#she moved onto my brother when i left and when he became cold and indifferent to her shouting

[pamgkrthwrites]

Flame of Healing | EraserMic x Reader | Chapter 1 - Fear

Masterlist | AO3

Warning: Soulmate AU

Word Count: 2023

A/N: So this chapter is rather slow and you don’t really see Shouta or Hitzashi with chapter, but we will get there I promise. Just hold up for me please.

Everyone got their soulmate names at the same time they got their quirk. However, unlike everyone else, you were part of the small 1% who got two names on their wrists. 

Even now, you can remember your parents and siblings faces when they found out. You younger brother grew disgusted while your older brother was happy for you. My father was indifferent while your mother was concerned. 

Even now, you could remember your caretakers and classmates reactions. Everyone was judging you and so you decided when you were 10 that you would hide your soulmates names.

Luckily your mother was Hero, her quirk being named Phoenix, a firebird quirk with some regeneration with it. Your father was guirkless but worked in the police force. She was able to get you all to move to Musutafu when you made this choice.

You would cover the names each day with waterproof makeup and with your mother connections, were able to have your soulmates names censored from your legal papers. However, that never stopped you from looking at their names at night. 

Shouta Aizawa on your right wrist and Hizashi Yamada on your left wrist. You would stare at their names for hours and whisper promises that once you meet, you’ll be better than you are now. 

Your older brother got the bird quirk from your mother, having dove-like wings on his back. Your younger brother had a fire quirk that responded to his emotions. You, however, got the regeneration part of your mother’s quirk. You could heal anyone around you and would always be full of energy. You were often put into sports events forced by your school as you could stay in the game. You felt little pain and could spread that to the rest of your team.

However, you learnt early on that people liked to use you for your quirk. You had more fake friends than you could count. The only real friend you had was a boy named Oboro Shirakumo. Sadly you met him in your last of middle school.

“Your applying to UA’s hero course?” You asked him.

“Yeah!” You smiled brightly as you two walked home from school. “I know we have joked about being heroes, but I really want to be one, ya know!”

“I’m happy for you Oboro.” You smile back at him. “Just don’t get hurt, I can’t just walk up over there to heal your dumbass all the time.”

Oboro laughed at your silly comment at him and he softly nudged your arm. You smiled, but at the back of your mind, you were sad at this. You were happy for him sure, but you would have to watch your only real friend walk away. Walk somewhere you saw your own mother had walked from. Hero life seemed cool, but it wasn’t from your point of view. You and your brothers had been endanger before from villains hating your mother. 

“Don’t see this as me abandoning you, okay?” He said softly. 

You looked up at him and his soft smile. You had wanted to tell Oboro the truth about your soulmate situation, but feared he would get mad at the lie or be disgusted at you for having two soulmates, like almost everyone in your life. He actually didn’t have a soulmate, and so you feared he may see you as mocking him, even though you had been doing this for 4 or so years.

“I could never, Oboro.” You smiled sweetly at him. “You’re my best friend and I will stand by you, even if we become distance.”

He smiled. “We can choose our own destinies Y/N.”

Oboro often said this because of his no soulmate situation. He saw it as that we got to choose who we love while everyone else didn’t. It kinda hurt, considering you had two soulmates, but you started to really think about his meaning.

Did you actually have to love your soulmate? Could you avoid meeting them? Could you lie to them? Could you hate them? Could you love someone who isn’t your soulmate?

Your thoughts went to a dark place with it, sure, but there were questions no one wanted to ask or answer, besides you. 

When Oboro got accepted into UA, you were happy for him. You two had a small party at his place, but when the new school year started you noticed him being really focused for once. Well, more focused. 

You meet up became less and less. The weekend before the sports festival came and you went over to Oboro’s house.

“Oboro, how you doing buddy?” You slowly entered into his room.

The boy with blue fire like hair looked up at you. His head was laid down onto his desk and his eyes looked tired. 

“Y/N, the training for the festival…” He said in a weak voice as he weakly reached out for you.

You giggled and walked over to him. You sat down next to him, put your hand on his back and activated your quirk. 

“This will just give a little boost and make sure you won’t get sick. You need to sleep Oboro.” You patted his back once you were done.

“Are you coming to the festival?!” He smiled at you he leaned closer to you. 

Your faces were almost touching and you felt you checks burn.

“Um, yeah I will. I won’t be able to come backstage or anything-”

“If you walk in with me, you are able to sit backstage with us!” He smiled, devilishly.

“...What are you planning, Oboro?”

“I just want you to meet Shouto and Hizashi, Y/N.” He smiled brightly as he brought his face away from yours. 

Your heart dropped and your eyes widen. You felt cold. How did he know about their names?

“They’re in my class at UA!” You said, after seeing your reaction. “I noticed your name on their wrists but also each other names. I pieced it together quickly after that.”

“...I’m sorry I didn’t tell you Oboro. I got judged for it a lot and so I-”

Oboro put a finger on your lips and looked into your eyes. “I know Y/N, and I understand. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Besides you trying to match me up with my soulmates.” You jokes and pushed his hand away in a joking manner.

“It will be fun though!” He whined with a smile on his face. 

“I’m not ready yet though!” You joked with him.

“Shouta isn’t ready either to be honest.” He leaned back in his chair and made a serious face.

“What do you mean?” You asked as fear started to walk up your back.

“Hizashi is the only person he talks to in the class for obvious reasons.” He sighed as he pushed back his hair. “When I tried talking to him he closed me off. He doesn’t know what hero he wants to be just yet, which is fine don’t get me wrong. But he doesn’t have a fighting style yet and his eyes get sore a lot.”

“...His eyes get sore?”

“YES!” Oboro sad up and smiled up at you again. “That’s how your perfect for him! You could help him with his sore eyes and musicals and help him when he is sick!”

“I-” Oboro cut you off.

“And Hizashi has a loud personality. Like, the opposite of Shouto! They both don’t know how to chill! You are such a perfect fit for them!”

“...But what about you saying we can choose our own destinies?” You asked.

Oboro had a concerned and worried expression on his face.

“You didn’t take what I said to heart about that, did you?”

You could hear your breathing. “What is that suppose to mean?”

“I said that because you always looked sad when soulmates were brought up! I thought it was because you didn’t have one so I wanted you to believe you could still find love.”

“... So you don’t believe soulmates can avoid each other?”

Oboro had a worried and shocked expression. “Y/N, why do you not want to meet them?”

“I mean, they already met right?” Your voice became strained but you kept up your seriousness. “They don’t need their third wheel ruining that for them. I’m fine on my own anyway.”

Oboro just stared at you. “Y/N,” he spoke softly. “You can’t actually mean that, you know that right?”

You stared at your friend and back off. “I’m sorry Oboro, but I do. Maybe I will change my opinion on the matter later in life, but this is what I think right now.”

Your friend just stared at you. “Are you sure about this Y/N?”

“Yes Oboro, I am sure.”

---

The following week, you were sitting in the stands with your older brother for the UA sports festival. You cheered for your friend who you saw doing his best. He made eye contact with you at one point, he waved at you and you waved back.

A boy with yellow hair that was styled up walked up to him and started talking to him. You saw Oboro side eye at you and smirk. You could only guess that blondie was one of your soulmates or he was just teasing.

But as you watched on, you heard a names you thought you would never hear over the announcement. 

“A student that was falling behind but catching up young Aizawa Shouta.”

Your older brother’s neck snapped to face the big screen to see the face of one of your soulmates. You slowly turned your head and saw a skinny boy with shoulder length hair.

You could see how tired he looked, even from the low quality camera. You could feel your cheeks burn and your heart thump loudly. 

Your brother smiled brightly until he saw your face, which had fear written all over it. 

“Y/N, you okay?” Your older brother asked.

“...Can we go home?”

“...Sure we can…”

Oboro looked up at where you were sitting in the stands and saw you leave rather quickly. He sighed as he placed his hands on his hips. 

“What am I going to do with you, Y/N?”

---

“Oboro was willing to let you meet one of your soulmates and you turned it down?!” Your mother looked down at you. “What were you thinking? Any sane human being would have loved or drooled at a opportunity like that Y/N!”

“I know mother but-”

“If you are going to cry to me about being a third wheel again Y/N-”

Your older brother cut your mother off and stood in between you two. “How about we take a breather, okay? Y/N got really scared when she saw Shouta. Some soulmates do that. We have to let them meet naturally.”

“Naturally? She knows what he looks like! She is going to get cold feet everytime they see each other from now on.”

Your mother was right, but you had locked yourself in your room. You pulled up the reply of the sports festival and looked at Shouta’s face for a really long time. You heart pounded in your chest over and over. He was really beautiful. You couldn’t identify Hizashi, but you had a theory on who it could be.

It was a boy Shouta was running with at one point. He had blonde hair that was styled almost like a punk rocker that always had a smile one and was loud. He also made your heart pound and you couldn’t help just see him as handsome.

You heard your doorbell ring and so you existed your room. You saw Oboro and he smiled brightly and ran over to you.

“You saw Shouta, didn’t you! That’s why you left early!”

“...Yes…” You sighed out.

He smiled so brightly. He started to jump up and down and ran into your room. “I’ll point out Hizashi for you! And if you change your mind by the next school festival then I have no problem taking you there myself okay?”

You felt your heart swell and you smiled sweetly at your friend. “Thanks Oboro.”

[shypotato-translations]

QTVW Chapter 11

The Future* President's Fiancee (XI)

----

The scene fell silent for a moment, and no one spoke again.

An Mu Lan lowered her head and her gaze fell on Father An. At that moment, Father An was holding a black jade walking stick in his hand, his hand was rubbing on the top of the stick, and the veins on his hand were clearly visible, so you could see that he was very angry now.

An Mu Lan's eyes rolled, she knew that what Father An had said earlier were just words of anger, he definitely did not mean to hand over the An family to her.

He is probably saying this now because he is under pressure from the family clan to let himself go out and be a shield for a while, and once he waits until the pressure from the family side diminishes, he will definitely take away these rights immediately.

An Mu Lan snorted disdainfully, in fact she had no intention of taking over the An family power, but seeing this attitude of Father An, she had the bad intention to sit this matter out and give him a blow.

With that in mind, she thought to herself: It looks like she needs to plan something in secret.

Her thoughts were dark in her mind when Father An, sitting beside her, let out a wrenching cough that interrupted her thoughts.

She hurriedly took a few steps forward, bent down and patted Father An's back, and said in a soft tone,

"Father, no matter what, good health is the most important thing. I think this matter, the brothers didn't mean it, this Miss Ye Zixuan, after all, hasn't come back for a long time, the brothers are understandably a bit excited to see her now and said some angry words. Father, you'd better go back and rest first, I will talk to my brothers, just don't worry."

When Father An heard these words, a hundred different feelings came to his mind.

He looked at the meek An Mu Lan with a complicated expression and then at his four indifferent sons before finally letting out a long sigh and saying,

"That's all, let's stop here for today, Mu Lan, you can stay tonight, the clan elders are coming over tomorrow and you haven't seen them for a long time, stay and meet them tomorrow and exchange pleasantries with the elders."

With that, without waiting for An Mu Lan to answer, he stood up himself and, with An Mu Lan's help, left the living room, never again paying attention to the people sitting in the living room with different expressions.

After An Mu Lan helped Father An upstairs to his bedroom on the first floor, Father An sat**, silently looking out the window, and said in an emotional tone,

"In fact, I have long forgotten about that incident back then, and you are not entirely to blame for that incident with your mother. I now love you as my own daughter, your four brothers are not fighting for their lives, I hope that between you siblings, there will not be a divide, you are after all blood dissolved in water."

An Mu Lan knew that he was now playing the affection card, saying nice things, but in reality, he was doing something completely different.

Father An coughed, took a sip of tea to moisten his throat, and continued breathlessly,

"When you meet the clan elders tomorrow, I want you to put in a good word for your brothers in front of them, they are still young and sometimes it is human to do the wrong thing. If you do as I say, I will share some of the shares of the An family with you, but ......"

His eyes grew stern as he said,

"Don't think about what doesn't belong to you, let alone touch it, or I'll break off the father-daughter relationship with you."

An Mu Lan cursed in her heart: after warmth, the threats began, it seemed that the original owner had definitely picked up the pieces, ah. Giving a candy and a whip, completely domesticating a pet, how could this be the attitude a father should have towards his own daughter?!

She hated it in her heart, but smiled warmly on her face and said,

"What are you saying, father? My brothers and I are from the same mother, so if I don't help them, who will? Don't worry. Father, rest for a while, until dinner time, Mu Lan will come and wake you up for dinner."

With that, she covered Father An with a thin blanket, then turned and walked out.

An Mu Lan returned to her room, which was still clean and tidy as she still had servants to tidy it up.

She opened her personal terminal and checked the time, noticing that it was only six in the afternoon, while at this time on weekdays, when she was still staying in Ling Xihan's physical exercise room, she was practicing the use of gun machinery, and Ling Xihan would teach her herself when she had free time. She had seen the indifference between relatives at this moment, and now missed Ling Xihan a million times over.

An Mu Lan thought of this, then clicked on the address book, found the top column, pressed the button to dial, and after only three seconds of waiting, the other side was connected, and the figure of Ling Xihan appeared on the other side of the screen, and it could be seen that she was signing documents at this time.

An Mu Lan clicked on the "life-size" screen next to the screen and chatted face-to-face with Ling Xihan.

With a look of regret on her face, she said,

"I'm going to stay at the An family tonight, poor big CEO Ling Xihan has to stay alone, hey, how can you spend such a lonely and unbearable night?"

After hearing this, Ling Xihan raised an eyebrow indifferently and continued with the task at hand, her hands swept over one document after another and then said slowly and methodically,

"Is there anything else? If there's nothing else, I have to work."

An Mu Lan stopped her and said,

"Don't, I just want to talk to you, I won't disturb you,"

She smiled, then lay back**, her arms propped up on her chin, the softness of her body in front of her, forming a seductive curve as she smiled wickedly and said,

"How are you going to sleep tonight without me to hold you?"

The signature under Ling Xihan's hand paused, she finally lifted her head, tossed the electronic pen onto the table casually, and then moved lazily to unbutton her collar, revealing her delicate collarbone. She said,

"Then how about I meet you in your bedroom tonight?"

She smiled wickedly, her narrow eyes narrowed, looking extraordinarily seductive and alluring.

An Mu Lan couldn't help but swallow, she blushed and looked down, then pretended to be oblivious and said,

"You said it yourself, don't go back on your word, I'm opening the window right now. If you don't come, humph!"

Ling Xihan shook her head in amusement and said,

"I'll be visiting the An family this afternoon after work, how can I miss it when there's a good show on?"

She picked up her pen to work again, and in an instant regained her cold demeanour and asked blandly,

"Is there anything else?"

An Mu Lan smiled happily, with two distinct dimples at the corners of her mouth, and made a kissing face at the screen before saying,

"I'm looking forward to it."

And turned off the video.

After the room had quieted down, An Mu Lan began to think about tomorrow, after letting the four brothers of the An family go for so long, it was time to kill them all. As for Ye Zixuan, she was now nothing more than a pale woman, and it would be easy to deal with her.

A more difficult one to deal with is Zhang Yao. This woman was already vicious and ruthless, and now that she is in charge of the Zhang family, she is afraid that she will be even more difficult to deal with. In the past few years, although the Zhang family had endured many blows, it was still the number one triad force in the future world and its strength should not be underestimated.

An Mu Lan lay on her **thinking for a long time, but still had no clue, her thoughts turned to the wedding in a month's time, her cheeks couldn't help but blush, she remembered once when she and Ling Xihan were **touching each other, Ling Xihan whispered in her ear, she said to take things further on the wedding night.

Although Ling Xihan grew up in the future world, some of her ideas about love are still very primitive and retro. She respects** and doesn't mess around with relationships, and after spending all these years together, An Mu Lan has learned something about Ling Xihan.

Ling Xihan grew up in the slums; she had no father, only a mother who was in the brothel business.

It is said that her mother, also a member of the slums, was beautiful in her youth and had many suitors, but was once deceived by a handsome young man and they married and had a child, but it was not long before the man disappeared completely and her mother then realized that she had been deceived.

After this incident, her mother, who was already neurotic, became even more hysterical and incoherent, she regularly beat Ling Xihan and denied her food.

Growing up in such an environment, Ling Xihan has seen so much of the dark side of s**t that she has become vindictive and ruthless, but even so, she is still a person of principle who wants a home of her own and an intimate and pure lover.

An Mu Lan knew that they were getting along well now, but it wasn't enough, she needed to do something to make Ling Xihan give her heart, otherwise she would die if the mission failed.

An Mu Lan thought silently, but did not have the slightest clue.

When it was time for dinner, she sat on the sofa and said to Father An,

"Father, Xihan is coming over tonight, she says she hasn't seen you for a long time and wants to come and visit you this time."

Father An nodded, indicating that he knew, and then twirled the cane in his hand without saying a word.

A short while later, the doorbell rang and she smiled as she stood up and walked to the door to open it, to see that the visitor was indeed Ling Xihan, who nodded at her and walked in.

At that moment, Ling Xihan had a gentle smile on her face as she handed the butler the gift she had brought and then politely said,

"Greetings, Father, it has been a long time. Hello to the four brothers."

The four men of the An family nodded their heads in response, their eyes still on Ye Zixuan.

Father An's face sank at this, but he still smiled lovingly and said,

"Yes, it has indeed been a long time, how has Xihan been doing lately? Did Mu Lan give you any trouble?"

Ling Xihan smiled at his words and looked at An Mulan, who was standing to one side with a good little daughter-in-law look on her face, and said,

"Mu Lan is well, and her father has been very successful in educating her."

During this time, An Mu Lan was busy serving dishes to Ling Xihan and Father An, while Zhang Yao, who was also a guest, was looking at Ling Xihan's face, her eyes greedy and deep.

After eating, Father An led Ling Xihan to the study to talk while Zhang Yao looked at An Mu Lan with a look that was about to eat her, and then made mouth movements and said,

"I want you dead."

An Mu Lan raised an eyebrow and smiled, a sudden flash of light came to her mind and she shrugged without moving her shoulders and went to the kitchen to make dessert.

She made a lot of cakes and took them out to give one to each of her brothers, and took two more trays to Father An's study. She stood outside the door and waited for a short while before Ling Xihan came out.

An Mu Lan handed one of the plates to the housekeeper and asked him to give it to Father An, while the other plate was in her own hands, talking to Ling Xihan while walking towards her room.

Sitting on the couch where she had initially sat when she came to An Mu Lan's room, Ling Xihan tasted the slightly bitter dessert and narrowed her eyes in satisfaction that it was her preferred taste.

An Mu Lan laid on her back**, supporting her chin and looking at her with a smile, deep love and laughter in her eyes, while she recounted the events of the day completely.

Ling Xihan nodded occasionally to show that she was listening, and after she had finished her dessert, she drank some tea to moisten her lips and said,

"It's a great opportunity, I'll arrange it, just wait and see what tomorrow brings."

An Mu Lan looked at her suspiciously, she knew Ling Xihan's usual style, if she didn't want to talk about it, even if she was pampered, she didn't think she would tell her.

In short, once Ling Xihan strikes, she will definitely achieve the best result, just like the Li family banquet three years ago.

An Mu Lan nodded in understanding and said,

"Our Xihan is the smartest, I'm waiting for a good show."

The two continued to talk for a while, reading the news of the day and communicating. When night fell, the two washed and bathed, kissed and touched before going to sleep.

[anotherdirtylaferte]

- Chapter - 1 -

Zane took a quick right off the main road, his shoes a soft pattering on the cobble-stoned road.

He was caught in the dark, again; the gas lamps along the main thoroughfare didn't reach back this far into the alley.

In the distance, Zane could hear the City Bell Tower donging off the chimes sounding the approach of the Curfew. He knew that once the chimes stopped, he would only have about ten minutes before the first of the fog settled. Zane wasn’t going to make it home before then; he was still at least twenty minutes away from home.

The air had a steely chill to it. It was early October but already he could see his breath as it escaped his mouth. Each new inhale of life was followed by the exhale of a silver ghost. It appeared as if his soul were trying to free itself from his body’s clutch.

Another ice-cold gust picked up. Leaves whirled in little cyclones ahead of him.

Zane tightened the old, leather jacket around his frame as a wave of shivers traversed his entire being. He picked up his step. The light breeze tugged at his hair.

It was bad enough that he was breaking Curfew by being out this late, but there were more pressing matters on his mind. The Sickness had taken his friend, Jonathan, and he had gone to see the young man’s parents. Zane had stayed too long.

He also knew what was waiting for him once he reached home; a lecture on responsibility and maybe even a small beating for his indifference of authority. He didn’t like doing it, but it had to be done… he just had to know what happened to his friend.

The lies about his plans were unavoidable Zane tried to convince himself.

 'You know the rules, Zane-Allister!’ his mother would say, ‘the Council has set the Curfew for a reason, and by being out past Light, you are in direct violation of the Council’s Mandate. This is not up for discussion and I don’t want to hear any more of your nonsense. I’m sick and tired of your constant disregard for rules.” Zane would then brace for the usual slap across the head and she would continue, ‘now, if I were you, I would not do anything foolish….. Strange things have been happening.' The lecture was nothing new to him.

Zane's footsteps continued their soft pattering upon the cobblestones, as he rapidly walked deeper into the back alley. The faint echo of each step bounced off of the brick walls on either side of him. The rhythm was eerie and sounded as though there were other people with him. As he walked, small whirlwinds of leaves and debris from the alley continued to form along the ground and then died as they ran into walls and barriers. He was coming to the alley's end when another sound became audible; the unmistakable click of another pair of boots.

He threw a quick glance over his shoulder.

The alley was bare.

Zane turned onto the adjacent street.

The tall, steep roofs of the tightly packed buildings on either side of him cast ominous shadows along the street. The wind was a little stronger out in the open road, so he ducked down and quickly crossed over to another alley on the other side. Zane had just ducked into the shadows of the back street when the clicking of boots could be heard again. They were without a doubt closer now.

Zane's thoughts began racing.

He had heard the stories; of the things that happen to those out after Curfew. He quickened his stride. The sound of footsteps got louder, as though the person or thing to which they belonged had also quickened their or its pace. A wave of dread raced over Zane.

He was being followed...

Zane looked over his shoulder again. The alley was still empty. The heavy feeling of being watched was unmistakable as he rushed from one alley, across a main street, and back into another alley.

He was being stalked...

Again, he quickened his pace, now almost a scampering jog.

The footsteps behind him sped up. Zane came out of the alley, his breathing coming in short gasps. The street lamps were a nice comfort but did little to settle the panic that had come over him.

The footsteps were still coming closer.

He was being hunted...

Zane ducked into the next narrow passage between a bakery and a barber shop. He threw himself behind several barrels of potatoes and tried to hide completely in their shadows. He could smell the earthy scent coming from the barrels around him. The smell took him back to days, as a young boy, on his Uncle’s farm. The night’s air seemed to grow thicker around Zane. He was nowhere near to his physical limit, but he was starting to have trouble breathing. The air was growing thick and stung his lungs with cold. He couldn't stay there, he had to keep moving.

His legs had become numb as Zane tried to get up, to make a dash for it. Pins and needles shot through his legs; they were asleep.

His thoughts were racing frantically. His brother had been right; he shouldn't have come, not alone at least. His vision was getting blurry and Zane's surroundings began to lose their features. Panic swept over him in undulating waves. The night was dark, but now it was getting darker. A cold sweat gathered on his skin as a deeper panic began to set in.

‘Is this Death?’ thought Zane, an odd sensation coming over him.

Suddenly, a deep, furnace-like pain began in Zane's chest. As though a hot iron had been placed near his chest, he felt his skin burn. Zane was so surprised by the sudden onset of internal heat that he let out a muffled scream. Adrenaline surged through his veins and the night instantly got brighter. His vision became much clearer and his hearing grew to levels of intensity he had never experienced before. Each star in the night sky grew exponentially brighter as he looked up in alarm, and the night took on a pre-dusk light. Another scream almost escaped his mouth as all of the night's sounds came rushing in like a deafening roar. Dogs barking off in the distance now sounded to be only yards away. The beat of his own heart was a thunderous thumping in his chest and head. A frosty breeze blew by and Zane could smell the night. The leaves and debris around him had a dry, earthy scent. And on top of that, he could smell his own body odor. So surprised by the sudden heightened senses, he poised himself to jump up and face whatever or whomever was following him. If he was about to go, then so be it.

A chill went up Zane's spine. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. The footsteps were mere yards away. His heart was a drum growing steadily in loudness.

He jumped up and spun around to face the threat and froze in his tracks. 

 “What the…?” he let out as a whisper.

The narrow alley was completely empty.

Zane thought his mind was playing tricks on him. He released a nervous chuckle. He rebuked himself for how worked up he had gotten. It would be ridiculous for anyone else to be out this late. He shouldn't even be out this late. With the Curfew and other Mandates in effect, everyone was too scared to come out after Light.

His Uncle Charles had told him stories of a dystopian past where the world’s current condition was to be the only outcome; the Council would rise up and the world would be gripped in fear. He had warned Zane of the reign of the Upyr and how it would no longer be just a legend. The night would no longer be safe. 'Fear, my boy; Fear is Death itself.' he would say. 'Never fear the night.' He would get a hazy look in his eyes and his mind would then drift back to his days during The War.

Then, two years ago, he, Uncle Charles that is, had mysteriously disappeared.

Zane's thoughts were interrupted by a movement at the edge of his vision.

A grey mist had begun to form just a few feet in front of him. It was incredibly mesmerizing. The mist had form. It had substance. As though a group of smokers had just exhaled their smoke into the same area, the mist came from the night itself. As Zane gazed into its depths, it struck him queer that the apparition moved not as a mist but with purpose and with intent. Greys, purples, blues, and whites all swirled within the cloud with a beauty and splendor that made Zane unknowingly inch a little closer. The mist grew in density as well as in size as he neared it. A soft, warm, and pulsating vibration began coursing through his body. In the distance, it seemed to Zane that he could hear soft music; it was strangely soothing and familiar. His thoughts seemed hazy, almost as though he had been drinking too much goose-nog.  

Zane stumbled over a cobblestone and fell to his knees. The sharp, sudden fall and pain caused him to yell out.

As though a curtain were being snatched from over him, Zane came to his senses.

He had been edging closer and closer towards the mist in a daze. A wave of uncontrollable panic came over him again and Zane leapt up to his feet, ignoring the shooting pain that ensued and he began running. Raising his arms over his face, he moved directly through the mist. Zane could have sworn that, as he passed through the mist, he could hear multiple children crying somewhere. He looked to his right, while in the mist, and was perplexed to see how slowly he was moving through it, almost as though at slow motion. He suddenly got nauseous. He exited the mist and the world around him seemed to resume its normal speed. Thrown off by the sudden change in physics, he almost tripped as he turned the corner, bursting out into the next street.

He began sprinting.

Panting, Zane made his way up the street. Sweating, he turned left onto another. He saw spots in his vision. A sharp pain began in his side. He skirted past a pile of garbage outside of a shop and took a quick right into another dark alley. He kept moving.

The cold night's air turned up the intensity of the situation by burning and searing Zane's lungs. As though a hundred ants were trying to gnaw their way out of his lungs, it became difficult for him to breathe. Zane lost his sense of direction. He froze at an intersection. “Shit!” he cursed himself for not paying attention. He looked around trying to get his bearings. He put down his head and began sprinting along the corridor to his left.

He had only been running a few moments when Zane ran right into someone else!

Both bodies dropped to the ground with muffled THUDS and shouts of alarm.

Trying to get reoriented, Zane looked up at the newcomer.

His older brother, by twelve years, Miguel, was on the ground in front of him and looked to be saying something. Zane could only hear ringing in his ears. A few seconds passed and his hearing returned.

 ”...man, what is your deal? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Miguel got to his feet and extended an arm down to Zane. He was a big guy and lean muscle covered most of his body. Zane got to his feet and exchanged a quick handshake with his brother. He grabbed Miguel by the arm and shoulder and hastily led him to the shadows of the nearest shop. Pushing down on him, Zane and his brother went down to a crouch in the shadows.

"How long have you been out here?" Zane asked in a worried, hushed whisper.

“Like two minutes, man. Come on, what's your issue? Zee, the parents know you're gone” he said with a stern look. Zane motioned for him to keep his voice low. He quickly but tentatively glanced around the corner of the building.

“Yeah, I figured as much." Zane said in a hushed voice and let out a nervous chuckle. "How much trouble am I in?” Miguel rolled his eyes at Zane.

"You should be more worried about how much longer you have to live." They both let out hushed laughs. "No, but seriously, they are really upset with you this time. I had to sneak out to come find you, so I'm in trouble now too. And why the heck are you so sweaty? And Holy Trinity, Zane. It is four hours past Curfew." Miguel's face had gone grim. Zane looked around as though making sure there was nobody else around and brought Miguel up to speed with what had just happened including the mist. He then continued,

“I went to see Jonathan’s parents tonight.” Zane dropped his head and lowered his voice so that Miguel had to lean in to hear him clearly. They were both quiet.

“How are they doing?” Miguel asked in the same hushed tone Zane had instigated.

“They think he might have turned.”

"That is not good. Do you think it’s The Sickness?" Miguel rose to his feet.

“His folks aren’t quite sure, but they said the Collectors had come and taken him to The Clinic.”

"I'm sorry to hear about John and I don't know what to make of the whole mist incident, but we really need to get home.” Miguel turned and headed towards the alley’s entrance. He looked back over his shoulder at Zane, “You know nobody ever comes back from The Clinic, right?” His voice drifted off.

“Yea man, I know.” They both got quiet.

Their journey home was hushed and hurried.

[sapphicsylvari]

Prologue: Mutiny Part II

@tyrias-library

Thank you all a million times for all the support You’ve sent my way! I’m all misty eyed when I read your comments! I’m so glad you enjoy my stuff, and fear not, there is SO MUCH MORE to come. This is the end of the Prologue for now. But after that, the fun really begins!

ON AO3

The first thing Asha feels is the unmerciful cold of the waters. She hits the surface like concrete and immediately after her head goes under, the panic sets in. 

There had been a strange calm in her until now, a resignation to her fate, but now that the fight for her life has begun, the protective layer of indifference is gone.

The water seeps into her clothes and drags her down; she struggles against her bonds, trashing about, eyes held tightly closed.

Sharpness hits her skin, pain as it's broken by... something. Sharks, Asha thinks. Krait. Unknwon horrors of the depths. Her lungs burn, her body screams for air and Asha cannot hold her breath any longer. Salty seawater fills her lungs and the world goes dark, a mercy after the raw fear of drowning.

When Asha comes to, she feels the sun on her skin, the taste of salt still lingers on her tongue, proof that she did not dream this terror. Not daring to let hope take her again, Asha slowly opens her eyes.

She sees a beach. Waves coming and going on the damp sands, sunlight glittering on the water's surface. Her bonds are undone, but the more conscious she becomes, the more pain Asha feels. Her wrists and ankles are open, raw from struggling against her bonds with no regard to her skin's integrity, adrenaline having clouded her sense of pain for that moment. Furtherly, there are gashes on her arms and legs, burning from the saltwater. Asha sits up, head spinning, nausea in her stomach.

She scans the immediate area for something, anything, an explanation to how she got her, and why she isn't one of the many unfortunate corpses at the bottom of the ocean.

The coast is rocky, aside from the few patches of sand. Large boulders adorn the beach, grey and bleak. Asha feels like she is dreaming, her surroundings feel unreal and too quiet for her standards. She's not used to this kind of peace, not after the harrowing ordeal of serving on the Rascal.

Then, from the corner of her eye, movement. Asha whips around, limps toward one of the big boulders in her vicinity. “Who's there?” she calls out, her voice raw and raspy from swallowing saltwater. In response, the stranger she'd spotted peeks their head over the rock, halfway, just to see wet, pale pink hair and featureless eyes. No pupil, no iris, just a white shadow where they should be, looking at Asha with a mixture of fear and curiosity. “Wait – Don't leave.” Asha pleads as she makes her way toward the stranger. “Please.”

A pair horrible, clawed hands appears left and right of the face, and the creature pulls itself upward, into view from behind its hiding spot. At first glance, it looks like a nude woman, pale as the moon, but then Asha sees the gills on her sides and her neck, the webbed hands and the scales on her waistline. She lifts herself up onto the boulder with impressive strength, revealing the mighty, scaled fishtail in place of her legs, the same salmon color as her hair, which clings to her back. Asha stares at her, frozen in place. She's heard stories of the melodious voices calling sailors to their doom, the beautiful women that feed on the blood and bones of those who hear them sing on the open sea.

“Siren.” she gasps and loses her footing collapsing back onto the ground. The siren bats her eyes and nods, then brushes her hand ober her tail. A change occurs with her, her tailfin shrinks, her scales fade into skin, and the entire tail splits, reforming into human legs right before Asha's eyes. A few minutes later, only a few scale pattern remain of the tail and the siren stands on wobbly knees before her. Once the transformation is complete, she kneels down at Asha's side and gives her a sheepish smile, as if asking if she is more comfortable with her now.

“Did... did you save me?” Asha dares to ask, as she has no other explanation for how she survived her execution and the siren nods. “I, um... thank you? But why? Aren't you supposed to eat sailors or something?”

The siren hurriedly shakes her head and takes Asha's left hand, her cold fingers tap the rash from the rope. She holds her own wrist next to hers, and a faint shimmer on her skin, an irregularity in her smoothness has Asha's eyes go wide. “You were cast overboard too? Is that how you became like this?” she asks and the siren nods once more, letting go of Asha's hand.

“Thank you.” Asha repeats, clueless about how to proceed from here. She's wounded, alone with a mermaid on some shore or island without any way to find her way home, let alone back to the Rascal.

Her gaze meets her saviour's again.

“I'm Asha.” she introduces herself. “Do you have a name?” The Siren opens her mouth, revealing a set of sharp, sharklike teeth, then closes it again, draws breath and produces as rasping, hissing sound from her throat, before managing to form a word.

“Raya.”

–

Vaixx stares into the spot Asha Gaets had submerged at, looking at the air bubbles rising as the girl drowns. His fists are clenched tightly, and he turns away.

“Set a course to Laughing Gull.” he orders, immediately assuming his duties as the new Captain, now that Rowan is no more.

“Hey.” He feels someone grip him by the shoulder as he makes his way into the Captain's Quarters, to clean up the body. “This isn't your fault.” He hums in response, brushes the hand off. “Vaixx.” His friend, Raxxi, moves into his way. “She killed the Cap'n. If you hadn't done this, the crew woulda torn her apart.” “I killed a kid.” he counters and pushes her out of his way.

Knowing not to push the topic, Raxxi follows him, clasping her hands behind her back. “What now? Taidha will not be happy about losing one of her best Captains.” she asks instead. “Taidha can suck my dick for all I care.” Vaixx responds sharply and closes the door behind them, cutting off the sounds of the crew celebrating the death of a little girl. He feels sick, and looks upon the corpse of Rowan Gaets.

His daughter's attack came out of nowhere. Rowan's eyes are wide open, his lips parted, as if in silent protest. Nobody would have expected the girl to snap, least of all her father.

“I followed Rowan's orders, not hers.” Vaixx adds and tears off his headband, to run his fingers through his hair.

“Sorry to burst yer bubble, mate, but those were her orders, passed through to the next instance.” Raxxi counters. “Look, I know you don't like her, but she's got an entire fuckin' fleet. We only have this sorry little boat.”

Vaixx pauses. “What if that wasn't the case?” “Wha?” “What if we had a fleet, Raxxi? We wouldn't have to follow her anymore, would we? We could just leave!”

Raxxi snorts humorlessly. “Yeah, what if we had five million gold? We could retire! Newsflash pal, we have neither that, nor a fleet. Taidha will appoint one of her goons as the new Cap'n as soon as she learns of this mess.” she says and Vaixx shushes her hurriedly.

“Yes, but she doesn't know yet, does she?” he urges. “I hate this situation as much as everybody else, but this might be a chance to leave Covington fleet for good! Your brother.” “My brother?”

“He's got the means to help us build a fleet, doesn't he? He's got the money to buy the ships we need, and the connections to populate them. We have to do this. We will not get another opportunity.”

“Vaixx, my boy. There is one weakness in your masterplan.” “What?” “You just set course to Laughing Gull.”

“Fuck!” The door bursts open again and Vaixx stomps out from the Captain's Quarters, followed by Raxxi as he makes his way up to the wheel. “Change of plans! Avoid Laughing Gull, Sanctum Harbor, on the double!” he calls to the Sylvari up there, who looks onto him with hollow eyes. There's a sting in his gut when he remembers her. She was close to the girl.

Regardless, she follows his order, spinning the wheel. Vaixx estimates, she will leave the crew as soon as they reach Lion's Arch but for now, he cannot worry about that.

He has work to do.

[thesickpanda]

Painful Goodbyes

For many people with chronic/mental illnesses, saying goodbye to people becomes an all too common experience.  Sometimes you get to actually say it, but more often than not people just fade from your life/grow impatient with you and leave. In my experience, most people leave when I, at long last, reinforce a personal boundary.

You see, I was raised with emotionally abusive and manipulative parents who made me apologise for their cruelty and therefore set the tone of many of my future relationships. I thought abuse and horrible behaviour towards me was normal. I was MEANT to be the kicking bag, meant to be taken for granted, I was too sensitive, I was the problem. I had the mindset that I should be grateful for any and all people in my life regardless of how they treated me. For those people who showed me any kindness at all, a lifelong loyalty was forged, no matter how many terrible acts on their part surpassed the kind ones.  It took years of therapy to learn to recognise toxic behaviour/relationships, as well as self-care and self-compassion. The people who grew used to exploiting me for all I was worth did not take kindly to my standing up for myself, and so I have lost many faux friends over the years.  I was like a flame to which all the manipulative moths were attracted, because no healthy, self-respecting person would put up with the bullshit they dished out.  

As a result, I have had a rocky end to many platonic relationships. I’m extremely grateful that I haven’t had as much abuse in my romantic relationships. I met the love of my life when I was fairly young, and he’s an angel who gives me so much love and kindness. If not for him, I’m not sure where (or IF) I’d be today.

Recently, I had to end a 14 year friendship with someone. I have written about this person before here (https://thesickpanda.tumblr.com/post/186529191819/what-do-you-do-when-a-loved-one-changes-for-the)

Pretty much all of my reasons were explained in that blog post – it just took me another 7 months and my final encounter with this person to fully recognize the urgent need to walk away from what had become a very toxic, decaying relationship. It still hurt like hell, though. You don’t just go from having someone in your life for well over a decade to accepting their absence without difficulty. Even if he had largely become a negative influence in my life, that person was still such a permanent-seeming fixture that I cannot help but feel a sense of loss.

Long story short, I spent many, many years of my life trying to save him from himself. He grew increasingly emotionally distant, buried himself in addictions and self-destructive behaviour and outright refused any and all help offered his way. His family gave up on him. His best friend became the target of all his projected self-loathing (he is, without a shadow of a doubt, horribly abusive to this friend). He didn’t used to be like this, and part of me didn’t want to let go of the possibility he might change back into a decent and full human being. My last trip to visit him proved that not only had he not made any headway on working on himself, he had grown significantly worse. There was literally nothing left for me to save. He was dead inside.

The kicker came when he went to bed early one night (unusual for him) and I went to his door to ask if he was ok and he snapped at me, essentially telling me to piss off. I asked if he wanted a hug and he made it abundantly clear that I should leave him alone. It wasn’t anywhere near the first time he had unfairly snarled at me, but because I was still desperately clinging onto the notion there was something in him worth saving, it hit me really hard to realise there wasn’t. Or at least, I was incapable of rescuing someone hell-bent on their own demise.

It also triggered a huge PTSD response in me, based on decades of abuse I have endured from my family. Loving gestures have been mocked, belittled, slapped back in my face for as long as I can remember. I am a hugely loving person, so this is a common occurrence for me. As I stood outside his room, shaking violently, I knew I wasn’t just experiencing a trauma response. I knew I was finally, at long last, realizing I had to walk away from this friendship, too.

I mentioned earlier that his family had given up on him.  They half-heartedly tried to intervene over the years but in the past 4 years they just threw up their hands. I can understand why. You cannot help someone who refuses help. But they seemed to expect I’d keep at it.

This guy’s family was, in my mind, my second family. I loved them. I bonded with his mother in the first 5 years. I bought gifts for all his nieces and nephews every year since they were born. I planned our one holiday a year to be down in Victoria to spend time with them on their birthdays (which mostly fell across September). I’d phone his brother and sister on their birthdays, send handmade cards, and chat for hours with them.  I’d do all this when he almost never bothered to call them, forgot the kids’ birthdays, refused to wake up in time for funerals, skipped special occasions and more. He put minimal effort in, so I tried to make up for it by putting a LOT of care into his family. Sometimes they’d rant about their frustrations with my friend, and I’d try to mediate. I felt my rapport with them, after such a long time and so much personal emotional investment, was separate to my friendship with this guy.

I was wrong.

When I ended my friendship a few weeks ago, I did it via email. I sent a letter to him in which I held back 95% of my frustrations. Instead I explained that I was no longer getting any enjoyment from the friendship, that I’d always love him but that we had nothing left in common between us and it was time for me to leave. I did mention he needed to tackle his inner demons and start living life, but it was lightly touched upon, because in all the many years I've known him, I have told him what he needs to do countless times, and he has never cared. I also sent personalized emails to his sister, mother and sister-in-law to explain (with huge delicacy and diplomacy) my reasons for ending the friendship. I told them he had grown cruel and abusive to his housemate and also to me, and that I could no longer be the collateral of a man intent on blowing himself up. I explained that I thought of them all as my friends and wanted to continue a relationship with them, if they were cool with that.

What I received was radio silence from the sister and sister-in-law (both who had MANY times raged about how awful this guy was) and, a week later, I got a three line email from his mother that was cold, indifferent and unfair. She acknowledged NOTHING of the behaviour I’d illustrated in my email to her, and basically said, “Whatever. You do you. Don’t know why you gotta be so dramatic about it.”

I was crushed. 14 years of love and relationship building, and it meant FUCK ALL to these people I had held so high in my esteem.

My partner pointed something out a few days later. He gently and kindly said, “But it’s ALL been one sided.”

He observed that not once did they call me on my birthday. Not once did they contact me or visit me, even when they were in my neck of the woods. Sometimes trying to reach the sister was like getting blood from a stone. I’d hear how she was always Skyping her mom, but then she’d almost never reply when I tentatively reached out to her. She has three kids, I’d reason, too busy for me.  But it stung. When I did get her on the phone she’d talk to me like I was her best friend, mostly ranting about how much she despised being a mother for the better part of an hour. I’d be her emotional sounding board when her husband was letting her down. But that sort of emotional labour was never reciprocated.

Now I did stay at this guy’s parents’ house when he lived at home, as it made it easier/affordable to visit him. I’m grateful to his mother for having hosted me in those times. When he moved out 4 years ago, I went to visit him at his place. I always made an effort to see the rest of the family, often bringing gifts for the kids. But no one seemed much interested in me or my life. I was mostly spoken at, rather than with. The brother had an injury from work a few years ago. He’s been struggling with chronic pain since and I’ve spent hours listening to him complain about the nightmare of his life. He never asks about my pain or my struggles. I spent hours listening, but he couldn’t give two hoots about what I’d actually learned/had to say in response, compassionate and helpful as it always was. He just waited for his turn to speak again.

All of this dawned on me two days ago. I realised I had been deluded in thinking these people cared about me as a person in my own right; that they’d want to say, “We understand why you gave up trying to fix him. He frustrates us too. But we’re glad you’re still our friend.” What I received was silence and indifference. I was just an extension of a family member they didn’t care about, which of course meant they didn’t care about me. I had been so wrong for such a long period of time. The grief magnified tenfold and I had an emotional breakdown.

Being chronically ill, I have so little energy as it is, and for years I poured it into people who didn’t give a shit whether I was in their lives or not.  

So yesterday, when my 86 year old friend and former neighbor called me to say he was dying and in palliative care and wanted to say goodbye “only to my close friends”, I lost it.  I bawled. I was going to have to say goodbye to someone else I care about. I totally respect his decision to opt out of trying to get better at this stage, as his body is really going downhill fast and he lost both his wife and son to cancer in the past 3 years. He’s had enough and I get that. But my god, it hurt. And yet… I felt so touched that he made the effort to actually say goodbye.  He told me I didn’t have to come and see him one last time, that he didn’t expect it. I’m going to make every effort to see him this week; today if I can. I am grateful for the opportunity to say a proper goodbye to someone I care about and who cared enough about me to consider me among his closest friends.

All of this is to say: be careful who you pour your love into. Reflect on the dynamic of your relationships. Know that if you’re a naturally caring person, that that is a beautiful thing to be cherished, but that there are those who will take advantage of it. Surround yourself with genuine people. Be kind to yourself and let go of those who do not appreciate you.

It hurts like hell and is hard to do when you’re already sick and disabled and rely on the kindness of others so much of your life (much as you may resent that fact). But if it’s not real, you’re doing yourself no favours by clinging on. Learning how to set boundaries is hard, but it is worth it.

At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. I dare say I’ll be repeating that to myself for many weeks and months to come.

[thewickedjude]

The Devious Human

SUMMARY: Nina Kinsella was sixteen years old when she entered the cruel world of the Fae, with her mother and her mother's new fiance, Malakai Virag. Her mother Naomi, a wild human with endless chaos in her eyes, found her place among the Circle of Grackles while Nina, an unapologetic human with kindness to spare, became lost among the Fae’s wickedness.

Four years later, Nina stumbled among a horrible secret, one that has made her one of Prince Balekin’s human slaves.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: takes place towards the end of book one. While reading the book I couldn’t help but imagine what a true unapologetic human would be like in that world and I’ve become obsessed. She has taken over Sophie’s place in the book. The human Jude tried to save in book one. LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE TAGGED!!

Other Sites: The Devious Human’s Tumblr | AO3 

TAGGED: @NATSKYS-W | @THE-POETS-MUSE | @READMEAWAY (if you don’t want to be tagged anymore let me know)

Chapter Two

As they walked Nina’s eyes began to focus more and she felt her heart begin to shatter as they walked passed the other human servants. Their glazed eyes were off somewhere else, dreaming of a better place while they worked and she knew better than anyone that they would continue to do so until they died.  Nina didn’t realize she began to walk slower until her Savior tugged at her arm impatiently. I will come back, she thought earnestly as she stared at each face hoping they would understand, I will help free you. No one looked up as they quickly walked out the door and into the summer night.

A lifetime seemed to have passed since the Girl had last spoken to Prince Balekin. She could barely recall the words they had exchanged it felt so long ago. The only memory that clung to her was the sweet taste of strawberry against her tongue and the name Nina. A name that would occasionally creep up out of the depths of her mind, though she didn’t know to whom the name belonged.  

As the Girl blurrily returned a book to a shelf within the library of Hollow Hall, she began to quietly hum a song whose name she had long forgotten. The notes were simple and calming. The word ‘lullaby’ floated through her thoughts before quickly disappearing. The Girl’s movements were slow, as if the air was as thick as water, but she wasn’t paying attention, her mind was elsewhere. 

Instead of being in the Library she imagined she was curled up in a dark green armchair, her oversized sweater covered her hands as she gripped a warm mug containing hot chocolate. Her bruiseless eyes flickered away from the book sitting in her lap and instead focused on the snow as it began to fall from the sky. The night she had imagined brought forth a sense of calm as she stacked a scroll on top of another. 

“Eat this,” She heard someone say from behind her. Blinking away the dream, the Girl slowly turned and saw a figure of a woman standing before her with a hand stretched out to her. Confused the Girl lowered her eyes to the Woman’s palm and immediately felt her stomach lurch at the sight of salt piled into the middle of it.

“I’m not allowed,” she explained, her eyes unable to focus on the girl in front of her, “No salt. You’re not supposed to-”

Her words were immediately cut off as the Woman pressed her hand against her lips, forcing the salt onto her tongue before locking an arm around hers. The Woman began to drag the Girl deeper and deeper into the library farther away from anyone who could potentially save her. The Girl lifted her frail arms, clawing at the hand pressed against her mouth, her teeth digging into the Woman’s flesh hoping against all hope that she’d be let go. Her efforts were futile, and soon the Woman forced the Girl against the wall. 

“I'm sorry,” The Woman whispered refusing to loosen her grip despite the Girl’s efforts to break free. “I’m winging it.  I don’t want to hurt you. I want to save you. Please, let me do this. Let me save you.” 

The Girl’s mind began to swirl as her body sagged against the cold bricks which pressed against her almost translucent skin. She could barely comprehend what the Woman was saying but eventually, the Woman dropped her hand to her side. And although her mouth was free the Girl didn’t have it in her to scream as the fog surrounding her mind slowly began to clear. Blinking the Girl forced herself to try to focus on the Woman’s face, her eyes falling on her ears which she noticed were rounded where there should have been a point.  She was unmistakenly Human. 

“We're getting out of here. You can trust me. Just act like everything is normal,”

Rubbing her lips together the Girl moved to nod her head in understanding but instead, she felt her whole body lean forward, as the world around her became blurry and unfocused. It was difficult for her to move, hard for her to even breathe, her limbs felt so heavy. Hearing someone sigh she felt the woman snake her arm around hers before quickly hoisting her up off of the ground. 

As the world began to spin around her the Girl forced her eyes to turn to look at the person next to her and she was shocked to see that it wasn’t a woman at all. The girl was a few years younger than she was with dark brown hair and naturally tanned skin. Something about her seemed familiar but the Girl couldn’t figure out where she knew her. Forcing herself to look away from her savior the two came to a halt outside of the library as the door closed shut behind them, the noise reverberating off of the ribbed vaults and walls of Hollow Hall. 

The Girl felt her heartbeat quicken against her chest as her light eyes took in her surroundings unable to grasp that any of this was real. “Hold on,” she heard her savior’s voice from behind her, drawing her eyes away from the gallery of pixies above, “I have to go back and-”

The Girl felt her heart drop as a small whimper escaped her lips before she could stop it. Feeling her cheeks begin to warm the Girl opened her mouth to say ‘I’m fine’ but was unable to make herself form the words because she wasn’t. Feeling unwelcome tears begin to spring in her eyes the Girl pulled lightly against her Saviors grip, hoping she would know it was okay to leave her there. But instead, the grip on her arm tightened before she was dragged back into the library so her Savior could retrieve a piece of parchment on a nearby desk.

“What’s your name?”

The Girl felt her stomach churn as her chin began to tremble against her will. The panic that she had felt deep within her chest slowly began to rise, breaking down the flimsy barriers she had tried to put into place the moment the salt entered her mouth. 

“You must remember it,” The Girl clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking as she tried to force the panic back down. “You are not allowed to cry. I will slap you if I have to.” her Savior ordered, her tone harsh though the Girl didn’t take offense. She was right, feeling anything right now, good or bad, wasn’t a luxury she could afford. She would face it all later, she promised the part of her that was broken, right now they needed to escape. Taking a deep breath the Girl nodded her head to let her know she understood and began to wipe her tears with the back of her hand. 

“Nina,” She said, her voice trembling slightly causing her to roll her eyes in frustration. You cannot afford to break, she reminded herself, her inner voice harsh and commanding. Clearing her throat she started again, this time her voice was stronger, “My name is Nina,” 

Nina felt a sense of warmth travel throughout her body as her name left her lips, bringing with it a small sliver of strength which she clung to as they began to move towards the kitchens. He didn’t erase her completely.

Nina’s heart skipped a beat as the guards came into view, causing her to school her features into one of indifference as her gaze became unfocused, her smile mirroring someone without a care in the world. “Prince Cardan says we are to attend him,” her Savior explained, her voice sounding light and dreamy, though her eyes told a different story. The guard to Nina’s left blinked and shook his head, convinced by her act. 

“Balekin won’t like that.” She hears the guard say and it takes everything in Nina not to react. Once you are free, she reminded herself, you can see your friends again, you can have a life again. Though she couldn’t recall any of their faces, it was that thought alone that made her stand her ground. Once you are free you can go home. 

“Very Well,” The first guard says, “Go. But inform Cardan that his brother demands he brings both of you back this time.”

Nina resisted the urge to shudder at the mention of the Princes and went to take a step forward when the other guard spoke, “What do you see?” he demanded, his hand wrapping around her arm as he yanked her back. Panic coursed through her veins but she stared at him dreamily, ignoring his death grip that was bound to bruise her. 

Sighing contently Nina whispered the first thing that came to mind, her voice dreamy and distant, “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…” she whispered, her voice trailing off as she let out a delusional giggle. The guard huffed in annoyance and released his grip on her, allowing her savior to tug her through the kitchens.

As they walked Nina’s eyes began to focus more and she felt her heart begin to shatter as they walked passed the other human servants. Their glazed eyes were off somewhere else, dreaming of a better place while they worked and she knew better than anyone that they would continue to do so until they died.  Nina didn’t realize she began to walk slower until her Savior tugged at her arm impatiently. I will come back, she thought earnestly as she stared at each face hoping they would understand, I will help free you. No one looked up as they quickly walked out the door and into the summer night.

[shooting-stars01]

Temptations of Time (Part 2)

A/N: Second chapter.  Super excited to get this uploaded.  Hope this is just as good as the last if not better.  As with before, this is not canon, just a storyline I came up with.  Hope you enjoy!  Also, any feedback is greatly appreciated.  

Synopsis: You were taken from your home when you were too little to remember the truth.  You are the last surviving royal from your home, and in an attempt to continue the royal bloodline of your family, Odin, King of Asgard, arranges a marriage between you and his son Thor.  Despite this, over the years, you have culminated a friendship w/ his brother Loki, and though you are promised to Thor, you long for something more between you and his mysterious brother.  

Pairing : Loki X Reader 

Chapter: 2/?

Words: 2,842

Warnings: None 

“I know you think it’s wrong, and maybe it is, but that isn’t for us to decide.  You love me, and I love you, and that should be all that matters.” 

I was distraught.  I felt like if I didn’t get out of the castle immediately, I was going to faint.  As soon as the doors to the throne room closed behind me, I rushed to the gardens, hoping that being outside would make me feel less trapped.  I couldn’t catch my breath, and every moment I breathed in felt like fire in my lungs.  When I reached the gardens, I threw myself onto the bench, knowing I could no longer support myself.  I looked up to make sure that none of the guards had followed me, and when I saw none, I began to feel the tears fall.  All the years of hidden feelings and moments that I had shared between Loki, wishing that perhaps one day we would be something more, had all disappeared within a single moment.  I had refused to believe my marriage to Thor would ever really take place, that it was just a kind gesture at the time, but maybe that was why Loki had been so distant with me the other day after he had spoken to his father.  The day we both dreaded would soon become a reality, and once that happened, there could be no future for us, no morning walks through the garden, no secret trysts in the library.  I suppose it had been a hopeless endeavor in the first place.  I belonged to someone else, and he knew that, and though I spent most of my days trying my hardest to prove to him that he was the only one I wanted, he was not as naive as I was.  I had stopped crying.  I could feel the heavy weight of this reality bearing down one me, but I could no longer mourn what might have been.  I had to face my future, find a way to live in the life that had been made for me.  I picked myself up off the bench and was focused brushing off the fabric of my dress when I noticed two feet stopped in front of me.  I recognized the shoes immediately and looked up to see Loki’s face.  He was wearing an expression of regret, and I could tell that he was here to apologize to me for what happened yesterday, but before he could even get a word in, I began to cry again, and buried my face within his chest, hugging him in an attempt to find some sort of comfort.  At first he seemed taken aback by this, and tried to pull his body away, but then, I felt his arms circle around me, which prompted me to cry even harder.  Each sob shook my body, and even though in this moment I felt so small and empty, I knew that I wasn’t alone, and a part of me never wanted this to end.  We stayed like that for a long time, and I, in every second, tried to soak up the last time we would ever have a moment like this.  When I finally pulled back I could see the concern swirling in Loki’s eyes.  

“Was this because of yesterday?”

“No, of course not!” I promised.  

He didn’t really seem to believe me, and I didn’t want to talk to him about what had happened in the throne room because I knew it would change everything between us, though I half suspected he had already found out, at least a part of it.  

“Your father said that your brother and I will be married within a month.”

There was a long pause where neither of us said anything.  He stood there, his face a mask I could not see through.  I was hoping for at least some reaction, something that would have given me a clue as to how he truly felt about me, but this face told me nothing.

“I don’t know how to feel,” I continue, “There’s so much I wanted, so much I needed, and I don’t know how to explain all of this to you, but now is as good a time as any.  I love you, I’ve alwa-”.  I was cut off before I could finish my sentence.  He pressed his lips against mine in a desperate attempt to force all the emotions that we had been hiding from each other into the kiss.  He held my face in his hands, deepening the kiss, and I, wanting to prove how much I trusted him, submitted myself completely, and became putty in his hands.  When he finally broke the kiss, I found myself unable to open my eyes, trying to stay in the bliss and completely overwhelmed by the moment.  My eyelids fluttered open, and I looked up into Loki’s smiling face.  I felt my smile grow to match his.  I had never felt so happy before, so utterly comfortable, until I was reminded that this could never happen again.  If Odin, or anyone else were to find out what just happened, both Loki and I could face serious consequences.  I could feel the smile slowly slip from my face as reality set in, and I could see the smile on his do the same as he traced where my thoughts were going.  He pulled me closer into his arms, and everything felt so right, yet so wrong at the same time.  How was I ever supposed to let this go now?  He had finally shown me that I was not the only one who had these feelings, that he loved me as much as I loved him.  

“What are we gonna do now?” I questioned, hoping that he would be able to solve all my problems, maybe give me an answer that I wanted to hear instead of the truth.   

“I’m not sure.  I’ve never really been in a situation like this before, have you?” he asked in his usual mockish charm.  

I wanted to kiss him again.  I wanted to forget all about Thor and all these promises that were made for me, promises that I had no choice in.  My whole entire life, I had lived a lie, believing that it was me who controlled my destiny, my fate, but now I realized that is hardly ever the case.  I looked at him, tying to express how lost I was, how much I didn’t understand what this meant for us now.  How could we possibly forget this ever happened?  Unless he intended that we were going to continue whatever this was, which, as badly as I may have wanted that to happen, would be a terrible idea.  He had to have known this, right?

“Loki, you know that what just happened can never happen again, right?  If we were to be discovered, the consequences would be more than a light slap on the wrist.  This would be catastrophic to the alliances that have been made between your father’s kingdom and mine.”

“How can you just throw away all of this, all of what we have?”  He was beginning to grow angry.  “Isn’t this worth the risk, isn’t it worth just trying?”

I was astounded.  How could he look at this with such indifference, as if everything weren’t on the line.  It wasn’t as if I had a choice in the matter.  

“I already am risking everything.  For you, it’s different.  You’re the Prince of Asgard. But for me, I am a guest of your father’s, a young girl who has been promised the throne.  If I were found breaking my vows with another man, I could be tried for treason!  This is about much more than forbidden love.  This is about alliances that go beyond self-indulgence.”  

He regarded me with cold eyes.  I knew by the fact he wasn’t speaking, he knew I was right.  

“I’m sorry, but you know I’m right.  I wish that things were different, but we knew that this was eventually going to happen.  I wish more than anything-” I couldn’t finish the sentence, my voice cutting out as I tried to hold back my tears.  

Loki stood still for a moment, and I watched as his eyes moved back and forth, deciding whether he should leave, hurt from the rejection, or stay and hold me one last time.  He resolved to the latter, and pulled me close to him.  I took in every feeling, every smell, every sound that I could and stored it away, knowing this was a bittersweet goodbye.  

The steam rose from the bath in hot whips, swirling around me.  The warmth from the water seeped into my skin, helping to relieve the deep ache that settled into my joints from nervous tension.  I breathed in the smell of fresh soap, and let my body slip beneath the water.  Looking up through the surface, everything appeared warped and distorted.  I closed my eyes letting my mind go blank for the first time in days, fading into the oblivion.  

I was viciously yanked out of this nothingness by a pair of sturdy hands.  They held me in a vice grip as they pulled me from the water.  When I was fully removed, I took a deep gasp of air, and saw that it was my maid who had “rescued” me.  

“My lady, are you alright?”

“Yes.  Yes, I am fine,” I affirmed, a little aggravated.

“I was just holding my breath under the water.  There was nothing wrong.” I slowly tried to get up, still feeling a bit shaken about the abruptness of what had transpired.  

“Of course my Lady.  I do apologize, it’s just when I saw you under the water like that, I panicked.”

“I understand.  It’s fine.  Thank you Elina.” I took some deep breaths in, trying to gather my thoughts.  “Do you think you can bring me some tea to help calm my nerves?”

“Yes, my Lady.”  She left the room in a hurry, eager to please.  

I pulled myself into a sitting position, and then slowly braced my arms, pushing myself up off the floor.  As I stood up, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror.  My skin was a bright pink from the hot water.  My face was flushed, and I looked like I hadn’t slept in days.  I walked closer to the mirror, finding that the closer I got, the worse it was.  I pinched my cheeks in the mirror, attempting to perk them up a bit, but it did nothing.  I walked out of the bathroom, finding a pair of night clothes that my maid had left out for me.  I put them on in a hurry, not liking the sharp contrast of the cold room.  I waited patiently for my maid to bring my tea, hoping that she would be here soon.  Being alone in my room did nothing to calm my nerves.  Finally there was a knock at the door.  

“Come in,” I shouted.  

When the door opened, it was not my maid who walked into my room, but rather the God of Mischief himself, and after our talk today, I wondered what kind of mischief he was searching for tonight.  

“What’re you doing here?” I hissed in an almost silent whisper.  

“I had to come see you.”

“My maid will be here any second with my tea.  You have to leave.  If she found you in here…”  

I let my mind trail to all the horrible things that could happen, but he appeared to be phased by none of it.  

“If she comes, I will make up a lie.  After all, it’s what I’m known for.”

He gave me a cheeky smile, and I knew that it was going to be very hard to turn him away, but I had to.  There was so much at stake.  It wasn’t worth one moonlight tryst, but the look in Loki’s eyes told me that it wouldn’t be just one.  I was just about to remind him of this when there was a knock at my door.  It had to be the maid, and I turned over to Loki.  I could feel the shocked expression on my face, and I was expecting to see something that at least resembled shock on his, but his expression was calm, as if we were having a casual walk through the gardens.   The door began to open and I could feel the panic quickly rising in my chest, but just as my maid entered the doorway, seconds from seeing Loki, he disappeared into thin air.  I was amazed.  I had never seen his magic up close before.  I tried my best to wipe the surprised look of my face as my maid walked over to hand me my tea.  I took it and dismissed her for the evening, assuring her there was nothing else I needed.  She nodded her head, curtsied, and then left the room quickly, not wanting to risk further aggravating me after what happened with the tub.  As soon as the door closed behind my maid, I felt a pair of strong arms envelop me from behind.  I was immediately startled and gave a small yell.  Loki and I both stood still for a moment, not even daring to breathe, wondering if my maid was going to come barging in to see what was wrong, but after a full minute, no one came.  I regarded him for a moment, trying to think through everything, hoping to come up with a way to let him down easily, make sure he knew that this time I absolutely meant it.  He started to move around my room, giving me time to stew in my own thoughts.  He walked over to the bathroom and gazed at the large pools of water that glistened on the floor.  

“What happened here?” he questioned.  

“Nothing, it was just a bit of a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding?”  He chuckled.  “It looks like a battlefield.”

“I think that it a bit of an over-exaggeration,” I expressed.

He moved out of the bathroom and walked over to my bookshelf.  It had just occurred to me that he had never been in my room before.  I realized how intimate this was.  The only people who had ever seen my room before were my maid and myself.  This room represented who I was.  I kept pieces of my past in it, pieces of a home I did not remember, and the bookshelf was the most intimate of all.  These books contained the past of my home, some contained love stories which I dreamed of living, and some were journals that I had written myself.  Loki ran his hands over the books, admiring the collection that I had built over the years, but it was nothing compared to the library that Loki had culminated, and even with all the books he had, you could still find him roaming around the Royal Library.  He carefully pulled one out of its place on the shelf and began to flip through the pages.  It was one of my old diaries, and I could not quite remember the secrets it contained.  I moved closer, wanting to pull the journal from his hand.  I didn’t want him to know that much about me.  I still had some of the cards, and if I let him see them all, then it was over for me.  Just as I was about to take the book from him, he closed the book and looked up at me with a puzzling look on his face.  

“Have you always felt this way about me? From the very beginning?” He moved closer to me.  

I didn’t want to answer, but he had seen the proof.  I didn’t matter if I said anything, he already knew the answer was yes, he just wanted to hear me say it aloud.  I nodded my head, not trusting my voice to speak.  He seemed amused my this, and took this as a cue to walk closer to me.  He stood right in front of me, close enough to reach out and touch.  I wanted to reach out to him, to hold him, to repeat what had happened in the garden earlier before reality set in, and just when I was about to, he handed me the journal.  

“I understand that you’re not ready and that you need time to think this through.  You think I don’t understand that you’re putting everything on the line because of this, but I do.  But I ask you to think about all of this, all that we could be?”

I opened my mouth to interject him, but he cut me off before I could by putting his fingers to my lips.  

“I know you think it’s wrong, and maybe it is, but that isn’t for us to decide.  You love me, and I love you, and that should be all that matters.  It’s unfair that they stole that choice from you, but this is your opportunity to take it back.  I’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready.”

And with that, he slipped out the door, quiet as ever.

[blxxdsweatntears]

Chapter 1

“Did you hear what happened to their clan..?” “Yeah, apparently their brother killed everybody but them...” “I wonder why he left those two alive if he was trying to kill the whole clan..” “Why not kill the one with the white hair, she was always an outcast anyway.”

Another day in paradise. Sasuke and his twin sister Yuki were making their way through the town, shopping for groceries as if their entire lives weren’t shattered in one night. Everyone now looked at the twins with sadness, pity, or contempt in their eyes. No longer adoration or pride, but pity.

Yuki was no stranger to belittlement or hateful words, but after what happened to her clan she had shut down completely. She no longer to responded to anyone’s negativity for she just never had the fighting energy in her anymore. She refused to believe anything anyone told her about her clan. Her brother did NOT kill their whole family. She wouldn’t believe it.

Yuki didn’t leave their home for days after her and Sasuke got out of the hospital. She spent her days and nights wandering the compound, just waiting for Itachi or somebody to show up and say it was all a test. Just a big, cruel joke. But that day never came. The blood stains were still there. Everywhere.

Yuki and Sasuke didn’t leave each other’s sides right after the massacre. They held onto each other’s hands even as they slept, for they both feared that if they woke up their twin would be gone too.

It took Yuki a whole day of sitting by the lake, lost in her thoughts, to snap herself out of it. She let herself have that time to mourn but now it was time to work. She owed it at least to Sasuke to stay strong. She had to take care of her twin since he seemed much more rattled than her. He was much closer to everyone in the clan than she was. The black sheep of the family, the embodiment of their shame and humility. She had still lost her family and her heart ached, but Sasuke’s heart completely shattered.

He hadn’t really spoken to Yuki since the incident. She made it her mission to get herself together and put on a brave face for her brother. He was all the family she had left. Him and Itachi. She had to keep going for them.

Yuki slapped her cheeks and got up to go find her brother. She wandered around and found him laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. She grabbed her brother’s arm and tugged. “Nii-san. Let’s go. We need food.” she stated, dragging her brother with her. They needed to get out of the place that was causing them so much pain.

“Yuki-nii, I don’t want to..” he grumbled, but didn’t put up much of a fight and let himself be dragged. She took a deep breath and sighed before turning around with a stern look on her face.

“I don’t either. I want nothing more than to lay in my bed and wallow in my pain and cry all day. But I can’t, Sasuke, because I still have you. We still have each other. And we can’t give up. We’re still here for a reason. We owe it to mom and dad to tough it out, so stop moping and help me with the groceries!” Yuki declared boldly, her face determined even though her voice quivered as her eyes welled up with tears at the mention of their parents.

Sasuke let out a shaky sigh and nodded, matching the determination in his sister’s eyes. “Okay! Let’s go, Yuki-nii!” the two sad twins smiled at each other and walked out together, hand in hand.

———

The days, weeks and months passed by. Sasuke and Yuki allowed themselves a mopey mourning period before deciding to train hard together, and attend the academy together.

They were both obviously the top students, and Sasuke grew to have his army of fangirls. He became apathetic and indifferent to the people around him, even speaking and interacting less with his twin, whom he used to be so close to.

Yuki had spent most of her time keeping to herself, much like her brother, but found solace in writing about her complicated feelings in a journal by the lake they walk past every day to get home.

On more than one occasion she’s seen a yellow haired boy walk a little slower and pay a little more attention to her than other passerbys, but he looked away and sped up when she moved to make eye contact. She always thought he was blushing, or maybe it was just the sunset. She soon found out she attended the academy with him, but they never spoke.

It seemed like in no time Sasuke and Yuki had graduated and got their leaf headbands. Sasuke put his around his forehead and Yuki kept hers tied around her neck. She didn’t want it to interfere with her bangs or have to change her hairstyle. She was content with keeping it in one untouched long braid to her left side.

When the genin were all placed into teams, Yuki was thankful she got onto a team with her brother. They were the only 5 man squad but the Third Hokage didn’t deem it fit to separate the twins, considering all they had been through.

Yuki was cautious of her new teammates, since she never paid much attention to the students in her class she didn’t really know anybody too well. Just a few names and faces.

The yellow haired boy she had seen by the lake plenty of times was on their team, and also a pink haired girl who couldn’t seem to keep away from her brother. Yuki instantly disliked her. She seemed shallow and though she might be smart, she was obnoxious and physically incapable.

The yellow haired boy was obnoxious in a different way, he was extremely loud and outgoing. He kind of reminded her of her former self. Headstrong, stubborn and desperate to prove himself. She was never as loud as he was though.

Their sensei seemed like he would rather be doing anything but be around children all day. Yuki didn’t pay much attention to the people around her, except her twin. Even if they don’t talk as much as they used to, Sasuke is still her beloved brother at the end of the day and she would do anything for him.

As the team went around introducing themselves, Yuki couldn’t help but roll her eyes at their new sensei.

“My name’s Kakashi Hatake. ... I don’t really feel like telling you guys about my likes and dislikes. As for my dreams....” he looked up into the sky. “I have a few hobbies...” he added on, and just stopped there.

Naruto didn’t hesitate to go next. “I’m Naruto Uzumaki! I like instant ramen, but what I like even more is the ramen from Ichiraku that Iruka Sensei treats me to.” Yuki tuned out then since he kept going on and on about ramen, but tuned back in when he started being loud right next to her. “And my dream is to become greater than the Hokages! I’m going to make all the villagers recognize my existence!” Yuki’s eyes went wide and she couldn’t help smiling a little. He really was like her. At least he could still be cheerful with so much suffering in his heart.

Sakura went next. “I’m Sakura Haruno! What I like.. I mean who I like is... And my hobby is... well my dream is to....” Yuki rolled her eyes and scowled at the pink haired girl who ignored her completely and squealed, staring at Sasuke with hearts in her eyes. Sasuke ignored her.

Sasuke glanced at his sister before going next. “My name’s... Sasuke Uchiha. I have a lot of dislikes, but no likes in particular. And... what I have is not a dream, because I will make it a reality. I’m going to restore my clan, and kill a certain someone.”

The tone in her brother’s voice and the look in his eyes made Yuki’s blood run cold, and her forehead grow numb due to panic. She knew he meant their brother. Who else could he possibly be talking about?

“You’re up last, girl who looks eerily similar to me.” Kakashi sensei said, referring to their matching silver hair and dark eyes. Yuki sighed and rolled her eyes.

“My name is Yuki Uchiha. I like .... flowers. Like my brother, I have many dislikes. Hobbies..... I like to train or study flowers. As for my dream........ I want to prove my worth and keep a promise.” she started off slow, but ended with a low, determined voice, remembering the promise she made her big brother when she was little.

She would get stronger and fight him with all her strength. And she would win.

[gusenitsaa]

Daylight Fading

Alternate version of the underworld arc toying with the idea that people in the underworld gradually forget themselves. A twist on greek mythology once-ified because why not!

The idea came out of the 'all headcanons come with a price' discord conversation with @icecubelotr44​  @pirate-owl​ and was saved from the abyss of our own forgetfulness by @rumdaydreams​ saving it in a google doc. Sooooo... beware of angst.  Artwork by @queen-mabs-revenge​ included to unexpectedly hurt her with her own stuff, obviously. 

Read on FF.

He could still feel the heat of it and the chill.

She's gone. Or he was. There was no one to fight, no one to fight for. No course to plot.

He was dead.

The underworld mocked him with familiar streets. If he were to look he was quite certain there would be a caricature of the home he meant to share with Emma, but he didn't want to see it.

The Rabbit hole was here and it seemed as good a place as any to hide and lick his wounds. It wasn't called the Rabbit Hole down here. Here the sign above the door read "Three Sheets" with what could only be described as three cartoon pillow cases flapping in the breeze on the logo.

Killian sighed in irritation, mumbling under his breath "that's not what bloody sheet me-" his annoyed comment got caught in his throat when the door opened in front of him and his eyes locked on the man behind the bar. "Liam?" the name came out choked and Killian was frozen in place, staring. He had shed the uniform for a sweater and slacks but it was without a doubt… his big brother.

For a moment he wasn't sure if he could force his legs to move. They felt as wobbly as they had moments ago when he'd collapsed with a sword in his chest. Finally he managed a deep breath, steadying himself. A smile pulled at his lips then broadened into a grin. He had not truly dared to hope that he might see Liam again someday; was so certain that men like him and men like his brother could never be going to the same place. But it was him, Liam, working as efficiently behind the bar as he ever had before the mast, what he could see of the place just as neat and tidy as he would expect.

Killian walked up to the bar in a daze, half convinced it was all a dream. It became a nightmare in a single moment when Liam met his eyes and there is nothing.

"Can I get you something?"

Killian was frozen in place for a moment, staring dumbly. Liam's eyes drifted down the bar to the next customer with a hint of annoyance. He didn't even meet Killian's eyes again when he said "Let me know when you decide" and moved on to the person occupying the next stool.

And still Killian stared at him like a bloody fool, trying not to sob like a child because damn it if it wasn't his one desperate hope when he woke up in this hellish place. Finding them, maybe being able to see them once more before... whatever the hell happens to men like him. Some part of him wanted to run, to hide away from this torment, from the brother who doesn't know him, who looks through him like he was just one more face in the crowd (he WAS just one more face in the crowd.) Another part is rooted in place, unable to give up the sight of his brother, even if Liam doesn't know him now.

He can't move, can't leave even as Liam gives him a sharp look when he realizes Killian is still staring at him.

Finally Liam approached him again but it's only to tersely ask "are you drinking or just taking up space at my bar?"

Killian can barely manage the word "rum" without his voice shaking.

He hoped like hell the rum will give him the strength to speak. To do something other than stare and hurt and hope that he'd wake from this nightmare and Liam would look at him... just look at him. The rum makes the room fuzzy eventually, other patrons filtering out over time until it's just the two of them and a few bar flies in the corner that Killian imagines will likely stay until Liam kicks them out.

"It fades," Liam finally told him, when enough customers have left that he had no choice but to engage the new customer that has been watching him all night. "Whatever it is from topside that haunts you so. It will fade."

Killian took another drink, trying to just... drown enough of the rawness to be able to speak.

"What fades?" he finally managed.

"Everything." Liam shrugged. There's something almost sad in his tone and it's like another dagger through Killian's heart. "Your life above. The good and the bad, it all fades here."

"You don't remember anything?" Killian couldn't help but ask. Even though he dreaded the finality of the answer.

"Just... feelings. I think it hurt a lot. Topside." Liam shrugged, "it's probably better this way."

Killian swallowed hard and put down his empty glass. "Aye, perhaps it is."

He tries to blame the heaviness of his steps on the liquor as he finally managed to drag himself from the stool and out the door, away from Liam's gaze. He barely managed to make it outside the door before collapsing heavily against the wall outside, his eyes burning with tears he refused to let fall.

It fades. Liam's words echo in his head. There's nothing left now. Liam didn't remember him, Milah has been gone nearly so long as Liam, surely her love has faded as well… And his own. The desperate love he still clings to. For Liam, for Milah. For Emma and Henry and her family... it will all fade. Until there is nothing left of him at all. Just a shell who remembers nothing more than: It hurt. But maybe it's better now.

The door swung open and the barflies were ushered from the bar by Liam's stern voice. "off with you gents, see you tomorrow-" And then Liam was kneeling next to him, his eyes a peculiar sort of distant kindness. Warmth without recognition. Concern without love. Liam's hand came down on his shoulder and he flinched away, the shadow of what they'd once had hurting more than indifference.

"What's your name?" Liam asked and Killian almost doesn't answer. His head fell heavily onto his hand, unable to look at Liam while he answered. "Killian. It's Killian Jones."

"Killian Jones?" There's no recognition in his voice but there was something else... curiosity.

"Come inside, Killian Jones-" The offer sounded like an order and Killian obeyed without question.

Liam helped him to his feet and back into the bar and Killian slumped into a booth, still barely able to look at Liam. He disappearer into the back room for a minute and Killian wondered if he'd even return, or if pity had driven him to let him in like a stray cat out of the cold. When the door opened again there was a yellowed envelope in Liam's hand. "I don't know for sure if this will mean anything to you… but …" He offered the envelope to Killian without a word.

Killian recognized Liam's handwriting on the front immediately, Killian Jones written in his brother's neat cursive. The paper is fragile with age and Killian takes it gently and unfolds the letter within.

Killian,

I'm so sorry Killian. I should have listened to you. I never wanted to leave you alone. It was the one thing I swore I'd never do and yet my stubbornness led me to break the only promise that was ever worth keeping. And now I fear I may leave you more alone than I ever thought possible.

I've forgotten your birthday, Killian. I remember the time I nicked apples from the market for you to celebrate, soft bread, double rations if I could manage no more than giving you my own. I remember how desperately I wanted your birthday to still be special. Despite everything. But I don't remember what day it is now.

I was told things fade. I didn't believe them. I didn't believe it was possible that I could ever ever forget you. But it seems even my stubbornness has its limits. I fear that more will fade. That I will never even know all of the precious memories that have abandoned me in this place. That one day you may join me here and find a man who doesn't even remember how much he loves you.

I don't know how to stop it. But I will fight it. I love you little brother and if these pages are all that is left of me I am so very sorry I've failed you again. Please know that I tried.

Your Brother, always

Liam

Killian's hand shook as he set the letter down, worried he'd tear it if he clutched at it any tighter. He'd long since lost the fight against his own tears but he didn't care anymore. He chanced a look at his brother-

"I found them when I was cleaning out the back room one day," Liam offered, his voice small. "There's more... a lot more. I haven't read them all but... he must have loved you very much."

Killian nodded, not trusting his voice for a moment. "Can I see them?"

There were more, so many more. A sizable box filled with envelopes, each with Killian's name neatly on the front. Far too many for Liam to really have found them while cleaning. But Killian knew what had happened. He'd woken one day no longer remembering Killian's name, or his own and come to the only conclusion that he could make sense of. Someone else had left them here during the night.

Some were longer than others, some little more than stories, things Liam couldn't bear to forget. A race against time, against his own failing mind. The early letters were crumpled, as though Liam had spent hours rereading them, trying to solidify their contents in his mind by sheer force of will.

He found lists amongst the letters, and short notes to himself, reminders in abbreviated form, nearly worn through from being folded in a pocket day in and day out.

Killian Jones, your little brother. Don't forget him. You can't forget him.

The letters changed. Fewer memories, more action reports. Recording the courses he'd already tried in his desperate attempts to protect his memories, lists of books he'd already read, more lists of books he'd yet to read.

He found one from the day Milah died, smudged with tears and with a faded charcoal drawing clipped to it.

I forgot your face, Killian. I'm sorry. But she gave it back to me.

Liam didn't hover while he was reading, retreating to the bar so as not to intrude into something that seemed to have so little to do with him. For a moment he was grateful Liam didn't see the tears that filled Killian's eyes. Liam had been hurting so badly, was so desperately trying to hold on to his memories even though they hurt. He was trying so hard, was so desperate that the only thing that remained in the end was this vague feeling that whatever came before hurt. For a moment Killian wondered if maybe it really was better this way. Because if he remembered he'd have to remember everything. Their cursed childhood, their struggles just to survive, every beating he'd ever taken to keep his little brother safe, every one he couldn't save Killian from. Neverland. Dying. His own mind abandoning him piece by piece.

This way it's gone. The agony, the pain, the desperation, the guilt.

(the love, the loyalty.)

Killian pulled out the last letter. It was little more than a list of books. One was circled and marked with a question mark and a scrawled.

Find someone who can read greek?

He no longer remembered learning to read Greek, apparently.

Killian finally looked up at Liam. He was still tidying up but he recognized the inefficient movements for what they were. He was stalling, giving Killian time to read.

"Can I take these with me?" he asked.

"They're yours."

The next day Killian started reading where Liam left off.

Liam had been so close. There were little tiny x's in the bottom right of every book's title page that Liam had read and notes scribbled into the margins with an uncharacteristic messiness. It took Killian very little time to find and translate the book that Liam had thought was important but could no longer remember how to read.

It doesn't take him long to find in the mythology a common thread of forgetfulness in the underworld tied to the rivers and the food. He stops eating and drinking himself. It was uncomfortable at first. The mind thinks it is in need when it truly isn't. But he got used to it. Realized that down here it wasn't truly needed. And most importantly, unlike everyone else, his life above wasn't fading. He could still remember, everything. He has his own versions of letters. To Emma and Henry, to Milah and Liam and David and everyone it would pain to one day find him with no memories of them. He checked his mind against them daily and while people around him arrived and faded, his memories remained sharp.

What he doesn't know is if they could come back. If he could bring his brother back by getting him away from that water. If he should, even if it were possible.

"If it were true, would you want to remember?" Killian asked one day, sitting at the bar with a rum he wasn't drinking in one hand, watching Liam carefully.

"If what were true?"

"The letters you found. My brother's letters. If it were you, would you want to remember?" Liam shrugged a little, taking a sip of water behind the bar which Killian struggled not to smack from his hand.

"Doesn't matter if I would want to remember," Liam said finally.

Killian's eyes furrowed, "Why not?"

"Because he wanted to remember."

With one sentence the days of conflict in his mind stilled. Liam was right…. he was always right. It wasn't his decision to make. He didn't have to decide if this shadow of his brother was better off without the memories of his old life.

Liam had fought for those memories. Desperately. With a fervor that stretched for pages and pages of stories and notes and scribbles on the margins of books in languages he no longer knew how to read.

Liam wanted to remember.

But how do you convince someone to forego something so basic as food and drink?

If you're Captain Hook… you wait until after closing, knock them over the head and cuff them to their own bed behind their own bar.

"I'm sorry," he whispered when Liam came around.

"What the bloody hell are you doing!" Liam cried, tugging at the cuff. Where did you even get these?"

"There's a sheriff's station down here too."

"Let me go, Killian, this is mad."

"Give me three days, Liam," Killian begged. "Three days without the food and water of this place and if you don't remember anything-" "Gods, you think I'm him?" Liam stammered, "You think I'm your brother. We share a first name, that doesn't make me him. Do you have any idea how many Liams there are in the underworld?"

"Is it so much more mad than your theory, that Liam Jones simply slipped into your room one night and left a box of letters and vanished?"

"You are mad."

"Perhaps. We'll decide in three days."

Liam was NOT a well behaved captive. Though Killian should have supposed he wouldn't be. For hours he screamed for help from the patrons he was sure were on the other side of the door. They weren't. The door was locked and the door reinforced with a broken bar stool. Even so Killian almost gave in then, his brother's cries lodging sharp in his heart. After that he tried to convince Killian by plea threat or logic that this was madness.

Maybe he was making a mistake, maybe Liam didn't really want…

He shook his head. He'd made a deal with himself for three days. For the version of his brother who had wanted this.

Well... perhaps not this exactly.

Definitely not what Liam had in mind.....  

Part 2

Leave me a note! I live off reviews and tears.

[defendersofaurita]

Title: Starve the Cold

Author/Artist: AnchoredTether

Rating: M [graphic depictions of violence, major character death, dark themes]

Pairings: Plance [Pikelavar], Kallura [Thunderyun]

Series: Defenders of Aurita

Chapter: 5/?

Summary: With the evil wizard Dakin defeated, Block can finally save his village from being turned to stone. Meklavar seeks to retrieve the Jewel of Jitan, Jiro needs to avenge his master (and twin brother) and slaughter the Leviathan, Valayun continues her search for the runestone, and Pike seems to have an agenda of his own. Revelations are brought to light and a mysterious ranger may be the key to solving their problems.

CHAPTER 05 :: STARVE THE COLD

Three days passed and somehow the group was still alive. They avoided any external threats or detection from dragons and had somehow kept from killing each other. Thunder's initial hostility was replaced with an indifferent calm, but Pike was still wary of him and tried to keep his distance with the star wolf. Block discovered one night that cooked rat was in fact delicious. Valayun looked up at the overcast sky with a troubled expression. "It looks like it might rain tonight." As if on cue, a rumbling of thunder sounded in the distance. She looked to the ranger. "It's going to reflect your name pretty soon here. Is there a place we can retire for cover?" "Did Valayun really just crack a joke at Thunder's name?" Pike muttered to Meklavar. "There is a canyon not far from here," Thunder replied, "but our chances of running into a dragon would be high." "Can't we make some kind of make-shift tent?" Meklavar piped up. She looked at Block. "Or cast some kind of shielding spell to keep us out of the rain?" "I could," Block started, "but I'd only be able to keep it up for a few hours at best." "I have a tent." Pike said, and everyone turned to look at him. "But it'd only fit at most, three of us." "Where are you hiding a tent?" Meklavar looked him up and down as if she were going to find it stuffed under his shirt. He pulled out a scroll from his sack. "Summoning scroll. I'm actually carrying a lot of stuff on me." "Huh. So it's like Valayun's satchel… but in paper form." "Something like that." "What if I cast some kind of invisibility spell on us when we enter the canyon?" Block offered. "We can find a cave, and the dragons won't find us." "Would your spell include hiding our scent as well?" Thunder asked. "It… should?" He bit his lower lip. "I'm not confident enough to answer that." "How long can you make the spell last?" "Probably an hour or two." "That should be plenty of time to find shelter." Thunder turned to lead the group a different direction as he headed towards the canyon. Rain weakly began to fall as lightning cracked against the sky, shortly followed by tumultuous thunder. "I have a bad feeling about this." Meklavar said.

][ --- ][

"At this rate we're going to all die of hypothermia!" Pike yelled into the wind and rain. The storm had intensified to the point where everyone was soaked to the bone. It was only getting darker. "Do you know where we're going, Thunder?!" "We're almost there, cat!" "Not a cat!!" "At least the rain is doing a nice job of masking our scent!" Jiro said. "Actually the rain is amplifying our scent!!" Pike said. "Trust me, I would know!!" "We need to mask it." Meklavar exclaimed as the idea came to her, her amber eyes searching around on the ground. "Everyone! Cover yourselves in mud!!" She fell to her knees and started slathering handfuls of mud upon her armor, her face, everywhere. The team followed suit. "Good thinking, Meklavar." Thunder said as he spun a finger to tell Rover to roll around in it. Once the whole team was covered, they practically ran as the ranger lead them further in. Eventually they reached the edge where the ground dropped into a ravine, and further on became a massive rocky canyon. "Time to cast that spell of yours, Block." "On it." He spun his staff a few times, creating a vibrant yellow magic circle as the spell began to form around them like a mist. After a moment of concentrating, he lowered his hands, magic circle disappearing, but the fog stayed close around them. "We should be undetectable now, but stay within the fog as we move." It didn't take long for them to find a decent cave with room for all seven. It had a narrow opening as well (which Block and Jiro had a hard time squeezing through), which was a comforting deterrent for any dragons. Block started up a fire and everyone gathered around the heat to try and starve off the cold of the storm that lingered in their bones. It wasn't until a solid ten minutes of freezing near the fire that someone realized they weren't heating up. "This isn't working." Thunder asserted. "Our clothes are soaked, we need to get out of them in order to warm up, otherwise we will all die of hypothermia, as the cat predicted." "Not a ca-" Pike started. "But we don't have any dry clothes to change into." Meklavar nervously pointed out. "Unless Block or Valayun know a spell to help with drying out our clothes." "If I knew one I would have done it by now," Block said dully. Valayun shook her head. "I mostly know healing and elemental spells…" Meklavar glanced to the khaliit. "I don't suppose you have some secret ninja art as a last resort?" Pike looked at her and could read the pleading and fear in her eyes. He knew that if they stripped their clothes her secret would be revealed. The mud would keep the markings on her face covered, but there was no hiding the markings on her body or her ears once she took off her helmet. "The only thing I can do that would help is breathe fire… and I think setting our clothes aflame would only cause more problems." "That leaves us with only one option," Jiro said, a little too dramatically. "On the plus side, there is no better team bonding exercise than being in the nude in a near-death scenario." "This is NOT a team building exercise!!" Pike hissed. "It's SURVIVAL!" "Well then let's get on with it." Thunder said, already starting to shed layers. "We're only getting deader." A startled noise escaped Valayun's throat. "C-Can we at least all turn around? Have our backs facing the fire?" "Technically we should probably press against each other to conserve body warmth-" Block said. "AAAND let's not!" Meklavar protested. "I like that idea, Valayun. Everyone turn around!" "What difference will that make." Thunder muttered under his breath. "We have a thing called peripherals." There was an unspoken agreement among the group to leave undergarments on, or everyone was too self-conscious to strip down completely. Meklavar thought her odds were pretty good - she had Pike on her right, who already knew her secret, and Jiro on her left, who was a lawful good paladin and the least likely to steal any kind of glances towards her. Even though Meklavar was desperately hoping that everyone facing their backs to each other would somehow miraculously keep her species and therefore identity a secret, everyone turned to look at her when she suddenly let out a frightened scream. "What? What is it!?" Valayun spun around, letting out a small gasp. Meklavar slumped onto the ground, bending her knees towards her chest and covering her ears with her hands as she tried to hide from the four pairs of eyes that were no doubt staring at the pointed ears they thought they all saw. Pike was in the middle of taking his pants off and struggling with balancing on one foot. "Uuuhhh…. So I think my tail brushed against her leg." His eyes darted between her and his tail. "Didn't realize you were that skittish." "Shut up, Pike!" You know why I'm skittish! Even without the fear of everyone finding out who she really was, she was still terrified of encountering a dragon. She was scared they would die and she would be powerless to stop it, or worse, everyone else would die and she would somehow be the only one to survive. "Just hurry up and take your pants off!" "If you insist." He teased in a velvety voice which elicited a kick from Meklavar, causing Pike to fall over with a yelp. "Meklavar…" Valayun was still staring at her in awe. "Your ears…" Meklavar let out a long, drawn-out sigh. She collected her strength and stood up, her ears fully visible to the team. She turned around to face Valayun, her amber eyes aglow from the light of the fire. "I'm an elf. I know I haven't been honest with all of you but…" Her shoulders shuddered from the cold. "Now you know… I guess there was no way around it at this point anyway." "You're not just an elf, though." Valayun blinked a few times, her eyes practically sparkling. "You're the Telcontar princess, Yekaterina!" "Waitwaitwaitwait… you're a princess???" Block looked at her as if he was standing before a demigod. She was half expecting him to get down on his knees and grovel at her feet at any moment judging by the way his jaw was hanging loosely. "You've been a princess this whole time and I've been treating you like a dwarf?!" "In your defense Block, you treat everyone nicely." Meklavar said dryly. "That… actually makes a lot of sense." Jiro mused. "You're the dragonborn. That would explain why you were able to survive Dakin's attack when it killed my brother." "I was wondering about that…" Block frowned. "And the sleeping spell that troll cast. I'm preeeeetty sure it works just fine on dwarves." "She's dragonborn??" Thunder spoke up. "Why didn't she say so? We're in dragon territory." "Hey, she doesn't know how to use dragon shouts, or whatever." Pike explained, his pants finally off. He stood confidently with his hands on his hips as if they weren't all standing around in nothing but their underwear. "So don't give her grief over something she can't control." "Wait… how did you know?" Block asked with a raised eyebrow. "Intuition." Pike said with a dramatic gesture of his hand. "I doubt that." Thunder quipped. Everyone's attention shifted when Valayun let out a small sniffle. Tears were threatening to spill from her bright eyes. "I thought… everyone thought…" Her voice was barely above a whisper. "That after the Invasion… all the Telcontars were dead…" Meklavar's expression softened as she saw the genuine sorrow in her fellow elf. "I guess not all of us are." She said solemnly, not knowing for herself if anyone else in her family was alive. For all she knew, she could have been the last of the royal family. "My father…" She sniffled, her smile bittersweet. "Is Alfor Altair. He worked alongside your father. I don't know if you remember him or remember me at all… I went to a few of the galas your family held. I was far too nervous to ever approach you, though." "I… I actually don't remember much of anything." Her eyes fell to the fire in a thousand yard stare. "I apparently hit my head pretty hard during the Invasion. But Alfor Altair…" She narrowed her eyes in thought. It hurt her head. It was as if the name were a trigger, pounding her skull to recede back into painful memories. "It seems… familiar." She lifted her gaze to give Valayun a hopeful expression. "Perhaps I'll remember in time." "Perhaps." She nodded in agreement, wiping away her tears. "Well… since we've all officially seen each other now, I'm going to continue facing the fire." Block announced, sitting down near the flames. "Good idea." Thunder agreed as he did the same. Everyone sat down facing the fire save for Pike, who kept his back turned to the flames so his tail could curve around the edge of the warmth. Meklavar couldn't help but stare at his spine where his crimson markings continued down in V-shapes with brown spots in between. The same pattern fell upon the sides of his upper arms and thighs. "You have stripes." She observed, as if it weren't obvious. Pike let out a small laugh. "Yeah, and you have pointed ears." "Man, you guys all have unique markings and cool scars." Block chimed with a laugh. Pike, Thunder, and Jiro were all covered in various scars, while Meklavar, Valayun, Pike, and Thunder had their elaborate markings based on their race. "I'm just a blank canvas over here." "Markings are nothing to get excited about." Thunder debated. "Mine have only brought me trouble." Pike twisted his shoulders to look at the half-breed, his gaze stern but sympathetic in understanding. "I know the feeling. I'm pretty used to people making judgement calls based on what I am, but I can only imagine what you must go through…" Thunder didn't smile, but it showed in his eyes. "It's rough sometimes. Galra think I'm too good for them, elves think I'm not good enough, and everyone in between thinks I'm an abomination. I don't belong anywhere in this world." "Maybe it's not so much about belonging as it is making a place for yourself." Jiro said. "When it comes down to it, you're right. You don't belong anywhere. But that's okay. You don't have to." "Thanks." Thunder blinked, looking the paladin up and down. "I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Shiro has a twin brother… You look like him and you sound like him but I can tell that you're not… him… If that makes any sense." Jiro laughed. "It makes perfect sense! I feel the exact same way sometimes."

][ --- ][

Eventually everyone thawed enough to start a second fire for the sole purpose of drying out their clothes. Valayun cast minor healing spells on everyone to make sure no one got sick. Block distributed pastries from his bowl of endless food and Meklavar had the brilliant idea to use her transmutation gloves to change the food into different food. Everyone got to eat what they desired, although Valayun was content to stick with the pastries. A few hours later everyone was back in dry clothes and ready to retire for the night. Any other night and everyone would have spread out to sleep in solitude, but considering they were all shivering to death not long ago, they slept side by side in a small cluster of makeshift beds. A spell was cast to keep the fire burning into the night, albeit a weak flame it was enough to keep the cave warm. Although no one would admit it, they knew Jiro was right. There was no better team building exercise than being in the nude in a near-death scenario.

[sunset-wishes-upon-hill]

Christmas (Ciel x Yuri)

Spin-off to The Liars and The Soothsayer: FF I Wattpad

A/N: So this has been in my laptop for a long time and thought I actually lost it but I found it and decided to share!

He wasn’t sleeping. Yuri knew. The heavy bags underneath his eyes and darkening of circles grew each day with burdens that fell on his tiny little shoulders. Yet none of the servants seemed to say much. Finn had been the brave one to voice out his concerns only to be cut away with his cold glare. Sebastian, although concerned, didn’t seem too bothered as long as he stayed alive and stay alive he seemed determined.

Ciel has always been aloof and distant with edge of indifference. She wasn’t sure why, but as winter deepened and Christmas approached, something cracked inside him. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion; disturbed yet perversely engrossed as she watched in the courtside the destructive unravelling of a perfectionist.

His eyes lost all glimmer of light. He reminded her more of a machine than a ‘child’ or a ‘person’, shut away in his office, slaving away day and night with frightening speed and unsettling composure.

Pitiful. She thought.

In a way, he had the world under his control. The title, the wealth, the prestige; the opportunities so many people in this world only dreamed of having. She dreamed of having. Sometime, he reminded of a celebrity – oddly familiar yet strangely distant, like standing in front of a two sided mirror of a circus show. But to her, he was the one being controlled by the world. Perhaps, that reasoning also applied for the rest of the wealthy and famed too.

Yuri suspected he didn’t rest for the whole day; his exhaustion was clear and often, his plate would come back, untouched. All they can do was watch as he slowly became undone.

One day, she did. A front seat to his fall.

“Ciel!” She hurried over to the fallen boy. His breathing heavy and shallow, face red with heat and beads trailing down the side of his sunken cheeks.

“I-I’ll call Sebastian–“ Before she could react, he had grabbed her by her collar, pulling her forward, eyes wide, “Don’t. Don’t you dare tell anyone what you saw! I’ll kill you if you do..” She felt his vine like grip tightening.

It took her a few moments to gather her composure, nodding, “Can you stand?”

She offered him her hand only for him to slap it away, “I can stand on my own. Give me a minute.”

His eyes clenched shut as if he was injured and in pain, his hold on her a sort of anchor from whatever that seemed to ail him. She had stayed there by his side, wordless and for a long time, until he gathered enough to strength to stand. Even a machine will not last long, if not cared for.

This small body that wasn’t made of manmade mechanical parts? It would shatter.

She wasn’t sure exactly how she ended up helping him with his company matters but she managed to assimilate herself into his day little by little. It was mostly organising and stacking them into a file and pile in between retrieving something out of his reach.

“What do people usually do during Christmas in your time?” He asked one day so suddenly.

Yuri looked up from the documents she was arranging in surprise. He seldom spoke (unless he was giving commands) and most of the time, they’d work in silence.

A minute past.

Then another.

Ciel looked up from the paper he had been signing, a delicate brow raised with question, flipping it closed and putting them on top of the finished ones.

She realised why he was staring at her – she had been gaping at him and not responding to his question.

“Oh,” Yuri recovered soon after, “Um…it’s a huge thing in my time. You have Christmas sales, before that you have Black Friday which starts about a week before December, where shops sells merchandises at hugely discounted price and lots of people goes crazy for it-oh, streets have Christmas lights hung up which is really beautiful at night and winter special foods, Christmas movies-those are moving pictures I was talking about with actors and actresses..it rarely snows though compared to here..uh, it’s a bit like here I guess just more exciting and amplified.”

He leaned back, allowing the information to sink in then asking again, “What do you do?”

She had been filtering through the papers when he spoke up, stopping in her track as she pursed her lips before continuing the motion.

“Nothing much.” Yuri simply answered. “I..don’t really remember celebrating Christmas.”

“Your family don’t celebrate Christmas?”

“I only have my mum.” She said in matter-of-factly tone.

“Oh, your father is..I’m sorry.”

“He’s not dead.” She blatantly said, meeting his eyes with unwavering gaze, “He left us.”

“I’m sorry.”

Yuri scoffed, “Sorry about what? I hate when people say that. ‘I’m sorry your grandmother died’ or ‘I’m sorry that happened to you’, it’s not like they killed them or something.”

Ciel wasn’t sure what to say.

“Well, my mum, my brother and I work at Christmas.” She elaborated, swallowing the painful knot in her throat.

“You work?” He sounded astonished by the information, respecting her wishes to move on to their previous conversation, “What type of work?”

“Well, I did several before I started working in my current restaurants and retail, babysitting if I have time.” She muttered, “Um..waitressing, paper rounds, retails, house cleaning for this old couple few blocks down the road, assistant..just whatever I can find. Christmas pays are double the amount of normal working days and workplace is always short-staffed during holidays. Better than staying home alone.”

Ciel did not look up as his eyes moved across the written documents, signing and stacking them onto the pile on his right.

“How about you?” Yuri decided to ask in return, “What do you usually do during Christmas?”

There was a pregnant pause and she decided her question was lost in his concentration until he spoke up after considerable amount of time had passed.

“I used to celebrate.” Despite his lack of expression, his sombre tone did not go unnoticed.

Yuri knew the reason for the use of past tense and didn’t pursue further, simply finishing the conversation with, “I don’t know what people would normally do during Christmas in my time but from what I saw, they eat Christmas dinner, open presents with families and they have a nice time and everyone’s happy.”

“Do you..miss it?”

“I don’t know. Christmas was always another working day for me.” She said, remembering looking around the dining tables during one of her short break at Christmas day with a cold sandwich in her hand from the hidden corner paved for staffs that allowed them a bird view of the whole restaurant while hidden away from the guests gaze. She remembered feeling a sudden urge to cry as she chewed down the dry bread although she wasn’t sure why, “Well..I remember my first Christmas present from my mum when I was fifteen; it was small note pads, pens and cute rabbit doll, cheap and nothing special. It was all we could afford but I really liked that rabbit doll..still have them in my bed back at home..”

Yuri felt her eyes water, turning her attention to the files and sniffing up the unshed tears to cover up the fact she wanted nothing more than to cry and scream.

Later that night, she found a rabbit doll by her bed, against her pillow as though it had always been there, a red ribbon tied around its neck.

[endae]

|ashes among us| - Part I

[AO3]

[Part I] [Part II]...[Part X(?)]

On his last breath, he made the sacrifice to fix everything. As far as he knows, that's exactly what it's done – almost too well. Dipper & Mabel. Canon Divergence from Weirdmageddon.

(sequel to this because the ending’s been weighing down my soul for years. buckle up.)

and a very special thank you to @superishs for helping me map this one out.

The world doesn’t end with a bang, or a whimper.

It ends with a crack.

Existence, as he remembers it, may as well have been a dream. Black and endless, the new world waiting for him stretches far into an eternal night. For eons, that’s all it feels like. Floating aimless and forgotten to a cruel and indifferent plane.

The moment he recognizes that he’d had a soul once, he feels it reaching out into the dark, searching.

It’s the closest he feels to consciousness.

From within him, it’s waking. Some ball of light with a purpose, some disembodied spirit determined to escape.

When the feeling comes back to him, they come trickling one by one. Like moths to a flame, they gather. Flocking to his shell of an existence, as if desperate to remind him. If time is a concept then emotions must be too, because it’s in a shapeless, yearning form that it dawns on him that he can’t remember them and their sensations. An ocean of feelings without names, some overwhelming inkling that grief is seemingly the one that never left.

You’re born in the darkness clinging only to that, maybe.

He’s forgotten who he is.

He has a name and he has a story, but in whatever oblivion he’s been sentenced to, there are too many gaps to connect the dots with ease, at first.

But they come.

Wisps of a past life. A different time. They’re fragments before they’re memories, a collection of chipped and cracked moments alluding to some existence he can’t remember. But they come. They come with the staggering realization that there was a heart that carried them once. A body that housed them.

The moment he recognizes he has eyes, he opens them to a blacker void than what he’d shut them to.

He was a brother once. Some story without an epilogue.

Whatever pieces he’s scattered to the universe, by fate, they come rushing back. Like dots of a puzzle, the images come alive with each link. Some secondhand account of a life that isn’t his anymore. He grasps it with all he can, listening for a heart that hasn’t beaten. Spreading limbs he couldn’t feel.

‘That’s right…’

He was a brother before he was a mistake.

From the corners of his prison, he hears it calling to him. Like the answers themselves were fighting through the darkness just as he was, he feels them creeping closer, closer.  Truth itself always found a way, a gracious homecoming of familiar sights.

Familiar words, from an existence that felt like lifetimes ago.

“...........ake up…”

And for more reasons than just one, the moment he recognizes that he has arms, he feels the hairs stand on them at the words. He’s heard them before. They’re his.

“....ease…...lease wake up……”

‘No…’

They’re his and they’re loud and they’re vibrating, a haunting reminder of how this all came to be. Like someone or something has cracked his head wide open, it all comes flooding back too quickly. Images flickering like a broken film reel, replaying over and over.

A slip of a broken promise through a walkie-talkie.

A fight that didn’t need to happen.

A hell on earth.  

The aching gap between his ribs when he’d first held her, hands trembling, Mabel wake up, why won’t she wake up–

A hand outstretched, consumed in blue fire.

A deal to fix it all.

The moment he recognizes that he has a spine, he feels the sins crawling through it. That’s right. It began with him. Reawakening a sleeping demon, feeding him the answers through a summer painted with ill-kept secrets and bleeding youth. He dragged them all down with him, deeper and deeper into the vicious cycle of manipulation that’s tormented this family for years. For it to amount to whisper that puts all the pieces in place.

One string, one desperate fragment that comes too clearly when everything else won’t.

“...I’ll do anything…”

‘No…!’

All one cruel lie, one giant game that never ends–

“Mabel–!”

The moment he recognizes he has a body again, it’s throwing itself.

All at once, it comes. What isn’t black is bursting with color, what isn’t color is a moving blur. The first breath, the first sensation, worldly essences rushing to fill his empty being with light. Motion.

Gravity.

As if only just suddenly recalling that it existed, the panic is replaced with a sharp lurch in his stomach. The world around him spins, falls, and materializes with a hard crash against the floor.

Everything is too still.

The ringing in his ears comes first – deafening and somehow blinding, made worse by the metal tray that comes clambering after him. Against the tile, it clangs and bounces, sending piercing waves of dissonance into his already fragile head.

Dipper wonders, briefly, where he is. But the sharp scent of antiseptic cutting through the air doesn’t leave much room for wonder.

A hospital.

Frantic, he feels around for the empty weight of a vest that isn’t on him anymore. Orange tee beneath it, gone. And if the pounding in his head from the direct impact with the floor is anything to go by, then it means his hat is missing too.

Groaning, Dipper presses his hand to the side of his skull to alleviate the blooming ache. More and more, the signs come to him. The swapping of his day clothes for a gown. The hollow beep of a heart monitor. Steady and patterned, and most definitely not a flat line.

He’s awake – and if he’s awake, he must also be alive.

‘What…?’

By some trick of fate, his life is still his own.

Through the disorientation, a lone voice pierces through the fog. Someone else – someone living, breathing, and the thought terrifies him, he isn’t sure why. It comes sounding like they’re speaking to him from underwater, calling to a child drowning inches below the surface.  

“–ipper!”

In his swimming vision, he sees another pair of feet enter the room. Slipping in and out of focus, he remains paralyzed in place by the vertigo of it all. When the figure’s close enough, they plant their hands firm against both his shoulders, more patches of warmth to fight off the cold grip of oblivion.

Dipper swears, if only for a moment, that he hears the heart monitor freeze with him, when his eyes meet hers.

“...Ma...bel…?”

Mabel. Mabel Pines.

His twin and his best friend, who only hours ago, lay motionless against the wilting grass with a heartbeat too slow to be her own. Mabel Pines, who without so much as a word, became the prize of this sick game they never wanted to play.

She casts him a sour look. Something almost humorous if not for the heavy reality of quite literally everything. Dipper’s jaw hangs in disbelief as she looks him over, staring baffled, wordless.

As nonchalant as humanly possible, she clicks her tongue in disapproval.

“Bro. I know you’re itching to get out of here, but can you give it a day? At least?” she patronizes. She tugs on his sleeve, insistent. “C’mon, upsy-daisy. Let’s get you back in bed.”

Effortless, her arms cup the undersides of his to help lift him up. Dipper sways when he rises, instinctively clawing for the mattress when he feels himself begin to sway too far to one side.

It may as well be the closest they’ve had to a hug since….since.

It’s the first time he notices her sweater – Pink, confettied. Her yellow skirt and its matching headband. He notices what it isn’t: worn and ruined, stained with tears.

With delicate hands, she helps him climb back onto the bed, refusing to let go until he does.

Mabel eyes the tray he brought down with him: a punctured cup of pudding, cold veggies, and what he could only imagine was a once hot bowl of soup. Kneeling, she scoops what she can back onto the platter, wiping the floor with the napkin. She chuckles.

“Although with the food they give you here, I can’t really blame you for tryin’ to make a break for it, can I?” she adds, glancing up at him with a side smile. “This stuff’s almost worse than Grunkle Stan’s.”

Chit chats like nothing’s happened. In his peripheral, she focuses her attention back to the spill, humming some thoughtless tune to fill the air. It settles in his heart what’s going on. He’s alive. He’s here, and so is she. But...but she shouldn’t.

Just as they had when his body wasn't his own, the pieces start to connect.  

He glares daggers into the blanket, fisting the blanket at both sides. The cogs in his head start to turn, the anger coursing through his blood.

“...You haven’t had your fun, have you?”

[Read the rest here on AO3!]

[anthemverseduology]

Geraldine

I was four-years-old when my mother split town for Toledo. Like most people in my life, my mother never liked me much. She'd met my father, and as legend would tell it, she fell in love with him. He was around for a while, but before or soon after I was born he disappeared, too. He left me with my name, William, and his black hair and blue eyes, then he vanished like vapor.

My mother was indifferent to me, that I can remember. She sent me to every daycare facility that she could, but the children always avoided me, leaving me to play in the corners alone. When I wasn't left to myself the teachers would sit me facing the wall, as if there was something about me that they couldn't stand to look at. Finally, one day, my mother dropped me off at her sister, Geraldine's, and then without a word of farewell, she was gone.

I cried a lot in those early days, as you would imagine a little boy missing his mother might do, but Geraldine wasn't sympathetic to my feelings at all. She was a cold and callous woman, and I knew that she didn't truly care for me, even as young as I was. Geraldine set me up in a room at the top of the stairs that I was fairly certain had once been a storage closet. There was one, tiny window that looked down onto the alleyway, but the building just behind Geraldine's blocked out most sunlight.

There was always dust in the air, and all that I was allowed to keep on the shelves in my room were two thrifted pairs of jeans, four pairs of underwear that I'd have to wash myself by hand, then hang to dry (she didn't want me using too much water or power), and two t-shirts, that were over-sized on me to start with. Eventually, I grew into them, but by that time they'd been worn threadbare.

I remember Geraldine like a dark shadow in my life. She was tall and imposing, with long, dark-brown hair that she kept drawn back, half-up in a tight knot at the crown of her skull. Her eyes were small, almost appearing black at times when she was particularly filled with brimstone. Her clothes all seemed like they were de-saturated, with the exception of two dresses; one in blue, and one in red that she would wear on her outings to meet with men that she called her 'friends'.

Geraldine had spoken many times about the ungrateful nature of my mother, saying often that she had run my father off, instead of convincing him to stay so that we would have money. As I grew older, I realized that all Geraldine cared about was being well-off, and when I reached eight years old that became more and more apparent as I finally found my first friend.

“Hey!” a kid around my age shouted, just before Steve's fist connected with my jaw again. I'd never done anything to Steve, Gary, and Dave, but they hated me all the same, and they made sure that I felt it on a daily basis. Sometimes it was my ribs that they pummeled, but that day my face had particularly offended them. “Let him go!”

Steve turned, looking to his right, pausing with his fist drawn back. “Stay outta this, MacFerrily.”

The other boy let out a loud scoff. “I don't think I will! You really wanna try me, Stephen?”

“Screw it,” Gary said as he and Dave turned my arms loose, and I fell to my hands and knees, spitting blood from where I'd bitten down on my tongue from an uppercut to my chin. “See you tomorrow, Willy.”

“It's...'Billy',” I said, coughing a little as Steve reluctantly followed Gary and Dave down the sidewalk. “Assholes.”

“What's those guys' damage?” The boy that Steve had called MacFerrily helped me to my feet, before grimacing as he looked at my face. “They do this to you a lot?”

“Every day since school started,” I said, wiping the back of my hand over my chin to get some of the blood off of my skin. “Thanks for stoppin' them.”

“You woulda done the same for me...I'm Frank,” he said, putting his hand out to shake mine before noticing the blood on my knuckles. “Get a lick in on them?”

I looked down at my own hand, shaking my head. “Took a swing at Gary and hit the wall.”

“Is it broke? You need a doctor or somethin'?” Frank asked, looking concerned.

“No, way. My aunt would kill me for goin' to a hospital,” I said, flexing my fingers, unable to help the hiss that escaped through my teeth. “Doctors cost too much.”

“Yeah, but if it helps keep you from havin' a messed up hand, don't you think she'd want you to go?” Frank asked, clearly confused. “My mom takes me to see the doc if I blink wrong.”

“I've never been to the doctor. I just know that she says it costs too much,” I said, inspecting a new rip in the collar of my shirt. “Damn...”

“What happens when you get sick?” Frank crossed his arms over his chest, seeming as though he was angry on my behalf.

“I get a can of soup and some crackers, and she leaves me in my room,” I said, shrugging. “Why?”

“Look, I don't mean to be nosy or nothin', but is your aunt poor?” Frank looked uncomfortable, but there was still concern in his eyes.

It was the first time that I'd really thought about that. Geraldine had always had nice new things, she was always out on the weekends, and she always had her meals after I went to bed. In the mornings, when I'd take out the garbage, I'd find the remnants of T-bone steaks or whole chicken meals, while I'd been sent to bed with oatmeal or broth. Something in my head and my heart clicked at that moment, but I needed the confirmation. “I have to go, Frank. Gotta see about somethin',” I said, turning to walk away. “Thanks again for the save.”

“Hey, listen, Billy,” Frank said, stopping me. “You could sit with me at lunch and recess. Those guys are cowards. I've been scrappin' with my older brother and his buddy, Rick, since I was little. I'll help keep Steve, Gary, and Dave out of your hair.”

I nodded my head once, feeling my head pounding with the ache setting in from having my face used as a punching bag. “I will,” I said, raising my left hand to wave goodbye to him as I made my way home, to Geraldine's house. Normally, I would have crept inside the front door, trying to make as little noise as possible, hoping that I wouldn't incur her wrath. That afternoon, though, I wanted to get her attention.

“Geraldine!” I called down the hall, my voice echoing off of the walls that were covered in gaudy wallpaper. “Where are you?”

Geraldine's face appeared around the kitchen doorway. “Who do you think that you're talkin' to in that tone, William Anderson?”

“I'm talkin' to you! Are you rich?” I asked, my voice coming out in an embarrassing squeak.

“What did you just ask me?” Geraldine asked, stepping into the doorway, holding a plate of chocolate cake, which I was never allowed to have.

“Are you damned rich?” I shouted, pointing at the floor.

“How dare you use that language with me, young man!” Geraldine shouted, throwing the plate she held, spattering chocolate frosting all over the wall. “Look what you made me do! Clean that up!”

“You clean it up! You're the one that made the mess. Answer the question. Are you rich?” I yelled back, even as she charged at me.

She grabbed me by the jaw, never questioning where the lacerations on my face and lip came from. “You insolent little shit. I should throw you right out on the street! See how you fend for yourself!”

“I might do better,” I growled.

“Oh, you think that you'll make it in the world alone? No one can stand the sight of you, William! You're a pustule on the face of the Earth. You shouldn't exist! You're the bastard son of a drifter and a weak-willed whore, and you're lucky that you're even alive!”

Any argument I had ready was silenced by her slapping me hard across the face. With the injuries I'd already sustained, and the pain in my head, I lost consciousness immediately. When I woke up I was in a dark space. I could see, but only just a little; enough to know that I was in the storage space underneath the basement stairs. I pushed on the door in a futile attempt to get out, then I started pounding. “Let me out! Open the door! Let me out!” I was left in the room with nothing but a Bible, a jug of water, and a loaf of bread. No one ever came to rescue me. Finally, the door creaked open, and I scrambled out, facing Geraldine in her finest red dress.

“I'm goin' out. Don't leave this house or I'll lock you right back where you belong,” she said, batting me across the face for good measure. “You'll obey or you'll go to Hell...What do you say...?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, resisting the urge to put my hand to the wound on my cheek that had been split open again by her strike. Blood had dried on my face, and it itched, but still I didn’t move. “When'll you be back?”

“That's not your business! Read four chapters in your demonology book,” she said, leaning towards me so that her nose was close to mine. “You need to remember your place, you little shit. You're lucky that I took you in or you'd be on the streets.”

“Being on the streets would be better than having to deal with you,” I said, feeling unusually bold.

Geraldine inhaled deeply through her nostrils, her eyes wide and glaring as if she hoped that she could kill me with a look. “You're lucky that you're lucrative.”

“There it is,” I said, feeling vindicated and still sick to my stomach. “What do you get out of keeping me? Tell the truth.”

“You want the truth?” Geraldine asked, laughing. “Your mama and papa couldn't stand you. No one can. You're an insufferable child, and you have no redeemable qualities to speak of. You, Billy, are a waste of flesh. Heaven couldn't possibly want you, so you must be bound for Hell.”

“And where do you think that you're gonna go, Auntie Geraldine?” I asked in a mocking tone.

She raised her hand as if she was going to strike me again. “No, no. If my hand is red I'll have things to explain...Get out.”

“What?” I asked, incredulously. “‘Get out’?”

“Get out of my house. I don't care where you go,” she said, crossing her arms. “You're not staying here while I'm gone.”

“I have school tomorrow!” I argued.

“Well, you should have thought of that before you decided to be so disrespectful!” Geraldine growled as I backed towards the front door.

“No! I need somewhere to sleep! You can't just leave me out here!” My back hit the front door, then like a malicious tower Geraldine was looming over me. “I'm just a kid.”

“You've never been ‘just a kid’. You're a cancer on this planet, and if I could eradicate you, I would.”

I found myself speechless. I'd felt unwanted before, but I'd never had anyone tell me so specifically how expendable I was. I moved away from the door in quick steps, letting Geraldine pass. She sneered at me as she walked out into the evening, slamming the door behind her. That was the last night that I cried for myself until many years later.

That's a whole other story.

What's important here is what happened to Geraldine.

***

It came as a surprise to me when twenty years after the afternoon that Geraldine had locked me in the closet I found myself once again in her presence. I was out on the road with some new friends, riding our motorcycles cross-country, seeing what trouble we could stir up wherever we went. Some nights, though, I got to dwelling on everything that I'd left back home, then bitterness and loneliness would settle in my chest. Those nights I allowed my three friends to do what they might, and I tried to hide myself in the darkest corner of the darkest upscale bar. My friends loved the dives, as did I normally, but they avoided any place with class. The denizens of those kinds of bars tended to have money, they would be missed, and many of them had contracts with Hell, so they were off limits, anyway.

I could go into the details of how I knew about the contracts, but this story isn't about me.

This story is about Geraldine.

That night she sat at the bar across the room from me, flirting with a man who was much older than her, but his wristwatch was expensive, and he kept ordering the most costly scotch they had on the shelf. He projected old money, and he had the distinct appearance of a man who had never done any real work in his life besides pointing a finger as he shouted.

He was perfect for her.

Unfortunately for the potential future of the couple, fate had smiled on the old fool, and my Path and Geraldine's had crossed once more. I waited until the man had gone to the bathroom for the fifth time that hour, then I tossed back the rest of my vodka, heading over to the bar. I sat my empty glass down on the counter, standing next to her as she adjusted the straps of her red dress to attempt to hide the wrinkles of her shoulders. “Hello, Geraldine,” I said, fixing my eyes on the rack of glasses above my head.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see her head snap over to look up at me, her eyes widening. “William? What are you doin' here?” she asked, looking around her quickly as the other people in the room froze right where they were. The only sound still filling the air was Geraldine's nervous breathing, and the music being piped in over the bar’s stereo system. Electronics have no respect for the way that time works. If you've ever had a song skip ahead for no reason, consider if you might have been frozen in a moment and didn't even know it. Geraldine was starting to shift away from me out of her seat, careful to snatch her purse off of the bar top as though her life depended on the object. “How are you doing this? What do you want? I gave you over to those people so that I wouldn't ever have to look at you again.”

“Ah, yeah. My family...” I bowed my head a little as I looked down into my empty glass before reaching over the bar to grab a cheap bottle of whiskey. “I'm not really welcome at home right now—not the way that I am. See, what you always said was true. I'm a curse on the Earth, and lately I've been leaning into the curve, so to speak.”

Geraldine screwed her features up into a scowl. “What does that mean?”

I turned down the corners of my mouth, closing my eyes as I shrugged slightly as the televisions mounted behind the bar that normally showed live updates on the stock market, all switched to different national news stations reporting on the same thing. “Maybe you should watch more TV, Geraldine,” I suggested, taking a swig from the whiskey in my hand.

“Multiple murders, assaults, and destruction have been reported now across the eastern United States. Authorities in all of the local areas and the FBI say that they are certain that there is a tie to a group of individuals on motorcycles. Witnesses at each scene said that these people were calling themselves 'Horsemen', though they say that one of the group is a female,” the reporter said, looking grim. “No one is certain if she's being held against her will.”

I couldn't help but let out a snort of mild annoyance. “Agata’s problem is that--against her will--nobody's holding her.”

“What is this?” Geraldine asked, holding up a hand to gesture at the televisions. “Are you sayin’ that you're one of the people doin’ this?”

“No, no, no. We're not people,” I said, shaking my head as I gripped the neck of the whiskey bottle, pointing at Geraldine. “'I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.' I'm sure that you remember the verse well. You know, I used to skim the bits about the Horsemen. I thought it was ridiculous, you know? Not scary, at all! Let me tell you, though, Geraldine, there's a lot of horsepower in a motorcycle.”

“I always knew that if you survived you'd grow up to be a wicked, sinful, monster,” Geraldine growled through gritted teeth, leaning towards me slightly, as she used to do when I was much smaller than her. The intimidation would no longer work. She had no power at all, and I stood a whole foot taller than her. I took a step forward, looming over her as she had once done to me, seeing fire flames flash in front of my vision as Geraldine's expression changed to one of horror. “You said that I was bound for Hell, but it seems to have turned out that Hell was bound for me. I've tried to leave it behind me, but it follows me wherever I go. Do you understand?”

“I don't...What happened to you, Billy?” she whispered, tears of terror running down her face.

“Oh, ho! So, now it's 'Billy'! I thought I was a pustule?” I asked, hopping up to sit on the bar top, knocking off her martini glass. I looked down after it briefly before turning back to her. “Oops. Eh, you break a glass, you destroy a few cities—same difference in the long run. Except when it isn't. What do you know about that, though? You just tried to destroy an innocent little boy.”

“You were never innocent. Clearly, by your behavior now,” Geraldine said, her voice quaking as she tried to inch backwards away from me. I wasn't quite done talking yet, and she found herself locked in place where she stood. “Why can't I move?”

“I'm in a mood,” I said. “If you were anybody else I might have let you try to run. I'd have let you think that you were getting away, and then I would have made some great gesture of power to show you that you're just a little, tiny thing in the grand scheme of the Universe. Not even a blip on the radar, really, and that's strictly down to you.”

Geraldine reached down, jerking at her ankle, as if simply pulling her foot from her shoe would allow her to flee. “You stop this right now, or I—”

“Or, you'll what?” I growled, the vibration of my voice rattling the glass in the bar. “Throw me in a closet? Toss me out on the street without so much as a jacket, or a place to sleep? I sleep wherever I want now. I dress how I like. I drink, I smoke, I've done a few drugs, and boy is it all fun! I've killed angels and I've made the Devil laugh. You...you're still dressing up like a two-bit floosy, just trying to find her next free ride.”

Geraldine raised a hand, slapping me hard across the face, but I didn't flinch. She grasped at her hand, looking from her wrist back up to me as she broke into sobs. “What are you?”

“I'm what you'll think about every night when you're trying to sleep. 'Will this be the night he comes for me? Will it be tomorrow?'” I asked, mockingly. “You'll wait every day for that moment when I'll appear again. One day you'll start wishing that I would come. You'll wish that I'll appear to you and just get it all over with—whatever it is that I'm going to do.” I hopped down off of the bar, moving to stand just in front of the spot that she was still frozen in. “The next time you see me, Geraldine Sharp, will be at the moment of your demise, for I am Death, and Hell waits for you.”

“No, please, no! I've prayed! I've gone to church! I've done all that I was supposed to!” Geraldine pleaded, tears streaming down her face.

“You tortured and neglected a little boy in your charge. A little boy, I might add, that you probably shouldn't have been a dick to, being that I inherited some serious power,” I said, turning the whiskey bottle up to chug from it for a moment as gold lightning flashed outside the windows of the bar. “I see where your time-line ends, Auntie. You keep a watch out. You never know when I'll be coming for you. Could be in twenty years...could be tonight.”

Geraldine jerked to a stumbling run, screaming at the top of her lungs, as if she was on fire. The other patrons in the bar looked after her in disgust or confusion, watching her push past the man she'd been flirting with earlier, nearly knocking the elderly gentleman to the floor. Her shrieks could still be heard from the entrance as she ran towards the elevator bank.

“Good Heavens, boy,” the old man said, coming over to stand next to me as I feigned bewilderment. “What on Earth was that?”

“Sir, she seemed to believe that I was the Angel of Death!” I said with a smirk. “I guess it takes all kinds, am I right?”

The old man let out a choking laugh, the stage four lung cancer he wasn't telling anyone about suffocating him a little further. “I suppose that you are right!” he wheezed. “Shame, I was going to move her into my manor house, in Vale.”

“Is that right, Marvin?” I asked, the wheels in my head beginning to turn. A house would be nice, and Marvin wouldn't mind dying early.

[was-gryff-whitehills-apologist]

So, with a lot of encouragement from the amazing people in this fandom, I finally got the courage to contribute some written material to it, namely - my take on the fate of Gryff Whitehill following the events of the ttgot season 2 au, made by the amazing @badgershite & @littlpeggy, as well as other contributors. You guys are awesome & I never would’ve done this without you!! :D

This is merely the first part of the prologue, that, I hope, will be just the beginning, but it’s still kind of a big deal for me to put up my first serious work. Idk what else to say, I hope this doesn’t suck & somebody may even enjoy it, same way I’ve enjoyed all the great fanfiction by other ttgot fans.

Minor spoiler alert, so that people don’t get their hopes up - there is no Roslin in this part. Yet. As I’ve already said, I plan to write more of this & the best stuff is still ahead. ALSO, the thing might be rather cronologically weird, it has a specific structure, that I thought of when I wasn’t planning to split up the prologue. It’ll make more sense when both parts are out, so for now I’d like to clarify - it is basically Gryff’s flashbacks about two days: the day of him being sentenced to the Wall, and the day of his arrival there. They are divided in parts & going one after another. Hopefully, this will not be too confusing.

Being put on watch alongside Carn was a lesser evil in Gryff’s eyes. At the very least he could count on the man not to start any small talk, and that was enough for him to tolerate the sour expression the other wore like his face had frozen this way. As the cage slowly dragged the two of them up, the second watcher felt like a constant, relentless presence behind his shoulder, and Gryff could practically feel his sad, watery gaze glued to his back without any particular purpose. Clenching his teeth together & hands around metal bars in annoyance, he tried to distract himself by looking down, in the darkness. Ground had long since disappeared in thick mist – now it felt like they were just floating through nothing, and he honestly wouldn’t mind just staying this way, never really arriving anywhere, simply enjoying the darkness & silence, that soothed his sight & ears. Even Carn’s presence would be tolerable this way.

Only atop the Wall, equipped with their torches, the two of them parted ways. Normally, it would be sworn Night Watch brothers, rangers, tasked with patrolling, but things scarcely ever went normally at Castle Black lately. Actual rangers were even fewer in numbers than they used to be, and some of their usual tasks fell onto the newcomers – it didn’t take much skill or brains to drag yourself back & forth with a torch in your hand, ready to holler if you’d see something approaching from behind the Wall. That, unless you weren’t even capable of doing that without slipping down – but such men would not have lasted long here either way.

Gryff walked off in the opposite direction from Carn before the man could say a thing to him, and soon couldn’t even hear his steps anymore. Torches lit up the icy corridor for many steps forward, but darkness, where their light didn’t reach, was still almost tangible. When he reached a wooden observation deck, walking close to the edge, the light of his torch, that seemed bright before, could barely dispel it. That night there was no moon, neither stars in the sky to shed at least some light on the view in front of him, and it took some adjustment for Gryff’s eye to make anything out.

The Haunted Forrest, when you looked at it from high above, was reminiscent of sea – height & darkness making it look akin to deep waters at the bottom of an enormous cup. In broad daylight, it used to present quite a sight, but now it was just black, distant and… ominous, for the lack of better word. It spread for as far as eye could reach, it’s another edge hidden in the dark nightly fog & the very clouds, that touched mountains’ white peaks at the horizon. Endless, deep and silent, but in the back of Gryff’s mind always sat the realization – the seemingly peaceful view in front of him hid more, than it gave away.

Even half a minute of not moving out here, in the cold, made one feel like the freezing wind was getting under their skin, stealing the last bits of warmth. However, Gryff remained standing, gaze locked where the clouds met mountain tops. He knew, if he were to look down, at the very edge of the deck, the sheer sensation of height would become overwhelming and make him feel unsteady on his feet, his head spin & hands tremble. Despite everything, being up here was… special, and not necessarily in a bad way. It took his mind off the shit that was happening literally all the other time, off his own torturous thoughts, which made quite a bit of sense, actually. Things were different up here – even air he breathed in was not the same one he was inhaling the rest of the time. Life could continue to go to hell, both around Gryff & inside his own head, but on this small, unsteady platform atop the world, he did not need to be bothered. Just a few steps forward laid the edge of that very life – where it would no longer have any power over him.

It was still the forest though, that he kept going back to in his mind. Similar to that damn grove near Ironrath, in a way – the only places where he had ever witnessed trees grow that tall. Even some ironwoods grew the other side of the Wall, but he was long past caring about those, and now his thoughts were occupied by something different – what he had first witnessed at that very keep, what the wilderness further north hid, and what he hoped he would never face again – until it became apparent he might actually have to.

The undead.

It was quite a surprise to find out, that not all men of the Watch actually saw wights as a threat – despite the number of people, who had run in them, growing significantly. Many of those who never had the chance, however, remained skeptical or simply indifferent. Stories of dead men walking grew in numbers, but for many, remained just that – stories. What happened to the previous lord commander made quite a few waver in their disbelief, but was soon reduced to nothing more, than one more story. Confined in a black keep at the edge of the world for life, most men here fell into an odd pattern of reacting strongly to whatever unusual thing happened – only to go back to almost complete tranquility as soon as it was over. Few things mattered in the big picture as long as snow still fell, crows were still in black & the Wall still stood. The rest came & went & made no significant change. There was nothing to be done with it, other from turn it into one more story & then slowly, day by day, forget it.

Such way of life correlated well with the numbness in his mind, but Gryff still remained sharp about some things. He’d avoid whatever talk about wights other watchmen would start – just as he avoided most of their talk – but he still knew. The sight of corpses of the people he used to know standing up would flash before his mind eye every now and again, but he’d then just clench his teeth & move on. He ran from them once, and paid for it, and if fate would wish for another walking corpse to try & kill him – it best be prepared for him not to repeat that mistake. Back in the muddy & bloodied courtyard, they filled his whole being with such dread, that he thought nothing could replicate, but he was wrong, as always. There were things so much more worse, viler, and he was a fool for ever allowing himself to forget that. Clenching the torch harder in his grip, teeth gritted together & eye narrowed, Gryff looked in the darkness, where he knew more monsters were waiting for their time to come. When they would, he knew what had to be done – and he would be ready. No creature from stories, no wildling, or wight, or Other would scare him off again

Not after he had already left all the real monsters behind.

Hardly feeling a thing, he got up from his place, then passed the woman, looking directly at her, but failing to keep a picture of her face in his mind. In the back of his head, he understood lady Whitehill looked sad, almost childishly hurt, but that was it. She left zero impression, just some figure that was there & then vanished the moment he left the Great Hall. Gryff even had trouble recalling what she was doing during their “conversation” – looking at Torrhen… probably, or maybe at him, he wasn’t sure.

As the bars clanked when the door closed behind him, he froze for a moment, simply staring in front of himself, his fogged mind struggling to process what just happened. He was not dead, that much was clear, but such an unexpected occurrence rose another question – what the hell was he supposed to be doing now? Instinctively, a step-by-step course of action was forming – he needed to get to his room to fetch the things he was not going to leave here, no, not a fucking chance, visit his father’s crypt to say goodbye, and then- leave?

Yeah, genius, that’s what it was all about. That’s what he was told to do a fucking minute ago, that’s what was going to happen – he would leave. And this time, going back wasn’t a part of the plan – no, Torrhen has made a bloody decision, and there was no coming back from those. This was final.

Gryff had imagined it thousands of times, Torrhen towering over him, smirking & spitting out his death sentence in one way or another. In his fantasies, he was never supposed to abide by that – he would grab the sword & charge forward, knowing fully well he’d hardly deliver a strike before he’d be dead, by Torrhen’s hand or one of his guards’ arrows. If he happened to be tied up, restrained, all he’d be capable of would be struggling to break free, to maybe deliver a final punch or some shit, before being put down like a dog. But that didn’t matter – he always knew, that he could never win. The point was not winning – the point was going down on his own terms, going down fighting.

Or has it turned out, that he wasn’t even capable of that?

It felt like his head had been put underwater – Gryff was all too familiar with the sensation, even if right now there was no hand on the back of his neck to hold him in place. The world around him starting to swirl, noise filling his ears, suffocation grasping his lungs. A tiny still-functioning piece of his brain screamed for him to turn back & do what had to be done, but his instincts knew better. Cursed self-preservation, too strong to fight, that had so many times caused him not to strike back, and instead cower, uselessly try to shield himself from the beating, trembling & waiting for it to end. For all he knew, perhaps it was the only reason he still lived. Perhaps it was saving his life right now, by immobilizing him, making his limbs heavy & head light. Just accept it. It is the only way.

He was fucking done with accepting things.

For some time – seconds or minutes, he could hardly tell – it felt like his mind had almost floated from his body, leaving him with little perception of reality, outside of what the subconscious part of his self was trying get through to him. He was brought back abruptly, when Gryff’s hand slipped down to the pommel of his sword – at first feeling it, like he struggled to recognize the object, but a second later clenching the hilt tightly. His breath slowed down again, blood pounding as he unsheathed the blade, feeling the hard handle, the heaviness, those sensations that were bringing him back together. Steel was bleak & covered in blood & it’s sight made whatever bits of strength he had left concentrate in his arm, so that he almost felt like he could manage one last blow.

Perhaps it was still not too late.

Castle Black’s courtyard was big, white enough for his eye to start hurting & almost completely empty on the day of their arrival. Several men minded their own business here & there, polishing swords or carrying something, & none seemed particularly interested in showing the three guests around. Darrin – a soldier as tall as an oak, as thick as one, & with an intelligence of the said oak, from Gryff’ point of view – remained standing by his side like he was ready to grab him by the scruff if the Whitehill decided to run off; meanwhile, his second supervisor went on, likely to search for someone, who’d finally take Gryff off their hands for good.

Taking a chance to look around, he observed his soon-to-be home with the same sour expression, that hasn’t left his features ever since the departure from Highpoint. The place certainly looked more presentable than Ironrath ever had, at least under his rule, but at the same time gave an impression of being somewhat desolate. Gryff had, of course, heard, that the Watch had seen better days, but was not sure of the extent. It was still early in the morning, after all, and perhaps the courtyard would become more crowded in daytime. Those who were up already barely paid them attention. Here, behind the walls, wind was not as severe – Gryff had grown used to the cold through the last few days either way. It was likely he’d get used to whatever this new life had to offer the same way, albeit without any enthusiasm on his part.

“I’m goin’ to handle him, don’t worry.” The voice came from some watcher, walking in their direction alongside Arvin, the second Whitehill soldier. “Ser Raffard’s supposed to be handling the recruits, but gods know where the bastard is now. Forgive the inconvenience – things have been, well, disrupted here after all that happened…”

Gryff paid no mind to the explanations the stranger was giving – something about the former Lord Commander, the bloody Snow, who apparently couldn’t be found here any longer. Instead he observed the man himself, with the same sulky grimace. Watcher did not stand out in any way, clothed in dark, thickly built, bearded; only a small, but sincere half-smile distinguished him from the rest of the lot here.

Arvin was exhausted & annoyed, same as he had been throughout their whole journey. He got up at dawn that day, eager to finally rid himself of the burden his lord’s brother was, & now was barely suppressing the urge to yawn widely. Watcher’s words seemed to escape his attention, but he would not interrupt, likely afraid that the stranger would refuse to handle the newcomer & they’d get stuck here, looking for someone else. He clearly was more eager to turn back & have a longer stop at the Mole’s town than they did on their way here, celebrating the parting with his troublesome ward.

“Aye, and he” the soldier nodded towards Gryff, earning himself a scowl in response “is not going to make things any easier for you here. You sound like a sensible man, so I’m warning you – keep a closer eye on this one. I will not be surprised if his head rolls for desertion within the next month. He’s tried to escape several times on our way here – and he’s going to fight back when caught.” He concluded mercilessly, paying no mind to Gryff, who’s been shooting him dirty glares the whole time he spoke.

“You really need not worry.” Man’s half-smile did not falter & he looked at Gryff with an expression, that was almost encouraging. “We handle far worse here all the time, you know. Besides, you can never know a man from other’s words of him.”  Last words were directed at Gryff rather than anyone else, it seemed.

“I’ve got trouble imagining what could be worse than this.” Despite the sourness, it was possible to tell, that Arvin was being ironic, merely a tad. “By the way” he hastily reached in his pocket, getting out a small envelop which he offered to the crow. “Here are some… Clarifications from our lord, as well as, I assume, advice on how to handle him.” Shit, it flashed in Gryff’s head, would’ve been nice if someone ever gave him a clarification letter on how to handle three bastards, whose purpose in life was making him miserable. “I would recommend you listen to whatever it says. Lord Torrhen had always been one of the few, who could truly rein this man in. He knows what he is talking about.”

“You think lowly of me, ser.” With a slight roll of his eyes, black brother accepted the piece of correspondence carelessly. “I’ve always managed to keep my men under control without a written guidance, believe it or not.” He casually pocketed the letter, yet the moment the Whitehill soldier turned his gaze away from him, he winked at Gryff, suddenly & swiftly, causing the fourthborn’s eye to widen in confusion.

Arvin simply shrugged it off. Muttering some words of gratitude & farewell, he hurried back towards where their cart & horses were left without sparing Gryff a look. The latter heard Darrin utter some goodbyes, but didn’t as much as turn to look at the man. His assessing stare was kept firmly at the watcher. The Whitehill wondered what the other has been told about him during the part of their short encounter with Arvin, that he did not hear, but he sure as hell was not going to ask, or in any way make the man feel like he cared what he thought of him.

“So, Gryff Whitehill,” The watcher finally greeted him directly, reaching to shake his hand. “It’s Astor Greyson, and although you hardly feel the same way, it is good to meet you.”

He simply stared at the hand offered uncertainly. There was no reason not to greet Astor properly, not really, & it would not change a thing – yet Gryff just felt stubborn, stubborn & spiteful, as usual. He did not need any of this shit, did not need anyone pretending like something good or even normal was happening. This man could smirk & be friendly all he liked – Gryff did not care, not in the slightest. They could both be watchers, equals now, but that was just pretense. He would not be his, or anyone’s brother here – just a prisoner, someone to keep an eye out for & keep in line.

His arms remained locked across his chest & he kept silent, gloomily looking the other right in the eyes.

Astor waited a few seconds before taking the hand away. Half-smile did not go anywhere, on the opposite – it looked a little like he has been expecting this to happen.

“You’re lucky not to have to deal with Raffard right from the first moment here.” Greyson went on like nothing has happened. “You’ll still meet him rather soon though – you’re not too late for his sword training with the rest of the newcomers. You’ll meet up with the rest of them there, perhaps get to know some a bit. Seems like I’ll have to show you around today, huh?” Turning around, Astor motioned his hand, gesturing for Gryff to follow. “Let’s find someplace to drop whatever things you have, get you properly equipped and then we’ll have to get back here. Our new master-at-arms is not the type to excuse you for being late – even if this is your first day.”

He’d never been a fan of that bloody bunch of portraits, adorning the Upper Halls. His own one frankly sucked, from Gryff’s point of view – he had a dumb smile in it. There was no pleasure in witnessing the faces of his gone brothers more often than needed either, and, if the tapestry was not fucking enough, there were two more images of that woman. He had outlasted all three of them at Highpoint, but they still weren’t gone for good, as long as their memory, held in these pictures, lingered like a bad smell.

Well, it looked like, in the end, it was Torrhen who had truly outlasted all of them.

He had almost passed the corridor without taking another look, heading directly to his former chambers, but, out of the corner of his eye, spotted something unusual on the wall. Observing more closely made Gryff smirk sarcastically against his own will – my, it seemed like brother dearest had begun the process of getting rid of him long ago. He should’ve expected that – remaining holed up at the shitpile of Forresters’ stronghold could only work for so long. If only he had enough brains to have at least tried to do something about it earlier- fuck, there was no point in thinking about that now.

Gritting his teeth, he measured the damage done to the picture. Just because he himself hated the thing did not mean that arsehole had any right to touch it. Making it was a pain in the ass, Gryff recalled – he’d avoid posing by any means available, until both the artist & his father got fed up with it, and the former was told to simply draw him from memory. Perhaps that’s why his face ended up looking so unnatural, with an expression Gryff never actually wore in real life.

In a swift, jerky motion he tore the painting from where it was hanging. It gave an impression of an animal’s head on a hunter’s wall to him; a winner’s trophy. It was likely the way Torrhen viewed it as well, hence why he just tore it up instead of getting rid of it for good. It was all for the best, Gryff told himself, getting back on the way to his room & observing the thing in his hands with little remorse. He would need something to start a fire any way, and he knew, that canvas & paints burned brightly.

He had a dumb smile in it anyway.

The room felt exactly like he expected it to – cold, dusty, filled with that weird frowsy smell, that all abandoned rooms had. He threw the frame into the long-empty fireplace & then got a sudden urge to sit down, which he did, lowering himself on the edge of his bed.

The effects of his handicap were most apparent in situations like this – when he had to approach something old in his new state. His chamber seemed smaller than before, & now he had to turn his head around to observe it fully. The bloody eye. Gryff used to believe he’s gotten used to it, but was still reminded now & again what a difference it actually made. He rubbed his forehead a little, trying to collect his thoughts, but the helpless anger rising in his chest wouldn’t let him concentrate. The Whitehill got up, starting to pace back & forth in annoyance. He was supposed to be doing something, collecting things, saying goodbyes, some shit like that – but every inch of his being refused to comply. The concept of this being his last visit to the place, that used to be his haven, refuge, that he guarded from them by any means, was as unreal as… As unreal as having his whole line of vision split in two. They couldn’t be compared, he’d exchange the room for an eye, obviously – but the feelings were still eerily similar.

There wasn’t much left here after his departure to war – Gryff had never been the one to hoard many possessions, not with his brothers constantly trying to get to him by breaking or stealing what was his. Whatever item of importance he could not take with himself had been locked in a small chest by his nightstand. The key – hell if he remembered where the key was, but he had probably left it among the rest of his belongings, at Ironrath. After a short consideration, he unsheathed his sword & tried to force it under the chest’s top.

A few minutes later, the lock was broken & Gryff observed what was inside sarcastically. A thin bunch of letters, tied together with a piece of rope were probably the most important ones – he had a habit of burning most of his correspondence right after reading it, to prevent the bastards from getting their hands on it. Those would not take up much space. A wooden toy sword, an old thing he hadn’t tossed away by some earthly reason – perhaps it was given by father? After a moment of hesitation, it joined the portrait in the fireplace – better than having Torrhen’s servants discard of it when they’d start cleaning up the place. There was a small dagger he attached to his belt – his own had been lost during the cliff fall; minor items of clothing, an old book, some things, that he couldn’t even remember what purpose they were supposed to serve – most of it went to the fireplace. He wished there was some way to burn every fucking thing remaining here – the set of heavier armor, whatever clothes have been left in the wardrobe, that there was no point in taking – those were not black. Gryff could only destroy some of it, but it still gave him an odd sense of satisfaction. The least personal this place felt, the easier it would be to leave it behind.

He started the fire, then sat down on the fur in front of it & simply watched the flames for a little while, trying to concentrate on something other than the twinge of pain in his chest, that watching some of these things burn caused. Only now had he realized how cold he’s been this whole time – he got used to it, but when the short-lived warmth from the fireplace reached his frame, the contrast made shivers run down his spine.

Gryff couldn’t bring himself to think about anything particular, could not figure out what he felt. The prevailing sensation, now that he wasn’t moving, became low ringing in his ears & dizziness. Pain in the bruises & cuts, that he almost forgot about, was returning – not sharp, like it used to be, but still perceptible. He’d have to visit the maester, the Whitehill had to admit much to his own displeasure. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to even get in saddle if he didn’t at least wash the blood off. It’s smell & the feeling of it drying on his face was becoming sickening on its own.

Just a few minutes. He’d get going, as soon as he’d get warm, he was promising himself, even though every last cell in his body begged for rest. As an addition to the pain, sitting down made him realize just how tired he was – enough, that he felt a wish to lie down in front of the hearth & sleep for a day. Aside from being unconscious for some time, he had not slept since before yesterday, he was now realizing. Everything after that – the battle, the fall, the ride, the talk – was mixing into a blur in his head, becoming difficult to tell from one another.

Seriously, what harm would… say, just half an hour, do? Or a whole hour, for that matter… Being in his old room was likely affecting him this way. He’d usually crawl back here to bolt the door & lick his wounds, try to feel safe for a little while, give his nerves some rest. Sometimes he’d end up being holed up here for days, when the mere thought of going out made him break out in cold sweat & gave him an urge to vomit. He’d still have to sneak outside every once in a while, to fetch some food from the kitchens – and, if he was unlucky, end up getting caught by Karl, or Torrhen, or both.

Torrhen. The name was like pinching yourself on the arm to stay focused. He had to remain alert, for as long as he wasn’t out of the bastard’s reach – the humiliation of having the man just grab him by the scruff & frog-march him out of Highpoint’s gates wasn’t something Gryff would be able to handle at the moment. The thought floated in his skull, that became heavier by the minute, as if something hot & thick, like melted iron, was being poured into it. His neck grew achy from having to hold it high & was giving in, until his chin would hit the chest & cause him to jerk, half-awake, but only for a second.

Vision blurred, his only eye narrowing further & further, until the only thing he could even make out were the orange flames – and even those, just as another blurred, moving spot. Bloody fire, he was realizing it now – should never have started it in the first place… The warmth was too lulling, as well as the sound. Soft, rhythmic cracks, with practically intangible sough of flames poured over those. They were almost like some weird speech in an unknown tongue, with calming intonation, soothing melody to it. He could swear, he even recognized bits from that tone – like he’s heard those before, just in another manner. Instead of being yelled, over howling wind & clashing, someone whispered them to him kindly.

Room floated before his eye one last time, before it slid shut. Last thing Gryff perceived before slipping into oblivion was a sensation of unseen eyes locked on him, of another’s presence somewhere by his side – but those got lost the moment he drifted off to sleep.

… Awakening was even faster than falling asleep – he just felt himself sliding to the side, on the floor, and that jolted him back to consciousness. Blinking rapidly, first thing Gryff looked at the fireplace – coals were still red & small tongues of fire would flicker here & there. That meant he had not been out for long – but he would be, if he allowed himself to repeat that mistake.

Memory of the sensation he got before dozing off nagged him slightly from the inside, but he pushed it away, getting back on his feet, helping himself by grabbing the edge of a headboard. He was unsteady still, but the quick sleep seemed to have given him a bit of short-lived strength. It wouldn’t last, likely, so he had to catch the moment & finish some business – probably the most important thing left for him to do here.

He had not been given a typical crow’s cloak yet – just a set of black armor, that, in all honesty, was better than the one he arrived here wearing. The latter has not aged well at all & has not been repaired or even cleaned much since the siege. The new one was also warmer, far more fitting for the harshness of weather this far north – it wasn’t all that bad, Gryff had to begrudgingly admit.

He & the rest of the recruits – about a dozen & a half of them in total, from what it looked like – flocked in the courtyard, waiting for the master-at-arms to signal the beginning of the training. Man in question – ser Raffard, from what Gryff recalled – did not seem to be in any rush, comfortably seated on a barrel near the rack, that held training swords & polishing his own, barely paying a small crowd in front of him any mind. He looked like a real crow – black-haired, dark-eyed & sharp-featured, he fitted the environment around himself perfectly.

Only when small talk among the soon-to-be crows died down to almost complete silence, the man looked up at them & got up from his place.

“Those of you, who have never trained here before – two steps forward.” The Whitehill made another mental note of the other’s voice – a voice & tone of a man, used to giving orders. “The rest of you, two steps behind.” Aside from Gryff, four men came forward – some balding elder, who stood leaning on a long wooden staff, tall & broad-shouldered lad with a dreadfully serious expression & a face of a lowborn, boy that looked like he wasn’t above thirteen, & a barrel-shaped individual, who stared in front of himself phlegmatically. Watchman observed his working material with an unreadable expression, but Gryff highly doubted, that what he saw left him satisfied.

“The Watch lacks men desperately, so even those of you, who’ll end up as builders & stewards” last words were spoken with some special scorn “are going to have to learn which end of the sword to hold & how to fire a bow. That means you will all be spending time with me, no matter how hopeless your case is. There are, however, some exceptions even to that rule.” Raffard’s gaze stopped on the old man. “Did whoever send you here lack any kind of mercy? All would be better off if he just snapped your neck for whatever horrendous crime you’ve committed. If you can’t even walk on your own, what makes you think you’ll be anything but a burden with a sword?”

“This thing” the elder lifted his staff slightly, “is more of a sentiment to me, than a walking aid.” Gryff cocked an eyebrow, feeling a slight twitch of curiosity – the other recruit, with his scrawny frame & dirty greying long hair on the sides of his head, could look like a lowborn, but certainly did not speak like one. “Put me to a test, my lord,” old man did not seem offended, quite the opposite – his lips tucked into a disarmingly friendly smile. “Perhaps I will not disappoint you.”

“We’ll see about that. Drop your item of sentiment & grab yourself a sword then.” Master-at-arms motioned towards the rack.

“If I could be so bold” there was something smarmy, intentionally non-threatening in the old man’s voice that made Gryff shift uncomfortably for some reason. “I’d rather stick to my own weapon, my lord.” Gryff recalled being told in the passing by someone, that staffs were used as weapons by some of the mountain clansmen – perhaps that was where the stranger originated from. “It does not look like much, but there are many uses to it.”

“I suppose, you could be so bold.” Ser Raffard’s cold, emotionless stare gave out nothing. “I suppose, I could be bold enough to break your stick against my knee & send you to scrub chamberpots till the rest of your time here, if you don’t stop wasting my time & start following orders.” The message clearly got through – shaking his head a little, with the same smile, recruit lowered the staff on the ground carefully & went to fetch himself a blade.

“A real charmer, is he not?” Gryff turned to the sound of a voice, discovering, that it was one of the other newcomers speaking. He didn’t seem to address anyone in particular, but seeing that Gryff has reacted to his words, graced him with an amused smile.

“I’m talking about Raffard.” Recruit continued in a low voice. “If you think he’s being an arsehole now, you should’ve heard the stories they tell about him here. They also say the man who dealt with newcomers before was even worse – till he went to hunt down some deserters & perished north of the Wall… Think we’ll get just as lucky with this one?” He chuckled & winked to Gryff, before turning his attention back to the fighters.

Unsure of what the other meant to accomplish by telling him this, the Whitehill just shrugged & turned back to look in the same direction. Old man was holding his own decently enough, to his surprise. His movements could be defter & he clearly couldn’t strike as hard as a younger man would, but by moving constantly he dodged & parried most of the hits, even though he made no attempt to go on the offensive himself. This went on for a couple of minutes, before the elder was careless enough to leave himself open & his opponent’s sword struck right in his kneecap, causing him to drop on the other one with a gasp. Raffard used the moment to aim for the wrist of his sword hand, knocking the blade out of it.

“At least you wouldn’t be dead in the first minute of battle – for someone like you, that’s encouraging.” After letting his opponent have a breath, master-at-arms grabbed his hand & helped the man back up to his feet. “We’ll see what can be done about you. Perhaps, with some training, you will actually do the Realm a service by killing a wildling.” The last words almost made Gryff laugh. Apparently, even the crows still believed it were wildlings that they all needed to fear – while he, a bloody newcomer, already knew better than that.

The trial carried on, the young boy & the sulky lowborn demonstrating their skill one after another. Kid fought fiercely, uttering almost animalistic growls as he’d jump back up on his feet over & over after being knocked down & charged forward. The lowborn, whose name turned out to be Ayden, fared even worse, making it clear to everyone, that he’s hardly had any sword practice before – at least not with a knight as his opponent. Ser Raffard’s expression hardly changed once throughout the short fights, but it seemed like he wasn’t too aggravated & his mocking remarks sounded rather passionless.

“You’re a lordling, is that right?” He inquired as Gryff was picking himself a blade, trying not to linger by the rack any longer than needed. Standing here, in the spotlight, grated on his nerves & he could not wait to get this over with. Last time he had used a sword seemed like it was months ago – but the memory of how it ended stuck with him for good.

He jerked a shoulder & nodded. “And a fourth son, that is.” His opponent added in passing. “Not that I’m expecting excellence from someone, who’s disposable enough to be sent here, but a lord’s son should’ve at least received better training than this lot.” As Gryff turned to face him, flash of irritation in his eye, the man had his own sword at the ready. “Come at me.”

The fuck was he getting at, the Whitehill wondered idly, circling the patch of ground between him & the man. With the rest of recruits, he always took initiative in his own hands, as opposed to now – it seemed like he was expecting Gryff to take charge. His train of thought was interrupted as the watcher swung his blade at him, swiftly changing the direction of the hit at the last moment & barging through his hastily established block. Sword was knocked from his hand & Raffard simply sent him to the ground with a heavy thrust of his shoulder into Gryff’s chest.

For a few seconds, he just stared back at him, stunned. This has been swifter than any of the fights he has just witnessed – even though in the back of his mind Gryff knew, that he’d be subdued either way. All that needed to be proven about him as a fighter has been proven before. He could hear a couple short laughs from the crowd & a sympathetic sigh, that, as he correctly guessed, came from the guy who’s been talking to him before. Getting back on his feet, Gryff simply shut those out of his mind. He did not care about what they would have to say, he really fucking didn’t-

“Sleeping with your eyes open, Whitehill? Or, should I say, your eye.” Raffard looked almost bored by this point. “Did you not hear what I told you? The part about attacking me.”

“I was thinking.” At last, he was forced to speak, picking his blade up from the dirt.

“I hope me chopping your sword hand off and slitting your throat did not interrupt the thought process, your lordship.” The man already took another stance. “Your blind side is the most vulnerable, keep that in mind. And get your head out of the clouds, recruit. I can accept it when someone simply sucks, but not when he isn’t fucking trying.” With the same idleness in his gaze, Gryff followed another’s movements, at this point not even bothered by what would happen next. There was that slimy feeling inside of him, that made even trying seem completely worthless. Strike, their blades clashed, again, and the next second his traced an arc in the air & landed back on the ground, while his opponent’s was directed right at Gryff’s throat.

It took some effort to force himself to look the man in the eyes – and their coldness made him flinch. Raffard had been distant & snarky throughout the whole training session, but this was different – and almost frightening. That piercing gaze, that felt like it was directed into his very soul, reminded Gryff too much of another pair of eyes – one, that he believed he would never have to see again.

Unable to bear it, he bit in his lip & looked away.

“What is the matter, Whitehill?” Raffard’s voice was not angry, or irritated – it was plainly empty.

“What?!” Gryff attempted to bite back with what little anger he felt. “If I suck, just bloody say so. You didn’t ask the rest of them what was wro-”

“You are not the rest of them. You are not a lowborn, who’s never held a weapon deadlier than a meat axe.” The watcher would not take the sword away from his neck. “I’ve been told about you, Whitehill, about who you were and what you got sent here for. So don’t expect me to buy it, that you’ve fought under Roose Bolton and then led your own men, but now somehow can’t parry the simplest strike.”

Who the hell told him, flashed through Gryff’s mind – was it that Astor Greyson son of a whore?! And the fucker even seemed like a decent man to him at the beginning… Silently fuming & with no idea of how to respond, he stood, eye lowered to the ground, flashing angry looks to the watcher each few seconds.

Realizing, that he would not get another word from him, Raffard finally lowered his blade.

“I don’t know what the deal is with you, Whitehill,” he spoke quietly, calmly & distinctly. “Whether you pretend to be worse than you are because you want to be assigned a safer position, don’t deem me worthy of your effort… I honestly don’t care. What I know, is that under me you will work to your fullest potential willingly – or be forced to, if that’s what I have to do. Pick you sword, recruit.” He stepped back, moving his body into a steady fighting stance. “This is just the beginning.”

It was never warm this far down, under Highpoint. Not a candle or torch in your arm, no amount of layers of clothing you'd wrap yourself in would make significant difference. The moment you descended down the steep stony stairs & take a breath of air, still & cold, it would settle at the bottom of your lungs & remain there until you had a chance to re-emerge & sit by a fireplace, or have rare northern sun touch your skin.  He had spent quite some time in this place back in his day, in the cellars, crypts & half-abandoned & ruined tunnels, and not always willingly. From his brothers' perspective, shoving him down the stairs & then locking the door behind him, so that he would remain in complete darkness, was a fun thing to do. The realization, that barging through the door was not in his power came to him quickly — shortly after realizing, that begging them to let him out was in vain just as well (it was early, very early when he realized, that begging them to leave him be would always be in vain, & would not even try – until a particularly harsh beating would force a plea out of him).  At first, he'd just sit with his back pressed to the door, staring in the darkness of the corridor in front of him, too terrified to blink or make a sound — even his short breaths seemed to echo against the cold walls in a hollow sound, that made his blood curl. It always felt like something— someone was lurking there, watching him, ready to strike if he'd fail to see the attack coming. Soon enough, the obscure figures, born in his imagination, formed into an only one, that felt so real, Gryff could swear he could make out it’s shape in the darkness sometimes. A pale female silhouette, whose face he could not make out, that moved slowly & deliberately, almost clumsily — due to having to support her grotesquely protruding middle with a pair of thin hands... Hands, that she, undoubtedly, wanted to grasp his neck with till he wouldn't be able to breathe — if she ever managed to catch him.  Blackness where the light of his candle did not reach still did not fail to fill him with unease, but now Gryff merely clenched his teeth & walked faster towards the crypt — something, that, in his childhood, took many hours of bracing himself to accomplish. Step by step, he'd move further down the corridor that it now took him half a minute to pass. His past self then journeyed further — in the cellars, in the old tunnels, where every noise made his chest clench painfully from terror, as he forced himself to continue walking no matter. That day though, he needed not go further — his destination has been reached.  It was stunning that he was only doing this now — visiting his father's last resting place for both the first & the last time. He did not have the courage to come following the siege, Gryff could at least admit that when nobody could hear. Just one more reason for self-loathing. Even now, he was hesitant to approach the tomb — stupid childish memories affecting him far too much. That's where the tapestry lady was laid, of course they'd make sure her & his father would be by each one's side in afterlife. It was her domain, her lair. He was long past believing any actual harm could harm from her, anywhere aside from his nightmares, but it didn't make visiting the place feel any better. He could not fight off the feeling of being watched from behind. This place never became any better to him — he just learned how to cope with being here when it was unavoidable.  The candle was placed carefully on the floor, in a way that'd make it light up the cell in the crypt's wall where he made out the silhouette of the tomb. Gryff meanwhile lowered himself to sit on the floor, facing it — the place wasn't really meant for sitting, but standing still for longer than a minute made him dizzy. Complete silence fell, making him hear his own blood pounding distinctly. It was fitting the situation, the cold, the quiet, the peace — except for how horribly wrong it was for Ludd Whitehill, a man, who was anything but those things, to end up this way, in his son's eyes. If he had not witnessed the disemboweled body with his own eye, he would hardly believe his father was buried a few steps from him. Nothing about it felt right. Nothing here reminded Gryff of him in any way.  He forced his mouth open, thinking of something, anything to say — and closed it after a moment or two. It was too damn quiet here — the sound of his hoarse, weak voice would not belong. Gryff himself felt out of place, despite trying to force the thought out of his head — This is your right, you idiot. Your duty. Nobody cares what bloody Torrhen has to say. He does not matter. Your father is the only one that does, so speak, while you still have a chance, or— "I..." He forced through the lump in his throat, and just as expected, it felt horribly unnatural and wrong. Deadly quietness made it feel like his voice could be heard everywhere, even if Gryff knew, that stony walls wouldn't let the sound go further. The knowledge did not help. Feeling like he was being listened to from the dark made talking almost an impossibility.  "I'm b-back." After clearing his throat, the Whitehill lowered his voice to almost whispering, and that was better, just a bit. "From Ironrath. It was— I— " He already had nothing to say. Nothing to report, but his failure. Facing Torrhen, he could pretend not to care, to make indifference into his armor, but now sickening shame washed over him like hot waves. Ludd wasn't even there anymore, not really, yet he understood perfectly what he would have to say. How he would look at him. The mere thought made him wish he had broken his damn neck in the fall, like the horse did.  "I'm sorry." And that was true. The only reason to hold onto the forsaken keep — aside from having nowhere else in the whole world to go — was honoring his father's wish. Spiting the people, that killed him. At least he could hope, that all of them were already dead — slaughtered by their own army turned uncontrollable. This way there would be at least some justice left in this world. Just enough to believe it even still existed.  "There was nothing I could do." A stupid, weak, pathetic lie. He sort of leaned forward, hands clenching his arms just above the elbows, desperate to keep warm. The truth was that he ran — ran when the realization hit him, that he was a step from getting killed to protect a place he loathed & would rather see burned to the ground. Getting killed & not having a single soul to mourn him, or even care enough to bury what would remain of him. Now, you are alive — see how much better that feels?.. Gryff wasn't sure whether those words, ringing in his ears, were his, or if his father had found some way to get them through to him from wherever he was now.

The one thing lord Whitehill would never stand for was weakness.  Part of Gryff wanted to believe father would've understood — like he did when his last son was dragged before him, covered in blood from his mutilated eye & barely standing, so Grag had to literally hold him up. Whatever words Ludd had prepared for him seemed to escape him at the sight of Gryff in that state. He barely even recalled what he was saying, overcome with nauseating pain & dizziness — furiously growling something about fetching a bloody maester right fucking now. The next time he had a chance to approach father, the latter did not speak a word of what had happened — his first gesture was offering him the eyepatch Gryff would wear for the next months, all without saying a word. It was only then, when the disgusting, lousy feeling of weakness he's been carrying inside ever since getting maimed by Rodrik, suddenly eased up.  But now Ludd wasn't there to ease his worry the same way anymore. All Gryff had were his own thoughts, and those were merciless. It was different now. Rodrik had only managed to defeat him by deceit, with the help of his whore & her archers. This time, he had lost in a fair fight. This was it for him — as a lord, as a warrior, as a man. What Torrhen's soldiers would escort to the Wall was nothing but a sack of meat & bones. Was Ludd still alive, even he wouldn't be able to argue or defend him like he always did. Just one more way in which he had failed him. He had always cared more for him than for Torrhen, Gryff recalled, his throat clenching treacherously, always trusted him more — and he had repaid him by submitting to the thirdborn's rule, by accepting his power, instead of keeping fighting for what his father stood for.  As if he couldn't get any more pathetic.

“You know I don’t’ want to.” Gryff himself was shocked by how whiny that sounded. He couldn’t just break down here, he had to be a man for one last time, to say farewell with at least a shred of dignity – and instead he spoke like a hurt child, a feeling from many years ago, as real as ever. “You know he is forcing me to, that I would never- never leave if I could. I wouldn’t, I just- I just can’t…” His voice trembled, eyes burned, but he knew, that tears would not fall – it’s been so long since he cried, he barely even remembered how that was supposed to be done anymore.

“You would never send me away. Right?..” What kind of bloody response was he expecting? “A Whitehill is still a Whitehill. It doesn’t matter what his-s, his orders are – he can’t… He fucking can’t…” The shaking was getting out of his control, it was like a hand tightened around his throat, making it hard to breathe. “A Whitehill’s a Whitehill. He can’t change it. He is nothing. You always knew he was fucking nothing – only you, and nobody else.” Or did it just seem to him? No, no, the thought was too fucking bad to even contemplate. His father bloody hated Torrhen, and that was the only comfort Gryff has had for many days. He sent him away to rot at the Bastion. He didn’t even trust him enough to meet without the presence of his guards. He hit him. He fucking punished him for the shit he was doing, the only one who ever did, Torrhen still had a scar on his face from those beatings, because Ludd saw through him, saw what a piece of scum he was, because he fucking hated him, like that coward deserved-

“I fucked up.” Gryff’s voice evened. “I… fucked up so badly, you couldn’t even imagine.” It was so… so pathetic of him, to sit by the tomb of the only person who ever believed he was worth something, & whine about his sorrows, even though he knew well enough nobody listened. “I don’t know how I can ever make it any better.” Some part of him was glad his father wasn’t there to hear this anymore – he couldn’t bear the thought of Ludd starting to despise him for it. Another, bigger part, simply cursed the day lord Whitehill had been killed, knowing fully well it was supposed to be him instead. It was always supposed to be him going down to defend him – doing something worthy with his life & spitting in Torrhen’s face by depriving him of a chance to be lord. Now all went wrong, his father dead, him, regrettably, not, and Torrhen winning the day.

This would never have happened if only he fulfilled his duty.

He didn’t know what to say anymore, or what to do. When he was heading here, he had some good, right things in mind, but now half of those were forgotten & half seemed too stupid to voice. A simple “I love you” – something he never had it in himself to say when Ludd was alive, now seemed even more dumb & embarrassing. The need to get going pressed down on him, but he was scared of doing that at the same time. This was his last chance, but Gryff couldn’t even force himself to speak. Deep inside, this just added as one more reason to hate Torrhen, for turning this moment for him into such a mess. Of course though, this was still his failure, first & foremost – failing his parent in life & death all the same.

He couldn’t handle this any longer.

Swiftly & out of nowhere, he stood up, causing his head to spin. His eye burned like a hot coal, but remained dry as ever, and Gryff looked around, shaky movements akin to those of a hunted down animal. Out, get out of this place. You had your chance. It was almost like he somehow became a child again, frightened by the darkness. Black corners & cells of the crypt hid something sinister. It wanted him out. This place did not want to tolerate him any longer. He was ready to run back, to leave the candle & just turn & run, until he’d see light again – but he could not take the gaze away from the stone late lord Whitehill rested under.

For one last time. Be strong. Be a man.

Shakily, Gryff reached with his hand until it rested on the tomb’s cold surface. The unknown behind his back set a tickling, panicky sensation in his stomach, but he would not take the hand away – not if the woman from the tapestry were to lay her thin, pale hand on his shoulder right in this moment. Touching it brought no peace, no warmth, no sense of connection or presence of his father’s spirit or whatever the hell was supposed to be here – but just knowing, that he spoke to someone, who maybe did not listen – but would’ve, if he was there, was enough. He searched his mind for something to say, something that he would’ve wished for somebody else to tell him if he was dead, or dying, and out of all possible things, one stood out for Gryff:

“I won’t forget you.” He forced the words to be confident, clear, not caring if someone was to hear them or not. He was saying it, and he meant it, and if there was any way for a dead man to hear what the living had to tell him – he would hear Gryff now. “I’ll never, never fucking forget you… And I won’t let anybody else forget.”

When he walked back, through the corridor & up the stairs, the feeling of being watched never let go for a second, but he walked slowly still, with every deliberately long stop giving the thing in the darkness another chance to get him, if so it pleased. Nothing happened, of course, not a weird sound, or movement, or a mysterious blast of wind to blow his candle out – he was no fucking child anymore, and he should’ve known better. What he felt down in the crypt was nothing but a moment of weakness, foolery of his sickly brain. Real monsters had no need to hide, in cellars, under beds, in the woods, or wherever – they had all the needed power to do what they pleased in broad daylight & stand by their deeds proudly, with their heads held high.

Only at the last stair did he finally look back. The candle had burned out, leaving him with a mere thread of grey smoke, but his eye had gotten used to the lack of light by this point. If Gryff closed it, he would be able to imagine the silhouette of the tapestry’s lady, like the little boy used to do – but not the man. He looked in the dark with his own impaired gaze, and saw nothing – just as he was supposed to. He’d meet her again – in feverish dreams, in nightmares, or when he simply wouldn’t be able to keep his eye open any longer & would clutch it shut in fear – but never in reality. Never. For all that has happened, for all that was eating away at him from the inside, there was one thing he still had not been robbed off –

He still lived, still breathed, & walked, & spoke, and what mattered wasn’t that it brought him no joy anymore – it was that she didn’t. No matter what, he would live to see the light again, while she’d remain down here, in the dark, where she belonged.

As he shut the door behind him tightly, that thought, for the first time today, warmed up some tiny part of his soul.

[247krp]

— Rejoice, little lambs! We have recovered our own Choi Hyuk, spotted prancing about in the Southwest Side. I don’t remember seeing him with any clique back in high school, but I’m not here to spill yesterday’s tea. So straight to the rundown: can you say soft-spoken and indifferent? Apparently now he spends time as a professional taekwondo fighter, and keeps skeletons buried at Prague Tower, 602. But those won’t stay hidden for long, if you and I have any say on it. Welcome back, Leather; we missed you so.

TW: violence/abuse, bruises, blood, mental disorder

In case you don’t remember the devil’s name, here’s to refresh your memory:

Chin burred deep in the collar of his sports jacket, Hyuk sat in the corner of the classroom, long legs poking from beneath the single school table. Eyes focused on the blackboard or the people around him, he was mostly uninvolved nods, voice heard only once or twice in a full moon. Despite a lack of interest Hyuk expressed, people wanted to talk to him. Instead of acknowledging him as a cold brat they genuinely wanted to know the guy who seemed like ice, yet spoke the warmth of a fading fire. 

The surprising soft-spoken manner found in him didn’t attract questions, however, his apathetic, indifferent nature did. In his lifetime peers who falsely imagined themselves as heroes came to be, poking at his personal space, fanatically believing that he’s locked himself away from showing major emotions. They knew him better than he knew himself, he supposed, chanting that the gentle light he shone speaking was the man he locked away. It painted Choi Hyuk’s sight crimson and as his blood boiled he could feel the taste of his own fury, leather clothed fingers slowly coming together to form a fist.

His first visit to the shrink was at ten years of age, when his teacher expressed concern about his inability to share or properly communicate with his classmates. Hyuk raged and yelled, pushed and fought. The woman in the fancy suit taught him to direct his anger somewhere else, pushing him straight to his father and into a gym. The years spent there made him into “our own star athlete”, as Cheongnam themselves called him, simultaneously firing the teacher that was caught “in a bar fight”.

The leather on his hands squeaked slightly as he slowly unfolded his fingers after closing his eyes and imagining the satisfying feeling of his knuckles connecting to the boxing pear. And so the voices faded into the background.

Nevermind the memory lane though, the present is always the ripest fruit:

The same warm words slip past his lips as he smiles to the interviewer of the local sports channel. Gentleness laced trough his voice that he uses often lulls to sleep, providing the perfect illusion of a honorable man the star athlete was. To eyes that knew, the soft tone he always carried had melted away a big part of his standoffish personality. The apathy was still there, but dosed, making him seem more approachable. To any skeptics it was no more but the aftermath of dealing with press after success, which he would always agree with, supporting a petty smile.

Truthfully, he doesn’t understand who he is or who he’s playing. His psychiatrist doesn’t either, as they watch him sitting quietly on the couch, glaring into space like an unsatisfied six-year-old. The only part of him that felt completely like Hyuk was the burning, unjustifiable fury that lived within him. Which classified him as a monster, he believed, but as long as nobody knew that the athlete carries darkness inside of him, he was fine with the feeling dragging him down from within. 

Leather still covers his hands as he sits in the locker room, sweat dribbling down his face and eyes focused on the ceiling. The breaths he takes slowly turn heavier as the taste of blood in his mouth is not strong enough to satisfy him and empty out the fury inside him. As lights flicker off by a motion of his fingers, the raging animal scratching him from the inside wins, carrying his body to the darkest corners in Seoul where underground fights happen. A masked Hyuk drowns in the lung burning smell of metal and he can live on again.

But we are nothing if not open books – my job is to ensure you get to the best pages:

01. The thought that slipped past his lips so simply as if it was a well known dogma, fluttering lightly in the air like a fallen leaf did not amuse his therapist. “Maybe I’m so feisty because something had to balanse out the ridiculous amount of rain that fell out when I was born?” as he cracked a sarcastic smile at the psychiatrist, who only wanted to dig deeper into his childhood. He couldn’t really tell the woman that much about it, pursing his lips in a nonchalant manner as his eyes went up to the ceiling and he silently picked at his own mind. From pictures in the albums neatly placed in his family house the story was that Hyuk wasn’t the prettiest baby in the planet, but one thing the boy didn’t lack was fortune. The diety accounted for luck made both of his parents healthy and as wealthy as a son of a taekwondo coach and a ten year older socialite could be. There was no abuse as there was no fighting. In fact, his earliest memory was the smiles of his parents when his brother was born three years after him. After that, all he could find in his memory of childhood were therapy sessions, him talking to different people in enclosed spaces as time ticked and his parents moving from Suncheon to Seoul in search of better doctors, as their son didn’t make any progress. Considering his words, she offered that maybe his aggression was sparked by the lack of attention he received after his brothers birth. Hyuk shook his head, almost laughing, eyes diverting back on the psychiatrist. “What are you saying? My brother’s to blame for me being fucked up?” Undeniable traces of fury were prominent in his eyes and his therapist pressed harder into their seat. “I love my brother and I’m happy he was born without this anger disorder gene in him.” His gloved hand went to poke at his temple a couple of times, a tense gaze on the woman in the leather armchair.

02. The woman kept her eyes locked on his black fingerless leather gloves as her questions were followed by a frown, giving away a lack of understanding of the accessory. Hyuk followed her gaze, squeezing his hands a couple of times and watching how the leather wrinkled at his movement, the sound of the material brushing against itself causing an unpleasant, taunting sound cut trough the office. He didn’t really know how to explain why he was constantly in the gloves without using crude words. “I’d just rather not see the skin of my knuckles.” He whispered, staring down at his hands just as he did after another fight he found himself in his middle school. Back then he stared at the cracking skin, the thinness of it after a number of times he’d injured himself in a state of aggression and having blood pool in the deep cracks disgusted him. His mother could not look him straight into the eye, too hurt and scared of her own son, as she handed him his first pair of black leather - a silent request to hide so the Choi family could forget about the shame that their eldest boy was for a second or two. It became his second skin and the requests of teachers to take the accessory off bounced off of him uselessly as if the boy was a wall. “Why don’t you take them off?” He could only laugh, shaking his head. One particular man once tried to peel his second skin away after making him stay after class. It ended with a broken nose and a concussion as Hyuk walked away, hands curled in tight fists and blood dribbling off kis knuckles. Next week their class got a new teacher. Next week nobody asked him to take the gloves off again. “Good luck with that.” He hummed, enjoying the noise his gloves made.

03. “How was practice?” Was the therapist’s first question directed at him every single time their session started. After being asked that for a total of twenty years, Hyuk didn’t need to have an impressive intellect level to know what the hidden meaning behind the question was. He used to answer it directly, telling that it’s not helping him contain his emotions, but as years passed the man grew tired of the same conversation that led nowhere, answering it with a cold shrug. There was no explanation for his aggression, why couldn’t they understand. “Fine.” She scribbled something onto her paper, looking at him from behind thick framed glasses. “How do you feel after practice?” Miss, we both know the answer to that question, no amount of training and exhausting myself will satisfy the animal in me. I’d rather hide in dark corners and watch people bleed out under my fist there. “Fine.” He repeated, a deadpan expression on his face as he felt his psychiatrist trying to intimidate him, keeping eye-contact. An imaginary pin dropped in the dimly lit office, making a sound loud enough to cause an avalanche. The woman nodded slowly, scribbling something again. By now he had a feeling that all that was written in neat cursive in the sealed file of his medical history was ‘hopeless’. To that he complied silently. “Do you think you’ll make the national team this year?” He let out a breath he was holding, gaze searching for the clock that counted down the time they had left. 40 more minutes. “Who knows.”

[accidently-happens]

A New Story

A Short Story

It is original. There is no aspects of other’s work in here as far as I know.

This is part of a short story series I started while traveling. It isn’t anything too special but it’s helped me feel more confident in my writing ability. If there’s any mistakes or confusion, let me know! The asks for this blog have been turned on.

I’ll occasionally share the drawings I’ve done of the characters 😋

It might get a little… uneasy… later based off of what I’ve already got written but enjoy!

Word Count: 3,303

Warnings in tags

All my characters

Death’s Death

What would you say if I told you that the Greeks and Romans were the most accurate about deities? Not as the creator of the universe but rather a group that had control over an oddly specific thing? For example, I, Nekes, had control over death. What does this mean? I kill people by touching them. I can tell when and how someone will die. I have the deathly knowhow. This is especially funny since my younger brother, Vitus, is major life. He said I give off a depressing aura. I told him he smelled of life and he went to take a shower. So, ha.

He tries to get us to hide ourselves. Easy for him. He just has to shower often and keep his hair long. I can’t be near people without them feeling like something’s wrong with me. Except for the others of course. Especially the lifes. They both counteract my aura. Our cousin Letcha is minor life. This might get confusing. Let me explain. I’m death. My younger brother is major life. My younger sisters are Timi and Shimi, sound and good endings respectively. Our cousin Dekins was weaponry. His sister Kilns was  flora and fauna. Their younger sister was Letcha, minor life.

Out cousins Merccie, Sotpa, and Neurs were siblings - in that order, first two being girls and the last being a boy - that were, in the same order, thanks & good tidings, love, and knowledge. A girl who might be my cousin from the other side was beginnings, Genesis. Then a family friend Travis was the gatekeeper.

Did that make sense? I’ll leave a list or something just in case. Moving on.

Today was the first day of school. Bad? Oh yeah. Very bad. I had a note from my parents, who were both aware and unaware of the reality of us children, that said I was to be in a seat away from the other students and closer to the door. My mom was a doctor but nobody knew that so it was a two in one. Score. The teachers were confused but never argued since I stood the right distance that they could tell something was up with me and not to be pressed but they didn’t feel any effects. Besides, a doctor’s note was hard to argue, even if it said I had “a contagious disease that could cause almost instantaneous death.” Emphasis on almost. I’ve been working hard to keep myself in check. If I really focus, I can touch someone for a couple minutes or not make everyone within a two-foot radius feel depressed and hopeless but not at the same time. Considering how it’s taken me the six years I’ve dealt with this, that’s pretty good since I’ve also had to not let anything bother me. Kids at school started calling me apathetic and dull. If only they knew…

Vitus snapped his fingers in front of my face. I snapped out of my day dream. It was our monthly gathering and I had dozed off. Again. Except for Genesis and Kilns, everybody else looked indifferent. This happened often enough. I’d probably doze off again as soon as Timi started talking. I hate her. Correction, I despise her.

“Nekes, if you’re going to sleep, do it at night,” I saw Dekins point at me aggressively with his pointer, “you need to be 100% here.”

“Give her a break, Dekins! Neko hasn’t been sleeping good for the last few weeks!” Genesis stood to my rescue and used the nickname she gave me, though, she didn’t have to bring my insomnia up. Whatever. I tried to not show the blush that wanted to burn my face. I felt Kilns shift, her way of telling me my aura was going through the life shield. I mumbled a sorry and focused on my emotions, bringing them back down into locked boxes.

“It’s fine, Gen, he’s right…” I mumbled to her through my jacket.

She glanced at me worriedly.

“Alright but,” she sat down and leaned towards me and whispered softly, “but I’m here for you so just let me know okay Neko?”

I nodded, “What did I miss out on?” Vitus sighed and pressed the bridge of his nose.

“We were discussing what to do about school. We need a good way of hiding our auras and other side effects.”

“I don’t. I just have to wear my-”

“Shut up Travis. You’re fine. It must be easy when all you have to do is hide a key-”

“Wow, I didn’t know you were so aggressive, Kilns,” interrupted Timi, filing her nails with a rather large file.

“Oh hush you.” Timi stuck her tongue out in an effort to be sarcastic without words, squeezing her eyes shut (here have an emoji that accurately describes this face: 😝 hehehe). Kilns went silent, leaning closer to me and forcing me to pull my aura tighter around me. This is when two-year-old Neurs spoke up.

“Nekes, your aura is the strongest and most problematic to hide because of the side effects of your presence.”

“Yeah I know… ’m working on it…”

Everyone looked at me with a look saying “really?”

“I need to leave… I might come back… just keep chatting without me… no Gen, you need to stay.” I added as Genesis got up to follow me as I headed out of the void room. I needed to let myself go for a while without others. She nodded and sat back down in my chair, leaning on Kilns who put an arm around her.

I quickly left and headed to an area of the void outside the void house that I visited often. While there wasn’t anything ever alive there, death was in the air and it felt like things had died. I didn’t notice a thing. It simply felt like home. Well, more than where I was raised in.

“Back so soon?”

I shrugged and sat in the middle of the death bubble. Nobody could hear me or come see me. They’d die no matter who they were.

“… suppose so…”

“What’s getting you so down, Death?”

I hesitated in telling the voice that always accompanied me while I was near highly concentrated areas of ‘magic’ even if it wasn’t mine.

“…nothing that concerns you…” I felt the voice smile.

“Are you sure, Death?”

I nodded.

“Oh Death. Stop lying to yourself,” it felt like hands came and rested on my shoulders, “Just let me-”

“No. Stop asking me.” I shrugged the feeling off me and dropped my emotional facade, my eyes changing from a dark blue to a near neon blue that glowed in the midst of the darkness that surrounded me. My face showed all emotion that I’ve been hiding for too long a time. I cried from sadness and anger. I gripped my arms so tightly that they started bleeding from my nails puncturing my skin as though feeling eyes on me. I felt anxious and terrified. I screamed out my confusion and horror at what I became. I sat and vented until I passed out, dreaming of what it’d be like if I wasn’t Death.

I woke up hours later. I knew the meeting was over. I couldn’t sense their life essence. I felt one. I didn’t want to talk to her, but I knew I’d have to. I trotted out, my clothes becoming a hooded sweatshirt, a pair of tights, and a short skirt. I pulled my hood up and pulled a navy blue scarf from nothing and hide the lower half of my face.

“What do you want Merccie?”

“To know if you’re okay.”

“…’m fine.”

She seemed unpersuaded. I chose not to care. I kept walking. She sighed and followed, jogging by my side.

“Look, Shimi says she can’t see your end. You know what that means?”

I stayed silent, tilting my head down to hide my face more.

“You… You do know?!? What?!? Do you-?!?”

“I can’t care not should I.  I’m death and caring hurts others. My emotions hurt others. Now, leave me alone.”

I opened a doorway to reality as it was known six years ago, stepping into my room. I had finally gotten my own room almost six years ago. It was technically an entire house. It had everything I might need to live in a zombie apocalypse which I know now will never happen. More likely, I’d get all of mankind killed. Or worse. Expelled. I smiled. That’s a good joke. I might have to tell the others that one.

I opened a cupboard, out of cereal… okay looks like I’m not having dinner tonight. I stumbled to the living room area. I fell face first onto the couch and sighed. I turned my head towards the TV.

“What’s up Gen?”

Genesis jumped from her position by the door and hit the door.

“How’d you know I was here?”

I got up and went to her. “You’re both loud in breathing and have an aura that is similar to the lifes.”

“…umm… in English please?”

“Magic,” I stood up and walked back to the couch, sitting with an ‘oomphf.’ She followed and sat close by me. My aura wasn’t being held too tightly and she was definitely in it’s range.

“You’re going to-”

“Nekes.” She was being deathly seriously. She never used my real name, especially when it was just us, and she never interrupted. I stared wide-eyed at her, afraid to say anything.

“Why are you hurting yourself?” she made eye contact and held it, “Why did you let this start?”

I looked down and pulled a knee up, not wanting to respond. I knew she’d find out. It was a beginning and that’s her thing.

“Neko… please tell me… I know good starts and bad beginnings but I don’t ever know why. I need you to tell me why.”

“….sorry…”

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say? 'Sorry’ is it? That’s the only explanation I get?” She sounded exasperated and… worried? She moved closer and I backed away, my touch might kill her right now. She persisted. She ended up laying on top of me, her warmth sinking into my cold form as she held my face. Hers being right above mine. She could see. She saw the tears silently and emotionlessly falling from my very dark eyes. She understood what it meant.

“I can see it… your pain… why do you hide it, Nekokonooo?”

My eyes lightened a little at the nickname she used when we were only alone. She smiled.

“Please tell me Nekokonooo? Please please pleeeeaaasssse?”

Funk she’s cute. My eyes grew lighter and dropped back to the dark color. I sat up, pushing her into my lap, and sighed.

“Since I can’t say no when you make that face-” at this, she blushed and smiled more “-I’ll tell you.”

She nodded and tried to maintain a serious face. She failed and laughed. It sounded like fairies flying through a sun beam. I smiled for a second.

“Even though you don’t seem to be affected by my aura too much, it affects the others but it affects the mortals worse, “ We called those not a owner of an oddly specific thing mortals cause we can, “I sense their deaths moving forward in time. Their life shortens for every second they’re in my aura. If I touch them, they’ll die. If I touch another of us, they get deathly ill. Even you are affected by my touch. I can feel it.”

She lost her hopeful & glad expression and found a more thoughtful & mournful one. I kept talking, finally having a way to let this out.

“I don’t go to funerals because I’m afraid that all I do is make people feel worse. That makes sense though because I’m Death. Why is that though? Why am I Death? Why couldn’t I be something- anything else? Who picked death as my realm? If I were to-” I was cut off as Genesis put a finger over my lips. She looked up and whispered a small thing. A seemingly insignificant thing. Except, it was all I ever needed to hear.

I woke up and found myself wrapped around Genesis on the couch. I carefully got up from around her. If her parents found out… Shed. I’d be so dead. I spliced a portal to her room, across the country, and listened for signs of their knowing. It didn’t seem like it. Fortunately. I went back and picked her up. In all the fanfics I read, it’s called 'bridal style’ but I’m not sure why. I’ve never been to a wedding. If you ask me why… what are you, an idiot?

I lifted Gen through the portal and placed her onto her bed, hoping her parents weren’t able to sense that I was in here. I caressed her cheek and jawline, moving hair away from her peaceful face. I sighed. I moved back through the hole in space, looking at her while I closed the portal. I turned back to the house. The one I live in. The sorta room. The “you make us feel depressed and sick so please stay here and don’t visit us okay thanks” room. I turned to the room I was supposed to sleep in but turned it into a pocket in space-time. It was much bigger than it should’ve been allowed to be, according to physics anyway. I waltzed to the section that had little of me and lots of everybody else. In other words, if people wanted to talk with me, this is where we would chat. Someone was there. I opened it. It was Vitus. Did he know?

“Why was she here?” Uh oh.

“Sorry who?”

He sighed. “You know who I’m talking about. Genesis…?” He said it like a question.

“She doesn’t come in. She wasn’t here. She hasn’t visited me in-”

“Nekes, why are you lying to me? I can sense her life force in there.”

Well, sprinkles.

“Nekes…”

“She wasn’t here. Go away.”

“Nekes. Don’t you funki-”

“Fudge. Off.” Then I slammed the door in his face. He yelled at me through the door as I walked away, moving away and to the the furthest room from the meet-and-greet door so I wouldn’t hear him. I landed on the couch and waited for his presence to go away. I wasn’t ready to deal with him. Or anyone. Unfortunately, it was a school day. Or rather, fortunately. It means he left. A lot sooner then he would’ve otherwise. I shouldn’t be going to school. Even though it was the second day of school. I can’t control my aura enough. I grabbed a phone and texted Mom that I needed her to call me out an excused absence. She asked why within the minute but she got no response. I assumed she called the school. I curled up on the couch with my knees to my face, my emotions trying to be free. I refused. I got up and spliced a one-way portal to Genesis’s room. She was awake now. She wasn’t aware I was watching. She never suspected that I watched her when she wasn’t around me physically. At least… I don’t think so?

She had changed into a simple outfit, one that I had given her. It was a shirt that read “Start Starting” and everyone laughed and found it odd that I let her take a selfie with me, even more so when they saw a genuine smile on my face. That never happened, certainly not anymore around them. Anywho, she was… sewing? I wasn’t sure what since it looked recently started. It was a lot of dark blue. My brain decided to shut off and the portal shut with a pop. My last sight was Genesis turning around and looking directly at me as I passed out.

I squeezed my eyes before opening them slightly, left more than the right. People were talking… about me?

“Go home Genesis, you’re parents-”

“I don’t care about what they think, Vitus. I’m too worried about KoKo!”

“She’s not dying, especially if the ending I saw is gonna happen-”

“What ending…?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it. I never should have brought it up. It’s overshadowed by less happy ends for Nek-”

“Tell me, Shimi.”

“Trust me. Not yet. Not all endings should be shared with those affected by it.”

There wasn’t a response. A different voice.

“Hey, Genesis, Nekes is awake.”

I heard someone’s - probably Gen’s - head whip around.

“If that’s another prank Travis-”

“It’s not. Look.”

A few steps. A face blocked the light in my face. I heard Shimi grab Travis and leave the room. My voice was like nails on a chalkboard.

“Gen… don’t cry…”

She sniffled and hugged me, bringing certain things to my attention. I groaned in pain. She backed away. I moved a hand to my chest. She made a sharp intake in breath as my eyes opened wide.

My entire chest was bandaged.

When I pulled my hand away to look at it, it was red and slightly blue.

“Wh-what happened?” My voice was full of horror and fear.

She must’ve shrugged.

“Not sure but when you were spying on me - something we need to talk about - you seemed to have gotten… well shot. By a gun. We can’t get the bullet out and it’s making you bleed more and more.”

My hand started shaking. I felt the cords that were attached directly to my heart and soul (it’s how we knew we were “owners” of something). My other hand went to my head. More lines connecting to machines to keep me alive. Death was on the verge of death.

“H-how l-long?”

“Only three hours but…” she mumbled, “it felt like years…”

For three hours, the world had no death. For three hours, Travis had to deny me entrance to my own realm. For three hours, I was going to die. I cried.

Only days later after I was able to wander again and I was in my deathful area in the void did I realize that someone had undressed me. I panicked.

Who had seen my chest? My arms? My neck? Whoever it was, knew. They knew. They knew the one secret I’ve been hiding. I hid it from everyone, including Gen.

“Uh ooohhh~ Someone knows~” The voice was back. It sounded different.

“What did you do? Did you shoot me? Why? What did I ever do to you? Who are you? Are you even real? Am I talking aloud to myself? What is even going on? I’m so confused. Someone help. I need help.” I rambled nonsense. I said nothings. There was no point in what I was saying. I was making it worse. How could I make it worse? Easily. I went from flailing around to punching things to laying on the floor crying. Adding to my collection. My collection of scars. Scars that ran from my fingertips to my neck to my hips. They were all accidents. They show up after every fit. Everytime I let emotions go, I got new scars. I was waiting for them to show up on my legs and face. They might this time.

I heard the voice. Laughing. It was laughing at me. I decided I was going to kill it. My eyes were glowing blue, tinted red and turning a stronger red by the minute. A scythe appeared in my hands, three, four, five times my size. I swiped it all around me. It hit nothing. I dropped it, realizing I had consciously summoned it. I fell to my knees and cried into my hands, feeling my nose bleed. I looked up at the sky. I sobbed. I wept. Death couldn’t take the stress.

Here’s the list Nekes promised without permission squints

From Nekes point of view:

~ Nekes - Death

~ Vitus - Brother - Major Life

~ Timi - Sister - Sound

~ Shimi - Younger Sister

> Dekins - Cousin - Weaponry

> Kilns - Cousin - Flora and Fauna

> Letcha - Cousin - Minor Life

+ Merccie - Cousin - Thanks and Good Tidings

+ Sotpa - Cousin - Love

+ Neurs - Cousin - Knowledge

* Travis - Family Friend - Gatekeeper

= Genesis - Cousin? - Beginnings

Each point mark represents a different family. They’re in oldest to youngest order within the families and Nekes isn’t the oldest on this list.