyoku gave a sad laugh, “--but funny enough it was you who kept me going.”

Judal held his breath as he waited. For what, he couldn’t say: maybe another verbal slap across the face, another cruel damnation. But what followed instead was much more tender.

“I had this dream about you a few years ago,” Like a nervous child, Gyoku fiddled with the fabric of her robe. “The peach trees were in bloom, and we just sat under them--together. Sometimes neither of us said a word, and sometimes I would yell horrible things at you, but you were silent most of the time.”

Judal’s grip on the comb grew tighter. Somehow this was a crueler choice. Self-flagellation was becoming his bread and butter, but if she was going where she seemed to be...

“Dreams are just dreams,” Judal muttered.

“Maybe, but in the last one, you told me that if I wanted happiness, I should go ahead and just grab it.” A light blush dusted her cheeks. “Even if it was just a figment of my imagination...it really meant a lot to me.”

Judal screwed his mouth shut. He didn’t trust his tongue at the moment. It was a stupid, sentimental creature that would only hurt her more in the long run.

“I remember those dreams as well...”

“Done with your hair,” Is what he said instead.

Gyoku turned around to look him in the eye. The fading sunlight gave her a gentle elegance. She looked nothing like her past self--all done up in elaborate hairstyles and fine silks. Still with the way she let her long hair flow freely past her shoulders, she looked more mature and at peace with herself than ever before.

“I’ve told you this before, but I will say it again: I promised to never depend on you again. I don’t want to tie my happiness to someone who has hurt me. Still--” She looked up at him through soft eyelashes. “--have you ever considered starting over? Trying things out again?”

“I always thought I would be dead by now.” Judal blurted out. It was a non-answer, but when had they found the time to grow up? He wasn’t used to second chances. Wasn’t used to imagining a future for himself that didn’t end with him alone and dead in a ditch.

He should have remembered he was a monster. He should have ran right then and there and forgotten everything about Xiaoshi. Instead he grabbed her hands in his and brought them to his chest.

“Is this what you were thinking of?” He waited for her disapproval, that his hands were too rough, his grip was too tight. But Gyoku only smiled at him sweetly.

“It’s just what I wanted.”

A.N. Another year wait between chapters, I guess I pulled a Judal, I feel I’ve grown and changed as much as the characters have so it took a while to fall back into them (especially to find Judal’s voice again after how long it had been) but I hope to have finally brought some catharsis

#jukou #judal #ren kougyoku #magi #my lame writing #rp #otp: I'm not an angel #arabian nights plus tears #in which the in-universe timeframe is starting to match that of this fic

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nire-the-mithridatist · 3 years

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Ao3 Tag Game

Tagged by@albatrossisland - thank you! I'm procrastinating writing right now so this is perfect <3 1. How many works do you have on ao3? 39 on nire and 17 on lesserfeelings. 56 total. That's... more than I thought I would have.

2. What’s your current AO3 wordcount? 300,928 on nire (since 2014, around 60k are in joint custody with@slipsthrufingers

157,247 on lesserfeelings (since late March this year, around 26k are not written by mine but part of a round robin fic). The more accurate number would be around 130,000.

Safely past 400k in total?

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? Quite a number, I guess. On ye olde ffnet, I wrote for Naruto, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Fullmetal Alchemist. On ao3, I went through Arrow, Mystic Messenger, Wonder Woman (2017), MCU Spider-Man, Game of Thrones/ASoIaF, one fic for the novel Circe by Madeline Miller, AtLA, and I suppose most recently Vincenzo. That's 12 properties/fandoms.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? The Universe Conspires - 3,089 kudos - an MCU Peter/MJ Soulmates fic. It just crossed 3000 kudos pretty recently. Pretty much my top 5 fics by kudos are for this ship (4 out of 5 of them for the soulmates series, even), written around the same timeframe, so I'll skip those, heh. The sixth top fic I have, by kudos:

A Good Match - 928 kudos - the J/B fic I co-wrote with Slips, which is a whole ass angst fest. Slips is excellent to partner with. I love her.

Waiting on a Steady Sun - 830 kudos - a Zuko/Katara fic I wrote for Zutara Week 2020, which is mostly marriage of convenience + mutual pining + pining for one's own spouse and best friend.

Hold This Threadbare Heart at Needlepoint - 746 kudos - my first Jaime/Brienne fic, which is mostly just Jaime training the use of his left hand by sewing/embroidering pretty garments for Brienne. Post-canon(ish). Very soft. Deeply self-indulgent. The show just ended and I needed to write fluff.

four stages - 711 kudos - my most popular Vincenzo/Cha Young fic, which is mostly Cha Young being sad because she thought Vincenzo is dead. Spoiler alert: he's not. Post canon. Very sad. Deeply self-indulgent. The show just ended and I needed to write pain.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not. I used to! But then I started lapsing, and then there's more and more piling up, and I feel guiltier and guiltier if I don't answer the old ones first but there's so many of them, and... yeah. I'm very bad at this. I'm sorry.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? Oh, easy. there's a ghost in my lungs; it sighs in my sleep is a fully post-show-canon J/B fic where Jaime lingers as a ghost no one but Bran can see and it ends with him sort of sacrificing his immortal soul to save a dying Brienne.

7. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve ever written? Nope. Well, once upon a time I wrote a Mass Effect/Dragon Age crossover on ffn but it never went anywhere, and I'd never tried anything like that ever again.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic? Sigh. Once.

9. Do you write smut? Heh. Yes. Needlepoint isn't only my first J/B fic, it's also the first smut I'd ever written.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not a whole fic, no, but I have had someone repurposing scenes I wrote by changing the words here and there, except they're structurally and fundamentally the same scenes, enough that they're still recognizable. It wasn't great.

11. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Yes. @slipsthrufingers I love you!

12. What’s your all time favorite ship? Oh lord. I don't know. The ships I've written the most for are J/B and V/CY, and the ship I've shipped the longest is Zutara. I've got a lot of other ships I didn't write for, though. Shepard/Garrus and Hawke/Fenris come to mind.

13. What was the first fandom you wrote for? Prince of Tennis! It's a manga about, you guessed it, tennis. And it's a very ridiculous manga. And I was so young, back then I didn't know gay people were a thing, so I wrote for like the one het ship in it. I never posted any of them, though. The first fic I posted was for Naruto.

14. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? Mmmmmmmmmmmmmh. Tough to choose. I'll pick one for each of the OTPs I listed on 12 I suppose.

J/B: A Matter of Honour because it's got the fight-to-fuck pipeline

Zutara: wrong when it's right because it's funny how much one sets out to write a huddling for warmth fic but the huddling doesn't happen until about like 6000 words in.

V/CY: warm as burial gold because I set out to write sad, angsty smut and I got comments telling me they never cried while reading smut before.

Tagging: @slipsthrufingers @naomignome @twelvemonkeyswere @ajoblotofjunk @forbiddenfantasies1 @pretty--thief @rosetintednerdglasses @stutteringpeach @ahenix @xtreasure @slpytea and you, if you want to do this. Consider yourself tagged!

#tag games

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hedonisthierophant · 4 years

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Unveiled eyes and bloodless lips -A skarsgard multiverse thing.

A universe of many Bills, a couple AHAs, and a few others.

@grandpa-sweaters You asked for fic with The Kid and instead I somehow came up with this monstrosity. I’m not sure if you’ve ever read my writing before but I’m sorry.

Dedicated to my literary soulmate @ill-skillsgard I hope you don’t hate it.

Warnings: Smut, mentions of pregnancy and childbirth, gore, spit kink, cuckoldry, degradation, injury, death.

Unveiled eyes and bloodless lips

The witch had lost this game long before she even started playing, the final result such a foregone conclusion that it might be more accurate in fact to say she had lost before she had even been born. Forces much larger than her, to call them even titanic in scope would be an understatement, had been attending to the moves of the board since time immemorial. To say her fate such as it was had been decided back then is to grievously misstate the situation. Her exact destiny was fiercely contested on the board of play, it could’ve turned out completely differently, unfolding along anyone of the infinite myriad of paths of kismet. But her doom? That became inevitable she drew the attention of the game’s players. Naturally she remained unaware of the inescapable quality of her demise, she fought against it until the very last moment, her ferocious zeal, her skill and talent, all of it amounted to naught, For what hope does in an insect have against flood? Through no fault of her own, her perspective on this eons-long contest she had the misfortune of being prescribed to enter was…limited. In actuality the word “limited” doesn’t begin to convey the magnitude of her ignorance, imagine if you will placing your eye at a keyhole and attempting to catch a glimpse of a room darkened to pitch black. Some less astute souls might say that her involvement in the affair was rather like bringing a deaf person to the symphony but you dear reader know better, I should hope. Someone who cannot hear will have a different experience with music to be sure, but an experience they will have, the concepts on display remain within the realm of understanding. In our case a young woman became the toy of forces so far beyond her ken that she was to them as an amoeba might be to one of us beneath the prying lens of a microscope. As you may have surmised the tragedy that brings my voyeuristic audience to me unfolded slowly, spanning two lifetimes. Of course, this is only slow from the mortal point of view, to the beings that brought this about such a timeframe was less than the blink of an eye might be to us, for their machinations make glaciers seem to move with haste. Oh yes, they lack celerity but in exchange their actions carry the gravity of unquestionable certainty. However, I have indulged myself long enough. It is time that I recount, to the best of my ability the story which is brought you here today…whilst I remain able to do so.

Her mother was possessed of a nearly singular lack of the talent that had been at the disposal to members of her family as far back as records would go. She did retain the gift of foresight. In the hands of anyone else this boon guaranteed an interesting life, if not necessarily a good one. The ability to see the future meant that so much of the world could be bent to your whim, fortunes raised, mistakes avoided, enemies destroyed before they even had the opportunity to transgress. For her mother though the only thing her visions brought was infinite sadness. She was many months pregnant you see. The result of an impetuous liaison with an excitable and impassioned thief several years who junior who quite literally stumbled into her lap, betrayed by his gangly limbs at a luxurious hotel bar he happened to be casing. He must have absconded with a waiter’s uniform for nothing about his outfit fit his exquisitely lanky form properly. Remembering the bowtie that hung limply and sideways from his collar still brings a smile to her face. The knave proclaimed she was the love of his life, his goddess and that he would devote his life to securing her happiness. It was quite a scene the tableau made certainly more…unconventional due to the fact that she was celebrating her first wedding anniversary at and sitting directly across from her husband at the time. Their marriage had been mostly a business arrangement, not entirely loveless but more cordial than intimate, but she thinks she could have grown to love him for the smirk that wound its way across his face after the blubbering young would be waiter realized his presence. She recalls watching the scene like a member of the audience at the theater, her face impassive, one brow raised. Her husband had a reputation for an incredibly violent temper, if you ever witnessed it though but she could never convince herself to entirely discredit the rumors. Both she and the scoundrel were frozen, he in fear, she in surprise. Her husband stood up, declare that their food had been awful and they were taking the waiter as recompense. Her husband, she couldn’t stand the pain that thinking his name brought even all these years later. He had made his fortune as proprietor of the “last heir to the great circuses of old, the man was a showman to his core and could have sold sin to the most pious of people. Sitting in the stands watching that man bewitch everyone around her, she certain she could’ve learned to love him had she been given more time with him. Her brother-in-law put a stop to any happy fantasies she might’ve entertained though, fratricide had a way of casting a pall over such things. Death took him from her, but that night he had been so very alive. He threw the reprobate onto their sumptuous marriage bed and ordered her in a voice that was equal parts chilling and gleeful to fuck him within an inch of his life. She did, hips canting madly as she struggled to match the thief’s exuberance for all he was worth, she was the only thing that grounded him as he shuddered through orgasm after improbable orgasm. His soulful eyes stared up at her as though she had hung the stars. After one particularly fierce climax she turned to look at her husband across the darkened room for all the while he had been orchestrating the performance as though being its sole audience member also burdened him with the role of conductor, she may have been having extraordinary sex but for all that the two of them were just toys for her husband. He controlled them with such precision a note here, a whisper there, advice for the two of them ghosting across the room. He was a master puppeteer, they may have lacked physical strings but that did not stop him. He ruled over them with the same exactness he employed with his beloved elephants, compelling them through routines to astound and amaze basking in the dazzled worship of the onlookers. That night though, he was taking full advantage of being the only onlooker. She still remembers the manic smile on his face and how his hair looked like flame in the moonlight spilling through the window as hysterical (euphoric) laughter echoed off the walls of their manor, as though her husband were the only one in on some wonderfully hilarious joke of cosmic proportions. Looking back on it, he may well have been. Following their final crescendo as her husband’s euphoria slowly waned into giggling, the criminal professed his love for her for the umpteenth time and begged her to come away with him to Florida, promising to dedicate the rest of his days to making her happy. His stirring gaze brimmed with imploring tears he unabashedly let fall from his eyes, his voice quavering beneath the immense wait of his need to keep her in his life. The scales she used to weigh her options were suddenly dashed as her husband took a great gasping breath, sprang up from his seated position in the sumptuous armchair he’d been occupying and began to flit around the room gathering things to him, mania rolling off him in waves. He’d hoisted the nude crook off her with little apparent effort despite being smaller than the rangy younger man. He spun him around and slapped the sex drunk visitor’s bare ass as the man squawked in surprise and indignation, pale globes of flesh flushing an angry shade of red and leaving a print in the form of her husband’s hand at the sting. Her husband crouched for on his haunches for a moment to admire his impromptu work of art. She couldn’t see him but she could clearly picture his eyes growing wide with fascination as the mark took shape, his hands twitched with restrained desire, she could practically feel him warring with the impulse to throw him onto their marriage bed yet again, but this time for the purpose of sowing sharper and deeper blossoms of suffering across the entirety of the canvas that was the other man’s body. Disturbed smile still in place as he ground his teeth he muttered to himself in hushed tones. “No Jer, be a good boy. Almost done now, you can do it. Just gotta ape him. He straightened the conflict within him tucked away beneath the impeccable veneer of the consummate showman’s mask. “Would that I could have joined you crazy kids. I’d have loved to use all my fun little tricks on a tall glass of water like you. I’d have driven you crazy, stark raving mad really, shown you just how wild gingers can get, I’m talking showing you where the animals go.” He said with a grin that was only matched in lascivious by it’s lunacy and air of danger. She was certain the young man with the innocence and coordination of a newborn fawn would not have survived such an encounter He clapped the sex drunk young man on the back, sensually garbed him in a ludicrously expensive silken kimono, handed him a duffel bag of cash as though he had one standing by for just this occasion. That torn expression came over his face yet again, this time he surrendered to his urges. Quite suddenly he brought their lips together with the force of a devouring hunger, grinding his crotch against the other man’s leg. Judging by the surprised sound that issued from their visitor, her husband’s tongue had embarked on an enthusiastic exploration of the other man’s mouth. Then as suddenly as the whirlwind of passion had come, it stilled. He stepped back, a deranged smile lighting up his face. A single thin and determined cord of saliva still bound them together in remembrance of their embrace, her husband broke it with his middle finger, and then brought the digit to the other man’s lips. He sucked on it with a dazed expression for a moment before her husband withdrew with out warning. He clapped him on his back, said in perhaps the most jovial tone a cuckold has ever used with his competitor “I’ve always loved a good fireworks show.” and sent the befuddled young paramour on his way with a wink. The next day her husband left on “family business” to some crime on the east coast submerged seven layers deep in corruption and crime, this business ended in his demise. She remembers looking at him in the casket, smirk fixed in place as though even in death he had gotten the last laugh after all.

That had all been eight months ago exactly. Now here she was at a comfortable cruising altitude of 30,000 feet returning from a sojourn to the place where so many of her sisters had famously died along with innocents and hapless victims of circumstance. She buried her husband in the cesspool city and then communed with nature and the spirits of the sisters who came before her in Salem, now all that was left for her to do was return to her family’s modest estate in Canada and continue puzzling over the odd provision in her husband’s will for any child of hers regardless of whether that child was part of their union or not. The trouble began in earnest on that flight which should’ve been an entirely unremarkable trip from Salem to Halifax. The first unusual occurrence was that her water broke and quite suddenly she was in the process of bringing a life into the world some 2000 stories off the ground suspended in what she’d always considered to be fragile contraptions held aloft by little more than a prayer. Her situation was odd and certainly less than ideal but not unheard of. The flight attendants rushed her to the back of the plane and by what many would like to think was a happy accident there were several members of an obstetrics team present aboard that very flight. The delivery was much more difficult than expected for the culmination of what had been by every reckoning a model pregnancy, with nary an over-enthusiastic kick. Whatever creature was inside of her head suddenly gained the claws of the most wicked of fairytale crones, and the weight of a giant every movement brought only piercing agony and precious little relief. Her screams echoed through the craft that was a dedication to mankind’s hubris as her pain intensified so too did an incredibly unforeseen bout of bad weather, the radar which just hours ago prior to takeoff had promised skies wonderful for flying was now proving itself to be a liar. It was as though passing above some insignificant little town in Maine that caused the storm spring up around them. Their vehicle was buffeted from every direction by winds and frost that were unseasonable even for harsh winter in upper North America. Around her people cursed and prayed, screamed and shouted as the pilots fought to deliver their charges to the ground in the same amount of pieces as they left it, rather than in so many more as was becoming increasingly likely. The town against all sense did have its own infinitesimally small airstrip, it wasn’t until many years later that she would begin to understand just how long ago the pieces had been set in play. As they began their harried descent people were struck by falling luggage and other debris that comes when you compress the lives of hundred people into the space of an aircraft and then turn it into a topsy-turvy. Some were killed, she even took a piece of glass to the jaw but any object that got within striking distance of the newborn child swaddled in a washcloth suddenly lost all momentum and dropped to the floor, this sort of power was most definitely beyond her she had no gift for telekinetics but she was simply too alarmed at the gravity of their situation as Earth’s own gravity began to make its power and its displeasure at having been flaunted known to the passengers. Someone with much more than was at her disposal was looking out for her daughter. And so, their airplane limped down from the sky thoroughly chastened by Zeus and his ilk for its trespass into their domain and Moira and her mother crashed into Castle Rock.

Moira and her mother had always been considered oddities by the town. Two outsiders literally cast out of the heavens and dropped into the midst of unwelcoming townsfolk. Her mother had made the best of the situation, for she had tried, made a very valiant attempt to leave this town but the moment that she crossed the boundaries she was wrapped in agony which would not abate until she took a step back into the town, this phenomenon persisted whether she tried by car or on foot and she refused to give air travel another attempt. She was no fool, she knew well that some incredible force was bent on keeping her and her daughter entrapped in this little nothing of a hamlet. She may not have had the gifts that her family had taken for granted but anyone could make rituals work with enough determination, she used her dead husband’s well to secure a small cottage on the outskirts of town for her daughter and set about turning it into a mystic fortress brimming with occult defenses. Oh the villagers looked at her askance when she went asking strange herbs or when rumors, true in this case, swirled about that she desecrated graves looking for bones or danced in the moonlight bared skin flashing as she circled her home and chanted in forgotten tongues. Castle Rock had a history with which is in their neighbor town of Salem’s Lot you see, they knew the signs even if many had forgotten precisely what they meant. When her mother realized she was potentially in the territory of other practitioners her theory became that a powerful coven existed here and they wanted her for as of yet unknown reasons, but the more she doubt the more it seemed that any true coven had long since died out or moved on to more fitting pastures. The occult in community the town consisted of one or two charlatans, and a few like herself with barely an iota of true power between them, capable of little more than the simplest cantrips, certainly not the massive feats of magic required to both down and trap her here. The first night she performed a ritual of crying beseeching a cracked bowl she’d stolen from the motel to connect her with her mother. Her family had always been a nest of vipers they were immune to their own poison but that did not stop the backstabbing that took place as soon as one was no longer able to defend oneself. Her mother made it clear imperious tones bringing out into the forest and stirring the leaves although in truth she was many miles away, that by allowing herself to be brought low and trapped in a backwater with even a lesser one of her families grimoires by unknown parties she had shamed the family and would be forgotten. They would not come to her aid. Cast out of the one coven she had known since birth she went about forming a tighter knit one as its replacement. She had asked the two charlatans out of town and gathered those with inklings of true power to her, she lacked her family’s innate command of the mystic arts, but her deficit had made her a master ritualist. And so she doled out their precious secrets to a few peasants in this town and made herself a new family. With helpers at her disposal she was able to enact more complex magic and had soon carved out a niche for herself and her followers as the area’s sole authority on matters of the arcane. People flocked to see her from all corners of the continent and a few from even further. She didn’t doubt that her mother, the rest of her family and their retainers were trying their best to end her life but as the years went by it occurred to her that whatever was keeping her here was also keeping her alive, the town seemed to repel anything more than passing outside influences and her family feared to enter its boundaries and become trapped themselves, better to let whatever invisible enemy had brought her there finish her off eventually. Their judgment proved correct.

Moira was an unusual soul, daughter of the town witch and perpetually mistrusted. Despite all that she had a sunny demeanor and those that matter couldn’t help but be charmed by her. For as long as she could remember her mother had forced her, even as a barely aware child to partake in odd rituals, from filling purple gossamer bags of strange herbs sends unknown objects and placing them in various spots throughout the house to keeping a bowl of water by the door and flicking a drop against the wood once it was shut to bathing in oils and strange concoctions by the light of the moon. She did all this because as she told Moira “Something was out to get them.” Moira always found it odd that her mother chose to say something as opposed to someone. Moira had always dreamed of being a doctor but her mother forbid her to leave town for any reason and although she could not explain why to herself even after all these years she’d never even thought of disobeying that particular rule. Her few friends in town and her mother concurred that she would’ve made a brilliant doctor but in a town like Castle Rock the closest she could manage was to be a nursing assistant at the local prison. Some days she bemoaned her life stuck in this little town, so small that it did not even merit a dot on most maps of the area. But she would gather up her natural cheer, take her sketchpad and pencil, sit in the park and draw on those days. Since Moira began drawing she’d been a prodigy, but even from earliest childhood when one has no attention span to speak of after she would dally with the subject and that she would return always to her first. A pair of haunting blue-green eyes, a slightly upturned nose, and your whispering pair of lips, cracked and dry, parched even to the drawings one got the impression that no words passed between them for a long time. The drawings of course worried her mother but try as she might she could puzzle out no theories as to their significance, the last time she’d tried describing ritual on the mysterious subject her bowl had been gripped by a powerful kinetic force shattered from the inside out embedding pieces of cheap ceramic into the wall around her and a few into her body as water that had been cool and tranquil moments earlier became scalding and improbably rose up to splash her in the face. It was then she decided that the drawings were out of her power.

Whenever she was outside of her house Moira always felt the faintest buzzing against her skull, the local doctor had considered it a prodromal symptom of a migraine, but the element never progressed beyond an irritating sound. Until the day she disobeyed one of her mother’s rules. She always looked forward to Fridays, it meant that she have the weekend to draw, but more importantly she would get to see Adrian. Adrian she suspected, that been an enigma from the moment he was born. A Scandinavian street rat with far too much charm and intelligence for his own good and somehow grifted his way across the Atlantic and ended up in her life riding a steed of criminal charges for allegedly attempting to traffic young women across the border. Adrian claimed he had been trying to rescue them and the promised jury of his “peers” such as it was appeared to have bought that story, but Adrian could sell water to a drowning man. Even Moira was unsure what the truth of the matter was. Still Adrian was a charmer, and incorrigible flirt and she had fun bantering with him, although when she asked about his plans his thoughts always turned to getting out and making enough money to support his little boy. About a month ago, Adrian had complained of awful whispering noises splitting his skull during the day while Moira was not on shift. She walked into his cell the later at the start of the graveyard shift and found him sitting as though he were a wounded lion whose legs had been caught in a trap, through his quick pained breaths he greeted her in a melodious accent that was related to but unlike Adrian’s own. She saw that his legs were twisted, broken and fractured at various intervals as though someone had taken a chisel up and down the length of bone within his limbs. No one at the prison could explain the origin of his injuries and beyond a cursory visit from the institution’s uncaring physician no one tried to. As long as word did not escape these walls no one cared, Moira had thought about telling but who was there to tell? How did one even begin to do that? She’d never even left this town once in her twenty-something years. He been an able-bodied, athletic young man at lights out, and had awoken as…

“A cripple! I am but a poor humble cripple and I throw myself on your mercy, my dear sweet Moria. How must I abase myself before you to obtain another of these wonderful puddings? I am willing to do quite a lot, to serve…no that’s not quite the right word, oh your language is so silly…Service! I am willing to service you in oh so many ways!” He said in his singsong voice, appearing quite proud of himself for hunting down his lexical quarry. He he had used the provided spoon merely an implement to tear the thin film of plastic keeping him from his prize, flung it away and for lack of a better descriptor… began preforming cunnilingus on the pudding pouch in his hand, his performance was complete with moans and groans and little contented sighs. All the while never breaking eye contact with her, blue orbs burning into her own filled with indecent proposals. Unwilling to tolerate his antics anymore she snatched the offending pudding cup from his grasp, for the shadow of an instant she could have sworn a terrible look of feral rage had flashed across his countenance but it was gone before Moira could register whether or not it ever truly been there. “I am so terribly sorry dear Moira for my offense, it is just that in my day, we did not have such…culinary delights. He’d slowed to get the word “culinary” out properly but hadn’t stumbled and looked satisfied. In his day, that was the other thing, in the month since Adrian awoken the entire prison wailing about whispering in his cell, according to the doctors he developed a dis-associative identity. The young man that now occupied the cell which officially belonged to Adrian, called himself Ivar Lothbrok. He had been doing his best to convince Moira that he was the spirit of a long dead Viking who had for reasons unknown even to himself woken up in a body that was so similar to his own that it had frightened even him. The prison psychiatrist couldn’t have cared less about the situation in that cell, but to Moira it was quite the engaging mystery.

Today Moira decided to challenge him. “If you really aren’t Adrian, prove it if you’re not him then your innocent of the crimes that got him put in here and you should be angry, you should want out.” The smile that split the face in front of her should have been a warning. “I may be innocent of his petty crime dealing in flesh and weird…potions,” Moira decided to let the odd word choice go to spare his pride. “But I have killed and maimed, and lied, and stolen, and coveted many times over. You’re correct though, I do want out of the cell but for the moment I’m right where I want to be.” Moira, ever quizzical couldn’t stop herself from asking “Why do you want to be here?” “Because here is where you are.” he said as if he were speaking to the dullest child in all the world. “I will indulge you however, I am not Adrian, Adrian had pure wholesome thoughts about you, he was going to be free, tell you that he wanted you to be his little boy’s mother, beg you to start a family and run away with him to whatever little speck of a town he found someone foolish enough to care for the child while he was here. He’d have trafficked poison and flesh slaves or slaughtered swine for the rest of his days for you. He used to touch himself here in the dark fantasize about reaching through the bars of the cage and touching your skin, used to dream of having pure loving sex with you on a blanket by fjords illuminated only by the stars and the moon, lest he seemed to greedy to want to see you in all your glory. He wanted to fill your cunt with his seed over any over until the two of you made a brother or sister for precious little Patrick. One big happy family.” He spat out the infant’s name like a curse most vile, and treated the world family as though it was unconscionable poison on his tongue. She took a breath intending to halt whatever sick game he was playing, but the moment she drew breath and opened her mouth his eyes blazed with danger. “Keep your tongue behind your teeth if you wish to keep it all wench!” He roared. “You asked for this, now you will listen. I am not Adrian because never in his wildest dreams would he have contemplated the fantasy of using your uniform to tie you down and spitting on your face over and over forcing you to swallow what you could, and what you couldn’t would slide down between those perfect breasts of yours and they would glisten as I played with them, sucked and bit until they were raw, then I would have kept spitting until your cunt was drenched from the inside out, I would have laid siege to it like it was my traitor brother’s last stronghold. Oh, the sounds and squeals I would have pulled from you. I would have lavished you with my tongue and fingers, bit and sucked and twisted and slapped and pulled and made you come over and over again until you understood what it is to be ravished by a god!” He broke off into a fit of chuckling then capped with a wistful sigh. “But alas all that is denied to me, and indeed you, for you belong to someone else, and as sweet as you would be, you are not worth the effort of challenging his claim.” He stated this with such nonchalance that it broke the terrible spell that she had been under and she fled the prison with eyes burning and tears streaming.

Ivar smiled as she fled, finally, finally. he was one step closer to being free of this accursed in-between place, he was getting home to his beloved Eira and their little girl. Or perhaps another sojourn through life with his healer who had the body of a tower. Or maybe he’d meet that lippy little puppy of an entitled young man in Pennsylvania again who secretly craved discipline. Whatever happened he would be home again, nothing would stop him.

In her haste, she entered her home, ran to her bedroom and threw herself down on the bed without observing her mother’s rules. Had she been paying more attention she would’ve noticed that the water in the bowl she was supposed to flick at the door suddenly evaporated and the gossamer bags filled with protective elements suddenly caught flame and turned to ash in moments. It was then that she heard his voice. “Please don’t cry. I’m here now, it’ll be alright.” His tone was nearly plaintive. She didn’t bother setting up she knew that the voice came from no place within her home. “I’ve been waiting…eternities for you Moria,” He whispered inside her skull. “Let me make you feel better.” There was a hand stroking her face. Her eyes shot open and she beheld a figure that was both present and absent, there was wait to him but light seemed to pass through him through him as though he was merely a projection. Even trapped in the in between as he was, he was gorgeous. Her angel. A completely bare towering figure with the chest and leg and back and ass seemingly having been sculpted from the highest quality marble by da Vinci himself, with cheekbones that could reduce adamantine diamonds to dust, with lustrous hair and sinfully plump and pillowy lips. His eyes, so soulful that she believed he had lived a thousand lifetimes, she realized she’d been drawing this face for as long as she could remember. To feel his touch was to experience euphoria. He kissed her and all her senses were expanded beyond human potential, she saw a kaleidoscope of colors behind her eyes, he smelled and tasted of every single enticing thing at once but instead of a riotous discord of scents and flavors, they were balanced in perfect harmony. His voice alone could reduce her bones to jelly in a way that would make Ivar fear she intended to stake a claim to his epithet. He worshiped her with his entire being, fingers and hands and tongue and colossal endowment yes, but in the midst of their lovemaking she was certain that their spirits were melding even more intensely than their bodies. He spat upon her face one and she felt as though she were being anointed in holy oil by a deity. He scored her flesh with his sharp straight teeth the color of shining bone, drew blood, and she was happy to give it. His enormous hand encircled her throat closed her airway and if she hadn’t already been experiencing what she thought might be Nirvana, the oxygen deprivation would’ve taken her there. After fucking her through more than 20 orgasms and claiming all her orifices for his own each first with the gentle fervor of a virginal lover at the end of an idyllic courtship and then with a harsh brutality as though fucking her two within an inch of her life was the only way he could properly express the hatred for her that filled his entire alien being. He finally unburdened himself of his seed deep inside her and sighed contentedly .

When she awoke after their tryst, he was seated in a chair opposite her bed dressed in a suit and other finery looking for all the world like a high-powered professional instead of some cosmic entity to take an interest in her. He then told her of the tragedy of Henry Deaver, how a Titanic battle with his wife over his infidelity with a young woman he had met at a business engagement led to him driving fueled by rage and sadness while rain pounded the car and obscured his vision, he’d crashed into the lake and been thrown into a myriad of alternate realities, “other heres and nows where the dominos fell in different patterns. His stories of lives spent with Charlotte, Oliver, Westly, as a professor, a soldier from West Virginia, a bounty hunter who fought for his life in a dystopia, the life he’d almost lived of a Viking, a philanderer with a beer-based pick-up strategy, a gangster, the searching for true love based on a scientific assessment ,they all brought tears to her eyes. He entreated her with every fiber of his being to free him from his cage and put an end to his cycle of loneliness, to save him and others trapped in this limbo. She swore to do it.

That was the day the matriarch without a clan descended on the prison, her chariot of choice, a limousine flanked by a motorcade of four SUVs each bearing the insignia of an elite private security firm denigrated the world over for unsavory activities, their detractors though couldn’t question their effectiveness. She and the battalion she paid for advanced through the prison like a storm, the guards normally employed were deferential and out of their depth. The only sounds echoing through the prison with a click of her heels and the thuds of the jackboots that accompanied her for she had brought silence to the prison with her mere presence. Moira had heard of her, the interim controller of a ludicrously wealthy and secretive biotech firm following the scandalous disappearance of her son and heir. Allegedly, the young man whom the newspapers referred to as the Brat Prince had somehow veered off the course of normally accepted philandering ways among the ultrarich and powerful and become involved with someone his mother deemed unacceptable. The matriarch had come because the vast network of informants that she plied with riches and sharp promises had imparted to her knowledge of a prisoner found here who almost matched her son’s description. The only thing he had left behind was a wheelchair covered in the blood of its owner, a crippled faggot whom he had dared to take for a lover. He would pay for his insolence, for the damage down to her reputation and company, she would break this mysterious prisoner and learn all that he knew, she swore it. When she reached his unusual cell a young woman in scrubs was fumbling with the keys, her son’s face taken on a different path through destiny than the one she knew stared back at her. He spoke to her in an antiquated dialect of that language from the Balkans she had left behind so many mortal lifetimes ago, she was not that frightened, trusting girl from Wallachia anymore, she nearly charged the cage to make him pay for daring to address her this way, but the meaning of his words stilled her. “Madame Olivia, I believe we can be of help to one another once this insect has served its purpose.” Moria broke the lock.

He nuzzled into her touch aching a contented sound as she ran her hands through his hair, it had been eons since he felt the touch of another, his eyelashes fluttered and tears swam in his eyes, he would allow himself this one indulgence. “Loyal Moria, you have played your part well and in appreciation I give you the greatest of gifts, the fulfillment of your destiny.” When he spoke it was with the voice of 100 different people at once both cacophonous and whisper quiet. She screamed as his lips brushed her forehead, for this feather-light touch broke everything inside of her all at once. She fell as her skin froze and burned all at once, her muscles liquefied and her bones turned to jelly, her ears, nose, and eyes ran with blood, then her eyes began to boil in their sockets fluids running down into her still shrieking mouth as her body contorted it this way and that trying desperately to contend with suffering that was beyond human comprehension.

The last thing she saw before death mercifully claimed her were a pair of unveiled eyes atop bloodless lips, her final sight was one she had been drawing her entire life.

As the wretch finally had the good sense to expire Olivia Godfrey watched as the death seemed to fill out the prisoner’s gaunt and wan features until she could almost confuse him for an older version of her son. He drew in a deep breath, stooped to kiss her hand and issued a request, eyes glittering with dark promise: “Take me to Derry.”

#Bill Skarsgård #fic #roman godfrey #ivar the boneless #henry deaver #Mickey #axel cluney

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oh-obrien · 5 years

Text

Inscrutable {1}

Inscrutable: Impossible to Understand or Interpret

Relationships: Stiles Stilinski x Original Female Character

Word Count: 5,611 6,683

Warnings: None

Author’s Note: My first Stiles fic!! I’m super excited to share this series with y’all, especially being new to the Dylan O’Brien / Teen Wolf Fandom. Send me an ask or message me if you want to be tagged!

THIS PART OF INSCRUTABLE HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH MORE CONTENT AND HAS ALSO BEEN EDITED MORE THROUGHLY!

Finley Mannulv carefully scooped a second heaping spoon full of protein powder into her shaker bottle, hoping that the drink would give her a well-earned boost of energy for her first class of the semester. Knocking the scooper on the side of the bottle, she watched as some of the white powder stuck to the sides of the clear-blue plastic of the bottle, the rest forming a thick layer on top of the water. Finley dropped the plastic scooper back into the container and a small cloud of powder puffed out of the top, accumulating on the black fabric of her t-shirt. She hugged the protein powder container to her chest and closed it tightly before she tucked it back into her locker, wiping off what had gotten on her shirt afterwards.

Moving her bottle off of the bench in front of her locker, Finley kneeled on the wooden bench and let out a deep sigh looking into her messy locker. “Dad would have a hemorrhage,” she mumbled to herself before pulling out her dirty clothes from conditioning that morning. She made sure her number, eleven, had been printed on each piece of clothing before she clipped them on to her laundry clip and dumped them into the bin that their coach had brought in earlier. She made sure her clothes for practice later that night, along with her pinnies, were in her locker before deciding it looked clean enough for the time being.

She had never been the neatest, a controlled chaos being the easiest for her to navigate more often than not. The same philosophy also held true for any living space or locker she had prior to starting college. As soon as she made a space spotless, she suddenly couldn’t find anything she needed, and it just fell back into some sort of disarray a couple of days later anyway. A little bit of mess made her spaces feel more comfortable, more lived in.

Finley pulled one of her many school provided hoodies off of a hook inside her locker and slipped the white fabric over her head. She looked down at the American University logo that had settled in the middle of her torso, the reality still not fully sinking in that she’d be spending the next four years of her life at the university. Her junior year of high school Finley had verbally committed to the University, contingent on the fact that she produced favorable grades through her senior year and also kept up her performance on the lacrosse field. Now, nearly two years later, she had just finished her first pre-class conditioning session and was in the process of getting ready to attend her first class of her college experience.

Finley just shook her head, not needing to be reminded about how quickly her life seemed to be blowing by, and tucked some of the extra fabric of her hoodie up under itself so she could prove she did, in fact, have on shorts. Her hair, which had mostly dried during team breakfast, got pulled out of the back of her hoodie and settled in messy, half damp auburn strands on her back.

“What do you have going on this morning?” Finley asked Cameron, one of the other freshmen on the team, who had been filling up her own shaker bottle at the water station when Finley approached.

Cameron screwed the top of her bottle on tight and looked down at the unmixed powder that had been pushed down when she had poured the water in. “Caramel,” Cameron replied as she started shaking the container, “it’s good. My go to in high school.” Finley nodded and started filling up her own bottle, the fresh water pushing the powder down into the small amount of water that Finley already had in the bottle.

Finley made note of the flavor as she watched the bottle’s water level rise. “I need to order a few more, vanilla and cookies and cream get old after a couple weeks, but they’re all I brought with me.” She flipped the switch on the water fountain, turning the water flow off. “My brother stole a few containers for himself before he left for school so I’m low on my stock.”

Cameron took a long sip of her drink before tilting the bottle towards Finley in some sort of ‘cheers’ motion, “I’ll drink to that one. See you tonight.” Finley offered a smile in acknowledgement as she screwed the top to her own bottle back on tightly.

She held the top tight with her index and middle fingers and shook the bottle vigorously, watching the spring ball bounce around inside as the drink mixed. After she made sure her drink had been properly mixed, she took a long sip, swiping her tongue over her teeth to remove the film that stuck to them from the protein powder. “I’ll see you tonight!” She waved to Savanna, her locker-room neighbor, and adjusted the straps of her designated ‘class’ backpack on her shoulders.

When she had helped to move her brother into college a few weeks prior, she had made fun of him for taking his ‘Notre Dame Football’ backpack with him everywhere. But, to his defense, he had been gifted quite a lot of gear by the university prior to even getting to college and he had also used a similar backpack throughout his senior year of high school. Now though, Finley looked at herself in one of the mirrors and snorted, realizing she was now in the same position. Team sneakers were on her feet, team shorts her choice attire of pants and an ‘AU Lacrosse’ hoodie topped off her outfit with the matching t-shirt underneath.

“Good luck with your first day of classes!” Savanna offered Finley an excited smile. Finley nodded in thanks while she picked up her lacrosse bag with her free hand, she needed to bring it back to her dorm to tighten the pocket of her stick, and bringing the bag to class with her was a better option than having to travel back to the locker room after her class just to pick it up.

“This entire year will go a lot faster than you think it will now, the countdown to graduation in four years really starts now.” Jayden, a junior, added. Finley nodded as she grabbed her lacrosse stick and gripped it in the same hand as her bag, off to officially start her first day of college.

She received the opportunity to move on to the American University campus two weeks early, along with the other athletes who attended the school. The two-week period seemed to allow her, and the other freshmen athletes, a cushion to comfortably adjust to college life and the campus itself. It felt like it gave her a leg up on the other freshmen, she already looked, and felt, comfortable on campus that was a huge part of adjusting to college life and she already had it in the bag.

In her two weeks already on campus, Finley had been able to find where all of her classes would be, as well as settle into a routine. Six o’clock morning workouts, seven fifteen shower, seven-thirty team breakfast. After breakfast she knew her classes started at eight-forty-five or eight-fifteen depending on the day.

Taking all early classes would allow her plenty of time to nap in the afternoon if she felt like she needed to before attending evening practices. On the days when she didn’t feel like sleeping a little extra, it would allow extra time for homework and studying. Her brother had settled into a similar routine at Notre Dame, although a little busier because football was in season at the university, but it was comforting to know her twin was in a similar mindset.

At eight-thirty Finley stepped out of the William I Jacobs Recreational Complex, the sun had finally risen within the timeframe she had been inside the facility. The early mornings would begin to get old near mid-terms, but for now the early start felt somewhat refreshing, she was already awake and nearly three hours into her day while most of the other students had probably just woken up.

Despite her classes being in the first time block of the day, Finley noticed that campus had already started to bustle with activity. Students who were excited, nervous, and overwhelmed for their first day of classes were all on the way to the multiple academic buildings. Some were chatting in small groups, others walked alone with headphones in, and she even noticed a few couples holding hands. Must be nice.

The late-August morning air had a slight chill to it and Finley felt the hair on her legs stand up when a breeze passed. The morning air seemed easier to breathe than the stuffy August afternoon air she had been practicing in for the past two weeks during two-a-days. Her first class for the day was Introduction to Law, a class she didn’t feel all that excited for.

Finley liked to think she had a solid knowledge of the basis of the legal system. Thanks to her parents, of course. Her father’s current job title read ‘Director of the Central Intelligence Agency’ on various news channels when he would give interviews, and her mom had once worked for the Department of Homeland Security, she felt well versed in the basics of the law. However, Finley had also accepted that fact that she couldn’t use her father’s government position and the stories he had told her to get out of introduction level classes for her major.

However, Finley had been able to use many of the dual enrollment and advanced placement classes to get out of many of her core curriculum classes. She only had two freshman level classes to take this semester and would then be fully immersed into the classes for both of her majors, and with her starting out on campus as a sophomore, she would be able to register for what she needed next semester rather than getting stuck with the leftover dregs for classes.

Carefully reaching back to put her protein shake in her left backpack pocket, Finley pulled her phone out of the waistband of her Nike shorts and saw a text from her twin brother. Cian was a freshman quarterback at Notre Dame and hoped to start a couple games in the upcoming season and be named the permeant starter his sophomore year.

“You cheating on the field yet?” Finley snorted reading the text message over to herself a couple more times before trying to think of a witty response, she felt too tired to think of one, her brain not being awake enough to muster a proper insult.

“It’s not cheating when it’s my natural athletic ability. Same goes to you man.” She responded before tucking her phone back into her waistband before scaling the steps to the academic building her first class took place in.

Entering the old building Finley inhaled the stuffy air before trying to remember which way she went to find her classroom last week. The strong smell of mold and sheetrock made her sneeze and she realized that she would need to take one of her ‘allergy pills’ every morning to be sure none of the buildings would bother her going forward. After deciding to take the hallway to her left she quickly found the room she had located once before and pushed the door open with her elbow. She stepped into the lecture style room and saw a few students already inside the tiered room, scrolling through their phones or laptops.

Surveying the room, she noticed plenty of prime seat options and opted to climb the stairs and slide into the first seat closest to the middle aisle in the third row. She grabbed her protein shake out of its pocket and settled it on the table in front of her along with her water bottle. Finley set her lacrosse bag on the floor, tucking it up against the end of the table that spanned her whole half of the row, making sure nobody would be able to trip over it. She stood her stick up next to her bag before sitting down and pulling one of her headphones out.

Scrolling through her team’s group chat she followed along with dinner plans and made a mental note to remember to go after practice later that night, their coach stressed team bonding, and team meals fell under that umbrella. Finley would look up every time the door opened, and her classmates started to trickle in. So far only one other girl had settled into Finley’s row, on the complete opposite end from her.

At eight-forty a middle-aged man entered the room and started logging into the computer, no materials with him other than his reusable water bottle and cell phone. Finley assumed he had to be the professor and nodded before looking back down at her phone. Something about him just felt off, but she couldn’t pinpoint what the ‘offness’ he gave off was.

A couple minutes later she heard someone move past the girl at the end of the row, mumbling a ‘sorry’ as they slipped behind her chair. The footsteps indicated they were most likely a male, and as they got closer Finley got a whiff of their body scent. It could only be described as ‘boy’. The cologne and deodorant he had on clashed and the smell of the two mixing with his normal scent made Finley sneeze. Fantastic.

She heard the stranger get closer and closer until his erratic heartbeat settled right next to her, he also smelled like some type of medication, something with amphetamine in it. “Hey,” his voice distracted her while she was in the middle of typing out a message to her brother, trying to concentrate on the message she had been through the fog that was this boy’s natural scent. She hoped he would leave after she didn’t acknowledge him, but after he didn’t leave after a few seconds Finley caved.

She looked up and noticed the boy had dark hair and soft brown eyes, his facial expression definitely gave away his anxiety about his first day. His thumbs were hooked into the straps on his backpack while he rocked on the balls of his feet. “This seat free?” He asked while pointing at the chair next to where Finley sat. She gave him a quick once over and noted how he nervously chewed on his bottom lip, his cheeks getting a little bit red as his heartbeat quickened, his nerves only growing.

He was nervous, and kind of cute, he could stay. Finley nodded and pulled her other headphone out, “yeah.” She didn’t understand why he had to sit right next to her when there were plenty of other seats free that weren’t near anyone. There were also a few seats two away from her but decided not to point it out.

He wore a loose red and black open flannel shirt that contrasted the fitted white tee he had on underneath; his spindly muscles visible through the material. His legs sported a pair of dark jeans and he had a black leather belt tight around his waist. To anyone else he would smell like old spice deodorant and fabric softener if they were sitting this close to him. However, Finley smelled the anxiety that seeped out of his pores.

“Some boy just sat next to me,” Finley sent her brother.

“He reeks of anxiety,” she added, wrinkling her nose and trying not to sneeze again after she had sent it. She went to slip her right headphone back in but instead felt the boy next to her stealing a nervous glance at her. Finley knew he considered saying something to her and instead opted to unplug her headphones and slip them into her school bag in a messy tangle of wires.

“I’m Stiles! I’m from California!” He offered Finley a nervous smile after his more than awkward introduction, his heart beating ever faster than after he sat down. Did he know introductions didn’t have to be so formal and forced?

Before Finley mustered a response to Stiles’ introduction, she watched his eyes trail to her lacrosse stick that peeked over the top of the table. “Oh woah! You play lacrosse here?” She looked down at her hoodie which had ‘American University Lacrosse’ printed on it, to make sure she pulled on the hoodie she thought she did before leaving the locker room. Maybe he thought it could be her boyfriend’s? But American didn’t have an NCAA men’s lacrosse team, they only had a club men’s lacrosse team.

Holy shit, Finley thought to herself, he also had too much energy. “I’m Finley. I’m from the D.C. area,” she replied slowly. “And yes, I do play lacrosse here,” she could have ended her introduction there, but her dad telling her to be ‘diplomatic’ with her classmates the night before flashed across her mind. “You’re familiar?” She added after the fact.

He nodded enthusiastically, “I played in high school! I’m also playing on the club team here, since we don’t have a varsity men’s team and all. I also probably wouldn’t have been asked to play on a varsity team if there was one.” He reached back to scratch the back of his neck nervously. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, just nervous about being across the country. Or maybe he had ADHD, just like one of her and Cian’s younger cousins.

With a nod at his response Finley turned back to her phone and saw another text from her brother. “The downfalls of being supernatural. Suck it up Fins.” She rolled her eyes at his response and tried to think of something to snap back at him when Stiles’ voice caught her attention again

“So, are you a Justice and Law major also?” Finley could feel his eyes on the side of her face. “Wait no!” He cut her answer off before she could even begin. “This class is for my Legal Studies Major!” He had decided to double major, that had to mean he was pretty smart, right?

Taking another sip of her protein shake to prevent herself from sighing, Finley turned her chair so she faced him this time. “Accounting and Legal Studies.” She saw Stiles ready to ask another question and felt thankful when she instead heard the professor’s voice carry a full ‘good morning’ through the room.

Her eyes turned to the man at the front of the room as she pulled her legs up on to the chair she sat in, with her legs ‘criss-cross-applesauce’ on the plush material. She felt herself start to swivel back and forth as the professor started his introduction but avoided the urge. “I’m Robert,” their professor seemed to run a very informal classroom. He wore dark jeans and a polo shirt, an unzipped American University hoodie over it.

All of high school Finley’s teachers had spent time telling their classes, ‘this will never fly in college!’ However, that statement quickly had seemed to becoming false as one of the classes for the next day had already been cancelled and the Professor had sent them an email that just stated, ‘read the syllabus, ask any questions in out class on Thursday.’ Mix that message with this professor’s relaxed attitude, casual dress and lack of materials and Finley really believed that her high school teachers had just been trying to scare the students into listening.

“If you’re not here for Introduction to Law, you’re in the wrong place,” he leaned against the table at the front of the room. Finley watched as a few students stood and left the room, they all had their eyes on pieces of paper which most liked contained their schedules. “Anyone else?” Robert gave others the ability to leave if they needed. After he received no response to his question, he pushed himself off the table and clapped his hands together. “Fantastic!”

“Seems nice so far,” Stiles mumbled from his place next to Finley who tried not to show her annoyance with him. She just simply nodded in response and continued watching their professor, still slowly turning back and forth in her chair.

Robert picked up a piece of blue chalk and started writing on the chalkboard. “Since we’re in a freshman class I’ll do the whole introduction thing!” He scraped a few more words on to the board. “So, give us your name, where you’re from, you major, and I guess a fun fact about you or some shit like that.”

Oh, so it would be this kind of class. He pointed at the student who occupied the very first seat in the front row and prompted them to introduce themselves. Finley listened as others introduced themselves mentally taking note of who seemed to give off anxiety and those who were confident going into the first day. Most of the room stank of anxiety, but Finley tried to ignore the smell. She took frequent, small sips of her protein shake to fill her nostrils with the scent of vanilla instead of anxiety. After the boy in the row next to her, David, introduced himself she watched Robert’s eyes flicker over to her.

Mentally groaning, Finley pulled the protein shake bottle away from her lips. “Hi, I’m Finley Mannulv. I’m-”

“Wait. Hold on,” Finley audibly groaned when her professor cut her off. Why did professors or teachers always have to do this? Especially in D.C. didn’t they get the kids of government officials, congressmen, ambassadors, anyone else with a title seemingly ‘important’ to the function of the country and the world, all the time.

“Yes, Mannulv as in Maxwell Mannulv Director of the CIA’s daughter,” she finished for him while rolling her eyes. “Now that we addressed the elephant in the room I’m moving on. I’m here for an education just like everyone else.” She saw Stiles’ jaw open slightly next to her and shook her head. Fantastic, already off to a great first day. “Anyway, I’m from around D.C., originally from New York though, but I’m sure you knew that already,” she glared at her professor. “But I’m an Accounting and Legal Studies major and I’m on the lacrosse team.”

Robert narrowed his eyes at Finley who just offered him a lopsided smirk in response. “And no, my dad didn’t get me in here. I had at 35 on the ACT and a 1550 on the SAT.” She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her.

Robert smiled through clenched teeth, “so nice to have a student with such close ties to the legal system in the class.” He turned to Stiles. “And you?”

Finley coughed when she smelled his anxiety grow even stronger, did this boy ever relax? “Umm hey,” he awkwardly waved around the room. “I’m Stiles Stilinski, I’m from Beacon Hills in California, and I’m a Justice and Law and Legal Studies double major. Umm-” he hesitated, “a fun fact? I’m on the men’s club lacrosse team here.” Stiles took in a deep breath of air after he finished speaking. Finley allowed herself to breath after that and noticed that the air of anxiety around him decreased greatly. She had more important things than Stiles’ anxiety to worry about right now though.

Finley made sure Robert no longer looked in their direction before pulling her phone out. “There’s a guy in my class from Beacon Hills!” She quickly typed out in the group chat she had with her dad and brother knowing they would be interested in the information.

“Is it anxiety boy?” Cian replied.

At the same time her dad sent, “Is he one of us?”

“Yes and no!” She quickly sent. She followed it by saying, “his first name is Styles? I don’t even know if that’s how it’s spelled and I didn’t catch his last name but it started with like Still.” Finley wasn’t sure if that was how he spelled it but that’s how it had been pronounced. Hopefully it would be enough for her dad to work with.

“Just pay attention in class. I’ll send a few messages out and see what I can find.” Maxwell replied while his son answered with “Who the hell names their kid Styles?” Finley locked her phone and slid it face down on to the table in front of her with the ringer turned off.

Still having heard most of the introductions of her fellow classmates, Finley tuned back into class while watching the boy who sat next to her closely.

He definitely seemed human, another supernatural tended to be incredibly easy for Finley to sense, her father had been training her how to do it from a young age. He also didn’t smell like he had recently been in contact with any other supernatural creatures, maybe that was because he had just moved into college? If he lived in Beacon Hills he had to know about all the supernaturals there, especially after Scott McCall managed to somehow chase most of the hunters out of town and create a ‘supernatural sanctuary’ of sorts.

Finley felt a migraine creeping into the back of her head and knew she had to stop stressing about this Styles boy before she wouldn’t be able to make it through the rest of the day. Instead she focused on Robert as he began speaking about what the class would entail.

“As you all know this is an introduction to law class.” No shit, Finley rolled her eyes and took another long sip from her protein shake. “Let me start with this question. Is anyone here somewhat comfortable with the legal process?”

Finley’s hand shot up with absolutely no hesitation and she gave Robert a fake smile, as if she asked him to challenge her. She watched as Stiles’ hand slowly raised from his place next to her and her suspicion of the boy only continued to increase.

Robert looked at Stiles with shock, his hand coming up to point at the pair. “Now I know about Ms. Mannulv’s legal background of sorts. But what about you Mr.,” he trailed off forgetting his last name.

“Stilinski,” he filled in the missing word. Finley would need to remember that as best she could. “And my dad’s the Sheriff of our town back home. I also had an FBI internship for part of the summer.” Finley almost choked on her shake and had to cough again to cover it up, her eyes widening.

“Are you okay Ms. Mannulv?” Finley held a hand up at Robert’s question and nodded for him to continue. She set the shake down in front of her and her fingers were itching to pick up her phone to text her dad and brother with the update, but she knew she needed to wait.

Robert walked back to the computer and pressed a button that had a projector screen coming down from inside the ceiling. “Well, since you two are so comfortable with the basis of law already,” Finley watched as the screen lit up. The words ‘Partner Based Case Study and Mock Trial’ were written across a PowerPoint slide. “You can be our first pair for this semester!”

Finley actually choked on her protein shake this time and spiraled into a coughing fit. She quickly reached out for her metal water bottle and unscrewed the top taking a long sip to clear her airway. “Sorry, practice this morning has me wiped out, especially with the air being cool.” She let the ice water coat her suddenly dry throat. That had been a total lie, her body easily adjusted to the change in air that morning, but it would need to be a good cover for now.

She felt Stiles’ eyes on her and carefully listened for his heartbeat. After detecting a quicker than normal resting heartbeat again she realized he felt just as anxious about this assignment as she did. Maybe they would be able to pull it off.

“So now that we all realize this is a case-based class, if the rest of you would like to partner up with someone else in the class we can go through the syllabus after.” Finley watched as other students started talking with one another, trying to make compatible pairs for their projects. She took the opportunity to open her laptop and pull up the syllabus, also grabbing her phone.

“His dad’s the sheriff.” She quickly sent in the group chat before flicking her ringer back on and turning it all the way down so she would feel the phone vibrate.

Finley quickly made herself come to peace with the fact that she would have to talk to this Stiles boy more often than she originally intended to and turned to face him. “So, this just took an interesting turn.” She offered him a small smile, taking note of the indifferent expression on his face, but she did note that his heartbeat had slowed slightly.

Stiles nodded then looked over to Finley again, his eyes were soft and carried some hints of nervousness, but a genuine smile spread across his face. “Definitely not what I expected to say the least. But I think we’re both pretty experienced so we should be a great team.”

“Definitely,” Finley suddenly decided the rings on her fingers were interesting and started spinning them. “I wasn’t a huge partner work person most of my life, but this should be an easy introduction.”

Stiles snorted out a small laugh and his smile grew, “seems like all I’ve done the past few years is group work.” He shook his head slightly, “this should be a nice transition into college though. A little calmer than life back home.”

Robert clapped his hands to get the attention of his class, waiting for the room to fall silent before speaking. “Hope everyone has a partner,” he walked over to the computer and pulled up an excel spreadsheet. “So, we have Mannulv and Stilinski to start us off.” He typed their last names in and looked up. “Who’s next?”

Finley tuned out after that and picked her phone up off her thigh.

“Stilinski?” Her dad had asked. After replying with a simple ‘yes’, Finley looked to see the spreadsheet almost completely filled out.

Robert filled in the remaining rows and turned the PowerPoint back on. Finley quickly read the ‘Types of Cases’ slide and immediately had her mind set on completing the murder case with the added mental state determination element and wanted to argue on the state’s side.

She turned to Stiles whose eyes still traveled across the slide and waited until he finished reading it and also looked over to her before speaking. “Four?” She asked him, making sure she had the case number right.

“I mean, since you knew what you wanted that quickly,” he shrugged, “sure.” After agreeing on the case, Finley tuned back into the instructions Robert read to the class off another slide.

“So! With that being said after discussing with your partner which case and side you would like to argue for,” he flicked back to the slide. “I would like one of you to raise your hand and let me know.” He leaned back on to the desk.

Finley made eye contact with Stiles again and raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead,” he laughed lightly, giving Finley the go ahead to lock their case in. She quickly raised her hand and watched as Robert raised his eyebrows at her.

“Ms. Mannulv, Mr. Stilinski. That was awfully quick.” He crossed his arms over his chest while speaking.

Finley shook her head with a small smile. “We’re experienced right?” She didn’t wait for the professor’s answer before continuing, “by those standards we should know what we want then. The homicide case, which I’m assuming is actually murder charges, with the mental state element, state’s side.”

Robert smiles after hearing her choice and nodded. “Now as most of you will find out, your case is based on real life cases!” Robert’s voice filled the room, cutting off other student’s conversations. “Which will be expressed in the email I send to those working on each individual case after class. Some cases are closed, others are cold. Cold cases are much harder to work with,” he turned to Finley with a smirk. “After I take down which case, you’re doing you’re free to leave!”

“Thank god,” Finley began putting everything back into her backpack and zipping it up. She watched as Stiles did the same, standing up afterwards and looking over to Finley expectantly.

He watched as she tucked her empty protein shake bottle into the side of her backpack, and she also did the same with her water bottle on the opposite side. She reached down to pick up her lacrosse bag and her stick. She seemed to have everything under control, but should he offer to help her anyway?

Stiles nervously scratched the back of his neck before speaking, “do you umm need, I mean want, do you want help?” He asked her. She stood up straight again, her phone in one hand and her lacrosse bag and stick in the other, a soft smile on her lips.

“I’m okay,” she shook her head. “I mean I’ve been doing it for years now, but I really do appreciate the offer.” Stiles noticed her blue eyes were softer now as they made their way down the middle stairs of the room and out the door. Maybe she wasn’t as cold as she gave off in class.

He wasn’t sure if she had class after this or not, but he knew they finished their class about half an hour early and had been interested in making new friends at college. Lydia told him he should get to know people early on and establish a couple friendships he could see lasting past college. “You’ve played for a while now?” He asked her as they walked outside of the building and into the warming morning air.

“Me?” She laughed a little bit. “Started in second grade, haven’t stopped since. Always wanted to play with the boys though like my brother did.” She shrugged. She didn’t seem to give off the ‘girly’ attitude that Lydia and Allison had through out high school. Finley didn’t ‘dress to impress’ like they had and clearly went for comfort and functionality.

Stiles laughed lightly, “I mean, I didn’t get a ton of playing time in high school, but the pushing and shoving was fun sometimes, especially if I had a little pent up frustration.” The pair stopped once they were outside the building and Finley dropped her bag and stick. She sat down on the top stair of the staircase and looked up to Stiles motioning for him to sit.

He dropped his backpack next to both of hers before sitting next to her. “What brought you all the way out here though?” She asked. “I mean California is across the country and all.”

Stiles carefully thought over his answer, he didn’t want to give away too much about exactly why he had left Beacon Hills. He hoped he didn’t have to open that part of his life up to anyone new so quickly. “Umm, I’m looking to work in the FBI after college, so thought it would be a good place to go to school.” That part held true. “That and my girlfriend is at MIT, we’re close enough to visit when one of us has time.” Right being close to Lydia had also been part of the original plan.

Stiles had been so busy in the past week he had hardly been able to talk to Lydia, or any of his other friends from back home for that matter. Diving across the country had him absolutely exhausted, mixed with the stress of moving in and trying to get settled pretty quickly it had taken up the remainder of his energy. He felt guilty, but he also realized that the lack of communication would sometimes be the consequence of a long-distance relationship.

He watched as Finley reached back to pick up her water bottle and unscrewed the cap, taking a long sip. “Oh god that must be stressful,” she cleared her throat. “I’m only like half an hour from home at most, and I never had time for relationships. That and I think any boy I brought home would be scared of my dad.”

Stiles gave her a curious look and raised his eyebrow, urging her to continue on her thought. “You said he worked for the CIA or something right?”

“Yep, he does. Head honcho of the CIA.” She grabbed the edge of her hoodie and quickly pulled it over her head, resting it across her lap once it came off. “Sorry I started to get warm. But sorry if I acted like kind of a dick in class, I don’t like people questioning my intelligence because of my dad’s position in government.”

Stiles could understand where that frustration could be coming from. He had often used his father’s position as Sheriff to his advantage but had never really experienced the negative consequences that his position could have brought as everyone respected his dad. “I think we’ll be a pretty great team though.” He looked over to Finley who swung her water bottle back and forth between her legs, his eyes momentarily focusing on the object.

“I think we’ll be the best team that guy has ever seen!” She smiled. “I’ll make sure of it.”

A silence fell between the pair and Stiles closed his eyes and allowed his face to tilt up into the morning sun, it’s warmth quickly spreading out across his body. He opened his eyes when he heard one of Finley’s bags being opened. She shoved her hoodie into her lacrosse bag and put her water bottle back into the open side pocket on her other backpack.

She huffed and closed the bag again, standing up. “I need to get to my next class soon,” she offered. “If you want to get lunch and stat looking over our case if we have the materials in time that could work. Here-” She held her phone out to him. “I usually eat at the gym with my team, but I know a couple good places off campus that the meal plan covers if you’d want to do that?”

Right. She grew up around here of course she would know what to eat in the area. “I get finished at 12:20 but after that would work for me.” Stiles hoped their schedules would line up.

“Oh yeah same,” Finley watched as Stiles typed his number into her phone. “I have all early classes, easiest option for me.” She took her phone back before picking all her things up. “I’ll text you after my class gets out!”

“Sounds good!” Stiles threw his backpack over his shoulder before waving goodbye to Finley who went the opposite direction from him. She seemed nice enough, maybe this would be the beginning of his life settling into a new normal.

Finley returned the wave with the hand she gripped her phone in before making her way down the stairs and off to her next class, financial accounting. She flipped her phone over in her hand and unlocked it, looking through texts her dad and brother had sent her.

“Best friends with McCall for years now, human part of his pack basically.” Fantastic, Finley groaned audibly after reading the message her dad sent. She finds a nice boy and he’s best friends with Scott McCall and has a girlfriend.

Finley felt her phone vibrate and looked down to see a message from her brother this time. “Well at least McCall is intelligent unlike some of the others we’ve worked with.” That held true.

Finley sighed deeply as she pushed open the door to the business building, why would she be getting herself wrapped up with a guy from Beacon Hills?

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