#its clearly cobbled together and forced

[lorelune]

(minors & ageless blogs dni. a piece for @ainescribe for helping me with my theme 💓 cw: predator/prey, hints of dubcon)

"i'll give you a head start."

jing yuan tells you this with a pleasant, easy smile and his hands behind his back. and no context. you cock your head at him from across the little table you share, and take a sip of your cold tea.

"come again, dear?" you knock your ankle against his under the table.

"i'm giving you a five minute head start." jing yuan leans closer and rests his chin his palm. his eyes take on a cat-like glint. "i've already started counting. i'd get going if i were you, sweetling."

you only want more of it.

your chest feels tight all of a sudden.

"jing yuan—"

"i won't be going easy on you." his smile verges on smug as he leans forward. "and i would advise to take full advantage of this time. i think you'll need it."

he leans away from you and tilts his head. it would be cute if you couldn't see the rapidly darkening mischief in his gaze. you jolt up from your little table, clattering your chair on the cobbled walkway. he eyes you up and down like a big cat sizing up its next meal as you step backwards, nearly stumbling.

something in your gut twists, like a hot iron.

you turn on a heel and walk as fast as you can without drawing too much attention to yourself. weaving around the late-night crowds and ducking around street vendors and their burning latterns, your heart pounds. faster and faster.

this had been your idea originally. you just hadn't expected jing yuan to entertain it (though on some level, he entertains all of your ideas.) this desire of yours seemed too risky, too innately... unlike him. at least to you.

this game had been a fantasy. one you'd confessed your interest in a few weeks prior, while luxuriating in a pleasantly steaming bath together. you shared a glass of wine, passed between sips after a slow, tender evening. you'd playfully started a conversation about things to try in the bedroom, and somehow, the Divine Foresight and honey wine managed to wring a few previously unspoken desires out of you.

this is the result, you suppose, as you stumble around a corner, toward jing yuan's estate.

you should've known that jing yuan would spring this fantasy on your unexpectedly. that was part of the allure. the hunt, the chase— you're just prey now, with no time to prepare or plan. the innate helplessness has already stirred something in you, even though jing yuan hasn't done anymore than send you hungry looks and promises.

you're sure five minutes have passed. you're positive that the man is trailing you, even if you can't hear or see him. you don't have the military prowess that he does, you're just a civilian. your footfalls are loud as you break into a run near his estate and its towering walls.

your hands shake as you hold your jade abacus to its lock. the slow 'clunk' of gears opening the gates feels like it goes on forever. your heart is pounding in your ears, like a drum that won't stop. you're out of breath, but force yourself to sprint the moment the door swings open.

you hide in one of his gardens.

jing yuan has many green spaces on his estate. it's situated on a large enough space to allow for a small stream running through the largest garden into the front yard. ponds gurgle nearby, filled with fat, sleepy fish. you wake them as you dash around the greenery and shrubs, uncaring of the dirt that is staining your shoes. the bottom of your outer most garment must be getting torn as it snags on the brush below.

the gate of the estate opens and closes once more, somewhere not far behind you. your heart lurches, your stomach feels cold and hollow and you run.

jing yuan knows his estate better than you, clearly. you don't know where is safe, but in his largest garden, there are large gingko trees and stones that seem okay to hide behind. maybe. you are too anxious, too out of your fucking mind, to use sound logic at this point. you scramble behind a smooth quartz boulder and lay a hand on your chest. panting. tears sting your the corners eyes as you desperately try to catch your breath.

you listen the best you can to see if you can hear him follow you. it's hard to pick up every little sound, breeze shakes the tree branchers into a late-evening song. cicadas chirp to disguise any potential footfalls. it would probably be best to hide somewhere on the edge of the garden. you're in the center of it, not far from the stream. you don't dare peak out from your hiding spot, but you should move— you feel so exposed—

a floorboard creaks nearby. you freeze.

the wind almost stills with the sound. you can't breathe as you strain to hear more. it came from the west, where you know there's an entrance to this garden. you think. probably. your heart pounds so loudly, you can barely hear anything over the roar.

you do another sound, though. the sound of a boot fall, onto stone. there's a path laid with them not far from where you are.

something white-hot, old and feral burst in your chest.

you need to fucking run.

with a burst of energy that makes you feel light-headed, you push off the ground and throw yourself over the rock you were hiding behind, away from the sounds that are surely jing yuan stalking you.

your feet hit the ground and you run. run, run, run—

you swear you can feel more footfalls than just your own, but you can't look behind you. all of your focus is on weaving through the gardens trees and shrubbery, to gain and sort of ground.

you stumble, eventually. it's inevitable that you lose. the game is set up that way.

you trip over your own feet as you near the little stream that cuts the garden and gurgles. your momentum ruins you; you can't right yourself fast enough.

a hand catches the back of your collar and pulls. your breath catches, caught in your throat by the pressure. an arm, his arm, bundle you up at the waist and slams your body into his. your back to his front. the force of it knocks the air out of you.

you still scramble, you can't help it. squirming and kicking, you fight against the unyielding grip he has on you. he's hot against your back, scalding even. the metal bits of his armor and belts dig into your as your struggle fruitlessly.

"what's this?" jing yuan says into your ear, soft and curling. "i thought you would do a little better than this."

you whine. your stomach feels cold.

jing yuan laughs then, rich and low like he always does. but there's a darker edge to it now. you can feel it spread down the back of your neck, your spine, drenching you down to your toes. he squeezes you, and you feel yourself get wet.

(you're fucked.)

"you'll have to try harder next time." jing yuan says. "maybe i did go a little easy on you."

"s-sure you did—"

jing yuan nips your ear. "what was that? i didn't realize prey animals were capable of speech."

you crane your neck, ready to snap at him, but you don't get the chance too.

in a single motion, jing yuan has you thrown over his shoulder. blood rushes too quickly to all of the places it shouldn't be. you feel dizzy with it and whine and sputter with it.

jing yuan doesn't yield, only laughs again, and gives your bottom a few firm (very firm) pats. you gulp.

(lucidly remembering the other details you revealed to jing yuan in the bath that night. all of the filthiest bits of your fantasies. jing yuan hardly had to ply you for them.)

and jing yuan is a strategist. you should have known he would use this new information advantageously against you in such a way.

as you enter his manor, heart still pounding, palms clammy, and feeling like a rabbit in the jaws of a lion, you feel foolish and turned on all once. jing yuan so easily catches you off guard when he chooses. he so easily undoes you, puts you in a place of his choosing and let's you fester there just enough that he can remedy it— either with sweetness or, as he now so adeptly showing you, with something an edge darker.

you gulp, light-headed.

[wheredafandomat]

Red tape ❌

Prince Loki x female reader

18+ | contains smut, loss of virginity and other smutty things

Don’t stray too far from the palace, your mother practically shouted it as you left mere moments after you arrived only having greeted the Allmother and the king, deciding to venture through the unfamiliar town. You left seemingly aimlessly however you knew exactly the place you desired to end up. Despite this being your first time in Asgard, you were aware of its reputation when it came to the lower districts. Unlike your home realm, Asgard had a darker side to it, a more amorous one; it was this place you sought.

Arriving at your destination, you looked around at the different buildings, a stark contrast to the ones closer to the palace. This place seemed void of light, dingy and cold. The floor was wet, puddles settling in between the grooves of the cobbled stone decorating the floor. You swerved through people who were trudging along, clearly intoxicated as they sang like merrymen. Feeling someone too close behind you, you flinched, quickly stepping to the side and allowing them to pass. This place wasn’t for you, you knew that, but neither was the life your family were forcing you to live. This was the only way. You walked further, eyes scanning your surroundings before you lingered outside an inn, watching others enter, the doors swinging open as they did so allowing the sound of music to fill your ears. You dared yourself to go in, sighing when your feet remained firmly in the ground.

“And what brings a fine lady like yourself around these parts?”

Gasping, you spun on your heels to be met by a stranger who’s eyes ran over your from before meeting yours. Your own eyes widened slightly, he was handsome to say the least. Tall, dark hair, great posture and a piercing gaze. Your eyes dawdled on one another for a few moments before you spoke.

“I’m visiting.” You answered, straightening your own posture.

“Visiting hmm” he replied, mulling over his words as he continued to speak “usually ladies like yourself don’t venture this far into Asgard.” He finished, gesturing to your surroundings.

“Ladies like myself?” You scoffed halfheartedly.

“Yes, made up, grandiose, clearly wealthy.” He listed, finger running over the golden necklace that clasped around your neck. He noted the small intake of breath you took as he evaded your personal space, the tension. “And innocent.” He concluded, speaking into your ear before he pulled away.

“W-who says I’m innocent?” You queried, releasing a breath you hadn’t realised you were holding.

“Oh please” he revelled with a coy smirk “I can smell your virtue from a mile away.

“My-my virtue?” You stuttered, eyes widening.

“So demure, so untouched.” He marvelled, eyes dipping to your lips.

“I’m no—” you began defiantly before he cut you off.

“Go on, lie to me.” He smiled, eyes meeting yours again.

Sighing, you decided to tell this stranger your predicament.

“I’m supposed to be wed to a prince” you confessed “as per my fathers orders.”

“Fathers will be fathers.” he huffed under his breath. “A prince huh?”

“Yes” you nodded “I’m to marry a prince in a special ceremony but the ceremony can only take place if I’m a virgin.”

“Oo, there’ll be a ceremony.” He grinned.

“Yes.”

“And why aren’t you happy?” He queried.

“I don’t want to marry, especially not a stranger hence why I’m here. No virginity, no wedding.” You explained causing his smile to widen slightly.

“You’re here to lose your virginity, in this disgusting place?” He chuckled “please tell me you’re jesting.”

“Why are you here?” You quipped, anger rising at his reaction.

“You’re not the only one in need of escapism.” He stated simply.

“Well, let’s escape together then, come on.” You prompted, grabbing his hand before making your way inside.

At first you were confused by everyone’s reaction to this stranger you hadn’t even caught’s name. Everyone seemed wary of him. He escorted you to the bar where you both ordered some Asgardian mead and when he went to pay, the man behind the bar refused his money. Others moved away from you both whilst some pointed and spoke. Judging by the man’s clothing, he was wealthy too, well spoken and clean unlike the surface you were resting your hands on. As the drinks flowed, so did the conversation and you managed to find out his name.

“Loki” he smiled, shaking your hand “pleasure to meet you.” He added, bringing it to his lips.

“Y/n” you answered just as enthusiastically as his lips dallied on the back of your hand.

Further into the late evening, when you were feeling exceedingly giddy, you and Loki made your ways towards the piano. By then, everyone seemed more relaxed around him, one man even bowing which you found strange but brushed off in your slightly besotted state. Women smiled at him, hiking their dresses higher whenever they caught his eye but he didn’t seem interested as he sat at the piano chair, pulling you onto his lap before his fingers found the keys, arms either side of you.

“Do you play?” He asked, speaking into your ear.

“I can play, can you sing?” You answered confidently.

Around fifteen minutes later, practically everyone was dancing, hooking arms and skipping around the room as Loki sang heartily, you playing the piano as you sang along to the songs you knew. The atmosphere was completely different to when you both first entered. There was no more tension, no more standoffishness, everyone was aswoon, excited.

“To y/n everybody!” Loki finished, everyone cheering after he did so.

“Too much Asgardian mead.” You laughed as you stood, swerving slightly before you caught yourself. “Let’s stay here.” You suggested considering that this was an inn.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you princess.” Loki assured, lifting you bridal style as he carried you upstairs.

Once you both reached a room, Loki carried you inside before laying you against the bed, you pulling him down to lay with you.

“Kiss me.” You asked, breaking through the silence.

“What?”

“Kiss me.” You repeated. “Please.”

Replying wordlessly, Loki nodded as you closed your eyes. He slowly closed the gap between you both, brushing his lips against yours before he pulled away. You opened your eyes to be met by his.

“Take me.” You murmured.

“What?” He near gasped more incredulously than he did before.

“Take me Loki, bed me. I want you to bed me.” You insisted, the both of you sobering up.

“Believe me I want to but—”

“Do it then.” You argued.

“Y/n no, you’re not thinking clearly.”

“Please, or I’ll—I’ll find someone else to.” You decided, standing to your feet as you strode towards the door, opening it a jar before it slammed closed, Lokis hand on it as he encased you, his chest to your back. Spinning around, you faced him before he slammed his lips onto yours, kissing you deeply. His hips pinned you into place, grinding against yours as the kiss grew needier. His tongue pushed passed yours, fighting for dominance before you relented. You moaned into the kiss as he sucked your tongue, feeling yourself growing wetter at his actions. You began removing one another’s clothes, Lokis tunic falling to the floor before he undid the leather bound of his trousers. Your dress was practically ripped off of you before Loki fell to his knees before you, kissing up your thighs. “What are you—” you began confused as he lifted one of your legs, resting it on his shoulder, his lips still kissing your thighs “oh, OH.” You gasped, hand instantly gripping his hair as you felt him at your centre, tongue swirling around your clit. “Yes, yes, just like that.” You moaned, his lips wrapping around it as he sucked gently. Your eyes squeezed shut, your balance wavering as he circled the bundle of nerves. The pleasure was almost unbearable as it built in your abdomen, threatening to spill. “Oh norns.” You cursed, the pressure reaching a crescendo as Loki lapped up your arousal, your slick coating his face.

Lowering your leg, Loki stood before picking you up and carrying you towards the bed. Settling above you, your lips met in a messy kiss again, his obvious excitement making itself known between your legs. Yes he had pleasured you but it still wasn’t enough, you wanted, no, needed more. You lifted your hips from the bed, trying to gather some friction before Loki broke the kiss, speaking.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, please.” You nodded.

“I’ll go slow.” He assured, waiting for you to confirm before he rose slightly, gripping his length before running it through your wet folds, gathering your arousal. You hummed at the feeling, this was already euphoric. Loki asked you again, his tip at your entrance, you said yes before he began to breach you, your eyes snapping shut as he did so. “I’m sorry.” He quickly apologised seeing your discomfort.

“No, no it’s fine.” You tried to smile as he stayed still for a while, allowing you time to adjust before he delved deeper.

“Norns, you’re just so, tight” he spoke through gritted teeth, pushing in further, your nails digging into his lower back. Trying to stop himself from moving too quickly, he paused his moments, nuzzling into your neck as you adjusted to his size.

“Oh, that feels quite pleasant.” You grinned, feeling more comfortable, your walls clenching him as he cursed quietly. “Loki?”

“Sorry, you’re just making it unbearable not to move when you do that.” He spoke, seemingly strained.

“Do what?” You questioned, your walls clenching around his shaft.

“That!”

“Oh, that” you smiled, doing the movement again “you can move now.”

Wasting no time, Loki began moving in and out of you at a slow pace before you were begging him to move faster. The feeling was rapture. You felt him everywhere. Claiming you, consuming you. His name was the only prayer you knew as you moaned it, screamed it, whimpered it. You had lost count of the amount of times you felt the pressure build in your abdomen before it imploded, washing over you, providing more lubrication for Lokis administrations. He wasn’t quiet either, your name falling fluently from his lips as he rocked his hips into yours. It was bliss, this was heaven.

“One more time princess, one more.” He growled, entering you quickly before you arrived again, your walls spasming around Loki before he pulled out of you, pumping himself to completion, ejaculating into the duvet.

You didn’t remember falling asleep, only that you were now awake, in Lokis arms as he slept soundly hugging you to him. You thought you’d feel different, no longer being innocent but strangely you felt the same. You didn’t mean to stay until morning and you imagined your mother would have been worried by your absence so you untangled yourself from Loki. He barely stirred as you replaced yourself with a pillow, searching for the remains of your dress before deciding to leave some money for Loki, not sure what the protocol for things like this was. It just seemed appropriate to leave money for him. Legs sore, you wandered back to the palace, managing to slip into your room and under your duvet before your mother entered.

“Y/n?” She called out, opening your door.

“Mother.” You yawned, stretching your arms.

“Where were you?”

“Just visiting the local area.”

“Well alright” she answered unconvinced “wash and dress, it’s breakfast soon.”

“Yes mother.”

“And ensure you look presentable enough to greet the Allmother, and the king.”

“Yes mother.” You said again before she finally left.

After bathing, you were accompanied to the dining hall where you were greeted by The Allmother and the king as well as their son, Prince Thor.

“Good morning.” He greeted, kissing the back of your hand.

“Good morning.” You answered before you all entered for breakfast. Sitting next to your mother, you nudged her before speaking.

“Is he the one I am to wed?” You asked.

“No dear” Frigga smiled, overhearing you “I have another son, who’s supposed to be here actually.” Just as she finished speaking, the door opened, another person joining you.

“Good morning all, apologies for my tardiness.” Loki said, making his way towards Frigga and kissing her on the cheek before taking his own seat opposite you who sat aghast, eyes wide and jaw slack.

“Y/n dear, I’d like you to meet my other son Loki, prince of Asgard and hopefully your future husband.” Frigga announced.

“I look forward to getting more acquainted with you.” Loki winked, finally looking at you.

Y/n’s like suddenly his use of princess makes sense 😂😂

Tags:

@mcufan72 @mischief2sarawr @mochie85 @lokisgoodgirl @fictive-sl0th @lokiprompts @lulubelle814 @vickie5446 @peaches1958 @lokilvrr

[youphoriaot7]

He's gone.

First Felps. Then Cellbit. Then Pac himself. Then Mike. Even Richas wasn't safe. And now...Forever.

Forever, who was still recovering just as much as he was; likely more. Forever, who already had so much on his plate as the president. Forever, who had to keep interacting with that bear as if he was okay, as if he didn't want to rip its head off every time they talked. (Pac at least had the freedom to hide, if he so wished. The president received no such luxury.)

His head reels, mind nearly fracturing into a million pieces at the information. Putting the tape on feels like deja vu of an experience he's never had, and yet the situation is all-too-familiar: another family member missing.

Watching the video, it's as if his head is underwater. The quiet chatter behind him fades completely away, Forever's soft and dejected voice fully catching his ear. The words wrap around his mind, sinking in the way water soaks through a sponge. (Slowly.)

"Pac?" Tubbo's call brings him back, and he blinks for the first time in minutes, trying to pull himself out of his stupor. "What did he say?"

"...sorry," he finally replies, voice gruff as he reaches for the pause button on the tape. He translates the important bits, but his mind just feels...hollow. Empty.

Gone. The word keeps rotating, looping in his mind just as much as the tape sitting in front of them.

The others discuss the situation and what to do next, but Pac isn't listening. He can't. What even is there to do? What's the point of saving people when the Federation will just take another? Why bother fighting when they come back ten times as strong?

A gentle hand on his shoulder makes him nearly jump out of his skin, and his face flushes as he turns to see Fit at his side. "You alright?" Fit murmurs under his breath, eyes still trained on the two men in front of them. (Giving Pac his privacy. Pac appreciates it more than he will ever know.)

"No," he responds truthfully, voice coming out as a hoarse whisper. He manages to shake off the numbness in his limbs for just long enough to shake his head. "I'm not."

Fit doesn't say a word in response; simply squeezes Pac's shoulder tighter. Before either of them can move, Tubbo turns to them both, eyes darting momentarily to Fit's hand before he speaks.

"Pac, we're gonna investigate the dungeon I last saw Forever in," he says, voice decidedly too calm and even for the current events. Forever is gone. Why is no one panicking? "You coming?"

...oh, he wants an answer.

"Um...yeah, Tubbo, I'll be there in a sec," he replies softly, nodding even as he glances back towards the screen. "I just...I want to listen to this one more time, you know?" He offers a much of a smile as he can muster, which isn't much. "Make sure I didn't miss anything."

"Of course." Fit speaks before anyone else can, nodding. "We'll wait for you."

Tubbo shrugs and he and Pierre turn, chattering their whole way out of the base. Fit removes his hand from Pac's shoulder—damn, it was warmer than he'd realized—glancing at Pac as he moves forward. "You want me to stay? Or...?"

"You don't have to." He gives Fit a half-shrug, avoiding his eyes as he turns the tape back on and rewinds. "It's in Portuguese, anyway."

"I didn't ask if I had to." Fit steps directly into his line of sight, forcing him to meet his gaze. "I asked if you wanted me to."

To Pac, the distinction is negligible: either way, he's still inconveniencing Fit. But clearly, the decision means something to the other man, so he sighs, trying to cobble together a response.

"Whatever you want," is still all he can end up with, turning up the sound of the tape as it begins to play once more. From then on, his attention is lost, focused solely on the message playing on the screen.

He's failed. Again. Forever is gone. Again. His family keeps going missing. He's losing them all. And it won't stop. Everything keeps falling apart.

There's a sudden presence close to his shoulder—Fit crouches down on the steps next to him, eyes trained on the screen. "Then you won't mind if I stay," he whispers, in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

...perhaps...not everything.

The video loops again. Then again, then again, and again, and again. It's on the fifth loop that Pac can finally feel his emotions turning back on, waking up from whatever horrible limbo they'd been stuck in. He leans into Fit's shoulder—even closer than he'd thought it would be—and just cries. His tears wet the leather armor beneath him and his wails echo off the walls of the small office, but Fit doesn't say a word—just wraps an arm around Pac's shoulders, pulling him closer.

At least something is still here.

[delimeful]

helpless (7)

warnings: restraints, blood and injury, unethical treatment, spider mention/drider, misunderstandings, cannibalism mentions, kidnapping, lmk if i missed any

-

Janus managed to bite three different people before they finally pinned him in one place long enough to force the makeshift muzzle over his head.

He didn’t regret it, persay, but the little victory would have been far more gratifying if he hadn’t gotten his head slammed into a wall hard enough to make him see stars right afterwards.

If it weren’t for the cobbled-together gag, he would have started swearing. It was already extremely unlikely that he’d make it out of this particular clusterfuck unscathed, and seeing double certainly wasn’t going to improve his odds.

At least he’d ruined a few lives on his way out, he reflected as they hauled him up and out the door of the decrepit barn at the edge of town. His curse wasn’t useful for much, but he’d made the most of his venom and its ‘truth-telling’ properties no matter where he went.

The ones he’d bitten would be spilling their guts for the better part of a day, and he was more than sure that they’d be dropping some unpleasant secrets. If he was lucky, they’d be forced to regurgitate his little vigilante scheme to someone in town who’d see it for the idiocy it was.

Well, no. If he was actually lucky, he’d miraculously wiggle his way out of a painful and messy death. Getting his tormentors punished was more of a pleasant afterthought in the luck department.

He was unimaginably pissed that of all the plots against him, this was the one he hadn’t seen coming.

Sure, in retrospect, the dragon that used to demand tribute from the town had clearly had a bigger impact on the older populace than he’d first assumed. He’d been wary about settling there for a while, what with the scales and the eye and the other dragon-adjacent traits, but nobody had given him more than the usual level of confusion and distaste, and some people had been outright friendly.

How was he supposed to know that opinion would suddenly shift because something as generally positive as a rescued child?

He hadn’t even been involved with the whole situation!

Sure, he’d felt the overwhelming dread in the air when the child of one of the town’s governing members had disappeared. He’d breathed in a sigh of relief the same as everyone else when she’d been miraculously returned barely a day later. He’d even heard a fair number of the rumors recounting the stories she’d told about the creature in the woods that had helped her.

Strange, and definitely a reason to keep an eye on those woods, but the ordeal had nothing to do with him, and he’d thought it was over.

Except, according to his oh-so-gracious captors, that wasn’t the end of it. No supernatural presence came without strings attached, and with the rescue of one that could (at a stretch) be called an heir, they were convinced that the town would be called on to repay the debt.

So they’d decided that rather than wait for a monster to come claim a resident and steal them away in a week or two, they would choose the payment themselves. At that point, it was only a matter of picking someone they could afford to lose. Unsurprisingly, they settled on the cursed foreigner with the bad attitude.

Janus had had his humanity doubted his entire life, and now he’d been forced into the role of human sacrifice. He imagined he would have appreciated the irony more if it weren’t at his own expense.

His only balm was the fact that this clearly wasn’t a unanimous decision, going by the cloak-and-dagger way he’d been abducted and dragged out of town. He liked a fair few of his neighbors at this point, and he would have hated to find out that in addition to his imminent demise, he was also a horrible judge of character.

His attention snapped back to the unfortunate situation at hand as his captors slowed to a stop. They had reached a small, man-made clearing a little ways into the woods, with a tall, worn post driven deep into the earth. The wood was stained and the ground indented in strange places, as though the dragon and a bloody sacrifice had departed only hours ago, instead of years.

A shudder ran through the idiot on his left, clearly remembering something about the horrors that had taken place here. As someone who was about to become a horror taking place here, Janus found himself utterly unable to dredge up any sympathy for him.

In fact, he abruptly decided that the hypocrisy had earned his captor a knee to the groin, in the name of him getting the hell out of here.

The person on his other side must’ve been the keener sort, because their reflexes were much sharper.

One very short escape attempt later, Janus was firmly tied to the post, now with a spattering of heavy bruising all along his ribs in addition to his probable concussion.

To add insult to injury– or rather, injury to injury, they’d bid him farewell with a gash sliced into the front of his lower leg, relatively shallow but easily deep enough for blood to start seeping into his pants.

Fantastic. More obstacles to him getting out of this, exactly what he needed.

He tried not to dwell on his own helplessness, but it was everywhere he looked. He’d been stripped of his work belt and all the tools on it. He couldn’t make them doubt themselves with any well-placed remarks. He couldn’t even glare at their retreating backs without sending a new spike of pain through his throbbing skull.

A glance at the post was enough to dispel any hopes he’d had of physically breaking free; it was covered in various scratches and scrapes from previous victims, and there was no sign that any of them had gotten anywhere close to damaging it.

He tenderly leaned his head back against the wood and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think of a way out. Trying not to let the creeping fear overwhelm his irritation.

A distant rustle made his head snap up with a painful jolt, scanning the treeline for a long moment, body drawn as taut as a bowstring.

Nothing. Nothing he could see, anyway.

Janus hissed lowly against the cloth of the gag, ignoring the way his hands had started shaking from where they were pinned behind his back.

It was going to be a long night.

—

Virgil was doing some early-morning web maintenance when he found them.

Or more accurately, stumbled across them. He regularly cut across this part of the forest to avoid running into anyone in the grove of fruit trees that the nearby town liked to harvest from, and he’d already been halfway across the clearing when the scent of blood hit him.

He stopped dead, shuffling his legs slightly to make sure he wasn’t imagining things, and then turned to actually look over the open space with a growing sense of dread.

Oh. The weird wooden pole driven into the center of the clearing now had a human tied to it. One that was staring directly at him.

… How many times was this going to happen to him?!

Not the thing to focus on, right now. Virgil took a deep breath, forcing himself to assess his latest mess instead of cursing whatever deity had apparently thought it funny to put him in situations like this.

The human was on the shorter side, with disheveled blonde hair, mismatched eyes, and a startling pattern of greenish-gold scales along one side of their face. Their clothes were meticulously embroidered, though Virgil couldn’t make out the patterns through the extensive amount of ropes binding them to the wooden pole. As though those weren’t bad enough, there was a strange haphazard gag tied around their head, preventing them from speaking.

Clearly, they had been brought here against their will. Not unscathed, either. Their legs were stretched out in front of them, and though their pants were black, one pant leg was torn and glinting wetly with what was almost certainly blood.

The sight was enough to jolt Virgil into action, and he turned to actually face the stranger, skittering forward a few steps–

They recoiled harshly enough to bang the back of their head against the wood, and made a low, panicked sound of pain.

Virgil froze, his chest growing tight at the way they were watching him. Their eyes flicked over every inch of him like a cornered deer, their chest rising and falling in shallow bursts.

This wasn’t one of his humans. This was a stranger that had been left to an uncertain fate, now faced with a monster. They were terrified.

“Hey, I– I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, his voice coming out slightly hoarse. He crept forward, slower now, with his hands raised in the human version of nonaggression. He tilted one down to gesture at their wound. “I don’t know how you got here, but that leg looks pretty bad.”

The stranger dragged both legs up to tuck their knees against their chest, curling into a defensive ball with a glare that screamed ‘back-off-don’t-touch-me’. The injured leg was visibly shaking with the strain.

“No, look– hey. I promise I’m not going to kill you or eat you or anything,” he tried, attempting to meet their eyes directly. He crept forward a few more steps. “I know that might be hard to believe with the whole giant spider thing but I’m very firmly anti-cannibalism. Even if it’s technically like, only partial cannibalism.”

That… actually didn’t sound super reassuring, out loud. Virgil winced, resisting the urge to groan. Why had he decided to start using words like ‘cannibalism’?

He really should just call it quits and go get one of the others. After all these years of avoiding contact to avoid scaring the life out of people, he finally had friends that could help him out of awkward situations like these.

Except… the thought of turning around and leaving the stranger like this, bound and helpless while those who did it to them were presumably still running around…

It would only be for a little while. Just until he could poke Patton awake and lead him back here. But a lot could happen in a little while.

The stranger was studying him with a little less mindless panic, now, but he could see the fine tremors running through their frame. It was probably from fear, or pain, or even… cold?

This close, he could see that their clothes were actually pretty damp everywhere, which was odd. The dirt was hard packed under them, no dew-covered grass in reach, and Virgil had been out and about for most of the night. It hadn’t rained this morning, only late… last night…

“Holy shit, you’ve been out here all night,” he said, horrified. “Bleeding!”

The stranger blinked at him with a level of mild disorientation that Virgil probably should have picked up on earlier.

Okay. Forget trying to coax them into letting him close enough to undo the binds and lead them back to town. The stranger was getting help whether they liked it or not.

Scurrying around the post, Virgil pulled his dagger and slit the restraints in one smooth movement, and then immediately swept in and plucked the human off the ground, lifting them up with the practiced strength of someone who regularly caught humans flinging themselves in his direction.

They responded with a distinctly-upset muffled protest, and a well-aimed kick to the gut.

“Don’t kick me with your injured leg, are you stupid?!” Virgil demanded through a wheeze, holding them out a little farther and twisting away from a second, much weaker kick. “Stop that!”

Deciding that making sure they didn’t bleed out took priority over trying to calm them down, he pulled some silk and wrapped it around the wound as best he could.

The stranger made a gargled hiss through the gag. Virgil hissed back absently, sticking the end of the webbing in place and deeming it a good enough placeholder bandage.

He readjusted so that he was carrying them more securely, an arm under their back and another wrapped around the crook of their knees, and hurried off towards the slowly-growing campsite where his humans were sleeping.

This was now officially an abduction; hopefully Roman wouldn’t get stabby about it.

[adobe-outdesign]

Can we get a review of Tinkaton and her line since there’s scans of its sugi art floating around now? I love the murder muppets

The Tinkatink line is honestly one of the best lines in terms of overall concept we've gotten in a while. "Small cute Pokemon with hammer" isn't really that remarkable on its own, but the fact that they're part fairy-type and go from being bullied by steel-types to making their hammer out of their body parts and using said hammers to attack them is absolutely incredible. It not only lends to some great worldbuilding (like how Corviknight aren't used for flying taxis in Paldea because Tinkaton keep launching rocks at them), but throughly explains why they have their object and where they get it from, something Pokemon holding objects sometimes struggle with.

Tinkatink itself is fine, looking appropriately pathetic and being a fun little abstract gremlin. I really like how the future hammer is only a nub in this stage; it looks somewhat hammer-y but also resembles a rattle, giving it a slightly baby-ish vibe without going overboard with it.

Visually, I like the super funky mouth (Forretress, eat your heart out). However, I do think the colors are a bit weird; pink on Slightly Lighter pink makes for barely-visible shading, and it's strange that the hair is like half pink and half cream rather than it just being all cream like its evos.

I'm also not a huge fan of the metal diamond on the chest. It's really weird that it goes down past the start of the legs and above the neck; it creates a lot of weird tension points and overall looks way to big relative to the rest of the body. The eyes also look weirdly flat, mostly because the line for the highlights is diagonal instead of curved. It's got the right idea, but could've been refined a bit.

Tinkatuff comes dangerously close to bland transitional middle evo, but I think it just barely scrapes by. This is mostly because of the hair style (ponytail instead of longer hair), the hands being all-pink without the cream of Tinkaton, and the in-progress hammer.

I do think it could've been visually differentiated a bit more however. Tinkatuff has the same metal bits around its waist as Tinkaton, just less of them; it could've easily had metal "boots" or bracers; something that's substantially different than the other stages. I also feel like the legs could've had some cream on them, or the hair to be rounded at the base instead of zig-zagged; once again, just stuff to differentiate it a bit more.

I also wonder if they could've done something more fun with the hammer at this point. It doesn't really look like it should be able to hit things with it at this stage, and while I get the idea of it being "built up", I feel like it could've been a bit less literal about it. Maybe the hammer is more of a baseball bat at this stage; some other blunt-force weapon that makes sense in-between that could be something unique for Tinkatuff to own. None of this is a huge deal obviously—it's not bad as is—it just would've helped to make it stand out a bit more on its own.

All that said, I have virtually no quibbles with Tinkaton's design. The stupidly oversized hammer is delightful, and I love the shape of it and how you can clearly tell it's cobbled together out of a bunch of different parts. I also like how the metal bits around the waist resemble blacksmithing tools, appropriate for its concept.

Tinkaton also has a lot more cream in its design than its pre-evos, which work to break up the body. This is also helped by the zig-zag markings in the hair, which are paralleled by the top of the hammer. The shape of the hair also gives a more unique silhouette than Tinkaton's otherwise very simple body would allow for.

If I had one minor nitpick, it would be that the thumbs being pink feels a bit random and makes them feel disconnected from the rest of the hands; it probably would've made more sense for them to either be cream or have all the fingers be pink-tipped for consistency. Everything else, however, looks solid.

Overall, while there are a few small things I think could've been improved with the pre-evos, this is a very strong line with unique visuals and a brilliant concept. Instantly iconic.

[gretahayes]

My unpopular opinion: Wayne Family Adventures is garbage. It's the disgusting junk food of comics -- a cheap knock-off of better material, with all its best ideas stolen from passionate fans who did it better and everything else built from only the most obnoxious, shallow and inaccurate fandom misinterpretations of the characters, all cobbled together by exploited creators (WebToons is notoriously terrible to work for) who have clearly stopped giving a shit.

And the art is just terrible. All of the costumes are hideous, the layouts are even worse than most of what WebToons' terrible formatting forces onto their products, and there's not a single genuine emotional expression to be found in the entire ugly mess.

It's a cheap, ugly, mediocre product that's an insult to the entire franchise.

I'm flatly eh about WFA. I call myself a fan of it cause I do read it, but I don't have any strong emotions about it. I think it's fun and it's hard for me to feel strongly about one way or the other, just cause everything’s so light, but it isn't supposed to be like. A work of art you know? It's like an elseworlds to me cause it's that far detached from canon.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 820: Nomeansno 0 + 2 = 1

Nomeansno began in 1979 as the rhythm section two-piece of Rob and John Wright. They added Andy Kerr on guitar in 1983, a year after releasing their debut album Mama. While Nomeansno always retained a heavy focus on the interplay between bass and drums, Kerr found a spot to insert his wiry, jagged guitar lines without undermining the low-end force of the Wright brothers. Kerr wound up with another crucial role: nodules on Rob's vocal cords meant that he had to step back from lead vocals, allowing Kerr's snotty timbre to outweigh Wright's booming baritone on the remainder of their '80s output.

Nomeansno closed out the '80s with the most popular album of their career, 1989's Wrong. The band's rising profile across North America and Europe allowed (or perhaps forced) them to quit their day jobs, and by the beginning of the '90s the band was touring full-time. When it came time to record the follow-up to Wrong, the band was in a very different position. They were no longer practicing several times a week and slowly stockpiling new material---they'd been on tour non-stop and were now having to quickly cobble together another studio album so they would have something new to tour on. The band had become a job.

Such realities weren't generally considered cool back in the '90s. Being a career musician in a punk band wasn't heroic to anyone. Professional musicians didn't take you seriously and the punks considered you a sell out. The irony was that Nomeansno were phenomenal musicians and staunchly committed to the underground.

If anything, Nomeansno could've benefitted from playing the industry game a little more. Their press photos were always confusing and never clearly featured all three members. They championed younger bands and even started their own label, but they also avoided opening for bigger bands, even as they watched the younger bands they'd supported eclipse them in popularity. Nevermind had come out just two months prior to 0 + 2 = 1 and Nomeansno could've easily capitalized on the global interest in the Pacific Northwest underground rock scene, but instead they were content to continue touring squats in Europe. At a time when it seemed like Nomeansno should've gotten even bigger, they instead saw the first dip in album sales.

Maybe folks just weren't as excited by 0 + 2 = 1. Maybe it was written in too much of a hurry. But I don't buy that. I'll admit that i don't love "Everyday I Start to Ooze" (some of the vocals tread a little too far into theatrics) and that I mainly get my fix on Side 1. But jeezus... can we talk about those first five songs?? "Now" is an electrifying album opener. "The Fall" is classic Nomeansno power. "0 + 2 = 1" is like a nightmarish mashup of Ginsberg and Burroughs prose sent against a lurching Man Is The Bastard riff. "Valley of the Blind" reasserts their classic punk vigor before "Mary" comes crashing down with its monolithic bass-driven weight. And Side 2 is packed with punches too. Whether it's the vitriolic attack of "The Night Nothing Became Everything" and "I Think You Know" or the blueprint for Unwound's future blend of guitar dissonance and mid tempo bass throb on "Ghosts," the songs are solid enough for the album to be held on the same pedestal as its predecessors.

But Andy Kerr would leave the band at the end of the album cycle, officially capping off the classic era of the band. Grunge was having its moment in the spotlight. Pop-punk would follow on its heel steps. And the two weird old guys from Victoria, BC that looked like Phil Donahue's long lost siblings and sounded like Dead Kennedys and Rush had a baby would continue to avoid the limelight while cranking out records and living in tour vans.

[ghostofnibelheim]

Cloud had invited Sephiroth into the little kitchenette for a chat, and upon the silverette's entrance he'd been invited to sit, a rather... tense atmosphere hanging in the air only accentuated really when Cloud reached over and placed his hand atop his lover's and offered a rather forced smile.

"Sephiroth, listen, yeah?" He starts quietly, still attempting to cobble together the stones to address this particular issue and clearly filling the silence with a little padding to buy him more time.

"Know that I love you, and I know that this is... Partly my fault for not talking to you sooner... But..." The blond's voice draws low, his gaze dipping to the space between them. Apparently then, however, no matter how sensitive this subject, it should be broached sooner rather than later.

Time to tear off that proverbial bandaid.

"... You need to stop wandering into the bar naked... You're scaring the punters. Just put some pants on sometimes, yeah?"

"So this is what this is about." Maybe Sephiroth could have made a little more effort to guess or even sympathize with the bar's predicament. After all, all places have rules, and the Seventh Heaven made no exception.

"And you are positive I am the problem, here?" He asked without bite in his voice, but nonetheless gently freeing from the handhold to habitually cross his arms over his chest. "I could've sworn that had something to do with it."

Lazily he raised his eyes, to point them in deadpan at the Rufus Shinra cutout in plain display against the wall. Old, wrinkled, doodled on, and having lost its ability to stand upright long ago, the thing had been vandalized in more than a couple inappropriate ways. Not exactly prime decor in Sephiroth's opinion, but Barret called it the pièce de résistance of the whole establishment somehow.

"That facial hair on the chin someone added isn't even accurate. Denzel argues it's male genitalia."

[iceeckos12]

time travel snippet

little time travel au oneshot. season 5 jon travels back in time to season 1. from the perspectives of tim, martin, and sasha. 3.5k.

i dont think i need to tag anything, but please let me know otherwise.

Tim wakes up that morning, and it’s just like any other day.

Well—no, okay, that’s a bit misleading. Today is his first day working as an archival assistant, so he’s one part nervous, one part that breathless, exhilarated feeling you only get when you’re about to do something unfamiliar that may or may not redefine your life for the foreseeable future. When he says “it’s just like any other day”, he means that he wakes up, and he’s a normal person doing normal people things like eating a healthy breakfast and going to work.

(So, no. In short, he doesn’t realize that today is the day when It happens, that big, life-changing event that you think will Never Happen To You.)

He gets out of bed, stumbles into the bathroom. Washes his face of whatever residue that’d built up during the night, tries to scrape away the evidence of his nightmares, smiles big and bright at the mirror to see how successful his efforts were. He’s betrayed by the traitorous bags beneath his eyes, but that’s okay. Sasha taught him how to wield concealer as a shield whenever his past wore down his armor.

He shoots twin finger guns into his reflection, making soft pew, pew! noises that are almost too-loud in the hush of the bathroom. Then he turns on his heel and walks away, sauntering and humming along with the chorus of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5.

He gets to the Institute twenty minutes before he’s supposed to—not because he’s trying to impress his boss or whatever (he and Jon have known each other long enough that there’s no point). It’s just, Jon will probably want to make some sort of game-plan before the actual workday starts. 

The poor man had been relieved to an almost comical degree when Tim had said yes, I’ll come with you to the Archives. It’s painfully obvious how out-of-his-depth Jon is with the whole “Head Archivist” thing. Tim’s honestly baffled as to why Elias had singled him out for the position in the first place, considering his lack of qualifications.

But, whatever. It’s fine! Tim and Sasha will be there to help him—although the third assistant is a bit of a problem, considering that they know absolutely nothing about him. There’s no guarantee that this Martin Blackwood won’t report inadequacies or mistakes back to Elias. If that’s the case, Tim and Sasha will have to be Jon’s safety net, which is partially why Tim is hoping to talk to Jon before anyone else gets there.

He also wants to talk to Jon because he just knows the man is probably working himself up over all of this. Maybe reassurances won’t do away with the source of anxiety entirely, but at least it’ll remind Jon that he’s not alone, and that he can count on Tim and Sasha.

As expected, when Tim gets there he can see a sliver of light pouring out from the cracked door of the Head Archivist’s office. He selects a desk and sets his bag on top of it, noting a set of strange gouges in the fake wood with a raised eyebrow, and then an internal shrug. The Institute issued laptop is near the far edge of his desk, and his collection of pictures are strategically placed so that he can see them all clearly.

His eyes linger over the image of him, his mother, and his brother. Their smiles are almost perfect replicas of each other, like someone took a mold of one of their faces and recreated it twice over.

Briefly, he closes his eyes. Then he shakes himself, releases a slow, steadying breath, and goes to check on Jon.

Tim’s not sure what he’s expecting to see when he goes into Jon’s office.

(That’s misleading too, though. He’s not sure if Jon will be visibly calm or upset, if he’ll be on his laptop, if he’ll be picking at the skin around his fingernails, as he so often does when he’s stressed. He is expecting Jon as he is and always has been—a twenty-some year old going on sixty, who wraps his gruff, grumpy demeanor about himself to protect the soft, vulnerable core he likes to pretend doesn’t exist.)

He comes up to the door, and the soft rectangle of light that emanates from beneath the door paints the tips of his shoes gold. “Jon?” he calls softly, rapping his knuckles against the frame. There’s a soft rustling noise—papers maybe? but no audible response, so he shrugs and pushes the door open. “I’m coming in.”

Tim steps inside, a quip instinctively readying itself on his tongue—but then his gaze lands on Jon, and he freezes dead in his tracks.

Even years later, he still vividly, viscerally remembers the moment he saw Danny standing on the stage underneath the Royal Opera House, the way he’d looked...not quite right. The wrongness had been subtle, so much so that it had been unnoticeable upon first glance, upon second glance. The longer Tim had looked though, the more obvious it had become, exposing all the little faults in that almost-perfect recreation of his brother.

Looking at Jon now, it’s the first and only thing he can think of. Because—yes, there’s the long, silver-streaked black hair, there’s the rich brown eyes, there’s the pair of spectacles that make him look far older than he actually is. But that’s where the similarities between the Jon he knows and this Jon end.

Jon’s always been a small man, but his feigned haughtiness makes him seem much bigger than he actually is. Except—except this Jon looks smaller somehow, his shoulders curved protectively inward, like he’s trying to present less of a target. And there’s something about his face, too—his expression is too sharp, too much—

But the worst of it is his eyes. There’s something very wrong with his eyes.

Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with Jon? He doesn’t say it out loud though, just keeps staring at Jon, a heady mix of terror and horror making any sort of reaction impossible.

After a moment Jon’s lips thin, contorted by some distant cousin of displeasure, and he rises to his feet. Tim stumbles instinctively backward, his breath escaping him in a sharp gasp that’s immediately swallowed up by the apathetic stacks of books and papers surrounding them. He’s struck by the fact that if he dies here, it’s unlikely anyone will notice; he’ll become just another set of marks gouged into the desk, willed away with an uneasy shrug.

Jon freezes, lips parting subtly, as though he were about to speak. Tim feels his breath catch in his chest, unable to shake himself out of the clouded stupor his mind has fallen into.

In the end, Jon says nothing. Just releases a long, slow breath of air and sits back down, pushing his chair close to his desk. The motion looks heavy, tired, as though it takes far more energy than it should.

“You—you should go,” Jon rasps, and there’s something off about his voice too, though Tim can’t put his finger on why. He can’t cobble together enough of a train of thought to make sense of any of this, all he can think of is that clown ripping Danny apart—

He stumbles out of Jon’s office, sits down at his desk. Stares down at the cheap, fake wood, at the gouges that have marred the otherwise pristine surface. Puts his head in his hands, and tries to will his heart to stop pounding in his chest.

-0-

Martin’s heard things about Jonathan Sims.

He’s not usually the type to pay attention or encourage gossip, as the vivid memories of his classmates tittering cruelly whenever he walked by still leaves a sour taste in his mouth.The problem with the Institute is that the employees get bored pretty easily. Though most would consider academic research into the esoteric and the paranormal to be fairly interesting, it’s still academic research. And the subject content can get to be a bit...repetitive. There’s only so many gruesome statements you can read without thinking, oh great, more meat.

So the employees gossip a lot, and while Martin usually tries to keep his head down and avoid it, it’s difficult not to overhear some things. And from what little he’s heard, he’s...a bit concerned. Rude and unsociable has frequently been mentioned, as have arrogant and unnecessarily finicky, and worst of all, a bit of a stuck-up know-it-all.

Normally he tries not to put too much stock in office gossip—he’s well aware that the grapevine tends to exaggerate one’s most undesirable traits—but if any of it is true, then he might just be in trouble. It was hard enough being a library employee when his boss wasn’t even paying attention most of the time. If Jon is as exacting as they say, it might be enough to expose the fact that Martin has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. And if that happens, then he might get fired, and he can’t get fired, he needs this job, he can barely keep up with his mum’s medical bills as it is—

Calm down, Martin tells himself firmly, pressing his hand against his sternum, as though that will be enough to quell the rising panic. It’s only your first day. Maybe he’s nice, and we’ll actually be good friends.

(With his luck? Yeah, right.)

The Institute looms in the distance, growing closer with every terrified, grudging footstep. A shiver runs up his spine at the sight of its imposing presence, a dark, ugly blot of a building against the backdrop of the iron grey clouds.

If there’s one thing he’s good at though, it’s keeping his head down and muddling through until he’s able to figure out what is actually expected of him. He can twist and fold himself into whatever role they need him to fill, as he has done so many times in the past. Not easily perhaps, but he has always managed. The alternative is untenable, after all.

So he takes a deep breath, and shoves his panic down as deep as possible. Lifts his head and forces a smile onto his face, like a good attitude will be enough to protect him from his boss’s wrath.

He could really do with a cup of tea.

Martin trudges down the stairs, giving the blank walls, the old-fashioned carpet, a dubious look as he does. The Archives themselves are as he remembers it—he’s been down here a couple of times when Gertrude made a request for something specific, but—

He pauses when he notices a man sitting at one of the desks, his face buried in his hands. His shoulders aren’t shaking and his breathing is even, so Martin doesn’t think that he’s crying? He’s just….sitting there, his stillness so perfect it’s almost inhuman.

“Hello?” Martin calls softly, cautiously, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet.

The man looks up, revealing a very handsome face and brown eyes so dark they may as well be black. His cheeks are dry but his eyes are bright and a little wild, and his mouth is pressed into a small, tight line. He doesn’t speak, just keeps watching, blinking dazedly in Martin’s direction. Martin gets the feeling that this person isn’t entirely there at the moment, like a house in which every room is lit, but there are no people inside.

He swallows and shifts nervously back and forth, trying to decide whether or not to call for some backup. Eventually he sets his bag on the floor and shuffles a bit closer. “Um—are you—is everything okay?”

The man blinks rapidly, some semblance of awareness creeping back into his gaze. He shakes his head slowly, pushes his short, gelled hair back from his head. His hands are trembling. “I’m...yeah, I’m fine. It’s—everything’s, it’s…”

But then his gaze lands on something over Martin’s shoulder, and all the color drains out of his face, his mouth shutting with a painful sounding click. Martin quickly spins around, searching for whatever could’ve scared him so much—

There’s someone standing in the doorway of Gertrude’s office.

There are so many things that one normally takes in upon first meeting another person: their hair, their skin color, all the little wrinkles and marks that give you the briefest insight into their life. Martin looks at posture first, tends to check if a person is intentionally looming, or if they’re making themself smaller.

But all Martin can see are the eyes.

There’s—two of them he thinks, but two is such an arbitrary number when the thing you’re applying it to doesn’t ascribe to human values (he’s not sure how he knows that—how does he know that—?). That horrible, terrible gaze is an unerring arrow, all-encompassing, all-consuming, piercing the deepest corners of his mind. It hurts in some distant, nebulous way he’s not even sure he comprehends—

Then he blinks, and the sheer terror, that feeling of the horrible, violating exposure of everything that he is, abruptly snuffs out. What’s left is just a person, wispy and small, his slight frame fairly drowning in a chunky, cable-knit jumper. He’s leaning against his doorframe, his eyes—two big brown ones, rich and unfathomably sad and more than that, human—drinking Martin in, his lips parted in a soundless gasp.

“Um—” Martin glances over his shoulder, and almost leaps out of his skin when a land falls heavily on his shoulder. The man who’d been sitting in the chair is standing just behind him, a strained but polite smile on his face.

“Hi Jon,” the man says, an undercurrent of a warning in his voice.

Martin glances between the two, his confusion growing with every passing moment. This is not what he was expecting when he first came into work today, and the uncertainty makes him feel strange and off-kilter.

The person in the door swallows once, twice, then straightens, one hand still gripping the doorframe like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. When he speaks, his voice is soft, tentative, a little ragged around the edges. “Tim. It’s, um...it’s good to see you.”

“Martin Blackwood, was it?” Tim continues, injecting a bit of cheer into his voice. It takes Martin a moment to realize that he’s being addressed, and he shoots Jon—this is Jonathan Sims?—an uncertain look before nodding slowly. “We’re happy to have you on the team.”

“O-Oh?” Martin squeaks, then grits his teeth and bodily forces his voice back into its normal range. “I’m—um, I’m happy to be here?”

“Good,” Tim says through a grin that looks more like a grimace, giving Martin’s shoulder a friendly pat. The look he shoots Jon is a dark, mistrustful thing. The look Jon gives him back is fragile, vulnerable, that winds the tension in Tim’s shoulders so tight it has to be painful.

Jon’s gaze flickers to Martin, just for a second—and then he disappears into his office, leaving the door cracked behind him.

Tim and Martin stand there for a second, staring at the door. Tim’s still tense as a bowstring, and his grip on Martin’s shoulder is almost uncomfortable. The air in the Archives feels stuffy and too warm, and there’s a strange prickling sensation on the back of Martin’s neck, like he’s being subjected to close scrutiny.

Then Tim sighs and lets go of Martin’s shoulder, a little of the tension bleeding out of him, and without it he looks small, deflated. He goes back to his desk and sits down, booting up his laptop without a word of explanation to Martin.

Martin stares at the back of Tim’s head for a moment, a number of questions clamoring around in his brain—what the fuck was that? What’s wrong with Jon? Why are you so obviously suspicious of him?—but the words won’t come. Breaking the silence feels...sacrilegious, somehow. Every breath of air sticks against the back of his throat.

In the end, he doesn’t say anything either, just sits at his desk and takes out his Institute-issued laptop. Stares blankly at the screen as the machine slowly, laboriously, comes to life.

-0-

Sasha’s not entirely sure how to interpret the tense atmosphere that has descended over the Archives.

The first day she’d arrived a couple of minutes before she was supposed to, prepared to follow Jon’s direction and help him adjust as best she could. (Her feelings about Jon’s promotion...didn’t matter. She didn’t like it, but it wasn’t his fault that Elias was an old-fashioned misogynist.)

But when she’d come down the stairs, Tim and the assistant she didn’t know, Martin, had been seated quietly at their desks. They’d both had the same distant, shell-shocked look on their faces, like they’d received some shattering, horrible news. Sasha had sent Tim a confused look, but he either hadn’t noticed it, or hadn’t wanted to explain.

She hadn’t even seen Jon that first day, just received a polite email asking her to start organizing the statements according to the system which he’d devised.

It’s been almost three days, and nothing has changed. Oh sure, they’ve all started organizing the statements as directed. Tim cracks jokes, Martin tiptoes around them and makes copious amounts of tea. That strange tension that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, like the world is holding its breath in anticipation, hasn’t faded though. And while she doesn’t know Martin all that well, she knows that something’s still up with Tim. He seems more subdued than usual, keeps sending uncomfortable looks in the direction of Jon’s office—

—which hasn’t been open since that first day. She hasn’t seen Jon at all either, no matter how early she arrives or how late she stays. The only proof she has that he’s still alive is the polite email she periodically receives, detailing some specific task that he wants for them to do.

Even then, his emails are...odd. She’s not sure how she can tell, but they feel...awkward? Stilted? Like he’s only half-aware of what he’s typing, or like he’s only asking them to do things because he feels like he should, not because he has any actual goal in mind.

Normally she’d be frustrated by this, would complain bitterly to Tim about Elias passing over her for someone who obviously doesn’t properly appreciate the position they’ve been given—except that she knows Jon. He’d made a point to explain the situation to her himself, an apologetic twist tucked into the corner of his mouth. More than that, he’d asked her to follow him to the archives, saying that he wanted the two people he trusted most, her and Tim, to come with him.

He respects her too much not to take this job seriously.

The strangeness of the archives is only emphasized by Jon’s complete and utter lack of presence within it, but she doesn’t—she doesn’t buy that. She doesn’t believe that he’d just suddenly decide not to do the job he’d been so anxious to excel at. 

More damning than anything is Tim’s complete, utter silence regarding Jon’s strange behavior, but whatever he knows about it, he isn’t saying anything. Martin is willing to talk, but he seems to be as lost as she is.

“I—that first day, Jon…” Martin shrugs, shooting a nervous glance toward the door leading to the archives. He’s been spending a lot of time hovering in the break room making tea, not that she can blame him. “He—I mean obviously I don’t know him very well, but he seemed...upset?”

“Upset,” Sasha repeats dubiously.

Martin lets out an exhausted sigh and turns away, waving a dismissive hand. “Look, I’m not entirely sure how to explain it. He just—okay, so, bear with me for a second, but he reminded me of this guy who used to live in my neighborhood.”

Sasha backs off, folding her arms and leaning against the counter. “Okay?”

“There was this little old couple that used to live in my neighborhood. They were—they were really sweet! The husband used to give candy to us younger kids. But um—sometimes you’d see him sitting in the rocking chair on his porch, and it was like...he wasn’t entirely there? Like, he’d just sit there for hours, rocking and staring at nothing. That’s—that’s what Jon’s expression reminded me of.”

Martin gets more animated the more he talks, Sasha notes; his hands move in broad, sweeping gestures, his expression twisting into an expression of extreme concentration. The moment he finishes he deflates again, tucking his hands into his armpits self-consciously, a hedgehog curling protectively in on itself.

“So, yeah,” he finishes eloquently.

“Huh,” Sasha says thoughtfully.

She gets back to her desk. Looks over at Tim, who’s studiously working through a box of statements, his mouth set in a neutral, concentrated frown. Takes a deep breath, letting the taste of dust and old papers sit heavy on her tongue.

Then she opens her laptop and starts looking through the catalog of cursed items that are currently being held in Artifact Storage.

(She doesn’t think that she’ll find anything, but—but just in case.)

-0-

They all get the call the next Monday morning: Elias Bouchard was found dead in his office.

[klbwriting]

Pirate’s Heart - Chapter 11

Ruin My Life

Fandom: Six of Crows

Pairing: Kaz/female!Reader

Summary: hearts are found and a new problem arises

Notes: so now you can see why I gave these two a catch phrase, just so a pop song worked out for me

Taglist:  @sixofshadowandbone​​ @thedelusionreaderbitch​​ @itsemy01​​ @angelicdanvers​​ @marinettepotterandplagg​​ @screen-to-stage​​ @aysegust​​ @sagewrites111​​ @lilyoflower​​ @madeofsilkandsteel​​​ @starjane312​​​ @spawn0fsatan​​​ @myalupinblack​​​ @ameliathackray​​​ @moondustmarauder​​​ @lizcookie1

I want you to ruin my life You to ruin my life, you to ruin my life, yeah I want you to fuck up my nights, yeah Fuck up my nights, yeah, all of my nights, yeah I want you to bring it all on If you make it all wrong, then I'll make it all right

When Kaz woke up he panicked for moment.  The room around him was not his.  It was messier than he would ever keep his quarters, papers strewn about, hand drawn pictures on the walls.  He was in a bed larger than his own, dark sheets and a heavy blanket over him.  He sat up quick and realized that this must be Y/N's cabin.  He stood slowly, feeling like someone had beat him with a pipe.  His mind was foggy but he vaguely remembered holding Y/N close and falling out a window into the sea.  Rollins's office, Nina betrayed him, he betrayed Y/N, she had still saved him.  He groaned as he stood, grabbing for his cane, his leg on fire.  He was about to head up above deck when the door opened and Y/N came in.  

"O, you're awake, good this won't get cold then," she said.  Her voice triggered another memory from the previous night.  I love you Kaz she had said.  She loved him.  Was it enough for her to get her heart back?  Was his love enough for that?  He swallowed hard and looked at what she was carrying, breakfast, eggs, a biscuit with some kind of gravy, bacon.  Where did this all come from? "Where did you get all this?" he asked.  She set the tray on her desk and motioned for him to sit.  He did gingerly and started to eat, his stomach feeling empty entirely.  

"I keep some extras on the ship, some luxuries in case we get new girls.  Usually they'd only been fed gruel or broth, a good meal makes them feel welcome," she explained, sitting on her bed.  She sat quietly by as he ate, just watching him.  She was so relieved that the fall didn't seriously hurt him.  After she woke she had had her medic come in and do a quick exam, nothing invasive, just enough to make sure he wasn't bleeding internally.  She also had made sure to send a small crew out to find his ship.  She was still waiting on word from them.  "How much does it hurt?"

"I'm pretty sure hitting the cobbles from that height feels better than this," he said, pushing the empty plate away.  "You saved my life last night."

"Well, my girl got you into that mess, I wasn't going to leave you all there" she said.  She looked at him behind her desk and shook her head.  He looked amazing.  She didn't care if he restored he heart or not, he was her love and that's all she cared about.

"So you said you loved me last night," he said, standing up and moving to sit beside her.  She nodded.

"I did," she answered.  They weren't looking at each other but she felt his hand sliding over hers gently.  

" Y/N, I don't know if what I feel is enough..." he said.  She held up her hand.  

"I don't care Kaz, I love you.  “I don't know if my heart will choose you to be my true love but my soul does.  I choose you, my mind, my soul, my very being chooses you.  Fuck my heart, who cares?  I want you to ruin my life, I want you to fuck up every night for the rest of my life," she said, finally looking at him.  As soon as she faced him he gripped her face and kissed her softly.  His lips were unpracticed but warm and so inviting.  After a few moments she felt a pain in her chest.  She doubled over, pulling back from Kaz and gripping her chest as she fell to the floor.  She groaned as she felt something beat, felt a pulse, felt absolutely everything.  

" Y/N?" Kaz asked, reaching out and touching her back.  She grabbed onto his hand and pressed it to her chest.  He stared, feeling her heartbeat against his hand.  She took a deep breathe, sitting back against the bed, looking at him.  "Well that is a declaration of love if I ever saw one."

"I knew it was you, knew that first time I saw you when you finally grew up.  I'm sorry it took so long for me to realize that I got to choose  my true love," she said.  Kaz just pulled her back to him for a  moment, kissing her head.  

"We can't stay here can we?" he asked.  She shook her head.  

"I sent a message out about the Crow, I'm trying to find it.  If Rollins really has a new fighter we're going to need to sink that think quick before it can sink us," she said.  "Plus, everyone thinks you might be dead."

"Out there..."

"Out there we can be whatever you want."

"I want to be careful.  Rollins seems to think we are just professionally linked still, we should keep it that way.  He thinks we're just working together to find the sea witch..."

"Which he knows we found?"

"I'm sorry," he said.  She looked at him and touched his still bruised face gently.  "But yes, he knows we have the gem, he said if he finds us he will send his entire naval force."  She nodded.  

"I may need to do something drastic then, we can't handle all of the ships in the navy with just our vessels and this gem on me," she said.  Kaz frowned.

"What else could you do?" he asked.

"Fuse the gem to my body, completely take its power," she said.  "Its what the sea witches did to restore the reef."  Kaz looked at her.  No, that could not possibly be what she was thinking.

"They were destroyed," he said.  She nodded.

"I know, but I won't let anything happen to you or my crew, I will protect you all with my life if I have to," she said.  "I need you on my side about this."  Kaz turned his eyes to the ground before turning to look at her.  

"Please, lets just try with our ships first," he said.  He couldn't imagine letting her do this without trying something else first.  He had already lost his parents, his brother, his childhood, what else would have to sacrifice to the sea before it had its fill?  

"We can try, but we have to find your ship first," she said.  She stood slowly, offering her hand to him.  He took it and stood.  "We have to get out there."  

"Before we go," he said softly, turning her face him, lips finding hers.  He nodded then for her to lead.  

On deck the rest of the crew waited, all of them cheering when Kaz emerged.  He almost smiled but waved them down, trying to look annoyed.  He was glad his people were safe, he could only hope the rest of the crew was safe too, wherever they were.   Y/N leaned on the side of the ship, still rubbing her chest.  Kaz realized a second too late, not able to push her hand away before Nina noticed.

" Y/N...something bothering you?" she asked.   Y/N removed her hand and blushed a little.  "O my God, it was Kaz!"  Kaz gave one loud bang from his cane on the floor and sent Nina a withering look to shut her up.  Nina closed her mouth, looking scared.  She should be, Kaz was still livid with her, if she wasn't so important to Y/N he would've killed her.  

"Is the messenger back yet?" Y/N asked, moving in front of Kaz to block him from even looking at Nina.  The others shook their heads.  "We are going to try to take out this new fighter Rollins says he has using both the Crow and the Menagerie.  It will be hard but we need to do something, Rollins has finally had it with us and has made us enemy number one to the navy."  She would leave out the part about fusing the gem to her body.  That was something private between her and Kaz for now, she wouldn't worry the others about it.  A young woman hurried over to the group, handing Y/N a piece of parchment.  She took it and frowned, reading it over twice to make sure she was seeing this correctly.  

"Where's the Crow?" Kaz asked.  

"They've abandoned it near Pirate Island," she said.  "This is clearly a trap...that new fighter is going to be there.  How much tonic do we still have?"

  "3," Inej answered.   Y/N nodded.  

"We'll need to go under them," she said.  She looked at Kaz.  "I'll need you to lead these girls as a distraction until we can take the ship and free the crew and join the fight."  

"Of course, I will keep Nina and Inej with me, you take my crew, they will be helpful against the military assholes," he said.  She agreed.  

"Raise the sails, its time to spring this trap."

[flowesona]

Renegade - Yandere! Seokjin x reader

Request: Number 6 with JinPlease 🥺

“How else would they know you belonged to me?”

There was a slight chill in the air, but with the warmth of her lover’s body next to hers (Y/N) couldn’t feel it. She reached out to curl his hand within her own, studying the hard veins and running her fingers over his worn knuckles.

“You’re sure we won’t get caught here?” She whispered softly, her breath a warm flutter on his bare skin.

“No one patrols here. As long as we aren’t too loud, no one will know.” Hoseok whispered back, his infectious smile soothing her nerves. Sure, the small, abandoned prison cell in the tower was not the most comfortable place with its cold draft and barely enough space to move but Hoseok would have been just as happy to lie on a bed of nails if it meant he could be with his beloved.

For a while they were just content to be together, the post-sex euphoria providing relief from their day-to-day life.

However, this was not long-lasting, as they heard the clicking of heels up the cobbled stairs.

“Crap, you need to hide.” Hoseok hissed, heart thumping a thousand beats a second at the fear of being caught. The palace physician, being caught with one of the king’s chambermaid? God knows what would happen to the two of them!

However, no matter where she looked there was no hideaway, and the best she could do was to crawl underneath the hard cot they’d been lying on together.

Hoseok had a few moments to pull on his clothes and fix his messy hair before the door creaked open.

“Your majesty!” He breathed, cursing internally as the monarch entered the room. 

“Sir Jung Hoseok. What are you doing here?” Seokjin questioned, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“I just needed to clear my head, your majesty. I thought it was best to get away from my quarters and find somewhere with more ventilation.” 

“Are you saying that the living I have provided for you is not adequate?” Seokjin snarled, face scrunched up in anger.

“Not at all, your majesty. I was just having trouble with my research so I thought a change in setting would be best to clear my head.” Hoseok said, in the calmest voice he could muster. Beneath the bed (Y/N)’s chest had tightened as she struggled to control her panicked breathing. If the King were to find them out, she was for sure fired if not executed for treason. 

“I see.” The monarch frowned. “May I join you?”

“Your majesty, with all due respect would it not be improper for you to-”

“It was not a question.” Seokjin ignored Hoseok’s pitiful protest and sat himself on the hard cot, closing his eyes as if to meditate.

For a moment, there was silence. Hoseok closed his eyes and hoped his thudding heartbeat was not too loud.

“You seem troubled.” The king commented, opening his eyes.

“I am just concerned for your health, your majesty. It is quite cold in here and I do not wish for you to catch a chill.” Hoseok replied.

“You don’t seem too cold.” Seokjin replied, arching an eyebrow. “Care to share your secret?”

Hoseok was stunned into silence. 

“Perhaps you had a maiden to keep you warm?” (Y/N) had to swallow the urge to sob, shaking as she knew they’d been found out. 

“Your majesty, I would not dare-”

“My chambermaid, (L/N) (Y/N). I woke up and requested for her to brew me some tea, but it appears she has gone missing. I hope this is not related?” Seokjin continued. “Surely it’s not the case that she has been in here warming your bed?”

“It would be a great dishonour for me to-”

“She’s here right now, isn’t she?” (Y/N)’s heart stopped as she heard the king stand up from the bed and bend down to make eye contact with her.

“There you are, (Y/N).” He smiled. “You shouldn’t sleep under there. It must be awful for your back. Right, Sir Hoseok?”

Knowing she was defeated, she crawled out from the cramped space and kneeled before the king, trying not to let her eyes water and show weakness.

“Clearly you both think that I’m stupid and that you can play me for the fool.” The monarch snarled, face reddening as he stared down the royal physician with a great anger.

“Your majesty, please do not punish Sir Hoseok. It was all me, I seduced him and convinced him to stay with me when I should have been ready to attend to you. Please, deal with me with whatever punishment would fit this crime but do not hurt this innocent man.” (Y/N) protested. 

“I would not even think to hurt a single hair on your pretty little head, my lovely (Y/N).” The king purred. “I couldn’t live with myself if I were to do such a thing.” 

He bent down (Y/N)’s kneeling level and - to the horror of those present in the room - pressed a gentle kiss to her soft lips. She attempted to get away from him, but he held her chin with an iron grip. He ignored her signs of rejection, his teeth grazing her lips and eyes closed as if he was in heaven.

After a few tortuous moments it was over, and (Y/N) was able to breathe and look at Hoseok again, seeing his eyes widened in shock and horror.

“You see, I could never hurt you (Y/N).” The king spoke casually, as if he was talking about something menial rather than discussing death by execution.

“However, I can’t promise the same for our dear Royal Physician.” 

“Your highness-!” Hoseok was struck with fear as the monarch approached him.

“You lied to me about what you were doing here. Not only that, you stole away my lovely (Y/N) and for that I cannot forgive you.” Seokjin sighed. “You will be tried for treason and conspiracy against the king. Don’t try to resist, it won’t be pretty.”

He whistled, and awaited his faithful guards standing outside the door to enter and take Hoseok by the arms.

“(Y/N)!” Hoseok cried out for his lover, meeting her beautiful crestfallen eyes as he was dragged away.

“I do look forward to his trial. No doubt he’ll get a fitting punishment for such a heinous crime.” Seokjin smiled, reaching for (Y/N)’s hand and pulling her to her feet. She stumbled slightly at the force, but the king was there to catch her before she could fall.

However, she was too upset at the fate awaiting Hoseok to even acknowledge the amorous way he was holding her.

“Why? I told you, it should be me that suffers for this!” She sobbed, burying her face subconsciously into his chest.

“Whilst you were in the wrong for betraying me like this, I must use that scum as an example to everyone else in the palace. How else would they know you belonged to me?”

[chaseatinydream]

pirate king (17) || atz

San looks over your hands gently, turning them over in his. His fingers trace the scrapes your fall on the cobbles have left behind, and he shakes his head in disapproval.

Then he lets your hands rest on the table of the sickbay and picks up a clean cloth with tweezers, soaking it in rum before wiping your hands down with it, removing any small pieces and blood still remaining on them. Your palms sting, but it’s nothing compared to the anguish in your heart.

“What happened?” San murmurs softly as he works on your wound. You remember Seonghwa had mentioned that San was a better healer of the heart than he was of any physical ailment, but the thought of Seonghwa’s once cheerful, smiling face twists at your chest and lungs like a poisonous vine.

The lump in your throat refuses to go away.

“I don’t know.” You reply in all due honesty. Truly, till now you still don’t understand what had happened to the gentle, kind-hearted cook, but you can only piece together what you have guessed from the incident earlier.

Seonghwa was afraid of the gallows.

Yunho has taught you that the brightest smiles can hide the most bitter tears, but you’ve never expected that the man who’d first treated you with such kindness has suffered so much.

San continues staring at you for a while. Then he finally puts down the cloth and whispers to you in a soft, secretive tone.

“Hey, look at this.”

You frown in confusion, but San places a single finger on your torn skin. Closing his eyes, you see his brows furrow in concentration before a tingling feeling starts to blossom across your hand from where San’s fingertip touches yours, warmth chasing the slight sting in your hand away. You feel as if you’ve dunked your hand in a warm bath, the heat emanating from San’s finger too real to be a mere figment of your imagination.

Then it happens.

Fascination washes over you as you stare at your hand in wonderment. The bleeding slows gradually and finally stills, before you watch the skin and damaged tissue steadily knitting itself back together like a spider’s web. In the end, the entire wound closes, leaving the skin of your palm a soft baby pink.

Your mouth falls open.

“Master, did you just-”

“I’ll be teaching you this over the next few days. Remember, don’t ever attempt this without me. It’s potentially fatal if you don’t know how to do it. Do your best to learn it fast.” San’s smile is a little sad, a little forced. Your initial excitement fades at your master’s clear unease. “I get the feeling we might need it.”

Your fingers brush the silver hairpin tucked securely in your belt for good luck. You don’t like the sound of that.

You know what your master is implying, that there will be much conflict happening soon. But you don’t like to admit that it may be coming already. You and your master sit in momentary silence, both preparing yourselves for what may be to come.

“Sanie, Chin Hae.” The two of you turn to the person who’s come knocking on the sickbay’s door. It’s Wooyoung, purple hair rumpled, rouge smeared on his clavicle and dark circles under his eyes from yesterday, but the unusually grim expression on his handsome face shows he isn’t exactly reminiscing happily about night before. “Captain wants to see us in his cabin, now.”

His tone gives no room for argument.

“Got it.” San rises to his feet, his expression neutral. You only know that there’s unease flickering in his eyes from the way his shoulders are tensed. Since you and Mingi have returned from desperately searching the town for Seonghwa, you’ve found out from Wooyoung, who’s just arrived himself with Yeosang, that Seonghwa had dashed up the gangplank in tears, all alone and ignoring the concerned shouts of his crewmates, before locking himself up in the kitchen galley by himself.

Ever since then, Hongjoong and Yeosang, as the most level headed of the lot, have been discussing what to do about this in the captain’s cabin, instructing for no one to enter while the meeting is still underway. Seonghwa might be only one person, but he means a great deal to many of the crew on board and for the whole afternoon, there has been a gloomy air settling over the ship, the deck unnaturally quiet and subdued.

Your mind has been filled with worry for the cook the entire afternoon, but then San brought you down to the sickbay to get away from the stress of it all. The initial concern and panic has worn off a little, but you can still your anxiety lingering at the back of your mind like an itch that can’t be scratched.

“Is Seonghwa-hyung okay?” You ask feebly, gripping the silver hairpin tight as the three of you make your way to the captain’s cabin beneath the quarterdeck. Wooyoung shrugs, mouth drawn into a thin, concerned line.

“I don’t know. Yunho’s with him to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, but...” His voice trails off as you stop outside the captain’s cabin. Wooyoung raps sharply on the door and you hear the captain call ‘come in’ from inside.

San pushes the door open and the three of you crowd into the room. Captain is sitting at the desk, massaging his temples with his fingers as he indicates for Mingi to lock the door behind you three. His blonde hair is falling out of its usual mullet, mussed and uncombed, as if he hasn’t had the time to do anything else this morning. You sit on the bed, sandwiched between Wooyoung and San, while Yeosang and Mingi stand around, looking equally tense and uncomfortable.

All three of them have dark rings around their eyes and grim, troubled looks on their faces. You can’t believe it was barely a night before that you had been drinking together, celebrating your integration into the crew, but this is your present now.

“Chin Hae.” Captain Hongjoong addresses you first and you snap to attention, back straightening as you look at your captain. His face is lined and etched with worry, so painfully obvious you almost wonder if Captain can actually feel Seonghwa’s internal agony and turmoil. “Can you tell us what happened today morning after Mingi left the two of you alone?”

You nod hesitantly. It only happened this morning, so the memory is still fresh in your mind, but the image of Seonghwa’s grief stricken face, how alone the two of you were and worst of all, your inability to do anything, weighs on your mind almost crushingly.

“Mingi-hyung, Seonghwa-hyung and I were shopping in the marketplace for herbs when someone bumped into me and snatched the herbs.” You begin, recalling the event to your mind. “Mingi-hyung said to go around to the town square to cut the thief off, so we did, but then when we reached the town square Seonghwa-hyung saw the hanging and suddenly started panicking and I didn’t know what to do and-”

Wooyoung’s hand is on your shoulder before you even realise that your breathing has started to turn irregular. “Breathe, Chin Hae.” His voice is as commanding as steel, yet as soft as velvet. San nods at you empathetically, rubbing circles into your back as you try to keep your breathing steady.

“I ran over as soon as I heard the bells, but I was too late.” Mingi says grimly, shaking his head, eyes downcast as if he personally blames himself for this happening. “I could have been there. I should have been there.”

Silence.

“I should have known what to do.” You murmur under your breath, a lump forming in your throat. There’s something lingering deep in your chest, you realise. It hurts more than empathy, eats you away from the inside more painfully that jealousy.

Guilt.

“None of this was your fault.” Yeosang says quietly, his voice almost cracking, but he speaks it like it’s a fact and not merely his opinion. “Especially not yours, Mingi.”

“It’s my job!” Mingi almost snarls, a glassiness to his eyes that makes you feel like crying from shame. The two of you were there, you should have protected Seonghwa, kept him safe. “That’s why you assigned me to follow Seonghwa-hyung around whenever we’re in town to keep this from happening, and look what I just did! I left his side for some goddamn cordyceps! As if this could buy back Seonghwa-hyung’s peace of mind!”

He throws the bag of herbs to the ground.

You don’t even realise you’re shaking from barely restrained sobs until San wraps an arm around your shoulders, pulling you into a side embrace. He doesn’t speak, knowing no amount of words can change your mind about your failure at this point, but instead giving you the physical comfort you need.

“Mingi, keep your cool. You’re scaring Chin Hae.” Captain’s voice is cold and detached, leaving no room for disobedience. Wooyoung nods in agreement. The captain continues speaking. “And regarding Seonghwa’s problem, Yeosang and I have been discussing whether to do something or not.  A plan, if you will.”

Mingi echoes your thoughts. “Plan?”

The navigator nods, a little jittery but face set in determination. “We’re sailing to Nassau.”

The word means nothing to you, but you can feel Wooyoung and San stiffen. Mingi gapes at his captain, as if he didn’t hear him right the first time.

“What?”

“We’re sailing back to Nassau. We’re going to find the person that got Seonghwa’s family hanged on false charges, and if Seonghwa so wishes, I’m sending him to hell.” Hongjoong elaborates, a little more clearly but his voice as sharp as the edge of his cutlass. “That’s the closure Seonghwa needs.”

The person that got Seonghwa’s family hanged on false charges.

“What if we sail back and Seonghwa-hyung has a relapse just like last time?” Wooyoung interjects nervously, foot tapping impatiently on the floor. But San shakes his head.

“He’s gotten stronger. It’s been six years, after all.”

“How do you know?” Mingi spits back, but your master replies without a trace of doubt in his voice.

“Ever since Chin Hae joined us, he made the choice to sleep below in the main hold instead of in the sick bay in my room.” Your eyes fly open, you’ve just remembered that your bed, the one you sleep in now, used to belong to Seonghwa. You open your mouth to apologise, but you master continues speaking. “He said he didn’t want to rely on my sleeping incense anymore, and that he needs to face his fears. Chin Hae coming was just a catalyst for him to take that first step.”

Your heart clenches in your chest. This whole time, you had no idea…

“I believe that he’s growing stronger.” Yeosang states, nodding his head. “In the past, Seonghwa-hyung wouldn’t sleep without that steak stuffed toy San gave him, but when Chin Hae came, he told me to lock it in strongbox because he was going to be in the hammocks and wouldn’t need it anymore.”

Part of you is honestly struck dumb. The entire time you’d been on ship, Seonghwa-hyung had been trying to turn his life around, and you had no idea at all.

“So there’s that, Mingi and Wooyoung.” Hongjoong ends off the debate smoothly, fixing the pair with piercing stares. “Are you ready to accept the plan now?”

Wooyoung simply sighs while Mingi nods reluctantly in agreement. Then you pipe up nervously.

“Captain…”

Immediately, everyone in the room turns to look at you, and you wish you’d just kept your fat mouth closed. But since everyone’s expectant eyes are already on you, you simply continue to speak your mind.

“Can I… talk to Seonghwa-hyung?”

To your surprise, the captain doesn’t question your request, simply rising to his feet. “It’s no problem at all. I was intending on talking to him myself. Come with me.”

San gives your hand a squeeze and a worried look. Do you want me to come with you?

You shake your head, squeezing it back as you stand up and follow your captain out of the cabin. The two of you walk in silence down to the galley.

“I’m sorry this had to happen the day after you got your name.” He says softly, and you turn to look at your captain. His cheeks are slightly sunken, mouth turned downwards in a worried frown. You’ve never seen your captain so worried, so concerned.

You wonder if he’d do the same for you.

“It’s fine.” You reply quietly, shaking your head as you climb down the stairs to the galley. “Seonghwa-hyung is more important to me than any celebration.”

When the two of you reach the bottom of the stairs, you see Yunho pacing in front of the kitchen door like a caged tiger. He sees you, and your heart almost breaks when you see the lookout’s face drawn with exhaustion and worry.

“Captain. Chin Hae.” He sounds spent, both physically and emotionally, but he straightens up while blinking the weariness from his eyes. “Do you need me for something?”

“Go take a nap, Yunho, you look like you need it.” Captain pats the lookout on the back, but Yunho shakes his head desperately, as if trying to clear his mind.

“But I need to be here.” His protest is weak and worn, like he’s about to keel over any second. The captain shakes his head.

“Chin Hae and I will be here. Don’t worry.” He reassures the taller man and all at once you see Yunho’s shoulders sag from the relief.

“Oh.” Yunho tries hard not to sound too relieved, but he can’t help the yawn that spills from his mouth. “Thanks, cap’n.”

With that, he stumbles past the two of you and staggers up the stairs, out of sight.

“Seonghwa-hyung?” You move to the door, rapping hesitantly on the wood. It’s the first time you’ve ever been denied entry to the kitchens and in your mind’s eye, you see all the happy times the two of you have had together in the galley, the first time he taught you to use a knife, the incident in which you’d nearly burned the kitchen down, the time you’d mastered cooking Seonghwa’s favourite grilled steak. “It’s Chin Hae.”

It’s silent for a moment and you turn to glance at your captain in a panic.

“Hey, Chin Hae.” Finally, you hear Seonghwa’s voice from behind the door, raw from tears and soft with vulnerability. Relief washes over you and you bow your head to hide your tears. “I’m sorry for making you worry about me, Hongjoong-ah.”

“Shut up.” The captain suddenly snaps, his own voice thick. “Don’t ever apologise for worrying me. I want you to tell me all your problems, burden me with everything, share life with me and the crew. We’re a family.”

There’s a soft inhale from behind the door as you slide to sit next to it. “Did we at least get the cordyceps back, Chin Hae?”

You snort through your tears. “Yeah, but Mingi-hyung threw them on the floor earlier.”

A weak chuckle. “Well, we’ll just buy more then. I’ll have to scold that Mingi for wasting all that… They were expensive.”

“Are you okay, Seonghwa-hyung?” You sniff, wiping your tears with your sleeve. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes… I am.” His voice is right there, at the door. “Chin Hae… can I… tell you about Ha Rin?”

Ha Rin.

Captain stiffens next to you, and you glance at him in confusion.

“Of course.” You tell him, trying to stop your nose from running, sitting up a little straighter even though he can’t see you. “I’d be honoured.”

“She was my younger sister.” His voice is soft, lost, far away, reminiscent of the time Jongho and Yunho had been telling you about their pasts. “I lived with her, my parents and my younger brother Hyunjung in Nassau. We ran an eatery by the harbour. Those were some of the happiest days of my life.”

The way he says it, with such yearning, makes jealousy clench around you. You have nothing to look back so fondly on.

“One day, I was at the harbor when one of my friends called me to the town square.”

Something sinks in your chest. You know where this is going.

“The town officials accused my parents of harboring pirates and sentenced my entire family to death at the gallows. And I did nothing but watch as my family were hung before my eyes.”

You recognise the emotion spilling from him, gnawing away at him from within. It’s an immense guilt, all consuming as a tidal wave.

Captain exhales next to you heavily, but he doesn’t look surprised at all by the news. Then you remember Seonghwa-hyung has been a member of the crew for six years now, of course Seonghwa would trust his captain with his past.

“Ha Rin was only nine. Hyunjung was eleven. I was supposed to take care of them, I was supposed to protect them.” He laughs but it sounds brittle and self deprecating, the weight of his failure settling on his shoulders. “And yet… I was the only one who survived.”

You don’t know what to say. Your fingers reach under the door, seeking his warmth on instinct.

There’s a pause.

Then his fingers intertwine with yours, gripping them tight. “I thought I could atone for my failure by taking care of the members on board the ship, but it seem that I’m failing in even that too. I still hear their voices, calling for me to join them every time I close my eyes. Maybe the gods are punishing me for my sins.”

You want to cry, scream, protest that he’s wrong, that he’s the first person who treated you with kindness even when you were tied to the mast, that the crew loved and needed him, but the captain beats you to it.

“You are not failing, Seonghwa.” Hongjoong growls, pressing his forehead against the door, voice raw with emotion. “Every single person on this ship needs you, you hear me? That includes me. Who else is going to cook us food if you’re not there? The whole ship will starve to death.”

It seems like such a small, petty thing to talk about, but Seonghwa manages a small laugh at that. “San was always interested in cooking.”

“Hell no.” The captain wears a fond, sad smile on his face. “We should just leave him to healing. Honestly, I don’t know how we trust him with our injuries. We need you, Seonghwa.”

You nod in agreement although he can’t see and Hongjoong continues to speak. “We’re sailing for Nassau, and we’re going to find the man who got your family hanged. Will you… will you do this with us?”

Seonghwa is silent for a minute. Just when you start to wonder if Hongjoong had asked too much of him, he replies softly.

“You know I’d follow you anywhere… Captain.”

[bkdk-writings-dump]

the boy with glitter in his hair

A Cinderella AU in which Izuku is a mistreated boy who just wants to go to the ball and Katsuki is the prince who can’t help falling in love with him. Written for Twin Stars Week 2020. 

(Part 2 Here)

Day 1: Fairytale

Izuku was folded over on the floor of his bedroom, sobbing into his hands over the burnt remains of the suit he wanted to wear to the ball. He’d thought it was elegant enough, though it was cobbled together from old curtains and whatever other scrap fabric he could find, but his step-siblings laughed when they saw it and threw it in the furnace, leaving him behind with nothing to wear to the ball and no way to get there. His chest felt cramped and tight, squeezing against the pain of all these years, mistreated by his stepfather, turned into a servant and forced to live in the attic, and now this, blatantly tossing away something he worked so hard on. Not just the suit he’d stitched together by candlelight, but all his dreams of ever seeing the palace and just once, just for one night, living like no one had ever hurt him. That was what the ball had meant to him: a chance to be something more, to meet new people and see new things, to forget his life for awhile, even if it only lasted a few short hours. His heart had soared when three invitations showed up at their door, the prince keeping his promise to invite every young man and maiden to his debut ball, one for each of his step siblings, and one for himself. He felt remembered, recognised, when he held that gold-embossed card, his name printed clearly across the line, formally inviting him to the palace.

Reaching out a trembling hand, he searched for the card amongst the pockets of the burnt and tattered suit, and for a moment his heart leaped up with hope when he felt something smooth and rectangular in the front, left pocket, only to cry out in a desperate sob when he pulled it out to reveal half of it was burned away.

“No!” he cried, holding it out in his shaking hands, his name only half legible, nothing but Izuku M– before it faded into the black, charred edge of the card. A teardrop fell onto the paper, sinking into the off-white cardstock and then miraculously, the burn started to recede. He gasped in shock as right before his very eyes, the card regrew and reformed, returning to its original, unburnt state.

“Wha-how?” Izuku seearched the card frantically, flipping it over and then back again in awe, when he heard a chuckle and looked up to see an older woman in a sparkling blue cape, holding a wand in the air and smiling down at him.

“Why, magic, of course,” she said, and Izuku yelped in surprise, scrambling back on the floor until his back hit his bed, stopping him.

“Oh, no, please don’t be afraid,” the woman shook her head, stepping – no, gliding – towards him.

“W-w-who are you?” Izuku stuttered.

“I’m you fairy godmother, silly,” she winked, flicking out her wand to tap him on the nose, the star-shaped tip letting out a few sparkles of magic right in front of his eyes.

“What? I… I don’t understand, why are you here?” Izuku asked, trying to wrap his brain around the glowing, magical woman in front of himself. He’d heard of fairy godmothers, sure, but he’d never thought they were real!

“Well, I thought you could use some help, sweetie,” she said, smiling softly at him. “You want to go to the ball, don’t you?” she asked, and Izuku gulped. It wasn’t like he had anything left to lose.

“Yes,” he said, the word more of a breath thand a sound.

“Then take my hand, and I can make your dreams come true,” she said, extending a gloved hand to him. Izuku let out a shaky breath, and then hesitantly put his hand in hers.

“Wonderful!” she chirped, pulling him up to stand and then circling about him, looking him over. “First things first, you need a suit!”

“I, well, yes,” Izuku nodded. “I wanted to wear this one, but… they burned it.”

“No matter, I’ll make you an even better one!” the woman clapped her hands together, and then spun her wand over Izuku’s head, sparkles showering over him in waves as fabric formed around him, an elegant gold and green suit taking shape, the fabric thick and slightly shiny, with beautiful leaf-like embroidery about the waist and gold jewelry to match.

“I… this is…” he looked down at himself, stunned, and the woman turned to pick up a small mirror from the nearby table.

“Have a look,” she insisted, and Izuku gulped before taking the mirror, tilting it up to see his face, and gasping in surprise when he saw a golden circlet in his hair, tiny, frilly gold leaves sticking out of it and little diamond-like gems scattered about amongst his curls.

“Did… did you put glitter in my hair?” he gasped, looking back to the woman in shock.

“But of course! You want to look your best for the prince, don’t you?” she winked, and Izuku felt his cheeks turn warm.

“Th-that’s not why I’m going!” he stuttered out defensively. “I just want to… have fun…” he trailed off, the woman giving him a knowing look.

“If you say so,” she chuckled. “But that’s not just what the head-dress is for. This circlet is enchanted, you see, so that now one will recognise you, but everyone will love you. That way, you won’t get in trouble with your step-father, nor will you go unnoticed,” she explained, patting him on the head before spinning around, wand outstretched. “Now! You’re going to need some way to get there, aren’t you?”

“Well, sure-ah!” Izuku started to answer, only for the woman to grab him by the wrist and pull him out of his room, down two flights of stairs, and into the front garden. “We don’t have any more horses, though,” Izuku said when she finally released him, trying to catch his breath, but she just shook her head.

“Then I’ll have to make some,” she flicked her arms through the air, sparkling dust falling from her wand in a massive spiral towards the ground, as a golden carriage took shape in front of them with two beautiful white horses that flipped their shining manes through the air, hooves stomping against the muddy earth.

“Will this do?” the woman asked, spinning around with a bright smile on her face.

“I… yes. This is amazing,” Izuku nodded, starting to wonder if he was dreaming, or if it could all possibly be real.

“It is, isn’t it… but too much gawking and you’ll be late!” she said, coming up behind him and urging him towards the carriage.

“R-right!” he nodded, clambering inside to find the seats comfortably cushioned and cabin spacious.

“Oh, and there’s just one more thing you need to know,” the woman said as she closed the door, leaning into the carriage with her elbows on the open windowsill. “You have to be back by midnight, because then all of this will disappear. Understand?”

“I–” Izuku opened his mouth to question her, but she was already backing away, arm raised to whip the horses into action. Izuku lost his train of thought as the carriage lurched to life, picking up speed down the dirt road.

“Goodbye! Have fun!” the woman waved to him as he went, and it finally hit Izuku like a ton of bricks that he was actually on his way to the ball. He turned away from the window and sat back in the chair, putting a hand over his heart to feel it’s rapid beating, and took a deep breath.

He was going to have his one night of freedom.

He was going to meet his prince.

---

When Izuku walked into the grand hall, the room stilled. People gasped in awe at the gallant, golden man, his angelic curls sparkling with gems and suit gleaming like it was woven from only the silkiest threads. He couldn’t help but blush at the attention, and for a moment he was terrified that his step-father would come running out of the crowd to drag him home and lock him back in the attic, but then a man stepped forward to meet him who was most certainly not his cruel stepfather.

He was tall and blonde with piercing red eyes, broad shoulders and a trim waist. He wore a fitted white suit with elegant gold lacing around the collar and cuffs, a red sash stripping boldly across his chest. Most notably, however, was the golden crown atop his head, inset with three small rubies and curved delicately into his hair.

Izuku almost fainted with the realization that his fairy-godmother hadn’t been kidding; it really was the prince, here, in the flesh, and looking at him.

“Ahem,” the prince cleared his throat and then extended his hand. “Might I have this dance, handsome stranger?” he asked, and Izuku felt himself get even dizier, mentally adding and flirting with me to that list.

“Of course,” he squeaked, taking the prince's hand, and the band started up again, giving them a slow waltz to dance to. The crowd started to chat again, some folks returning to dancing while some still stared, but at least, it seemed, they were no longer the complete center of attention.

The prince pulled Izuku in, putting his other hand on his waist, and led him through the delicate, intimate motions of the dance, making sure Izuku knew all the steps before he started to speak again.

“Well, you certainly made a scene,” he said, and Izuku felt his face turn red again.

“I… I didn’t mean to,” he admitted, and the prince chuckled.

“Is that so? Then what, exactly, did you mean to do?” he asked.

“I just came to have a good time. Same as anyone else,” Izuku answered.

“Hm. And now you’re the name on everyone’s lips. Except, I don’t know your name,” the prince said just as he spun him into a dip, faces mere inches apart as he gave him a pointed look.

Izuku opened his mouth, and then closed it. For some reason, he hesitated to give his real name, and settled on something similar.

“Deku. You can call me Deku,” he said, and the prince smiled, satisfied, and let him back up.

“That’s a funny name,” the prince smirked at him as they continued to dance.

“You think so?” Izuku shrugged. “Well, what’s yours, then?”

“You don’t know my name?” the prince raised an eyebrow, the dance moving them so Izuku was facing away from him, back pressed up against his chest.

“Sure I do, Prince Katsuki, but I don’t know what you’d rather me call you: Prince,” he paused, allowing the dance to move them back so they were facing each other, and then pulled them ever closer than before so his mouth was right next to the prince’s ear. “Or Katsuki,” he finished in a whisper, not sure where his sudden confidence had come from, but when he heard the prince’s thick gulp, he knew the risk he’d taken had been worth it.

“Katsuki,” he said. “You… you can call me Katsuki.”

“Hm,” Izuku pulled his face away, smiling sweetly at him. “I think I will, then.”

“Heh. You’re a coy little thing, aren’t you?” Katsuki smirked at him, and then Izuku was the one gulping.

“I just asked you your name,” Izuku shrugged innocently, but Katsuki was having none of it, his grip on Izuku’s waist tightening as he pulled him closer.

“Definitely coy,” Katsuki said, nodding to himself. “But don’t worry, I won’t let you go anywhere.”

---

True to his word, Katsuki hardly left his side the entire night. They danced for a long time, their conversation becoming more and more natural until Izuku got tired and asked if they could stop to have a drink. Katsuki eagerly obliged, whisking him away to the far side of the ballroom where decadent refreshments were lined up on a long table draped in white linen, and Izuku indulged himself with sweets since his step-father rarely let him eat much besides table-scraps. Once he’d had his fill, Katsuki took his hand and led him away from the ballroom, saying he wanted to be alone with him. Izuku bashfully agreed to follow him, and gasped in awe when Katsuki opened the door to a balcony overlooking the city, a starry sky overhead and lanterns lit along the streets below. Flowering vines curled around the metal grate fencing off the edge of the balcony and climbed up the wall behind them to hang down in the air, fireflies blinking as they flew between the fern-like leaves, the whole place something of a magical secret grove right there in the castle.

“It’s beautiful,” Izuku had said as the door slid shut behind them, the faint sound of music finally drifting away.

“Not as beautiful as you,” Katsuki answered, pulling him close with his hands around his waist before he kissed him, soft and chaste, just for a brief moment.

“Oh,” Izuku chirped and placed a hand over his mouth in surprise.

“Ah… do you not like me?” Katsuki asked, taking the reaction as a rejection.

“N-no!” Izuku shook his head, jumping to clarify. “I like you… very much, actually,” he admitted in a breathy whisper as he laid his head on the prince’s chest, and listened as Katsuki let out such a relieved, contented sigh he could hardly believe it.

“Good,” Katsuki cooed in that low voice of his, still holding Izuku’s waist in his arms, and they stood like that for a long, silent moment before Katsuki struck up another conversation.

The night flew by in a blur after that, their conversation so natural and humorous, Katsuki had Izuku giggling more than he ever had in his life, as far as he could remember. Being with Katsuki felt so perfect, like he couldn’t say a single thing wrong, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter, Katsuki would still look at him so fondly, still hold him close and make him feel loved.

But then he heard the clocktower in the town below begin to strike, and gasped in horror, remembering his fairy-godmother’s one stipulation: be back by midnight.

“I… I’m sorry! I have to go!” he said, pushing himself out of Katsuki’s arms and rushing towards the door.

“What? Wait, Deku!” Katsuki called out, rushing to catch up as Izuku sprinted down the hall back towards the ballroom. Though Izuku had gotten a head start, the prince was faster, and he finally caught Izuku’s wrist just before he could make it back to the grand hall, the light and music and buzzing of people just beyond the grand doorway a few feet ahead of them.

“Deku, what is going on? Why do you have to leave?” Katsuki demanded, pulling him close and showing him such a broken expression of confusion and desperation that it made tears spring to Izuku’s eyes knowing he couldn’t stay and make that pain disappear.

“I’m sorry, I just do! Please, let me go!” Izuku shook his head, and snatched his wrist away, sprinting into the ballroom as soon as he was free.

“Wait!” Katsuki called out after him, voice breaking, but Izuku was pushing through the crowd by then, using the other people as cover as he sprinted across the marble floors and back out towards the door. He could hear the clocktower still chiming as he rushed past the confused guards at the entrance and made it onto the stairs, but then he heard Katsuki cry out behind him, too.

“Deku, please!” he called out. “Don’t go!” and Izuku couldn’t take it. His feet slipped and he tumbled down the stairs, eyes filled with tears, but got back up and kept running the second he was at the bottom. He ignored his sore limbs and panting breath and kept running, the final gong of midnight ringing out over the air just as he made it past the tall bushes of the hedge garden and out of sight.

He paused, gasping for breath, and looked down to see that his clothes were nothing but the dirty rags he usually wore, and knew that everything would be gone: the circlet that hid his identity, the carriage and the horses to carry him home. He sighed, and began to walk slower as he shuffled quietly through the gardens unnoticed, the muffled shouting of Katuski and the royal guard behind him, but he wasn’t too concerned. If they did find him, they wouldn’t even know who he was.

Katsuki would never recognise him again.

His prince would never come save him.

[allgirlsareprincesses]

A Saga in Ruins: How the sets reflect the empty nostalgia of the Sequel Trilogy

To the great surprise of many fans, the Skywalker Saga ended in the ruins of the Lars moisture farm on Tatooine. Perhaps this was intended to be circular, to be a coming home of sorts, but it was an odd choice for many reasons. Why would the youthful heroine find herself in an old, empty home to which she had no real connection, instead of on a verdant green world that she had so clearly craved earlier in her journey? Wouldn’t a place full of life be more fitting for a young woman starting a hopeful new chapter?

Of course, the dirty little secret is that there is nothing hopeful about the end of the Skywalker Saga. In fact, if we look across the Sequel Trilogy, we can see the theme of destruction, aging, death, and decay in many of the settings. Notably, the only sets that look truly new are the interiors of the First Order ships, and the rich luxury world of Canto Bight, but these sleek structures actually contain a moral rot.

It was appropriate for the Prequel Trilogy to be filled with shiny new sets as the Republic and Jedi were at the height of their power. The beauty was intentional, both so that we would appreciate the civilization that would be lost with the ascension of the Dark Side, and so that we would see it as the deceptive shell hiding the moral destruction within. In the Original Trilogy, the sets have an older, worn appearance, but are rarely what could be termed “ruins.” Given that the Sequel Trilogy takes place 30 years later when the galaxy has presumably been rebuilding since the Galactic Civil War, why then are SO many of the events set in ruins, or in places that become ruins?

Ruins in The Force Awakens

The first movie of this final trilogy started on Jakku, a ruin of a world home to the destroyed imperial fleet that made a last stand at the end of the Galactic Civil War. In the first scene of the film, new ruins are created when First Order troops destroy a village. Not long after, Poe and Finn crash-land into the desert, the ruin of their TIE fighter swallowed up by the sand. Later, we meet Rey, a lonely scavenger who is picking at the guts of a downed Imperial Star Destroyer. The shots in this sequence emphasize the scale of these ruins, along with the utter emptiness of the desert. Next, we see Rey in a little trading outpost cobbled together from disparate parts. She gazes dolefully at an elderly woman working the same task that she is, clearly seeing in the aged woman her own barren and lonely future. Finally, she travels to her own home, which turns out to be a collapsed AT-AT Imperial Walker. In an endearing but somewhat macabre moment, Rey dons the helmet of a Rebel X-Wing pilot. In a parallel scene, Kylo Ren is seen talking to the charred helmet of Darth Vader, beseeching his grandfather to speak to him. It’s nostalgia, yes, but for a past that is ruined, destroyed, and dead.

She next escapes Jakku in the Millenium Falcon, which might not be considered a ruin since it still (barely) flies, but it has clearly seen better days. Rey heaves the decrepit freighter through yet more bones of downed starships, finally escaping Jakku only for the Falcon to malfunction again. Han and Chewie, elderly yet vigorous as ever, join Rey and Finn and they all travel to Takodana, where Maz Kanata lives in a castle. From there, they witness the destruction of the Hosnian system, and then the First Order arrives and completely destroys Maz’s castle, creating yet another pile of rubble. The group next travels to D’Qar, a Resistance base nested in an old Rebel Alliance base from the Galactic Civil War three decades prior. Again, everything is old, aging, and recycled; nothing is new.

Starkiller Base is shiny and new, but it is also a tool of destruction, and before long it too collapses into space debris like Alderaan and Hosnian Prime. Meanwhile, we learn that the Skywalker-Solo family itself is in ruins, with Han and Leia split up, their son Ben fallen to the Dark Side, Luke missing in exile, and Han soon killed by his own son. Rey then travels to Ahch-To, where stand the ruins of the first Jedi Temple, to find the aging and bitter Luke Skywalker.

Ruins in The Last Jedi

On Ahch-To, Rey comes to find that the Jedi religion itself is in ruins, with their ancient texts abandoned and their one avatar, Luke, having cut himself off from the Force itself. In the course of her stay, she shoots a hole through the wall of her hut, slices through a large rock on the island, and emerges from the ruin of a hut that Luke explodes when he finds her with Ben Solo. Though Ahch-To is teeming with life, death is equally present, with Luke chatting with Force Ghost Yoda and watching the Jedi tree burn.

Further, Luke is a ruin of his former self, his moral certainty destroyed by regret. In the series of flashbacks to his last encounter with Ben, we see the hut collapsing, Luke rising from the rubble later, and his training temple in flames. Luke’s legacy, his relationship with his nephew, and now the physical manifestation of both is in ruins, as well. Even his X-Wing, once a symbol of his daring, sits submerged in water, presumably unusable and possibly scavenged already for parts.

On the Supremacy, the shattering of the Skywalker legacy is made visible in the breaking of Anakin’s lightsaber in the destroyed throne room. The ship itself lies in ruins after the battles that have raged across the ship and Admiral Holdo’s brave sacrifice, and even Ben and Rey’s fledgling relationship has been shattered by the end of the sequence.

Meanwhile, after the destruction of their fleet, the Resistance escapes to Crait, to yet another old Rebel Alliance base in the hope of escaping the First Order. Their speeders are so decrepit that Poe manages to punch a hole through one with just his foot, and the remaining forces are decimated before he makes the decision to pull back. With their massive laser cannon, the First Order punches a hole through the blast door to the base, effectively destroying it and rendering it unusable as a defensive position. By the end of the Crait sequence, the Resistance, their fleet, their base, and the central relationship of the movie between Rey and Ben are all in ruins.

Though destruction and ruins abound in The Last Jedi, the framing is notably different from the other two films because the purpose of all this imagery is to show hope for the future springing from the rubble. Rey states this theme explicitly when she’s meditating for Luke on Ahch-To, saying she sees “death and decay that feeds new life.” The breaking of Kylo Ren’s mask and the legacy lightsaber are intended not as endings but as steps in the cycle of rebirth and renewal. Luke manages to shed his broken shell and become the young hero he once was, later achieving transcendence as he passes whole into the Force. Despite the massive wound dealt on Crait, the salt cleanses and covers the carnage, suggesting rebirth with womb-like imagery. Ruins in The Last Jedi tend to serve less as nostalgic settings and more as visual symbols of brokenness that must and will be healed.

Ruins in The Rise of Skywalker

As the final film of the sequel trilogy opens, we see Kylo Ren fighting a group of cultists, whom the TROS Visual Dictionary tells us are Vader loyalists. Leaked images from the art book and cut scenes suggest that this scene actually takes place in the shadow of Vader’s castle, also now a ruin in the absence of its dark master. Using the Sith wayfinder, Kylo flies to the Dark Side planet of Exogol, entering what appears to be an ancient temple of the ruined Sith culture. There he finds the resurrected but still deathlike Palpatine, who is clearly such a ruin of his former self that he must be kept alive by machinery and dark arts.

In returning to the forested, hidden Resistance base, Finn and Poe nearly destroy the Falcon yet again, with the old ship catching fire as she lands among a small collection of similarly ancient ships that appear to be in questionable flight condition. While running her Jedi training course, Rey uses the same pilot’s helmet and training remotes that Luke used over 30 years earlier to practice her skills, and cuts down a number of trees in the process, leaving a path of destruction in her wake. Not only does the continued use of old, OT-era objects confound logic, but the wanton destruction of the natural world seems at odds with the Jedi philosophy’s reverence of the life which creates the Force.

Rey’s vision leads her to the barren desert world of Pasaana, where she meets the now-elderly Lando Calrissian, then finds the wreck of the ship that pursued her family when they were fleeing the resurrected Emperor. In the ruin of Ochi’s ship, Rey finds D-0, a broken and abandoned droid who yet again mirrors all the broken and abandoned characters (literally, ALL of them) in the Sequel Trilogy. When Kylo Ren appears, Rey first destroys his TIE Whisper, then when he crawls from the wreckage, the two have a Force tug-of-war over a transport ship which ends in Rey destroying it, as well. Of course, it later turns out that Chewbacca was not aboard that transport, thus continuing the pattern in this film of laying waste to the new planets, ships, and characters that were created for the sequels, while those from the original trilogy are miraculously preserved.

The gang next travels to Kijimi, where they apparently need to destroy C3-P0′s memories in order to unlock his ability to translate an ancient Sith language. As with Chewie, this is merely a temporary “death,” and Threepio’s memories are restored later. Kijimi, unfortunately, is not so lucky, and it is rather unceremoniously blown up, like Alderaan and Hosnian Prime. It seems that even with their allies, the Resistance heroes leave nothing but destruction in their wake.

Rey and friends next land on another moon of Endor, and the poor Falcon takes another beating. While her friends work yet again to repair the old ship, Rey escapes alone to the most imposing ruins of the entire film, collapsed shell of the second Death Star from Return of the Jedi. Calling back to not only Luke’s ordeal there, but also Rey’s own origins scavenging in the carcasses of Imperial Starships, the partially-submerged battle station serves as the backdrop for still more violence and destruction. When Ben Solo arrives, Rey engages him in another duel, which ends with Leia dead and Ben mortally wounded. Though Rey heals Ben, she next flees to Ahch-To, abandoning him and taking his TIE Whisper with her.

On Ahch-To, Rey burns the TIE, standing before the flaming ruins and attempting to throw her lightsaber into the fire. Luke stops her, then leads her to an abandoned hut to find Leia’s lightsaber, a remnant of her aborted Jedi training. Lastly, Luke raises his X-Wing from the water, offering it to Rey inexplicably space-worthy and no worse for the wear having been underwater for the better part of a decade and being at least 35 years old.

Finally, all the characters converge on Exogol, where they continue to engage in as much destruction as possible, including the apparent annihilation of an entire Sith civilization who lived on the planet as part of Palpatine’s Final Order. Ben Solo also arrives on the planet to help Rey (in another OT-era fighter that is miraculously space-worthy and moreover made it across the galaxy WITHOUT A HYPERDRIVE), but Palpatine sucks the power from him and then throws him painfully down a chasm, leaving his body broken. The climactic sequence ends with thousands dead, ships destroyed, and even Rey dead (or something) on the ground. Ben drags his broken body up and across the wreckage of the arena, and dies after resurrecting her, thus ending the Skywalker line.

After a celebratory hug with her friends, Rey flies the Falcon to Tatooine, to the literal ruins of the Lars Homestead. This is the place we last saw belching smoke as Owen and Beru’s charred remains splayed grotesquely across the scene of Luke’s destroyed childhood. Recalling again Rey’s beginning scraping a meager and lonely existence from battle wreckage, she slides down a sand dune on a loose piece of debris, and precociously explores the place. Finally, she buries Luke and Leia’s lightsabers (further cementing this place as a graveyard since Shmi is also buried here along with the Lars), and declares herself to be a Skywalker, the heir to these ruins.

Nostalgia as Love of a Dead or Imaginary Past

So, what does it all mean? If the Sequel Trilogy relies on ruins as a setting more than the other two trilogies, why does that matter? Isn’t it just paying homage to all the stories that led to the saga’s conclusion? Doesn’t it simply tie everything together?

Most critics and fans agree that the Sequel Trilogy relies heavily on nostalgia. In particular, JJ Abrams is often criticized for using nostalgia to such a degree that many of his films are direct copies of the stories they’re referencing: Super 8 is a mash-up of films like E.T. and Stand By Me, Star Trek: Into Darkness is a copy of The Wrath of Khan, The Force Awakens is nearly identical to Episode IV: A New Hope, and so on. Nostalgia is defined as:

“A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”

Most of Abrams’ movies succeed in creating this feeling because they rely on a shared cultural childhood memory. We fondly remember iconic moments from the films we loved as children, so seeing those moments again creates a feeling of remembered happiness. These movies encourage the viewer to recall how they felt the first time they saw certain images by repeating those images.

The first problem with this approach is that nostalgia is for the audience, not for the characters. The believability of the characters’ actions suffers when they are forced to act out scenes from a story that is not their own, from lives and perspectives that are not theirs. The audience might love seeing a lightsaber battle because that’s quintessential Star Wars, but if the two (or more) characters have no logical reason to fight other than as a spectacle for the audience, then the scene will lack any emotional depth. Likewise, a character revering someone whom they either barely knew or openly loathed makes no sense. In the case of settings or props, characters must respond to them in a way that is believable based on their actual history (or lack thereof) with the place or object. If the main characters of a story function only as a sort of modern Greek chorus, mirroring the nostalgic reactions of the omniscient audience, then they fail to be characters at all and become the most reductive versions of a self-insert.

This video explains the problem well, from 7:09 to 10:58 (the whole video is good but fair warning that not all of his takes align with what I believe about Star Wars, especially as regards Kylo Ren/Ben Solo): 

Another problem with this reliance on nostalgia is that in order to speak to a shared childhood experience, everyone in the audience must have had similar childhoods, or at least belong to the same generation so that they all fondly remember the same things. This is necessarily exclusive, as different generations have vastly different collective experiences and memories. The members of the audience who were children at the time of the Original Trilogy’s release or shortly after grew up in a very different world than those who were children during the release of the Prequel Trilogy, or from the generation living through childhood now. Some things that older generations remember fondly carry uncomfortable or even traumatic associations for younger generations, so something intended to be nostalgic will not impact all audiences in the same way.

The legacy saber is a great example of this: an older Original Trilogy fan might be delighted to see Luke’s inaugural lightsaber from the very first Star Wars film being passed on to the new generation, but a younger fan who grew up with the Prequels might see it as a tainted symbol of Anakin’s fall to the dark side and a weapon stained with the blood of innocent younglings. A family sword meant to press the nostalgia button in The Force Awakens instead invokes a feeling of dread and horror in fans with different associations. While Rian Johnson mentions deliberately referencing the Prequels in his creation of The Last Jedi, JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio make no secret of the fact that they don’t acknowledge those films, and it shows.

Lastly, Star Wars has always been a story of youth, of coming of age, growing up, and becoming one’s own person. Luke’s story in the Original Trilogy was about him learning who he was independently of his father and mentors. He is merely a boy, young and defiant, and through his own mistakes he learns how the elder generation was wrong, resolves to do better, and thereby redeems them. Anakin’s story was similar, except that he was unable in his youth to learn the right lessons from the failures of his mentors, his defiance taking a more destructive form. In contrast to both of them, Rey learns.... that all her mentors and parental figures were right all along. In the end, she defies no one, discovers no new and better way, and ultimately brings nothing new and different to the galaxy. She brings no peace or renewal, adopting a legacy of death and destruction to cap a life that has featured only the old, dead, and destroyed.

This is where Disney and Abrams tip their hand and the true philosophy underpinning the Sequel Trilogy is revealed: in an effort to appeal to the nostalgia of older Star Wars fans, they fail to tell a story of youth and instead offer an orgy of death-worship and aesthetic decay. Rather than having the Star Wars conclude with Star Peace, the final trilogy seems to say “Weren’t those wars great? Don’t you miss them? Don’t you want to be reminded of all those wars?”

In her book The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym defines the term a little differently than the dictionary:

"Nostalgia (from nostos - return home, and algia - longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but is also a romance with one's fantasy."

Boym points out that memory is often faulty, and that fond recollection is often a reaction to current despair. If things are bad now, it is natural for us to imagine a more comforting past, as with popular references to “the good old days.” In fact, another translation of the root algos is “pain,” thereby associating the return home with pain. Is it pain that prompts our longing to return home? Pain that creates the fond memory of home in the first place? Perhaps home itself is a source of pain, and so our minds construct an imaginary home that is better than the reality. In any case, it is typical that our rose-colored glasses distort the truth of what we long for, so the danger of nostalgia is a disassociation from truth.

One of those truths that we might deny in our fantasies is the ephemeral nature of human life and experience. All things age, decay, and ultimately cease to be. They may be evergreen in memory, but in a contiguous timeline like the Skywalker Saga, every location, object, or person must inevitably show the passage of time. Thus it is that the youthful heroes of the Original Trilogy become wizened and less vital when they reappear in the Sequels, that old ships break, and symbols of better times shatter and burn. As Boym states, however, the nostalgic lives in denial:

“The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into a private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.”

Nostalgia cannot hide the steady march of time, which is why most stories look to the future and the creation of the new. Not so the Sequel Trilogy. At no point in the story does there appear to be a goal outside of “defeating the latest bad guys, who are identical to the old bad guys.” There’s no vision of the future toward which the characters are striving, neither on a galactic level (achieving peace) nor a personal level (starting a new family on a vibrant living planet). As such, with nothing to look forward to, the story can only look backward, trapped in nostalgia for a past that appears worse the closer you look at it.

This is why the Sequels are filled with characters, objects, and places from the Original Trilogy that are revered in spite of their violent and even traumatic pasts, not to mention visible signs of age. Ultimately a story that has nothing new to say or offer, only weak attempts to recreate a half-remembered childhood feeling of an aging generation, can ONLY logically end in a graveyard. Viewed in this light, it makes sense that the young protagonist builds her life around fond memories that for her are only imaginary, surrounded by the visible evidence of death and decay to which nostalgia blinds her.

If this is all the fan in the audience is looking for, a faded echo of their favorite memory, then perhaps that is enough. But for those who do not share the reassuring memory, or those who look forward to the future and how things might change for the better, the ending of the Skywalker Saga offers only knowledge that all things fade and die. Without the lens of nostalgia, the Sequel Trilogy is merely an empty tale of death.

[the-iron-orchid]

BOOK IV: THE EMPEROR

Chapter 3: The Doctor (~3200 words)

Warnings: alcohol use

back to table of contents

It’s early yet; it should be quite possible to scry on Doctor Devorak’s location and then return in time for dinner with the Countess, perhaps even bearing fruits of my investigation.

I make my way from the Palace back into Vesuvia proper. Doubts and fears assail me as I walk; I’ve never done this sort of thing on my own. I’ve always had Asra or Heron to guide me. But divination magic is my strength, and neither Asra nor Heron are here.

I must stand on my own.

Stepping into a side alley, I pause and take a deep, centering breath, just as they taught me, gathering myself. My magic is a swirling, bubbling, riotous thing, and like rushing water it does not respond to force - it can only be guided, channeled, with the hope that it will not overrun its banks.

I take the scroll of papers from my bag, holding it between my hands. I summon the image of Doctor Devorak to mind, as clearly as I can - tall, spare, broad of shoulder. Pale of skin, auburn hair, his aura close and tight to his person, dyed through with guilt and pain. 

I speak the words, tracing a sigil in the air over the items that may be able to connect me to him. A sensation sweeps up the back of my neck, over the crown of my head, until it settles at the point above and between my brows: the Ajna chakra, the inner eye. I pivot on the ball of my foot, concentrating on the tingling, prickling sensation, until I discern where it is the strongest.

Opening my eyes, I begin to walk.

I’m paying only enough attention to my surroundings not to collide with another, or be run over by a carriage. My focus is on that sensation, the one that I hope will lead me to Doctor Devorak’s hiding place.

I do not yet know what I will do when I get there... but that has never stopped me before. It will be enough if I can observe where he is to be found.

I wend my way through the Heart District, through the Floating Market. With my present appearance, the vendors are trying to get my attention, rather than shoo me away, but I care nothing for their wares today. I cross through the northern tip of Goldgrave, home of Vesuvia’s entertainers. And as the sun begins to lower into the afternoon, I find myself crossing over into a part of the city that is less glamorous, even shabby - the South End. The cobbles here are worn, cracked, and uneven, making footing more treacherous, and I must slow my pace.

I can feel eyes upon me, judging my clothing, my bearing, perhaps my ease as a target. But anyone who pickpockets a magician deserves what they will get - nothing, if they are lucky. If they are unlucky, well… a lump of bat guano and a dried spider is the best they can hope for.

I will not speak of the fate of one who makes an attempt upon the person of a magician.

The canals are not in good repair here, the dirty water slowed by silt and reddened by some contaminant. The walkways are crowded with buildings that seem to rely on each other for support, the windows curtained or boarded but rarely glassed. The circumstances of my home and shop are humble; these are humbler yet. 

But delighted laughter rings out from somewhere, and a group of children across the street are playing a game, chanting and slapping their hands together in complex patterns.

I continue walking, as South End life goes on around me. I garner some looks, but by and large the people here have little desire to get involved with outsiders. 

I turn down a narrow, roughly-cobbled street. The sensation is intense - I must be very close, assuming the spell has worked and I am not on some wild goose chase. It would be disheartening to have come all this way only to find, say, some other former belonging of his, or some other tall and red-haired man.

Even as I am thinking this, a door swings out into my path, and I stop short.

“Oh, I’m not leaving yet. Just going out for a little air.”

The voice is known to me, and my heart begins to gallop in my chest. It worked. 

Not knowing what else to do, I retreat, backing into a nearby alleyway for cover. But the rough stones of the street betray me, catching my foot. Windmilling my arms wildly does nothing to save me; I topple into a stack of crates with a crash. 

For a moment, I can only lie there in my ignominy, looking up at the late afternoon sky, with the sound of quick bootheels approaching and no way to avoid them.

“Hello? Are you all right? That was quite a -”

A face hoves into view, a face I also know.

Doctor Devorak. He jerks back, recognizing me in turn, his eye going wide and round. He’s dressed differently today, the coat and jacket forgone for a loose-fitting shirt of some thin white cloth, tucked carelessly into his sash and left to hang half-open. 

“The little mouse? What are you doing here?” 

“Lying on my back, stuck in a crate,” I snap, without thinking. Of all the ways to foul this up, just when it was finally working - 

Devorak shakes his head and looms over me. “Come on, up we go.” Gloved hands grip both of my wrists before he hauls me up by main force - a little too much force. I stumble directly into him, forcing me to catch myself against him to keep my nose from slamming into his bare chest. His arms come around to steady me, a reflex.

For a brief moment, we can only stare at each other in surprise, and a dull pink stain spreads itself over his cheekbones. He shifts his grip to a steadying of my shoulders, then releases me. “All in one piece?” he asks, and I nod.

It’s only now that I really take in the locale: it’s clearly a tavern. Set well-back from the busier thoroughfares, it’s no doubt a locals’ joint: The Rowdy Raven.

“Dare I ask what brings you to this part of Vesuvia?” Devorak asks wryly, and I find I have no answer to that; I did not actually expect to find him, much less literally run into him.

The doctor arches a brow at me, then glances at the door to the tavern. Voices can be heard coming from the inside - arguments, laughter, general carousing. He turns back to me with a narrowed eye, gleaming in the late afternoon light.

“Rumor has it that you’re working for the Palace, you know.”

My body tenses with the urge to flee. I can feel my magic begin to roil inside of me.

“But what you haven’t heard is my own side of the story... have you?” His expression relaxes into a one-sided smile.

I shake my head, my own tension unconsciously relaxing in kind. Of course, what I have heard and seen doesn’t necessarily fit together neatly… or at all.

“Besides,” he says, his smile broadening, “I still owe you for the reading, don’t I? Let me buy you a drink.”

I blink at him in confusion, several different impulses vying for control of my actions.

I suppose he certainly has not left me in peace since then. And this might be my only opportunity to speak to him directly.

“...All right. If you want to speak… then I will listen.”

“You will?” Surprise takes over his face again, and the flush returns. “That is - of course. Follow me.” He guides me to the rough stone steps that lead into the tavern, opening the door and stepping through. I can only follow.

It’s nowhere near dark, but a place like this cares little for such conventions. The interior is full of raucous patrons, and the drink is flowing freely. We pass the barkeep, a stocky barrel of a man with a huge scar on one side of his face. He grins at the doctor as we pass, giving him a saucy salute - perhaps he thinks I am some doxy Devorak has found. It hardly matters.

A patron deep in their cups swings a wooden leg into our path, but the doctor just nudges it aside with a courteous nod. A few ribald comments follow in our wake, ignored.

He pauses before a small booth in a fairly private corner. “Have a seat,” he says. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

As I sit down, I notice that there was a casualty in my fall - the fine fabric of the kameez is snagged and torn. I pass my hand over it, speaking under my breath, and the fabric relaxes from its snags, seals itself back together good as new.

I see the doctor leaning casually on the bar while the barkeep fills two tankards. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but they both break into laughter. It’s clear that he is a fixture here; his demeanor is so different from when we met at the shop that it’s hard to believe it’s the same person. 

He brings back two sloshing tankards, sliding his long frame into the booth somewhat sideways. He sets one of the drinks in front of me with a nod, before taking a swig of his own. 

I gaze down into the tankard with my magical sight. To my surprise, a faint glimmer appears - but it’s harmless, a mild euphoric. The drink itself smells faintly of fruit, like a cider.

As the doctor lowers his drink, I make a certain gesture - and the tankard disappears from his hand, only to reappear in my own. While he stares at me in astonishment, I drink, looking him straight in the eye the whole time.

The first rule of intimidation is to be the first one to intimidate.

Devorak grins broadly, telling me it’s very smart never to trust a free drink. He takes the other tankard, not put out at all, and drains perhaps half of it in one go. Then he laces his long fingers together on the table, giving me a look from under his lashes, one that feels calculated to make me blush.

Unfortunately, it works, and I must cover it over with another drink from my stolen tankard.

Watching me, he asks my name. I give it to him, for it can do no harm. (After all, he already knows where I live.)  He repeats it, as if testing its meter, as if tasting it. “It means knowledge, doesn’t it? In Prakran, that is. The true awareness. Ah, such a powerful name. You know my name, of course.”

He offers me his hand across the table. I take it, and the leather-clad fingers wrap around my hand, engulfing it entirely. There is a frank admiration in the way he looks at me now, and it calls a response in me that I cannot name.

I hold that gaze, clearing my throat lightly, and remind him that he said he’d tell me his side of the story. 

“Oh, I did, didn’t I? How careless of me.” Something in my face makes him laugh, and he finally releases my hand. He settles back in the booth, as much as he can. One lanky arm is draped over its back, and one long leg is bent up on the seat next to him. He tells me to ask anything I like.

It’s still strange to me how at ease he seems here, compared to how tightly wound he was at my shop in the wee hours of the morning. But that changes when I reach into my bag and hand him the relics from his old desk. The good humor drains from his features as his eye looks over the papers, then back at me.

“Where did you find these?” he asks, wariness returning to his tone.

“On your desk, in the Palace library.” There’s no point in dissembling.

Something passes over his angular face, difficult to decipher.

“The one is just a letter.” He shrugs, as if indifferent, but I know better.

“A letter to someone important,” I say, leaning over to look at the scrawled words once more. Some trick of the light, or just seeing it upside down, makes some of the squiggles seem to form something almost decipherable. “Your sister?”

His eye flicks back up to me, his face even more pale with a sudden mortification. “You can read this?”

Hardly. I simply shrug in return and drink from my tankard; let him draw his own conclusions.

In silence, he reads over the parchment. As he reads, his free hand often rubs at his temple, or pinches at the bridge of his nose. It’s very curious. Finally, he shakes his head with a sigh, examining the second piece of paper.

“And this... is a diagram of a human brain, in cross-section. The patterns are different, you see, in every individual.”

“Every individual?” I ask, and he stiffens. “That is to say… you have seen many.”

“I have.” He lets the papers fall to the table, folding his long fingers into a steeple, resting his chin upon his extended thumbs. His color is terrible, making the shadows under his eye seem all the darker, and a strange pang of conscience goes through me.

“There are more of these drawings and letters, yes? At the Palace?” he asks.

“There are.” 

A small muscle in his jaw twitches as it clenches. “Well. You should put these ones back. I’m sure someone will notice they’re gone.”

He rolls the papers up and hands them to me, as if he cannot bear their presence for a moment longer. Perhaps he cannot.

I take them and replace them in my bag. Julian rubs his gloved hands briefly over his face, then tosses back the rest of his tankard in a few swift gulps. 

“So you have a sister.”

Julian starts badly, nearly choking himself on the last of his drink. He coughs a bit, then recovers, clearing his throat.

“I do. Ahem. But I haven’t seen her since she was, oh, maybe this high.” He holds his hand not far above the height of the table. Then he grins. “Smaller than you.”

Before I can respond to this, he rises abruptly, gathering the empty tankards and excusing himself to take them back to the barkeep for a refill.

While he is once more chatting with the scarred man, I try to fit these new pieces of information in with what I already have, to no avail. None of it makes any sense; too much is still missing. I need to keep him talking.

The man is infuriating, but is he a murderer?

On his way back, Julian pauses at a table where two old crones are huddled, bickering over a card game of some sort while onlookers cheer and jibe. He leans to whisper something into the ear of one of the old women. She plays a card, and the table erupts into pandemonium. Someone’s ale goes flying, squarely dousing Julian himself as he quickly holds the fresh tankards away. 

He returns to the little booth, chuckling to himself, setting the tankards down before dabbing ineffectually at his soaked shirt. The thin wet cloth clings to his skin in a way that I find I’m not really prepared to deal with.

“Ah, you’d think I would know better by now... but no.” He laughs and takes a swig of his fresh drink, the dark mood of before vanished.

I shake my head at him, then trace a quick symbol in the air, speaking a single word. His shirt is instantly clean and dry, sparing me having to constantly avert my gaze.

“Oh! Well, that’s handy, isn’t it?”

“One of the first things a magician learns,” I tell him, then lean forward over the rough table. “How can you just… walk around like this, anyway? Aren’t you worried about being seen?”

“Here?” He raises his brows. “Oh, no no no. Not here. People here aren’t exactly, ah, bending over backward to please the wants of the Palace and the law.” He grins. “Even the raven despises the guards, and spends most of his time scouring the area for them. He’s a bit obsessive, really.”

I recall the large raven I saw at the Market, apparently shadowing Julian himself, even seeming to warn him that I had spotted him.

I remind myself that this is not Center City. There, the city guard is respected, even feared. But it is also far closer to the Palace, the seat of their power. Here… South End is a warren of tightly-packed buildings and dark little alleys, and without magic it is no doubt impossible to find someone who does not wish to be found.

It occurs to me that perhaps Julian did wish to be found, on some level… just not by the guards.

“So what is your side of the story?” I ask him. “Did you do it… or not?”

He regards me for a long moment, taking another swig from his drink. “Wouldn’t you know,” he says, “I’m forever asking myself precisely that.”

I frown, tilting my head in puzzlement. Julian leans forward, gloved fingers steepled once more. He looks me in the eye… and tells me that he actually does not remember.

But before I can pursue this, a dark shape bursts through a window, shrieking like a banshee, striking a string of bells that hangs from the rafters above. Instantly, the tavern patrons scatter, reminding me of nothing so much as rats fleeing a disturbed nest. The raven - for that is what is making the hellish noise - comes round for a second pass, jangling the bells some more.

Even as I am sliding my way out of the booth, I find myself summarily scooped up and carried, like a child, as Julian rushes out the door we came in, back into the alley.

How does he move like that, anyway? I didn’t even see him leave his side of the booth.

Outside, the sun is setting in a blaze of red, orange, and purple. Julian whips his head from side to side before ducking into a darkened corner of the alley, pulling me with him. I would be more alarmed about this... but he just sets me on my feet, looking down on me with seeming concern.

“You can get back, yes? The guards aren’t after you, anyway.”

I nod. Then, “Julian?”

“Yes?” He lifts his brows inquiringly.

“If you ever call me little mouse again,” I tell him, very gently, “I will singe your eyebrows right off of your face. Do you understand me?”

The look on his face is nearly comical with astonishment, and then he grins. “Perfectly,” he says, and once again there is some undercurrent that I sense, but do not fully understand. Then he sobers, gripping my upper arms in his hands, his eye fixed intently upon my own.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “For… well, just... thank you.”

He releases me, and then vanishes into the twilight.

[lastxviolet]

In Neglected Fields, the Fern Grows - CH. 1

Fred Weasley x OC

3,495 k

Ch. 1 / 10

Warnings: None for this chapter. Eventual smut 

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13829826/1/In-Neglected-Fields-the-Fern-Grows

_______________________________

How someone in the wizarding world hadn't come up with a spell to mimic the brief high of a cigarette puff, Fern Longbottom had no clue. Being a witch would finally feel worth it if she could blast herself at least once every ten minutes to feel momentary relief instead of having to climb the god-awful moving staircase to smoke one cigarette in the Astronomy tower before she was missed by the other Prefect on rounds.

Not that they even needed her. Prefect duties had become much easier ever since Umbridge had taken over as the unofficial authority at Hogwarts. These days, nary a soul, besides the dead ones wandered the halls after hours, for fear of peeving off the menace in pink. She didn't much mind the strict witch's presence, but then again, she wasn't exactly in the line of fire, nor was anyone else in Ravenclaw. The only thing that did make her roll her eyes was that almost all of her duties and responsibilities had been bequeathed to undeserving Slytherins on the Inquisitional Squad. They were a pack of eager dogs, desperate to bring their master the best corpse. At least when she gave someone detention, it was rather painless and they actually deserved it.

Thankfully, she hadn't run into anyone who deserved it tonight. Not that she'd mind the company. Every hall she had passed on the way up the dizzying stairs, was empty. That was one thing she did miss from the time before Umbridge. Usually, there would be absolute chaos in every corner of the dark seventh-floor hallway but tonight, it was silent.

She skirted through the hall, ignoring the hairs on the back of her neck, reminding her of how dark and empty the hallway was. Without light pollution from civilizations nearby, nighttime at Hogwarts was deep and unrelenting until morning. Even in the castle, candles and fireplaces couldn't illuminate the stone rooms enough to fully ward off the hours of shadow. To make matters worse, she'd noticed in her tenure as Prefect that in the evenings, without company or companion, the cobble architecture swallowed sound. Footsteps, words, laughter, and voices dissipated upon utterance without a crowd to overpower the course sandstone abyss. She didn't normally like the quiet, in any capacity, but especially in the castle that could easily swallow her whole with various secret halls, doors, and chambers.

Even at home, quiet was no good. If Neville wasn't rambling on about Herbology or Gran wasn't lecturing her brother about speaking too fast or walking too slow, the air felt thick. It clung to her limbs, and filled her lungs, and brought her thoughts to a standstill. The emptiness that followed, before sound rushed back in, froze her. She'd read a quote once, walking out of St. Mungo's after a particularly somber visit to her parents that said, 'for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.' Whatever abyss Nietzsche was referring to, she doubted that he knew what real emptiness felt like.

You didn't look at it, and it didn't look at you. It was an extension of consciousness; unrelenting and irremovable. Emptiness was a hospital room with people who couldn't recognize you. Emptiness was seeing the same careless bravery that had gotten them there in her brother who seemed too eager for war. Emptiness was being powerless to change any of it. After a while, she'd didn't feel so empty anymore, realizing that she'd simply become the abyss.

Now, it took up a corner of her mind, whispering evil things and infuriating questions with no answer. Every action had an equal reaction, and she was powerless to control every single one, not for lack of trying, as it liked to remind her. Every glance in the mirror, conversation in her head, and silent moment was tainted by this ache with no relief, other than the few times a week she got to smoke a cigarette.

She briefly closed her eyes as she walked, quelling the downward mental spiral by focusing on the crisp scent of fall turning into winter as it drifted in from the tower at the end of the hall. She imagined herself amongst the trees somewhere warm and beautiful, like Italy. The heat from the lone fireplace to her right acted as the artificial seaside sun. The crackling log was a babbling brook and she couldn't hear her own footsteps because she was barefoot in the grass. Her lips pulled into a soft smile. She was content until she heard footsteps.

She jumped and opened her eyes frantically as a very familiar figure appeared ten feet in front of her.

"Nev?" She half shouted.

"Oh hi," he squeaked out, looking behind his right shoulder, around a corner she couldn't see.

She cocked an eyebrow, waiting for him to explain why he was out of his dorm so late but he just stood, staring at her with wide eyes.

"Hi… uh what are you doing up here?"

She watched as he jumped a little at her question, clearly uncomfortable with her suspicious tone. In recent years, her younger brother had become more akin to rule-breaking but sneaking around after dark wasn't usually his style.

He glanced over his shoulder again and took a few frantic footsteps towards her as if he was trying to herd her back down the hall.

"Erm…nothing," he worried. "I was in the uh tower."

His words slurred with the speed and she took sweeping steps to meet him before he got too far away from whatever it was that he seemed to be hiding.

"Nev," she said slowly. "In the tower…doing what?"

He didn't seem to register her question so she snapped her fingers in front of his face, bringing his consciousness back down to earth.

"What's wrong with you? Why do you keep looking around like that?"

"Um…I'm just uh waiting —"

"For…?"

As if on cue, more voices appeared, loud and bouncing, out of thin air.

"Who is that?"

He looked down at his shoes, content to have her discover his counterparts on her own. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to actually hand out a detention, she breezed past him and towards the sound.

She made it three steps before Fred and George Weasley stepped around the corner and looked down at her, in shock, as if she was the one who had appeared out of nowhere. The evening was already a headache, but it was well on its way to turning into a migraine.

Before they could speak, she pounced.

"What are you doing?" Her voice was cruel and seeping with blame, directed at two of her least favorite people.

From as far back as she could remember, nearly seven years now, the three of them hadn't gotten along. The twins were intolerable, annoying, and self-centered. There was no joke, prank, or quip that could ever really be enough to fuel their egos so they always went too far, too fast, making the entirety of the study body accomplices and victims to their antics. Although, it hadn't been until her brother's unfortunate friendship with the twins that she'd started to harbor a real hatred for them.

"Hey," Fred called down the hall behind her towards Neville, pointing wildly, avoiding her accusatory stare. "Look Longbottom, it's Longbottom!"

"A family reunion," George added, clapping his hands together. "How touching."

Fred's eyes twinkled at her sour look. "Out for an evening stroll?"

She rolled her eyes. "I asked you a question."

"Oh c'mon Longbottom, no need to be so hostile, I'm only making small talk," Fred cooed. "Y'know like, how's your evening? How was your day? Are you —"

"Enough, you fucking half-whit. Why are you up here?"

George smiled big at her instantaneous anger but it was Fred who stepped closer and spoke again with a more threatening tone.

"Not quite, but you've almost got the hang of it. You're supposed to answer someone's question before you ask one of your own, it's polite."

"So answer it," she retorted, closing the last few inches between them.

"You first," he said with a scowl, relishing in her contempt. "How is your evening?"

"Abysmal, thanks to you."

"It always seems to be that way when we're together, Longbottom. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you're the problem?"

"Funny," she hissed. "I would beg to differ"

"You? Beg? Now that would make for a lovely evening. Go on then," Fred taunted, looming over her with his usual pretentious sneer.

She glared at him, fuming, and ignored Neville's plea behind her to just leave it alone.

"Alright, we should really be off now," George yawned, stretching his arms over his head for dramatic effect. "Longbottom family, it's been lovely."

Fred bared his teeth as if to gloat and brushed her shoulder with force as he followed his brother towards the stairs. She glanced at Neville for backup but he gave her a miserable shrug. Discontent with the outcome, she spun around and grabbed Fred by the arm.

"For fucks sake, just tell me what you're doing up here or I'll give you a detention!"

He whipped around with a fire in his eyes and clamped a hand down on her wrist.

"Ask. Your. Brother," he hissed through clenched teeth, blazingly serious as he yanked her arm up close to her face.

Neville let out a little gasp at the outburst but she just hardened her glare.

She yanked her hand from his. "Charming."

Fred didn't let her finish the word before he stalked away in a huff, tapping Neville on the shoulder as if to say good luck. The less volatile twin shot her an apologetic look before disappearing down the stairs after his brother.

Despite having gotten used to Fred Weasley's short fuse and erratic temper, her heart nearly beat out of her chest. She'd been the reason for many an outburst, from detention slips to thwarted pranks over the years, none having been quite this tame. If they'd been alone, she liked to think that she might have accosted him back. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

Neville came up behind her, radiating with nerves.

"Really, Fern," he stuttered. "It's fine…I just had astronomy homework."

"Don't lie to me, Nev," she accused, probably louder than she needed to.

"Honest, we were just studying!"

"Oh give it a rest, those two have never studied a day in their lives! They're nothing but trouble. What are you thinking, letting them drag you into something sure to get you on Umbridge's bad side?"

"I'm already on her bad side," he mumbled. "So it doesn't really matter if —"

"Well then you can't really afford to make it any worse, can you? I mean hanging out with the Weasley twins after hours is one of the stupidest things I can think of. You're smarter than this!"

"They're my friends, it's nothing —"

"Some friends they are, Neville. Honestly, what could you possibly expect from hanging out with them, besides trouble? You're lucky that it was me that you ran into tonight, and not another Prefect, or worse. How could you be so —"

"You aren't my mum, Fern… I can look out for myself," he squeaked in a small, but stern voice.

She stopped talking immediately, struck by his sudden gumption. The twins had definitely gotten to him. Normally, he would've at least given her the benefit of the doubt and listened to her advice. She furrowed her brow when he glanced up, still looking nervously at the hallway behind her.

"You should get back to your common room," she sighed finally, unwilling to fight and elongate the portion of the evening without any nicotine in her system. "It's late."

"Alright," he said, nodding a little more energetically now that she'd stalled her lecture. "See you later?"

"Yeah….see you later."

He sped off down the hall, probably keen to catch up with his so-called friends. She cursed Fred to high heaven as she scaled the astronomy tower stairs, stopping briefly to retrieve a cigarette from the school stash, underneath a floorboard below the telescope. She tucked it between her teeth, used a non-verbal fire spell, and stepped over to the balcony.

The grounds were fuzzy and dark green beneath the muted moonlight. She stared confused for a moment at the darker than usual, blurred Hogwarts lawn, and then tipped her head upwards. A deep fog blurred the view, making the constellations completely invisible. The moon tried to blaze through the haze but it barely reached the earth's surface.

There was no way they got any astrology homework done, she thought, glancing around the room for clues.

Other than a few cigarette butts, there was nothing.

She took a drag and watched the smoke commingle with the haze. Nicotine rushed through her head providing momentary dizzying peace and oblivion. This buzz, although brief, was preferable to anything else. Drugs were unobtainable and inconsistent, alcohol lasted too long to be truly relaxing and she could never get the various potion options right. Tobacco gave her the two things that she craved, a tiny ounce of rebellion, and an unoccupied mind.

She flicked her finished cigarette onto the floor, one final testament to her moment of disobedience for the night, and flitted back down the stairs, eager to be finished with her rounds.

The hallway was still and dark again as she flew through it. The incident with her brother and his fellow Gryffindors had nearly been forgotten when other voices drifted from the hallway behind her.

Stunned by their apparition, she turned slowly, trying not to look terrified.

"Hey Fern," Padma Patil and Mandy Brocklehurst said in unison, arm in arm, coming around the corner where she'd been a few footsteps ago.

"Hey…guys," she responded, looking for an explanation.

"Prefect rounds?" Padma said, nodding to her house robes after hours.

"Yeah," she stammered.

"That sucks. Almost done though?"

She nodded and watched the girls try and contain their giggles about something she couldn't see. She glanced down the hall and found it devoid of doors or entrances despite the astronomy tower, where they most certainly were not.

"Astronomy homework?" She asked them, surrendering to her urges of suspicion. Where had they come from?

"Yep," Padma replied energetically.

"Lovely evening to see the stars," she goaded.

"They were brill," Mandy chimed in, turning to get her friend to nod in agreement. "Oh, by the way, I think a few people are going to be hanging out in the boy's dorm later tonight if you wanna come."

"Wicked," she responded, faking interest. "Corner and Boot's room?"

"Yep!"

"Ok, I'll try and swing by," she assured them. "You guys better get back though, I don't know who else has rounds tonight but if it's Abbott, you're screwed."

"Shit," Mandy said. "Is the Inquisitional Squad out tonight too?"

"Haven't seen them yet but I think they come round at 9."

"Thanks, Fern, you're a lifesaver!" Padma whispered, turning to run with her friend, hand in hand. "See you later!"

She watched them run back down towards the moving staircase and then turned to inspect the hall in a daze. She squeezed her eyes tight, imagining a door at the end of the hall but when she opened them, the stone wall remained the same; tall, grey, and empty.

There was no door anywhere.

Where were all these kids coming from?

The Weasley's having some secret entrance into the hallway made sense but her housemates and brother didn't. The mystery motivated her enough to make quick work of the walk back to her common room where she ignored a wave of 'hello's from her peers and rushed to her dorm room.

"Daisy!"

Her roommate jumped two inches off the bed and nearly toppled onto the floor as she rushed in and slammed the door. The tall strawberry blonde stared at her with wide, absent eyes for a moment before relaxing back onto the bed and setting her book on the nightstand.

"You might be content dying from a stress-induced heart attack at a young age, my love," she cooed, returning to her easy-going state. "But I, am not. Please exclude me from any further loud and anxious announcements in the —"

"Daisy," she repeated, ignoring her best friend's usual long-winded, abstract ramblings. "I think I may have stumbled upon a mystery."

Daisy gasped and threw a hand over her mouth, smiling wickedly as for one moment Fern thought that she was equally intrigued.

"I'm serious," Fern said flatly.

"I can't say I'm surprised," she said wistfully. "There is no way that we could know all the goings-on in a castle this old or this large. The mysteries it holds….the mysteries it has been witness to…well that must span centuries. Fern, what do you think was happening in this very room, a century ago?"

"Daisy, this room is not the one that I am concerned about. Will you please listen to me?"

"Yes, yes, yes," her roommate rambled, staring at the door as if she could actually see the ghosts of Ravenclaws past.

"On my Prefect rounds, I went up the astronomy tower—"

"So that you could look up at the night sky and not smoke a cigarette because you promised me that it was simply a fleeting phase of insubordination and not a serious habit?"

She squinted at the suddenly alert girl. "Yes."

"Lovely, please continue."

"Well on my way to the tower, Neville appeared out of nowhere with Fred and George Weasley in tow."

She paused for dramatic effect but continued quickly as Daisy didn't seem intrigued in the slightest.

"When I asked what they were doing, the twins wouldn't say, and Nev gave me some excuse about astronomy homework but when I went up to the tower, the fog made seeing the stars impossible!"

Daisy gave her an exasperated look. "So they were in the tower smoking pot?"

"Ah very clever, my love, but no. See, I would have smelled it either on them or in the tower if that had been the case but there was nothing."

"Okay…so what were they doing up there?"

"Now that is the mystery. I don't think they were up there at all."

Daisy stared at her silently, raising her brow in a combination of confusion and doubt.

"And here's why…when I came back down, Padma and Mandy appeared in the hall behind me, looking like they were leaving something, just like Nev and the twins had but they weren't up in the tower with me."

"Okay…"

"Daisy, are you hearing me? They said they were doing Astronomy homework, just like Nev. On a cloudy night! Don't you think that's a little suspicious that five people appeared out of thin air in a seventh-floor hallway this evening?"

"Well it's definitely odd but I don't know if I'd call it suspicious…actually maybe it's a little abnormal….no….bizarre perhaps?"

"Yes, yes, yes, all of the above," she said quickly. "What I'm trying to say is that I think they're up to something."

"Your brother, the twins, and two Ravenclaws?"

"Yes."

"Orgy?"

"Oh Daisy, for fucks sake, don't put that image in my head."

"Well, it's the obvious choice of usage for a secret room in a distant hallway with people who might otherwise consider each other acquaintances."

"They didn't look nearly flustered enough for that to be the case and besides, Padma and Mandy couldn't ever like any of them."

Daisy nodded like she was pondering.

"And you're sure they couldn't just be a study group?"

"Well I mean sure, they could be but what room were they using?"

"Fern, what time is it?"

"What?"

"The time," Daisy repeated.

"8:45, why?"

"So it's nighttime?"

"Yes…"

"Meaning that it was dark…up there."

"There are lanterns and fireplaces and moonlight, Daisy, I know what I saw. Dim light cannot hide an entire door. Or room!"

"No need to shout, I'm only trying to guide you to an air-tight hypothesis. Are you sure your mystery isn't just because of a lack of light or perhaps a result of your lack of sleep?"

She thought back to the hall and all the times she'd been there. It wasn't often, but it was enough to know what was there.

Nothing.

"No, I'm sure there is something else going on."

"Alright…I'll entertain it," Daisy said, propping her head upon her hand. "Do you think it's something sinister?"

"No," she mused, sorting through all the possibilities in her head. "Perhaps more of a nuisance in progress but I still don't like it."

"Fern, it's probably harmless."

"I can't shake the feeling that it's not. I don't want Neville involved with those fucking Weasley twins, no matter what they're doing."

"You're going to smother that poor boy. They're his friends, let him have his fun!"

Fern glared at her level-headed friend and then laid back onto her bed in a huff.

"We'll see."