#my fic: unimaginable things

[goldeneyedgirl]

Late V-Day Space-verse Fic: Better Than Nothing

Six days late, but it's done!

A little Unimaginable Things-verse fic, because I love me some space drama.

Holidays are a quiet thing on the Olympia.

There is Carlisle, who is so augmented and been away from Earth for so long that his classification of ‘human’ feels very much like a technicality. Once, in another life, there were a pair of children whose birthdays were celebrated with much fanfare. But those times had passed.

Edward staunchly refused to celebrate anything, arguing that he is not a person but simply a program. Carlisle still makes sure to buy him huge quantities of music and software around the end of June, without comment.

Rose had little use for the traditional holidays of her people, only bringing them up to ridicule them. Whatever she celebrates, none of them know of it. Emmett celebrates with his family, carefully logging leave three times a year. And Esme’s ceremonies are solemn, uplifting, and intensely private moments.

And few other cultures have holidays like Earth - casual ones propped up with commercialism and novelty. More than once, he’s tried to explain them to his friends, Esme curious but bewildered, Rosalie quietly superior, and Carlisle chuckling in memory.

Alice had been intrigued, never knowing Earth or the little cultural touchstones. Maybe he liked the opportunity to get a little bit closer, explaining those missing common links carefully and greedily soaking in her presence.

But of all the things that left a mark on them, a scar that would never heal clean, neither of them would have ever imagined it would be something as harmless and cliche as February 14.

—

before.

In a perfect world, she wouldn’t have been stranded in Cesset - the capital city of a planet called L’im - for a week straight. It’s a huge, sprawling city divided into sectors; more than half forbidden to tourists, travelers, or anyone without citizenship.

The rain comes down in bright sheets, and she settles in the doorway of a pick-up bay for the night; the last job she took turned into a scuffle and her lens is offline until her appointment with the technician in two days, once the bruising around her eyes heals more. Which means she might have money but no way to use it.

The stoop of the building keeps her out of the rain, and the night is still. She might even be able to snatch some sleep.

She rifles through her pack for something to eat - some half-finished cereal or a protein drink. There’s not much in there - food is so heavy to transport, and street vendors are always better than long-life snacks. But they are handy and the three bars, two gels, and one water will have to see her through.

(Does she think about going to the nearest comms center and getting Carlisle to wire cash onto a card for her, so she can get out of the rain and buy some food, get a bunk to sleep in? The gels are a slimy mass in her mouth as she takes a drag from the sachet, a gooey lump that is hard to swallow and artificially sweet, leaving a film in her mouth. She dismisses the thought of asking Carlisle for help quickly. She’s caused enough trouble. It's only two days. She’s lived through worse.)

Absently, she slides her hand into the back of the pack, searching for her slate. Old-fashioned, cheap, and well-loved, it was the first frivolous thing she’d ever bought herself, loaded with hundreds of books. It might have gotten her enough for a hot meal if she sold it (not a good meal, just one of the oily soups with a few tough cubes of meat that the city favored and sold at every store), but the sentimental part of her couldn’t part with it.

As she pulls it out, she freezes, seeing what is slipped into the front of the cracked cover.

It was an odd thing for her to bring with her, after everything. She doesn’t know why she slipped it into her pack instead of into storage. Maybe to remind her of better times. Or maybe that once, just for a little while, she was loved.

Paper is expensive and hard to come by - most planets use fabric or digital surfaces for art and letters. The planets that do use paper reserve it for books, mostly. It’s not easy to acquire privately. The old newspapers that Carlisle had bundled in storage should have been handed over for some credits but instead, Jasper had cut out squares, had folded them precisely into triangular shapes that had glided when he tossed them out. And she had laughed out loud, delighted as the little creations caught onto the draft leaking in from the departure bay. He had folded two whole sheets of newsprint for her in dozens of paper airplanes of all sizes; had shown her how to fold her own. Something all children on Earth knew how to do, apparently.

(The lie falls easily from her lips - “I was born off-world. I’ve never been to Earth.” But it’s not really a lie. Except she knows he’s picturing a story like his - adventurous parents, a tragedy - so it really is the worst kind of lie.)

All eight of the airplanes are folded flat in one of her boxes. They would be mistaken for trash now, she supposes.

What she kept is small, it fits in the palm of her hand. Rough pink speckled paper - probably bought from an artisan, because it’s too nice to be something that was just found - cut in the shape of a wonky heart. ‘Love you - J’ written on it in red ink.

For a little while, she was loved. That’s why she keeps it. No matter what happens next, she can remind herself that he loved her once. That he cared enough to make her smile.

Carlisle warned her when he arrived. Who he was. What had happened to him. And she thought...

She thought that it was romantic, a forbidden romance that could overcome anything that life threw at them. After all, the Jasper who teased her and bought her drinks and danced with her was sweet, kind, understanding. And Carlisle had smiled at her and let her walk away believing that things would work out and she’d get her happily ever after.

The stupid little Valentine he gave her sits in her hand mocking her, sitting in an old pick-up bay in the rain. She can feel the rain seeping in at the seams of her coat which is a cherry on top of this terrible day; Pro-tex is expensive and hard to track down on this planet, especially in her size. If the water is getting in, it needs replacing.

But it’s better than nothing.

—

after.

Carlisle talks him through Systemic Failure in the first two weeks, even lends him a few texts to go over.

By the end of the first weeks, he’s having nightmares of all kinds. Of finding her dead and cold back in Viltri, her eyes clouded over and the blood gathered under the tissue around her eyes and nose and mouth. Of waking up in a pool of blood as she silently hemorrhages out beside him, blood seeping through her skin. He dreams of her dead on the ground, her insides hollowed out, his father holding him back from her because it was ‘better her than them’.

“This is the one downside of the design of the Synths,” Carlisle sighed, as he looked over the notes he had downloaded from Alice’s lens. “There was a petition to take the earliest sufferers to Earth, to run genetic panels and see if there was something missing, maybe a transplant or donation that could offset the imbalances...something we could correct. We were denied rather forcefully.”

“A donation?” His mouth is dry as the voice in his head volunteers. Blood, bone, tissue, anything she needed.

“Unfortunately, your system has been compromised simply by leaving Earth. We tried with many local humans in the day, and there was nothing they could do for us.” Carlisle frowned, circling something in Alice’s notes. “None of us could supply the donation, and even then, it would take months and years of experimentation...”

She lies behind them in a capsule, wearing surgical modesty garments, green med-patches keeping her eyes closed. Spidery wires and tubes run from multiple arteries and places. She barely looks to be breathing, even though the readout says she is.

The first surgery was a week into her return, a hotspot on her thigh that Rose picked up with the handheld scanner. A thirteen-hour surgery that ended up with her losing more than sixty percent of the bone in her left thigh. Infected and eating away at the surrounding, healthy bone and getting ready to jump into her tissue and bloodstream. Carlisle had replaced the bone with titanium (he’d physically flinched when he heard that; titanium was one of the most expensive medical implants; almost all human implants were done with cheaper Med-fil and needed replacement every ten years. The idea that Carlisle had fucking titanium for surgery made him feel nervous). But the external support - the augmentation - would be waiting for them with the new supply pick-up.

Carlisle reassures him that everything is fine - more serious than he’s used to, but nothing that they cannot get on top of. They’re running her bloods twice daily, to make sure the infection doesn’t spread, and antibiotics feed constantly into her.

(The cost makes him feel sick. Alice will never get on top of this debt and he cannot even help her until his own debts are paid off. He’s got nothing of value to sell, and he just feels sick at what she’s going to wake up to.)

He leaves Carlisle alone in the med-bay when Esme makes dinner, picking at his food, and staying quiet. He’s still lingering over it when Rose and Emmett have cleaned up the kitchen and left, trying to wrap his head around everything.

The chime of his lens brings him out of his maudlin thoughts (he knows what happens to the people with debt they can’t pay off, that after death their bodies are broken down and sold off to recoup what they never managed to pay off. He’s been at those auctions and the idea of knowing the people behind the pieces on the block makes his stomach churn uncomfortably).

Memories: Six Years Ago Today!

The photo flashing up is of him and Alice together in a bar somewhere, cheek to cheek. Her make-up is all red and pink, with a glittery heart next to her eye. There’s a sticky, pinkish outline on his cheek of a kiss.

There’s a wire flower in her hand, iridescent and shaped like a rose and that’s what places him. Valentine’s Day. They’d gone out, she’d remembered the date, and he’d bought her the rose. They’d eaten and drank and come back to the empty ship - everyone else in the dock dorms - and had a rare night together, completely alone.

If his eyes well up at the sight of her, bright and smiling and so very happy, no one else sees.

He feels like an old man as he shuffles his dishes into the washer, as he slips down to the little room near the airlock that Esme keeps for her plants - the ones associated with her faith are in hand-painted pots and kept high so no one touches them. But there are a cluster that are free to use, and he plucks a spring of a flower, a short brown stem with tiny greyish flowers.

It’s easy enough to offer to watch Alice whilst Carlisle gets coffee and stretches his legs. Rosalie’s shift doesn’t start for three more hours, and Carlisle seems grateful for the respite.

Her pale, lifeless face is unchanged, unaware of anything. And he can see the scar near her eyebrow, the one he can’t think about too hard or he’ll remember the worst parts of himself.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Alice.” His voice is barely above a whisper, and he tucks the little stem in between the hinges of the capsule.

There is nothing but shame and regret and grief whenever he’s with her, and bringing such a paltry offering - one no one will ever notice - feels more like an insult.

But it’s better than nothing.

—

Who said V-Day fics had to be happy and romantic? When you can have regret and pining?

Lenses are both an arm and eye implant, and the user can set whether the ‘screen’ appears on their arm or over their vision. When Alice got punched in the face on a job, it definitely fucked up her lens.

Esme’s species is very plant-and-nature focused, and that is evident in their faith. I’m still figuring out her full backstory, because she and Carlisle are very much in love but agreeing its a bad idea and they need to remain friends.

Alice’s slate would essentially be an old Kindle type device without internet access.

I am at a crossroads with where to take this verse. Both versions are valid and good, but have different outcomes. I will continue to contemplate it.

I don't think I've mentioned it in-verse, but Carlisle is not Edward and Edythe's biological father.

I am having a good time with the world-building in this verse.

[lovesickeros]

☆ de fontaine

{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!

She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.

She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.

Furina is tired.

But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?

So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.

Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.

Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.

An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.

She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.

She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.

She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.

And Furina has always been good at lying.

It's the believing that's the hard part.

There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?

Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.

She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?

She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.

Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?

Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.

Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?

They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?

"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"

Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.

Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.

Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.

Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.

"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.

But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.

They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.

She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.

If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..

Furina will make sure they do.

[waveridden]

“Welcome to the Imperial Senate,” False says, with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Saying what you mean can get you killed.”

Two senators, a bodyguard, four days, and a plan to cause some trouble. False/Ren/Xisuma, Star Wars AU, 12.7k.

[ragnarlothcat]

Ok hear me out: au where anakin actually dressed like that (re: the art you reblogged of anakin in the belly top with cut outs) in his downtime when he’s chilling in his quarters? Maybe his style has been influenced by Aayla and ahsoka... and Obi-wan lives in a state of constant sexual frustration as a result

We're talking about this art, yes? Let me tell you, this ask has been devastating because I love it. I don't have the bandwidth to get any actual writing done at the moment so I am instead thinking very loudly about it because the art is wonderful and so is your idea.

I was thinking, you know how lots of Jedi wear outfits that must be from their birth cultures? Like Barriss and Luminara and everyone? What if it was a thing where padawans would share parts of their culture with their masters as like a bonding exercise. Or maybe it isn't even an official thing but when Anakin was little and homesick Obi-Wan tried to learn about Tatooine traditions? Because Obi-Wan is the best?

But maybe Anakin's struggling to adjust to having Ahsoka around and says something kind of insensitive (already spinning conversations in my head over here) and he figures, well, Obi-Wan's methods are always good, right? So it could be half a sweet fic about Anakin and Ahsoka developing their bond and half Obi-Wan coming across Anakin wearing the tiniest crop top he put on to better understand the Togruta tube top rationale (I have questions too while we're on the subject) and just standing there mutely for like ten minutes straight while his brains leak out his ears.

I think it'd be fun to write! I say that about all my wips and then they betray me by developing plot but I still like it!!! I am putting it in the "when my brain turns back on" folder 🥰

[spotsupstuff]

me n my sister seriously n deeply discussing blitzbee longfics like

[nishicchikouchi]

I am so confused by a fic. Like, I see it recommended by an author I liked the work of, so I get intrigued but then I see the tags, the pairings and the summary. I AM SO CONFUSED LOL. Havent read it yet cuz the tags scares the heck out of me. Im kinda scared but I am so curious cuz it had a lot of kudos and in many collections...

[scattered-winter]

love reading a fic and having my insides carved out of my chest and laid out before me where i can know them like i've never known anything before they are carefully and meticulously placed back inside and my skin is sewn up and i am both more broken and more whole than i was before

[imwritesometimes]

help! I can see the scenes so clearly and with frightening detail in my mind's eye but I cannot make myself actually write

[cashmoneyyysstuff]

ring pop proposal ♡

fem reader, pure fluff, childhood friends to lovers lemme alone do not perceive me yk the drill by now, lil self indulgent fic cus i love childhood friends to lovers and puppy crushes, polar opposite’s trope, this reeks of my oc x canon katsu ship sooooo shh shh do not perceive.

the first person who realizes katsuki has a crush on you is his mom because when she comes to pick him up one day from kindergarten he suddenly mentions you. it’s an innocent little interaction he had with you that mitsuki doesn’t think much about at first, simply surprised her son managed to befriend someone outside of his little group of friends until he starts mentioning you more and more.

soon you’re the only thing he talks about and katsuki even starts begging her to have you come over to play. mitsuki is extremely curious to know what kind of person you are to have been able to enchant her son the way you have, she says it’s fine as long as your parents agree.

you’re a sweet little thing, almost the complete opposite of her little devil’s spawn. you’re polite and a little shy when you ask “ is it okay if i come to play at katsu’s house, please miss katsuki’s mom ?” and how could she say no to you ? she pulls at your cheek lovingly and her son almost snarls at her.

“no touchin’ !” he snarks, pulling you against him like you were his teddy bear.

mitsuki was the first to realize her son had a crush on you when you were always around. when he found something cool during a class trip you were there and whenever he was upset it was always because you had argued about something irrelevant that seemed so much bigger in the eyes of a child.

she realized because katsuki had, and in some ways, will always be rowdy. he’s rough and temperamental and moody—basically, he can be quite the brat. (she wonders where he gets that from a lot) but he’s different with you.

he’ll always be a little rough around the edges but it’s the thought that counts. he drags you around a little too hard but it's to show you something he knows you'd like and you repay him by being patient with him and letting him drag you around to his hearts content. he let’s you use the crayons he’d just denied another classmate seconds ago and when it’s really early in the morning and you’re still sleepy unlike your more energetic friend, he waits for you. sitting with you in the reading corner quietly commenting on a little bit of everything in the book you’re sharing until you’re awake enough to start the day because katsuki wanted you to be together through anything no matter what, starting the day without you was simply unimaginable.

you offer him your kindness and he repays you with his loyalty. acting like your guard dog, protecting you from everything and everyone he considers a threat to you. he goes a bit overboard but it’s the thought that counts and he’s definitely got the right intentions.

“ i’m g’nna marry yn when i grow up !” katsuki proclaims from the backseat of the car after mitsuki had come to pick him up. she looks at him through the rear view mirror only to see he’s not even looking at her, looking out the window somewhat longingly, watching as his school fades away from his sight, further and further and further away from you. she smiles to herself.

“yeah ?” she asks “yeah !” he responds proudly, crossing his arms “ i asked yn if she wanted to be my wife an’ she said yeah, so we’re gettin’ married !”

“huh. how’d you propose ? you don’t have a ring.” she jests.

katsuki responds immediately and exclaims he does have one, shuffling around to reach for something in his pocket. he pulls out a plastic ring pop holder, the candy on top is missing and mitsuki can imagine what happened to it.

“gave her one of these !”

“so that’s why you had me buy those from the store last time,” she hums. “ you ate it, though.”

katsuki tries to roll his eyes but just ends up looking up and to the side, mitsuki recognizes it as him trying to mimic what she does a lot and she snorts.

“well duh, we both did ! ‘f i kept it in my pocket it woulda gotten gross !” he defends. mitsuki simply responds with a hum, smile on her face growing larger as she hears her son happily chatting about the rest of his day with you.

she knows her katsuki is hard to handle. extremely so. but when she sees the way you both interact she can tell something is there. you don’t ‘handle’ him. you like being around him. you like playing and talking with him, she sees how happy you make him whenever you come over for playdates. he holds your hand when you get scared and you hug him tight and beam when you see him again after he’s gotten over a nasty cold.

she can tell you make her son happy and he does the same for you in the way children do with pinky promises and shy cheek kisses, kisses over tiny wounds and refusing to be separated whenever the rowdier one of you both gets his recess time taken away for being naughty.

mitsuki hopes this crush, this love you have for her son can grow along with you. she hopes you’ll stick around as katsuki grows up more and potentially more rowdy and rougher around the edges but even more enamored with you. and with the way her son is squirming around in his seat and tugging at his seatbelt, giddy about you accepting his ring pop proposal, she has a funny feeling you’ll be sticking around for a long time.

[ravensareunkind]

So… I just realized that I haven’t cleared my reading history on ao3 since joining in 2015 and as a result I did some fun maths

So overall I read 12850 fics (of various lengths) which means that on average I read 127 fics a month and 31 in a week.

No wonder my brain is rotten, damn

[psalmsofpsychosis]

Jesus christ the feeling of homesickness that hits after finishing a multichapter fic that rewires your whole internal neural network and gives you an involuntary heart transplanet with the main character's heart. This shit will never get easier and i wouldn't have it any other way

[goldeneyedgirl]

whumptober 2022: day 15: unimaginable things (jasper/alice, AU)

Title: Unimaginable Things

Prompt: day 15: lies

Rating: M (body horror)

He joined the Olympia seven years ago now, still on probation from everything that happened with Maria and the Monterrey... Everything about these people, he cares about fiercely. But they also scare the shit out of him just by existing. 

Viltri is a graveyard. It’s a place of death and dying. 

He used to like the story of Viltri. An old planet, a small one, riddled with volcanic activity that was slowly dissolving it. The Federation reinforced the surface with an alloy frame, one that reminded him of the old-fashioned models - an orrery, that’s right - from Earth. But shit happens, and slowly the planet dissolved and took more than half the frame with it and then Viltri was just a curve of alloy flowing in space, a docking station with slums surrounding it, carving out some kind of living with booze, weapons, sex, and scavenging. A real shithole. 

That was the Viltri he knew as a kid. A place to get totally shitfaced and gamble a month’s wages in a few hours, and wake up in a shitty box of a room with some stranger who was just a little too gaunt and a little too worn down to be beautiful. 

But five years ago, the Federation acknowledged that it was over. The remnants of the frame were decaying, crumbling away. Entire buildings on the fringe were quickly collapsing, and the deaths were becoming noticeable. And because of the docks, because of the risk to ships passing through, Viltri had to be evacuated and abandoned, no questions asked. Third-generation criminals had been delighted they had finally found a way off without Federation paperwork, whilst the handful of native descendants had staged ceremonies of passing for the remnants of their home. 

And now it was empty. No vermin underfoot, no smell of cheap food cooked and fried and replicated. No music or shouting or rumble from the dock station. No cloud of smoke that was. some kind of miasma of fuel and smoke and shit. Nothing. 

The lights are off, the buildings are empty, and Viltri is just waiting for its slow descent into nothing. 

They shouldn’t even be there; Carlisle is back on the ship, fielding numerous messages about why they passed the safety barrier against Federation decree. Promising that they have enough fuel and rations to last them. 

“We received an SOS, and whilst the origins and timestamp were corrupted, we’re doing a sweep of the area.”

Such an easy explanation, an act of a good Samaritan. Edward’s probably already created the false message in the system for proof when some bureaucrat demands it - they’ve already demanded fuel and ration records. Rosalie’s signed off on more documents in the last hour than all month, and she’s still pissy that they came at all. 

Glass and debris crunch under his boots, and he wonders if they were wrong, if the message was old. There had been no response to the reply messages that they had sent through and that’s… well, it was the I.D. chip in their wrist (her left one) that ran the messaging system and it was powered by their bodies. The lack of reply implied…

He doesn’t think about that. Instead, he focuses on the groan of the alloy frame, a death rattle. Viltri’s got only weeks left, if Edward’s analysis is correct. 

That its final orbit was always destined to be very slow and then fast and then over.

(That hits a little too close to home. Or it will, when he looks back.)

—

His story isn’t an interesting one, like Charlotte’s. Or an adventure, like Peter’s. Born on Earth to a pair of young parents who were dazzled by the promise of space, they set off with nothing but what they could carry. 

And it was everything they hoped for. Until it wasn’t. 

He remembers how his father died far more clearly than he wants to. 

(People are always visibly disappointed that his mom lives over in Panai with his stepfather and his three half-siblings. Things aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy between them - she insists she doesn’t understand him anymore - but he talks to her sometimes. She’s happy and safe. Apparently, his story would be better if she had become a vigilante or a villain or gone and died as well.) 

He’s the least interesting of the Olympia crew; Carlisle, the heavily augmented doctor, scientist, and engineer who was one of the early pioneers in space, and was right there when Earth signed on as honorary Federation members. The owner and leader of their little clan, he’s at least a hundred years old, and his augmentations are the oldest, hydraulic-powered type that he refuses to upgrade. 

Then there’s Esme, the Atargatian female. Something about her features - the slope of her nose and the tilt of her eyes - remind him of Earth deer from his childhood picture books. In all the documentation, she’s a personal care assistant for Carlisle. That’s not really his story to tell, though. But she’s the heart of them all, the one that never flinches back from the bad, the disgusting, the grotesque. 

There’s sad, arrogant Edward who is a monument to Carlisle’s grief more than anything else.

Sharp, vain Rosalie who captains the ship, a refugee in her own right, and smarter than all of them put together. 

And then Emmett, the one-man deck crew. Emmett had never met an order he wouldn’t take - especially if it came from Rose. The man had been mooning over Rosalie ever since he’d joined the ship according to Edward, and Jasper had to admire Emmett’s commitment. 

There wasn’t really enough for a ship the size of the Olympia - there were more than a few spaces that sat empty and forgotten - but they all tend to think of it as a luxury. They all appreciate the space to be alone, to not have to fight for water and food, and peace. And sometimes Carlisle would call up the Denali or any one of his old friends who freelance if they needed an extra body or some fresh blood for a season. 

A leader, a ghost, a nurse, a captain slash engineer, an… Emmett (whose job is everything and nothing; one day he might be co-piloting with Rose, but the next he’s running the comms. He’s too good to be on a ship like the Olympia, too reasonable and proactive. A jack of all trades, and a good one.) 

And him, security. 

No analyst, not anymore. 

He and Emmett cover the tech side of things, with Edward’s input. That position has been open for more than five years. Long-term dispatch under her name in the system, like the computer won’t archive her profile in a few months and the Federation won’t send them paperwork to confirm her permanent departure from their crew. 

(And it’s his fault she left.)

—

He picks his way north and pretends the only thing crunching underfoot is glass and rubble. A few candles are still burning, jammed into nooks of walls, and spilling the red and yellowy wax down the bricks, like a burst wound. He leaves them to burn because they were lit by the descendants, the ones who watched their planet dying, only to be saved, and then lost again. The ones who finally realized that the Federation, despite their promises, didn’t really care that much about a remote planet with no long-term resources they could lay claim to. 

Maybe he’s getting bitter in his old age.

Their farewell had been poignant, piecing together the reports from the final departure - candles and prayers and ancient dirt saved in jars for decades flung out in memory of where they had begun. 

There’s an old sign, dull and broken, and when he kicks the rubble off it, he recognizes it. Not the language - no one can read Viltrian, a language with more than 900 characters across five alphabets - but the English speakers (it’s fuckin’ ridiculous they still call themselves ‘English’ speakers, but it’s been over a century and Earth is still refusing to name its official language, and there’s still a furious battle between English, Mandarin, and - inexplicably - French. The next argument will be whether Earth changes its designation to Terra or Sol or something because ‘Earth’ does not translate well to a lot of Federation languages) called it Rocco’s, due to some complex series of events long before Jasper’s time. 

Either way, he’d spent more than a few nights there - drinking and smoking and ending up in a shitty cot above the bar with a glassy-eyed companion. It had been the safest bar in Viltri for humans, the one place they wouldn’t risk being beaten or skinned or molested or just killed. The one place where the food was guaranteed not to be poisonous, the drink wouldn’t burn a literal hole in your stomach, and most of the barmaids knew enough human first aid to be useful. 

The sign is too big to drag with him, and that’s regrettable. The loss of that little safe place, that sanctuary, reminds him of things he’d rather forget. Reminds him of people he’ll never see again, and a person he’ll never be again. 

If he reaches down to snap off the end of one character, brace-laser cutting through it clean, then no one is around to see it. 

He feels like a vulture, like a carrion bird, picking over a body. 

They shouldn’t have come, there’s nothing here. 

That’s when his radio crackles to life, Rosalie’s voice sharp and serious, summoning them west - and he turns on a dime, both reluctant and anticipatory. 

—

He joined the Olympia seven years ago now, still on probation from everything that happened with Maria and the Monterrey, and tired and used up by the scavenging ships. Even the legit ones were the kind of place that wore everyone right down to nothing. The Olympia seemed like a cushy job; security for some soft-hearted millionaire running a traveling medic ship. There was nothing special about the pay or the brief, but he’d applied and gotten the job in two days. 

It had been surprising, how small the crew was. There were three empty rooms on his deck alone - one used for overflow storage. But it was… nice. Nice to have his own room and not just a bunk. A private washroom. Requisitions that were more of a formality than a process or game of roulette. 

Meeting everyone was done over dinner, a communal meal that resembled the family meals at his mother’s home more than any he’d taken aboard a ship - second and third helpings were taken without a blink, and it was mostly fresh food and not the typical stock rations most ships fed their crew. Emmett is boisterous and fun, Edward is seated and irritable, with no food or drink in front of him (it’ll be a week before Esme clues him in to Edward and the perfect tragedy of his existence, and a couple of months before his presence at dinner isn’t uncomfortable. But he’ll never be comfortable with Edward’s complete and utter access to every corner of the Olympia, to every security camera and microphone and file.) 

And then she had breezed into dinner late, and he had frozen for a moment. 

Five feet nothing, easily, and with the biggest brown eyes he’s ever seen; the tell-tale gold disc fitted over her left iris revealing some kind of augmentation, mirrored in the slim vein of alloy outlining the left side of her jaw. Barefoot and in loose pants and a tank top, her hair piled messily on top of her head, she’s just the most beautiful thing he’s seen in a long time.  

“Jasper, this is Alice - our analyst tech,” Carlisle said, smiling brightly as the girl snagged the remaining plate on the counter. “Alice, Jasper is our new security officer.”

“Hi Jasper, the new security officer,” she replies with a smile that feels brighter than anything he’s seen in a long time. “Nice to meet you.”

(Her left arm has the silvery plates of alloy peaking through the skin, especially around her elbow and wrist; it’ll be several months later when he finds the plating runs all the way down her left side, and she’s gone through and etched flowers on all the surface plating, like tattooing over a scar. There are a million different reasons for augmentation and the invisible kind is outrageously expensive. Later, when he’s going over all the onboarding paperwork, he examines the crew profiles and is secretly pleased that there are no android disclaimers on Alice’s. Some people would say he’s discriminating, but he’s not fucking anything without a soul.

That’s crude and unfair. He just … doesn’t want to get his hopes up if Alice isn’t real, if she’s just a tool to help them get their jobs done. If nothing else, he wants the Olympia and all of its unexpected promises to be real.)

—

Rosalie is already with her when he and Emmett make it to the old docking station. 

And for a moment, he doesn’t recognize her. The tiny figure in the black hood, sitting on the ground with Rosalie crouched beside her, slapping some med-patches onto her, is not one he associates with Alice. 

“What a shithole,” Emmett says cheerfully. “No idea why you’d camp out here, Alice.”

Rosalie tugs the hood off Alice’s face to add a med-patch to her temple and jugular, and he’s surprised at how much she’s changed. Her hair is cut harshly to her chin, uneven on one side. She looks smaller, beaten, in layers of worn pro-tex that doesn’t seem to fit right. And clutching a worn-out duffle. She glances at him, and then immediately away. 

“I don’t even want you to fucking look at me, you understand?” His hand was fisted so tightly in her hair that when he lets go, the strands are tangled in his watch and he doesn’t give a shit when he rips the hair from her lying head. He pretends her terror, the tears rolling down her cheeks didn’t cut into him sharply. Pretends he’s in control of his rage and fear and trauma, and that this isn’t just him wildly lashing out like a feral animal. He just storms away and leaves her there, without looking back. 

“Ready to go?” Is all he says, as Rosalie checks something on the med-screen and nods. 

“I…” Alice begins, but the look Rose shoots her stops her. “Ready.”

She’s unsteady on her feet, but she doesn’t relinquish the bag. Instead, she trails after them, limping and fragile to watch. He can see how worn her clothing is, and pro-tex is compromised when it wears. And when it’s as ill-fitted as Alice’s set is. She might as well be walking around in pajamas. 

They had to dock on the opposite side, and it’s a slow walk back. Rosalie makes them stop a few times, offering Alice pouches of rehydration fluids, and checking her vitals with a blank look on her face. 

The luminous blue mesh of the med-patches on her face draws his eyes and he tries to remember his own first-aid training. He’s not qualified to use the blue ones, but the green ones need to be placed directly over the injury and she has them everywhere, and the worry is tight in his chest, and he hates himself for caring even a little. 

Emmett finds an old Viltri flag amongst the wreckage and ties it to a broken pole and carries it like they’re on some kind of adventure mission and not just an SOS call from an old crew member on a dead planet. 

What would have happened if they hadn’t come? 

How did she get here?

How could she have gotten off Viltri before it collapsed? 

She walks in silence, her head bowed, blue mesh glowing on her skin, and he wonders what he’s going to say to her when they get back. What can he say? Nothing has really changed; they’re both just five years older. 

The shudder and groan of Viltri’s death underscores their silence as they pick their way through the wreckage. There are a handful of bodies, and it’s not hard to imagine residents choosing suicide over evacuation in the face of everything… or even for career criminals to hide and choose to die free than risk being discovered. 

He breathes a sight of relief as the Olympia comes into view. It’s become home, somehow. 

But Alice’s head ducks further, and one hand shoots up to tug her hood up, and the fresh wave of guilt settles in nicely.

Why does he still care so damn much?

—

The first few weeks on the ship are weird, he decides. And then it becomes… not quite home, he hasn’t had one of those in a very long time. But a place he’s okay being in. 

Rosalie is one of the Faceless from Velea, and he is quickly warned to never ask about her life before the Olympia; she’s whip-smart, with an engineering background and Carlisle training her as a ship-level medic. Emmett had been working on ships since he was a kid, piecing together a living to help out his family and maybe save for his own small ship one day. Esme was a runaway, and he’s surprised that someone so kind and steady could do something as spontaneous as fleeing home and joining a med support ship as a barely-qualified nurse. 

Edward was an enigma until Jasper catches him walk through a fucking wall and Esme kindly takes him aside and explains that Edward is a hologram AI designed off of Carlisle’s missing son. The whole story is horrible, and there’s something morbid about sitting down with what is essentially a memory. But despite everything, Edward is smart and occasionally witty. 

Alice is a delight, and he hasn’t enjoyed someone’s company so much in a long time. She’s always smiling, always happy to pause for a conversation. She seems to have an easy back-and-forth with everyone on the ship. She’s terribly vague about her past - the most he gets out of her is that she doesn’t have any memories of her family, and was on her own until Carlisle was willing to offer her a place on the Olympia. 

He finds himself drawn to her, seeking her out when she’s on break. He tries to justify it to himself, that it’s just been a long time since Maria; it’s been a while since he’s spent time with friends, with people who aren’t as miserable as he is. It’s a good thing that he’s making normal friends.

(If he sticks close to her side when they dock, fetches the drinks, and turns down smoking, ignores the pointed looks of the willing around the bar… well, it would be fucking rude to abandon her.)

They are a sight to behold, he knows, about more than one person whispers about them when they are docked on a new planet. Two humans together? A rare sight on the more rural planets. And they are an interesting contrast; he towers over her, with blond hair and sharp grey eyes. She’s so slender, with black hair that she changes on a whim - sometimes it’s long and pin straight, or short and curly, or braided with bright purple streaks. 

It’s… nice to be normal. Ordinary. Emmett’s quick to show him how to hide the parole anklet in the style of boots they’re issued on the Olympia (nicer than anything else he’s ever gotten on any other job), and Rosalie is quick to pay the bill if she suspects he’s short on cash. No one judges him too hard when he wants to smoke; Rosalie huffs and rolls her eyes, Emmett jokes about it but very, very rarely joins him. Alice does, but she’s tiny enough that she’s a lightweight, and Emmett ends up carrying her back to the dock dorms more than once. 

It’s especially nice when those outings somehow turn into just him and Alice. Sometimes they bum around in the crew bars, the ones where the food is greasy, the music is loud, and the booze is cheap. Sometimes they end up in nicer places, where the lighting is low and the food is good, and they have to sit too close to each other. 

It starts with a drink and a kiss, a dance, and an awkward night bunking together at the dock dorms because they checked in too late and there was only one bed. 

Alice feels like a fresh start, like something good and happy and safe. Like maybe he’s been looking for a place where he could be happy when he should have been looking for a person. He never thought he’d meet someone he’d be okay with being stuck out in the middle of space for weeks on end.

Then he met Alice and, well, he’d get lost with her any time. 

(Too goddamn good to be true.)

—

Carlisle is delighted by their return, only a flicker in his expression when he glimpses Alice. 

“Food and then med bay,” Rosalie orders, pushing past to head to the cockpit, dumping the stash bags in the alcove. “Then rest. Anything else can wait.”

“Thanks Captain,” Edward says snottily and Rose just flips her fingers rudely at him, ignoring Emmett’s chortle, the flag still in his grip. 

“I’ve got food waiting,” Esme beams at Alice, and Alice nods silently, accepting the gentle squeeze on the shoulder that Esme offers as she takes them all to the galley, to plate up the food and settle around the table.

For a moment, Alice is wolfing down the food in the kind of way that indicates she hasn’t eaten in a while. Esme’s a good cook, even with the shelf-stable shit they have to keep between docking. 

But just as suddenly as she starts, she stops before bolting to the flush sink, hurling before she’s even still. Esme is there with water and comfort and Carlisle shakes his head. 

“A little too much too fast,” he says as Alice wipes her mouth. 

“Sorry,” she mutters, keeping her gaze on the ground as she sits back at the table, not bothering to reach for her plate again. 

It’s an odd reunion of the crew, Alice fidgeting for a while. He doesn’t know what to say to her because he doesn’t know how he feels about her. Five years is a long time, but nothing has changed. 

Or maybe he has. Maybe five years apart, knowing he was the reason she left, has shamed him and softened him. Maybe all of those lessons he was supposed to learn from the debacle with Maria, he really learned from Alice. 

She should have told him the truth. But he should never have been that angry, that cruel and terrible to her. 

He still hasn’t worked out what to say to her when Esme escorts her to the guest suite, with Carlisle promising to look over her med report, and Alice still clutching her duffle bag. 

“I-I need to talk to you, Carlisle,” Alice says in a small voice, and something passes between the pair when she says that. 

“Of course. After dinner - you need some rest,” Carlisle says and everything feels a little off-centre, so he skips the rest of lunch and spends the day locked in the old analyst office doing ship paperwork because somehow that’s more appealing than being alone with his thoughts right now. 

—

Every year, Carlisle gives them ten days off. They dock on one of the capital Federation planets so that the Olympia can be serviced and maintain its accreditation, and they get a break. 

They usually choose late summer-early autumn - or what passes for it - for Emmett’s benefit, so he can spend time with his family. This year, he’s loaded up with gifts and dragging Rose along with him; Carlisle (and Edward) are headed to the University of Namen; Esme and Alice are going off with the crew from the Denali, and he’s headed off to see his mother. 

Panai is one of the planets most like Earth’s visions of the future, of alien cities. A futuristic white city with abundant green-space, clean air, and children playing in the street. His mother lives on the hill, with her new family, a bit of a local oddity being the only humanoid living in the Panai equivalent of suburbia.

Cass Whitlock lights up when she sees him, her smile genuine as she embraces him and brings him inside the house, but he still feels the words they exchanged right before he left with Maria sitting between them. With every argument and disagreement and look of frustrated disappointment on her face. 

His half-siblings peer around the corner of the meal-room; two giggling girls and a toddler boy - Cat, Nori, and Baby Lo. Cat’s the one that looks most like him and his mom; the blonde hair, her nose. But all three of them strongly resemble their father with the mottled blue skin, the extra digits on each hand, and the two smaller eyes under each humanoid eye. Nori has sinuous blue strands in place of hair, and both she and Lo have the flat, serpentine nose of their father, Najo. 

Jasper’s never gotten along with Najo, whose strict religious leanings made him distant and cold to outsiders. The few times Jasper had been to the house, had chosen to stay there instead of at the dock dorms, it had been uncomfortable at best. But the man keeps the space for Jasper’s father in the shrine wall out of respect for Cass, and his mom is happy with her life. That’s all he wanted for her. He’s just hurt that her happiness never seemed to have a space for him when he was younger, and now that she has made a space, it’s not a shape that he fits into anymore. 

“How are you, Jas?” Cass is already preparing snacks, and he pretends not to hear Cat hush the others. He’s got gifts for them - Najo had been seething with offence the first time he’d arrived without traditional offerings, even as Cass tried to explain that human culture didn’t involve the guest - especially family - making an ‘offering’ to allow their presence.

“I’m good. I brought stuff,” he says, and there’s a whoop of delight as Nori darts out, visibly sniffing the air. He piles the boxes on the table - wine and tea and the candy Nori ferrets out. The books make Cass smile and kiss his head, and it’s times like this he misses the outpost he was raised, the quasi-human compound that was just familiar enough to give his parents confidence. 

“You don’t have to, you know,” she says as she scoops up Lo, handing him a piece of the candy. “Najo understands.”

“Najo was genuinely disappointed I wasn’t executed or sentenced off-planet,” Jasper says and regrets it when Cat’s smile disappears. Old enough to understand, then. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”

“I appreciate that.” 

The visit goes surprisingly well, and when Najo gets home, he is polite - warm to his children and Cass, so Jasper doesn’t really care how he’s treated. 

Unexpectedly, Nori seems taken with him, staring at him as they eat, but he really doesn’t know how to talk to kids, especially these children that share his mother. 

It’s late when he goes to the shrine-wall; dozens of little alcoves with photocells of the dead. Cass only has five alcoves - Jack Whitlock, her parents, a brother who died as a kid, and a friend who died at the same time as Jack. The rest are Najo’s family and friends. 

He leaves a stone, from Yavanna, at his father’s memorial. Najo hates it, hates the symbol of an Earth faith in his home. And Jasper himself was not raised in any faith, but his father had been and it was just … one thing he could do for him. 

“You seem lighter.” He turns to see Cass. The children are asleep, and Najo is in the sanctuary, so it’s finally just them. 

“Easier work,” he shrugs. And it’s true, the salvage ships are hellish; he lost fifteen pounds his first stint, and it had only been a half-time job.

Cass shook her head. “You’re less angry,” she clarified. “I’m glad you’ve found a better place.” She moves towards the opposite wall, the one that bears the photocells of the living with incense and coins to ensure a good life. His photo hasn't been there in years - probably destroyed when he was arrested - and he hasn’t been bitter about it in a while.

“Tell me about your new crew.” Cass begins to tidy up the shrine, picking up bits of dried fruit and candy that the children have left there, and he finds himself talking, explaining, and trying to gloss over the stranger or more personal details of the people he works with. He finds himself talking about Rosalie and Alice, about their educations and how goddamn smart they are, before musing about Alice’s fascination with all things Earth and how much more celebrated someone as skilled as she was would be back there. 

“Alice, huh? Are you close? She sounds like she likes you,” Cass has a knowing look on her face as she watches him, and he looks away. Alice is a lot of things, but they aren’t anything serious. A teasing kiss in the tech room, a drink at a bar wherever they’ve docked, a soft conversation when everyone else is asleep over coffee about everything and anything… it’s becoming something, but slowly. And he’s cautious. After everything that Maria did, promised him, and everything that she ruined… he never told Cass any of that, and he doesn’t want to confirm that it was worse than she already assumed.

He lets out a huff of breath and Cass beams at him, reaching out to squeeze his hand. 

“I only ever wanted you to be happy, Jas. To let go of that anger and fear and let yourself be happy. I know it’s hard, but that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. Sometimes it feels like I lost you and Jack at the same time, even when I had you by my side.”

He nods, but the old anger flares; the one that let her move on so easily. That she was sad for a while and she packed it away after a while. Met Najo and picked him over Jasper; build herself a brand new perfect little family.

“Do you even remember that day?” he asks, after she’s turned to leave, and when she looks around again, she just looks frustrated. 

“Of course I do, Jasper. I still have nightmares. But being angry after twelve years… it doesn’t fix a thing.”

“Maybe not for you.” Because you weren’t there. You only showed up when it was too late, when it was all over. The words he spat at her as a traumatized fifteen-year-old hover in the air. 

“I’m not having this conversation again. I’m glad you’re happy, and I’m glad you’ve made friends. Good night, Jasper.”

(Cass always thought it was like magic, the idea that a few chemicals in a petri-dish could create a fetus; he knows she was enchanted that she could go to the equivalent of a 711 and buy a baby, a child, another whole person, in a test tube. He wondered why she had never done it, grabbed the green and purple tubes of Synth, and taken it home to build the second child she and Jack could never manage. Afterward, well, she had always just been sad. Never angry.)

They don’t talk alone again before he leaves after breakfast, and he finds himself mulling over his mother’s words. Not about being happy - that ship sailed when he realised how deep he was in it with Maria. But about Alice. About that maybe being something. 

He still hugs Cass when he leaves and she wishes him well. As usual, he makes no promises when he’ll be back, and she doesn’t invite him. 

—

Edward shimmers as he strides irritably across the galley, and Jasper idly wonders what it’s like to be eternally seventeen. To have all the thoughts and feelings and memories of an ordinary kid, to think you are that kid but in reality, you aren’t. Just a database of code. 

(There’s a panel in the hall outside of Carlisle’s room and everyone hates it. Of a redheaded girl at a piano, smiling as she plays; then she looks over her shoulder and laughs. Miss Edythe Cullen, frozen forever at her piano; an eternal shrine that is a little too lifelike, a little too convincing.)

Rose strides into the kitchen and for a second, she’s faceless before her usual, perfected facade drops into place. He winces because Rose hates it when she lets her facades drop, when others see her in those moments. 

“She still in there with him?” She asks grumpily. 

“Yes,” Edward scowls. “Carlisle turned off the projection in there. Wanted privacy.”

“Esme’s retired for the night,” he adds in casually, and they all exchange looks. Esme is privy to so much of the crew’s … mess that it feels notable that she’s not included in whatever Carlisle and Alice are discussing in his quarters. 

He wants to not care, honestly. Not to desperately want to know how the fuck she ended up on Viltri after the evacuation. Why she had waited five goddamn years to call them. 

“Well, I’m not waiting up,” Rosalie said, turning on her heel and leaving. “Whatever she wants or has or knows is just going to be more drama.”

Edward huffs and continues pacing and Jasper slumps at the table and wonders again what its like to be eternally seventeen, and not being able to sleep or eat or fuck or do anything but wait. 

Everything about these people, he cares about fiercely. But they also scare the shit out of him just by existing. 

—

When he walks into the galley the next morning, he expects a crisis. He expects Rosalie to be percolating with irritation, Emmett to be shoveling in breakfast so that he can get on with whatever plans they need to put into action, Carlisle arguing with Edward and trying to talk Rosalie out of her snit, and Alice and Esme to be trying not to trigger an argument. 

He’s not expecting silence, of Rose and Emmett drinking coffee alone. 

“Where is everyone?” He asks. Esme prides herself on cooking for them regularly, but this morning is pre-packaged rations that Emmett is attempting to reanimate with gels and the precious bottle of honey they snagged during the last supply run. 

“Edward and Alice haven’t come to breakfast,” Rosalie said, her stern look masking her worry. “Esme is tending to Carlisle.”

That’s bad. ‘Tending’ means she’s there in a professional sense, as Carlisle’s nurse. ‘Tending’ means that something is wrong. He can’t even begin to understand Carlisle’s health or medical status, but the few incidents he’s seen are clear reasons that Esme is employed on the ship, her relationship with Carlisle notwithstanding. 

“Rose thinks she’s handing out a nice relaxing sedative,” Emmett says, taking an experimental bite out of his breakfast and looking satisfied with the results. “Eddie hasn’t told us anything.”

“Probably just a long night,” he says, snapping off a chunk of the breakfast bar and popping it in his mouth. He regrets it immediately; it’s the same brand and flavor the Monterrey used to stock and it takes him back to a place he’d rather not be, mentally. “Or his hydraulics fucked up again. You know how he gets.”

“Maybe.” Rose pushes her untouched breakfast toward Emmett and stands up. “If you see Alice, tell her I want to see her in the med bay. You two are on dinner duty - no reheats or rations. I’ll take lunch.”

That’s when the sense of dread really settles into his bones. Rosalie offering to cook. 

It’s nothing. What could it be? They’re all here, the ship is fine, they have supplies. 

Anything that has happened, they can fix.

He tries to convince himself of that as he throws away his breakfast bar, but the bad taste continues to linger.

—

Of all the secrets he kept - the ones that kept Peter and Charlotte out of prison, the ones that let him still see his mom, the ones that mean the difference between life and death - the dumbest is the one that has always weighed the heaviest on him, has gnawed at him over the last five years. 

They got married on Xevis, drunk and high and happy. It was a fucking cliche, and when they had sobered up, she had laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks and he was just embarrassed that he didn’t do it properly. 

(Grandma Whitlock was still alive down there in Texas, and he’d always promised himself that he’d take himself back to see her one last time. With a bride in tow… well, that would have made her so happy.)

The paperwork sat in the inbox for nine weeks before everything went to hell, and then she left the ship, and he didn’t bother doing anything with it. Just an ugly, sour memory split between fear and resentment of everything that she hid from him, and regret for how he had driven her out of her home. 

(The marriage was legal and binding on Xevis, but never filed with the Federation. Meaningless unless they wanted to work or live on Xevis, and that would never fucking happen. He’d be more likely to set up shop on Viltri.) 

But it was still a vow. A moment where consequences and rationality had been damned, and he - they - had just done what they wanted. And then, when everything had gone wrong, he’d become the person everyone feared he always would end up being. 

Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he’d never found out. If she’d just been another pretty augmented human girl to him, and his wife. He’d never wanted kids, and she’d never be able to have them, so that wouldn’t have revealed her. 

(He’d been shitfaced when Emmett dragged him back to the ship that last night, and loudly slurred if he ever saw the fuckin’ Synth again, he’d shoot her between the eyes. Esme and Rosalie had been horrified, and Emmett had blamed the drink. She’d already left by then, but it would take him another two days to notice her absence, those words echoing in his head.)

—

The compound he was raised on was one of two that Earth had contributed funding to, for expats. He remembered a scarlet sky with two suns, and lush grass that was more blue than green. He remembered their bungalow of straw and mottled wood. 

He remembers most of the residents at the compound being humans; the adults had grand plans of raising earth animals and selling them to alien worlds and making millions.

(He was only young. He didn’t know everything. He didn’t know anything. He knew three languages, and that watermelon, corn, and blueberries became poisonous when grown in alien soil, and that the half-alien girl in the house down by the northeast corner was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. He didn’t know the price on human bodies, on human tissue. He was a white boy from Texas; he could never have dreamed up how dangerous and unfair and cruel life could be.)

He was nearly twelve, by Earth-time, when it all went to hell. 

They were supposed to be safe. 

That’s why when the compound bought the Synths as support workers, they included security. It was probably more expensive than necessary but it was important 

Back then, Synths were not really special, not to him. Humans made in Petri dishes and grown in labs weren’t all that interesting when he might see something blue and gelatinous or with five legs or sixteen eyes at the docking station. They were just neighbours to all the kids in the community. 

And the Synths ones in the compound weren’t fancy; they looked like regular people. They were treated like regular people, mostly. The only real difference was the tattooed serial number on the inside of their middle finger, a shade darker than their skin. Something you had to look for, designed to be subtle.

No one knew they were unhappy; they were good at hiding it. Or rather, they were upset as the Federation began the Synth restrictions - tougher than androids because Synths could blend in so much easier. But no one noticed their rage. 

(The trigger was when Earth refused them passports, refused their entry, and made them stateless. He remembers his father promising his mother that it would be okay, they would look after their own.)

He remembers it being a hot day, helping his father with the precious few chickens they were attempting to acclimatize in a corner of the barn.

He remembers being confused when the barn doors closed.

He remembers his teacher, her gaze hard and cold against him, holding him back as the others cut Jack’s throat. 

As they laid Jasper’s father down next to the other men, the older teenagers (nine of them died that day), and stripped them down.

When they began to cut and slice and peel, as they bagged and boxed each piece, they didn’t need to hold him back anymore. He just stared, blood sticky on his face and hands. Too young to be worth a dime. 

Sixteen hours in that building, before they packed up their bounty and bid him farewell, and left him there with nine splayed out bodies, cut down to the bone and hollowed out for profit. 

(The one with the dark hair blew him a kiss and promised they’d come back for him when he was older. He still has that nightmare where he’s just another body on the floor, eyes and tongue and organs scooped out.)

Cass had howled when she saw Jack, screamed when she saw Jasper, and grabbed him in her arms so tightly when he reached for her that there were bruises on his arms. He shook but he didn’t cry, didn’t make a sound. 

Not even when the community lined up the other Synths, the ones that were just as confused and afraid as the humans were, and executed them on the spot.

Monsters were real and they wore human skin. 

—

Carlisle comes to dinner with red, tired eyes. 

Edward appears not at all. Neither does Alice. 

The meal is eaten in silence, Carlisle looking exhausted and worn and utterly hopeless and nothing is said until the plates are cleared and Rosalie is pouring cups of coffee. 

“Rosalie, please run co-ordinates for Noctuae, Small Island,” Carlisle finally says, deflated. “They should be in the system.”

“Of course,” Rosalie says cautiously; she’s been quiet all day - like the rest of them, she’s been waiting for whatever bomb is about to be dropped.

“Emmett, send a message through to Masen House that we will be docking for three in nine,” Carlisle adds, staring down at the translucent slices of fruit remaining on his plate with the sort of hopelessness Jasper is familiar with. 

“Masen House?” Rosalie asks, and Jasper surreptitiously runs a search for the name in with his Lens, the name ringing some faint bell. Edward Masen Cullen. “What’s going on, Carlisle?”

There is a terrible, hollow pause as they watch Carlisle try to gather himself. 

“Alice brought me Edward,” Carlisle says simply, staring into his mug. “She found him being used as a tissue farm and…” His head bows and Esme’s gone pale in horror, and Emmett looks vaguely ill. 

Tissue farming had popped up before the Synths and continued on after them; it wasn’t something they could be blamed for. It just… wasn’t taboo in some quarters of space. DNA splicing, transplants, blood, and organ donation… it was all legal. The problem was in that there was always a demand for more variety, more choices, especially exotic ones. Like humans. And where there was demand, there was always going to be someone willing to provide. 

He imagines what Alice found when she saw Edward. If it was a nice place, probably a man kept alive on life-support, harvested at the whim of wealthy clients. Probably brain-dead from the chemical coma. 

If it wasn’t a nice place… he didn’t want to imagine that. Edward’s just a kid.

Or he was. He always has been. Always will be, now. 

Carlisle sets the metal box down, a rough label slapped on the front, along with a blood-stained microchip. 

“She had no way of traveling with him,” Carlisle began, and he can already see the sobs building. “And he couldn’t have anyway, he was gone.” The sobs break through and Jasper wonders what that level of love felt like when turned to grief. If he’d sob if any of his half-ling siblings were found too far gone to help. 

“We’ll take him to Small Island,” Esme rushes to comfort Carlisle, her own face streaked with tears. “With Edythe and Elizabeth.”

“Yes. The end of a chapter,” Carlisle manages with a shuddering breath. “A father without his children…” He shakes his head. 

“You’ve still got a child,” Rosalie says softly, and looks down the hallway and for a second, Jasper expects to see Edward’s mopey visage, trying to compute the idea that he’s a hologram and AI of a dead person and how exactly he needs to mourn himself. 

Instead, he sees a flash of black hair and worn pro-tex, and he just feels pity for them both.

—

It starts - or ends, really, with Alice flipping Emmett off.

They’re in the galley, doing the quarterly reports on supplies. It’s boring as hell, documenting every mug and every spoon, with the knowledge that once the galley is done, they have to check over every other common or unoccupied room in the ship. 

(“It’s fucking stupid, but at one time any human goods fetched a good price on the black market,” Emmett informed him solemnly during his first year. “When I was a kid, a potato peeler was worth more than a new optical drive. So now we log every fuckin’ dish towel for the Federation to make sure Carlisle doesn’t make his dough hocking tube socks and chopsticks on the down-low.”) 

It’s a good night; Rose mixed drinks for them and they’ve bypassed Edward to pick the music themselves, and Emmett’s making salacious jokes at their expense because their last date-night at the Peremai dock involved too much liquor and not a whole lot of discretion, and Alice flips Emmett off and that’s when he sees the tattoo. 

The shiny glint of the genetic-tattoo a shade darker than her skin, running up the inside of her middle finger, and the bottom drops out of his stomach. The world tilts, and he hears static, and then he feels sick before he feels anything else. 

Maria reassured him, all those years ago, that the Federation had outlawed Synths after the attacks on the Earth compounds, and the small population of them were tagged and monitored - virtually the only forms of employment for a Synth were wet work and sex work. You had to go looking to find a Synth.

That was what she was good at - they were good at. 

And Alice is standing there, laughing with a drink in her hand, and he doesn’t know how to speak. 

(What happens next is that he grabs her by the arm and drags her out of the room, and Rosalie demands to know where they’re going and Emmett wolf-whistles, but really he takes her back to his quarters and he demands to know the truth. There is screaming and crying and words that he doesn’t remember saying. He remembers punching the wall over and over again, and when Esme is bandaging up his hands the next morning, he can’t convince himself that’s the only thing he hit. It’s all a messy blur in his mind, of terror and rage and betrayal and the kind of fear that never ever leaves him, that remembers the shape of him. He doesn’t remember a word she says in her defense, and for a long time, he doesn’t care.) 

Carlisle finds him three days later and invites him into his lab. He’s hungover and an open wound, ready to be fired and dumped at the next docking station. He wants to fucking yell every obscenity at the man for not disclosing Alice’s status anywhere at any time.

But he’s not fired. He’s given a cup of coffee, and Carlisle is serious but kind. Every human knows of the Earth Nine, knows their names. They’re in the history books, even in space. 

“Alice has been put on an alternative schedule for the foreseeable future,” is the first thing out of Carlisle’s mouth and he is petty enough to be pleased that she - it - will be on shift alone, maybe with Edward for company whilst the rest of them sleep. The rest of what Carlisle says is the usual - counseling, time off. Nothing he hasn’t heard before, and he doesn’t want to admit that he can’t afford extra leave because of all the fines and shit that were a part of his sentence. 

It’s late at night when he’s trying not to listen out for her moving about the ship and get some fucking sleep, that he allows himself to mourn what he thought he had. To let the great well of sadness swallow up the rage. And he blames himself for thinking that he could ever expect anything to be good, to be safe, to be happy. 

(Maybe, after she’s gone, he starts gathering two stones from the places he visits - one for his father’s shrine at his mother’s house and a spare, one that he lines along his port window and never acknowledges.)

—

It’s quiet after they find out about Edward. Carlisle spends a lot of time in the mostly-unused sanctuary of the ship, lighting cells and whispering prayers from one of the Earth religions over the box of ashes. 

Esme takes to cooking, and everyone pretends they don’t see her sniffle over cookie batter - another child lost to them. If the world was a perfect place, everyone on the ship would have their children, their siblings, and their parents. But it isn’t, and he’s the one that goes with Esme with her little bundle of things - a cookie, some strands of hair from an old hairbrush, writing he cannot read on a piece of paper - to throw into the airlock and release into the sky as Esme kneels and whispers the prayers of her childhood. 

Rosalie just looks sad in the few absent moments he catches her; she prefers to remain busy, moving between the cockpit and the med bay, to make sure everything is textbook-perfect. 

Emmett’s in the tech room and Jasper runs into him having a conversation with his siblings on the video-comm, and Emmett looks a little sheepish, but he understands - you want to hold a little tighter to what you have when there is a loss. 

Edward and Alice are both absent from public spaces, and he feels slightly pathetic when he leaves a hydration pouch and some snacks outside the guest room door - along with a spare pillow and a set of clean pyjamas - instead of knocking on the door and talking to her face to face. 

He wishes she’d chosen to stay in her old room, but he understands why she doesn’t. She emptied it before she left; he remembers Carlisle telling him she’d left the ship, and going straight to her room like she’d be waiting there for him. And it had been empty, smelling of antiseptic, the bunks folded up and the walls blank. The guest quarters are always made up and ready. He doesn’t even know where her stuff is - he assumes in storage but he doesn’t know. 

He finds himself wandering the ship under the guise of keeping an eye on things but really, he’s thinking about Edward, about tissue farms, about his father and eight others splayed on the barn floor, hollowed out for profit. It makes him feel old and tired and lost. It makes him hope that Edward’s death was soft and peaceful, that he just drifted off and eventually his brain gave out from the drugs. 

He hopes it wasn’t ugly and dirty and scary. No one deserved the death his father had, what he witnessed. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. 

It’s quiet, but the weight of everyone’s grief is the loudest thing he’s heard for a long, long time. 

—

Alice’s quarters were always the smallest on the ship, and she’d joke that it was because she was too. Narrow and programmed to have purple walls with flowers that bloomed around doorframes, it held a pair of single bunks, a locker, and a small desk. She used the washroom across the hall and he was bewildered that an analyst with seniority was given worse quarters than he was. 

But there was the window. The one opposite her bed that took up the entire wall and offered an uninterrupted view of the sky. It was beautiful, and the entire reason she kept the room. 

The night he spends in her room, he keeps finding new things to look at - the moons and stars and suns she’s painted onto the underside of the top bunk; garlands from every planet she’s visited, each of them with a different meaning, strung across the ceiling. How she requisitioned as many blankets as she could and cut them all up to make a hideously ugly quilt of industrials greys and greens and blues, and then spent a fortune on inks and brushes to painstakingly paint each square in bright colours. How she’s piled half the bed with pillows like she’s trying to create some kind of nest. 

“It’s a mess,” she says shyly, as she begins gathering up her clothing to cram them into her locker. She has more clothes than any of them, picked up at markets all over space. It reminds him of some kind of home seeing her swan down to breakfast in a floral bathrobe and duck-print pajamas; to drag him off the ship when they dock clad in a white sundress and ballet slippers. 

“It’s perfect,” he says, and she beams at him, crawling onto the bed with him. 

“You know what?” She asked him shyly, her hair falling into her face. 

“What?” She’s so tiny in his arms, he worries he’s going to hurt her as he gathers her up. 

“I love you, Jasper. The most I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life. I just wanted you to know that.” Her eyes are wide and she smiles at him before she kisses him, and that’s the moment that imprints itself on his brain; surrounded by stars with the scent of floral shampoo, and them wrapped up in each other. 

(Something in him breaks, months later, when he finds that room empty and grey, and smelling of antiseptic cleaner. It’s the kind of despair that cuts deep, and he knows that he deserves it, every ounce of pain. But it takes years for the rage to dull and let the shame and regret through.)

—

It’s Edward that finds her. 

Three days later - three days of Edward hiding away from everyone, three days of Carlisle shutting himself in his quarters to mourn. Three days of Alice emerging for meals she picked at in silence before returning to the guest quarters, never going near her old room.

He hears the alarm go off for med bay, and Rosalie and Carlisle dash through the ship to the guest quarters; he and Emmett follow and for a moment he wonders if she’s killed herself.

She’s on the floor in her sleep clothes, so pale she looks translucent, with Rosalie already slapping med-patches onto her and Carlisle checking her vitals. 

“I told her to go to the med bay,” Edward says waspishly, the first words he’s spoken since he found out, and it is comforting that he’s at least been confiding in Alice. 

“How long has she been sick?” Carlisle asks. 

“She wasn’t in great shape when she boarded, Carlisle,” Rosalie’s answer is short, and Carlisle looks away and he realizes that even though she arrived covered in med patches, Carlisle had been too distracted to look over the health report Rose had compiled. 

“Two nights ago,” Edward says quietly. “She said she found treatment before she left for Viltri, but she implied it wasn’t good.”

Carlisle nods, his whole demeanor changing. “Get her to the med bay,” he says, flicking the screens on the med-screen authoritatively. “I’ll stabilize her and pull up her records.”

Emmett is the one to carry her, with Rose and Carlisle hot on his heels. He stays back with Edward - he knows basic first aid, nothing useful at this moment and he’s seen enough dead bodies not to enjoy this part much. 

Edward’s looking at him, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. 

“How sick is she?” Is what he goes with, and he’s surprised how lost he sounds in that moment. 

“She’s been sick a long time,” is what Edward says. “Do you know how hard it is to find doctors that know human physiology and will see a Synth? Let alone treat one?”

Edward leaves without another word, and not for the first time, he wonders where she’s been and how she ended up here. 

—

Alice leaves them. 

There's not much else to say about that, really.

It's weeks after he found out the truth and she's been working second-shift the whole time. He barely sees her, and he's glad of it.

He goes with Emmett and Rose when they dock, and he walks past her on the ship, holding a cup of coffee and looking tired.

Edward tells them not to bother taking the projection cells, he's staying on the ship with Carlisle.

He walks out and goes and gets blackout drunk, and when his hangover passes, and they are two days out in the middle of nowhere, it finally registers that she's not on the schedule anywhere, that it's been Emmett in the tech office.

"Alice decided to take extended leave" is Carlisle's diplomatic answer when he asks. And that's it.

She's gone.

Alice left (and she never planned to come back.)

—

He’s not allowed to see her until the next day. 

Edward tells him everything, refusing to speak about anything but Alice when he appears - that she did regain consciousness but only long enough for Carlisle and Rose to question her. 

He selfishly wants to know if she asked for him, and the look Edward gives him implies that he knows what Jasper is thinking and that he really is a fuckwit to think that the girl he so fantastically terrorized out of her home wants anything to do with him anymore. 

“She was out of it,” Edward finally says. “Answered direct questions but didn’t realise she was here. Kept trying to give out our call-signal. Rose was pretty generous with the pain meds I think.”

Rosalie is never generous with pain medications; insisting on a stockpile in case they really needed them. Emmett needed laser-stitches up his back a few years ago, and even then Rosalie had been stingy. It makes his stomach twist, that Alice needed them bad enough that Rose was willing to give them. 

He waits for a while before decamping to the galley, where Esme is waiting with lunch and a sympathetic touch to his shoulder as he paces, uninterested in food. 

“She would hate seeing you so upset. Carlisle and Rosalie are beyond capable of handling this,” Esme says so gently, her words punctuated with a soft click-pop typical of her species. It’s comforting.

He shakes his head and keeps pacing, gets himself coffee just to give himself something to do. Esme sets the table and Edward slouches against the wall, scowling at the pair of them. 

“Do you think…” Jasper begins and Edward huffs. 

“Tell him Esme,” Edward says and Esme frowns before looking over at Jasper. 

“Alice corresponded with me a few times over the years. Very superficial messages,” Esme says, and he whirls around at the idea that there are clues and information that has led them to this moment. “There was nothing to tell, so I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

“What did she say?” He wants to yell. That any message was better than nothing. As if it is Esme’s fault she’s so sick she doesn’t know where she is. 

“She said she hoped we were all well and safe. She mentioned that she hoped you were happy once or twice. Edward seems to think that withholding this information from you was tantamount to betrayal, but they were nothing, Jasper. I write longer supply reports.” Esme looks so sad.

“You went to her room the other night and spoke with her,” Edward retorts, and he and Esme have always had an odd, sibling-like relationship where they both know best and both want the best for Carlisle. Normally, it is funnier. Now, it’s just irritating. 

Before Esme can respond, Rosalie emerges from the med bay, looking tired. She plucks the coffee out of Jasper’s hands without a word and takes a long draw from it. 

“Carlisle said you can see her if you want to,” is all she says to him, as she takes a seat at the table and pulls a plate towards herself, ignoring Esme and Edward’s bickering. “He’s put her under though - advanced systemic shock.”

Life-support. It sounds worse than it is; he knows this. Humans are put on life-support for bad fevers, infections, setting badly broken limbs - anything where the body needs to be stabilized and supported. It just makes him nervous. 

The med bay is quiet when he slips in the door, his eyes finding her immediately. She lies on the gurney like a dead body, wrapped in medical modesty garments and nothing else, staring blindly at the ceiling and seeing absolutely nothing. He sees the white tubing threaded through her nose and mouth, into both wrists, and he knows that it's the life-support system that will keep her sustained until the treatment is over. But the tubes are almost as thin as wire, enough to render them invisible in the bigger picture, and mostly she just looks like a corpse on a slab. He can see her skin now, blue and black mottling all over her right side, pink and scarlet lines of infection just under the skin. 

(Did he read everything he could on Synths after she left them? Yes, he did. He knows about systemic shock, and he knows about every single hellish detail about the long-term effects of lab-generated tissue. Somewhere, Maria is laughing at him and calling him a hypocrite and a traitor.) 

Carlisle looks at him with pity. “I haven’t prepared her yet. Taped her eyes and such,” the man says and that makes Jasper want to gag a little. 

“How long will she be under?” is what he manages. 

“It’s been a long time since I treated advanced systemic shock, let alone of this severity,” Carlisle admits. “She’ll be under for a while, at this rate. Alice knows the risks and accepted them.”

Ninety days. That’s the limit of life-support for Synths. They die quickly after that; and it takes at least twenty-one to grow new tissue if the infection on her side is too far gone. He knows that. 

That’s why she’s got so much plating down her side, he realizes suddenly. A previous infection. He never asked and she never told him. But it makes sense. If a tissue-graft hadn’t taken or had needed some kind of binding and reinforcement, plating would have been the most effective option.

And this is all assuming the infection hasn’t gone to her brain or heart, he swallows hard and drifts to the seat at her side. If it has, there’s nothing anyone can do for her. She’ll just die.

Maybe that’s why she chose Viltri to send an SOS. Planned to be quietly dead when they arrived, with Edward’s ashes in her bag. 

Or maybe she never planned on coming home, and planned to pass on her message, and stay behind to die with the planet they met on. 

(Carlisle lets him stay as he tapes her eyes close, draws blood, and links up with the chip in her wrist. At some point, he finds himself holding her hand and pressing his lips against her knuckles as Carlisle drills into the bone of her thigh for tissue. 

If he finds himself praying, saying the words a half-remembered grandmother once taught him, well, maybe that’s okay.)

I’m here and I’m so, so sorry. 

I’m sorry for hurting you, I’m sorry for forcing you to leave, I’m sorry for forgetting how much I love you.

And I do, I love you, and I’ll wait for you as long as it takes. 

—

She’ll be okay. 

He doesn’t believe in much, but he has to believe that. 

—

Notes

For those who don't dwell in the same media spaces as I do, 'wet work' is killing for hire.

I have detailed backstories for every single character. I just need you all the know the idea captured me and became a thing. Thanks for the inspo, Archer 1999.

Jasper’s father was raised by a Jewish mother, and whilst Cass and Jack Whitlock were more science over religion, they did teach Jasper as much about his origins as they could. Leaving a stone from his travels at his father’s memorial was the way that Jasper could honour his father that had multiple meanings. But I really wanted to mention that yes, Jack Whitlock was raised by a Jewish mother. 

Rosalie’s backstory here is somehow grimmer than her canon backstory, but I hope to explore that in an expansion of this fic. Basically in this fic, Rosalie’s parents were far more active in her downfall, that Rosalie is a 100% self-made alien. 

Edward as an AI hologram allows him to keep so many of his canon personality traits, as well as some of the hurdles his relationship with Bella faces. Edythe’s demise weighs heavily on both him and Carlisle. There is a story there, and if I get the opportunity to tell the full, multi-chapter version of this fic I don’t want to spoil it ahead of time. But Edward and Edythe were not Carlisle's bio-children.

The Lens is something that didn't get explored enough but is essentially a permanent contact lens that allows users to access their computing network - that's what the gold overlay over Alice's eye was. Alice chose one that was very visible over her eye, mostly people chose them to blend in with their eye colour.

Cass Whitlock's story is a lot more complex than gets touched on here - I have a whole backstory for her. I'm still undecided whether she's kind of an asshole to her eldest son, or if she was just totally unprepared to deal with his level of trauma.

[morning-star-joy]

half asleep, half awake

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader, ASHWAH Universe

Summary: Every time Joel Miller realizes he loves you. Every time he wants to tell you, and the time he does.

Warnings: Brief smut (unprotected p in v, possessiveness, creampie), brief reference to canon-typical violence, longing, Joel can’t communicate his feelings until he can, lots and lots of love. Multiple specific references to the main series. Joel's POV.

A/N: I’ve gotten asked a few times when Joel realizes he loves Reader in this series, and the inspiration hit me the other day to write out my answer to it. Because it could be one scene, but so many before, and so many after when he wants to say it. I miss these two and I love these two and I hope that this little companion piece to the fic makes somebody as happy as I was to write them again!

Wordcount: 1.8k

gorgeous dividers by @saradika

Important: Please read this post and how to help Palestine.

The first time Joel feels it—really feels it, settled into his bones with an undeniable weight, tugging at his heart with an unimaginable lightness—is the night of his 57th birthday.

Months of staying out of his bedroom, of keeping you off his bed, dissolve into a forgotten time the moment you tug the glass of whiskey from his hand.

Move over, you’d said, making room for yourself amongst the place where he laid his head every night. You finish off the drink, take the rest of the poison he’d been diluting his veins with to drown out the pain of all he’d lost, and settle next to him.

He thinks he wants to see you there every night.

You ask him things like his favorite fucking color, things that don’t matter. Not to him, not to you—but you ask anyway. You meet his eyes readily, open and honest and searching his soul for the same old breaks in your own, and he feels it.

You hold his hand, and it fits there. You would fit into his side too, he muses, if he pulled you in.

He wants to pull you in. He wants you in ways nobody’s ever had you—he knows they haven’t, can feel the trepidation in your soul when he looks at you for too long, or lets his touches linger.

You’ll fuck him like there’s no tomorrow, because maybe there isn’t, but you won’t let him hold you tender. Not that he’s tried, but he knows you. Not everything about you, but enough.

And that night, there’s more. More to you, wounds open and pain spilling out, and it looks like his own. It is his own.

I should probably go, you say when it’s become too much, and he feels the urge to ask you to stay.

Joel asks if you want a drink instead, because he’s an idiot, and you say he’s had too much, because you’re right.

He watches from his window as you walk home under the streetlights for once instead of sticking to the darkness, and though he won’t call it what it is, he knows it’s love.

Joel’s loved you longer than that, though. Somehow he knows it, but he can’t place when.

In front of his fireplace, maybe. You’re shivering from god knows how long you had spent in the rain, in the graveyard, in your own mourning. Broken, and he wants to find each piece of you that you’ve lost and put you back together.

Or at least hold you tight enough that you feel okay again. He just knows that he misses your damn smirk, your fucking laugh, and maybe that was love too.

Or maybe it’s when he wants you to be his, his, his only. When he wants to erase the image of that man’s hand on your back with his own on your skin, fingertips digging into your hips and pulling them back to slap against his.

Maybe it’s the skirt of a temptress bunched up around your waist, each desperate thrust of his cock into your needy cunt, dripping and squeezing as you say, moan, scream his name, his, his.

Maybe it’s when you’re half-naked after, admitting you don’t know what the fuck this is, don’t understand what it’s become, and he doesn’t know either. But it’s something delicate. Maybe it’s love then.

Maybe it’s love on the bathroom floor when he realizes you’re the first friend he’s made in years.

Maybe it’s love when he wants to kill every single bastard raider who took you from him, wants to tear them apart with his bare hands and make them bleed and bleed for how much blood they’d taken from you. Precious blood, blood that kept you alive, kept you snarky and angry and wrapped around him each time he took as much pleasure from you as he gave back.

Or it’s Halloween, the bright lights, loud music, and clothes of a bygone era. None of it real until Maria shoves the truth of the matter into his face. She tells him he’s an idiot and just what it all means, what you mean to everyone, and to him, and he finally accepts it.

That’s the first night he has you in his bed. The first night he sees all of you, feels all of you, skin against skin, and you come again, and again, and again. It’s not enough, he needs to keep feeling it, needs you to fall apart in his hands so he can put you back together. A single thread he weaves through you and tugs with each ripple of pleasure, pulling you apart again with each clench of your cunt around his cock, until you pull it from him too.

You fall asleep in a matter of minutes after. Lips parted, and he wished he could watch them swell after a kiss, but you were still holding back.

So he settles for his palm on your cheek, stroking the scar that he still doesn’t know how you got, and feels so much longing, so much love when you sink into his sheets, wrapped up in his favorite color that you knew because you cared to ask. Settled by just the touch of him.

Joel thinks you tried to say something that night, but he’ll never know what. He does know what he wants to say, but he holds back. He’d wait for you, even if you never wanted this too. He’d be whatever you did want him to be.

Time passes in a blur after that, as you tangle yourselves together in ways he never would’ve once thought possible. He doesn’t move, and you lean into him. He doesn’t move, just lets you come to him, too scared you’ll run away again if he holds you too tight, or at all.

Then that night. A meal shared with the family you’d found. He tries to go home alone after, and you chase after him, hold him tight, and he knows. He knows what he feels, and he knows you feel it too.

He doesn’t have to say it, but he wants to. Night after night he wants to, the more that you settle and the more that you’re his. The more that he is yours.

You kiss him, finally—or he kisses you, he can’t remember which. And it says it all.

Still, the words are trapped in his throat as his home truly becomes yours.

His body had already been your home for a year.

His heart, for longer than he would ever know.

But his house. Four walls that didn’t mean anything, not really, not until you lived within them and your sister’s art was on the mantle, your photograph of your parents was in your room that was his room, all your mugs in the kitchen and his coffee was your coffee—he needs to tell you.

He tries to every morning, in his kitchen with your cups of coffee—or tea, with complaints falling from both his mouth and yours if you were out of your preferred beverage. He doesn’t, but he knows you can taste it in the drink he brews for you, perfected to your liking.

He tries to before every patrol, in case somebody takes you from him again. He doesn’t, but he knows you can see it when his eyes seek yours, when he gives you a nod and a lingering gaze before you’re out of the gates and on your way. He knows you can feel it when you both get home, his arms wrapped around you tight and the tension seeping from his body when you’re pressed to him.

He tries to every night, but it’s lost on his tongue every time it slides into your mouth. He knows you know with every kiss, every thrust of his hips from where he’d found a home nestled between your thighs, spilling himself into you as you welcomed him in and made the most beautiful music every time.

You’re comfortable in bed months after the holidays, after that first kiss. Winter is warming into spring, the air feels like starting again, and he tries to tell you.

You’d been reading when he crawled into bed behind you after a shower. His face buried into your neck, each drop of water onto your skin so cold it makes you shiver. But your nails dig into his forearm when it wraps around your waist, the book tumbling from your fingers as you grasp at the nightstand with each drag of his pulsing cock inside your tight heat.

The lamp on the nightstand rattles with each thrust, sending waves of warm light flashing across the room. He’s mesmerized each time it washes across your face, pinched in the familiar climb for pleasure you trusted him to guide you through. He mouths at the scar on your cheek, caressing with lips and tongue as you gasp his name.

You’re so beautiful. His moon, his heart, his home, his everything.

Joel wants to tell you when you come, your eyes fluttering open and seeking his. Seeking that connection between you, as hungry as you are reverent, and he doesn’t deserve it, that undying loyalty. But you think the same for yourself, so what did either of you know, besides what this was.

Love, and he wants to say it. Wants to say he loves you when each flutter of your pussy around him sends him spiraling into an orgasm, a blissful moment of release he now only ever associated with you.

Half asleep after, you’re content, the warm light of the steadied lamp caressing your skin as he cleans it. You know what he wants to say, he thinks. Your eyes are heavy and lazily watching as he kisses the inside of your thigh, peppers his love up your body to your lips.

Half awake, Joel watches you reach for him, pulling him down into a soft caress of your lips against his, with more tenderness either of you ever thought you were capable of.

He won’t say it. You know he won’t.

But you know he will. Someday.

And that one morning amongst many that belong to just you and him, when you ask about other lives, when he realizes you’d want him in more than just this one—in every one—he says it.

You say it back, and everything is right.

When you ask him when he first felt it, he tells you the truth; that he hadn’t felt it just yet on that snowy street a year ago, but a part of him always knew he would love you.

And now, Joel knew he always would.

[ghouldump]

hi your fics are so amazing!!

if you’re open to requests, i was wondering if you could write a lestat x louis x reader fic that takes place during their huge fight in the townhouse? i can imagine the reader being a mother figure to claudia and trying to protect her during it and getting hurt in the process of trying to break up louis and lestat. i’d love to see how the reader deals with the aftermath of her and louis’ injuries as well as claudia taking care of the two of them.

sorry if its confusing😭 i thought of this while rewatching s1

For The Love Of A Daughter | Lestat x Reader x Louis

�� out of fear, lestat does the unimaginable and has to try his hardest to win his family's trust back, but it may be too late

the comparison of s1 vs s2 of this scene had me on the edge of my seat 🥺 ⚠️ THIS IS S1 E5 ‼️

How did your once beautiful family go to ruins? When Claudia was created? When she rebelled? Or when she left? Your daughter, you would go to hell and back for her, yet, you couldn't convince her to stay.

Lestat was cruelly strict with her, invading her privacy by reading her diaries, not considering the fact that she was trapped in the early stages of puberty for an eternity. She couldn't help that she was a young girl stuck in this body, and he never let her forget or made it easier on her.

Louis, he'd always been passive, about your companionship, as well as his role as a parent. He wanted to keep the peace and harmony. If that meant allowing Lestat to discipline her, then he’d turn his head to not have to watch out of guilt.

Then you, Lestat often complained that you spoiled her too much. You never raised a finger to her, nor your voice. You hadn't been brought up that way, and so you did the same with her. You still remember the night she left. Packing only a few things, while you and Louis tried convincing her to stay. Standing her ground, she gave you both a hug, letting the wind carry her away.

Seven years flew by, silence made its way into the house that no longer felt like a home. Louis nose-deep in book after book, Lestat leaving going god knows where, while you remained secluded, drawing, reading, and sometimes staring at the wall.

Tonight was a rarity, Lestat wasn't running off, and Louis sat on the sofa, reading, while you sat in a chair, your head lying on your arm, taking in the soft jazz music.

Hearing the door open, Claudia entered, setting her suitcase on the floor. Rushing over, you wrapped your arms around her, rocking back and forth. Pulling away, your heart broke as Louis hugged her tightly. He too had been taking it so hard, since she had been gone. Abruptly, the music stopped, Lestat glaring at her.

“The prodigal daughter”

“I've come to apologize, I put all of you in a bad spot, I wasn't right in my head. I am now,” she said. You couldn't put your finger on it, but there was something different about her, a certain brokenness, she was trying to shut away.

“Apology not accepted,” Lestat said.

“How was college? Magna cum? Summa cum? Phi Beta Kappa?” he continued.

“I've read a lot of books. Started with Persia and Babylon, the old gods who longed for blood. A lot of it was popcorn, but a few old tomes. A Romanian tract on vampirs. A strange old Hungarian text, ‘Masticatione Mortuorum,’ the chewing dead. I plan to leave for that part of the world as soon as I can,” she told him. You and Louis shared a look, sensing that this wasn't headed in a positive direction.

“So, quick stop home to do laundry before you fuck off for good,” Lestat spat.

“A quick stop to pick up my mama and Louis,” she told him. Your hand went to your stomach, trying to control the unsettling nervousness building up. Lestat glanced at the two of you, before glaring at her in disgust.

“Oh, Perused a few folklore anthologies, and now you're going to cross the ocean and take on a society of monsters,” he said, slowly making his way towards her.

“If what I've read is lies, then tell me what's true,” she told him, but he only continued to stare at her as if she was beneath him.

“Seven years and what’s changed, other than you need a housekeeper?” she sneered. He slowly approached her, and as you were about to step forward to intervene, Louis grabbed your hand, discreetly shaking his head.

“The vampires out there…are vicious. Oh, but you've learned that already. Who did you meet out there in the American hinterland? Read her,” Lestat looked at the two of you, walking away. Staring at her, you quickly wiped the tear from your eye, you couldn't imagine what she had been through all on her own.

“That’s it, keep 'em scared. That's his way,” she said to you both.

“The vampires in Europe are much, much worse”

“But I think he's scared,” she spoke over him.

“I never asked, how did Charlie taste? Like the love you'll never really know,” he said, trying to get under her skin.

“And when he's scared, he ridicules”

“She was a destitute little girl, destined to live an inconsequential little life,” he said, approaching the both of you.

“And we took it from her, we cursed her,” Louis said, making the smug expression drop from his face. Looking at you, his frown deepened, seeing you gaze at her, the bloody tears moments from seeping out.

“Come with me!” she called out, both of you staring at her.

“Come with me, mama, Louis”

“Louis, Y/n,” Lestat said, becoming angry as neither of you looked at him.

“I thought I could live without either of you, but I was wrong,” Claudia said, her eyes pleading for you to come along.

“Y/n, Louis”

“Louis, Y/n,” Lestat continued, raising his voice.

“His love is a small box he keeps you both in, don't stay in it,” she said, as you glanced at him.

“A thousand nights of sulking, and the first sight of her, you are just gonna up and leave me?!” Lestat yelled.

“Please, come with me! Let’s be vampires worth of your love!” Claudia screamed before Lestat surged, choking her.

“Get off of her,” you said, going to shove him off of her. However, he was much stronger, gaining the upper hand, his fingers wrapping around your throat, he looked unrecognizable.

“You, always choosing her,” he spat, before Louis charged over, tackling him.

As they fought, Claudia screamed, panicking, as you tried to keep up with them. Throwing Louis in the living room. Lestat straddled him, punching him in the face.

“Lestat, stop it,” you cried out, jumping on his back, but he easily slung you across the room, as you smashed into the wall, you could feel your arm already broken.

“Claudia, stay down here,” you told her, rushing to the bedroom.

“Stop fighting,” you screamed, as they continued tackling each other.

“Let him go,” you hear Claudia crying.

“It’s alright, you stay where you're at,” Louis told her, as if he wasn't completely bruised up.

“You're going to choose her too? Leave me for her when she left you both, I’ve been here,” he told you, as you slowly backed away, unsure of what he'd do next.

“Lestat st-

“Do not tell me what to do,” he told you, wrapping his hand around your throat, and pulling you close. His nails were in your skin, with your airway completely blocked.

Dragging both of you downstairs, and outside, you could hear Claudia running.

“I fought myself a million times, fought my nature, controlled my temper. I never once harmed either of you,” he said.

“Let him go,” you cried, hoarsely, trying to claw at his hand, while reaching for Louis.

“Silence,” he told you.

“Uncle Les”

“It's Uncle Les, now suddenly?”

“Let them go, they didn't do nothin’, let them go, it's me you want,” you could hear her steps approaching.

“Listen to me, and listen very carefully my infant death, it was never you. No matter how much your mama made you think otherwise,” he spat, crushing your throat, and dragging you both out into the road.

“I chose you, and you, given you the dark gift and you've betrayed me,” he said, biting into your neck, draining almost every ounce of blood from your body, before throwing you, watching as you flew into the backyard, colliding with bricks, you could feel your rib cage shatter.

However, as you stood up, you quickly fell to your knees in pain and fear for Louis’s life, watching as they flew into the sky to the point where they were no longer seen.

“Mama, are you alright?” Claudia ran to you, reaching for her hand, your other hand on your throat. You couldn't speak, Lestat’s nails had managed to pierce through. Claudia gasped, as you coughed, blood spilling out.

“Are you okay?” you asked.

“I’m okay, we just need to get Louis,” she said, helping you stand, however, just as you stood, Louis fell from the sky, hitting the ground. Limping over, you were afraid to touch him, the slightest touch looked as if it would break him even more.

Crying, you looked up, staring into Lestat’s eyes as he flew over you all, not saying a word. You couldn't say it, but from your expression, there was no way you could easily forgive him after this.

Healing was a struggle, not just from the physical damage, but any previous trust was gone. While you managed to bounce back within a few months, Louis had a long way to go. Lestat skipped town and hadn't bothered to show his face.

You avoided thinking about him, altogether. Dedicating yourself to Claudia and Louis, from coffin-bound to limping, every day was progress. Louis was slowly getting better and you both worked on strengthing your bond with Claudia. Then the calls started coming.

All of this time, you managed to push through the soreness and pain, but the moment he called you hid away, licking your eternal wounds. He was a completely different person that night, the things he said, the things he'd done. After Louis fully healed, you were no longer opposed to the idea of leaving for Europe with Claudia.

Hearing the doorbell ringing, you turned your head, watching as Claudia went outside. You could hear his voice, he had gifts, and he wanted to talk, to apologize. Louis went upstairs, throwing his coffin out of the window, you couldn't help but snicker.

“There’s your answer”

“And where is Y/n? I know she would enjoy these paints, they are rare. I paid quite a price because I knew she would make the most beautiful-

“My mama ain't got nothin’ to say to you, like you said, she betrayed you, choosing me,” she told him, shutting the door, and locking it.

Coming back to the living room, she glanced your way before to Louis, who came from upstairs. As Louis sat next to you, you pulled him close.

“You okay?” you asked him.

“Getting there,” he mumbled, smiling as you kissed his cheek.

Lestat didn't show his face anymore, but the gifts never stopped. Each time more spontaneous than the next, and while you knew, Louis was becoming weaker, you wished you could say the same for yourself.

“Emily Dickinson is not a vampire,” Louis said, as you laughed.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Because she is dead,” you pointed out.

“How do you know?”

“She got a grave,” Louis said.

“And a tombstone,” you added.

“So do you,” She told Louis, all of you laughing, afterward.

As you crossed the streets, the driver honked their horn, as they slowly came to a stop in front of you. Opening the door, Lestat climbed out, smiling at you all. Rolling your eyes, you simply looked the other way.

“25 horsepower Rolls-Royce six-cylinder engine and a front end they call a coffin nose, is that rich? This one’s yours, mine’s back at home in blue,” he said, showing off the new car, and tossing the keys to Louis.

“I know how much you despise driving, so I got you other things, the finest fabrics, books, art supplies, and music, waiting for you at home, I'm back in town permanently,” he continued, looking your way, but you just stared off to the side, as if you didn't see him.

“Were you gone?” Claudia asked him.

“Across the river, in Algiers,” he said, you could still feel his eyes on the two of you.

“You know who lives in Algiers” Claudia said to you, as you clenched your jaw.

“I don't know what possessed me that night,” he said.

“Three years ago, that night, three years ago, he means,” Claudia corrected him.

“I was someone I don't want to be anymore. I've changed. Let me prove it to you. I’m nothing without you. I’m nothing without any of you”

“If you want me to go away, just say so. I’ll obey you. I’ll leave your lives forever. This silence is cruel, all I ask is that Y/n looks at me. You haven't spared me a glance since I've been here. Neither of you were ever cruel, don't let our situation change you,” he said.

“Just look at him,” Louis pleaded.

Turning to face him, he cleared his throat, straightening his posture. You didn't say anything, emotionlessly staring at him.

“You look stunning as always, ma chérie,” he complimented, his heart breaking as you looked away again.

Taking the keys, Claudia threw them, before scratching the car, reaching for your hand, walking away.

Six years, came and went, and more gifts flooded the house. It was unspoken between you and Louis that you both missed him. Although it looked different, Louis wanted him to come running back, each extravagant, but sentimental gift was tugging more and more at Louis’s heart. You preferred the distance, reminiscing on the past, before that night. You didn't think you could have that back, now, you secretly enjoyed every time he saw you, or wrote to you, begging that you would acknowledge him.

Unexpectedly, it happened, the record came in the mail and was immediately played. The song meant to win you both back while pissing you off, a song sung by his affair partner. Louis was seething, grabbing the record, and ran out of the house.

“You're not going with him?” Claudia asked.

“They will be back,” you mumbled, knowing his plan worked, he got through to Louis and would be coming back.

“Rule number four-

“Kill Antoinette”

“Antoinette is my own private-

“Affair,” Claudia said.

“Said child, interfering in the romantic lives of her parents,” Lestat said, wanting one of you to stop her. She had been sharp with him since the moment he stepped into the house.

“She will be 33 soon, far from a child,” you reminded him, rolling your eyes.

“It’s a lick and a promise in vampire years,” he shrugged.

“Maybe, but I am not your child anymore, that's rule number five,” Claudia said, catching his attention.

His eyes shifted from her to you, your interlocked hands. She had you, wrapped around her fingers, taken from him. Louis was more willing to work on the broken relationship, but you had shut him out, choosing your child.

“I’ll be your companion, your sister,” she told him, as he scoffed.

“It's not as simple as choosing a new family configuration, now I'm your cousin, now I'm your aunt, I am your maker,” he told her rudely.

“I’m going to bed,” you said, standing abruptly, he looked into your cold eyes, searching for any emotion.

“Will you not lay down your rules, as well?” he asked, sarcastically.

“Good night,” was all you said, turning away, going upstairs.

“She needs time,” you could hear Louis say.

Did you need more time? You didn't go through nearly as much as Louis and he managed to forgive him, why couldn't you? You were never maternal until Claudia came along, perhaps it came with being a mother. The way that he treated her, turned you against him. As much as you loved him, thinking back to the times you were spoiled, lavished as if you were royalty, you couldn't bring yourself to open up.

Hunting became insufferable. Louis began drinking human blood, it was supposed to bring everyone closer, hunting as a family, but you kept your distance. He knew he'd wounded you, his choice of words hurting you just as bad, and he'd have to be more persistent to win you back.

“I wished you’d look at me, the simplest glance would help me a great deal,” he said, following you, sighing in relief as you faced him.

“Happy?”

“You have my heart at your will, your precious words command me, and I would do anything you ask of me,” he said, trying to fight the tears, as you slowly approached him.

“Take up your heart, I wouldn't want you to feel betrayed when I don't choose you,” you said, turning around, leaving him to stand there and try to gather his emotions.

“Could you at least try to compromise?” Louis asked you, as you looked through the different fabrics in the store.

“I am-

“No, you're not, you put your coffin in Claudia’s room, and the other night, whatever you said, he cried himself to sleep”

“Aw, poor baby,” you said, placing the fabrics into Louis’ arms.

“You agreed that we would work things out, everybody is compromising trying to work through our problems, we need you too,” he said, pouting, as you approached the cash register.

“Fine, I hate when you give me that look,” you playfully rolled your eyes at him.

“Thank you, I love you,” you grinned.

“I love you,” you laughed, pecking his lips.

Later that night, after putting away your things, and changing into your nightgown, you were about to into Claudia’s room, when you stopped. Huffing, you went to your shared bedroom, opening the door.

“Did she say anything? I left a note, but she never responds,” Lestat grumbled.

“I talked with her, but it is up to her to make a decision,” Louis said.

“I hope you don't expect us to squeeze that coffin,” you said, making both of them face you.

“We could always sleep in the bed,” Louis offered, both of them approaching you.

‘Thank you’ he said, as you faced Lestat.

“Will you keep that stupid look on your face, or will you speak?” you asked.

“I didn't know it was okay for me to do so,” he chuckled.

“Y/n is willing to compromise, she hasn't said it verbally, but she does still love you,” Louis spoke, as you stared at the two of them.

“Ma chérie, if I could take back what I've said, what I’ve done-

“But you can't”

“I can't, and I will have to live with the burden of knowing I hurt you and Louis both, your role in Claudia’s life was never a problem, I am sorry, my love,” he said, walking to you, falling to his knees in front of you. His head laid against your stomach, and he continued to apologize profusely.

“To have you look at me, after months of refusal, even if it is a look of anger, is to see heaven,” he said, looking up at you. Reaching for his hand, you helped him stand, pecking his lips. Holding your hand out for Louis, as soon as he was close enough, your lips were on his soft skin.

Pushing Lestat onto the bed, you straddled his lap, rolling your hips, as Louis stood behind you, kissing your neck. Leaning down, you wrapped your hands around his neck.

“I’ll forgive you, but if you ever do anything remotely similar, I’ll make sure you burn in the sun, and I’ll wear you as makeup,” you said, making him smirk.

“Anything you say, although the thought of me being on your face, arouses me greatly,” he said, watching as you pulled Louis onto the bed, moving over to him.

Your nearly decade-long monogamy had now come to an end, sharing the night with Louis and Lestat. You had forgotten how spontaneous he was, managing to pleasure both of you.

‘Have you taken him back, like Louis?’ Claudia asked.

‘For now’ you thought, as Lestat kissed along your shoulder blade.

‘Do you think Louis will help?’

‘He will’

‘Do you think it will work?’

‘I don't know, my child, but we will try’

‘We can do it, mama, he wants to keep you and Louis for himself, he hates me and would probably kill me if it meant having you both alone’

‘I know’

Now lying in bed, Lestat in between you and Louis, both of you in his arms.

“I hope you will allow me to continue to prove myself to you, and I am lost without either of you, I feel empty without you both here with me, I love you,” he spoke, you couldn't deny the way your heart fluttered.

“Then it is official, we will kill Lestat’

‘And if our plan doesn't work?’

‘Then we escape to Europe, we find other vampires, and we rebuild our lives there, does that sound okay?”

‘It sounds perfect’

‘Great, good night mama’

‘Good night, my child’

Looking up at Lestat’s face, he lay peacefully, his eyes shut, face relaxed. He was incredibly handsome, you didn't dare tell Claudia but coming to this room, you were just as weak as Louis. Would you be able to kill this beautiful man, the love of your life? Or run away and live an eternity with your daughter? You couldn't decide anymore, only time would tell.

brotha eughhh, this was so mid

[ponderingmoonlight]

can you pleaseee make a sequel to the "jjk men hurting y/n" (gojo part) where their son wonders if they can marry y/n when they grow up. you know what i mean.

(also oh my goddddd that fic had me rolling in bed giggling and kicking my legs 😭😭😭😭)

Nothing better than that, thank you so much for your request and liking my work<3

Part l can be found here under Gojo's part

Gojo's and (y/n)'s son wanting to marry (y/n)

Pairing: Gojo x fem!reader

Word Count: 1,2k

Warnings: fluffness overload

Tags: @coffee-on-a-rainyautumn @defnotriri @smarsd @sharycatx3 @kaiserkisser @sanicsmut

As usual, feel free to leave a comment or reblog <3

What happened on that fateful day of the night parade was hard to swallow for both you and Satoru. That unimaginable grief of the breakup when all he wanted to do was to save you. Suguru who wanted to not only kill you but Yuta for your abilities and died himself.

It was all too much to handle, a test for both of you.

“Why didn’t you just tell me? I told you I’m pregnant, that I’m expecting your child and you-….You looked at me with nothing but hatred in your eyes…”

“I’m so sorry, (y/n). Believe me, it killed me from the inside to be so cold to you when in reality, I wanted nothing more than holding you in my arms and tell everyone. But there was no other way. If I’d told you about Suguru’s plan, you would have insisted on coming to Tokyo. And if I didn’t and you’d find out yourself, you would have been absolutely mad and would have been there anyway. Please, all I wanted was to keep you safe. I had no other choice…”

For the first time in your relationship, you saw Satoru Gojo cry in front of you, his hands wrapped around your face. Oh, if you only knew how hard it was for him, how it broke his very own heart within these three cursed weeks.

But now you’re here, safe and sound.

“What happened to Suguru?”

Your innocent question pierced his heart like a knife. Satoru wanted to break down in front of you, too overwhelmed by everything that happened over the last weeks.

But he had to be strong. For you and his unborn baby.

“He didn’t make it.”

Your heart dropped, arms instinctively wrapped around your boyfriend’s trembling frame. Oh, your Satoru. All the things he had to endure over this time. Despite you had every reason to be mad at him you simply can’t. He did this for you, after all. And who knows at what cost.

“We’ll get through this together, okay? You, me and our baby.”

And after months of grieving and talking everything out, you did eventually. You did live through it all: the difficult pregnancy, you almost dying during birth, Satoru getting sealed at Shibuya, the loss of many good friends. It was never easy, you thought about giving up all too often.

But now you’re sitting at the kitchen table with your three year old beautiful son who owns the eyes of his gorgeous father and your hair color.

“Good morning my lovelies”, Satoru purrs against your ear before gently placing a kiss on your cheek.

“Stop that!” your son suddenly shouts, gazing at your husband and his very own father visibly upset.

Huh, what has gotten into him today? Normally he doesn’t mind much when Satoru shows you affection. You tilt your head to the side, Satoru nods towards you.

“What, are you jealous, young man?” Satoru asks challengingly, sitting down next to his son who crawls into his lap immediately.

“You can’t just kiss mama like that because I wanna marry her!” the little boy in front of you announces, determination sparkling in his blue orbs.

Satoru and you stare at each other bamboozled and before you can help yourself, a little giggle escapes your lips. Is this why he was acting so weird? Where does this thought come from?

“You wanna marry her?” Satoru repeats.

“I learned that you kiss at a wedding. So you can’t kiss mommy!”

“Oh, I understand. And how did you get the idea of marrying her?” Satoru continues the conversation.

Your heart feels like exploding in warmth, pure joy speeding through your veins. Seeing your sweet little angel sitting on his father’s lap while announcing that he’ll marry you makes tears sting in your eyes. After all the things you’ve been through, the fights, the injuries, the worries, is this really your life right now? Sitting at the breakfast table while having a delightful conversation with your family?

“I love my mama because she makes me brave.”

Satoru’s eyes dart towards you, so touched by the words of your little one that you can immediately see the glossy shine in them. It’s still like a dream to him, sitting here in peace with both of you by his side. This was definitely worth all the fights and losses he had to endure over the last years. This precious little moment of innocence and pure love.

“Y’know little man, just because you love someone you can’t automatically marry that person. That here is your ma, which means you can’t marry her. If someone gets to marry her that would be me”, Satoru clarifies with his oh so sweet voice.

You desperately try to hold back tears. The love you hold for your little family is more than you could ever explain, deeper than any ocean on this planet. Your son might not be aware of it know, but the fact that he’s sitting here so unbothered was never granted, that all of this will work out was never given.

But now it is. Now you’re sitting there all together. And your son just announced that he wants to marry you.

“But why can you marry her and I not?” he requests, lips forming that little pout that reminds you so much of his father.

“Because you already have her as your wonderful mama. Leave some for the rest”, Satoru replies.

Your son shrieks in his father’s loving arms as he begins to tickle him, laughter filling the room. If anyone would have told you 5 years ago that this will be your life, you would have laughed at him. You really thought this world has no joy for you left, that you and Satoru are cursed through being jujutsu sorcerers.

But that child in front of your very own eyes isn’t a curse. No, it is a true blessing just like Satoru himself. You can’t help but admire him for his strength, for his never ending optimism in this world that tried to tear him down multiple times. Always running back into your open arms, always looking out for you and your family. How do you even deserve him, the man in front of you who looks at your child lovingly?

“But why did you not marry her then?”

You tilt your head to the side, amused by the question of your little one.

“That’s a really good question, angel”, you comment sweetly.

Of course you know all too well that the last few years didn’t have any room for a wedding. Between so many deaths, getting sealed and constant fighting, there wasn’t enough time to arrange something like that. But still, you love to tease your boyfriend a little bit.

“I definitely will someday”, Satoru ensures, gaze set on you with a breathtaking smile.

“And I’ll be there too!” your son cries out in excitement.

“Of course you will, Suguru! Ain’t no wedding without my favorite man by my side!”

[muntitled]

more dom!hazel would be so appreciated if u can hehe 🫶🫶

+ another anon who asked for a cleaning bruises fic

𝐁𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐬 & 𝐁𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬 | 𝐇𝐚𝐳𝐞𝐥 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐡𝐚𝐧

Hazel Callahan x fem!reader

Summary: "If I put my hands up your skirt right now, am I gonna find you wet?"

Warnings: Established Relationship, Hyper feminine!Reader, PJ as her own warning, Mentions of Bruises, Mentions of Violence, Cleaning Hazel's bruises, Domestic Fluff, Humor, Jealousy, Possessiveness, Smut (+18 Minors DNI), Dirty Talk, Mutual Pining, Fighting Kink?, Fingering, Dom!Hazel, Sub!Reader, Praise Kink, Degradation Kink, Overstimulation

Can be seen as a continuation of this fic but not strictly

Your afternoon had been almost perfect, with Hazel nestled between your open legs just a step lower on the school bleachers. Her head had been thrown back, with her curls running rampant against your skin and tickling your chest. You smoothed her hair down in vain intervals while she played with a loose string on the stitiching of your plaid skirt as she droned on and on about the unlikelihood of being enlisted as a bomb tech by the US Army.

"I don't really know where else I could use my particular set of expertise. What else could I do that won't ultimately lead me down the path of... you know, treason and terrorism?" You nod vaguely as Hazel continues her equal parts aloof and equal parts worrying rants. All while combining your fingers through her hair, "I mean, I just feel like World War III is probably upon us, you know-"

"Ugh, could you guys get a room?" You had been so enamored by Hazel's ranting that you failed to notice PJ at first. Her and Josie made their slow ascent on the bleachers until their shadows blocked your afternoon sun.

"Could you get a girlfriend?" The words had snipped off your tongue with harsh vexation as you instinctively cradled Hazel closer to your chest.

"Jesus-" Hazel had muttered, as she craned her neck up to stare at PJ and a disgruntled Josie, "Why are you trying to hijack my boob time?"

You had to reign in all murderous intentions as PJ grabbed hold of Hazel's forearms and forcibly dragged her up off the bleachers… out of your arms.

"You don't get boob time until we all get boob time. And need I remind you that you're going to be late for Fight Club," You heaved a very loud, very obnoxious sigh as you tilted your head backwards, letting the rays bounce off your pink sunglasses, "You guys should seriously get a room." Said PJ, "Stop giving the entire football team a show. Come on, you're setting us back like 69 years-"

Before PJ sunk her claws into Hazel completely, she bent down until her lips pressed against your cheek, and she whispered, "I'll see you back at my place, yeah?"

Your heart deflated at her confirmation that she was indeed leaving you for Fight Club, "Hazel..."

"Shh, shut up. Just say yes,"

But before you could wrack your brain for something coherent to say, PJ had already begun to make her descent off the bleachers, taking your girlfriend along with her.

You did not hate PJ, nor were you her biggest fan at the best of times. However, nights like tonight made your vexation grow to unimaginable heights simply because PJ is completely and utterly inescapable.

This evening, however, waiting for Hazel to get back from Figh Club, had been perfect. Etta James had been oozing through The Callahan's home speakers as you prepared the butternut soup- Hazel's favourite Post Fight Club recovery meal (although she hated admitting it, because she did not want to put you out of your way).

You are perfectly content, trapped in your web of make-believe as you prance around Hazel's kitchen, assembling your respective bowls needed for the soup. Mrs Callahan had let you in, as she always did after school, with a dismissive wave while she babbled into the receiver of her iPhone. Before she completely disappeared into the innards of her sprawling house, Mrs Callahan vaguely threw over her shoulder "Hazel is at her thing until 5 but I'm sure you've been made aware," and you were left in this great big labyrinth to entertain yourself.

Sex had been even more seldom, given that Hazel was rarely ever in any shape to commence any form of coitus due to the various bruises popping up in unlikely places. You wish you can safely tell yourself you despised seeing her bloody and battered state - that you gain absolutely nothing from Fight Club and that you most likely never will.

But you're staring dreamily into the pot of soup, and you're stirring and stirring, with your heart racing in anticipation of Hazel's inevitable return with her inevitable bruises smeared across her perfect little face.

You had not planned on cooking for anyone because seducing Hazel in her inevitably bloodied state was on the forefront of your mind, and Mrs Callahan had a very tempting bright pink apron hanging on the hook.

So perhaps you did do this all for her.

Perhaps you were waiting for her, to stride on through the foyer, nursing a streak of dried blood down her nose, eager to catch her reaction at seeing you so comfortable in her space while you rushed to swoop in and fawn over her.

This near perfect daydream might have actually manifested…

Were it not for PJ's loud and obnoxious voice bleeding into the kitchen from the foyer, accompanied by the heavy groan of the front door slamming shut. Your shoulders visibly sag as you empty the rest of the soup into your bowl just as the trio rounds the corner into the kitchen.

"Oh my God - soup!" PJ exclaimed rushing towards you with her gaze zeroed in on the bowl locked firmly in your hand. You had been so focused on keeping the bowl from PJ's incessant grabby hands that you failed to see the dazed, almost breathless look that sprinkled over Hazel's face who drifted slowly behind Josie despite this being her house.

Suddenly, every thought about the impending bruise she was facing due to not dodging a right hook earlier vanished from her mind like doves in the wind. Hazel's head was completely flooded with the image of you, in her kitchen, with your cute as fuck little skirt grazing just above your knee.

This almost did not feel real. Less than a month ago, no one barely blinked in her direction, but now...

So enamored was Hazel by your act of service, she nearly failed to catch PJ's innate need to flirt whenever you were in the vicinity.

"You look hot by the way," PJ had slyly said, still reaching for the bowl of steaming soup, which you only drew higher above your head.

"Sorry PJ, only people who make me cum get to eat my cooking."

"Is that an invitation?" She asked, leaning against the counter, "That sounded like an invitation."

Hazel cleared her throat, finally succeeding in having your eyes wash over her. "Can we probably not talk about you fucking my girlfriend, maybe, I think?" She said cooly, discarding her bag somewhere on the floor before making her up closer towards you. Her slouch was even more prominent and you swear the air in your lungs thinned as she brushed up beside you and muttered, "Hey,"

"Hey yourself." And Hazel's tummy instantly warmed as you discarded the bowl on the counter, turning to cup her cheeks in your hands as you observed her latest shiners acquired from Fight Club. Something sinister flashed through Hazel's mind as your big dark eyes scanned over her visage, eyeing the new bruise splotched across her eye and the horizontal laceration on her cheek.

"It doesn't hurt," She can barely find her words under the overwhelming feeling of your care and attention. Your scent is all encompassing, and before she ever allows for anymore of her arousal to stain her boxers Hazel attempts to draw her face out of your palm.

"Jesus, Hazel!" You squeal, pulling her head down closer to your height, until Hazel has to support herself with a hand on the counter behind you, "Please don't tell me you were sparring with anyone on the football team again!"

You hoped you succeeded in masking how turned on that thought actually got you...

Hazel's voice is deep and low as she replies,

"Jeff said that if I can at least dodge his left, left, right hook next time, I could probably be ready for the whole team." You breathe out and airy laugh almost the same time as her, the both of you silently aware of what the other was doing.

"Ugh, you're such a virgin." PJ mutters under a mouthful of soup.

"I literally have a girlfriend," Hazel mutters without looking away. Her gaze was nearly trapped in yours as she allowed you to pull her limp body away from PJ and Josie. "Come on, I need to clean you up."

And that's how you had found yourself, cross-legged on Hazel's bed with her leaning against the headboard like your Oh so compliant little patient. Her gaze is yet to waver from yours, in fact, cleaning the laceration had been utter hell, right up until this point because Hazel had taken to drawing various circles against the skin of your exposed thigh.

The skirt had ridden up marginally from your seating position, and Hazel seems perfectly fine toying with your various emotions.

"You look really pretty," Hazel breathed out as if those words were sitting heavily on her heart ever since you applied the wet gauze against her left cheek. You try to hold your composure, keeping a firm eye on the dressing of Hazel's wound as you say, "I don't really think I want you going to fight club anymore,"

"Tch'yeah okay," she snickers dismissively, "Hey, is this skirt new? It's hot- like 'gay 50s housewife' kinda hot," There's an edge to her voice that has Hazel sitting taller against the headboard before incriminatingly letting her hands drift just a little higher on your thigh. Your breathing becomes heavier as you fight hard to maintain your crumbling composure.

"I'm serious, Hazel," you had begun to whisper. Why had you begun to whisper?

"I don't wanna have to stitch you up every time-"

As soon as the gauze was plastered onto her cheek, Hazel's head was already melting into your chest, nuzzling at your open cleavage exposed by your Pastel v-neck as she says, "God, I love it when you mommy me,"

"H-Hazel," any warning you tried to inject into your tone gets fizzled out by the embarrassing moan that escaped your lips as Hazel's teeth dragged lightly against the skin of your chest. Her hands were restless, as if she was testing herself as to how far she'd allow herself to go so quickly.

You suck in so much air as Hazel's palm cradles the inside of your thigh and because you're cross legged, closing your legs is nearly impossible. "Fuck, I'm so turned on, right now," her voice cracks as she brings her face up from your boobs. Pressing a hand to your cheek, she tries and fails to bring your lips towards hers.

Hazel frowns as you say,

"You think it makes me feel good seeing you like this?"

You ignore the budding voice in your head echoing the loud and very obnoxious 'yes, yes you do like seeing her like this. You like seeing that reckless smile blossom onto her cracked and battered face. It gets you wet and you know it does-'

But your voice is full of fragile conviction as you say, "You think I like seeing my girlfriend beaten up everyday of the week?"

Hazel blinks once before she succinctly replies, "If I put my hands up your skirt right now, am I gonna find you wet?" An entire desert ecosystem is suddenly born inside your mouth, and you swallow thickly as your eyes evade Hazel's uncomplicated, piercing gaze. She tilts her head, smiles gone, simply waiting for your response.

"Do you want me to tell you what I think?" She asks before steadily closing the distance between you once more. Only, you're so terrified of being caught out, so utterly embarrassed at the thought of her finding out about the pool of wetness that had begun soaking completely through your panties, that you back away the closer she gets. Your slinking backwards only allows Hazel to crawl closer until she's hovering above you in the centre of her bed.

You have her undivided attention, and she has yours. Your eyes recklessly scans her face, every cut, laceration, and every old bruise buried under a new one has your lips turning downward as a small, almost imperceptible whimper forces itself out of your throat.

"There she is…" Hazel whispers with a palm cradling your cheek, "There's my needy little girl," You're quickly slipping into subspace right in front of her and Hazel is more than grateful. A single silver pendant dangles from her throat as she dips down, finally connecting your lips in a quietly passionate kiss. Your eyes immediately flutter shut, and so does hers. The both of you are utterly enamored by the sheer lust communicated by the intensity of the kiss alone.

"Fuck," Hazel curses, momentarily breaking apart to peel off her oversized graphic tee. You're watching your girlfriend in her sports bra with unbridled lust shining heavily on your pouty lips.

"Tell me you're wet for me," She says, "Please, Baby."

You're slipping deeper and deeper but you still have half a mind to lightly whisper, "Hazel, they're right downstairs-" She's already crashing her lips back down onto yours.

"Tell me you're wet for me," She murmurs against your lips, never being able to stray too far.

The hand that isn't holding her up, hovering above you, is once again, underneath your skirts, only this time, the tips of her fingers are dragging up against your inner thigh with no chance of stopping.

"Fuck, Hazel,"

"Is that supposed to be an answer?"

You're already pulling your own hips off the bed, seeking her hand out like a whore as you break the kiss only to whimper, "Yes, okay, fine! I'm so wet for you, Hazel- just, please!"

She watches completely fargone as you let your soaked panties meet her awaiting palm. Watching you grind yourself against her hand has Hazel's mind absolutely descending into lust.

"God, you're so beautiful," she says, before finally pressing her own hand against your soaked panties. She rubs in harsh, rough circles, eager to bring you to the very edge of insanity. She needed to see you fall apart for her again and again-

"Inside," You whisper, watching your girlfriend rub your cunt with bated breath. You're still wearing your skirt but you figure Hazel needs to fuck you in it to fulfil some sort of fantasy and you don't entirely mind. Not at all.

"Hazel, Please. I need you inside-"

"Fuck- you're such a slut-"

Your head immediately falls back against the bed as Hazel's movements against your soaked panties increases.

"You like it when I call you a slut, baby?" Your hips stutter upwards in vague response as you moan loudly into the air.

"Fuck- Hazel, I'm close- I'm so fucking- fuck," the orgasm sneaks up on you like a villain in the night and you're spamming underneath her, while Hazel continues to rub your cunt through the torrid sensation. Before you've ever even come down from your high, there's a knock on the door, and look towards it with slightly parted lips and blurry vision.

"Hey- you have no more soup, and I think you two are fucking in there so Josie and I are just gonna g-"

"Fuck off, PJ!" Hazel screams at the door, failing to hear the small little 'Okay, rude' before she's lifting your skirt until they're pooling at your hips.

"Hazel, what're you-"

"Another one, okay?" She nods encouragingly before shifting your panties aside and pressing the colds tips of her forefinger and middle finger against your soaked cunt. "You're going to give me another one. I wanna see if I can do it."

You can't even roll your eyes at her unnecessary display of pride because your eyes are rolling to the back of your head as she drags the essence of your arousal along your clit. "Fuck, you look so hot-"

"H-Hazel," the aftershocks from your previous orgasm rack through your upper body just as the oncoming tempest of lust gears you up for the next one. Hazel leans over you once more as she continues to rub at your clit, "Just one more, baby, I know you can do it. Show me, baby." It's downright evil, the effect her manipulation has on your body as you descend further and further into your lust.

"Look at how perfect you look," she says with a voice thick with lechery, "Fuck, you get me so wet to, baby," she murmurs before instinctive pressing her lips to yours once again, as if something nestled in her being, craved the touch of your lips against hers.

"You're gonna be a good girl for me?"

"Fuck- Hazel-"

"I'm right here, angel," she whispers, before bringing the tips of her fingers to your opening. Hazel is quick to slide her index and middle finger into your pussy until she's fucking you hard and deep. It takes a few short pumps for you to clutch mindlessly at her forearms with your vision slightly waning as you look up at your smiling girlfriend who watches you descend into your orgasm.

"That's it," she coos as you clench around her fingers, "You're doing so well for me, baby,"

"F-Fuck!" You stutter out as you fall into the depths of euphoria. Your mind is flooded with nothing but Hazel, all thoughts previously plaguing your brain is made null and void. In the end, you're just a beacon for her to release her frustrations out on. Even if it means overstimulating you until you become a noisy, helpless mess.

For a while, each other's heavy breathing is all you hear.

That is, until you hear a loud bump against Hazel's closed door, drawing both your attention.

"PJ-" whispers Josie with unimaginable frustration.

"Oh my God, they're definitely fucking-"