#its like a slow exhale of longing but also of quiet joy and a sort of sad acceptance

[imadhatt3r]

God I know this is basic but what was Sufjan Stevens on (with admiration) when he created Futile Devices 😭

[rune-writes]

To Act the Hero

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII

Word Count: 1199

Rating: G

Summary: After two years, Cloud is finally back in Nibelheim, but failing the SOLDIER exam has him hide his identity from the townspeople. As he leaves his mother's home, the water tower stands imposing in front of him, reminding him or a promise he once made—a promise he now wonders how he could keep.

Note: A piece I wrote for @theclotizine! I also wrote a prequel of sort for this fic titled As Long As You're Safe that explores how Zack accompanies Cloud to visit his mother. You can find it here.

Read on AO3.

~*~*~*~*~

The stars hung low that night, a myriad of white spreading as far as the eye could see, blinking against the blue-black vastness. Cloud stepped out of his house and drew a lungful of the cool evening air: pine, mixed with a distant hint of rain, rolled down the mountain. He was home.

“Thanks for having me, Mrs. Strife.”

Zack’s voice drifted out from inside. Cloud had invited his friend over to try his mother’s cooking. It was an excuse; Zack probably knew. His mother had sent him off with such zeal that when Cloud failed his SOLDIER exam, he hadn’t had the courage to put pen on paper and inform his mother of the results. Letting her think he’d made it big in Midgar had sounded like the better option. A misconception on his part—one he’d realized after seeing the panic in his mother’s sky-blue eyes when Zack knocked on her door and mentioned Cloud’s name.

Their voices grew louder as Zack stepped over the threshold and joined his side. Cloud’s mother followed closely behind, chuckling and asking Zack to come visit again. Zack promised that he would. He gave her a quick bow, then nudged Cloud on his shoulder. Take your time, his eyes seemed to speak. Cloud didn’t get the chance to respond before his friend crossed the village toward the inn.

“Great friend you found there,” his mother commented once Zack was out of earshot.

Cloud fastened his helmet over his head and turned around to face her. Claudia Strife had been all smiles and laughter throughout dinner, talking about everything and anything with an overabundance of joy that had felt almost palpable. Even Zack had been swept up in her enthusiasm. Yet now, a quiet melancholy overshadowed that elation, reminding Cloud of how she’d embraced him tight and whispered, it’s been two years.

“Have you met everyone else?” she asked. “What about Tifa? I think she was asking about you.”

His fingers twitched at the question. No one would want to see him—a nobody kid like him with no friends. Just one of the boys who’d gone looking for a job and never came back. Not like Tifa. Everyone adored Tifa. While he was floundering in Midgar, she'd learned martial arts and become the village’s best guide. Lovely, friendly, hardworking—even his company had appreciated her efforts for keeping them safe throughout their journey to the reactor. Tifa wouldn’t want to see him.

A gentle squeeze to his shoulder brought his eyes to his mother. His heart clenched at her tender smile. She’ll understand, she seemed to say. A lump formed at the back of Cloud’s throat.

He waved goodbye and headed back to the inn. But when the door clicked shut and with his mother out of sight, his purposeful stride gradually ground to a halt. The water tower stood imposing in front of him, with its proud wooden beams and the ladder leading to the top. He’d sat there before on a cool night like tonight, legs swinging down from the ledge, as he’d waited for the girl with ebony hair and ruby eyes to appear.

When we’re older, and you’re a famous SOLDIER… if I’m ever trapped or in trouble… promise you’ll come and save me.

Back when the dream of becoming a SOLDIER was still within reach. Back when he had easily agreed to a lofty promise he now wondered how he could keep.

Cloud pursed his lips to a thin line. He dropped his gaze, then made to move, but as he did, a shuffling of feet drew his attention to the other side of the water tower. Cloud spotted a shadow leaning against the beams—a shadow he recognized so well. Tifa stood with her back to him, her round-brimmed hat hung from her neck down her back, kicking her boot against the dirt as she gazed at the star-strewn sky.

Cloud froze. The last time he saw her had been at the reactor, barring her way as she’d tried to enter. She’d huffed and pouted with hands on her hips, and Cloud had wanted to laugh at the familiar sight. But he’d stood his ground, then stood in front of her as hordes of monsters came their way. He’d meant to protect her, to act the hero, but in a twist that had only deepened his sense of failure, she had ended up protecting him.

Tifa pushed herself off the beams, jerking Cloud to attention. He should have moved—looked away before Tifa noticed him—but just as she rounded the tower and stepped out of its shadow, her eyes found his. Time slowed to a passing crawl. One moment, two… Under the moonlight, her ruby eyes widened, a small, relieved smile blossoming on her face.

“Figured it was you.” Tifa was suddenly in front of him.

Cloud blinked, startled. He took an involuntary step back.

“I was coming back from the inn and you weren’t there. Have you rested? Are you well now?”

Cloud should say something, anything, but if he spoke—

“Thanks.” Her smile grew, concern mingling with gratitude and a hint of shyness. “For protecting me.”

I’m sensing some issues here. Zack had told him that morning, after Cloud had woken up from his rest and his friend had asked about Tifa. Shouldn’t you do something?

He should, but what could he do? Cloud wasn’t the hero he had promised her he would be.

Tifa fidgeted on her feet, hands behind her back. A question seemed to brim behind her lips as she lifted a half-expectant gaze at Cloud. But when she opened her mouth, no voice came out.

“Nothing,” she said after a while, her lips parting into a weak crooked smile. She gave a little shake of her head, biting her lower lip as she cast her eyes down. Her shoulders shuddered under a faint scoff. “Zack doesn’t know him,” she added, her voice barely above a whisper. “You probably don’t either.”

Cloud drew his brows in confusion, but before he could ask what she meant, a door opened behind them. The unmistakable voice of Brian Lockhart rang out, calling for Tifa. She had to go.

“Well, glad to know you’re alright.” She turned to leave.

Wait—

“Nice talking with you.” Even though she was the one who had done all the talking.

Stop!

Her hat swayed like a pendulum behind her back. Farther and farther away she moved, his chance slipping out of his grasp. But before she disappeared—

“Hey!” He hoped his helmet masked his voice. Tifa looked back. Cloud gulped past the growing lump in his throat. “Thanks for helping me get down the mountain.”

The silence stretched for one second longer, then there it was—the smile that always made his heart skip a beat. Bright and warm, like the ones he would see when they were kids and their eyes made contact. Tifa gave a quick wave, then disappeared behind her door.

Cloud stood there, staring at the two-story building beside his house. It looked as enormous as he remembered it.

Shouldn’t you do something?

Cloud blinked back at the stars, exhaling a quiet sigh into the night. Easier said than done.

~ END ~

[flyinghome-againstthewind]

the best by far is you: chapter 10

Read on AO3

Previous Chapter

For all the things my hands have held The best by far is you -  Cecilia and the satellite

------------

Summary: An exploration of Claire & Jamie’s story if their firstborn had lived and they had the chance to be parents together of wee Faith Fraser before the Battle of Culloden.

A very special thank you to Michaela for providing a perfect moodboard!

Chapter 10

“Mama?” 

Her eyes drifted open from sleep by the sound of Faith’s voice, soft and baby-like. Claire grunted tiredly, but nevertheless drank in the sight of the baby girl sitting up in bed by her pillow. “What are you doing here?” She asked. A smile bloomed on Claire’s face as she took in the sleep-tousled curls and Faith’s flushed cheeks, one marked with a deep red line from where she’d slept on it.   

Faith didn’t answer her question ‒ Claire didn’t expect her to ‒ but she did respond with a soft smile of her own, slow and languid. Claire rolled from her side to her back as Faith leaned forward and gathered the girl up on top of her chest. Her head rested just above Claire’s nightgown, her cheek pillowed against her mother’s skin. She yawned then and seemed to melt into her on the exhale, her eyes drifting shut. 

“This is your spot, isn’t it?” Claire turned to kiss the girl’s forehead. “Since the day you were born.” How many times had they laid like this, and felt all was right with the world in that moment? Too numerous to count. 

Faith’s fingers curled around the edge of Claire’s nightgown and she looked up to catch Claire’s gaze. “Hello, lovey,” she murmured. Her fingers gently teased Faith’s wild curls away from her face. 

“‘llo, Mama,” Faith echoed and then hummed as Claire continued to play with her hair, never breaking eye contact, though her eyes crinkled with joy. 

My whole heart. 

“Faith, I lov‒”      

Her breath came in a stuttering gasp, eyes flying open in the dark. She reached over and found only the edge of her hospital bed. 

She was alone.  

Her body curled in on itself while she clutched a pillow to her chest and smothered her sobs there. 

The weight of her grief settled in around her as the last vestiges of her dream fell away, and her new reality became starkly clear. 

She was alone in 1948 ‒ a time in which everyone she loved was undoubtedly dead. And without Jamie, Faith, and Fergus… without Murtagh and the Murrays… with only dreams and memories to haunt her, she wished she could curl up and die right there in that bed. 

She wanted it ‒ wanted death to come swift and easy, to bring her at once to whatever came next, where Jamie promised he would be waiting for her. Where he would find her.

But there was no impulse to act on this wish and in some rational corner of her mind still functioning, she knew there was only one thing standing in her way, keeping her tethered to this world. 

The baby. 

Part of all that would be left of Jamie. Of their life together.  

But even while she would live for the baby, she couldn’t think of it growing inside her without the sharp twist of a knife in her gut. 

Her arm muscles ached from the hour she had carried Faith. Had that only just happened that morning? Her mind felt foggy from the drug-induced sleep but her body wouldn’t let her forget. One hour after eight months apart and then… 

She clutched the pillow tighter, and the howl that tore from her throat didn’t even sound human.

One hour after eight months apart and then never again would she hold Faith in her arms.

Only in her dreams…   

On her second day in the hospital, Frank arrived. Seeing his face again was jarring, both in how it grounded her in this time, and made her blood run cold at its uncanny resemblance to another face that still haunted her. 

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Frank said in a tight whisper. He reached for her hand and eased himself carefully into the seat at her bedside. She was dumbstruck at seeing him and could hardly manage to look him in the eye, but when she did, there was no anger or hurt staring back at her. Only his love, his broken heart over the missing years, and his widespread relief to find her once more ‒ though these feelings were likely to change when she told him the truth.

“I’m pregnant.” The words slipped out into the space between them and Claire studied his face, watching for any hint of the quiet anger she knew he could possess. Better to rip the bandaid off than try to hide her condition. 

“I know,” he said softly. “I spoke with your doctors.” His gaze dropped to where he still held her hand and he squeezed it gently, collecting himself. He was rattled by the news, she could see, even as he tried to present a calm front. “Darling, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, but I’m here now. We’ll get through this.” 

His meaning snapped into place with stunning clarity and Claire’s breath left her in a rush. “I‒ I wasn’t attacked or… or held captive.” Her hand withdrew from his grasp and settled protectively over her still-flat stomach. “This baby isn’t‒” 

“It’s alright. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything,” he cut in quickly to quiet her and gave her a stiff smile. But she saw the flash of doubt in his eyes all the same. He didn’t believe her. “We don’t have to talk about the particulars just now. None of that matters, anyhow. I won’t leave you.”

She recognized the old habit in him of skirting around the uncomfortable ‒ and this was certainly uncomfortable ‒ but his assumption sat like molten hot lead in her stomach and her face suddenly felt flushed. 

“Really, I’m sorry to have upset you, Claire,” he said quickly before she could broach any sort of explanation. “God, I’m just so relieved to see you.” He cleared his throat, glassy-eyed. “I’ve been in contact with Reverend Wakefield. He was thrilled to hear about you and he’s prepared some rooms for us to stay there while you convalesce.”

She let the matter of her pregnancy go for now. It would take hours to tell him the truth of it, and even then he might find her to be insane by the end. And the mention of Reverend Wakefield lit a spark in her ‒ he had a library’s worth of resources and also‒ 

“Is Mrs. Graham still in his employ?” 

“Mrs. Graham?” Frank looked mildly perplexed. “I didn’t ask, but I would assume so...” 

  He could see the change in her right away ‒ like a light had gone out from within. She kept to herself that first week, spoke only in an exchange of pleasantries. Even though she was there ‒ she was actually physically there with him after three years  ‒  she seemed a different person entirely. 

At first, Frank thought it must be the shock of returning, but as the days passed at the Wakefield residence and Claire remained distant, it seemed whatever she experienced while she was gone had altered her forever. 

Beyond the mention of her pregnancy, he had no notion of where she’d been or what had happened to her, but a picture was beginning to build in his mind’s eye. She hadn’t been physically harmed, according to her doctors, but she had been malnourished, perhaps from neglect. And someone had gotten his wife with child. Frank breathed in sharply. He thought that bit of news would sink in, but a knot was still in his stomach. With signs pointing towards her mistreatment, he couldn’t imagine that Claire had run off with someone, that she would’ve chosen to leave him, but… 

But there had been that moment when he told her he knew about the baby. Something in her eyes had flashed before him and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had encountered the very edges of a mother’s protective fury for her child. It had stunned him and truthfully unnerved him a little. Not that she would already care for the little thing ‒ they had both longed for a child for years ‒ but that he should be the one on the outside. If she’d been attacked… what would cause her to want to shield the baby from him? He’d already assured her that he would stand by her, but somehow that statement felt like it had done more damage with Claire.   

Frank turned toward the windows in Reverend Wakefield’s study and watched for a moment as Claire sat out in the garden, her head bent over a book. 

The Battle of Culloden. Somehow that had become an obsession of hers since her return and he couldn’t make sense of it if he tried. 

…What the hell had happened to her?    

Claire registered Mrs. Graham’s presence as the afternoon tea was brought out to her, but she didn’t look up from the pages of her book to greet her. As the kindly housekeeper set a cup of tea on the table, Mrs. Graham suddenly broke the silence. 

“Och, lass, you’ll only create nightmares for yourself poring over those accounts.” 

Claire finally met her gaze and swallowed thickly. “There might be clues in here, or even an account of the two of them if I’m lucky. I’d rather know what happened to them. It’s not knowing that keeps me up at night.” 

Mrs. Graham smiled pityingly at her. “Aye…”

“There were wanted posters for him put up all over England and Scotland during the rising, you know. Not just for him ‒ all famous traitors to the crown who were involved in the rising ‒ but… he’s the only one I can’t seem to find any mention of after Culloden. If the British cared enough to make him a traitor, to… to vilify him as they did, you’d think they would’ve looked for him. You’d think someone would’ve bothered to write that down. It’s not like ‘Butcher Cumberland’ to let grievances go.” 

Mrs. Graham took a seat next to Claire. “Ye told me that ye didn’t think Faith traveled at all‒” 

“I mean, I don’t know for sure and I’ve never traveled with someone before, but… I can’t describe it, but there was a moment in the in-between and I was alone. I don’t think she traveled at all, but I can’t even know that for sure.” 

“Still,” Mrs. Graham patted her hand. “Ye would ken better than I. And if she didn’t travel, then she was with Jamie. Maybe the two of them got away safely.” 

“I want that to be what happened,” she rasped, her eyes burning with tears. “God, I want them to have survived it. But I begged him to run with us and he wouldn’t. He said he was doomed to die one way or another and he wouldn’t risk us. I know he would give his life to protect her. I know he would do everything to keep her safe. But these men?” She waved the book in her hands ‒ an account of Cumberland and his troops in The Rising and immediately afterwards. “Pages and pages of how they slaughtered the Jacobites and destroyed the Highland way of life. I don’t need to read every account to know what little disregard they would have for my daughter’s life if she and Jamie encountered them.” 

Hot tears were spilling down her face, and when Mrs. Graham sniffled softly beside her, she found the older woman softly crying as well. “I canna imagine what it’s like for ye. But I worry that this is consuming ye, my dear. And what’ll that do to the bairn ye’re carrying?”  

Claire swallowed roughly and her tear-clouded vision dropped to the book in her lap. How could she not be consumed by this?        

“You have children, don’t you, Mrs. Graham?” Her voice wobbled as she asked the question. 

“Och, aye,” Mrs. Graham replied awkwardly. “My husband and I had three bairns together.” 

“And if you lost one… if you were separated from one and you had no idea what became of them, could you just put that to bed? Would it be enough for you to love the next child as though you’d never known the first?” 

Her words were spoken softly but they had a scalding effect and Mrs. Graham drew in a deep breath. “No,” she said at last. “No, I dinna think I could let it go.” 

“I know they’re both long dead by now. I know. But I need to know if they were killed that day or shortly after or if… if Faith was able to grow up… if Jamie lived and was able to raise her.” Claire’s arm folded tightly across her chest, holding herself together. “I didn’t… didn’t tell her goodbye,” she admitted in a hoarse whisper and Mrs. Graham made a soft sound at that. Her hand suddenly brushed back Claire’s curls in the first display of motherly tenderness Claire could recall receiving from someone in a long time. “I… I only told her it would be alright. Those were my last words to her. Even when we left her at Lallybroch, I… Jamie said his goodbye to her but I never thought I’d lose her forever. I heard him promise her that he would make sure we were reunited someday and…” She shrugged one shoulder helplessly. “It was Jamie so I believed him. I told her…” Her chin quivered before her face disappeared behind her hands. “I told her it was only goodbye for now, not forever. I lied to her. I left her.” 

Since she’d arrived here, she’d kept her crying confined to her room at night, but here with Mrs. Graham, her resolve crumbled and a sob broke free. 

“Oh, my dear.” Claire was pulled rather gently by the shoulders and gathered against Mrs. Graham, who stroked her hair and murmured softly. 

“I’m her mother and I never said goodbye or told her again how much I loved her,” she cried. “The least I can do is find out what happened to her and‒ and make sure she isn’t forgotten. Maybe in some way, she’ll know. That I looked for her and that I loved her.”

“My poor dear,” Mrs. Graham murmured above her, seemingly at a loss for what else to say. Claire held her arms tight about her, the only physical comfort she’d known in days. 

“I know it’s hard now and I don’t pretend to know what ye’ve been through.” She gave Claire a small, fortifying squeeze. “But in time… I’m glad ye’ll have this bairn. It doesn’t mean ye won’t miss them, but ye won’t be alone. And ye’ll have a piece of them with ye. This new bairn won’t be exactly like yer Faith, nor will he or she replace her in yer heart, but ye’ll notice things about yer second born ‒ how she’s different from Faith, how she’s alike ‒ and that will keep Faith alive, too. Hold onto that, aye? When the days are hard, hold onto that.”   

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted in a choked whisper, and felt Mrs. Graham stiffen. 

“What do ye mean, dear?” 

She pulled away slightly, still sniffling, and Mrs. Graham held her hand, as if knowing she still needed a soothing touch. “I can’t‒” Claire shook her head slightly. “I can’t move on from them. I can’t stop looking until I know. But…” she breathed in deep and exhaled shakily. “I‒ I haven’t figured out what comes after that. I can’t think about the baby just yet. I wish…God, I wish everything else would just hold until I knew. That time would just hold for me.” 

Mrs. Graham smiled sadly and patted her hand, seeming to digest her words. “Ye don’t have to figure anything out just yet,” she said at last. 

“Thank you,” Claire murmured. “For everything.”      

  “Reverend?” 

Reggie Wakefield looked up from his letter to find Claire Randall before him with a small stack of his own books clutched to her chest. He made a sound of startled joy at the sight of her and motioned for her to join him at the table. “I haven’t seen anyone so interested in my collection in such a long time, Mrs. Randall. Does my heart good to see ye enjoying them.” 

In truth, he had spoken with Frank at length about her curious obsession, but as odd as it was, he wouldn’t dream of voicing any of those concerns to such a kindly and elusive woman as Claire Randall.  

“Have ye found everything ye needed, then?” 

“Actually, I…” She stopped herself suddenly and smiled politely at him, hesitant. “Well, first, thank you for being so kind to allow me to go through your collection. I did wonder if you had any other books that perhaps I hadn’t looked at yet.”

“Well…” He scratched at his jaw absentmindedly as he thought about it. “I believe I gave ye every book on the subject of the Battle of Culloden and its aftermath. The rest would focus on the earlier risings and what preceded the ‘45, ye ken.”  

“I see,” she said softly, sounding very sad to him. 

“But I’ll have another look, just to be sure. Perhaps I missed one or two books that could be of use to ye.”

“Thank you,” she breathed, full of relief, and a stunning smile followed shortly. She was an odd sort since she’d returned, but it was plain to see that she was hurting and even if he didn’t understand it, Reggie felt inclined to help the poor young woman however he could. There were rumors ‒ nasty rumors ‒ flying about town since she turned up last week, including scandalous speculation around her condition. He’d done what he could to put those to bed, to address his opinion on the matter by opening his home to the Randalls. And while he hadn’t a single clue as to her whereabouts for three years, the more time he spent with Mrs. Randall, the more indignant he grew over the gossip that swirled around her. It was all so uncalled for. 

He was so caught up in this reflection that he didn’t register what Mrs. Randall had said to him. “Sorry, my dear. What did you say?” 

Oddly, her face flushed and she looked as though she might not repeat it. But she surprised him by blurting out, “Did the British kill any children after Culloden?”

His brows reached his hairline and he struggled to answer.

“I know they showed little mercy to those who fought on the Jacobite side,” she added quickly. “But I’m wondering if there’s anything about how they would’ve treated family members of known Jacobites… like perhaps their children?” 

He drew in a slow breath and prepared his answer, but his gaze caught hers at the last moment, and he saw something there that stopped him in his tracks: a deep pain and desperate hope mingled together. “Why don’t I help you look into this, hmm? We can work on this together.”

She seemed taken aback by this offer at first, but smiled again. “Thank you, Reverend. That’s very kind of you.” She looked down, her fingers tracing the corner of one of the books. “Can I… can I actually ask for your help in trying to find someone who lived during that time?” 

“Oh, of course, of course,” he chuckled. That was something he could do for her. 

“I’ve been trying to find some record of her. Her name is‒ was…” She hesitated for a moment, needing to collect herself. Something about her reaction had his hairs standing on end. “Her name was Faith Fraser. She may have been called Faith Murray, if... well, I don’t know for sure if they would’ve raised her. Or…” She straightened suddenly. “Or if she married… I wouldn’t know her name at all.” She seemed to sink under the weight of this realization and Reggie took pity on her. 

“We’ll start with what you know,” he added kindly, patting her hand. “Even a marriage record should have her maiden name.” 

“Yes,” Claire said rather distantly. “Yes, good.” 

“Do you know whenabouts she would’ve been born?” He prodded gently, trying to engage her as a distant look had crossed her face since the mention of marriage. She drew in a deep breath and began to answer him.  

“May 12, 1744. She was born in Paris but her family moved back to Scotland before the end of the year. She lived on the family’s estate called Broch Turach for a time, though it was sometimes referred to as Lallybroch.”

“Yes, I know the one‒”

“Ownership of Lallybroch was changed over to her cousin, James Murray, dated in 1745, but his parents would’ve managed it until he came of age. That’s Ian and Janet Murray,” she rattled off easily. “The Murrays also‒” She swallowed roughly, struggling to get the rest of it out. “If her father died or was taken away, I believe the Murrays would’ve raised Faith. Her father was James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser and he was a known Jacobite...” She glanced out the window suddenly, focusing on the trio of birds flitting about a nearby tree. “He didn’t fight in Culloden, but he would’ve been near there at the time of the battle and I’d… well, I’d like to find out about both of them, you see, but James Fraser is quite a common name then and I’ve been struggling in my research to find him. I’m hoping if we can find Faith… we can find Jamie, too.” Mrs. Randall looked back suddenly to catch his curious gaze. “Is that enough to start?” 

“Oh. Oh, yes, my dear. That should do,” he said swiftly. “Tell me,” he began cautiously, measuring his next words. “Why are we looking into Faith Fraser? Who is she to you?” 

A strange expression crossed her face, making the well-intentioned Reverend regret his mere curiosity. 

“Who is she to me?” She echoed his question in a hoarse whisper. “She’s everything.” Her eyes were glistening with tears and he couldn’t begin to explain how odd this whole conversation was. “So I need everything that you can find about her and Jamie. Please.”

“Aye, Mrs. Randall. I’ll do my best.” He smiled weakly to ease the tension but she never caught his eye.  

Frank thought that with time, the Claire he once knew would return to him, even in just small glimmers. But days passed and she remained committed to the routine she’d developed here early on; she kept to herself, taking breakfast in her own room, and when she did appear in the sitting room or garden or the study, it was always still with those damn books. 

She pored over them constantly and prowled the bookshelves for titles she may have missed. She avoided conversations at meals, her eyes downcast at her plate, though the Reverend carried on cheerfully with him at every supper as if none of this was strange. 

Claire had taken Mrs. Graham into her confidence early on, sequestering the housekeeper into Claire’s room for hours that first day they arrived. Since then, she was the only person Claire really talked to. 

Until recently, at least. 

Somehow, Frank was on the outside from his own wife while Reverend Wakefield and Mrs. Graham ‒ two people who had been strangers to Claire a few years ago ‒ were brought into her circle of trust. 

Worst of all, the Reverend wouldn’t discuss with him what it was that he was working on with Claire, skirting his questions and assuring him it was only a little history project, not unlike their own when Frank had first visited him. 

 She wouldn’t even talk to him outside of pleasantries when they saw each other, and he was torn between wanting to wait for her to initiate, and wanting to look beyond this time at the Wakefield house and live their lives again.

Because whatever the hell was happening here, it wasn’t really living. 

“Claire?” He rapped lightly on her door and waited for a response. “It’s Frank.” 

After supper, he’d had a dram with Reggie, which had turned into two drams and then three, and now his head swirled a little even as he rested his forehead against the door jam. 

This was the antithesis of Reggie’s advice ‒ give her time, man, it hasn’t even been two weeks ‒ but his feet seemed to lead him to her door of their own volition. 

When he heard Claire’s soft “come in?”, his heart leapt to his throat and he hesitated. He wasn’t even sure what he meant to say to her; he only knew he wanted her to tell him something.  

He pushed in and found her in one of the two chairs by the fireplace in her room, and she was tucking loose sheets of paper into a book and setting it aside. For some reason, the fact that she was still studying up on Culloden into the night made him inexplicably annoyed. 

She looked up at him curiously, no doubt wondering why he was here.

Why was he here? 

He had composed this conversation so many times in his head over the last several days, wanting to initiate it more with each passing day… needing to know but also wanting to be delicate with this new Claire, as everyone had been telling him. And then there was some small part of him that didn’t want to know at all. 

But the whisky had loosened his tongue and he found himself blurting out the words without much tact to them at all. “Where the hell have you been, Claire?”

She felt her stomach drop at his question ‒ though really, she shouldn’t have been surprised. At some point, she would need to tell him, but the very thought of telling him the truth sent her heart rate skyrocketing. Mrs. Graham had been someone Claire could trust, but to almost anyone else, she knew her story sounded insane. If she hadn’t lived it herself, she might not have believed it to be true. 

“I’m sorry,” Frank said quickly when she froze, waving his arm a little too wildly. So he was tipsy, then… “I‒ I don’t want to pressure you to talk if you’re not ready. I‒”

“Have a seat, Frank.” 

He shuffled over to the chair opposite her and sat with folded hands in front of his face, elbows propped on his knees. “I really didn’t mean to… the truth is, Claire, I don’t care where you were or what happened. I’m just so relieved to have you back. But… I feel like there’s this wall between us now and I just want you back. I want our life back.” 

She breathed in slowly and dropped her gaze, a little ashamed that her own desire didn’t echo his. Maybe it would be better if he knew, even if he judged her. Even if he didn’t believe her. At least then there would be nothing to hide and she could accept whatever his feelings were once the truth was out in the open

“I’ll tell you,” she said softly. “I’ll tell you everything but please let me tell it all at once and have it over with before you ask any questions.” 

She slid her gaze back to his and found his expression to be unreadable, but he swallowed roughly and agreed. 

  She talked for hours, pausing every now and then to drink so her throat wouldn’t dry out, and when she finished, the sky outside her room was streaked with the first soft pink lines of daybreak. 

She had stuttered over the last moments of her time in 1746… of her goodbye with Jamie and waking up alone without Faith. 

While she talked, Frank kept his promise and only listened, sometimes in the chair with his gaze on the fire, which he tended to all through the night, and other times he paced the short length of her bedroom. He was pacing at the time that she finished her story and a heavy silence fell between them like the drop of a curtain. 

 Having said the words out loud again for the second time, Claire suddenly wished she could be alone, feeling the grief tsunami on the periphery, about to sweep through her again. God, she ached for them in a way she didn’t know was possible. 

But Frank was still in the room with her, quiet in a way that meant he was still sifting through his thoughts. At last, he scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. 

“So that’s what you’ve been doing with your history books and Reverend Wakefield… You’ve been looking for him.” 

“And for Faith. For both of them, yes.” 

“What happens if you find a record of them?” 

“Then I’ll… I’ll know what happened to them.” 

“That’s it?” 

“Yes,” she said hotly. “I just want to know what happened to them.” 

“You won’t try to go back?” 

Oh. 

She breathed in sharply. “I hadn’t thought about it,” she lied, feeling the color rise to her cheeks. The whole point of this had been to tell him the truth. “I don’t know if I can travel again,” she added, which was the honest truth. “It’s… it’s hard to describe. But it feels like it takes something from you each time and the screaming‒” 

“Screaming?” Frank looked curious now, his interest in this unknown finally piqued. 

But the remembrance of it had a shiver running through Claire. “I can hear the voices of those who haven’t made it through and were lost to the stones.” Even with all that they’d talked about overnight, that statement might have been the strangest thing she’d uttered yet. 

His expression turned equal parts horrified and fascinated and then faded all together with a short nod of his head. “Hmm,” was all he had to say to that. He strode over to his chair and seated himself across from her. She got the distinct impression that he was entertained by the idea but wouldn’t put any stock in what she had just described. 

“And what if… you don’t find any record of them?” He asked carefully. 

“Are you asking that because you don’t believe any of this or because‒”

“Claire, I’m asking…” He cut her off and then took a deep breath, choosing his next words. “I’m asking because someone needs to. You spend every waking moment with your head bent over one of these books or writing your notes or discussing with the Reverend where to look next. How long will you keep going if nothing turns up? How long will you make me wait before we can actually start our life together again?” He had started off cool and collected, but had turned frantic with his pleading by the end. “I just got you back,” he added. “Have you any idea what it’s been like for me, Claire? Having you ripped away without a trace and never knowing what happened to you? And all the while, everyone was telling me that you’d up and run off with another man!” 

Stunned by his outburst, it took her a moment to speak. “I’m sorry, Frank. Truly. I didn’t intend for it to happen and I wish there was some way I could’ve told you I was alright while I was gone. That I was safe.”

“But you didn’t wish to come back to me,” he said bitterly. It was petty, even for Frank, but neither of them had slept yet, she reminded herself. 

“I had a child.” She was patient but unapologetic in pointing that out. Frank wouldn’t meet her eye. “I had a whole family with Jamie. And Jamie was‒”

The love of my life.

She swallowed back those words. There were other ways to phrase it, especially considering her audience. “I loved him very much. I didn’t plan for it and I’m sorry for the ways this has hurt you, Frank, but I can’t change what happened.” 

“But you are here now, Claire, and you’re with me.” He finally met her gaze again. “And I’m grateful for that. For a second chance. I only worry for you with how… how consumed you are with this.”

“Well, at what point did you stop looking for me, Frank? What’s the magical number of days before it’s acceptable to move on?” 

He recoiled as if she’d slapped him in the face, and she felt a small pang of regret for those words. Somehow, he still possessed the ability to provoke something juvenile in the way she responded to him, and she hated that. “I never‒ Claire, that was different, and I never stopped hoping you would return! But I did have to go back to work at some point, and in your case… Christ, you never talk about the baby but it will be here in a matter of months so perhaps we should start.”

The mention of the baby struck a nerve that lately everyone had been poking and prodding ‒ as if this baby existed on its own. As if it wasn’t made by her and Jamie on a cold February night, seeking warmth and solace in each other. And for Claire, any thought of the baby came with thoughts of her first baby. They couldn’t exist separately in her mind. “Until you know what it’s like to bring a child into this world and have her quite literally ripped from your arms, you don’t get to tell me when to stop looking. Faith is this baby’s sister and that doesn’t go away when the baby is born.”

To his credit, Frank looked properly chastised by her words. “Claire,” he began softly and then took her hand gently between his own. “I only mean to say that you might never find them, and I worry what that will do to you if you keep at this pace of searching. And what will you do when the baby is here? Drag him along to the library with you?”

“I’m not sure that’s any of your concern,” she snapped.

His hold on her hand tightened. “Not any of my concern,” he scoffed quietly. “No, why would that concern me? You’re only my wife.” 

She leaned back from him, pulling her hand free with her, but was startled to see tears in his eyes accompanying the bite of his voice. 

“Do you even believe me about any of this?” 

“Does it matter if I do?” He countered. “You’re back with me now and‒” 

“Yes, and pregnant with Jamie’s child.”

“I know. But he isn’t here with you, is he?” If he was intending to hurt her, his words hit their mark. “And besides, I… Look, I know this child isn’t mine, but I want to raise it with you.” 

“You do?” 

“Yes.” He was more adamant than she expected. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since you’ve come back and that’s all I want for us now ‒ to raise a family together.”  

She tried to picture it, this life he was so insistent that he wanted with her. How would Frank handle a baby? How would he handle teething and sleepless nights and‒ 

Instead, what flooded her mind were the images and memories of her life before: Jamie taking turns with her on the rough nights with Faith. Carrying her in the crook of one elbow as he strolled about the grounds of Lallybroch with Ian. Telling her stories at night, during the long winter months and well before she could even comprehend what he was saying. She was enraptured with his voice, though. Claire remembered that so clearly, how Faith would stare up at him while he talked, studying his face with keen interest and cooing softly every now and then. Jamie would pause at every sound she made and smile, making up some interpretation of her noises to add Faith’s opinion of the story. Och, aye, ye’re right. Wasna verra nice, was it? 

She fell more in love with Jamie, seeing him as a father ‒ a role he was born for and something so integral to who he was at his core. 

Could she… have that with Frank? Could she just raise a child with him, all the while being haunted by the memories of Jamie and Faith at every turn? Would Frank even love a child that wasn’t his, after years of insisting he couldn’t? 

To her horror, tears spilled down her cheeks and she wiped at them furiously. “I think it’s too soon to have this conversation. I’m‒ I’m sorry.”

He let out a resigned sigh, as if he expected this, and stood. “Get some rest. We’ll talk more about this another time.” He made for the door and paused, giving her one more look back. “And Claire?” She met his gaze, hoping the fresh wave of grief wasn’t too plainly obvious on her face. “At some point ‒ and soon ‒ you have to start living again.” 

The sound of the door shutting behind him echoed hollowly through the room, and his last words to her hung in the stale air. 

Her hand found its way to her belly, which felt slightly curved now under her palm. For weeks, she’d been living with the knowledge of this baby’s existence but hadn’t allowed herself to think beyond what would happen when it was born ‒ not in the way that she had when she carried Faith and couldn’t stop imagining what it would be like to hold her child.

She hadn’t had a thought like that once yet with this baby and the guilt wormed its way in amongst the myriad of emotions she was drowning in. 

“I do love you,” she found herself whispering. “And I promise I will take care of you.” She felt a little silly, talking to the baby… but who else could she share her thoughts with? “It feels like my heart is missing, and I just need a little more time to get used to that. And we have that, don’t we? Despite what everyone wants to tell me, I understand time better than most. When you arrive, I’ll be ready for you. And I’ll love you enough for me and Jamie both.”

[enkelimagnus]

HaMakom

Bucky Barnes Gen, 2146 words, rated T

Jewish Bucky Barnes, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Episode 3 Power Broker

In the plane to Riga, once Sam has fallen asleep, Bucky and Zemo find themselves in an atypical conversation: what is it like, to fight beside a god when you are yourself a believer?

Read on AO3

Part 25 of Making a Home - the Jewish Bucky series

--------------

“I wonder, James, what is it like, to fight beside a god when you are yourself a believer?”

Bucky looks up from where he was staring, a fine wrinkle on Sam’s skin, at the corner of his right eye, a mark of laughter and joy.

He meets Zemo’s eyes then. Zemo still looks tired, but he also looks awake, interested, ready to talk. Bucky sighs. Of course he is. There’s no getting any peace and quiet with a man like Zemo around, desperate to open you up and play with the inside of your brain like you’re nothing but a science experiment.

The question itself is too pointed and specific for a time like this, but it’s not surprising.

“Who says I’m a believer in anything?” He asks, voice sharp, with a hint of threat. He doesn’t like talking about religion, not with people like Zemo, not with anyone. How would Zemo know he’s Jewish anyway?

“Your files,” Zemo replies smoothly, undisturbed. “They report you called out for three people as you were tortured. The good Captain, Steve Rogers. Your mother. And God.”

Bucky shudders. Of course they would have recorded that. It’s the kind of leverage that could have proven useful if he took even longer to break than expected. And of course Zemo would know. This might actually be another attempt to show off.

Hasn’t he done enough already? Proven that he knew Bucky in the same way his Hydra handlers did? Is he that desperate to make sure Bucky’s aware that he has too much control over him, that he can make Bucky fold back into the role and space of the Asset?

“A lot of people call for God when they die, Zemo.”

The man hums. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

It’s a sharp needle of a rhetorical question. After all, Bucky’s made his own number of hurtful pointed remarks. He guesses he can take that one. It doesn’t sound like an insult, though. They’re both aware of what he’s done, and Zemo doesn’t seem to be that disgusted by it. After all, he’s a killer himself. Commander of a paramilitary death squad…

Bucky saw those skills at Buccaneer Bay, he saw the ease with which Zemo killed those bounty hunters. And that was after eight years in prison. Zemo is nothing if not competent, and Bucky can appreciate that. When you can look past the murder, it’s a beautiful, skillful display.

The Soldier would still have torn him apart, had they met in the field. There is no doubt in Bucky’s mind.

“So, what is it like, to meet the God of Thunder?”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. So it’s about Thor.

“Thor’s not a God,” Bucky replies. “He’s just a man. A strong, powerful one. But a man nonetheless. He bleeds.”

“Is that the sum of a god to you?” Zemo asks, sharp eyes still on Bucky. “A person that doesn’t bleed?”

Oh, he wants to talk, he wants to have a conversation. He’s trying so hard to get Bucky to talk to him. A desperate, lonely man. Eight years in solitary confinement must have been torture to someone like Zemo, who obviously is no loner.

Bucky decides to humor him. “That’s actually it,” he starts. “God can’t have a body. Because God is everywhere at once, all the time. If he had a body he’d have to be in one single place at one single time. And God is omnipresent, and omnipotent. Unlimited, by definition.”

The words come easy. They’re words he pulls from the back of his mind, from the unsullied memories of his childhood, from Hebrew school and its Torah commentary lessons on Thursdays at 4pm. He’d run from his secular school to the little room at the back of the synagogue, where only the Romanian kids ever came, and they’d lovelingly insult each other in Yiddish until the class started.

Zemo leans forward, a bright light of interest in his eyes, resting his chin on his hand, watching him intently. “Yesodei haTorah also says that if there were many gods, they would have body and form, like entities are separated from each other only through the circumstances associated with body and form,” he replies and Bucky can’t help but stare at him.

The Hebrew words sound off on his tongue, but he sounds like the kids from down the street who went to the German synagogue, too, the annoying ones whose mom didn’t like Bucky’s.

“Thor could be a god. Because if he is the god of something as specific as thunder, he would have a body,” Zemo continues.

Bucky just keeps staring, for a long moment. He didn’t think Zemo would know this. He didn’t think Zemo would know this and be able to answer, to debate it properly, using the quote and the name of the text. He didn’t think Zemo actually wanted a complex conversation with him. But if he wants it… Bucky’s gonna give it to him.

“He could also just be a prophet. A prophet given the opportunity to show God’s miracles on Earth, through his physical form. A mouthpiece, of sorts,” Bucky replies to that. “But there is a whole species of Thor’s kind out there. There is no such thing as a species of prophets.”

Fucking hell, he hasn’t felt this steady, this self-assured in decades. This is something he remembers, something he knows. Something Hydra never got to touch. Something they never got to twist against him like they did everything else. He’s missed being certain, he’s missed being an authority on something, even if he’s far from an authority on the works of Rambam.

“Doesn’t the Talmud say there were hundreds of thousands of prophets?”

Bucky shakes his head. He was expecting that answer. “Maybe, but it still doesn’t make it a species. Being a prophet isn’t an innate biological property. It’s a result of specific personal spiritual and ethical achievements. The Shechinah doesn’t rest upon you because you are of a specific genetic makeup, or of a specific people. There were gentile prophets too. You can’t breed a race of prophets.”

Zemo nods after a moment, holding up his hands. “You know more about this than I do,” he admits and Bucky rolls his eyes. It’s unlike the man to admit defeat in a verbal debate.

“Says the guy who quoted the Mishneh Torah to me.”

He hasn’t pulled from his childhood lessons from Hebrew school in forever. It feels strange, but good. No one has asked something like that of him in years.

Zemo shrugs. “I have an interest. I dabble, you might say. Knowing what people believe in is interesting to me. It gives me an excellent window into their psyche. We are shaped by what we believe.”

“You don’t seem like the type who believes.”

Zemo has a slow, low chuckle. Bucky’s skin erupts in goosebumps at the sound. “I believe in human ingenuity. I believe in science.”

Bucky snorts at that. “Of course you do,” he mutters. “You’re that sort of guy.”

Zemo raises an eyebrow at him, sharp brown eyes trained on Bucky, the corner of his mouth turned upwards slightly. He’s enjoying this. Unsurprising. Metaphysical debates seem perfect for Zemo’s spank bank. Bucky would be lying if he didn’t admit he was enjoying it as well.

“And what sort of guy is that, James?”

He’s one of the few who know his identity, who have met him while fighting alongside Steve in the 21st century that call him that. He admits he appreciates it. Zemo doesn’t force him into familiarity.

Once upon a time, he’d told him to call him Bucky and not James. Now he’s thankful Zemo has decided that request had an expiration date.

“The... atheist, crazy into evolutionary science and philosophy sort,” Bucky supplies. “Wealthy intellectual. Too much time on his hands.” He means it as a small poke at Zemo’s ego.

Zemo opens his hands in a sign of acceptance. “What can I say? My family was royalty, and I’ve spent the last eight years in a prison cell, all by my lonesome, except for the company of some literary treasures. I believe that qualifies me for ‘wealthy intellectual with too much time on his hands’. Besides, you seem to also enjoy evolutionary science and philosophy. Do not blame me for finding a common ground between us.”

Bucky huffs again. “It’s not exactly a niche interest.”

They fall into silence for a moment, the engine of the plane a comforting, soothing white noise.

“I don’t believe,” Bucky says after a moment. “I stopped in 1945 when the Soviets had me. I kept screaming his name out of habit,” he mutters. “I don’t think I’ll ever get that back, but I don’t think I want to.”

“Who wants to believe in a God that would make you suffer in such horrifying ways?” Zemo punctuates, nodding quietly, understandingly. “The fall of Sokovia and my family’s passing didn’t make me stop believing. I don’t think I ever really did. Perhaps, as a child… The same way one might believe in Father Christmas. I grew out of it.”

Like one grows out of shoes.

“What are you? Catholic?”

There’s another nod. Bingo. Though it wasn’t that hard of a guess. After all, Zemo’s European royalty. At this point, Bucky would have been surprised if he was anything else. Still, knowing things, being able to figure it out, feels good. He gets where Zemo’s penchant for analysis comes from.

“The Zemo line has Habsburg blood,” Zemo adds, as if Bucky asked for his pedigree. “Catholicism is nearly a genetic marker at this point.”

Bucky makes a slight face at that. “Habsburg. Those were the inbred ones.”

The man chuckles again, low and compliant. “I hear it has the tendency to happen, when people insist on reproducing with members of their own group,” he mutters, inhaling deeply. “I will not defend the stupidity of that part of my family tree, distant as it may be,” he adds on an exhale.

“Testament to your intelligence, then.” Bucky hums and looks back out of the window.

Catholicism. The only reason he was really in contact with it was Steve. Steve was Catholic. Like Zemo, it wasn’t something he actually believed in. He said grace because his mother taught him to, he went to church on Christmas and Easter and on the other important holidays. His priest must have been highly entertained by his confessions.

“For what it’s worth,” Zemo starts again, circling back. “I do agree with you that, if he exists, God isn’t a man like Thor. Or a man like Nagel.”

Bucky’s eyes snap back to the man’s face. He is serious, dark. There isn’t a hint of regret in his expression. Zemo’s eyes meet his.

Maybe he hadn’t been dead set on killing Nagel when they’d walked into his lab, but hearing him call himself a god for what he’d done, what he’d made, that had been the deciding factor. Bucky doesn’t need to ask to know. He agrees wholeheartedly.

The serum shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t have existed in the first place. It had only brought horror into this world. Without it, there would have been no Red Skull, no Zola, no Winter Soldier program, no experimenting on Isaiah Bradley.

From the second it enters your veins, your life is forever changed. First, the pain. Then, the uncontrollable senses and heightened feelings, all of it overwhelming you and making you dangerous to yourself and to others. And then, you become a weapon. Someone’s weapon, or something’s. And judging from the fact the Power Broker is racing to recreate the serum, the market for that kind of weaponry still exists.

Bucky is thankful Steve got to live a full life, free of his medical conditions. But the list of good ends there, and he’s not sure it’s worth it, even for someone he loves.

Despite it all, if someone came to him offering to cure him, to take the serum out of him, he doesn’t know what he’d say. The one thing he doesn’t hate about it is how easy it makes protecting the ones he cares about. He can take a bullet for them, and he doesn’t have to worry too much about it. He can stay awake, cut off his rations, give away his coat or his water for a while. Sacrificing his own comfort for those he loves has never been this easy.

“The serum isn’t a gift from God. It’s a human creation,” Zemo keeps going, as if he doesn’t believe Bucky gets what he means.

Bucky hums. “Horror always comes from humans. At least in my experience.” And fucking hell he has plenty of that.

There isn’t a single piece of proof of God’s existence, or Satan’s existence, he’s ever seen in his days of being the Soldier.

[wanderingalicewrites]

So Much Discounted - Chapter 6

Trust

I was housed by your warmth

But I was transformed

By your grounded and giving

And darkening scorn

***

(Also on AO3)

The door shut behind him with an ominous thud, and Aziraphale was alone with the creature that had once been Crowley. It hesitated only a moment before it surged forward, rising over him like an enormous wave and crashing down with all the force of a nuclear explosion. Aziraphale had just enough time to throw up a barrier - a shield of pure white Heavenly light that barely held the creature off. It pressed down upon him, raging, flooding his senses with ANGER/PAIN/HATE/FURY.

Aziraphale pressed back, sending out his own pulse of positive emotions - AFFECTION/CARE/HOPE/JOY.

When it connected, the creature screamed in pain, recoiling from the angel. The sound was primal, feral, without any hint of intelligence to it.

“Crowley, stop!” Aziraphale commanded, relaxing his shield. The creature surged forward again, still screaming its rage and pain. The force was almost enough to overwhelm him. A weaker angel, or one that had been unprepared for what he would find, would have been destroyed. Again, Aziraphale sent out a pulse of love. And again, the creature screamed and recoiled.

“Crowley!” the angel called to him. “Crowley, wake up! It’s me!”

The creature’s next assault was worse. It fell on Aziraphale in a flood of darkness echoing of RAGE/PAIN/DESPAIR/LOSS, burning through his Heavenly shield like acid. It burned where it touched him, leaving him with angry red marks on his skin.

Aziraphale pushed back against the darkness with all the light he possessed, lashing out with Holy fire filled with COMPASSION/PEACE/DEVOTION. The creature cried out, doubling down in its attack, overwhelming the angel’s senses with a cacophony of every terrible, negative emotion.

He gasped, faltering, his shield failing under the onslaught. Heavenly emotions weren’t working. Not even the touch of Heaven’s light against the creature’s infernal essence could break through the mindless rage inside.

“It’s me!” Aziraphale cried desperately, hoping something in the creature remembered enough to recognize him. “It’s Aziraphale!”

The creature bore down harder, shredding his shield and engulfing him in darkness and flame. He was drowning in a sea of rage and hate, tossed about in a tidal wave of infernal fire. ANGER/AGONY/RAGE/HEARTBREAK beat at him from all directions, disorienting him until he could no longer remember which way was up. His entire body was on fire, and he could do nothing to escape it.

“CROWLEY!” He tried to should into the chaos. “It’s Aziraphale! Remember! You know me!”

RAGE/DESPERATION/LOSS/ANGER/AGONY flooded his senses as the darkness surrounding him squeezed tight enough to break bones. He could sense no recognition in the creature. Nothing at all of Crowley in the endless madness of its thoughts. It flowed around him, engulfing him, until he could see nothing but darkness, sense nothing but pain.

Crowley was right, Aziraphale thought as the darkness began to overtake his mind. There isn’t enough of him left to remember. This creature, this being of rage and pain, this was all that was left of his demon. There would be no bringing him back from this. Aziraphale had failed Crowley once again. And now he was going to die here, exactly as Crowley had feared he would. Something in him rebelled at the thought.

“NO.” He refused to give in. Crowley was still in here. He could feel him, sense him deep within the darkness. If he could just reach him… remind him of who he was… Aziraphale sent out a call into the essence surrounding him. Crowley’s name, carried on a pulse of pure power and all of Aziraphale’s love.

The creature froze, quivering, no longer trying to crush him into pieces.

The angel pushed outward again. Not, this time, with the general Love of Heaven, but with his very own, specific love. A flare of power filled with laughter/warm golden eyes/an arm around his shoulders/cold nights spend warm in the bookshop/a demon on a ratty tartan couch/’angel’ , spoken low and quiet, meaning so much more than just his type of being/wine shared straight from the bottle/fingers tangled together as they stand against the end of the world/love six centuries old and growing stronger every day.

WORTHLESS/FORGOTTEN/BROKEN/UNWORTHY echoed out from the creature surrounding him. It shuddered, torn, drawn towards Aziraphale’s light but also burned by it.

“No, my dear one, not you,” Aziraphale told it from within the darkness. “Never you.” He sent out more light, bathing the creature in Beloved/Cherished/Precious/Worthy.

UNFORGIVEN/UNWANTED/ALONE. This time the crash of emotions was hesitant, slower, and noticeably weaker than before.

Forgiven/Wanted/Loved, Aziraphale pulsed back, filling the darkness with the swell of joy he felt seeing Crowley smile, the sweet warmth that settled in his chest when watching Crowley sprawl across his sofa, the urge he could never escape to grab Crowley by the hand and pull him closer, to shelter him beneath his wings from any chance of harm.

The creature hissed like water poured on a fire. Tendrils of darkness and flame beat feebly at Aziraphale’s shield of light.

AGONY/UNLOVED, pulsed faintly from within the darkness.

MINE, Aziraphale sent back to it, filling the darkness with memories of every time he had looked at Crowley and known how lucky he was to have the demon in his life. Of every moment of every day when he knew just how much he loved his demon. LOVED.

All at once, the creature retreated from him, releasing him from its grip. It scrambled back against the farthest wall, piling on top of itself in its effort to get away. Aziraphale stepped forward and it scrambled back, higher, all swirling flame and eyes. As the angel moved further inward, the creature could climb the wall no higher. It flowed out to the sides, always keeping a circle of space around Aziraphale, until all four walls were nothing but roiling blackness, flames, eyes, and mouths. A perfect circle remained clear around him - a radius of six feet from the angel at any given point. Every single golden eye was focused inward, tracking his movements, wide with fear and a soul-deep pain.

“Oh, my darling,” Aziraphale said quietly, his voice the only sound in the echoing chamber. “My poor, poor dear. What have I done to you?”

The creature hissed from all its mouths, a sound like a thousand snakes in an echo chamber. It tried to pull back further, widening the circle around the angel by a few bare inches.

“It’s alright. I won’t hurt you.” Aziraphale kept his voice soft, soothing, like he was trying to calm a wild animal. He took a step forward, and a high-pitched keening rose from the creature - though it didn’t seem to come from any of its mouths.

“Okay. Okay, it’s alright.” He stepped back into the center of the clear space, and the keening stopped. “See? It’s perfectly safe.” Carefully, making no sudden movements, he sat in the center of the circle. He would have to wait for the demon to come to him, just like he had for the past six thousand years. Only this time, he would not hold a line between them. There would be no stepping back if Crowley got too close now. There was no ‘too close’ when it came to Crowley, not anymore. There never really had been. There had just been Aziraphale’s fear, and the disapproval of Heaven.

He watched the creature as he waited, taking slow, deep breaths to keep himself calm and centered. It was true that he did not need to breathe, but the feeling of air filling his lungs had always been soothing to him. Crowley, too, had always seemed to appreciate the human mechanisms of their bodies. Aziraphale could remember listening to him complain about how he always had to stop his heart when he went to Hell, and how he didn’t feel right until he could start it back up again.

There had been a day when Aziraphale had met him by chance, just outside the entrance they used to report to their respective headquarters. He’d noticed, as they’d walked together, that Crowley wasn’t breathing. Nor, when he listened for it, could he hear the demon’s heart. It wasn’t until they had reached the shop, and he had invited Crowley inside, that his sensitive ears picked out the telltale beat of Crowley’s heart. Crowley had stood still then, in the center of Aziraphale’s home, and had taken a long, deep breath. His first free breath of air since departing for Hell. He’d shrugged when he caught Aziraphale staring, and said he’d just wanted to smell something clean. And then he had made jokes about books and dust, annoying the angel enough that he forgot all about the fact that Crowley had waited to breathe after getting back from Hell. That he’d wanted that first breath of air to be from Aziraphale’s shop.

Aziraphale promised himself that Crowley would be free and breathing, heart beating once again. He would return to the bookshop, and Aziraphale was never, ever letting him go again.

He continued to breath. Slow. Steady. In and out. In and out. As he did so, he noticed a strange motion start within the creature. A sort of rhythmic rising and dimming of its flames. He frowned, and forgot for a moment to exhale. The rhythm stopped. And then he let out his breath, and the flames dimmed. He inhaled, and they grew brighter. Curious, he held his breath again. And the fires remained consistently bright. At his exhale, they dimmed again, stayed dim until he breathed in again.

He’s breathing with me, Aziraphale realized, staring at the thousands of serpentine eyes that watched his every move. With each slow, steady breath, the fires dimmed a little more. And each time they rose again, they were less bright. Slowly, the eyes started to close. At first it was just one or two, but soon all but a single pair were shut, leaving two bright eyes focused on the angel’s face. The fires faded almost entirely, until they were just barely flickering above the darkness.

Aziraphale forced himself to remain still, to keep his breathing even and slow. He could not risk moving and breaking this spell that had come over them. A deep humming noise echoed around him suddenly and he jumped. Immediately the humming vanished and the fires shot up again as the creature opened all of its eyes.

“It’s alright,” Aziraphale said quietly. “You’re alright.” He wasn’t entirely sure who he was reassuring - the creature, or himself. He continued to breathe steadily, and slowly the creature fell back into mimicking his rhythm. This time, he was prepared when the humming started. It rose up and wrapped around him, warm and comforting like the purr of a cat.

They stayed like that for some time - how long, Aziraphale did not know. Long enough that he had to remind his legs not to cramp, and the cold of the cell started to seep into his bones. Slowly, ever so slowly, with two eyes always on his face, the creature began to move closer. Aziraphale had to hold himself still for fear that the slightest movement could send the creature running again. He could only wait and breathe, letting it come to him.

Something cold pressed against his leg, and he looked down to see a single tendril of darkness extending from the creature. This time, it did not burn him where it touched. It did not try to overwhelm him with negative emotions. It rested briefly on his knee before extending further, up his leg, until it encountered his bare hand resting on his thigh. Carefully, light as a feather, it prodded at his fingers, working its way up one finger and down the next, feeling out the shape of his hand. It hissed when it found his ring, pulling back, and Aziraphale could see the harsh burn of frostbite where the darkness had touched angelic gold.

“Wait,” he said as the creature began to retreat. “Wait, look.” He removed the ring, the symbol of his place in Heaven, and shoved it deep into a pocket of his coat. “See?” he held out his hand again to the creature. “It’s gone. You’re safe now.”

The humming around him increased in volume, and the creature extended a tendril of itself again. This time it wrapped around his hand, coiling itself about his fingers before flowing further up his arm. He watched as it stuck the tip of its tendril in his pockets (avoiding the one with the ring), and wrapped a tiny string of itself around the buttons of his vest.

“Do you remember me?” Aziraphale asked, looking up at those two bright eyes that still watched him from the darkness. “Do you know me, my dear?”

He received no reply. He wasn’t even certain the creature was capable of understanding his words enough to form one. It just continued to hum as it flowed down his other arm to inspect that hand, twining around his wrist and then slithering up the inside of his sleeve.

As the creature explored his body, Aziraphale reached out with his mind. Sending his thoughts out to reach into the creature and see if anything of Crowley remained. All he could sense from it now was a childlike curiosity, tempered by centuries worth of fear and pain. That chaotic rush of emotions from before was still there, hidden now beneath the surface but still as strong. There was absolutely no order to it, no thoughts he could sense, no words, nothing to indicate a higher understanding.

The creature’s ‘arm’ poked out from the collar of his shirt, and began to feel its way across his face. When he touched it, his fingers could almost feel the pattern of Crowley’s scales beneath the oily darkness. It hummed louder as he rubbed a hand along it, vibrating a little with the sound.

“Is there anything of Crowley left in you?” Aziraphale asked it, sorrow and fear leaking into his voice. What if he was fooling himself, thinking he could still sense his demon? What if Anathema had been right? What if he had come all this way, only to find Crowley was too far gone to bring back?

The creature hissed, squeezing gently where it had wrapped its coils around the angel, reacting to his pain. And there, for just a second, Aziraphale sensed a bright flare of concern rising up from the core of it, before being washed away in the turbulence of all the other chaotic emotions it contained. He followed that flare, chasing it, his thoughts diving deep into the chaotic center through all of those negative feelings it had weaponized to throw at him before. They threatened to overwhelm him again, burning against his essence with infernal power. He gritted his teeth, reaching deeper, searching for that thread of concern. The anger and pain around him boiled, threatening to burn him away from the strength of it. But… something stopped it, holding those negative emotions back, providing him a clear path down to the demon’s core.

The creature, he realized. It could sense him moving through its essence, and was doing its best to protect him from itself. The same way that Crowley had, making his deal with Beelzebub so Aziraphale would be safe from the creature he became.

At last, Aziraphale pushed through to the core of the creature. And encountered walls of glass. He circled, trying to find a break in them, a way to get in to its heart. There was nothing. Just a solid barrier, held without conscious thought or effort against any and all intrusion. Beyond it, he could barely sense anything at all. Just fault-lines and broken pieces of the soul that had once been housed within.

“Can you let me in, my dear?” Aziraphale asked softly, pressing against the walls of its core.

Fear rippled through the creature, icy cold terror pulsing out from its heart.

“I can heal you!” the angel told it, projecting his intent. “I can bring you back!”

The creature shook with the chaos of its emotions, its fear and rage and pain. From within the core, Aziraphale caught one fleeting thought, more a feeling than a question.

Why?

Aziraphale sent out a wave of comfort, and very specific love. “Because I will not let you go when I have the power to save you,” he told it. “Because you are Crowley, and you are important to me.” He took a deep breath, and prepared to make an admission had never before been able to say out loud. “But most of all because I love you.”

The humming stopped. The fires flared. And every single eye came open. For one awful moment, everything went completely still. And then the core of the creature opened. And it rose up, crashing over Aziraphale once again, surrounding him with darkness and flame.

[gotboredwrote]

His Personal Constellation // BHM

Pairing: Brian May x Fem!Reader Word Count: 4.3K Style: One-Shot Warnings: Serious injury, amnesia, fluff Summary: While working as a roadie during a tour, Y/N gets injured doing something extraordinary to Brian, leading to a discussion and bond over a mutual interest. Permanent Author’s Note: To clarify, I write because I get bored. Nothing is meant to be professional in any way, nor is meant to offend, cause anxiety, cause anger, cause sadness, or promote disagreement among readers in any sort of (semi)permanent way. A/N: First, this is the first Brian fic I’ve ever written, so go easy on me, Queen side of tumblr (I’m a Deaky babe at heart). Second, I know nothing about astronomy or the medical field, so again, go easy on me science side of tumblr. Third, let’s pretend that Bri already had his PhD at his point, shall we?

Masterlist

~

Prepping for a show in a country and season where the dark takes over around five in the evening has one advantage and one advantage only. Seeing the night sky in all its grandeur, each and every ball of gas twinkling in its own unique way creating a stunning collection for the eyes to gaze upon. While the vastness of space is intimidating to say the least, there is also something soothing and beautiful about it. Very few people were already out working on the stage, considering showtime was not for another three hours, so you took advantage of the quietness and stillness to climb what appeared to be a stable scaffolding that came maybe about fifteen feet off the ground. Heights never bothered you. The closer you could get to that rich, deep blackness in the sky, the better. The platform of the scaffolding was just long and wide enough for you to lay down. You would be closer to space if you stood, but you felt like you could appreciate the sight before you more by laying down, not focused on keeping yourself upright. You managed to lay yourself down and find a comfortable position for about two minutes. All was calm, despite a few more voices roaming about the stage. Then you heard it.

clack.

~

You remembered nothing. Absolutely nothing. The doctors were surprised you even remembered your name before you passed back out. When you awoke for the second time, you still had no idea what day it was, what city you were in, and all you could feel was a sharp pain radiating through your body. Especially your right leg. God, what happened to your right leg? What happened to you? Prying your eyes open, the sounds of the extremely white room you were in started making their way past your ears to become recognized by your brain. You heard a steady beeping, a couple people chattering, and the rain hitting the window to your right lightly. You made no movement with your body, just your eyes, so no one knew you were awake yet. Had you been asleep long? What happened? You had so many questions and you felt like you had no energy to do anything about it. You took a slow, deep breath in to try and ground yourself further, and by the time you exhaled all the air, you realized there was a hand on your knee, your left knee. You put every fiber of your being into moving that kneecap ever so slightly to get the attention of the person who was there. A face you could not see from where your head laid. You managed to move your knee maybe a distance of three inches, but it was enough. Soon, you heard a swarm of voices and footsteps approach you, and you forced your neck to crane around slightly to see who all was in the room. You could see doctors and nurses – white lab coats and scrubs giving them away. Then you saw a few crew members you recognized from your job, but you could not remember their names nor what their jobs were. You could not even really remember your job at the moment. Then you saw a cluster of three guys that were just a little bit more recognizable than the crew workers, but again had trouble remembering names. One had a dark, bushy mustache, one had shaggy blonde hair, and the third had a frizzy poof adorning his cranium. Clearly recognizable appearances, so why could you not remember their names? Then the face attached to the hand that was on your knee made its way into your field of view. Again, you recognized it. Then one of the doctor’s spoke up.

“Y/N? Are you with us again?”

All you could manage was a nod, even trying to smile hurt too much.

“Wonderful. I hate to rush right into things, but there are some new faces in the room and I need to know if any of their names come to mind. I’m going to point to each one and you can say their name or say you don’t remember it. But do tell if you at least recognize the face.”

The doctor started at the opposite side of the bed from where the hand on your knee came from. He first pointed to the shaggy-haired blonde. You shook your head, but squeaked out a short fragment of a sentence that told the doctor you know the face. The face dropped slightly, feeling sad that you did not remember his name, but at least recognized him. The same exact process happened with the mustached man, the frizzy poof man, and the people you recognized as crew members for something. You expressed to the doctor that you remembered that part, but not what they do or who they work for, and that you could not remember your job, either. Then the doctor’s hand went to the body on your left. The one with its hand on your knee. You had barely made eye contact with the full-volume dark curls when you quietly yet triumphantly said his name.

“Brian.”

His eyes shone brighter than the sun hearing his name come from your mouth. Despite feeling disappointed that you did not remember their names, everyone around beamed at you, proud that you were not completely amnesia ridden. You swore you even saw Brian flush with color, realizing that he had gone pretty pale waiting to see if you would remember his name. First a pale white, and now red as could be.

“I remember Brian. He… plays an instrument. Guitar. Built his own.”

“Bloody hell, why does Bri get all the attention from ‘er?”

“Relax, Roger.” Freddie placed an arm on Roger’s shoulder while Deaky spoke to him.

The doctor spoke up again, clearly bemused by the antics shared between the bandmates and overflowing with joy and relief at the fact you remembered something more than your name.

“Alright, well, I have good news, but I need to talk to the four of you,” motioning to the band, “in private, seeing that you guys are her bosses and she fell on the job.” He then motioned for the four of them to follow him into the hallway and the nurses informed the crew that they could leave if they wanted while they checked on your vitals. Once everyone but the nurses were out of the room, you felt a single tear roll down your cheek, fully aware that you had gotten into some kind of accident and that something was clearly wrong with your brain. Through a choking sob, you managed to ask the nurses who flocked over you a question.

“Could someone please tell me what happened?”

~

“As you are probably aware by now, Y/N was on a scaffolding that collapsed under her and pieces of it managed to fall onto her by the time she collided with the ground. Nothing metal hit her head, but the impact of the fall caused quite a jolt to run though her entire body, her brain being no exception. That is what is causing the amnesia. On top of all of that, one of the heavier pieces of metal managed to crush her right kneecap, which we replaced. She will be able to be discharged today, but she will need to be in a wheelchair for a week, and then we have a full leg brace that she can walk on slowly after that for about eight more weeks. Basically, the duration of the tour, if I understand correctly. I’m not so much worried about her leg healing properly, considering she could push herself around on the wheelchair, if necessary. However, my concern is the amnesia. I’m not as worried as I would be if she could not remember anything. But she did recognize all your faces, knew that some people had the label of “crew member,” and she clearly remembers Mr. May, here. So, I’m sure with some reintroducing, everything will come flooding back in due time. My request of you guys is to just keep an eye on her. From the conversations I have overheard, she seems like the kind of girl who can fend for herself, but regardless of what she says, she needs at least one person by her side for a while. Just until things are back to normal. Did you catch all of that?”

The members of Queen all silently nodded their heads in the direction of the doctor. Each of them knew they would be helping her, but none of them minded. Especially Brian. For some reason, he felt that he had an obligation to help her more than anyone else considering what she was doing when the fall occurred. That is his specialty. This would be his chance to get close to the girl whom he would like to call his. Once the small, one-sided conversation between Queen and the doctor concluded, they made their way back into the hospital room to see that you were already in your wheelchair with the brace on your leg, dressed and ready to go. The nurses told you everything that the doctor told the boys, and now that you all were on the same page, Brian stepped up to push you through the hospital to the van door.

“I got you, love, no need to exert yourself more than you already have.”

After a smug look was exchanged between the boys and Brian, you were rolling your way through the hospital, ready to get back to… whatever it was you did for a living. Eventually, the van you were riding in pulled into its destination, which to you looked like a massive arena. This could not possibly be related to what your job was, right? Why would someone like you work in a place like this? The van parked, and Brian scrambled around to your side of the van to help you into your wheelchair. He might be lanky, but the boy is strong. He was pushing you into the wide empty floor of the arena where the janitors were already cleaning up when he spooked you with a question.

“Anything here look familiar, love?”

“Not really. I can’t even imagine what it would be that I do for a living in a place like this. I’m no security guard.”

Brian chuckled behind you, so quietly you never even heard him. He wanted to just tell you everything, now that he had an excuse to really talk to you, but the voice of your doctor rang in the back of his mind. He was not supposed to tell you things, he was just supposed to show you things and hope it jogs your memory. You cannot relearn the things you knew. If they do not come back on their own, there is no hope for getting them back. Brian noticed something about the stage – it had not been put away yet. When the fall happened, everyone rushed to the hospital, and they all wanted to stay while you were operated on, but their management insisted that they go back and do the show and come back once you were awake. The stage was just as they had left it, and Brian got an idea.

“Would you feel comfortable if I left you alone for a second and hopped up on stage to grab something?”

You shook your head at him, practically expressionless, and he slowly turned away from you to hop up onto the stage, long legs making him look like a frog jumping. You saw him grab a guitar. The guitar you mentioned when you were still in your hospital bed. He also grabbed a stool and made his way back down to you. About forty feet from the edge of the stage. He plopped the stool down directly in front of you and plopped himself right down on top of it. Then he started to play. And you remembered. Well, you at least remembered why you were at this arena, what your job was. Nothing else really came back, like the name of the band, the names of his bandmates, anything like that. But hearing Brian play helped you remember something. And that was all he needed to do for you. He was there to be a walking memory. As he played, he made eye contact with you to try and see the little stars in your eyes he always looked at. They were there when you were happy, and that was all he wanted to make you feel in this moment. He could tell you were feeling defeated about the whole situation and he just wanted to see your eyes light up. Little did he know that you would make him feel the way he wanted to make you feel.

“You Take My Breath Away.”

“You… remembered.”

“I… I guess I did. I also know that that is the guitar you made. The one I remembered.”

“…”

“But I still can’t remember the name of your band.”

At this point, you and Brian were laughing so hard it was a wonder neither of you had started crying. He had stopped playing, and the light started to leave your eyes again. Brian could see it, and he started to think he did something wrong.

“What happened? Are you feeling okay?”

“Please keep playing.”

“Wh…what?”

“Play for me. It helps. My memory and my mood. Please keep playing.”

Brian continued to strum and sing quietly for you, testing your knowledge on the band whose name you could not remember.

~

A week had gone by, and slowly but surely, you were starting to remember things. You watched a show, and before it all started you gleefully shouted “QUEEN!” at the boys, signaling that you remembered their name. Then you went one by one and pointed at them, exclaiming their names, making them beam with pride. Other things you remembered were your job, your birthday, and some of the interests you had. The one that you really could not forget was your love of all things space. It was what got you into this mess in the first place. Something you had not remembered, though, was that Brian, the bandmate who had been by your side this entire past week, had a degree in astrophysics. Meaning he knew space stuff. Brian made no effort to tell you that, because he was afraid it would trigger something in your brain and that you would forget him. He voiced that fear to his bandmates and they all called him dramatic. He did not feel that his fear was over the top, but it was three to one, so he lost by default. On the first day you could walk on your leg, everyone doted on you, making sure you did not fall. You felt fine, but really only accepted help from Brian. You had come to trust him more than anyone else after all he had put up with this week. He had seen sides of you that no one had really ever seen, especially in vulnerable moments. At hotels, you two shared a room because you needed help in the bathroom and getting changed and whatnot. At least, that is what Brian told himself to keep himself from admitting the obvious. But now that you could be own your own, he felt like there was not much he still needed to do for you, which made him feel slightly depressed. He wanted to help you all the time, and he meant all the time. Not just when you were hurt. He wanted this companionship you had formed to be a lifelong one, filled with more than just the occasional shy look exchanged between the two of you. He wanted more. He wanted you. The bus had pulled into the hotel where the boys would be staying that night, and you shocked everyone by what you said to the check-in lady.

“Make that one less room, put Brian May and myself together, please.”

Brian gaped at you, completely red in the face, while his three bandmates snickered behind him, knowing how he felt about you and how oblivious you seemed to be about the whole thing.

“Love, my room is for one person.”

“You have a queen bed, we can fit, silly.” Then you saw the look on his face. “Unless you… don’t want to share your room with me.”

“Room 445, May and Y/L/M. It has a nice ring to it. Who am I to say no to that?”

You all made your ways to your respective rooms. Once you and Brian were settled in for what you thought would be a relaxing night flipping through television stations, he proposed an idea. Something to jog the last parts of your memory that had not come back yet.

“Would you be opposed to coming outside with me for a few moments, my dear? There is something I want to show you.”

“As long as I can borrow that sweatshirt you’re wearing, I have no complains, Bri.”

You flashed him a warm smile, still completely oblivious to how much you had him wrapped around his finger. He would do anything you asked him to do, no questions asked in any situation. He tossed you the sweatshirt he was wearing. The two of you quietly started to make your way to the back entrance of the hotel, and you found yourself being helped by Brian up this small hill at the back of the property with nothing on it but a lonesome bench. How Brian knew it was there was beyond you, but you did not find yourself questioning it, either. He helped you up the hill carefully, so as not to cross a boundary but make it as easy for you as possible. Once you made it up the hill, with a few stumbles along the way and grabbing of hands and torsos, you sat down side by side in a comfortable silence. You heard Brian sigh lightly next to you, and you turned your head and body to face him.

“What’s troubling you, big guy?”

“Nothing. I just want to talk to you about space.”

He said that as a precursor. A warning. He wanted to gauge your reaction to see if you leaned into his words or scooted away from them. He did not catch a grimace, or see your body tense in anyway, so he milked the moment. He wrapped an arm loosely around your shoulders and lightly squeezed as if he wanted to capture you in his embrace. You gladly moved yourself so your side was flush against his. Except Brian felt even more confident, knowing that you were not shying away from him. He had no reason to believe you were feeling for him the way he felt for you, but he wanted to take this moment by the horns, since he was not certain he would get to do this again. He reached down with his free arm, hooked your legs in it, and he swung them over so your body was facing perpendicular to his with your bum seated against the side of his legs and your legs laid across his lap. You turned lightly so you could still face partially the same direction he was facing, and pressed your side into his once again. Then he began to talk in that calming voice of his.

“Let’s see who we’ve got to work with tonight…” Brian started rambling off the constellations he could clearly see and tried to get you to see them yourself. He loved the look on your face – despite feeling frustrated with yourself that you could not see them, he thought your scrunched-up nose was adorable. He could tell you were genuinely interested in all the space stuff he talked about, unlike past girls he found himself enamored with. He continued to talk and you even asked him a few questions you had wanted to know the answers to, things about black holes, supernovas, comets, and the like. Brian practically felt like he was up amongst the stars seated next to you talking about all of this stuff. To him, you shone like brighter than all of them combined with the sun, and even if he was too shy to do anything about it, just being able to spend time with you was what he wanted. Eventually though, he took a break from his rambling ask you a personal question.

“Do you quite understand why I asked you to come out here with me so I could talk about space?”

“Do I have to? I’m really happy listening to you. Everything you say is… enthralling. Enchanting, if you will, Bri.”

His heart swelled. So much that it actually hurt his chest a little.

“Well, allow me to explain myself.” He turned his head to he was no longer looking at the stars, but the expression on his face when his eyes landed on yours made it seem like he still was. “You and I have known each other for a little while now, about six months, if I’m not mistaken. Besides your obvious personality quirks,” you lightly punched him, smiling up at him, knowing it was a playful jab at you, “there is something about you that I have noticed. Any time we are playing a show that has no roof, you find something you can climb so you can look at space. Even when there are nights with a venue that has a roof, you climb all the way up to find a window or go outside. Clearly, you are just as enamored with the scenery up above as I am.”

“Clearly, Bri. You just rambled off more facts about space than I even thought possible.”

“Well, that’s just the thing – there is something you need to know about me.” For some reason, he was nervous to admit he had his degree. Like it would make you think he is too nerdy and that you would be repulsed by him. “I actually have a degree in astrophysics. I specialized in interplanetary dust, but if simple facts about comets are enough for you, there are plenty more where that came from, love.”

You laughed from your core. It was music to his ears, and he wished he could make that sound come from your lips every day. Very few girls that he had dated in the past found him funny. They found him too stoic or serious. Yet somehow, you appreciated that side of him and the dry humor that came with it. He was certain by this point that the stars you so fondly gazed at had aligned in all the right places to get you two on this Earth together at the same time in the same place. He continued…

“But back to the matter at hand. I mentioned before that you always find a way to look at the sky at night before shows, and I’ve sworn I’ve seen you do it after some shows, too, if we get done early enough and you have time before all the vans leave. I sincerely don’t want this to come across as strange or uncomfortable, but I’m just speaking my truth in an effort to get you to see and hear me.” He took a shuddering breath, knowing by your expression that your full attention was on every word that dripped from his intelligent mouth. “Every time I see you do that, I stop what I’m doing to look at the expression on your face. You always look so calm and at peace, and I have never seen someone look at space the same way that I do. Everyone thinks I’m a dweeb, frankly. But you… you’re different. You look at space the same way I look at space. I also look at you the same way I look at space. You’re like my very own personal constellation, love, and if it isn’t already obvious, you have me wrapped around your little finger. I am infatuated with you, and this is one instance where I truly don’t know how to handle the situation.”

You had just been staring at him wide-eyed, trying to process the words coming from him. Brian was… infatuated with you? You knew what the word meant, you just weren’t sure if he meant it in regards to just how you held yourself, or if he was… in love with you. So, one of your signature quirks, as he liked to call them, came out when you bluntly asked him to explain himself further.

“Bri, when you say infatuated with me… do you mean what I think you mean?”

Brian was not the confident type around women, but for some reason, a surge ran through him at the prospect of you not completely rejecting him already. This surge coursed through his veins and overtook his senses. The next thing you felt were his lightly chapped but somehow still soft lips gently pressing and moving against your own. It was the definition of a kiss filled with love. He answered your question, alright. You pulled away from each other, lips remaining close enough to brush each other with each word spoken breathily.

“I, uh, I guess I know the answer to my question. Huh, Bri?”

“I guess you do.”

“You really feel like that for someone like me? A nobody?”

“Y/N, love?”

“Yeah?”

“Not even the stars above us compare to you.”

[yourlettersinthesand]

‘39 - Brian May x reader

A/N: Well, here I am, writing reader insert fic. I’ve never written reader insert before, but @fredthelegend ‘s writing challenge came along and I figured I gotta step outside of my comfort zone at some point. This is probably not my best work and also very sappy at times, but hey - at least I tried. I’ve got a longer (and angstier) Roger fic coming up for this writing challenge too, but it’s not quite ready yet (yes, I’m very late). In the meantime, have some songwriting Brian fluff!

Reader is gender neutral, and this could also be read as BoRhap!Brian, if that’s what you’re into.

You came to your senses slowly, alternating between states of sleep and consciousness. You turned over a couple of times, burrowing your head into the soft sheets and letting the impressions of the world around you come back one at a time; sunlight dancing across your face and the warmth of the covers wrapped around your body. You were well aware that it was likely way past any reasonable time to get out of bed, but you were so tired, and it wasn’t like you had anywhere to be today. You might as well lie here for a bit longer, you decided, as you sprawled across the bed, limbs sticking out well outside of your own designated side of the bed.

Then, you realized that the other side of the bed was cold.

You opened your eyes fully, and the sight of the rumpled sheets next to you confirmed your suspicions.

You rolled onto your back, into a starfish position; closing your eyes for a moment and exhaling deeply. Last night had not been particularly wild - a couple of drinks with the band and a half-empty pub didn’t make for much excitement - but you had gotten back home late and the fact that you were already tired from the stressful past week didn’t help.

Then, you noticed the sound of soft guitar playing from the living room. Lifting your head slightly to look at the bedroom door, which had been left ajar, you frowned at first and then laughed silently, shaking your head. It wasn’t the first time you had woken up to something like this.

You stretched, groaning, then sat up and dragged yourself out of the sheets. You had fallen asleep in the same slightly oversized t-shirt you had been wearing when you got back to the flat last night, and settled for simply picking yesterday’s shorts off the floor and pulling them on to maintain some sort of dignity. You quietly pushed the door open and stepped forwards into the doorway, taking in the view of the living room and its resident.

Brian sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the couch, his acoustic on his lap, strumming a slow-paced melody. Every now and then, he’d mumble a few words, as if trying them out to the beat. A pile of blank paper sheets lay to his right, and a single sheet with words scribbled on it to his left; a ballpoint pen discarded on top of it.

Brian’s hair was a mess and he was still wearing the worn-out t-shirt and sweatpants he had fallen asleep in last night. He looked gorgeous, and you caught yourself smiling a little, taking the opportunity to observe him while he still hadn’t noticed your presence.

Queen was doing well and for the past couple of years they had frequently been away on tours for months at a time, leaving you to your own devices back home. As happy as it made you that they were making it big, you hardly enjoyed the loneliness. So, knowing that you’d soon enough only have Brian’s voice at the other end of a phone line to keep you company, you were grateful for every moment like this that you could get.

“Genius at work?” you finally asked with a smirk, approaching him slowly.

Brian stopped playing and turned to look at you, a look of both joy and concern spreading across his face. “I guess so. Did I wake you?”

“God, no, I sleep like a bloody rock,” you assured him. “What are you writing, then?”

“Oh, just an idea that came to me. I’ve had a few chords in my head for a while now, but I only just came up with the proper order. And it’s still far from finished. I’m trying to come up with a melody.”

You kneeled on the floor next to the paper sheet, picking it up. A short sequence of chords was written on it: G, C, G, D, G, Em. A chorus or verse; you weren’t sure which one - and, frankly, Brian probably didn’t know either. Below it was a set of lyrics, about as short as the chord sequence. Brian’s handwriting was neat, but the letters were slightly disfigured; the rushed handwriting of someone in a hurry to put an idea into words before it was lost:

Don’t you hear my call, though you’re many years away?

Don’t you hear me calling you?

Write your letters in the sand, for the day I take your hand

You smiled. “It’s great.”

Brian’s eyes lit up a little, his eyebrows raising. “You think?”

“Yeah. Beautiful lyrics.” You read through the words on the paper again, regarding them carefully. “What’s the song gonna be about?”

Brian shrugged. “I’m not quite sure. I had this idea… It sounds a bit weird, but I had this idea of writing something inspired by the theory of relativity.”

You frowned, surprised. “The theory of relativity?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m imagining this…” Brian fidgeted with his fingers. “This man, who goes on a ship and travels somewhere, and he’s away for what he thinks is a short time, but then he comes back home and realizes that it’s been decades and everyone he used to know has aged without him. Don’t you think that would make a good song?” It was a genuine question, asked in a relaxed manner but with an underlying hint of insecurity.

“That’s- that’s amazing,” you said, sincerely. “Yes. Absolutely, it’s going to make a great song.”

Brian shrugged. “I hope so.”

“It is. It really is.”

Brian smiled, looking a little flustered. His eyes turned to the floor, his long fingers plucking at the strings of the guitar absentmindedly.

You crawled closer to him, reaching out and combing your fingers lightly through his hair. He leaned into the touch, before picking the playing back up, and your heart swelled. How lucky I am.

You remained in this position for a couple of minutes, Brian strumming his guitar and occasionally taking a break to write something down. Eventually he put the pen down, shifted slightly and placed the guitar gently on the floor to his right; your cue to lay down on his lap. You fit your head and upper body neatly onto his crossed legs, your back pressed against his stomach. You felt him lean back against the couch, and his fingers landed in your hair, running through it for a second. Your eyes fell shut almost instantly, You were always most comfortable like this.

“I thought about the fact that it’s kind of what touring is like, too,” he suddenly said, picking right back up where you had left the conversation several minutes ago. “I mean, you go away and feel as though you’re unstoppable and that you’ve got all the time in the world, but then you come back home and you realize that everybody else has moved on without you.”

You frowned, turning your head to look up at Brian. He didn’t look back at you; instead, his gaze was fixed somewhere on the other side of the room. His expression was neutral, but there was something underlying there, too; a sense of guilt, maybe. Something heavy and sad.

His voice was thoughtful, almost guilty, and your heart ached. You clasped your fingers gently around his wrist, your thumb rubbing up and down almost of its own accord. “Want my honest opinion?” You paused for a beat, but Brian said nothing. You continued: ”I hate waiting for you. I hate it when you’re not here, I hate only being able to talk to you over the phone for weeks on end.” You could feel Brian tensing up a little. ”But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s worth it. And it certainly doesn’t mean I’ll stop waiting.”

You heard him exhale as his body relaxed beneath yours, his fingers running through your hair once. In return, you put your hand on his knee, rubbing gently for a couple of seconds.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said, shaking his head slightly.

“Of course not. I’m way out of your league. Much hotter than you, and cooler, and…”

Brian slapped your arm gently, his body shaking with quiet laughter. “Oh, shut the hell up.”

“It’s true, though! I should be dating someone more rockstar-esque. Roger, maybe.”

“You think Roger reaches your standards? Are we talking about the same person? Last night he mixed beer and strawberry soda for you when you said you wanted a non-alcoholic drink.”

“Yes, he did, like a true gentleman.”

Brian snorted, and you took his hand, pressing it against your lips. “Sorry. Of course you are the one for me; Brian May, love of my life, apple of my eye, most epic shag I’ve ever had. I would never replace you, no matter how great Roger’s drinks are.”

“It’s like a giant hug.”

“I’d expect as much.”

Your laughter died down eventually, giving way to a comfortable silence and stillness. After a few seconds, Brian leaned forward - a movement made awkward by your respective positions - and pressed a gentle kiss to your cheek. You smiled widely as he moved on to your mouth, this time kissing you deeply.

He hummed contentedly. “You’re lovely,” he told you, his face hovering just above yours. You laughed briefly.

“You’re lovelier.”

[juicebuck]

what are your top 5 clips/scenes from s2 of skam italia? (i know it's hard to choose)

This was incredibly difficult, anon. How dare you? But l gave it a good go. This took longer to answer than I intended because I am me and thus I could not stop prattling on. Sorry? But here we are:

1. La Grotta / Martino e Niccolò

Tied first place because it is impossible to separate them. I refuse. I know I have already talked everyone to death about both of these clips but I just adore them. Every single thing about them. They are so important. La Grotta took my breath away. Both Rocco and Fede did such an incredible job at conveying the emotion of this moment. Because the thing is, Marti's issue was never entirely to do with Nico having a mental illness. Despite what happened in Milan, Marti still wanted to see Nico, to know that he was okay. Marti's struggle was predominantly with the idea that Maddalena (*side-eyes*) planted in his head that Nico's illness somehow voided their relationship and his feelings for Marti. Nico's illness never made Marti love him any less. In fact, Marti was afraid of the opposite. That Nico's illness meant that Nico didn't love him. And all of that is just so apparent in this clip. Because as soon as Marti realises that Nico is truly in love with him, not even God himself can fucking stop him from getting to that terrace. The entire scene on the terrace is utterly heart-wrenching and breathtaking. One of the most beautiful things about that moment is that Marti does not stop smiling through it all. It is the most certain and understanding and reassuring smile. He looks at Nico with so much softness and conviction. Because he knows that Nico loves him now. And that's all that really matters. Yes, it's going to be tough. But it's worth every second. He breaks through Nico's shame. He literally kisses away his tears. He soothes Nico's deepest fears. And all Nico can do is watch in silent awe that this boy really exists in front of him. That Marti's not ashamed of him or abandoning him. Like, it's so beautiful? Everything about it is just so beautiful.

Martino e Niccolò is just as beautiful. I've talked about this before so I'm not going to write an essay, but Nico's fragile vulnerability hit me like a fucking train. I can feel every single moment of his conflict and shame in this scene. Of how utterly terrified he is of Marti witnessing a depressive episode. Terrified that he's going to drag Marti down with him and that Marti will inevitably end up hating him and leaving him. And Marti handles it with such care and reassurance. So much gentle certainty. I am truly in awe of that boy. He is such a grounding presence for Nico. It was so lovely to see Nico respond the way he did. Because despite how completely horrible he feels he manages to smile. And that's a wonderful thing.

(Also I love when Marti's on the phone to Maddi and she says, "It's not true that he only wants to be with you because of his illness" etc. Because Marti's face is so funny? His expression literally says, "Yeah, cheers, but I already fucking know that now. No thanks to you." In fact, he doesn't even dignify the comment with a response. I love you, Martino.)

2. Due Ore

I will never forget the night that clip dropped (or the previous night when we were all sat waiting for it and it didn't drop, what a fucking time). I love every single second of Due Ore. The atmosphere -- the feeling -- of that scene was just incredible. It was like an exhale. You could feel it. Could feel the relief, the finally, this is where we're supposed to be, after the tumultuous push-and-pull of the last couple of weeks. You could feel the inevitability of it when they were stood there staring at each other. Nico's nervous anticipatory smile as he waited for Marti to make the first move. Marti grinning back at him in earnest. They both knew that there needed to be an actual conversation at some point. But in that moment it just wasn't necessary. It could wait. Because everything was written on their faces. This is what I want. You are what I want. We talk about fate a lot with these two -- the red string of fate! -- and I never felt it more strongly than I did in this scene. You could almost see the damn string tying them together. It was inevitable and they both knew it.

3. Patatine e Marmellata

Getting to see them wake up together was such a blessing. The way Marti was sleeping on Nico's chest, gosh. They looked so peaceful and content. It was wonderful. And their conversation -- the conversation that they inevitably had to have -- about Maddalena was important. "I want to figure out how I feel for myself." It gave us an important insight into Nico's headspace and the way the people around him treat him and his illness. When Marti directly asks him how he feels, Nico's face just lights the fuck up. It hurts my heart a little. When was the last time someone asked him that without trying to dictate the answer for him? His soft, whispered answer of "You know perfectly well. And it's never happened to me before." He knows how he feels and he can finally say it and not have it questioned. Marti's smile and his little breath of a laugh -- like he just can't contain how delighted he is that they feel the same way -- before his "Me neither". And then of course, Buon Viaggo. The way they literally cannot stop grinning at one another. Their soft kisses in between serenading each other. I mean, you could not make this up. And god, the way Marti stares up at Nico when he starts singing absolutely floors me every time. He is so in love with him he is completely incapable of keeping it off his face. Then he just straight up calls him the man of his dreams. And not forgetting the boys and their incredible dance and sing-a-long while cleaning the kitchen. How was this clip even real? What a fucking blessing.

4. Nel Mio Letto

Soft Boyfriends(tm). This is always my first go-to clip when I'm feeling particularly awful. Because there is just something so incredibly comforting about it. It's like a warm blanket and a hot cup of tea on a bitter cold winter's day. I think it's to do with the cosy softness of it all. The way they're intertwined. The sleepy cuddles and kisses. The coffee. The coffee heart. The song. It's like a wonderful bubble of contentment. Like Nico's bed is its own little safe haven. I love the whole atmosphere of it. It really does feel like they are the only two people in the world. Which ties in perfectly with their conversation about the last man on earth. (Still sad they didn't get their three days in bed though.)

5. Halloween

HALLOWEEN. Everything about this is iconic. The giraffes on the beer glasses? Marti dramatically ditching his mask in front of the Catholic church? The lighting in the pool? That shot of them underwater where they're surrounded by an endless expanse of water like they're in the ocean? Nico somehow managing to never stop fucking smiling at Marti even when trying to hold his breath underwater? I love that Skam Italia managed to make the pool scene their own. It was a world away from the OG scene (in the sense that it has a completely different feel to it) and I love that. I love that they're both essentially the same scene but evoke so many different emotions. There was this sort of giddy anticipatory feeling with Marti and Nico. Their kiss was like taking that first breath after being underwater for so long. The way they clung to each other? The way they were so in awe of each other? Like in Due Ore there was that overwhelming feeling of joy and relief. Finally.

Honorary mentions, because just five is too hard:

Tu Non Sei di Milano

It feels a little bizarre to call it a favourite clip. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that it is a clip that particularly resonated with me. I have only watched this clip in its entirety three times. The first time I was on a bus to London -- frankly I should have known better than to watch it in public -- and I almost had a panic attack while watching it. I sobbed in a public bathroom for a good twenty minutes, it was quite the day. Because I recognised so much of myself in Nico and his behaviour and I felt so much empathy for him. It hit me like a fucking train. It was the most difficult clip to watch, but it was also incredibly important. It took me a long time to rewatch it. The second and third times were difficult too. But also cathartic in a way. When you suffer from an illness like BPD, it can be incredibly isolating. You can feel like there is no one else in the world who can possibly understand what you're going through or what it feels like. Sometimes I think, "I'm ridiculous. No one else does this crazy shit. Why am I like this? Why can't I just snap the fuck out of it?" Watching that clip was validating in a lot of respects. It was difficult to watch but it also reminded me that I am not alone. That there are other people out there who experience the same struggles that I do. Who battle with episodes like this too. It was an incredibly tough watch, but it was so important.

Also, veering away from the more painful aspects of that clip: I absolutely love the way Nico seduced Marti in front of that damn neon light. Marti's soft and naive voice when he's attempting to read the "how fun". Nico's "no, no, it says Marti and Nico" and insisting Marti look again just so he can catch him by surprise in a kiss. Those achingly slow and soft kisses they exchange are probably my favourite kisses of theirs. That scene was just so intimate and beautifully done.

Vediamo

One of my favourite things about this season is the dynamic between Marti and his mother. It was so lovely to watch them heal and slowly but surely repair their relationship. Vediamo really captured the essence of that. Marti's misplaced anger towards his mother during the fallout of Milan. The brutal yelling. The way they both sit on opposite sides of the door. Marti's quiet and tearful "Are you sitting there?" His mum asking him if he thinks she would have a problem with it and then her sobbing "You are the most important thing in my life." The two of them just bloody sobbing on either side of the door. I am tearing up thinking about it. Good grief. I absolutely adore Mamma Rametta. And of course, "Vediamo" and her calling it Martinese for "No." Their tearful laughter. I love it so much. They have their ups and downs but they really do love each other unconditionally.

Effettivamente

This might just be one of my favourite coming out scenes that I have ever witnessed. Fede did such a wonderful job at conveying Marti's inner struggle. The way Marti has to fight to get the words out. The way he falters a little when he says "It's not a girl." It makes my own heart falter every single fucking time I watch it. You can see him wrestling with the words. And Gio, darling Gio. I love Giovanni Garau with a U (it's Sardinian), resident Love Wizard. He's such a wonderful friend and I just really adore the way he handles it. The way he stops playing FIFA to give Marti his full attention. That wonderful and supportive smile of his. How he asks questions about Niccolò and lets Marti get out some of the shit he's been holding onto. He really puts Marti at ease. You can see the relief seep into Marti's body when he realises that nothing is going to change between them because of this. Marti's huge smile when Gio says "He needs to leave his girlfriend" and then ruffles Marti's hair. I love supportive best friends.

And there you have it. Sorry, you asked for five and I gave you about nine. You probably didn't want a novel. But what can I say? I have a lot of love to share.

[lilyths-blog1]

♦ : ^ ). You can set this in our normal verse or write that lil scene I told you about that coulda happened in America.

Intimacy Meme. — (( @rinadealga

♦: Slow dancing.

The ear numbing cacophony of overzealous shouting, singing, and overall merriment echoed throughout the halls of the White House; sounding so strongly within the now mess hall that the walls quivered. The atmosphere was electrified with excitement and anticipation . . Only causing the crowd of celts to grow louder and more rowdy by the second as the aura gradually grew stronger.

They were celebrating; Celebrating the final approaching battles, completely assured that with the power of a grail, their beastly king, and his newfound magus that the said battles were already won. A grave mistake, perhaps, for any other battalion . . But even SHE knew that they were not overestimating themselves. It was entirely possible that they would win . . Against Chaldea, the savior of humanity, and likely every battle to come after that. They would win here, and the world she’d left behind would end in flames.

Rubied hues stare out, over hundreds of exclaiming, joyous heads . . Scanning the groups and crowds below her balcony perch as a realization hits her. It does not strike her with force as it should have . . It is not the mind shattering, gut wrenching thought that it should have been. It’s subtle, and simply put, and by the time it even becomes a true thought, she’s already accepted it.

Her mind had wandered for a moment, and now as it returns, she brushes her fingers along the balconies marble rails before walking from it; Leaving the bustling main hall behind her as she walks into the somewhat darkened presidential suite.

The heels upon her feet click softly as she moves to take a seat upon the side of the bed, reminding her of the dull ache they’ve caused upon her soles. With a sigh, she reaches down and removes them, bending down and placing the pair to the side . . As her head raises once again, a glint of silver catches her eyes, and she pauses.

Slowly sitting to her full height, a satin gloved hand reaches out, fingers gingerly curling about the chipped music box on the nightstand. Staring down at it for a moment, her free hand reaches for the small key about her neck . . It had never worked before. Clearly broken when they had found it during their excursion . . A peace of junk with no use to anyone any longer, left to ruin along with the building about it as the war raged on. Naught but fancy scrap metal now . . And she had only been allowed to keep it back then because she had promised to keep her mouth shut.

It had never worked before, just a small chunk of wood and metal that shouldn’t have been able to bring joy to anyone anymore; Completely useless. So . . There was no point in trying to play with it anymore. Her free hand drops back to her lap now, eyes dimming as she stares down at the music box, thumb idly pawing along its sides.

No . . No. She should try again. Maybe some sort of miracle would occur and this time it would work? Her hand once again reaches for the key, removing it from about her neck and sticking it into the music box’s keyhole. With a deep inhale, Selena twists the key slowly . . Around, and around, until she hears a soft ‘click,’ indicating that it could be turnt no further. Holding her breath, she slides the key from the hole . . Soft mechanical whirs come from within, and her eyes light up seeing the top of the box slowly lift open . . Revealing a miniature ballerina upon a spring. A singular musical note resounds from the box, and the ballerina begins to turn. Ah, was it actually going to—?

But no. It falls silent after that. Excitement immediately dissipating, Selena places the music box back down upon the nightstand with a defeated exhale.

The sound of the door opening behind her alarms the woman, though she knows by the sound of the footsteps that follow that she has no need to be startled. With her eyes glued upon the music box, she waits for him to speak.

‘It was your idea, remember? So . . Why aren’t you out there?’

It had been her idea; Some sort of get together . . One last, large shindig of sorts to raise morale . . And it had certainly worked judging by the ever present buzzing from the main hall. It was a party, and everyone was enjoying it, except her. So, why wasn’t she out there?

Sighing, Selena puts on a half-smile, glancing back at the mad king over her shoulder, “ . . And YOU’RE their king. Shouldn’t YOU be down there too?” When had she grown so bold? How could she sit there and speak to carnage made man with such cheek? She didn’t remember when the feelings had shifted . . But she did know, that had she been anyone else, she wouldn’t have been sitting there intact for much longer.

Meeting his gaze, they’re silent for a moment and the quiet fills the room, her eyes returning to the music box, “It was my idea, yeah. But, I’m not much for crowds, honestly. They make me queasy.” She was lying, partly. She had no problem with crowds, but . . She WAS feeling queasy. As for why? It was easier to know and accept than explain. This seemed to be the one time a fib of hers had actually been convincing judging by the berserkers tone (tinged with worry so faint it would be unnoticeable by most,) when next he spoke.

‘Then rest. You’re going to need your strength tomorrow. I’ll go get some water—’

He must’ve seen the way she was shaking her head because he paused there and waited, “No. I don’t need it.” Silence consumes the suite once again until, at last, the magus stands. Walking about the side of the bed, she makes her way to stand before the man before extending a hand . . A soft smile taking its place upon her lips.

“This is a party, isn’t it? I don’t know about you guys but, at OUR parties . . Theres usually dancing. And since I don’t see anyone else up here, I guess you’re just going to have to dance with me.”

She watches with slight amusement as a wave of confusion washes over his face . . Though it’s soon replaced with resignation before her hand is engulfed in the claws and scales adorning his own. Slowly raising her opposite hand, she moves closer so it can gently grasp his free hand and place it upon her hip before it trails its way up his arm to perch upon his shoulder.

And as the first step of their waltz is taken, just as her now bare toes land against the floor; The music box begins to play.

Eyes now fixated upon her partners, she grips his hand firmly as she leads them both about the room in gradual circles. The white noise of the main hall suddenly forgotten as she focuses in upon the gentle melody filling the room. It was strangely peaceful considering what was happening . . As if the world outside had gone and poofed away for the moment. No party, no celts, no war . . Just her, and him, and the music box.

And when at last the music stops, and feet along with it; She decides. No, she’d already decided, from the moment those command seals had appeared on her hand . .

Her eyes fall to the ground now, though she doesn’t let go of him just yet.

“ . . Tomorrow.” A pause as she inhales, “Tomorrow is it. Tomorrow is our last fight . . At least for now.” And now her gaze rises again, “We’re going to win. And when we do, you’re . . Really going to be king around here.” Theres blatant confusion on his face now . . And she understands why.

“I must sound really fucked up right now, right? After all, this was all a mistake. I was never supposed to be here to begin with . . And then you locked me up, forced me to make a pact with you . . Made me fight against the people I was supposed to be fighting to save. Not to mention you pretty much forced yourself on me multiple times—” She pauses, shaking her head, “Yeah . .  I’ve gotta be screwed up in the head or something . . But that’s okay. I’ve already forgiven you.”

“ . . I’ve . . Never been able to do anything for anyone. Never once have I ever felt that I’ve been of use to anyone no matter how hard I tried. No matter how desperately I strived or how much I pushed myself . . I’ve never been useful, I’ve never been enough.”

“I poured years of my life into training . . To become a magus actually worth a damn. I gave up a normal life . . So that for once I could be useful to someone. And thats why I went to Chaldea . . Because surely they could make use of me there, right . . ?” A quiet, sorrowful laugh escapes her after this, “But, of course not. In the end, Fujimaru was the only one they cared about . . And I ended up being nothing but a bother they pushed grunt work on so they wouldn’t feel bad because I had nothing to do.”

“Then I come here, and I become your . . Master. And god I hated you. I should STILL hate you, you know? You’re my enemy . . You’re my WORLDS enemy at this point, you are what stands between a future of prosperity, and one that ends in fire. But . .”

“But you’re the only one who could make use of me . . you’re also the only person who’s ever NEEDED me. And after years . . And years of searching for that, to find it here of all places . .” Her voice gradually turns whisper like as she speaks . . She’s shaking now, it’s barely noticeable but . .

Selena lets go now, stepping back . . And when she raises her chin, tears have begun to stream down her face, “Please . . Just say that, after tomorrow, you’ll still need me. Even if it’s just as a mana source . . So long as you continue to need me . . “

“Then, I’m content staying here with you. Forever.”

[ask-yusukekitagawa-blog]

shukita fic: “i wish i could just leave it all behind”

words: 3395

summary: "Yusuke was angry. No, so extremely maddened, possibly even insane with it. His mother had died at the hands of the person he still yearned to call father, even despite all that transpired. His tongue tasted bitterness, a strong bitterness brewed from black fury, but above all else, was disgust. Not with Madarame, but with himself."

It was still hard. Very, very hard. Madarame was gone, Yusuke knew that. But he didn't know how to really be free again, and he doubted he ever really even knew what it felt like. Akira, though, would never let him be so lost forever. (yusuke has many emotions and probably needs therapy, akira gets him to open up and its sad)

ao3 link

(i finally got around to postin this! it’s been in my files for months!! pls give me a read and tell me what u think!)

Yusuke wasn’t a big talker. To other people, that is.

He was his best conversation partner. He could hold countless arguments within his own head for as long as he wanted, and accompany himself in the solitude found in a large group. It was not like he particularly liked himself, but he didn’t mind being alone. Loneliness was not his issue, because he had himself, but also...only himself.

He saw Madarame on the TV screen, weeping like an abandoned child, curled up against the cold wood of the table. The crowd was in an uproar, and the shuttering cameras clicked obnoxiously, but his cries rose above it all. Flashes of light surrounded him like the strikes of angels, and was sent away into the sky, where Yusuke would never see him again. The twisted feeling he had in his chest was nearly indescribable in its pain. On the screen was his abuser, his prison guard, but somehow, still his father, and he hated it so, so much.

As the press conference quickly ended, Yusuke was left with so many emotions he could not capture and control. His mind focused only on how Madarame gave him his favorite meal for him on his birthdays, and how he purchased too many medicines for him when he fell ill, and Yusuke felt sick to his stomach. All he wanted was to curl up into a ball so small that no one would ever see him again.

He could bask in the delight that Ann, Ryuji, Morgana, and Akira gleamed with at Madarame’s downfall, and indeed a large part of him was full to the brim with joy and freedom. His heart ached with a new, raw sweetness. More than anything, he was drunk on delight at his life reborn. Yet, when he went to bed, he missed the same bed since he slept in as a child, and the house he grew up in. A large part of him still wanted to go back home (not that it ever really should’ve been a home). He could not act in this, this emotional way...

He slapped his white sketch pad open in front of him, and he held his pencil to the blank surface, waiting for the graphite to bloom at the tip, but there was nothing. A landscape—no, a blind contour—no, no, an observational drawing—no. No, his hand couldn’t even move. His brain was empty, and he drifted thoughtlessly into it, empty in consciousness. His vision blurred until he couldn’t see anything anymore.

Yusuke was angry. No, so extremely maddened, possibly even insane with it. His mother had died at the hands of the person he still yearned to call father, even despite all that transpired. His tongue tasted bitterness, a strong bitterness brewed from black fury, but above all else, was disgust. Not with Madarame, but with himself.

He remembered warm nights, but also frigid ones. Ones in which a bed was an off-limits privilege. Ones in which, at the peak of night, he wished that he was talentless, but have freedom. Ones in which he wanted to be anywhere but there, and somehow, he, he...

Sleep swallowed him up as he fell deeper into himself, and he drifted away, unfulfilled.

. . .

Yusuke didn’t bother texting back to most messages on the chat. They were mostly between Ryuji and Ann, including the occasional blip from Akira. His input was unnecessary, but he thankfully he didn’t forget to read the one regarding mementos.

“We shouldn’t let our guard down,” was what Akira said at the rooftop. He leaned against a desk, and he looked slim and tall. Yusuke fell in love with how fluid he appeared, even upon standing still. He wished he had brought his sketchbook with him. “Let’s go.”

Mementos was dark and pulsed with the breaths of shadows, wandering up the empty railways. It wasn’t Yusuke’s first time in it, and yet, he felt so swallowed up by the thick atmosphere. He felt like he was suffocating. It was probably the depth.

Yusuke’s body ached with lethargy on his strikes, and anxiety screamed at him to get it together. He felt eyes all over his back, and he didn’t know if it was from his friends or just the enemies. He wanted to shout when his last attack was almost enough to end the battle. He felt sapped of his usefulness.

Everything felt like it was eaten by white noise. No one was real, frankly. They all felt very, very far away, and they were gradually drifting farther into the tunnel. Maybe, they would leave, too, and Yusuke would no longer care.

“Fox!” Akira screamed. Another unexpected battle had jumped onto them. They were unfairly and foolishly surrounded, and they were getting beat into the ground. Akira reared back to withhold a fiercely placed attack, and dirt crawled up his heel. His entire body was trembling from the strenuous effort. Yusuke knew he had to do something, but his brain couldn’t think of anything, he couldn’t, his heart was crawling up into his throat until he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t do it, he had—couldn’t—he, nothing— “Mabufula, Fox, now!”

Yusuke jolted, attention snapping back, and ice crystals shattered like fireworks against the shadows, and they exploded into cold dust. A knot in his chest tightened as he heard the thump of Akira hitting the floor. He whirled around, sprinting towards him, who laid limply.

“Joker!” Ann appeared by Akira’s side, and fretted as she gently cast diarama over his bruises. The magic shone a mild green over his wounds, and she cradled him gently as he caught his breath. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Joker said, voice tight, and sat up quickly. He didn’t seem severely damaged, just woozy. He met Yusuke’s eyes, and Yusuke froze. Ice pooled at the bottom of his feet and crawled into his veins. He had failed, and he was going to pay for it. He wanted to apologize, wanted to say something, but his nerves had closed up around his lungs. He could barely breathe.

“Fox.” Akira’s voice was much softer than he had imagined. It broke the tight string knotted in his chest, and Yusuke exhaled. He didn’t look upset, just slightly scuffed up. His eyes were kind. Even so, his stomach ached nervously, and he wanted to shut off all of his senses. He didn’t deserve such an apologetic smile. “Could you do support today? That will be easier.”

“Of course,” Yusuke said quickly, and then he sped to the back of the group, shame blooming like thorns of a rose in his chest. He drilled his eyes into the floor, and made sure not to say anything. He was being a burden on them. He had one job for them, and he couldn’t even get that right.

Akira was right, as usual. Battles processed much more smoothly, and there were no hiccups in their offense. He hated to say it, but there was a noticeable difference with him off the front lines. If it was just him and Akira, Akira may have died right there. It was a horrible thought.

Yusuke stayed quiet, and drifted away. He wasn’t of any use to them, and it wasn’t his place to declare it anyways.

. . .

“Excellent work today, everyone.” Everyone cheered tiredly as they materialized back into their own world, and Yusuke, too, had never been happier to see their starless night sky. Akira gave them all an affirmative nod, praising them for their hard work. “Get some rest. We won’t have to head in again for a while. You guys were tough today.”

The entire party had leaked out the door of Leblanc. They regrouped back at base to eat a quick dinner before departing, as a sort of reward for their efforts. It was also a Saturday night, leaving the night limitless without school the next day. Yusuke was slow in his walk out, head heavy with thoughts. He didn’t feel better than he did before. On the contrary, he still felt like garbage, or as he would prefer to put it, like an unfinished bowl of miso soup left cold. As he opened the door, a hand grasped his shoulder. He gasped and reversed, meeting Akira’s face head on. He jolted back, but not far.

“Yusuke.” Akira’s voice was still soft, but yet, Yusuke was still scared. Madarame had been so soft-spoken, but at the end of the day, he hit harder. “Can I talk with you for a quick second before you go? You’re fine, you haven’t done anything wrong,” he clarified, and Yusuke felt a twinge of embarrassment. Akira must have seen the tight coil of anxiety right on his face. “I just...want to ask you about something.”

“Y-Yes,” Yusuke complied.

They sat at an empty booth, and Yusuke would’ve been picking at the sides of his fingernails if he weren’t so numb. Akira was silent for a minute, as if he was trying to pick the right words. Yusuke knew he said he was fine, that he hadn’t messed up, but yet, he was still steeling himself for an onslaught of pain. It was just like how it was with Madarame, he would just have to breathe evenly, and he would be fine. Fine.

“Are you okay?” Akira finally said.

It felt like a winded up punch right against his chest.

He wasn’t expecting such that sort of sincerity, and that’s all it took for Akira to break his façade. Yusuke really was weak, after all. Hot shame melted inside of him. Under the table, he clasped his hands as tightly as he could. Akira’s expression remained unchanged, save for the bite on his lip.

“I’m sorry. Let me rephrase.” His eyes kept Yusuke’s attention in place, who felt rather fidgety all of a sudden. “You’re not okay, and, if you would...please talk to me about it.”

“...” Yusuke almost let his mouth hang open.

That really was not what he was expecting at all. How could Akira sound so okay with it? If anything, he felt angry at himself for being so transparent the whole day. It wasn’t good for morale, and clearly effective in battle. He was better than this. He could do better than this.

“I’m fine,” Yusuke said. He tried to sound convincing.

“Stop, please,” Akira argued. It didn’t work. “Yusuke, I’ll be plain. You were completely different today, and in battle, it was even more obvious.”

“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” Yusuke said quickly, shameful heat crawling up his neck. He couldn’t even look at Akira anymore.

“No, Yusuke.” Akira was gentle, and again, again, Yusuke was surprised. “I’m not here to berate you. And even if it happened again, we work through it, together.”

Yusuke couldn’t say anything to that. He felt stuck. Akira was a warm candle to his cold skin, and he didn’t know where it came from. No, that was a lie. He knew its origins. Akira was naturally and beautifully kind. It was just...why?

“I’m not trying to make you tell me anything, but next time, tell me if you don’t feel well, physically or mentally.” Akira leaned in across the table, elbows squeaking against the surface. It made Yusuke look up, and at that point, there was nowhere else for Yusuke to stare. “Especially since you don’t eat a lot, too. I don’t want you to get hurt when we fight. Just promise me you’ll tell me. Please.”

Unwillingly, Yusuke was silent for a while.

“You’re—You’re genuinely not mad at me?” he said after an aching pause. His voice was very small.

“Mad?” Akira’s whole demeanor loosened. “Of course not. I’m just concerned for you. You’re my friend.”

“I almost got you killed.”

“That’s not true. Injured a bit, maybe. But that would never happen, at the very least not in mementos.”

“You should be more mad at me,” Yusuke whispered, throat tight, but Akira did not yield. He settled back into his seat, surveying him with a puzzling stare.

“I’m your leader, sure, but I’m your friend, too.” Akira smiled softly. “It’s not my place to yell at you, and you didn’t even doing anything. You’re apart of us now. Not just The Phantom Thieves, but of our group. Our friendship,” he clarified. “None of this is easy. The metaverse is difficult, but we tackle a lot of painful things, too. Emotional things. Our first palace showed that really well, and..We don’t want to leave you behind in this. I don’t want to. I want to be there for you, Yusuke. Always.”

Yusuke blinked, and then stared into Akira’s face. He felt completely still, but not like before. His body had gone rigid in shock. A breath of fresh air scorched his swollen lungs, and he felt his chest swelling heavily. Hot tears filled up the edges of his eyes, and his eyes blurred out of focus, welling up. They trembled on the edge of his reddened eyelids, and clung desperately to the tips of his eyelashes. He finally blinked, and they dripped down his cheeks. Yusuke could not speak.

“Yusuke,” Akira murmured.

“I, I don’t,” Yusuke sucked in a breath, grinding his teeth together to shut himself up. “I’m—” He began coughing in his own attempt to stay quiet, and he felt like he was drowning. There was no saving this. “I’m sorry,” was all he was able to get out.

“Don’t apologize,” Akira soothed, and his voice came from right next to him. Yusuke looked up to his side and Akira was sitting right there, eyes empathetic and open. His eyes appeared a bit glossy, much like a wet streak of white paint. Yusuke blinked to make sure he wasn’t an illusion. Wet tears dripped out again, and he continued to stare in awe, until the emotions in his chest could no longer wait.

Yusuke wept.

He felt so ugly inside, so horrible. He hated the feelings that plagued him from sunrise to sundown, and all the dark hours between. Even sleep would not let him forget. His eyes stayed glued to his knees, and his chest heaved with enormous effort to stifle his cries. Then, he felt Akira’s arm over his shoulder, and he was tugged into his warm side. Almost immediately, the tears simply gushed out, like a shaken soda can. He cried, cried, and cried into Akira’s side until he felt it would be an impossible feat to produce to do more.

. . .

Wordlessly, Akira put a tissue box into Yusuke’s hands. The only sounds were Yusuke sniffling violently. Promptly, he blew his nose, and made a rude noise. He supposed, though, it was better than letting snot fall out of his nose.

“Better?” Akira asked. His arm was still tight around Yusuke’s back.

“Much so,” Yusuke said, and it was the truth. He gave a particularly ginormous blow from his nose, and the low rumble of Akira’s laugh reverberated into his side warmly. He left Yusuke collect himself and his hefty pile of used tissues. “...Tell me?” Akira prodded carefully.

“I don’t wish to burden you,” Yusuke said weakly. He was tired. It felt futile to argue, but he couldn’t help himself.

“You could never be a burden.”

Yusuke swallowed, and tried not to cry again.

“Alright.” He took in a slow breath, and he could feel Akira’s eyes firmly on him. “Ever since sensei—no, Madarame was put in jail, I’ve been constantly disturbed by thought after thought,” Yusuke started, words shaking. “I keep thinking about my past. About him. About my childhood.” He stared straight in front of him, eyes unfocused. “Everything was a lie. Truly, I detest him. A future with my mother was not his to take, and neither was my life or hers.” Yusuke’s fists clenched unbearably on wet tissue, and he felt it crumble in his hands. “I have the deepest of contempt for him, and yet, part of me has the audacity to call him my father.” He burst at the last note, and he swallowed thickly, grinding his teeth.

“...Do you miss him?” Akira was so quiet Yusuke wouldn’t have heard not for the silence.

“I suppose I do,” Yusuke said. He paused, and took in a deep breath. He could feel his chest shaking. “I hate that particular feeling the most. I don’t want to miss him. There’s scarcely anything to miss about him.”

“But that’s something, isn’t it?” Yusuke could only nod numbly in agreement. It hurt. “It has only been several weeks. Of course it’s difficult. He was your dad, to an extent, even if he was horrible to you.” Akira drew soft circles into his back, and Yusuke thought he very much didn’t mind it. “I think I can understand a little.”

“Truly?”

“Yeah,” Akira said. “I miss my parents a lot. The ones back home.”

“Are they...kind?” Judging by Akira’s forlorn face, Yusuke didn’t expect anything nice.

“I wouldn’t say that. They haven’t called me since I first came here. They don’t care much, and they didn’t really care much before, either. I still love them, though. It’s not right, and they haven’t given me a lot to work with, but they’re still my parents. It’s not all black and white.” Akira smiled, but it was very sad. “I’ve never said this to anyone, you know.”

“Neither have I,” Yusuke said. “Your words reflect my thoughts rather well.”

“Yeah?” Akira sighed, and Yusuke felt that he agreed wordlessly. Without thinking, he let his head fall on Akira’s shoulder, and he snapped back.

“S-Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Akira rushed. “...If you want, you can.” Yusuke sat still for a moment, and then, slowly, let his head rest back onto Akira’s shoulder. “Just remember how it was back then. Your past life, and how you’re free now. It’ll just take time to get used to.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I should’ve said something about this earlier. We made this big deal about how you didn’t have to go through life alone anymore, and yet, now...I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Yusuke said, voice scratchy. “I didn’t say anything, how would you have known?”

“Like today. I hadn’t noticed and then there you were, in mementos, worked up and stressed. Only then, did I realize that something was seriously wrong. To be honest, I thought it was strange when you seemed okay the week after, but I was just stupid.”

“You’re not,” Yusuke countered, albeit without much heat. Akira didn’t really respond.

“You’re not alone in this. I can’t do much for you, but I’m here to lend a shoulder.” Yusuke felt the weight of Akira’s head on top his, and inside, he felt very warm. “Please talk to me if you don’t feel well. What happened to you is a big deal, no matter how you look at it.”

“You’ve already helped me a lot,” Yusuke assured him.

“I’m glad,” Akira said. His hand had slipped behind his back and placed itself on Yusuke’s waist, and brought him closer. His side leaned comfortably into Akira’s shape. “I care about you. Not just as a friend, but...” Akira paused. “I’m sorry. I worded that weird. What I’m trying to say is, is that even we weren’t part of the phantom thieves, I’d still care about you.” Akira had gotten really quiet, and Yusuke felt almost too emotional, all over again.

“And I you,” Yusuke replied, voice barely there. “My feelings towards you wouldn’t change, even if you didn’t help me physically pummel Madarame’s gaudy version of himself.” That got a laugh out of Akira, and there was a slight pink hue to his skin. Yusuke imagined he was the same, but he didn’t bother worrying. It felt nice being so see through.

“Thank goodness,” Akira chuckled. “Our friendship is stronger than the bonds formed from beating up adults.” Yusuke felt Akira’s hand grasp his, and he tried not to seem too delighted. Akira looked at him, and Yusuke felt warm and blurred. “...Stay here? Just for tonight?”

“I’d like that,” Yusuke said without a trace of hesitation.

Without another word, Akira held his hand as they walked up the stairs, and they slowly merged onto the same bed, breathing soundlessly into the night.

Yusuke thought that everything was quite alright with the world.

[snowbellewells]

Quite Cozy

This morning for #ouat fandom crescendo I have just a short little post 4x02 one shot!  I couldn’t resist!  The Captain Swan moments at the end of this episode were so beautiful, and I couldn’t help imagining just a few more.  

“Quite Cozy”

By: @snowbellewells (TutorGirlml on ff.net)

               He is hovering, and he knows it; yet, Killian Jones finds that he cannot help himself.  A mere two hours ago, Emma had been encased within a wall of ice where he could not reach her, could do nothing to help her, and could only listen as her voice grew weaker through David’s crackling walkie.  Sensing all the lovely verve and fire fading from Emma’s dwindling voice had nearly been his undoing, and had him franticly striking the ice with his hook in desperation, even knowing that he would never make a dent in time.  

               Emma glances up at him now, weary eyes grateful as he presses a steaming mug of hot cocoa into her hands.  Her graceful fingers curl around the warm sides; she releases a pleased hum in the back of her throat – almost a purr – and his breath catches roughly.  She was nearly gone.  He had felt the limp exhaustion and the tremors wracking her frame as she crawled out of the hole Elsa had made in the icy wall and nearly collapsed in his arms.  The feisty Swan he was used to would never have let him pick her up and carry her back to the cruiser, would have fought tooth and nail against admitting any sort of weakness, but instead she had clung tighter – as if he would have let anyone take her away from him in that moment. It was a terrifying confirmation of how close she had come.

               His heart swells slightly when she thanks him for the cocoa refill and gives him a heavy-lidded, but open, smile over the ceramic rim of her mug. Emma’s eyes may look frighteningly dark in her still-too-pale face, her hair may be mussed and only partially dry from the coating of ice it had borne, but she is here and safe with him, and Killian tries to focus on that relief instead of the ebbing fear.  The fact that she had not protested when they had returned to the loft and everyone began fussing over her, that she had continued to lean into him while he held her close – even after he had deposited her safely in a chair – that she had twined her fingers together with his when he took her hand in front of her family, did him more good than he wanted to admit.  He still felt his stomach residing somewhere near his knees at the mere thought of her in danger, but if the incident somehow made Emma stop hiding herself away, he would count that as one small gain within the crisis of the last several hours.

               “Are you sure you’re warm enough, Love?” he asks roughly, voice still ragged from calling for her through the impenetrable barrier and forcing down the despair that had been nearly flooding him.  He perches uncertainly on the edge of the couch she has moved to and reaches out hopefully.  Everyone else has gone to bed for the night, and he finds himself strangely unsure of where he belongs and what she wants him to do.  It’s strange; she has always been so controlled, capable, and impervious, that to see her like this – soft and fragile – almost steals the breath from his lungs.  Though he has pushed, teased, wheedled his way into her space, waiting to inevitably be shoved back, now that she sits watching him, seeming to welcome his nearness without qualm or hesitation, he hardly knows how to proceed, whether or not to touch her; he is almost afraid she might shatter.

               A delayed shudder runs through Emma’s limbs, her teeth clacking hard and sending tremors down her arms and legs that Killian can feel through the couch cushions, though she tries to hide them.  Sheepishly, she peers up at him through her lashes and bites her lower lip, knowing she has been caught.  Her toes, still like ice cubes even through the woolen socks her mother brought her earlier, curl against his leather-clad thigh, and she actually giggles like a little girl, her mirth contagious.

               “Oi, Lass!” he yelps, too delighted by her playful joy to be embarrassed at the sound he makes.  “How can your toes still be so cold?”

               He catches her foot in his good hand just as Emma attempts to snatch both feet back, and brings it and its mate to rest on his lap, encircling them both with his hookless forearm and gently caressing the one he first grabbed in a slow, lazy massage.

               “Ooh…” Emma’s voice is low and causes his stomach to flip and nerves to hum as she exhales while letting her head fall against the back of the couch. “That feels wonderful! I’ll…mhmm…give you…an hour to stop that.”

               He chuckles, continuing the soothing motions, slightly awed that now when the danger and shock have passed, she is still allowing this, letting him care for her, but only too happy to pamper his Swan and have her as near as possible after what the night nearly brought.  The quiet between them is comfortable for several minutes until Emma finally lifts her head and eyes him sweetly.  

               “Alright now, Darling?” he murmurs, grinning widely at her, a twinkle in his bright blue eyes.  

               She nods, swallowing thickly, and though she is practically beaming at him, he also cannot help feeling that she is blinking back tears.  Killian hesitates, not wanting to push her or ruin this peaceful moment they have together, but it spills out, “Has no one ever done this for you before, Swan?”  The words sound hoarse, and he realizes the evening’s emotions are finally settling in on him as well.

               Their eyes meet and hold for several beats in time, then Emma shakes her head and simply whispers, “No.”

               Before he can think of any other response, or do anything, she pulls her feet back under her, rises on her knees, and leans over to place a chaste, perfect kiss to his stubbled cheek.  “Thank you, Killian…” she states simply, “…for everything.”

               It is the pirate who finds himself swallowing hard now, throat working as he struggles to force out any sort of sound at all.   Grabbing both of Emma’s hands before she can retreat, he pulls her forward, wrapping her in his arms and holding on tightly, with her half against his side and half in his lap.  “You’ve nothing to thank me for.  I only fought for you as you deserve.  …What would I have done without you, Emma?”

               The breath he draws against her ear is ragged, and Emma has no other reply but to burrow into his warmth and hold him back just as fiercely.

               “Are you alright now?” he murmurs low, tracing time-roughened fingers over her skin.  

               Emma side-eyes him, trying to lighten the serious mood between them with a smirk and an attempt at his distinctive accent.  “I’m quite cozy, Captain,” she promises.

               Killian shakes his head at her obvious teasing, rubbing his scruffy cheek, cat-like, against her neck and holding her closer, while making sure the blankets are still tucked in securely all around her.  As long as she is here, gradually warming, the shivers growing more and more scarce, breath lightly tickling his collarbone, his world is as right as it has ever been.

Tagging a few who may enjoy: @whimsicallyenchantedrose @kmomof4 @hollyethecurious @artistic-writer @ilovemesomekillianjones @laschatzi @jackieorioncat @duathadun @galadriel26 @rere105 @blackwidownat2814 @jennjenn615 @revanmeetra87 @winterbaby89 @lessawildmoon @spartanguard @bromfieldhall @drowned-dreamer @capswantrue @celestial-fire-writer @branlovesouat @searchingwardrobes @kiwistreetswan @gingerchangeling @psymplemind @kitkattin92-deactivated20180507 @ohmakemeahercules @love-with-you-i-have-everything

[krisiunicornio]

Summer is the season for feeling full of life. Here, what Ayurveda says about prana, tejas, ojas, and nurturing balance and vitality.

In Ayurveda, the key to glowing from within is balancing three mind-body energies: ojas, tejas, and prana. These exist in all of us in a mutually beneficial relationship that sustains long-term health. Their preservation is a fountain of youth. Healthy prana (life force) and tejas (a healthy physical glow) yield ojas (internal nourishment from). Finding balance among the three is the key to longevity. Below we break down each of these elements, and offer practices that can help you reclaim your energy and joy.

Prana

Prana is the energy of life. Because, like air, it is characterized by movement, prana is considered the subtle counterpart of vata—the air element we all carry in some measure. They work in tandem. This energy circulates around the body, carried by the currents of vata and governed by the movements of your attention. In cases of vata imbalance, the circulation of life energy can be compromised. In busy day-to-day life, it is very easy to lose touch with the movements of life energy and attention. A slow and steady commitment to paying attention to self-care and self-love pays off in the prana bank. 

For optimal health, prana and its smooth circulation must be cultivated with care. Moderate exercise, high-quality food, enough rest, good company, and self-love all build life energy. Mental afflictions, such as stress and worry, may be the biggest drain on life energy.

A break in prana’s rhythmic circulation can be physical, such as cholesterol blocking an artery or gas stuck in the intestines. However, psychic causes—chronic stress, worry, grief, or a general disconnect from the physical body (all computer, no exercise)—may be as important as physical causes in the modern progression of diseases.

See also How to Access Prana and Let Your Light Shine

Prana and the Senses

An important part of the subtle body, the five senses are a major player in stress, important enough to earn them a ranking as one of the three causal factors of disease.

Eyeballs and earlobes may seem physical, but without prana, they are inert, and this, along with their intimate connection to mind, is why they are considered part of the subtle body. The survival instinct of the senses to be on alert to protect us and our young from dangers such as tigers and forest fires carries over into the present day. Survival instincts now are addressing ever more subtle causes, like financial strain and kids finding their way in the world. This persistent pull of the mental attention outward by the senses causes constant stimulation of the nervous system. If this natural outward movement of energy is not balanced by quiet time, heightened levels of stimulation result in stress and energy deficiency.

See also Find Stillness 

Daily self-care practices address this phenomenon and preserve prana by nourishing and protecting the senses. A healthy daily regimen will result in less stress and more energy. The channel of prana that begins at the nostrils and ends at the heart has a close relationship to respiration. Breathing is a life-giving activity and not to be ignored. Bringing the attention to the breath, at the heart of many yoga and meditation techniques, quiets the senses and the mind and nourishes the heart, the seat of prana. Rhythmic breathing is considered a vata-balancing therapy, and it can be as simple as the following breathing practice.

Practice: Sama Vrtti Ujaayi (Equal Breathing Practice) 

Sama means “balanced,” vrtti means “fluctuation,” and ujaayi means “victorious.” This breathing exercise makes one victorious over the fluctuations of the mind. It is accomplished by equalizing the fluctuations in the breath.

Sit comfortably, where you won’t be disturbed, and set a timer for 5 minutes.

Close your eyes and take three breaths, just to settle in.

Begin to inhale and count from one to four as you go, landing on the end of the inhalation at four. 

Begin to exhale and count slowly from one to four, completely emptying the breath at four.

Continue like this, counting rhythmically to four on each in- and out-breath. Concentrate on making them the same length and strength. This may take some practice. You may find that inhaling is easy and exhaling is hard, or vice versa. The counting is there to help you keep the rhythm. Stick with it, pay attention, and keep going until the timer goes off. Over time, you can increase your practice time incrementally, if you like. The more minutes you spend breathing in rhythm, the more stable and relaxed you will feel and the longer that feeling will stay with you.

See also How to Practice Sama Vritti Pranayama (Box Breathing)

Tejas

When you are on your self-care game and friends tell you you’re “glowing,” it’s tejas at work. Think of tejas as the smoldering embers of fire that continue to emanate a gentle and sustainable source of energy once the fire has settled down. Tejas is the subtle aspect of balanced pitta dosha, or the part of your constitution that is fiery, that governs the metabolism of food and information, and provides luster, luminosity, and brilliance to both body and intellect. Tejas brings a shiny glow to the skin, a sparkle to the eyes, and a sharp, clear mind. Tejas is responsible for a clear perception of the world around us, called sattva. In a balanced state, it burns through delusion and mental fog to reveal the true self.

See also Quiz: What's Your Dosha?

Practice: Retreat

Tejas is promoted by the intake of clean-burning fuel (nutritious food prepared with love), maintenance of a strong digestive fire, and the necessary time and space for the mind to process experience and emotion. Too much intake, the wrong kind of intake, or lack of energy and attention for transformation all compromise the body’s luster. This is why retreats result in the glow; adequate rest and time for self-care and reflection are at the forefront of any retreat. A steady commitment to daily routine keeps the embers burning bright by keeping us in the habit of paying attention to wellness and carving out time to do what it takes to process daily living in the moment rather than playing catch-up all the time. Too much too fast, like wood on a fire, will overwhelm tejas, leading to a cloudy complexion and perception.

Ojas

Paying attention to healthy diet and routines and having a keen awareness of energy levels in both your body and your mind will result in high ojas. Unlike prana and tejas, ojas is a substance. Like cream as the essence of milk, ojas is the end product of digestion, produced once all the dhatus are nourished, and is the stuff of vitality and immunity. Charaka Samhita calls ojas “the nutrient cream of the body” and “that which keeps all the living beings refreshed.” Like honey, ojas is the nectar of nutrition, and it takes volumes of food and days of digesting to produce a small amount.

During the process of digestion and metabolism, a small amount of ojas is released into each tissue layer before the remaining nutrition is passed on to the next layer. This provides immunity and strength for each tissue. The refined end product, which takes 30 days to produce from food, results in ojas for the vitality and longevity of the entire body.

See also Foster Your Inner Glow with Ayurveda

Burning ojas by overdoing it on a regular basis, or by subsisting on poorly digested food or not enough building food, shortens the life span. It takes one month of rejuvenation to make up for burning the candle at both ends. Keep in mind, you have to live large for a while to burn it up completely. Getting enough rest and rejuvenation time regularly is the way to promote strong immunity and true vigor. When you start to feel a decline in natural energy, take a rest to preserve ojas rather than pushing ahead all the time.

Practice: Ojas Milk

Dates, almonds, and cow’s milk are prized substances because they contain a mixture of qualities that ultimately provide nutrition to build ojas (as long as they are digested well). These foods are commonly blended into a warm smoothie of sorts, called ojas milk.

Adapted from The Everyday Ayurveda Guide to Self-Care by Kate O’Donnell © 2020 by Kate O’Donnell. Photographs by Cara Brostrom. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

[cedarrrun]

Summer is the season for feeling full of life. Here, what Ayurveda says about prana, tejas, ojas, and nurturing balance and vitality.

In Ayurveda, the key to glowing from within is balancing three mind-body energies: ojas, tejas, and prana. These exist in all of us in a mutually beneficial relationship that sustains long-term health. Their preservation is a fountain of youth. Healthy prana (life force) and tejas (a healthy physical glow) yield ojas (internal nourishment from). Finding balance among the three is the key to longevity. Below we break down each of these elements, and offer practices that can help you reclaim your energy and joy.

Prana

Prana is the energy of life. Because, like air, it is characterized by movement, prana is considered the subtle counterpart of vata—the air element we all carry in some measure. They work in tandem. This energy circulates around the body, carried by the currents of vata and governed by the movements of your attention. In cases of vata imbalance, the circulation of life energy can be compromised. In busy day-to-day life, it is very easy to lose touch with the movements of life energy and attention. A slow and steady commitment to paying attention to self-care and self-love pays off in the prana bank. 

For optimal health, prana and its smooth circulation must be cultivated with care. Moderate exercise, high-quality food, enough rest, good company, and self-love all build life energy. Mental afflictions, such as stress and worry, may be the biggest drain on life energy.

A break in prana’s rhythmic circulation can be physical, such as cholesterol blocking an artery or gas stuck in the intestines. However, psychic causes—chronic stress, worry, grief, or a general disconnect from the physical body (all computer, no exercise)—may be as important as physical causes in the modern progression of diseases.

See also How to Access Prana and Let Your Light Shine

Prana and the Senses

An important part of the subtle body, the five senses are a major player in stress, important enough to earn them a ranking as one of the three causal factors of disease.

Eyeballs and earlobes may seem physical, but without prana, they are inert, and this, along with their intimate connection to mind, is why they are considered part of the subtle body. The survival instinct of the senses to be on alert to protect us and our young from dangers such as tigers and forest fires carries over into the present day. Survival instincts now are addressing ever more subtle causes, like financial strain and kids finding their way in the world. This persistent pull of the mental attention outward by the senses causes constant stimulation of the nervous system. If this natural outward movement of energy is not balanced by quiet time, heightened levels of stimulation result in stress and energy deficiency.

See also Find Stillness 

Daily self-care practices address this phenomenon and preserve prana by nourishing and protecting the senses. A healthy daily regimen will result in less stress and more energy. The channel of prana that begins at the nostrils and ends at the heart has a close relationship to respiration. Breathing is a life-giving activity and not to be ignored. Bringing the attention to the breath, at the heart of many yoga and meditation techniques, quiets the senses and the mind and nourishes the heart, the seat of prana. Rhythmic breathing is considered a vata-balancing therapy, and it can be as simple as the following breathing practice.

Practice: Sama Vrtti Ujaayi (Equal Breathing Practice) 

Sama means “balanced,” vrtti means “fluctuation,” and ujaayi means “victorious.” This breathing exercise makes one victorious over the fluctuations of the mind. It is accomplished by equalizing the fluctuations in the breath.

Sit comfortably, where you won’t be disturbed, and set a timer for 5 minutes.

Close your eyes and take three breaths, just to settle in.

Begin to inhale and count from one to four as you go, landing on the end of the inhalation at four. 

Begin to exhale and count slowly from one to four, completely emptying the breath at four.

Continue like this, counting rhythmically to four on each in- and out-breath. Concentrate on making them the same length and strength. This may take some practice. You may find that inhaling is easy and exhaling is hard, or vice versa. The counting is there to help you keep the rhythm. Stick with it, pay attention, and keep going until the timer goes off. Over time, you can increase your practice time incrementally, if you like. The more minutes you spend breathing in rhythm, the more stable and relaxed you will feel and the longer that feeling will stay with you.

See also How to Practice Sama Vritti Pranayama (Box Breathing)

Tejas

When you are on your self-care game and friends tell you you’re “glowing,” it’s tejas at work. Think of tejas as the smoldering embers of fire that continue to emanate a gentle and sustainable source of energy once the fire has settled down. Tejas is the subtle aspect of balanced pitta dosha, or the part of your constitution that is fiery, that governs the metabolism of food and information, and provides luster, luminosity, and brilliance to both body and intellect. Tejas brings a shiny glow to the skin, a sparkle to the eyes, and a sharp, clear mind. Tejas is responsible for a clear perception of the world around us, called sattva. In a balanced state, it burns through delusion and mental fog to reveal the true self.

See also Quiz: What's Your Dosha?

Practice: Retreat

Tejas is promoted by the intake of clean-burning fuel (nutritious food prepared with love), maintenance of a strong digestive fire, and the necessary time and space for the mind to process experience and emotion. Too much intake, the wrong kind of intake, or lack of energy and attention for transformation all compromise the body’s luster. This is why retreats result in the glow; adequate rest and time for self-care and reflection are at the forefront of any retreat. A steady commitment to daily routine keeps the embers burning bright by keeping us in the habit of paying attention to wellness and carving out time to do what it takes to process daily living in the moment rather than playing catch-up all the time. Too much too fast, like wood on a fire, will overwhelm tejas, leading to a cloudy complexion and perception.

Ojas

Paying attention to healthy diet and routines and having a keen awareness of energy levels in both your body and your mind will result in high ojas. Unlike prana and tejas, ojas is a substance. Like cream as the essence of milk, ojas is the end product of digestion, produced once all the dhatus are nourished, and is the stuff of vitality and immunity. Charaka Samhita calls ojas “the nutrient cream of the body” and “that which keeps all the living beings refreshed.” Like honey, ojas is the nectar of nutrition, and it takes volumes of food and days of digesting to produce a small amount.

During the process of digestion and metabolism, a small amount of ojas is released into each tissue layer before the remaining nutrition is passed on to the next layer. This provides immunity and strength for each tissue. The refined end product, which takes 30 days to produce from food, results in ojas for the vitality and longevity of the entire body.

See also Foster Your Inner Glow with Ayurveda

Burning ojas by overdoing it on a regular basis, or by subsisting on poorly digested food or not enough building food, shortens the life span. It takes one month of rejuvenation to make up for burning the candle at both ends. Keep in mind, you have to live large for a while to burn it up completely. Getting enough rest and rejuvenation time regularly is the way to promote strong immunity and true vigor. When you start to feel a decline in natural energy, take a rest to preserve ojas rather than pushing ahead all the time.

Practice: Ojas Milk

Dates, almonds, and cow’s milk are prized substances because they contain a mixture of qualities that ultimately provide nutrition to build ojas (as long as they are digested well). These foods are commonly blended into a warm smoothie of sorts, called ojas milk.

Adapted from The Everyday Ayurveda Guide to Self-Care by Kate O’Donnell © 2020 by Kate O’Donnell. Photographs by Cara Brostrom. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

[amyddaniels]

How to Get a Natural Glow, the Ayurvedic Way

Summer is the season for feeling full of life. Here, what Ayurveda says about prana, tejas, ojas, and nurturing balance and vitality.

In Ayurveda, the key to glowing from within is balancing three mind-body energies: ojas, tejas, and prana. These exist in all of us in a mutually beneficial relationship that sustains long-term health. Their preservation is a fountain of youth. Healthy prana (life force) and tejas (a healthy physical glow) yield ojas (internal nourishment from). Finding balance among the three is the key to longevity. Below we break down each of these elements, and offer practices that can help you reclaim your energy and joy.

Prana

Prana is the energy of life. Because, like air, it is characterized by movement, prana is considered the subtle counterpart of vata—the air element we all carry in some measure. They work in tandem. This energy circulates around the body, carried by the currents of vata and governed by the movements of your attention. In cases of vata imbalance, the circulation of life energy can be compromised. In busy day-to-day life, it is very easy to lose touch with the movements of life energy and attention. A slow and steady commitment to paying attention to self-care and self-love pays off in the prana bank. 

For optimal health, prana and its smooth circulation must be cultivated with care. Moderate exercise, high-quality food, enough rest, good company, and self-love all build life energy. Mental afflictions, such as stress and worry, may be the biggest drain on life energy.

A break in prana’s rhythmic circulation can be physical, such as cholesterol blocking an artery or gas stuck in the intestines. However, psychic causes—chronic stress, worry, grief, or a general disconnect from the physical body (all computer, no exercise)—may be as important as physical causes in the modern progression of diseases.

See also How to Access Prana and Let Your Light Shine

Prana and the Senses

An important part of the subtle body, the five senses are a major player in stress, important enough to earn them a ranking as one of the three causal factors of disease.

Eyeballs and earlobes may seem physical, but without prana, they are inert, and this, along with their intimate connection to mind, is why they are considered part of the subtle body. The survival instinct of the senses to be on alert to protect us and our young from dangers such as tigers and forest fires carries over into the present day. Survival instincts now are addressing ever more subtle causes, like financial strain and kids finding their way in the world. This persistent pull of the mental attention outward by the senses causes constant stimulation of the nervous system. If this natural outward movement of energy is not balanced by quiet time, heightened levels of stimulation result in stress and energy deficiency.

See also Find Stillness 

Daily self-care practices address this phenomenon and preserve prana by nourishing and protecting the senses. A healthy daily regimen will result in less stress and more energy. The channel of prana that begins at the nostrils and ends at the heart has a close relationship to respiration. Breathing is a life-giving activity and not to be ignored. Bringing the attention to the breath, at the heart of many yoga and meditation techniques, quiets the senses and the mind and nourishes the heart, the seat of prana. Rhythmic breathing is considered a vata-balancing therapy, and it can be as simple as the following breathing practice.

Practice: Sama Vrtti Ujaayi (Equal Breathing Practice) 

Sama means “balanced,” vrtti means “fluctuation,” and ujaayi means “victorious.” This breathing exercise makes one victorious over the fluctuations of the mind. It is accomplished by equalizing the fluctuations in the breath.

Sit comfortably, where you won’t be disturbed, and set a timer for 5 minutes.

Close your eyes and take three breaths, just to settle in.

Begin to inhale and count from one to four as you go, landing on the end of the inhalation at four. 

Begin to exhale and count slowly from one to four, completely emptying the breath at four.

Continue like this, counting rhythmically to four on each in- and out-breath. Concentrate on making them the same length and strength. This may take some practice. You may find that inhaling is easy and exhaling is hard, or vice versa. The counting is there to help you keep the rhythm. Stick with it, pay attention, and keep going until the timer goes off. Over time, you can increase your practice time incrementally, if you like. The more minutes you spend breathing in rhythm, the more stable and relaxed you will feel and the longer that feeling will stay with you.

See also How to Practice Sama Vritti Pranayama (Box Breathing)

Tejas

When you are on your self-care game and friends tell you you’re “glowing,” it’s tejas at work. Think of tejas as the smoldering embers of fire that continue to emanate a gentle and sustainable source of energy once the fire has settled down. Tejas is the subtle aspect of balanced pitta dosha, or the part of your constitution that is fiery, that governs the metabolism of food and information, and provides luster, luminosity, and brilliance to both body and intellect. Tejas brings a shiny glow to the skin, a sparkle to the eyes, and a sharp, clear mind. Tejas is responsible for a clear perception of the world around us, called sattva. In a balanced state, it burns through delusion and mental fog to reveal the true self.

See also Quiz: What's Your Dosha?

Practice: Retreat

Tejas is promoted by the intake of clean-burning fuel (nutritious food prepared with love), maintenance of a strong digestive fire, and the necessary time and space for the mind to process experience and emotion. Too much intake, the wrong kind of intake, or lack of energy and attention for transformation all compromise the body’s luster. This is why retreats result in the glow; adequate rest and time for self-care and reflection are at the forefront of any retreat. A steady commitment to daily routine keeps the embers burning bright by keeping us in the habit of paying attention to wellness and carving out time to do what it takes to process daily living in the moment rather than playing catch-up all the time. Too much too fast, like wood on a fire, will overwhelm tejas, leading to a cloudy complexion and perception.

Ojas

Paying attention to healthy diet and routines and having a keen awareness of energy levels in both your body and your mind will result in high ojas. Unlike prana and tejas, ojas is a substance. Like cream as the essence of milk, ojas is the end product of digestion, produced once all the dhatus are nourished, and is the stuff of vitality and immunity. Charaka Samhita calls ojas “the nutrient cream of the body” and “that which keeps all the living beings refreshed.” Like honey, ojas is the nectar of nutrition, and it takes volumes of food and days of digesting to produce a small amount.

During the process of digestion and metabolism, a small amount of ojas is released into each tissue layer before the remaining nutrition is passed on to the next layer. This provides immunity and strength for each tissue. The refined end product, which takes 30 days to produce from food, results in ojas for the vitality and longevity of the entire body.

See also Foster Your Inner Glow with Ayurveda

Burning ojas by overdoing it on a regular basis, or by subsisting on poorly digested food or not enough building food, shortens the life span. It takes one month of rejuvenation to make up for burning the candle at both ends. Keep in mind, you have to live large for a while to burn it up completely. Getting enough rest and rejuvenation time regularly is the way to promote strong immunity and true vigor. When you start to feel a decline in natural energy, take a rest to preserve ojas rather than pushing ahead all the time.

Practice: Ojas Milk

Dates, almonds, and cow’s milk are prized substances because they contain a mixture of qualities that ultimately provide nutrition to build ojas (as long as they are digested well). These foods are commonly blended into a warm smoothie of sorts, called ojas milk.

Adapted from The Everyday Ayurveda Guide to Self-Care by Kate O’Donnell © 2020 by Kate O’Donnell. Photographs by Cara Brostrom. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

[pennycorp]

I spent the last few weeks by myself. Instead of the standard beach trip, my closest friends had gone to the mountains to do trekking. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't wanted to go when the plans first came up. And I'd have had a great time.

Still, I'm not really a "mountains" kind of guy. No, for me it's the beach. The ocean. The sun and the surf. 

And I needed time to myself. I was on the verge of a new phase of my life: I moved out of the place me and my ex-had rented for the past 3 years four weeks ago and decided to move to Makati. Alone. And as the weight of that decision, that commitment, settled in on me, it got me scared thinking of the future and having to deal with starting over again.

And I needed to clear my head.

The depths get murky sometimes and that I need time and space once in a while to stay in the game. 

On Saturday afternoon I loaded the stuff I wanted to take into my backpack and set off on the eight-hour drive to La union, the place where I first fully experienced my life as a locus of powerful, and not-too-easily-navigated, crosscurrents. I needed to be there with myself, my thoughts: thoughts of my future, my past...but especially, of him. I arrived at downtown around 9:00 PM, and decided to rent the room that we had last year during my birthday. I put the key in the lock, turned the handle, opened the door... ...and found myself staring into a roomful of ghosts. Memories assaulted me with a ferocity I wasn't prepared for. Sounds, words spoken and left unspoken, feelings as familiar as my own breath, but not as matter-of-fact, all came back to me as I walked in. A heaviness threatened to settle in, and I wondered for a minute if I should have come here alone. But these ghosts were mine and nobody else's; anyway, the haunting was part of the reason I came. I needed to deal with those ghosts: phantoms of other possibilities; memories that trail off into dead ends; wishes for square triangles; and the chimera of The Endless Summer. If you're a "beach" kind of person, you understand how the salt-and-sea-life smell can sort of take you away. I spent about an hour walking up and down the shoreline, transfixed by the beauty, aching over having been away too long, remembering. How does a person live with, and own, the choices he has to make when life presents him with a prepackaged, limited set that doesn't really meet the deepest longings of the heart? That's what I was here to think about. I'd been deeply in love with him  for years. To be the love of his life, to grow old with him, loving him, making love to him...contemplating these things filled me with joy and heartache at the same time.

And yet when I try to look forward with starting over, as I dreamed about my future.. of someone i want to share a home with.. I am aware.. there would always be in that house an empty room, a place where I spent time alone and lonely.. and I understood that that room would always be empty. I also understood that there would be a nameplate on its door, designating the space for someone who would never live there with me. I had come here for two days to remember, to regret, to love, and to make my peace with that.

Saturday night, I decided to walk by the beach far away from all the chaos. 

And I stared off into forever. The night was black. A full moon shone down upon the water. The tide called to me with its hypnotic, incessant song, as I watched it kiss the shore and fall back, over and over and over. The song "Beauty and Madness" repeated itself endlessly on my playlist.  I thought about that first time hearing it and smiled. The fire I'd lit flickered in my peripheral vision, and if I'd had company, they he might have asked me about the streaks that the fire illuminated. The ones running down my face from my eyes. It was the song, really. That old fucking song, and the memories of first hearing it when we were just starting out, and the memory of us-- for almost 4 years that had led up to our bitter break up last month. But it wasn't only those memories. There were so many others, and I'd been soaking in them. All week long, I'd lived him. I'd lived us. I'd traveled back in time. Back to the Endless Summer. Back to my earliest, scariest longings for him. Back to our first days together, and on through time to the current ones. I'd been us all over again, at all our ages. And with every memory, I looked at him intently. I listened to his words carefully.

And I loved him through all those memories as if I were living them for the first time.

And I felt him loving me. More clearly than I'd felt it the first time around. Soaked in all that, I tried to make sense of the road that lay ahead of me.

The desperately rational part of me saw long odds, dim prospects, and no realistic way to guarantee that we had a future together that in any way resembled our present. But life without him was unthinkable. So why did I keep thinking of it? Why did I keep dreading it? Why did I keep assuming it as the default inevitable future? I knew there had to be an answer for me. Some peace for me.

For us.

And I knew the answer lay in those memories. Rich and inexhaustible, tenacious as himself, the memories had accompanied me every hour I'd been here. Branding me. Marking me. And there on the shoreline, on the final night of my stay, a quiet understanding came to me as I gazed out into the shorelines in La Union. I'd walked into the room we had rented last year during my birthday. I decided coming here again, few days before my birthday was a good idea. To remember with love...and then to release. To go back home and enjoy his love until our lives diverged, and then to let him go. For his sake. So he wouldn't have to figure out what to do with me as he moved into his future. A conventional future that had no room for me. Over the two days that I'd relived my memories, though, I got a better look at him than I'd ever allowed myself before. The time didn't flash by. I could slow things down. Replay them. Live in them again. And I discovered that my memories had pull. Even more surprising was that they had intention. They weren't interested in merely providing a mental playback of my life with him. At first, I'd resisted the conclusion they'd been urging me toward. Not because I didn't like its contours or content. No. It was because I wanted to be responsible, and loving, and to do the right thing, and I'd been stubbornly committed to believing that what he needed was a return to the conventional life. Pressuring him to carve out a space in his conventional life for me felt selfish and self-centered. I didn't want to keep dragging him back to me if and when life called him forward. Called him away from me. But as I stared out into the beach, the things he'd been saying to me over the last year rearranged and repeated themselves in just the right order and at just the right level for me to hear them. 

As if for the first time. As if I'd never heard them before.

And when I listened...

I understood that preparing for us to drift apart wasn't necessarily an act of love. It was an act of self-protection. And I understood that--just maybe--the highest love I could give him would involve summoning the courage to trust what he'd been telling me. “Because i don't want to lose you as much as you don't want to too..”

I played the words over and over in my head as the sound of the waves against the shore soothed the anxiety that was trying to rise up in me. This night, this concentrated immersion in him and all he meant to me, brought me to a point of decision.

It was time to decide whether his words meant anything or whether I'd always think I knew better. Whether to soldier on in monster-slaying mode, or whether to risk getting hurt for the sake of trusting a promise that as yet had no shape. A promise that was as essential to my life as it was to his. I took a deep, cleansing breath of the salty air. And then I went to that mental door, the one with his name on it, the one through which I'd been so frantically anticipating having to shove him and my memories of him. It was standing open. And, oddly, the room was still empty. But it seemed like a different kind of empty. A waiting kind of empty. I closed my eyes as the deepest aches and yearnings and hopes I lived with swirled to the surface of my consciousness. And a conviction broke through the swirl. There aren't any monsters under beds. There's only you, and the roads you walk, and the choices you make. And you are loved throughout all of them. And you are asked to love throughout all of them. I don't know which part of me that internal voice was, or whether it was someone else, or whether it was just something convenient my subconscious tossed up. But it was as clear as a bell, and it felt like some kind of final word. I took another deep breath, and my mental eye looked up at the nameplate on The Door of that room. This time, it read "E&I. Room Reserved For Part Two." I opened my eyes. Nothing looked different. But everything was. I breathed in once again. Deeply. Gratefully. As I exhaled, years' worth of fog dissipated, and the diamond-hard clarity of the night brought this place home to me once again, giving me an opportunity to experience it--at last--with an unclouded mind and a heart free from crosscurrents and cross-purposes. I grabbed handfuls of sand and put out my fire with them. Then I picked up my belongings and began walking back toward the transient that I was renting. It was time to go home.