#so I can wander barefoot in the forest without people wondering what in god's name I'm doing walking barefoot with coffee in hand

[loveableabomination]

Being ace but also being people-pleasing enough that I think I'm not ace cuz I like to make my partner happy...is a mind-fuck.

[tatestripedsweater]

Plot: Kit Walker never came back from the abduction of him and Alma, the extra-terrestrials kept him until they were done with the man. In the year 2000 Kit gets taken back to Earth in a time era he is unaware off, he’s just as confused as the person who finds him in the woods.

Kit Walker x GN!Reader

Wordcount: 1941

Tags: @kitwalker02 - Message me or comment below if you want to be added

Key:

Italics - Flashbacks

Bold Italics - Aliens speaking

1964

Kit lay on the bed smoking his cigarette as he looked up at the ceiling, only in his white briefs he couldn’t help but grin slightly at the events prior. It wasn’t the first time him and Alma had made love, in fact it was the second time today they had sex as this morning they fucked before he went to work. Moving so he was sitting on the edge of the bed, he put out his cigarette in the small tray on his bedside table, a clattering soon got Kit up onto his feet.

‘’Alma?’’ He maneuvered quickly to put his jeans on and shirt on before walking out into the living room, she was nowhere to be found. Quietly moving, Kit grabbed the gun he kept under a weak floorboard, he did this so no one would find it but he had to keep his wife protected somehow. The air was cold as Kit walked outside barefooted, not even bothering to put on shoes since he was more concerned on where Alma was, she couldn’t have gone far. ‘’Okay this isn’t funny darlin’!’’

Silence. The fear that something had happened to her had started to set in on Kit’s mind, he didn’t want to shoot into the darkness just in case she was playing a prank on him and the bullet accidentally went into her. As soon as Kit stepped inside the house the entire room was filled with a bright light and everything flew up onto the ceiling, including himself.

“Alma!” Kit screamed out loudly before putting his hands to his ears at the loud ringing in his ears, it was like something you’d use on a dog for it to stop misbehaving, he felt like electricity was being shocked all through his body before everything around him turned white and he was suddenly laid on his back on a cold, metal surface. “Alma..?”

Looking over at his wife she was completely naked as was he, but she was unconscious and no matter how hard he tried to reach her she seemed to get further away from him. “Alma.. please wake up!” Tears were streaming down Kit’s face as his voice cracked, his nose was running from how hard he was crying, the fear was getting worse the longer he lay upon the metal surface. Hearing noises around him soon turned Kit ridgid, it was mumbling in a language he didn’t understand.

His head was beating like a drum, it was as if someone had punctured right through his skull but he wouldn’t put it past these creatures if they did. The mumbling got louder and so did the ringing in his ears, screaming out even louder Kit could’ve sworn his ears were bleeding from the pain he was currently feeling it, he just wanted it all to end.

‘’I think it’s time’’ The moment that left the aliens lips, the sentence unknown to Kit, the surroundings went a blinding white before Alma found herself back in the living room that she called home. Quickly standing up she looked around for any sign of her husband. With her whole body shaking she made her way outside hoping he would be out there, crying out for Kit, but all she got was a beam of light like a fallen star flying across the sky before disappearing.

“Kit..”

2000

You were used to people shutting down your claims of what you believed to have happened that evening. You remembered it like it was yesterday but due to you being a child when the event had happened, people just put it down your brain creating false memories to protect you from what actually happened to your mother. The officer in front of you was the same as all the others, he felt sorry for you so he never shuts you down when you tried to explain to him about the ‘abduction’, but he had to soon stop you since you were getting stares from people passing by.

‘’Y/N stop this.. we’ve been through this dozens of times’’ Huffing heavily you shook your head, a look of disappointment on your face when he said that to you. Staring the officer in the eyes you couldn’t help but narrow your eyes at him, he always seemed to cut you off as soon as people started staring but you believed people of this town deserved to know. Of course you’ve gotten called everything under the sun.

‘’You should be put in a mental hospital! You’re turning into Julia’s mother, Alma, God rest her soul’’ You knew that voice all too well, she was the gossip of the town Mrs Wilkins and she had a face like a toad, and the perfume she wore wasn’t exactly being kind to your nose either. Feeling the annoyance and anger within you, you decided to stand up for yourself and the officer knew the look in your eyes all too well, but it was too late to even stop you before you spoke with a harsh tone towards her.

‘’Shouldn’t you be getting a new mirror, considering your face made the last one crack!” You quickly got pulled away by the officer before the woman you had now offended could speak another word,

“Go home Y/N! It’s getting late for a woman of your age to be out anyway..” He always used that excuse with you, being a girl of eighteen had more downs than ups, you sometimes wondered why everyone who was young couldn’t wait to turn eighteen, you frankly wanted to go back to being a kid again. “It’s six thirty, I can drive you home if you want?”

Shaking your head but staying silent you put your left foot in front of the other and started walking down the now lit street, the streets lights automatically came on around this time and you knew that your father was going to kill you for being out. It wasn’t even late yet they panicked if you weren’t in the house by five in the evening. Since your mothers ‘disappeared’ he hasn’t wanted the same to happen to you due to being the only thing left of her.

Sitting in front of the television watching your evening program your parents always let you watch before bed, you could hear them arguing like they did every day. The comfort of the teddy bears on the screen is all you had at the age of six, you held onto your stuffed bunny as you tried to drown out the shouting from the next room.

“I know they aren’t my kid you cheating whore!’’ You didn’t even understand what the words even meant at that point in your life, but you knew that they weren’t nice onces just from the tone of your father. Slowly turning around once you heard the door open you stared up at him with your glassy and wide eyes, his face turned soft once he looked at you. You were the innocent one in all of this, your mother wouldn’t admit to you not being your fathers even if it was the truth. Watching his every move until he was out of the front door, your mother was the next one to walk out.

“Come on you, let’s get you ready for bed” She acted as if that argument had never happened as she scooped you into her arms, the moment you wrapped your arms around her neck the ringing in both of your ears started. Her grip on you tightened in that moment and all you remembered was the blinding white light and the ringing. Your memory had gotten rid of the both of you going upwards to the ceiling and the details of the abduction. It was as if something didn’t want you to remember what happened that night. But part of you knew what had happened even if you couldn’t remember most of it. That’s what drove you insane.

Looking down at the watch on your wrist it read ‘7:00pm’, you were in for one hell of a lecture so you decided to take a short cut down the forest. You didn’t like the dark as it was but you knew if you took the long route it would be another hour till you got home. You wished you had taken those driving lessons from your father when he offered you them months ago. You would’ve been home by now if you had a car.

‘’I should’ve taken Officer Carter’s offer of a drive home..’’ You often talked to yourself in times off stress and annoyance but you didn’t want to rely on a man to help you with all your issues, even if it was as little as having no driving licence yet.

The snap of a twig caught your attention and goosebumps formed on your skin out of fear. Someone else was out in these woods. Taking slow steps, you made sure to pay close attention to every sound no matter how little it was. You didn’t know if this person was dangerous and you weren’t taking the risk of being kind if they decided to show themselves.

You made your way over to a bank in the forest, thanking god that you had even got this far without coming across the person that seemed to be in here with you, sliding down the bank your eyes caught side of a shadowy figure inbetween two trees. Your eyes didn’t leave the figure but the air got caught in your throat once you saw it run towards you. It’s arms reaching out for you as you fall on the bank floor due to trying to run backwards. Stupid.

‘’Please you need to help me!’’ The moonlight shone down on the figure as it quickly kneeled down beside you. Themale looked scared and you couldn’t help but go wide eyed due to him being in just a pair of boxer shorts. “I-I’m sorry I scared you, but I really need your help!”

“Okay! Okay! Just calm down..” The man in front of you took a few deep breaths once that left your mouth, him thanking you over and over again for your kindness to a stranger. “Just tell me who you are..”

“I’m going to sound crazy, I was taken by these things. I don’t remember much..”

“What’s your name..?” Your voice was timid and quiet but it was enough for the man in front of you to hear. He kept looking up at the sky then back at you and in that moment you knew what he was afraid off. Your mind wandered but in a good way, what if this man had experienced the same thing your mother had done in 1988? Or was he another homeless man looking for a home but pulling the heartstrings of a woman? You didn’t know but you believe the first question that was circling through your mind.

“Kit.. Kit Walker'' Your eyebrows furrowed once he told you his name. You recognised it from somewhere. Your brain was doing overtime trying to figure out where you had heard that name before, the last name you knew all too well. your neighbour, Julia, had the same last name and you thought she had mentioned a distant relative of some sort.

Maybe this was him? The next sentence he said gave it all away on who this man was. “You need to help me find my wife.. Alma..”

The sentence from Mrs Wilkins rang in your head like a bell ‘You’re turning into Julia’s mother Alma’

Maybe she wasn’t so crazy after all.

[elsewhereuniversity]

Your senior year roommate calls herself Clarity. She’s very small and rumpled and distant, and she goes for long walks in the forest south of campus when she’s frustrated. You aren’t friends, but you coexist peacefully. It’s enough.

The creature on your co-owned Walmart futon isn’t Clarity.

It looks like her. Enough to fool a casual observer, certainly. Enough to fool someone who hasn’t been soldering sterling silver for six hours. But you have, and the truth of silver lingers, and the Thing That Looks Like Clarity is sprouting delicate flowers from the skin of its bare shoulders.

It’s sitting cross-legged and perfectly, terribly still, tracking your eyes as you take all this in. When you sigh and set down your backpack, it says, “Hello, smith. There didn’t seem to be any sense in pretending.”

“Jeweler,” you say, and, “I go by Florence, these days. What should I call you?”

It blinks, languid and slow. “I’m not here to usurp. I’m a… placeholder.”

“It’s still confusing as shit, my guy.”

It considers this at length. Finally, with the air of one who has just solved a great puzzle, it says “Claire. We will know, the two of us.”

“Works for me. Nice meeting you, Claire.”

And that seems to be all there is to say. Your roommate’s been stolen by the Fair Folk, you’re living with a changeling, and there’s not much you can do about either of these things. You scroll through Instagram until it gets tired of watching you and wanders out into the hallway.

So that’s Claire.

 Three nights later you wake up shivering, because it’s November and Claire has neatly lifted the screen out of the window. You can hear the clink of glass just beyond - it’s climbed out onto the slanting roof of the dorm.

“Fancy meeting you here, darling.” It doesn’t turn its head when you gingerly settle beside it. The affectation is stilted and awkward and antiquated in its mouth.

“Do you want to maybe come off the roof?” you ask. “You’re starting to sway.”

It sighs. It looks less like Clarity in the moonlight, although whatever Sight you pull from silver has faded by now. It’s a small girl still, close-cropped hair a dark purple, nose elegant, mouth wry – but the knobs of its spine are far too sharp, now. The thready tendrils of climbing vines are pushing themselves from the skin of its forearms. It has eyes like holes in the universe, and it’s drinking like it’s trying to fill up the incomprehensible wasteland behind them with straight gin.

When the silence draws out for too long, it offers you the bottle and says, “Elderflower infused. Freely given.”

You hesitate, because at the end of the day you’re a smith and you Don’t Deal With The Gentry. But this day’s only twenty minutes old, and something about the moment seems important. You nod, take a swig, hand it back. It’s cloyingly sweet, and the kind of strong that makes your breath catch in your chest. Claire smiles all teeth, but there doesn’t seem to be any actual malice in it. It might just be that it hasn’t quite figured out how mouths work.

“Do you really need the whole bottle, though,” you say, when you can talk again. It looks at the sky (has it looked away from the sky at all?) and smiles, and smiles.

Claire seems to take place-holding as a personal challenge, typing Clarity’s history essays with thick gloves on so it can touch the electronics. You know Clarity is gone, and some of Clarity’s friends know, and Clarity’s boyfriend has gone missing (you last saw him setting out for the forest with a backpack full of obsidian and caramel creamer cups, and you hope he finds her). But outside of this subdued inner circle no one else seems to have picked up on how much sharper Clarity is now. It seems pleased about this, the few times you mention off-handedly how well it’s fooling people.

The pair of you fall into something that’s not quite friendship, something that very carefully has no give and take at all. If you were smart you’d let Claire be, honestly. If it was smart it would let you be. But there’s a kind of mutual morbid fascination, if there’s anything. Claire demands you show it every new Snapchat filter, and recoils at the soldering iron, and calls you darling like your chosen name is something dangerous to speak. Claire has two settings, and they’re euphoria and a kind of wistful rage. Claire sighs over the silver rings you make and tells you that something will take your eyes, one day, and that maybe Claire will be the one to do it.

And for your part… on the nights when the air is fresh and the moon is neatly halved and Claire’s pupils are blown wide with something that smells like honey, it says things like ‘when I die I’ll come back with green eyes’ and ‘I’ll make wings like Icarus, what a lovely story, and mine will work better, I’ll get all the way to the sun’, which isn’t how it’s supposed to go, and it could break your heart if you let it.

Sometimes Claire goes to the revels. It never asks you to come along, which you suppose is as close to friendship as it’s possible to get, with the Gentry. Sometimes it comes back barefoot, or with mottled bruises down one side, or with a shadow that is more violet than it should rightly be in the morning sunlight. Wordlessly, you find one of the mason jars full of rosewater that have become such a staple of your dorm room. Your skin stings where your fingers brush.

You watch Claire closely, at times like these. You aren’t sure why. You think you want to see it vulnerable, but it never quite softens the set of its jaw, the angle of its shoulders. You know it’s stupid to worry about it, but you do, you do. Claire’s too proud, dangerous proud, the kind of pride that means someday it won’t be coming back from whatever trouble it’s looking for.

So sometimes, when you hear the hunting horns, when the smell of apple blossoms curls from the snowy fields and Claire’s eyes start to look like burned-out viewports to a bombed-out world, you tug the creature onto the roof and try not to notice how it’s much heavier than it really should be, for its apparent size. Claire sits still on the roof, watches the spaces between stars for hours without blinking, and you watch Claire. It would all be very teen-movie, except that there are the spider-leg fingers and the moss creeping over its exposed ribs and you’re reminded more often than not of how alien it is, this monster that you’re living with; that power to this girl-shaped thing is true names and the ability to break good things without caring. Despair comes in moments like that, and when Claire says things like, “Lets find the marble palace that the crows told me is hidden in the library,” you agree without thinking because god help you but you love the way it smiles when you say, “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“We won’t die,” Claire assures you. “Not like this. That would be boring.”

“Boring,” you repeat.

“Extraordinarily so,” Claire confirms, as if to remove any doubt that’s arisen. You press your palms to the grit of the rooftop and wonder when this will fall apart. But Claire is very close and warm and there’s an entire lost world in it somewhere, and that’s why you haven’t given up yet.

Or wait, it’s the smile Claire gives you, which is bright and lovely and fascinating as a fractured mirror.

“Let’s roll out, darling,” Claire announces, swinging back into your room, radiant and uncaring, and no, this is why.

You find the marble palace in the library, and the eternal summer backstage at the theatre, and the series of waterfalls that pour through the mirror world you can get to through the laundry room. Lost weekends, all of them, gone in a matter of hours, but Claire’s hand is firmly in yours and you both set foot back onto safe ground untouched and giddy, full to the teeth of wonder at the hidden things.

One night, early in May, you stumble out of the music classroom where you’ve found an entire forest of jeweled trees. You’ve saved one single oak leaf, a paper-thin thing made of copper, set with the most delicate seed pearls along each seam. Claire pressed it into your hands and told you to never let the sunlight touch it.

Now, on the short-clipped grass of the quad, it’s late Sunday night and you have a paper to write and a project to finish and the mist that’s never quite gone entirely has buffed the distant river to a mirror-shine, and Claire says, “Clarity has won her game.”

It takes a second to parse its words, and then your stomach drops out. “You don’t have to leave, we can – ”

Claire says, “I am a placeholder and you will graduate in two weeks.”

“Come with me,” you say, before you can think better of it. “I…we can find somewhere you can live too, we can…”

Claire’s face is blank as the moon. It’s probably the worst thing you’ve ever seen. “God, darling,” it says. “I couldn’t do that to you. Neither of us could live like that.”

It’s not your choice. You know it’s not. It doesn’t make it any easier.

“You can write to me,” you say instead. “Or email or whatever, I know you know how to use a computer. Or tell the crows, or something. There’s got to be some way to talk to me, if you need to.” You hesitate. “Will you be okay? Are you okay?”

Claire hums something tuneless, stares into the night sky. The shoulders of its shirt writhe. Finally violets push through, like the black fabric is nothing more than cobwebbing. It says, “I think this was never supposed to happen. I think there’s nothing I could have done to change it. I want to …” Its throat clicks. “I would stop everything, if I could. I would stay here and watch the sky.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” you say, because you’re a smith, and you know. Real things, true things – they end. It’s part of the whole deal. You tell Claire so. And then you tell it that if it wants to stop and watch the sky you can do that, for now. There will always be sky, and endings can be pushed back.

“Darling,” Claire says, and for maybe the first time since you’ve known it, it turns its eyes away from the stars to look at you instead. “Florence, oh. If you were mine I would keep you,” and it hurts, god it hurts, so maybe it’s love after all.

“I am,” you say, stupidly. “I could be.”

The first time you kiss Claire, it’s just a brush of lips against the corner of its mouth. It stops moving, stops breathing. You’re shaking, suddenly. This won’t fix anything, you know this by now. But then Claire is moving in a rush, snarling a hand into your hair and kissing you hard and desperate. You can feel teeth, and you’re flush against Claire’s sharp angles, and it’s glorious-

And just as suddenly, Claire takes a shuddering breathe, and then another, and it shoves you back. You stumble, almost fall.

“You can’t be anything,” Claire hisses. You think it would be crying, if it could. “You’re leaving.”

Suddenly you’re just as angry, the gut-punch of loss and fear turning vicious inside you. “So are you! No one’s making you fuck off back to the Elsewhere–”

“You were going to leave since I met you!” Claire shouts. “And I knew and I was good and you’re free, you can go! This is what you want! I can’t…I didn’t want…” Its face is caught half-snarl, half sob, a tangle of emotion you want to smooth away or maybe punch. Its cheeks are blotchy and there are ruins behind its eyes and you think you might regret this, later. No one was ever supposed to see Claire like this.

“I can’t,” Claire repeats. Its voice is a boneyard. “Darling, I can’t. I just…”

The anger leaves as quickly as it came. You feel as hollow as a reed. “I’m sorry,” you say, because one of you ought to. Damning words, to the Fair Folk, but no words are as dangerous as the ones you’ve already said. “It’s okay. It will be okay.” No part of that was not a lie, but Claire takes it as the peace offering it is, and when you cross to the wall of the music building and sink down to the ground, shoulder blades against the cool concrete, Claire follows you down. It leans over to brush at your cheek and you register the track of your own furious tears. It’s a poor attempt at an apology, as sweet as it is empty. You don’t acknowledge it, and after a few seconds Claire draws back.

You watch the stars move, and in the morning you go home. You go home alone. You go to grad school on the other side of the Atlantic and go for long walks in forest and think about Claire. You go for short walks and wonder why the night sky makes you so sad these days. You forget.

The last time you see her, you are twenty-six, and Claire is sitting beside you, radiant with poppies. There’s a half-moon overhead and the mist has rolled over the garage roof where you’re sitting. When you breathe it in you remember. This isn’t the first time you have remembered. It will be the last.

“Florence,” it says, and frowns. “That’s not your name, now.”

“Claire,” you say. “That’s not right anymore either.”

“I’ve missed you,” it says. Its eyes are green in the halflight. You want to say I love you, but you don’t know if that’s right anymore. You settle for, “I missed you too,” and add, “Be safe.”

“That would be exceptionally boring,” it says, and smiles like it’s holding a knife in its teeth. “But you know where to find me, darling. If you were mine…”

The mist rolls back out soon, and it takes Claire with it. You feel salt-scourged somewhere deep in your chest. This isn’t what you imagined, but then very few things have turns out the way you imagined. In the end Claire can’t stop and sit with you on rooftops, can’t stop at all, nothing ever really stops until it ends. You know this. So you lie back on the roof and watch the sky move sideways by yourself.