#marrow ugly violence <3

[trollbreak]

Hey fun fact sometimes I do a funky description for syrin and then I can’t just have a passing thought about it without having it on the brain for the next like hour

[helloheyhihowdyheya]

Up in Flames

Druig x gn!Eternal!reader

Masterlist

Summary: Once again a team, you would do anything to keep them together.

Word count: ~2.2k

Warnings: Canon-level violence/injury. Reader has fire powers. A bit of angst, reader misses the team. Fluff!!

A/n: Not sure how alive the Druig fandom is lol, but he's been plaguing my mind since I watched Eternals again. It's my first time writing for him, so please let me know your thoughts! Thank you for reading <3

--

Unrelenting. The deviants continued in waves, the swells of their army growing as they passed over the grassy hill — the soil churned up under their talons.

At the bottom of the hill, past you, stood a village already half torn apart from the monsters. It awaited its fate against the gnawing fangs currently bared toward you and the other Eternals fighting to hold them back.

And as your power coursed through your veins and muscles, down into your marrow — searing fire erupting from your palms into a wall to keep the deviants contained — you thought of your team.

Your eyes had long been squeezed shut as you held the army back, the swirling flames rising high into the smoky air. The creases between your brows only fueled the pounding in your head, making images stark behind your eyelids. Images shimmering with the aching memories of the only family you’d known splitting apart  — splintering like your mind under the weight of your straining power.

Most of your team had been apart for hundreds of years, separated by oceans and long-worn arguments that came to a bitter end. Few saw eye to eye when things became tense, and while you had tried to see each of them occasionally, the visits felt too short and all too quiet without the others. Like visiting your childhood home once you’ve moved out — you once belonged there, but the decorations felt different, the walls long bare of your voice.

And yet.

When you were called together once again, they’d come back to fight side by side, as if none of that lonely time had passed — or had left an ugly scar on your memories. 

You knew that they’d probably go their separate ways again after it all finished, happier apart, but for now, you relished in it all. The whipping of wind around your body as Makkari ran past and the sound of Kingo’s sarcastic remarks as he shot lasers past you. Even as your arms began to shake, exhaustion settling into your limbs, you were glad to be by them once more.

Strengthen the left side. Put that extra nap you took to good use.

A hint of a smile graced your face as the lilting voice of your husband Druig filled your head. He fought somewhere out of view to your right as you sent more fire out left, keeping the wall of flames steady. 

Each hit the deviants sent against it reverberated back into your body, chattering your teeth against each other. But the others were attacking from other sides, thinning out the army — all to give Phastos time to build something from nothing like he always did.

Thousands of years ago, your team handled the monsters with little effort, but there were so many concentrated here — and they weren’t going down as easily. So Phastos’ expert hands crafted an explosive so strong that it’d reduce them to nothing, but they had to stay contained in one area for it to work.

So you kept them back using the only way you knew how. After all this time with your abilities, you’d learned to welcome the heat breathing from your palms — to settle into the warmth it curled around your body. 

The sweat, the exhaustion, the pure power rocking from you in waves matched your rapid heartbeat — it all meant that you were alive. But as the deviants beat against your flames with no pause or mercy, your knees shaking and bones aching, it felt like you were dying. Each breath felt too shallow, the strength of the monsters too strong.

You heard their growls aimed at you — could feel their anger against your fire. As you forced an eye open, blinking away drops of sweat, you couldn’t see any of your teammates for a moment, and your heart jolted.

A brief thought passed your mind, worrying whether they had abandoned you — had left you like discarded remnants of food to be feasted on by these monsters. But just as you’d slipped down onto one knee, your leg giving out, you saw Gilgamesh and Sprite fighting stray deviants back from the darkening corners of your vision.

As a groan ached to leave your mouth, you only hoped Phastos would finish soon enough.

But your flames began to flicker, leaving holes in the wall for the deviants to slip through. You caught a flash of light as Thena tried fighting some, but there were dozens all waiting for this exact moment. Even with the whole team together, the fight had begun to shift.

As they broke past the smoldering fire, you dropped to the ground, the dry grass biting into your palms. Ragged breaths ached through your lungs, scratching along the inside of you with each inhale. Your vision began to blur, your head spinning as you struggled to stand back up.

Even in this state, you saw a deviant stalking toward Phastos. Glancing around, you found everyone else occupied and overwhelmed — so you raised your shaky palm.

But your powers sputtered, spent from trying to hold so many back. Your throat, so painfully dry, cracked as you tried to scream to get his attention. Nothing came out but a whimper.

Still, you stumbled toward him with your body burning too hot, your steps much too slow to make it there in time. Your legs kept moving.

Come on, I know you’ve got more in you.

The voice came from inside your head, from your mind that begged you to rest. But it was Druig again. Each word sounded strained as he fought a deviant much too far away to get here in time.

He needs you. Just a little more, sweetheart. Then you can rest.

Please.

His last plea to you trickled through your brain, dripping down your spine and out to your fingers. You thought of Gilgamesh wrapping Thena in his arms the way he did, smiles etched onto their faces. You thought of Makkari’s gifts, all of them stolen relics she “found” along the way. You remembered the weddings, the dances, the births, and the funerals you attended of all the humans you’d come to love along your long lives.

And you quickened your steps as you felt the gentle caress of Druig’s fingers brushing along the apple of your cheek — as kind as the way he whispered into your mind.

Your power began to surge again, your feet pushing your body forward to help your team. But as you commanded pure fire to burn from your hands, the deviant lunged at Phastos.

The world shifted, your steps stuttering, as you watched its long teeth sink into Phastos’ body. 

Only a weak grunt left his lips as blood began to pool along his shoulder. Watching his face twist, you sprinted to him with panic closing around your throat. The unforgiving exhaustion and screaming in your mind fell away, leaving just an ache in your chest as hollow as Phastsos’ ragged breaths.

He pushed the deviant away, falling to his knees from the monster’s bloody maw. His red-stained fingers continued working on the explosive device, even as Makkari guided him away from the fight. 

In that instant, with painful fire burning beneath your skin, you knew you’d be no help to healing Phastos. Your vision instead tunneled onto the deviant responsible. 

White-hot rage clouded your senses as you leapt onto it, grabbing its head with a furious grip. Fire pulsed through your body, its power searing new images behind your eyelids.

The monster roared beneath you as you saw Druig leaving the group all those years ago, the pain of his helplessness worn on his sleeve. The broken look on Thena’s face flashed as bright as the fire exploding from you. An image of you, sat alone in your home, alone, while Druig was away — your family nowhere near.

And you wouldn’t let that happen again, not because of these monsters.

Your teeth clenched so hard against each other you thought they might shatter. On the edges of your awareness, you felt your knees hit scorched earth.

Even though it was gone, burnt beneath your body, you stood up again while more deviants came at you. Without thinking, your hand raised to them, unrelenting as you created another wall to protect your team. It didn’t just keep them back, it burned them into nothingness. Even with shaking arms, you refused to give them an inch. 

You thought hearing Phastos completing the device would be a sigh of relief — a soft voice telling you that you’d done enough. But as a wave of air pushed past you, the rush of Makkari speeding to the center of the deviants, you found no solace.

Even when the explosion flashed bright and shook the ground seconds later, sending you back down to your hands and knees, your rage refused to die out.

You shielded your eyes, finding many of the deviants evaporated into dust. But the few that were far enough away from the explosion continued their fight. Their dark eyes and unforgiving claws just reminded you of how many they’d hurt

Their agonized screams only made your mind want to keep going.

Stop. We’ve got the rest. You need to stop.

You didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t? Who knew. You could only see the reds and oranges dance around one another, seeking  revenge where it was needed.

The power pulled and pulled at you, draining from your veins until it threatened to smother you forever. 

You were going to burn out, reduce yourself to cinders amongst clouds of smoke.

Druig’s begging voice continued to echo through your mind, but you couldn’t focus on any specific word. It all mushed together, smoldering along with the rest of the world.

You wanted them to pay, but it was hurting you. Tears ran down your dry cheeks, searing a trail through the ashes caked onto your skin.

“Please,” you whispered from cracked lips. Your body swayed as you asked Druig to fill your mind with hope. You needed him to stop you.

The flames continued to spill from your body until you felt a trickle at the back of your brain. The floating sensation bled forward and pulled you away from the cliff your mind was about to fall over. 

Your hands dropped to the ground once more, fingers clawing into the rubble to keep you steady. You hadn’t realized the ringing in your ears until it faded, letting in the sounds of your teammates fighting off the last deviants.

Phastos is okay. You protected him. We’re okay.

You trusted Druig with your life, and his with you. So you knew he took no offense as you turned over to see it yourself, see Phastos with your own eyes. He sat with his back against one of the village’s buildings, giving you a thumbs up and tired smile. 

You returned it, the edges of your mouth lifting just enough. As you crawled from the circle of burnt ground around you, your heart slowed. They were all still here. 

From behind, you felt your husband’s presence, caught his deep exhale as he sat among the grass.

His hands wrapped around your body, moving you to rest your back against your chest. “Rest, my love,” he murmured along the curve of your ear, smoothing his palm down your leg. And you did, sitting with your legs bent and feet planted as you relished in the weight of him encircling you.

Your throat felt too parched, so you whispered in your mind, I was so angry. I thought he was gone for a moment.

Druig leaned his head against yours, his thumb rubbing along your skin. “Aw, no way he’d go down that easily. He knows you’d kill him if he died on ya.”

His chuckle reverberated against you, drawing out your own laughter. An easy smile made its way onto your face, turning brighter as a wafting breeze washed over you.

The rest of the team made their way toward the village, each holding varying injuries from the fight. Gilgamesh patted a heavy hand onto your knee as he passed, his other hand encircling Thena’s arm. You watched as Sprite and Kingo joined them too, the latter making a fuss about how his suit didn’t match his complexion well enough. 

The short beat of silence after they walked away felt painfully familiar. It made your heart heavy knowing their presence wouldn’t last.

“They love you, you know,” Druig said, knowing exactly where your thoughts went without having to read them. Turning your head to look at him, you admired the way sunlight carded its fingers through his hair and kissed freckled spots on his irises. 

You nodded, giving his arm a squeeze in thanks. He pressed his forehead against yours, eyes fixated on you.

“And I love you, but please don’t ever pull a stunt like that again. Scared me half to death,” he breathed against your skin with a grin, lightly pinching your side to make his point.

It brought out a squeal from your lungs, your jaw dropping. “Are you sure you love me?” you laughed, shaking your head. “Because someone who loves me wouldn’t do that.”

You jokingly tried pinching him back, but he caught your hand, bringing it to his smiling mouth. With a gentleness that made you pause, he kissed your palm.

I love you more than anything… more than life itself.

His words caressed along your mind, filling your body with a warmth that didn’t pull at you or demand energy — it just settled deep into your ribs, breathing life into you. The comforting presence of his voice pulled you in, telling you that even when the team eventually left, your home would always be with you.

I love you too, Druig.

[staggeringsmite]

ooh ♫ + lapin? or any acoc character?

i have so many feelings about acoc so... i'm just gonna give all the pc's a song <333 (most of these are either my #1 vibes song or my "this is the specific one i break down to for this fictional little guy" song) - under the cut!

send me a 🎵 + character/pairing/group for some songs!

lapin: (various storms and saints + no hell from another ask) pure vibes bad believer by st. vincent <3

Show me your stones I'm just a bad believer What do you know? What do you know?

Momma held me up through the rapture Dragged me through the eyes and the whispers Lost the spirit out the car window Bad by righteous, righteous hands

jet: jackrabbit by san fermin - jet vibes and also just makes me so upset in relation to her story having just seen the change she could've made on the throne of candia

I can tell you how the story goes If I die, if I just get old Altogether, all alone, all alone, all alone Like your mother and your father too All grown up and they're just like you And you're going to do it all anew Better run for the hills, run for the hills, run

Run on down, run on down, run on down Run for the hills, run for the hills, run

ruby: youth by daughter - WRECKS me in regards to ruby after jet's death i love her and them so much. the grief was done so well and this song guts me right alongside it.

We are the reckless, we are the wild youth Chasing visions of our futures One day we'll reveal the truth That one will die before he gets there

And if you're still bleeding, you're the lucky ones 'Cause most of our feelings, they are dead and they are gone We're setting fire to our insides for fun Collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

bonus: icarus by the crane wives - my ruby post campaign song <333

Our hands are pulling everything apart Fall apart, falling back Tell yourself there's no more need to lie We don't have time for that

It's okay, it's okay My love will fall with grace

Climb ye higher, and higher, and higher Leave our footprints to be lost along the ground

amethar: i knew how by ali dineen - okay yes i literally wrote an amethar fic using lyrics from this song but it's for Him okay, okay. amethar is so flawed and that's what makes him so compelling to me *screams in war guy deciding he has to live for his daughter(s) character arc*

I tried to guard myself from all the pain I'd ever known Beating heart, flesh and bone, flesh and bone So I learned to hide away from everyone I'd ever loved Beating heart, flesh and blood

I knew how to sing before I knew to how to speak with violence I knew how to sing before I knew how to scream in silence

bonus: the cave by mumford and sons - also makes me go insane amethar song similarly just about his whole character arc

So tie me to a post and block my ears I can see widows and orphans through my tears I know my call despite my faults And despite my growing fears

But I will hold on hope And I won't let you choke On the noose around your neck

And I'll find strength in pain And I will change my ways I'll know my name as it's called again

theo: this is why we fight by the decemberists - viiibes theo music is very hard for me idk why but This One is for him <3

This is why Why we fight Why we lie awake This is why This is why we fight When we die We will die with our arms unbound And this is why This is why we fight

cumulous: sedated by hozier - okay i just think about zac's response being "shallow" for cumulous song Every Single Day and i think he's a funky little man with a lot of melancholy in there and a lot of unexplored sorrow about lazuli and being on hold in time for so long we maybe didn't get to see, so this is very vibes but i'm right i think <3

You and I nursing on a poison that never stung Our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it Somewhere for this, death and guns We are deaf, we are numb Free and young and we can feel none of it

saccharina: ribs by the crane wives - So Saccharina it HURTS just,,, just look at most of it here please i beg of you

Marrow made a wife of Eve But no one gave up a rib for me And mine My heart did expose to the elements Calloused and untouched by a man's design

Oh, my ugly organs How lucky we are

Brick and mortar between my bones Built a kingdom fierce and fortified My name fading from the yellow page Stones are laid upon the mountainside

Oh, my savage empire How lucky we are Never to be moved by the words of a liar

The dark doesn't frighten me I chose to close my eyes; it is mine The night doesn't frighten me I chose to let it ride; it is mine

liam: runaway by aurora - hrmrmph seed guy turned war guy returning to seed guy liam my Beloved

And I was runnin' far away Would I run off the world someday? Nobody knows Nobody knows, and I was dancing in the rain I felt alive and I can't complain

But now take me home Take me home where I belong I can't take it anymore

[yeoldontknow]

Time Runner: 5

Author’s Note: welcome back! thank you all for being so patient! once again, im making it clear that there will be historical inaccuracies and that this is a fictionalized account of the events of the inquistion, and i am not claiming that everything that is happening is something that would have happened. thank <3  Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader (oc; female) Genre: time travel!au; suspense; thriller; drama; romance; angst; sci-fi Rating (this chapter): R Warnings: graphic violence; graphic depictions of blood; swearing; dark themes; themes of abandonment; themes of war; explicit language Word count: 4,526

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Unknown, 1484-85 Turuel, Kingdom of Aragon, Spain

How strange, you thought, for the air to lose its static, a vacuum biting against your skin with claws; hard enough to make your existence hurt.

How strange, you thought, for the world to taste bitter. To taste bitter and to becoming little more than a mausoleum of memory, colours rusting and dimming with only your joyless eyes to touch them.

How strange to be burning alone in the world, waiting and waiting and waiting.

It seemed as though, with Chanyeol’s fading form, your breath had left with him, dissolving into little more than a phantasm of life and living. With no oxygen to propel you into motion, your feet faltered, unsteady and unbalanced against foreign terrain without a hand to lead them true.

Echoing everywhere and nowhere at once, perhaps thriving only in the marrow of your bones, his named died on your lips. Against your lips, the syllables were hot to the touch and left a residue on your tongue, thick and scratching at the roof of your mouth like ash. In the brief moment of stillness, you felt the flux of solitude press against your arms, the molecules in the air disrupted by a thing that was once there and suddenly was no longer.

There was a gentleness and a cruelty to the glimmers of possibility that faded around you - a soft brush against your skin, feeling not unlike whim or fantasy, before the weight of knowledge sought the innocent openness of your pores. Once inside, it moved deeper and deeper still until it found your throat, found the trust that you offered freely alongside every word you had ever said, and choked it. Of you, it wanted everything, until there was no end to where your turmoil began.

Behind you, the members of the Ministry vanished with little pomp or circumstance, their interest in you evidenced by how quickly they left you behind. With you on your knees, they had you exactly as they wanted you: vulnerable, broken, tongue pressed behind your teeth and silenced. Your turmoil had been their victory, a thing they had never witnessed in the long line of history, a new treasure to behold. And, once they had seen it, it became clear that your grief was neither special nor unlike any other throughout the whole of time, it merely tasted sweeter because it belonged to them.

Perhaps it should have alarmed you how one swift motion of abandonment could render you obsolete, leaving you for dead or simply just leaving you, letting history claim you as its own to fade namelessly into oblivion. Confronted at last with the speed at which life both begins and ends, ugly at both ends of the spectrum. Of you, they had created an offering, a gift offered to the slowness of time and the madness of men.

It was not, you thought, that you wanted to be found, that you wanted them to care, that you wanted be found as guilty as you felt. Simply, you thought you wanted to matter. To someone.

They never came back for you, neither for questioning nor for an execution.

Instead they left you for dead at the hands of an army so skilled in psychological and physical torture, you took to breaking yourself, cutting at the dead pieces of your spirit, before they could do it themselves. At least this, you thought, you were good at. Staying mobile, moving, running, accepting the darkness and letting eat the tips of your fingers. The length of your life had become blurred with Chanyeol by your side, the chronology unordered and disorganized, but you know you had spent years learning how to move without eyes keenly following; of learning to make yourself small and make yourself invisible, running with enough speed to be forgotten and enough force to slowly stop wanting to be seen at all.

This time, your footprints left marks in dirt roads, tracks you learned to cover with leaves or mud. This time, you did not have days or weeks to catch your breath. Sometimes minutes, most often seconds. This time, it was not to explore or see or learn or help or love.

This time, it was to survive.

And this time, it was for yourself.

You ran from town to town, palms sweating and chest burning with each thrust of your feet to soil. Every burning city you entered held a brief promise of security: empty houses containing discarded scraps of food, piss soaked beds to sleep in, the torn, mangled clothing of men hauled off to jail cells below the earth. Some homes contained weapons, discarded daggers and knives you strapped to your belt with leather laces you found in old, worn boots.

With a knife, you learned to pull apart the shoes and yield scraps of leather. With butchers needles and tools, you learned to strap the leather together, binding your breasts tightly beneath a soiled tunic you found discarded behind a farm, no trace of the man who had worn it. It took practice to cut your hair without clipping part of your ears in the process. You wore scars on the side of your head, self-inflicted and only half healed.

Three weeks was all it took before you killed a man. You told yourself it was survival, that he would have killed you first, that this was your life now. You had walked into a war between God and men, and if men could command time and temporality then there was no longer a difference between the two. God, man, woman, beast - in your eyes there was no difference, decided that in the mouth of hell, we were all equal. His life left his eyes before your dagger left his side, the blood hot and thick on your fingers as if to burn straight through your bones.

It seared against your fingerprints, as though his blood contained all the memories of his life, as though, in death, he demanded you remember him.

You held him close while he struggled, spasming violently until he stilled, collapsing against your chest like a spent lover. In your arms, you held him, cradled him, while you cried through grit teeth, realizing that it was easy, easier than you thought it would be. Killing a man was easy and this would not be the first time you held mortality between your unwilling hands.

In a daze, you walked along a river until sundown, unseeing and unseen. The trees lined the bank, leaves rustling in the wind as though whispering about you, sharing your secrets, speaking the names of the dead as though you were meant to respect them. For hours, you did not want to clean your hands, stared at your open palms and remembered Chanyeol’s palm against yours, wondered how his skin would feel with blood pressed between you. For hours, you wore him, until the stain of his blood on your skin became a tattoo.

And even when you did, when you finally used the blunt edge of a rock to wash him away, replacing his blood with yours, your skin was slick with the memory of him for days.

Patience was never one of your virtues, your past life so filled with endless noise begging for your attention that stillness always seemed irrational in the modern world. With Chanyeol, time had become tangible, something you had run through, and between, something you could touch, and kiss. With Chanyeol, there time became something that moved with your will, and you thought, surely, that kind of unrestrained living could never be replaced.

After six months of running towards nothingness, towards a mapless terrain and without any promise of safety, the slowness of living, the slowness of expecting death and counting the hours of night, you forgot what it mean to live quickly at all.

Somewhere along the way, you had grown accustomed to fear, to anguish, to the impossible length of a minute, the unbearable torment of a second. Somewhere along the way, the cold and the fear of longing had given way to a survival instinct that filled your lungs with heat; expectation of the warm arms of a man became a dream of an oncoming pleasure, inconsistent, irrational, and intangible, and, when it was over, you were always filled with disappointment.

After six months, you stopped telling yourself he would come back, ceased a morning ritual of bathing and whispering today is the day. Eventually the memory of him splintered altogether, becoming little more than just footprints on the wind and a phantom limb in a cold bed.

Yours had become a tempered reality, one  filled with false heroism and the saving of tyrannical children from a sacrilegious death. The violence of this new life suited you fine, and you wore the blood and the armor with a chest puffed full of regret. Unfazed by corpses and carcasses, your nose no longer seared from the stench of burning flesh, eyes unblinking and the bones piled high or the homes reduced to ash. Steps slowing as you passed, you saw these things, you felt them, you mourned them, but, eventually, you did not fear them.

You’d seen towns fall and women bleed; you tasted war on the air and swallowed it whole, studying the nuances of the flavor and finding retribution in the way it made your teeth ache. The sight of a sword ripping through a man no longer made you ache with recoil, only made your knuckles tense with disdain. The hatred of men had become commonplace and, until he came back, until you were pulled back and taught how to run without the clanking of metal behind you, the act of loving was nothing but a distant, surreal dream.

When winter came you skinned rabbits and learned to properly sew, stitching their uncleaned fur into the lining of your shirt, binder, and boots. You walked through ice and snow, from town to town, taking a drink in each but never staying long enough to share a name, to share a bed, to be remembered at all. You had become a wanted man, hoarding secrets beneath the costume you’d turned into a shield; a heretic for believing in nothing except that time was continuous, that this genocide would happen again, and that if Chanyeol could touch time then somehow he was touching you, until even this too was brought down like so many of the gods before him.

When the trees of the forest of Aragon began to emerge from their slumber, the shade of their bark taking a ruddy complexion rather than the pale brown of death, you saw him standing not too far down the path you walked on. Like a pine shaking loose its nettles, you shivered at the sight of him and paused, breath stilling in your lungs at the sight.

He was beautiful, still so impossibly beautiful, you recognized him the moment his frame appeared on the hill up ahead. The sunlight, frigid and unsoothing in its glow, yet learning how to bloom once again, splayed behind him, making halos against his limbs where none should exist. You could have sighed, you would have sighed, shut your eyes from the relief and the hope and the bliss, but instead visage on the hill made you feel slightly sick. As though this should convince you he were yours for touching, as though this, his emergence like Virgil before Dante, should act as reassurance at all.

You’d imagined his presence countless times and, while you were fully aware he was no premonition, that your mind had long since given up imagining his visage once it had been almost completely forgotten, you felt little excitement behind the knowledge that he had proven you wrong, expecting this to make up for all the days in which you were right.

He ran to you, face unchanged and golden, the brightness of his smile combating the sun for dominance and tugging at his cheeks as it demanded access to your heart. Around him the air shifted, just like it always did, making space for him and igniting with an electricity bordering on cosmic, your skin starting to prick just like it used to simply because he was near and he was magic. Already, you could see the coil of tension in his elbows and hands, desperate to hold you and pull you to him, as if you were still his to touch. His hair in the wind moved back and turned his expression of delight and relief into something boyish.

Long ago, you would have swooned at the sight of, would have held his cheeks between your palms with a desperation that dripped down to your soul, and kissed and kissed and kissed him, until all the breath in your lungs was his. Instead, you felt yourself begin to seethe, the scars along your neck searing with blood for the first time in months, burning with contempt and derision. At him. At time. Mostly, at yourself.

Still you wanted him, still you yearned for him, limbs twitching with the unfulfilled effort of reaching towards his arms, his hands, his cheeks, his skin. The urgency to touch him betrayed the year of everything you had learned without him, pulled towards him as always as a moth to a flame, but you kept still. Gritting your teeth and lips pressed in a thin, neutral line, you kept your feet rooted to the earth, reminding yourself you were no longer the woman he left behind, body pressed into shapes you could no longer call human. He was running towards the past, a version of you he had idealized and held close, or maybe never held at all, and you remained motionless, accepting that time neither begins nor ends, it simply is.

‘I found you.’ He said the words to himself as he approached, proud and pleased and pink with gladness at your reunion, celebrating in solitude with himself. As he reached you, he slowed, paused, fumbling awkwardly over his feet as he finally, truly saw you.

‘What’s happened to you?’ The lowness of his tone wandered over your skin, reintroducing itself to your veins, your pores, and seeking permission against a guard that did not previously exist.

Time had pulled you apart, Chanyeol had pulled you apart, and still his voice could make you quake, make you thirst for the flush taste of his sweat on your lips, the needle that promised to mend you back together. But even then, you did not know exactly what you desired of him, or how you were meant to be sewn, for you were not a thing worth softness, or the gentleness, hope. The ghost of you had burned to ash beneath your bones so long ago, the desire you felt was little more than echoes, little more than memories of a love born from childish fantasy.

Now, you simply needed his eyes on your scars, his eyes on yours, demanded he feast on the mess and trauma of you. You hoped he would drink his fill, that he would see what he had made of you, that you had become this for him.

In stoic silence, you watched the way his gaze traveled down your body, tracing the scars and the scabs, the distinct lack of the swell of your breasts, the steadiness of your grip. Wherever his eyes went, the hairs on your body stood to attention, forced awake after a hibernation that felt like prison, the magnetic touch of his gaze bringing your molecules back to life. Slowly, his expression became mangled with a shock not unlike horror, jaw twitching in an expression you could not read. You were glad for this, glad that you had unlearned enough of him to make new opinions about the length and power of his bones.

And only after he returned his eyes to yours, only after you finally saw his nostrils flare in confusion and hurt did you take your turn to speak.

‘What the fuck took you so long?’ You were a venomous thing, and you wondered if he would ever learn to love a snake.

He loved you when you were young, naive, begging to be brave and uncertain how. He loved you when you followed, when you asked questions that felt like philosophies and not war strategies. He loved you when you were asking to matter. Now, he would have to relearn you. Now, he would have to love you as his judge, his jury, and his executioner.

Without hesitation his brow furrowed, eyes wide in bewilderment and abjection, cheeks blanching. Chanyeol fell over his words, eager and rushing his speech like a child. ‘Took me - it’s been two hours!’

‘Two hours?’ you shouted, unconcerned with giving away your position. Let them find me, you thought. Let them find me so I could watch him run once more. Blood left you, left your head, your cheeks, your fingers, numbing you. Anger, a red thing, blanched you completely, mouth turning dry as it kissed your tongue. ‘It’s been over a year!’

Behind his eyes, you counted infinity, an endless stream of thoughts that raced behind his dilated pupils, the only place his fragile guard had never reached. You expected tears or rage, regret, every emotion he had ever offered or received or taught you to feel. Instead, he blinked. He blinked and he nodded, brows furrowed as he released a trembling sigh.

‘So this is what happened to you...’ he began, slowly, chewing at the inside of his cheek before glancing away from you, conflicted.

‘What the fuck did you expect?’ you sneered, tone cold and demanding. The loss of his gaze made you feel scorned, betrayed - you wanted all of his sadness, all of his distress; wanted to see if it could ever match your own.

Meeting your eyes once more, he regarded you as though you were the key he had stolen, as though you were his answer, his benediction, his greatest fear. The change, you felt, was staggering.

‘When I met you,’ he said, voice small and struggling to remain even, ‘you were raw and hard. Something about youth didn’t sit right on you, I could never imagine you as a child - you just were as I had met you, forever. Not at all the person I met in the library. I see now this was the year that turned you.’

The voices of the crows echoed in the sky as though echoing his words, and you felt yourself rear back, frowning. No longer merely a thief, he had become a liar.

About you.

About the order of your life.

About everything that involved him, which weighed so much more than the memories you had of just yourself and your past.

It was as though he had peeled back pieces of your skin, his skin, revealing an ugliness that tainted every memory you had shared with him - the ugliness of expectation and disappointment. You were not as he had wanted to find you in the library, and, now that you were, you were unsure you wanted to be found at all.

‘Remember,’ you said, tone thick and words heavy, ‘that you did this. You made us this.’

Chanyeol did not crumble or break in the wake of your words, neither begged for forgiveness nor defended his actions, simply remained still and relearned how to breathe. Lines formed on his cheeks, creases giving away his sadness and his anguish, the guilt eating away at him just as life had eaten you.

For a while you said nothing, simply watched the way his fatigues moved in the breeze and the way he flushed when your tongue moved along your lips, wetting the flesh. The tension in his throat was palpable, full of words that lived and died before ever reaching his lips, strained from the effort of remaining strong, hardened, when for you he was always, eternally soft.

Between your bodies, longing lingered, a heaviness that begged to be felt - unfinished kisses, unwhispered sentiments, vows of love and life and death cluttering the space your bodies did not touch. These things looked nice, sounded nice. You wanted them, almost as badly as you wanted him, but there were too many questions, too many bodies, and too many knife wounds were your affections used to lie.

You wanted him, oh how deeply you wanted him, but not like this.

Chanyeol broke the silence with whimper comprised of sorrow and regret, fists clenched at his sides from the effort of not reaching and touching you.

‘There’s blood under your fingernails,’ he offered weakly, eyes focused on your left hand which remained weaponless.

He studied your knuckles, the scars and the marks, the bloodstains and the dirt, likely remembering how he used to cherish your hands. Pressing his lips to your fingers, he would kiss each pad before moving your hand to his cheek, feeling your skin against his and sighing with an affection that made your chest ache. He would bind your fingers together, blocking out the sun, the air, atoms unable to fit between your hands until you felt as one. It must have hurt, you thought, for him to wonder what you had held without him.

‘There’s more than blood under my nails,’ you said, keeping your voice level and emotionless, remembering how you used to touch him, too. How even after war and death and grief he was still so incredibly, impossibly soft. For you. Only for you. ‘You don’t send a person to the Inquistion and expect a child to come back.’

'It's killing me not to touch you -'

'I went a year without you.' You cut him off, voice strained and tight, the thickness in your throat beginning to throb. 'Surely, you can wait a little longer.'

‘You were always a soldier. I wondered what made you this way, all these years. You would never tell me.’

‘The details are in history books, where they belong,’ you countered. ‘My version is too stained with blood and vomit to be legible.’

‘What’s -’

You cut him off, blinded by questions and anger. You wanted to scream, to hold his throat beneath your palm and remind him you had earned the right, the right was yours to be the Inquisitor. My feelings are valid, you wanted to shout. This right is mine because I felt it. It was mine because I lived it.

‘Run me somewhere safe,’ you said, instead. ‘Run me somewhere that feels like home.’

31 December, 2012 New York, New York

The world built itself around and against you in a haze of black and white, malformed objects that surrounded you as deities, the hiss of exterior modern sounds consuming your senses in disorienting cacophony. When the colours started to seep in, the noise of the Earth became vibrant and loud. Everything felt distantly familiar, things that once belonged to you but had been traded away for a promise of delight, a promise of excitement. They no longer belonged to you, and you did not miss them, though, briefly, you missed the sense of simplicity they brought.

Modernity, you remembered, was an uncomplicated mess. Disastrous, if only because the effort and the knowledge of to survive had been almost eradicated.

The concrete beneath your feet was a comfort, the terrain unchanging with weather and weight. For the first time in over a year, you felt stable, powerful in the posture that rooted itself in your spine. Almost instantly, your eyes began to burn, the smog in the air making them sting and the lights of modernity altogether too bright after spending so long in the bleak dimness of the past. Covering your mouth, you coughed several times, lungs having grown used to an uncontaminated atmosphere.

Chanyeol watched you with eager eyes, glancing between your face and the panel on his arm, with a wary gaze.

‘When are we?’ you asked once you were able to speak, taking in the high rise buildings. Their height made you anxious, feel swallowed by the metals and manufactured glory of men.

‘New Years Eve, 2012,’ he said softly. He came to stand next to you, facing out to the street as he watched cars pass.

In the closeness, he let his fingers graze against yours, seeking the feel of your skin if only for a moment. Electricity coursed through your joints, the shock of contact making you glance down at his hand, though neither of you moved away. Perhaps, you thought, he was afraid you would run from him, breaking away and abandoning him once your feet had touched the ground.

It would not have been the first time he misjudged you. It seemed as though you were born to make the hard choices, born to make the things that hurt most into something magnificent.

‘Where?’ Your voice was flat, exhausted.

‘New York.’

‘I need clothes.’ You moved your hand away from his, ignoring the small whine of protest that spilled over from his lips. He kept his eyes on the street as you pulled the thick tunic away from your chest, nervous to look at you and the actions of a life you learned without him. It reeked of dirt, blood and vomit. In the oncoming breeze, you could smell the odor of your skin and clothes, and you scowled, nose hairs burning with the stench. Water had began to leak into your boots, the snow melting through to numb your toes. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just half six.’ Chanyeol turned to you, body and soul battling the hope for reconnection that threatened to turn him into a dying star. He was waiting for the fallout - your fallout.

‘Shops should still be open,’ you hummed, though truly it did not matter. A small smile played at your lips, smirking at how naturally willing you were to follow the rules of your own time. You turned from him then, beginning a brisk walking down the street towards bright lights and a crowd of people, suddenly bold in the anonymity his presence offered you.

In just a few strides, he caught up, walking at your pace as though he were born to follow you, as though he were used to existing at your side and not asking for much more.

One year for you but two hours for him. You played this over in your mind as you walked, wondering what happened in his two hours that would have made him so compliant, so willing to let you walk freely without question. Idly, you recalled the last thing you had said to him, the last proper request you had made.

‘When we get out of here, you teach me how to lead.’

It took effort not to snort at the irony, that it was not he who taught you how to lead, but yourself.

You taught yourself to lead. You taught yourself to stay safe.

You were safe.

You were safe.

[sprinklesandsugarcubes]

Wail

Fandom: Harry Potter Time Period: Marauders Era Pairing: Sirius Black x OC (Aurora), James Potter x OC (Aurora), Possible Sirius x OC x James (Aurora), Platonic Remus Lupin x OC (Aurora) Words: 2,764 Warning: angst, emotional trauma, bullying, cursing, character death/implied character death, some violence/fighting, smut, darker theme, possible poly-couple, witchcraft, etc. Part/Format: Mini-Series, (1/3-4) Rating: Mature/NSFW- contains bullying and smut in further chapters! Request: Yes!

Early October, Sixth Year Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry The Highlands of Scotland- He was beautiful, in an eerie and all-together powerfully frightening sort of way. Hair darker than she had ever seen lay undisturbed across the pale, unblemished expanse of his bare chest. It was unerringly straight, and the color of the blackest night, falling in strands that must have nearly reached his ribs. His skin was pale, almost ghostly so, like he quite rarely found himself exposed to the light of day. It was covered though, multiple symbols and runes she could not identify, etched across the alabaster expanse in an inky, ebony hue. He had a tall build, one that was lean but obviously capable, if the fine definition of muscles rippling under his bare skin was any indication. His chin was sharp, his jawline sharper, and chiseled cheekbones sat high on his face, giving him a haughty and regal appearance without even a flicker of expression. It was his eyes that made her pause, a shiver of something she could not name slithering its way down her spine. They were dark at the edges, but their middle glowed a deep reddish-orange, almost like embers from a long burning flame. They flickered as flames would, licking at the dark ring that surrounded them, robbing those that gazed into them of the ability to move, to even speak. It was a color that she found reflected similarly within the jagged circlet resting on his head, and the scepter gripped securely in his palm, his long fingers cool and strong, adorned with jeweled rings. They glowed, pulsed with a heat she could almost feel, her imagination was so great. Yet, she could not seem to look away.

His plump lip curled into a devious smirk as he held her stare, and she could hear the gasp that tore from her parted lips, almost as if the very motion stole the breath from her lungs. Thudding heartbeats jolted within her chest, and as he took a single step forward, she knew that she needed to run. It was an overwhelming feeling, like the world was crashing down upon her shoulders all while she drowned within his captivating eyes, unable to breathe. Her mind screamed for her to look away, but the notion was simply impossible. Just when she thought she would be able to take no more, the black dots spotting across her vision a testament of her failure to breathe, a slender hand with a surprisingly forceful grip clamped down on her shoulder, squeezing almost painfully. She yelped in fright, the distraction enough to rescue herself from those glowing orbs, and an ear-splitting shatter brought her back from the cloudy depths of her mind, wisps of words and memories unsaid, untold. The crystal ball lay in dangerous shards on the carpeted floors. Her breath came in wheezing gasps, her lungs desperate for the fresh oxygen they had been denied, and she found herself scrambling back and away from the small circular table that sat on the third row of risers, situated by the only window in the Divination room that was hidden away in a spindly tower.

Whispers faded in and out of hearing but her eyes, which had dulled considerably from their usual glacial blue, remained stuck, glued to the shards of now twinkling crystal that lay scattered across the floor. As the nimble fingers clutching at her shoulders gave another squeeze, this one gentle compared to the last, she found herself slowly gazing up. The muddy brown eyes peering down at her were sympathetic, concerned, and questioning as they searched her face for signs of something she did not know. And it was only when Professor Elphick uttered such damning words, did she dare to meet their eyes.

“You saw him, didn’t you?” She asked, her voice a mere whisper, reverent in its tone. “Death.”

October 31st, Sixth Year
 Halloween Feast, The Great Hall
 Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry-

Remus Lupin hustled his way to the Great Hall, his pace frantic and his honey-colored eyes filled to the brim with both uncertainty and a touch of well-deserved fear. Determination burned through his blood as he took the steps two at a time, desperate to make it there before the worst could happen. His thoughts whirled with what he had just so happened to walk in on, and with an endless stream of berating thoughts.

He never should have let it go on this long.

Still, with every hurried footstep, he was unsure how exactly he had let the current situation get so very out of hand. It had started with silence, then a bit of nit-picking, and in his distaste for the subject he thought a little bit of a reality call wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

How bad could it get, really? She was one of their best friends, after all.

Over the single course of a full moon, his hospital stay for recovery time had left him unavailable to rein in his rather mischievous and most of the time, halfway oblivious friends. What had been just between their small group had become house-wide news, leaving the honey blonde teenager ostracized, a stranger within her own House, minus the company of sometimes himself and one Lily Evans.

He had been trying to fix things ever since.

The young werewolf burst through the heavy doors, his fierce gaze sweeping across the inhabitants until they landed on the three boys he called his closest friends, no matter how annoyed or disappointed in them he found himself at times. He made quick work of the distance between them, ignoring how they chortled back and forth, a fountain of pumpkin juice being spouted from one wand to another as sweets and Halloween treats littered the polished tabletop.

"Call it off.”

His voice was uncharacteristically raspy, as if he was speaking through a growl, perhaps a snarl. It was enough to capture their attentions, and he found himself peering back into the questioning silvery-grey eyes of Sirius Black, and a pair of warm hazel ones, the glasses perched on James Potter’s nose doing nothing to hide the slight amusement there.

“Moony?” James frowned, a single dark eyebrow arching, disappearing beneath the rumpled mess that was his hair, draping down over his forehead.

His fists clenched, nails biting into the skin of his palms with a sharp sting, his voice a harsh whisper as he leant to take a seat in front of the two. “Whatever it is you have planned for her, call it off!”

They each scoffed. “She needs to learn-”

“You don’t understand! It’s dangerous, she could-”

Her deafening shriek cut shrilly through his words, and Remus found them left behind, choking on them in his throat as he swung those honey-colored orbs to the side. They fell on her at once, along with the eyes of James and Sirius, joining just about every other pair in the vast room, only for them to cringe when they caught sight of her.

The creamy fabric of her dress was completely ruined, stained forever the murky orange that was definitely pumpkin juice, still dripping from a massive pitcher that had suddenly revealed itself where it hovered just above the doorway. No doubt primed and ready to pour the moment she dared to walk over the threshold. The material was soaked, conforming to her skin with every dip and curve, leaving nothing to the imagination as the wet silk slowly became nearly see-through. She sputtered and coughed, strands of hair plastered to her face, dripping into her eyes. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, a mixture of adrenaline and embarrassment aiding the near hyperventilation.

It didn’t take long for the laughter to begin.

At least those of the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables had the decency to smother their chuckles into snickers, and most at the Slytherin table found themselves either leering her way or glancing over at the neighboring table of Lions with disgust. But the Gryffindor’s…roaring laughter echoed off the walls, bouncing down from the magically spelled ceiling, reverberating down into their very bones. They pointed, whispered, snorted through jokes and catcalls as she stood, trembling, seemingly frozen.

Until she lifted her eyes, and they immediately fell on the four boys she had once called her own.

Collectively, they felt their hearts drop down into the pits of their stomachs.

The typical icy blue of her eyes was nearly grey, almost flat in their color, and tears brimmed her eyelids as she struggled to keep hold of any last shred of dignity she possessed. She spun slowly on her heel, ignoring the calls from one infuriated redhead and a flustered McGonagall as she strode from the hall, somehow managing to keep her head up as the laughter bounced off of her now slick and sticky back.

And with her exit came an overbearing sense of dread.

Her fingers muffled the sobs that threatened to break through, the sound no doubt ugly and heartbreaking all at once. She didn’t see as she walked, had no real sense of direction, which left her quite surprised when she blinked and suddenly realized she had somehow managed to maneuver her way all the way to the Astronomy Observatory.

It was the cold that seemed to wake her up, the icy wind licking against bare, damp skin in bone-chilling waves.

The chill sunk into her skin, down through her bones, permeating the very marrow within them. The stained and soaked silk of her dress made the cold that much more intense, but she remained numb to it all. Her cheeks were frigid, was she actually crying? When had the tears finally spilt over? Was she shivering? That strange clicking noise, was that her teeth chattering?

She pressed her fingers tighter to her lips, desperate to stop the noise, to remain oblivious to what had befallen her. By the Gods, how had it all gone so impossibly wrong?

“Are you ready, now?”

Her gasp echoed off the arching stone that made up the ceiling, seeping out through the windowless gaps before disintegrating. Vaguely, she wondered if the noise would be heard from the many, many stories below.

Startled, her eyes swung wildly until they settled on the person looming beside her, his height far surpassing her own. They widened upon recognition, a spark of blue returning with her undeniable curiosity, for everyone she had spoken to warned her against welcoming his presence. Professor Elphick begged her to seal her aura, so that her essence would no longer attract such a visitor. Dumbledore cautioned her of what might become of her, should she ever accept an offer from the unearthly being. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder, why did he return to her?

“Death,” She breathed, unable to take her eyes away from his sinisterly beautiful appearance.

He hummed lowly, his answering nod a majestic and serene sight. “Yes, that is what some call me, though I have many names.”

She remained silent, unable to comprehend the current situation she had found herself in. Alone, those she thought would always be by her side the cause of her sorrow, and soaked to the bone with sickly sweet smelling pumpkin juice while standing in the cold. Perhaps, she was dreaming? But any possibility of that being true seemed to fade away when he turned to her, that unfathomable gaze resting upon her slight form, flickering like such a realistic fire, she could almost swear she felt heat from them, seeping into her skin. He bent at the waist, crowding her against the wall, until his nose brushed along the slope of her own, nuzzling slightly. His lips skimmed over hers as he spoke, sinfully soft, his words falling sweet on her tongue.

“But you do not wish to just know of my names, do you, sweet Aurora?”

No, she did not.

The Sixth Year boys of Gryffindor Tower had just returned from the Great Hall, nearing the portrait hole and feeling far less pleased about their mischievous doings than they had anticipated, when they heard the scream.

Well, scream was far too mundane for the sound that echoed along the corridor…a shrill, unearthly wailing was more like it.

The sound took to the air with such power, even from a distance, those who heard it cringed as a wave of sharp, needlelike pain stabbed repeatedly at their minds. It was frighteningly loud, and quite long, longer than any typical witch or wizard might manage, one was to be sure. It trailed off slowly, falling into something more like a desperate cry, before it disappeared altogether.

Leaving nothing behind but an echo that was more ghostly than human.

The infamous foursome stood frozen in front of the Fat Lady’s portrait, their own wide eyes staring back into hers, noting the look of terror upon her face. It was unnervingly quiet in the corridors after the scream, not a sound echoed along them, and they were left paralyzed with a mixture of acceptance and denial, both in regards to the suspected owner of said wail. They couldn’t seem to make their feet move, stuck in place as the Lady’s portrait sighed softly, her usually profound voice a mere whisper, laced with fear and sympathy.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a Wail,” She murmured, shaking her head. “Poor child. She’ll never be the same.”

It was a mad scramble to run down the corridors then, with Remus leading the way and the mystical painting shouting after them. His nose led him to the highest point in the castle, and the most dangerous. The astronomy tower wasn’t the place for a sixteen year old girl, suffering through heartbreak, to be.

When they came upon her, the sight was chilling.

Cold wind ripped through the open archways, nearly sweeping the teenage werewolf off of his own feet. Warm hands steadied him from the back, and they didn’t seem to notice they had lost a member of their quartet back in the sheltered halls of the castle. Pushing hair from their eyes, it was Sirius who noticed her prone form first, lying in a heap in the middle of the circular balcony.

But she wasn’t alone.

A shadow hovered above her, clad in darkness that seemed to sweep out from the body and swirl around them. It couldn’t be seen if it was a cloak that pooled and billowed along the ground, or was actually just that, shadows. Inky strands of hair hung in a curtain, blocking most of her face, aside from a pair of lips that were slowly growing a blue tint to them. It was a man that crouched over her, it could be nothing but, and each boy felt their blood boil in their veins as the thought that this unnamed stranger had taken advantage of their closest friend grew in their minds.

They each seemed to forget the pure hell they had inflicted upon her, choosing instead to focus their guilt and frustration on this new threat instead.

Sirius let out a yell, more like a bellow; a sound that was nothing but pure rage and fear.

He charged forward in the next breath, aiming for the hulking figure, intent on shoving them away from the defenseless girl. James followed quickly behind him, the two of them working in tandem, as they usually did. It was Remus that peered back at the scene with keenly observant eyes, being the first to notice that something was wrong.

Terribly, horribly, wrong.

Her hair was all wrong, a completely different color, now whiter than the snow that fell upon the grounds down below the tower. Her dress lay askew across her torso, the strap of her left shoulder ripped and torn, baring the milky skin that lay beneath and was no longer unblemished. Instead, it held a marking, one that was blacker than the darkest night he had ever witnessed. Her head was turned to the side, thick lashes brushing against her cheeks, her chest barely rising and falling any longer and her lips a disturbingly pallid color.

This wasn’t her.

It couldn’t be.

The boys were nothing short of unprepared when, as they stretched out their arms with an idea to tackle the intruder, the shape of a man seemed to fold in on itself. Quickly, before either of them could react, the figure disappeared into thin air, leaving behind nothing as the shadows seemed to melt away into the darkness that surrounded the edges of the chilled balcony. Sirius and James both toppled to the floor, leaving behind nothing but a pile of tangled limbs and furious curses.

And a girl that should have been, but was no longer.