#on ao3 well ao3 has its own warning so i use that and most people dont put ages on ao3 no matter how old they are

[firsttraintovictoriaville]

I can't find the og post I made but once again, the only time I age check people I see visibly interacting with my fanfics is if it's an E or M rated fic. If you interact with a fic with that rating im going to your blog and hunting for an age. If that age is less than 18, instant block.

[almondmilktargaryen]

Duty & Sacrifice (Part One)

Summary: Aemond is married with two kids to Floris Baratheon, as it was his duty. But it's when he ventures into Flea Bottom in the night that he faces his sacrifices.

Couple: Aemond Targaryen/Fem!Reader

Category: Flangst

Content warnings: Cheating, mention of dead children

Word count: 2k

Also on my Ao3

Part one | Part two | Part three ✍️ | Part four ✍️

The memory of Aemond’s mother holding a blade inches from Rhaenyra’s eye pops into his head whenever he plans to head into the city.  His mother’s thirst for justice and balance, for the sake of him, is an image he has never shaken.

“Where is duty!” He remembers.  “Where is sacrifice!”

And years later, with the Greens victorious and the Blacks slaughtered, sacrifice reveals its head here.  As Aegon takes rule on the Iron Throne as the one true king (according to future history books, not the people), and Helaena’s ashes rest in the sept with Jaehaerys, Aemond takes on his own sacrifice.

Well aware of his brother’s ineptitude (and reliance on the milk of the poppy), their grandsire assigns Aemond responsibility for helping train the Royal Army with Ser Criston,  as well as command the City Watch.  As much as Otto claims not to care for it, Aemond and Daemon were shockingly similar.  So there was no better person.  Aemond agrees with his grandsire but knows he only won the dragonback fight against his uncle because he was more disciplined.  He flew away on Vhagar unscathed in comparison because of his discipline.

Because Aemond understands duty and sacrifice.

And like his mother, he understands his role in the family and takes it seriously.

He wears his typical black leather attire whilst eyeing the hood in his wardrobe.  He’s even just about to grab it before his chamber doors groan loudly, the force of his two boys clamoring through to see him.  Baelon attacks his legs while little Daeron stumbles behind, forcing Aemond to submit and fall to his bed.  Aemond’s laughter mixed with the squeals of joy.  Before Baelon can sit on his chest again, he quickly sits up.  “Is it almost that time?” He asks them.

“Yes,” Baelon says. Aemond rises further and the boy rests against his father’s arm.  Aemond is sure that if he blinks, he’ll find his oldest suddenly tall enough to rest his head on his shoulder.  “Mother says I still have to go to bed when Daeron does.”

Aemond shrugs with an amused sigh.  He had learned through his oldest how much time children have to argue and dwell on their smallest of issues.  “Your mother’s rules are your mother’s rules.” He simply says.

“But I’m much older than Daeron.” He has used this argument multiple times on his father, yet Aemond remained delighted as his lips curled.  Aemond places a hand on his boy’s head and brushes over his matching Targaryen locks.  He’s letting them grow past his ears now.  Aemond has also learned his eight-year-old bends his will effortlessly, something powerful men with the most fearsome reputations and twice as many battle scars could not even dream of.  Meanwhile, his son achieves it with his mother’s eyes and little effort.

“I will speak to your mother about it tomorrow.” He grabs Baelon by the waist and lifts him to let his feet land on the stony floor.  “But for tonight, you must return to your chambers at the same time as your brother.”

“But Papa,” he drags out the last syllable.

“I will not hear it. Your mother--”

The doors echo again, and Princess Floris Baratheon steps in like she was summoned.  Her belly has already started swelling with their third child.  Despite what handmaidens and wet nurses have prepared her for, Floris has yet to discover any dreadfulness during her pregnancies.  Bards have written songs about her and each birth so far, claiming the Baratheon strength eases the process,  and the camaraderie between her and her sisters ensures strong sibling bonds for House Targaryen.  Aemond cannot disagree with the first, holding her hand throughout each labor.  Baelon took seven hours, and Daeron took four.  Not a scream, but Aemond was sure he’d witness her clenched teeth reduce to dust before the babies took their first breaths.  He brushed the hairs sticking to her brow and kissed her head and cheeks when she could finally sleep.  She deserved those songs, every lyric.

He has reason to doubt potential bonds, though, considering his relationship with Aegon.  His hope remains strong for his girls.

“Say goodnight to Papa, boys,” Floris says.

“But Papa thinks I should stay up late--”

“I said nothing of the sort.” He responds matter-of-factly.  “Listen to your mother or lose your negotiation opportunities.”

Baelon groans while Daeron giggles, following him out into the hall.

“Stay with Ser Criston, boys,” Floris tells them.  Her hands rest naturally on the bump as if her wrists missed it.  “I will be out in a second.”

When they disappear, Aemond keeps his expression light.  She still beams, and it helps.  “Best to head to them before the handmaidens snatch them up.”

“Yes.” She replies. “Though I’ve told them time and again to leave bedtime for me.”

Aemond puts a hand on her forearm and the other on her belly.  “You go on. I have a meeting concerning the City Watch.  I won’t be back until later.”

Floris maintains a radiant expression while nodding, despite the noticeable swallow in her throat.  When the door closes and he hears scampering pairs of feet grow farther in distance, he briefly questions going out, aware of his wife’s subtle yet looming suspicions.  But by the time he finally reaches out for his hood, he has already pushed the thought back.

Aemond follows the hills and dips of the cobblestone roads whilst keeping his head down and royal roots securely hidden.  He turns some corners sharply and holds his breath before advancing toward others.  He knows his path through Flea Bottom well, but the odors of sweat, rotting meat, as well as discarded piss and shit (in buckets and sometimes small piles) are all elements he has yet to get used to.  It would be a more straightforward path if he took the Street of Silk, but they both agreed they would never return there again if they had the choice.

The roads were dimly lit, and though dangerous men lurk more prominently at this late hour,  one stare down from Aemond and a good view of his eyepatch gets the message across that he is not one to be trifled with.  Not to mention his skills with a sword.  He claims not to care for his appearance, but hot-tempered or drunk men hesitate to come close when they see him.  It saves him time.

Aemond looks around for lingering faces in nearby windows before repeating the special rap at the door: three times, then two, then one.  He opens it, unlocked to his dismay, but his arrival was expected.  He enters anyway and moves the heavy metal bolt to secure it after an audible shut.

The small home is dimly lit, with barely room for a stewpot, let alone one bassinet.  Aemond can see a single flame burn near the bedside.  He follows it with the sound of his own name, as it’s spoken so sweetly from around the corner.

Radiance fills Aemond's sight: a mess of copper curls and a nightgown, and two swaddled babes in her arms.  An exhale leaves his lungs and nose as he comprehends the familiar sight.  “Welcome back.” She says softly, not to disturb the girls, or likely from her own lack of sleep.

“You know I hate it when you leave the door unlocked,” Aemond tells her.

“It’s too early in the night to worry about that.  They are all at the taverns and whorehouses.”

One of the girls starts fussing.

“You cannot be too naïve. If I’m not here to protect you like what happened at--”

“Oh, hush and get over here. Hold your children.” She tries to sit up properly.

Aemond presses his lips together and takes a seat on the small cot, bumpy and unpleasant, nothing he’s been unfamiliar with in the past eighteen months.  The comfort settles in him like a kindling fire when he gets to gaze upon his two girls.  United since birth, it is hard for their mother to nestle one while Aemond cradles the other.  But with every visit, they learn and adapt.  Now is no different, as Aemond reaches for the one closest to him: Alisha.  He’s studied the difference between them, staring at them still in the hours of the night, observing from the floor while their mother rested.  Small strands of white peek through the auburn, already beginning to curl.  Alyssa's hair is a blazing hue of ginger.

Aemond gives Alisha time to adjust in his arms.  She fusses but eventually settles.  Her eyes open gently, a dull brown.  Nothing special. Nothing Targaryen.  Alyssa is safe too. And her mother keeps her close with two arms now rather than one.  “Are you staying the night?” She asks Aemond.

“I certainly can.” He scoots closer, meeting her hip.  He brushes some strands behind her ear before cupping her face, bringing her in for a kiss.  It was gentle, and the longing was the same as their first night together where nothing more happened other than this; sitting and kissing.  They did not feel the need for anything else right away, understanding what the other had been through amidst long talks in the dead of night.  When things escalated, she showed him patience and love, despite his fears and questions.

Now he’s more confident with movements, as his hand traveled to the back of her neck to keep her close.  The brown eyes she blessed their daughters with stared back at him.  Her breath smelled like bowls of brown, and he did not mind.  “You know what I think you deserve?”

“Hmm.” She looks up toward the ceiling as she ponders.  Brown seeps from the corners, and Aemond has hesitated to ask.  She puts a hand to his face, just below the scar.  “I’m sure you’re eager to show me.”

“A house.”

“Oh.” She pulls back as her brows quirk.  “But I have a house, Aemond.”

“Not one you deserve, though.  This was just temporary, to get you off the Street of Silk.  You deserve comfort. A home where the girls can run around outside and fall asleep at night in proper beds.  Where danger doesn’t loom just outside that door.  No one would ever hurt them.” He kisses her again, and he feels her hesitate.

“How do you know no one will hurt them?  Will you be there?”

“Not all the time. But more than I would be now.  That I can promise.”

“Aemond--”

“I can assign guards to protect you when I’m not there.  Servants that understand discretion.  The girls will be happy and safe, well-provided for.” Prisoners in the black cells live more comfortably than she does,  with space to move and leftovers from royal dinners served to them (that was Helaena’s biggest request as queen, and Aemond pushed it on Aegon as an attempt to honor his late wife).  When he visits, Aemond sees how little she moves.  She hurts from sharing such a horrible cot with twin babes, and Aemond cannot do anything about it here.  “Please, my love. You’ve done so much for me.  Taught me so much. Let me do this for you.”

“You know what will happen if they find out.”

“Nothing will happen.”

“The last war was about bastards taking the throne.  People have been finding your brother’s bastards on the street.  They butcher any boy or girl with silver hair like livestock, left to rot in dark corners alone.  I know you’ve seen them.”

“And I would do everything in my power to make sure no one touches you.  I have a lot of power. And will.  I’ve protected you from horrid men before.  You cannot doubt I won’t do it again.”

Water lines her eyes. It glistens painfully in the candlelight as her palm falls from his face, his shoulder, and then his chest.  She keeps her voice steady. “You can’t have lost one eye, be so intelligent yet so blind,” she says.  “People see. People talk. Even in the fields where nothing happens.  It only gives them an excuse to be more vigilant.  To see a whore just show up from the capital with guards, servants, and two girls.  One with some silver in her hair and another with a purple eye.  What else would they think?”

Aemond pulls back. “Purple?”

She gives Alyssa her full attention once more, coaxing her to open her eyes.

“No, last time I was here, they were both brown.  Like Alisha’s. Yours.”

“This happens with babies sometimes, Aemond.  This is only month three.” She tries to keep herself together.  “The gods are in their right to punish us.  For what we’ve done here. In here.”

“No,” he simply says. “The gods have tested me before we met.  I’m used to their tests. And I’m used to prevailing, eventually.  I will do it again.”

“You can’t--”

“I will.” A surge runs through him, nothing dissimilar to when he went to war.  The simplistic instinct that comes with the will to survive.  When he was at war, there was one he relied upon from beginning to end, and even years before that.  Aemond is gentle as the surge flows through his veins.  “I can’t stay tonight.” He tells her.

“Where are you going?” She doesn’t try to hide the stress.

He gives her time to take Alisha back.  Alisha protests, but only momentarily.  With a flat palm on each, he brushes over the heads of the twins.  His gaze meets hers and he notices tears streaming halfway down her face.  He brushes them away, planting a kiss on her lips again, holding her by the neck once more.  He doesn’t speak a word until she looks him in the eye.  “I love you.” He’d say it with more of a tender demeanor if time was not of the essence now.  “With all my heart, I love you.  You made the grave mistake of letting a royal war hero fall in love with you, my dear.  The determination to keep you safe comes with that territory.”

Her head drops as tears finally do the same, dripping off the edge of her chin.  Aemond kisses her nose.

“I want to make you a home and keep you safe.  That’s not possible here. But it is possible.  For you. For them. It is possible.  I just need you to trust me.”

“I’m scared.” The whisper shakes from her, like dead leaves against the winter wind.  “Don’t leave me yet.” She holds the babies.  She can’t reach out to touch him, yet her arms try.

“I’m not leaving.” He kisses her lips again as if each one was a grant of safety from the gods.  He gave each one to her willingly, frivolously, like he was a god himself who had the power to control such things.  Because he did. He was a Targaryen.  It was close enough. “I will be back, I promise you.”

She still cries as he stands.  The babies too. And he cannot show how it breaks his heart, not now.  If he gives in and does what he truly wants, it will only be a problem when he wakes up here the next morning.  His eye stung with its own unshed tears, but he turned away regardless.  He took a long, steadying breath before heading toward the exit.  With a grip on the bolt, he commanded, “Lock this door.” He tried keeping his voice firm.  “And do not open it unless you know it’s me or a man named Ser Criston Cole, you hear me?”

She nods, and he can feel a tear slide down his cheek, mirroring her own.  He took in the image of the three before slipping out.  The door closed and hearing the heavy bolt provided some relief.

Then he stood there, longer than what was safe, yes.  The cold of Flea Bottom wrapped around him almost instantly, a biting chill of the desolate streets while the soft glow of candlelight shut out from him on the other side,  as it was not his to bask in for too long.

But even in the nearly black darkness of the narrow streets, he could spot one of them; a tiny figure huddled in the corner of a nearby alley, a broken skull with hair shorter than Baelon’s.  Royal blood left to soak into the cobblestone under his feet.  Bones exposed and rotted in the dark, forever cold, soon forgotten.

Aemond made haste to vanish into the shroud of night, swallowed by the fog.  Criston would be in his quarters at this hour, surely.  It was a straightforward path back if he took the Street of Silk.  And he didn’t have a choice.

[vagabond-umlaut]

gojo satoru x reader fic recs (I)

‣ now that i've got loads of free time, thought why shouldn't i use it well by showing (few of) my fave authors their much well-deserved love, respect and attention? ^_^

‣ this is merely a list of works i've enjoyed reading. kindly heed the tags and warnings in each of them and consume content responsibly, at your own discretion. that being said, i own neither these fics nor the characters nor the above gif. enjoy reading! 🥰

⌀ all that is solid [series] by GrilledTandooriSmoke on ao3

one of the best series there is. period. the fluff, the angst, the drama, the humor, the romance, the friendship, the plot, the dialogues - everything is top-notch in this series, i'm telling you. bonus points for being narrated in both reader's and gojo's pov.

⌀ The King is But a Man [series] by Petrichorium on ao3 (@petrichorium on tumblr)

royal!gojo who's terribly in love with the reader x reader who's equally (but way more discreetly) in love with gojo. add to that, the trope of childhood sweethearts reunited as adults, excellent communication between the couple and a wonderfully-crafted world and dialogues - what more could you ask from a series?

⌀ Ten to None (Soulmate AU) (oneshot) by Oreosmama on ao3

a fic which i adore with every fibre of my being. i will not say anything more about this, except to request you to go read this. you'll love it. (especially the fantabulous ending. btw, did i already say how much i'm in love with how well-written this fic is?)

⌀ Scarred [oneshot] by cainis on ao3

one of the best angst-with-a-happy-ending fic there is. i wish i could give thousands of kudos for the heart-wrenchingly amazing way the author has portrayed gojo's character here.

⌀ Mother of otherness, Eat me [oneshot] by itsbaby on ao3

one of the most beautiful works i've read so far. told from yuuji's pov, it explores gojo and reader's relationship and its nuances in a way seldom done before. however, what stole the show for me, was the soft and sweet mother-son duo the reader and yuuji grow to be in this fic. i really love this one-of-a-kind masterpiece.

⌀ something sweet [oneshot] by heresan on ao3 (@pretty-toru on tumblr)

i love love love this fic. it's so fluffy, so funny, so cute, so heart-warming... just read this fic, people. you won't ever be disappointed by the dynamics reader and gojo have in this one. one of my all-time faves, tbh.

⌀ teen dad Gojo [series] by pantao on ao3 (@seravphs on tumblr)

a sweet and realistic depiction of reader and gojo being teenaged parents to young megumi, all the while they try to figure out their feelings for each other. a perfect mixture of fluff, angst, drama, slice-of-life and romance, imo. (also, the author's notes are pure gold. whatever you do, please don't miss reading them! :D)

⌀ To see those eyes I prize above mine own (twoshot) by koyama on ao3

if you wish to watch godlike!gojo willing to let go of his powers, out of guilt and immense, immense, protective love for the reader, this is the ideal fic for you. i'm in awe of the way the writer wrote gojo's complex persona and the way the sorcerer realized his feelings for the reader. (the second chapter's the cherry on the cake. it's so good!!!!)

⌀ keeping up with the fushigojos (series) by @augustinewrites on tumblr

fluff? A+; angst? A+; drama? A+; characterization & dialogues? A+; humour? A+++++. a sureshot way to end a long hectic tiring day on a happy note is to read this series. (my go-to comfort series, ngl. :])

⌀ CAT & DOG (oneshot) by @mimiriko on tumblr

an adorable fic of gojo being in love with the reader, who knows, yet doesn't really know, much about it. plus, the feline-like features of gojo are sooo cute... and this fic is sooo sweet... the story left me smiling when i finished reading it.

⌀ surely summer wasn't over yet [3 chapters] by 3rdgymbros on ao3

an amazing fic set against the backdrop of the hidden inventory arc. the portrayal of the characters and their dynamics is simply impeccable. despite my kind-of-dislike towards this particular arc of the manga, i really enjoyed reading this one.

[fortheloveoffanfic]

Broken Chords

Hozier x fem!reader

Author's note: this got out of hand and became something it wasn't supposed to be. Maybe there will be more? Idk maybe if everyone doesn't hate it

Author's note #2: (Just to add a shameless plug to this note; for my other Hozier works, check out my AO3)

Summary: It's been years since their break-up, and still, Y/n and Andrew just can't seem to let go of each other.

Warnings: SMUT/NSFW, Angst

Andrew would like to think he knows himself pretty fucking well. He knows what he likes, what he doesn’t. He knows when something’s bad for him. Tequila, ice cream after dark……her.

She is bad for him.

So why can’t he ever seem to remember that when it matters most? When he's home alone after spending months surrounded by people. When he’s out drinking with his mates, he smells a familiar perfume. When they’re both at the same wedding, he starts thinking “maybe if things were different….”

She always looks so good in green, especially darker tones so its no wonder that's the colour she’s chosen this evening. Andrew knows that dress too, she bought it for a charity event they attended together a couple years ago. He distinctly remembers seeing her in it for the first time, the way he drew in a sharp breath, the way the silky fabric felt under his palm when she asked him to zip it up – the thrill he got when it pooled at her feet after he'd peeled it off her.

Y/n must feel his eyes lingering on her from across the room, because after a handful of seconds she turns and their gazes meet. He knows that’s his cue to look away and do a terrible job of pretending that he hasn’t noticed her, but he doesn't because she’s something of a siren and he loses all sense when they’re in the same room.

Taking a sip of his whiskey, he swallows harshly, holding her gaze over the rim of his glass. She's absently running a manicured finger around the top of hers, and he remembers that its something she does unconsciously. He wants to smile, or wave, or do something that constitutes more than just standing there like an idiot, but he can’t. He can’t do anything but think about what it would be like if they’d gone there together.

She’d ask him to dance and he’d say no at first but cave no more than a minute later because even if he has two left feet, he loves how it feels when she rests her head on his chest. He’d watch his friends get married and think about all the times his mother suggested making Y/n his wife – but not say a word of it to either of them because he doesn't think he’s ready to take that step. They’d go home together, and Andrew would carry her inside, because she took off her heels in the car and the gravel on the driveway makes her feet hurt.

Upstairs, in their bedroom, Y/n would push off his coat and comment on how she likes seeing him dressed up like that, and then he would inch that green dress off her shoulders and it would stay on the floor, next to his suit coat, until late the next morning.

But he’s not there with her. Though, Y/n is approaching him now so he thinks maybe the night is gonna end like that anyway. Because there isn’t a universe made by any God in which he doesn’t find himself tangled up in her. Even if he knows how it ends, even if he knows that she isn’t right for him, even if they’ve broken each other’s hearts half a dozen times by now, he goes back.

“Hey.” She begins simply, with a smile that can't be anything more than polite, “How’ve you been?”

Alive, thinking about you more than I probably should, he wants to say.

“Hey. Ehm, I’ve been alright,” he shrugs, “Just um, workin’.”

“Right, of course. Working.” Working, why is that all that he’s said, surely he could’ve offered a bit more.

“You?” He asks.

Y/n takes a slow sip of her champagne, nodding as she does. “Good, I've been good. Just you know….working.”

“Workin’,” he repeats with a nod that mirrors her own. Its funny how they used to have so much to say to each other. He’s never been a man of many words, and Y/n isn’t exactly the chatty type, but they used to be able to talk for hours without more than a couple minutes of silence. The most mundane thoughts would spark hour long conversations, pillow talk would span well into the am and morning coffee chitchat would keep them at the kitchen table until lunch. There used to be a time where it seemed like his every thought was shared with her, and Y/n did the same.

They lapse into silence for a moment, and when the music changes to something slower and the dj starts encouraging guests to cozy up to their dates, Y/n sets her half empty glass down on the bar just past him. “Do you wanna dance? Just one song, I promise,” she smiles, and that time its beautifully hopeful.

Andrew chuckles hesitantly, “I haven’t gotten any better at it.” In one swing, he finishes off his drink and rests his glass next to hers before offering his hand. Hers is just as small, and just as soft as he remembers

They find a vacant spot amongst the other guests in the area designated for dancing. Instinctively – almost as if the last time they stood together like that was yesterday – Andrew slips his arm around her waist, splaying his hand on the small of her back. The fingers of his other hand are laced with hers, settled near her shoulder as they ease into a slow sway.

“You cut your hair,” Y/n marvels softly upon pulling her head back a little.

“Just took a couple inches off,” he confirms in the same hushed tone.

“It looks good,” Y/n says, and he feels his heart skip a little. Compliments from her always mean more than they would from anyone else, even if its about the same haircut he's been getting since he was twenty-two. “Better than the pictures make it seem,” she adds in a whisper.

Andrew swallows thickly; she’s been keeping up with him, even if they haven’t spoken in months. The thought is strangely comforting because God knows he’s been doing the same. “I heard that you’re seeing someone.” And by heard, he means read.

“I’m not,” Y/n shakes her shoulders slightly. “I mean…I was, but I’m not anymore.”

He knits his brows, hoping to hide his relief, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t serious,” Y/n licks her lips, “Are you?”

“Am I serious?”

She chuckles softly, the sound airy and musical. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Oh!” He scoffs. What the hell is he thinking? “No,” he shakes his head, “ehm, I've been on a couple dates,” set up by friends who are hoping to help him move on, “but they didn’t work out.”

Her next question stuns him; “why?”

The song changes, but neither of them make a move to pull away. Thinking on her question, Andrew fumbles with his words. Certainly he can’t tell her that its because he compares every woman to her and none of them ever come close. So he decides to go with a poorly strung together lie. “Just….. incompatible, I guess.” When Y/n offers nothing more than a hum in response, he tentatively probes, “why didn’t it work out with you and your….?”

“Because….” Y/n pauses, searching his eyes before opting against whatever she was going to say, “it doesn’t matter.” Casting her gaze to their lazy feet, she leans her had against his chest – finally – and the sigh that tumbles off his lips is one of relief. He doesn’t think there’s any lyric he could piece together, or any word of any language, that could properly describe just how much he’s missed that. The lack of even a thread of distance between them, the way his heart ticks a little differently when her ear is over it, the smell of her shampoo when he bends to look at her while he’s nestled against him.

He doesn’t pressure her for a response, he isn’t sure if he even wants to know anything that will ruin the pleasure of having her with him. “I’m staying upstairs. 27,” Y/n says, just as the second song ends and the maid of honor announces that its time for the bouquet toss.

“Yeah?” Andrew licks his lips, “I think I might just go home after,” he adds, trying to gauge her reaction, but she's always had a good poker face.

Though, her expression falters just a little, so quickly that its almost unnoticeable, “right. Of course. My flight’s pretty early tomorrow anyway.”

His jaw tightens a littles, but he nods and smiles, “right.” He wants to be as good as she is at playing it cool and unaffected. He wants to just be able to pack up and leave their relationship behind like it was nothing, but just standing there in front of her is taking more out of him than it should, chipping away at his resolve and undermining his self-respect. “You’re leaving tomorrow,” he swallows thickly, going against the voice in his head that practically begged him to not say that.

“Mhm,” Y/n hums, “maybe next time?”

Andrew clears his throat, “Yeah, maybe.”

Y/n doesn’t say anything for a moment, instead tilting her head a bit to the left and narrowing her eyes just a little, as if she’s just seeing him. He’s about to ask what she’s thinking when most of the guests start gathering at the front of the room, getting ready to catch the bouquet. “I should go,” she declares.

Slipping hands into his pockets, Andrew offers the chaos behind him a quick, casual backwards glance, “Don’t wanna try to catch the bouquet?” He manages a barely there, lopsided smile.

And Y/n doesn’t return it; for the first time since their end, Andrew truly sees how he’s hurt her. Y/n furrows her brows, and stares at him as if he’s just asked her something completely outlandish. “No,” she shakes her head. Taking a step forward, she arches up on her toes – because even in four inch heels its hard to reach his face – and kisses him so close to the corner of his mouth that it would only take the slightest shift on his part for their lips to meet. “I’ll see you around Andy.”

He’s too stunned to react, and by the time Andrew has mustered up a reply, Y/n is already near the double doors that lead out of the small hotel’s dining hall and his fingers are lingering on the stop that she kissed.

An hour and a half ater

Threading his long finger through his wind mused hair, Andrew fixes his gaze on the gold plated numbers mounted above the off-white door.

22.

He’s back at the hotel after having left the reception shortly after Y/n did. He doesn’t even know who caught the damn flowers; he was too focused on trying to convince himself to not go after her.

Despite that, he’d made it to his car and then all the way home. Opened the front door, turned on the lights, walked to his refrigerator and got himself a beer. And then he closed the door and one of the pictures they took after he’d played a show in London was just there, stuck to the door with a little magnet shaped like the Big Ben. With the cap covered by the edge of his jacket, he twisted it open and took a swing of the beer, the bitterness of the hops not making him wince near as much as the grayscale memory taken by a phone with a number that he tries his best to not call.

He’d made it all the way to his car….and then a night where Andrew had sworn he could hear her voice above every other in the crowd and her lips were more intoxicating that any whiskey could ever be, came back to him and now he’s at the hotel again.

But hey, he lasted an hour and a half, so that's something.

Well, technically it was fifty-five minutes. But he's not interested in technicalities.

As he stands in front of the door, thumb flicking the corner of the polaroid, he finds himself half wondering why she’s never the one that comes crawling back. He knows the answer, mostly; Y/n has always had more resolve than him, she's good at guarding herself.

She’s even better at knowing her worth.

But him? He’s as close as anything gets to a walking definition of insanity; Andrew thinks he'll go back a thousand times if she’ll have him.

He’s pretty damn good at being on his own until he catches a glimpse of her face.

Shaking off his thoughts, he finally approaches the door and gives it three, brief knocks before slumping against the outer part of the frame. Y/n doesn’t answer immediately, and there's a little part of him – that’s blue and cold and nursing the pain of a wound that runs too deep to heal – that hopes she doesn’t open up. But his luck is as good as nil.

Her eyes are as sullen as his and much redder when Y/n pulls the door open. The green dress is gone, replaced with a pair of shorts and a sweater that resided in his closet long before he even met her – he’s been wondering where it went. Andrew is only a little disappointed that he didn’t get to peel that dress off her himself, he’s more concerned with the glassiness of her eyes and the way Y/n sniffles when she sees him.

“You okay?” He peers gently, thumb courting the dull edge of the picture.

“I thought you went home?” Y/n squints her eyes a little, “I saw you leave,” from the window she'd sat at upon returning to her room. She'd held her breath as he walked to his car, leaned closer when he pulled out of the spot and finally, fell apart as she watched the taillights disappear in the distance.

Andrew shrugs, still leaning on the frame. She's close enough to have to tip her chin to meet his gaze, but neither of them take the initiative to step backwards. “I came back,” he explains simply, slipping the photograph into the pocket of his slacks.

“Why?” Its a loaded question, he thinks. Why did he go back? Why does he keep going back, when he knows forgetting is the hardest part? Why does he do that to himself?

Why does he do it to her? Its the first time he’s ever asked himself that one. Maybe its because tonight, she’d been crying.

Reaching out to brush away a stray tear from under her eye, Andrew shrugs. He swears, when he curves his palm against her cheek, Y/n leans into his touch. Her fingers close in around his wrist loosely, and she stroke the side of it with her thumb.

“Can I come in?”

He’s telling himself that if she says 'no', he’ll just turn around and leave. Accept that its officially over and finally move in.

But he won't. He can think it all he wants but he won't. He'll grovel if he has to. Tell her he needs her -because it's true. He'll lie and say it's the last time if he thinks it's what they both need to hear.

“Sure,” Y/n manages, voice soft without moving back.

Lowering his face, Andrew presses his lips to hers, gently urging her into the suite. The lights are on, but he doesn’t pay much mind to anything around him. Instead, he slips his arm around to the small of her back as their kiss grows more impassioned. When she almost trips over a haphazardly discarded heel, he tugs her closer to his chest, before finally succumbing to lifting Y/n off the carpeted floor. Her legs go around his hips immediately and when they break for a moment, she holds his face close to hers.

“We can’t keep doing this,” he rasps, “you need to stop.”

“I can’t let you go,” Y/n counters, voice small and sad, “I can’t just let you disappear from my life just like that.”

Then why won’t you just be with me? He wants to ask, but the idea is gone the minute she kisses him again, and all he can think about is being with her right there, in that moment. Fuck the rest of the world or all the ways she’s broken his heart.

He barely has time to undo the button and zipper of his pants after setting her down on the bed, because her hands are reaching for him the minute her back hits the mattress. Unceremoniously, she pushes off his suit jacket before clumsily getting to the buttons of his white shirt. “I love when you’re dressed like this,” she manages, breath hot on his skin as the plastic buttons fall victim to her eagerness.

“I’ve been thinking about you all night,” he presses his lips to the side of her face, inhaling deeply before kissing his way down her jaw. His hands slip under the sweater after she pushes the shirt off his shoulders, and her skin is warm and smooth. With hurried ease, he peels the sweater off and casts it off to the side before lowering his mouth to the valley between her unclad breasts.

Y/n’s fingers slide up his back, settling on his shoulder blades as Andrew litters the swell of her breasts with small, purplish bruises. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he mumbles against her skin while gripping her hips and urging them off the bed so he can push her shorts down. “You're always on my fucking mind,” he mummers, nibbling on her skin.

Her nails graze his scalp, lithe fingers tangling in his curls, inciting a sensation that only she can rouse with a gesture so small. Gooseflesh along his skin, electricity up his back and a shake in his breath. With her toes, she shoves his pants and boxers down, and they get tangled up in the messy sheets. Her hips arch towards his, and reaching between them, he guides himself to her entrance. “Fuck,” he heaves upon feeling her wrapped around him.

Connecting his forehead with hers, so the tips of their noses touch and he can taste the lingering remnants of wine on her breath, Andrew stirs his lips in a leisurely pace.

“Andrew,” her voice breaks and a thread of moisture trickles from the corner of her eye.

Halting his movements, Andrew regards her with a mixture of concern and longing. “What?” He moves his hand from the pillow beside her head to cup the side of her face, “Did I hurt you?”

Y/n holds his face, thumbs making loose, circular patterns at the apple of his cheeks. “No,” she lies. “No,” Y/n sniffles again, “keep moving…..please.”

Burying his face in the side of her head, soaking up the aroma of her coconut shampoo. Y/n nuzzles the side of his face and he can hear her erratic breathing matching the thump of her heart. She’s clinging to him for dear life, and the only thing keeping his weight from smothering her is his hand buried in the pillow next to her head, while he tangles the fingers on the other in her hair. Andrew is eager to keep her close, just in case its the last time she lets him near – or by some miracle, he finds it in himself to let her go.

He treats every time like the last time, because in his head, it is.

“Andrew,” she eventually heaves again, and he feels her legs tighten around his hips as she tries to buck her pelvis towards his. Her fingers curl and he can feel her crescent shaped nails digging into his skin again.

“I wanna see you,” he coaxes, “look at me,” he pleads when Y/n buries her face in the crook of his neck, “I need to see you.” When she pulls away to meet his darkened gaze, Y/n slides her hand from his back to brush some hair from his face before settling her palm on his cheek. “You’re so beautiful, sweetheart…..so fucking perfect,” he rasps, lowering his face to hers.

As her back arches, Y/n’s toes curl and she feels the knot in her stomach tighten. The friction Andrew stirs with his desperate, quickening pace coupled with the way he reaches something inside her that no one else ever has ushers her to the cusp of exhilaration. It doesn’t matter who she’s been with before – or after him – no one will ever compare; there isn't a person in the world that can make her feel what she feels when he runs his calloused fingers along her sides, or anything that’s even remotely as pleasurable as the heat of his mouth on her neck while his beard bruises her skin. Every time they’ve been together, she’s worn the mark of him, the ache of his memory, for days and Y/n doesn’t think there’s a version of her that can live without it.

His name tumbles off her lips again, that time with the insistence that she’s close. The pressure mounting in her center broils over in a flurry of panted breaths and garbled obsenties. “Andy….fuck, Andy,” Y/n is putty in his hands, moulding to his whim as he rides out her climax.

“Fuck,” Andrew groans when he feels her clenching around him. Her legs locked around his lips, the way she pulsates around him and his own, impending high makes the controlled jerk of his hips falter. He’s caught between wanting it to last longer and being shamelessly desperate for release.

Reaching for her thigh in a bruising grip, Andrew holds her in place as he finally reaches blinding gratification. “Y/n….Jesus sweetheart,” he groans, struggling to maintain the roll of his hips. His fingers hold a fistful of the sheets in a white knuckled grip and Andrew presses his forehead to hers for a second before angling his head to catch her lips in a sloppy kiss. Her teeth drag along his lower lip, exciting a sound that stays trapped in his throat.

Andrew rolls onto his back as their heavy breathing slows. Y/n is nestled against his chest and his arm immediately goes around her while he uses his free hand to pull the sheets over them. Neither of them speak for a while, but he knows she’s awake because he can feel her finger trace lazy patterns on his chest while he stares up at the ceiling. The fan mounted above them is spinning so quickly that he can barely make out the individual blades, but it doesn’t do much to combat the lingering heat on their skin, expressed only in the shine of sticky moisture.

It takes a while before he can think straight again, and even then, Andrew wouldn’t credit himself with much sense, because his next words are thick with emotion and marred with an urgency that is sure to give away his desperation. “Don’t leave.”

“What?” Y/n can’t bring herself to look at him; she doesn’t think she can stand the desperation in his eyes, that way he looks at her when the dust settles and she remembers why they can’t be anything more than tangled limbs and messy sheets. Usually she’s good at pretending that she doesn’t see it, but its been a long night and right now, all she can think of is everything they could be when he says;

“Don’t go…..back. Don’t get on the plane tomorrow.” His fingers trail up and down her spine, their familiar roughness rousing a comfort she hasn’t felt since the last time they were wrapped up in each other.

Its unusual for her, but Y/n can’t bring herself to say ‘no.’ Its never been easy, but she’s always been able to push him away before he gets close enough to hurt her again. Always, expect for tonight, after the wedding that dredged up memories from the worst time in their relationship, after Andrew showed up at her door with only the best of them at his fingertips.

After he, for the first time in a damn long time, asks her to stay.

[blaisenova]

ermmmm like i dunno if you're still doing requests buttt could you do like kustard but it turns to dustard

that dynamic always interested me but i never see much about it :3

anon, has anyone ever told you that you're a genius?

the kustard to dustard pipeline is WOEFULLY UNEXPLORED. WHICH SUCKS BECAUSE IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD. so, naturally, i was REALLY excited when i got this ask. yippie!!! an excuse to write fun fucked up dynamics!!!!!

this one is pretty tame. i can't think of any warnings you might need other than it being like..... long and, obviously, kinda angsty. it's fluffy in the end tho. but that's what you get when you ask me to write i guess LOL

thank you all for the requests btw!! i was NOT expecting so many after the kist fic, but i am pleasantly surprised and am trying to chip away at them as quickly as i can. spat this one out in a few hours, so it might not be my best work, but i'm happy with how it turned out either way :)

as always, the link to this fic on ao3 will be in the reblogs once it's posted, if that's your cup of tea (as it is mine LMAO)

i hope this feeds you well anon. thank you for the ask <3

It was undeniable that the multiverse was an entirely cruel and ruthless place.

Or, at least, that was what Red had wholeheartedly believed up until he’d met his other self, in a universe that was so very unlike his own. A universe where the typical LOVE of any given passerby was nothing higher than 1; where Sans and his brother were kind to one another in public; where there was so little need for the royal guard that the worst Sans got for sneaking off to Grillby’s during his shift was a slap on the wrist. It was difficult to believe that a place like that could exist – that it could be self-sustainable, since, logically, their weakness should have led to their downfall – and even harder to look at it as anything more than a childish fantasy that had yet to find its catch.

Initially, Red hated Sans. 

It felt ridiculous, looking back upon it – in the moments when his head lay in Sans’ lap and gentle fingers traced over his scars like they were poetry written in a language Red had never bothered to learn, and he wondered what Sans saw in him that he hadn’t seen; wondered if this was what it felt like to love himself – but it was the truth. It had taken him a while to understand that the circumstances in which they’d grown were enough to turn them into two different people; that hating Sans wasn’t so much like hating himself, or what he could have been, as he wanted it to be.

Really, Sans was so unsuspecting that Red had been foolish enough to let his guard down, forgetting that then was when feeling was the most liable to appear. 

He hadn’t expected to fall in love with the laugh – genuine, unabashed, and lacking all of the gruffness of his own – of someone whose humour was just as terrible as his own.

He’d been far too blind to realise how incredibly endearing it was for someone to wake up and allow themselves to be bleary and half-asleep, cuddling into his arm without even meaning to, even if it meant opening themselves up to being easily picked off.

In allowing someone into his blindspot that he’d believed to be too weak or foolish to use it against him, he’d failed to remember that it was the softest words that cut the deepest, when they would bleed him dry so tenderly and lovingly that he couldn’t even think to fight against the bloodloss; when, instead, he’d lean into the knife and ask them to twist it. The wound was soul deep, and the soul’s wounds could not be so easily ignored.

Though, it was a small price to pay to hear that raucous laughter over jokes that weren’t even funny. Trivial, really, in comparison to soft smiles and gentle touches that moved slowly just to prove to him how tender the world could really be.

“Earth to Red.”

A soul for a soul; a life for a life. They gave one another all of themselves, promised each other that it was enough, and it was. For once, it was, just to be soft.

“Come in, Red.”

There was gentleness in the multiverse, hidden until it was allowed in.

Tiredly, he bat away the hand that waved in front of his sockets, only to grab it by the wrist and pull it back down, firmly, on the crown of his skull. With a laugh, the fingers scratched gentle circles into the bone, and Red hummed happily at the feeling, allowing his sockets to slip shut as he lay against Sans’ legs.

“Where’d you go, space cadet?”

“Nowhere,” he grumbled, sighing softly as he fully relaxed into the touch. “Must’ve dozed off.”

Again, there was that laugh, and Red’s soul fluttered. “With your eyes open?”

“It’s a little known talent of mine,” he hummed.

“Gee, must be handy,” came the response, and amusement never sounded so beautiful. “You’ll have to teach me sometime.”

“Nuh uh,” and he couldn’t stop himself from snorting. “It’s genetic.”

“Ah, damn. Guess we gotta add that to the list of differences.”

“Guess so.” His breath hitched as the hand on his head trailed downward to cup his cheek. His browbones furrowed, ever so slightly, and he felt himself go tense.

“Hey. Look at me.”

After a moment, Red opened his sockets, and there was no sight more welcome than the face of his lover. Each time he saw him was like the first, and Red drank in each of his features as if they’d disappear at any moment: smooth bone, unmarred by chips and cracks; eyelights that glowed softly in dark sockets, like how he imagined fireflies might; ever present, gentle smile that smoothed away his worries. Oh, to be so untouched by cruelty. He’d do anything to keep it that way.

“‘Sup,” he breathed, and Sans’ smile widened as he snorted.

“‘Sup,” he returned. His thumb ran circles over his cheek, and Red leaned into the touch. “You okay?”

With a snicker, he rolled his eyelights at the question. “Super duper.”

Despite himself, Sans laughed too, but, still, pressed on. “You sure? You were spacing out pretty bad before. Like, way out in deep space,” he emphasised, unnecessarily. “No planets around, just stars. Way beyond our galaxy. Uncharted territory. Where no man has gone before.”

“Alright, alright, I get the picture” Red interrupted, though not without chuckling. “‘M okay. Was just thinking.”

When Sans’ head cocked to the side, Red couldn’t help but grin. “About?”

“Uranus.”

At first, his sockets simply narrowed, confused, then all at once, “Ura– Oh. Alright, perv. Har har.”

But, he was laughing, and Red was, too, like it was the funniest joke in the world despite it not even being funny. Maybe it didn’t matter, if Red was the one to say it; if Sans was the one to laugh. Maybe, then, it could be good, even if it wasn’t, really. The sound of their laughter, something shared and sacred, was what Red imagined it might feel like to hear the birds chirp when the sun rose and turned the sky whatever colours it was supposed to when it drove the night away. He hoped that it was blue, like Sans’ favourite colour, but the pictures in his textbooks were too faded to be sure.

When he tuned back in, the laughter had tapered off.

“You do that a lot, y’know,” Sans noted, almost absentmindedly, and his hands turned back to trailing shapes on Red’s skull.

He grunted at the feeling. “Do what?”

“Go to space,” Sans said, simply. “Or… somewhere else. That I can’t reach.”

Red frowned, closing his sockets to cut off the dull thrum of agony he felt in his soul whenever Sans’ smile didn’t reach his eyes like that. “I do it less than I used to. It used to be better, somewhere else – anywhere else – but ‘m not so sure anymore.”

“Where would you wanna go?” he asked, in a whisper. “If you could go anywhere. Anywhere at all.”

For a moment, Red considered. The answer would have been easy before – the surface, of course. Where Paps and every other monster longed to be – but access to the multiverse had opened up options that he’d never known existed. If he could conceive of a place, it surely existed, somewhere. Any place. Anywhere. Anywhere at all. But, if kindness was so thoroughly hidden, why should he want to look for it anywhere else?

“Think I’d rather just stay here,” he hummed. “With you.”

Maybe he should have questioned the way that Sans’ hands stilled at his answer. Maybe he should have opened his eyes; looked at his face; seen his expression; known what it meant.

But, he didn’t.

“Geez,” Sans breathed, with a laugh that sounded breathless. “My answer feels stupid in comparison.”

“Yeah? What’s yours?”

“Anywhere else. Anywhere at all.”

In hindsight, Red should have known it was too good to last; too good to stay good.

A universe where the typical LOVE of any given passerby was nothing higher than 1; where Sans and his brother were kind to one another in public; where there was so little need for the royal guard that the worst Sans got for sneaking off to Grillby’s during his shift was a slap on the wrist. It was difficult to believe that a place like that could exist – that it could be self-sustainable, since, logically, their weakness should have led to their downfall – and even harder to look at it as anything more than a childish fantasy that had yet to find its catch.

Of course, there was a catch. 

There was always a catch. Every childish fantasy grew tainted with time, like the innocence of children was stripped with age. Every fairy tale book grew weary and old, pages yellowed and frayed. Every picture faded, until you couldn’t be sure whether the sky was blue or grey.

But, you hoped it was blue anyway, and maybe that was your mistake.

It was undeniable that the multiverse was an entirely cruel and ruthless place. That was what Red wholeheartedly believed. Maybe, after all, there was a reason that love and LOVE were spelled the same.

Try as he might, though, Red could not hate him.

It felt ridiculous – in the moments when hands clamped around his neck like a vice, choked by the grip and the grief that came with it, as if the two were one in the same, and they would both cry, both tremble in fear, or fury, or something worse, and Red would think that this was what it was like to hate himself – but it was the truth. It had taken him a while to understand that the circumstances in which they’d changed were enough to turn them into two different people; that hating Dust wasn’t so much like loving himself, or what he could have been, as he wanted it to be.

Really, Red had underestimated Dust as he had been before; had assumed that kindness meant the incapacity for cruelty.

And, in allowing someone into his blindspot that he’d believed to be too weak or foolish to use it against him, he’d failed to remember that it was the softest words that cut the deepest, when they would leave scars so deep that all he could think of was how much he missed the feeling; when he’d search for the knife and throw himself against it. The wound was soul deep, and the soul’s wounds could not be so easily ignored.

Before, he’d thought it was a small price to pay. Trivial, really, in comparison to what he had to gain from it. As if it were a simple transaction as opposed to something living, and breathing, and ever changing; as if he would never have to be the one who was tender; as if that made it anything less valuable.

“Red.”

A soul for a soul; a life for a life. They gave one another all of themselves, promised each other that it was enough, and it was. Just as before, it was. Harsher now, but Dust had taught Red to be soft, and Red would teach him what he’d forgotten.

“Red.”

There was gentleness in the multiverse, hidden until it was allowed in.

With a jolt, he came back to reality to a slap on the face, not hard enough to hurt, but more than enough to be startling. He frowned, but, nonetheless, took his hand by the wrist and guided it to the crown of his skull. Hesitantly, as if spurred on by some muscle memory, the fingers ran in gentle circles across his bone, and Red hummed in approval at the feeling as he lay against Dust’s legs.

“Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere,” he mumbled, unconsciously leaning into the touch. “Must’ve dozed off.”

“With your eyes open,” Dust said, and it wasn’t a question. “Freak.”

Immediately, Red snorted. “Guess we gotta add that to the list of similarities.”

Despite himself, Dust laughed; the sound short, subdued, and nothing like the laugh he’d fallen in love with, but something about it made his soul flutter, nonetheless. “Guess so.”

After a moment, Red opened his sockets. Each time he saw him was like the first, and Red drank in each of his features as if they’d disappear at any moment – as they had before – smooth bone that crackled and buzzed with magic, refusing to be underestimated; eyelights that glowed brightly in dark sockets, like how he imagined neon signs would on a city street in the middle of the night; a face shrouded by shadow, as if it was saved for him alone to see. In the end, he’d been marred by cruelty despite Red’s best efforts, but he was beautiful nonetheless.

“‘Sup,” Dust mumbled, and the edges of his mouth quirked up in an attempt at a smile.

Slowly, Red lifted his hand and, ever so gently, cupped Dust’s cheek, pausing when his breath hitched, but, with the same caution, Dust leaned into the touch; barely enough to be noticed, but Red noticed. This time, he saw. “‘Sup,” he finally returned. “You okay?”

“You’re going to disappear,” Dust whispered, and his voice broke on the words in a way that made Red feel hollowed out. “You’re going to go somewhere else. Somewhere that I can’t reach. Like you do when you go to space. It scares me.”

Browbones furrowed, Red ran gentle circles across his love’s cheek, staying silent as Dust took in a shuddering breath to continue; a quirk Red had grown accustomed to.

“I remember what you told me before,” he said, and his hand came up to desperately hold Red’s to his face, like he might forget it was there if he didn’t make sure. “That you did it because it was better to be somewhere else – anywhere else. Do you want that now? To be somewhere else? Away from me?”

“No,” Red said, and the lack of hesitation in his answer surprised even himself. “I don’t want that.”

Again, Dust’s breath hitched, and he frowned, like the answer wasn’t enough, and, maybe, it wasn’t. His fingers threaded between Red’s, and, when he clutched onto his hand, Red squeezed back, holding him with desperation to match. Dust laughed, a breathless sound. “I’m not the person that you loved.”

Scoffing, Red rolled his eyelights at the notion. “Of course you are.”

“I’m not,” Dust insisted, and something about it was a plea.

“Then,” he breathed, “I love you. This you.”

And, with a breath that was cut off with something that sounded suspiciously like a sob, Dust leaned forward – over Red’s body, as if to trap him – and pressed his chest against Red’s. His ribs fluttered with each breath, and Red guided his stuttering breaths with deep inhales that interlocked their ribs with each one. His hand remained stuck to Dust’s cheek, and he squeezed gently, relieved when Dust squeezed back to let him know he was still here; in this reality, not another.

“Breathe,” Red commanded, soft; soft, like he’d been taught. “I’m here.”

Dust took a heaving breath – deep, frantic, like he’d been drowning – and, in a voice that sounded so much like before – reminding Red once more that this was the person he loved, despite the change – he whispered, “Where would you wanna go? If you could go anywhere. Anywhere at all.”

The question made him sputter, for a moment. Then, with a breathless laugh, “Seriously?”

“Please,” he pleaded, so what could Red do but answer?

The answer would have been easy before – here; here, just like before – but, despite how they fought against it, things had changed. Did that mean his answer had to change? That his longing had to shift, too? The multiverse was infinite. If he could conceive of a place, it surely existed, somewhere. Maybe even somewhere that Sans stayed Sans, but would it be the same? Any place. Anywhere. Anywhere at all. But, if kindness was so thoroughly hidden – had been ripped from Dust’s grasp with the signature ruthlessness of the multiverse – then why shouldn’t Red be it? Like Dust had been for him, before.

“Think I’d like to stay here,” he hummed. “With you. Still.”

And, this time, Red noticed the way that Dust’s breathing slowed to a stop; felt the way that his magic crackled between his joints; how something wet slipped between their fingers on Dust’s cheek; knew what it meant.

“Okay,” Dust whispered.

“What about you? Where would you go?”

There was a pause – a moment as Dust inhaled once more; held Red’s hand tight, but oh, so gentle – before he managed to answer. “Here,” he said. “With you.”

[gonzo-rella]

Love is Understanding | Benedict Bridgerton (ft. Lady Danbury)

MASTERLIST | AO3 | KO-FI

Pride Month 2024 #10

Relationship(s): pansexual!Benedict Bridgerton x nonbinary/genderqueer!AFAB!reader (romantic), Agatha Danbury x nonbinary/genderqueer!AFAB!reader (platonic)

Summary: It should be simple: Benedict Bridgerton is in love with you, and you are in love with him. But, you have a secret, one that you believe threatens your chance at a happily ever after with the only man you've ever loved.

Warnings: Coming out scene. Period-typical lack of knowledge about nonbinary people. Identity-related angst. Other characters use she/her pronouns for the reader (but the reader expresses discomfort). (Let me know if I need to add any)

Word count: 2.9k

(A/N: This is my longest fic in a while, and I'm so happy with how it turned out (aside from some pacing issues)! It's a good way to end my Pride Month 2024 series. There aren't a lot of fics in the Bridgerton fandom for nonbinary or genderqueer readers, so I decided that I wanted to give my fellow enbies who are in love with Benedict Bridgerton something to read.Let me know if you'd be interested in a follow-up to this fic!)

Every time you shared a dance with Benedict Bridgerton, the rest of the world seemed to fall away. All you saw was him. His eyes, the corners of which were creased by the grin he could never suppress, stared into your own. Unconsciously, you mirrored his expression. You couldn’t help but giggle as he twirled you around. Smiling so widely hurt your face, but you simply couldn’t help it. You lost yourself in the moment, in him, so it felt so sudden when he pulled away, bowed and led you to the refreshments table. He handed you a glass of lemonade, and once the pair of you had moved enough out of the way, you took a sip.

“Might I ask who else has the pleasure of dancing with you tonight?”

You averted your gaze to the glass in your hand, absently swirling its contents around by tilting it back and forth.

“Once again, you are the only gentleman to whom I have promised a dance. You must not flatter yourself.”

As expected, he did flatter himself. His grin somehow grew wider.

“I see. So, would it be acceptable that I remain in your company for a while longer?”

“Well, it would be marginally better than the alternative of standing by myself, and, of course, significantly better than warding off the unwanted attention of the few gentlemen foolish enough to think that I would like nothing more than to be courted by them.”

“Does that mean that my attention is wanted?”

“It is not unwanted. My mama is thrilled that I have befriended a Bridgerton.”

“I hope that your mother’s happiness is not the only reason you are still here.”

You chuckled. His eyes lit up at the sound. In the moments of silence that followed, you glanced around the room. Your eyes landed on Lady Danbury and Lady Bridgerton- who were standing on the opposite side of the room- and, to your horror, they were both looking right back at you.

“Speaking of mothers,” you said, your gaze flickering back to Benedict. “It seems that yours is looking right at us. As is Lady Danbury, who probes me about our friendship as though she is my mother.”

“How… positively mortifying,” he replied with a laugh. “I must confess, my mother has taken quite an interest in you and our friendship.”

“You have many friends far more interesting than myself. What is it that intrigues her about me?”

“I expect it is the fact that you are a woman-”

Your face fell at that, and, after clearing your throat, you took a quick sip of your drink to mask the change in your expression. He continued speaking despite this, not noticing the shift.

“And, that I have danced with you at almost every ball since the beginning of the season. Well, not only danced, but spent most of the evening with you at almost every ball, as well-”

“We are only a couple of months into the season. That is not that many dances or evenings together, all things considered,” you insisted, sounding slightly panicked. Benedict did notice this, and he knitted his brows. You paused to think. “Is that why she has taken to greeting me whenever she sees me at the park? Because, she suspects that our friendship is not strictly that?”

Benedict scrunched up his nose sheepishly.

“She might be under that impression.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I thought that she was just being cordial,” you practically whined, rubbing your temple with your free hand. “Have you told her that you do not intend to court me?”

For once, Benedict didn’t respond right away, not even with his face. Instead, he paused thoughtfully, then he met your gaze.

“Would it be so bad if I did intend to court you?”

You realised right away that this wasn't his normal teasing inquiry. He sounded curious and sincere, and perhaps even cautious. 

“You do not intend to court me, and I do not intend to be courted. So, such a hypothetical need not even be discussed.”

Your hand began to tremble slightly, so you raised your glass to your lips once again and took an unsuccessful sip. You coughed and set it down on the table.

“Do not take this as an insult, Mister Bridgerton, but I really must get some air.”

You made your way to the nearest exit. He knew better than to follow after you; you seemed so desperate to escape his presence that he imagined that he could chase you all the way to Cornwall without persuading you to stop.

When you finally made it outside, you inhaled the cool air, hoping a lungful of it would steady your hands, which you busied by smoothing down your skirt. Standing there reminded you of the night you had befriended Benedict. Of course, before then, you knew of the Bridgerton family and their secondborn, but you weren’t sure he had ever looked in your direction. It came as a surprise that he knew your name. You had both come outside for some respite from the second ball of the season, and you realised that you got along with him quite well. The next ball you attended, he sought you out immediately and asked you for a dance. For the rest of the evening, you stood in the crowd with him, chatting the night away. This had become a kind of routine for every ball since then.

It was easier to ignore your feelings for Benedict than it would have been to accept them. After all, you had spent year after year in the marriage mart keeping your head down with the hope that you wouldn’t attract any suitors. Any time a gentleman spoke to you, you pushed them away. It had given you a reputation of being odd and reserved amongst those who paid your existence any mind. You didn’t let it bother you; in fact, it worked in your favour, as it warded off most of the Ton’s eligible gentlemen. You only participated in the social season, at this point, because your family was so eager for you to find a husband (and, you supposed you liked seeing your friends, what few of them you had). After years of begrudgingly attending every ball you were invited to, this newfound excitement for them came with an undercurrent of terror. You were in love. But, there was a very good reason you had been denying yourself the feeling for all these years.

After standing there by yourself for a few minutes, you heard a set of footsteps approaching you from behind. To your horror, you also heard what sounded like a cane clicking against the gritty pathway. A familiar voice called your name.

“Lady Danbury,” you greeted. “What are you doing out here? It is lovely and warm inside, is it not?”

“I could ask you the very same thing,” she said, now at your side.

“I need a moment to myself. I always do,” you replied. “Have you not observed that about me?”

“Of course I have. What I have also observed about you is that, since you’ve become acquainted with Mister Bridgerton, you have taken fewer and fewer moments to yourself. You seem rather content in his company.”

“Yes. Having a friend at my side makes these events far more bearable. Mister Bridgerton himself is good company.”

Lady Danbury nodded.

“Might I ask what your friend Mister Bridgerton said to make you so desperate to escape his ‘good company’?”

“Nothing. I simply needed some air. That is all.”

She looked pointedly at you.

“You know better than to try to fool me.”

You huffed.

“He mentioned that Lady Bridgerton believes that he would like to court me,” you said, a familiar heat rising to your cheeks. “Then… he implied that his mother may have been onto something.”

“Ah. I see. And, what horrifies you about that prospect, hm?”

“You know that I do not wish to marry. Did you assume that I would change my mind for one reason or another?”

“I could only guess that you, understandably, did not wish to be trapped in the confines of a loveless union or that you wanted to achieve more for yourself than wifedom and motherhood,” she replied. “However, that was only an assumption, based on what little you were willing to divulge to me. Admittedly, I thought that love or merely pragmatism would persuade you to reconsider.”

You chewed on your bottom lip and blinked away the tears that were stinging your eyes. She watched you expectantly, her concern for you subtly etched into her expression.

“You were, at the very least, right about me not wishing to be trapped in a loveless marriage,” you began. “There are parts of me- or one part in particular- that is so fundamental to who I am, that I could not feel truly loved until it was known. But, exposing such a thing would be so petrifying. And, I am not sure that anyone, no matter how open-minded, could understand nor accept it. That is why I do not wish to marry- why I cannot. It is easier to come to terms with the fact that I will never be truly loved than to cling on to the foolish hope that there is anyone out there who would ever be able to love me.”

Your efforts were in vain, and the tears spilled down your cheeks, leaving glistening trails in their wake. A quiet sigh escaped Lady Danbury’s nostrils, and she rested a hand on your shoulder.

“My child, love is many things. It is petrifying. It is vulnerability. It is understanding. It is curiosity. It is enduring. It is all these things and many more,” she explained, and, since it was her explaining it, it made sense. “It is also something that will only grow stronger in denial.”

“What are you suggesting, Lady Danbury?”

“You know very well what I am suggesting,” she said sharply. “Mister Bridgerton cannot accept what he does not know.”

“And, what if he knows and he does not accept it?”

“Then, it is not love.”

Tightening her grip on your shoulder, she pulled you closer, her lips inches away from your ear.

“Between you and me, I have a feeling that Mister Bridgerton is open-minded enough that, whatever your secret may be, it will not be an issue.”

She relinquished you from her grasp. You took in a few deep breaths.

“You need not tell him tonight. Though, I suggest you come out with it soon. I have never seen that man look so worried in his entire life.”

This made you crack a smile, and Lady Danbury looked satisfied.

— — —

The next day, your mother decided to drag your family to the park. It seemed just your luck that you soon spotted the Bridgertons walking vaguely in your direction. Quickly, you looked away, but it was no use. Your mother halted, and you were forced to stand there as she made idle small talk with Lady Bridgerton, whose gaze kept flickering to you. Meanwhile, Benedict was outright staring at you. Hyacinth, an excited grin on her face, glanced between the pair of you, and Anthony nudged her lightly (to her evident annoyance).

“Oh, yes, she is feeling much better. Aren’t you, my love?”

Your mother grabbed your arm, and you realised you were the ‘she’ in question. Your nose twitched, almost scrunching up entirely. 

“Oh, right. Yes. Much better.”

You didn’t look much better anymore.

In the days leading up to the next ball, you found yourself in an unending state of dread. You had decided that you would find a moment to speak to Benedict that night, as you knew you would be able to get a moment of privacy somehow.

Unbeknownst to you, while everyone waited for you to make your move, Lady Bridgerton had confided in Lady Danbury.

“Benedict has not said a word about it to me since, but I know he has been unsettled since that night,” Violet said with a sigh, setting down her teacup on its saucer. “I believed that she was holding out for love, not that she did not wish to be courted or married altogether.”

“I cannot reveal too much,” Agatha began carefully. “But, I believe that this matter will be resolved soon enough.”

“You do? Why is that?”

“In our conversation that night, I strongly suggested that she have a talk with him. And, of course, when I strongly suggest something, well…”

A hopeful smile crept onto Violet’s face.

“Oh, Agatha, that is wonderful news.”

And, soon enough, the night of the ball arrived. You turned up before the Bridgertons, and you stood on the outskirts with your eyes fixed on the door. Family after family poured through the doorway. It seemed like an eternity until the Bridgertons finally strolled in. Now, your attention was trained on them, and you waited for them to settle. Anthony broke off from the group and made his way to the refreshments table, and the rest of them stood together, chatting (or bickering, probably) amongst themselves. Before you could think about what you were doing, you hurried over to them, your face on fire and your heart thudding so loud you could barely hear the string quartet.

“Bridgertons,” you said almost breathlessly, offering them a courteous nod.

Lady Bridgerton smiled at you and greeted you warmly.

You made eye contact with Benedict, who was already staring at you, half-bewildered, half-amused.

“Mister Bridgerton, I am feeling rather faint. Would you mind escorting me outside?”

The words sounded rehearsed and came out rushed.

“Are you alright?” he questioned, brows furrowed.

“No. I am feeling oh so faint, and I would very much appreciate it if you escorted me outside, lest I… faint.”

“Benedict!” Kate whispered through gritted teeth.

That prompted him to step forward.

“Of course.”

Clinging onto his arm, the pair of you made your way outside without saying a word. When you reached the garden, you let go of him and glanced around. The only other person in sight was whoever was manning the door.

“What on earth was that?”

“Mortifying is what it was. But, in all the days I have been fretting about this night, I could not think of another excuse to have a moment alone with you without adding another thing to my reputation.”

“Are you genuinely unwell?”

“I do feel rather nauseated, come to think of it.”

“Well, before you vomit, I must apologise for the other night. It was… unfair of me to spring such a thing on you. I am sorry. I very much value your friendship, and it would be unfortunate to lose it.”

“And, I am sorry for running off like I had just found out you were carrying the plague. But, I am ready to have an open conversation. If your mother is still right about you wishing to court me.”

Benedict looked at you with surprise.

“Yes. She is.”

You locked eyes with him.

“Benedict,” you began, and he bit back a smile at the sound of you saying his name. “There is something I must tell you, and you must be honest in your response.”

He nodded, waiting for you to speak.

“I do not see myself as a woman. I would go as far to say I am not one, despite my body and the role in this society into which I have been thrust because of my body. I am not a man, either. I feel like something between the two, or perhaps something else entirely separate. I know it is strange and unfamiliar, but I have read books that speak of people like me throughout all of history. I cannot be with someone who does not see me for who I am. So, before I can agree to be courted by you, I must ask. How do you see me now that you know who and what I am?”

He did not speak for a moment; you took that to mean that he was giving your words the proper thought that they deserved.

“I see you as you. You may wear the features of a woman, and dress in the clothes of a woman, but if a woman is not who you truly are, I will stop viewing you in such a way, too.”

You stared at Benedict with wide, glassy eyes. Your breath hitched in your throat. Your heart ached. You choked out a half-sigh, half-laugh. He grinned.

“In the spirit of honesty, might I confess something to you as well?”

“Yes, of course.”

“It never mattered to me that you were a woman- or rather, that I perceived you as a woman. Were you, say, a man, I would still be madly, torturously, blissfully infatuated with you.”

You let out a full laugh this time.

“Is that a testament to how irresistable I am, or do you mean to say there is a fluidity in your attractions?”

“Both.”

You nodded in understanding. Then, you couldn’t help but gaze at Benedict for a few seconds more, your smile causing your cheeks to ache. The terror of love had melted away, and despite the cold air, warmth surged through your body, pumped around by your racing heart. Looking into his eyes, it was like the rest of the world had fallen away once again. You were lost in the moment, lost in him. And, yet, you felt like you had finally found what you never dreamed you would.

“Well, then, Benedict, you may court me.”

[thatstheproblemwithnapkinman]

new fic time

you can read it below the cut here on tumblr or over on ao3

I'm Stuck in this Life, and I'm Stuck in these Pants

Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

Gen

Fandoms:

Batman - All Media Types

Justice League - All Media Types

Relationship:

Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne

Characters:

Bruce Wayne

Dick Grayson

Clark Kent

Justice League (DCU)

Additional Tags:

Emotional Hurt/Comfort

its crack and hurt/comfort so have fun with that

enjoy the whiplash

no beta we die like jason todd

Dick Grayson Needs a Hug

Dick Grayson Gets a Hug

Dick Grayson joins the Justice League

Hurt Dick Grayson

Dick Grayson Has Eldest Daughter Syndrome

Probably ooc

Bruce Wayne is Trying to be a Good Dad

One Shot

Language: English

Summary:

"Do you want me to join the League?" The League would assume it was an open question, but Bruce knew it was directed at him. This moment was in complete contrast to years of conversations about protecting their identities and keeping their former partnership a secret. He needed to speak up.

"You are one of the best, you deserve the right to choose." He responded, consciously keeping his voice in Batman mode.

aka Dick get chosen to join the League but before he does he has to face his inner demons

Notes:

this started as a crack fic and became hurt/comfort so be aware, it's also the longest single chapter work i have every written at 6082 which is short for some people but me and my adhd tried no beta reader obviously so any mistakes are there for good now. i did a sweep but again, it's tagged and i've warned you so no telling me i spelt something wrong or used the wrong version of there ok *points at you*

Bruce had been working with the Justice League for over a decade, taking solo heroes and turning them into a team. They knew each other's strengths and weaknesses and can bounce off of one another during combat. It took time but they truly were a single unit. He's proud of what they have accomplished.

The rest of the League weren't on the same page. Sure, they all worked well together, but then there's Batman. He kept to himself, was never on the watchtower when he wasn't needed, constantly avoided talking about himself, and looked like he hated being with them. After years of working together, everyone had revealed their identities, some by choice, some accidental. Everyone but Batman. No one in the League knew who he was. They knew very little about him, other than that he's completely human (probably) and that he's from gotham. He doesn't even let them in his city, with strict rules about them working there. something about "human rogues" and "dangerous for supers". They disagreed with the rule, but without explicit permission from him, they couldn't enter. And no one was about to argue with him.

The time had come to propose new members for the League. Everyone was allowed to submit up to one person to join, and unless there were any serious objections, they would put it to a vote and the person with the most votes would join the League, provided they wanted to of course. But no one had ever turned down their offer before, who would refuse to join the Justice League?

The majority of the League didn't put anyone forward. Barry had suggested Wally, not as a new member but as his replacement given he was looking to retire from the hero game, and given that Wally had left the Titans recently, was available. Batman had said that would be discussed separately at a second meeting as replacements were a different conversation. No one had spoken otherwise, until the nominations got around to Superman.

"I do have a nomination this year. I've worked with this person a lot and I believe they would be an excellent addition to the League. They have been in the game for almost 10 years and protect an entire city on their own. He truly is one of the best."

A chill went down his spine and Bruce suppressed a shudder. That could apply to multiple people, a lot of heroes have been around for a while. But very few were responsible for a city, and there was only one person he knew that was close with Superman.

“I nominate Nightwing for the League."

Honestly, he was surprised it took this long for Dick to get nominated. He was one of the most capable heroes out there, having worked alongside the League before as both an independent hero and as the leader of the Titans. He worked well with others, as Bruce would know given he was Robin for a decade. He trusted no one more in the world. Batman fought well with the League, but he was constantly thinking about how to work with their moves. watching himself and others, predicting what they would do so he could make sure he wasn't interfered with. But with Nightwing he could just fight. They knew exactly how the other would move, and on instinct could follow through. He knew they would both protect each other.

"...Batman?" Superman broke him out of thought

"Hn"

"Do you object?"

Having him on the team would mean he wasn't alone. He had someone there that immediately understood his plan and was much better at communicating with the others. He would be a bridge, a bridge that provided support for everyone. Bruce would also have an excuse to work with him more. He did sometimes miss the conversations they would have in the field, the snarky jabs at rouges, the smile on his face whenever he managed to make Bruce laugh.

But having Dick on the team put them at risk. It wouldn't be too hard for the League to figure out that they knew each other. They could dig and find a connection to Gotham and then to everyone else. Maybe something he'd say would cause a memory to resurface for one of them, a memory of Batman during the time when Dick wore the cowl, and they could see that Nightwing happened to disappear during that time. It was too risky.

He opened his mouth to object, but no sound came out. Dick had taught him a lot, one of which was to trust him. Dick was his own hero now, and he could weigh up the decision. He deserved the chance.

"No."

"Ok then, as no one else was nominated, that negates voting. Batman, could you give him watchtower access and request him?"

Trying to figure out how he could manage this, he got up and moved over to the console on the side. Dick had watchtower access, they all did, but he went through the process of giving it anyway, all it did was throw you a message saying they already had it, which Bruce dismissed. That was the easy part. bracing himself, he tuned into the comms.

"Oracle."

"What's up batman?" Babs always cloaked her voice, even on the bat exclusive channels, but he could still make out her speech pattern and a sliver of her accent.

"I need you to relay to Nightwing that he is requested in the watchtower."

"Y- yeah." The surprise wasn't hidden at all. "Everything ok? Do you need me to send it to anyone else?"

"No."

"Right, I'll let him know." Static on the line told Bruce that Dick was in the same room and they were discussing it. He was in Gotham that night, helping out while Bruce was with the League, and must have stopped into the watchtower. "Yeah, ok, he's on his way now."

Bruce hung up. He felt bad not thanking her but he had an image to uphold. The League all thought oracle was an AI program, and it would be weird. Not for someone like Clark, who would thank automatic doors half the time. But Batman? People would be worried.

He'd barely made it back to the table when the zeta-tube whirred to life.

"Entering, Nightwing, B-01"

"Wait, hold up, there's a B?"

"I know he isn't Titan anymore but weren't they T?"

"That was really fast, like he was expecting it..."

Bruce tuned them out and turned to face his former partner, now only a few feet away.

"So... why exactly was I requested?"

Complete confidence in his voice. If Bruce didn't know him, he would assume he was comfortable. But he could see the minor tension held in his chest, the way he rubbed his thumb along the side of his index finger, how his footsteps were almost silent to not disturb. Dick was confused, curious, and concerned.

Superman stood up. "We held nominations for a new member, and your name was put forward. We deliberated and would like to extend an invitation to join the League."

Dick stood there. He was completely still and looked in shock, and was staring directly at Bruce. They could see each other's eyes behind their dominoes thanks to the lenses in them, so he could see Dicks locked onto him, narrowed as if to ask 'what the hell is going on?'. If he hadn't opened his mouth, Bruce would've walked over to check on him.

"Do you want me to join the League?" The League would assume it was an open question, but Bruce knew it was directed at him. This moment was in complete contrast to years of conversations about protecting their identities and keeping their former partnership a secret. He needed to speak up.

"You are one of the best, you deserve the right to choose." He responded, consciously keeping his voice in Batman mode.

He was so proud of what Dick had become. He'd outgrown Robin, had gone far beyond what Batman could be, and had truly become the best. No matter how much he tries, it's hard to keep the affection he had out of his tone.

Dick noticed, and softened his posture. He started towards him and Bruce felt the League tense behind him. Normally he wouldn't allow anyone that close without reason, yet to them, here he was, letting this almost stranger into his personal space. Ignoring them, his eyes remained locked onto Dick until he was alongside him, forcing Bruce to turn around and face the League.

Every set of eyes was on him as Nightwing clapped him on the shoulder. The last person who'd tried anything like that had ended up with a batarang in their hand. Batman wasn't a people person and that was to be respected. The rest of the League tensed, prepared for bloodshed that would never come.

"Well, if Big Batsy over here gave me the stamp of approval, I would be insane to reject it immediately, although I am going to need some time to consider."

The majority of the room looked shell shocked as Bruce took his seat and Dick shuffled to stand behind him, resting his arms on Bruce's shoulders.

"I mean, this is a very big decision and I would at least like to discuss it with my team."

Flash spoke up. "But I thought you left the Titans? Wally said it was something about trust issues."

Dick snorted.

"Wally’s right, the endless debates about identities and how valuable they can be started to get on my nerves. If you must know, we disagreed on if I can be truly trusted without revealing my identity, so I chose to leave, along with Wally and Donna. With B over here, I assume you don't share their sentiments." He tugged on the bat ears as he spoke, a gesture he'd been doing since he was Robin, and something they both found comfort in.

The League was still in shock over how Batman was letting someone be near him, let alone play with his cowl. Bruce should've stopped him, kept up the act, but he was tired and he was happy Dick was this comfortable around him, after all the time they spent at a distance.

He sensed the rouse of working alone was coming to an end

Dick was having too much fun.

Sure, he was honoured for the invite, but messing with Bruce in front of the League was an opportunity he couldn't pass up. Of course, he wouldn't jeopardise their identities, but just getting to poke the bear would bring him so much joy. Making the Justice League lose their minds watching this random hero from Blüdhaven get close and personal with Batman and walking away unscathed was the highlight of the year, and it was clear Bruce was also enjoying it.

Well, he was tolerating it, which meant he found comfort in it and didn't growl at him.

He'd take it, after all the years they spent at each other's throats. Dick's later teenage years as both Robin and Nightwing hadn't been the most pleasant. He was a teenaged boy who'd spent every day at school and then came home to be ordered around. He needed his freedom and he'd gotten it, albeit by less than peaceful means. But after he came to terms with being fired, and had recovered from Jason's death, he'd started mending their relationship, and now they were closer than they'd ever been. So he was absolutely going to stand too close to Batman and put the League on edge.

It was even funnier given he'd met most of them before, back when he was Batman. Not that they'd know it, he made an excellent brooding, works alone, Dark Knight Batman. Even as he actively worked with Damian, Tim, Steph, and Babs. But he'd kept up the mythos, kept everything in the dark, and had seamlessly given the mantle back to Bruce once he was ready. As far as the League was concerned, he'd never been here before and was no different than the other ex-Titans.

At least, he hoped that. A hope that was crushed when Hal Jordan opened his mouth.

"Ok, but explain why you have the code B-01 for the zeta tube? The Titans were under T, and as far as I am aware, no one was under B."

This is where the real fun begins.

"Yeah, I've asked B the same thing, but he said it was due to clearance issues, that T had restrictions and I needed to be separate from that. I'm honestly surprised he didn't just throw me in with you guys, make me like 3-6 or something, but he's paranoid and didn't want to risk anyone finding it so..."

This seemed to confuse him more.

"What kind of clearance?"

Dick walked around the side to lean against Bruce, folding his arms and crossing his right leg behind his left.

"Oh, y'know, being able to use the Gotham tubes."

He feigned innocence, knowing the storm that would erupt from those few words. And indeed it did, as shouts echoed around the room in disbelief that someone other than Batman can enter Gotham.

After a few minutes of this, Dick saw something click in Superman's head. Dick had worked with Clark a lot, and had been inspired to take the name Nightwing from him. Clark was the only member of the League that knew Batman had a Robin, although he'd never personally met anyone besides Dick and probably assumed Batman worked alone now. He also knew Clark hadn't pieced together that Nightwing was that Robin, which was surprising given he took his name from a Kryptonian myth that Clark had told him once. But we see what we want to see and as far as everyone was concerned up until this moment, Batman and Nightwing didn't know each other.

But Clark had seen it. He'd seen Robin tug on Batman's cowl. He'd seen how Robin was the only one Batman allowed to get near him. He'd seen Robin's eyes light up telling him the story of Nightwing and Flamebird. Nightwing was Robin. An older, stronger, all-round better fighter and strategist, but still the same little shit he'd always been. The Man of Steel had finally figured it out.

"Robin?"

Silence fell and everyone turned to face Superman.

"Who?" Barry tilted his head like a dog, a move that almost caused Dick to snort at.

"You know, Robin. Batman and Robin? He used to have a 12 year old kid dressed like a traffic light follow him around everywhere..?"

Nothing.

"Wait, did no one else meet Robin?" all eyes remained locked onto him.

Breaking the silence, Diana, who had been quietly watching this unfold, made her way over and stood next to Batman with tension throughout her body.

"Batman-"

"Hold up, Nightwing still hasn't explained anything, like how he can enter Gotham, and who is this team he has if he isn't a Titan anymore?" 

Dick unfolded his arms and placed his hand on Bruce’s shoulder. He gave a subtle squeeze, asking if he could explain. After a second, Bruce shrugged, the signal for yes.

"When I was 9, B took me in and trained me. He taught me how to fight, but he also showed me how to be a detective. Once he knew I could handle myself and be an asset, he let me go out with him. I chose the name Robin and to wear bright colours. We worked together for a decade before I outgrew being his sidekick and became Nightwing, operating solo in Blüdhaven or with the Titans."

"I thought Robin died..." Superman looked straight at Dick, locking eyes with him as if his mask wasn’t there.

This startled the two of them. Maybe Clark knew more than they thought. Bruce shifted under his hand, letting him know he was there. This was still a tough subject for them both, given how their current standing with Jason was. 

“Well, I’m clearly not dead so… Don’t know what to tell you, Supes.”

Clark furrowed his brows and looked down. The journalist was clearly unsatisfied with that response yet chose to let it go. The rest of the League shuffled around, obviously uncomfortable with the latest development. Dick took that as his cue.

“Welp, with that revelation I shall leave and ponder your offer. Good morrow fair Justice League.” Tipping his head into an incredibly dramatic bow and sweeping his arms out, he turned on his heel and headed for the Zeta Tube. He’d had his fun but the mention of Jason had brought him back to reality and he wanted to leave. A nice, long, warm shower awaited him at home.

Pondering was hard. Dick discovered this as he sat in his shower, the water falling on his face. After making his way back to his apartment in Blüdhaven, he’d climbed out of his suit and straight into the shower as his thoughts finally hit him.

Holy shit, he’d been invited to join the League.

He knew he’d been a vigilante for longer than most of the members, save for Batman, Superman, and Captain Marvel. But that still didn’t diminish that fact he was chosen to join THE superhero team. 

Dick loved being on a team. He was a leader by nature but he also liked bouncing ideas between people. He knew he wouldn’t be in a leadership position but he wouldn’t be seen as less. He would be an equal and that was all he needed. Besides, he would be working with Bruce, someone that knew his abilities and just how useful he could be. 

“Oh. Ok, that need for approval will be promptly filed away in the ‘things to bring up in therapy’ folder,” he mumbled to himself. He’d been working on his people pleasing tendencies and desperate need to prove himself and be more, yet clearly not enough. Wally called it his ‘eldest daughter syndrome’ and he couldn’t really disagree. He did put the weight of the world on his shoulders sometimes. But this was why he needed a team, people who he could rely on when needed. People who could help remove some of that weight. People he could trust. The trust issues that came with being a bat never really go away, huh.

He stood up, turning the shower off, and wrapped himself in a towel. There was no point in thinking about it any further. His answer was obvious. He opened the bathroom door and made his way into the main room, where Batman was waiting for him.

“You are so lucky I put a towel on.”

Bruce grunted. Dick rolled his eyes in response.

“Seriously, I could’ve walked out with nothing on and that would have been traumatising to both of us. Imagine me having to explain to everyone why you can’t look at me, how embarrassing that would be.”

“Hn. I came to congratulate you.” Dick couldn’t stop the smile that crept onto his lips at that.

“Thanks B. I'm still a little shocked if I’m being honest. I know I’m not an unknown vigilante, but not only being noticed, but getting nominated and accepted is a big deal.”

Bruce stepped closer, pulling his cowl down and placing his hand on Dick’s shoulder. Dick looked down at the ground, sheepish in the face of actual affection.

“Dick, you have been doing this for longer than almost everyone. You’ve helped save the world countless times and been a beacon of light and hope. Not only to the rest of the world but to me too.”

His head snapped up and he met Bruce’s eyes. After a second it was Bruce that looked down at the floor.

“I know I haven’t always been the best, firing you and acting the way I did after Jason… But you have made me proud, Dick, never forget that.”

Almost without thinking, Dick wrapped his arms around Bruce. Since he’d become Nightwing, they hadn’t been very affectionate with each other. They never really were but when he lived at the manor, when he was Robin, he would find comfort in Bruce’s arms after a bad night on patrol or after he woke from a nightmare. This was one of the few moments of vulnerability they shared and Dick knew to let himself fall into it. He felt pressure on his back, and he was enveloped in the embrace. He didn’t want to let go but knew Bruce wouldn’t if he kept hold. He almost didn’t, wanting to keep this moment going, but Batman had important work to do tonight. Gotham wouldn’t stay quiet for long. 

As if the powers of the universe were listening, beeping echoed from the cowl and the two separated. Bruce grabbed the comm and listened to whatever was going down, before turning to Dick.

“Don’t feel like you must rush this. I trust your judgement and know whatever you decide will be the right choice.” He moved back towards Dick before hesitating. Dick wasn’t sure what he wanted, but after a few seconds, he found his hair being ruffled. Just like when he was Robin. 

The pressure left and with a breeze, Batman was gone. Dick debated throwing his suit on and going to help, but he’d had a long day and needed the sleep. He would catch up with Bruce in the morning, after filing ‘Wanting the feelings he had as Robin’ to his therapy list.

“Has he decided yet?”

Bruce was glad his eyes were covered, otherwise the Flash would’ve seen a very un-Batman-like eyeroll. Wally was settling into the team well after Barry departed a few days prior, but he was clearly impatiently waiting for his best friend to arrive. That is, if Dick chose to join the team at all. It had been a week with no hint of a choice. Bruce didn’t want to push him, this was a big decision, but he also wanted to get the rest of the League to stop asking him. It was as if they were children, poking him and asking ‘are we there yet?’

“He has not, and I will not push him for a response.”

“But he said he would think about it, surely a week is long enough.” Wally paced back and forth as if he was trying to solve a complex math problem. 

“I am aware of that, but it is a big decision.”

“UGH I’m gonna call him, see if I can get him to choose.” He sped over to the tubes, punching in the coordinates for what Bruce assumed was Central City. 

“Recognised, Flash, 0-7.”

“Stupid tower and it’s lack of phone signal. How hard is it to install cell service up here…” His voice fading away as he travelled off the tower, finally giving Bruce room to breathe.

It was his turn for monitor duty, which he was supposed to do with Green Arrow, but had let Oliver off for the night, due to a gala he needed to attend. He himself was supposed to be there but unfortunately Bruce Wayne had come down with a nasty case of the flu and so wouldn’t be attending. The was partly true, Bruce had caught the flu and was suffering because of it, but no one would notice if Batman was quieter than usual. 

The silence he was enjoying was promptly broken by the Zeta Tube announcing the arrival of Clark.

“Entering, Superman, 0-1”

“Hey Batman, how’s the case going?” “Hn.”

“Good good. Don’t worry, I’m just here to pick up something before heading back to work. You’ll be left to your silence again soon.”

Bruce turned back to his files as Clark moved around the Watchtower. Of course, he wasn’t working on the file, but rather keeping track of where Clark was in the room. He was awful at keeping his emotions off his face, and Bruce knew he wanted something. No doubt it was Zeta access to Gotham for the night. Clark was covering the gala for the Planet and even with his speed, it would be quicker to go straight there instead of via Metropolis. He knew Clark was getting closer to him as he moved around, and finally, when he gathered the courage to stand right behind Bruce, did he turn around to face him.

“What do you want, Kal?”

“Well, I wanted to ask if I could have access to the Gotham tubes, just for tonight while I’m working there.” “You can just fly across the bay from Metropolis.”

“I- Yes I can but I would rather no one know Superman was around Gotham, and I believe you do too.”

Bruce sighed, his patented ‘Tired Dad Batman’ sigh as Dick labelled it after he managed to elicit the sigh on many occasions. Clark was right, he definitely didn’t want anyone thinking Superman was operating in Gotham on a night where Batman wasn’t. It would send the wrong impression and risk the exposure of the other Bats. 

“Hn. Fine. You can have one time access to the Tube nearest the Museum.” Bruce got up and made his way to the console.

“Oh, wow, err, thanks.” Clark stammered out as he followed. He started to put in the access code and was almost done when the tube roared into life, the screen showing the connection coming from the Batcave.  Both men turned to face the tube as a human outline started to appear. Bruce let a small smile creep onto his face as the announcement was made.

“Entering, Nightwing, 3-6.”

Dick stepped through onto the Watchtower and was immediately greeted by Bruce and Clark. He threw his iconic grin onto his face and threw his arms out

“Whoops, didn’t realise you guys were using the tube. Sorry about that.”

Clark tilted his head slightly, as Barry had when he’d been invited. Guess it was a midwestern thing. Bruce, however, just turned back to the console as he spoke.

“I see you had Oracle reassign you.” “I figured you were busy.”

“Yes.”

Dick snorted and made his way past Clark, who followed him with his eyes.

“Wait, Nightwing?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you number 3-6? We don’t have that many members so you should be a lower designation.”

Dick kept the smile on his face. 

“Inside joke, and when Oracle is the one giving me access, I couldn’t not ask.”

Clark looked as if he wanted to pry deeper, but that was cut off by Bruce.

“Superman, you will arrive about three blocks from the museum. I assume you can find your way from there.”

Clark turned back to the tube and nodded. 

“Recognised, Superman, 0-1.”

Then he was gone.

Dick turned to Bruce, and was met with a smile.

“Wally just left. He went to call you.”

“Oh, well I guess I’ll just call him back later. I didn’t come to see him.” Dick shrugged.

“Did you need something, or did you just want to test your new designation?”

“Ha, both. But I knew you were up here and working on the Fear Toxin case and came to offer help. That and tell you my decision. I figured it was pretty obvious I would accept.”

“I wasn’t so sure.” Dick frowned at Bruce. “You’ve just left your team, one you lead, to join one with people that don’t exactly trust you.”

“Hey, they don’t trust you either. Now there’s two of us.” Dick tried to deflect but after almost 20 years, Bruce knew to ignore this.

“I was unsure if you’d want to join a team so soon, let alone one where people already are weary of you. My reputation is something I’ve built but now people know you and I have been working together for a long time. The tension has been higher in the past week. I’m yet to be called out, though I suspect people will attempt to gather information from you on the incorrect assumption that would be easier. I wanted to leave the decision to you, but was tempted to inform you of how it has been in case that would change your mind. I don’t regret offering you a place on the team. If I’m being transparent, I would enjoy having you here, someone I can trust without any hesitation. But I want you to make sure it’s right.”

Dick inhaled sharply. Bruce had thought about this, and was actually being open with him. Since their meeting in his apartment, Dick had thought about it a lot. He’d jumped between joining and not, missing being part of a team but worried about how it would affect him and Bruce. When Wally had told him he’d be replacing Barry as the Flash, including joining the League, Dick had the only serious doubt about it. Not because he didn’t want to be on a team with Wally, he was his best friend. He just didn’t want it becoming another Titans debacle, where he was incredibly close to Wally and Donna, but everyone else questioned him because he hadn’t revealed his identity. 

That hurt. Being a bat meant wearing a mask and protecting your identity for the sake of everyone else. If even one of them was unmasked, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out the rest. So he never did. He couldn’t risk any of them. He couldn’t risk his family. And in protecting one, he lost another. The Titans slowly withdrew from him, getting more and more combative, and it resulted in a disaster of a mission.

What should’ve been a simple rescue after an earthquake ended up with Dick having to call in Superman to help. His plan had been solid but everyone other than Donna and Wally had abandoned it in a sort of coup. What they hadn’t planned, however, was exactly how the building they were operating around would collapse. Dick had studied the building’s structural integrity using blueprints and footage of the earthquake, and had constructed his plan to evacuate at the right speed and in the right order to minimise extra strain on the weakened foundations. This required to start from the central part of each floor and work outwards, maintaining the balance of the building. This ensured it wouldn’t crumble under the weight down one side. He’d been in the process of explaining this when the team had run off and started rescuing whoever they could access first, which altered the building’s centre of gravity as they shifted piles of rubble, and caused a complete collapse. 

Dick had called Clark immediately, a vulnerable moment where he’d screamed for Superman out of pure fear, who’d helped in recovering the bodies of those that didn’t make it, and after arriving back at Titans Tower, Dick had packed up his stuff and left. He’d dropped his bag at his apartment before going out on his bike. He hadn’t paid attention to where he was driving and the next thing he knew, he was outside the gates to the Manor. Driven there on instinct. He hadn’t gone in, just sat outside for longer than he should’ve, before driving back to Blüdhaven and beating the shit out of some corrupt cops, something that was incredibly cathartic. But part of him regretted not going up to the door and asking if he could stay a while. He missed having people around, and being alone in his apartment didn’t help with his thoughts. He knew it wasn’t his fault the team didn’t listen to him. He did everything he could. But people had died on his watch, and he’d called for help instead of handling it by himself. He was a leader and he’d let everybody down. 

A cough brought him back and he looked up to see Bruce had made his way over and placed his hand on Dicks shoulder. He’d missed it during his spiral, and Bruce had noticed. He could see his eyes through the cowl, new lenses that polarised for each other but no one else, and they were full of concern. Dick hadn’t spiralled like that in front of Bruce for a while and it was clear he was worried.

“I- I’m just thinking about the last mission I had with the Titans. Maybe it was time for me to leave leading behind me.”

“Dick,” Bruce brushed the hair that had fallen onto his face behind his ear. “We can’t always win. Sometimes we try our hardest and we lose. But we have to move on. I know this is hypocritical coming from me, but that’s why we have each other. Me, you, Robin, the Batgirls, everyone else. I know how much it hurts, I know the pain and anger and fear you feel inside. I felt it when you got shot, I felt it when Jason died, and I feel it every time one of you gets injured. But we are there to support each other and keep ourselves from getting lost in that pain. You taught me that. So I’m here to support you, and anyone else here will say the same thing.”

He coughed back his tears. Bruce knew what he was doing but made no move to get closer. That would be on Dicks terms.

“I want to be in the League, but I’m scared of messing up again.”

“You didn’t mess up. Clark told me what happened, how your team ignored your plan and acted in a way that caused the collapse. You then called for help when you knew you couldn’t do anything more. That’s why we are here, to help when needed.” Bruce sighed, but this time it wasn’t out of annoyance for Dick, but annoyance for myself. “I know I trained you to be the best. I know you put so much pressure on yourself to save everyone. To be there for everyone. And I know that is my fault. But you are not capable of saving everyone. No one is. Not me, not Wonder Woman, and not even Superman. That’s why the League has so many members with different strengths. Our strengths fill holes in others weaknesses. You would do that. You’re a natural leader who sees the best in everyone. You have an ability to light up the space and make people feel comfortable. You are one of the smartest people on the planet and could take over the world if you tried. Which, please don’t try to take over the world.”

Dick let out a sob as he laughed.

“I don’t plan on it yet, but if I do I’ll make sure to give you a few minutes' notice before I begin.”

Both men let themselves be vulnerable for a minute, holding each other and laughing. If the other Leaguers had been there, they would’ve lost it at the sight of Batman acting like… a person. The League probably believe all the rumours that Batman is a local cryptid, or maybe they prefer the vampire story. He’ll be able to find out, probably from people asking him about it.

Dick pulled himself back from Bruce and looked back up at him. They’d both been crying, but they both needed it. They’d both learned to be vulnerable sometimes, even if progress was slow. Bruce put his hand back onto Dicks shoulder, steadying himself. They moved apart and he straightened himself out.

“I’ll be okay, B. Besides, the moment someone else walks into the room, I’ll be all happy again.” 

“Dick.” Bruce tried to grumble but he could hear the compassion that lay underneath.

“Ugh, fine, I will deal with it, Mr Hypocritical.” 

Bruce smiled at that, knowing how this discussion would go if it continued. Dick knew it too, and soon they were standing next to each other, staring out the window at Earth.

He bumped Bruce, who bumped him back. It felt so calm, the two of them together. Not as Batman and Robin, but as Bruce and Dick. Father figure and first son. Two decades of fighting together, training together, learning together. He was going to have a lot of fun working with him again, this time as individuals. 

But more than that, he was looking forward to playing the League. He was ready to ruin them, to make them doubt themselves. He wanted to see how far he could go before Batman would step in, and knowing Bruce, it would be pretty far.

He was going to be ok.

Notes:

i hope you didn't hate that, it was a brain worm that bounced around in my head for weeks and i'm glad i was finally able to get it out oh, and the inside joke is that 3-6 is the date dick debuted in the comics, March 6th 1940, so for the non-us americans it would be 6-3 but they are american so... the title is a lyric from inertia by ajr, which i listened to whilst writing this (specifically the acoustic version) it's so good and can be found on youtube or spotify

[fieldofdaisiies]

secret santa gift 2 for @moonlightazriel ❤️ @acotargiftexchange ship: Feyre x Rhysand type: nothing but pure fluff word count: 3k words warnings: none summary: We all know SJM is not a fan of writing wedding scenes and since you (my lovely secret santa recipient) indicated that you would love to see their wedding scene, I decided to write it for you. @moonlightazriel I acted as your lifesaver (hope you are not disappointed that it is me haha). I am sorry didn't have that much time hence why the story is a little shorter, but I added a playlist at the end, hoping I included a lot of your favourite songs. Love you so much❤️

read on ao3

Beneath the starlit sky of the Night Court, in the middle of a forest, where trees stand tall, and the moon casts a gentle glow upon the land, is where their union will happen. Twinkling faelights adorn the bushes and the leaves of the large tress, creating a magical atmosphere that makes the forest glow softly and come alive. Further between the towering trees, shadows dance along the soft rustle of leaves that accompanies the silent chatter of the people gathered here on this day. 

"Are you ready, my darling?" The High Lord of the Night Court smiles up at his High Lady, his demeanour showing a male who is fully contented and at ease with his life. A male who finally has everything in his life that he deserves and has longed for for centuries. A male who has suffered the worst possible in life, and has survived this hell. A male who can finally be happy.

His family is finally complete with a mate and a son, who brings joy to him every day — the greatest luck in his life. Nyx's smile alone could light up the darkest night, and more than once a day Rhysand finds himself marvelling at the small wonder. 

The High Lord's eyes lock with Feyre's, violet clashing with blue and something sparks inside his chest. Once again the bond comes alive, glowing vividly, its tendrils stretching out and curling around their souls like a warm embrace. 

Feyre smiles at him, at her mate, her husband, the father of her son, her heart brimming with love and admiration, and she is once again reminded that she is mated to the most beautiful male on this planet, the most amazing one. He is stunning and perfect - absolutely breathtaking, his dark suit perfectly complimenting his whole appearance. His hair, black-blue, is glowing in the faelights, his eyes shimmering with nothing but love and affection.

Feyre's giggles and it reaches Rhysand and reverberates through his entire body, her smile just like Nyx's able to light up even the darkest part of the Court of Nightmares. His mate is stunning and breathtaking, and he fights the urge to punch himself to make sure this is really all real. 

"To marry you again?" Feyre quips, a sheepish grin on her lips.

A proud grin spreads over the High Lord's face. "To marry me again, my High Lady." He exhales deeply. "But now with everyone present. With our whole family and most importantly with our little son joining us." 

Rhysand takes her extended hand, and steps into her, drawing in her scent, drinking her in. For a split second, his gaze moves to Nesta standing behind his mate, standing behind her sister, and he smiles at her. Then he looks to his own brother. The tall Illyrian is wearing the biggest grin possible, eagerly waiting for Rhysand to take his place in front of him. Cassian's hands are folded behind his back, wings tucked in, he is dressed in a fine suit, hair neatly combed back. 

Below the small dais they find themselves standing on, is their whole family. Mor has been the one to lead Feyre down the aisle, holding tightly onto her arm, supporting her when Feyre felt like sobbing out of happiness. Her family cheered for her, their love wrapping around her like a tight embrace. Everyone is here on this special day — all the others as well, Elain, Lucien, Amren, Varian, and of course little Nyx, happily bouncing on his aunt's lap, smiling brightly at his parents, his eyes glowing with joy and love. 

The path leading up to the dais almost seems like a dream, petals scattered like confetti amid the lush green leaves. Strings of fae lights hang above, painting the scene with a soft, twinkling glow. Lanterns flicker, casting gentle shadows across the mossy ground, creating an absolutely enchanting atmosphere. It feels like a dream! It is a dream! But one that came true. Feyre's very own dream - the one the stars have made possible for her. The dream that was answered.

Feyre knows that her older sister Elain, with the help of her mate, Lucien, has truly outdone herself. They did all the decoration as well as the food preparation and Feyre couldn't be more happy and impressed about what they have created. It is truly stunning, so stunning she has to fight the tears now bubbling up in her eyes. This day…it is all she could have ever dreamed of. 

A starlit sky spreads above them, a breathtaking dome of twinkling lights and with a crescent moon in the middle, creating a magical ambience. 

When Rhysand takes both his mate's hands into his, he leans in and kisses Feyre's brow and then takes a moment to look at her, just admiring her - her beauty, her smile, her eyes, his mate. 

His gaze strays again, landing on Gwyn and Azriel, standing next to the altar made of wooden branches with flowers and ribbons adding the finishing touch to it. Candles stand among the flower arrangements, their flames adding warmth and intimacy to the setting. 

The High Lord has to fight the grin from spreading over his face, knowing it would reach from one ear to the other. The priestess truly managed to get Azriel up here to sing with her. She is the only one who he would do it for, Rhysand knows this, and it makes him happy. His brother has also finally found happiness. In his mate. In Gwyn. 

Next to Gwyn and Azriel, Deidre, a priestess and Valkyrie from the Library steps forward, a large and ancient book open in her eyes. She wears a smile on her lips, edging on pride - after all she is allowed to hold the ceremony. 

She looks at Feyre first, then at Rhys and smiles anew. "We are gathered here on this wonderful evening to witness the union of Feyre, High Lady of the Night Court and Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court. Although they sealed their bond a long time ago, they decided they wanted a wedding celebration where their family is present." Deidre pauses and smiles. She brushes her finger down the page and moves over to the next one.

Feyre and Rhys can't tear their gaze away from each other though, their love for each other still so strong. Nothing could ever come between them. They are still fully enthralled by each other, hearts beating in the same rhythm. 

Rhysand admires how beautiful she looks in her dress — another one his mother made back then. It is breathtaking, long and light blue, just like her eyes, adorned with small diamonds, lace and sparkling elements. She almost reminds him of one of the travelling spirits in the sky — bright, full of life and joy, stunning.

You look breathtaking my mate. Absolutely beautiful. Feyre feels a warm brush against her mental shields and her smile brightens. 

And I love this dress so very much, but I have a feeling it will also look very good on the floor tonight. 

His eyes sparkle, glowing almost a little mischievously. She can't wait for the moment where he will pull the dress down her body, where his lips and hand will then touch her skin where formerly her dress has been. 

Tugging at her hands, Rhysand brings her a little closer, the warmth of their bodies mingling, as well as their scents, hearts beating in the same rhythm. 

It is then that Deidre continues. "Feyre and Rhysand have met a long time ago, and their start and their journey was definitely not easy - no, not at all. But all throughout they had each other, held each other, supported each other, became each other's anchor. Only together they could get here. Only together they managed everything the way they did. Their relationship is one of power and strength and most importantly love. With every obstacle put into their way, this love got stronger and stronger. They conquered everything, saved the world. Became parents to a wonderful child, the biggest sunshine of the Night Court."

Deidre pauses again when a shuddering sob leaves Feyre. She turns her head, and Elain places Nyx who is almost vibrating with excitement and anticipation on the ground. Elain gives him a little push, signalling him that it is fine to run up to his mother and father. And Nyx does not hesitate.

Carrying the box with the ring made of silver with a small diamond of the deepest blue on top, in his hand, he starts running. His violet eyes sparkle like the brightest stars in the sky when he sets out for his parents, his little feet loudly padding on the in pedals and leaves covered ground.

All formalities are forgotten — why should they even care about them on such a beautiful day only surrounded by their family. Feyre sweeps him up, cradles him in her arms and kisses his cheek. Simultaneously, Rhys presses a kiss to the young boy's forehead, a single tear slipping out of the corner of his eye and landing on Nyx's suit. 

"Oh, daddy," Nyx mumbles and reaches for his father who immediately takes his son into his arms. "Don't cry." But Rhysand can't stop it. But he has to laugh through his tears, a big grin parting his lips and he tips his head back. Nyx is so big already, it is scary - just a short time ago he was nothing more than a tiny bundle in his arms. 

And now…now he is no longer a baby. He is the biggest luck and joy of his life. Rhysand's happiness is right in front of him, right in his arms. He is so proud of him. Nyx is so wonderful and amazing and he couldn't be any prouder to call the little boy his son. 

With Nyx everything became truly perfect. This family is home and happiness and he knows he couldn't be any luckier. Everything has happened for a reason. Everything has happened for them to end up here, for them to get right here, to experience this sort of bliss. This is fate. Meeting his High Lady was fate. Their lives had been planned out long before they were born and everything has happened just for them to end up here, right in this moment. 

On one arm the High Lord of Night holds Nyx, his other hand once again reaches for Feyre's hand, holding it gently, his thumb sweeping over the back of it. Rhysand calms himself a little, meeting Feyre's gaze when Nyx rests his head on his broad shoulder. Then the High Lord dips his chin at Deidre, signalling her that she can continue now. 

She nods at him and inhales a deep breath, then opens her mouth. "The couple has always stayed true to each other, believed in each other, relied on each other and endlessly loved and supported each other. You can't picture one without the other anymore. There is no High Lord of the Night without his High Lady. The two of them share a huge amount of love, but also a bond stronger than anything else. The mating bond, tying their souls and hearts together with invisible strings stronger than any other force."

"I love you," Feyre breathes when Deidre finishes. "So much." She holds Rhysand's gaze but reaches behind her where Nesta unfolds a piece of paper and hands it to her little sister. 

"And I prepared something for you."

With trembling fingers, she holds the piece of parchment in her hands, her heart rapidly beating inside her chest, hammering against her rib cage. She steals a glance at Rhysand's eyes, then looks at her son, cradled against his chest. With a smile, her gaze returns to the paper and drawing in one last deep breath she finally opens her mouth. 

"Rhys, when we first crossed paths, I admit, I didn't quite see us here. It would have been the last thing I could have imagined. Our start was, well, rocky at best. I called you a prick more times than I can count on two hands, and well, the shoe I sent flying at your head…let's not mention that, alright?" She giggles and looks at him again. 

Rhys is close to breaking, chest heaving with deep inhales, his eyes glossy. 

"But through it all, I've learned that love isn't always born from instant harmony. You have to get to know the other, manage to cross obstacles, to fight for love, to accept and respect to live and let live."

A happy smile graces her lips. "We've weathered storms, and I've come to see your true self—the parts you hide from the world and for a long time hid from everyone apart from yourself. I didn't shy away from you. You did not scare me. I love you, I love every part of you - darkness, power and everything. In you, I found a partner, someone who helped me find the person I was meant to be. Someone who taught me how to read and write and how to love and accept myself the way I am."

"You encourage my strength, you make me feel alive, you gave me wings so I could fly and see the world on my own, conquer every part of it and find happiness."

She gazes deeply into his eyes, the love evident in her every word. "And you, you never feared my power. You are unafraid of what I am capable of, of my true self. You respect my choices, value my opinions, and always, always ensure that I have a voice and can speak my mind. You see me, respect me, and have always done so."

The tears run freely and Cassian steps forward, placing a gentle hand on his brother's shoulder.

"And lastly," Feyre says and stifles a giggle. "Rhysand is the best mate in the whole word. Rhysand is the best husband in the whole word. Rhysand is the most amazing father any child could ever hope for. Rhysand is my mate, my husband, the father of my son, and I couldn't be happier."

As she finishes, a wave of applause, loud sobs and cheers fill the forest.

With Nyx on his arm, he lunges for her, cradling Feyre to his chest as well, showering her face with kisses. 

His vows, he reveals to her mind-to-mind, speaking softly, gentle, reciting everything he has told her so many times in their life together while Gwyn and Azriel start to sing their second song, falling into a perfect harmony, their voices beautifully matching, creating the most beautiful sound the Night Court has ever heard, enchanting everyone. 

Rhysand closes his eyes when he speaks to his mate through their mental bridge. He loves her, endlessly, and will never again leave her side, that is clear. "I love you my mate," he eventually says out loud, still holding her close, face wet with tears, kissing her brow. 

The song finishes, and Gwyn leans against her mate, Azriel folding his own hand over hers, holding her close while the two of them watch the High Lord and Lady. 

"Thank you for the beautiful words, High Lady," Deidre says, "Please, now, repeat after me!”

“I, Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court take you Feyre, High Lady of the Night Court to have and to hold”

“...for better or for worse,”

“...for richer or poorer,”

“...in sickness and in health,”

“...to love,”

“...to cherish. … As long as we both shall live!”

“I do!” 

“I do!” Both of them say, tears gently streaming down their cheeks as they exchange smiles, their faces illuminated by sheer joy. Rhysand swiftly brushes his thumb across her cheek, locking eyes with her. Sniffling, she stares back at him, lost in the captivating gaze of those wonderful violet eyes she fell for years ago.

“I shall now pronounce you husband and wife once again,” Deidre announces.“You may kiss the bride now!”

With eager anticipation, Rhysand draws her close. Their hearts beat in unison as his lips meet hers in a tender, passionate kiss. It seals their vows. Cheers echo through the forest, celebrating love and joy. 

With radiant smiles, Feyre and Rhys step forward, hand in hand, their hearts brimming with love. Their family and friends line the path, their cheers and applause echoing through the forest, a symphony of joy and bliss reaching every nook and corner. 

Rhys carries his jubilating son, cradling him in his arms with a tender strength. The boy, wide-eyed and filled with wonder, looks around at the enchanting scene, his small hand grasping onto his father's shoulder. 

Feyre, her eyes sparkling with love and gratitude, walks beside him. Her hand, held by her husband, by her mate, warm against her own.

Petals rain down upon them. They meet everyone's gaze, full of love and joy while they walk over to the place where they will have dinner, the table and buffet once again beautifully decorated by Elain and Lucien - just like all the meals that have been cooked by them. 

Embraced by the warmth of their loved ones and the magic of their union, they celebrate until late into the night, Feyre and Rhysand joined by their whole family, dancing beneath the night sky, the wonderful songs enchanting their feet to keep moving and moving. 

Rhysand lets her twirl, her dress swishing over the ground, the lace and tulle rustling with every spin. When he collects her in his arms again, holding her close he kisses her head and in a low voice says, "To the stars who listen, Feyre darling."

"And the dreams that are answered." She beams and presses her lips against his, her hand placed on his chest, right atop his steadily beating heart. 

They dance and celebrate for long hours, getting lost in the love and joy of this day. And later, when Nyx is already fast asleep at Elain and Lucien's place, Rhysand makes love to his wife, to his mate, beneath a skylit sky, worshipping her and reminding her once again how much he loves her.

[wishcamper]

Heavy Lies the Crown: Rhysand, greatness, and the pressures of power

Or: the librarian’s daughter, former playwright, licensed counselor mashup of my nightmares dreams because I am vast, I contain multitudes.

No content warnings and no real HOFAS spoilers, I don't think, other than that he's in it but I feel like you know that by now. Spoilers for Breaking Bad (lol).

---

In working on my current fic (on ao3 here!) I've been thinking a lot about Rhysand and how he really goes off the rails in ACOSF and HOFAS. It's easy to chalk it up to poor writing, but I like the challenge of trying to make it make sense. What are Rhys’ motivations, truly? What would explain the vast array of heinous shit he does the text tells us is justified?

Rhys is shown over and over to be quite Machiavellian ('ends justify the means' dude, who was maybe writing satire). It's easy to list the times he shows this. The 50 year Velaris hostage situation. The bargain UTM with Feyre. The Weaver's cottage. Stealing the Book from Tarquin. CLARE BEDDOR. Infiltrating people's minds. Torture. Assassination. Allying with Kier. Concealing his wife's medical information. Being an ass to people in general. According to Mr. Machiavelli, any action is warranted if it the goal it achieves is morally important enough.

It seems like Rhys can justify anything to himself if he believes it will serve the greatest good at the end of the day. He does so many things with the air of “it’s for your own good” or “you’ll understand why one day” but that day never.. comes? Not yet anyway, which begs the question: is he that unself-aware, or is there a longer game he’s playing that all of these minor skirmishes are leading up to? What if he knows what's coming? And what kind of cause or threat would feel so great he could justify everything he does up to this point?

Okay I'm gonna talk about Aristotelean literary structure, please don't leave me.

The idea of a tragic hero is a character whose downfall is inevitable but who fights against it anyway. Hamlet is a classic example of a tragic hero, Oedipus being the de facto first, Walter White from Breaking Bad a more modern version. We see Walt learn he’s going to die in the first episode, in the middle he does a bunch of stuff to prevent his physical death (cancer) and metaphorical death (failure/obscurity), and then both his body and reputation die in the last episode as a direct result of his attempts to avoid fate. It’s blissful Aristotelean symmetry. *chef’s kiss*

Every tragic hero has hamartia, more commonly known as a ‘fatal flaw’. In Hamlet, his fatal flaw is procrastination, and his delays create space for all kinds of the fuck shit he was trying to prevent. It’s important to note that hamartia is by design a neutral term - not so much a flaw, but a trait, motivation, or decision that sets off the chain of events the character is trying to avoid. Tragedies have occurred equally from too much love as too much hate, and doing nothing is just as much a decision as doing something. The word itself comes from the Greek for ‘to miss the mark’. To try and fail, the backbone of tragedy.

One of the most common hamartia is hubris, a modern synonym for arrogance but which more specifically means an outsized belief in one’s ability to affect and control the future. Well-known tragic heroes taken down by hubris include our boy Walter White, Tony Soprano, Viktor Frankenstein, Achilles, Jay Gatsby, Kendall from Succession. It exists in real life, too: Lance Armstrong is a perfect example of a modern tragic hero brought down by hubris. And what do all these men have in common? Power, via money, fame, strength, the state, intellect, violence etc.

I’ve been enjoying looking at Rhysand through this tragic hero lens because while it doesn’t really make him more sympathetic, it does make his actions easier to understand logically, which is its own kind of humanization. If Rhysand is aware of a prophesied or fated event sometime in the future and is pulling the cosmic strings now, it must be incredibly important, like annihilation-level important, which is so much pressure. 

So he grows to maturity with an understanding that he will one day have to face this intense evil that could completely destroy his world, and it plants in him a hubris. He believes that his immense power grants him a certain amount of influence automatically. And honestly, is he wrong?

And this is where it’s important to think about how power makes people weird. Power gives people a false sense of confidence in their actions and choices, because their status and privilege protect them from so many more consequences. In this way it’s easy to see how someone can get a big ego - no one is stopping me, so I must be doing well! Or: everything is going well for me, so I must be really killing it! I know I feel that way in the first tingles of hypomania, but hypomania is fundamentally a distortion of reality and I believe so is power.

Power not only gives people confidence but also access to make decisions for others. They begin to think they should share the success they’ve found by leading and guiding others to see how great it can be if you do what they say. Just look at one of those cringe 'billionaire morning routine' videos to see what I mean. It’s a very patronizing form of altruism, because the leader genuinely believes they have the people’s interest at heart. And I use the word patronizing intentionally - leaders have often referenced feeling paternal towards their people, Winston Churchill + FDR, 'God the Father'. Power and fatherhood have been linked for a long time. And direct from our girl Wikipedia, "paternalism is action that limits a person's or group's liberty or autonomy and is intended to promote their own good".

I was talking with a girlfriend of mine recently about how I think some men don’t have the experience of other people depending on them in a significant way until they get married and/or become fathers. Like, afab and femme people learn very early to be considerate of others, to think about how others feel, to act in ways that keep others happy, etc. This plants in us a sense of duty to perform in ways that please others, to smile, to create comfort and provide caretaking in every environment we enter. So by the time we get to marriage and motherhood, we already know how to put others’ needs before our own because we’ve been doing it from the jump.

For men, however, this can be a completely novel experience. And it seems like it's SO HEAVY FOR THEM. George ‘Father of his Country’ Washington just wanted to go back to Virginia the whole time he was President. So many men talk about the pressures of being a provider and their families depending on them in a way women don’t, and I think it’s because for the first time others truly depend on them and they don’t know how to handle it.

In response, they either shove down their emotions as patriarchy demands and have a midlife crisis, or they abdicate that responsibility and go completely absent physically and/or emotionally to continue living for themselves. (Obviously there are good men and dads out there, and bless you if you’re lucky enough to know, have, or be one.)

And this aspect of power feels relevant because from the text it seems like Rhysand is unraveling. Between Feyre, the baby, the Trove, Nesta and being threatened by her power, Koschei, Bryce, the whole High King shit - I think he’s starting to crack under the pressure. And honestly, I’m kind of surprised it didn’t happen before now.

According to Aristotle, the tragic hero must:

Be significant (virtuous/capable/powerful/important etc.)

Be flawed

Suffer a reversal of fortune.

Rhysie boy definitely ticks the first two. I wonder what it would look like to get to three? I don’t think Sarah has the balls, but it’s definitely enhanced my reading experience and given me a lot of interesting things to think about.

Okay that's all I've got. Love ya, see ya soon xx

[blackoutspoetry]

The anatomy of starved dogs (part 3)(Ghoap) – FLASHPOINT

This is a chapter of a long form slow burn Ghoap fic I've been working on for the past few months.

This chapter alone is has 16k words, so it might be easier to read this fic on ao3.

Read the first few parts on ao3 here:

WARNINGS: gore and graphic depictions of violence, civilian death, acts of terrorism, torture and permanent disfigurement

4 APRIL 2019

CAPTAIN PRICE'S FLAT, UNDISCLOSED ADDRESS, ENGLAND

The most important thing to remember when it comes to human nature, is that the adult brain is shaped from childhood to pursue something which is mostly unattainable. People are defined by the constant pursuit of what they don’t have. 

The healthy brain, it chases after things it's allowed to get ahold of, grows accustomed to the idea of labour rewarded sweetly at the end of a long day’s work. Even if paid in peanuts, a reward is a reward. 

The unhealthy brain is grown from a childhood bid for survival. The young brain is made to endure and spring up like weeds in concrete, grow through difficulty because it becomes indoctrinated with the aesthetic of suffering. It knows nothing else but the weathering of the storm and has not yet learned the concept of injustice or fairness. 

 It learns its place quickly, grows around the stones and infertile soil and becomes a distended, etiolated seedling in the absence of the sunlight it yearns for. 

But grow, it will, forever doomed to reach with begging arms to sunlight that will not yield, until it begins to view itself as a poetic tragedy, see the beauty in the hollowness of needing and wanting. And once that point is reached, it romanticises having nothing until it  becomes afraid of actually grasping that thing it yearns for. 

There is even a point of hunger where the body has grown so used to not being full, that once fed, it rejects the meal to marinate in its own despair. A work of art, one tragic and beautiful, because it cannot fathom the idea that it was robbed of life. A better life. 

If, however, it realises the injustice, refuses to kneel to its feared master and learns that it too is able to bite, it uses this newfound discovery to its advantage. It cuts off completely from the idea of vulnerability and lashes out at anything that mildly gives it the taste of being subservient once more, so that even things that are only vaguely related to the oppression is now a symbol of the life it had fled from. 

It bites and devours out of fear of returning to that life, over correcting and becoming the very thing it had sworn to destroy. 

In the mind numbing hours following the briefing, Soap thinks Vladimir Makarov might be one of those people, grown from a hard life into a dangerous man, or maybe, he was something more dangerous, one planted in the soil of war fertilised earth from his conception. 

Either way, it only further convinces him that he’d made a mistake agreeing to Price’s terms in that coffee shop. He’s dug himself a grave and he’s damn well made his bed in it too. 

Though Soap is substantially pissed at Price, he honours his wishes and makes a point of laying low until they have to leave for Verdansk at midnight. Price had arranged for him to stay over at his flat for the time being and though his thoughts were consumed with visions of doom, he found it interesting to distract himself by the rare insight into the man’s personal life. 

It's a moderately large place, modestly furnished with two bedrooms, a living room, joint kitchen and dining area, a bathroom barely large enough to stand in and a sofa facing a TV. 

“Make yourself at home, I suppose I don’t need to babysit you, but you might benefit from getting some sleep in before we leave,” Price loosely gestures over to the spare bedroom with the single bed, freshly made and ready for him. 

“Thank you, sir.” 

“Anytime,” Price nods with a hint of guilt. He knows he’s got Soap in over his head but neither acknowledge it, they keep things civil. Whether Price had known about Soap’s talk of retirement remains a mystery to him. 

“I’ve got some work to get done before we leave, so if you need me, I’ll be here,” Price informs him, taking his things and disappearing into the other room where his desk was, leaving Soap standing in the living room.

 

 

It doesn’t take long for Soap to settle into the spare bedroom, throwing his suitcase on the bed with a dejected sigh before beginning to strip out of the thick jacket unsuited to the stale English weather this time of year. 

 

He’s just thrown it on the bed when he hears his phone buzzing with a notification. 

 

He’s put his mother on mute for the time being, so it couldn’t be her, possibly one of his sisters. He supposes he should do some damage control before shit hits the fan, though. 

 

Begrudgingly, he sits down on the edge of the bed and reaches for the phone, swiping at the cracked screen to unlock it. 

 

Five unread messages, better than he expected. Three from his mother, and two from someone he definitely doesn’t have the mental energy to respond to now. 

 

He opens the chat and begins typing back before he’s even formulated what he wanted to say to her.

Elena (barista): heyy so I know its been a while but I wanted to know if you're still interested in that second date?

John: Yes|

‘Yes’ is too short…

John: Ye |

John: |

John: abs |

No, that sounds too enthusiastic and she’ll get the wrong idea. 

John: yes, sure

Before he can change his mind again, he hits send. To his surprise, she begins typing back immediately. 

Elena: Great! How does tomorrow evening work for you??? 

Soap grimaces.

John: I'm actually at work at the moment...

He can almost feel her hesitating on the other end. 

Elena: Work?

Elena: I thought you’re not going back until the 15th??

Soap is unsure how much he should be telling her, but he wants to be as honest as possible. 

John: That was the plan but an urgent last minute thing came up. I only found out about it a week ago.

Elena: oh, okay. But tell me when you think you’ll be available?

John: sure :)

Soap exits the chat and quickly writes back to his mother to confirm to her that he had landed safely, but decides against entertaining the conversation any further after that. 

He tries to get a couple of hours of sleep in before Price comes to fetch him at well after dark for their return to base, but he’s still tired enough by the time they arrive that he has to take two shots of espresso for good measure. 

And then it's off to their designated aircraft, a three and a half hour flight outbound for Kastovia and another promise John MacTavish would inevitably fail to keep. 

 

Its just past midnight by the time Soap finds his seat with Sergeant Burns to his left and Ghost two seats on with Price in between them. Ghost gives Soap a nod of acknowledgement as Soap straps himself in leaning back against the cargo netting behind him and letting his head hit the wall with a thud. 

“You been to Verdansk this time of year?” 

Soap is surprised when Burns asks from beside him. The question is half muffled by the humming of the large cargo door being raised to a close but he shakes his head anyway. 

“Can’t say that I have.” 

“It's nice. Off season so it's not as packed with tourists as it is when all the schools are out. It's beautiful actually, when you’re not working.” 

“You think so?” 

Soap had never had the luxury of being in the city for anything other than a work related crisis. His best memories of Russia and the surrounding countries are the quiet moments when the weapons cease or he’s privileged enough to be in the safety of a fortified military base. 

His worst memories there are by far the most haunting of his career and some of the most life changing. He still has visions of that bomb going off, splatters of blood and shattered bone. He’ll never forget the stillness after Oliver had stopped screaming or the look on his parents' faces when he gave his condolences at the funeral. 

So no, Soap did not consider the idea of finding Kastovia beautiful or inviting in his days off. 

“It’s quite a sight actually. I brought my girl out there to propose last year, to get away from it all.” 

Soap raises an eyebrow. “You’re married?” 

“Almost, the wedding’s in two months. You got anyone waiting for you back home?” 

Briefly the phantom smell of smoke and warm blood fills Soap’s nose and he clutches at the chain around his neck, but the moment’s gone in an instant. 

“Nothing serious at the moment, no.” 

He curses the fact his mind had skimmed over Elena so quickly, but he can hardly call her a significant other. 

“Ah well, I’m sure you’ll find someone soon,” Burns says and reaches into his pocket for a half empty pack of gum. 

The plane had taken off with a rumble and Soap’s ears were having trouble adjusting to the change in altitude. 

“Can I have one of those?” Soap inclines his head to the pack. 

“Sure, but they’re nicotine. I’m trying to quit smoking before the wedding.” Burns tilts the pack in his direction nonetheless and Soap hesitates for a moment, feeling a distant suppressed ache in his chest warning him against it but he silences his concern. 

“That’s alright by me.” 

He takes the stick of gum and pretends not to waver as he pops it in his mouth.

They land in Verdansk three and a half hours later and Shepherd meets them on the ground. Its barely past sunrise and the air is heavy with a piercing cold fog that clouds his measured breaths as Soap steps out of the plane onto the landing strip where a man stood waiting for them. 

The man was around Soap’s height, but he carried himself with an air of authority. Something to indicate he was powerful and very much aware of it. 

He gave them a polite nod by way of greeting. Soap watches his overtly friendly interaction with Price and Burns and then the notably impersonal way he shakes hands with Ghost. 

“Sergeant MacTavish, you come very highly regarded by Captain Price, he’s told me a lot about you.” 

Soap feels himself stiffen but he smiles nonetheless, “all good things, I hope.” 

“ Excellent things,” Shepherd corrects.

“Well, I hope he’s got enough of that in him to live up to the Captain’s expectations,” Ghost chimes in from beside him, not with bite, but Soap can’t decide whether he’s supposed to take the joke as a sign of friendliness or hostility. 

As if sensing the uncertainty in the atmosphere, Price claps him on the back and gives his own response of almost flat feeling reassurance. “He’ll be up for it, I’m sure. But I expect we better get out of the wind before we get into any of the further details.” 

 

The drive takes a while. It isn’t long, but the road out is congested and Soap finds his eyes wandering over the densely packed sidewalks, gaze panning over the figures on the street, blissfully unaware of the danger pending over the city. 

It makes some uneasy feeling run a chill down his spine. An image from the carnage left behind by the street market bomb on Price’s slideshow comes into his mind unbidden and he tries to rid himself of the idea of Verdansk being reduced to rubble. 

The base they’d be operating out of for the next few days was situated on the gentle slope of a hill building up into the nearby mountain range, densely forested with evergreen spruce trees creating a thick coverage for the well maintained dirt road. 

Upon arrival, they pass through heavy security and are let to park on a reserved spot by a painted brick face wall rising into the upper floor of the building. 

Once inside, it is much more temperature controlled and Soap relaxes a bit once they’re through security and the doors are closed behind him. 

General Shepherd’s been in Price’s circle for years. Soap knows about the kinds of things he and Price have buried in the past and he’s got his own theories as to a couple of the more sketchy, off the records things. He gets suspicious about when the talk around base doesn’t match up with what’s on the news, so for him to be standing here in the room with both of them, while official records still have him safely tucked away in Glasgow is disconcerting to say the least. 

He glances to his side at Burns and even gives the futile look over at Ghost on his right, but both of them are tight-lipped and observant, their expressions betraying nothing.

An hour and two coffees later saw Shepherd introducing them to a few men from the local authorities they’d been working with and hurriedly getting them over to a more private room to discuss the details. 

Though Soap is still sceptical of Price’s anonymous source, he keeps his mouth shut for the duration of the discussion, listening intently to the plan for the next day instead. 

The airport had upped its security earlier that month. With Verdansk just gently nudging the border of the country and its frequent conflicts with the nearby Russians, the city has grown desensitised to the sheer amount of military vehicles patrolling the streets at all times. They wouldn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary for there to be a heightened military presence at the airport or the nearby areas. 

The good thing, they figured, would be that Makarov would not be anticipating it either. 

Once more, with detailed information from Price’s informant, they determined that multiple bombs would be left to detonate throughout the airport, but how they planned on getting them through airport security remained unclear. 

By the end of the discussion, they’d concluded that the four of them would enter with the rest of the local team Shepherd had assembled well before the window the informant had provided them with and keep a low enough profile so as to not worry the public but be present enough so that any suspicious activity could be flagged. 

By the time Soap was allowed to leave, he felt as though he was due another coffee with how little sleep he’d gotten in the last few days and the monolith of a task before them. He gets himself a coffee and tries to find some fresh air. 

 

By the next morning, Soap had developed an uneasy feeling about it all, a feeling he doesn’t manage to shake by the time he’s dressed and sharply awake at just before sunrise. 

The sun is high and expectant by the time they arrive at the airport the next morning. The world stands at attention. 

A thin smattering of clouds obscured the sun from view almost entirely and rendered the world washed out and lifeless on the drive out to the airport. 

By the time they’ve parked and Price is well out of earshot, Soap can’t keep it to himself anymore and turns to Ghost nearest to him by the open door of their vehicle. 

“I have a feeling that informant of Price has been feeding us bullshit.” 

“As much as I trust Price, I’m not so convinced either.” 

There isn’t time to talk about it after that. The day at the airport is tense. Speaking is difficult, airport security knows next to no English, with Price and another English speaking security officer needing to translate any time something mildly suspicious turns up. With the extra security keeping a keen eye on the ground, they were sitting in a closed off room watching the security cameras for signs of suspicious activity. 

Security flags a man but it's a bust. He’s pissed and cursing as he’s patted down for the forgotten pocket knife in his coat. A generous amount of similar issues turn up but nothing to write home about. 

A little after that, there was a brief issue on a forgotten suitcase left in a suspicious position on the other side of the airport, but after twenty minutes and broken exchanges, security confirms it was a false alarm. 

Soap doesn’t know if that should disappoint him or not. Even Shepherd starts to look frustrated by the time noon comes around and they’ve noticed nothing else. 

“Any news from your guy?” Ghost asks later and Price gives a frustrated shake of the head. 

“Haven’t been able to get through to him since this morning. Absolute silence.” 

“So he set us up?”

“It's too soon to call any of that, Ghost. Let's not jump to conclusions.”

 

The day’s still young when it all goes to hell. 

Security screens a woman potentially carrying drugs in her suitcase and she is immediately pulled away into a side room and searched. Her suitcase, marked fragile and wrapped in plastic, is thrown onto a table and opened for search. 

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you? There’s glass in there!” 

“An American,” Soap observes, finally glad to be able to understand what was going on around him. 

“Just standard procedure, ma’am,” one of the security officers relay in accented English and indicates for her to hold her arms out for her to be searched. Soap watches her disbelief morph into frustration when her handbag is also tipped out onto the table, sending folded receipts, loose coins and her cell phone clattering out onto the table. 

“Hey, you can’t just mess with my stuff like that,” she says as a man shuffles through her suitcase to find the suspicious item. 

The phone suddenly lights up with an urgent message.

Three missed calls. 

The phone suddenly lights up with an urgent message. 

Three missed calls. 

Mikhail: are you ok? 

Mikhail: answer your phone 

Mikhail: I can see the smoke from my window. Tell me u are ok. 

Mikhail: Jess please, are you at the airport? Did you see it?

 

“Captain, something’s not right here.” Soap reaches for the phone, beckoning Price over to show him the texts. 

“Hey, you can’t just look at my phone. That’s an invasion of my privacy–” 

The phone starts vibrating in his hand as another call comes in, Price turns to her, still kept in place by security. “Who’s Mikhail?” 

“My boyfriend, he’s worried about me.” 

“Why?” 

“Maybe I can ask him if you give me my phone.” 

“Bag is clear,” the man searching her suitcase behind Soap declares and she gives him a harsh glare.  

“I could’ve told you that myself,” she says angrily as she takes her phone back from Soap and calls the number back, hurrying to put her things back into her handbag. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine! Wait, slow down, you’re freaking me out… what… like, actually?”

Soap looks from her to Price. 

“No way… just now?... I didn’t hear anything… are you sure?”  

On the other side of the room, Shepherd’s phone rings in his pocket and he goes to answer it while security escorts the woman out of the room. 

Shepherd’s face morphs into a look of distress and Soap tenses in anticipation. “Say again?” 

Soap can’t make out anything on the other side but it sounds urgent. Shepherd relays the news as he terminates the call. 

“Reports of explosions at the stadium. No official confirmation yet, but it seems like the news has caught onto it.” 

Immediately, Soap curses himself for not trusting his instinct sooner. He knew something was off 

“Makarov used the airport as a diversion.” 

“He could still be at the stadium, we might still have a chance to nail this bastard,” Ghost suggests and they turn to Shepherd for confirmation. 

“Ghost and I can stay at the airport until security can get a read on the situation,  just in case he decides to double back while we’re out. Price, take Burns and MacTavish. The three of you head out and assess the situation at the stadium.”

 

 

The door shuts with a resounding, anxious thud as Price ushers Soap into the passenger seat and straps himself in behind the wheel, acting on muscle memory alone as he releases the handbrake and reverses out of the parking lot at an alarming speed. He turned towards the exit and gestures wildly for the security guard to raise the boom for him to exit the parking faster.

Within a minute, he has navigated out of the incoming traffic and headed onto the highway. 

“What’s the plan when we get there, Cap?” Burns asks from behind Soap. 

“It's difficult to say now. It's fresh. We’ve got no idea what the conditions are or what to expect. So we try to assess and contain the situation as best possible. But knowing Makarov, it's best to assume he’s not done yet.”

“And if he’s there?” Soap asks and Price’s grip on the steering wheel tightens. 

“Then we bring him back.” 

“And if he’s not?” Soap asks. 

“Then this entire operation is dead the water.” 

 

The over chewed wad of gum was bland in his mouth and did little to soothe the tension in Soap’s system as he cast a glance out at the world beyond the passenger window, seeing it pass in a smear of colour. They’ve been driving for a good five minutes now. 

 Heart racing a mile a minute, his anger was only spurred by the comms in his ear as Shepherd's voice came through, confirming the worst. 

“Gold Eagle to Bravo-6. Security confirms gunfire and at least one explosion in the stadium with multiple injuries, over… “

He watches the world in the muted grey, fade from obliviousness to panic as they neared the stadium, seeing the world descending into chaos around them. 

Price reached to press the button on his mic, face setting into a hard look as he yanked the wheel hard for the upcoming turn. “Copy, we’re inbound now.” 

Shepherd’s response was instant. 

“Be advised, Makarov and his men may still be inside. If he’s there, you bring him out– alive.”

Soap felt uneasy about letting the man go with his life, but pushed the concern down, silencing the thought with his own acknowledgement of the order, but it did nothing to ease the growing concern as he caught onto the shifting energy on the street around them. 

“Roger that. Where’s medical?” 

Soap couldn’t make out any words from the civilians outside or let his eyes linger long enough to analyse any of the reactions properly, but they were close enough to the stadium that he knew they must have heard something. 

“First responders will not enter until the scene is clear. The third floor VIP lounge may be Makarov’s next target.” Shepherd’s voice was clear and calm as he spoke, but it instantly added another thread of anxiety to the mix and Soap couldn't stop himself from cursing as Price took another left, narrowly dodging past a truck on the corner and putting them on a street funnelling to the stadium dead ahead. 

“You said it, son,” Shepherd acknowledges Soap over comms. “Ghost and I are ten mikes out. Let's bag this bastard. Out here.” 

The high rise office blocks seemed to shuffle them forward and usher them out to the open air, now enough for them to smell the acrid smoke emanating from the stadium in a rolling curtain of grey heat.

A car swerves onto the road and shoots past them at a speed as they merge onto the main road, panic palpable in the erratic driving of those still on the road and fleeing the scene.

The fear ripples through the crowd like a curtain of panic holding the world in a vice grip and descending over the street like a dire blanket of fear. Even the dying leaves on the trees seemed more dead and wilted into themselves with an unseen oppression, like an incursion of an unknown force pushing hostile tendrils into the ground that the earth itself, and by extension, the trees on the sidewalk, seemed sharp and alert to the whims of its enemy. 

The bleak sky was barren like the sun had withdrawn into itself to make way for the undulating spire of smoke curling into the sky before them from the blazing inferno that leaked from the burst windows of the structure, weeping fire. 

Unconsciously, his hand went for the chain around his neck, but it was obscured by his vest and the lack of that comfort made him feel like he was floating in a sea of disarray with no anchor point. 

“Makarov threatened the airport and hit the stadium instead,” Soap seethes through gritted teeth. Even Sergeant Burns, who had been quiet up until that point, had something to say to the carnage. 

“He’s a fuckin’ madman.” 

A row of orange boom gates that was meant to be blocking off the entrance to the stadium’s underground parking was raised for the hurried exit of the cars, now descended into complete disarray as a car drives straight out through the wrong gate into the incoming lane and almost collides with their vehicle. 

“Fuckin’ hell!” Price cursed as he swerved aside for it, missing it by a hair’s breadth and gunning it to the middle gate before another car could block them off. 

“Civilians are everywhere,” Burns noted, sounding as thoroughly shaken as Soap felt. 

Soap resists the urge to look back at the blaze beside him as Price turns down the ramp to the parking lot. 

“Alright,” Price begins, gathering their collective attention. “Check your shots. We’ll have a lot of unknowns inside.” 

Civilians are fleeing on foot and he doesn’t stop when a man trips on the incline of the road and scuttles out of the way before an oncoming car has the chance to plough him over. 

“And Makarov?” Soap risks a glance back over to the stadium, now towering over them like a lit funeral pyre. 

“You heard the order. ROE still stands. We take him alive.” 

Soap jolted when two cars collided in front of them and glass skittered across the junction. Price had been so fixated on the collision that he didn't notice the civilian rushing in front of them until Soap shouted at him to stop. 

There’s a heavy thud against the hood of the car and for a sickening moment, Soap worries they’ve hit her, but when she stands up unharmed, he breathes a sigh of relief. 

Irritably, Price gestures wildly for her to get out of the road. “Get out of here! Go!” 

They watch her stumble disoriented from their path before shooting off ahead into a dark tunnel. Cars piled up on the outgoing lane and Soap shouts for Price to watch it when a desperate soul reaching the back of the row decides to take a risk and turn onto the incoming lane, narrowly missing them again.

“Close one,” Soap says, trying to make sense of the cacophony of panic surrounding them as he watches for more civilians on foot and desperate cars. 

“We’re still in one piece,” Price concedes mirthlessly as he turns off from the incoming tunnel into a wider section that splits off to a higher floor. 

“Watch it!” Burns cries from the back. 

The wailing of an ambulance siren cuts through the panic and the oncoming glow of a pulsing red light gives them enough of a warning to get out of the way as it rushes past them and they turn up onto the ramp to the higher floor. 

For a moment, Soap has the chance to think its blessedly empty, save for a parked ambulance in his peripheral vision until he witnesses a speeding car mow down a civilian, letting the rest of the group erupt into panic as he reversed and rerouted. 

Soap curses. He glances back at the contorted form of the man as Price drives them past, determination set in his face. 

They can’t afford to go back for him now, probably dead on impact by the look of it, but that wasn’t their concern now. 

“This is chaos,” Burns says. 

“Yeah, it's what Makarov wants,” Price confirms. 

Right now, their concern was Makarov and getting that sick son of a bitch behind bars. Soap sends up a quick prayer for the man now, knowing he’ll forget to do it when they’re out of here and he has time to think, it will be lost to the chaos of the day. 

Price drives them into a single lane funnelling them to another parking block and Soap is relieved to find a welcome sight waiting for them. “Police up ahead.”

“They got here fast,” Burns says as they’re approaching the uniformed men, trying to talk down panicking civilians. Soap was even surprised to see them here so quickly, but he wasn’t going to ask questions with more hands– 

“They’re killing civilians!” Soap cries right as an officer guns down three people and turns towards them. 

He dodges out of the way, shielding his face from the spray of glass bursting inward. 

“Return fire!” Price shouts as Soap manages to get his bearings, tugging on the door handle and reaching for his gun and releasing the seatbelt clasp. 

He practically falls out of his seat as one of the men turns his gun towards them. 

With renewed fervour and hatred for the man they were after, Soap takes down three of the fake policemen in rapid succession. 

The concrete floor is slick with a mixture of blood and viscera and Soap can feel it clinging to the bottom of his boots as he crosses over to the entrance of the staircase leading into the building. A civilian lies slumped against a cold wall. The back half of his skull shot out and he lies marinated in a pool of his own blood.

Not far from him lies one of the officers Soap shot down, gun still tight in his grip. A bullet to the neck had been too merciful a death. His face has got the hard look Soap has come to know with the enemies they deal with, and his hand’s got an old prison tattoo obscured by the cuff of his sleeve. Soap’s seen them enough to recognise it instantly, though. 

“Inner Circle’s posing as police,” Soap relays as Price comes up beside him with Burns in the back, taking point and leading them up the staircase. 

“They’d have access to the VIP area," Burns confirms Soap’s concern. 

“It's on the third floor, let��s move.” 

Another bullet shoots off from an awkward position at the top of the stairs and Soap and Price make quick work of clearing the staircase before emerging into the furnished concourse. 

If he'd thought the parking lot was chaos, this was a step up. 

Several more of the fake first responders were opening fire on civilians, screaming and running for safety only to be shot down by a careless bullet. They trip each other and slick the tiled floors with red. 

Price says something in his ear, but Soap is too preoccupied to register what it is as another police officer pulls his gun on him. 

Soap takes cover behind an advertising screen as another one of Makarov's men fires on him. 

Soap shoots first and the man falls backward with a jolt. 

"Gold Eagle, Bravo-6, we're internal and pushing to the VIP area. Be advised, Inner Circle's posing as police, over." 

"Copy. All police on target are considered hostile."  

"Roger that," Price acknowledges. 

Soap gritted his teeth as he pushed forward against the torrent of fleeing civilians. A heavy weight knocks him sideways as a  man stumbles into him, eyes wide and muttering distraughtly in Russian as he scrambles away from him. 

Ahead of him, one of Makarov's men hurls something through a window and it erupts into flames. 

He ducks more gunfire behind a vacant information desk, scrambling for safety before he reports back to the others. 

"Fuckers are using grenades." 

His lungs burn from the hazy wall of smoke as he moves forward. The floor is covered in contorted bodies and coagulating pools of blood, smelling so strongly that the air around him is tainted with a stomach churning thick fog of burning plastic and stench of iron. 

Burns isn't far behind him, trying to get a civilian to safety but struggling with the language barrier. 

Price barely has time to warn him of the figure running out of the smoke before another one of Makarov's men emerge like a wraith from the haze and nearly manages to get a shot in. He dies with two bullets to the head and neck, hand still reaching for his gun. 

Another woman is shot down as she flees from her hiding spot behind a counter of glass cases selling refreshments, pitching forward into the smudged floor, a stone's throw away from Soap. 

"Fuck!" 

Soap aims to shoot and curses when it clicks empty, quickly ducking behind the kiosk to reload as he grimly locks eyes with the corpse of the woman. 

He takes a deep breath to steel himself before leaving his temporary safe haven and charging at her killer with a rage he didn't think possible. 

Taking the man down he dodges behind a pillar in the centre of the floor as another charges out of the smoke and fires at him. 

A bullet clips his exposed arm and blood runs a warm crimson trail down his forearm. 

He just needs to make it through the concourse and get to the VIP area. His arm can wait. The dead civilians, the smoke in his lungs causing him to become light headed, the mission's already half-failure– it will have to wait.

To his right, Soap finds an entrance to the gift shop, by no doubt shorter than the path around it. 

Soap coughs against the wave of acrid smoke hitting his lungs before he informs the team over comms of his detour. 

He steps around the mangled body in the centre of the floor. Even through the cacophony of screaming and gunfire, he has half the mind to notice how heavy his boots have become, slaked in the grime and glass littering the floor. 

Soap reconvenes with Price by the entrance of a stairwell, taking point. He dodges pasta man running them down two at a time, resisting the urge to move out of harm's way as a barrage of gunfire from the top of the staircase sends bodies tumbling the rest of the way to the landing and piling up together by Soap's feet. 

He makes quick work of shooting up the son of a bitch, wasting no more than two billets to make sure he was properly dead. 

At the top of the staircase, he's met with a dead end. 

"Exit's locked." 

"On it," Price says, coming up behind him to pry the door open. 

Burns comes to stand beside Soap, observing the words on the door. Clearly, his Russian was better than Soap's. 

"Executive level. VIP level is close." 

The door gives way and Soap quickly confirms the floor is clear. 

There is an eerie silence overlayed onto the shrill, mindless drone of the fire alarm. The entire floor is strewn with casualties, not a living soul in sight. 

Makarov's men had swept through like a pestilence. 

"Eyes on the VIP," Price says as he spots it to their left. "Got movement inside. Stay sharp." 

Price steps away as they reach the door to give way to Soap, inclining his head in Soap’s direction.  

"On you, Sergeant." 

Soap grips the door handle and twists it on the mental count of three. 

"Special forces," Price cries as Soap pushes the door open, gun at the ready. There’s several men inside, dressed in blue uniforms and tending to bleeding, half dead men on stretchers. Though Soap is glad for the help, he’s seen enough today to be sceptical of anything. 

Soap shouts for them to show their hands and they’re up immediately, all looking from one to the other with worried expressions. 

 "First responders! Don't shoot!" One of the men steps forward, eyes darting nervously from the gun in Soap's hands, to his face, to Price and back again.

The air conditioning is cold on his sweat damp skin. There’s a handful of TVs in the room, all set to mute, but they’re turned into the news, reporting from the outside of the stadium, still shrouded in a column of rapidly worsening smoke. 

"How did you get in here?" Price demands sternly. 

"Security," he stammers, flustered and shell shocked. "Security let us in." 

"Who are you with?" Price pushes. 

"Please, we are trying to save lives." Another of the paramedics is just barely suppressing the urgency in his voice. 

Soap casts a sceptical glance over to the poor half-dead man on a stretcher to his right. Other paramedics are gathered around him, trying to stabilise his condition as best possible. 

"Shit, I need help over here," A paramedic by the side of the body says as he looks up urgently and finds Soap's gaze locked on him. "Soldier, please?"

Taking a risk while the other is occupied by Price's questioning, Soap moves over to assist as best he can. He's no field medic but he knows the basics if he ever gets himself into a twist. 

"Stand fast, Sergeant," Price warns, but he's already halfway over when the man draws a gun from his drug bag. He's a quick draw, but Soap is just as fast.

Soap fires just as a blow to his chest knocks him backwards with all the power of a freight train and he hits the floor with a painful thud. The bullet proof vest absorbs the brunt of the impact, but the shot still hurts like a bitch. 

It is outnumbered by the adrenaline and he recovers quickly, assisting Price and Burns in taking care of the other Inner Circle scum. 

His ears ring in the absence of the gunfire and his free hand comes to clutch futilely at the phantom pain of the gunshot over the clamouring of his racing heart. The tac vest obscures its path and his fingers grasp at spare magazines, his sidearm, as it tries to tear a direct path to ease the pain. 

The shot is absorbed into the marrow of his ribs and he knows somehow he'll feel it worse tomorrow. 

"You broken?" Price asks in a serious tone and he shakes his head. 

"Just the plate." 

Soap makes his way over to the table where various medical bags and equipment was set out on the pretence of being useful, but upon closer inspection, Soap notices the heart monitor is ancient, at least from the 90s and missing its internal wiring. 

Burns beside him opens one of the bags and turns to Price. “Check it. They had explosives. This was their next target.” 

Price calls it in immediately. “Gold Eagle Actual, explosives located in the VIP area. No sign of Makarov.”

Soap moves over to the window, eyebrows knitting together as he sees the rubble beneath the window from where the roiling mass of black smoke was rising up from. The field was empty, but there were casualties twisted and dead in the seats, either blown to bits or trampled by the masses in their bid to weave through the labyrinth of seats. 

He cuts his attention back to the task at hand when Shepherd returns to comms. “Copy, make it safe. Local set up a cordon, so Makarov will have to exfil fast. We’re five mikes out. Don’t let him escape, son.” 

Soap checks the pulse on the nearest man on a stretcher, but he’s so far gone dead, he knows for sure the Inner Circle just had him up there as a cover. 

“Roger that.” 

“The garage,” Burns says. 

It's the next logical option, Soap reasons and Price seems to agree. “Affirm,” he nods to the bag they’d been looking at earlier. “Secure the explosives and get to the secondary exfil.”

Burns gives him a nod of acknowledgement and Price gestures for Soap to follow him, moving over to the door on the opposite side of the VIP area and back into the concourse, the shrill alarm still insistently echoing through the space. 

Along the inner wall, Price stops him short at an elevator and he and Soap just about manage to pry the doors open with force, only for them to slide open and reveal a dark void plunging down into the abyss beneath them.

The only sign that there was something down there was a dim red glow licking up the sides of the elevator shaft, catching on the rivets and dents in the metal plating. 

 Soap took an instinctive step back from where the polished floor dropped off, giving a sceptical glance up to the elevator’s resting point a fair bit above their heads. 

Wires jutted out from the dark and trembled slightly with a phantom tremor of the cables, like vocal cords vibrating an ominous metal groan. Soap was unsure how safe it was for them to be standing there with the metal contraption suspended in the air by nothing but rickety cold war era engineering and pure faith holding it up, but when Price seizes one of the cold cables and drops down into the darkness, Soap has no choice but to follow. 

He hits the floor below with a force he feels compress into his spine and he grimaces. 

Price meets him at the bottom. “Eyes peeled for Makarov.” 

Soap sets himself with new determination as they emerge into the larger space. Empty buses are parked on either side of the tunnel, forcing them to move away from the walls inward. 

A chill runs down Soap’s spine as he hears the echoing of footsteps ahead, run-shuffle across the cast concrete. He reaches for his gun instinctively but Price halts him in his tracks as the man comes into view at the other end of the tunnel. 

“Check fire, that’s a civilian.” 

His gun lowers, but only slightly. 

Ahead of them around the bend of the turn, the rhythmic pulsing of a red emergency light caught Soap’s attention and he stopped dead for a moment, straining to hear the sirens before Price could confirm his suspicion. 

“Vehicle incoming.”  

It rounded the corner slowly, like it was a cornered animal placing a careful step forward into the crosshairs of its pursuer. 

Soap stepped forward, but Price laid a hand on his shoulder. 

“Maintain distance, Soap. Could be Makarov.” 

An empty bus to his left stood as the only shield between him and the ambulance a couple of metres ahead of him. He takes a cautious step backward as the ambulance inched closer at an excruciatingly slow pace, lurching as it halted. 

Price held his gun at the ready, moving away from the direct line of the ambulance. 

“Step out of the vehicle!” 

Though Soap couldn’t see who was inside, it was as though its unmovable energy almost seemed to mock them. 

It happened almost out of nowhere and predictably quickly at the same time. The engine revved and there was a moment the ambulance reversed sharply, turned on the sirens and ploughed forward. 

“Incoming!” Soap shouts and he and Price move out of the way on either side of the oncoming vehicle, Soap knocking his already tender shoulder against the back of the bus with the force he falls backwards with. 

There's the echoing crush of metal as the careless driving of the ambulance sees it knocking into an abandoned car and barreling over onto its side, ceasing the urgency of the siren to a dead silence. The absence of sound and the shifting of angular shadows from the strobing of the red emergency light mounted on the roof drew on the vastness of the dark parking garage, threatening to send the already heightened atmosphere to a fever pitch. 

“It’s down,” Soap says with only a hint of relief. 

Price was already moving. “Move to secure.” 

Soap bit the inside of his cheek to avoid showing how much the strain was impacting him as he and Price made their way over to the upturned vehicle, wheels still spinning for phantom grasp in the air, like desperate waving limbs that couldn’t grasp the earth to flee. 

The doors remained resolutely closed, but Soap’s stomach twisted at what he knew he would find there. There was no question of it. That ominous energy, the itching of his sixth sense, he knows it in the marrow of his bones. 

“Open it,” Price motioned Soap over to the door. 

Though hesitant, he complied, tugging the dented metal door open with a firm yank and flooding the gutted ambulance with sharp torchlight. 

“Hands! Hands!” Price shouted for the figure in the blue uniform moving from his sprawled position, his face turned away from them for the moment. “Pokazat' ruki!” Soap shouted for good measure, drawing on his limited Russian to make sure the man got the message. 

Dead on impact, there were two fake paramedics sprawled on the now earthside wall, but his attention was fixed on the man crouching towards the back, shielding his face from the glaring light. 

His hand shifted away from his face to raise in vitriolic surrender and Soap cursed, instinctively readjusting his grip on his gun. “It's him.” 

“Vladimir Makarov, step out of the vehicle now!” 

Sending them a searing look, Makarov gritted his teeth and crawled across the uneven side of the ambulance panelling, knees shifting over the bruised, dead limbs of his men. 

“Nice and easy,” Soap warns when he gets a bit too close to the door for his liking. After all, he still had his firearm tucked into the holster on his bullet proof vest. 

“That’s far enough.” Soap held out a hand to halt him when he attempted to take a step further from getting out of the ambulance. 

“Now don’t fucking move.” Makarov’s attention shifted to Price as he ordered Soap to search him. 

Soap immediately relieves him of the gun and tosses it out of reach. Makarov’s face held a discontented but somehow still neutral expression that Soap struggled to read. 

“You scared Captain?” he asks in a condescending tone as Soap went through the cursory motions of patting him down for extra firepower. Makarov takes Price’s silence as a win. “You should be.” 

“Shut up.”

A little grin tucks into the corner of his mouth and Soap has had about enough of it. He’ll take silence, he’ll take anger, but he will not have enjoyment coming from someone on the wrong end of a gun. 

He’s a soldier. He does not play fair in the game of terrorists. 

“Get on your fucking knees!” Soap manhandles him into a kneel on the cold concrete. 

Without the usual decorum, Soap roughly completes the search. “He’s clean.” 

Not wasting any time, Soap reaches into his pocket for zip ties and tightens them a bit more than strictly necessary, using a second one for good measure.

“Are you going to kill me?” Makarov asks evenly, completely ignoring the hard plastic digging into his wrists and focusing his attention on Price. 

“Oh I’ve thought about it, yeah.” 

He scoffs. “I recommend you do.”

“And I recommend you tell your men to stand down.” Price’s eyebrows narrowed at him. The gun now hovered only a foot away from Makarov’s face, but he remained unfazed. His expression remained unimpressed and he shook his head almost imperceptibly. 

“They’re not trained to stand down. That’s more… your strategy.” 

Soap couldn’t believe the audacity of him. Even like this, he thinks he’s got the upper hand. It takes a heavy helping of self restraint for Soap not to knock his teeth out. 

Price ignores him, locking eyes with Soap. “Keep him close.”

Soap tugs on his bound arms to get him to stand, following behind Price as he radios in. 

“All stations. We have Makarov. We’re moving to the extract.” 

“Roger that, John. they’ll fight to get him back…” 

“We’re counting on it,” Soap says bitterly with a bit of a shrug. 

He doesn’t miss the way Makarov turns to shoot him a venomous glance and he gets a bit of a rise out of it. 

“Alright, take him left. We clear these vehicles, we move up,” Price instructs him shortly, taking the lead and Soap acknowledges him, yanking Makarov roughly to his feet and shoving him in Price’s general direction. “Get goin’.” 

Price confirms the area on the other side of the ambulance is clear, and Soap starts them out at an urgent pace, making sure not to give the man any chance at a rest after the tumble he’d just taken in the ambulance. 

“You think you can just walk me out of here?” Makarov’s voice doesn’t have a hint of worry or remorse.

“We can drag you out as well,” Soap reminds him, giving him a rough shove to make him pick up his pace, but if Makarov feels anything at the rough treatment, he keeps it to himself. 

“Capturing me… it means nothing.” 

“It means we beat you, Vlad.” 

Soap can just barely see him shake his head, huffing out a laugh. “Don’t be a fool.” 

“Contact!” Price shouts from somewhere ahead of him and Soap’s first instinct is to duck behind the nearest vehicle as the Inner Circle men Price had spotted come into view, irritably losing Makarov to the confusion. 

 He gets a shot in, risking a glance sideways to Price who reassures him he’s got Makarov secured, but Makarov and one of the men are shouting back and forth for another moment before he gets him down too. 

“We clear?” Price asks him when the last man falls. 

“Affirm.” 

“It's not safe here. Grab Makarov, we need to move.” 

Price waits for Soap to take him before they proceed down the tunnel towards where they would be meeting with the others outside. 

“You’re not safe anywhere,” Makarov tells him and Soap’s just about had enough. 

“Your luck’s running dry, Makarov.” 

They’re coming up by another skewly parked bus, promptly ignoring the dead body of one of the Inner Circle men Soap had shot down, lying slumped behind it, Makarov doesn’t even look in his direction, just keeps his eyes focused dead ahead. 

“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in planning. Bad luck, it's just poor planning.” 

“What part of your plan involves rotting in a prison?” 

“A man can be locked up,” Makarov reminds him. “An idea cannot.” 

Soap keeps him close, tightening his grip on Makarov when they pass a woman trying to flee the building and giving her a jump scare. Soap tries to give her an apologetic look, but she’s clearly shell shocked and just stumbles away from him. 

Price is up ahead, securing them a path through to where they were to rendezvous with the others. 

“Found a way through, Sergeant. Lets move.” 

Up ahead was a blockade of buses, narrowly parked together, pressed into the wall. As Soap neared it, he could see the arms of daylight reaching for them from the gap between the two. 

“I bestow my blessings on your courage, but curse your stupidity.” 

“Worry about yourself.”

“Every man is replaceable, even me.” 

The only way around the barrier would be to squeeze through the narrow gap between the two vehicles, but it appeared Price was willing to bet they’d fit. 

“On me,” Price calls to Soap and slots in first. 

Soap gives Makarov a shove, both to move him forward and to shut him up as they come up to the gap, making progress at a snail's crawl. Soap isn’t particularly put off by tight spaces, but this could change that. 

Still, he takes Makarov by the shoulders and forces him after Price, sucking in as far as possible to try to keep his gear from snagging as they move. 

What’s even more unnerving is the pained crying he can hear from inside the bus, a bleak chance that there were still lives that could be saved in this shitshow. They didn’t have the time to stop now. 

“You’re not a soldier, you’re a war criminal.” Price picks up on it too, giving a heated glance in Makarov’s direction as he shuffles sideways. He’s more than irritated with Makarov’s attitude in combination with the injured civilians just metres away from them.

“These people need medical.” 

“What’s stopping you from helping them, Sergeant?” Makarov asks condescendingly and Soap shoves him sideways to keep moving. 

“You.” 

Makarov looks back at Soap. “That's your choice.” 

“You did this, not us…” Price reminds him sharply.

“They’re innocent people,” Soap adds from the side.  

“No one is innocent. War is treachery.” 

“Enough of this shite.” 

Price groans as he squeezes past the last bit and emerges into the open, Makarov –still within Soap’s grasp– follows shortly and Price has them heading for the exit, just to the right, just a little further and they’ll be out of the smoke and into the light. It gives Soap the strength to push on. 

Just to the end of the tunnel. A smoking wreck of a car flickers by the end of it, a false beacon of hope, but Soap knows it's just a little further. He just needs to keep his head on straight. Maybe what he says next is to distract himself, maybe it's because he wants to throw stones at the enemy while there isn’t a glass wall and several government officials between them. 

He doesn’t want to admit that it's probably to cover a chip in his own hope they’ll get out of this in one piece. He’s learned that celebrating the victory too soon only turns a blind eye to the evil building in his peripheral vision.  

“Time for you to meet some friends of mine.” They’re so close that Soap can almost begin to sense the relief of a win drawing close. He’ll get to go home in one piece and he’ll make good on his promises, all the ones he almost failed on. He’ll get time to reconsider his resignation, maybe he’ll let Scotland and its people resculpt him into an honest man. 

“Where are they?” 

Soap doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a full answer, lips turning into a conceited sneer. “Close.” 

Makarov gave a half-shrug, letting the cuffs jingle a bit behind his back. His hands were balled into tight, tense fists. 

“So are mine.” 

Soap worries it’s too late to save himself now, but he’s twenty-five. A lot of people find their feet at the age of twenty-five. He can still choose to rewrite the ending of his story. He can still return to the nostalgia of his not-yet-past youth, his mother’s home cooked meals. “You should know when you’ve lost.” 

“You’re still thinking about victory. Think about success.” 

It's another pebble thrown against Makarov’s unshakable demeanour, hitting nowhere vital but somehow still spurring him to give Soap a word of advice, sitting on that self-made throne. 

“The wicked prosper. They always will. Peace is invisible. War you can see…” 

Soap hates how evocative it sounds, how a weaker man might have thought it inspirational. Soap just thinks it sounds as though he’s pulled it from a fortune cookie. 

Soap’s nose scrunches up as the smoke thickens and burns at his lungs, blinking as his eyes water from the burn too. 

“Incoming!” 

He’s more prepared for the hits this time when the bullet zips past his head to disappear into the inferno. 

“Molotov!” Price shouts to him and he ducks away behind another wrecked vehicle as a bottle hurtles through the air and shatters on the floor just a couple of metres away, sending flames licking up the side of the wall. 

“I’ve got Makarov, you take ‘em out.” 

Soap swiftly takes care of the man running at him, catching him before he’s even spotted Soap behind the car and turns on the other man running to cover his fallen comrade. 

Soap takes down the next three in rapid succession, sidestepping another attempt at a molotov in his direction and finding the thrower with a bullet to the neck.

The last man catches him by surprise and he takes a hit to the arm before he gets a good shot in. The man slumps to the floor and Soap grits his teeth as he scans around for anyone else to materialise out of the smoke before relaxing slightly. Crisis averted. 

“We’re clear.” 

In his adrenaline high mind, the bullet wound, though only a graze, was a distant low hum, barely offering a distraction from the here and now. He resists the urge to clutch at his chest as he returns to Price. 

He’s by the gate, forcing Makarov to his knees with a gun pressed against his neck. 

“Lift it.” Price inclines his head to the gate and Soap drops to his knees to pull at the edge and lift it just high enough for them to duck under. Once out, he lets it drop with a thundering crash. 

“Gold Eagle Actual, we’re external. East side of the stadium. What’s your status?” 

Soap comes up behind Price, eyebrows drawn together and squinting at the too-bright sky for their helicopter flying over the building to land on the other side. 

“Bravo-6, we’re on station. Be advised, you have enemy personnel moving in from the North. Ghost will provide sniper support.” 

“Copy. We'll meet you at primary exfil. Six out,” Price says and turns to Soap. “I’ll handle Makarov, you clear a path.” 

Soap moves ahead, sticking close to cover as he eliminates those of Makarov’s men still looking to take him back. He’s briefly aware of Price behind him, but he makes sure to cover all their bases before the Inner Circle men can get the better of them. He’s too desperate for a win now. 

To his left, a man emerges from behind a white van, cowering behind a riot shield as he tries to get a shot at Soap. Soap moves back to duck behind a parked car but he lets out an involuntary curse when a neat bullet clips the man in the back of the head and he collapses onto the pavement with a heavy lurch. 

He follows the path of the bullet up to the helicopter hovering above their exfil point, finding the imposing silhouette in the doorway and he acknowledges the man with a nod. 

Ghost may be a bit of a prick, but as Soap looks down at the mess of the man’s skull spattered across the concrete, he can at least acknowledge he’s a good shot. 

“Watch right,” Ghost warns him over the comms and Soap turns and fires at a man ducked behind a parked car.  

There seems to be no further pursuit and Ghost confirms it a moment later, giving them the green light to proceed to exfil with Price and Makarov shortly behind him. 

The helicopter has barely touched down and Ghost is standing guard at the open door, expression completely obscured by the mask, but Soap can sense the tension in his stance as he just barely tracks their movements. 

Soap squints against the torrent of wind coming in his direction, finding Shepherd’s outstretched hand to tug him over the threshold of the doorway. And it's homeward. They made it. 

Price comes in after him, handing Makarov over to Shepherd before he wordlessly taps Ghost on the shoulder to signal him inside. 

The door shuts with a resounding bang and soon, they’re up in the air, watching the smoking stadium recede beneath them. 

Soap steadies himself against the wall to allow himself to catch his breath, resisting the urge to turn and face the monster of a man behind him as Price makes sure he’s secure. He takes a long look at the city beneath him. He can sense it writhing with panic and it itches beneath his skin in a way he cannot put word to. 

“Simon Riley.” Makarov’s accent registers behind him and Soap glances to the left to find Ghost still by the door, now facing Makarov at the mention of his name. Soap turns to meet Makarov’s eye for a moment, but his gaze quickly averted back to Ghost. 

“I expected you to stay at the airport… and die there.” 

“If you wanna live, do not threaten my men, Vladimir,” Shepherd warns him. 

“Are we on a first name basis? Herschel?” 

“So you know names,” Soap cuts in impatiently. “Anyone can read a bloody dossier.” 

A beat passes and when no one makes any move to ask any of the big questions, Ghost doesn’t beat around the bush. 

“What’s the rest of your plan?” 

“This.” He shrugs, almost nonchalant, staged in a way that put Soap’s nerves on edge. Like he knew this was eating at them and he was enjoying watching the scene unfold instead of worrying about the fact he wouldn’t be able to slip through the noose this time. 

Price sits forward. “What do you mean ‘this’?” 

“Amazing. You’re all dumber than you look.” 

“I asked you a question–” Ghost reminds him sharply. 

“And I have a question for you.” he addresses them all, inclining his head in Soap’s direction, hinting at his watch. “What time is it?” 

“What the hell do you care what time it is?” Shepherd asks impatiently and he gives half a shrug as partial explanation. 

“Timing is everything, General. I think we’ll all remember this moment. Some… more fondly than others.” 

It registers first as a distant rumble. A shaking of earth that offsets the balance of the air by such a dire tone it compels Soap to look out the window and find the source of the noise. His heart plummets into his feet. 

“The airport,” Ghost says with more concern Soap thought he was capable of. 

“He pulled us off target.” 

“You fucking son of a bitch!” 

Something in Soap snaps. He’s restrained himself far too long and before he’s even realised what he’s doing, he’s pulling his gun and grabbing Makarov with a fistful of the blue uniform he was wearing, knocking him against the metal wall with a reverberating bang before tossing him to the floor. 

“I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out, I swear I’ll do it.” 

Makarov locks eyes with him over the barrel of the gun, mere inches away from his face and finds Soap’s eyes with an intensity he didn’t think possible. 

“Soap, don’t do it,” Price warns him, but its dead noise in his periphery. Still, he hesitates. He feels the chain chafing against his neck.

The gun waits between them for Soap to pull the trigger. His finger itches, he clutches just a bit, with no pressure. But he could if he wanted to, he feels the impulse curl his finger in his mind’s eye but there is no gunshot and Makarov is still looking at him as though he’s bluffing. 

“Do it, come on,” Makarov taunts him. 

“You shut your mouth,” Price tells him, but his eyes never leave Soap. 

“Let me finish him.” Soap doesn’t know why he’s waiting for permission. He knows what needs to be done, but he can’t. He needs that bit of reassurance that its a necessary evil. 

Makarov gives a cynical laugh but Price pulls his attention. “John, we have him, he’s in custody. He’s not going anywhere. Stand down, Sergeant.” 

With all the self restraint he can muster, Soap pulls back before he can impulsively pull the trigger, reholstering the gun and taking a seat as far away from Makarov as possible. 

Price tugged Makarov up from the floor and into his own seat. 

“I thought you were the good guys.” 

“You gon’ rot in hell for this,” Shepherd tells him. 

“You’ll die in the gulag with the rest of the Russian rats,” Soap adds. 

Makarov glances at Soap, eyes drifting down to the gun now tucked uselessly into its holster. 

“You can lock me away, MacTavish, but I can promise you, the next time we’ll be seeing each other, you better hope your Captain didn’t just sign your death warrant.” 

Soap has learned over the years that the silence after the fact can sometimes be more haunting than the screams that came before it. Silence is a full stop that drives the hope into the ground and smothers any thought of change for the better. 

Silence is the whiplash passing of the first stage of grief and sinking into those later phases, the knowing that nothing can be done once the last breath has passed dying lips and all that can be clung to is the husk of what remains. 

Sometimes the acknowledgement of the silence is the victory for the sadistic intention, so tight lipped, Vladimir Makarov took the lack of words following the skirmish with Soap on the ground as a proof of this victory. 

Soap didn’t let it show, but he felt it in his knees, sinking into acceptance of the horror and he sank to his seat in bitter anger. He would not let Makarov have the satisfaction of being ignored, so he made a point of looking him in the eye as they made their way back to base, from which General Shepherd had informed them authorities were already awaiting their arrival to take Makarov off their hands. 

Halfway through the return trip, Ghost comes to take a seat next to him and Soap shifts an inch or two further away to allow himself to breathe. 

He’s aware of the motion beside him, Ghost clenching and unclenching his fist in Soap’s peripheral vision.

He’s surprised Ghost isn’t more visibly worked up by the situation, but Soap realises that idea might have come from a misjudgement of the man’s character on his part. Ghost was reserved and brash, but he was calculated, something Soap worried he fell terribly short on. 

“You’re a hard man to kill, Riley. My men tell me you’re dead on paper. Suppose it goes to show that even if you read between the lines, most of the story is left off the books.”

“You’ve got nothing to gain here, Makarov. You’ve lost. Throwing stones at us isn’t going to help your case,” Soap warns him harshly, but Ghost holds up a hand to silence him.

From out of the window, Soap can see them coming up on the base and the helicopter begins to turn in for landing. 

“No, let him talk. I wanna know what else kind of shit has been circulating.” 

“Only a fool lays all his cards on the table, but I will tell you this. Your system, your government is lying to you. They’re using you, tell you its for your country. But they’re all the same, your Captain,” Makarov nods to Price, “the General, they’ve got more skeletons in the closet than they’ll let on, just make sure you don’t become one of them.” 

“No one should be taking advice from a madman,” Price dismisses him. “And we’re coming up on your last stop before you won’t be seeing the sun for a long time, so you better take one long look at the world, because it's the last you’ll be seeing of it.”

The helicopter descended on the landing pad. 

A waiting group of armed men in uniforms stood close by and approached with urgency when the doors opened and Makarov was taken into official custody of the Kastovian government. 

The exchange happens in Russian and Soap struggles to follow along with it as they get out with Price after General Shepherd and the men escorting Makarov into the building, following behind at a respectable distance. 

Makarov is properly restrained and escorted off base to another facility in an armoured vehicle and Soap feels a strange emptiness settle over him as he watches them leave the premises. They’d gotten Makarov, but he cannot consider this a victory. “You did good today,” Price informs him a while later when they’re alone. “The outcome is far from what we hoped for, but we made sure he’ll never be able to do something like this again.” 

Burns arrives later with questions about Makarov’s arrest and the airport after the bomb squad had successfully taken care of the rest of the explosives on site at the stadium, but he’s got very little to say in return to Soap’s recollection of it. 

 

Finding he can’t manage to catch any sleep after an hour of tossing and turning, Soap supposes he should give up on sleep in general. 

He wants to reflect about the day, but his mind is cluttered with thoughts about the thousand of innocent lives lost in the carnage, its jarring to see those faces from the news, burned into his mind and superimposed over what the airport had looked like when they’d driven towards it just that morning, those people outside, saying goodbye to families, pressing kisses to cheeks with a promise of ‘see you soon’. Most of those people are crushed and buried under rubble and maybe even lost forever. The thought is sickening. 

Though it's futile and seems like a juvenile remedy to a problem that can’t be helped, he replays that moment on the flight out from the stadium over and over again, and in each instance, he pulls the trigger and Makarov is dead on the ground. He doesn’t listen to Price. 

Fuck. If only he hadn’t listened to Price back then. 

It wouldn’t have mattered though, he’d have felt just as guilty seeing it on the news, knowing he could have done something to help as he feels now, knowing that he’d been played for a fool. 

Lying back on the bed, Soap dips his hand under the hem of his shirt and pulls out the tangle of his dog tags with the cross over his chest. It dangles in the artificial heatless glow of the industrial strip light he’d neglected to turn off, clinking together as he holds it just a few centimetres from his face, skin warm and seeming to possess a life of its own. He clutches it all together over his heart and closes his eyes, trying to muster the words for a silent prayer through all the clutter of his mind. 

His mind jumps around, but it's sincere. He prays for the families he knows must be mourning their loved ones, for those in hospitals clinging to life, for the people who’d lost their lives today. He puts a conscious effort to word it understandably despite how utterly exhausted he is, even though he knows that God must already know what he has to say. 

Yes, he should probably stop swearing so much and he’s not proud of his history, but at least he’s trying. His hands are covered in the blood of people that despite their choices, God would have wanted to call his children and he’d killed them for material means. No matter how evil their actions, Soap had killed hundreds if not thousands of people over the years. 

It doesn’t matter how tainted the soul, blood is still blood. 

But he’s doing good with the darkness he’d been born with, the destruction he was always leaning more towards. He’d been entrusted with this attribute like a double edged sword he must use wisely and he reminds himself that he does it so that others can keep their hands clean. 

It's a noble thing to do, to sacrifice your own innocence for the sake of others. It's honourable. 

He can only lie there for so long before his skin itches for something other than the stillness of the stale room. Burns is knocked out on the bunk across from him and Soap gets up and leaves the room, turning off the light upon his exit. 

He decides fresh air might do him good and he takes his chance to slip out onto the roof to catch his breath and collect his thoughts. 

The night sky is almost completely obscured by the haziness of the smoke that had spread out from the epicentre of the airport, only letting in through pinpricks of blinking light from the stars. It takes Soap’s breath away for a moment. 

He hadn’t realised just how easily he could see the airport from the base, especially situated on the hill, overlooking the city. He can’t see all of Verdansk, but he can see enough to know how much the disaster has affected it.

He can hear the wailing of sirens and the dim flashing of red lights responding to the remainder of the disaster. 

Soap sighs heavily as he walks over to the edge of the roof, sinking down to his knees and scooting over to dangle his feet off the edge of the roof, he’s half startled out of the haze when his phone vibrates in his pocket. 

He debates answering the message later but goes to pull out his phone. 

Four unread messages. all from Elena. 

Elena: a guy came into work today and he looked almost exactly like you. It was sort of scary.

Elena: oh btw, you left your sweater at my house the other day in case you were looking for it. 

Elena: hey, how was your day?

Elena: Look, I understand if you’re busy and just don’t have the time to talk to me, but if you don’t want to see me anymore, I’d appreciate it if you told me. I can handle it. I really like you and I thought we had a genuinely good connection the other day, but I get it, the moment’s over and I was clearly reading the situation wrong. It seems like we went into it with two very different intentions and I just don’t think it's going to work. After everything that happened, I think I just need someone that’s present and I need some time to work on myself before I get into anything now. I’m sorry.

Well, fuck. Soap can’t be everywhere, he can’t fix everything, he can’t be there for everyone. Maybe he should’ve tried to respond sooner, but on top of today’s disaster, it stings. 

John: There's nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I don’t want to talk to you, really, I’ve just had a really long day. And I think you’re right, I don’t think this is going to work. I had a great time getting to know you but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now and things are very stressful here. I just have a lot of things to think of right now and I don’t think it's fair to drag you along with me.

It didn’t take very long for her to respond to him, quickly adding a heart emoji in response to his message before she wrote back. 

Elena: thank you for being honest with me. 

There was nothing more after that and Soap stared at the last message for a couple of moments, frowning at it as the screen darkened and died. He sighed heavily, shoving the phone back into his pocket, looking down at the cracked pavement two storeys below him, right to where they had parked coming into base just two days ago and how he couldn’t have ever imagined what was in store for him. 

“Just don’t fall, you’ll cause me paperwork.” 

The voice startled Soap to his core and he almost tipped forward by the sound of it, cursing as he stabilised himself again. 

He turned to find a small pinprick of light from where a dark clothed figure leaned against a wall not far from him. He hadn’t even recognised the smell of cigarette smoke, figuring it was the wind carrying the smoke from the explosion site. 

“Shit, Ghost, you scared me,” Soap laughed uneasily as the man approached him to stand by the railing. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says. Soap gets to his feet and Ghost holds out a half empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes in Soap’s direction, an olive branch. Soap isn’t sure he’ll take it. 

“I don’t smoke. It's a filthy habit.” 

Ghost rolled his eyes, sighing around his own cigarette as he plucked one from the pack, lit it and offered it again, now with a thin curl of silver smoke distending from its orange glow. It highlights the edges of the skeleton motif on his gloves and somehow, Soap knows he’ll carry a part of this day with him for days onwards, because the smell of that cigarette will burn into the fabric of his gloves. 

“I don’t smoke,” Soap insists again with a frown, but all Ghost does is take his hand –not roughly, but not gently either– and puts the thin cigarette between his fingers. 

“After a day like today, everybody smokes, Soap.” 

Soap hesitates with it for a moment, watching the glow eat away at the unburnt part of the cigarette and inching closer away from the ashen end before he gives in and raises it to his mouth for a long, much needed draw. 

He wishes he could wipe the smug look he just knows Ghost has under that mask off his face as he watches the action, knowing how easy it is to fall back into dormant muscle memory. 

“You don’t smoke, huh?” 

Soap pouts, not sure how much he wants to let the strange man in on his past, but he settles for something basic. “I don’t smoke anymore .” 

Ghost nods, whether it was meant to be mocking or genuine is something Soap’s ego can’t discern. “Right.” 

They stand there for a moment in the pseudo-silence, filled with the ambience of night sounds and distant sirens echoing through the ether and surrounding the two of them in a lamentous hum. 

“If it was up to me, I’d have let you kill him today.”

“You would?” Soap asks with genuine confusion. 

“I would. Price doesn’t always think of it that way, but the world’s better off without having scum like him wasting space, even if he’s behind bars.”

Ahead, somewhere from out of the darkness, the glow of the burning airport stood out, a beacon of hellish light that made Soap’s skin crawl. They’re far away and the attack was hours ago, but it lingers on his skin like an itch he can’t run away from. 

He leans on the cigarette for comfort, and just a little, the presence of the taller man beside him helps to ease the loneliness of feeling like one tremendous failure. 

“Don’t think too hard about it Soap, it’ll make your hair fall out and we certainly can’t have that with that illustrious haircut of yours.” 

Soap jerked his head around so fast, he could’ve almost sworn Ghost startled just a little. 

“Oh you’re one to talk about appearances with that halloween costume shite you’ve got going on.” 

It takes two seconds for Soap to realise he’d chosen the wrong option. He’d overstepped one of the rules Price had very clearly set out for him. No questions about his appearance. 

To his surprise, Ghost just gives him a bit of a laugh, albeit a bit of a snide one. “To each their own, but I’m serious, don’t beat yourself up about what happened today, there’s no use in dwelling on it.”

Soap frowns. “How am I not supposed to dwell on it? If we hadn’t responded to the attack on the stadium, if you and Shepherd hadn’t followed after us, we would have died there too,” he gestures vaguely out at the glow of the still smouldering heap of rubble. 

“That’s just the way of the world, Soap. No one gets into this job thinking you’ll walk away with a bruise or a cut you can just slap a plaster over. People die, that’s how it works. We just happen to see more of it because of what we do. We are not entitled to living longer or dying later or easier because we’re supposed to be heroes. We could have died today, but what does it actually matter in the grand scheme of things.” 

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, Lt,” Soap says dryly, bringing the cigarette to his mouth again. In the corner of his eye, he can see Ghost do the same. 

“Maybe I’ve just been screwed over by the system that’s supposed to keep me alive more than I’ve been saved by it.” 

Soap shrugged, but it didn’t sit right with him, the idea that death was just an inevitable fact of life. He’s too stubborn to believe it. For someone who’d spent more than half his waking life trying to change the hand he’d been dealt when he was born to broke college student parents and the expectation to be utterly average, he didn’t take kindly to the notion of just accepting things he can’t change, even if it drives him up the wall. 

There’s a lot of other, more personal questions he wants to ask the man instead, but he settles for something safer. 

“How do you deal with it? Stuff like today?” 

“I’m not the person you should be asking for advice, Soap,” Ghost says with a hint of surprise. “That’s more Price’s thing.” 

Soap turned to face him, trying to analyse what little he could see of his face where the mask was pulled up just high enough for him to smoke. He can just about see the curve of his lip around the cigarette and the edge of what seemed to be a jagged scar extending from the corner of his mouth. 

Just as quickly as Soap had seen it, he lowered the cigarette, holding the smoke for a moment before he released it in a slow exhale. 

“I’m not asking for advice, I’m asking how you cope.” 

“I keep going. Sometimes the only way to cope is to endure.” 

The silence that followed thereafter was more comfortable, more settled. Soap could begin to see why Price had told him Ghost was an acquired taste. For all his cold facade, he was really just a man with a grumpy disposition. Maybe even one with a personality outside of work, but Soap struggles to comprehend what that might be. 

Reminded of work and everything they’d discussed in the wake of the attack, Soap frowned as he took another drag from the cigarette, now on its last breath.

“What do you think ended up happening to Price’s informant?” 

Ghost scoffed, stubbing out his own cigarette against the rail and crushing the rest under his boot for good measure. “Fuck if I know.” 

Soap shook his head, feeling himself getting riled up just at the thought of it. “Bet you the arse is sitting somewhere comfortable, getting piss drunk, laughing at the news.” 

Ghost shrugs. “Reckon you may be right about that one, sergeant.” 

“Wherever he is, I hope karma comes back to get him good.”

 

MOSCOW 

 

The man convulsed with a cry of pain as another shock of electricity surged through him, curling in a distortion of twitching muscles through the point where the cattle prod made contact with his bare, singed back and burned another snakebite pattern onto what remained of the undamaged skin. 

The small, uninsulated barn stank of singed hair and burning flesh, all emanating from a centre point where a young man, beaten and tortured beyond recognition, was bound to a bloodied kitchen chair. 

He shivered and twitched from the aftershock of electricity under the glaring warm buzzing of a bare filament bulb, fixed to the rafters above his head. 

Six other men, still residually wearing police uniforms and paramedic overalls, were gathered around him in a semicircle. 

The one in front of him, Andrei Nolan, was not holding the cattle prod. His hands were clean of blood, though there was a light spatter across the front of his body from his earlier beating, inflicted by the man now standing behind the chair, resting a gloved hand dutifully on the wooden backrest, waiting for further instruction. 

“I’m not going to say I’m surprised, Dmitri. But I expected better from someone like you,” Andrei says with mock pity, crouching down to find the swollen eyes of the young man. A trickle of pinkish saliva traced down his trembling lip and dripped to the cold floor by his bare feet. 

“Not even twenty with a whole life ahead of him. You could’ve gone and married that pretty young thing you’re hiding in the city. Could have fathered children to carry that name since the anti-communist rats snuffed out the rest of your Soviet supporter family and executed them like dogs, but your bloodline will end here because you wanted to be a bootlicker.” 

Dmitri flinched as Andrei pressed a calloused thumb into the burn on his inner thigh, drawing out a pained noise. He leaned away from the hand, but stripped naked and bound, there was little he could do to avoid the pain of Andrei’s finger scratching open the blistered skin and causing it to bleed again. 

Even Yuri, the man that had inflicted the burn waiting behind him with bated breath, began to feel nauseated at the sight of his own handiwork, but it did not show. He kept his expression even and serious. 

Andrei was a dangerous man and Yuri knows better than to cross him when he’s already angry. Andrei might think of Dmitri as a bootlicker, but he was just as much the same to Makarov. Still, Yuri stood by, idle, complacent. The cattle prod in his other hand was heavy and had more weight to it than it should have had. 

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Andrei asked. 

Mustering the last of his strength, Dmitri lifted his swollen face to look Andrei dead in the eye and spoke around a mouthful of busted teeth. 

“Preserving innocent lives… is not… the same… as bootlicking.” He threw in as much venom as he could into the words, punctuating it by spitting blood and phlegm into Andrei’s face, mere centimetres away from him. The man recoiled with a curse and reacted with a harsh backhanded smack to his already busted face. Andrei wiped at his face with the edge of his sleeve. 

“It would’ve been better for you if you begged for mercy,” he says, getting to his feet and moving a safer distance away. 

“Fucker thinks he’s Pavlik Morozov,” one of the other men laughs, shaking his head pitifully and the others join in. “But by all means if he wants to die a young hero, we give him his martyr fantasy,” another says. 

 Yuri feels himself stiffen. He agreed to rough up the kid, already uncomfortable at the thought of hurting him to teach him a lesson. He gave in when the Inner Circle wanted to use his house to lay low after that afternoon's situation with Makarov’s arrest, but he did not consent to killing a man that had seen him as a mentor. He’d practically fathered him from the age of fifteen when his parents were killed. 

“Don’t be so hasty, Pyotr,” Andrei scolded him. “Now that Makarov is in federal custody, we must make extra sure not to lose his sentiments to our own vision. We must be patient.” 

“We still have Zakhaev,” the first man suggests and Andrei turns to him, unimpressed. 

“Zakhaev is a puppet on a string. He knows what Makarov wants and he’ll be better in executing that vision than any other of his affiliates, but we must not forget that though Zakhaev was Makarov’s predecessor, he still had a different vision for Russia.” 

“It's better than letting the cause die off.” 

“Makarov has planned for this. The system has not failed us. All the more to show that this little stunt of yours has meant nothing,” Andrei directs his attention back to Dmitri, kicking his bare foot roughly. 

“But seeing as this stint didn’t play out as you planned and you have nothing meaningful to say, perhaps you shouldn’t be able to say anything at all.” 

Yuri frowned, unsure where this was going as Andrei addressed one of the men beside him. “Go to the van and fetch the white jug in the back. Should be under the spare uniforms. Don’t let the woman in the main house see you.” 

Andrei tossed his keys to the man. 

“What are you planning to do to him?” Yuri asks, now visibly becoming unnerved. 

“Nothing extravagant.”

“I am not going to kill him with my wife and child barely two hundred metres away,” he said sternly and Andrei scoffed. 

“He won’t die immediately. I’m counting on the secondary complications to do that. Keeps the hands clean and the conscience clear.” 

“You fucking murderer,” Dmitri says as loud as he was able, struggling against his restraints. “All of you will burn in hell.” 

“At least you’ll be there to welcome us,” Andrei says dryly. 

They all turned in tandem to face the creaking of the barn door behind them, just a little way away, the man how having returned and holding up a heavy, half-empty bottle that at first sight seemed to be some sort of laundry detergent, but Yuri’s heart dropped through the floor as he realised exactly what it was. 

“You can’t be serious– that’s insane,” he stammers as the man hands off the bottle to  Andrei, now making a play to thoroughly check the label. 

“Thirty-seven percent hydrochloric acid. A lower concentration is an irritant to the skin, but undiluted, it’ll corrode right through to the flesh. I wonder what it’ll do to those vocal cords of yours.” 

He roughly shoves the bottle in Yuri’s direction. “If you would do the honours.” 

“I am not going to pour hydrochloric acid down his throat.” 

“You’re not really in a position to negotiate here. It would be a shame if I were to show your little girl what her daddy is really capable of.” 

“You leave my family out of this,” Yuri warned. 

“Then you wouldn’t mind teaching the rat here a lesson?” 

Gritting his teeth and avoiding eye contact with a panicked Dmitri, Yuri took the bottle from Andrei and slowly unscrewed the cap. It looks just like water. 

 He moved over to Dmitri with much trepidation. 

“Don’t fucking come close to me– you asshole, I thought I could trust you–” he thrashes, scooting the chair back and lurches back with so much force, the chair tips and he crashes to the floor. He cries out in more pain as he takes his weight on his bound arms behind his back, no doubt dislocating his shoulder in the process. He’s still thrashing and crying out as Yuri approaches him.

He freezes, standing there with the open bottle, not sure what to do now. 

“Dinner’s almost ready Yuri, your wife might come out and fetch us soon. You better get a move on.” 

Torn between what he knows is right and the very real possibility that his family could walk in and see what he had done, he kneeled down by the upturned chair and reached for Dmitri’s face, still trying to move away from him. 

“I’ll fucking bite your finger off! Don’t touch me!” 

“Someone hold him still,” Andrei orders and one of the men dutifully comes over to roughly yank him by his hair into a flat position against the dirty floor, tugging his mouth open with a gloved finger. 

“I won’t be able to hold him like this for long,” the man says plainly, clearly struggling to hold him still but Yuri didn’t move. 

“I can’t.” 

“This isn’t a choice,” Andrei says sharply. 

“I let you stay in my house, share my food with you. I am not getting blood on my hands in my own house.” 

Andrei’s eyes narrowed at him, but he stepped forward nonetheless, taking the bottle from Yuri’s hands and knocking him out of the way. 

“I’m starting to question your loyalty, Yuri.” 

Yuri ignores him, pushing past the five other guys to leave the barn as soon as possible. He doesn't get out before the screaming starts, wet choking around the sound. 

He leaves the barn with his head in his hands. He can still hear him, now, halfway to the house. 

Yuri thinks he might continue to hear that scream five, six years down the line. 

It's not completely stopped by the time he reaches the kitchen and finds his wife standing there over the simmering pot on the stove, shoulders stiff and mouth pressed into a tight white line as she stirs the mix once more and forcefully knocks the extra broth from her spoon on the lip of the pot, clearly demonstrating her discontent while refusing to meet her husband’s gaze. 

“Anya–” 

“Don’t even begin,” she warns sharply. She doesn’t look at him, instead, shutting off the stove and looking out at the uneven plain of dying grass between the house and the barn that had now gone eerily quiet and empty in the symphony of night crickets. 

The barn door opens and five out of the six men still in the room step out and begin making their way over to the house. In the background against the chattering of the TV, Yuri can hear the little girl in the living room, playing with the scatter of toys on the carpet and giggling, blissfully unaware of the conversation unfolding in the kitchen and the horror on the other side of the lawn. 

He turns back to his wife, unsure of what to think, but she gives him something to hold onto. “We’ll talk about it later.” 

She gets him to set the table, clearing all the leftover clutter from the time he’d been away. He’s missed so much over the past few years in Makarov’s ranks, he’s hardly been around to see his child growing up. Still, she draws him in her wobbly doodles of the family. 

He gathers all the drawings together in a stack and goes to shove it in one of the cupboards in the living room, ruffling the kid’s hair as she doesn’t even bother to look away from the TV as he is passing–

“What happened to your hand?” 

Yuri goes back to the kitchen when he hears Anya’s concerned voice, now looking down at Andrei’s freshly bandaged arm as she began ladling soup into the bowls on the counter. 

“Cleaning accident,” he laughs it off, making eye contact with Yuri. “Was struggling with a tough stain that didn’t want to go out without a fight, but it gave in eventually.” 

Dinner after that was painfully quiet, interspersed with a few crude jokes and inappropriate glances in Anya’s direction every now and again when she went to fetch something from a cupboard that one of the men would order her around for, and though Yuri was having none of it, there was little he could do about the situation while being on such thin ice with Andrei and the others already. 

But he knows now, with how deep he’s getting into this, with the incident from earlier that day on the news, his furious wife and his oblivious daughter in the living room, that he has to make a plan to dig himself out of this hole. 

It's only later that evening, when the other men had retired to the spare bedrooms and guest cottage that came with the old farmhouse, that Yuri found his wife in their upstairs bedroom, gathering a bundle of stuffed animals into her arms and throwing it on her side of the bed. 

Their en suite bathroom door was closed and he can hear the faucet of the bathtub running. 

“I’m having Nadya sleep here tonight. I’m too worried about leaving her alone with them,” She informs in a hushed voice, fluffing up one of the pillows and arranging the stuffed animals accordingly. 

“I’m sorry about everything,” he begins to say but she holds up a hand to silence him, still too angry to give him the time of day. 

“Save it. People make mistakes. I didn’t marry you to sit at home alone for half of my life wishing you were here to see your child growing up, I didn’t marry to sleep in an empty bed and wander around in an empty house until the next thing I know is that my husband’s on the news because he was part of a terrorist attack on an airport. I made that mistake, and I have to live with that, but I swear on my mother’s grave, Yuri, you bring these people into my house again, and I divorce you, for real this time. So either, I go back to Kastovia to live with my family, and you forfeit your rights as a father, or you come up with a plan.”

[honeydjarin]

TO THE BONE PART II

DIN DJARIN X READER

Crowds part for the Mandalorian, eyes averted, a constant path standing clear before him even in the busiest places. By the time you realize exactly why his kind is so feared, it’s too late for you. Your silence just might be your downfall.

warnings: fem!reader, soulmates, non-consensual drug use, Dr. Pershing conducts tests on unwilling subjects, canon typical violence

word count: 6,800

a/n: Thank you so much for all of the kind feedback on the first part of this series! I’m so excited to continue this journey together.

I have several parts written, and hope to post every two weeks. That may change towards the end depending on how long it takes to get the end written.

EDIT: reposting because the previous version wasn’t showing up in the tags

SERIES MASTERLIST || MASTERLIST || AO3

It’s been a while since you were last in hyperspace. You’ve forgotten the strength of the initial jump, the atmospheric turbulence transitioning into something much smoother. You’ve forgotten the lurching in your stomach as your body tries to adjust to going far faster than should be possible for a human.

If you don’t think about why you’re traveling, or who is keeping you company during the journey, you just might find this jump through hyperspace peaceful. There are only the stars streaking by around you, clear of your path as you hurtle along the various hyperlanes throughout the galaxy. 

Traveling with the Mandalorian is even quieter than most of your journeys through the galaxy have been. The starliners were always busy, loud, and often ran late, as is to be expected from any sort of public transportation hub. But when you left home to travel the galaxy, the commercial ships had been the only way for you to see new star systems, or at least the only way that wouldn’t put you at risk of having a bounty on your head. The passenger liners always served your purpose despite the constant noise of those also seeking to planet hop. 

You could get a flight at a reasonable cost, and travel between most of the well settled planets regardless of where they were in the galaxy. Even the Outer Rim has its fair share of ports, constantly shutting people for work or trade between planets, or even just for the sake of sightseeing. You could pretend you were running towards a new future for yourself, one that didn’t include the Force, unchanging destinies, or bounty hunters. You could pretend that it wasn’t really your home that you were running from, or that you weren’t really just trying to escape from yourself.    

Even later, when the future you had fought so hard against began to pass, your fate sealed because of the skills your mother had taught you instead of letting your gifts fade to nothing, when you became a target, there was constant commotion in the starships. Passenger liners were no longer a safe way for you to travel, and the smaller, privately owned ships rang out with a different type of noise. Too much sabacc, too much alcohol, too much money lost. These things always led to raised voices and stray blaster fire. 

You felt safer there than you do now. Each moment the words on your forearm weren’t spoken was a promise that you would survive at least one more day.   

The Mandalorian’s starship isn’t like those other transports. It’s quiet, near silent, more so than the scarcely populated Arvala-7. This is the quietest journey across the galaxy you’ve ever been on. There is no conversation, no threats, no blaster fire or raucous laughter. Just a single warning. 

“Don’t touch this,” the Mandalorian said as he locked up his extensive arsenal of weapons upon your entry onto the ship. You doubt you could find a way to crack open the door even if you wanted to. Not without the Force. Then he herded you towards a short ladder, one that reaches up to a second level above, before undoing the restraints just long enough to reattach them to a rung just below the height of your chest. It was high enough to be uncomfortable but low enough that you wouldn’t risk losing feeling in your arms. The action was just more insurance that you won't touch his stuff, it seemed. He left you there alone in the hull and took the still unconscious child up the ladder with him. At least he didn��t shut the door to the cockpit behind him. 

Now, you’re left to wonder if you’ll spend the whole journey like this. 

You almost think he forgot about you. or he finally decided you’re not a flight risk. He has you trapped on his ship with nowhere to possibly run. He only needs to worry about what you might do to the starship itself. 

He doesn’t come back down from the cockpit, even when he clearly has the ship on autopilot. You stretch back as far as you can and watch from below as he turns towards the pram floating beside him, rocking it gently a few times. Grogu must still be asleep. It is a sweet gesture, or it would be, if the hunter wasn’t still planning on turning you both in to whoever the latest client is. It is only then, after he finishes checking on the kid, that he climbs back down the ladder from the cockpit to check on you again.

He removes your binders completely and your arms fall instantly to your sides, not knowing what else to do with them. The Mandalorian makes no indication of wanting to put the restraints back on you. He doesn’t speak, and doesn't show you any further signs of acknowledgement. He just steps back and climbs up the ladder to the cockpit once more. 

It’s too quiet in the Mandalorian’s ship, the silence stretching on from the moment he released you from the restraints. With no chatter, no attempt by the armored man to make you comfortable, no sign of where it is he’s taking you, the silence settles like a heavy weight that pulls you into the floor more firmly than the ship’s artificial gravity. It’s suffocating.  

The Mandalorian intends to hand you off to the client, take his reward, and then forget about you and the child. You know you’re just a job to him, even if he is your soulmate. So you intend to leave as much of an impression as you can. He only told you not to touch where he stores his weapons. He didn’t say anything about the rest of the starship, so you can touch everything else… right? 

You cast a lingering glance towards the carbonite freezer. There are no bodies that you know of on the ship right now, but you’re certain the bounty hunter is more than willing to use it on a quarry. Would he freeze you if he caught you touching his things? 

If he needs you alive, then you doubt it’s a risk he is willing to take. Not when 60% of those put in carbonite don’t survive the process, and the ones that do often face other side effects such as hibernation sickness and temporary blindness. Still, you'll just have to be careful in your meddling. 

As if he can sense your intentions to snoop, the Mandalorian returns for you.

“Come into the cockpit,” he states, leaving no room for argument. 

He helps you to struggle up the ladder, your arms half numb from being restricted, just to make sure you don’t fall and crack your head open, before he makes you sit in one of the remaining unoccupied seats of the cockpit. Your hands remain free, the Mandalorian considering you to not be a threat—it’s almost pitiful. His gaze holds steady on the galaxy before him, trusting that you couldn’t hurt him even if you tried. He still doesn’t speak to you, and you're not really sure if he is comfortable in the silence or not. You are once again reminded that he is most likely used to being completely alone while traveling through the galaxy. 

It’s a thought that almost makes you sad.   

—☾—

He brings you to another desert planet, one you’ve never been to before and really don’t want to be on now. 

It’s more populated than Arvala-7, the entire population of the previous planet likely not even the equivalent of half the faces you see milling about before you here, especially now that the Niktos no longer have control of the bunker. 

There were no towns on Arvala-7, just some farms, some Jawas, and the hideout, but it didn’t feel gloomy there, even when you were trapped in the bunker walls. The sun would always filter through the slatted windows—they were too small to climb through but just enough to give you a glimpse outside the walls and remind you of the galaxy beyond the well guarded building. The sunlight would glint on the dust particles and show you how they danced through the air, almost as if they were alive. 

Here, everything is dark. The earth is black, burned from the same magma that created it, the sky turned grey with the ever smoldering cinders of the planet. It looks as though a raging storm is coming, but the lack of moisture in the air indicates otherwise. 

You can taste the planet burning on your tongue. Do the people around you taste it too? Or has everyone here grown used to the acrid ash filling their lungs? The Mandalorian pulling you once more by the restraints down the ramp of his ship doesn’t seem to notice. The filter in his helmet keeps all impurities in the air out of his body, just another form of armor against any adversary he might face. 

The docking area, not so much a bay as an expanse of flat land outside of the town limits, has several worn down starships settled in it, the old yellow paint detailing on the Mandalorian’s ship being one of the only things that makes it stand out from the other docked ships. The hunter leads you through the bustling shipyard and pulls you directly to the main street in the town. 

The town’s entrance is framed by a giant stone archway made from the same grey material as everything else around you. The top is almost more square than round, and crumbling from age in different parts. It is still magnificent despite its weathering. The structure towers above everything around it, no building in the town coming close to the height of the arch. 

You stumble slightly as you gawk, too busy paying attention to what lies above you than what rests on the ground before you. You fail to see the uneven dip of the unpaved path, and the toe of your boot catches on the solid earth. The Mandalorian’s grip on you is the only thing that prevents you from tumbling to your knees. 

“Keep up,” he demands, his tone giving away his clear irritation despite the lack of change in his body language. But he still pauses, gives you just a moment to get your feet back under you, before he continues into the town once more. It’s another moment resembling kindness, even if it’s over in a flash. He returns to pulling you forward through the threshold, Grogu floating by your side.

While the street around you is wide, it feels as though the edges are pressing into you, the walls growing closer as the number of sentient lifeforms increases. All around you are vendors stationed at various market stalls—the smell and smoke of cooking food wafts your way from many of the stands, the scents barely stronger than the natural smell of the planet. Groups and individuals of all species are shouting and laughing, some stopping at the stalls while others push through the crowd, heading to some other destination. The commotion in this place is the complete antithesis of the last few days spent on the Mandalorian’s starship. 

The child watches from his spot close by your side, curious about the new location. He doesn’t know that soon your safety will not be guaranteed. He coos slightly each time you’re hit with a new smell, reaching a clawed hand out towards whatever food catches his interest. Even though he ate a ration bar not long ago, the kid is hungry once more. 

In other circumstances you would like to stop and look at the different stands. You would find some real food for the kid to eat, making sure he ate slowly so as not to upset his stomach, as he is prone to do. But the rations have all of the nutrients he needs, and you don’t have that kind of freedom.    

Despite the close press of the crowd, no one jostles into you, even when many keep their eyes away from your form, gazes directed instead at the Mandalorian in front of you. It’s obvious that the majority of those wandering the streets here are not the most law-abiding of people, if the number of blasters and vibroblades you see looped around belts and strapped to thighs is any indication of their character. 

The Republic has little control over the planets in the Outer Rim, creating the perfect breeding ground for those living outside the law, the distance from the rest of the galaxy offering a sense of freedom that often goes too far beyond the line of what’s considered moral by most. But even here the crowd parts for the Mandalorian to pass through. You and The Child receive little attention compared to the armored man directly in front of you. 

The Mandalorian shows no sign that the staring bothers him. He hardly changes his trajectory as he pulls you through the market, the dark visor of his helmet never wavering from the path in front of him. 

“This way,” he grunts, tugging you in a new direction without any further warning. Your new course takes you down an alley. 

There are far fewer people here than there were on the main street. Somehow all the clamor and commotion fades away almost immediately, leaving nothing but the rising fear behind. It bubbles in your gut and turns your stomach sour. There is nothing to distract yourself with now. Nothing but the dull reflection of the churning firmament off the Mandalorian’s helmet, and the dented cuirass—which no longer looks bloodied, the paint instead like rust, in the grey haze of this planet—that has lost almost all of its integrity since he first began dragging you with him from the bunker. 

You wish you could beg, or cry, or even just speak to him. You should do something to stop this, anything to keep him from turning you and the child in for the bounty. If you could just talk to him things could be so different. But you’ve spent your whole life building up resentment for the man, and something that looks like compassion doesn’t mean it is kindness.

 He could still be cruel, and speaking to him may lead to a far worse outcome than you’re already facing. You’ve spent your whole life determining his character without even meeting him and now you can’t bring yourself to reveal the truth. You wish you weren’t so stubborn. 

You wish stubbornness didn’t feel so much like fear. 

The hunter drags you down several other streets and alleys, twisting and turning along the town’s winding passage ways, up and down short flights of stairs until you are too lost to even think of making your way back to the main street—not that doing so would provide any real safety, not when a Mandalorian is after you.

Finally, he brings you to a halt in front of a nondescript door in the back of an alley. He lifts his free hand up to knock on the door, the sound of his fist against metal reverberating off the walls inside in a dead and hollow clang. 

For a moment nothing happens, and you almost think the Mandalorian managed to get lost in the streets himself. Then, a camera the shape of an eye stalk extends from a hatch beside the door, speaking robotically in a language you don’t recognize but must mean something to the Mandalorian. He holds something up in front of the camera, receiving a response in that same unknown language, before the camera disappears in the hatch once more. 

The door hisses open slowly, a cool gust of air breathing against your face, raising goosebumps on your flesh. What lies behind the steel barricade is enough to make your blood run cold. 

The helmets that stare back at you aren’t supposed to exist anymore—at least, not attached to a body. They shouldn’t adorn walking, talking, living beings. But the ghostly figures clad in cheap white armor are clearly alive, and when you turn to look at the man who brought you here, the T of his visor that had seemed so neutral to you before begins to look more terrifying by the second. Suddenly you understand why crowds part around him, why people grow silent and avert their eyes in his presence, or keep their stare trained on him, ensuring that they are not the ones he is after. 

The ghosts usher the three of you into the hall behind the door, and as it slides shut once more you are confronted with the fact that you wasted any chance you had to run. You should have tried harder, fought tooth and nail to protect the child and yourself. Your knowledge of your connection to the Mandalorian allowed you to grow complacent during the journey here, but he doesn’t have the same knowledge as you. He has no reason to change his routine when he is oblivious to the truth. 

You hate him even more for his unwilling ignorance. 

One of the stormtroopers grabs onto the edge of Grogu’s pram, rocking it harshly. You want to scream at him to let go, to get away from the kid, but you can’t. Only now your silence isn’t a choice, it’s a product of fear. Even if you tried to open your mouth to speak, no words would make it past the thick shard of terror sinking down your throat—but you don’t have to speak. The Mandalorian interjects first, his tone sharp enough to send a chill up your spine.

“Easy with that,” he states, visor trained on the trooper. For just the smallest moment you feel hope, not enough to fill you up, to make your chest swell and your mind swarm with thoughts of escape, but just a little flicker. It’s another act of not quite kindness. A small part of you can’t help but think that maybe he won’t leave you here, even if you know there is no reason for him to take you away from this place. He intends to collect on the bounty regardless of your desires, regardless of the fact that you have done nothing to warrant this fate.  

You know It’s a silly thought as soon as you see the client. 

He’s an ex imperial officer. Rather, he should be ex imperial, but the troopers around you and the clear command he holds is evidence that despite the fall of the Empire, the Empire is not truly dead, and now you and the kid are just two more not quite Jedi in their hands. 

If your hands were free, everyone in the room would be tossed aside already, mere rag dolls when confronted with an energy far greater than any individual can ever truly comprehend, but the Force acts as an extension of your body, one you can’t access when your own hands hang uselessly in front of you, bound by your hips. 

You can’t think, can’t breathe. The men around you are talking but you can barely process what they’re saying. All you can do is watch as the kid is passed around, concerned eyes blinking up at you, and then at the Mandalorian. The hunter keeps his own gaze angled towards the client. 

“Yes, very healthy,” you hear someone say, but the words do not fully process in your mind. Suddenly, there is a hand grasping your jaw, fingers digging into the flesh of your cheeks like talons, forcing you back into the present. Cold eyes bear down on your own, lips pulling taught over teeth in a sharp grin. 

This is what you’ve always been destined for.

A light shines at you, bathing your skin in a red glow, scanning for something. Whatever it is that the sensors pick up only makes the officer’s grin grow wider. He finally releases you from his grasp.  

“She will do well,” the officer claims, his tone carrying barely suppressed excitement that sends a shiver down your spine. 

Beside you, Grogu is crying. A man with wide, round glasses begins to pull you and the kid along behind him, heading towards a door away from the officer and the Mandalorian. You can’t bring yourself to turn back as the two discuss the hunter’s payment. 

You can’t let the Mandalorian see how the air has become too thick for you to breathe with ease, filling your lungs but providing no relief. You must hide the way your eyes have finally blurred with the tears you managed to keep at bay until this moment. And you cannot bring yourself to look at the man who the Force determined to be more entangled with you than anyone else in this vast galaxy. You don’t want to see him again.  

Even without turning, you can feel his eyes on you, burning as the spectacled man guides you and the child through the door and deeper into the building.

Suddenly you are glad for your silence. You are grateful for the whispers and less than subtle looks that led to you learning to always hide your mark, because a life with a man who would leave you in the hands of the Empire is not a life you want to live.      

—☾—

It appears that the scan was just the first test. The spectacled man tells you as much. He tells you his name is Dr. Pershing. He tells you that he is the one who will be conducting the tests, and that there will be many more to follow. 

“This will be much easier if you cooperate,” he says. “Otherwise you will be made to comply.”

He guides you to sit on a metal table, the chill of its surface immediately seeping through the thin layer of your clothes. The pram floats silently beside the doctor. Grogu’s large ears are lowered against the sides of his head, but at least he’s no longer crying. 

The tests begin simply. Pershing asks questions that you choose not to answer and that Grogu is unable to answer. Instead of responding, you look around the room, taking in the sterile smell and excessively white walls. It reminds you of a medical facility with big machines, tables, and tubes laid throughout the room. Two stormtroopers remain by the door, watching silently. This is not a place you want to be. You would rather be back with the Niktos. 

“When did you first realize you could do things others could not?” 

“Did you have training that fostered your connection with the Force?”

“Have you ever been tested for your Midi-chlorian count?” 

Your lack of cooperation becomes a growing frustration for the doctor as he continues to ask you more questions. A crease forms between his dark brows, a slight frown tugging at his lips, growing deeper each time you ignore him. He looks up from the holopad he was likely intending to take notes on before he realized you don’t plan on speaking, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose once more before speaking directly to you. 

“May I remind you that your cooperation will make this whole process run much smoother,” he nearly hisses. But there is something more than frustration in his expression, despite the sharp tone of his words. Something like fear seems to flash in his eyes, even if it is only for a brief moment. 

“You may,” you state, tone flat, hiding the storm of your emotions, “but it will not change anything.” 

Dr. Pershing huffs out a sigh before setting the holopad back on a table. 

“Then I will move forward with the other tests,” he says, stepping towards you. He attempts to guide you to lay back on the table, his brow creasing in concentration as he does, but you don’t budge.   

Suddenly, there are more hands on you, pushing you down, the cold metal of the table causing your muscles to spasm in a desperate attempt to avoid contact with the uncomfortable material. The Mandalorian’s binders were removed from your wrists sometime during your initial meeting with the Imperial officer (despite the clarity of the faces around you, you can’t seem to remember anyone removing your restraints), only to be replaced with something less permanent but somehow more painful. These temporary binders are removed now, but before you can relish in the freedom of your hands and attempt to sooth what you’re certain is bruising along your wrists, your arms are once again being restrained. 

Grogu ends up on a similar table. It’s more of a machine really, and you begin to panic.

“Don’t hurt him. Please,” you beg. 

“I will do what I can for the child, but results will be expected,” Pershing states, his words sounding almost truthful, and you hope it’s not some sick sort of mind game, something he’s saying solely to obtain your compliance.  

When he goes to draw blood from Grogu you fight to get to the child, pulling against your restraints even though doing so agitates the already sensitive skin and risks further damage to your flesh. The troopers are there to make sure that your struggle doesn’t amount to anything, and the Doctor is able to collect the blood sample that he needs. 

He returns to your side to collect a sample from you as well, even while you continue to struggle as much as possible. There is not much room to move between the restraints and the stormtroopers holding you down. Pershing begins to unravel the fabric wrapped around your arm. The cloth has, thus far, protected your veins and, more importantly, your soulmark, from the doctor. He starts from the top, quickly revealing the skin of your elbow.  

“Stop!” you beg. “Please don’t!” You’re not sure if he’s listening, if he takes some sort of mercy, or if he just doesn’t understand the real reason why you are pleading with him, but he unravels the fabric only enough that the second half of your mark is exposed. 

I can bring you in cold. 

From the moment you met the Mandalorian, your survival hasn’t been guaranteed. If the officer didn’t care if you were dead before, he sure doesn’t care if you survive what’s coming next.     

It quickly becomes apparent that Dr. Pershing doesn’t care about the mark, just the tests, which require him to collect your blood in order to conduct them. You continue to struggle, but it doesn’t stop the doctor from reaching his goal. 

The site where the needle enters your skin will surely form a mark because of your wriggling, another instance of your own foolish actions resulting in more pain than necessary. The doctor’s patience seems to finally reach its limit. 

“I told you this would be easier if you cooperate,” he states, setting the blood sample aside before grabbing something else from his table. “One way or another you will comply.”

You feel another prick, followed by a chilling numbness that spreads from the crease of your elbow out towards the tips of your fingers and towards your chest, the sensation rapidly extending to the rest of your body. Your mind numbs with it, growing foggy and distant. For just a moment longer you think about escape, but thoughts are growing more fleeting by the second. 

It becomes impossible to keep track of what is happening. Grogu is quiet beside you, the Doctor continues to flit around the two of you. Time passes but you're not sure if it’s mere moments or entire hours.

The lights go out, a quick flicker. Then another begins flashing above the door. 

People rush around you. The child lays still beside you, looking around but remaining quiet.

The room is empty. 

Time still passes.   

—☾—

Sounds travel to you slowly. They are clouded and warped, as if they are passing through thick fog on a cold night, ringing out from directions that shouldn’t possibly be able to produce them. In the distance, or what seems to be the distance but really could be anywhere around you, blaster fire screeches out. The high pitched whine barely registers in your sluggish mind. It isn’t in the room and that’s all that matters. 

There are calls for action, screams of pain and shouts of fear, more blaster fire. 

Beside you Grogu remains still, dark eyes blinking towards you, unafraid. You blink back at him, your own eyes struggling to open again once they close. Everything is just so heavy. 

The door slides open with a hiss, and for just a moment all of the noise sounds just a little closer. It’s all still clouded, but the commotion is not such a distant thing even if it still doesn’t seem real. A figure clad in silver armor steps through the door, reflecting the swirling red light of the lab in the same way every other surface around you flickers and shines, a warning. 

It’s your Mandalorian.

As soon as the door seals behind him he rushes over to you. You can’t help but stare at his new armor—this is what your bounty was worth. More shouting comes from beyond the door and your eyes roll back in its direction, taking a while to finally reach their destination. No one else enters the room.    

“Hey. Hey!” your Mandalorian says, lightly tapping your cheek until your eyes return to him. “What did they do to you?”

You can barely keep your eyes on him, your vision constantly being drawn to different things—like the child cooing next to you, or the way the flashing light reflects off the silver of the Mandalorian’s new beskar armor (real beskar, durable and rare). When you fail to respond, he begins to tug on the restraints closest to him.  

Through the cloud of your mind you are aware of just one thing. You need to hide your soulmark from him. He cannot see the words he said to you scrawled across your forearm in sharp Aurebesh. You twist your arm in your restraint, doing your best to try not to think about just how heavy your muscles feel, or how much your arm aches, as you shift your soulmark so it angles towards the table. You are grateful the hunter occupies himself with the other arm first, working quickly while trying not to hurt you.  

He rips away your restraints with ease, and a small part of you wonders, if you had your full strength, could you have gotten out on your own? But the thought doesn’t linger, your mind unable to focus on anything for longer than a moment.

The Mandalorian turns from you to The Child, setting him free as well. You take the opportunity to rewrap your arm, covering your soulmark once more. It’s a sloppy process, one that is difficult to complete with the weight of your muscles and ache of your wrists. Your fingers seem to have as much function as they would in the freezing cold, and keeping your mind on task proves to be difficult. You’re lucky the fabric used to cover your mark was only partially unwound. 

 The hunter retrieves Grogu, placing the child back into his protective pod, before helping you down off the table, tucking you into his side. Your legs collapse, unable to hold your weight, forcing the Mandalorian to bear the brunt of it, although he likely anticipated this outcome. You take a moment to get your legs back under you, just enough so that he doesn’t need to carry you. He pauses, giving you time to adjust, just as he always does.  

You can’t fully comprehend what is happening as he tugs you through the building. Flashes of blaster fire cross your vision, fading into darkness as they pass. The time between blasts is never long enough to let the shadows linger. Some are aimed at you and some directed towards the stormtroopers blocking your path, courtesy of your Mandalorian. 

He tries to keep you behind him, standing strong as you stumble along, shielding you and the child as much as he can with his body. 

A bright red bolt, burning hot, streaks past your face and nearly makes contact. You’re too out of it to react, eyes shifting in its direction long after the shot has passed, finding nothing but shadows behind you. The hunter turns towards you for just a second, taking any oncoming fire with the shining new beskar on his back. 

His leather clad hand cradles the side of your head for a mere moment, eyes burning through his visor into your own, hotter than the plasma that came so near to the place his hand now holds. His helmet flickers red as more shots go wide around the three of you. He nods, chin barely tilting down in acknowledgement of your continued safety. Then, certain that you are alive and well, he turns towards the oncoming fire once more.

You don’t know how much time you spent in the hands of the Imperials. It could have been hours or weeks, or something in between. Realistically very little time actually passed, no more than a day, but your perception of time is wrong, its passage still something you are unable to cling onto. You’re not even entirely sure how long the Mandalorian has been fighting to get you and The child out from where you've been held. 

All you know is that when the hunter finally gets the three of you outside of the building, back onto the volcanic soil and into the acrid air, it’s night. There are no stars here, not like on Arvala-7. Just the ashy sky, tumbling like a storm but always too dry for rain. Or maybe it’s just your own vision that’s swimming. Now, with the horizon farther in front of you than just a wall across the room, with alleys and streets stretching long before you and lined by rows of buildings, you can tell just how far off its axis your world has become.  

Everything is spinning, and you would be dragged along in the current if it weren’t for the Mandalorian’s grip on you. At some point during the firefight he passed the kid to you, freeing up his other hand. You can barely hold The Child’s weight, terrified that your grip will be too loose and you’ll lose him—or worse yet, too tight. 

The Mandalorian’s words echo in your mind the closer to the ship you get, though you’re not entirely sure where his voice ends and the voice inside your head begins. What did they do to you? 

You reach the main street, familiar to you despite the haze in your mind, but it looks much different than you remember. The stalls that had once been bustling are closed down for the night, the noisy crowd and plethora of smells long gone, but the street isn’t empty. There are others, bounty hunters, gathering around you on all sides. 

The world spins faster. Fire streams from the Mandalorian’s wrist, stretching out towards those around you before eventually sputtering and dying once more. The night seems a little darker after that, the blaze of the flame still burning your already weak eyesight even when it’s extinguished. 

You’re dragged and pushed, hidden and pulled—helpless in the face of your adversaries. All the while the Mandalorian stands before you, risking his own life to save yours and Grogu’s. He doesn’t know you’re his soulmate. He doesn’t know that you have been bound together since before your lives even began. This is a choice entirely his own. You can’t allow yourself to think about what that means right now, partially because of the circumstances you are still in, partially because you physically can’t concentrate on anything, and partially because you just don’t want to. 

Time blurs again as you push further towards the starship. The arch framing the entrance of the town looms before you, a silent witness to the events that you cannot comprehend. 

The world spins and then you see double, triple, quadruple of the Mandalorian. 

No, that’s not quite right. The world is spinning but that is not the cause for what you see. The Mandalorian to your left wears beskar painted a color too dark for you to distinguish by the light of blaster fire. Your Mandalorian stands before you, painted in the colors of the fight around him. 

You cannot concentrate on what they say when they exchange words, only picking up on a single repeated phrase:

“This is the way.”

Then, you are on the move again, stumbling forward, always forward, towards the arch above the town. Towards the ship. Towards your destiny.   

—☾— 

The starship is quiet.

You hadn’t realized just how loud the blasterfire had been, even through the fog in your brain, until the ramp finally raised behind you, sealing you off from the rest of the galaxy. The only sound comes from the Mandalorian’s vocoder, warping his heavy breathing into static. But he doesn’t take long to try and catch his breath. To do so would be to risk being caught once more. 

He lifts you up without warning, slings you over his shoulder like it’s nothing—to him it probably is nothing, even after fighting for his life. 

Somehow he manages to cradle Grogu in the same arm that he uses to keep you stable, a precarious balancing act. Then, impossibly, he manages to begin climbing the ladder to the cockpit. It’s ridiculous, you think, like a stack of farm animals standing on each other’s backs—a Mandalorian warrior, a not quite Jedi, and a 50 year old magic baby piled on the ladder. 

You can’t stop the laugh that rips through your throat, the tone wobbling as the silver pauldron presses into your stomach and releases during the climb. Grogu laughs too, unaware of what exactly you find funny, just happy to join in. When a particularly rough jolt up the ladder causes your laughter to turn into a wheeze, the Mandalorian pauses. He readjusts his grip on you and the kid, then keeps climbing.

First he sets the kid down, temporarily plopping Grogu in one of the passenger seats. Then he does the same to you. He straps you into your seat, not wanting to risk you being launched onto the floor or the control panel as he brings the starship off the planet. You just stare at him, at the glint of his new, unpainted beskar and the steely gaze of his visor. 

The hunter picks Grogu up again, placing him on a cuisse covered thigh and leaving a hand on the kid to act as a seatbelt. The ship starts with a purr, engines whirring as the Mandalorian presses a series of buttons and flips several switches. There’s some turbulence as the ship cuts through the atmosphere before leaving the ashen planet behind. In no time at all you are among the stars, body lurching as you make the jump into hyperspace. 

The Mandalorian’s armor catches the light of the universe as the stars blur all around you, the transparisteel surrounding you allowing for every inch of him to be bathed in the flickering glow of distant suns. It’s as if the galaxy has come alive on his armor, painting the beskar in ever-changing streaks of light and color. It shifts and dances even more as he moves from his spot at the helm. 

He returns the child to the second passenger seat, the hunter no longer needing to worry about the kid falling as he had feared during the ascent. Hyperspace offers protection, freedom. You can’t help but stare at the Mandalorian as he returns back to his seat, his own gaze angled towards the stars before him. Your mind is still hazy, but you are unable to focus on anything other than the resplendent man who sits before you.        

You’re so beautiful, you think. 

For a moment you fear you’ve said the words out loud. The Mandalorian’s shoulders grow stiff, back straightening slightly from where he sits in the pilot’s seat. But he doesn’t turn towards you, and he doesn’t speak. Surely if you had spoken he would have something to say as well, something along the usual lines of “I’ve been waiting for so long,” or even “Why didn’t you say anything?” It must just be the fog drifting through your brain, an unfounded paranoia. Your exit from the planet was rough, after all, both the firefight and the atmospheric turbulence. Some lingering tension is to be expected. 

It’s not until you’re well on your way through hyperspace, safe from any of your would be pursuers, that the Mandalorian says anything at all. His star stained helmet turns towards you, the black of his visor burning just as bright as it had when he cradled your head not so long ago. 

“My name’s Din,” he says. “Din Djarin.” 

NEXT PART

a/n: Next chapter we will get some of Din’s perspective!

taglist: @unmitigatedsuperiority @haven-is-happy @sorrow-has-a-place-here @unofficialavenger90

I don’t have a taglist form, but if you would like to be tagged on future chapters you can let me know in the tags/an ask/etc. this is a sideblog so I can’t respond to replies ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[antimony-medusa]

Hi! To preface: I don't think there's any one right or wrong answer to my question necessarily, but I value your opinion as a level-headed adult in this fandom who can probably provide sensible input on the issue I'm having, so I thought I'd ask.

If a CC asks for their character not to be drawn (specifically referring to fanart, which they likely saw on Twitter) in a sexualised way, what does that mean for written fanwork content? Is it "wrong" (putting this in quotation marks since that's a loaded word, to say the least) to write nsfw content about said character and post it on Ao3, considering the differences in visibility/CC knowledge of those platforms, as well as the general consensus/expectation that CCs don't generally read fanfic anyway? Where is the line between "you should respect the CC's wishes" (avoiding the word "boundaries" since that's also very loaded in mcyt spaces) and "you can do whatever you want forever; fanworks are created by and for fans, not for the creators" drawn? Does "just don't put it where they can see unless they go looking" (i.e. correctly tagged on Ao3, not on a CC-frequented site like Twitter) apply? Would it be better not to do it at all, or only create and share said content in private spaces like Discord? Or is this all a "there is no single 'morally correct' answer, make your own personal judgement" thing?

(Sorry for the long-winded question but this is genuinely something I'm struggling with right now, lol. As I said I value and respect your opinion and views about these kinds of things in fandom, so if you have anything to say on the matter I'd appreciate your input!)

Alright so, obligatory warning for discourse on this one right at the top, and possibly also long post. These tend to be me rambling.

This is a situation that I think it's fair that a lot of people disagree. Your personal comfort level with making NSFW content in general is not where my comfort level is, we can come to totally different equilibriums. And then you add in creators expressing that they don't like seeing NSFW content of their characters, and people end up in a whole lot of different places, whether that's a complete no on shipping or NSFW, or people feeling fine to consume it but not create it, or only if it's archive locked, or only specific ships or smps, or whatever. I think it's fine that we don't all agree on this, creation is a fickle beast and we are in a weird place as a fandom of being not rpf but kinda cousins, and we can get *really* close to the creators with twitch and twitter, so people's comfort level in meshing all the parasociality and roleplay and real life of it all can end up in a lot of different places.

I just think that the most important thing for the fandom being a healthy place to spend time on the internet is that we don't go aroud sending hate/abuse to those we disagree with. a) i don't agree with internet mobs or suicide baiting or anon hate in general, b) the number of times I have seen internet games of telephone happen when it comes to this subject is unreal. To use an example from literally today, I saw someone saying that Pac of qsmp pacmike was uncomfortable with shipping art and fic and we all should stop shipping immediately, and once I tracked it back to its source, it turns out that what had happened was the creator said that he wasn't a fan that all the art was of him in the jumpsuit that used to be his skin, he has a new skin now, which turned into sexy jumpsuit art was the problem, which turned into pac hates all sexy fan art, which turned into "pac is being bombarded with nsfw art and shipping and he hates it". Now he might actually also not like NSFW art, but that's not actually what he was adressing, but it was certainly what was being circulated! So like, people warning me off of certain subjects— how do I know that they're actually accurate or if twitter just went twitter on a passing mention of something someone said on a twitch stream?

So I think it's way way way healthier for us as a fandom to sometimes disagree on the subject of "what we're drawing/writing about" and when that happens we implement Don't Like; Don't Read, and we just ignore that, or block if necessary. Don't Want To See it? Simply Don't See It. It's a bad idea to start hate campaigns for sinners, and half the time it's based on bad information anyways.

But in cases that you do know that the creator doesn't want to see that, you found an accurate clip? So this is a case where I think that there's no single moral answer to this that everyone is gonna agree on. We're all coming at it from too many different cultural backgrounds and different streamers in mind and comfort levels with NSFW in general. I don't think there is a firm answer that is gonna make you morally safe. But my personal feelings is that in cases where we know the creators doesn't want to see that, I think the important part there is that the creator never sees that, not that we stamp it off the internet entirely.

I do think, personally, ymmv, that you are not necessarily doing anything morally wrong with drawing or writing NSFW of someone's character, even if they think it's weird. There's a long history of creators saying "you can't do [this] with my characters," and it happens to be you can't [make them gay] enough to make me uncomfortable in general principle with saying creator of the character gets to call the shots in all settings forever. This happened with Anne Rice and with the supernatural fandom and like— it's the internet, we get to make the characters be gay together. This is the making sex jokes about fictional characters website, and Ao3 is the making porn about fictional characters website. I think it's fine if it exists on the internet, the question comes down to one of what we're forcing the creator to see, or what we're putting where they'll stumble upon it. Like, examples from real life— if you have a friend who's vegan, it's polite to not spend time rhapsodizing about how good meat is around them, and if you know that meat makes them sick, it's polite to do a meatless meal around them. That's a human person you want to be okay around you. But that's their boundary for their life, not yours, so even when you're being polite you have no obligation to go vegan when they're not around. And they have a politeness obligation to not walk into a steakhouse and freak out because there's meat there. They have a boundary for their life, and I'm going to respect it, but my life is a different story, and they need to take reasonable steps to protect their boundaries and not just expect everyone else to conform to them.

Or walking by someone on the street and waiting till they're out of earshot and then going "jesus christ that guy was hot" to your friends— that's fine. That's normal human behaviour. What becomes rude is when you make it hot guy's problem and yell at him. Being attracted to someone in your own space is not a problem. I'm aroace, I am not going to be in a relationship with anyone. I'm not going to ban having crushes on me, as long as you don't make it my business. Talking about an attractive person in your own space is not a problem. Being sexual in your own space— and again we are talking about fictional characters, the way I see it, these are lies we're telling about folks that are not real, who live in little minecraft worlds— that's fine. The problem is if we start catcalling people about it.

When you walk into fandom spaces you are walking into a space where we all like taking fictional guys and telling stories about them and a good portion of those stories are going to include kissing. That is not necessarily baseline normal for like, all of humanity, but people talk about tv shows they watch as one of the classic work small talk techniques. Fandom takes the "I hope ted gets together with jessica" "no he needs to work on himself first" discussion and writes stories, is all, to share with each other. Privately. On our special private website where there's a button you can click to hide your work from search engines and another one to hide it from logged-out users. If you log into the website and search things up, no tags blocked, what you find is on you for saying "I will see literally anything that exists on this subject in a space meant for literally anything". You will find gore. You will find kissing. You literally just opted in to seeing it. That's on you.

So like, there's my little defense of nsfw work existing in general, I think it existing is not a problem. I do think that we should keep it FAR AWAY from streamers. They get to set the rules for their spaces, and if someone doesn't want to see sexualized fan art, I do think we should make sure that in a reasonable way, they never have to see sexualized fan art/fic.

So like me personally, I'm going to hit that Ao3 button to hide my work from search engines, and anything NSFW (or shippy, depending on the person) is not going to go into the main tags on tumblr or twitter or anywhere I'm aware that the creators ever check that tag, and I'd probably archive lock it if the creator had publically mentioned being uncomfortable with it, and if I was regularly posting NSFW I'd block the creators on social media with any account I discuss NSFW with. I want to make sure that I am talking to my friends about the cubitos, not catcalling someone.

And I would probably err on the side of caution when it comes to social media sites that creators are on? Okay so the fandom has a habit of saying that NSFW and Shipping is BAD and can't exist, on the one hand, but on the other hand it says that anything that isn't Bad Wrong Shipping/Explicit NSFW is fine, which leads to like— extremely sexy thirst trap art being drawn and then the creators are tagged. People putting family dynamic fics that really pushes that envelope in the main tag. Gahhhhhh????? No? Don't do that?

I think it would be healthier in the fandom if we did a lot more going "this is for the fandom, not the creator" and we don't tag creators on twitter, and we took our little kissing fics, or gore, or kidfic, or neurodiverse headcanons, or anything else it might be not for the creator to see, and we kept it in fandom spaces and away from creators. But Ao3 is that fandom space that you have to opt into, it's literally archive of our Own, for fans, in that space as long as you tag it you're good.

So the TL;DR of this all is that my opinion is that if you tag it correctly on Ao3 you're fine. Maybe archive lock it. Keep it off twitter. Don't make it the streamer's problem, and you're good.

[otterlyfoolish]

No Smoking Indoors

(Shiba Togo x GN!Reader)

Warnings: Mentions of war, Possibly OOC, not edited

Tags: Small Age Gap, unrequited crush, its like really subtle though

Word Count: 3k

Summary:

Cafe Haru Haru has all sorts of people. Typically, you'd usually find people that's skilled in combat visiting the most for work. So it really shouldn't surprise Shiba to see a fellow war veteran there.

If you like Ao3 for reading fics more, here!

-----

Café Haru Haru is a café. Obvious, right?

You can buy coffee, you can get tea, you can get some sweet treats if the owner remembered to restock it for that day, otherwise you can settle for some sort of fruit juice she has in a little fridge under the counter. (Which is most of the time, since she tends to snack on her own products.)

From the decoration, you might think that its kind of like a bar, but there's no alcohol being served there - the wine glasses on the shelves are mostly for decoration. You can tell by the dust on the shelves - it might have been used to serve drinks once, but now it sits there solely to reflect the warm lighting and any sunlight it catches. It's probably for the best considering the main purpose of the business though.

It's not just a café, because if it was, it would be out of business extraordinarily fast. The main function is that it connects sorcerers to paying clients, and collects a fee. Typically it's yakuza looking for a little more firepower (sometimes literally,) or some blood thirsty fool that doesn't know any other way of life.

With a ring of the bell from the front of the store, it lets the owner know that someone's come in, whether it's a client looking for some protection, or a violent guard dog, she welcomes them in with a idle smile, hoping that its something more exciting this time.

"Excuse us!" The man yells out, already treating the place like a second home as he saunters in, the younger man next to him following closely as he gives him a blank stare.

"Ah, Shiba." She dejects with something of a scowl, leaning on the counter with a slump in her shoulders. "I'm busy right now, sit down and I'll get to you." She waves at him dismissively then shoots Chihiro a warmer greeting: "Hey, you look cool today as well, Chihiro!" To which she get a slow nod of confusion in response. Shiba glances between the two of them, the preferential treatment clear as day.

The two of them sit down at the stools, staying quiet as they glance over to Hinao explaining the details of a job to another customer - this was uncommon, they've never really been around seeing her handle her customers.

The customer has been served a cup of coffee (something Shiba and Chihiro had to always make themselves), and sat silently at the counter, reading over information Hinao had handed them. With a small thank you from them, Hinao nodded and then walked away, greeting Shiba now.

"So! What do you need?" She asks, leaving her customer to their own devices as she slides over to her regulars, hands flat on the table. "Need another job, Shiba? I got a couple, you might like." She says, "or just checking up on intel?"

"Just dropping by Tokyo." He answers simply, "but while I'm here, thought I'd also just ask you, how's it going on that front?"

"Bad." She sighs, looking out the window with a shoulders slumped. "I got nothing. Nada."

"Ah." He mouths back, while Chihiro lowers his gaze towards the counter, his face remaining as stoic as ever. Shiba had a feeling that the teen was pretty disappointed at the news though. "Well, let me see the job listings then. I'll check it out if it sounds promising."

"Sure, just wait 'till they're done." Hinao nods back at him, putting her hands into her coat pocket, using her head to motion towards the only other person in the room. "They've got the nice juicy ones right now. 'course, I've other ones if you're looking for something easier for a old man like you."

Shiba ignores that last jab. "Huh, really?" He utters back in response with a eyebrow raised - usually Hinao tried to pair up the difficulty to the person so her customers wouldn't be disappointed. If they've got the 'juicy' ones, that meant that they've got the high-risk, high-reward offers.

She nods back at Shiba, about to say something more before her other customer placed the papers down on the counter, waiting patiently for Hinao to speak to them again with their hands folded on the counter. Shiba glanced over again towards them as Hinao walked back over, discussing the details with the sorcerer.

"I'd like to take this one, please." They say holding one in particular. Their voice made Shiba's ears perk up.

"Okay, I'll give them a call, and we can arrange a meeting sometime." Hinao says, marking it down in a little notepad under the counter before grabbing the pile of job offers, sliding it over to Shiba. He didn't catch it, seemingly frozen as he looked across the room, leaving Chihiro to stop the pile of paper before it hit the floor.

"Thank you." They nodded back in response to Hinao who walked over to the rotary phone, humming absentmindedly as she rung the customer, one hand in her coat pocket.

"Mr Shiba," Chihiro starts out, trying to get his attention as Shiba still seemed to be frozen in his seat.

"Huh? Yeah, what's up, Chihiro?" He snapped out of it, glancing back at him as Chihiro fixed the pile of paper.

"The job listings you asked for." Chihiro answered simply, putting them in front of Shiba in a neat pile.

"Ah, thanks." He nodded, then turned his face back to the other side, looking at the only other customer again. Chihiro joined in, blinking at the two of them with a blank expression, but it was obvious he was wondering why Shiba seemed so interested in this other person. Slowly, he moved his hand to rest on the hilt of Enten, his eyes narrowing in anticipation, glancing over to Hinao, and made some mental calculations in his mind.

There didn't seem to be anything unusual about them - they seemed to be a pretty normal person overall, so Chihiro isn't sure what Shiba is picking up on. He's just trying to follow Shiba's lead. Then, there was finally movement.

The person from across the room pulled out a pack of cigarettes, pulling one out as they waited for Hinao to finish the deal for them. At the sight of them taking out the little box, she narrowed her them and shooed them out of her store, motioning towards the 'NO SMOKING' sign.

They nodded, then slowly made their way out. They seemed to have expected to be ushered out of the room. Choosing to wait outside as Hinao stayed on the phone, still discussing the details with her client.

Shiba's eyes followed them as they walked past him and Chihiro, still not even bothering to give either of them a single glance as they pulled the door open and walked out, standing outside for their smoke.

Chihiro blinked in confusion, then moved his hands back to his sides.

Shiba was quick to move after this. "Chihiro, you stay here and look through the pile, I'm going to have a smoke." He says, getting up from the stool, readjusting his shirt to look messier as he walked out.

"Mr Shiba, you ran out of cigarettes." Chihiro answers back, watching him walk out the door without another word from him. Chihiro blinked at the sight of him walking up to the stranger before turning to the pile of paper on the counter and reading through it carefully like he was told to.

-----

"There's a first for everything, huh?" A masculine voice calls out to you as you light your cigarette. You already knew who it was, so you didn't bother looking up as you took a deep breath as you let him continue speaking. "Never seen you in trouble before."

He looked at you as you slid the lighter back into your pockets, your eyes lazily turning to him as you began smoking, leaning against the cold walls of Cafe Haru Haru. You've aged, he could tell, but at the same time you looked younger - it's probably because of the fact the dark eye bags he's used to seeing on your skin wasn't so prominent anymore, unlike the past. You don't look so tired - maybe you've finally been getting some peace at night.

"Mr Shiba," you rolled his name off your tongue as you finally lifted your head up, blowing out a cloud of smoke as you spoke. You don't sound too different. "You still follow strangers into dark alleyways. Break that nasty habit, why don't you?"

He scoffed slightly at your answer, "we're not strangers, don't address me so formally."

"Apologies," you nodded back at him as you stood a little to the side, letting him stand next to you in the narrow space. He took you up on your unspoken offer, standing opposite you, back against the other wall of another building. "Oi. You brat," you verbally slap him as you let him settle near you.

"You're not old enough to start calling me a brat either!" He retorted back, but you could tell that he doesn't really care about the way you address him. He's playing around. "We're not in war times anymore either, so you're not my superior."

Shiba doesn't get angry easily, the both of you know that there's worse things to get riled up over compared to this. You somewhat miss the days where he would show you something that's a little more of a normal reaction.

"I wasn't done speaking," you say, pulling the cigarette out your mouth to speak again. He stayed quiet after that, listening to you. "You were worrying the young man by staring at me like that," you murmured out, gazing up at him with furrowed eyebrows. Your eyes seemed to catch something, as you briefly looked down. "Oh for goodness...! Fix your clothes." You grumbled, putting your cigarette back into your mouth to free up your hands. They smoothed out his collared shirt, and you pulled his suspenders back into place. "Why don't you notice these things, Shiba?"

Damn you and the eyes on the back of your head. But your observant nature was also what he was betting on. "Sorry."

He had noticed, but he knew that nothing would happen, so he didn't bother giving Chihiro any form of commutation regarding you. Though, he should have really at least gave him a wave or something. "I was just making sure that it really was you."

"Hm." You flicked your eyes up at him, not really buying his answer but chose not to linger long on it. "He looks like a young Rokuhira. But with less peach fuzz."

"...Yeah." Shiba nodded at your words, his shoulders slumping slightly at your words. His tone changed as he spoke, you noticed but couldn't place what he was feeling in response to your statement. "He's grown up a lot."

Your eyes flick over to the street and then back over to him. "Nice swords he's got." You state, taking another deep breath of your cigarette. Nonchalantly as ever, Shiba thinks, as you don't bother seeing if you're crossing boundaries you shouldn't be. "I take it that one of them is..." You say, not finishing on purpose, and Shiba is forced to mentally retrack his last statement.

"Yep." He nodded firmly at your unfinished question. If this was anyone else, he might have to reconsider sharing this bit of information, but he knew that you wouldn't do anything with it - it would just betray everything he knew about you.

You blinked at him slowly, already understanding any implications about that statement. "...I see."

A small moment of silence fell between the two of you - he rested his back against the cold walls of the building behind him as he gave you more space to stand with him. You stared at him, watching him watch you, the two of you aware of how close you were but didn't want to move further apart either.

"I saw the little poster about the Hishaku Ms Hinao put up." You stated, looking at him in the eyes, already knowing that he was the one that requested for the information. You've never asked Hinao about who put it up, but judging by what you know right now and the time frame that poster went up on the corkboard, you took a small leap of faith. He stared back into yours, occasionally glancing down to the cigarette in between your lips. "I'll let you know if I hear anything about them."

"...Thanks. That would help." He says, now looking off to the side before slowly guiding his eyes back to you, tracing your features as he tries to read your expression. He wouldn't be surprised if you were disappointed in him - he had a feeling that Kunishige would be.

You stare back at him, not caring about the way his eyes never really left your face. "Be careful," You say to him, locking back onto his pupils as you breath out another small puff of smoke. He stays silent, no random interjections. "I know you probably don't want to, but guiding or helping teenagers to commit violence doesn't settle nicely on your soul." As you spoke, your voice grew quieter. "Don't put more on your conscience if you can help it. The both of you."

...Huh. Shiba thought for sure you'd scold him for letting Chihiro do this. There was a part of him that followed you out of Cafe Haru Haru because he needed to consult to someone with a stronger moral compass. Kunishige wasn't there anymore, Azami could only assist him so much as part of the Kamunabi, you were the only one left.

"...Speaking from experience?" He asks you, though he really doesn't need to. He was there, from the start to the very end.

"I mean, that's all I have." You say back with a light voice that's meant to clear the tension, but he doesn't latch onto it. You take another inhale, shifting your eyes away, unable to bring yourself to look at what expression he had. "Sorry. I shouldn't lecture you."

"It's fine." Shiba says, but doesn't touch on it again as he shifts to another topic as you seem like you want to leave the conversation already. "How you've been doing recently?" He asks and the simple question already makes you want to let out a small groan.

"Eh." You start off, trying to think of a way to summarise your current everyday life in a way that won't concern him, but is enough to be honest at the same time. "Good enough. I'm currently teaching sorcery though."

"Huh?" He lets his mouth hang open at your words, blinking at you repeatedly. "Like, to a class? Or are you back in the Kamunabi?"

"Don't be ridiculous." You scoffed out at his guessing. "Just this kid that ran away from home." With a chuckle, you go on. "He's got potential, but he has a tendency to stick his nose into things he shouldn't be. He's like you when you were younger."

"I didn't cause that much trouble." He says, straight up denying your words.

"Only because you got away with it." You say, "The three of you would scuttle away to pull some shit off, and I would be forced to clean up any mess you made because I was in charge of your damn group." You let out a verbal exhale, thinking back on it. "If it wasn't for the fact it was war times, I wouldn't even be put in charge of you guys, y'know...? I'm not that much older than you."

He opens his mouth to say something in response to you, but when he receives a sharp glare in response, he closes it again, noticing something in the background. You turned around, looking at whatever he was looking at.

At the sound of a bell ringing behind you, you faced Hinao who had just exited from her store, holding a little bit of paper. The two of you instantly stop talking in anticipation of her speaking to either of you.

"Yo, you still- ah, there you are!" She said, walking up to you and extending the object in her hand to you, not caring that the two of you were just standing in the alleyway. "Here, they wanna meet up with you before working, but it seems like they're willing to hire you."

"Thank you, Ms Hinao." You said, taking it from her - you could tell from the lines that it was just torn out of her notepad. As you folded it neatly, you continued speaking, "I'll give you a cut of the pay if I get it, is that okay?"

"Eh?" She glanced over to Shiba who had forced a completely blank look on his face, not daring to show anything on his face to Hinao. He tried to look serious, but she thought that he just looked like a frog. "...Yeah, I mean, you always remember to pay up so I'm not too bothered." She agreed rather easily, before walking back into the café, realising that Shiba was talking to you, and there was just some sort of weird vibe coming from him. "See you."

The two of you watch Hinao go back into the café, a pensive thought on your face while Shiba continued to try to stay stoic. It doesn't really suit him, in your opinion.

"...Hm." You mumbled, sensing that she didn't want to hang around outside for too long for whatever reason, but once again, you don't care enough and just slip the paper into your pocket. "Well, I guess I should be going now."

His eyes darted over to you, "already?"

"Yeah?" You said, raising an eyebrow back at him. "I mean, I don't have a reason to stick around."

"You could talk to me." He said, "let's smoke together a little longer."

"Quit slacking," you shot down with a light laugh, rolling your eyes at him. "You haven't even been smoking while talking to me anyways."

He let out a small huff of annoyance, but you knew that he wasn't actually offended. "...Here, let's stay in contact." He says, pulling out his flip phone and handing it over to you.

"...Yeah, sure." You agree, putting your cigarette back in your mouth as you typed with both hands. When you handed his phone back over to you, he stuck his hand out, looking at you expectantly. You stared down at his palm, trying to think of what on Earth he wanted before taking the cigarette out of your mouth and putting it in between his fingers without another word.

He gave you a incredulous look, his pupils going back and forth from the object in his hands to your dumbfounded expression. "What?"

"...Huh?" You uttered back at him.

"I'm asking for your phone," he states, giving each word time to sink in, "so I can, you know, put my number in your contacts."

"...But I'm not going to contact you." You state, crossing your arms. He narrows his eyes at you, about to say more, but you chuckle at the expression on his face. "Goodbye, Shiba. Please give the young Rokuhira my sincerest condolences." you say back to him as you begin to walk away, joining the crowd. He watched your figure slowly disappear into the flock of people.

Shiba looked down at the object in his hands, it was still burning at the cherry. His eye flicked upwards again.

He pressed the cigarette to his lips, taking one last inhale of it as he looked at the crowd of people, trying to find you once more, before snuffing it out, walking back into Cafe Haru Haru.

[starheirxero]

WOE, SERVANT SUN ANGST BE UPON YE !!! The fic is also under the cut in case you can't use ao3!

Summary:

The world-eater unleashed upon their dimension has done its job with ease. Buildings are reduced to rubble in mere seconds and many are lives snuffed in an instant. Sun was among those lives.

Now, in the afterlife, Sun finally feels every emotion he had locked away for the past century and Moon—a brother he never knew he had—is there to support him every step of the way.

Warnings: Major character death (already happened), angst, loss of faith, just generally a lot of very messy emotions

Word count: 1,091

"How are you feeling?"

Moon's soft tone is nearly drowned out by the sound of something cracking and falling in the distance. The rubble around them shakes from the force, a few books fall from the shelves behind them. Moon's legs dangle freely off the edge of a broken staircase, while Sun has his own curled up to his chest. Neither of them are particularly paying attention to the destruction around them.

"I don't know," Sun mumbles, "Tired, I think. Am I supposed to be feeling some type of way?"

"I wouldn't say you're supposed to be, but people are usually sad or angry or even relieved." Moon rubs his thumb back and forth against Sun's shoulder. "You feeling any of those?"

Sun shakes his head slowly, the golden eclipse earrings on his middle rays swinging with the motion. "I don't think so."

Moon waits a long moment, staring at the other bot expectantly. A bookshelf topples over loudly across the room. Outside, the world-eater lets out a sickening scream. Sun doesn't elaborate.

Moon sighs. "I think what I'm trying to ask you here is," he gently taps Sun's forehead, earning a startled noise from the other. "what's going on in that head of yours, bud?"

Sun stares up at Moon, chewing the side of his lip as he debated on whether or not to speak his mind. If this man is truly his brother like he claims, he may already know what to expect. Sun looks away.

"Do you think He's waiting for me?" Moon's soothing motion pauses for just a moment and Sun feels the need to explain himself. "I mean, surely He must be, right? During such an important time, He's likely gathering the rest of His followers, taking them to safety, and wondering where His last saint is. I promised Him I'd be there when He needs me most, but now I'm here when He needs me most and stars I know He will be upset with me."

"Sun, I don't think he—"

"What if He thinks I ran off, Moon?" Sun interrupts Moon with a frantic edge to his voice. The servant's body starts to tremble and Moon feels it in his hand. He opens his mouth to sooth his brother, but Sun speaks first. "What if He can't find my body and He thinks I broke every promise and prayer I ever made? What if He thinks I'm a traitor? What if He thinks the last century was nothing but a lie and I'm a dissenter, just as Bloodmoon was? What if He hates me?"

Sun suddenly stands up, pacing in a circle on what little flooring remained of the library's second story. Moon rises as well, but stands in the same spot. He watches his brother quietly.

"I did so much to show I still worshiped Him! I did all of this," he motions at himself wildly, "for Him! I did all of it without Him even prompting me to! My entire life centered on Him, every single ounce of energy I ever had was used to serve Him or think about Him! He was the air that entered my vents, He was the electricity in my wires, He was the solder that held my stupid, stupid body together!

"He was everything to me, Moon!" Sun suddenly turns his attention to Moon and he sees the tears threatening to fall from Sun's eyes. The world seems to shake louder at his anguish. "And I failed Him! I failed the one person I absolutely could not afford to fail! My god, my savior, the one constant in my life! How much of a fuck-up do I have to be to manage that?!"

Sun hiccups loudly and looks away to cover his face. Moon approaches his brother at a slow pace, gently putting his hands on his arms. Sun lets out a whimper and leans into Moon, crumbling into his arms and hiding his teary face in the bot's shoulder.

"Did I do good, at least?" Sun's voice is strained, desperate. "Or did I waste my life in the most pitiful way possible?"

Moon wraps his arms around Sun's body and hugs him tightly. He hasn't been able to do this for a century. It's nice. "You did perfect, Sun. You did all you could, even with someone like Eclipse looming over you at every turn. I'm proud of you, brother. I always have been."

And just like that, Sun's fragile mask melted.

His stifled cries become full-body sobs that were already leaving Moon's shoulder wet with tears. 100 years worth of grief—of anger, of disgust, of hatred, of fear—all come out in a wail that only the dead can hear. He wept for every soul he was forced to turn away from or harm, he wept for every part of himself he maimed in an attempt to feel holier, he wept for the person he used to be, he wept for the life he never had.

He wept for every moment he felt like his lord was truly going to kill him. He wept for every moment he dreamed of a kinder god. He wept, and he wept, and he wept.

When Sun's sobs and hiccups quieted, the world seemed to have done the same. No more tumbling buildings that shook the earth. No more screeches from the world-eater. Not even the sound of wind or rubble falling. So, in such a still moment, Sun admits something. "I think I hate him."

Moon hums, rubbing a hand down Sun's back in a soothing motion. "I know."

"I feel disgusting."

"I know."

"I don't want to be his servant anymore."

"What do you want to be, then?"

Sun pauses. He gently flicks the bell at the end of Moon's hat. "I want to be your brother."

"You already are my brother," Moon says with a chuckle.

"I wasn't really before this, though. I didn't even know you were here." Sun flicks the bell again, harder this time. Moon lets out a snort. "I want to know what it's like to be your brother. I want to know something that isn't Eclipse."

Moon mutters in understanding. "You know, I'm not the only brother you have."

Sun suddenly breaks the hug to look at Moon with wide eyes. "What? What does that mean??"

Moon smiles and wraps an arm around Sun's shoulder, guiding him through the broken remains of the library. "Here, follow me. I'm sure Lunar and Bloodmoon will be thrilled to see you."

Notes:

and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you

and the universe said the light you seek is within you

and the universe said I love you because you are love

HAPPY DAY EVERYONE ^_^ i hope this fic made you drop to your knees in a waffle house parking lot! reblogs and anguished tags are always appreciated <3

[sunbadger]

Mini detectives / Chapter 1

Next chapter Read on AO3 Rating: General audiences, no warnings apply Relationships: Levi/Erwin, Gabi & Falco Tags: Attack on titan spoilers, post-rumbling, Erwin is still dead, slice of life, mystery solving, a little bit of comedy.

Summary: There is an unsuspecting, wooden urn on Levi's shelf. Since it's incredibly rude to ask him about it, Gabi and Falco instead decide to investigate to find out who it belongs to, and why the flowers in the vase next to it change every week. First they stalk Levi, then they search his whole house, then finally go through all of his personal belongings. It's an ethical operation lead by detectives Gabi and Falco! Background that may be helpful: - This is set post-rumbling and Erwin is still dead. - I believe Erwin is the only body that Levi really had access to after they died, so this urn is incredibly special to him. - Gabi and Falco are around 14 - Levi's got his own little cottage and a tea shop.

Rest of the fic under the cut, it's 1600 words.

The wooden box on Levi’s bookshelf had always stood out to Gabi. The feathers of her duster brushed against it each week, tracing the chiselled lid and the space around it. On its own, it would easily be overlooked due to the lack of decorations and details - only naturally decorated with the wood's marbled pattern. What truly made it interesting were the constantly changing flowers in the vase next to it.

Every week, Gabi would come over to clean, and every week there was a new set of flowers. Her nimble hands turned the box left and right, tilted it back ever so slightly to check the bottom, and forward to see the top - but alas, there was no name, nothing engraved, and no indicator of what it was. After finishing his work elsewhere, Falco put a stool down in front of the shelf. He glanced at her.

“I think that’s an urn, Gabi,” he said, “you shouldn’t be touching it.” Gabi pouted.

“I'm just trying to find a name on it.” She put the urn back in its intended spot. “I wanna know who Levi’s lover was.”

“Lover?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She asked, touching the vase. This week’s flowers had petals as deep and blue as the ocean.

“Well… flowers are used for anyone,” Falco said, “and Levi doesn’t seem to be very popular, to be honest.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she sighed. Falco climbed the stool to reach the top of the bookshelf to wipe it with the soaked towel in his hand.

“Why don’t you just ask him?” Gabi’s jaw dropped.

“You can’t just ask about dead people like that!” She exclaimed. “What if he, like, starts crying?” Falco shrugged.

“Maybe he’ll be happy to talk about them, since he clearly cares about them so much.”

“You go ask, then!”

“I could, but…” His mind drifted.

“Why are you asking about my dead friends, huh? You thought that would make me happy? Mind your own business, brat.”

Falco shivered. “B-Besides, you’re the one that’s curious.” Gabi glared at him. “Okay, maybe I am a little bit curious.” He stepped down from the stool. “But I don’t want to ask.”

“Let’s continue cleaning for now, and we’ll figure out a plan later, alright?”

“A …plan?” She nodded, gave him a thumbs-up, and brushed past him towards the kitchen where more cleaning duties awaited her.

Falco was nearly crushed into the dirt as Gabi leant over him, trying to get a better view between the leaves. The fedora that Jean had leant him for the day was already smudged with dirt and his coat threatened to rip from the thorns of the forest they had walked through. He would probably have to “lose” the suit and hope Jean forgets about it once the mission was over.

“The target has approached the destination!” Gabi bursted out. “We will observe closely before making our first move!” Falco crawled his way towards an opening in the bush. Just like Gabi had reported, Levi’s familiar figure was currently making its way down the plaza. They had done a thorough analysis on his schedule and deduced that he would be most likely to visit the flower shop on Fridays at 5 pm, one hour after closing his shop. A small miscalculation meant they had actually been waiting in the dirty bushes of a hill for 30 minutes too many, but otherwise, it was a perfectly executed plan. 

The hill allowed them to have a great overview of the whole street, and the leafage surrounding them provided cover. Falco had expressed doubts that Levi would be on the lookout for small kids in bushes, but Gabi brushed him off. Her eyes shined as they fixated entirely on the target, suspensefully watching to continue the mission. Falco was happy to be living a normal life, but it seemed that Gabi almost missed the conflict of their old lives. She was always excited to put herself in danger, and maybe this was her new way of getting that kick of adrenaline. Well, as her best friend, he would never turn her down, even for something as trivial as-

“Falco, pay attention!” She grunted, suddenly staring straight back into his eyes. He gulped. “Are you ready?”

“Y-Yes sir!” 

“Ready…” His eyes shifted to Levi, who was now taking a moment to browse the array of colours set up on the porch of the flower shop. The lady working there must have noticed him coming, and was kind enough to hold the door open for him as he rolled up the ramp to the entrance. 

“Set…” As soon as he disappeared behind the glass door, Gabi hit Falco’s back. 

“Go!” she yelled.

Pressing the hat down on his head, Falco ran down the hill, doing his best not to trip as he made his way towards the building. Their predetermined route allowed him to move as swiftly as possible while avoiding any doors or windows due to the slight curve. With one last, clumsy jump over the edge of the street, Falco got as close as he could to the wall of the building and hunched down. His breathing had quickened somewhat, resulting in quiet pants as he collected himself. While the door to the shop had closed, the window was thankfully open, allowing him to listen in and analyse the situation.

Operation one: Gather information

“Do you need my recommendation today, Levi?”

“You should know I don’t have any knowledge on these things,” he grumbled, “I just need it to look nice.” Falco was able to make out a faint sigh. “Something happy, preferably.”

“Something happy,” the cashier echoed. “Would chrysanthemums do the trick?”

“Chrystanthe-what?” She chuckled.

“Bright, yellow flowers,” she said, picking a pot from the shelf. “Makes you smile, right? They make for a great addition to any home, and are used both for memorials and decoration.” Falco’s ears perked up at this. He determined that he would have to leave his position outside the shop in order to observe the flowers. The visuals could hold essential information, after all. He quickly glanced up to the hill where Gabi met his eyes with a thumbs up. With a deep breath, he gathered courage and pushed the door open, simultaneously pushing his fedora down over his face. 

“Welcome!” The lady helping Levi greeted him. He opened his mouth to greet her back, before remembering that his voice would give him away. Awkward social situations were a necessary compromise for the operation to succeed. Instead, he slipped as far as he could into the opposite corner of the shop, turned around and pretended that the bags of soil in front of him were really interesting. Gabi acted like the disguise was perfect, but even with the fancy jacket and matching hat, Falco was unsure if he could pass as a random civilian with this behaviour.

The store was crammed to the max with as many plants that could possibly fit into such a small building. Everywhere possible, there were pots with flowers or boxes full of gardening equipment. If you were too reckless with your movement, there was a risk of bumping into obstacles everywhere you went. While it was difficult to stay far away from Levi in the cramped shop, it did instead provide many shelves to hide behind, as long as he was careful. Regardless, Falco was somewhat confident that he could execute the job flawlessly.

“Decided yet, Levi?” She continued. “Daffodils are also a great choice,” she tried again. “They reach high towards the sky with ambition and strength.”

“Quite on the nose.” She laughed.

“Well, you’re not a roses kinda guy, are you?”

“Definitely no roses.” Falco gazed over his shoulder as subtly as he could, catching the sight of the two. The lady dragged the pot of a yellow pair of flowers off the shelf and held it in front of Levi. They didn’t look very romantic, in Falco’s opinion.

“No matter what your choice of flower is, I assure you that your love will shine through.” Her smile beamed with light this time. “Because flowers are the best gifts.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he deflected. “Let’s do those daffodils this time.”

Falco frowned at the choice of flowers, but regardless, he had gathered the information he came there for. It meant almost absolutely nothing, but enough to potentially, maybe, sort of confirm Gabi’s theory that the flowers are meant for a lover. Feeling satisfied with the information, he walked towards the door, but the crowded room unfortunately included tons of things he was capable of knocking over. With a loud clang, an empty, metal watering can hit the floor, and Falco felt his mind scream in embarrassment.

“...Falco?”

“O-Oh, Levi!” He exclaimed, lifting his fedora and thus giving the disguise up. “Didn’t see ya there!” Levi’s expression turned sour. “I mean, I was so absorbed in the- uhh-” He looked at the shelf in front of him. “These new gardening gloves! I’ve been meaning to get some.”

“...Right. For your gardening.” Falco suddenly realised what Levi’s scowl was about and began a frantic attempt at brushing the dirt off of his coat.

“Me and Gabi are trying out this new idea of planting veggies for everyone!” After his failed attempt at cleaning himself, he walked over to the wall of seeds instead. “Maybe potatoes!”

“Oh honey,” the flower lady butted in, “potatoes won’t be in season until april.” Falco’s smile wavered. “Let me help you.”

Falco left the store with a bag of lettuce seeds, gardening gloves, and an empty wallet - without much of a clue to report back to Gabi.

//// That concludes chapter one! Next time, they'll have to try another approach. Comments, likes and reblogs appreciated. This is my first published fanfic, so please be kind lol!

[a-smol-cosplayer]

Okay here is my master list of Wyler fic recs cause literally two people asked and I cannot control myself.

Psa I have probably read at least 70% of the fics on this tag in ao3 however these are my bestest/favourite ones. most of them are ongoing bc this fandom is hella new but still :) pls check ratings and tags before u read obvi. Also none of these fics are out to hurt u (as far as I’m aware) some of the longer ones might have angst but I’m here for relationship, plot and fluff rather than angst and pain (we go enough of that in the show). Some of the ongoing ones have updates every two/three days? Some haven’t updated since I have read them but most of them are under a week and a half old so I still have hope. There are ordered in shortest to longest in each category 

alright enough chitter chatter, buckle ur seatbelts people here we go!!

Finished 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43546942

Ocean Blue Eyes, Looking In Mine (I Feel Like I Might, Sink And Drown And Die) - cute Wyler one shot where they are dating at nevermore, after season 1, {1,876 words}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43494253#main

Grocery shopping in c minor - alternate au grocery store, Tyler works there, love the fact that he’s still super sweet but slightly unhinged, characterisation on point, {3,759 words}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43386558/chapters/109065348

A Half Life - Tylers pov of the first ep or so, kinda angsty bc its Tyler and he’s struggling, but still nice, not sure if its technically Wyler but its got the vibes {4 chaters but only 4,272 words}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43332840 

Yeah, all you did was smile (‘cause I’m a mastermind) - canon divergent but still similar story line, Tylers pov, love how they have chemistry, no hyde Tyler but still really good, {8,536 words}

In progress - y’all don’t understand, I religiously check these for updates every single day

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43333995/chapters/108929727

What if… you helped me change? Basically what could have happened after the kiss in ep 7, minor kidnapping but we forgive him bc he was freaking out, no real ‘hyde Tyler’ more like ‘idk how this happened but I want to make it better Tyler’ {3 chapters, 3,592 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43353318/chapters/108979656

I never fell again - only really the set up so far, Wednesday comes back to school and finds that Tyler has come back and is enrolled in nevermore, she hates (misses) him so much, na they love each other {4 chapters 5,505 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43278591/chapters/108783186#workskin

On Wednesdays we dance - wednesday buys a laptop and enters a horror writing group, and yet, one prompt is about a date, and Tyler offers so that he can have real life experience, another wednesday style date which is so cute, I really love this fic its super fluffy and nice {2/3 chapters 5,733 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43470636/chapters/109282542#workskin

Perfect Match - READ THE TAGS (is rated T but really should be M/E) not much plot just wyler smut, and unholy use of the gates mansion, set after season 1 ends, also slightly off topic, but I like the hc that wednesday eats dried strawberries, idk why but I love it, anyways, read at ur own warning, {3/4 chapters finished 7,387 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43286737/chapters/108804511

Frump Family Curse - from ep 8 into post season 1, we get some obsessed wyler at the start, and then, build on each of the characters for upcoming chapters, shaping up to be a really good fic. Also surprise Gomez and Donovan friendship over there cute murder children, 100% support {4 chapters 9,111 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43354401/chapters/108982119

Woe to do with two soulmates - Wednesday has 2 soulmate marks (writing of their first words to her, I think we know where this is going👀) and doesn’t know which one she wants yet, deals with Wednesday and feelings and well and our adorable barista, some angst cause ew laurel but still really good, sort of plot twist?/something I didn’t expect but I’m glad it happened in chap 8 {9 chapters and 11,498 words and counting}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43284108/chapters/108797994

My unconquerable soul - wyler, mostly after season 1 in the break, tags!! And ratings!! Please!! They are psycho but psycho for each other, some light kidnapping, the hyde side of Tyler appears a little, some angst but mostly dark fluff {10 chapters, 12,749 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43482336/chapters/109313109

A Girl and her Monster Of Woe - post season 1, wednesday realising that she actually liked and missed him, in her own dark way obvi, setting up for them to meet again, sort of adresses how Tyler can stay and not be charged, yet again pls read rating and tags {7 chapters, 13,266 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43424209/chapters/109164106

Woeful - wednesday comes in wondering about Hydes and the cute barista seems to know an awful lot about them👀 basically, Tyler knows he’s a hyde, but!! He isn’t the one murdering people, developing some alternate plot line which seems really good so far, plus wednesday and Tyler being cute in the weathervane {7 chapters, 13,906 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43328175/chapters/108913881 

She’s mine - I know I keep telling y’all to check ratings but I don’t want any ‘I didn’t realise’ complains, basically Tyler realised that he fucked up and wednesday is actually his mate (I dislike that word but oh well) and basically fixes his mistakes in ep 8 ect ect, goes slightly further, loving the surprise Tyler/ajax friendship that comes with dating enid/wednesday, also good Adams adopting Tyler vibes {10 chapters 20,203 words and counting}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43466823/chapters/109273329 

Just the Two (Three) of Us - wednesday if she’s known about the hyde from the beginning, I really love this fic, lots of wyler connection and chemistry and stuff, trust me, its good, the characterisation and writing is excellent {7 chapters 22,728 words so far}

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43329579/chapters/108917643

You can occupy my every sigh - wyler!! Literally my fav fic rn, Tyler already goes to nevermore, has its own plot line sorta, pls check the tags and rating before reading, Wednesdays characterisation is so good, got some Tyler/enid friend vibes as well, soulmates? Bonded? Something? idk its really good and super long - {11 chapters, 123,607 words and counting}

okay thats it!! let me know what u think in the comments, also if u have good fics that I haven't put on here I'm always open to more recs :)