#ive heard that the epilogue has broken people

[enlighten3d]

chapter 503 of orv has emotionally damaged me. i am so not ready for the epilogue, holy shit.

[iceywolf24]

Just remembering Varys speech on Aegon and Kingship in the ADWD Epilogue.

"He reads and writes and speaks several tongues" - Varys

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one."

"The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human man could speak. The ravens could speak it, though"

- Bran, III ADWD

"He has studied history and law and poetry. A septa has instructed him in the mysteries of the Faith since he was old enough to understand them". - Varys

"The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood. "- Bran III ADWD

"He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands... He can fish and cook and bind up a wound " - Varys

"I was just remembering," he said. "Jory brought us here once, to fish for trout. You and me and Jon. Do you remember?" - Bran V AGOT

"Jojen sent Hodor out for wood and built them a small fire while Bran and Meera were cleaning the fish and frogs. They used Meera's helm for a cooking pot, chopping up the catch into little cubes and tossing in some water and some wild onions Hodor had found to make a froggy stew" - Bran I, ASOS

"Meera had drawn the broken arrow from his leg and rubbed the wound with the juice of some plants she found growing around the base of the tower" - Bran IV, ASOS

"He knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid" - Varys

"The last of the food that they had brought from the south was ten days gone. Since then hunger walked beside them day and night. Even Summer could find no game in these woods. They lived on crushed acorns and raw fish" - Bran I, ADWD

"The Umbers and the Karstarks and the Manderlys may all be dead as well, he realized. As he would be, if he was caught by the ironmen or the Bastard of Bolton" - Bran II ASOS

He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" he heard his own voice saying, small and far away. And his father's voice replied to him. "That is the only time a man can be brave." - Bran III AGOT

Bran was also hunted by wights in Bran II ADWD.

"Tommen has been taught that kingship is his right. Aegon knows kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first, and live and rule for them." - Varys

"Bran gazed up at the rough stone ceiling above his head. Robb would tell him not to play the boy, he knew. He could almost hear him, and their lord father as well. Winter is coming, and you are almost a man grown, Bran. You have a duty." - Bran II ACOK

A good lord protects his people, he reminded himself. "I’ve yielded Winterfell to Theon." - Bran VI ACOK

The way Varys was describing Bran when he talking about how Aegon was raised to be a good King.

EDIT: added some parts .

[quillandink333]

Scarlet Carnations ~ Part III

BotW Link X Zelda ~ Detective AU

Rating: T

Word Count: 2k

WARNINGS: death, murder, loss, trauma, blood and gore, terrorism, organized crime, self-harm

Summary: Inspector Zelda Hyrule, assisted by the faithful Constable Link Fyori, is infamous for cracking the most confounding of cases in a town dominated by crime. Her latest assignment is to solve the murder of her own godmother, Impa Sheikah, the late CEO of Sheikah Tech. Incorporated, while staying under the radar of the dreaded Yiga organization.

Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI • Part VII • Epilogue • Masterlist

The investigation was still underway a week or so later, still without even a semblance of a lead to go on, or at least not a favourable one. Auntie Purah still had yet to take the Slate into the lab as she’d promised, which was understandable. She was still in deep mourning, after all. I, however, still got up at six o’clock each and every day to make my way to the site, as if the murderer would one day just walk out into the open if I waited long enough.

Truth be told, despite my conscious efforts to suppress it, a part of me deep down was growing weary of one fruitless search after another. Most of the cases I’d led up to this one had been closed within a maximum three days. Admittedly I’d even begun to consider ways to dispose of the fatal evidence I’d been carrying with me since the start of all this. No one but Paya and I knew of its existence, and no one but us would ever have to. Besides, if these egregious felonies truly were the designs of the organization—which they had to be—there was no way I’d ever find any clues leading toward the perpetrator’s true identity, let alone that of their ever elusive boss.

And yet, every morning when I returned to the scene of the crime, with officers bustling about and those who remained of my family sitting quietly in another room, I was reminded of my ultimate purpose. It wasn’t a matter of being able or unable to catch my godmother’s killer. It was one of necessity. Letting them roam the streets as they pleased was not even a part of the equation. I hadn’t spent the better part of the last decade toiling away to reach my current level of authority as a detective investigator simply to throw it all away as soon as my will was tested. That wasn’t what Auntie Impa, nor what Mother, would’ve wanted. I had to uncover the truth, no matter the cost.

What happened next, however, would make my distress up until then seem almost laughable.

I was made aware of it via wire on one muggy afternoon at my office, when I’d decided to work on typewriting up some reports. I picked up the phone only to hear the wails of one distraught Auntie Purah on the other end.

“Zelda, it’s terrible!” she cried. “The Slate—Impa’s Slate—I’ve looked everywhere, and so have Paya and Symin and all the men here on duty, but I—it’s...we can’t—we haven’t...” The poor, old woman was hyperventilating, creating awful static noises through the speaker’s papery membrane.

“Auntie, it’s okay. Calm down,” I urged gently. “Take a few deep breaths.”

“Alright...” A few moments of silence went by before I heard her voice again. “Thank you, dear.”

“Not at all. Now, what were you saying about the Slate?”

“It’s been stolen.”

I froze, breath stagnant and eyes glued to the edge of my desk. “It’s—what?”

“Stolen,” she repeated, only deepening the pit forming in my stomach, from where my heart was now pounding. “Right out from under our noses. We’ve searched high and low for it, but there’s been no sign of it, or the thief.”

I had to reign in my voice before I’d start shouting at her. “H-How can you be sure it was stolen?” The vigilant Link’s eyes now bore into me with intensity from his place by the file cabinets.

“The lock on the safe,” blubbered my auntie, “the one in the study that it’s always kept in. You know the one?”

“Yes?”

“It was broken, and the safe was empty.”

“But...that’s impossible.”

“Precisely!” she cried, giving me a start. “I still haven’t the foggiest how they did it.”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

With that, I hung up and prepared for immediate departure, my assistant just a few paces behind me. I had to see this for myself.

Surely enough, when we arrived, the safe’s lock was destroyed beyond repair, and there was nothing but dust to be found inside. Unsurprisingly, the thief had been careful to leave no fingerprints behind, just as the killer had been. For now, though, it was too soon to say for certain that the same individual was behind both crimes.

Upon closer inspection, it seemed the lock mechanism had been melted. My eyes widened. “That’s not something you see every day.” Constable Fyori crouched down beside me, then gave a similar reaction when he noticed the cause of my astonishment.

The thief had to have been someone with access to a welding torch or something along those lines. There certainly weren’t many who fit that description, save for the police. In fact, the whole reason they were issued out to a select few officers was for this very purpose, but situations requiring said officers to break locks such as this one using such extreme methods were few and far between. Nevertheless, the possibility stood.

It was for this reason that I finally gave in and decided to take up the case with the chief detective once we’d finished here. As always, Constable Fyori accompanied me thereto.

Chief Bosphoramus’ office was neither too grand nor too modest, not unlike my own, though it still clearly belonged to someone of high rank. It resided on the third floor of the three-storey building where my dear colleague and I made our livelihoods, boasting a broad view of the deceivingly peaceful streets below.

“It seems UC3680G662LL was the only officer on the scene who was equipped with a cutting torch,” relayed the old man, hunched over the records lain across his desk. “Unfortunately, however, he resigned just yesterday.”

I waited a number of seconds for him to follow up with something useful, but to no avail. “So...what? You’re saying we can’t go question him now? Because he ran away?”

He clasped his fingers together in front of him, looking at me like an elementary school principal. “That is what I am saying, yes.”

I wanted to growl like a bear as imitated by a child, but I held it in. “You do realize what this means, don’t you?” I scoffed. “No doubt he was a member of the organization sent to steal the Slate after killing its owner.”

“Now you listen here, Inspector.” The chief’s tone turned serious. I closed my mouth. “You of all people should know that not a single square inch of this town is safe. Not even this precinct.”

“Yes, but Sir, surely you agree that this entire case has ‘Yiga’ written all over—”

“Are you mad?!”

His thundering voice made Link and I jump. The room fell silent, the chief’s eyes flickering between the door and the open window behind him.

Then he rose from his seat to close the shutters. “Have you some sort of death wish?” he continued at an infinitesimal volume in comparison.

I bit my tongue, restraining the urge to retort with, “Whose fault is that?” for I knew I would only be spinning my wheels. There’d once been a saying in this city: “When one sheep leads the way, all the rest follow.” And Chief Detective Bosphoramus was a perfect reflection of this. Every last member of the force was the same. Weak-willed curs. Shirking from their sworn duties and hiding away behind their shields of specious ignorance.

But despite the virus of cowardice festering throughout the bureau, my partner’s lasting air of calm resignation reminded me that no one could truly blame those affected by it.

The power that the Yiga organization possessed over the town was beyond compare. Those on City Council were nothing more than their puppets, and likewise were the police. Fear and massacre were the whips they raised to drive us all into submission and to punish any and all who had the will remaining to fight. But the one group who’d dared to challenge their might, who’d stood tall ever in the face of their tyranny, had been my godmother’s company. Thanks to her intelligent mind and righteous heart, the people had been given access to technology that would keep them safe, to a degree, from crime, and little by little, the company had developed into a beacon of hope for the town and its inhabitants. Until now.

Now, that hope had been snuffed out, like it had never been anything more than a week and vulnerable candle flame, flickering faint against the darkness of obscurity, in the first place.

Later that evening, when my gaze happened upon the knife block sitting on my kitchen counter at home, my steps halted. The scars on my arms left over from my last couple of years in secondary school—the period in my life following the yet unexplained events that had taken away the one I’d cherished most—had only just begun to fade. Even so...

I shook my head, turning my back to the kitchen. But then, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder once more. I recalled the rush of adrenaline that took hold each time my skin was breached by icy steel. It was true that letting my emotions control me would get me nowhere, but maybe...maybe just this once, I could at least do something to assuage them.

Then the image of the gaping, dark red hole running straight through Auntie Impa’s neck flashed before my eyes. I covered my mouth, quickly swallowing the bile rising up from the bottom of my throat. The idea slipped my mind that very instant.

It wasn’t until the following day’s investigation that a substantial piece of the puzzle finally revealed itself to me.

For it to have taken a whole two days to find wasn’t all that unbelievable. Even I had to admit, although my stepsister was a spineless, tattling suck-up who’d always received far more credit and affection than she was worth, no one could have imagined her ever turning criminal.

Even so, I was certain that what I discovered there in her bedroom went against the expectations of all. Upon my entering, a faint glow of teal and tangerine peaking through the floorboards caught my eye. I went to lift the plank doing such poor work of hiding the thing from sight. There it was, unscratched and in perfect working condition, its screen lighting up and displaying that dastardly riddle I’d been confronted with several days prior and still didn’t know the answer to.

Although the mystery of where it had disappeared to had been solved, its reason for being here of all places was still unclear. Why would Paya have gone to such lengths just to get her hands on the Slate? It was difficult to imagine there being any information contained therein that she would want so direly to be kept secret from the world. She and her grandmother had been close since before I’d become a part of their family as a six-year-old.

Then something hard and marble-sized went flying across the floor when struck by the pointed toe of my shoe. I gave chase, soon realizing what it was when it slowed to a halt just before the south-facing wall of the room:

A bullet.

I didn’t even need to perform a striation comparison; anyone could clearly see that it matched the one I’d pried out of my mother’s memorial shrine. Whatever blood might’ve been here at one point must have simply been wiped up, and she must have stolen Link’s revolver with whatever methods she’d used to steal the Slate. Without a doubt, this room was the true crime scene I’d sought after since day one of the investigation.

But even in the face of this victory, I could hear the voices of those who would oppose me ringing in my ears. “Paya’s the mastermind?” they jeered. “Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?” But at this point, this case had already pushed me far beyond the boundaries of my patience. I didn’t have a single damn left to give about how flawed my logic might or might not have been. All that mattered now was that I had a suspect, and so help me, if I was correct in my line of thinking as suggested by the evidence, this criminal would receive no mercy.

[intricate-oeuvre]

On how to be deadly || Geralt of Rivia || part III

A/N: Ahhh, update!!! This  is a bit of a filler chapter, so I can set mood for the next big turning point. Also I don’t know how long do you guys want this story to be? Hit me up if you want to be tagged. Likes, reblogs, comments, fanarts, playlists, moodboards are always welcomed!

Word count: 3.1k+

Summary: Axelia is Witcher experiment herself and has gone through same harsh Trials as Geralt, but she wasn’t so lucky with the outcome. Her vision didn’t become better. Therefore, she was rendered blind in the end. And because of that, she solely uses her Witcher senses to make her ways. Only potions can give her false sense of sight for limited time.Somewhere along the way she meets the Rivian. Who’s interested to know how she’s been killing monsters and hasn’t been killed herself yet.

Warnings: Nudity, but nothing too graphic. Alcohol (drink responsibly). Angsty, kind of. Bad grammar, since English is not my first language.

part I || part II || part III || part IV || part V || part VI || part VII || part VIII || part IX || part X || part XI || part XII || part XIII | Epilogue

Before Axelia had gone and slayed the monster she had found some old lady that was ready to take her in for some time, or until she will be ready to leave for the next place, next monster.

Now she was making her way towards that place. With deep sigh she exited the grove and stopped at the small stream that separated the village from the said grove. She leaned down near the stream, letting her fingertips dip in the cold, refreshing water, she washed her hands off, at least enough to knock on the old lady’s door. Then she stood up again and shook off her hands. Girl with the tulle blindfold carefully made her way across the small stream and then walked on the dirt road. She heard chatter of the people that were walking through the village. Someone was feeding their pigs; another was chopping wood. Someone three houses down was forging iron. Then there were giggles and laughs of children. Some even running past her, making girl stop and turn around as she followed the sound, small smile of wonder curving on her lips. Which soon turned into look of curiosity as she heard the whispers that followed afterwards. Kids were talking about her. The way she had outlandishly white hair, or the fact that she looked as if someone had been dragging her on the ground for hours to no end. Or maybe it was the blindfold that made her look odd, or two swords that were attached to her back. Axelia didn’t indulge anymore on that chatter and turned back around and continued her path to the old woman’s house. She just wanted a hot bath and some peace and quiet as everything seemed to be annoying her at the moment. As curious as she was about the talks going around about her, she, at the same time, couldn’t take anymore talking.

With three quiet taps of her knuckles against the wooden door, she was granted the warmth of the house.

“Oh, lords, look at you, dearie!” Old woman exclaimed and putted her hands together as she saw how Axelia looked like.

“Did that beast do such a thing to you?” old lady asked.

“Nothing serious. It’s mostly dirt and some scratches. Nothing that good night’s sleep won’t fix.” Axelia replied taking a seat at the nearest chair as she was wishing to get off her boots faster.

“I am going to draw you a bath. Would you like that?” She asked the girl.

“Yes, thank you very much.” Axelia said as she pulled off her boots and putted them down by the fire to dry.

“Are there some specific herbs you’d like in your bath?” lady had asked. All people around here were herbs gatherers, that much girl knew.

“Velvet rose and sandalwood.” She said without thinking. After realising what she had said, she hissed and looked up at the lady, who was already gone to prepare her a bath.

“Great.” Axelia rolled her eyes and stumbled to where she heard the sound of the running water.

*Some time later*

Axelia was sitting in the wooden tub. Fire crackling softly to her right, casting the right side of her face in orange glow as her shoulder was getting pleasantly warm. The old lady was sitting behind her on the small stool and combing Axelia’s white hair that was now wet and cascading down her back. Girl absentmindedly played with the rose petals that were spinning in the water every time she moved. Girl didn’t talk much, but the old lady seemed to be the opposite. She told Axelia how she became living here and that she was once married and has a daughter, similar Axelia’s age, at least in the appearance. How all her children were living in different cities and villages. All the reasons why she was alone in the big house, only her and two maids with two stable boys, that she raised like her children. Axelia didn’t answer much to it, only occasional hum and nothing else. At some point Axelia had quite blatantly asked the old lady to leave her alone for the moment. And without questions and only full with understanding, the lady had grabbed her dirty clothes and left the girl.

Axelia had her left elbow propped on the side of the bath tub, while her fingertips were against her forehead. She was trying to not listen for once, not feel for once and just let her body restart. At the moment she was feeling as everything was setting her off, keeping her on the edge. In her other hand there was small woodchip, as she was turning it over and over with her fingers, to distract her mind. For a second her eyebrows rose up as she heard commotions downstairs. She didn’t pay any heed to it and with a deep sigh stretched her legs under the water. Couple moments later doors to her room opened, without raising her head she said in a tired voice:

“May I be undisturbed for the rest of the night?” And as she finished that sentence, she raised her head and froze for a moment, similar to dear that is fearful and is listening for noises and smells.

“What are YOU doing here?” Axelia said, sitting up straighter and pulling her knees to her chest.

“I told you to leave me alone.” Axelia grumbled, in no mood to talk to Geralt who was standing in her room now.

“Your payment.” He said as he tossed the leshen’s head near the tub alongside with purse of coins.

“You brought dirt in old hag’s house. And thus, in my room.” Axelia looked down at the scull, that still had the broken antler missing. She raised her right leg out of water and putted its calf on her other knee, wiggling her toes as the water dripped down now exposed leg.

“If that is all, you can go.” Axelia said, turning her attention back to the water, listening how water droplets hit surface of the scented water.

“Geralt, you forgot-” There was a voice that Axelia didn’t recognise. Jaskier had just entered her room too, holding other antler in his hand.

“What are we doing in the naked maidens chambers? Together?” Jaskier asked raising one eyebrow as his eyes slid from Geralt to Axelia.

“I’m hoping that not only talking.” Axelia tilted her head to the side, small smirk playing on her lips. Jaskier could feel the tension in the room and it was not between him and the girl in the bath nor it was one akin to pleasure.

“I, um… I got your... horn?” Jaskier said, pulling on the collar of his jacket as he briskly walked to the bath and extended the antler toward Axelia. Axelia extended her hand, palm up but didn’t take the antler from him. With still outstretched hand, Jaskier turned his head back to look at Geralt, questioning look on his face.

“Put it in her hand, Jaskier.” Geralt answered with slight roll of his eyes. The bard did as he was told, and as soon as the girl grabbed the antler out of his hand, he stepped back, still standing slightly behind the witcher.

“Thank you.” Axelia smiled politely and instantly started to twirl the antler in her hand.

“But I don’t need it.” She said dropping it near the bath.

“And now you can leave, so I can continue my bathing.”

“Water’s cold already.” Geralt said not missing a beat.

“Fine.” Axelia said in steady voice as she braced herself on the edges of the tub and on her right, got out of it.

“Oh, sweet…” Jaskier exclaimed, hiding his face behind Geralt’s back. The witcher only let out a displeased grunt as he casted his eyes down at the floor. With her back naked to two men, Axelia reached for a towel and wrapped it around herself.

“I’m… I am going back downstairs.” Jaskier said sliding away from the back of Geralt and disappearing from the room.

“Is that your jester?” Axelia asked as she pulled a comb through her hair.

“Jaskier is a bard.” Geralt’s voice come from somewhere closer than before.

“Why don’t you go downstairs now? Join that Jaskier of yours. I am pretty sure that they have ale or something.” Axelia said putting down the brush on the table in front of her.

“Look…” Geralt started, briefly receiving disapproving sigh from her.

“About what you said.” He continued.

“I don’t like where this is going. You should leave. Before you say too much, Geralt.” Axelia said, looking down at the floor. All she could feel was him standing behind her, as his warm breath landed on her naked shoulders.

“I didn’t want to-” Geralt started again, but Axelia interrupted him:

“Leave me?” she took a step forward, away from him.

“Axelia.” Geralt said sternly.

“Leave. I need to get dressed.” Axelia run her hand along the dress that was on the bed.

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.” Geralt said, his yellow eyes following her hand movement.

“I don’t feel like showing my scars to you right now.” Axelia said holding towel closer to her chest. Her head turned towards the door, where one could hear cheers from downstairs.

“Go. Join them.” Axelia putted her hand gently on his chest and gave him a small push backwards. He didn’t fight her, with only a nod towards her, went downstairs.

Axelia was left alone for a moment, when there was a small knock on her door.

“What is it?” Axelia asked half annoyed as she was securing her hair in low bun at the nape of her neck.

“Are you wakeful, dearie?” Old lady peaked her head in her room.

“Yes.” Axelia half whispered.

“May I come in?” old lady asked even though she already had come in.

“Boys must be keeping you up with all that noise.” Lady said sitting on Axelia’s bed.

“I’ll manage. After all I grew up in a place with mainly boys.” Axelia sighed at took a seat next to the lady. She let her hands slide along the skirt part of the dress that lady had given her. Axelia was never one for the dresses. They always got in her way. Restricted the movement of her body.

“I guess alongside the big one.” Lady chuckled. Axelia hummed in response.

“But there is something more.” She continued to tell the girl.

“Maybe in past.” Axelia sighed, looking around the room. Without a word, the old lady took hold of Axelia’s left hand and held it in her lap.

“Tell me what happened.” She asked her softly.

“He left…” Axelia started in the softest voice, barely above the whisper.

“Without any explanation. Left me alone on the doorstep. I thought that all the things we faced together until that…. I thought that there was something more to it. Maybe it wasn’t the connection he was looking for… I don’t… know… that winter he didn’t come back… I was being a fool… for waiting for him to come back… I was alone… no one believed me that I could do this… this…whatever this is…” girl explained, her head now in the old lady’s lap as she used her hands to express her mixed emotions.

“I was all alone… and all the parts of me that I showed him… kind of disappeared… I thought that he loved me… we didn’t say that… not directly, anyway… but I thought that… he had this thing with tapping me three times… I didn’t know what that meant… still absolutely don’t… he tapped whatever part was closest to him… just *tap tap tap*” Axelia tapped lady’s knee three times.

“Only three times… no more, no less… tap tap tap.” Axelia tapped in air with her finger.

“After the second winter, I kind of… got sick of it… news travelled fast you know? I heard that he was coming back… I don’t know why or for what… but he wasn’t alone…” Axelia explained, letting out some details, not willing to bare her all to some stranger.

“With who?” old lady asked softly, letting her fingers brush hair out of Axelia’s face.

“Yennefer…” Axelia said softly, without any malice in her voice.

“This pretty girl, the sorcerer… the one that had stolen his heart… Love of his life.” Axelia said, single tear running down her face. She remembered that, she didn’t want to, but she did. Vesemir had said  something about Geralt coming back, to do something. Unfinished business of sorts. But when Vesemir had mentioned another name, Axelia was confused. She had asked him to explain who this Yennefer is to be. And once Axelia had learned about this all ordeal of love of his life, she didn’t want to linger. She had run upstairs to her room, packed as little as she could and escaped the Kaer Morhen through the hole in the wall, so just she wouldn't have the option to run into him and the love of his life. But that was years ago, even though the memory was burnt in her head like with flaming spear.

“You know…” old lady started as she saw the unhappy look on girl’s face.

“In one lifetime you can and will love so many times, but there will be that one that will burn your soul forever.” She continued.

“Yeah… right…” Axelia scoffed with slight roll of her eyes.

“Sweetheart, do you know the difference between the love of your life and a soulmate?”

“Aren’t you supposed to love your soulmate for the rest of your life…” Axelia furrowed her brows.

“You choose the love. You choose who to love. How long? That is up to you. But the soulmate… soulmate isn’t a choice, dearie.” Lady explained.

“What are you implying?” Axelia sat up, dried her tears and blinked at the lady.

“Maybe he’s your soulmate. Have you thought about that?” lady looked at her with caring smile.

“No… never…” Axelia trailed off, her eyes drifting towards the door.

“He might not love you in the same he does this Yennefer. Nor does he love you in a way that you might understand love. But there always will be that connection, that power that will draw you together. You might think that you both are just making your way through the fog, but in reality, you’ll just end up meeting each other again. He needs you as much as you need him.” Lady explained. Axelia sat there, thinking. Her thoughts running in circles. Her ears buzzing. Hairs on her hands raising, sending shivers down her spine.

“I…umm… I gotta…” Axelia stood up, pointing at the door.

“You better…” Old lady got up too and opened doors for her.

**

Axelia didn’t walk down all the way. She stopped in the middle and just looked over the railings. There at the table sat Jaskier telling some magnificent tale about his and Geralt’s adventures. The stable boys drinking and laughing, and cheering at that. Two maids seemed to listen in as well, but their attention was caught by the handsome witcher sitting at the same table, tankard of ale in his hand, and annoyed look on his face. Axelia leaned against the railing and listened at the story that Jaskier was telling. But her unseeing eyes seemed to be drawn towards the witcher.

What if the old hag was right? What if he was her soulmate? What if it was inevitable for her to meet him here? What if it was inevitable for him to find her in that forest? She would have stared longer at the witcher, but he caught her stare and quirked an eyebrow at her, that familiar scent of velvet rose and sandalwood more prominent than ever. That smell could numb all his senses and he wouldn’t complain. He could drown in that scent and he wouldn’t even fight for his life.

“What?” Axelia mouthed but didn’t move away from her spot on the stairs. Jaskier, on the other hand, had caught the look that Axelia shared with Geralt.

“Ah, yes, the blind she-witcher!” he exclaimed, raising his tankard and cheering at the girl on stairs. This only got him a look of disapproval from Geralt and annoyed sigh from Axelia.

“Come, join us!” Jaskier got up and made his way towards Axelia.

“Oh, no, no, no.” Axelia said taking a step back but she had nowhere to go as Jaskier grabbed her hand and dragged her to the table, making her sit between himself on her left and one of the maids on her right. And next to that maid sat Geralt.

Great. She was stuck somewhere she didn’t want to be in the first place.

“Do tell us of your adventures!” one of the stable boys in front of her asked, sending a smirk her way. Axelia furrowed her brows, but didn’t say anything.

“How can a blind girl fight monsters…” giggled one of the maids that seemed to be tipsy already.

“It just takes sword and little bit of courage.” Axelia explained pulling on her sleeves, as she didn’t feel like being in the centre of the attention.

“That sounds like lines for my next song.” Jaskier mumbled to her left.

“That kind of life must be hard. No man in your life and all…” other maid on her right said, leaning her head on Geralt’s shoulder.

“I’ll choose to not answer that…” Axelia leaned her elbows on the table.

“Oh? Why not?” still giggled the first maid.

“I don’t want to talk about that one asshole…” Axelia answered matter of factly and sent a small look to Geralt, who looked at her incredulously.

“He was not an asshole.” Geralt said in his tankard as he drank ale.

“Oh, really?” Axelia’s eyebrows rose up as she leaned away from the table and turned to look at Geralt.

“Let’s see, hmm. That asshole left me. Didn’t explain anything. Not a single word. What else? Didn’t come back for two years. Oddly enough. Oh, and when he did come back, it was with another woman. And a child. I could live with that child part, because that’s complicated and he kind of asked for it. Destiny has something for all of us. But you know, no explanation... How’s that for an adventure story.” Axelia finished her rant with crossing her hands.

“We weren’t together.” Geralt gave her a pointed look.

“We...?” Jaskier mumbled, his fingers pointing to Axelia and Geralt, as he was drawing parallels in his head.

“We slept together!” Axelia stood up. She bunched up her skirt part of the dress and climbed over the bench and was ready to leave.

“As if you haven’t slept with anyone else.” Geralt called behind her. She swiftly turned around, still holding her dress:

“Speak for yourself, Rivian. Some of us don’t really go for unmeaningful sex.” Axelia huffed. There was silence as both of them stared at each other.

“So, you two were together…?” Jaskier asked meekly, pointing at both.

“Jaskier.” Geralt warned the bard.

“Shitty day to learn that you are my soulmate, I suppose.” Axelia mumbled quietly to herself, but she was pretty sure that the witcher at the table was the only one who heard her.

“I bid you all good night.” Axelia made a little bow and walked up stairs. Geralt only stared at her leaving form. With annoyed grunt he got up and went after her.

~~~~

part I || part II || part III || part IV || part V || part VI || part VII || part VIII || part IX || part X || part XI || part XII || part XIII | Epilogue

tags: @boiled-onionrings @fandomwithnolifesblog @901seconds @kingniazx @shesakillerkween @your-dreams-are-strong @stitchattacks​ @ayamenimthiriel​ @stormfire6​ @mr-illegal-king @stretchkingblog97​ @mikariell95​

[veeranger]

Thoughts on Halo Reach's plot and best to worst noble team members?

you know ive actually been a lot more critical towards reach lately because i think it fails on the biggest thing it advertised: noble team. characters have never really been the strong suit of bungie’s writing (idk who destiny is so dont @ me) and while this isnt usually a major issue, it is an issue when a game wants to sell you on this squad of your teammates it wants you to care about or at least be fond of. ODST and Reach both have a cast of characters that could be really interesting but since halo is a shooter and not really a storytelling kinda game series all they really get are a few lines here and there and some cool moments, nothing really solid or anything to get a glimpse at who they are. maybe thats kinda the point though since spartans are all fucked up broken people like inherently. i dont think thats why bungie did that though

as for reach’s actual plot, i think it works well for what it is, a playable tragedy that tells you the conclusion up front. halo fans who are any level above completely casual knew that reach got completely glassed right before the start of halo ce and the advertising of this was very clear. the fact that you’ve never heard of spartan 3′s or noble team before was a pretty clear indicator of what their fates would be before you even turned on your xbox. the game literally opens with your smashed helmet embedded in the ground as a tombstone to your inevitable heroic sacrifice. reach invokes the same kind of feeling as star wars rogue one, you just know things wont end well for our main characters but you know that their deaths will pave the way for the main series protagonist to eventually win the whole damn thing 3 games/movies from now. 

so even with this in mind you go through reach and you think “wow things are going pretty well, we’re holding out own against the covies and even striking back at key targets” and maybe you forget whats going to happen or you dont and you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. and boy fucking howdy does it drop. jorge dies thinking he just saved reach and as you fall through the atmosphere you realize how hopelessly fucked you are. thats where the game enters its second phase, the “we’re fucked but still fighting” phase, as opposed to the first half of the game where things were still somewhat hopeful. noble six wakes up like a week later to half the planet burning and civilians being slaughtered as they try to evac. the first level of the second half of the game features you busting your ass hard to clear an evac point for civilians only to see them all get shot down and die. its brutal stuff, especially for halo who had never shown the conflict though that lense. 

what follows is a parade of squadmate deaths as your numbers dwindle with every level until its just you and emile, and then just you. unlike in rogue one you actually aren’t immediately told what the key item in this quest is, in this case its cortana, the equivalent to the death star plans in rogue one, the most important thing in the universe since cortana will be the one to slipspace jump to halo 04 and kick off a series of events that will lead to the survival of humanity. but once you get this item suddenly it all makes sense, carter is told this is “what his spartans died for” and to you that means a lot more than it ever would to him. 

reach ends with a profoundly impactful epilogue level where you just. are doomed. you can’t hold out forever and even if you could there’s no rescue coming for you. noble six gave their life to save the universe and never even knew it. the fact that their death isnt a cutscene but you actually yourself have to try to stave off death or just take as many elites with you as you can before they get you, it really adds so much to the impact of the final noble team death. nevermind that six isnt a real character it does work in this case because you’re seeing it from a first person perspective.

so overall my thoughts on reach is that despite the major flaw of not making you care enough about noble team (unless you do, this is my personal view) it does its job very well in portraying the desperate struggle of humanity against a threat that they cannot possibly comprehend or rightfully stand up against, but despite devastating loss the small victories they achieved still ended up mattering in the end. 

now as for noble team i wont do a best to worst but ill give my thoughts on everyone

carter: hardass commander type, not much to say imo. his death scene was his best moment and i wish his relationship with kat had been fleshed out more because it was so so funny to see her pull his strings to get what she wants. you can tell he has the respect of everyone, especially emile. 

kat: the only girl! i actually like cat, im glad they gave her a buzzcut instead of trying to make her sexy or anything even if they did give her that ass in her armor. shes the typical smartass better than you genius character but it works, especially with that accent. i wish i could be friends with her, there was that scene right before she died where she confided in six that this was also her first glassing. her death was kind of shock value to me and i wish she could have at least died with a little more dignity like the rest of noble team but alas :(

jun: probably my least favorite. i cant really remember much of this guy. he’s the only one who got to live and i kind of hate him for that because he was the least interesting of the bunch. 

emile: certainly the most iconic of all the noble spartans. he comes off as sadistic but not a maniac, he listens to carter when he speaks and is on good terms with kat even through his obvious inability to really connect to other people. this is certainly because of the fact that he’s a spartan-3, he’s probably the most “inhuman” of the bunch. i wish his relationship with jorge was given a little more, i liked how despite his pushing jorge early in the game he still mourned his death, and yet refused to carry his dogtags because he knew six was the one who was entrusted with them. his death was very iconic i think everyone remembers that. 

jorge: the big man himself, his death is what set the tone for the second half of the game and was probably pretty impactful to most people playing. i always thought it was interesting that he was a spartan-2 and not a 3 like the rest of noble, i wonder why that was. his relationship with halsey was interesting and it showed that not all spartans hated the devil woman for what she did to them. his defining characteristic was his big heart and that was especially interesting for a spartan-2, that he managed to hold onto something like that through all the shit he probably went through. 

[veiledpeaches]

chance encounters | epilogue: this is what distance does

Summary: Between pages of meddling friends and societal expectations, all she actually wants is to find a happily ever after with Doyoung, even if it feels like that is no longer possible. 

part i x part ii x part iii x part iv x part v x part vi

word count: 3.3k

i would say this is more of an epilogue than a final chapter, ‘cause if the ending wasn’t clear in the last chapter - this should do the job. 

GIF originally posted by @lukhei​

In a universe where love is a form of currency, Doyoung believes that the Johnny’s of the world will always win.

Even back in university, when they discussed their stock market ventures, he has always noticed Johnny’s indifference towards sunk costs, detailed analysis of opportunity cost at every stage of the investment and decisiveness when it comes to exercising call options. Johnny always believed in win-win situations, so he would never get himself caught up in toxic and mutually detrimental situations.

The same could be said about his relationships. With the number of relationships he has walked away from, he knows that Johnny thinks he isn’t able to make anyone stay, that he’s going to take a while to settle down, but Doyoung knows otherwise. It takes another form of self-preserving courage to walk away from a relationship that no longer serves your growth, to cut your losses and learn to transfer the investment of your feelings in the search for a more suitable person.

While Doyoung has always been firm in his career choices, he hadn’t been able to replicate the same decisiveness in his relationships.

Everyone around him thinks he knew about the affair four months before he had broken things off with her, but Doyoung knows better. It had been close to a year before the wedding date, that he had received an anonymous email, presumably from Inhee’s co-worker, that she was cheating on him. And as the image of his girlfriend on another man’s lap had loaded pixel by pixel, when he had his fist clenched so hard that his knuckles turned white, when his blunt nails had dug into his skin and the hand on his mouse started to tremble, Doyoung had vowed, albeit in brief, revenge for such an affront to his ego.

But on the drive home, once he had calmed down, what struck Doyoung most wasn’t the hurt that he should have felt because of a lost love, but the betrayal of trust, as if that was all his relationship with Inhee had been about - the mutual trust and respect for each other.

That night, when he had returned home to a smiling girlfriend, when she had straddled him and pulled his shirt over his arms after dessert, Doyoung had silently uttered an apology to Inhee, looking at her with the same gaze she had mistaken for desire. An apology because of his cowardice and his selfishness. An apology because, even though it could set both of them free of this convenient relationship, a break-up wasn’t in the cards for him.

Maybe love wasn’t for him, he had mused the next morning. He had spent the last two years of high school studying for entrance exams, the whole of university in search for a suitable career path; a relationship had just been something he picked up along the way. But then as he looked up that morning, watching a familiar figure cursing under her breath as she almost spilled his coffee, looking back down and pretending to focus on his work while his heart had beat faster listening to her make her way over to him, Doyoung realized it had always been about finding the right person.

And Haewon, with the lightness she had about her, the curious lilt in her voice, the endearing way her eyes lit up when someone recommended a restaurant to her, her relentlessness in pursuing the things she believed in - these were just some of the things about her that brought a smile to Doyoung’s face everyday.

So now, as he flies halfway across the world to a city he’s never set foot in, Doyoung just hopes there’s still a space left for him in Haewon’s life.

The international airport he finds himself in isn’t as big as Incheon airport, but it’s still a bigger crowd than Doyoung had anticipated. He’s flipping through the texts in his phone since he has landed, in search for any of Johnny’s texts that indicated where to get a cab after he has left the arrival hall, and almost doesn’t feel it when there’s a tap on his shoulder.

He swings around, fully expecting to tell the person that he’s new to the airport too, and that he wouldn’t be able to deliver directions in English, when he meets eyes with the person he’s wanted to see for a year now.

Haewon’s hair is lighter than it was a year ago, thrown back in a messy bun held by a pencil, and she has the biggest grin on her face when he turns around. Her face is almost devoid of any make-up, and there are tiny crinkles at the corner of her eyes as she smiles now, but she looks beatific. Doyoung finds himself smiling too, as the people traipsing around and about them seem to slow down and blur out. His eyes are so warm from smiling so wide, and his chest feels so tight from looking at her like this, but he feels like he’s in the right place now.

“How did you know?” His voice comes out tighter than usual.

Haewon rolls her eyes endearingly. “Johnny texted me this morning - it took me a few minutes to realize he wasn’t on the plane. I could only guess it would be you.”

“Well,” he chuckles, “I hope you like your surprise.”

She looks at him for a moment, her eyes pearly and twinkling, and her smile falls slightly.

“I thought you might get lost,” she says, the corners of her lips rising again, “I know you hate crowds, just like me.”

Doyoung can’t fight the feeling of breathlessness that follows.

Once Doyoung has loaded his luggage into the trunk of her big silver Ford, it’s just default routine behavior that leads him to the driver’s seat, but a raised eyebrow from Haewon reminds him of where he is.

“You don’t even know the roads here, boss,” she tilts her head to gesture him to the passenger seat as she drops his messenger bag in the backseat.

Doyoung climbs into her car albeit reluctantly, “Johnny says you suck at driving though.”

Haewon whistles at the dig. “Johnny’s always speeding, does he really get to say that?”

(“I kissed Haewon before she left,” Johnny had confessed just a couple of months ago. “I had a crush on her for a while and I kissed her.”

Doyoung had found himself riveted in his seat, unable to say anything or even make a sound. That something could have transpired between Johnny and Haewon wasn’t something he could have anticipated or even imagined. He tries to fight the twinge of jealousy arising from the pits of his stomach, and then wonders if that’s what Johnny has had to experience all this time.

“She rejected me though, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“That’s between you and Haewon,” Doyoung tries, uncertain if the words are said for Johnny’s sake or for his own, “why are you telling me—”

“Of course I have to,” Johnny turns to him with a smile, and Doyoung isn’t sure if the redness of Johnny’s cheeks is because of the cold, the beer or the memory.

“Only you would be dumb enough to think that she could’ve forgotten about you after a year.”)

“-But I stayed ‘cause I wanted to experience Providence in the summer - I’ve heard that it’s really different and I have to agree, there’s a lot more happening… Are you listening to me, boss?”

Doyoung turns to look at her somewhat dazedly, his eyes grazing over the pencil in her hair and how her sunglasses perches on her head, her sun-kissed cheeks, the intent of her gaze on the road. Then he realizes they’ve been on the road for five minutes and haven’t discussed the living situation at all.

“I booked a hotel just in case—”

“Nonsense,” she interrupts quickly, “you’re staying with me. I’ve a spare room, Johnny stays there when he comes anyway.”

“Well, I didn’t want to assume anything.”

Haewon frowns and signals left, and when she turns to reply she finds Doyoung’s eyes on her. They exchange a lingering look, too loaded with potential meaning to begin to interpret. Then she looks down and laughs, a little too brightly than what should be considered appropriate for their situation, especially given the bite of the words that had been exchanged at their last meeting.

“It’s not like you’re here to visit anyone else, why would you stay anywhere else?”

Doyoung finds something hot and heavy slash across his chest - he isn’t sure if she is intentionally being facetious or just trying to stave off the impending heavy conversation. Save for their short-lived moment at the airport, the conversations they’ve had since they walked towards her car have been surface-scratching.

“Ha, no, you’re right,” he hears himself saying, and feels more than sees Haewon’s turn towards him, and he knows she’s still wondering what exactly had precipitated this sudden acquiescence.

Perhaps it’s premature to discuss the lines that run deeper between them, Doyoung tells himself. After all, he did show up without a warning, and Haewon has never been good with surprises. But even amidst the chaos in his brain, there’s a thought that he can’t shake off, rattling in his head like an old screen door:

Because it is only then that something dawns on Doyoung - something he probably blanked out of his system and disregarded as an insecurity - that in the time Doyoung took to decide on his next move, Haewon could have changed her mind.

Thankfully, the conversation on the rest of the road - and even as they take the lift to her apartment - is free of hiccups. He tries to slip in the idea that this trip to visit her is to segue into a work trip he has to make to the New York headquarters,  to hopefully dispel any pressure she might be feeling upon his arrival. And it works - the conversation does become more casual. Doyoung learns that in the short span of a year, Haewon, expectedly, is doing well enough in her classes, has become more of a coffee addict than him, and has actually written a short story that earned the interest of local publishers. On the other end, Haewon learns that Doyoung has finally taken time off work and spent it with his family, and that his brother is getting married in the fall. She’s also really excited to hear that he’s painting again.

“That’s incredible, boss,” her smile is soft and genuine, “I’m so proud of you.”

Doyoung can’t stop the smile forming on his face, so he nods embarrassedly and looks away, turning his attention to her apartment around him, taking in his minimalist surroundings and the sleek modern furniture that greets him. On the left, there’s the closed door of what is presumably her bedroom, and on his right, a small study room with a clean but disorganized wooden desk, and he can make out the end of what he thinks is a blue sofa bed.

He wonders if there has been another man in her apartment before. It’s not out of jealousy, he tells himself, it’s not like I’m her boyfriend. It’s just… curiosity.

“Your walls are bare,” he comments offhandedly, and hears a chuckle escape her lips as she walks to his side.

“That’s the first thing you notice? I thought you’d definitely say something about my desk.”

“Well as it is, you’re markedly less organized than I’d thought.”

She makes a face. “Isn’t the lack of organization befitting of the starving artist trope?”

“Look at this place - you’re hardly starving.”

She bursts into a tiny fit of laughter, shrugging off her cropped denim jacket to reveal a casual burnt orange maxi dress.

“Fine, enough about my apartment. I know you’re a little jet lagged, but I made a reservation at this—”

And even though he feels the question rising in his chest, he doesn’t know what prompts him to say it, and when he does his voice has automatically lowered into a gentle timbre,

“Did you read the book I gave you?”

It’s a question he’s wanted to ask for a year now, when she’d texted him a simple ‘thank you for the book’ once she’d landed. The answer he’s waited for with bated breath, but by the look of her face right now, he feels like he shouldn’t have said anything at all.

He hears Haewon swallow abruptly, and then she’s removing the pencil holding her bun, her hair cascading over her shoulders.

She drops the pencil on the table next to her, and Doyoung is still waiting.

“I did.”

Her answer is as clear as day, but it isn’t a happy answer that greets Doyoung. Instead, in the aftermath of those two words, Doyoung isn’t sure how to continue.

“So you saw…”

“I did.”

“And when you texted me to say thanks, you knew—”

“I did,” Haewon lapses into a refrain she finds frustrating herself, but there is a form of resolution and collection in her voice, and her chin is lifted a little, as if daring him to say something, anything else.

They are rooted to where they stand for a long time, their eyes speaking the words their mouths are unable to say. Then Doyoung hears a buzz, and he thinks he’s imagined it, until the buzzing doesn’t stop and Haewon regretfully tears her eyes away from his and reaches for her phone on the table. She walks into her room as she picks up her phone, and Doyoung carries his luggage into the study, presumably where he would sleep for the rest of the trip.

His heart drums loudly in his ears as he thinks of the way her eyes had looked when he'd asked her about the book, and all he really wants to do is to pick that memory up and bury it deep in his chest, because only there would it not seem real.

He’s so deep in thought, he almost doesn’t see the images playing as a screensaver on her desktop, until there’s a photo that flits into the center of the screen, and his lungs are robbed of his breath.

It’s definitely developed from a film camera, the background dark and blur and almost Polaroid-like, undeniably taken on the night before she left.

They aren’t smiling to the camera in this photo, Haewon’s mouth is slightly open and she looks as if she's about to say something to the person behind the camera. Her hair is still dark, still straight, and she looks exhausted.

Right next to her is Doyoung himself, his arm around her shoulder and a glass of white wine in the same hand. He isn’t smiling, but he might as well be, looking at her with the softest expression he didn’t know his face could form.

So this is how he looks like when he looks at her, he thinks. He looks… happy.

Does she see it?

Then the image shrinks back into another one, which fades into another one, but Doyoung only looks up from the desktop when there’s a cough at the door.

“Hey,” Haewon’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes, but she tries to shrug it off as she drops her wallet into her bag, “we should go. I need to pick up something—”

“You’ve been calling me ‘boss’.”

“What?” Haewon looks up from her bag to meet Doyoung’s eyes, and watches as he gets up from his crouched position on the floor. The warmth of the late afternoon summer sun filters through the window of her study, but even as Doyoung gets up she can feel the sun against her, casting its golden hour rays onto the both of them and peeking from behind his shoulder.

“From the airport and then all the way here, you kept calling me ‘boss’, even though you are no longer working for me,” Doyoung says, his voice measured and low. “Is that what’s left of us?”

The smile on his face is tight, and as she tries her best to ignore the glare of the sun, Haewon can’t stop herself from asking the next question.

“Why’re you here, Doyoung?”

The diminishing glare of the sun still feels too bright for her, and Haewon finds herself dropping her gaze onto the neighbour’s balcony opposite the study.

“Why’re you really here, honestly?”

His smile falters, but it feels like he has lifted something off his chest when he says, “do you remember when you told me you didn’t want to like me?”

“That was a year ago…” And now her voice is cracking, loud and shaky, rising up into the huge space above them, “you still remember that?”

Doyoung still feels too far away.

“Have things changed?”

Haewon falls silent, choosing to focus her gaze on a pot of sunflower in her neighbour’s balcony instead. She’s wrestling with her feelings, desperately trying to keep the very potent – and yet very tenuous - glimmer of hope (that she doesn’t want to admit still exists) from being unearthed again.

“Because I hope they haven’t. And not just that, I want you to be okay with liking me. So then maybe…” he bites his lip, taking one step towards her, “it’ll be okay for me to like you too.”

“Doyoung…” And suddenly all she can see is Doyoung, as his eyes sparkle with a desire that has been displaced for too long.

“I should never have let you say those words. I should have told you how much you make me feel, how in love I am with you, how I never want to lose you, the night before you left. But I couldn’t, I just kept thinking… I’ve missed my chance, and now I can’t stop her from leaving.

“I used to think that what Johnny was always expounding – the concept of ‘the one’ – was just over-glorified. That soulmates were a myth, there are only people who are more compatible for each other. And I still don’t know if that’s true, but from the moment I met you, there has been an insistence in me that was never really there before.”

Haewon can feel her face contort, and she doesn’t stop the tears from falling this time.

“You knew that if you had asked me to stay, I would’ve-”

“I know, I know.” Doyoung’s hands are cupped against her face, brushing the tears away with his thumbs, “But I couldn’t let you do that. This was your shot. I couldn’t bring myself to take it away from you.”

“But now,” he drops his hands and laces their fingers together, “I’m taking mine.”

“Could you give me a chance to love you?”

She looks up at him, taking in the line of his chin, his eyes and long lashes, the way his fingers are brushing a bit of her hair off her face, entwining themselves in the strands there. So nearby now, after the distance before. But he is here, and this is all that matters to her as she wraps her arms around his shoulders and buries her face in the crook of his neck.

“I never needed a dramatic love declaration,” she says between sobs against his neck, “I never needed you to fly all the way here to ask me to be with you. I just needed to know that you were willing to take a chance with me.”

She feels a kiss against her temple, and shuts her eyes as she relishes in the warmth of his embrace.

“Thank you for waiting,” he whispers into her ear. “From now on, let me be the one to take care of you.”

They have a long way to go, so many things to work out, but for now, Haewon thinks, this is enough.

//

w/n: and that’s all she wrote. :-)

it got cheesy at the end - oops. as usual my stories are always a cringefest (like are we even surprised lmao no) alsO i still have no idea how to end fics, hence.

i recently read from an interview that Doyoung said that an action that could possibly make him fall for someone (i think?) is that which makes him feel like they’re taking care of him. it made the crybaby cry. long story short it gave me so much DOFEELS - i had to write it in. he’s so cool I’m so done

just wanted to say i’m so thankful for the support that has been given to this short story, it really means a lot as this is the first one i’ve written on tumblr, hopefully there are more to come but for now, this is it. thank you!

COMMENTS ARE ALWAYS APPRECIATED :-) ask

[actuallykiwi]

Phoenix

Fan-written Mass Effect 3 Epilogue

The Reapers are destroyed. The galaxy knows peace once more. Mostly. Amid the crashed ruins of the Citadel, the “Hero of the Galaxy”, Jane Shepard, lies barely alive. It takes a keen eye from one team of paramedics to find her broken body. The galaxy was saved, but now it’s Shepard’s turn once more. 

So many bodies. So much debris. The next four or five generations would be seeing the scars of the Reaper War. Clean-up had only been going on for about 48 hours. Most of the Citadel ended up in the ocean, but that still left a lot of it on the shore. “Shore” being 1/3 of Manhattan. The rest of it was reported flying back down on London.

Evening was falling. Dawson and his team of paramedics were part of the New York Search & Rescue (NYSR) squad, scouring any and every part of the Citadel debris that landed in New York. They were looking for anything or anyone they could salvage, but so far, no signs of life had been detected. And the damage the explosion had done, the damage the Reapers did to the citizens of the Citadel... they would all have mental scars for the rest of their lives. Dawson’s team only had 45 minutes left until they had to call it a day. The hardest part of the job was finding and identifying every single body they found. And today they found... less than yesterday, but a staggering, heart-wrenching number nonetheless. 

Dawson, stone-faced as usual, helped his teammate load another poor asari onto the shuttle before climbing over the debris back to where he was. He wanted to leave so bad. But someone had to do this job. He sighed as he turned off his flashlight and sat on jagged metal slab, head in his hands. 

It was only when he sat completely still that he heard it. 

He couldn’t be imagining it. He shot up and stood quietly. There, ever-so-quietly to his left, he could hear it. 

Breathing. 

Raspy, soft, labored breathing. Someone was still alive. 

Dawson almost dropped his flashlight to turn it on, but quickly and carefully tread to the source. “I’ve got a live one over here!” His heart was racing as he reached the dark figure and his teammates began to trek over to him. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the N7 tag, bloody and crumpled, but there. The flashlight glided over their hardly-moving torso, over the various scars and broken bones, the bloody, singed black hair, and to the nearly-mangled face of none other than... 

“OH MY GOD! IT’S COMMANDER SHEPARD!!!!”

And then chaos. Every team that was close enough to hear him immediately rushed to his position. Dawson and a few other men began clearing the rubble around her body as carefully as possible. At least a dozen paramedics stood by ready for action. 

“We need as much medi-gel as we can spare over here, NOW!” 

“Oh my God, Shepard’s still alive?!” 

“Get anyone that worked on the Lazarus project in an OR!”

“Has anyone been able to reach the Normandy crew yet?!” 

Shepard’s unconscious body was delicately placed on a gurney, and a dozen or more tubes were now sticking out of her every which way. They had to move through the debris to the nearest landing zone for the chopper to receive her. From there, it was a short ride to the hospital. 

“You’ll be alright, Commander. Just hang in there!” 

*******************************************

I need more medi-gel in here! That rubble was keeping her from bleeding out!

Voices. They were faint, but she could still hear them clearly. All she could see was white. Then black once more. 

Keep that IV in. She’s gonna be in a hell of a lot of pain whenever she comes to. You mean if she comes to. She will. She’s Commander Shepard, after all, this wouldn’t be the first time she’s beat death. 

She could smell this time. It certainly smelled like a hospital. Then black again. 

Shepard, I’m almost certain you’re immortal at this point. 

That voice. Miranda? It had to be. 

I’m not sure if you can hear me, but you’ve done it again. You’ve cheated death. Though this was a bit different than last time. We don’t have the tools we did in Cerberus, during Lazarus. And I’ll be honest, you’re in... much worse condition this time. You’re an actual miracle if you wake up... But I know you. You will. 

She felt slight pressure on her head. A gentle rub. 

You lucky bastard. 

Blackness. 

This time was a whole host of voices. She could recognize each one distinctly, but still didn’t have the strength to respond.

“-and yet here we are. Here you are. Somehow still kicking. I’m honestly a little scared of you now.” Joker. 

“Now? I always have been! To come back from death once was scary enough, but now? To still be alive after all that?? Shepard, I could almost worship you.” Laughter from sweet Tali. 

“I don’t know about worship, but I definitely believe you’re immortal, or close to it.” Kaiden. 

“I’m just glad you are still alive, even though you’re not with us.” Liara. 

“Alright, her pulse is rising, give her her space.” Dr. Chakwas. And from the distance, she must have been standing right outside the door. A few more people said things, complained, pats on the shoulder, but began to fade away. 

But someone was missing. Whose voice was she missing? She wanted to hear it, to- 

And then a hand was around hers. Gently on her cheek. And that voice, right above her... 

“Come back to us, soon. We miss you. I miss you... It’s empty without you here.” Garrus. Garrus Vakarian. Her pulse slowed back down to normal and she could feel herself breathe with relief. She heard him chuckle. “That’s my girl. Keep breathing, and open those pretty eyes soon.” She felt him kiss her forehead. 

She was beginning to fade out again, but she could just make out him asking Chakwas if he could stay. She argued, stating “if he did, they would all want to”, but she begrudgingly accepted. She felt his hand around hers again, and then everything went quiet. 

**************************************

It was silent, minus the beeping of the heart monitor. Steady. That’s good. It took effort, but she moved. A twitch of the hand. A nudge of the shoulder. Face squinting. And hoo-boy, she was sore. A little grunt came from inside her, and for the first time in God knows how long, her blue eyes welcomed the pale ceiling. She could feel the cold nightgown across her torso, which was also strangely freezing. It was a slow process to move anything. At first it was just her eyes, which glimpsed the ceiling, window to her left, monitor to her right, and monitor on the wall, displaying her name, condition, date, etc. 

Then, her head, moving to fully look at everything, including her turian boyfriend sleeping soundly on the chair. She grunted again, trying to move her arms and legs, and found it more difficult to move her whole left side. She swallowed, painfully, and mustered what little strength she had to call his name. 

“G-Garrus...” 

Her voice was raspy and quiet, but audible. He snorted and slowly woke up. He looked over at her. She stared sleepily back, and smiled as big as she could manage. “Hi...” 

“JANE!” With his height, he was over to her in one bound, hugging her as gently yet as tightly as he could. She grunted and laughed, groaning from pain. “I knew you’d be back, nothing can keep you down. God, I missed you!” 

“I.. missed you too.” She whispered, forcing her right arm to hug him back. He released her and held her hand as he sat by her. It was only when his other hand wiped her cheek did she realize she cried a little. From joy or pain, she couldn’t tell, but she was happy to see him, too. 

“I know it’s probably difficult to talk, so I’ll answer your questions before you ask. Yes, the galaxy is safe. You did it. The Reapers are destroyed. But also so is most synthetic life. I say most because, it was all, but the quarians managed to bring the geth back online, which the quarians are doing great by the way, and we’re working on bringing EDI back. She’s a bit... different from the geth, a bit more complicated, but we got some experts to look at her and she’ll be back soon. Like you.” He smiled at her. “The Citadel was destroyed though, as well as all those who didn’t evacuate in time. A good percentage did, but there’s still so many casualties... Most of it landed in the ocean, then some in London, and the rest here, in New York. You’re in a hospital in New York, by the way. Miranda, Chakwas, and a few other professionals and people from the Lazarus project we could find fixed you up as best as they could. Which, by the way, uh... was... most, of you.” 

Garrus reached for her left arm and lifted it up for her. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to be looking at metal. She flexed her new metal fingers, testing it out, and found that it only felt a little heavier than normal, but otherwise fine. “Your whole left body was... in bad shape. Well, you had no arm or leg, and a chunk of your side was chiseled, but the best smiths on this side of the universe got you replacements real quick. I didn’t even have to use my bad boy charm to convince them to give them to you.” They both chuckled. 

Shepard shuffled her left leg a bit. Sure enough, it was slightly heavier too. That would also explain why her side was freezing; it was metal. “You also have several broken bones, but I’ll let Chakwas explain all that.” 

He cupped her cheek again and sighed. “I’m glad you’re back. I’m buying you a whole bar worth of drinks once we get out of here.” She grinned. “I’ll take you up on that...” He laughed, and leaned down to kiss her. Her metal arm draped around his shoulders and their hands tightened together. 

A moment after pulling apart, Dr. Chakwas softly knocked on the wall and approached. “Glad to see you’re awake, Commander. We missed you.” Chakwas gave her a quick, soft hug. After their greeting, she gave her a rundown of all her injuries. Thankfully, most injuries were on the outside, including: a new arm, leg, and a few new ribs, multiple permanent scars on her face and torso, skull fractures, and her other leg broken. Inside, slight internal bleeding, which surprisingly was already healed. 

“You were found about 2 months ago, and I suppose you just awoke today. In terms of your new synthetic attachments, your entire left side of your body...” She cleared her throat and read from a tablet. “Your omni-tool is hardwired into your arm, so you can now even activate it without it your armor. It also comes with a hidden blade in both your arm and leg, so the omni-blade is no longer necessary, but there just in case. Your middle finger has a laser now, though I’m sure you can guess who chose that location in design.” She rolled her eyes. Garrus chuckled. “There’s also a long list of other goodies in your synthetic attachments that I’m sure you’re just dying to have me read off to you, but I’ll send it to your omni-tool because I have no desire to do so, and I need to do a quick physical before-” 

“SHEPARD!!!!”

“-that.” 

The entire Normandy crew had their commander surrounded, and were showering her in tears and welcomes and hugs and jabs and... you get the picture. It was emotional. 

The whole next month was like that. Garrus and Shepard had a movie night that ended as... passionately as it could. Joker compared notes about the usefulness of Shepard’s legs to his now. Liara, Tali, and Miranda had something like a tea party with her, only it was wine. So, a wine party. Samantha had a heart-to-heart with her. Joker brought a newly-revived EDI with him, and they agreed to go on a double date soon. Jack played with Shepard’s middle finger laser and discovered the arm came with minor biotic capabilities. She broke the monitor on the wall. 

Eventually, Shepard started taking physical therapy, but to be safe, they kept her in a wheelchair. 

She rolled out to the hospital balcony overlooking the city, and took a deep breath. It was her first time seeing the destruction herself. It was covered in bulldozers and other cleaning machines by this point, and several hundred people were packing up for the day. Even from here she could see the more massive pieces of the Citadel sticking out of the ocean. How she survived that, she would never know. 

“Gonna miss that place, for sure. Especially my favorite spot.” Garrus walked up beside her, arm draped behind her. 

“You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?” “Nope.” They both laughed. 

She sighed. “...Honestly, I’ll miss it, too. But I’m just glad this is all over. What was it you said? You wanted to retire someplace tropical, or something?” He nodded. “Yep. With you, of course. We’ll still adopt a little krogan, if you want.” 

“We could adopt Grunt.” She suggested. There was a pause. Then they both burst out laughing. 

“I know I’ve said it a million times by now, but God, I missed you, Shepard.” 

“Oh, you’re back to calling me Shepard, now? I was convinced you didn’t know my first name for the longest time.” 

He shrugged. “I know what it is, but I figured I’d call you that a bit longer before i change it.” 

“Change it?” 

“Yeah. I was thinking something along the lines of ‘Jane Vakarian’.” He looked at her and smiled warmly. “What do you think?” 

Jane reached for his hand and returned the smile. “Y’know, I really like the sound of that.” 

The End

[jflashandclash]

Traitors of Olympus IV

 Epilogue

           As they exited the courtroom for recess, Kally wished she hadn’t worn a skirt. Everything was miserable enough without having uncomfortable clothing on the list.

           Nikhil, Merry’s little brother, looked terrified. His gangly limbs looked awkward and stick-figure in his charcoal suit, like someone decided to stuff a scarecrow with dowel rods. Although Merry was pretending everything was fine, there was too much talk of foster homes. Neither sibling wanted to be split up again. With Merry’s emancipation, it was looking more and more likely. If Nikhil stayed at his Mom’s, then Merry would be close by and could do some proper mothering from a distance. But, Mrs. Blythe had missed out on too many court dates concerning Merry’s abusive stepfather.

           When Nikhil went to use the bathroom, all of Merry’s feigned confidence deflated. She collapsed onto one of the benches in the eerily sterile, white hallway. Kally had to wonder why all government buildings thought white was a good idea. What a comforting color when you’re settling a violent family dispute.

           “They’re not going to let me take care of him,” Merry said.

           Her voice was as hollow as her expression. No humming. No “sweetie” or “bae.” Even her outfit looked really… not Merry: a conservative business suit that couldn’t cover her curves and her wavy hair twisted up into a bun.

           Kally wished she knew what to do. Pax would have cracked a joke, but she hadn’t seen him since their chaotic Christmas dinner. Calex probably would have known best, but he hadn’t been able to come back from Britain. He’d fought hard to scrounge up enough money for a flight, but his side job didn’t make enough extra to helping his father with the funeral debts, contribute to rent, and pay for a ticket.

           Merry had teased him on the phone, had told him it was fine.

           Now, Merry’s face was pale. There wasn’t a trace of a smile on her lips. Kally could tell she hadn’t been sleeping.  

           “I did a lot of research with Malcolm about the laws for this,” Merry continued, her eyes distantly staring at the sunlight trickling through the window. A beautiful backdrop of a parking lot. “If an older, emancipated sibling can provide for their younger sibling, they’ll sometimes let them live together, but, I disappeared when he needed me… They’re going to keep him in permanent foster care. He doesn’t even like his temporary foster family.”

           Merry’s eyes glistened.

           Kally took Merry’s hand and squeezed it. “Hey, we’re going to make sure you can see Nik.”

           Merry’s eyes focused. She forced a smile. Although Kally hadn’t seen Merry nearly as much as she would have liked—something about being grounded for eternity as punishment for “running away” for a few months and drowning under makeup school work—Kally could tell Merry hadn’t been taking any of what happened well. Not that any of them could, but what happened to Hiro haunted Merry. Merry did not like that she had the power to drive people insane. It especially terrified Kally when Pollux gave her a call on the camp phone to say that Merry was second guessing whether she could have driven her own father to beat her.

           With the two months of distance between them and the Battle of Saturnalia, Kally almost wished these monsters were the kind she could hit with a light javelin.

           Then, the recess ended, and everyone was allowed back into the courtroom. Kally made sure not to look Merry’s adoptive father or her mother in the face. She was afraid she’d punch both of them for what they’d done to their children and that didn’t seem like a great idea with so many deputies patrolling the halls.

           The judge, an elderly, possibly senile Hispanic man named Justice Jose, shuffled back into the courtroom. For the entire proceedings, Kally had feared he would pass out. He and his two deputies had been glistening with sweat and clearly sick.

           Now, however, he looked much better. Color had returned to his wrinkled complexion. She’d heard Nikhil make a half-hearted joke about the judge really needing to go to the bathroom when he called recess so close to the final hearing. Maybe Nikhil had been right. No upset stomachs allowed in the courtroom.

           There was something different about him though, something Kally probably shouldn’t have even noticed because it was so subtle: he was wearing thin, black gloves.

           When Kally glanced at his two deputies, something else weird happened. Already, she couldn’t really remember what they looked like. Now, she struggled to look them in the face at all, and not because she’d broken the law several times in the last few months.

           Each time she did look at one, she immediately forgot his features, beyond the fact that the deputy was tall and a male. Hadn’t one of them been a female before?

           Kally was so distracted, she didn’t register the court formalities. She was so conditioned to standing and sitting at mass, the motions blurred past.

           But, her mind sharpened when Jose said, “I think we’ve heard enough from the different parties. Normally, I might go through an explanation to Mr. Sukumar Priya and Mrs. Blythe as to why I find them unfit to raise Nikhil, but I believe we have covered that amply.”

           Merry blinked and glanced over at Kally. This judge had been very wordy, like Homeric epic wordy, before.

           “From her financial records and the amount of maturity and responsibility that this merry girl has illustrated—”

           Merry’s eyes widened. During the entire proceedings, they’d been referring to her by her legal name, either Maari or Ms. Blythe. The judge looked like he’d held off a smile at the comment.

           “—she clearly is the best option to take care of her little brother. We will set up another home inspection and check in the next month after.”

           Kally almost didn’t hear anything else.

           Merry’s jaw dropped. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

           Kally felt the same happen to her. She didn’t even catch the judge delegating the decision’s write up to a clerk, who looked confused and skeptical. Jose signed a paper and said, “This court is adjourned.”

***

           They were celebrating as they left the courthouse. Kally’s older brother, John, would be driving around to pick them up, and she knew she could bully him into taking them for dessert. He’d been a lot more protective and attentive since she’d been back, especially after the massive fight that Kally had with their mother. And the fact that Kally could barely move the first month with her broken ribs.

           When they turned to the parking garage, Kally froze.

           On the sidewalk, facing away from her, there was a person wearing a silk burgundy suit. His hair was gelled back into a perfect, short ponytail.

           Reflexively, Kally’s hand shot into her messenger bag. Her chest constricted, and she felt her rib pain return with her panic.

           She stepped in front of Merry and Nikhil, withdrawing her Argonaut statue.

           There was no way—she wouldn’t be able to—he couldn’t be alive—

           “Kall! Merry!”

           Kally’s vision had tunneled. She had noticed two figures standing on either side of Mr. Burgundy Suit, like henchmen, but she hadn’t registered them beyond the matching dress shirts.

           One of the two henchies—the tallest one—had broken off, rapidly walking towards her with a broad grin.

           There was no muzzle or straight jacket, but Kally still took a step backwards, horrified this might be a trick.

           His black hair had grown out. Instead of the military style cut he used to have, the bangs hung long, and would have concealed his dark eyes if the bangs weren’t so fluffy. The once-neatly trimmed goatee was longer too, giving him a look crossed between a disheveled, adventurer and a rock star. The scarification gleamed on his bronzed skin.

           Mr. Burgundy Suit whirled towards his rogue underling. “Axel! This isn’t the dramatic reunion we agreed to! We’ll never get this valuable opportunity back!”

           Axel ignored him. He also ignored the way Kally squeaked when he picked her up by the waist for a bear hug.

           Kally felt her cheeks warm up. The suspicion dissolved and she hugged Axel back tightly. “You guys are okay,” she whispered.

           Axel nodded. He held her for an instant longer, then slowly lowered her feet back to the ground.

           There had been no word from them since Christmas. Lapis hadn’t even come after Merry like he’d promised. They had no idea if the Romans had captured them, other than a quick message from Nico and Will assuring her that Frank had no progress on his hunt. But, she’d been wondering if the Romans and Greeks were covering things up or if any gods with a taste for Pax vendettas had achieved vengeance or if the Pax boys had disappeared into the forests of Belize like a bad folk tale monster.

           Kally was genuinely torn between giving each of them a kiss on the check or slugging them hard in the diaphragm. She’d probably have to do both.

           Axel gave Merry a warm smile. “It’s good to see you, Merry. And you must be Nikhil. I heard you two just had a major victory.”

           Nikhil had taken a step behind his sister, practically vanishing. He made a grunt noise. Kally felt bad. He’d gone through too much today to meet these maniacs. Though this was pretty tame compared to the first time she’d met the Pax brothers. Not enough flaming cars.

           Not that we need flaming cars, she thought, in case any Fates were listening.

           Merry’s eyes went glassy again. This time, though, she swayed softly to a tune she was humming. “You dodgy, wonderful works of nature.”

           Kally didn’t quite understand until Pax came over. Her stomach twisted to see him in that familiar burgundy suit with his hair slicked back. One resilient lock still popped out in the front, like a flag that said, I will never be tamed!

           Then, she saw what Merry had: Pax wore a pair of thin, black gloves. The same ones Jose had been wearing.

           There was no way for them to know about the verdict unless they were in the courtroom itself. Well, unless they had threatened the first person out of the courtroom, which is something they would do.

           Pax stopped a few feet away from Kally, giving her his most devilish smile.

           Behind him, a tall, gangly figure approached in a similar burgundy dress shirt with black tie.

           Last time Kally saw Alabaster, he’d been sickly pale and trying to hide his want as everyone else shoveled Christmas food into their mouths. Everything he ate had to be puréed.

           Although Alabaster was still pale like her—he’d always burn within ten minutes of sun contact—there was more color to his freckled cheeks. A thin scar traced where his jawbone had protruded the skin a few months ago. His wry smile looked far less painful as he said, “It’s good to see you Kally.”

           He could talk. Kally didn’t see any wires or anything.

           When he turned to Merry, he merely nodded his head and said, “Ol’Sissy.”

           “Proof that Kally has questionable taste in men,” Merry retorted, folding her arms and looking him up and down like the most disappointed of matchmakers.

           “Aw, Merry! I think Witch-Boy looks hot in a suit and tie,” Pax said with a wink.

           Both Kally and Alabaster blushed. Pax wasn’t wrong. They all looked good in a creepy Santiago’s men wore these when they were being evil way, and it made Kally want to slap them harder and demand where they’d been.

           “Who are these guys? They look like Agents of Shield villains,” Nikhil muttered from behind Merry.

           “We’re the psychopaths that kidnapped your sister and her hot friend,” Pax said.

           “So, demigods,” Nikhil said. He’d been taking some time getting used to the new knowledge of the world, but Merry, Dionysus, and Chiron agreed it was necessary if Merry wanted to have any hand in her brother’s life.

           “Fifty percent,” Pax agreed, gesturing towards Alabaster and himself. He pointed a thumb to Axel, and waggled it between them. “The other fifty is primordial awesome.”

           Axel shook his head, smiling.

           “You’re weird,” Nikhil said. His shoulder relaxed a little and he took a timid step out from behind his sister.

           She completely sidestepped to leave him fully exposed. Merry: ever the coddling caretaker.

           Pax wiped a fake tear from his eye. “We only just started talking and he already knows me so well.”

           “You must be Pax,” Nikhil said, pointing a finger.

           “I was story worthy?” Pax asked. If he were an anime character, his eyes would have sparkled.

           “You were warning worthy,” Merry said. “I know you didn’t just wear those to give Kally and me a heart attack.” She gestured at Pax’s suit and Axel and Alabaster’s burgundy dress shirts.

           “We’re rebranding,” Pax said.

           The stiffness of his smile made the unease return to Kally’s stomach. Something inside Kally said that Pax shouldn’t have been the one to answer that question. He hated those suits. He had sobbed to her when his father made him jell his hair back for their violent family reunion.

           The unease turned to nausea when she realized how much Pax really did look like his father. The more his face had matured from cute to handsome, the closer it got. With the stiffness of that smile, the way his shoulders were held back, and the disquieting confidence—

           Kally shook off the thought.

           Another one immediately clouded her mind. He was answering for Axel and Alabaster. They stood on either side of him like a pair of bodyguards. Pax also hadn’t tried to hug her or touch her at all. Weird to think that boundary respect would be foreboding but—

           “There are a few changes we’re excited to—”

           Merry’s eyes went wide. She held up a hand to cut Pax off. “Stop everything.” She took a step closer to Axel, rising on her tiptoes to examine him thoroughly. Kally wondered if she’d picked up on the same oddities and was about to call one of them out on it.

“Your neck.” She pointed a finger into his chest. “What beautiful creature got a hold of it?”

           Kally feared she meant that someone had strangled Axel. When she saw what Merry meant, Kally’s hand shot up to cover her lips, a habit that she’d been trying to break.

           There were at least four bruises, two just under his ear and two peeking out from his collar, with skin discoloration speckling the skin beside it. Kally couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed them before. They were—

“Are those hickeys?” the words blurted out of Kally’s mouth before she could choke them back.

Really. Obvious. Hickeys.

           Axel’s smile turned to a cocky smirk. He cracked his neck and glanced innocently off to the side. He didn’t even blush.

           “Witness his open defiance of societal standards,” Pax said, making a grand show-man gesture.

           “No,” Merry said in clear disbelief at Axel’s shamelessness. Her grin was enormous.

           Pax pouted and folded his arms across his chest. The perfect posture caved as he slouched gloomily. “He won’t spill. The worst part from this devious fiend? Yesterday, I was gone all day on boring business stuff, and he had a peace meeting with a praetor in the afternoon, and went to a Green Day concert with Grace at night. And Bast has constant access to the house. Could have been an actual empousa for all I know.”

           “I know who it was,” Alabaster said, feigning disinterest as he checked over some spell pouches along his belt.

           “You’re bluffing,” Pax said, “You just want something to hold over my head.”

           “You’re upset because you have no way to find out if I’m bluffing and can’t make me talk if I’m not,” Alabaster said.

           From the way Alabaster and Axel exchanged a glance, she could tell how much they enjoyed dangling this in front of Pax.

           The youngest whined and huffed.

           Kally’s worries melted at their ridiculousness. This was still them. Though, what had Pax meant by business stuff? Alabaster may be capable of becoming a reasonable member of society, but the Pax boys had spent most of their time training and doing street performances before she met them.

           “Oh Mr. Stoic, don’t you go thinking you can hide this from Auntie Merry,” Merry said and folded her arms across her chest. Unlike Pax, she looked more like a mob boss or a proper Queen of Gossip with the motion. Kally was always terrified of how Merry could twist people’s personal info—or assumed personal info—against them.

           Axel pulled out a packet of gum from his pocket. He gave her a grin as he withdrew a piece and slowly folded it into his mouth. “Gentlemen,” Axel said, “Do not kiss and tell.” He looked so proud of himself.

           He offered the gum out to the group.

           Nikhil timidly reached forward and took a piece. “Looking at your neck, I don’t think the person you’re interested in wants anything to do with someone who is gentle,” the kid said.

           Merry gave the most genuine laugh that Kally had heard since everything happened during the Festival of Saturnalia.

           A slight blush finally lit up Axel’s cheeks. Maybe he had to hear it from a fourteen-year-old.

           Kally could tell her face had gone bright red. She often forgot Axel was a Pax boy. When she first met them, Axel was always restrained by the stress of running from their psychotic father and New Rome, of struggling to keep his little brother safe and fed, of crumbling under the guilt of a failed army. He looked so much more relaxed, so much… younger, and, with the new hair, almost wild.

           She never considered how much of a terror Axel could be without those worries. Especially if he put all of his efforts towards charming over one girl. Kally had always assumed it would be Reyna, but Pax’s grumpiness and Merry’s conniving grin made her wonder.  Thalia hadn’t revoked her vows, had she? Not like Kally would have heard about it. She didn’t even know if Thalia and Euna had been talking.

           Anger threatened to bubble when she realized they had been keeping in touch with some of their other friends and not her.

           “Merry, lunch is on me if you can weasel information out of him. That’s usually my forte, but, alas…” Pax glared at his brother. “I’ve been a weasel failure.”

           “You can try,” Axel said. He pinched the gum between his front teeth and pulled it forward with his pointer and middle finger, the same way someone might hold a cigarette, then slipped it back into his mouth.

           “This guy is cool,” Nikhil said.

           “You’re forbidden from looking at him as role model material,” Merry said. “And don’t think you can distract us from the fancy get-ups with this information, at least not for long.”

           “Can’t I?” Axel asked, raising an eyebrow.

           “It’s dangerous when these two agree to work together,” Alabaster said, voicing exactly what Kally was thinking. “Shall we move this conversation to a restaurant? We passed an acceptable-looking ramen house on the way here, and I think Ajax just offered your celebratory lunch on him.”

           That felt too smooth. That ramen house was a spot Merry and Kally enjoyed visiting when they had spare cash from birthdays and could con one of their parents or Kally’s siblings into taking them. They hadn’t been able to go with Merry pooling all her extra cash to get a place for Nikhil. Mr. D was helping, but they all knew it would look suspicious if Merry didn’t come across as financially responsible on her records.

           Merry clucked her tongue. “As suspicious as ever boys.”

           “We’ll need to invite John,” Kally warned, desperately wanting to go, even if this whole thing felt weird. When it came to them, when did anything ever not feel weird? Plus, she still needed to punch all three of them for keeping out of contact for so long.

           “Augh, your brother is an ass,” Nikhil grumbled.

           “Language, sweetie. Remember the rule? SAT hot word with every cuss,” Merry said.

           “Fine. He’s a supercilious ass,” Nikhil said.

           “There’s my smart boy,” Merry said. She tried to pinch his cheek. Nikhil batted her away, clearly embarrassed around the older boys.

           Pax stood up straighter with excitement. “We’ll just have Alabaster talk to John. He’s white. White people like white people, right?”

           Considering John was a walking stereotype of racism, this was a scenario that Kally couldn’t scold Pax for saying that. It still made Kally cringe with secondhand embarrassment. She wanted to point out that John thought that Alabaster was a city-slicker pansy. The only thing that pissed her brother off more than race was the amount of money someone had.

           “I would like to think that Merry can do an exquisite job of broadening his horizons without my assistance,” Alabaster said.

           Merry’s jaw jutted to the side. Both she and Kally cringed at the old discomfort they felt whenever Kally brought Merry to her house. “That stubborn hunbun—”

           “Supercilious ass,” Nikhil said, looking proud of himself. Kally couldn’t help but notice that he’d put his hands into his pockets the same way Axel had.

           “—has commented that he doesn’t view me as Desi anymore, like it’s a compliment,” Merry’s voice was tight. “Though, I think it’ll do him some good to spend more time with you two. I heard he has a certain respect for Mr. Stoic.”

           Axel looked amused. The first time Axel met John, he’d sent John  running faster than a drunken centaur in fear. Kally had to hope, with Axel’s presence demanding respect, Merry’s wit, and Pax’s playfulness, John would become more open-minded over time.

           Alabaster, Axel, and Pax offered to escort them to the designated space that Merry, Nikhil, and Kally had agreed to meet John. They ought to start moving anyway, considering the matching style of the boy’s dress was drawing attention from the deputies just inside the courthouse.

           “So whose nicked money is paying for our lunch?” Merry hummed as they walked. Kally was ecstatic to see a slight dance in Merry’s step again.

           Pax inhaled sharply. “Merry, the person who this money belongs to is a perfectly respectable member of society. They would be offended that you insinuated otherwise.”

           Everyone laughed, though the ones coming from Axel and Alabaster sounded dark.

           Kally swallowed. At least for today, she wanted to have a “normal” lunch with them, as normal as they could handle.[1] Merry had her brother. Kally knew the boys were alive. Would they run out of conversation if they avoided anything serious for this round? Between Merry trying to worm information out of Axel and Pax teasing John, Kally felt the normalcy of the conversation was fabricated. She wondered if they could keep it to normal conversations, if they could make it through a meal without having a dragon attack. By the end of the day, Kally was shocked to find out that they could.

***

One chapter left before the series is done T.T Seriously guys, thank you so much for reading this far and dealing with all of my nonsense. *Pax sniffles* Okay, okay, saving it for next week. Tune in for the last chapter, Epilogue Part II!!!!

***

Footnote:

[1] Melbeta note, “I’m imagining as she says this a monster just bursts through the shop and causes destruction.” Jack, “That’s the movie version.”

[leowenila]

God Bless The Broken Road- Part Six

I am deeply sorry for how long it has taken me to update this story, but from now on I will be posting a lot more frequently! This time I had severe writers block and was very unhappy with the original I had written, so I started over! Thank you for all your patience, and please enjoy the long awaited Part Six, expected two more parts (and the epilogue) very shortly. :)

Pulling into the hospital parking lot, the red headed trauma surgeon caught sight of two the doctors nearby the main entrance with a wheelchair beside them, ready to be pushed. He quickly jogged over to the passenger’s side of his vehicle where his girlfriend had been sitting. Giving Amelia the silent comfort she needed, Owen placed his hand his girlfriend’s leg but was ignored out of stubbornness while a contraction wrapped around her tight abdomen. She firmly bit down on the leather seat belt and breathed out heavily after the sensation temporarily subsided.

“I’m in labor, not crippled.” The brunette snapped with anger deep in her voice before walking away from the three people that cared about her the most.

“This is what happens when she gets scared.” The trauma surgeon mentioned to the other redhead standing beside him after he noticed a tear left unshed fill in the corner of her blue left eye.

“Don’t you think I know that?! I know more about that girl than she knows about herself! Now if you excuse me, I have to block out the rest of my day to be there for my sister.” Addison forcefully said, attempting to remain the calm in the storm as she ran to the main entrance in hopes that the neurosurgeon didn’t walk too far away.

Hours after being privately admitted to the Labor and Delivery wing of the hospital, the brunette continuously held onto her boyfriend’s hand for comfort in her already tired and worn out state that she exclusively allowed him to see. Owen occasionally fed her complimentary ice chips and retrieved water from the nurses but most of the time he held her shaken hands. Without any warning the couple heard a knock on the wooden door of her hospital room, the red headed trauma surgeon walked and opened the door to reveal the older Shepherd sibling.

“How is Amy holding up?” Derek asked Owen as he tried to peek into his sister’s private room she revoked access for any close relatives.

The chief of surgery released a breath was unaware he was holding and tilted his head to the side to understand as to why a world class neurosurgeon attempted to break HIPPA regulations.

“If you would like to ask how Amelia is doing, you can ask her yourself but I don-“ Owen began to say before the neurosurgeon walked into Amelia’s rather large room with his hands crossed over his chest in a loss of words of what to say to his little sister. The last time Derek saw her on the hospital bed was when the girl Shepherd was only a teenager after she overdosed for the first time and just like that time, he was more disappointed in her actions than her.

“Did you come in here to tell me about how I screwed up again or how I’m making a mistake by allowing surgeons to tear my baby boy into pieces for other children around the world so they won’t have to suffer anymore like he already has been for the past eight months. Thank you, but I don’t need to hear it so just get out.” Amelia told her big brother as she tried not to allow her emotions to get the best of her or to cause another painful contraction to rip through her, hoping he would just go away she turned to look at her shaking hands as she said a silent prayer for him to leave.

“Derek, I know you care about Amelia. But I am telling you as a friend and your boss, please leave.” The trauma surgeon offered to his friend after seeing Amelia grow anxious at the presence of the other neurosurgeon.

“Leave!” Amelia shouted as soon as another contraction caused her to grab her swollen belly that grew tighter by the hours. Sensing that it was his cue to exit the maternity room, Derek angrily walked out towards the elevators to go back to the Neurosurgery wing as he briskly walked past his ex-wife standing at the nurses station.

Halfway through the night after twisting and turning in her sleep from the constant contractions and dull pain in her back, the brunette began to remove herself from her bed as the pain became more intense causing Owen to remove himself from the book he had been reading for him to run over to Amelia and move the IV pole she had almost tripped on and noticed the difference in his girlfriend’s apperance from earlier, before he chose to sit behind her to massage out the tight knots in her back.

“Stop it. Please don’t touch me,” She stated before she attempted to crawl away from him as the pain shot throughout her entire sciatica muscle. Owen refused to listen to her and continuously pressed his palms into the curves of her back.

“If you touch me, I’ll cry. I know I will. It’s stupid and it’s weak. And I have to be strong.” Amelia’s voice quivered as her emotions began to build inside of her until Owen pushed harder and formed a hug around her shaken form, causing her to sob into his strong arms.

-

The bright sun shined through the cream colored curtains of the large hotel room where Addison and Jake had been staying for the past seventy three hours, meeting in the room together to have breakfast together the members of the practice discussed how they would spend their day individually and how they would be of support to Amelia.

“Any news on the baby yet?” Violet asked her colleagues, walking into the hotel room as she drank from a generic white coffee mug holding her warm coffee.

The group shook their heads with food still present in their mouths leaving Mason, the only child in the room to act like the adult.

“Has she talked to anyone other than Owen?” The male therapist questioned everyone before taking a large bite out of the blueberry muffin he had been eating.

“Jake and her were talking for a little awh-“ The redheaded woman began to say before all five phones dinged and vibrated loudly at the same time.

“It’s Amelia. She’s dilated to a seven.”

The group quickly sat up from the table they had been sitting and put their jackets on before opening the hotel door and walked into the elevator doors closest to their room. After making it outside they all frantically ran to the rental van Charlotte had rented for the trip and exited the parking lot, to drive to the hospital only five minutes away, to be of support for their dear friend whose life was about to change forever in more ways than one.

[diinofayce]

Like A Whisper In The Night - 20

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OFC (Layne Hardin) | Word Count: 5k | Warnings: LANGUAGE, lots of language, angst...lots of angst | A/N: Here it is, the final chapter. There will be an epilogue, maybe, probably, I tend to feel guilty still about leaving people angsty. Maybe I’ll grow out of it. | PREVIOUS CHAPTER

“Bucky, you have to calm down,” Steve caught Bucky’s vibranium arm at the elbow as he turned and threw a fist at Stark.

“Let go of me, Steve,” Bucky growled turning and wrenching his arm out of his friend’s grasp. Bucky reached up and tore the damn mask from his face as he glared at Tony who was looking at the man with a mixture of fear and confusion.

“Bucky! He didn’t know! You would have done the same thing,” Steve argued and Bucky huffed, tangling his fingers in his hair and pulling - it was so much easier when it was longer. He knew Steve was right, of course Steve was right, but it didn’t stop him from being frustrated that Tony just repulsor blasted his girlfriend who was taking over the body of a crazed anarchist. It didn’t stop the fear that Layne, who was normally forced back into her body when the host was killed, was still out cold and being loaded into the back of an ambulance.

“Barnes, I had no idea she was in that maniac!” Tony yelled, his arm wrapped tight around Pepper’s shoulders.

Bucky raised his hands above his head in surrender, he knows, it’s fine, he’s just mad. He reached out and grabbed the edge of one of the dining tables before throwing it across the room with an angry howl. Steve reached out, mouth opening to say something to his friend, before he closed his outstretched hand into a fist and closed his mouth thinking better of trying to calm him down right now. Instead Steve turned to Natasha.

“I need you to chase down Ava List, I think Hardin injected List with whatever was in this syringe hiding in her glove. Tony, take Pepper home and bring this syringe to Bruce. See if he either knows what Layne was working on or if he can figure out what was in it.” Steve commanded, his Captain voice leaving no room for question. Natasha pursed her lips and nodded, casting a concerned look over to Bucky before turning and leaving the ballroom. Tony took the syringe and wrapped his hand gently around Pepper’s elbow, steering the woman out behind Natasha.

Steve sighed and waved off the staring and whispering uniformed officers who were watching The Winter Soldier have a break down.

“Bucky, Buck. You have to calm down,” Steve said softly, stepping forward to his best friend, to the man he’s known since he was in grade school. Bucky turned to him, gelled hair sticking out at odd angles from where he had pulled it out of place.

“What do we do Steve? What do I do? I felt her and then I didn’t and she’s not awake and she’s not responsive. What do I do?” Bucky rambled, panic wrapping around his chest. He couldn’t believe he was going through this again, he had just gotten her back, just finally started to kiss her and call her his. He groaned and carded his fingers through his hair again when he thought of what wall Susanna was going to throw him through when they got back. Layne was so damn impulsive, all she had to do was stand on that damn stage play eyes and ears, going near List wasn’t part of her mission.

“We have to call him in,” Steve said begrudgingly, wincing as he looked at Bucky.

Bucky stopped cold in his pacing and turned to glare down Steve. “We can’t. If she wakes up and finds out she’ll hate us.”

Steve sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and nodded, his hands on his hips. “Yeah. Yeah, I know Buck. But what other option do we have? She’s flickering back and forth like a shadow, he’s the only one that will know what to do.”

Bucky swore angrily and threw a chair, breaking and throwing things were the only things keeping him from going completely insane. Steve flinched and sighed deeply, waiting for Bucky to regain control.

“We promised that if it ever came up that I’d break it to her. This is going to break any trust she put in us,” Bucky argued weakly.

“If we don’t do this she might die, Buck,” Steve pressed softly.

Bucky placed his hands on his hips and squeezed his eyes shut as he took a deep breath through his nose. “I’ll make the call.”

~*~

The steady and irritating beeping of a heart monitor was the first thing Layne came to register as she slowly slipped back into consciousness. The next thing to start coming back was the heavy feeling of her arms and legs and the bright orange glow on the other side of her eye lids. She squinted her eyes shut tighter and groaned softly, the scratching of her throat sharp and dry. Layne raised her right hand to her face, the weight and pull from the IV in the back of her hand tugging as she moved. Layne heard a door open off to her right but refused to open her eyes, her hand covering them and blocking her from the outside world.

“Agent Hardin?” Doctor Cho’s voice was soft and Layne could hear her messing with the dials on the machines she was attached to. “Take it slow, Layne, it took a lot to get you back.”

“How long have I been out?” Layne rasped.

“Three days.”

Layne felt Helen’s soft hand brush the hand she had over her face and let the doctor peel it away. With a soft groan and a lot of effort Layne slowly opened her eyes, taking in the medical wing of the tower - the part that wasn’t still under construction. She turned her head to the side and eyed up the pitcher of ice water, Helen graciously poured her a glass and helped Layne drink. The cold water soothes her dry and scratched throat, they must have had to put her on a respirator. Her brows knit as she tries to remember back to the gala, shoving herself out of the anarchist’s head and not being able to find her own.

“How did I make it back?” Layne asked. She remembered wrapping her energy around Bucky in her panic, trying to find something to hold onto. But she could feel herself weakening and fading, she projected her regret not thinking that her actions would go as horribly south as they appeared to have.

Helen paused and smiled softly, helping Layne sit up and readjusting her pillows. “If you’re up for visitors, I feel like they’re better off explaining it to you,” she answered vaguely and Layne nodded.

Helen walked out of Layne’s room and within seconds both Bucky and Steve were rushing in. “Hey boys,” she said, her voice still hoarse and weak.

Steve looked at her with excitement, but Bucky’s face went through a variety of emotions; happiness, anger, concern, and guilt being the main ones that Layne was able to pick up on. But relief won out and Bucky made it across the room to Layne’s bedside in two long strides, at her bedside he hesitated for a second and Layne licked her lips before he bent down to capture her lips with his. Layne hummed in content against him before they parted, Bucky’s ice blue eyes raked over her face.

“You need to stop scaring me,” Bucky whispered, his voice cracking.

Layne cocked her head slightly, a small smirk on her face. “Nothing scares you.” Layne reached out and threaded her fingers with his.

“You scare me,” Bucky replied, the brute honesty behind his words rocking her.

“Layne,” Steve spoke up, clearing his throat and stepping forward, resting his hands on the foot of her bed. “There’s something we need to tell you.”

A soft knock on the door frame had all three turning their heads. Daniel Hardin leaned against the door frame, his brown curls clean and soft, his brown eyes warm and caring, and a small smile on his face. He looked healthy and much less dead than the last time Layne had seen him.

“Hey, Sunflower,” he said softly, looking from his baby sister down to his black Converses, waiting for the blow up.

“What the fuck,” Layne swore as she tried to get out of her hospital bed.

~*~ Two Days Ago ~*~

“He should be here by now!” Bucky yelled at Steve as he paced back and forth at the foot of Layne’s bed where she laid with a respirator tube down her throat. He chewed on the nails of his right hand as he looked at his girlfriend, looking battered and broken.

“Fury had to get a hold of this Xavier guy and then Xavier had to get a hold of Hardin. Coulson said he’s running a ghost mission for them, needed a break from SHIELD and Hydra and Fury thought it would minimize the risk of Layne running into him accidentally,” Steve rationalized.

Bucky nodded, scrubbing his hand across his face. He rounded the bed and sat down on the edge, cradling Layne’s hand in both of his on his lap, running his vibranium fingers up and down her forearm. Bucky didn’t like having to bring Daniel Hardin back in after they all lied to Layne’s face. He watched her struggle with the thoughts that she had killed her big brother and it had killed Bucky to keep his mouth shut. Bucky had fought with Daniel and Fury on the decision, but at the end of the day all Daniel was sent on were ghost missions and it made his job so much easier if he just didn’t exist and that was something Bucky understood all too well. But Bucky knew Layne was going to hate Bucky for not telling her, that it might be the nail in the coffin for her and her brother’s relationship, that it might be the thing that actually pushes her out of the tower and away from all of them. Steve walked over and rested a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly.

“She’ll be alright, Buck. Helen has the whole team on this and Bruce is running tests on that syringe.”

“All we’re doing is keeping her body alive, Steve. She’s not in there, I felt her fade away from me,” Bucky growled softly, trying to fight the tears that were pricking at the corners of his eyes.

“The problem isn’t her fading away from you, it was she faded into you,” came a familiar voice. Daniel Hardin sauntered into the room, rolling the sleeves of his black button up shirt to his elbows. His brown eyes were sharp and accusatory as he looked at the two super soldiers.

“Excuse me?” Bucky asked venomously, standing up to his full hulking 6’2” size and puffing his chest out.

Daniel scoffed and rolled his eyes at the power display. “Real it in macho man. What I don’t understand is how I set her up with a powerhouse enhancer, I open her mind to the rest of her mutation and powers, and instead of training her to use them you send her off on a totally unnecessary mission,” Daniel barked. Bucky noticed how his cheeks flushed and his voice shook in the same way Layne’s did when she was upset.

Bucky clenched his jaw and looked back down at Layne, hating the tube coming out of her mouth, hating how small she looked. Every so often a cloud would pass over the sun in her room and she would become almost translucent, the parts of her in the deeper shadows becoming almost invisible.

Steve stepped between the two men and raised his hands. “We had to go after List, what would you have had us do?” Steve asked, trying to play the diplomat.

Daniel looked at Steve with irritation and made a soft scoffing noise as if the answer was obvious. “I told you the moment you wanted List I could hand her to you on a platter. I had her eating out of the palm of my hand and instead you send the most reckless, arrogant, and hot headed person I know who has had almost no training into a situation where she would be out for blood? I figured two highly trained soldiers would be better strategists than that, especially one that’s taking the time to fuck her. Or is that all she is to you, Soldat? A good fuck?”

Bucky saw red and immediately whirled to shove Steve aside, but the man held firm like a brick wall. Bucky wanted to tear this kid apart limb by limb at this point, but Steve’s hands on his shoulders held him back. Instead Bucky threw a plethora of profanities at the dark haired man in front of him. Daniel just looked at Bucky with a shit eating smirk on his face, hands in the pockets of his jeans. Bucky felt a heat in his chest, an extra batch of anger that wasn’t his and Daniel squinted at him.

“Ah, there she is,” he murmured and Bucky froze, what was he talking about?

Steve looked at his friend and frowned. “Buck, your eyes are brown,” he said in confusion. Bucky’s eyes normally a crystal blue color burned with amber flame.

Daniel pushed past Steve and reached up to place his palm flat on Bucky’s forehead. Despite Bucky’s chest heaving in rage and being easily a head taller, Daniel wasn’t even breaking a nervous sweat being next to the super soldier who was literally shaking with so much rage.

“Hey, Sunflower,” Daniel whispered as his own chocolate brown eyes shifted to molten amber and his fingers tightened on Bucky’s head. “You gotta go home.”

Bucky growled and reached up to wrap his vibranium hand around Daniel’s wrist. Daniel didn’t even flinch at the bone crushing grasp, he merely dug his nails into Bucky’s forehead and shoved the man’s head back. A rippling energy force pushed from Daniel’s hand and through Bucky’s body. Bucky felt something tear and separate from his mind and leave his body, something he didn’t even realize had been holding onto him. Daniel’s eyes followed the movement of something, removing his hand from Bucky and reaching out to guide whatever he was watching towards Layne’s body. Daniel placed his other hand on his sister’s forehead and coaxed an invisible something towards her, his other hand joining the first. Steve and Bucky watched as Daniel’s palms glowed orange, lighting up Layne’s face, before he finally released a breath he had been holding and let go of his sister.

“She’s back. Take the tubes out, she’ll wake up when she’s ready,” Daniel said curtly, unrolling his shirt sleeves and buttoning his cuffs.

“When will that be?” Steve asked, watching Bucky warily. Bucky just rubbed a hand over his chest, feeling like he suddenly had a gaping hole in his heart.

Daniel shrugged and walked passed them. “When she’s ready,” he repeated and left the two super soldiers standing there.

~*~ Present Time ~*~

“Layne! Layne! We need you to calm down and lay back. You’ve ripped your damn IV out!” Bucky reached forward and put his hands on her shoulders, trying to push her back down while Steve reached forward to grab her hand and try to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.

“Fuck you! Fuck the three of you! What in the ever loving fuck?!” Layne screamed, spit flying, her throat raw as she glared angrily at the three men in front of her.

Daniel stepped forward, his right hand raised he pointed his first and middle finger at her and lowered them slowly. Layne felt herself calm instantly, it was like he turned the volume knob down on her emotions. She let out a deep breath and slumped against her pillows. Bucky and Steve both looked at him with wide eyes and he merely shrugged.

“How? Why are you here? Where did you go?” Layne asked, now that her anger had been taken from her the pain and tears had room to bubble up. They fell heavy and fat down her cheeks and when Bucky reached up to wipe them she flinched away from him. Bucky jerked back and stepped away from her with pain in his eyes.

Daniel flinched slightly before looking at the super soldiers. “Can we have a minute?” he asked, for the first time sounding cautious and polite when addressing them.

Bucky was about to refuse until Steve grabbed his friend’s arm. “Yeah, we can do that. Come on, Buck, we’ll wait outside.”

Bucky hesitated, looking back at Layne who just looked at him with pain and betrayal as tears fell down her face. “I’m sorry,” Bucky whispered to her which just caused anger to flare up in her eyes again before he followed Steve outside.

Daniel closed the door behind the boys and moved to sit on the side of Layne’s bed. “How are you feeling?” he asked her, reaching out slowly and placing a hand under her chin, raising her face so he could examine her eyes.

Layne felt her chin tremble under his touch, but bit back the sob that wanted to tear through her chest. “Confused.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame you.” Daniel said, folding his hands in his lap and sighing. “Charles Xavier found me in Madison, he runs a school for mutant youth but the mutant adults are apart of a task force kind of like the Avengers. They’re called the X-Men. We are not some construct of the Terrigen Mist, we always had our powers, they’re hereditary which makes us mutants.”

Layne blinked at her brother, reaching out with a shaking hand and taking his in hers trying to figure out if this was real. “So you went missing, you just up and disappeared to become apart of some super hero group.”

Daniel smiled wryly, regret in his eyes, as he ran his thumb over the back of his sister’s hand. “Yeah, well, you did the same thing. I knew you would, I told Charles about you and he went to your Director Fury. Charles has been trying to build a bridge between the Avengers Initiative and the X-Men for some time.”

Layne ripped her hand back. “So Tony didn’t find me because of my work at the University?” Layne asked in disbelief, the feeling of betrayal roaring up into her chest again. “And you, what, became some underground sleeper agent working for Hydra who decided it was totally a good idea to kidnap me and torture me and have me…fuck, Daniel, I killed people!” The heart monitor Layne was attached to sped up as her heart rate increased with an incoming panic attack. “I killed you, I’ve had nightmares for weeks. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and that’s all your fucking fault.”

Danny stood up and shushed Layne, trying to calm her but she just wrenched away from him and sent him stumbling back with a flare of energy. “I don’t trust you. Get the fuck away from me.”

Danny sighed and stepped towards her again. “Sunflower,” he tried but Layne cut him off.

“No! You don’t get to call me that, get out. Don’t come back. Go back to your deep underground shadow bullshit and stay out of my life.”

Daniel looked over his little sister, her brown curls wild and her eyes fierce an angry flush brightening the freckles on her cheeks. He huffed a breath of air harshly through his nose and licked his lips. “You didn’t kill anyone,” Danny said finally. He picked a file up that had been sitting waiting on the end table and dropped it in her lap. His gaze roamed up to the enhancer on the side of her head, the tiny red scars that creeped out from the little metal box that mirrored his own.

“I know this was all less than ideal and I’m sorry, in a lot of ways my hands were tied. I picked my mission over keeping you out of it, but I did what I could to keep you safe. I will always be there to keep you safe.” Daniel gave his sister a once over once more before turning on his heels and strutting out of the room. She would find him when she was ready.

Layne pressed her hand hard to her mouth to muffle the sobs that ripped from her chest. With a shaking hand she opened the folder and flipped through the pages, picture after picture of the girls that thought she had killed staring up at her. Detailed accounts written in Daniel’s scrawling scratch on how he would ‘short circuit’ Layne when she was too far into a girl’s subconscious, how he’d implant the memories he needed her to have while he put the girls to sleep and sent them away to safety in secrecy. He mentioned a Logan Howlett and a Jean Grey that would pick the girls up and take care of them and either take them to the X-Men safe house or send them home with a back up group.

She was so focused on the files in front of her that she failed to notice Bucky leaning on the doorway, arms folded across his broad chest as he watched her flip page after page, tears falling down her face. He knocked on the door frame softly and Layne looked up, startled, and wiped away her tears with the back of her hand sniffling sharply.

“Hey, doll, I…uh…saw your brother leave,” Bucky said softly, looking down at the floor awkwardly not sure whether he would want him to stay or kick him out.

Layne hiccuped softly and closed the folder. “Did you know?” was all Layne asked, looking up at her boyfriend. She prayed for the first time in over a decade, she hoped with every cell in her body that he didn’t, that he was as shocked as she was.

When Bucky visibly winced her heart plummeted. She scoffed and reached for her glass of water. “Did you find List’s body?” she asked hoping for at least one shred of good news.

Bucky looked up at her sharply, narrowing his eyes. “How did you know we’d find her dead?” Bucky asked accusingly and Layne gave a small smile of relief.

She nodded, pleased, and started carefully taking out her IV lines and pulling the monitors off her chest. Bucky stepped forward and reached out to her but she shrunk from him and Bucky pulled his hands back like she had burned him. Layne swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood shakily, the thin hospital gown brushing just above her knees. Helen Cho burst into the doorway at the sound of the monitors all going flat, but Bucky raised a hand and signaled for her to step back out. Helen glared at Bucky, but left the room.

Layne turned and looked at the man in front of her. She loved him, everything in her heart ached for him, but she wasn’t sure she could over look what he had kept from her. “Did you know that I didn’t murder all those girls? Did you always know he was undercover?” Layne asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

Bucky shook his head. “I didn’t know any details. When he his heart starting failing Fury made the call. Same trick he used to escape me…you know…before. I wanted to tell you, but Fury made the call.” Bucky explained, sounding desperate.

Layne nodded, chewing on her bottom lip and looked over Bucky with a scrutinizing eye. “I injected her with a reverse of the super soldier serum. Instead of enhancing her abilities and her health it destroyed it. Basically a super advanced and fast acting cancer. That’s essentially what they gave you boys, by the way, cancer. Tell Bruce to follow the cookie trail and flip it in what’s left and he’ll be able to replicate Howard’s original formula. I can’t fight, I can’t shoot a gun, and I guess I’m gullible enough to think you liked me and weren’t just trying to distract me from the truth - that the good little soldier would do anything except fall in line, but at least I managed to do what Tony brought me on to do originally.” The venom that dripped from her voice was bitter and acidic and it cut Bucky to the core.

He swallowed hard, his adam’s apple bobbing, and tears welled in his blue eyes. “Layne, please,” Bucky begged, his voice breaking. “It’s not like that. I love you.”

Layne shook her head, blinking as her own tears slipped down her cheeks. “What were you trying to achieve, James? Who were you trying to protect by keeping that from me? You forget, I know you. Were you afraid that once I learned he was alive and working for a different team I’d want to follow? Were you afraid I’d choose him over you?”

“Yes,” Bucky answered honestly, the confession coming out in a rush of pain that Layne could just about taste. Layne using his true name stabbing him the heart like a shard of ice, bringing him back to the first time she whispered his name tangled in her sheets and hating that the meaning behind it this time was such a polar opposite.

“If you love someone, James, you put your trust in them for better or worse. You put their needs ahead of yours and you trust that they’ll take your needs into account.”  Layne said with finality. She wiped the tears from her face once more before walking around the hospital bed to Bucky. She reached up and wiped the tears that had slipped down his cheeks as well.

“FRIDAY? Please deliver my resignation to Director Fury.”

“Right away, Agent Hardin,” FRIDAY responded automatically.

Bucky trapped Layne’s hand against his cheek. “Please, don’t,” he begged once more. Layne smiled sadly and reached up to kiss him softly on the lips.

“See you around, Soldier,” Layne whispered against his lips before slipping out of his arms and leaving him standing alone in the hospital room, the feel of her lips still tingling on his.

~*~ Two Days Later ~*~

Layne finished zipping up her duffel bag, everything in her room packed into a few bags sitting on the foot of her mattress. The posters and mirror frames stripped from the walls and stuffed in a trash bag, music equipment boxed neatly on the floor by the door. Susanna hefted a few bags into her arms, sending Layne a small reassuring smile before turning to head to the elevator with them. Layne looked up when she heard an “Excuse me, Cap,” from Susanna and smiled awkwardly at Steve in her doorway.

“How’s it coming, kid?” Steve asked stepping through the threshold and Layne sighed.

“I showed up here, almost six months ago, with this duffel bag and my guitar. No combat training, no idea what I was getting myself into, just hoping I could actually make a difference,” Layne said bitterly, Steve stuffed his hands in jeans pockets and scuffed his toe in the carpet. He smiled fondly at the bright orange Converse high tops on Layne’s feet.

“How are you leaving?” Steve pressed, looking her over. She wore a baggy men’s Avenged Sevenfold tour shirt from 2007, jean shorts poked out of the bottom hem and her purple beanie was covering her head, her hair plaited in a long braid on her right side.

“With a lot more baggage,” Layne answered, chuckling darkly. “How is he?”

Layne looked over at the man she hoped she could still call friend, he had dark bags under his blue eyes and he had a beard growing in. She could only imagine that he had been staying up late with Bucky and a pang of guilt rocked through her core, but she ignored it.

“Terrible,” Steve answered honestly and Layne tried to keep her features schooled. “He really cares about you, Layne. We all had our orders.”

Layne nodded, fiddling with the zipper on her bag. “I know. I care about him too, I just need to be mad. I need some space to figure all this out and I can’t have that here.”

“Fury said you revoked your resignation,” Steve delved, looking at Layne imploringly. Layne scrubbed a hand over her face.

“Yeah. I’m going to go on the road with the girls for a few months. I check in with him every big move, if I’m in the area of something I said I’d check it out. If when this is done and I’m better and he’s better maybe I’ll come back on,” Layne explained brokenly. “Tony took my choice away with that press conference while I was out.”

Steve looked at Layne with his brows furrowed, confusion and indignation on his face. “You think that you can just walk back in after a couple months and it’ll all be fine?”

Layne smiled wryly and looked around at the bare walls of her room. “Not at all, Steve,” she answered, slinging her duffel bag over her shoulder and grabbing her guitar case a perfect mirror of when she first stepped into the tower. “Bucky was…unexpected. When you and Tony first debriefed me on him I was afraid of what you were asking me to do, I was afraid of him and myself and god. I was afraid of everything, Steve. And Bucky was exactly what I expected, he was harsh and demanding and abrasive…until he was protective and caring and devoted.”

Layne licked her lips and laughed to herself, shaking her head. “I spent my whole life being treated like a child who couldn’t be trusted. Whether it was over protection or for my own good or another plethora of excuses my parents could spout. I thought, when it came down to it, that I was finally apart of the team, but all of you decided to omit me and my feelings and my reactions. I refuse to be apart of another family that thinks that’s okay.”

Steve let Layne brush passed him, watching as she left her room behind, aware of his part in making her feel like running was her only option again. Steve stepped into the hallway behind her and frowned as she made her way towards the elevator. “He’s not going to get over you, you know.” Steve called after her.

Layne hit the down button and turned back to Steve, her cheeks wet with tears. “That’ll make two of us, Cap. Good thing he has you to help him.” And then she stepped into the waiting elevator and was gone.

EPILOGUE

[elkrs]

Red Suns: Let's Make A Dungeon - The Slithering Shade

I started designing the Red Suns setting as a world to play in, and so far, I haven't. Well, actually, if you are reading this on the day it came out, then I have played it once. I'm running a game for NotACon 2018 (see Red Suns III for deets) set in Red Suns, and so I want to prep my first session for it on here. You'll see some parallels between the Scarlett Citadel Conan story, and that is because it was the inspiration for the adventure. At the bottom of the page you'll find a link to the live play of this session, so you can watch how my prep played out in the end (if I remember, if not, look in the top corner, press the three lines and you should see a YouTube link)!

Initial Thoughts and Goals

This is a fairly new part of my preparation process that I have begun to find exceedingly helpful in staying on-task with both prep and running the game. I take 3-5 ideas, goals or cool things that I want to be in the game, and I note them down at the start. It gives me a very quick and easy reference during the session, as well as making sure that the session runs how I want it to.

A twisting labyrinth filled with unspeakable horrors - I want to have the players explore a weird dungeon that could very well threaten to swallow them.

An evil shade, determined to end the world - I want the player to fight the Shade. I want them to have to deal with the fact that this person has no qualms about doing unimaginably awful things to themselves and others to achieve their aims. I want the player to go "Oh shit... This guy will kill us all and himself."

Weird, lasting effects on the characters - I want the players to feel as though any moment could be their last. I want them to be scared to go around corners and nervous about touching ANYTHING.

Gonzo, crazy NPC - I want them to meet someone who will drill home the fact that, if they get lost, they are doomed to end up like this guy.

I think that'll do it. I can always add to this if I want to, but this will keep me in check for how I want the game to go.

The Dungeon I - Why and Wherefore

When I prep a session based around a dungeon, I do so in a completely different way than I would for a dungeon-less session. Normally, I'll prep some scenes, a combat or two and have a narrative structure in place. Very light, very LITTLE prep. However, for dungeons, that simply will not do. Instead, I think about the dungeon itself. The first part of which, is why?

Why is this dungeon here? A dungeon for dungeon's sake, does not for a good session make. As such, the first thing I want to think about, is the purpose behind it. Who built it and why? For this dungeon, that's easy.

Ocotl is the bad guy for this session. He's a nasty boy who wants to... Well, what does he want?

World domination is dumb, and boring.

Scorned and seeking revenge is better, but I don't feel like that fits my vision of Ocotl.

Got it. Ocotl was always the little guy. A worthless worm who cowered in the shadows of his betters, mocked and ridiculed (so I guess there is a bit of revenge, but hey, that's good). Anyway, he got some sorcerous power, then found that he wasn't so little anymore. Thus, his crusade to gain  A B S O L U T E    P O W E R  began.

He started messing around with the darker stuff, and eventually turned into a Shade. He was now powerful enough to do horrid things to those who wronged him, but it wasn't enough (never is!) and so he decided to try and attempt the Ritual of Red Tears (see Red Suns I, or below) in order to become a demon of immense power.

To do this however, he needed a space to experiment. A hidden space where he could practice in peace, while also having access to lots of people and bodies to play with. Hence, he needed somewhere in a city, hidden and safe, but in a prime piece of real estate. Also, Ocotl always had a love of meddling with the physiology of creatures, creating monstrous hybrids and the like, so it needs to be big.

That is why he built his dungeon. In the interest post, I said that it was below Ashkul's hall. This means that the dungeon is in Basharoud, and that is have a reson for existing. Now all we need is to build the darn thing! That and design some encounters, as well as our big ole' bad guy.

The Dungeon II - Structure, Feel and Execution

Firstly, the entrance to the dungeon is going to be a trapdoor, hidden in the floor of Ashkul's Hall. As a result, I think the dungeon should have a sewer-type feel. Not to do with the muck that flows through it, but more the actual building materials and such. For example, I think it should be built from huge bricks of dark stone that have been smoothed with age. I think there should be random grates and tiny tunnels from which scuttling, squeaking noises can be heard.

As for theme, well, it's a magical menagerie for malicious and maltreated monstrosities, who live trapped in the cells and cages that litter the place. I also want a clear progression towards the goal, though it should still feel like a maze. I want it to be cold, dark and smelly, with the players understanding the truly terrible place that this is.

Execution. This refers to how we want the actual session to go. Best to start thinking about this as early as possible, that way we can be sure that all the cool stuff we come up with later fits properly. We want the session to last about 3.5 hrs. I'll allocate about 20 mins for them to get into the dungeon, and about 10 mins for a quick epilogue. So, we've got 3 hrs in here, and a half hour of that should be the final fight. If we assume that Ocotl is in room 6, then our aim is to get the players there within 2.5 hrs. I don't want to do all the rooms, and many of them will be just quick descriptions, so this should fit nicely into our time frame.

The Dungeon III - Rooms and Encounters

Here we're just going to go through and have each room listed out with some ideas for encounters and the like. I'm not worried about killing players and making them go weird, because it's a one shot, so we can go a bit insane with this. In other words... Welcome to the fun part. In each room, I'm going to try and describe three things, and that's it. That way, everything doesn't take ages, but there is still enough description to go around.

Room I - The Entrance

Description

Cold air, dank and thick. Hard to breathe due to horrible smells.

The rotting corpse of an enormous anglerfish.

Strange sounds coming from rooms beyond.

Encounters

None.

Room II - The Serpent

Description

A smell of rotting wood pervades this room, and a sickly sweet odour hangs at the back of your throat.

An enormous pile of wood and rags sits in the corner, it is about six feet high and ten feet across.

Cupboard in the South wall (contains an old, gold chain. When worn as a belt, grants ADV. to CON tests. It used to be some kind of leash).

Encounters

Giant Snake: Hiding in the pile in the corner. Will attack when disturbed or when the party try to leave the room. (HD3, 2d4D, CON test or +2d6)

Room III - The Old Library

Description

Old, ruined books litter this room, as well as smashed and broken shelves.

Pools of stagnant water sit on the floor.

An old, amulet of +1 INT lies on a bookshelf in a smashed, glass case. Was used for research. when touched, it reveals a curse. When the wearer touches it, they immediately put it on and are forced to constantly read, otherwise they take 1d4 damage per round. Can be pulled off, though the reader will fight back.

Encounters

West corridor contains a Giant Ant Warrior (HD2, Poison Bite (1d6 + CON test or + 2d6)

Room IV - The Prison

Description

Decrepit, rusted cages stand everywhere.

A table with rotten food sits in the middle.

A beautiful, black dagger sits on the table. When touched, it rots the hand of whoever touched it after a CON test with DIS. They now have DIS on all attacks.

Encounters

Farruk. He is an old man, dressed in rags, who has lived here for years. He is stuck in one of the cages, and has gone insane. He keeps calling the members of the party either 'Jasaline', 'Asha', 'Denad', or 'Abbar'. He just wants to be free, and seems earnest. A successful WIS test will reveal him to be quite mad. If he is freed with the keys that sit on a hook in the corner, he will immediately attack (Human Berserker, HD1, DIS on defence tests against him).

Room V - The Pits

Description

Three large dirt pits in the floor, smelling like dung and with vague, dark shapes inside. The pits are each 10ft wide and 20ft deep, and are very dark.

Rattling sounds can be heard from below, and bones can be seen moving in the darkness.

The door closes behind them, and is locked with a magical seal. Dispel magic to break the seal or take 1d6 damage. When broken, the doors are still locked (unlock, or break down (STR test DIS).

Encounters

3d4 skeletons in the pits. (HD1, 1d4HP, 1d4D, shoot with bows)

Room VI - Ocotl's Chamber

Description

Large, round room. An altar stands in the centre.

Ruined, black tapestries cover all the walls.

They see 1d6 skeletons around them, waiting. As well as a figure on the far side of the room, sitting, chanting and coated in black blood. He has one hand, and the severed limb sits on the floor next to him. Suddenly, he begins to chant something different. He begins to cry tears of blood. He then chants even more words, before erupting in red flames. Black, obsidian skin, bat-like wings. Red eyes and curled horns. He screams and stands, now a demon of 9ft tall (Hezrou Demon, HD9, 2d10D, (2 Claws (1d3) + 1 Bite (2d8), Cause Fear (as per Banish) or Darkness (spell) - each once per fight)).

Encounters

Hezrou and 1d6 skeletons.

Room VII - The Mirror Room

Description

The walls are dark mirrors, and a shining orb of white light hangs in the centre as your reflection dances around the room.

Bones lie all over the floor here, and they crunch as you walk across them.

Black smoke burns from a censer hanging from the ceiling.

Encounters

Censer: CON test or paralyzed for 1d4 rounds

Mirror Reaper: Hands come out of the mirror, as well as a head shrouded in black rags that hang down below it. They try to grab a character (Mirror Reaper, HD4, 1d10D, Whenever it attacks, STR test or dragged into the mirror).

If they get pulled into the mirror, they must roll WIS tests each round to escape. Otherwise they stay trapped.

Corridors

There are many labyrinthine corridors that can be found throughout the temple. In each of these, we'll be rolling random encounters every time they turn a corner.

1-3. Nothing

4. 1d4 Manes Demons (HD1, 1d4D, 2 Claws (1d2) + 1 Bite (1d4), Half damage from nonmagical weapons)

5. 1d2 Ghouls (HD2 (1 armour), 1d6D, 2 claws (1d3) + 1 bite (1d4) + CON test or Paralysed)

6. Basilisk (HD6 (5 armour, +5 to tests against it, 1d8+1d6D, CON test on eye contact or be petrified)

Ending

We will probably assume that the players will run away or die. There is no way they can beat this monster. Not a chance. As a result, if any players escape, we will leave it to the players to decide what their characters do, though they will have to make a DEX or STR test to escape Ocotl back through the dungeon.

Starting the Adventure

We don't want to waste too much time on getting the characters to the dungeon, so we are going to be handwaving a lot of the earlier stuff in order to make the session feel tighter and sharper, without lots of wasted time at the beginning and the end. So, we will have the party be introduced by saying that they have been hired by the stewards of Ashkul's Hall to go down and investigate the strange noises that have been coming from the basement.

They will enter the basement, then give a brief description of their characters and introduce them, before finding the entrance to the dungeon. The basement itself is full of things like wine and food, supplies for conducting ceremonies and the like. However, with a successful WIS test, they notice a strange trap-door under a rug in the corner. Thus, the dungeon starts.

That's it, that is all you need. This is only a one shot, so it doesn't need to be a huge introduction. Just needs to get the party where they need to be for the adventure to start!

Running the Adventure

Now obviously, this is A LOT of prep for a game, and I don't like to have this much stuff to look at when I'm running. So I've taken my own notes from this, and put them into a style that I'd actually use, all shrunk down onto a side of A4. Enjoy!

Watch the Live Play on YouTube

[petelonesome]

The Way of a Story

“How often do we tell our own life story?  How often do we adjust, embellish, make slight cuts?  And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to tell us our life is not our life.  It is just a story we have told about our lives.  A story about our lives, told to others, but mainly to ourselves.

I’ve been turning over in my mind a question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it…I think of everything that has happened in my life, and how little I have allowed to happen.  I, who neither won nor lost, who avoided being hurt, and called it a capacity for survival.  I think of how our lives got entwined, and went along together for a time. And when I look back, now on that time, however brief, I am moved more than I thought possible.  Indeed I am sorry that I have known nothing of your life in the years since.  No doubt you could have taught this old fool a thing or two.  Perhaps, in a way, you have.”   (Julian Barnes)

The floor is mine.  And at such an age when I expect most people are thinking about their story.  Which I am.  Enough decades to indicate a progression, with a remaining set of pieces still in motion, still unresolved.  At some point, it will likely seem that all that is left is that story.  There will be less altogether of a compelling present, and the thoughts will strive against failing memory to see the past for all that it was, with a diminishing need for a practical focus on things still taking place, still taking shape.  Once all things have taken place, taken shape, and are done with, then the by product of such inward meditations will perforce be silence.  Perhaps you understand.  Perhaps not.  

As it happens, what we were to each other, that which has indeed already taken place and taken shape, is at a practical end, and so to feel a conversation can be mandated, or even be meaningful, seems unrealistic. For indeed it was that silence, once installed as a habit, that later became the basis and requirement for how we knew each other. For dead things are defined by their silence, but with the living it must be voluntary, and once adopted, it needs be enforced. Otherwise, what might we say? As such, I could even say that it doesn’t matter at all, but you see I am still in the process of figuring out the story.  How does it turn out?  Will it winnow its way toward a noiseless ending?  No climax, no denouement, no meaningful epilogue.  Just the end.  For if there is no heaven, then surely there is no history, for an extinguished memory passes on to no one.  It has less use than an old set of steak knives, left behind in an untouched drawer by an old man who has collapsed in the next room.  Lacking a theme park in the sky where one gets to meet one’s dead relatives (alas all together, and given the moral screening process, all the least interesting ones), then I suppose it does just end.  One moment here, the next not here.  So, then, what is meaning?  

Meaning being existential, inasmuch as we are still existing, and inasmuch as any of us care.  And so the irony of silence gives way to the irony of what that silence refuses to serve.  And what it refuses to serve, forgive me, is exactly the same laundry list of questions I endured at the dinner table, or during family evenings, and on many a holiday, when you were piecing together your story, your meaning, your place in the world.  Alas, poor Yorick, where are your jibes? For in all such insufficiencies, what we are left with is comedy.  Because in this late pageant, the senior actor had an audience, but in later scenes faded into the background, a non-participant and now serving as nothing more than an extremely misleading bit of foreshadowing.  The long-winded melodramas of vanity, where are they now?  They are done with.  Act I has completed.  And I am right at the beginning of Act IV, just as you are facing the conclusion of Act V.  The bitter, angry protestations at all the grownups who let you down in Act I, all the people I was supposed to love or something, all at their most faulty.  And on and on it went.  Your meaning, your story, until it had been told, right up until the turbulence of Act III and its tragic climax.    

If it was important then, why is it not now?  These faulty people, in all their inadequacies, well they surely were known to me.  I knew their names.  I knew about their likes and dislikes. I knew what their stories were.  They told me.  I knew where they grew up.  I knew what part of the Earth they sprang from.  I knew something of their ancestors as well.  I saw photographs.   I heard their stories, repeated many times, for each of us can only carry so many.  They called on holidays.  They called on birthdays.  They often visited in person,  They were aware of my various tiny achievements.  I was a part of their story, and they were a part of mine. My children are old enough now to be thus aware.  But they do not pause for long.  They simply have no information.  They are not yet old enough to know about the truth of what happened, or what actually is and is not available to them by way of human interaction.  But they will at least know a few valuable things once they reach adulthood.  That love isn’t guaranteed, not from anyone.  Because love stories are never about love, not really. They are only about brief, illusory respites from loneliness. It’s the long con–someone sets themself up in one’s life as a bona fide, with an implied promise to do something impossible, continually, via some sort of dialogue which is not begged for, but rather offered as a permanent gift.  It is the great human futility that saves us from extinction, the grand failing that we must accomplish every day for each other. But failing to even try? I sincerely hope they will see this for what it is, and simply move on, beyond this person, leaving them without even imprinting them as a memory.  For they do not get to be in the story. They have been proven a liar, and the one rule of this story, my story, is that one must tell the truth. Else, they disappear. Good stories don’t allow this form of cheating.  

That’s the thing about stories.  They do not judge, unless a character refuses to act, to take part.  If something or someone relevant to the course of a story enters its boundary lines, then it is immediately part of the conversation, an important and crucial element.  But if it does not, then there is no feeling that is attached to it.  It simply does not exist.  And once the story is complete, it is a thing that doesn’t even become a memory.  It has ceased to be.  It has been replaced.  Now, some people think their story requires certain elements.  Forests need trees, rain needs clouds and water, stories need people.  But these people of the archetypal story structure are not adept.  Stories don’t work that way.  A life story certainly does not work this way.  In life stories, certain human beings come and go.  And sometimes, those people who require such things might say, oh, in this story, such and such was there in the beginning, and later left the story.  No reason is given for this. They didn’t exactly leave.  They simply are not there anymore.  This story went on without them.  And because of this, the story has continued thus.  And if you’re reading this story, maybe you might find this bit funny.  You might say, oh how absurd.  That one seemed to be so central, but I guess I was wrong.  I wonder who will be in the next chapter?  

And that is all there is to a story.  Lately I have been thinking a lot about mine.  The recent chapters.  The turbulent Act III.  The protagonist is challenged.  His assumptions were all wrong.  Yet he looks around, and while up ahead lies a shiny question mark, behind him are ghosts.  And some of these ghosts are still alive.  Or are they?  Perhaps you know.  Either way, I will eventually find out.  Because stories need answers.  And even silence can be an answer.  

The broken kettle spills the water.  It cannot help it.  But it cannot turn away from the water.  It is still a kettle.  So the water still gets poured.  Even as the water leaks out, we see the kettle for what it is. Broken, perhaps noble in its elegant way of failing in its one purpose, but still, in the end, itself.  

Adapted. Excerpt from the last, unsent, letter I wrote to my father two weeks prior to his death on 4 July 2017.