#otp: selene ourania

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Φάρμακον [Whumptober 2019 - Day 21: Laced Drink]

Summary: φάρμακον (phármakon): substantive neutral, Ancient Greek. Remedy, poison. A queen must have means to protect her own power and person. For Selena, whose rings shine like stars in the starry sky, it's what her jewels hide behind their flare.

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V (Royalty/Ancient Mediterranean Sea AU) Relationships: Very implied Serena & Ruri friendship, also very implied Peregrine

Wordcount: 1.052 words

Content Warnings: Deals with poisons (y’know, considering the prompt, it’s predictable).

Notes: I have a question: are you familiar with a manga called Aoi Horus no Hitomi? I bought it under its French name and edition, "Reine d'Egypte" (a lame translation, compared to the original Japanese title, if you ask me) kind of by chance and it's since then become one of my favorite manga series of all times with Cardcaptor Sakura, Pokémon Special and FMA. I buy every new volume as soon as they come out. It's about the first female pharaoh, Hatchepsut, and how her rise to power and reign were... tumultuous, to say the least. Also it looks super fucking good.

If I bring up Aoi Horus no Hitomi, it's because this is the inspiration for this AU oneshot. I suddenly wanted to write about an Ancient Times-inspired queen and how she expressed her authority. This may be more Greek than Egyptian-like necause I'm more comfortable with Greco-Roman codes (blame it on my major), and used Serena's already Greek name (y'know, the moon, the goddess Σελήνη, etc.). Now, I have no excuse for having Ruri and Shun roam around with their very not Greco-Roman names, but fuck it, my AU my rules So in short here Selena is a moon-themed queen officially endorsed by the moon goddess Hecate, Ruri is her childhood friend-slash-servant-slash-maid and Shun is her dedicated scribe. You'll easily be able to tell where the Aoi Horus no Hitomi inspiration kicks in there if you've read the manga lol. Implied Peregrine here I come. (It can be read as just deep friendship, tho, I think).

And the title of the story, which is the first thing I actually came up with when filling this prompt, is absolutely a play on the term because φάρμακον can translate to either "remedy" or "poison" depending on the context. 

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A queen cannot let her guard down, can she? In a world where enemies keep rising against her, both from the inside and the outside, she must keep a careful and watchful eye on everything possible. Alas, she does not have the eyes of the gods, cannot see through all of the lies and the darkness and cannot ride on the boat of the sun; she needs to take care of this with her limited human abilities. It is but part of being a mortal in a cosmos ruled by the deities.

Like any queen, she wears bright and luxurious jewellery for most of her days and nights, earrings complementing her hair, crescent-shaped headband and crown to show her social status to all, golden necklaces and shining gems decorating her breast, bracelets colouring her wrists in bright and regal colours, rings armouring her fingers. These are more than simple, superficial decorations: they are weapons in their own right. She can scratch an assassin with the claw-shaped accessory on her right index finger and has the most efficient powders in the other rings she wore, contained under the pretty gemstones making her hands shine like the early rainbow sky.

People of the court want her dead or alive, to exert their authority on her and, in then, get the country’s power in their filthy, egotistical hands. Alas, she was raised by a cunning pedagogue and taught by the winner of the Olympic Games of his youth: she knows her environment and how her high-ranked officers act. She prefers young, low-class citizens to serve her, as they’re more diligent and more deserving of her attention, having struggled their way to the top instead of inheriting from their parents’ status to her ancestors. The son isn’t always as good or bad as the father, after all.

A noble-blooded accountant flatters her too much with empty-sounded words and verses she’s already heard or read somewhere else, gratifies her with gifts that smell like dishonesty and future treason. She sees the sharp, bright blade tied around his waist, clean and yet poor, handle made out of wood. His clothing is unnaturally crimson, colour of power in another city they have contacts with, he told her when she asked about it. Still, despite the flags this rises, she invites him to sit down at her table and invites a maid to serve them both a cup of strong-flavoured tea, waiting for him to turn an eye away during their conversations once the fuming cups are set before the both of them.

He glances at his blade, irises filling with a dark shine; she pours the powder hidden behind a sapphire into his drink.

Their conversation resumes. His words still sound empty, flatters that mean nothing, and she only listens with half of her mind. Instead, she focuses on the cup, drinking her tea with slow gulps, attention focused on the noble. He eventually puts the treacherous drink to his lips and, in a slow move of his wrist, takes a sip. His last, she knows it, as his hands go limp and he passes out. In a complacent nod of her head, she gets her maid’s attention and claps in her hands.

“Ruri, please,” she asks, the girl rushing to her side, “can you get this man to his new cell?”

“Absolutely, your Majesty.”

“I told you already, you can call me Selena when we’re alone like this. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a scribe to check on.”

The maid bows and runs out of the room, diligent as always, as the queen eyes the tea still drippling from the table. He should have known a woman endorsed by the moon would have Hecate by her side to protect her, her starry sleeves shrouded in the dark filled with tricks.

In the palace’s office, a man is slouched over a desk, a hand writing down accounts and books for the royal archives. She doesn’t need to glance over his shoulder to know this is what he is doing, because she assigned this task to him last week, and he’s been nothing but serious about it since then. A bit too serious, it’d seem.

“In how long have you not slept, Shun?” She asks as she enters the room, a sly smirk on her face, her guard slightly down despite the blade she has tied around her waist and hidden away by the precious clothing and the jewels.

The scribe rises from his slouched position, obvious dark rings under his eyes, hand almost hitting the cup of water he has next to him. She slowly walks up to him, bracelets tingling, stones shining under the gentle, dim light of the candle lighting his workspace.

“Ah, your Majesty,” he replies. “I’m almost done with this manuscript. It should only take a couple of hours left.”

“I appreciate your dedication, but your queen is ordering you to bed, so could you please do so right this moment? I am afraid you have, in fact, not slept for a couple of days.”

“I have frankly not seen the sun enough to judge, your Majesty.”

“This only gives me more reasons to order you to bed, Shun.”

“I swear on my life that I’ll do so once I’m done with this manuscript.”

Selena opens her emerald ring’s cache over his cup of water while he looks over his handwriting again. For someone who seemed as rough as he was when she first hired him, his is smooth and clear. People are full of hidden talents and traits, it gladly seems.

Shortly after she’s laced his drink, he grabs his cup it in his hand and almost drinks it, only to wince when it gets close to his nose. He glances back at her, a familiar smile on his face.

“Ah, I guess that Her Majesty very much wants me to go take a rest. I’ll execute myself without making her wait any longer.”

“I prefer that.”

She gives him her hand, which he takes, his head spinning for a moment. She didn’t say that for her own good, after all, she expected that to happen. Still, she got proven right, and that’s enough for her, for now, when it’s about her personal scribe.

She blows out the candle before leaving.

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Keepsakes [Whumptober 2019 - Day 15: Scars]

Summary: Serena asks questions about Shun's scars, bringing them on the path of memories.

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V (post-canon, implied alternate ending) Ship: Established Serena/Shun

Wordcount: 1.171 words

Content Warnings: Brief mentions of surgeries. Some references to a near-death experience. Consensual love.

Notes: It's whump if I mention how the scars happened, right? Because otherwise this is all fluff lol Nano and I got the same idea when I mentioned to her the next Whumptober prompts on my list being, back then, "Tear-Stained" and "Scars" : Peregrine stuff. We need more of it. I'll provide, I don't care how or when, I'll provide. I didn't intend this oneshot to have such a sensual tone, but I'm not against it, I've barely written any intimacy lately. The most sensual thing I've written aside from that was, like, a hug in BWI maybe? (spoils spoils) This is meant to be post-canon where the dimensions have fused together, but the Bracelet Girls and Yu Boys are free and not stuck in one mind because that was bogus/20. Bracelet Girls rights. (this story isn't the right place to complain about Arc-V disappointing us). And of course these two are a little older than they are in canon, they're young people who know what they're doing and can consent. I absolutely self-indulgently slipped a reference to a former work of mine, "Birds of a Feather, Fall Together". I've also included a modified reference to an older Arc-V fic I absolutely love, "placeholders" by harezora (who's most likely never gonna read these notes, but in case they do: I love this story so much it was great and better than canon holy shit). 

Event hosted by @whumptober2019

AO3 version available here.

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The stare she was giving his chest was a bit too intense to his liking, as if her eyes were deciphering some ancient writing on a wall, scrolling from top to bottom, gliding from the left to the right. For a first night sharing a bed in peaceful condition with so little clothing on either of them (it had taken ages for him to even get comfortable with the idea, let alone putting it into place), it was a weird thing for her to do.

Not like he was any better, considering his own eyes couldn’t seem to unglue themselves from the bits of exposed skin left alone by her pyjamas, trailing from her slender shoulders to her hands, focusing on the few imperfections left on her skin by time and experiences, the easily seen and the barely visible, the memories’ physical form laid before him.

 “What are you staring at like that?” he still asked, right as he himself didn’t look quite exactly into her gaze.

“Your scars”, she bluntly replied.

He found himself puffing.

“They’re terrible, right?”

“They’re scars, really,” she continued, crossing her legs on the bed. “You’ve got a lot of them, but they’re a part of yourself. We wouldn’t be the exact same without them.”

That was a bit too deep for his late-night brain, truth be told.

“I suppose so.”

She must have been right, he silently figured, considering the number of scars he could see on her body.

 Serena’s eyes didn’t deter. In fact, her gaze only grew in strength as it continued deciphering the foreign inscriptions in front of her eyes. Her hand twitched on her tight, fingers in a dire want to move, as if she was preventing them from taking off somewhere else.

“I see that you too have a lot of-”

“Can I ask you about them?”

The question surprised him beyond his mind.

“…Come again?”

“Can I ask you about your scars?”

His eyes were furiously blinking.

“Sure, I guess…?”

 What was so interesting about these? They were just ugly, abhorrent traces left behind by wounds of all sorts. And yet, and yet, he found himself with her fingers dancing around his chest, her touch almost sending shivers down his spine (it was closer to a fluttering feel he wasn’t very familiar with, at least not yet), her eyes shining with the light of the bedside lamp.

He didn’t mind, frankly. It had a weird sense of comfort to have her explore him like this, curiosity filling her every move. It made it far less awkward for him to do the same, his own hands brushing against her shoulders, questions coming to his mind. How had she gotten herself these blemishes on her shoulder blades, as light as they were, near a crescent-shaped birthmark right over her breast? Where did the little scars on her arms came from?

Serena was right: they wouldn’t be the same without their scars. This much he could only realize, now that he was actually discovering someone else’s body for the first time in his life.

 Her fingertip stopped on the freshest scar on his skin, laying right under his ribcage.

“This one is from what I think, right?”

“Our first meeting,” he commented. “Well, the aftermath of it, at least.”

“I remember you trying to escape the hospital right before your surgery. Reiji had to send Tsukikage to stun you before you did because Yuya didn’t want to hurt you.”

Her laugh made it worth the embarrassment.

“Sorry, I just… remember your reaction to it. It wasn’t funny at the time, but now that I think about it… It’s kind of funny.”

 Her eyebrows then slightly frowned, making her smile bittersweet.

“…we didn’t start on the best first impressions, did we? You know, being on the opposite sides of a war, my people wanting to slaughter yours and the opposite way around, the Lancers…”

“I wouldn’t have said that. You were the best first impression I had in that dimension.”

“Was it because I looked like Ruri?”

“Maybe.”

 She smiled as her finger left its spot.

“I’m just glad we’re at peace now.”

“Same here.”

 Silence fell between them, albeit only for a short-lived moment, as her finger was still dancing around, eyes following it, before it found itself another spot to ask about.

“And this one?”

Her touch landed on his abdomen, on an old scar he had almost forgotten about from how used he was to seeing it every morning, every evening, every day, every night. Her eyes were sharp, to notice such a faded-out line.

“An old surgery from when I was a kid. I tried ignoring it, but it wasn’t an option. The best thing I remember about it was Ruri sitting by the bed asking me if it hurt.”

“And, did it hurt?”

“It was just sore, really.”

“What surgery was it?”

“Appendicitis, I think.”

“Ah… Never got it myself. Sounds rough.”

“Don’t,” he laughed, looking back at his younger self lying frustrated in a hospital bed. “It was a terrible time to be alive.”

It wasn’t funny, but she giggled back anyway.

“I’m sure it was.”

 Her irises continued their dance, accompanied by her lips shaped in a soft smile. This was a face he could have never resisted, the one who had won him over when he was refusing to show more skin than his arms to her. She’d be the death of him, now that the people trying to kill his entire kind were gone and on the path of redemption – but what a desirable demise she’d be.

“Oh, and this one?”

Her finger gently pressed against a deeper, much more visible scar on his left flank. That one displeased him much more than he’d have wished to admit.

“I got stabbed by an Obelisk Force jackass back in Xyz, before Yuto and I came to Standard, right in front of Ruri too. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have bled out there.”

“That’s horrible…”

“Wasn’t a cosy time to be alive either. Just shows you how strong my sister actually is. Heh, I was blind back there.”

Serena was quiet, her five fingers now flat on his abdomen.

“Hey, don’t make this face. I’m still here, alive and kicking, and so are you. That’s what matters.”

This managed to bring a small smirk back to her lips.

“You’re right.”

 She eventually sighed, cupping his face with her hands, her slender fingers brushing through his hair.

“I’ll have to tell you about mine someday. I don’t have as many, or with as much history, but…”

“That’s wrong. I’m sure they have more meaning that you’re trying to imply.”

“You think?”

“Try me.”

They exchanged mischievous looks, smiles and gazes swapped.

“For another day, then. We got to make the fun last.”

Peace meant they finally had time before them to enjoy life and all the things it brought with it, good and bad.

“Of course,” he said, before they closed the space between their lips.

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Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, dark red crosses are already completed fics and mint lambda-ish signs are prompts I’ve gotten requests for already).

What's that? I've already written a glorified 70K-word Peregrine fic? Psh, you can't have enough Peregrineshipping in your life, stop dat.

You know my friends have my back when they can guess what combination I'll immediately want writing for. Cookie's been a genius there, considering he's picked a very cool prompt + my Arc-V OTP, whose themes and characters just match it perfectly. I'm flabbergasted at how quickly he's come up with it after I shared my card in our Discord server. It's short, it's harsh, it's been a while since I've written like this. The context isn't obvious, not even to me, but I'll say that it's some canon divergence, it's maybe not even the real show's settings. I just wanted to write a scene like this that isn't a dead giveaway for Black-Winged Icarus's events, it's kinda hard.

May be OOC, proceed with caution.

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Empathic Dissonance

Summary: Serena is trying her best to make her duo work one way or the other, but Shun's having none of it.

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V Ship: Peregrineshipping (Serena/Shun) (pre-relationship)

Wordcount: 1.1K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

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“Don’t you fucking dare pity me!”

 His words are harsh, piercing through her attempt at a monologue like a spear through a papier mâché cast. She’s trying to reason him, but it’s clearly not working, and the way he presses the wounds against his chest don’t reassure her. Not that she isn’t injured either, as she’s taken some hits, but that’s besides the point.

 “Kurosaki, that’s… That’s not what I meant to do!”

“You don’t even know what my people’s gone through! Don’t you dare look at me like I’m some defenceless chick who’s fallen off the nest, I know what I’m doing! We don’t need someone from Fusion to tell us how poor we are when Fusion’s the reason this madness started to begin with!”

 He’s furious, she can sense it from his tone alone, the words are just giving him a reason to be this infuriated. He’s spitting out all of his anger at her, and some blood with it. She doesn’t know what to say: she’s never been a smooth talker. How’s she supposed to have him calm down so they don’t get killed?

 “I see it in your eyes! That stare who’s trying to empathize with something you can’t relate to! Have you been tracked down night and day, wondering if you were gonna see the sun rise again, if there even was a point to all this misery?! Have you contemplated ending it right here and there because there was nothing better to come?!”

“No.”

 Her sudden response interrupts his flow like a barrage in the middle of a tempestuous river.

 “No. I haven’t been through the same experience as you, Kurosaki. Frankly, I wish it on nobody, not even my worse enemy. I’m not pretending like I can anyway, because I’ll never be able to relate. I’ve been luckier than you, this much I’ll admit.”

Serena takes a breath. In truth, she wants to cry; but crying in front of a warrior like Kurosaki is likely to anger him even further, which they really don’t need right now considering he’s bleeding out, they’re both injured and exhausted, and this is where they’re supposed to rest so she can do something about that wound he’s insisted on not feeling.

 “I just want us…” To get along? That sounds cheesy. “Never mind. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry for representing what you’ve been through. I can’t pretend like I know how hard it is, but I’m certain it is.”

They stare at each other in silence. She swallows her tears, he gulps down some of his anger, breathing finally evening out.

“I know you don’t want to be pitied by someone like me, someone who’s from the enemy’s side.” She looks at his calloused hands, then back at her smooth ones. “I’ve never known war until recently. I’m not a warrior like you are; yet I know warriors hate pity, because I’ve been raised along them, like the orphan I’ve always been. But, even knowing that… I still try to sympathize. I just don’t want to see you like this, in pain from all meanings of the term, wallowing in your misery. This isn’t how you’ll fix anything.”

She has to show herself as strong, so she has to hurt him in some way. She simply didn’t expect the thought of doing that to hurt this badly.

“You’ll have to open yourself to others if you want to save Ruri.”

 She also doesn’t expect him to almost kneel to the ground, eyes almost rolling back in their sockets, until he catches himself on the wall and glides against that instead.

 Serena doesn’t think: she rushes to him, already getting out her first-response materials from her pouch. He doesn’t look as angry as he is pained, so she uses the commotion and his general confusion to both of their advantages, taking this opportunity to check on his wound. It’s less deep that she thought it’d be, making her sigh in relief, as it’s a mere slash that he’s just let fester around. To be fair, they had to run away from soldiers, so it wasn’t like he could have stopped and put some bandages on that cut. Still, neither of them wants to let that get infected – the lessons she’s gotten on that were scary enough for her not to see that happen – so she quickly patches it up as well as she can.

 “Why? Why the hell are you doing this, Serena?” He asks in a much lower tone, as if his voice doesn’t want to rise.

“We’re comrades.”

“You’re… you’re serious?”

“Of course I am. Do I look like I’m kidding? What do you think I’m doing?”

“Fair enough.”

 She tears herself apart again to look at her bandage placement. It’s a fairly pristine white against his bruised and scarred skin, but she tries not to let the embarrassment of having half-stripped a guy she wants to get along with get further inside of her than her ears and cheeks starting to burn spontaneously.

“Here you go”, she says with a small smile of satisfaction. It’s like seeing work well done, even if that’s the least she could do for him.

“…thank you,” he tells her, his tone still quieted down.

“It’s nothing.”

 He’s still upset, she can tell with how his hands twitch, but he seems calmed down enough for her to remain sitting in front of him. Still, when she tries to look into his eyes, he’s the one who looks away until she feels two arms pull her against his chest and she doesn’t know what to say or think about it all. The hell’s happening? What’s taking him all of a sudden

Still, she said they were comrades, so she’s content staying there and trying to complete the weird embrace he’s triggered, even if she has no answer to the questions starting to grow inside her mind like weed quickly appears in humid spaces after the rain.

 Serena then remembers she reminds him of Ruri, and she guesses that’s why he’s hugging her so suddenly, the guy who must feel too lonely to even say it out loud and instead spits in the faces of whomever has a hunch on that theory. That’s, however, only until he says this one thing that gives him away way more than he probably thinks.

“I… guess don’t mind you, Serena,” he whispers under his breath like a confession that he doesn’t want to hear himself say.

Is this him admitting they are, indeed, comrades? She hopes it is, for them, for her, for him.

“I don’t mind you either.”

 She may not be able to pity him for his trauma as a teenage soldier, but she can at least sympathize with his loneliness, the girl who’s always been protected in a tower of ivory.

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Sole Obscurato [Whumptober 2019 - Day 4: Human Shield]

[Title meaning: “The sun that was obscured”]

Summary: Serena gambits with the Obelisk Force, Shun complies.

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V (vague canon divergence verse) Ship: The lightest hint of Serena/Shun

Content warnings: None.

Wordcount: ~600 words

Notes: I'm a day late because I got my Internet connection severed by... having my phone stolen. Yeah. That was a thing that kinda happened. It's still here tho! Some light, vague canon divergence for the soul, nothing groundbreaking, but it was still nice to provide. Would have been better if it hadn't happened on BWI day tho lmao I decided to take the prompt both literally and less literally, if you know what I mean. I wasn't up for hostage situations yesterday lol

Event hosted by @whumptober2019

AO3 version available here.

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They were right in the wolf’s jaw, faced with the last of Academia’s forces: a couple guys dressed in that silly-looking uniform that had terrorized his people for way too long, armed with much too familiar disks. He had had his option to card them removed from his and, while he had been forced never to use it again, the danger of the situation called for it in his opinion.

Serena’s hand on his twitching wrist was telling him otherwise, making their walk through the deserted corridors stop in its tracks.

 “We’ve finally found you, Miss Serena,” one of them engaged them, stepping forward. “Please come with us if you want nothing to happen.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Doctor’s orders.”

He felt shivers running down her arm and hand while her face contorted.

“I refuse,” she told them, gulping.

“Then we’ll have to use force.”

 In a reflex, not even thinking twice, Shun put himself forward, an arm in front of her. He wasn’t willing to let those goons even attempt abducting a friend. Not again, not after Ruri’s disappearance, not after Yuto’s, not after losing his world to some maniac’s demented project. He wouldn’t let people be made prisoners under his watch, especially by the same persons who had turned his entire world into an unliveable hell. He wouldn’t let Serena be made their captive, even if it cost him his life.

“Kurosaki,” she whispered next to his ear, “let me deal with this”.

“Wha-”

 Before he could say anything back, Serena threw herself in front of him, arms wide open, legs firmly planted into the ground. The gesture immediately rose the wrong vibes within him back to life, reminding him of all the times he had failed to do what she was trying to accomplish, her gaze inaccessible to him.

“You’ll have to stomp on my corpse before you get to him!” She screamed, fierce, biting.

 He was as surprised as the Obelisk Force agents of her reaction, sudden and frankly unpredictable. She seemed sure of herself, confident in her strength, as the three goons in front of them blinked and stood in awe for a couple moments.

“The Professor wants me alive,” she tells him in another whisper. “They can’t hit me unless they defy orders.”

“And what if they do?!” He asks back, barely keeping the volume of his voice in check.

“They won’t, believe me.”

 Serena sounded so certain and firm that he couldn’t help but buy a bit into her words. It was a stupid thing to do, to believe someone from Fusion like that, and his sister would most likely be unhappy with how he decided to go; yet the situation called for it. He had to believe in Serena, put his life into her hands, completing a process that had started oh so long ago. He begged Ruri to forgive him in silence.

For now, they both needed to survive, to make it out alive and beat the evil from the inside.

 The Obelisk Force goons lowered their disks, instead putting them in duel mode. They’d have to beat them the usual way around, turning their own on, the familiar jingles and voice clips playing as they did so. Serena had since then moved back to being by his side rather than having all four of her limbs trying to cover him, still looking as determined and about to get ruthless on her enemies. Shun, as a consequence, decided to pay her back and protect her during the game, even if it’d mean becoming her human shield.

He wanted their relationship to be reciprocal in terms of strengths and services and, well, he had always hated owing someone for more than a minute. She must have agreed, considering their matching glances at each other, filled with trust. He had missed being able to trust someone like this, despite how catastrophic their meeting had been and how dangerous their current situation was.

 The one certain thing was that they could mutually put their lives in each other’s hands.

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Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me I give myself self-indulgent requests according to this marvelous card!

The last thing I expect going into this bingo was to end with an Arc-V fanfiction of all things, but those things happen, sometimes... It was a fun one to write, even if I’m sure I got either of the characters right. Writing fanfiction is hard guyze.

I’m later going to make a retrospect on my BTHB experience and fills in a video, so I won’t go into too much detail on the background being this one, just that I just find Peregrineship to be really neat and I wish we got more of it in the actual show.

(yes, my title is garbage, I know that. my brain just froze trying to find one.)

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Time Is Pouring Out

Summary: An unlikely duo of lone wolves find themselves split from their group of friends in the ruins of a desolated city. Of course it had to go wrong somewhere and get one of them injured, but stubborn; because they're both stubborn, but one of them is more of a fool than the other.

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V (canon divergence: see AO3 notes) Ships: Peregrineshipping (Serena/Shun, pre-rel, can be considered as platonic)

Wordcount: 2.8K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

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“You… You’re a fool, Kurosaki.”

Serena didn’t even look up as she told her fellow Lancer so, her hands busy disinfecting small wounds and applying bandages around the cuts he had gotten from duelling Academia students. Not that he was any happier about having to be bandaged up on the go than she was: they were searching for the “Duel Sanctuary” the Resistance had taken shelter in and that Allen and Sayaka had told them about before they had all gotten split up, it was costing them time and, frankly, getting scolded wasn’t a part of his passions. He had essentially duelled these guys because they wanted to abduct her, he’d have thought she’d have been happy about that.

“I’ve told you not to barge into action like that several times already, do you even listen to me?” she continued as if she hadn’t gotten the urge to fistfight her own former alliance before realizing it was going to be hopeless. “Look at where that got you.”

 He didn’t respond, preferring to grit through his teeth as she applied antiseptics on his cuts and focus on where exactly he had been hit (mostly his sides), before getting up again and zipping back his coat close. They were losing time, they both knew that, but she had thought patching up some little cuts was important enough to waste that precious time. They needed to meet back with the others before a catastrophe could happened. After all, the ruins of Heartland could have been hiding all kinds of direct threats to them, he knew that well, but she didn’t know what kind of threats exactly. At least, not yet.

“Just be careful, next time,” she told him as she got to her feet. “I don’t have that many bandages on me.”

They exchanged a smug smile.

“Will do. Thank you.”

“It’s nothing. I, at least, owe you that.”

 They resumed their walking, gazes looking around for their comrades, their footsteps echoing in the deafening silence of death and past destruction. As their eyes kept admitting all there was, was the ever-lasting void of an annihilated city, Shun wondered what exactly had made him trust Serena, who clearly had once been the enemy (and hadn’t hidden that fact to what her faction would have called “Xyz scum”), enough to let her patch up some small cuts.

In a way, she had been lucky that the eerie calm of their situation had made it so he had allowed her to wrap some cloth bandages she had on her (“Academia taught us to patch ourselves up if we ever got injured, so I’ve always had some first-aid stuff on me,” she had told him as he had been opening up his coat). Maybe the sheer absurdity of bandaging someone in a physical representation of what desolation felt like had made it so being a prude had no value anymore, no shame to expose one’s skin to someone else.

And, to be fair, he did trust Serena like he trusted the other Lancers, if not more. She had helped him escape when he had broken a rib: it wasn’t even like she hadn’t seen him when he was vulnerable and left wide open for any potential assailant. Moreover, as far as he knew, things hadn’t changed in that regard between them for her to suddenly want to do the opposite way around: they still were allies and, dared he thought it, friends, despite all odds and the warfare going on. They had to stick together until they reunited with the others anyway: better make the best of it.

 “Was it always this silent, before you left for Standard?”

“No. They must have left the city once the Resistance moved bases.”

“…I see.”

Silence again. Neither of them was good at small talk and, considering the current atmosphere, they more than likely didn’t know what to tell each other about either. Looking around for danger was already enough of a distraction.

 It wasn’t like either of them wasn’t entirely focused on the mission at hand either. They were the kind to think of the objective and only the objective, which made their tandem surprisingly work despite the former rift between them. Their goal: finding the others, reunite the Resistance, get Kaito back into it and help the survivors fend off against Academia. Nothing else mattered, really, as long as they were aware and able to walk.

Yet, something was off about the situation. Serena could just feel something strange, a something she couldn’t describe in words: a feeling of something about to go wrong, or already going wrong. It wasn’t exactly unfamiliar, but she wasn’t used to it either, like a distant thing she had used to feel before forgetting all about it years ago. Maybe it was just the smell in the air, akin to rust and blood, of dust and, in a way, death. Academia had been made out of monsters all along, and she had contributed to it… The horrors of Heartland kept clutching at her heart, reminding her of the actions and ideology she had once defended.

 As she didn’t know the city, Serena was walking behind Kurosaki, who always made sure to signal her when they’d turn around a corner by putting his arm in front of her. She didn’t need protection, as she could perfectly fend off for herself; but her reason told her not to risk getting lost in the ruins and, as such, to tolerate it. Perhaps he was simply trying to pretend like she was his lost sister, as if he was protecting Ruri and not her, making sure she was safe by putting himself first. At least, he seemed passionate enough to do that, to her.

(They didn’t know each other that much, despite the intensity of their recent experiences. Getting to know someone when both parties are involved in a war whose dimension is way above their heads was arduous, and getting split from the group was the best way to learn about a comrade in misfortune).

 Nonetheless, even with the needed precaution and the eerie lack of activity all around them taken into account, it was still weird to her that Kurosaki was that slow. His footsteps were heavier than hers, sloppier even, and he was, she’d have sworn, losing more and more speed as time went on. For someone who had first protested against getting his wounds treated, “we don’t have time to do that, we need to find the others”, he sure was the one making them lose all that precious time he had ranted about wasting to his own wellbeing.

The ambient smell was what bothered Serena the most out of all these little things surrounding them. It was, like the impression of incoming disaster, not a stranger to her: in a way, it was frighteningly the opposite. It was faint, but her sense had been sharpened by the training of Academia: she caught up on the iron smell, on the fact it was indeed weak, yet present and strengthening. There had to be a reason why she hadn’t been disturbed by it before, right? What was that reason?

 Because she didn’t pay attention as much as to where she was walking anymore, she almost crashed into Kurosaki who, to her surprise, hadn’t anticipated it and almost tripped over himself. At first, she had guessed his foot had gotten tricked by a piece of debris or shrapnel; but there was nothing at his feet, only dust and a plain, crackled surface. His loss of balance seemed more and more unnatural as it went, making her heart do that weird little thing she had felt when she had seen him at the bottom of these stairs, a hand trying to clench his own ribcage through his clothing.

(Funny enough, she had taken advantage of having to take care of his wounds to check if there had been any bruising there. There hadn’t, but she was still left wondering why she had even thought about checking that out. Of course it’d have healed since then).

Serena quickly realized that she was, in fact, getting concerned for him all over again, except she was even more surprised this time around: back during the Battle Royale, she hadn’t had the time to wonder why she was worrying for some “Xyz scum”. Now, due to his speed and now the fact he had stopped altogether for a few seconds, she had the time to question her own feelings for once, not hindered by Academia’s mould or peer pressure. Usually, she’d have been infuriated to be stopped in her walk when she had no time to lose, getting aggravated the moment someone would slow down; but that was then, she supposed, and now she was concerned because the guy she was walking with should have been much quicker than that on his feet. Something was wrong.

 “Kurosaki, why did you stop?” she asked him, her voice trying to be both loud enough to get an immediate response out of him and low enough not to echo in the void.

He didn’t respond immediately, preferring to turn towards her before. Looking at his face again, she was realizing he had begun panting despite the low effort they were doing (he hadn’t shown any signs of fatigue beforehand, that was beyond suspicious), eyes looking hazier than they had done before. The smell had gotten stronger too, to the point she was finally able to recognize it: it was, unmistakeably, blood.

And the red stain Kurosaki had his hand over was giving it all away.

 “Don’t tell me you’re bleeding again!”

She was more upset at the wound than him, because he wasn’t exactly responsible for the liquid pouring out of it to act up on its own after she had tried to stop it, but her emotions had taken over. He hadn’t recoiled, didn’t even look fazed by getting yelled at, simply looked at his wound and fingers starting to coat in red.

“I guess so,” he responded nonchalantly before ducking his head in the other direction. “I think I saw Yuya and the others far away, we should be close to finding them.”

“Don’t change the topic, let me check that!”

 Shun frowned in response. Did he know he was bleeding again? Yes, or at least, he had supposed so before she had pointed it out. Did he want to waste even more time on what was most likely still a minor injury? No, absolutely not. He could swear he had just heard, in the distance and faintly, but had still heard nonetheless, the voice of his companions. There was no mistaking about the fact he had heard Sayaka, Allen, Yuya and the others. He felt faint, a bit weak on his legs, but still very much able to walk.

He’d have had all the time in the world to bleed after they had found the sanctuary and their friends, so pressing on was a better strategy than just stopping there to see what cut had continued bleeding despite the care Serena had put into stopping their doings.

And yet she grabbed his wrist, put her other hand on his shoulder, and forced him to sit down here and there without any warning, leaving him lightly stunned and, admittedly, defenceless.

 “We won’t get anywhere if you pull that crap on me, so stop being a child and let me see! I don’t want to drag you through the wastelands because you’ll have passed out from blood loss!”

Shun sighed, but gave in and started opening his coat again. There was no reasoning with the thick-skulled, stubborn, proud Serena: it’d just be a lost battle and, frankly, he felt too tired to deal with it. On second thought, the fact he felt that fatigued was a dead giveaway that these bastards had gotten more hits on him that he’d thought. In fact, she was as stubborn as he was: that was why he felt so comfortable working with her, he supposed. It didn’t help make his wounds look any less concerning, though.

“Make it quick, we need to catch up on them as soon as possible.”

“Will do.”

 Serena kneeled to his head level and put out her first-aid kit again. Having nothing else to do and feeling his consciousness starting to leave his body through his vision dimming, he focused his attention on her, on her hands finding the source of the problem, on the kit she had next to her, on the floor. Focus, don’t let yourself pass out. Someone fainting out in the streets was a sure way to get killed. Focus, don’t let yourself pass out. He was in good hands anyway, and would soon be joined by their comrades. Focus, don’t let yourself pass out.

She still had her fingers coated in a think layer of dried blood, showing up as maroon plaques on her hands. Her fingertips traced across his abdomen until she gritted her teeth, having found the culprit. It was, honestly, easy to spot: a red spot tainting the white of the bandages, soaking them until she could visibly guess they were going to stick. Serena gritted her teeth again: she had thought that had really just been a cut, not even thinking back on it that it could have been any deeper.

Her frustration would have to wait.

 “Don’t faint on me, Kurosaki, got it?”

He nodded, as it to save energy by doing so.

“I’ll need to peel that off, then disinfect the wound again, so it’s going to sting more than earlier.”

 In full silence, she started on her work, doing as she said she would. Her guesses had been right, this time: the bandages stuck to his skin around the cut, the fabric sipping with blood on her hands, until she had reached a point where she had to suddenly tear it off. She muttered an almost-quiet apology before yanking it off, leading Kurosaki to strangle a yelp. She could have contemplated the pain it was bringing him considering her past experience with him, but their time was running out like his consciousness was pouring out of the wound, so she simply kept on with her procedure.

As she disinfected the source of their problems, Serena examined it. It clearly was deeper than she had thought it to be at first, the stench coming out of it almost nauseating, more akin to a stab wound than some artificial scratch done with a blade. From what she could gather, he hadn’t exactly gotten stabbed, but it had been his assailant’s intention all along, leading to a deep cut bleeding heavily, but not immediately life-threatening. Considering their scarce resources in this dimension, Serena chose to bandage the wound again after making sure it wasn’t going to get infected anytime soon, pushing a compress against it as she did so. As she did so, she heard grunts, even if he mostly stood quiet as she did what she had to do. Truly, they both had their ability to hold their ground against their own injuries.

 “I’m done,” she said, not without pride, as she rose her eyes and put her kit away. The lack of any response and his glassed eyes made her heart jump for a moment before she had to make sure and asked, “Kurosaki, you’re still with me?”

He zipped his coat close, yet again, got up – and so did she as to follow along –, and shook his head, exhaling what sounded like a sigh of relief, or one at to chase the pain away. She wasn’t exactly able to tell.

“Yeah… Let’s meet up with the others, now.”

As if they had been in the known, she heard their comrades in the distance, before spotting their shapes in the distance, on the other side of the street. As she felt a smile appear on her face, either in relief or just in happiness to see them all again and in one piece, she decided she’d help them go forward by putting Kurosaki’s arm on her shoulders (not that he was objecting to it, busy trying to remain conscious).

“Yeah. Let’s do that.”

 They, obviously, were much slower than before, and it’d have frustrated her to no end if she hadn’t able to see their partners coming towards them, Yuya waving at their duo. As it stood, instead, she told herself that she could stomach the slowdown and support them until they’d be reunited, making sure that he was still awake and able to walk with her. They, again, exchanged smiles.

“Thank you… again.”

“You’re still welcome.”

 She’d scold that fool further later. For now, she had friends to join back, and he had a situation to explain. In a way, they were both fools.