#knew her true self. She would have gone back to blonde sometime before going back to the US though

[vaguely-functional-directions]

I've thought about it and made the decision that it is now canon that Evelyn let her brown hair grow out for most of their time in Spain. When she and Celia got married, she was brunette.

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

Vickie wasn't immune to being bullied. It happened to her all the time. Her teeth were weird. She talked too much. Why does she have to have so many freckles? One time, she went quiet for a month when someone told her to shut the hell up. Vickie knows how annoying she can be sometimes, and she always tries to real it in, but it was difficult when she found something she was passionate about. Then, there were times when she had thought that she had made friends until she overheard them in the library.

"God, she's so annoying!"

"Do you hear the way she talks?"

"She's so boring!"

"Well, she's a ginger. She's got no soul!"

Vickie had run all the way home and swore never to return to school. Crying and laying in bed, she didn't understand why anyone ever hated her because all she ever did was try to be nice to people. Does everyone think about her this way? She had gone down to the store not far from her house and bought a bottle of hair dye. Maybe they would like her if she wasn't a ginger. It didn't turn out well. Her mother had returned home and rectified the situation. She always knew how to make things better.

"What are you thinking about?" Robin said as they continued to make peanut butter sandwiches.

They had been volunteering at the same station for the last couple of weeks. Whatever happened with the earthquake seemed to slowly be getting better, but it was still pretty rough. Vickie refused to leave, though even though she had this feeling on the back of her neck, a couple of days after, like something bad was going to happen but then it was gone like it had fixed it self or something. It wasn't the first time she had those feelings.

"My mom. I was thinking about my mom," Vickie said softly. "When she was alive."

"Oh, I didn't know. I'm sorry," Robin said.

"It's alright. I mean, I miss her like crazy. Of course. I was just thinking about the time I tried to dye my hair blonde because I got it into my head that people would like me more. I had these friends or I thought they were my friends. Apparently, I talked too much, and my hair was too red," Vickie said. "It turned green for some reason. I was terribly embarrassed, and when my mom came home, she had to cut my hair. Then she sat me down and said: 'fuck them and what they think.' It shocked me because she doesn't curse a whole lot, not that she had anything against it. She said that there's always going to be people who are always going to comment on the way you live, and that's not on you to make them change how they see you but it is up to you how you see yourself. It's up to you and you alone what you like to see in the mirror."

"Wow," Robin said. "Your mom sounds amazing."

"She was the best," Vickie said proudly and paused. "She would have liked you."

"Yeah?" Robin asked.

"Yeah."

"My mom likes to bowl," Robin blurted out. "I don't know why I said that. I mean, it's true that she does. Although, she hasn't been bowling since she got pregnant with me. She raised me by herself, you know. Single mom. She didn't know who my father was, which didn't say anything about her except that I think she's the best and I never needed a father. She would like you too. What?"

"I like that you ramble," Vickie said.

"Yeah?"

"You know, I could use a break," Vickie said as she took off her gloves.

She started to walk away, and she paused before looking at her shoulder at Robin. Vickie grinned and shook her head, indicating she wanted Robin to follow her. She walked out of the cafeteria and moved far enough down the hallway before moving into an empty closet. She heard the sound of footsteps.

"Vickie?" Robin hissed.

Vickie giggled before opening the closet door and pulling Robin inside. She had apparently yanked her too hard, and she was now pressed up against Vickie. She placed her hands on Robin's hips to stop her from moving back. Vickie moved her face closer to Robin's.

"Life is short, you know," Vickie whispered. "I don't want to regret not doing something that I really wanted to do. You know?"

She brushed her lips against Robin's softly and tentatively. Robin froze for a moment, and Vickie thought she messed up, but then Robin started kissing her back. It was wonderful. Robin cupped her neck, her fingers moving into her hair as her lips moved against Vickie's. They both smiled into the kiss. Vickie wrapped her arms around Robin's neck as she deepened the kiss while Robin moved her arms around her waist to support her. A giddy, warm feeling rose up from her stomach to her chest, and she broke the kiss. They leaned their foreheads together, giggling.

"This is better than any dream that I had," Robin said, biting her lip.

"You dreamed about me?" Vickie asked.

"Yeah."

"I dreamed about you too," Vickie said, and she grinned. "Can I tell you something?"

"Yeah," Robin said.

"I own my own copy of Fast Times," Vickie said.

"Why did you rent it?" She asked.

"I was trying to let you know that I like women without being obvious," Vickie replied.

"Oh my god," Robin laughed. "Steve was right."

"You talk about me with Steve Harrington?" She asked.

"He's my best friend in the whole world," Robin said. "My platonic soulmate."

"That sounds nice. I don't think I've ever had a best friend. I mean, I have friends but. . .that sounds nice," Vickie said.

"It is," Robin said. "And the video thing. . .so cute."

"Really?" Vickie asked.

"You're so cute," Robin said.

Robin kissed her cheek, rapid firing a bunch of kisses against it, causing Vickie to giggle. She began moving her lips down until they were attached to Vickie's neck. Vickie squeaked when Robin started nibbling at her neck, but she pulled her back in when Robin tried to pull away.

"Robin?" A young boy's voice rang out.

Robin and Vickie sprang apart.

"Who's that?" Vickie asked.

"Dustin Henderson. He's one of the kids that Steve and I platonically adopted," Robin said with a sigh, and Vickie's eyes twinkled.

"She's probably in the bathroom," they heard Steve tell him.

"They're going to keep looking for me," Robin groaned.

She cupped Vickie's face and kissed her deeply. Robin pulled away and grabbed a box of gloves off the shelf. She burst out of the closet, right next to them and causing them both to scream. Vickie followed and laughed at the look on their faces.

"What were you doing in the closet, Robin?!" Dustin exclaimed. "You scared the shit out of me and Steve!"

"Looking for gloves," Robin said, shaking the box at him. "What do you want?"

"Oh, they cleared Eddie of all charges!!" Dustin exclaimed.

"Shit! Seriously?!" Robin exclaimed.

"Yeah!"

"Yeah, they arrested Jason Carver," Dustin replied.

"I always thought there was something off about that guy," Vickie muttered. "I mean, Jason, not Eddie."

"Who is this?" Dustin asked, realizing there was someone else there.

"Vickie Fisher," she said, greeted with a smile and holding out her hand. "I like your shirt."

"It's Weird Al," Dustin said, looking at her suspiciously.

"I love Weird Al!" She exclaimed.

"I like you. Robin, I like your friend," Dustin said. "You're automatically my friend now, too. You can come with us to tell Eddie the news."

Dustin took off ahead of them, and Steve pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh.

"He's adorable," Vickie laughed.

"His moms certainly think so," Robin said, and Steve sighed.

"His moms?" Vickie asked.

"Claudia, his real mom, and Steve," Robin said. "I am, of course, the dad."

"Of course, that makes sense," Vickie said seriously. "I always thought Steve looked like a mom."

"You know, Fisher, I was going to warn you about the hickey on your neck, but I think I changed my mind," Steve said.

Vickie giggled as she buttoned up the collar of her shirt to cover it. She looked at him seriously.

"By the way, I have nothing but honorable intentions with your platonic soulmate," Vickie said.

"That's good to know," Steve said in amusement.

"You were totally right about Phoebe Cates," Robin said.

"I already owned my own copy," Vickie said.

"So, why did you - oh, I see what you did. Nice," Steve said and high fived Vickie.

Robin rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

"You really like me?" Vickie asked.

"Yeah, even if you do like Weird Al," Robin said teasingly and Vickie laughed.

"Oh my God, she would not stop talking about you. It was constant, nonstop," Steve rolled his eyes. "She even called you the girl of her dreams."

Vickie's eyes lit up as she gazed at Robin fondly. The smile dropped from her face as she realized something.

"Wait. . .Eddie's alive?!"

[graniairish]

Walking on eggshells

So this is my first own story here. I hope it is written in an understandable way. (Please ignore any grammatical errors. English is not my mother tongue.)

Title: Walking on eggshells

Words: 6761

Warnings: language (some explicit words), harassment and insults, heartbreak

Summary:

Daryl and reader have been close friends since the early days in Atlanta. They are deeply in love with each other but have no clue about it.

At some point new people join the community, including a young woman who is immediately after Daryl.

Reader is not exactly thin, no size zero, but also not fat, rather curvy, feminine. Even in this apocalyptic time. (you are just the way you are.)

Daryl has withdrawn more and more from reader, avoids contact. Reader believes he does that because he now has a perfect woman by his side.

However, Daryl avoids reader because he does not know how to deal with his feelings.

One day reader goes on a run that goes wrong. To save their group, the reader does a suicide stunt, that can cost her life.

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

"Ya even know what ya're doin’?"

Those were the first words Daryl Dixon had ever said to you.

It was still at camp in Atlanta. Daryl stood over you, the sun behind him, as he looked down at you as you made a stew from a basket full of leaves and mushrooms.

“Believe it or not, I know what I'm doing here. My mother taught me as a child which mushrooms and plants are edible, and which can be used as medicine."

He nudged his nose up in a nod.

"If ya say so."

With that he dropped something in front of you.

"Maybe the whole thin’ tastes like somethin’ with that," he said before he turned around and made his way back to his brother.

Your eyes followed him - confused. Only then did you notice that he had thrown about a dozen freshly hunted squirrels in front of you.

Maybe the grumpy redneck was not that bad after all, you thought to yourself with a smile as you started to skin and gut the dead animals.

It was not long before a friendship developed between you. You were the only one he really let near him after the disappearance of his brother and Sophia's death. And after the farm was overrun by Walkers, he was by your side to comfort you.

He was always there for you, just as you were for him. You cared for each other.

But you only noticed how deep the feelings really were on your side when Daryl - after the incident with Woodbury - had turned his back on you and everyone else and disappeared into the woods. Just to be with his brother.

The realization that you were infinitely in love with the withdrawn redneck hit you hard. And just seeing him walk away hurt you so much that you could not breathe.

Without knowing it, Daryl had broken your heart into a million pieces.

It felt like he took a part of you with him.

More and more you withdrew from the others. From time to time, you even slept in the old management office of the Prison, far away from the cell block, from everyone else, from your family. You just wanted to be left alone in your grief and heartbreak.

In the first time you had gone through hell emotionally and a psychological breakdown would not have been long in coming. And if it had not been for Maggie, you probably would not have found your way back.

She had been your solid rock and, without you really noticing, had become your best friend - your sister.

And after a while it got better. It did not hurt that much anymore. Although it was not quite true. It still hurt - hurt infinitely - but the distances that those waves of grief hit you grew larger.

And then suddenly Daryl was back.

It was a shock to you.

And the moment he moved back into his cell in the cell block, you moved out. There was no trace of you or your belongings in the whole building anymore.

Quietly, and without anyone noticing, you moved into the management's office - permanently. The thought of being so close to him - physically - without actually being able to be close to him was just unbearable for you.

And so you had retreated.

Daryl did not seem to mind. It almost seemed as if he had not even really noticed it.

You hardly had any contact with each other. He rarely talked to you, and if he did, then only what was necessary and as monosyllabic as possible. He even seemed to be avoiding you.

But that's how life works - hard and unfair.

And you cannot choose who to fall in love with.

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return. But it only worked like that in movies and love songs, right? It did not work that way in real life, at least not for you.

As time goes by you had devoted all your concentration to your small farm. Your mother taught you how to handle plants as a child. In your previous life - before the apocalypse - you also had a vegetable garden with which you mostly tended yourself. So you knew the job and it was easy for you.

You lived in your own little world where you worked side by side with Rick and spent your meager free time with Maggie. Sometimes Carol would join you, but you had already noticed that she somehow always dropped a few comments about Daryl.

You did not want to talk about the redneck, let alone think about him. So, you ignored her as best you could - or at least her suggestions.

But it was not that easy. Your whole prison family knew how deep your feelings were for Daryl. No matter how hard you try to hide it, hide yourself from it.

Then Woodbury fell. New people came to the Prison and with them a young woman - Michelle. Probably only in her mid-twenties, model type, blonde, pretty. A typical homecoming queen.

To you, she made it seem like she had never worked hard in her entire life. She was the type of person who always muddled through, for her own benefit.

And just a few days after moving in, she was permanently on Daryl's heels. She asked questions, talked to him, spent most of the days near him.

But worst of all, she was openly flirting with the man you loved, and he did not seem to mind. Your stomach cramped painfully at the sight, and you had not been able to eat for two days.

Your heart, painstakingly patched together, broke one more time. After that you had avoided Daryl and his blond girl for almost a week, avoided them like the devil had shunned holy water.

But it could not go on like that. And at a certain point you realized: as long as Daryl was happy, nothing else mattered. At least for you.

To make matters worse, there was that cruel little voice in your head that kept whispering to you why Daryl was interested in Michelle and not you. It kept talking to you, all the time.

And then the little wheels in your head started spinning until you were caught in a vortex of thoughts.

She was thin and delicate; you were rather well built.

Her shoulders were narrow; yours were broad.

Her stomach was flat; but you had unmistakable love handles.

She had a firm, shaped ass; you childbearing hips - as your mother used to call it.

Her golden blonde hair always fell in gentle waves down her back. You always had your y/h/c ones in a messy bun. And after hours of hard work in the gardens, you always looked like a half-plucked chicken.

You would never have any chance of comparing yourself with this beautiful, gorgeous woman. Michelle was perfect.

You were just you.

But the worst part of this whole thing was that this woman could not leave you alone. She had won, the man was hers. What else did she want from you?!

Every now and then she dropped small comments, out of the earshot of others. But so that you could hear them very well.

"Hard to believe how one can be so well fed.”

“Are you secretly eating your way through our supplies?"

"Given your size, a whole bunch of Walkers could get fed up with you for a week."

It hurt, hurt infinitely. But you were willing to endure everything. You did not want to make a scene. Did not want to get upset, maybe to draw more unwanted attention to yourself.

In the depths of your heart, you only wanted one thing. You just wanted Daryl to be happy. Everything else does not matter to you.

But what you failed to notice in all your self-doubt and self-sacrifice was: Daryl was not happy.

You were both blind to each other's intentions, had no idea why the other acted the way he was doing.

But the inner circle of your family, especially Maggie and Carol, knew what was going on. And having to watch the two of you - while you did not notice it yourself - slowly but surely drove everyone to despair.

The whole thing was like a fucking soap opera!

You and Daryl had barely spent time together and avoided each other as best you could, so you had not noticed all the little signs that spoke volumes to all the others.

How his ears turn red when you have been near him.

How he sometimes looked at you a little longer than others.

How he changed his shifts in the guard tower just so he could take care of you when you were near the fences during your work.

The moment Daryl faced you for the first time since his return, the floor was torn from under his feet. When he saw your y/e/c eyes looking at him, he felt his heart swell. Warmth spread in his chest and he had thousands of butterflies in his stomach. The redneck had never felt anything like that before and it terrified him.

It was something he could not handle.

He knew he screwed up when he left you because of his brother. The way you behaved towards him was unmistakable. Daryl did not want to endanger the little friendship that was still between you. He could not risk losing you for good.

So he gave you your freedom and just adored from a distance - without you noticing.

But from a certain point in time all his thinking was focused only on you. Or rather, to hide what he really felt about you - how much he loved you.

Daryl was so busy hiding the love he felt for you that he did not even notice how much this young woman from Woodbury was constantly flirting with him. Of course, it had not escaped him that she ran after him like a lost puppy; and yes that annoyed him.

But weren't all of these newcomers a pain in the ass?

He was not interested in this blonde woman, not a little bit. Daryl does not care about her; he does not even listen to her most of the time.

If he was honest, he did not even know her name.

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

In the last few weeks, it had become routine for the redneck to be on guard duty in the early hours of the morning. Not just because he was an early riser- and finally got some peace up here from the intrusive people from Woodbury - but because you went to work in the vegetable gardens shortly after sunrise every day.

And from high up there he had the opportunity to watch and admire you unnoticed.

You have always been used to working hard, and everyone who saw you knew that you had no problem with it and that you could lend a hand. Rick once joked that you could overshadow any Amish when it came to your work ethic. You just shrugged your shoulders and replied that you had no problem with that as long as you didn't have to pray for hours.

So you and Daryl spent the mornings together - without your having a clue about it. You, lovingly watching over the plants in the vegetable patches, he on the guard tower, lovingly watching over you.

As the sun rose higher and higher on its way across the sky, it made the sweat shimmer on your skin as you patiently devoted yourself to each of your tasks without taking a break. The black tank top you wore on that hot summer day stuck to your body and framed it perfectly. Your figure was like an hourglass, and each of your curves came out sensually.

At least as far as Daryl could tell. For him you were perfect, just like you were. He could watch you for hours without getting tired of it, could watch you for the rest of his life.

Only when the crotch of his jeans became uncomfortably tight did the redneck look away from you. His thoughts had taken a suggestive course, and the images that emerged in his head were by far no longer suitable for minors. Daryl would surely spend this evening in his fist again - dreaming of how you would feel lying under him, how you would smell, how you would taste, and what sweet noises would come over your lips if he would touch you where you needed it most.

"Everything's okay," he heard a familiar voice next to him.

Damn it, did the time really go that fast? Was his shift already over?

"Are you okay? You seem a little distracted to me."

Carol had come to relieve him. But Daryl, in his fascination for you, had not even noticed her.

"’m okay."

"Yes, of course, and your thoughts were on the task in front of you the whole time."

There was unmistakable amusement in Carol's voice. With a knowing smile, the woman leaned on the railing and watched you work for a while.

"Can you please finally tell Y/N that you love her. So that we can finally all get on with our lives? It's really not nice to see you two walking around each other on eggshells."

Daryl was embarrassed. He was caught with his hand in the cookie jar by Carol. Still, he tried to stay as cool as possible.

"I have no idea what ya're talkin’ about."

But the woman was not easily fooled. She knew very well what was going on in the man in front of her. Just as she knew how you felt about him.

"I hear what you say, but your ears say something else.”

Daryl flinched. Sometimes he hated the way his body betrayed him.

“What the hell,” Carol had to keep from laughing “I didn't even know that they could get so red."

"Stop it woman."

Again and again, Carol tried to get her friend to finally confess his love to you. Because in her eyes you were both wasting valuable time. And being able to spend time with loved ones was the most important thing now.

You had not noticed any of this. You were too busy tying up the tomato plants and removing the leaves so that they brought the greatest possible yield. After all, many mouths had to be fed, and you all needed supplies for the coming winter.

And it was precisely these necessary supplies that prompted Rick to ask you to go on a run the next day with others. Of course, you immediately agreed, after all, everyone went on these runs at some point. It wouldn't be your first time, and certainly not your last time, that you would take part in something like this.

But who could say that in these uncertain times?

What you did not know at the time was, that Michelle would be there too. Maybe then you would have refused. But now you sat in the back seat of the pickup truck in silence, staring stubbornly out the window.

Michelle just a few inches away from you.

It had been clear to Maggie from the start that this constellation would not bring any good. However, even the young woman would not have expected what dimensions the whole thing would take. And in what a heartbreaking catastrophe it would end.

During the entire journey Glenn and Maggie tried to break the mood. The four of you sat in the truck and drove a few hours until you finally arrived at your destination.

It should be a simple thing - in and out, quietly, quickly, unseen.

But what no one had expected was the behavior that Michelle had displayed when it came to doing her part. She had absolutely no desire to be actually a part in this job.

And Michelle let the three of you feel that very clearly.

She neither wanted to help find the necessary supplies nor carry them; even found it outrageous that she had been asked by Rick to join in and risk her life. She had never had to do this before, why now?

It took you so much strength to stay calm and not yell your opinion on Michelle's face - or beat her across the street.

You did not like this woman, not a bit. For you, she was a narrow-minded, self-centered, selfish slut who cared about only herself. And what Daryl saw in her was incomprehensible to you.

But when Michelle began to risk all of your lives because of her loud behavior, even Maggie's patience ran out. The eternal insults in your direction were just the cherry on top. Maggie would have liked nothing more than to give this snotty brat a huge slap in the face.

But to make a shitty day even more shitty, that was unfortunately your smallest problem.

Michelle's loud complaints drew the attention of more and more walkers, and at some point, you had difficulties getting back to your car.

You had just successfully cleared a pharmacy when you saw the horde slowly approaching on the street.

That was by far the worst scenario, and your greatest fear.

It was all happening so quickly, and the only thing you thought was that Michelle had to make it back to the Prison alive. You could not risk Daryl losing someone he loved again. No matter what a fucking bitch she was. You knew it would destroy him.

The way back to the pickup was long and the Walkers unfortunately closer than wanted. The heavy backpacks did not make it any easier to escape them quickly. So you stayed back when Maggie, Glenn, and Michelle started running back towards the truck. You knew your partners needed a distraction to make it through.

And what could be a better distraction than you.

"Come to me you damn motherfuckers! Here I am! Come and catch me you bloody bastards! You ugly fuckers!" you screamed on top of your lungs, tried to make as much noise as possible.

The walkers slowly turned to you and came to hunt you down - to kill you. You would be their lunch. Scared to death your heart was beating so hard in your chest that you thought it was about to pop out.

From that point on, you could not remember anything. Your brain just shut down, went into survival mode. You only ran on instinct, no more active thinking.

In a way, like the Walkers you tried to escape from.

Maggie turned when she heard your voice, and the blood froze in her veins. She thought you were right behind her, but you were still near the entrance to the pharmacy and the horde of walkers was on the way to you.

"Y/N!" her voice was desperate.

She was about to turn back to you – to help you - but Glenn could not and would not let that happen.

"Come on Maggie, we have to get the car. We'll come back for her; I promise."

Glenn took his girlfriend's hand and pulled her forcefully with him.

Michelle had not noticed anything of that, she was the first to take a seat in the pickup and firmly locked the passenger door behind her.

When Glenn finally started the engine and Maggie - now in the back seat - turned her eyes back to the pharmacy entrance, you were gone.

Your best friend was in a panic.

"Where is she? Oh my god, where is she?"

Only then did she see you on the canopy of the building - the backpack with the bandages still firmly strapped around you.

"On the roof, Glenn, she's on the roof! We have to get her!" the young woman screamed in desperation.

She could not and did not want to lose her friend. Not now and not like this.

“and preferably before these things figure out how to climb”, was Glenn's addition when he turned the truck and drove towards the pharmacy.

"Are you crazy," squeaked Michelle, "do you want to die just to maybe save her life?"

Maggie's eyes darkened, and Glenn realized immediately that she had now reached the limit. Another word from Michelle and his girlfriend would feed this woman to the Walkers with no trace of guilt.

"You shut up now, bitch! You're to blame for all this shit. If you’d shut your damn mouth and done what we've all done hundreds of times before, none of this would have happened! These fucking things would never have noticed us."

Michelle gasped to give Maggie a neat answer, but Maggie was faster.

"If I hear one more word from you, if you just beep, I'll feed you to these Walkers!"

Michelle's reply was interrupted by the gruesome sound of breaking bones as Glenn brutally drove through the horde of walkers who were now confused and trying to understand what was going on around them.

You were still standing on the roof. Your gaze was focused on the scene before you but not fearful, as if your self was not there at that moment.

"You have to jump," Glenn called to you when he brought the pickup to a stop right under the roof.

And with that you jumped onto the back of the truck. The fall was higher than expected, and there was a thump as you hit the flatbed. Immediately Glenn had accelerated the car again and drove away as fast as he could in the direction of Prison.

Desperate, Maggie kept calling your name, but you just did not answer. Maybe you were in shock. After all, it was not common practice to voluntarily sacrifice oneself as a meal for these monsters.

A few miles out of town, Glenn finally stopped the car, and Maggie was by your side in an instant. But she was not prepared for what she saw. You were passed out and a small pool of blood had formed under your head. The thud she had heard - when you landed - had been your head when it hit the loading wall.

"Oh my God."

Immediately Maggie was at your side, looking for your pulse with trembling hands. And there it was - weak - but she felt it.

"Please open your eyes Y/N/N", the young woman pleaded as she lovingly brushed the hair off your face.

"Maggie?" Glenn's voice was timid, almost frightened, as he stood next to the pickup and stared at your broken body.

"We have to get her to my father as soon as possible!"

Maggie's harsh words seemed to loosen Glenn from his stupor.

"Okay, no problem, I can do that."

And with that Glenn was back behind the wheel and gave full throttle. Maggie stayed with you on the flatbed, took off your backpack and trying to stop the bleeding on your head.

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

Rick and Daryl were in the courtyard of the prison, discussing the next runs when the pickup truck drove through the gates with screeching tires. It was immediately clear to both of them that something bad must have happened.

Without wasting time, the two men ran towards the car.

"What happened", Rick called out.

But Daryl could not hear Glenn’s answer. Everything around him fell silent and vanished when he saw you - bleeding, passed out - in Maggie's arms.

Without thinking further, he jumped on the flatbed and leaned over you. He caressed your pale cheek with trembling fingertips before desperately looking for a pulse on your neck.

Frightened, he held his breath until he felt it, your heartbeat.

Even but so weak.

"We have to take her to my father."

Maggie had not even finished the sentence when Daryl had already taken you in his arms - bridal style - and was on the way to the infirmary with you.

With a lover's desperation, he clung to you as he ran all the way.

“Don't do this to me. I beg ya, please don't die to me."

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

Daryl never left your side for a moment. He sat like a statue and held your hand. He did not say a word, did not move. Neither when Hershel examined you, nor when he sewed your laceration.

He listened quietly to the vet's diagnosis and what he thought might happen in the next few hours or days.

Only when Maggie came with a bowl of water and a cloth to wash off the dirt and blood did he break free.

"Let me …" Daryls voice cracked, and the knot in his throat made it difficult for him to say anything else.

He took everything from Maggie's hand and put it on the little table next to your bed.

The redneck looked broken. The young woman could clearly see how much he loved you. And she knew that if you died, Daryl would vanish. He would just cease to exist.

“I'm so sorry,” Maggie said quietly, and a tear rolled down her cheek, “I thought she was right behind me. But … but she wasn't."

"It's not ya’ fault." Daryl's voice was barely perceptible.

Slowly he dipped the cloth into the warm water and began to carefully wash the blood off your face.

"Daryl I’m ... I’m"

"I know."

“Y/N is strong, she is tough. She will be okay."

Daryl just nodded absently while he concentrated fully on washing the blood off your temple.

And so Maggie left the redneck alone with you in the infirmary.

With trembling hands, he began to clean your neck. Little by little he washed your whole body- took care of you quietly and lovingly- making dirt, blood and sweat disappear, made you as clean as he saw you before you went on that fucking run.

Then he sat there, hour after hour, just looking at you, holding your hand. You looked so fragile. You lay there injured and pale, almost like a corpse. Only your quiet, even breathing told Daryl that you were still with him.

Inside Daryl, everything contracted painfully at the thought that you might not wake up again. Slowly he leaned towards your face. He looked at every birthmark, every wrinkle, every freckle, as if he wanted to burn them into his memory.

“I don't know if ya can hear me,” he finally began with a trembling voice.

“But I ... I ... I “, he had to laugh bitterly.

“’m a bloody coward. Why can' I jus’ say it?"

Daryl took a deep breath, he had to get his fear under control somehow. He had to tell you. He would never forgive himself if he did not do it now.

What if you died.

"I love ya Y/N. 've been in love with ya since ... I actually have no idea how long. But I love ya. I should have told ya much earlier. I don' know why I didn't. But I love ya."

Daryl fought back tears but lost.

"Oh God please, I beg ya, please come back to me. Give me a chance to show ya how much I love ya. Just one chance to prove myself to ya." and with that Daryl collapsed on top of you, crying and sobbing.

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

It took you two days to open your eyes again. Two days in which Daryl had not left your side. Two days of going through hell and back again. In which even he had sent a quick prayer or two towards heaven.

It was as if you had been awakened from a deep sleep far too abruptly. And it took a while before you knew where you were. You felt dizzy and tired. Your head hurt like hell. And you were confused.

First, why you were in the infirmary, and second, why Daryl was sitting next to your bed looking like he had not slept in days – your hand in his.

"Hey," he whispered, "how are ya feelin’?"

"Tired", your voice was scratchy from not using it for a long time, "my head hurts."

“You hit ya head bad. Hershel had to patch ya up."

"What happened?"

"Can't ya remember."

"No ... Yes …. but not ... not really ... only up to a certain point."

You were nervous, were not used to Daryl being so close to you. You did not want to make a fuss about yourself, and yet you liked the attention this man was giving you.

“I can still remember the horde of Walkers who came up to me, but then … nothing ... I can't remember what happened then."

You had not noticed that tears had started to run down your temples until Daryl lovingly wiped them away with his thumb.

"Hey ... shh ... take it easy. Everythin’ is okay. Everyone’s fine. Please don't get upset, ya have a concussion. Hershel says ya need a lot of rest now."

And suddenly you were silent. Never before had Daryl spoken to you with such a loving tone in his voice or had touched you in this way. You did not understand what was happening here.

But he said you had a concussion. Perhaps it was to blame for this filter through which you noticed this whole interaction.

“I'll let Hershel know that ya woke up. I'll be right back; promise."

Confused, you looked after the redneck. Something had happened that you had no idea about. But you did not want to worry about it now. Your head hurt too much, and you just wanted to sleep.

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

When you opened your eyes again, Hershel was sitting in the chair on which you had previously seen Daryl.

"It's nice to see you again with your eyes open Y/N," said the older man with a friendly smile, "you worried us very much."

"‘m sorry. "

"It's okay. How do you feel?"

"Okay. Tired, head hurts."

"Something else?"

"No, except that I feel like I'm wrapped in cotton wool."

Hershel sat and listened to you before nodding.

"Daryl said you can't remember what happened."

"Not really."

"Don't worry, that's nothing unusual with this type of head injury."

He patted your shoulder encouragingly.

"Will I be able to remember one day?"

"You know kid, sometimes it is really good not to be able to remember some things."

"Probably."

“But now you should rest first. I know you have questions, but answers will come later. After all, you have to regain your strength."

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

You knew you had slept, but not for how long. Because the next time you opened your eyes, Carol was sitting on that same chair. But there was something else. Could it be that it smelled of her venison ragout?

"How are you, Y/N/N?"

"Still tired, but the headache is almost gone."

"Good to hear. You gave us all a real scare."

"I'm sorry."

"Especially Daryl. I've never seen him so frightened."

You looked questioningly at the older woman next to you. You were used to it that she kept dropping allusions about Daryl - at least when she talked to you. But you just did not understand that statement at all.

Daryl was never afraid of anything. Why would he ...

"Well. Are you hungry?" Carol had a friendly smile on her face when it broke your train of thought.

At that moment, your stomach made a loud rumbling noise.

“I'll take that as a yes,” smirked the gray-haired woman, “Daryl went hunting so that I could cook this. He knows it’s your favorite."

Unsure you looked at Carol before you took the bowl from her hand and slowly began to eat. It was true, that was your favorite food - if there was such a thing at all in times like this.

"You know that he loves you," she suddenly began out of nowhere

"Of course, we are family," did you try to belittle the matter.

“Okay, let's reformulate the whole thing again. Daryl is in love with you, absolutely and one hundred percent madly in love with you. A 'you're the only one for me' love. Without any misunderstanding."

When she said that, you choked on the stew right away and now you sat in front of her, coughing and snorting.

“And I know you love him too. So don't try to deny it at all. Everyone here knows that. Or how blind do you think we are? Although ... apart from Daryl. He has no idea. He probably wouldn't even understand if it bites his ass.”

At this picture you had to laugh.

“Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith in order to reach their goal. You two really have to start talking clearly to each other. You two belong together like pepper and salt Do you actually notice how much you waste your precious time? Neither of us knows how much of it is left. You should know that now, because honey it was damn close."

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

Sleeping was your main occupation right now. A concussion took time and a lot of rest to heal. So it wasn't uncommon for your life to consist of short scenes at the moment.

With a sound - like a purring cat - you stretched in the hospital bed before opening your eyes. You no longer had any sense of time, and only the sunlight falling through the barred windows told you that it was probably afternoon.

"Hey."

Only now did you notice that Daryl was with you again.

"Ya feel better?"

"Yes."

Daryl seemed kind of nervous. But that wasn't possible, why should he?

"I've been here before, but ya slept and I don't want to wake ya", his words just gushed out of him.

Could it be? Was he nervous?

"Okay ... yes ... uhm ..."

You were easily overwhelmed with this situation, and somehow your head just seemed to have been swept clean. You could not find any words.

"We take turns. Hershel thinks there should always be someone with ya. Because of the concussion. Rick has already been here, and Maggie of course."

"And Carol."

"Yea."

"I wanted to thank you."

"For what?"

"For the food. Carol said you went hunting especially for it."

"No problem."

“I still appreciate it. And for ... that you are here ... with me."

He nudged his nose up in a nod.

And then there was silence. The conversation with Carol kept going through your head. What she said. Could it really be true?

You knew that Daryl has always been more of a man of action than a man of words. And it was clear to you that if you did not take the first step now, you two would probably never get anywhere.

"Carol spoke to me", you started when you sat up

The man across from you was obviously nervous now. You could tell all too clearly by the fact that he was starting to chew the inside of his cheek.

"With me too."

"Apparently something like an intervention is going on here, could that be", you smiled, trying to loosen up the mood a bit.

"Seems so."

Daryl looked at you for a few moments. You could see the wheels turning in his head.

"I'm a coward, Y/N," he finally began.

You had expected a lot, but not a statement like that.

"No, you’re not. How did you come up with such an idea?"

"I was a complete idiot and too cowardly."

"What are you talking about Daryl."

In your opinion, this was going completely wrong right now. You actually wanted to tell him you loved him, and now it seemed to end in a vortex of self-doubt.

"I love ya, Y/N.”

And with that your thoughts became silent.

“I am terribly in love with ya. And out of fear I didn't say anything. But then I saw ya lying on the flatbed of that fucking truck, covered in blood and passed out. At that moment, my heart stopped. And I swore to myself that when ya're okay again, when ya've got throu’ this, that I'll finally tell ya what I feel for ya. Y/N I love ya. "

During Daryl's monologue you forgot how to breathe and just listened intently while thousands of butterflies fluttered around in your stomach like they're having a bloody party there.

It took you some time to realize that Daryl was waiting for a reaction from you as he gnawed his thumb in fear.

"I love you too," it gushed out of you before you even realized you had said something.

And then there was silence again. You and Daryl just looked at each other. Unsure what to do now. After all, you were both in uncharted waters.

"And ... and now," you asked uncertainly.

"Don't know," Daryl just shrugged.

"I mean ... um ... are ... are we ... together now?"

You carefully ventured out of cover.

"Um, yea ... if ya ... if ya want that."

"Oh my god, yes please", you replied in one breath.

Suddenly the tension between you had dissolved and you both had to laugh. It was so surreal. Two adults acted like teenagers in love who had no idea what to do.

But then Daryl slowly leaned in towards you. Your heart was pounding when you could finally feel his breath on your face. But before your lips touched, he stopped. He wanted to give you the opportunity to evade him if you did not want this.

But you wanted it, wanted it more than anything else in your life. And when you had overcome the last few inches, you finally felt his lips on yours.

The feeling was amazing. As if at that moment an electric shock had run through your whole body, and at the same time it was like coming home.

Everything around you no longer existed, was no longer important. Here and now, it was just you and Daryl. The way his lips moved with yours, how his fingers slowly ran up your arms until they were in your hair.

Everything was so intense. And when you finally parted to take a much-needed breath, Daryl leaned his forehead against yours.

"Ya have no idea how long I've been dreamin’ about this."

"Probably as long as me."

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

When Rick was about to visit Y/N in the early evening hours, he saw Carol and Maggie standing in the door to the infirmary.

"Everything's okay," he wanted to know.

The two women turned around with their index fingers over their lips.

"Shhhh."

Both did at the same time.

"Be quiet and come here," Carol whispered, "you really have to see that."

Rick approached the two women curiously. What could be so interesting that Carol and Maggie were half-hidden behind the door, staring into the infirmary?

He was confused, but when he saw what fascinated them so much, his heart swell. A satisfied smile played on his lips, as he was seeing what was going on less than five paces away.

Daryl was lying - half sitting - on the bed. His back supported on the wall behind him. Y/N was snuggled close to him, head on his chest and her arm wrapped around him. Absently, the fingers of his right hand traced patterns on her upper arm as he read to her from an old paperback.

Everyone could see the love that bound these two people. And thank God the two finally understood that.

"Seems like we finally have a happy ending," said the former deputy with a broad smile.

"Thank God", Maggie exhaled, "nobody wanted to watch this puppy love shit anymore."

“Yes,” laughed Rick, “but you have to admit there was something exciting about the whole thing. As if it had been our very own little soap opera."

"You're right, but I prefer my best friend happy."

"And what do we do now. I mean this seemingly endless heartbreak theater has come obviously to an end."

"Gossip- Rick is afraid he'll get bored?"

Maggie's voice was teasing.

"No, that's not how it was meant."

"Don't worry, Rick," said Carol with a smile, "I think the whole thing has a sequel anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, has someone told Michelle yet?"

All three looked at each other with big eyes before they having to resist laughing convulsively.

This story could get really interesting after all, they agreed.

part two

[artificialqueens]

Don't Make What You Can't Hold Up (Daya x Jasmine) - Puppy 

Summary: Jasmine and Daya are roommates who haven't really talked in a bit... and it might end up staying that way.

A/N: Here's some season 14 reunion inspired angstTitle comes from "Skype Tomorrow" from the musical "We Are the Tigers"

ao3 link

Jasmine Kennedie knew one thing about friendship: it wasn’t long-lasting.

Well, at least not to her. Everyone left eventually, so she should have known not to get attached too much. She was self-aware enough to know that she was part of the problem. She talked too much, yet barely listened. With all of that talking, she’d bore those friends to death. It was reasonable for them to end things.

The first time Daya left the apartment for a weekend wasn’t too bad. “Thank God for FaceTime, am I right?” She said with her suitcase in hand, “We’ll talk all the time, almost like I didn’t even go.”

Last winter break, they had plans to go on a road trip together. No Crystal, no Bosco, other family or friends or even other acquaintances: just the two of them in a beat-up Sedan going down the interstate. The wind would have gone through their hair and it would have been the best feeling in the world.

It would have been great if Daya hadn’t told her just a day prior about a music festival she bought tickets for. Jasmine had just finished packing her bags.

“Do you want to move out?” Jasmine asked one day almost out of the blue while she was sitting in her friend’s room.

Daya finished tuning her guitar as she looked up at her roommate. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s just that… I never get to see you anymore. To me, at least, it makes me feel like you don’t want to be around me. We make plans, you cancel them…”

“Look, things just… come up, that’s all. It’s piss poor timing. The next time --”

“The next time,” Jasmine bitterly laughed, “When will that even be? Our lease ends in four months. You’re heading back to Missouri.”

“You’re overreacting. We still have time, don’t worry about it. I promise.”

She promised… Jasmine laughed quietly to herself. She knew how those types of promises went. Those people talked like they were written in blood, it was just done in chalk and broke as easily as glass. It felt like she was still pulling out splinters that were lodged inside from years ago. But there was something about Daya that made it hurt even more. She just sounded so confident, but for someone she’s known for that long, Jasmine just couldn’t believe her.

It wasn’t out of character for Daya either. She was known for talking a lot of shit, but not acting on anything. There were sometimes she’d just… say things without any repercussion.  That was a thing Jasmine felt like she knew too well, and there were time she wish she’d just stop talking. Someone once told her this feeling was just projection, and Jasmine could only deny that claim because she knew it was true.

Both of their mouths have gotten them in a fuckton of trouble.

“Sounds good,” She nodded her head. “Next time you go out just… call me or something? That would be nice.”

“I can go out without you having a leash on me.” The punk rocker scrolled through her phone, not making eye contact.

That conversation sounded a lot better in her head. “At least tell me you’re okay. That you’re not, like, dying or something! You haven’t gone home with someone who’s gonna murder you or worse!”

“God, who are you, my mother?”

“No…” The blonde tilted her head a bit. “Just a concerned friend..”

“I can handle myself, thanks Jas. We’re gonna be fine.”

Knowing Jasmine’s track record, this wasn’t going to be the case. She could just imagine the rest of the time they’d have together. Come to think of it, Daya almost seemed happier when not directly around her. They’d host house parties, and as soon as Jasmine entered her little friend group, she just seemed… indifferent, and that stung worse than anything negative.”

“Daya… I’m not stupid.” Before Daya could respond – I could be the judge of that –, her roommate just kept going. She always needed to have the last word; how else could anyone pay attention to her? “I know how this goes. Communication slows down and then you’ll barely call and ten you’ll eventually forget I exist, only remembering when… when Facebook reminds you it’s my birthday, and even then I only get those well-wishes from aunts I haven’t spoken to since I came out!”

“You’re right…” Daya set down her guitar and stormed out of the room with Jasmine following close behind. “I’m sorry.” She apologized in the most insincere sounding way that she could. “I’m the worst for not calling or responding. You always answer calls and texts. You’re so good, and I’m the worst person in the world. You’re just so fucking perfect and amazing at making conversation.”

“I never said that you were perfect, I was saying that—"

“If you let people finish their fucking sentences, then they might still want to talk to you!”

That was just too far.

“Jaz, you might have been onto something. Maybe I will move out.

“You can’t!” She blurted out, immediately wishing she hadn’t said anything. “You can’t go...”

Daya almost laughed – out of shock, more than anything. “Why not? You clearly hate me.”

“No! Just… stay… please.”

“I - Out of everyone in our friend groups, why do you want ME to stay? Are you just saying Bosco can just go fuck off right now?” She knew she was just waving a red cape in front of Jasmine, waiting for her to just snap again. “Or… how about DeJa? Or Jorgie? Bye, Orion; you can’t be here any because Jasmine said so—"

Jasmine just slammed the door to her room with enough force for the paintings in the hall to shake.

If Daya paid enough attention, she could have heard some faint tears dripping from her leaky eyes. And this time, she did. She sat outside the door with her head in her hands, knowing she fucked up too late.

For the first time in Jasmine’s recent memory, Daya stayed.

[puppywritesthings]

Don’t Make What You Can’t Hold Up

So I have some reunion-inspired jasya angst.

It’s a sorta- college AU where they’re both roommates, so there’s that.

Title comes from “Skype Tomorrow” from the musical “We Are The Tigers” (highly recommend if you like murder mysteries)

ao3 link

Jasmine Kennedie knew one thing about friendship: it wasn’t long-lasting.

Well, at least not to her. Everyone left eventually, so she should have known not to get attached too much. She was self-aware enough to know that she was part of the problem. She talked too much, yet barely listened. With all of that talking, she’d bore those friends to death. It was reasonable for them to end things.

The first time Daya left the apartment for a weekend wasn’t too bad. “Thank God for FaceTime, am I right?” She said with her suitcase in hand, “We’ll talk all the time, almost like I didn’t even go.”

Last winter break, they had plans to go on a road trip together. No Crystal, no Bosco, other family or friends or even other acquaintances: just the two of them in a beat-up Sedan going down the interstate. The wind would have gone through their hair and it would have been the best feeling in the world.

It would have been great if Daya hadn’t told her just a day prior about a music festival she bought tickets for. Jasmine had just finished packing her bags.

“Do you want to move out?” Jasmine asked one day almost out of the blue while she was sitting in her friend’s room.

Daya finished tuning her guitar as she looked up at her roommate. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s just that… I never get to see you anymore. To me, at least, it makes me feel like you don’t want to be around me. We make plans, you cancel them…”

“Look, things just… come up, that’s all. It’s piss poor timing. The next time --”

“The next time,” Jasmine bitterly laughed, “When will that even be? Our lease ends in four months. You’re heading back to Missouri.”

“You’re overreacting. We still have time, don’t worry about it. I promise.”

She promised… Jasmine laughed quietly to herself. She knew how those types of promises went. Those people talked like they were written in blood, it was just done in chalk and broke as easily as glass. It felt like she was still pulling out splinters that were lodged inside from years ago. But there was something about Daya that made it hurt even more. She just sounded so confident, but for someone she’s known for that long, Jasmine just couldn’t believe her.

It wasn’t out of character for Daya either. She was known for talking a lot of shit, but not acting on anything. There were sometimes she’d just… say things without any repercussion.  That was a thing Jasmine felt like she knew too well, and there were time she wish she’d just stop talking. Someone once told her this feeling was just projection, and Jasmine could only deny that claim because she knew it was true.

Both of their mouths have gotten them in a fuckton of trouble.

“Sounds good,” She nodded her head. “Next time you go out just… call me or something? That would be nice.”

“I can go out without you having a leash on me.” The punk rocker scrolled through her phone, not making eye contact.

That conversation sounded a lot better in her head. “At least tell me you’re okay. That you’re not, like, dying or something! You haven’t gone home with someone who’s gonna murder you or worse!”

“God, who are you, my mother?”

“No…” The blonde tilted her head a bit. “Just a concerned friend..”

“I can handle myself, thanks Jas. We’re gonna be fine.”

Knowing Jasmine’s track record, this wasn’t going to be the case. She could just imagine the rest of the time they’d have together. Come to think of it, Daya almost seemed happier when not directly around her. They’d host house parties, and as soon as Jasmine entered her little friend group, she just seemed… indifferent, and that stung worse than anything negative.”

“Daya… I’m not stupid.” Before Daya could respond – I could be the judge of that –, her roommate just kept going. She always needed to have the last word; how else could anyone pay attention to her? “I know how this goes. Communication slows down and then you’ll barely call and ten you’ll eventually forget I exist, only remembering when… when Facebook reminds you it’s my birthday, and even then I only get those well-wishes from aunts I haven’t spoken to since I came out!”

“You’re right…” Daya set down her guitar and stormed out of the room with Jasmine following close behind. “I’m sorry.” She apologized in the most insincere sounding way that she could. “I’m the worst for not calling or responding. You always answer calls and texts. You’re so good, and I’m the worst person in the world. You’re just so fucking perfect and amazing at making conversation.”

“I never said that you were perfect, I was saying that—"

“If you let people finish their fucking sentences, then they might still want to talk to you!”

That was just too far.

“Jaz, you might have been onto something. Maybe I will move out.

“You can’t!” She blurted out, immediately wishing she hadn’t said anything. “You can’t go...”

Daya almost laughed – out of shock, more than anything. “Why not? You clearly hate me.”

“No! Just… stay… please.”

“I - Out of everyone in our friend groups, why do you want ME to stay? Are you just saying Bosco can just go fuck off right now?” She knew she was just waving a red cape in front of Jasmine, waiting for her to just snap again. “Or… how about DeJa? Or Jorgie? Bye, Orion; you can’t be here any because Jasmine said so—"

Jasmine just slammed the door to her room with enough force for the paintings in the hall to shake.

If Daya paid enough attention, she could have heard some faint tears dripping from her leaky eyes. And this time, she did. She sat outside the door with her head in her hands, knowing she fucked up too late.

For the first time in Jasmine’s recent memory, Daya stayed.

[apinklion01]

Going Angst

Day Three: Family

Walker didn’t go far from his post at the prison unless it was for patrols or if a prisoner escaped. He had a very private corner tucked away within the walls which served as his main lair where no other ghost could go.

So any other ghost stood clear when he did venture further out into the Ghost Zone. He liked that they kept their distance. They knew the consequences if they didn’t. He was the only one trying to keep any sense of order down here, and he worked hard to keep it that way.

There were only two occurrences where a ghost didn’t give him respect: the mangy excuse for a werewolf and the Phantom.

The werewolf he could care less for. The ghost was powerful, yes, but Walker knew more about his time in the living realm than the mutt would ever know, and that was all he needed to give him an upper edge when dealing with the furry convict.

The Phantom was another story.

He was a freak even by ghost standards. A spirit boundless from the planes of life and death who moved between them freely thanks to the wrenched machine his family had built within a place called Amity Park.

The teen was impulsive, rash, and even led a prison escape that left Walker and his squadrons beaten up and reinforcing the security measures.

However due to being half ghost, the Phantom remained the sole convict that the warden knew he couldn’t lock up permanently.

But something was odd during the time he talked to the teen.

Walker heard an unusual song in his ears. One he hadn’t heard since his time in the living world. A song from his mother, supposedly handed down from members of her side of the family tree.

That very song kept repeating while he fought the Phantom, and only stopped after he was long gone. 

But why?

Tired of asking himself questions, Walker decided to venture to the Library of Alexandria. The legendary building was open to any in the Ghost Zone so long as you didn’t start any fights that could damage the books and scrolls inside.

Walker didn’t learn everything about ghosts from word of the ear. Prior to dying, he came across a few books teaching him an intermediate amount of how the spectors worked. Their powers, obsessions, weaknesses. While Walker didn’t have access to the more offensive abilities, the knowledge was all he needed to fight such supernatural entities, even beyond his final breath.

He continued building more knowledge by returning to the library. There was a section specifically for new ghosts who wanted to learn about how to handle the afterlife, but also for older ones to learn of rituals, common spells, and caring for their cores.

Walker made his way down the aisle, a young apprentice of a librarian having handed out the book that might have the answers he needed.

His eyes spotted the name of a book: Melbourne’s Guide to a Spectral Entity. It appeared to be far older than anything Walker had read, the spine of the book faded and tearing apart, the threads loose on the covers.

Walker took out the book from the shelf, a few lowly blob ghosts scuttling away to undisturbed places of the library. Prying the book open, he grazed through the pages, the words mostly in Old English, yet he somehow was able to read them.

One page stood out. A ghost and a human side by side, the older being a ghost, a depiction of their core present.

If a ghost dies prior to learning about any future descendants or relatives, a song they hold dear will be heard when they encounter them. The living or dead relatives will not be able to hear the song until the older one speaks the truth. When they do, then the relative will be seen as a true descendant. 

Rediscovering and reuniting is held as sacred to all ghosts. To break the bonds of family is viewed as disgraceful unless done properly. If not, dire consequences may occur to both the living and dead members.

Walker nearly dropped the book. It was impossible. There couldn’t be any connection between the Phantom and him. 

Either the book was speaking blasphemy, or it was some sort of joke that the half ghost conceived. But the boy looked too young to think up such an act.

There was only one ghost who had the answer: the master of time himself.

One doesn’t simply wander into Clockwork’s lair. To some it’s visible occasionally, and to others it doesn’t even appear in the Ghost Zone unless they need his assistance.

Clockwork already had seen a few timelines where Walker would come inside, but didn’t bother to turn around, cleaning up a gear connecting the multiple clocks the building held inside.

“A simple greeting wouldn’t be too much to ask,” He said.

“I need you to show me something,” The warden’s deep voice spoke.

“Do you know what you need to see?” Clockwork answered, drifting down to the place where the ghost stood. He noted in several timelines that the ghost preferred touching the ground, avoiding acting like a ghost during his time in the Ghost Zone for more than half a century.

“I need you to show me a family. Any related descendants of John James Walker,” The ghost narrowed his eyes. It was dangerous to reveal the true name a ghost had prior to dying, but Clockwork had no usage for such knowledge and never told a soul any when they asked. Not even a certain Daniel James Fenton had the privilege.

“As you wish, though I warn you Walker, you may not like what you’ll see.”

Clockwork escorted Walker to an old mirror, where a small clock was inserted on the wooden frame. Nothing was visible on the mirror except both their reflections. A small flick of his wrist to the right, and the hands turned back fast until they were a mere blur. 

Clockwork held his hand out and the clock stopped. In the mirror there were three children running on a farm. One was Will, a red headed boy, the other a brown haired girl named Elizabeth. The third was one he knew Walker recognized: himself. His hair was a dirty blonde color, yet his eyes were a stormy gray.

“Is this you,” Clockwork asked. Walker didn’t respond, stunned at the sight that he thought was all but in his memories.

“Bet you can’t catch me,” He heard his eldest brother shout.

“No fair, you had a head start,” His younger self cried out. Walker tentatively placed a hand on the mirror, the surface flickering like a leaf touching a puddle.

The ghost was silent as he watched the scene play out: a normal game of tag, with not a care in the world.

“Continue forward,” He spoke dryly, and Clockwork obliged.

The clock spun forward, and Clockwork halted it. The scene had changed to the inside of an old house. The sky beyond the windows was a dull gray, the grass in the distance muted green and brown colors.

A woman, Walker’s mother, stands by the door, reading a letter she had long awaited back from the army. Her anxious smile soon faded into disdain, and she muttered a few lines of the telegram to herself before she began to shake her head and cried. Her daughter Elizabeth, who was standing nearby, tries to console her but her words falter, and tears too begin pouring from her eyes.

A young Walker runs down the stairs, looking at both his family members. “Liz, what’s going on?” He asked worryingly.

Elizabeth looked up, her eyes wet from crying. “Dad,” She began, pausing as she coked up. “He’s not… coming back from the war…”

Clockwork maintained his distance, but saw Walker’s shoulders tense up. He took his hand away from the mirror, placing it inside one of his pockets.

The younger Walker in the mirror appeared confused. “Did he get held back again? Liz, tell me-”

“He’s gone Walker!” Elizabeth shouted before biting her lip. A shaky sigh escaped her mouth. “He’s gone…”

Clockwork turned the clock forward again. Walker didn’t seem to mind.

They paused again. Walker backed away again as the scene unfolded. It was a funeral being held around sunset. His mother appeared older, having begun growing gray hair and crying gently. William and Elizabeth were nearby with their own kids. Clockwork reckoned they were but six years old at the time of the unpleasant event.

“John, you didn’t deserve to go like this,” William spoke solemnly. “If we had known this was going to happen, maybe I’d have tried harder to convince you to tell the army to give you a break.”

“But you were an awful lot like dad,” He continued. “You didn’t want us to get too wrapped up in your troubles. I don’t know how many you had on your hands, ranging from learning I was drafted into the war to getting into the paranormal. All we have left of you are our memories. “

He set down a white lily onto the headstone marked with Walker’s name. 

“I hope you still have them when I meet you on the other side.”

The rest of the funeral played in silence. 

“Why are you showing me this,” Walker spoke, his head hung low.

“Your mother died sometime after your funeral,” Clockwork said quietly. “But her name lives on in one of your living relatives, Maddison. Elizabeth’s granddaughter.”

Walker perked up at the news, his eyes uncertain but wanting answers. “... Show me,” He muttered in slight disbelief.

The scene changed quickly, the hands slowing to a stop inside a modern home. Four figures were present. A woman, presumably Maddison, held a baby in her hands. It was easy to see the reason she was given the name, as she had a resemblance to Walker’s mother.

A man, the father of the baby, stood by, beckoning a smaller child to come forward. This one had reddish hair like her mother’s. The baby looked like it was recently born, their eyes remaining closed.

“Jazz, meet your baby brother,” The father spoke. 

Jazz looked at the baby with big eyes. “He’s small.”

“He’s only a baby Jazz,” Maddie said quietly, her eyes full of nothing but love for her children. “And he’ll need you to be there for him, even if we’re not around. Can you promise me that?”

Jazz gave a tiny nod.

“Here, you can hold him,” Maddie spoke, handing the sleeping child into the other’s hands. Jazz carefully held him. The baby stirred, but didn’t wake up. Jazz gave a smile in awe.

“What’s his name?” Jazz asked.

“We’re giving him a special name,” Jack told her. “One part comes from a relative of your mother’s.”

“I had a great great grandfather who was around long before you or I were born,” Maddie said. “He passed away in a war, but he gave a name to one of my great grandfathers, John James Walker.”

Walker let a faintly audible gasp that Clockwork made out.

“We’re naming him Daniel James Fenton,” Maddie continued. “So he can grow up and be just as good as both of them.”

At that moment, baby Danny started to cry, startling Jazz. Maddie took her younger child back into her arms, rocking him back and forth.

“Shhh, don’t cry sweetie,” she spoke softly. “Shhh. I’m right here, I’ll always be here to protect you, my little Danny.” She began humming a melody Clockwork knew Walker had known his whole life.

Clockwork let the hand return to the present, and the mirror reflected both ghosts.

“So,” Clockwork said, floating over to clean the clock on the mirror. It had been a while since he had done so. “What will you do now?”

Walker didn’t respond for a minute, placing together the pieces in his head. The older ghost counted till the moment where the warden would ask the question.

 “...He doesn’t know anything about this yet, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Clockwork said.

“You better not do any funny business, old man,” Walker muttered, walking toward the exit.

“What do you intend to do,” the time keeper questioned.

Walker stopped at the steps. “My job. I’m the one making any attempt at order. Only something like Pariah Dark could stop me from doing that.”

Clockwork sensed that the ghost had left before glancing at another mirror playing a particular timeline scenario: Danny looking through a scrapbook detailing Maddie’s side of the family tree.

“Fate isn’t kind to you, is it Daniel,” The Master of Time muttered.

[rose-colored-amy]

So, this is a continuation to my extremely short one-shot Last Moments, Last Regrets, but it can be read as a stand-alone. Regardless, I'll leave the link of that one in here:

Also, thanks to @coeurhh for suggesting I write a second part. You're a sweetheart 🥰

She made a lovely fanart/gif, which I'm also sharing, of course:

Prompt: AU. Sakura's death goes unnoticed to everyone but the squad she protected with her life and Tsunade. Team Kakashi doesn't find out until the very end, when Naruto and Sasuke have already had their fight, and there's nothing to do about it but mourn the absence.

Warning: Mild Sasusaku and lots of angst. Team 7 sort-of-fluff (?)

—Blue Bird, Let Go—

"Hey, bastard... I know they really let us down, the village, I mean."

"Aa... "

"But I really think it's not all that bad. When we were I team, I knew you understood. It felt like having a brother, believe it."

They were watching their lives go by, shadows of unknown faces passing by them, not noticing their pain, or not caring whatsoever. Their backs were touching, but it was all cold and bleak; a bad memory. A clan slaughtered, a demon sealed. Two lonely boys wallowing in their own sadness.

"Well, even if I don't make it, I'm glad it was you, bastard—"

"Shut up, idiot." His voice sounded strained, even for his standards, but Sasuke was so tired he couldn't even bring himself to care.

"We're really dying, ah? Wanna say something? I do have things to say, 'cause there's no way I'm dying—"

"In silence?" Sasuke interrupted, but Naruto payed him no mind.

"Without telling you how much of an asshole you've been! I couldn't even keep my promise to Sakura-chan! She's gonna be so damn mad when she finds out, I'm sure she'll drag me back to life just to cave my face in—" He was rambling at that point, but it was just so comforting and normal to Sasuke that he didn't even acknowledge it anymore.

"Hn. Sakura... She..."

"She still loves you, asshole. I don't have any idea how it can be possible but—"

"I'm sorry..." It sounded rushed, but Naruto heard it perfectly, and in the darkness of their shared consciousness, Sasuke heard a resigned sigh.

"Well, it's not that bad. I cannot imagine dying beside anyone but you, bastard."

"Idiot..." He made a pause. "Me neither."

"You're both a pair of idiots!"

Suddenly, the unreadable mass of unrecognizable faces around them cleared, and one figure stood in front of them, pink eyebrows frowned in annoyance. Though this version of Sakura looked familiar, it was one none of the boys had seen in a long time. Genin, long-haired, Sakura was glaring at them, arms crossed.

"Sakura-chan! What are you doing in here?!"

Her eyes softened. "What, so I'm supposed to let you two die, after everything? No way in hell!"

"Sakura..."

"You!" She pointed at Sasuke, who flinched slightly at her rudeness. "I don't know what the hell happened, but I don't care. Lighten up and start being your moody self. We love you just like that! Don't act so repented and shit! If you're sorry stop looking like a lost puppy and start doing something about it, you asshole!" Her voice was raising with madness and it was slightly off putting to see what used to be a stuttering lovestruck preteen talking to him like that.

Naruto snorted at that, obviously delighted for not being at the receiving end of her wrath for once. It was short-lived, however.

"And you!" She pointed at the blonde; then crossed her arms. He jumped back in fright. "What is this? How dare you even consider dying after you promised to be the best goddamned Hokage in history?! Here I am, rooting for you, while you lay around like a lazy pig with your edgy bro there. You should be ashamed of yourself!" She scoffed.

Naruto's mouth was so wide open he could have caught a fly. "Lazy pig? Are you kidding?!"

Sasuke raised an eyebrow, half amused, half annoyed. "Edgy?"

Suddenly, the edges of their vision began to blurr, like a genjutsu being unravelled. "Ah, someone came to help you at last." Sakura seemed relieved. Strangely so.

"Hey, Sakura-chan! You know what? You're right. I'll be the best damn Hokage ever, believe it! Just you watch!" He threw a punch to the air.

Seemingly placated and pleased with his answer, she nodded. "I know so." Then, she turned to her other teammate, who was concentrating solely on her face, mismatched eyes softened as they'll ever be. "And you'll make sure he doesn't mess up, right?"

They shared a long silence. There was something strange about Sakura aside her appearance. He could tell. "Hn. I will..."

"Hey! I don't need him watching over—"

"Sure you don't." He countered sarcastically.

"Also..." They turned to her again. "I'm sorry."

"Wha—" Naruto stuttered. "What the hell would you be sorry for, Sakura-chan?! If anything, it's the bastard here who should be apologizing to you!"

"Sakura..." Sasuke seemed to be searching for the right words, but she couldn't let them go without them listening to her. To what she needed them to know. There wasn't much time left after all.

"I'm sorry, because I wasn't what you needed..." She closed her eyes, her pretty minty orbs. Her appearance suddenly shifted, before then now standing her true self, still dressed in the standard shinobi uniform of the alliance. Her forehead protector lost to whoever knows where. "And thank you. You both made me stronger. You made me appreciate what I had. And I'll always, always love you. Our moments together like team seven... I'll treasure them for all eternity."

"Sakura-chan..."

"I know Konoha wasn't the best to you both, but don't forget the good... The wholesome moments. It's all that matters in the end... Our bonds, the bonds you managed to forge with sweat and blood... The world we live in, the world that gave me the chance to meet you. To me, that's to be cherished. Forever."

The white light started overwhelming the rest. Even Sakura's features started dissapearing.

"Live. Just live." For that, she specifically stared at Sasuke, a soft smile playing on her lips. "And thank you."

Sasuke started racing towards her, hand stretched, a forebonding understanding shaking his bones. "Sakura!"

And then, they both lost consciousness.

When they woke up, aside from feeling like shit, the first thing that crossed their minds what the finality of Sakura's words. Tsunade was beside them, patching them up, with Kakashi beside her, silently watching over them.

"About time, brats! What were you think—"

"Baa-san." Naruto interrupted her, his voice the most serious she had heard him until then.

"Where's Sakura?" Sasuke finished for him, his eyes icy and detached, trying to keep his worry at bay.

But she didn't need to answer. Her chakra flow hesitated, spiking with sorrow. Her eyes glistening with unbearable loss. Kakashi, at her side, stared, eyes widened in comprehension.

She was gone by a long shot.

And they were just finding out.

...

Everybody had different ways of dealing with loss. Naruto helped rebuild the village along with everyone else, but he skipped his usual meals, his ramen left forgotten in his kitchen counter. His movements when sparring were sloppy at best, not just because of the new prosthetic limb, but also because his mind was clearly somewhere else. Usually, Shikamaru would drag him out his makeship house, like he had done when Jiraija was gone for good. Sometimes, he would bring Ino with him, who was suspiciously skinny and messier than normal. No makeup covering the dark circles under her eyes.

Kakashi spent more than usual at the memorial stone every day, tracing the newly marked name of the girl who once remained him of Rin but that had come to claim a place for herself in his heart. Also, he took more missions than it was allowed in a month, going so far as to pick up his ANBU mask again, which caused an altercation with Tsunade, who hadn't been sober in a long time and had been hoping to hand the Hokage seat to him.

Sai avoided the color pink for a long time.

Sasuke... Well, he dealed with loss the same as everyone else... Longing for the missing person to be there, itching to have the opportunity to say what he couldn't at the time. Wanting to be alone whenever they would reach for him... And he built a tomb for her in hopes to find some closure. Not that official, because there wasn't a body to bury, and it had no name, but it was enough for him. He would bring with him camellias every day, buying them at the Yamanaka's, where Ino would always glance at him in silent understanding.

One morning, on his way to her tomb, he spotted a young shinobi leaving a white lilly for her. When he came by, the child spoke without a care, like they were acquaintances. "This is Sakura-san's, right?"

"Hn." It wasn't really an answer, but the child seemed to understand anyway.

"You know? Mama and big sister are also buried in these grounds... I always talk to them and tell them about my day and stuff I want them to know!" He turned to the Uchiha, a smirk on his cherubic face. "I'm sure she would appreciate it as well." And just like that, he left without another word.

Sasuke sat on the ground, just in front of the stone, mismatched eyes half lidded. Sensing no one in the vicinity, he exaled a shaky breath, and his dam opened up, the words longing to be said broke the silence he had been wrapping around himself since he knew of her death:

"I miss you... I've been missing you since I first left."

[cant-think-of-anything]

I think part of the reason that there’s such a dissonance between what kind of character Matthew is ~supposed~ to have and what kind of poor traits shine through, especially in his treatment of Alastair, is not just because of CC’s poor handling of alcoholism (and, in my opinion, mental health issues and depression) but also because: Our first introduction to these characters happened a long ways before some major changes to TLH.

Namely… Alastair and Cordelia were basically white in CC’s original planning. There’s just no way around that. Their flower cards, where they’re not just whitewashed but purely white, prove that (and they STILL haven’t been updated, by the way.)

Also, Alastair’s hair: in CoG it was dyed blond, and CC wrote it off implicitly as a racism thing when she decided he was Persian (which I guess happened after the short story where we met Alastair and before TLH) , which would have been fine it if it was an arc written better. Except, I don’t think she realized that it would make Matthew’s comments about Alastair inherently and obviously racist, being a white author. And I doubt that it will be dealt with and named or even acknowledged outright in the final TLH installment.

Kind of the same thing with Cordelia. I’m not saying POC can’t have like red hair because obviously POC don’t come in a prepackaged set of five or six traits that are all configured randomly, but something has always rubbed me the wrong way about the way that CC writes the majority of her POC and especially WOC as exotic. I mean, Kamala as a character is to me a special favorite (even though CC did her dirty and didn’t do a good job portraying her character or intersectional identity) but I rolled my eyes so hard when she had lighter brown or “amber” eyes in canon or officially commissioned art. With Cordelia, I know CC once said she uses henna to redden her hair which is great for her, and I guess I have less of a bone to pick with that because it’s semi(?) realistic, but still. Also the fact that so much of her description as a beautiful person comes from her hair. Again that’s cool, and women of color should be loved wholly including being loved for the parts of them that they freely change (such as Cordelia’s hair) but… the proportion of the fixation on her hair as what makes her lovely rubs me the wrong way sometimes. I feel like it’s sometimes an out from CC making the ~scandalous~ decision that a woman of color can be beautiful because of the traits she is born with. Idk it’s just for me I had this long standing repulsion towards my colorings and my facial structure and white girls would tell me I was whiny about it and then I finally began to piece together things like “Eurocentric beauty standards.”

Going on a tangent slightly, but something else that bothered me was when Anna insulted Cordelia after buying her those dresses and everyone kinda treating it as a compliment? And just cause Cordelia, a fictional teenager, didn’t get mad about it doesn’t mean readers of color can’t see the underlying racism behind “Cordelia looks MUCH better in these dresses which are SUITED for her skin tone.”

I think that narrative could have been handled much better: if it was Cordelia picking out her own clothes as an act of maturity and self-realization and ownership, if Cordelia herself said (in a different way lol) “Damn right I can wear lavender ruffles if I want to and crimp my hair but I’m not going to let white fashion prevent me from outshining everyone because dark skinned women INVENTED jewel tones.” And I think some people will argue that Cordelia’s context makes this too self aware of a development but I would say that it would have been a powerful part of her development outside of her relationships, especially considering that she’s supposed to be a main protagonist. Full arcs for the win baby!

But even aside from all that what bothered me about Anna’s dresses was the fact that it was a white woman showing the “truth” or the “right way” or “saving” a woman of color, a trope which I don’t think CC intended but committed nonetheless. I think from a white author POV the thinking was “Anna is such a free bohemian who lives true to herself and she’s going to help Cordelia become that way too,” which irks me because I feel like that just worked against CC in terms of POC rep and also because that same ideology is used in an attempt to make Anna’s treatment of Kamala justified even though Anna as an out person, with racial and economic privilege and the support of an extensive and powerful family network, pressured and tormented Kamala into coming out.

I have a lot of thoughts on that relationship, mainly: it shouldn’t have been dragged out this long because from the beginning, Every Exquisite Thing, it was clear they were looking for different things. And if CC had left it at that and let them go on their separate ways after a week of knowing each other that would have been fine: Kamala can’t do an out and proud relationship and Anna doesn’t want secrecy, so they’ll develop on their own. And then later Kamala’s pursuit of Anna in the actual TLH books was I think meant to be a thing about “the lengths you’ll go for true love” but it felt forced. Honestly… It just feels icky. like this woman of color is just so hung up on this white woman who abuses her repeatedly and can’t handle her own misogyny and internalizations. And I hate that because both had such awesome potential! To me it’s less that I dislike Anna ( I’d need a whole other post to explain that) and more that I dislike CC for wanting so bad to claim sapphic rep but not wanting to put in the effort to portray it effectively- and pretty much all that entails is writing the relationship without acting like it exists in a pseudo-vacuum where the history and realities of interracial relationships and queerphobia don’t exist in the way we obviously recognize and experience.

And characters like Cordelia and Alastair are amazing and have so much potential; I think the true origin of the problems with their portrayal is that they weren’t really intended as POC or even queer representation in the first place. I don’t know if Cassie would have taken a different approach to her characterization had she known Alastair would be a brown gay man when she first introduced him, but I hope it would have at least made her more conscientious of the inherent application of colonialism and racism in her storytelling from that point onward.

I want to finally add that I’m not saying any portrayal of racism is bad. I’m saying that the racism in the story is not part of a conscious framework that critiques racism appropriately. I think CC wrote the beginnings of the narrative, decided she was going to develop the diversity point content, and then either didn’t look back at the older content to analyze it and the other (white characters) through a new lens of race and outsiderness and queer personhood, or she looked at it and didn’t know what to do with it, or looked at it and didn’t care.

Sorry this got so long! Thanks for listening.

- A.

I feel like CC handled everything poorly in regards to characters who had a lot of potential.

The fact that Cordelia and Alastair are both originally white and it's so obvious in the way every bit of racism is handled by the characters. Matthew's comments in CLS are very important and they should've been handled with the same severity that Alastair's words were. CC changing the characters to POC was a big decision and when she did so she should've went back and actually read her own material. I can assure you that it will not be handled in CHOT, my expectations for CC recognizing the importance and gravity in the words she writes regarding racism or any of her "implied racism" bullshit have gone to the ground.

Because while golden eyes are obviously so easy to write when discussing discrimination obviously racism is out of the question /j

THAT'S EXACTLY IT, women of color in these books are so pathetically rare that on the rare occurrence that she does write them they should all be given these features that aren't as common in POC and written as more beautiful because of those features. I read CHOG after I became more appreciative of my ethnic features but if I had read this a year or so ago? Or even if I had read it after just feeling insecure in general? It would've been awful. The implication is that the lighter features in POC are the most beautiful, with Cordelia's red hair being put on a higher pedestal than her dark eyes and Kamala's eyes being focused on more than her hair (because I literally went back and counted the numbers to prove it and it's exactly what happens.)

I'm sure Cordelia's hair is stunning, but it's the way that when she's described (or more accurately being sexualized) it is just her hair and body that is shown, not the color of her skin or the color of her eyes.

God the pastel thing pisses me off so much. It's not even that Anna tells Cordelia that she would look better in darker colors it's that she says it suits her skin tone. Implying that anyone with brown skin should be barred from wearing pastels. And Kamala? In the few times she is described, she's wearing dark colors or champagne gold, never light blue or purple or pink WHICH HONESTLY SUITS HER PERSONALITY. It's also the way that the dresses Anna sent her are described to be more revealing- it's weird. Anna barely knew her when she started dictating everything that Cordelia could put on her body.

“Damn right I can wear lavender ruffles if I want to and crimp my hair but I’m not going to let white fashion prevent me from outshining everyone because dark skinned women INVENTED jewel tones.”

I literally would have loved that. It recognizes that she doesn't need to follow these "rules" on what to wear but still shows her choosing what she wants to wear without making all the darker skinned readers feel like they can't wear a certain color.

I think what some people fail to realize is that these books are also aimed at upper elementary and middle school and a middle schooler with dark skin reading something like that? In a book with characters they love? It's going to be so harmful

Someone else mentioned that CC said Kamanna's relationship was complicated because Kamala didn't defend Anna: Defend her FROM WHAT? Literally what is there to threaten Anna?

These books are filled with tokenism and then praised for it. The idea of Kamala X Anna has so much potential but they're portrayed in such a toxic way. Throughout the last through books Kamala puts herself through so much guilt and regret and turmoil just for Anna to literally use her, blame her, and cast her aside. And it's so fucking annoying because it pushes this idea that this woman of color who was terrified and in an extremely vulnerable position is in the wrong for choosing her safety and presents them as guilty and shameful for doing such a thing.

I would disagree, the portrayal of racism is bad, because it is used at random points in the story and never brought up again, if you interduce racism take it seriously it's not the kind of thing you're meant to half-ass in a book thousands of people will read

I agree on everything else though, so much of these books are incredibly harmful and they are presented to a young audience so it's overall just a gross situation

Thank you for the ask though! I loved answering this, if you ever have anything else you're more than welcome to come back <3

[camslightstories]

Tolerate It - Part 10

Lena Luthor x reader, Kara Danvers x reader, Alex Danvers x reader. Baby Danvers.

Notes: Hey guys! First of all, thank you for your patience and your support. I’m so sorry I took so long, like I commented it had been a rough two weeks. I think this chapter closes many questions but also opens a lot to understand what is going to happen...

I hope you guys enjoy it!. Thank you for reading, for your support and patience. I hope you have a great day!

Taglist: @multi-images @captain-josslett​ @aznblossom​ @venteen​ @coxmicbabygirl​ @lezzzbehonesthere​

Song use: Rat by Penelope Scott 

Russian Translations:

Принцесса - Princess

The room was filled by your heavy breathing and the sound of your hands making contact with the heavy bag. The slight light that came from the bulb gave enough sight for you to see and the others to check on you. The smell of french fries invaded the room as well as the sound of the arena coming out of the bag after your last hit. 

Taking your wrapped hand out of the bag, you huffed as the last of your patience started to leave. The last three days made you frustrated, every hour one of the teams would come into the room and try to make you open up. Some of them calmer than others.

Your conversations with them had been cold and short. Your disinterest every time they came made some of them have more determination and others to leave faster. The blank and void expression in your face every time they would come up with something that they hoped would let you open up, scared them. 

Kara overflowed with hope, but every time she tried with you and your expression kept beginning blank, your sister hated herself inside for making you leave. Alex was blinded by rage and sadness, she tried to be considerate but after the third visit without you talking, her comforting voice became yelling, determined to get you back. 

Oliver stood hours with your training and trying to make up to you, he was the one who had the longest time with you, his and yours silence made him know a lot of things. How much were you hurt and broken on the inside? Your fighting was somehow balanced to his, and he knew every time he looked into your eyes, you were lost and he wasn't going to stop trying but your best friend’s hope was slowly leaving. Felicity was calm and comforting, somehow made you comfortable when the blonde with glasses started to ramble out facts. Her hope and determination were the same as her fiance, she knew you were going to come back just like Oliver did. 

Lena never came inside of the room after your guys' first encounter. Pain covered her heart at the sight of the void you. Self-hatred and more had been going on since the first minute. She stood watching you from the window, but never coming inside, never trying to get you back. Kara and Alex had comforted your girlfriend as she never left the place, she was scared of losing you again, and there were nothing and no one that would eliminate that feeling. 

You lay on the couch as you eat the fries. Everything was silent and calm, comforting you inside. Thoughts have been moving through your head somehow making your bottle of feelings stir. You wanted to get out of there and find your life again. The soft smile of satisfaction when you remember how you had almost gotten back to Roulette, only to leave when the pain on your stomach began to fly in when you remembered the black-haired had shot you. 

The youngest Luthor stood outside watching you from the window, smiling softly when she saw your smile. Tears overwhelmed her as she did, remembering the times that smile grew bigger lighting the room and was only for her. 

Her expression left when she heard the strong footsteps of the Queen man, followed by the two Danvers sisters and Felicity. Oliver grabbed a gun and a knife from the glass cabinet before speaking up. “Don't stop me, she is going to talk”

“What!? Oliver!” Lena and Felicity screamed as your sister held them back, as the Green Arrow entered the room with determination. 

Immediately at the sound of the door, you sat up straight observing the Queen’s posture. Oliver didn't even hesitate to put the gun in your temple making you chuckle while getting up.

 Lena screamed as tears ran down her face trying to lose the redhead's grip. “No! You are going to hurt her, let me go!”

“Come on, Queen. Why are we wasting time? Both of us know that I don't have anything to live for, and neither I have something to die for, I'm just remaining” You said, the words hitting everyone have a cold stone. Your tone was truthful and somewhat open, closing your eyes as the last words purred from your tongue you stood there waiting for it. 

You didn't flinch at any moment of the encounter. Oliver gripped the gun stronger and walked away, the four women watching from the outside some calmer than others. The knife made his way in your direction almost grazing your face as you took a step aside well aware of Oliver's throw. 

Your expression remained intact, you didn't flinch, didn't think, didn't even breathe. That's when your redhead sister let go of Lena and came back with both of your parents. Eliza and Jeremiah both remained quiet as they entered the Arrow’s cave. Both of them knew of the situation. Jeremiah was different from Eliza and had determination and angriness in his eyes while your blonde mom stood with worry and sadness in her eyes. 

You stood there having a connected glance with the archer, only to furrow your eyes as the door opened again, only this time for all of them to come in. Lena and Felicity on the front walking to each side of the room, your sisters following behind and your parents at last. 

You scoffed the moment you saw your father, anger began to fill your body as your bottled feelings began to flow out, as your last bit of patience broke. “I'm not doing this anymore”

“You are not going anywhere kid,” The black-haired man said getting in front of you. Your sisters watched closely, while Oliver tried to put together your anger burst.

You spatted, glaring at him. Lena looked into your eyes finding a burst of pain, hurt, resentment, and anger hidden in your eyes. “Get the fuck out of my way, Jeremiah”

“Lilian let you out to play fetch, or did she finally get tired of you?” When the scientist only stepped closer, one of his hands trying to grab your clenching fits as blood came down from them. You tilted your head gaining control of the situation and speaking only for your sisters and mom’s eyes to go wide and your father to scoff.

“You do not speak to me with that tone, I’m your father, we are your family” Your father scoffed, taking a step back, looking at you disapprovingly with his arms closing in his chest.

You claimed with a sarcastic laugh. All of the hatred and angriness could be heard in your tone, also the hurt could be heard by everyone. “Here I thought you were are allergic to this family, or more specifically me” 

Leaving everyone confused, you walked out of the cave. Everyone stood quietly before your oldest sister burst in anger looking at your dad. “What the hell did she mean by that?”

----------

You entered the bar, and the sound of the music overwhelmed your ears. The smell of alcohol could be identified by your nose. The dark bar was full of people. Colored soft lights rotating around making you distingue where the bar stool was. 

“Pass me 5 shots and the bottle of vodka, please,” You said to the green-eyed bartender as you sat on one of the stools, keeping your glance to the table. 

Minutes became hours as the third vodka bottle stood empty at your right side, while you drank the five shots in less than a minute. Tears slowly gained control in your eyes as all of your feelings gained control of you. 

“Can I get another one, please? I just want to forget” Slurring your words while pouting to the blonde bartender, who had a worried expression on her face.

The blonde started but was interrupted by a voice behind you “Sweetheart, I don't think you should keep drinking-”

“Hey! You up for a competition?” A tall dark-haired guy with a group of women and men behind him asked you. Gaining your attention, you smirked before nodding fastly. 

You walked back to the table where all of the shots were begin arranged, determined to win, you chunked down a water bottle on one of the girl’s hands. Your drunkenness is starting to hit.

The minutes passed on a bliss, one moment you were drinking the first shot, and the next one you were begin cheered on after you chunked down a full bottle of vodka in less than 2 minutes. 

You start crying as one of the guys brought out the whisky and the wings. The boys drunkenly comforted you as you cried and sobbed for Lena. You sat at the edge of the table as you sang drunkenly with the rest of the group.

“I loved you, I loved you, I loved you, it's true”

“And sometimes I feel like I still fuckin' do”

Your hand made its way to the vodka, closing the distance on your way to chunk down as much as you could so you could forget, even though you didn't want to forget, it hurt you and you just wanted the pain to be gone. A hand grabbed the bottle with force and stopped you from drinking. 

In a second you were surrounded by your sisters, Oliver and Lena. All with worried faces on, as Kara read the name of what you were drinking. “Alien Vodka, out of this world”

“Hey, guys” You slurred, moving your head to rest in your hand as you smiled dumbly at them. 

All of them stood in shock when your warm and open personality was regained. You turned around when you felt a voice startled you. A brown-eyed brunette asked you, as she extended her hand to you. “Would you like to dance?”

Lena felt everything burning inside, the jealous feeling of seeing you with another person made her feel sick. Her whole demeanor changed the moment she smiled at you. ‘How dare any person think they can get their hands on you?’ Alex had caught on to her friend's reaction and slightly hit her shoulder playfully. 

“No, thank you. I have a certain type, soft black hair, green eyes you can get lost and an accent.” You responded with a dreamy smile on your face, as you put your head on the table and looked dreamily at the bar as you described Lena. 

The brunette nodded and walked off, Lena feeling pride inside as all of them watch you stare dreamily at the vodka bottle. Memories of Lena began to flow into your mind, nights of cuddling and kisses, holidays, galas, dates, everything. Her smile made you fall to your knees at every waking moment of the day.

The moment you went to grab the bottle again when the pain of the break up flowed back in, two strong arms scooped you in bridal style making you giggled as your best friend spoke. “That's enough for you, Y/N”

“Ollie! Ollie, I missed you so much” You claimed as you tried to hug him as strong as you could, giggling. 

“Me too, idiot,” Oliver said as he kissed your forehead with a smile.

“Idiot in love, Ollie. I told you that, Idiot is so much love” You said pointing a finger to his chest, as you hide your face in his neck.

Lena and your sister walked behind you and Oliver as he carried you. Glancing at her dreamily before speaking, playing with your hands, the trio heard the conversation.“You know we both wanted to marry strong geniuses. I had a ring, Ollie, the best ring for Lena. It was perfect for her. I worked so, so, so hard and I had it all planned. Christmas morning, only letting my sisters know that day because they would have asked me and bullied me the whole time.”

“Y/N-” He said softly only for you to interrupt him again.

“I don't ever want to stop loving her, even though it hurts, she was my everything Olie, like Felicity she is a soft genius, like Alex, my sister, do you remember her? She is strong, and like Kara she is a star and a hero” You interrupted, your voice came in as a broken sob, sadness coming out of it as you spoke. 

Oliver began to walk slower, as you started to cry silently. Emotional and physical pain overwhelming your body. The trio walked right up to you, as you spoke. “Dad told me I needed to put my feelings in a bottle and keep them inside, that would make me strong enough to fight the demons away. But Dad also left me two times, Ollie, he left me all alone after making me bottle my feelings.”

Alex and Lena clenched their fits as the words fell out of your mouth, while Kara scooped you in her arms, trying to calm you as heartbroken sobs began to come out of your mouth. Oliver kept his worried glances every once in a while, while Kara tried to comfort you as much as she could, having a heavy gut feeling that they weren't going to like what you have to say.

“I don't want to be alone. I wanted to be strong for everyone, so they could be happy” You whispered under your breath, as everything began to flow in. 

Flashback - 3 years before, 2 months after leaving National City

The nights after your departure from National City leaving everything behind had been the worst. Cold and silent nights in Texas as you cried yourself to sleep. After hours of clinging to everything that you could, it left you exhausted physically and mentally. 

Boxes and bags of takeout and beer flood the apartment. The mess of your clothes dividing your living room with your bed. The study apartment smelled like french fries, ice cream, and car oil. You laid your back on the couch dipping your fries into the ice cream bowl. Tears unstoppably running down your cheeks and heartbroken sobs coming out of your mouth.

The strong yet soft knock on the door startled you, making you face land into the floor when you went to get up off the couch. Walking over to the door you opened without even looking through the peephole. 

Your breath caught your breath, as you looked up to find a familiar, way too familiar face in front of you. Small and soft tears began to flow in your eyes when your eyes caught the view of your deceased father. Your stomach clenched painfully. Your vision became blurry and everything began to fade around you. 

The last thing you recognize is the warm embrace you had missed for years. The fatherly embraced that you craved after his death. 

-----

“You took a snooze” You woke up on the couch seeing a figure moving at your side, cleaning the apartment. Everything came crashing to you as your father walked over with a smile, you struggled to return one when all the emotional pain you had felt for the last two months and the pain from losing your father began to combine. 

You claimed to get up from the couch with hesitation, taking all of him. Scared that he would just vanish into the air. Memories of his funeral, memories of sleepless nights of crying and the void feeling for years.“Dad?”

“I know, it's confusing and almost unbelievable but I'm here, I'm real, I'm alive, Y/N,” Your father said, walking up to you waiting for your first move. The moment you touched his arm, your body became automatic and embraced him as much as you could, clinging to him scared that he would disappear again. 

Minutes passed and both of you pulled away, with teary, red puffy eyes you mumbled questions, not knowing the right one. “How...? What...? Why-?”

“A lot of things happened, I was severely injured and Cadmus took me in, they helped me get better and in exchange, I helped them with a few things.” He said as he sat upright on the couch.

The hurt that passed through your eyes as the relaxation hit you, was enough to not make you understand a few things. You said as you walked various times back and forth in the living room  “So you've been alive this entire time?”

“Yeah, I couldn't get in any contact with anyone who knew me as Jeremiah Danvers, if I did I would have put you all in danger, especially your sisters” He responded looking up to you, waiting for your reaction. 

“You have been keeping up with our lives?” You asked as you took a seat beside him, looking at him with teary eyes, and the same scared face you did as a kid.

“I have, your sisters grew up to be the strong, independent, heroes they were always meant to be. And you, my little artist did the same” He said bringing you into another hug, only for you to pull away before the hug.

You got up off the couch, as tears began to flow in again, the hatred that you had him for dying so early, the caring he gave you when you hurt yourself accidentally, the holidays, all of you together as a family, everything.

“I’m sorry” You exclaimed looking into his eyes, before taking a deep breath continuing. 

Your voice cracked the moment the last few words left your mouth. You tried to keep the tears from coming out, with shaky hands. “For hating you the time, I hated you. It just kept hurting and I didn't know how to stop it.”

“And when mom told us that you entered the DEO to protect Kara, and died in a plane crash when I was just a kid, that you did all of these things with them because they were older and it was their time for you to teach them that, but I never received them. I felt less when you weren't in my first father-daughter dance, or when I didn't have a dad to take to the fathers day in middle school, or when you taught Kara and Alex how to cook, or when you taught them how to go camping or to help me in the tryouts for my sports, or the tryouts for the band, or how to do my first Rubik's cube, I didn't have you for any of that, while they did” You commented. Your father sat on the couch, with teary eyes.

You finished breaking down in your knees as the last words left your mouth.“I know mom was there, and I love her for that but there were things that they learned from you, that I never got to do them. Inside jokes that were not appropriate until I was in middle school and more. Mom was amazing but there was always a missing void inside of me that I never got to fill until lately until it left again”

“I promise you, that it was never my intention. You, my little artist just like your sisters mean the world to me. And I promise you I will never leave you again” He promised, wrapping you in a fatherly embrace, as you sobbed.

“You promise?” You whispered after your breathing had become calmer, now in a more calmed but hurting stage, still wrapped in the hug with your now very alive father.

“I promise, crossing my heart with it” He whispered, kissing the top of your head after you let out a small chuckle. 

Hours had passed by and the two of you were eating pizza, as you caught up with him. A few things left your mind at unease but he was your father so how could you not trust him. Even though you force a smile from moment to moment, the broken feeling inside you never left, and Jeremiah had seemed to keep up.

“I know you loved her-” He said carefully, before putting his beer on the table as you interrupted.

You said cleaning your face with the napkin, looking him in the eye. Trying to make him understand. “Love, I love her that. I don't think I will ever stop”

“To be at your best, you need to face your demons and yours are all these insecurities and feelings that you have. And put them in a bottle, closing it, keeping them there. You are not going to feel pain or hurt or anything. You are going to be powerful, strong” He said calmly. 

Your mind went into overdrive, you didn't want to forget your feelings and less for Lena, she was the love of your life even though you weren't hers. You also didn't want to forget the caring and protectiveness towards your family. Your feelings were normally the greater part of you and you didn't know if you could just shape them into certain things.

You responded worriedly. “Why would I do that? I don't wanna stop feeling that, and less stop caring for everyone” 

“Do you trust me, Y/N/N?” He recounted looking at you with a sad smile and determination in his gaze. 

Somehow the question felt so foreign and everything inside you yelled for you to not trust him but you could only see the father that wanted the best for his kids. So you went and picked out your heart before your instinct as always. “I do, I do, dad”

“Then trust me with this, and if you do this I would be so proud of you,” He said walking to the couch, signaling you to go. 

Your heart and mind ached for his approval and his pride, something you had craved from everyone since you were a kid, and right now that your dad was willing to give it to you after all of this was more than worthy of it.

You murmured as you nodded sitting on the couch, turning to him. “Okay, I will make you proud dad”

“Close your eyes, clench your fits, breath fondly, and open your mind.” He said as you reclined into the couch following each one of his instructions.

Your father kept going after a pause, everything became quieter and the only thing you could focus on was in his instructions. “Imagine the glass bottle like if it was a room, and inside the room are all of your feelings, it doesn't matter if they are bad or good. Nothing can be left behind”

“Now when you breathe in again you are going to suck them all into the bottle and when you breathe out, you are going to close the glass bottle like if it was new, with a champagne cap so it can't be open” He finished taking a deep breath. 

Everything began to fade out. Your feelings, your memories, your insecurities, your wants, your needs, it was just blank. Until there wasn't anything anymore.

He said after he saw you fall asleep, looking over at you one last time before walking out of the apartment without even bothering to say goodbye. Leaving you behind unconscious and now in a new territory that you never experienced before. “There that's it, there it is” 

-----

You opened your eyes and everything was gone. There wasn't pain, or happiness, or hope there wasn't anything. A gut feeling of betrayal was what you felt as you got up off the couch. The solitude and silence were what gave you the bad feeling as you started to call out for your father. The only person you could rely on from now on. “Dad!? Dad!?”

The time of the day passed and you realized you were alone, that even you knew he was real and alive. He left you once again, this time more broken than before, and void than before. 

After giving you an out for your feelings all he did was put you in a box. Where you had to stay. And you understood that maybe you just weren't enough for anyone, and everyone was just too good for you. And now you weren't going to let anyone walk over you, you were going to be what your father once thought and wanted you to be. But this time, everything was going to be different, now that you were broken beyond repair, you were just going to remain.

Flashback ends

“Ollie?” You whispered as the five of you went into the elevator, your head on the crook of your blonde sister’s neck, finding the glance of your best friend.

He waited for your question, as everyone went silent. Alex and Lena froze when they heard your vulnerable, fragile, and hurt voice.  

“Do you think I am a princess?” You asked as you cling to your sister's shirt. Kara reassuringly kissing the top of your head. 

The last minutes had been intense, you had opened to them about your’s and your father’s interaction three years ago. Alex and Lena remained silent as well as Oliver, Kara would occasionally when she felt you sob quietly reassure you that you were not alone.

“I do, you are a strong, brave, and unbreakable princess” He responded with a smile, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he did. 

“Anatoly said the same, that's why I get to be the принцесса in the Bratva. Did you hear that Kar? I'm a princess” You claimed drunkenly with a chuckled and a small smile. Just like when you were a kid and you just had won a prize. 

Kara chuckled before hugging you closer to her chest as she spoke. Alex's small laugh in the background and Lena's heels sound as you guys walk into the room. “Yeah, I know little one, I know. But you need to sleep”

You looked up to your older sister with a pout on your face, almost crying. The same expression of a kicked puppy. Your voice was more into a yawn than a request. “You think Alex would sing to me? I can make the lemon pie she likes so much-”

“I will sing to you but you need to do two things for me, okay?” Alex responded as Kara laid you on the couch softly. Her voice was the same one she used on you as a kid when you got injured or sad.

 You responded as you brought her into an embrace, in which the redhead started to tear up. “Whatever you want”

She whispered kissing your forehead softly, before cleaning her tears waiting for your response.“You tell me about your scars, and you don't shut us out please”

“I promised, and Alex?” You called as they began to leave the room. 

She asked, walking closer to you. “Yes, honey?”

Your drunken thoughts, memories, and insecurities came out as the words left your lips, the drunkenness had seemed to take more effect on you when you didn't notice both Kara and Lena still standing at the doorway of the room begin able to hear the conversation.

You asked quietly, before looking up to her with a kicked puppy face worried. Your tone almost lets out a sob that you caught the moment your ex came into your mind.“Do you think if Lena had seen the ring, she would have liked it?”

“I know she would have loved it, baby bear,” The redhead said, cleaning away the tear that had got out of your eye. Smiling sweetly at you before walking away again.

You murmured when the door closed, your consciousness and foggy mind leaving you. As you fell asleep “I love you guys so, so, so much” 

-----

Lena stood at the side watching you and your sisters interact. Her heart ached painfully when she learned that you had a ring for her. You were planning to propose to her as if you were the love of her life. The moment the words fell out of your lips ‘perfect like her’ her heart broke into million pieces. 

Lena remembered every single smile, laugh, kiss, hug, cuddle, and more. As everything fell into place, the hits in the romantic movies. The sudden and carefully said by you ‘I want to wake up like this every single day of my life’ ‘I want to have you forever and always’ ‘I could get used to your sudden use of bad jokes’ ‘i wish to kiss you infinity times’ and more.

Reliving the same pain over and over again. Kara and Lena stood outside of the door where Alex looked apologetically between them. Both of them silently cry, at the sudden relaxation. Alex opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before walking away without a word. 

The best friends stood there unable to put their thoughts together. Both of them hurt inside for hurting one of the most important people in their lives. Both of her hearts and minds hurting and hating themselves for it.

They had ruined you, as well as your father did. And now they didn't even know where to start getting you back. After all, you were just you, you were strong but easy to break, and now that you were broken beyond repair, would you be able to come back forever and not as you are intoxicated in something?

[billiedeanhwrd]

when i fell you were there, with your hands in the air

cordelia goode x fem!reader

summary: your depression is hitting you harder than most days, cordelia comforts you 🤍

warnings: depression, slight mention of childhood trauma, it's angsty mental health fluff basically

word count: 1.7k

a/n: this is my first ever fanfic and i'm very very nervous about it, so pls don't be too harsh, constructive criticism is very much welcome though!! also i'm sorry about any grammar mistakes, english is not my first language. i also have to add that this was very much self indulgent and based on my own experience with depression, so if you don't relate, that's fine, everyone experiences it differently. I hope you enjoy it tho, have fun reading <3

today was one of those days again. one of those days where everything seemed grey and pointless. one of those days where taking a shower was too exhausting. one of those days where it didn't matter if you left your clothes on the floor or a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. one of those days where you isolated yourself. one of those days that seemed to return to you every morning for almost 3 weeks now.

you had been struggling with depression for years now and attending therapy regularly still didn't take away from the embarrassment you felt about your illness. cordelia didn't know, you didn't want to burden her with your subjectively "silly" problems. It wasn't easy hiding something so life consuming from your lover, but whenever you were with her you felt as though you could reach for the stars and there was no point in ruining happy moments with sad stories.

Whenever you felt really depressed and unable to function, you isolated yourself. Cordelia and you had been together for 7 months now and the first time she thought she had done something wrong which had resulted in you needing space from her, but when she confronted you, you reassured her that sometimes you needed some time to yourself because you were a more introverted person. While that might be true, you wanted nothing more than for her to take you into her arms and tell you everything was going to be okay again, but the fear of possibly burdening the already very busy supreme held you back from confessing what was weighing you down.

you were used to this already, you always kept your darkness to yourself, too afraid of being too much or being abandoned by your loved ones, while the rational side of you knew that the people in your life who truly meant something to you would never abandon you because of your chronic depression, anxiety left no room for rationality.

you were always feeling kind of down, but some days it was easier to cope and enjoy your day despite that... and then there were those phases where you felt unusually down, those phases that caused you to isolate yourself and wait for the storm to pass in solitude. They usually lasted only a few days or maximum a week, but this one had been going on for much longer. cordelia was worried, you had never needed so much "alone time to recharge your social battery", but she didn't want to overstep your boundaries and possibly push you away, because what you weren't aware of was that cordelia too struggled with abandonment issues and fearing she would be "too much" (which she could never be for you, you adored every single second you could spend in the blonde witch's presence).

After leaving multiple text messages and trying to call you, only to be greeted by your voicemail, cordelia took it upon herself to see what was going on with you. The knocking on your door would've usually startled you, but you had just ordered a pizza, too tired to prepare a meal yourself and assumed the delivery was faster than they had stated on their website. your jaw fell open and the door was quickly closed again, shit shit shit, what am i supposed to do now? the place looks like a mess, i can't let cordelia se-

"y/n can you open the door please?" she asked in her gentle voice. "Uh, yeah, give me a second" you replied, hastily throwing on a hoodie that had been lying around on your couch, coincidentally that hoodie being one you stole from cordelia a few weeks ago, something that made your girlfriend's heart warm up a little and relieve her of some of the worried thoughts she had that this might be your way of signaling to her that you no longer wished to be in a relationship with her.

"can we talk? i haven't seen you in three weeks and you haven't answered any of my texts... what's going on? you know you can talk to me about anything..."

"uhm, yes, of course. sit down, make yourself at home, would you like anything to drink?"

"no, thank you, i just want to talk to you"

you didn't have the energy to lie to the woman who held your heart in her hands anymore, you were terrified of her reaction, not only to you being mentally ill but also to you hiding it for so long.

"i'm so sorry delia, please don't be mad", you anxiously stuttered out. cordelia grabbed your hand and smiled reassuringly, signaling for you to continue talking.

"I didn't tell you before because i know you've already got so much going on with the academy and i didn't want to pile onto that with my irrelevant issues... I was diagnosed with depression amongst other things a few years ago, it's something i have to deal with every day and some days are easier than others, but sometimes it all comes crashing down on me and i feel like i'm lost in an ocean of a sadness so powerful, i can feel the pain on my body. I know it can be challenging to be close to someone with severe mental issues and I understand if you don't want to continue being with me, i would never want you to stay with me because you pity me or because you're afraid i'd do something to myself if you'd left, you're not responsible for my feelings or actions and i would never want to impose you with such a burden and-"

you stopped rambling when you noticed the tears flowing down cordelia's cheeks.

your eyes widened and your heart started pounding rapidly in your chest. "i'm sorry, was that too much?"

"no, no, no, no, no... it just pains me to know that you've been dealing with this on your own for such a long time because you don't value yourself enough to believe that other people might want to support you through your everyday battles. y/n, i know you, you're the girl who's always there when someone else needs a shoulder to cry on, anytime, anyplace, you always go out of your way to make others feel seen and accepted, why would you ever think that you don't deserve the kindness you so openly give to others?"

now it was you who was crying, cordelia was right, you didn't value yourself enough to believe that. you didn't actively think of yourself as less than others but that thought always unconsciously motivated the way you dealt with the things that were bothering you.

cordelia patted her lap, signaling for you to sit on her lap and come into her arms. you hesitated though, you weren't used to being so vulnerable and open with your emotions and it scared the shit out of you. you feared cordelia was possibly annoyed at you and was only doing this to get it over with and then get out. she watched you, while you were anxiously deciding what your next move would be, her heart broke for you, you looked like a scared baby dear when all she wanted to do was to comfort you.

"baby, look at me"

her chocolate colored eyes were so full of love, simply looking into them managed to get your heart rate down.

"it's okay, i'm not mad at you for talking about your feelings and all i want to do right now is to hug some of your pain away, so please, let me hold you"

you melted at her gentle words and understanding nature, cordelia was an incredibly smart woman, who went through traumatic things herself and even from that little information you shared, she understood you. she saw her younger self in you, so incredibly lonely but oh, so scared of being vulnerable with another person, due to the emotional abuse her mother subjected her to, and while she might not have gone through the same things you did, she felt like she understood your feelings in this exact moment and she wanted nothing more than to make you feel safe with her.

you slowly crawled into her lap, still afraid this was all a trick to hurt you, but when she started combing through your hair and reassuringly whispering "i've got you" and "you're here with me, i promise you, you're safe", you relaxed into her arms.

after about half an hour of laying there with each other, calming down and enjoying the other one's warmth, you spoke up.

"delia?"

"yes, my love?"

"so you're not leaving me?", you hesitantly asked.

cordelia sat up and looked straight in your eyes while asking "would you leave someone you love because they're depressed?"

"no, never"

"then tell me, sweetheart, why would i leave you?"

her response left you speechless, you almost missed her confessing her love. "you love me?"

she hugged you tight and pressed a kiss on your forehead. "more than anything, and please, never worry about telling me about what's going on in that pretty little head of yours, no matter what it is, i wanna know, okay?"

you let out the breath you didn't know you were holding and confidently replied "okay"

a few minutes passed before you spoke up again when you remembered you didn't say those 3 special words back.

"i love you too, by the way"

cordelia smiled lovingly and stood up to reach out for your hand and pull you up. "i know, now let's go to bed, we can clean up this place tomorrow"

you accepted her helping hand and engulfed her in a hug. the way she so naturally used the word "we" and didn't seem to mind helping you clean up your mess of an apartment made you more emotional than you'd like to admit.

And while you knew this would not be the last time you were overwhelmed by your depression, you now knew that you could count on the woman who loved you to stand by your side and help you get through even your hardest day.

[sevlgi]

selfish

requested: yes

group: blackpink

pairing: rosé x fem!reader

genre: angst

contents: idol!rosé, no happy ending

warnings: self-deprecation, possibly triggering insults

synopsis: As Rosé gains more and more fame, maybe she starts to lose sight of what’s important. Is it selfish that she still wants to hold on?

a/n: it’s pride month!!!! 🌈🌈 i know you requested for a happy ending, but I couldn’t find a way to fit it in, but I hope you enjoy

word count: 3.1k

Chaeyoung hasn’t been home in a while.

You know she doesn’t officially live with you- she shares a dorm with her members, a dorm in which she’s expected to live in- but ever since you started dating, Chaeyoung spent more and more time in your apartment, so much so that she has mentioned several times that it feels like home to her.

The apartment really just represents your mind. It doesn’t belong to her, no, but half the things inside are about her; most of the pictures inside are of the two of you, and you can’t recall which of the clothes draped over chairs and hung on hangers are actually yours. Even when she isn’t there, you see her everywhere, in memories or picture frames alike.

But she hasn’t been home in so long. Your communication mostly consists of short, curt texts or cut-off phone calls; honestly, she talks to her producer more than she talks to you.

It feels odd to have the entire bed to yourself again, after you’ve shared it with her so many nights. You have an entire bottle of the shampoo that she prefers, just because she visits so often, and you find yourself using it just because you miss the smell of her.

She’s rescheduled or completely cancelled all of your dates, saying she’s busy and leaving you to watch the Vlive that takes priority over you. 

You knew it wasn’t going to be easy to date an idol, but Chaeyoung was such an incredible girlfriend at the beginning. Sure, she missed dates occasionally, but even you do sometimes because of work. Chaeyoung always made time for you and made you feel important and loved, but recently, you feel like an abandoned side project.

She’s visiting tonight, but you don’t know why- you hope it’s for an impromptu date, so you prepare her favorite foods, enough to feed an army. You wear a little bit of makeup and you do your hair, glancing at the clock every so often with a bubbly, giddy feeling in your stomach. Why shouldn’t you be excited? You’re seeing your girlfriend again, after weeks!

Chaeyoung arrives 45 minutes later than she said she would, but you don’t mind. You open the door with the biggest smile on your face, only to find her telling her manager she won’t be long. “Hey, baby,” she smiles and breezes past you into the apartment. “Wow, that’s a lot of food. Are you expecting someone?”

You feel like you’re about to cry as she starts rifling through the pile of her clothes that you neatly folded and reserved a corner of the couch for. “Um, I thought you were visiting me? For dinner?”

“Ah, I can’t tonight,” she apologizes. At least, it sounds like she’s apologizing. “I have an award show, I just needed to grab this.” She waves around a blouse, one that you remember she accidentally left at your place after a performance. “Thanks, jagi, I promise we can have a date sometime soon.”

With that, she’s gone, and you’re left staring at the closed door, feeling stupid in your jeans and styled hair, with half-melted candles still flickering on the dinner table and the food already cold.

On Jennie’s birthday a few days later, the members invite you to come over and have cake with them. You’re incredibly grateful to Lisa for extending the invitation- the maknae is close with Chaeyoung and knows that you haven’t seen each other in a while.

“Hey, Y/N!” she exclaims as she opens the door, giving you a short hug. Jisoo waves at you from over Lisa’s shoulder, and Jennie shouts a greeting at you from inside her room. “It’s so good to see you.”

You smile warmly at her, placing the present you bought for Jennie on the table. It’s nothing special, just some cute things you got for her last time you went overseas. “You too, Lisa. Do you know where Chaeng is?”

Jisoo exchanges a look with Jennie as the younger girl comes out of her room. You can’t read their expressions; you never were very close with either of them. “Ah, she went out to pick up some more food,” Jennie says finally, giving you a quick smile and patting the chair next to her. “She’ll be back in a few minutes, she just texted me.”

“Okay,” you smile, sitting. It’s unmistakable that something’s wrong- honestly, the first clue was that Chaeyoung wasn’t the one to invite you over. “Have you talked to your family yet, Jennie?”

You let Jennie start talking, thankful for the fact that she understands that you just want to wait for your girlfriend. Jisoo decides that you’ll wait for the blonde to come back before you start having cake, so you just sit and listen to the members talk.

Suddenly, you’re interrupted by a crashing sound. All four of you stop talking and look towards the entrance, where Chaeyoung stands amidst a group of dropped grocery bags. “Yah, Chaeyoung, who let you drop the bags?” Jisoo jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood.

It’s obvious that Chaeyoung doesn’t want to see you; her eyes are fixed on you and her expression is halfway between shocked and angry. She doesn’t make a move to pick up the bags, and the smile on your face drops. “What’re you doing here?”

Lisa cuts in, “I invited her. You haven’t seen her in a while, I thought it would be nice for Y/N to celebrate Jennie’s birthday with us. Is something wrong?”

Chaeyoung smiles, but it looks forced, and you can all tell. “No, nothing’s wrong.”

You decide to speak up; the atmosphere has never been quite so awkward with the five of you together in a room before. “I can leave, if you want? You’ve just been so busy, and I wanted to see you...”

“Yeah, I’ve been busy,” Chaeyoung snaps at you. “Being an idol is hard work, you know?”

“I... yes, I know,” you answer, taken aback; even in the few fights the two of you had before, Chaeyoung was never so hostile. “I just missed you...”

The blonde stalks closer to you, and the anger is palpable in her expression now. “No, you don’t know. It’s hard to have your life out there and so much to do, I just don’t have time for you sometimes! So stop being so selfish!”

Everyone looks shocked, and you can feel your tears just begging to pour out, but you try your best to keep your voice steady. “I’m not being selfish, Chaeng. I’ve been patient, right? I don’t force you to come and see me...”

Your girlfriend rolls her eyes. “Come on, don’t you think I know that you were trying to guilt me into staying by making dinner? I have a life, you know.”

“I made dinner because I thought you wanted to see me!” Your heart feels like it’s ramming into your ribcage over and over again, filling your head with pounding. “I thought you were going to stay.”

Chaeyoung almost snarls now. “Why would I? I have better things to do than have dinner with you, you know. It’s a waste of time.”

Jisoo tries to intervene now, saying pleadingly, “Chaeng, that’s not fair...”

You shake your head quickly, dabbing at your eyes with your sleeve. “It’s fine, Jisoo. I shouldn’t have come. Jennie, happy birthday, it was nice to see all of you.” You do your best to exit with grace, but you can’t help the hot tears pouring down your face when your girlfriend doesn’t even make an effort to ask you to stay.

Lisa calls out after you, “Y/N, wait!” But you’ve already run too far down the hall to hear her.

All the members stare at Chaeyoung. “Chaeng, why...?” Jennie starts, looking confused. “Why would you say that to her?”

Chaeyoung frowns, “She intruded on our celebration. I didn’t invite her, but she still came here to find me.”

“I invited her,” Lisa interjects now. The maknae looks the most confused out of all the members; she remembers all the times you and Chaeyoung were so lovey-dovey together that she could’ve thrown up, and now there seems to be miles between the two of you. “I asked her to come, I thought you wanted to see her.”

The blonde hesitates. “Wait, you invited her?” At her best friends’ nods, she pauses in her anger. “Oh. I thought she crashed Jennie’s birthday just to find me.”

Jisoo sighs, “Even if she did that, we wouldn’t be mad. She’s your girlfriend, it’s natural for her to miss you. You shouldn’t have said all that to her just because you’re stressed.”

Chaeyoung attempts a careless shrug and sits down next to her members. “Maybe not. But I don’t have time for her drama right now.”

“Drama?” Jennie asks, eyes narrowing a bit. “Y/N wasn’t even willing to come at first. When we invited her, she didn’t think you would want to see her, but Lisa begged her to come. You haven’t seen her for weeks, you don’t think she misses you?”

Crossing her arms, the maknae scowls, “Yeah, do you know how much I had to beg her? She knew this would happen, and that’s why she didn’t want to come.”

The blonde looks between her friends, then looks to Jisoo, the last peaceful one at the table. “I... I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Jisoo sighs. “But even if you didn’t know, even if we didn’t invite her, you never should have called her selfish or a waste of time.”

Hearing her own words coming from her unnie feels like a direct hit to the face and Chaeyoung snaps out of it. True, she has been incredibly busy and stressed the past couple of weeks, but how could she say that to you, her girlfriend? She suddenly remembers all the dishes you had prepared for her a few days ago, dishes that you let go cold as you waited.

She remembers how all the clothes she left at your house were laundered and neatly folded when she went to pick them up, how all the cosmetics and things she left behind were so lovingly placed and cared for. And she called you a waste of time. “Oh... oh my god,” she exhales, tears pricking at her eyes as she puts her face in her hands. “I...”

Lisa still looks a bit angry, but Jennie places her hand on the younger girl’s back, rubbing lightly. “Chaeng... You need to find her. We’ll wait for you.”

“Are you sure?” Chaeyoung asks, lifting her head. At her members’ nods and comforting smiles, she stands up. “Okay. I can fix this.”

“Y/N?” she shouts, bolting out of the dorm and into the street. Some people turn around to look at her, but none of the faces are the one she’s looking for. “Have you seen Y/N? She’s about this tall, pretty, dressed in a dark coat...”

When everyone she talks to shakes their heads, Chaeyoung starts running to your apartment. As the bitter wind whips across her cheeks and tosses her hair, Chaeyoung remembers how many times she had run to you after a disastrous music show or a sasaeng attack. She remembers all the times she escaped in the middle of the night just to see you, to kiss you. 

As she runs, tears start falling, even as she furiously wipes them away. All of a sudden, she’s at your door, hesitating when her fist is just a few inches away from the door. She can hear sniffling, sobbing, and her heart aches to think that it’s because of her.

You never cried in front of her; you were always the one who gave her a shoulder to cry on, an embrace at her worst times. Now, Chaeyoung stands outside your door, able to hear your heart-wrenching sobs loud and clear.

Part of her wonders what would happen if she knocks, if she lets herself inside and kisses you. But Chaeyoung is too much of a coward, and she turns around and walks away, silent tears pouring down her face and your cries echoing in her head.

Chaengggg [6:11]    jagi, I’m so sorry

Chaengggg [6:12]    Y/N, please

Chaengggg [6:12]    I should never have said that, please forgive me

Chaengggg [6:15]     baby?

read at 6:15 pm

“Chaeng? Yah, Chaeyoung!”

The blonde almost jumps when she hears Lisa calling her. The maknae looks impatient, standing in the next aisle of the supermarket, waiting for Chaeyoung to catch up. Lisa has been more and more irritable with her unnie recently, despite the older girls’ attempts to soothe her. “Pay attention, please!”

“Sorry,” the blonde mumbles, jogging to catch up with the other girls. 

“Is it Y/N?” Jennie asks, putting her hands on her hips. “Look, Chaeng, I know you’re worried because she wasn’t home, but you need to focus. For the Blinks.”

For the Blinks. Of course Chaeyoung loved her fans- they were the reason she was so successful and famous, the reason she could keep pursuing her dream. But what was all that worth without love?

Before, Chaeyoung prioritized her career over everything, and when she met you, she wasn’t sure if she would have time for a relationship. But she loved you so much, it would have been worth it to lose her career if she could be with you forever.

Something changed a few weeks ago, and even Chaeyoung wasn’t sure what it was. She changed enough to ignore you for weeks on end, to cancel an anniversary date because of a last-minute meeting with her producer. When she thought back, she was ashamed of how she had acted towards you. She treated your caring reminders to have dinner as you being selfish and rushing her to come home, and she didn’t notice everything you did for her.

You haven’t responded to her texts. She realizes how hard it was to be respectful, to not spam you with texts asking you to respond or talk to her, and suddenly, Chaeyoung realizes just how much damage she had unconsciously inflicted on you. “Chaeng, how about I go with you to get some ice cream?” Jisoo offers. “Lisa and Jennie can go and finish off the list.”

With that, Jisoo links her arm with the blonde and sets off. It’s smart of the older girl to distract Chaeyoung with food and keep her away from Lisa and Jennie, both of whom don’t seem to agree with the blonde recently.

Suddenly, Chaeyoung stops in her tracks, locking eyes with you as you stand a few feet away. You look terrible, and Chaeyoung can’t believe she couldn’t see your panda eyes and drawn face before. “Hi, Jisoo, Rosé,” you greet them. It hurts to not hear you call her ‘Chaeng’ or ‘Chaeyoung’ or one of the pet names she has.

“Y/N,” Chaeyoung breathes out, stepping closer to you. Jisoo lets go of her and goes off to look at ice cream, but the blonde doesn’t notice. “You... you look tired.”

“Do I?” you laugh, rubbing at your eyes as if that’ll make your dark circles go away. “I swear I put on concealer before I left the house.”

Humor. That was always your fallback whenever you were angry, or sad, or anything, really. “Baby...”

You shake your head. “Ch- Rosé, don’t call me that. Please.”

“I’m sorry,” the blonde begs, voice starting to shake. “Please, Y/N, I’m so sorry, I haven’t been able to focus, I’m so worried. I... I want to fix this. Us.”

“Was there ever really an us?” you ask, and your voice sounds so, so bitter. It matches your wan face. “I thought I was just a waste of time.”

Chaeyoung feels like you’ve just slapped her in the face by throwing her words back at her. “No! No, please, jagi, you’re not a waste of time. You’re... I love you, okay? I’ve always loved you, even if I was so rude to you. Please, I’ll do anything.”

“Tell me, Rosé, what have you done?” Your expression isn’t angry like Chaeyoung expected it would be- instead, you just look tired, heavy, bitter. You look so much older than she remembered you did when you laughed with her and kissed her, when she still made time for you. “I was always the one who put in the work. Wouldn’t asking me to forgive you be selfish now?”

Selfish.

She told you you were selfish when you just wanted to see her, when all you did was care for her and love her. And now, Chaeyoung can’t blame you for saying the same thing to her, not when you’re right that she was never the one who put in the work. “I’m sorry, but I can’t handle this, being tossed around like one of your toys,” you continue. “I still love you. But you need to think about whether you really love me or not, don’t be selfish and hold onto me just because you’ll miss the way we used to be.”

Chaeyoung can’t stop the tears now, even as she holds her hands up to her face to stifle her sobs. You’re right- asking you to stay now, asking you to go back to being the only one trying in the relationship, would be selfish. And it’s selfish that Chaeyoung clasps on your hand in an attempt to get you to stay, but she can’t help it.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, words broken by her tears and the empty look in your eyes. “You were never selfish, it’s all my fault. I’m the selfish one. But please, please give me another chance.”

It feels like she’s letting go of her life when your hand slips out from between her fingers, the warmth of them lingering like a long-gone memory as you go.

She collapses, picked back up by the strong hands of her members, but she can’t help but feel empty too, like you took her heart with you when you walked away, a fragile glass ornament in your hands.

Chaeyoung thinks her heart is cracking right in half, but she realizes that your heart had long since shattered in her hands too. She feels like she’s bleeding as she watches you disappear, cut and pricked by the tiny, stabbing shards of your long-shattered heart.

But even if she bleeds to death, she’ll keep holding those shards as tightly as she can. Because it’s all she has left.

Is it selfish to want to hold on to what used to be?

[guessimwritingficsagain]

To be seen, part One (Frankie Morales x reader)

Summary : Usually, you’d be babysitting your friend Jessie’s son but you had to come into work. Your colleagues are really excited because “the boys” are here, so you get the chance, for the first time, to see what the fuss is about. You probably need to get laid. 

Author’s note : This is gonna be a four or five chapter story, not clear on that yet. Frankie isn’t here much but the endgame is Frankie x Reader. This chapter is really here to set up the reader’s relationships and workplace.

Warning : Harassment 

____________________________________________________________

Chapter One :

« Yup, they’re here, » confirmed Anna, with a wink in Jessie’s direction, before she closed the kitchen’s door and went back to wait on the patrons. You were confused for a moment, but Jessie was jumping up and down in the small space, almost knocking over a bunch of plates she had been cleaning just before. She was vibrating with excitement. 

« You’re finally going to see what the fuss is about ! » She all but screamed. It dawned on you, then. 

The boys. 

So, here’s the story : once in a while, always on a Saturday, four dudes come in, sit down, drink a few beers, chat for a bit and call it a night. There used to be five, apparently, but one of them must have been kicked out of the group, according to Jessie. One of them is usually a little banged up - always the same. One of them always makes a point to flirt with whoever is waiting on them but it’s harmless. They tip well. Nothing special, right ? Except apparently, they’re hot. And Jessie juggles with this job and the kid, and she’s on her own, has been for a while now, so it is a big deal. Apparently. 

You’d been a bit worried with all the fuss she made about those guys, but then you remembered that her last date had been months ago and had ended with her coming home in tears, self-depreciating bullshit spilling out of her mouth, about her life, her failed mariage, the state of her car and the way she drank beer instead of wine and she shouldn’t because wine is more refined. 

So. You’d been worried. But you figured that nothing seemed wrong with those men, and that a little fantasy was harmless and sometimes needed. 

You’d never had first-hand experience with the four guys, though. You worked every other Saturday night but Jessie and you had an agreement with your boss, so you could babysit her kid the Saturday she worked since she couldn’t afford to pay someone. This Saturday, though, you had to make do and find someone to mind Clara because Phil, the cook, was sick and someone needed to replace him. 

You couldn’t cook for shit and Jessie could, so she was in the kitchen, you tended the bar and Anna waited on the patrons. You let her friend get a well-deserved sneak-peek at the table before you made your way back to the counter, making an off-hand, harmless remark that she needed to get laid as you walked through the door. Once you got behind the counter, you took a deep breath and looked around. 

Time to see what all the fuss is about. 

The place wasn’t overly crowded for a Saturday evening, but it was still early. You spotted the table pretty easily. It was one a bit away from the others, isolated, separated from most of the room by the pool but far enough from it not to be disturbed by the players and-

Oh. 

Oh. 

Maybe you needed to get laid, too. 

———

You were staring. You knew you were staring. Hard. But then again who on earth allowed those four men to look that good. Men should never look that good. Men that looked that good were trouble. And three of them definitely looked like trouble. It was written in the way they sat, like they were at home and not in a public space with other people, legs spread wide, radiating confidence. The last one, the one with a cap on his head, was on the shyer side, but still-

Trouble.

Here’s the thing. That dating thing, that wasn’t on your mind. You gave it a shot a few years back. You’d met her in college, and when you’d both ended up with an art history degree that proved to be useless, you’d moved in together, and you’d tried to open a bookshop that crashed and burned in less that two years, and all of your savings with it. Something had cracked in your relationship, then, and you’d both tried to fix it because you’d had a good thing. The break-up hadn’t been ugly, but mending both your broken hearts had taken time. You still called each other from time to time, true to your last promise : when things get easier, let’s not be strangers. It had been her - Linda - who had said it. You hadn’t had the heart, then. Now, five years later, you were glad she had. 

Five years later, you found yourself back in your home state, bartending on a Saturday night, that art history degree still useless but no longer leaving a sour taste in your mouth, a bitter sense of waste of time and money. You hadn’t had a date in three years - he had been nice, really pretty, you’d dated for a while but he’d wanted to become a big Wall Street boy and you just weren’t into that. It might be time to reconsider getting laid if you couldn’t look at a bunch of hot dudes without your brain turning to jelly, though. 

Somebody cleared of throat right in front of you and you snapped out of it, apologizing before getting the man’s order, good that his presence would prevent you from drifting away too much. Then the rush came, and you forgot about the table for a while. 

———

When Anna came back to give you a bunch of orders, she did so with an eyebrow slightly raised in expectation. You knew she wanted your feedback on that table, but you didn’t want to agree with Jessie and her, so you shrugged in a way you hoped looked casual and unaffected. She saw right through your bullshit. 

« Fine », you whispered. « They’re hot. Hot. » 

The patron at the barstool turned his head towards you and you felt your face burn. So much for whispering. Anna only laughed, head tilted back, her blonde hair waving as laughter shook her body. She was 25, beautiful in a traditional way. She was genuinely nice, and always saw the good in people. She was to this world what Jane was to Pride and Prejudice. 

Which is why, when the man sitting on the barstool leaned and said to her :

« You’re a pretty one, too. »

She just smiled and thanked him. Of course, he had to take that as an invitation. This could have been the beginning of a very beautiful story if not for the fact that he was old enough to be his father, knew it, didn’t care, and that this beer obviously wasn’t his first one. You hadn’t noticed when he first sat down but now that he had leaned in, you could smell it. He reeked of alcohol. 

« Wanna grab a drink sometimes ? See where that leads us ? »

Anna politely declined, and made to leave, but he grabbed her arm. You could tell it wasn’t meant to hurt her, just to hold her back, to prevent her from leaving, but you felt yourself tense. 

« Sir, » you said in a tone you hoped sounded firm and steady, « I’m going to ask you to leave my colleague alone. » 

He turned his head towards you and Anna took the opportunity to free herself from his grasp. She looked at you a second, a silent question (are you gonna be okay ?), and seemingly satisfied by your slight nod, she took off. 

« You’re not bad yourself, you know. » 

Steeling yourself, you turned to the patron. 

« This is inappropriate and I’m not interested, Sir. » 

But the man was relentless. When you said no for the third time he started muttering to himself, something about women all being bitches to him. You were getting really tense, and looked around to see where Anna was. She was at the boys’ table, watching you. Actually, the whole table was watching you as one of the men - the beat up one, your mind registered - was walking your way with purpose. 

— —— 

You were staring again, you realized. The man had taken a barstool too, right in front of you, and was waiting for you to say something. Probably a sentence. A coherent sentence. 

« Hi, what can I get you ? » 

Nice. One word at a time. You could do it. 

« Nothing, I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Benny. » 

He offered his hand. You took it. He was all sharp angles and there was something wild and dark in his eyes, but he had a nice, warm smile. Your hand seemed tiny in his. After a beat, you told him your own name. He gestured behind him, towards the table, still looking your way.

« My pals over there and I were wondering if you were new. Never saw you around. »

« I’m not. I guess I’m not around when you guys are. » 

« That’s what your colleague said. »

Bullshit.

He knew you saw right through it, and you tried to convey the fact that you appreciated the gesture without saying anything too obvious. There was no doubt that Benny would have no problem getting physical with the other guy at the counter if needed. But the man in question was standing awfully still, like he got the same vibe off of Benny you did. He’d stopped muttering and was looking very intently at his bottle. Benny kept going, and you soon saw what he was doing. He slightly turned and pointed towards his friends. You noticed Anna had gone back to work. 

« See the blonde guy over there ? That’s my idiot of a brother, Will. Guy with the cap is Frankie. Last one is Pope. » 

You raised your eyebrows at that. 

« Pope ? »

« Sorry, force of habit. His name is Santiago. Santi for short. We used to serve, Pope was his call sign, and I guess it stuck. » 

He shrugged, keeping the conversation light, but the mention of four ex-military casually sitting there and checking on you was enough for the other patron. He got up and left without a word. Your sigh of relief didn’t go unnoticed. 

« Santi saw something was off a while back with that guy, when he grabbed your colleague … »

« Anna », you automatically corrected.

« When he grabbed Anna, » Benni obliged. « She confirmed when she came to take our orders. » 

« Thank you. » 

You were used to dealing with that kind of stuff, but it was nice to have back-up, especially when the usual one wasn’t there. Normally, you’d go to Phil in the kitchen, but today, Jessie wouldn’t have been much of a match against a drunk guy would wanted some. Jessie, who was standing, you saw, right outside the kitchen door, gaping at you. 

« I never got your order », you stated, turning your attention back to Benny. 

He gave it again and you smiled. 

« It’s on the house. » 

———

« So his name is Benny. The blonde one, Will. That’s his brother. Then Santiago and Frankie. »

« Yes but which one is Santiago and which one is Frankie ? » all but whined Jessie. 

You were closing the place. Anna wasn’t saying anything but you could tell she was listening intently. 

« A bit too old for you, aren’t they ? » You quipped. 

She just laughed. 

« No harm in looking. » 

She was right. No harm. Meanwhile Jessie, arms waiving all around, complained :

« How come I tried to get their attention for weeks and something happens the first time you see them ? » 

« Yeah, it was a real pleasure to get harassed. I made sure it happened for the attention. All part of a very good plan. »

« Oh come on, » she shoved you playfully « you know what I mean. » 

The parking lot was empty. The cool air around you was quiet except for the occasional sound of a car going down the street nearby. The three of you fell silent, walking to Anna’s car. You kept silent during the drive, too, exhaustion settling in your bones. You knew you were lucky : tomorrow was your day off. Neither Anna nor Jessie had that chance. You’d be sleeping on Jessie’s couch tonight, just so you could babysit Clara. Your foggy brain betrayed you, then, and a bad thought came to you like a stab in the back :

When was the last time you saw a movie ? Went to an exhibit ?

You buried it, like you did every time you reminded yourself you were not where you thought you’d be at your age. When Anna pulled over in front of Jessie’s house, you thanked her and waited, silent again, as Jessie thanked her babysitter, winced as she paid her - you knew that was not something she could afford - and went to check on her sleeping girl. You were making yourself at home, preparing the couch for the night, thoughts of Benny and other hot dudes, ex-military guys entirely forgotten when you heard, soft and broken :

« I know it’s silly. This whole thing. I just … I wish someone would look at me, you know. » 

`

Jessie was standing in her living room, lost and desperate. You stopped, right then. The bags under her eyes were dark. She wasn’t going to cry, you knew that. The way she spoke, with finality, like she was convinced no one would look at her ever again, made your exhausted body tremble with anger. You closed the space between the two of you and held her for a while. 

Later, as you were plugging your phone, you saw a text from Linda. 

Hey, just checking on you. Everything good, these days ? Saw that French movie you told me about. It’s great ! Seen it yet ? I know you were excited. Don’t be a stranger ;)

You thought back on Jessie’s words. Somebody, at some point, had looked at you. Had seen you for who you were and had embraced every one of your qualities and your flaws. You didn’t miss it. It didn’t hurt anymore. But you remembered how beautiful it had been. Jessie’s marriage was never like that, from what you could tell. If you picked up the phone right now and called Linda, she would be there for you. If Jessie picked up the phone, all she’d get would be a reminder that her ex-husband had changed his number and couldn’t be reached in any way. 

You were lucky, you realized with a sharp sense of guilt. 

You were lucky that you’d had that, with Linda. And you were even luckier that you didn’t need anyone to look at you. You didn’t need anyone to see you for who you were. 

You didn’t. 

You didn’t.

[spicysoftsweet]

Chapter 13

Masterlist 

cw: nsfw, timeskip

 “Mmm.”

A soft moan of pleasure left Kumi’s lips as she continued to roll her hips slowly, a smile on her face as she leaned forward, letting her palms glide up her partner’s chest. His eyes seemed to glaze over with lust still as he looked upon her breasts, and she giggled.

It truly was nice to be with someone who definitely loved you more than you loved them, she thought fleetingly, then attempted to banish the idea from her own mind.

Perhaps it was an unkind thought. She liked the guy she was currently riding enough; Seiichi was nice to look at with heavy-lidded eyes, shaggy dirty blonde hair and an easy going smile, and he had been attentive and caring to her through these last couple of years as they futzed through medical school together.

At graduation just a couple weeks ago, he’d asked her how she felt about the two of them becoming official and she’d avoided the question, and he’d known better not to bring it up again. Kumi considered that he’d perhaps ask again now, now that she was hovering above him and his hands pressed firmly around her waist and she could feel her stomach coil tighter and tighter the longer they moved together.

He didn’t just like her more, he liked her too much for her comfort, she’d realized.

“Kumi, I-” he began, cheeks flushed, but then she’d cut him off abruptly.

“I’m moving back to Tokyo-” she blurted out, right before she felt herself snap and let out a strangled cry as she climaxed and promptly collapsed onto him. She could barely see his look of distress as he took in this sudden news, his cock softening inside her almost immediately, but she could feel the quickening pace of his heart. 

It was an asshole move.

“You’re what?” He asked.

Kumi shifted her legs as he slipped out of her, then rolled over to the side so that she was staring at the ceiling and not at him.

“I’m leaving this weekend,” she repeated, cheeks still warm as she recovered from her orgasm. The pensive, slightly amused look on her face was unchanging, as though she had simply told him about a funny dream she’d had, and Seiichi, who had thought he was making some progress all these years realized all at once that he’d never even cracked the surface of her frozen heart. The idea of him having wasted his time so thoroughly aggravated him suddenly.

“Were you ever going to fucking say anything?” He hissed. “Or did it just hit you spur of the moment to say something like this?”

She turned towards him, noting his now red-faced and angry expression, and placed a hand on his cheek, caressing it softly. There was something akin to pity in her look, but not love.

“I didn’t think it was important,” she replied simply.

She could have left it at that, and Seiichi may have calmed down and even considered bargaining with her - trips back and forth maybe, a vacation here or there, she just had to tell him that she still wanted him, in some capacity, and it would still be alright.

“You are important to me,” he said and attempted to mirror her action, but frowning, Kumi moved backwards and quickly made her way off the bed, redressing herself.

He watched her with anticipation, anxiety choking the words in his throat as she got ready to leave.

After an unnecessarily silent period of time, she turned to him and smiled widely, something unnatural and painful and flat all at once.

“I’m sorry, I don’t feel the same way.”

---

“Why did you decide to become a doctor?”

Kumi hated this question every single time it was asked. The truest answer was when my middle school boyfriend died in a gang fight in front of me, mostly due to self-inflicted injury that could have been preventable if only I had the skills, but it wasn’t exactly the answer that earned her points with anyone. If anything, it only invited more unnecessary questions.

Instead, she offered something generic like, “I’ve always had a passion to take care of others and found that I was interested in the science of the human body and thus pursued my passion in this way.” It was sufficiently true, she figured, even if it wasn’t as exciting a reason.

The interviewer seemed to be impressed enough with the lackluster response, as she expected. Her grades were excellent, after all, so this interview was somewhat of a formality. The only thing that worried her was whether or not she was ready to move back to Tokyo for residency, and decided after very brief contemplation that she was.

It had been so many years since that event had happened, after all. She couldn’t possibly still be hung up on the past.

People died all the time; years of medical school had taught her this. She could prevent some death but not all.

When she’d received the residency position, she was excited as the program was top rated in the country for emergency medicine training, but then recalled that she likely had no one left in Tokyo. Her parents had long since moved to the United States permanently along with her grandmother who had taken her in charge up until she’d started college, and her brother, many years older, lived on the other end of the country. They weren’t close, even if she had wanted to be.

She had no one left. She’d even briefly wondered if she could bring Seiichi with her, and realized it would be too cruel to use him in this way. Seiichi would remain in their city, pursuing specialization in pediatrics, so his goals and her goals wouldn’t be compatible anyway.

Why Tokyo?

Her mother hated even the idea of moving back there, and she’d had to reassure her repeatedly that more than ten years had passed, so there was no way she’d return to that dark place she’d been in the latter fourteenth and entire fifteenth year of her life.

“Are you sure?” Her mother pressed.

“Yes, mom,” she reassured her. “I won’t even be living on the same side of the city.”

And I’m past it, she thought.

With that, she moved to a small apartment in Tokyo alone on a Saturday morning and started her first day of work as a newly minted doctor that very Monday.

The first day was busy and the emergency department was as busy and as hectic as she should have expected being in a major city, but she survived after putting in her hours, clocking out sometime between 13 to 15 hours after the beginning of her shift, exhausted and with no one to go home to. As she sat on the train, trying not to let her tired eyes glaze over, she downloaded a dating app, swiped left and right on a couple of strange faces then sighed loudly.

It was a dumb idea to meet men if she was going to have no one to call in case of an emergency.

Kumi made it to her new home, hopping into the shower, and changing into soft shorts and a pajama shirt immediately before preparing some instant noodles for dinner. She made a mental note to buy some real groceries sometime this weekend. She then quickly texted a message to her parents to tell them her first day had gone well.

She would be fine.

As she ate her meal in silence, her mind flitted to Kaksi for a moment. She wondered how she was doing. Should she contact her? They hadn’t spoken in over a decade. Did she miss her? Was she even still in this city?

She finished her meal and shook off the thought of digging up past relationships. She wouldn’t want to burrow too deeply and be hurt by what she found.

---

Kaksi rested the ends of her chopsticks on the dark blue and white hashioki in front of her. Then her brown eyes wandered outside, enjoying Tokyo’s skyline through the large glass windows of the private room she shared with her friend. Blue eyes studied her features quietly, while slender fingers brought the white chopsticks to rosy lips.

“Did you not like the food?”

“Oh, I did,” Kaksi replied in a soft voice. “I’m just not very hungry.”

Senju didn’t say anything for a moment. By now she had memorised all of Kaksi’s habits, which made it usually easy for her to pick up on her emotions and thoughts.

“Are you nervous?” she asked before taking a sip of her drink.

Kaksi smiled.

“I guess I am.”

Was this moment shared together their goodbye? As much as Senju preferred not to dwell on the future, she couldn’t ignore the inevitable change that Kazutora’s return would bring into her life. She had made a mistake, growing too comfortable treating Kaksi like she was hers when she was someone else’s all along.

Senju had never met Manjiro Sano despite the similar lifestyle they shared but back when Kaksi would still talk about him, she compared them a lot. Brahman’s leader used to believe she was nothing like him, the idea of ever leaving Kaksi behind unthinkable to her but now she wondered if the reason behind their fall out wasn’t just Mikey trying to spare his own feelings, something Senju failed to do by falling for her best friend.

She had been foolish to think Kaksi would fail to keep her promise. While they had shared more kisses that they could both count and uncovered the secrets to each other’s body in between almost forbidden confessions, Senju still wasn’t the one Kaksi wished to have by her side, or maybe she did. It had felt like she did so many times and it still felt that way as they walked out of the expensive restaurant too close to each other.

Kaksi’s hands were always so cold but Senju liked to warm them up. Tonight however the brunette wouldn’t let her like she had been doing for the past months. Senju was being selfish again, she knew. Kaksi couldn’t say no, not to her, not when she would give her those pleading blue eyes or slide her hand around her waist.

“Sen,” she said, irritated and distancing herself from her best friend.

But this time she had to say no.

“I don’t think I can do it, Kaksi.”

Kazutora would be out of jail in a few days and Kaksi had already planned out a future for them, one that she had desired ever since they had promised to never leave each other’s side back when they were children. It was unfair that she couldn’t preserve what she had built for the past years but if it wasn’t her then who would watch out for Kazutora? There was an obligation Kaksi felt to him, one that she felt like she could never get rid of but this was also what she wanted.

“I don’t think he would be happy in Tokyo,” she told her.

Senju rolled her eyes at her answer. Why was it that Kaksi always had to make her life revolve around him?

“Aren’t you happy in Tokyo?” she asked, voice louder as her irritation grew.

“I need a change of air.”

“Do you need a change of air or do you think Kazutora needs one?” Senju replied. “Because those are two very different things.”

“I think we do.”

Senju stayed quiet for a moment. She wondered if Kaksi could see that what she felt was beyond jealousy. If Kaksi didn’t want to stay by her side that was fine by her, as painful as it was but she wished her best friend would choose herself instead of someone else sometimes.

“You know, you can’t make decisions for others, Kaksi,” Senju reminded her. “You can only make decisions for yourself.”

Kaksi chuckled but it was irritation that she felt.

“This is not how I want things to end between us before I leave for Osaka,” Kaksi told her.

Then you could just stay, at least.

“I don’t think there is any other way for it to end,” Senju admitted, her blue eyes not hiding a sadness she had been containing for too long.

Kaksi fell silent, not sure about what she could say if this was really how they were meant to say goodbye to each other. Senju took a deep breath.

“I hope Kazutora and you enjoy Osaka,” she said with a genuine smile, contrasting with the disappointment and sadness she felt moments before.

But she meant those words. Maybe she was the one who didn’t get it, maybe this was what Kazutora desired and maybe this was something only Kaksi could offer and wanted to offer. There was nothing rational about feelings after all but even after experiencing all of those emotions, Senju couldn’t help thinking only a bit of madness could explain Kaksi’s behaviour sometimes.

If she did get it though. Then there was only one thing she needed Kaksi to remember even though she was choosing Kazutora right now and had planned to always do so.

“But if you don’t then come back to me in Tokyo.”

Kaksi’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of Senju’s smile. She couldn’t smile back but she nodded as she watched her walk away, in a direction she wouldn’t follow this time.

---

“You said you grew up in the city, right?” The girl situated beside Kumi asked, turning slightly in the booth of the bar. The man sitting directly across from her, who from the beginning of the gaokon had seemed to have set his sights on her, perked his ears up.

“I thought you were foreign!” he asked, and she flashed her most charming smile in response despite mild irritation, accepting a drink from her coworker as she spoke.

“Nope, I’ve been here since early childhood. Briefly moved just outside Kyoto in my teen years, but I guess technically Tokyo is my home,” she explained.

The young man before her nodded, leaning just close enough that she began to grow uncomfortable. She couldn’t tell if the man’s interest was related to an expectation that she’d put out more readily than the other women on this date, and just because of that, she was determined not to spend the night with him. Instead, she focused her attention on the girl behind her who was also desperately trying to avoid eye contact with another guy who had latched onto her.

This group blind date was a bust.

Kumi didn’t feel too bad about it, however. She would appreciate anything that allowed her not to think about work. An adolescent boy had come in earlier in the day with a stab wound, and despite the fact that this was not the first time she’d seen injured children or the sequela of gang violence, perhaps the fact that she was back in this city made it such that the event had unearthed some trauma. She found that her hands shook as she stabilized the teen and for a moment, she thought she had even seen a flash of Baji in that young boy and temporarily forgot how to breathe.

That couldn’t happen again.

She should be over it. She had to be.

“Would you like to meet again?” The man whose name she’d long since forgotten - Tadashi? Satoshi? - asked her at the close of the evening, when she’d made it sufficiently clear that she was just interested in going home.

She should have said no, but instead she politely exchanged phone numbers with him, fully intending to block him in three to five days.

But who knew when she’d be lonely again?

---

A week later, Kumi could get over the haunting visage of the young boy who looked everything and nothing like Baji, but she couldn’t get over the sudden talk of gang activity on the news she let play in the background while she reviewed medical publications.

A horrific truck accident, involving a young woman about her age, had taken the news by storm. Listening closer, she heard a name that sounded familiar but not recognizable.

Hinata Tachibana.

It felt like a name she should remember, but she figured they might have interacted before she had relocated for high school, and most of the things and people from before then were essentially blocked out of her memory.

But not the name Toman.

Kumi perked up, sipping onto her tea and folding her legs beneath her as she sat on the couch, finally setting her paper aside, now that the television had caught her interest. There were no real suspects, but the death was thought to be related to this group, as were a series of other random execution-like killings. Kumi took a look at the still image of the young woman’s face, eyes wide, noting that she definitely looked familiar to her, like she’d seen her at least once or twice a long time ago. She couldn’t imagine her having done anything wrong or any act that would anger someone enough to order her death.

Toman doesn’t kill. Toman doesn’t do real crime, she thought.

But times had changed, and maybe they did do real crime now. She wondered briefly if Mitsuya was still part of Toman. What had become of Mikey and Draken, and the rest?

Did Kaksi know what Toman had become over the years?

Kumi unconsciously reached for her phone beside her to call, then caught herself. She hesitated for a moment, letting the sudden wash of anxiety run through her, then shut off the television instead and returned to her reading.

Let sleeping dogs lie, she thought, and she spent the rest of her night, minding her own business, minding her future.

---

She wouldn’t have broken if not for her dream that night.

“Bambi, you don’t ever stop crying, do you?”

Kumi’s eyes jolted open at the sound of that voice, the mischievous laugh she remembered from her childhood, even if it was richer, an evolved version. It couldn’t be, could it?

But she was no longer in her room. Instead, she was somewhere warm and blindingly bright, where her eyes could barely adjust, and her body felt… lighter?

She rose to a sitting position, shielding her watering eyes from the light, only to be startled by a warm hand taking hers, interlacing their fingers.

“Kumi-chan, look.”

Her eyes opened again, and this time, rather than light unfocusing her, there was a man before her, with a face that was foreign yet oh-so-familiar, crouched down on one knee and still holding her hand gently.

Fangs grinned back at her, and she gasped.

“K-Kei..?”

Her voice came out no more than a squeak and suddenly in her heart she was fourteen again, and her lip started to quiver as she repeated his name again.

What did this mean? To be looking at him again, a him that was no longer dead just days before he turned fifteen, whose dark, wavy locks were even longer and whose face had aged just as much as hers, but with the same fox-like brown eyes that she’d fallen in love with a decade ago as part of a sharper angled, handsome face?

She repeated his name yet again, heart thumping and tears welling up in her eyes, and he cupped her face in her hands, using his thumbs to wipe away her tears.

He frowned.

“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” he said, a pensive look on his face. He sighed, and Kumi felt his lips press onto her forehead. Warm, soft lips that felt every bit as real as she did, and it only made her hurt more.

She was hallucinating. All of this was impossible, whatever this was.

So why did it feel so real?

“I miss you so much,” she choked out.

A decade had passed, and here she was. Conjuring up an image of Baji as he could have been if he had lived, something that may not be real. She wasn’t even sure he’d look like this - might he have cut his hair, or gotten his teeth fixed? How did she know what his voice would settle to be like in adulthood, and if this soothing baritone in her ears was anything close? How did she know he would grow to this height he now stood at, towering over her once he’d pulled her to her feet and pressed her head against his chest? How did she know what his arms would feel like wrapped around her? Would she actually have felt this safe and warm?

Would he have still cared for her, had he lived?

“I miss you too.”

She sobbed harder.

“How can you miss me when you’re dead?”

He paused, and let a hand stroke through her hair.

“Pretend.”

Almost shocked, she pulled back and looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He smiled sadly at her and shrugged.

“Pretend I’m still here with you. I’ll stay with you till morning comes,” he promised. "I can promise you at least this much.”

There’s a point where it’s easier to live in the delusion, and it was at this point, where Baji leaned in to kiss her, then embrace her in a way they never could in life. They drank deeply of each other throughout the night, connecting with each other physically and emotionally, and the young woman hoped that the cursed morning would never come, where she’d have to give up on this dream or vision or delusion or whatever the fuck it was, and return to reality.

But alas the dead cannot commune with the living forever.

Kumi woke up in a cold bed where Baji was no longer inside her or beside her or with her, and there was nothing that remained but messy bed sheets, dampness between her legs and unrelenting, fresh pain in her heart.

She brought her knees to her chest, and felt new anguish for the first time in years. Birds chirped outside her window to welcome the dawn and light seeped through her window, and on this cool Saturday morning, she had regressed to the same child curled up in blankets, encountering heartbreak for the first time.

Why?

Why couldn’t she get past this?

Her father had said it first. It’s just a boy.

And here she was, a grown woman, who no longer could love, hanging on desperately to a ghost.

Kumi’s phone alarm went off suddenly - she’d forgotten to turn it off - and she reached for her phone, her whole body shaking like a leaf. She was pathetic, despite the fact that she so desperately wanted to be strong.

And thus, the moment she quieted the alarm, she dialed the only person who could understand the pain she felt. Even if it was selfish. Even if it had been a decade.

She didn’t expect her to pick up, but she did.

“Kumi?”

The familiar sound of Kaksi’s voice made her want to weep in a different way. Relief rushing over a wave.

She sucked air into her lungs and smiled, warm, thankful tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Kaksi, I missed you so much.”

[evielallemxnt]

"There are T W O types of secrets: those we hide from others ─ and those we hide from OURSELVES."

have you seen GENEVIEVE 'EVIE' LALLEMENT strolling around central park at lunchtime? rumor has it they’re actually A HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE years old, but i’m pretty sure they’re only TWENTY. they’re currently posing as a PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR at LALLEMENT LAW, but when dusk falls, you can usually find them heading home to MANHATTAN by TOWN CAR. apparently they DID attend the met gala this season! @duskintro

* / CHARACTER INFLUENCES: Jake Peralta ( Brooklyn 99 ) + Veronica Mars ( Veronica Mars ) + Nancy Drew ( Nancy Drew ) + Claudia ( Interview With The Vampire ) + Rebekah Mikaelson ( The Originals )

* / ANTHEMS: PRETTY SAVAGE | YOU MADE A MONSTER | 7 RINGS

*** PENNED BY BRI FOR DUSKFELLHQ ***

FULL NAME: GENEVIEVE "EVIE" LALLEMENT

FACECLAIM: Savannah Lee Smith

AGE: 20 ( estimated @ time of changing ) physically | 135 mentally

SEXUALITY: Lesbian

PRONOUNS: She/her

POSITIVE: Intelligent, charming, loyal, brave.

NEUTRAL: Spontaneous, trustworthy, daring, cocky

NEGATIVE: Impulsive, self-destructive, snide, and Machiavellian.

ELEMENT: Fire.

MBTI TYPE: ENFJ.

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic neutral.

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Slytherin

AESTHETIC: Breakfast at Tiffany's, fine tailoring, diamonds and pearls and rubies, late-night bubble baths with red sangria, Chanel No.5, bubbly stocked fridge, penthouse parties, drinks @ The Blond, exclusive social club, wigs and disguises, sly smiles, bad decisions, midnight sleuthing, gossiping until dawn, closets filled with Birkins, eyes that hold secrets, smudged lip gloss, devilish temptations

TW: Death, dying, blood

* / BIOGRAPHY: The history of Genevieve Lallement is a tricky one. If you ask her, she became a creature of the night in some whirlwind fashioned tale filled with love, betrayal, and sacrifice -- all the makings of a heart-clenching closed shut story. But the reality? That's much more of a mystery.

Her genesis is one filled with darkness. No memories. No family. No nothing. The only solace coming in the form of her sire -- Cassius. He saved her from a fever that took many in late 19th century England and told her as much as he knew. That he had found her bedridden and sickly in a run-down isolation ward where patients were sent to die more than to be cured. Apparently, she had reminded him of a sister he’d once lost and he acted on an inner impulse to save an innocent. The staff had told him that she had admitted herself under what they proved to be an alias, so there was no way to notify family or even prove she existed.

She was a ghost. Alone in the world. And dying.

So, he gave her new life. Eternal life.

When she’d awakened from the transition, the ripe young vampire found herself unable to remember, well... anything. It was as if the transformation erased everything human about her, wiped her slate clean as she re-entered the world as someone else. Something else. Cassius said that vampirism isn’t a perfected process. There are some ailments that the immortal blood which now ran through her veins can’t heal. By the time he’d found her, her mind had already been overcome with the sickness that was moments away from snuffing her out completely. To drag her back from the depths of near-death, she had to lose some parts of herself along the way. There were some upsides, though. She clung to Cassius like a newborn, and he grew to coddle her as if she were his own. Being inducted into the Lallement family allowed her to see a world that was previously unattainable as a mortal having had come from the dregs of England. He’d brought her to New York at the turn of the century, and it was a sight to behold as she realized…this was HOME.

As the decades passed, the new Lallement glided through life. The adjustment to vampirism wasn’t as hard as it probably was for others. Sure, she had her hiccups, but it was almost as if the lack of memories helped. There was no other way of living for her to remember or to acclimate from. In some ways, there was no true loss. Her new family filled the voids ( even helped her pick out a new name ‘GENEVIEVE” ) showered her with endless love ─ and the bloodlust helped pick up the slack. For a while. As an immortal, it is easy to become distracted by the power, privilege, and play that is now bestowed upon you. But eventually, the semblance of loneliness and eternity creep in. For Evie, it was plaguing thoughts of the unknown that haunted her. Did she have a family when Cas took her away? Did they look for her? Mourn her? Soon all she could think of was the possibility that they somehow survived the plague and managed to continue on. This led her to try to trace their footsteps back to the town Cassius found her in to look for anything, any semblance of a clue that pointed to her previous human existence. Only for Evie to be faced with the harsh reality that the one hospital in town, the very town she’d believed herself to have been raised in, had burned down not long after they’d fled. Along with the patient records. Any possibility of tracing back her roots had been destroyed in a reckless accident and something in Evie c r a c k ed. Never again to be fully healed.

But if anything, she’s a survivor. Evie turned her sadness into something productive, going on to study criminology and criminal justice in the ’70s and '80s, along with a myriad of other majors she probably got too distracted to finish. Evie figured, if she couldn’t figure out the mystery of her own life, then the least she could do is help others figure out the mysteries in theirs. Becoming a private investigator sort of just happened, but it soon became her life’s joy. Piecing things together, going on recon missions, and doling out the truth was something that Evie not only excelled at but truly found fulfilling. At least ─ during the day. When the sun goes down, she resorts back to her party-girl ways, needing to find some sort of entertainment as a method to keep herself distracted. Because, you see, the only thing Evie hates most in the world is being by her lonesome. It leaves time for that inner sadness and loss to come creeping back in, to remind her that there’s nothing in the world to truly call her own. That the Lallement name is a placeholder for the truth. And that’s the one truth she cannot face.

So, she parties, boozes, pushes the limit because she has none, and there is always a need for M O R E. Because boredom is never on the menu. And when the town car arrives eventually to take her back to Manhattan, merely a few hours before she must be up for work, Evie revels in the few minutes of silence and thinks ─

‘Another day down. Only an eternity to go.’

* / PERSONALITY: Evie is, more than anything, fun. She likes to have a good time and to look good while doing it. Sure, her deviousness occasionally gets her into more trouble than intended, and in some ways, her childlike need to be paid attention to can be exhausting to people, but she is not all play. Evie truly enjoys being an investigator and will isolate herself for days, weeks even, if that means cracking a case. Her job and lifestyle have been carefully cultivated to always keep her busy so the facade can stick. No one knows about her growing concerns with the idea of unlimited time or the feeling of wanting a connection with someone -- anyone. Evie doesn't really give into supernatural politics or bias, and her ruthless side only comes out when hangry or when you threaten someone she loves. Then it's all-out chaos.

* / FUN FACTS:

She's gone to college several times and has studied many things but only holds a degree in Criminology and Interior Design

Currently paying a witch to figure out a way for vampires to get tattoos

Obsessed with all things horror and true crime

Officially identified as a lesbian in the late '60s

Has two poodles named Khaleesi and Drogon

Manhattan PD knows her by name

* / WANTED CONNECTIONS:

SCOOBY GANG/HARDY BOYS/7 RINGS - These are her people, her confidantes, her ride or dies. Can be supernatural or human, mortal or immortal. Whether they met decades ago or the night before, tipsy, in the Cosmopolitan bathrooms, they instantly clicked and have been loyal to each other ever since.

ROOMMATE(S) - Evie lives in one of the many ritzy buildings Manhattan has to offer. While having an entire floor to yourself has its benefits, it can feel quite isolating. So, the vampire opened up her doors to allow in some roommates -- free of charge!

ASSISTANT - As a private investigator, sometimes certain cases can become quite tedious. While her work rarely ventures away from mild cases Cassius needs help with, Evie does also take cases from anyone who needs help. Keeping everything organized, going with her on recon, and even offering their own input and theories is what they provide for her.

PLAYTHING - Now Evie isn't evil, she doesn't play with people's emotions ( at least not intentionally ) but she does indulge in the power and influence that comes with vampirism. Not only would this person be someone to go to for the occasional midnight snack ( where they're the snack sowz ), Evie would also indulge in their life. Making sure they're well taken care of, listening to the things they're going through, and being there for them whenever they need her.

FOES/ENEMIES - When you live forever you might make an enemy or three. Evie has ruffled a few feathers over the past century, that's for sure, and she has no problem continually poking the bear if she finds herself bored enough to do so.

also: literally anything else pls plot with me i'll send you kit kats and a coupon for a free taco.

[docholligay]

An Overwatch Christmas Carol: Stave I-- Morrison’s Ghost

All thanks for the sponsorship to @keyofjetwolf. 4,500 words 

Jack Morrison was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. HIs death was registered in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and his small pittance of a savings account and a life given over to a quick signature. Jack Morrison was as dead as a door-nail. 

Wilhelm Reinhardt was dead, to begin with. Died that same grey and cloudy day in a pile of rubble. His coffin, sent to the Lindholm family plot in Sweden, with nary a stir from the occupant, and buried there, a name carved in stone, dead as the man below it. 

Lena Oxton was dead, to begin with, though her grave had not yet even sunk into the ground, dirt still piled high over the top of it, but please know that it was no less sure, that she was dead. Angela Zeigler had pronounced her herself, and while a bit harried, these last months, she was never one to miss a heartbeat. 

No, all of them were dead, when our story begins. 

Did Ana know they were dead? Of course she did! Ana was Jack’s partner and roommate and perhaps sole great friend in this earth, and Reinhardt was her sometimes companion and always admirer, and the silence of Tracer ever missing from a room was impossible to ignore. She saw their pictures hung in the Overwatch headquarters, having given their lives in the pursuit of making the world they occupied a better one. 

Besides all that, she was no great fool in matters of the mind, however you might find her in matters of the heart, once I allow the tale to truly begin. 

And so, you might say, why all the preamble? Why not let the story speak for itself? Well, I tell you this, because if you do not remember that our assembled parties have all taken their last breath long before this day, nothing wonderful can come of the story laid before you here. 

But enough. This is a story you know, and a story you do not know, and like all stories known and unknown it begins with a hero, or perhaps a villain, or, in the best stories of all, simply a main character, with affiliation to good and evil fleeting and half-decided. 

So brings us to Ana Amari. 

There are people, in this world, immediately assured of their own correctness, and Ana was one of them. This is not to say that she thought of herself as having done everything in the most perfect way possible, or that there had never been something that might have gone differently, given different choices, but simply that she had nothing on this earth for which to apologize. Ana was a child of revolution and struggle, and it was well known that all people did what they had to do, and she had always and ever done that. 

Ana was a genius in some respects, as most of us are, and a particular point of her genius was her ability to justify everything she had ever done as being rooted in a good idea, an impossible choice only she was willing to make, and her skill in deciding others were simply looking for someone to blame.She had changed, she reasoned, in the way many people who fail to see the original problem do. The balance of power no longer held her, and her child was grown, and these changed circumstances allowed her to believe that it was a changed self. 

Ana moved through her life as if she were on trial, every conversation twisted into something that made her into a criminal. She would not be forced to speak against her own effort, and so she antagonized and snapped and refused to answer. They would not force her to admit guilt, to imprison herself. 

Only the weak did such things. 

It was a terribly chill December day, and the grey pall of a London winter cast out of the city as she moved to the cafe on her side of the Thames. She watched London always--she had never learned quite how to not pay attention to every given moment and movement--looking at the people who passed by, their clothing and manner changing as she moved through the city. 

The city was dressed up for Christmas, tinsel in windows, softly glowing lights strung up inexpertly, banners of evergreen strung over the streets as the inhabitants of the areas got richer. Happy Christmases were exchanged along the street between shopkeepers and customers, acting as if they knew or cared for each other at all. It was not a time of year Ana especially relished, not so much for the fact that she had never celebrated it herself, though she did not and would not, but for the fact that it reminded her even more keenly of a universally held truth. 

They were fragile. Londoners were mostly spoiled children who had no idea of what a harsh life might look like. The Omnics had come, those years ago, but they had not needed to rebuild a society out of the flames of the old one. They did not know what it was to have to be strong. To be firm. They were the sorts of people who let a date on a calendar upend their entire lives, pretending at all these childlike ideas. Take away some ridiculous pudding, and the whole of society might collapse. 

A mother crouched down by her daughter on the sidewalk, holding her small hand and telling her that it was was very disappointing when we couldn’t get a little cake to take home, she understood. 

Ana chuffed and shook her head as she walked by, her mental point proven. This was how children were prepared for the world to listen, to give them what they wanted. To hide from them the fact that sacrifice was demanded of people who wanted any good to come of it. It was no question that the sorts of people who attempted to empathize with a four year old’s want of pastry couldn’t understand Ana. 

In some ways, she found comfort in this. If people accustomed to the plush robes of a gentle life could not understand her, it was merely that they did not understand the sort of things that needed to be done. She almost could not fault them, though she certainly found occasion to do so anyhow. Sheep do not understand the sheepdog.  People like her were made to protect the world for people who did not have the strength to be like her, to do difficult things.

The cafe was a simple affair with a black awning, and in summers, Ana imagined there must be plenty of seating on the sidewalk in summer, but now there were only a few small tables crowded into the place, covered in a red gingham plastic. Black and white photography covered the walls, every square inch devoted to a memory that was certainly somewhat different from the lived experience of it. It smelled of bacon and beans and eggs, and it didn’t make much sense for Ana to be there, but the coffee was some of the most competent she’d found, the prices were right, and the English insistence on beans at breakfast was one of the few sensible things about them, this place preparing them with a bit of cheddar, if lacking much else by way of seasoning. They had a ready selection of newspapers, it was at nearly the halfway point between her apartment and her work, and she was accustomed to her little spot in the corner. 

Today, there was somebody in it. Not a tourist, but perhaps worse. A blonde woman with a round, almost dollish face, and bright blue eyes, a cozy pink sweater wrapping her like a blanket. 

Ana found sentimentality a crime, regret a worse one, and found weakness in softness. For these reasons, Ana Amari had never particularly bonded with Mercy, who had encompassed all of these things from the first time Ana had met her. She was a brilliant doctor, and few people could reasonably say otherwise. Her work was integral to the development of several new weapons. She was a private physician to Overwatch’s most complex cases. She was all of this, and Ana could admit it, but she was also the sort of person who cried in her office at times, who questioned the good of what they were doing because the means made her uncomfortable, the sort of person who let her heart overtake. Mercy was as bad as Moira, in her own way, Tracer had once struck her for saying, even if it was true. 

All of this might have been complicated enough, but then, while Ana was temporarily dead, Mercy had gone and married her daughter. 

Mercy sat looking at Ana with a small smile on her face, hands folded in her lap and what seemed to be salmon on toast in front of her. Across the table, there was a steaming cup of coffee and a plate of beans with cheese on toast. 

“I asked them what it was you were ordering every day.” Mercy nodded. “They know you very well.” 

Ana closed her eye and sighed. Mercy never knew when to leave anything alone. Which might have been fine, if she had ever bent Pharah’s ear to understanding what Ana had done was all to the good. But she seemed to constantly be needling Ana to apologize, to reach out to Pharah. When was it going to be Pharah’s responsibility to admit that she was wrong? The she had never tried to understand her mother? 

“Do I look like I need you to buy me breakfast?” She stood, looking down at Mercy, who shook her head. 

“Ana, please. Sit?” 

“I don’t know what possibly we could share here.” But she sighed and sat down anyway. At least there was breakfast, and the order was right. “But go on.” 

Mercy nodded hopefully. “The baby is doing well, the doctor tells me,” she gave a small giggle, looking off away from Ana, “Though, I am not needing too much input, I remember my rotation and have been studying up. A new mother’s anxiety, it must be, you know how that feels.” 

Ana took a drink of her coffee. “I was running an operation to my eighth month. But then,” she shrugged, “ I was so much younger. Less to worry about.” 

She looked back to Ana a moment, and then looked down at her salmon toast. “Yes. We have....we want this very badly, so I am, more nervous.” 

Ana said nothing, simply began to eat her beans and sip at her coffee.

“Ana,” Mercy straightened her back, “I was thinking. Wondering. If you’d like to come for dinner, on Christmas.” 

Ana looked over at her with a long, flat stare. 

“Not to celebrate! But, we always, everything is closed, and, Fareeha is making a wonderful dinner, we watch movies, you would be alone, and with it almost being Fareeha’s birthday,” She leaned forward, “And the new year, there are so many changes that will be coming. I thought that, maybe, since there are so many new things--.”

Ana set down her fork with a high clink, and chuckled. “Now we get to it. What do you want?” 

“Nothing. For me. Ana, you can snap at me, and be--be dismissive of me, all you are wanting for the rest of your life, that was before Fareeha, even, but I love her--” 

“You have never understood things between me and Fareeha. You can’t.” 

“All you would need to be doing is apologizing. Things have been,” Mercy gave a little sigh, “Fareeha, I think, would forgive you, if you tried. With the baby, and with the sadness of Lena--” 

Ana chuckled. “Just because you will hold my grandchild hostage doesn’t mean I’ll apologize, Angela,” she shook her head, “I did what I had to do. There is absolutely nothing to forgive. Just because Fareeha refuses to understand, does not, even for a minute, mean I will bend my knee to--” 

Mercy stood up, hands balled at her sides. “Then--then don’t! I--” she lost the words a moment, tears streaming down her face, and she wiped at them, buying her face in her hands, “I was wanting to help you, is all of it! I want to help her! I want,” She let out a sob,  and continued, very softly, “My parents are dead, Ana. For our child, I was wanting…” She shook her head and wiped her eyes. “No. I will go, now. I won’t try again. You can...win, if you are thinking this is winning.” 

She stood up and smoothed the front of her skirt, puling the coat over her shoulders, tears still streaming down her face. Mercy was like this, Ana thought. She was soft, in all the ways Ana was happy she wasn’t, and she good too emotional about things, things that didn’t even really concern her. What she and Pharah had as problems, was her and Pharah’s business. 

As she moved to leave the table, dropping a few pound coins next to her coffee, she turned back, stopped, and then took one look back. 

“You, are a terrible person,” she jutted out her chin, feigning strength, “Fareeha deserved much better than you. But,” she took a deep breath, “I still hope she forgives you, someday. Someday, I hope you will deserve it.” 

Ana sat back in her chair, and picked up a newspaper. 

Ridiculous.

____________

Ana lived alone, now, in that tiny and dark apartment in Brixton with the two small bedrooms barely enough to be called such. It had never occurred to her to live anywhere else. The hallways were dark and dank in the best of times, but the place was cheap, and she didn’t need any kind of frills to entertain all the guests she didn’t have. 

There was a chill coming up the stairs, and Ana attributed it to the cool of the December air, wet and icy on her face, and the poor maintenance of the building. It hardly mattered. The hallway was dim and still, a lightbulb at the end of it flickering out the last of its life in some desperate Morse code Ana could not decipher. She turned to unlock the door, when her sniper’s eye caught the movement, just a little. 

She turned toward the flicker and shadow. Silence. Nothing. Of course nothing, this hallway was always quiet as the grave, small people in their small lives coming and going like mice nibbling for crumbs. Another flicker, and he was there. 

The dark shadow at the end of the hall, strong and bricked and dead for years. Darkness again.

Ana dropped her keys in the moment, and bent down to pick them up. Had she eaten today? Clearly she was seeing things, if she needed to--

She raised her head, and he was there, grey and dead and big as life, standing next to her. She did not even have the time to gasp before his mouth through open and emitted a yell of pain and agony and deep loneliness, one that cut into her spine and made her shiver. She jumped back to ready herself to fight, but another flicker and it was gone. Nothing there, just the dingy carpet that always had been. 

She took a slow breath. Another. 

“Ridiculous.” She opened the door and went into her apartment. 

It was spartan, only a few small things giving any identity to the people who had lived there at all. Ana had made few changes since Jack’s death, other than emptying out his bedroom not because she needed it so much as she wanted the memory gone. There were two pictures on the mantle. A small television. Two tea cups in the small area that passed for a kitchen. 

She was unnerved, no matter how much of a hallucination the incident in the hallway had been, and her training kicked in. She swept the place quietly, examining every space, every nook every corner for signs of life. There was nothing, nothing at all but the long shadows the light cast across the floor. 

Her shoulders relaxed. Of course there was nothing. She needed to eat something, was all, she was no longer young and could not rely upon her body in the same way she had. There was a carton of soup in the refrigerator, and she dumped it into a pot unceremoniously, stirring it until it boiled and she put it into a deep, wide mug that served as a bowl nowadays.

She turned off the unpleasant florescent overhead light, and flipped on her small lamp next to the couch, the one small bit of soft warmth in the place, something that had been her mother’s from a lifetime ago. There was a book on the table, though she likely couldn’t have told you what it was, simply something to wile away the hour while she ate her soup. 

Her only minor concession was the knife set upon the coffee table.

The night had been dark, but somehow grew darker, the shadows drawing into the room, as if night itself was being sucked into that tiny apartment that served as fortress for Ana’s personal war. Ana tried not to notice it, at first. It was silly. She was unnerved by the hallucination in the hallway, and part of that had probably been thinking about the past. It was quite natural to think of the past, when someone stalked you to your cafe and tried to wield it as a weapon. 

Then someone knocked at the door. 

She looked down at the knife, and went to grab it, and then Jack’s bedroom door started knocking too, and then her bedroom door, and the knocking continued, louder and louder and louder, echoing around her as the darkness closed into the room. 

Ana opened her mouth to yell, but nothing came out. 

It stopped. As suddenly as it had started, it stopped. 

Ana considered herself to be grounded and logical, as a person. She wasn’t given to flights of fancy, she didn’t see the world as she wished it were, and she knew what to believe with her own eye and her own sense of instinct. She had never doubted her senses, before. She was a creature that fully inhabited them, that required them to survive. The day she could no longer assess a situation would be the day she died. 

It nearly had been, years ago. 

But now a prickling doubt hung over her head, that she might be losing touch with those same protective senses, even in the silent darkness of her small apartment. Losing her edge. She had always assumed death would come first. It had for the rest of them. 

But there was no angel of death in the corners of this room, only the silence being broken by the sound of heavy, slow footsteps, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. The floor creaked beneath the thing she could not see, and a low groan of pain and deep sorrow came echoed off the walls. 

Ana leapt to her feet, grabbing the knife off the table and exposing the blade. 

“You picked the wrong flat for this.” She growled. “I’ve had enough for today.” 

But the room was so small, Ana could not figure where the creeping, moaning, creaking came from. She looked behind the couch, only to find nothing. Behind her bedroom door, only shadows. Jack’s room had been closed since London, and it was windowless besides. But still the footsteps, and still the creaking, and still the sense of being watched. 

A face. 

Ana jumped into action, slashing at it quickly, sticking the blade where between the ribs would be, and coming up with only shadow and smoke in her hands. The face became a body, and the body took shape, even in the dull lamplight, as real as it was spectral, shimmering in the line between life and death. 

“Who are you?!” she barked, refusing fear. 

The ghost took full form now, a familiar shape against the darkness. “When I was alive, I was your partner. I was your best friend. I was your roommate, Ana. You know me.” 

The ghost glowered and Ana cocked her head slightly. It occurred to her, briefly, that she had also once been dead, but that was a different matter entirely. It couldn’t be. Jack had died in the Battle for London, she had selected how to deal with his body herself, she had seen him taken away and she had gone home to that same empty apartment that they had shared. She knew Jack. She had known Jack for more than 30 years. Jack was dead. These things she knew. 

“Ridiculous.” she spat.  “Impossible.”

And yet, it had to be. She moved closer to him as he looked at her, shaking his head in frustration and irritation at another one of Ana’s petty arguments. He did not wear his visor now, the shattered eyes he had only let her see fully visible in the shimmer of his presence. There were chains coming from him, dragging across his back and binding him, some attached to rocks, some attached to nails, all of them heavy, and hard, and he moved slowly even as he did not stop. 

“Jack? Jack.” Even his name sounded strange in her mouth. 

She nearly reached out to touch him, and then stopped herself. “No. No,” she waved him off, “This isn’t real.” 

There were ideas that were worse than losing your edge. 

He paced around the living room slowly. “Yeah, because you’ve always been a hallucinator. Why would this be fake? You don’t drink. You don’t do drugs.” 

“I buy sushi from Tesco. There’s the reason all itself.” Ana stopped at the side table, and sipped at her tea. “I have some sort of brain tapeworm from a fish. That is all, and I will go to bed, and, that will be all of it.” 

“Ana.” He said in that tone, that tone that was too close to real, that too carefully mimicked his annoyance and affection, “Come on now.” 

Ana sat down at the edge of the couch and looked over the chair near her. “Can you sit?” 

He shrugged. “Yeah, yeah, I can sit.” 

Jack, for lack of another thing to call him, did so, setting himself in the chair he had occupied so many times in life. Ana herself was still unsure that she believed any of it. 

“Chains? How dramatic.” She sipped at her tea, determined to be unruffled, even as a chill hit across her back. 

“I made these chains, and I’m stuck with them. I made them every single time I set myself apart, every time I used my work as an excuse to build a wall,” he indicated to the rock near his foot, “I build this myself, link by link, with my own excuses and my own behavior.” 

Ana leaned back. “Comfortable.”

“Don’t joke, Ana. You should see the chain you’re wearing.” He shook his head. “It’s too late for me, but it doesn’t have to be for you.” 

Ana sat a moment, looking into her tea, considering all that she had seen, considering the things in her life that she knew were impossible and yet were somehow, still possible. This could be so many things. It could be the beginnings of some mental illness. It could be a hallucination borne out of stress or loneliness. It could be the aforementioned Tesco. But it could also be real, and if it were real, than the world at larger had it all wrong about them. 

“You did what you had to do. To save the world. We both did.” She waved a hand and scoffed. “We gave up so much for it, and then they hated us for it. We never got any reprieve.” She leaned toward him, pointing, “We made the sacrifice.” 

Jack gave a weak chuckle. “Did we? Or was it just always easier to fight?” He smiled softly. “We could have had families. We could have...built connections. The crisis ended, but we never stopped being there. We forgot how to be people, me, and you, and Gabe.” 

“I--”

“You were the most important person I had.” Jack rose to his feet. “I’m here to help you. I don’t want this to happen to you.” 

“And how, exactly,” she raised an eyebrow, “Are you going to help me, with all of my supposed problems?” 

“There will be three spirits: The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present--”

She stood up, laughing. “Why Christmas? I don’t even celebrate Christmas. I’ve never celebrated Christmas. I--” 

“It’s for narrative structure, Ana. Call them the ghosts of Last Tuesday Past, I don’t--” 

She crossed her arms. “I don’t know why we need to--” 

He shook his head again, “You will be visited by three spirits, one tonight, at midnight--” 

“I don’t have time for this, have them all come at once, so I can go back to--”

“ANA!” He howled, and raged toward her and the force of it knocked her into the wall, those empty eyes burning, burning like coals in the darkness of his own death, “I am trying to help you! Do you want to die alone? Do you want to be completely separated from every human being? You can live a long time Ana, and start to realize it’s a hell, and all you’ll do is wait, and stare, at visitors that are never coming, and birthdays you’ll never celebrate, and you’ll know,” He pointed his finger in you’re face, “You’ll know! That you put yourself there.” 

“Jack…”

He sighed heavily and plopped into the chair, his hand at his temples. ‘While I was alive, I couldn’t help you, or save you. You were so damn--we--were so damn determined to put walls around ourselves, thick ones, like we were fortresses, and keep everyone else out. And we did a good fucking job, didn’t we? You and me, side by side, shooting down anyone who tried to come over.” He removed his hand but did not look at her, “When I died, who truly mourned me? You?” he chuckled, “Maybe not even that.” 

“I did.” 

She hated herself for saying it, at first, and knowing that it was true, and then there was a second, smaller hate there, one she could not place. 

“Okay. If you say so.” He looked out the window. ‘This isn’t a discussion. You’re going to be visited, and for God’s sake Ana, please just listen. I could never get you to listen. I...that’s all the time I have. Listen.” 

He stood up and stepped toward the window as if not under his own power, drifting more than walking toward the dark London night. Ana stumbled to her feet, confused and angry and afraid, calling after him. 

“Jack? Jack, why can’t you just--Jack!” 

He faded through the window, though Ana knew it to be double tight, and she was left alone in the dark, with but one word, surrounding her and echoing off the walls. 

“Listen.”

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “Supernal Threat.”

Sorry it took me so long to write this this morning, but I hope you all enjoy it anyway :) I wanted to do a little worldbuilding and work on the development of my universe. 

The hub: it sat halfway between Andromeda and the Milky way, a massive station built around a structural ring. Each Ring housed a section of the station, which had been specifically built for the needs of one alien species over another. Each of these sections had attached housing food, docking bays, and contact locations with important tradesmen all held under strict atmospheric conditions. The only place where the sections were connected to join freely was at the center ring, and the council chamber: a large ball suspended at the center of the ring by way of specialized tunnels branching form each section, and leading into a massive meeting chamber.

Construction on the hub had begun almost as soon as the humans had joined the GA some five to six years earlier. While Rundi were the oldest space faring species, their planet was hardly the ideal location for interspecies meetings.

Then again, no planet was exactly perfect, that logic having led to the construction of the station, which was built to house a perfect environment for each and every visiting species.

Just outside the perimeter of the Hub, a massive set of glowing rings rotated slowly in place, on occasion the ring would glow bright white blue, and a ship would suddenly appear inside its outermost ring, only to come curving off into space and down to where it would dock at the hub.

This was another one of the great inventions being constructed around the galaxy: a stationary warp ring, which could be used in place of an on-ship warp drive. The only downside was that ships who used it could only move in preset patterns around known locations while ships with an onboard warp core could explore at their leisure.

However this was hardly the concern of small civilian transports or large shipping freighters, who generally tended to move only between known planetary locations. Either way, the sudden implementation of the warp rings was changing the galaxy rapidly, and now everything seemed closer than ever.

It was almost Ironic that this was all thanks to the Kree/burg collusion and their attempt to get rid of Commander, now admiral vir, by shooting him into an unknown warp tunnel which they had generated using a ring of their own ship probes. Ever since scientists had been reverse engineering the technology until this moment, when warp rings were first being  implemented at all the major hubs.

From a window, on the far side of the ring, a young military intelligence analyst was standing nervously before a viewing window staring out at the rotating warp ring and watching quietly as small ships emerged from it’s rings like polen. She held a sheaf of documents in one hand, and all around her important government and military officials were filtering into the tunnel behind her and up to the council chambers.

Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, and her stomach hurt as her intestines twisted themselves into complicated and painful knotts.

She was a simple threat analyst with the newly burgeoning Department of Intergalactic Security (DIS) and she had not expected to be brought in front of the Galactic Assembly today to speak on her work. Yes, she was head of the department’s threat analysis team, but she hardly expected herself to be important enough to be called to do what she was doing.

She almost wondered if her boss had called her into speak to cover her own ass if something were to go wrong and the report wasn’t satisfactory.

She hardly noticed the footsteps behind her or the shadow which had fallen over her face, so engrossed was she in her thoughts and nerves. It wasn’t until a few minutes later when she turned her head and caught sight out of the corner of her eye.

She froze, almost dropping her papers into a heap on the floor, but managing to catch them last minute. A man stood next to her the glowing white blue of the warp ring lighting up the front of his face and sending light dancing down his cheekbones and through his messy blond hair. 

She would have known his face anywhere, from the front of UNSC recruitment posters, the inside of history textbooks, magazines, newspapers, movie posters, and… in one case, a deck of playing cards where he had been the Jack.

Behind him a group of officers was huddled in a tight circle, broken only by his absence as it seemed he had left the conversation to gaze out at space as she was doing.

And unfortunately, he noticed her scrutiny.

She tried to look away, but it was hardly discrete and made it look like she had some sort of awkward neck spasm.

She blushed wishing she could hide behind a curtain of her hair, but the military bun she wore was unforgiving.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and caught him looking at her, her blush grew brighter.

“You know the last time I saw one of those, I was being launched halfway across the universe in a crumbling space ship.”

His voice was pleasantly smooth and calm but friendly as if he was just about to break into peels of laughter. When she turned her head to look at him still feeling awkward, the expression he gave her was one of polite amusement.

“S-sorry for staring sir-”

He smiled, “I can hardly blame you. I am nothing if not amazingly interesting.” The way he said it made it pretty clear he was only joking, and she broke out into a small smile of her own.

Her hands tightened around her sheaf of papers her mind brought back to an image she had stashed in her notes. He knew pretty damn well that that was true and not just a joke, “I think we both know you’re not entirely joking…. If you don’t mind me saying, sir.”

He shrugged, “Sometimes I forget that my life tends to be a little more interesting than most people’s.” he held out a hand, “Adam Vir, but I guessed you already knew that.” She took his hand, finding that his grip was strong and firm, but not too strong as to crush her hand.

“Lydia Deckler, sir.” He had turned his head to face her now, and she was a little more than surprised to find that he did, in fact, wear an eyepatch as all the rumors suggested. Some people said it was more of an aesthetic choice, while others said it had something to do with his -- supposed mechanical eye-- which tended to overwhelm the user after prolonged use, and of course there were the cynics who considered his use of an eyepatch the cry of attention from a man with so plungingly low self esteem he would do anything to make himself more interesting.

He didn’t seem like the latter, but she couldn’t be sure.

She wanted to ask but thought it might be rude.

The silence had gone on to long, and as she looked into his face, his one remaining eye, she felt a strange sensation, as if he already knew what she was thinking. His pupil seemed to open up, reflecting back at her the entire universe behind the station boundaries. She almost felt as if she would fall in, teetering on her heels.

There was a sudden thud against the window, and she turned and screamed.

Sheaves of paper dropped from her hands and went spilling out over the floor as the massive black eyes leered at her from the window before a curtain of billowing white ribbon.

The entier room had gone silent.

At the window the strange alien face broke into something approximating a grin.

“Conn!”

It was the Admiral’s voice, and she turned wide eyed at him, heart pounding as he marched up to the window.”

“Conn what the fuck was that!”

The face leered at him from outside, and now that her heart rate was going down, she recognized it as a starborn. She blinked in surprise, she had only ever seen pictures of them. Behind them, the entire room had turned to stare at them, and she blushed hard scrambling on all fours to pick up her papers.

Admiral Vir had gone quiet, and while he didn’t talk, he gesticulated wildly with his hands as the starborn pouted and occasionally made rude gestures at him in response.

Incredible.

She knew starborn communicated telepathically, but as far as she knew Admiral vir was the only person who could communicate back to them. Eventually the starborn made one final rude gesture and floated away from the station and down out of sight.

Admiral vir turned from the window grimacing, and bent to help her with her papers, “I am so sorry about that, he’s a bit of a problem child.” He glanced up at her and, looking sheepish he said, “And all three are probably correct.”

She looked up at him frowning with confusion, “Sorry, what?”

“All three, of their theories about why I wear an eyepatch.”

It took her a moment to register what he was talking about, and when he did her eyes widened, “Can you read minds!”

He frowned, “No, but Conn can.” he held up a hand, “Don’t worry, he didn’t mention anything else to me other than the eyepatch thing, and yes I like wearing it because I think it makes me look cool, I wear it because sometimes the mechanical eye becomes too much, and there is probably a modicum of truth about the self esteem thing, though I like to think i've mostly worked that one out.” he stood and handed her back her papers, “I hope that answers your question.”

She blushed again, and hated herself for it, “Sorry sir.”

“I’m sorry for intruding on your thoughts.”

“Amidral!” The two of them turned at the voice, and she shrunk back as she recognized Admiral Kelly,a and the fleet Commander as they stepped up, “Meeting starts in five minutes, we should be going.” 

He inclined his head and turned to her with a nod before disappearing up the tunnel with them.

She found herself suddenly very glad that the starborn hadn’t showed up when she was thinking about the movie poster hanging on her wall.

With that thought now firmly and embarrassingly fixed in her head, she hurried forward across the floor and up the tunnel into the meeting chamber, which was mostly dark, but held large pod-like seats to contain each of the delegations. Some of the seats were covered by a protected, and enclosed glass bubble while the rest of the delegations allowed the bubbles to be open to the air.

The room was alive with the chatter of a hundred or more alien delegates speaking in alien tongues.

She saw Drev, and Vrul and Rundi and Celzex: those of whom were sitting WITH the human delegation mostly clustered around Admiral Vir as he spoke with them.

Thanks to Admiral Vir, threat analytics had shown that the Celzex: despite their planetary destruction capabilities, were of the least threat to the human civilizations due to their fierce loyalty to the friendship he had worked so hard to build with them.

Those same threat analytics showed that their weakest ally within the GA was actually the Bran…. For similar but opposite reasons.

The man had really only become good at alien diplomacy within the last three years, and their first encounter hadn’t exactly gone according to plan.

She stepped across the polished black floor of the large, dark room, and took a nervous seat below the Rundi section , where the other speakers were sitting. If they were nervous, they didn’t show it, most of them sitting straight backed and blank faced, while the alien speakers were hard to suss out when it came to their own facial expressions.

One of the speakers, a short blue Drev wearing pearly white armor, looked almost bored as she spun a spear idly around in one hand.

The Drev saint, she hadn’t expected to see her at the meeting, though she supposed she should have considered she was also the weapons specialist on Admiral Vir’s ship. Her promotion to sainthood had caused a real stur in the galactic community as it sent huge ripples through Drev cultural traditions, which in turn, sparked a change in their foreign policy.

There was also the question of how hierarchy was supposed to work on the Admiral’s ship as he was technically a clan Sentinel but saints were generally positioned above Sentinels in clan hierarchy. Some worried the Drev would use this as a way to take over command of the human run UNSC Omen, though that didn’t seem to have happened.

She was probably here to speak today about how Drev and interspecies relations would reflect the new doctrine.

She had a copy in her sheaf of papers.

As a threat analyst, it was her job to determine what changes in the galaxy were good for humans and which ones were bad. She imagined that this would be good for humanity and the other GA members as a whole as the new doctrine was a little more lax on the Drev themselves.

She sat in her seat nervously as the meeting began with the Rundi chairwoman greeting them all and welcoming them to the meeting. A few words were said about the new meeting hall, and a couple of new faces were introduced to the assembly. Some general business was conducted, and then it was time for the speakers.

There were a few trade and economic reports from the Tesraki, and a very long winded speech from some foreign policy maker on space waste disposal off of ship, which had half of the gallery asleep in the first five minutes, a gallery that picked up as soon as the Drev saint stepped onto the floor, and gave a short but impassioned speech about the changes she expected to make on behalf of drev relations everywhere.

It was then her turn, and she felt her knees shaking slightly as she got to her feet and made it to the front of the room.

“Assembly members please welcome the human Director of threat analysis within the department of intergalactic security of the UNSC.”

She cleared her throat awkwardly, setting her pages down  on the small presentation table as she began.

“Ladies, Gentlemen and esteemed others of the Galactic Assembly, I have been asked today to compile and present our gathered intelligence on what my departments agree to be the greatest threats facing the interests of the GA at this time.” She began working on economic threats, social threats, and a couple of mentions of small militia groups and anarchists popping up around GA territory. They were just passing comments as it seemed there was more infighting going on than there was cooperation between the groups.

She discussed a few general topics about policies she thought needed more shoring up, before getting to one of her latest points.

“In the past months we have been compiling and analysing all the information Admiral Vir brought home with him in regards to the alien civilization nicknamed the Omnidroid. As of yet we have only determined that their civilization contains multiple sentient alien life forms capable of space travel, and have formed some sort of economy not dissimilar to our own.  With Explorations of the technology described by Admiral vir, we have no reason to believe that they have power output or technological capabilities higher than our own. We still have no idea where their location is, and find it likely that they are at some distance from us. Still we known they have weapons capabilities, and are likely to communicate on levels, as of yet, unknown to us. However without further analysis, our work has been sparse, and based only on conjecture.” 

The room shifted a little as she supplied sketched images of the aliens based on the descriptions the Admiral was able to give. Her heart had slowed a little in this time, but began to speed up again as she came to the real point of her presentation.

“But I have really been asked here today to give you all a threat assessment about what my department has labeled as Supernal Threats” there was a shift in the crowd, “These threats are categorized as being of unknown origin or power output. In all cases they are sentient, and in most cases their motivations are completely unknown. We have ranked these threats on a sliding scale of power to hostility.” She motioned to the board, “Our first Supernal threat comes in the form of the starborn hive queens.” She flipped through a few images, “These images were captured by footage taken from Admiral Vir’s space suit over a year and a half ago.” 

There was a muttering around the room as the image showed a large white, humanoid figure towering high into the overhead  of the camera.

“Based on mathematical analysis of these images, we are willing to base the size of the creature  at almost ten stories tall, a size only possible by way of little to no gravitational input. She is seen as having high hostility but relatively low power. This does not by any means mean she is not dangerous In fact she is capable of, somehow, telepathically crushing the life out of species she deems as “silent” or those species who are able to keep secrets. There is only one starborn known not to be hostile, and he has no further information to give. It is advised that she is approached with extreme caution.”

She flipped through a few more pictures of the massive celestial shape before flicking on to another image.

This one had no scale for reference and showed a massive curling shape glowing white blue against the blackness of space, “Our second Supernal Threat is the Leviathan, his and her power levels are relatively unknown  though they are capable of creating self contained warp tunnels. For a living creature to generate the kind of power it would take to fold the universe is…. unfathomable . We have no idea what other kind of powers this creature has, but we have judged the power output of this creature to be high while their hostility level is marked as relatively low. According to his own report, Admiral Vir says that the creature saved him from Omnidroid airspace and warped them both back to the Burg homeworld on the tail end of the war. Again the ability to warp itself and another object with it would require vast amounts of energy though, as of now, we have no real idea where it is coming from. Based on  the pictures we have seen, it is difficult to determine the dimensions of the creature, though experts estimate the leviathan to be nearly a mile long from nose to tail and wingtip to wingtip, while his mate is nearly one twentieth of that size.”

She took another deep breath and glanced quickly up att the human delegation box where Admiral Vir was sitting, “The last, and most recent threat is shrouded in the greatest unknowns. The UNSC has opened these classified documents to the rest of the GA as a gesture of good will, and concern for what this may mean. This last threat is a creature known only as Deus and has been mentioned slowly come into mention on multiple occasions by multiple sources. Generally his name is the only thing that is mentioned , and mostly only in context with humans.  Strangely enough the other Supernal threats have been involved with nearly all mentions of his name mentioned at one point by an infected starborn, and a second time by the Leviathan, who also communicates telepathically . The power levels of Deus is unknown, though it seems he has both telepathic and  telekinetic abilities. He has once been known to use some sort of astral projections, and he can…. Inhabit the bodies of humans.”

There was a murmuring around the council chamber.

“This is the one and only image we were able to capture of Deus.”

She flipped on the holo projection and the room grew to sudden dull roar.

In the image, Admiral Vir stood on cold hard metal surrounded by a nimbus of glowering white light. He had both arms held out, and his eyes glowed blue white, all around him stone was being turned into ash.

“This image was taken on the tail end of one of our operations at an unknown alien archeological site where inscriptions were found carved into the metal. Admiral Vir and a few other marines report the ability to read the unknown inscription, while others were unable. The inscription read “And with knowledge they did pass away andl pillars of stone were left by them and light came before them and the host surrounded them until they were brought up and none were left save pillars of stone, Woah be unto those who find this stone and read.” She paused as the room grew silent, “Literary analysis of the stones before they were destroyed determined that their closest linguistic relative….. Were human writing found in northern africa and southern parts of the middle east. A few scholars have noted a couple of lexical similarities to Hebrew, and Greek, both ancient human languages used in the writing and development of religious  documents, though that relationship is only of passing interest.”

There was quiet around the room.

“Admiral Vir reports no memory from this incident, though it is remarkable to point out that while Deus was in charge, he was able to survive a full fifteen minutes on the face of a hostile planet with high concentration of CO2 and other deadly chemicals in the atmosphere. The radiation alone should have killed him in under five, and the chemicals should have burned his lungs in under ten. Even so he came out with only minor injuries and a week of anti radiation therapy after Deus left and he spent an additional half a minute exposed on the planet’s surface.”

She looked around at the delegation, “As of now, we know neither the power levels or the hostility of Deus. It seems that, as of now he is relatively neutral, but has been meddling in our galactic affairs. Any reports of his name or sightings of him should be immediately reported to the DIS.”

She stepped back as the crowd began to murmur and overhead the image of Deus stared down at him his borrowed hands outstretched, and glowing with power.”

She glanced upward at the box where Admiral Vir stood, and shivered slightly, remembering the look in his eyes earlier when they had met.

She knew it was just her imagination, but the thought was still strange and all too unnerving.

She had no doubt that Deus was their biggest current threat.