#so filtering it only gets rid of the posts talking about blood

[pendinganchor]

the best part about having blood as a visual trigger is that nobody ever fucking tags it 🤪

[fieldofdaisiies]

gwyn x balthazar | 2,7k words | warnings: mention of post trauma | masterlist

Gwyn is looking at the dark wall opposite her bed, her fingers toying with the hem of her priestess robes. Then her eyes close. 

The sun's golden rays filter through the leaves of the large oak tree she and her sister lie beneath and cast a warm glow onto their faces. Gwyn, resting her weight on her elbows, looks up into the bright sky. "Catrin, have you ever wondered what falling in love feels like?"

Catrin chuckles lowly, her face turned to her twin-sister. "All the time! It must feel wonderful, don't you think? Tingly and beautiful." Gwyn's laughter is loud, but sounds like a beautiful melody as it dances in the light wind. "Tingly?" she asks.

"Yes!" Catrin says. "Like your skin will tingle with love. Like your heart does a little dance, and your tummy fills with butterflies." Gwyn inhales deeply her eyes closing as she lets her face be warmed by the sun. 

"You want to know what is even more enchanting?" Catrin asks and a slight hint of mischief tints her voice.  "What?" Gwyn whispers, blinking open one eye. Catrin is grinning at her.  "The first kiss!" Both girls giggle at the. "It must be phenomenal. Like sparkles exploding everywhere in your body." Catrin idly plucks at a culm of grass, and toys with it in her fingers. 

"Do you think I'll ever fall in love, Catrin?" Gwyn asks. 

"Of course, you will. Every male who sees you will for you, and if you give them a chance they will be the luckiest male alive." Catrin grins and so does Gwyn, her eyes full of hope and happiness. 

Suddenly her eyes dip. Dip to where the culm cuts a small fracture into Catrin's finger. 

She wipes her thumb over it… When Gwyn lifts her gaze, Catrin's face is pale, her eyes empty, dead. "Gwyn,'" she whispers… 

In an instant there is blood everywhere. More and more, so much it stains Gwyn's robes, her hands and—

The young priestess sits up in bed, her eyes wide open, breathing ragged. She feels how her skin turned clammy and she squeezes her eyes shutting, hoping that the memories will vanish. 

"Oh Gods!" she expresses, blinking her stinging eyes rapidly to get rid of the sudden dampness. She swallows around dryness in her throat, shoving her legs off the bed. 

It is time to head upstairs. It really is time! She needs to leave, get out of here, and surround herself with people who only mean good. 

More importantly, at least in this moment, she wants to catch Balthazar before he leaves, make sure he got some sleep the previous night. She wants to talk to him again before he is gone. She wants to hear his voice. See his smile. It will be the kind of distraction she needs. The comfort his presence always gives will be her salvation now, she knows this. She needs this right now, not wanting to fall into the hole of endless an endless void and nothing but sadness again.

Gwyn gently runs her hands down her thighs, smoothing the fabric of her robe. As her hand brushes over the small wooden fish in her pocket, she momentarily pauses. The fish is there, providing her with a sense of comfort, and it stirs her heart to beat a little bit faster, her chest warming.

It was a gift made especially for her. Balthazar made it just for her.  He creates many things, but this little fish was a unique piece only for her. Balthazar invested his precious time in making it, and she will forever treasure it, even though he might not fully understand  significance it has to her.

Gwyn breathes in and out a few times, long and deep, before she finally walks upstairs to the House of Wind. 

She slowly opens the door, and is immediately greeted by Cassian's voice. He is talking to Balthazar! 

Her heartbeat quicks, anticipation bubbling inside of her. A smile, fully on its own accord, spreads over her face and she steps into the room. Her gaze is trained on the young Illyrian standing outside on the balcony with Cassian and her lips part a little. It is not difficult to forget about the most mundane things, like breathing, when in Balthazar's presence, Gwyn has to admit. 

The door to the balcony is open, leaving in the early morning scent of summer. 

"I am really glad you finally see your potential," the general remarks, his voice carrying a hint of pride. 

"You will be a great camp lord and we all know this." Cassian's hand is placed on Balthazar's shoulder and the young Illyrian looks at the general as if he's a young boy receiving compliments from his proud father. Perhaps, in this very moment, that's precisely how Balthazar feels.

A little crack appears in Gwyn's heart when she watches them for a moment longer. Balthazar's pain was so radiant last night, she felt it so strongly. 

She knows he is strong — he has revealed so much of himself the previous night, and that is a huge testament for strength. But Gwyn also knows that he might often be putting on a mask, hiding behind it, and not letting his pain and worries show. 

"Thank you, really. For all of it. The support and trust, foremost all." Balthazar releases a deep sigh and lifts his hand to wave at Nesta sitting at the breakfast table. His gaze seems to search for a moment, traveling through the room until—

"Gwyneth," he greets, his charming, boyish smile making Gwyn's knees feel weak. She forces a smile on her lips, scared her knees might fully give in. 

I guess this is exactly what Catrin had been talking about back then. Feeling tingles all over your skin, Gwyn thinks to herself. 

"Hey," she whispers, her voice breathy but tinged with joy. The young priestess takes a few hesitant steps towards him, towards the balcony. She turns her head when Nesta says, "Good morning, best friend. I am here as well, by the way." Gwyn's eyes widen and she giggles. "Of course, good morning, Nes." Gwyn dips her chin, her cheeks gaining a little rosy touch. 

"And what a good morning it is. Cass, could you hand me another roll, please?" Nesta asks her mate.

Cassian does not move immediately, until awareness dawns on him — he should give Balthazar and Gwyn a moment to talk alone. "See you soon, Balthazar. Until then, keep your head up and Rhysie—Rhysand and I will set everything up for the inauguration."

Balthazar tilts his chin, slowly unfolding his wings. But he does not take off — he waits for Gwyn to finally appear on the balcony. 

"You are flying home now?" Gwyn asks and Balthazar nods. She finally takes a step outside. 

"You have quite large wings, you must fly quite fast and be home in the blink of an eye."

Nesta, now having heard about the wingspan theories quite a lot of times, presses her lips together to keep from giggling. She probably should have told Gwyn about it as well, but now it is too late and a furious blush spreads over Balthazar's face. 

"I think my wings are quite average," Balthazar says. "But as usual, I really appreciate the compliment. And yes, they carry me home quite easily."

"Average? I think you definitely got the biggest wings I have ever seen." Gwyn grins, marvelling at the leathery skin of the wings where deep red veins are visible in the sunlight. Her eyes follow them, from the bottom end to the talon at the top. "So, it makes sense you are a quick flyer."

His blush now reaches the top of his forehead and Balthazar clears his throat. "Thank you," he brings out, coughing lightly. "I really wish you could experience what it feels like to fly. On your own I mean."

"Oh, I will experience this soon!" Gwyn quickly chimes in, beaming. 

Balthazar raises a brow in silent questioning. "One day, I will fly a pegasus." Her eyes begin to glow, her whole face actually, as she looks at Balthazar. She is waiting for his reaction, wondering if he will laugh at her, mock her, tell her she is delusional. But none of that happens. 

When he sees the look on her face, he knows she is right. One day she will fly a Pegasus! 

"Oh, yes. Yes, you will. I can see you doing that. A Valkyrie on her Pegasus — the most skilled warrior that there is." He is grinning as well, eyes sparkling. 

The young priestess bites down on her lower lip when a single tear fills her eye. He does not find this idea absurd, he believes in her! He truly does, there was only honesty in his voice. 

Balthazar's wings are still spread, but he has one more thing to say. One more thing to ask. He will risk this now, be brave and bold. It is the only chance he has. 

He gathers all his courage, inhales a deep breath and smiles. "Come visit me in Windhaven." 

Not a question, but an invitation. "Outside of training, I mean." 

No training with Cassian and the others is planned for the next weeks as the Inner Circle around the High Lord has to deal with business in Velaris, so this is the only chance he gets to see her again. Soon. 

"Will you show me your woodcrafting space then?" Gwyn asks, voice tinged with anticipation.

"I will. I will show you everything you want to see."

"I would love to. I will consider it and let you know in a letter. Is that alright?"

Balthazar tips his chin, only feeling slightly disappointed about the possibility of her saying no in the end. But he does not allow himself to dwell on this thought.

She will come visit him, he knows this. He believes in it. 

"Stay safe, Gwyneth."

"Stay safe, Balthazar."

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Balthazar sits on the ground, his gaze fixed upon the weathered tombstone that bears his father's name. Balthazar's fingers toy with a dried culm of grass, his teeth clenched. 

"Are you happy now? Proud?" he spits, his voice carrying the weight of years of longing for approval. The question hangs in the air, and obviously there is no answer. And even if there was, it would only hurt him. 

The young Illyrian gazes at the cold stone. Memories of past confrontations and all the trauma fill his mind, reminding him of the pain he had to endure. He recalls the countless times his father called him a disappointment, the hurtful words etched deep into his soul.

Darkness gathers in his eyes, until it fills them completely. "I guess you wouldn't be." 

Balthazar straightens up, bracing his hands on the ground next to him. "I guess you would still be calling me a wimp. But let me tell you one thing. I am not a wimp. And I am not a little boy anymore. I will become a great camp lord. I will be remembered in history, while the whole world will forget about you. No one will remember you and that is how it should be."

A single tear rolls out of the corner of his eye and Balthazar quickly brushes it away. "The only question I am asking myself is why I still come here? Why I still want to hear your answer. Why I still seek your approval. I know you would never say your proud. You would have never been proud. Why am I such a dumb idiot to still come here?"

A sudden hand on his shoulder startles Balthazar and he jerks up. A second later he feels the press of lips against the top of his head. "He does not deserve you coming here."

Thena lets herself fall onto the ground next to her little brother, her arm still his shoulders. "I am proud of you — the proudest big sister in the world. My brother, who made it out of the Blood Rite, who has the kindest and most beautiful soul, who cares so deeply, and who will become the next camp lord."

She leans her head against her brother's shoulder and inhales a deep breath. "I am not sure if you want my pride, or appreciate it, but you have it. I am immensely proud of you."

Balthazar turns his head a little, his cheek pressing against Thena's head. "It is all I care about, Thena. Thank you."

Thena's shoulders rise with a deep inhale and she grabs Balthazar's hand. "I am very proud of you as well, Thena." Balthazar squeezes her hand. "For how strong you are. For everything you do. For not being afraid."

The sun shining brightly behind the towering Illyrian mountains slowly starts its descent and a soft breeze brushes over their skin. 

"So, I assume you made your final decision then?"

"I am becoming camp lord, yes."

"It is going to be so good. Things will be so good, with you as the leader. Everything will finally be as everyone deserves it." Thena gives her brother a squeeze, her happiness and the prosperity of a good future so radiant, her whole body seems to glow. 

Balthazar shifts a little on the ground, so he can look at his sister — his older sister, who always was so much taller than him, so much stronger…until he started to grow. But she will always stay his big sister, no matter what. And her saying she is proud, is all he needs in life. 

He doesn't need to hear it from his father — no longer possible anyway— he just needs to hear it from Thena. 

The young Illyrian meets her eyes, excitement swirling vividly in them. "It will come with a ginormous responsibility."

"Of course, it will, but I am sure you will manage it. I mean look at you, Balthazar, and the things you have already achieved!" 

He nods slowly, his brows slightly furrowed. "What if I fail? What if my choices lead us down the wrong path? What if I'm not suited for this role?"

Thena reaches out, gently resting her hand on his arm. "Little brother, I can't say that you will never make a mistake, it is only natural to fail sometimes, but you won't lead us down a wrong path. I have watched you grow into a strong, young male, with great goals and a pure heart, I know that whatever you will do to and in the camp will be good. For all of us."

Balthazar manages a small smile, her words filling his being with courage and happiness. 

"And remember, if you ever stumble on your journey as a camp lord, I will be here, right by your side and catch you. You won't fall, because you have me. And you have Corrian. And you have a dozen of younglings and probably all females in this camp supporting you. And you have…mother."

Now Balthazar squeezes her to his side. "You know I would be lost without you?" Balthazar chuckles a little, the former sadness and pain slowly fading from his being. 

Thena breathes a low laugh and nudges her little brother with her elbow. "I know," she says, mirth lacing her voice. "Hopelessly lost."

She spreads her wings a little behind her shoulders, so she can stretch her back. Then she turns to her brother again. "Speaking of hopeless. What about the red-haired female?"

"Her name is Gwyn." 

A sly smile spreads over Thena's face. "Alright, what about Gwyn? It seems to me that she has thoroughly bewitched my little brother's heart."

"She has bewitched nothing, you idiot."

"Balthazar!" Thena shakes her head and laughs. "You are so very much falling for her. Even a blind person would see that. Even Corrian has noticed it."

Balthazar lifts his gaze to the sky, Gwyn's face and how she stood next to him, glimpsing at the stars flashing in his mind. 

"I invited her."

"Did you?" Their is a sort of lightness and happiness in Thena's voice, Balthazar has hardly ever heard before.

He nods. "I am waiting for an answer though. She said, she will think about it and let me know."

Thena smiles brightly. "I am sure she will accept the invitation."

~~~~~~~~~~ tag list: @a-frog-with-a-laptop @brekkershadowsinger @moonlightazriel @callmeblaire @headcanonheadcase @waternymphia @autumndreaming7 @devilsfoodcake22 @readercacau @sv0430 @bubybubsters @cyntia-ktn

[lumosinlove]

PREVIOUSLY ON RELIC KEEL:

We get our first glimpse of Finn, who is still in Saint Clair orphanage. Finn has worked out that Crucio is being given to the orphans because it allows them to see their families again and makes them want to stay at Saint Clair so they can keep receiving it—even if it means reliving memories every day that are not their own. Finn doesn’t want that at all, and he’s been in solitary for the last week because he refuses to eat, realizing that the drug is mixed in with the food.

Luke is struggling with his mother, who seems to be delighted that Luke’s father is gone. She has completely transformed into a woman Luke doesn’t recognize, offering him alcohol, and wanting to get rid of Luke’s father’s things. Luke escapes her words, retreating to his father’s study where he can take Crucio and re-arrange the events in his own mind, making it so his father never got taken away.

Remus and Sirius, at James’ house for a movie night, have an awkward exchange in the kitchen. Remus wants to ask Sirius if he wants to go sailing with him, quickly realizing the unexplainable but seemingly unavoidable crush he’s developed on Sirius, but they get interrupted by Saint.

Saint asks Remus to help him sneak into The Hogwarts History Museum, where Remus is working for the summer, but when Remus refuses, guesses he has to take matters into his own hands.

Saint finds Luke on the grasses with the others, watching a movie. Luke wants his father’s watch, which Saint stole, back, but Saint refuses. Luke can’t believe Saint has never seen many movies, but rudely puts it up to Saint’s “fucked childhood.” They argue, and it just makes Saint quietly angrier. Saint thinks more deeply about it than he lets on, though, reflecting on people’s need to control things—a need that Crucio plays on. Saint leaves, but not after stealing the keys to Luke’s car, deciding he can control things a different way—with ancient gold from an ancient pirate ship, perhaps.

Sirius follows Saint out of the house. He can tell that he’s more on edge than usual, that he has been ever since Logan arrived. Saint won’t tell him what he wants from the museum, though—a treasure map to the Voldemort. Sirius is hurt. He’s angry at himself for liking Remus. Both Sirius and Saint, it seems, have a hard time distinguishing pity and friendship.

Leo and Logan are waiting for Saint so that they can all go to the museum together. Leo asks about Finn and finds out that Logan and Finn are in love, that they’re everything to each other. It stings Leo’s slowly developing feelings for Logan.

Remus and Sirius go to the history museum to try and thwart Saint and find out he’s working with Logan and Leo, and that they’re all after The Voldemort. Saint confesses he’s trying to help Sirius, to Sirius’ surprise. Leo wants to finish his father’s work. Logan wants Finn—but no one seems willing to help him bust Finn out. When they find the drawer where the map should be kept in the museum’s archive room, however, it’s gone, having been taken out on loan by Luke’s father, Victor Deveaux. Victor and Luke loved the tale of the treasure, too. Perhaps it has something to do with Victor being sent to jail.

They go to Luke’s house where Saint climbs through Luke’s bedroom window. Saint studies a sleeping Luke, a strange, unexpected constant—a brooding, rude, beautiful one, that is. And oh, how Saint hates letting things surprise him. Saint wakes Luke, who has taken Crucio, and plans to use his father’s watch as leverage to get Luke to help them find the map.

~

*****cw: mentions of drugs, mentions of use of drugs, mentions of past deaths, mentions of past abuse, mentions of blood*****

~

part vii

Luke’s father was standing over Remus’ shoulder, flickering as the Felix wore off, and it was really fucking with Luke’s head.

“Some fellow treasure hunters,” his father said with one of his soft smiles. “Sounds fun.”

“Sober up,” Remus’ voice filtered in. “What makes you sober up?”

“I’m not drunk.”

Luke watched Remus just shake his head at him. His father’s flickering frame was looking closely at Saint, who was picking up everything in sight.

“We both know what you are,” Remus replied. “Now, come on. Coffee? Anything I can do without waking your mom up.”

“She’s not going to wake up,” Luke rubbed his eyes. “She takes these—sleeping things, I don’t know.”

“Well—“ Remus hesitated. Behind him, Luke’s father flickered out.

“I’m fine,” Luke said. “What’s going on?”

“We’re bargaining, remember?” Saint held up Luke’s father’s watch again. “Tell me about your father, Deveaux.”

Luke blinked. “What?”

“Well, Lupin’s already told us a little. You, him, and your treasure hunting days.”

Luke looked at Remus, who looked half-guilty and half-curious. “You mean—like when we were kids?”

Luke didn’t want to tell them about the time he had spent with his father in here, just the two of them, fantasizing about gold and pirates.

“We were at the museum just now,” Remus began slowly. “Your dad loaned out a map…it’s of the Cradle. Of a, what was it, a trading post?”

The tall, blond boy standing in a corner nodded.

Remus looked back to Luke. “Have you seen it? Here?”

“A map?” Luke scrubbed his hand over his face again. “What fucking time is it?”

“Oh, he’s swearing,” Saint said as he opened another drawer. “He’s back.”

“Fuck—” Luke clamped his mouth shut. He turned away from Saint and fully towards Remus. Sirius and another dark haired boy were standing near the blond one. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Treasure?”

Remus winced. “Like the Voldemort.”

“The—what? He was never serious about that stuff,” Luke replied. “It was just for fun.”

“And yet he takes it upon himself to acquire an ancient document,” Saint piped up from behind him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Luke said again over his shoulder.

“Um—“

Luke looked towards the blond boy, who had taken a hesitant step forward.

“I know what it looks like. My dad had a copy.”

“A true father’s affair,” Saint mumbled.

“What?” Luke asked for what felt like the one hundredth time.

“If we could just look around—” the blond began.

“You come here at ass o’clock in the morning to look around may dad’s study? For a treasure map that your dad has?”

“Used to have,” the blond’s eyes went colder. “His version was lost with him and his boat.”

Luke swallowed, eyes drifting away from the other boy’s blue ones. He looked back to Remus. They used to spend hours playing pirate when they were younger. Remus looked like he was remembering those hours, too.

Luke only had to blink for that golden-edged memory to mingle with the hours Remus had held Luke close in Luke’s bed, letting Luke soak his t-shirt through when they’d taken his dad away.

“Why do you think my dad has it?” Luke said now. “What do you mean loaned?”

“We went looking for it at the museum just now,” Remus explained. “Well—not not we. Saint stole your car—”

Luke looked back at Saint. “I’m aware.”

Saint flashed a smile.

“—and went with Logan,” Remus pointed to the somber looking brunette, “and Leo,” the cold-eyed blond, “to more or less, God, break into the museum archives. If they’re going to find the treasure—which, in my opinion, they’re not—they need—”

“A map,” Luke said, then scoffed out a laugh. “You guys are fucking crazy.”

Remus ran a hand through his hair. “Look, none of this was my idea, but your dad’s name was on the loan card. If it’s here, it's here, and then they’ll take the picture they need and we can all leave. I mean, shit, I have work at seven tomorrow morning, guys.”

Luke let out a long breath. He was tired, from being woken up and from the Felix, and he frankly wanted Saint to stop messing with his father’s things.

He nodded at Remus. “You can look around. And I will. The rest of you, don’t fucking—” he snatched one of his father’s fountain pens out of Saint’s hands. “touch anything.”

Saint just tiled his head defiantly. Luke couldn’t help but hold his gaze for a moment, remembering waking up to those syrupy eyes and feeling—he didn’t know what. Like he was standing on the edge of the Howler cliffs, above a storm-warmed, rough ocean. Saint’s hand had been in his hair, and it had been ever so gentle, unlike the rest of him. His words were tough, and, from what Luke could tell by his own jabs at Saint, so was his skin. He guessed a kid didn’t grow up the way Saint had without at least a little armor—Saint was practically drowning in his own.

As if Luke could talk. Luke looked away and gestured towards Remus. “Let’s get this over with.”

Luke opened drawers and cabinets. He looked through stacks of paper and under dressers. He checked the den, even, just in case, but there was nothing. Everything was orderly—and even more, the police had taken so much. Any paper they could get their hands on. His mom wouldn’t tell him what they were looking for, and neither would the lawyers that occasionally came to the house.

But there was no map.

Luke began to double check, if only at Remus’ insistence, but he was at a loss. There were only so many places—

“What’s your birthday, tweedle?” Saint said suddenly.

“What does that have to do—” Luke began as he turned, but his words died in his throat when he saw Saint.

Luke’s father had had the old map of Hogwarts framed and hanging in his study ever since Luke could remember. He knew its markings as well as he knew the island as it was today. Saint had it tilted to the side, revealing a sliver of sleek steel. A safe.

“I told you not to touch anything,” Luke said breathlessly. He hadn’t known about that safe. He’d stared at that map a thousand times and he hadn’t known. Did his mother know? The lawyers?

“I bet you one of Leo here’s best breakfast sandwiches that the map’s in here,” Saint replied, nodding to the frame. “Little bit of an X marks the spot, don’t you think? Now,” Saint reached for the painting and unhooked it smoothly, setting it on the ground to reveal the neat square metal sunken into the wall with a dial in the center. “Tell me your birthday.”

“Why do you think the combination is my birthday?”

Saint rolled his eyes. “Because you’re his son. Fathers do that. Don’t they?”

Saint asked the last part like he was trying to be sure, but wasn’t.

“January first,” Luke replied.

Saint hummed as he leaned in. “New year, new you, huh?”

Luke just swallowed dryly as he listened to the dial tick. It felt so loud in the room that was now holding its breath. It felt like it lasted forever, but, finally, the safe opened with a gentle click.

“Damn, Saint,” Sirius said softly.

“I know, I’m so good,” Saint said, and made to push the door open when Luke pushed forward and grabbed his hand. Saint’s fingers were warm in his own. Saint raised an eyebrow.

“Like you said,” Luke still felt breathless. “I’m his son. I’m doing this.”

Saint raised his free hand in surrender until Luke let go, and he backed away. Luke faced the safe. He felt the Felix in him all over again, though it was long gone. He felt his father, smelled his cigars. Luke reached for the door, too aware of the four pairs of eyes on him, and pulled it open.

It was relatively empty. There were papers that looked like they had once bound money, but lay ripped and lifeless now. There was a case of expensive cigars.

And there was an envelope with Luke’s name on it.

“There’s a letter,” Luke said faintly, picking it up. “For me.”

He looked up at Remus, and Remus nodded.

“Like the clues he would leave us?” Remus said quietly.

Luke went for the seal—only to have it snatch out of his hands.

He looked up, eyes wide, and found the unfamiliar brunette—Logan, Remus had said—staring back at him, at all of them, with wild green eyes.

“Logan,” Leo said, voice filled with surprise. “What the hell are you—”

But Logan just backed up towards the door. There was a familiar click, and the flame of a lighter appeared in his other hand.

“Hey—” Luke stepped forward, panicked, but Saint’s palm pushed against his chest.

“Don’t,” Saint said softly, for Luke’s ears only.

“That’s mine,” Luke snarled, shoving Saint away.

“Yeah, well I have something I want, too,” Logan snapped, and then looked at Saint. He held the flame closer to the envelope. “You want to know what this says? Then—”

“So do you, Logan,” Saint said. “You need that money. You know you do. The Carrows know it, too.”

“You owe me something first. I want Finn.”

“I don’t owe you,” Saint replied evenly. “I don’t owe anyone. That’s kind of my general idea in life, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Logan faltered, and the flame slipped close enough to the envelope to make smoke trail, but when Luke stepped forward, Logan took another step back. He looked small, framed by the grand desk and leather chairs. Small and scared.

“You left us in there,” he finally whispered, and Luke thought he heard Saint’s breathing stop and hold, like a punch to the gut.

“He was seven years old,” Sirius growled, and Luke didn’t know what they were talking about, was done waiting.

“Do you know the last time I talked to my dad?” Luke said, voice raising. He glanced upstairs, careful of his mother despite her pills, and dropped it to a deadly whisper again. “He’s not allowed calls. Not until the investigation’s over. This could—” Luke hesitated at putting his wildest, most desperate hope into words. “This could prove he’s—”

“Do you think I give a shit about the last time you talked to your daddy?” Logan snarled just as harshly. “When’s the last time I talked to mine? Oh. Right.”

“Please,” Luke heard the word rip out of his throat before he could help it, but Logan wasn’t even looking at him. Logan’s eyes were on Saint.

“Help me get Finn out. The windows are barred now. There are alarms, I’ve seen them.”

“I didn’t use a window,” Saint replied.

“Then show me how you did it.”

“You won’t be able to get in the way I got out.”

“Then do it for me.”

If Luke was begging, so was Logan.

“Fuck, I’ll help you,” Luke shouted. “Just don’t. Please. My father—”

“You don’t know shit about Saint Clair,” Logan snapped, then looked back at Saint. “We both know where he is. Why I haven’t seen him. Saint—”

“All right,” Saint said, voice calm. His brown eyes reminded Luke of stormy seas, ruddy with stirred up sand. “All right, Logan. Just don’t burn the letter.”

“Promise,” Logan said.

Saint laughed, cold and clear. “What has a promise ever meant to either of us? I said I would. Take it or leave it.”

There was a terrifying moment in which Luke worried that the letter would go up in flames anyway. That he would never know what his father had wanted him to have, wanted him to know. He didn’t know Logan, didn’t trust him.

The lighter clicked off and Logan held out the envelope. Luke took it and gave Logan a shove towards the door for good measure.

“Get out,” he said. “Get out of my house.”

“What does the letter say?” Logan replied firmly. “It could be about the map.”

Luke laughed, and it rang a close twin to Saint’s in his own ears. “You should have thought about that before you held it hostage for your orphan friend.”

Logan took a step forward, mouth opening to protest, but Luke was bigger than him, stronger and taller. He met him chest to chest.

“I said get out.”

“Logan,” Saint sighed. “Listen to him.”

Leo stepped forward then, a gentle hand on Logan’s fiery frame. Logan simmered for another moment, but let Leo lead him from the room, lighter still clutched in his fist. Remus followed them with a whispered, I’m sorry that Luke barely heard.

He faintly heard Saint say something to Sirius, who followed Remus.

Saint, the only one left in the room now, looked at Luke steadily. Luke expected some sort of joke, or a snarky remark about the desperation Luke had shown—something he tried to never let slip through. He didn’t care what it was. He just wanted to be alone, to have this room feel like his father’s again. Instead of a crime scene. Instead of a lead, or a pin-point on a map. Just his father’s familiar room.

Instead Saint tossed him something that shone—his keys.

“Let us know, if you want,” Saint said simply, and held the gold watch out. Luke took it with shaking fingers, watching him go.

Then, he looked down at the letter, at his name in his father’s familiar scrawl. He peeled back the seal with a lump forming in his throat.

~

Remus’ steps slowed to a stop when he saw who was waiting for him at the end of his dock in the five-AM light.

Sirius had his flip-flops beside him, his feet dangling over the edge into the water, the Wolfsbane rocking gently in the early morning waves to his left.

“Sirius?” Remus called, more so that the first thing Sirius felt wasn’t the shaking of his footsteps than anything else.

Sirius jerked around, startled either way, and scrambled to stand.

“Hi,” he said. “Or, morning.”

“Morning,” Remus laughed a little, glancing at the boat. “I…is this you taking me up on my offer?”

Sirius ran a hand through his thick black hair. “Ah, well, I’m here to say sorry about last night. Dragging you into it and all. That wasn’t fair of Saint, but he’s…I don’t know what he is right now. I usually do but…not this time, I guess.”

Remus nodded, trying to buy himself time to figure out what to say. He stepped onto his boat and took a rope in hand, just for something to do. To hold onto. Sirius had spoken the words plainly enough. There was nothing about Saint and himself being together, but Remus still sensed some sort of intimacy that wasn’t quite friendship, just as he had at the museum.

“It’s okay,” Remus said. “All’s well that ends well, right?”

Sirius’ smile was a small, relieved one. “I guess so. Still. He was on some sort of mission. He still hasn’t told me anything, so.”

Remus leaned back from stowing his phone and keys securely in a hatch. “He doesn’t seem like the type of person you can really get things out of.”

“That’s true,” Sirius laughed, and it was easier this time. “Anyway, I’ll let you…I just wanted to say.”

Remus wanted to ask again, if Sirius would come with him, but Sirius was already backing away and so Remus just nodded.

“Thanks.”

He turned after he said it, breathing in the ocean air and trying to still himself, to let the familiarity of his boat and sails wash over him. He would find someone. Maybe they weren’t Sirius Black. Maybe they just weren’t here. Maybe he’d fall in love on the water, or in a classroom, or—

“Can I?” Remus heard Sirius say, and turned to look. Sirius had stopped half way down the dock.

Remus raised an eyebrow.

“Take you up on your offer?”

Remus smiled, even if his hope at Sirius’ words paired with the thought of Saint made his heart a little tender.

“Of course you can,” Remus said.

Sirius jogged towards him with a grin of his own, but he paused before he stepped onto the Wolfsbane, looking down. Remus wondered for a moment if it was the gap over the water, but Sirius had said he sailed, too, he’d said—

Remus understood. He unmoored the nose. “Get that rope back there if you finally want to do something other than watch.”

Sirius jumped to unknot the rope with ease, and then stepped onto the waves beside Remus, using one of his feet to push them away from the dock. Remus let them drift a moment, feeling for the wind. It was quiet for now, but he could see rougher waves out past the point.

“Is it just yours?” Sirius asked as he watched Remus with the tiller.

“Yep, birthday present,” Remus patted the side. “My baby.”

Sirius smiled. “It’s a beautiful boat.”

The wind began to pick up as they got farther from the land, pushing towards the open water. Remus’ heart seemed to pick up with it and, glancing at Sirius, who looked contemplative and—well, beautiful—Remus didn’t think it was merely the sea’s doing.

Remus had never thought too much about Sirius Black. Sirius had been there one day, gone the next, and in the run-ins at James’ house once Sirius had started working there, he had been a suddenly handsome face. Grown into himself and strong from his outdoor work. In turn, Remus always became suddenly awkward around the boy who obviously didn’t like Gods. He and James poked fun at each other, he and Luke were downright hostile, and Remus didn’t know where he fit in.

He hoped the water and the Wolfsbane would do some talking for him, and maybe some listening, too.

They didn’t speak as they began to fly. The pontoons skimmed the waves and the wind would have snatched their voices away, but Remus swore he heard Sirius laugh.

Sirius knew how to sail, too. He breathed it all in, just as Remus did, and they worked together, balancing and pulling and leaning out to trace their fingers along the water’s surface. It felt as warm as a bath against the cool air.

Remus didn’t let them go too far out, he had to be back, but he would have. He would have sailed right to the horizon with Sirius without looking back.

As the wind died down, as they turned around, Remus felt something different. Like a wind change between the two of them. They grinned at each other, flushed with it, and as the wind cut down more, as they past the point, Sirius’ turned self-conscious but it didn’t disappear like before.

The boat settled into a glide towards the shore. Remus let his feet dangle in the water.

“So, the treasure,” Remus asked, because Sirius looked hesitant to talk, sitting there soundly on the other side of the boat. “Do you think it’s real?”

“Fuck if I know,” Sirius replied, and Remus laughed. “But if Saint thinks it’s worth it…I’ll try to go along with it.”

Remus nodded, taking that in. Saint. The mention of him slowed his heart back to a glide along with the boat. Remus cleared his throat and Sirius looked back at him from the horizon questioningly.

“What was that thing with—Logan? I mean, you don’t have to tell me but…”

Sirius took a long breath. “Logan has someone, Finn, inside Saint Clair. Finn helped him escape. And I don’t know if it’s guilt that’s making him help to get Finn out, or something more, but…Saint's the one who can help.”

“Because he escaped.”

Sirius nodded. “Right.”

“Is it complicated?” Remus asked. “Like, is he worried he won’t be able to do it twice?”

Sirius shook his head. “It’s not complicated.”

He was silent for a moment, and Remus didn't want to push him. He waited, seeing if Sirius would continue.

“Saint walked right out the front door,” Sirius finally finished, and looked at Remus. “I think he’s worried because it wasn’t a grand escape, even if he tells it that way. Even if he makes it seem like he climbed walls or something. He’s worried because…because it was a fluke. Sometimes there are doors you can’t walk back through.”

Sirius said the last sentence heavily, as if he had a door of his own. Remus guessed that maybe everyone did.

“So, what’s he going to do for Finn and Logan?”

Sirius just shook his head again. “I have no idea. But I’ll help him in any way that I can.” Half a smile raised Sirius’ mouth. “If he lets me.”

~

“No.”

“Tell me,” Sirius demanded. Saint just rolled his eyes and popped a sweet potato fry into his mouth.

“Tell us,” Dorcas cut in from her place beside Marlene.

“Right,” Sirius said. “Sorry.”

“Saint,” Marlene sighed. “If you’re not going to tell us, it’ll make us think you have no plan at all.”

“Who invited the God?” Saint said airily.

“My girlfriend,” Dorcas scuffed the back of his head.

“Not for long she’s not,” Saint replied, and at Dorcas and Marlene’s expressions, waved a hand. “Come on. She’s going to college, Dor, you’re not…don’t tell me you haven’t talked about it.”

“We—” Dorcas began, but flushed and closed her mouth. Sirius glanced at Marlene, whose eyes were firmly down towards her burger.

“Stop trying to change the subject,” Sirius sighed.

“I’m not, I’m just telling everyone what to expect.”

“Saint,” Sirius leaned forward. “How are you going to get Finn out of Saint Clair? You said last time—”

Saint cut in quickly, “I say a lot of things to you that are just for you, Black.”

“Well, I don’t know what to do with what you said,” Sirius replied. “Come on. Please. Is it because you don’t know? Is that why you won’t say anything?”

Saint stayed quiet, looking down at his food. “I know. We’ll just have to see if it works.”

“Saint,” Dorcas leaned forward and Saint turned his palm up for her hand. He knew they were trying to help. “Babe, we just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“You mean you want to make sure it’s not too insane.”

Sirius nodded. “That, too.”

“Can’t you just rest assured that I’m doing this for myself, too?” Saint said. “I’ll get Finn out, Logan will calm the fuck down, and maybe Luke will let us know about the treasure.”

“Who gives a fuck about this treasure?” Dorcas said harshly.

“It probably doesn’t even exist,” Sirius added.

“You want off this island, like you said? Then you give a fuck.”

Sirius began to shake his head. “It’s not—” he said, but Saint pushed on, voice raising.

“We’ll get Finn out, we’ll get Luke’s help, we’ll get the map, we’ll find my mom—”

Saint stopped talking, frozen by the words that had ripped out of him of their own accord.

Sirius, Dorcas, and Marlene’s eyes were wide. Pity. The word seemed to hang in the air.

“The treasure, I meant,” Saint managed. “We’ll find the treasure and…”

“Saint…” Dorcas said, and when he looked at her…Pity. “Do you know where she is?”

Saint was furious with himself for the slip. He was looking for Sirius. He wanted the treasure for Sirius, he didn’t need it for himself. He didn’t need anything, especially not people who left. Not his mom, not Sirius.

“I don’t need help with Saint Clair,” Saint said and pushed his chair back, leaving them staring at each other across the table.

~

Saint hadn’t let any of them come. He didn’t want anyone here to see him tremble and shake at doing the one thing he had always promised himself he would never do. The one thing he didn’t think he could do.

But, thinking about it, the trick wasn’t getting out. Anyone could walk out the door. The nuns needed it that way, for business. For the appearance of normalcy. The real trick was getting inside without being let in. The way to keep secrets, after all, wasn’t keeping everyone out. Walls begged to be breached. The secret was to filter the truth. Let people see half, a quarter, or different parts at different times. The trick was getting in to see the whole picture.

Maybe Saint was half of Saint Clair, keeping his cards close to his chest.

The offices. He needed to get the the offices, and then he needed to get to Finn. In and out—just not through the door this time.

“What’s the plan?” said a voice just behind him, and Saint closed his eyes.

Sirius.

“I told you not to come,” Saint said.

“And I told me yes,” Sirius parroted. They rolled their eyes at each other even as Sirius rested a gentle hand over Saint’s where it was clenched over his own knee. They crouched beside each other, staring at Saint Clair in the darkness. It was two in the morning, maybe a little past it now, and Saint wanted everyone to be asleep.

He looked towards the chimney. It was wide and old fashioned. It would be too hot for them to be using it tonight.

“Jesus Christ,” Sirius sighed, following his gaze.

“The windows are barred. The doors are alarmed. I’ve cleaned that thing, I know it’s big.”

“Yeah, everything looks big to a seven year old,” Sirius countered.

“Guess we’ll find out.”

“And getting out?” Sirius asked.

“Alarms don’t go off if you open the door from the inside. There’s a kitchen door around the back. We’ll use it. We just have to get in.”

Sirius nodded slowly, and then asked, “Your mom?”

Saint pressed his lips together. He needed to get to the office, and then to Finn, and then out.

He started forward towards the drain pipe, just like on Luke’s house, and didn’t look to see if Sirius was following him.

~

Marlene didn’t like seeing that contemplating look at Dorcas’ face. Dorcas was chewing on her lip, eyes staring at the movie playing on Marlene’s laptop, but she was somewhere else entirely. Marlene put her pencil down at wiggled her toes, which were in Dorcas’ lap. Dorcas blinked and looked at her.

“Don’t listen to Saint,” Marlene said. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

But even saying that ate at her. Marlene thought of the acceptance email, of California and Berkeley, buried in her inbox right now. Tell her, said everything inside, but Dorcas already had that look on her face. The worrying, I-want-everything-that’s-good-for-you-regardless-of-what-it-means-for-me-or-us look.

Marlene didn’t want to see that look. She’d seen it the first time her father had banned her from seeing a Salazar girl. They had been fifteen and Dorcas had offered to stop, and Marlene had kissed the idea right out of her mouth, right out of existence.

This was different. She couldn’t kiss college away. She didn’t want to. But she also wanted Dorcas, and California felt far, far away.

Dorcas chewed on her lip some more, then rubbed a soothing thumb over Marlene’s ankle. “We haven’t really talked about it, though.”

“I know,” Marlene said softly. She pushed herself up and set her sketchbook aside before reaching over to close the laptop, cutting the actor off in mid-sentence. “I guess I’m sort of…avoiding it.”

“We are, you mean,” Dorcas offered her a small smile. “I…I know we said we wanted to just have our summer, and I do want that. But I think I would feel better knowing what you think. About, you know…about when you do start hearing back.”

Marlene looked down as she whispered, “I got into Berkeley.”

A short sucked-out sound of silence filtered in between them for a moment. Marlene looked up.

“I should have said,” Marlene sighed. “I know I should have. I just…”

“Sweetheart,” Dorcas sighed, and then Marlene was pressed back onto the bed, Dorcas’ hard kisses bringing a hot blush to her cheeks. “That’s amazing.”

Marlene hummed against Dorcas’ mouth, a sad-happy sound, and wound her fingers into her hair as Dorcas kissed along her jaw. “It can be as amazing as it wants, but it’s really far away. And you like it here, and—”

“I like you,” Dorcas said, and pushed herself onto her forearms so she could look down at Marlene. “Marls, the question about us was never a debate about you following your dreams and going to college, just like you want. The question lies with me. I don’t know how to pull off following you yet, but I’m working on it.”

Marlene looked up at her and felt tears join the heat within, felt her voice wobble. “I’ll miss you. I want you to be safe, and I want you to be with me.”

Dorcas’ kiss was softer this time. “Me too.”

Marlene enjoyed it for a moment, relief bubbling in her chest, until Dorcas began laughing into her mouth.

“Maybe the boys will find that treasure and give me a piece of it.”

Marlene laughed, too. “God, if that’s our best option…”

They wound tighter together, snuggling down into Marlene’s quilt. Dorcas pressed her forehead against Marlene’s.

“Whatever I can do, I’ll do it,” Dorcas said. “I want you, wherever we are.”

Marlene just kissed her again.

~

Sirius was noisier on the climb than Saint would have liked, but they made it to the slanted roof without trouble, standing on its apex to stare down into the soot-dark.

“Is this really going to work?” Sirius whispered.

“It could.”

“Why not climb the fence? Maybe that door is open.”

“Too loud.”

“Why didn’t you let Logan come with us?”

Saint huffed out an annoyed breath. “Because if this goes wrong, what Finn did was for nothing. If this goes really wrong, at least there would still be one of us on the outside who knows what it looks like inside,” Saint stared out at the trees and bit of coast they could see by moonlight from here. “One of us who doesn’t return every night, that is.”

Saint went down the chimney first, one step at a time. The stones and rusted iron rungs provided easy enough footholds, they just had to hope no one was having a midnight cup of tea when they reached the bottom. He looked up once, blinking through the fine grit of ash that seemed to hang in the air, at Sirius’ face, the silver moonlight like a halo around his dark hair.

And Saint kept climbing down. He went slowly, listening hard. If someone was down there, they’d hear him, and then he’d hear them, and he could scramble back up the chimney and out of sight. Once he was down, however, who knew what they would do to keep him that way. He could practically taste the heavy sleep of Crucio, and his stomach rolled against the images it brought back. The many different families—fathers, siblings, and mothers. So many mothers that he didn’t even know which had been his own anymore.

He hated them for it. He hated them for thinking he wanted that.

Saint’s trembling foot slipped on the last hold and he tumbled out, only barely withholding a cry as the log holders scraped heavily across his side.

“Saint,” came Sirius’ harsh whisper from above him, and Saint waved a hand beneath the flue to show he was okay, then pushed himself up from the now ashy floor, gripping his side.

He knew this room too well. He knew it through the over-active eyes of a five year old. He knew it through the only slightly more alert gaze of his seven year old self.

It was smaller than he remembered. Shabbier than it had seemed then, with its hard couches and children’s books, its desk by the window that still held a letter opener that he had eyed a few times, wondering if he could fight his way out like heroes did in the books he read. Now, he willed all to stay quiet as he walked over and picked up the dull knife. He hated the sight of it.

Sirius came after him, more smartly, landing feet first.

“You could have fucking impaled yourself,” Sirius whispered.

“I didn’t, though,” Saint said, and looked at his ribs. The cuts stung, but the bleeding didn’t look too bad, just enough to dot uneven lines across his t-shirt.

Sirius lifted his shirt to see, and passed a careful thumb near the worst of them, his other a familiar weight on the side of Saint’s neck.

“Let’s go,” Saint whispered.

“Wait,” Sirius said, and turned Saint’s gaze gently to meet his own.

“We don’t have all the time in the world,” Saint began, but Sirius just shook his head, silencing him.

“Listen to me,” Sirius whispered. “All right? Just this once. Just listen to me.”

Saint closed his eyes briefly. “We don’t have time to talk.”

That only succeeded in bringing Sirius’ other hand to his cheek. “If something goes wrong, you just run.” Sirius reached down and took the knife, setting it back on the desk. “Don’t think about me. They can’t keep me.”

“They’ll give you to your parents,” Saint warned.

“I don’t care,” Sirius said. “They can’t keep me. They could try to keep you and I won’t let that happen.”

Saint looked up at Sirius. The only person he could ever remember caring. Saint didn’t like that a side effect of being cared about was caring back, didn’t like that risk…but he liked Sirius.

“You’re leaving anyway,” Saint said. “It doesn’t matter where I am.”

“I never said that and you’re wrong.”

“But you will say it.”

Saint turned away, keeping a hand laced with Sirius’ to pull him towards the dorms. He knew the words sounded accusing and regretful, but he only half meant them that way. Sirius deserved to go.

Sirius didn’t respond. It wasn’t the moment, and they needed to listen for other things.

The dorms came up on their left. Boys to one side of the hall, girls to the other. Saint paused, looking in.

You’ll sleep here with the rest of the boys, Sebastian. Be a good boy and make your bed every morning and you’ll get a treat with breakfast. Chocolate milk, how does that sound?

“Was this you?” Sirius whispered, and Saint shrugged.

“I slept all over this place,” Saint breathed to Sirius. “I’d sneak into the other dorms, the attic, the reading room. I was just…” Saint turned away, unable to stand the softly rising and falling chests of the boys within. “I was just trying to find a place where I felt like myself. Maybe it wasn’t the place, though.”

Maybe it was the dreams. Maybe the drug.

“Maybe it’s just me,” Saint said.

Grimmauld was the closest he had ever gotten, the most settled he’d ever felt. He loved the ocean, and his gold draped vanity, and Sirius always beside him. But there was still—something. A misplaced, tweaked something inside of him that was feeling around in the dark for a comfortable position. Saint didn’t even know what he was looking for, but he did know that it was too dark to find it right now. Sirius had been the first gleam of bright, a pin-prick of a star, a friend, a lover, and a safe place. But stars weren’t a moon or a sun. He needed light to see.

“Let’s go,” Saint said. “This way.”

They walked the halls carefully, listening after nearly every step. Saint knew that the nuns slept at the other end of the house, but that they woke to check in on the children. He couldn’t remember when, though. With the Crucio, his young age, and the late hour, the nights had felt the same and endless. He’d shuffled around like a small ghost, trying to escape the unfamiliar dream-faces. They’d only caught him a few times. A slap on the wrist. Solitary.

That’s why he nearly jumped when they heard the first footsteps. He was seven again, haunting this place and being haunted in return. Saint froze, eyes on the bend in the hallway.

“Here,” Sirius whispered, and together they ducked into a room—the offices, Saint realized—and behind the open wooden door. They huddled together, barely daring to breathe as the footsteps got closer.

“Sirius,” Saint breathed, and didn’t realize he was trembling again until Sirius’ arms wrapped around his shoulders.

“Shh,” Sirius hushed him.

The footsteps passed right by them, towards the kitchen, Saint realized, and Sirius pressed Saint against him more tightly, no doubt feeling the dry pants that his breathing had turned into. They would be caught. They would be seen. Saint hid his face in Sirius’ neck.

Don’t be a waste of space, boy. Line up, after number six, come on.

He took up too much space here.

Try that again, Sebastian, and you know what happens.

Saint hated that name. He couldn’t remember who had given him that name. His mother? The nuns? What was a name if it was just a number, too? A way to keep track of him. A way to tell him what he was. Orphan boy. Five. Six. Seven. Abandoned. Good. Bad. Asleep. Awake.

Go to sleep now, there’s a good boy.

The hall was silent again and Saint felt Sirius’ embrace ease, felt his hand running soothingly along his spine.

“I’ve got you,” Sirius said the words so quietly they were barely words at all. “Let’s just go. Let’s get out of here.”

“Finn,” Saint rasped.

Saint looked up and saw the protest in Sirius’ eyes. It was wrong of Logan to make you come here.

“I told him to stay away,” Saint said softly. “I needed to come. I needed to come and get out again.”

Saint needed to get rid of some of this damned dark.

Saint pulled away from Sirius carefully and peaked around the door with a dry swallow before walking over to the cabinets. Records. They weren’t in alphabetical order, though. They were numbered.

Saint fingered his cross, looking towards 1-20.

7.

He traced a finger over a key hole dejectedly, and tried the handle anyway. Locked.

“Saint,” Sirius breathed. “Your mom?”

Saint shook his head, clutching his necklace. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I didn’t know you wanted…”

“I don’t,” Saint snapped. “Let’s get Finn.”

The door to solitary was one that Saint knew well. It was a normal door, and the room beyond was a normal room. It was the memories that made it unbearable to see. Almost every kid Saint had known knew what it meant to be in that room. Alone, the wallpaper flowers withered, the bed turned cold, and the ever-changing family members flickered through your mind without anything to counter it. No reality. There was a glass window with the shade pulled. Saint hesitated for a long moment before lifting it up.

“Finn,” he breathed.

Finn’s red hair was fiery against the white bed spread. He was asleep, and Saint swore he could see Finn’s eyelids flicker from here.

Saint wrapped his fingers carefully around the door. The trick was getting in to see the whole picture.

Everything in Saint Clair felt locked from within. Everything in Saint did, too. It had taken years of wandering around at night for Saint to discover that he could open more doors than he had thought. He was still trying doors eight years alter.

The hinges didn’t so much as squeak, and Saint felt like a ghost again.

“Don’t let this close on me,” Saint whispered to Sirius. His voice shook and just one of his feet just barely breaching the threshold.

Sirius held the frame fast and shook his head, leaning forward to press a steady kiss to Saint’s forehead.

Saint crossed the small room in two slow steps and knelt beside the bed, the motion making the punctures on his torso ache. He pressed a hand to Finn’s cheek and stroked a gentle thumb across the freckles on his skin until Finn stirred.

“Bash,” Finn murmured, eyes barely open.

“Hi, Finn,” Saint said softly and gathered Finn into a sloppy sitting position. “Let’s get you out of here, huh? See if you’re worth all of this fucking trouble.”

“Crucio,” was Finn’s only half-spoken reply. “They make it.”

And then Finn went limp again in Saint’s arms.

~

All Logan could taste was sour guilt, despite the heaven Leo had placed on a plate in front of him not too long ago.

For Saint. For Leo. For the letter and even Luke. For the map. The treasure. The Carrows.

Finn.

His heart ached with the thought of seeing him. Of holding him.

“Why weren’t we allowed to go with him?” Logan asked Leo for what he knew was the tenth time, but he couldn’t help it. “I asked him to help me, not go for me.”

“It’s easier to get one person in and out than two?” Leo said. He was puttering around the small kitchen, had been for the last hour, and the entire house smelled like sugar and cinnamon now, replacing the herbs, lemon, and chicken. He didn’t look at Logan when he said it.

He hadn’t looked at Logan much at all since the night at the museum.

Logan watched him taste a bit of what looked like frosting and wet his lips.

“Are you mad at me?” Logan whispered.

Leo’s restless hands paused. Logan watched his chest rise and fall once.

“I’m not mad,” Leo said finally. The heat of the oven had fluffed out his hair. “I mean, I’m not sure if we reached a dead-end or not…and you could have told me you were going to do that. I said I would help you, didn’t I?”

“I needed Ba—Saint,” Logan replied. “But I also…I should have told you. And I shouldn’t have made Saint go. I just want…he’s my family. Finn is my…”

“I understand why you did it,” Leo cut in softly. “I probably would have done worse if I thought that there was something that could save my dad.”

That just made Logan feel even smaller, sitting at the table. Leo glanced at him, gave him a tight smile, then went to the sink and began scrubbing dishes.

“Hey,” Logan said, then rose and strode over to Leo. “Hey, let me clean up.”

“I just need something to do,” Leo said shortly.

“Me, too.”

They stood, their shoulders pressed together. Logan washed. Leo dried. He slipped cinnamon rolls into the oven and then returned. They kept close to each other at the sink and it felt…so normal. Like a home. Leo felt like a home.

“I never really thanked you properly,” Logan said into the now more comfortable silence. “For letting me stay with you. And—I just want to say, and now with Finn…I understand if you want us to leave. I mean, three’s a crowd.”

“You’re welcome here,” Leo said quickly. Logan watched his throat bob. He was looking away again. “You should do what feels best for you, but you’re both welcome here. Just—”

Leo paused, and Logan found himself suddenly desperate to hear what he had to say. He knew he hadn’t been friendly all the time. He knew he’d been selfish. Leo had been nothing but kind. He was funny and warm, teaching Logan how to weld two pieces of metal, talking about the latest book he was reading while he whisked batter and handed Logan different new recipes he was trying out.

Finn would like Leo, Logan thought, and glanced towards the door. Maybe he was about to find out.

“Never mind,” Leo said, and flashed a smile.

Logan went to protest, but then his phone began buzzing madly on the table and he all but lunged for it.

~

Luke stared down at his father’s handwriting.

Luke, it began. And then there was a name.

Pascal Dumais.

There was no mention of himself. There was nothing. Luke had thought this would make him feel better, make it easier. Only, now, he was frustrated to the point of tears. He couldn’t seem to ease the lump that was lodged in his throat. He clutched the paper in his fingers hard enough to tear, willing something else to appear on it. He thought of Felix.

“Well?” said a voice from his window.

“Oh—” Luke flinched, surprised, then cursed at Saint, who was stretched out on his window sill. “Come on. Are you kidding me?”

Saint’s mouth twitched up in a smile, but it was strained. He was sitting awkwardly, tense rather than his usual languid posture.

“What’s wrong with you?” Luke asked hesitantly, trying to discreetly wipe at his face.

“What isn’t?”

Luke spotted the blood between Saint’s fingers and rose. “You’re hurt.”

“I fell down a chimney.”

“Is that a joke?”

“No.”

Luke blinked. “That’s how you got into Saint Clair? And you climbed to my window?”

Saint pulled himself all the way through the window with a soft groan and Luke walked forward, hands hovering near Saint’s shoulders, unsure if he should help.

“The orphan?” he asked instead, then at Saint’s sharp look, “Finn?”

“Sirius is bringing him to Grimmauld.”

“What’s Grimmauld?”

Saint sat down heavily in Luke’s desk chair, hand still pressed to his side. He had what looked like soot on his hands and face. “A place.” He picked up a book. Jane Eyre. “Didn’t take you for a romantic.”

“You’re bleeding all over my room.”

“Lucky you.”

Luke tucked the note into the pocket of his shorts. “Fuck—come here. Jesus.”

He walked into his bathroom and jammed the light switch up, looking back when Saint didn’t follow him. “Come here.”

Saint rose, still holding the book. “I am coming!” Saint quoted, head tilted in a way that made his neck look long. “Wait for me! Oh, I will come!”

“Very funny,” Luke sighed, but the corner of his mouth twitched. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a reader.”

“Why?” Saint said as he stepped out of the darkness of the bedroom and into the yellow-lighted bathroom. His brown eyes took on the soft yellow, too, and he leaned forward as he pushed himself up onto the counter carefully. “Because I don’t buy my books and,” Saint looked down at the book, flipping through it. “Write all over them like you do?”

“Because you didn’t go to school,” Luke said with a raised eyebrow as he ducked for the first aid kit beneath his sink. It was good to have one near during the lacrosse season—or it used to be.

Saint rolled his eyes. “You Gods and your single paths in life. You’re all stupid.”

“Then why are you here?” Luke asked as he unlatched the kit.

“Because this is the last place anyone would look for me,” Saint replied. “And you’re mean.”

“Mean? Are we in seventh grade?” Luke scoffed as he wet a towel in the sink. “I don’t know if it’s healthy to want to be around people who you think are mean to you."

“I just don’t want to talk about it,” Saint said. “And that’s all Sirius will want to do. And I don’t want to. And we don’t have this shit at Grimmauld.”

“Is that where you live?”

Saint just set the book down and reached behind himself to tug his shirt over his head. Luke tried not to stare at Saint’s smooth, light brown skin. He swallowed, busying himself with the bandages and the wet towel again.

“For all the breaking into places you do, maybe you should invest in some band-aids,” Luke said, and glanced down at the finely woven muscle on Saint’s ribs, at the red edges of the slashes. “If you flinch too much, you’re doing this yourself.”

Saint smiled. “Mean.”

“Fuck off,” Luke said, out of reflex, and then pressed his lips together. Saint laughed and then hissed as Luke pressed the towel to the cut.

They were close like this, Luke leaned in to dab the blood away, and then dot it with disinfectant, all while Saint’s muscles jumped beneath the palm he had steadied low on his belly. He could feel Saint watching him, and remembered waking up to those eyes. Saint’s hand in his hair.

“How did you do it?” Luke said into the small space between them. “Get in and out.”

“The chimney.”

So, he was serious.

“What did the letter say?” Saint asked.

Luke glanced up at him warily, but wiped a hand on his shorts before fishing the letter out of his pocket and handing it over. “Do you know who that is?”

Saint read it quietly, and then met Luke’s eyes. Luke was stuck there, pinned like a tack in a map, marking the place to be.

“Yes,” Saint said, and smiled brightly. “I know exactly who this is.”

[meesa-hoe]

An Angel In Beskar

Pairing: Din Djarin x Fem!Reader x Paz Vizsla

Summary: Two Mandalorians find you near death in the middle of a desert on Tatooine and while you’re quick to warm up to the one in the mismatched blue armor, his silver companion is much colder towards you.

Rating: M but later chapters will probably be rated E for sexual content.

Word Count: 4,500

Warnings: Descriptions of hopelessness, violence, trauma, and minor injuries.

Author’s Note: Hey everyone! I’ve been working on this for a while and finally decided to post it here since I noticed there’s not a whole lot of Paz x Reader x Din stories and I absolutely love the ones that I have read. I’m hoping to have the next chapter up in the next week!

There is an established relationship between Paz and Din prior to them finding the reader.

‘May the Maker have mercy on my soul.’

There’s no point in you praying when you’re certain death is about to wrap it’s cold arms around your weak body. After traveling through the unforgiving Tatooine desert for days without water, your body is beginning to shut down and you fear that this will be your last night spent alive on such a cruel planet. Your thin dress and the scarf you had used to cover your face in an attempt to protect yourself from the scorching hot suns is your only source of warmth as you lifelessly lay on the sand and you wonder how long it will take for you to be buried deep underneath the soft granules.

You will soon end up like the ones who had perished in your village after it had been brutally attacked by bandits and raiders just days ago. Though you had barely escaped in one piece, you suddenly wished you had stayed so you could have at least had a quicker death, rather than slowly dying in the middle of nowhere. You had been foolish to think there would be another village nearby and tears finally trickle down your cheeks as you peer up at the moon, an intense feeling of despair seeping all the way down to your heart.

You miss your family.

The silence that surrounds you only makes you sob harder, loneliness eating away at you as you simply long for your family. Despite not living a luxurious life in the tiny village, it never diminished the love you had for the ones close to you. The images play on a loop in your mind--bodies covered in blood and lifeless eyes staring into your soul as you hid from the bandits--and you finally allow the physical and emotional pain to consume you.

In a way, it’s cathartic to let it all out without others being around to judge you, though it also has you longing for a comforting touch, whether that be a firm hug or someone just holding your hand. You’re reminded of the way your parents would comfort you and your siblings when you were younger, their voices always like soothing, cold water during the hottest days of summer and it only has you crying harder.

Once it feels like you can’t cry anymore and you’ve accepted your fate, you rest for the final time.

Hours pass--at least you think that as you barely cling onto life.

You don’t even realize you’re not dead until a quiet, filtered rasp manages to break through the darkness and silence that surrounds you, though your eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds and are nearly impossible to crack open. It’s morning now, or maybe even the afternoon, judging by the way the suns ruthlessly beat down on you.

“How did she manage to get all of the way out here?” That hushed, soothing voice sounds a little further away and you wonder who he’s talking to until two leather digits press against the pulse on your neck. “The nearest village is days away on foot,” The person taking your pulse simply grunts in response and you finally manage to pry your eyes open when your curiosity threatens to overwhelm you. 

Who would be insane enough to trek through a desert on Tatooine?

Your vision is blurred, black dots floating around as you blink several times before it finally clears.

Instantly, you’re face to face with a t-shaped visor and--

A Mandalorian! 

Not just one, but two.

You think the lack of water and the intense heat has you hallucinating.

You had grown up hearing stories of the warriors, your oldest brother telling you how they were the strongest beings in the galaxy and typically not cruel to strangers who were innocent. There had been rumors of one living on Tatooine and as a little girl, you remember praying to the Maker that they would show up and rid your village of all the bandits that would terrorize your family and neighbors.

Even the Gods don’t want anything to do with Tatooine.

If you weren’t so exhausted and weak, you could have cried from relief and begged the two Mandalorians in front of you to save you, though your throat is far too dry and your mouth feels like cotton.

“What are you doing all the way out here, little one?” The blue Mando closest to you questions when he realizes you’re awake and you find that his voice is far more rough and brusque than his companion’s, though it’s not unpleasant in the slightest. After going days with nothing but your own thoughts to keep you company, you’re just happy and relieved to not be be alone

“P-Please... Help,” You manage to speak in a hoarse plea, tears spilling from your eyes as you clutch at the material covering the warrior’s ribs as tightly as you can, afraid that he’s simply going to stand up and leave you there to die. The way he leans in a little closer instantly fills you with hope and even though your face is mostly covered, you pray that he can see the desperation in your eyes and that he’s able to sympathize with you.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now.”

He’s massive and wears scuffed up, dull blue and yellow armor that you think has seen several battles since it was forged; he’s all mismatched and terrifying, but in that moment, you see him as some sort of Beskar angel.

His armor looks far more worn than his companion’s as you lift your gaze to peer at him, though it only has you squinting your eyes in pain as the impossibly bright suns reflect off of the silver Beskar and you simply let your eyelids slip shut once again. You feel a hand touch the thick cloth that covers your cheekbone, your Beskar angel letting out a low hum as he assesses your injuries as much as he can with all of the fabric in the way.

“What are you doing?” The silver warrior questions, his tone now cold and your heart instantly shatters when he continues, “We don’t even know who she is and you want to bring her with us?”

“We can’t just leave her out here to die,” The Mandalorian crouched down next to you doesn’t hesitate to admonish him, his voice filled with sympathy and conviction, “The ship isn’t too far from here and I don’t mind carrying her. Who knows how long she’s been walking through this desert on foot.”

“We can’t just take in every stray you stumble upon. Besides, we don’t know her--what if she’s just another criminal? Tatooine is filled with scum.”

“Look at her!” The blue warrior instantly snaps, his voice tinged with anger towards his companion and you nearly cry upon realizing he’s willing to fight for your survival, “She’s so weak that she can’t even keep her eyes open and she looks injured. Who’s to say she wasn’t running away from a bad situation? Besides, if she does try anything, do you think she could really get the upper hand on two Mandalorians in her condition? She doesn’t even have a single weapon on her!”

You hear an exasperated sigh and before the shiny Mando can put up anymore of a fight, you feel clunky Beskar sliding under your knees while his other arm winds around your shoulders, bringing you off of the hot sand with ease. If your mind wasn’t so hazy, you would have marveled at his sheer strength, but you feel your body relax against his Beskar that has been warmed from the suns.

“If she tries anything, I’m putting her in carbonite.”

Instead of praying to the Maker for mercy like you had hours ago, you find yourself praying that the stories your brother had told you of Mandalorian are true and that these two strangers don’t have cruel intentions with you. The blue one carrying you seems nice enough, but the silver Mando with the quiet voice still has you on edge and you immediately tense up at the thought of essentially being frozen.

“You don’t have any slabs left available because you’re an impatient di’kut,” The blue warrior reminds him, sounding more amused than agitated and you hear a hint of fondness in his gruff voice, “Let’s just get her back to the ship and we’ll find out what happened to her.”

“Fine, but I’m putting the cuffs on her.”

The one carrying you is quick to shoot down that idea, “Unless you want me to give you a concussion, you’re not putting cuffs on her.”

Using all of your strength, you manage to curl your arms around your savior’s neck, your fingers pressing into the soft fabric covering his nape as you whisper out a meek ‘thank you’. It hurts your dry throat but you hope he can detect the genuine gratitude in your hoarse voice, tears filling your eyes as they crack open to peer at the silver Mando who’s trailing behind your savior.

His tilted visor is trained solely on your face, despite the fact that most of your features are covered by your white scarf and you can tell he’s still wary about your presence. For a moment, he fiddles with his cuffs before giving up with a tired sigh and you let your eyelids slip shut when you realize he’s no going to restrain you.

“Shh, little one,” The Mando carrying you intones, his rough voice soothing the ache in your heart as you sniffle, tears soaking your scarf, “It is safe to rest your eyes now. Once we get back to the ship, we’ll get some water and food in your belly again.”

That’s all he has to say for you to slump against his cuirass before you’re being tugged back into unconsciousness once again. You’re in and out of it for most of the journey and every single time you manage to pry your eyes open, the silver Mandalorian’s visor is fixated on you, putting you even more on edge until you fall back asleep again. Even with his gauntlets digging into your knees and shoulders, you find comfort in knowing that you have the protection of at least one Mandalorian and it’s the only thing that lets you rest as peacefully as your hectic mind will allow.

The next time you regain consciousness, it’s to the sounds of the warriors conversing with one another in hushed tones, perhaps in an attempt to not wake you up.

“Do you think it’s okay to take off her face coverings?” Your savior sounds hesitant as fingers graze along the material covering your jaw and something about it is endearing, “What if she has it on for a reason?”

He thinks your culture is similar to his--that you have to keep your identity concealed just like a Mandalorian--and if you weren’t so exhausted and in so much pain, you would have found this amusing. “Not everyone who covers their face does it because they’re sworn to a creed,” The silver Mando sounds just as entertained as you are, the terseness from earlier no longer lingering in his filtered rasp and when you finally open your eyes, you’re surprised to find how relaxed he appears as he sits on a crate adjacent from the cot you are laying on.

Your savior has his back to you as he stares at his companion, “I just don’t want to invade her privacy.”

“She’s probably wearing it to protect her skin from the suns.”

“You think so?”

“Ask her yourself.”

The blue warrior instantly turns to you, his visor tilted to the side as you stare back up at him with wide eyes, suddenly feeling sheepish and shy. Slowly, you manage to sit up on the cot with a pained whimper and reach up to remove your white scarf that is stained with splotches of blood. As soon as the cold air cycling through the ship kisses your warm cheeks, you let your eyelids slip shut with a relieved sigh, the stained fabric that had protected you from the unforgiving suns falling to the metal floor next to your feet.

“You must be thirsty,” The blue Mandalorian’s rough voice has you opening your eyes and you nearly let out with a loud gasp when he offers you his canteen, “Here.”

The water could have been tainted with poison and you wouldn’t have even noticed as you chugged the cold liquid, a few tears escaping your eyes at the immense relief that instantly floods you after going days without a drop of liquid. “What is your name?” He inquires once you’ve sadly finished off all the water, though the one in silver approaches the two of you and retrieves the leather canteen, wandering off to perhaps refill it.

You hesitate to give the stranger an answer, especially after all you’ve been through these past few rotations, but you think if he wanted to hurt you, he would have done it by now and you eventually whisper your name after a pregnant pause. His visor tilts further to the side as you stare at his scuffed up cuirass rather than his helmet, tears filling your eyes when he asks how you ended up in the desert.

“It is okay, little one,” He soothes your pain with that gruff voice as he towers over you, “You’re safe now.”

“M-My village, it--” The blue warrior places a heavy hand on your shoulder as the terrifying memories of your home being burned to the ground play on repeat in your head and something about his firm touch is incredibly comforting, “The raiders they… They killed everyone and burned down all the buildings. My whole f-family--”

You don’t realize the shiny Mandalorian is within earshot until he says something in a foreign language that you don’t recognize, though you think he must have asked about you when your savior repeats your name in a terse voice, along with a few other words. 

“Dank farrik,” The smaller of the two sighs before angrily shoving the canteen into your hands and they continue to speak in their mother tongue, sounding as though they’re arguing.

“D-Did I do something wrong?” You meekly question them after you take several swigs of the cold water, tears still drying on your cheeks as they both gaze at you long enough to cause your nerves to spike even more. Anxiously, you pluck at the loose threads on the hem of your skirts, feeling anxious underneath the intense stares of such strong warriors when you feel the weakest you ever have in your life. The blue warrior angrily shakes his scuffed up helmet before hastily stomping off of the small ship, leaving you alone with the silver, brooding Mandalorian that seems far more awkward around you than his companion.

The ruddy, orange tips of his leather gloves curl against his sides as he silently regards you for a few more moments. 

“Come with me,” He eventually orders with a slight tilt of his helmet, urging you to follow him as you scramble to your bare feet to obey his gentle command. He leads you to the hull of the ship and you nearly cower away from him as he leads you through a small walkway that’s lined with several slabs of carbonite, afraid that you’ve done something wrong. With the blue Mandalorian gone, your mind runs rampant of all the horrible things this stranger can do to you and your gaze lifts to the huge rifle strapped to his back.

You freeze as you wonder how many people he’s killed with it, or if he prefers to use the smaller blaster holstered against his hip.

Upon noticing that you’re not following him, he turns to face you.

“I’m... I’m not going to hurt you,” He quietly promises when he notices your hesitation, his visor lingering on you as you eventually trail right behind him again, still clutching the leather canteen between your clammy palms, “I just want to see if you recognize someone.”

The stranger comes to a stop in front of one of the slabs of carbonite and confusion floods you as he gestures to it like one would offer a prize, though fear and horror immediately has your heart in a frenzy when you recognize the Zabrak frozen in time.

He had been among the many that had terrorized your village for so long.

“W-What is he doing here?!”

“He’s the leader of the group of bandits that burned down your village and he is also a quarry of ours,” He quietly explains in an oddly gentle voice, watching as the canteen slips from your palms and onto the floor of the ship, “We managed to track him down the day after the attack. I am... sorry we were too late.” 

The shiny Mandalorian holds a hand up in an attempt to calm you as panic tugs at your heart to the point where it’s difficult to breathe properly and you quickly back away from the hunter, fleeing further into the ship until you manage to find the refresher. You’re grateful there’s a lock on the door as you sink to the floor, the hunter’s voice calling out to you on the other side of the door, though there’s a sharp ringing noise blaring in your ears that makes it damn near impossible to hear even your own thoughts.

The Mandalorian eventually gives up on trying to get you to exit the refresher and leaves with a defeated sigh. You’re shaking with fear as you keep reminding yourself that the you’re on the same ship with the cruel monster that orchestrated the attack on your little village.

That Zabrak is the reason why your entire family was slaughtered.

And he’s on the same ship with you.

You sit there in solitude for quite some time, listening to the two Mandalorians as they quietly talk to one another in the hull of the ship. The larger of the two must have a naturally loud voice and you can’t stop yourself from smiling when his silver companion occasionally shushes him when he speaks your name. It sounds like they might be arguing about something and you hope it’s not about you, but judging by the irritation in both of their voices, you’re certain they’re trying to figure out what to do with you.

Especially now that you have no home to go back to.

A deep sigh pushes past your lips you as you finally stand, the warriors’ argument ceasing when you move to the sink and turn the water on to splash some of the cool liquid on your face. The stark contrast between the cold water compared to the sonic shower in your home is lovely and cathartic after having gone so long with only ever really having warm water.

There’s a firm knock on the door, the blue warrior calmly reciting your name in an effort to get you to come out, “It’s okay, I just want to talk with you.” 

Dread floods your frantic heart as you dry your face off with the sleeve of your dress before hesitantly cracking the door open to stare at his scuffed up cuirass, too afraid that if you look at his helmet, you’ll only breakdown again.

“I am sorry for your losses, little one,” The Mandalorian sighs, holding his hand out for you to take in a friendly gesture that has you opening the door all the way. “I know all too well the grief of losing loved ones,” You take hold of his hand and he immediately strokes a firm thumb along your knuckles, the foreign touch comforting as he guides you out of the refresher and to one of the crates so you can sit down.

“Are...” You hesitate as you finally peer up at his tilted visor, fear wrapping around you like a vice, “Are you two going to leave me here?”

A sigh escapes him and your eyes widen when he rests a leather palm on the side of your neck, his thumb grazing along your jaw as he takes in your appearance for several moments. Though you’ve only been in the presence of the two warriors for a couple hours, you realize just how different their personalities are. Your Beskar-clad angel is massive, loud, and rough around the edges, yet somehow so gentle around you, while the silver warrior is placid, quiet, and constantly brooding, wanting nothing to do with you. 

You can’t help but to wonder what their relationship to one another is, if they’re simply close friends or something more, given how they’re simultaneously comfortable and dysfunctional around each other.

“No, we’re not just going to leave you in the middle of nowhere,” He sounds oddly sad as he pulls you from your thoughts, his voice the quietest you’ve heard from him so far, “We can either drop you off somewhere safer or you can stay with us for a little while and help out with certain things on the ship.”

You don’t hear the silver Mandalorian descending from the cockpit, his visor on the two of you as shock courses through you. “Y-You would let me stay?” His fingers twitch against your neck upon hearing the way your voice shakes, your eyes burning at the kindness he’s displaying, “But... I don’t think the other Mandalorian really wants me here. He doesn’t trust me.”

His blue pauldrons slump and you resist the urge to reach out and trace a silver indentation on the worn armor, “It’s not that he doesn’t trust you, we’re just not used to being around people who don’t want to kill us.”

You contemplate his words thoroughly as his thumb continues to stroke your jawline and after going several days without anyone to talk to or share your fear with, the touch is a warm welcome. “Well, after everything that happened to my village, I don’t think I have it in me to hurt anyone, let alone kill,” Your own shoulders slump, eyelids slipping shut as you remember how scared you had been as you hid yourself from the bandits underneath a pile of bloody, lifeless bodies.

You don’t realize you’re shaking until the silver Mandalorian makes his presence known by softly saying a word in what you think is their mother tongue, instantly earning his companion’s unwavering attention.

“Vizsla.”

You quickly pull away and wipe the tears from your flushed cheeks, a heavy hand lingering on your shoulder as the quiet Mandalorian speaks in that gentle rasp that sounds softer than usual and you feel bashful when his visor lowers to regard you. 

“I set the coordinates for the next stop,” He appears awkward as his fingers flex against his thighs, his visor still fixated on you as he offers you a sharp nod. The blue warrior chuckles, though you’re not sure why as his companion approaches the two of you, seeming to tense up a little more and you’re certain that the silver Mando hates you already.

“This is your last chance for us to drop you off at the nearest village,” He warns you as the heavy-infantry warrior gives your shoulder a firm squeeze, as if trying to give you some of his strength even though you feel devastatingly weak, “Otherwise you’re stuck with us until further notice. We can’t guarantee your safety.”

You try your hardest to appear tough in front of the hunter, though his helmet tilts to the side with what feels like amusement as you awkwardly shift on your feet, “I… I have no family left and nowhere else to go. I would rather be with you two than have to suffer alone in an unfamiliar village that may or may not be attacked by cruel people again.”

He hesitates, visor shifting between you and the Mandalorian at your side, before nodding and making his way back to the cockpit without another word, pulling a sigh from the blue warrior as he turns back to you, tilting his helmet in the direction of the ladder. “Come on, little one,” He helps you off the crate before guiding you to the cockpit, following close behind as you push yourself up the ladder. Before you can say anything else, you’re interrupted by an intense rumble coming from your empty stomach and you pray that he didn’t hear it, though judging by his snort of laughter, your prayers were unanswered.

“Once we make the jump into hyperspace we’ll get you some food. Flying can be a lot if you’re not used to it and I don’t want you throwing up all over the cockpit.”

A warmth blossoms across your cheeks as the metal doors slide open, his palm still covering the small of your back as he urges you to sit in one of the unoccupied co-pilot chairs. You quickly buckle in as the brooding hunter flicks some switches on the console, seeming completely at ease as his blue companion lazily plops down in the chair next to you, the two of them not bothering with their seatbelts. Briefly, you wonder how long they’ve been doing this--traveling with one another--and with how sure of himself the silver Mando appears as he easily guides the ship off the sandy ground, you think it’s been quite a while.

“Have you ever been off Tatooine before?” The blue warrior asks you when he notices how tightly you’re clutching your seatbelt the further the ship ascends and you force yourself to relax your stiff fingers. “N-No,” You quietly inform him, tearing your gaze away from the windows to peer at him instead, “I lived in that village for all my life. When... When everything happened with the bandits, I wasn’t sure where to go, so I just ran.”

His visor tilts to the side and as he continues to speak, you can’t stop yourself from wondering if he’s doing it to distract you as the ship breaks the atmosphere of the sandy planet. “Well, it’s a good thing we happened to be close by since the nearest city was at least four more cycles away on foot,” This information makes you shudder and instantly, you grow quiet, knowing that there was no way you would have ever made it if they hadn’t shown up when they did.

He seems to notice your melancholic disposition and is quick to change the subject, his filtered voice melting into something more lighthearted that has you weakly smiling at his visor. “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re here,” He tilts his helmet to where his silver companion is piloting the ship into space, “He doesn’t exactly make for the best company sometimes, always brooding and complaining. Besides, you’re far prettier to look at.”

Your cheeks immediately grow warm at his sudden coyness, though it only seems to exasperate the other Mandalorian as he sighs, his silver helmet shaking as starlight reflects off of the pretty Beskar.

As the old, rickety ship makes the jump to hyperspace, causing a queasy sensation in the pit of your belly, you think that maybe the two of them don’t make for bad company at all.

Perhaps there is some force in the galaxy that took mercy on your soul after all.

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

Hold On Tight, Learn To Behave (Ao3)

[Wenzhou one-shot set post-canon, after episode 36 but before the bonus - NSFW and a quick warning as well for some blood/rough sex]

@evilteddybear requested: I’d love WKX and ZZS to have a conversation on all they’ve hidden from one another by the end of the series. WKX lied about his death, then ZZS, then WKX again. Talking isn’t dramatic enough for TV so they never reach true honesty. They love each other but also hurt each other. And I am not sure that WKX ever realizes that hurting himself hurts ZZS too.

and an Anon requested: I would love to see something set post-canon where ZZS's body is like a live-wire where instead of it being hard (lol) to get off, he manages it really really easy bc suddenly everything has come back and it’s A LOT. I just wanna see WKX fuck several orgasms out of ZZS (literally or in other ways) and ZZS being a mess about it bc holy shit he can FEEL again.

(special thanks/shoutout to @omgpurplefattie for suggesting that these two prompts go well together, you gave me the idea to combine them!)

--

“Lao Wen!”

Zhou Zishu sits up sharply, tongue still locked to the roof of his mouth from shouting his lover’s name, and he raises trembling hands to scrub tiredly at his face.

“Ah-Xu?” Wen Kexing’s voice is sleep-ragged at his side and Zhou Zishu does his best to slow his breathing, to try to stop his heart from pounding in his chest. He tries to stop seeing his zhiji dead right in front of his eyes, but if it’s not the sight of him falling off a cliff then it’s that of him lying dead and still in a burning shed, and if it’s not either of those two haunting memories then it’s the most recent, that of opening his eyes to find Wen Kexing fading right in front of him, hand in hand as his qi drained out of him like water through a sieve. A sob manages to escape his throat despite his best efforts and Wen Kexing is on him in an instant.

“Ah-Xu!” he gasps as he sits up and wraps long arms around him, hugging Zhou Zishu close to his chest. “What is it? What happened?”

Zhou Zishu knows even as he does it that it’s petty, but he pushes Wen Kexing away. Not as strongly as he has in the past, perhaps, but he does it, an elbow to his lover’s side that makes him wince and loosen his grip though he still doesn’t let go entirely.

Zhou Zishu’s hands curl into tight fists in the blankets still covering their laps and he tries to forget about Wen Kexing’s hands, ice cold and limp in his grip as Zhou Zishu had scrambled to find some way to pass his qi back. His arms remember the weight of Wen Kexing’s corpse, the way it had felt to gather his lifeless body close to his chest and bury his face in that silver-white hair, the only outward sign of the strain Wen Kexing had forced himself through just to make Zhou Zishu immortal - with no regard for his own life, or for how empty Zhou Zishu would find the world without his zhiji at his side.

And mourning these incidents feels so strange when the man himself is not only alive and perfectly fine at his side, but at fault for each and every one. It’s this thought that sends him staggering from their bed to shove his feet into his shoes.

“Ah-Xu wait, where are you going? It’s the middle of the night,” Wen Kexing points out like he doesn’t already know it. It doesn’t take Zhou Zishu long to find his outer robes to shrug on over the layer he sleeps in and he doesn’t even bother tying them shut before he stalks from the room and out into the rest of the sprawling armory around them.

He hears Wen Kexing curse and tumble out of bed behind him but he doesn’t stop to wait for him, he just starts wandering in an attempt to soothe the itching under his skin. In the aftermath of everything, after Zhou Zishu had found a way to pass their refined qi back and forth, after Wen Kexing had remained unconscious for over a month recovering from nearly fizzling out into nothing, they’ve been too happy about being reunited in the past few days since he woke for Zhou Zishu to find space to comfortably fit the fact that he’s angry as well. It hardly feels fair to say anything now, and he’s been forcing himself not to give a voice to the ugly thing in his chest mainly because he feels that he knows what Wen Kexing will say. That he lived, that they’re here now, that they finally have as long as they want to be together so why spoil it with unhappy things?

And Zhou Zishu is trying, but it’s so hard. He shoves it all away in his waking hours but then it comes back to haunt him in his sleep and he has to watch his zhiji die over and over again, every single fucking night.

Zhou Zishu comes to a stop at random and begins idly running his hand over the books on the closest shelf, searching for something he hasn’t read yet, or even just something he read so casually first as to be able to enjoy it a second time. Anything for a distraction, anything to try to get rid of the sourness of the bile rising in his throat from the remembered panic of opening his eyes, his senses fully restored, only for the first thing he felt properly since the application of the Nails to be his lover’s dead body. Well, nearly-dead, but it had certainly felt close enough to his newly awakened senses.

Wen Kexing finds him as he’s still brushing dust off of the contents of one of the cubbyholes in the shelf.

“Ah-Xu,” he calls, quiet in the gloom of the sparse few lanterns and the moonlight filtered through vents in the mountainside high above their heads, reflected and magnified by a neatly hidden collection of mirrors far above their heads. “There isn’t light enough to read by tonight. What are you doing?”

“Go back to bed.”

“Ah-Xu -”

Zhou Zishu moves without conscious thought when Wen Kexing reaches for him, fingers just catching on his sleeve before Zhou Zishu whips around to grab him and pin him to the shelves, a furious glare in his damp eyes. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scuffle isn’t nearly enough to wind either one of them, but they’re both breathing hard anyway into the scant space between them. Perhaps Zhou Zishu shouldn’t be surprised to find that it only takes the span of a single breath for Wen Kexing’s concerned gaze to go steely, rising to meet the fury he must find in Zhou Zishu’s glare.

“Go ahead,” Wen Kexing challenges with a haughty jerk of his chin. “What is it?”

It’s easier like this, with Wen Kexing seemingly angry right back at him. This is not his Lao Wen, this is the Chief of Ghost Valley - fitting, when he feels less like Ah-Xu and more like the leader of the Window of Heaven, full of a cold sense of merciless righteousness that usually ends with blood on his hands.

“I’m tired of dreaming about all the times you ripped my fucking heart out,” Zhou Zishu finally manages to spit and when Wen Kexing bares his teeth at him in a parody of a smile it’s almost a shock to see his teeth gleaming white rather than stained pink with someone else’s blood.

“Is that so? The feeling is mutual.”

“How many times would you have continued to make me watch you die if we hadn’t trapped ourselves in here?”

“You trapped us here with your avalanche trick, and I would have kept doing it as many times as necessary to keep you alive!” Wen Kexing is practically snarling, though he doesn’t fight against Zhou Zishu’s hold keeping him pinned to the shelf.

“You didn’t have to follow me here!”

Wen Kexing does fight back a bit then, just a savage jerk of one arm that frees it from Zhou Zishu’s grip so he can reach up to curl his fingers into a fist in the front of his robes for the purpose of jostling him, as if shaking him will help him understand as he shouts, “After all this anger over my plans to save you, you have the nerve to also be angry that I didn’t stay put when you left me behind to go die anyway?!”

Zhou Zishu is the one to bare his teeth next, but Wen Kexing takes advantage of his moment of trying to formulate a reply to flip their positions so quickly Zhou Zishu nearly becomes dizzy even before his back is slammed against the shelf and Wen Kexing’s forearm presses against his throat.

“After everything we’ve done, everything we had just lost, you left me,” Wen Kexing says next, no longer shouting but the faint glitter of tears in his eyes and clumping his lashes together is somehow more cutting than if he were. “If you die I die, how dare you take my choices away from me!”

“Your choices?!” Zhou Zishu bites back, finding his metaphorical feet again even as he has to go up on his toes a bit to accommodate the way Wen Kexing is pressing him higher with the arm on his throat. “Your choices are why I was dying so quickly in the first place! I was going to be healed, Da Wu was going to fix everything but your plan that included everyone but me forced my hand! Why would I continue living without you after watching you die? How could you not have known I would try to follow you even after Ye-qianbei stopped me from jumping with you?!”

“How could you throw your life away so quickly?!”

“There is no me without you!”

Zhou Zishu’s shout rings off the stone around them. Wen Kexing slowly releases the pressure on his throat as the reverb of it fades into nothing but silence again broken only by their breaths, too fast and out of sync. But they’re both here. They’re both breathing. They’re glaring daggers at each other, but they’re both here.

“A day without you, a week, a year, an eternity? I don’t want any of it,” Zhou Zishu continues eventually, voice low and fervent. “Of course I tried to follow you. What else would you expect me to do?”

“And then at the last, you turned around and abandoned me. Are you really such a hypocrite, Ah-Xu?”

Zhou Zishu doesn’t refute that, though he can’t quite help but grind his teeth and curl his hand still holding one of Wen Kexing’s wrists a little tighter.

He is, abruptly, exhausted. Perhaps it’s the sleepless nights of relieving Wen Kexing’s ‘deaths’ from every angle. Perhaps it’s the stress of having kept all of this tucked close to his chest since the moment Wen Kexing returned during the second heroes’ conference. Perhaps it’s the way the fight leaves Wen Kexing’s eyes as quickly as it had appeared. Perhaps it’s none of these things, or all of them, but whatever the reason, the thought of somehow keeping score for the next however many years they live, of holding onto resentments and bitterness and playing a constant game of who-owes-whom makes him so tired.

Zhou Zishu tips his head back to rest against the shelf at his back, baring his throat (perhaps unwisely, when Wen Kexing is still so angry at him) and closing his eyes against the sight of the filtered moonlight overhead.

“We can’t keep living like this,” he mutters and he feels Wen Kexing’s body go stiff against his where they’re pressed together practically from chest to ankle.

“Like what? Don’t tell me you regret this already, Ah-Xu. It’s not even spring yet, you have to at least wait for the thaw before you can decide to leave me behind again.”

“Lao Wen!” he protests sharply with a jostle of Wen Kexing’s arm in his grip. “Like this, angry with each other for things that we’ve done because we don’t know how to live for each other. This is getting us nowhere.”

Wen Kexing takes a long, slow breath in and Zhou Zishu is about to drop his head again to look at him when he’s abruptly stopped in his tracks by the feeling of teeth on his neck, too sharp and insistent to be comfortable. He gasps and can’t help but jerk a bit in Wen Kexing’s grip, a frisson of heat slinking down his spine and out towards his fingertips as he follows it with a soothing but possessive pass of the flat of his tongue, hot and wet against his skin.

“Lao Wen?” he manages to gasp around the too-intense pressure of Wen Kexing’s teeth around a different section of his throat, more sensitive than the last - so sensitive his knees nearly threaten to buckle, though that may also be because Wen Kexing chooses that moment to dart a clever hand between the drape of his robes to grab him through his trousers. There’s nothing gentle in the gesture, it’s hard and possessive. Painful.

They haven’t been intimate since Wen Kexing had finally regained consciousness. Between adjusting to their new reality, Wen Kexing finally having an opportunity to begin grieving for Gu Xiang, and Zhou Zishu working to build them something of a permanent living space in the armory, and with an as-of-yet undefined eternity stretching on before them, they’d just...settled. Tried to relax and let time pass as it would now that it’s no longer their master.

Zhou Zishu realizes belatedly that he should have anticipated that it would feel different with the return of his senses, but he is somehow still blindsided by the shock of it, crystal clear and overwhelming. He can feel Wen Kexing’s too-quick exhales against his freshly bruised skin, hot and damp in the chill of their new home. His hand is painfully tight between his legs and Zhou Zishu gasps again as his grip tightens even further, bucking his hips back to try to escape Wen Kexing’s groping but there’s nowhere for him to go. He bites down again and Zhou Zishu swears he can feel every single one of his teeth - no longer just the muted sensation of more pointed pressure than his hands could provide, now he can feel his skin protesting the sharp crush of capillaries, red bruises blooming like aching flowers under his lover’s mouth.

“If you want to be angry then be angry,” Wen Kexing growls into the point of his collarbone, and the bite he leaves there has Zhou Zishu’s back arching without his permission though he at least manages to keep a pathetic whimper locked in his throat. “You’re not getting rid of me so easily.”

Under such an onslaught, it doesn’t take long at all for Zhou Zishu to find his temper again. Wen Kexing is harsh and cruel with him, offering no reprieves or mercy as he takes what he wants. Zhou Zishu has absolutely no qualms about giving him the same in return, digging in with his nails until he pierces his skin, and only then does he scratch up his back and leave bloody furrows in his wake. He bites whatever part of Wen Kexing he can get his mouth on, and finally when Wen Kexing is ever-so-slightly distracted with gathering all of Zhou Zishu’s hair into one hand to yank on it, Zhou Zishu manages to get his ankle hooked behind Wen Kexing’s to kick his leg out from under him. Paired with a shove of the hand he has bunched up in the front of Wen Kexing’s robes, it’s a perfect move to unbalance him and send the pair of them tumbling to the hard ground.

Zhou Zishu doesn’t bother feeling guilty for cushioning his own fall with Wen Kexing’s body, he just sets about continuing what they’d started with a sort of hunger that startles even him, but that Wen Kexing seems to take in stride. He had started this, after all, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that he’s prepared to see it through to the end no matter how rough it should get.

It’s a messy thing, quick and aggressive with absolutely none of the finesse they’ve managed to find together in all the times they’ve done this before. By the time they’ve finished, Wen Kexing’s bared torso is a mess of blood and come - from both of them. Zhou Zishu brushes the back of his hand against the swollen curve of his bottom lip without any regard for the flare of aching, burning pain he finds there where Wen Kexing has bitten him bloody.

“You got hard,” Wen Kexing finally mumbles through bright red lips. Zhou Zishu can see that his teeth are pink as he speaks and he wonders if it should worry him that that feels right. What he had actually said filters through the haze a moment after and he huffs a humorless laugh as he shakes his head a bit and leans back on his heels where he’s straddling Wen Kexing. The motion grinds his ass down against his softening cock and Wen Kexing hisses a little, shuffles his feet like he’s going to try to get away though he settles again after a moment, allowing the overstimulating pressure.

“Philanthropist Wen so kindly traded his life so that I could have all my senses restored,” Zhou Zishu retorts as he crosses his arms over his chest and grinds himself down more purposefully into Wen Kexing’s lap until the man’s back arches and his hands fly down to grip his hips tight enough to bruise there too.

“A fair trade,” Wen Kexing mumbles, still staring at him in bleary wonder. Well, not at him. At his cock, which hasn’t even managed to go entirely soft. How can it, when he can finally feel Wen Kexing’s hands on him properly? When every place their bodies are touching feels like the spark of a struck match?

“And if I hadn’t found a way to pass the qi back to you such a ‘gift’ would be absolutely wasted on me living here alone!”

“You’re still angry after that?”

Zhou Zishu doesn’t even deign to respond to that with words, rather he just grinds his hips again and Wen Kexing chokes on some sort of wounded noise that ends with a whimper. His teeth are no longer bloody though he certainly looks worse for wear, his lips still red even where Zhou Zishu hadn’t split his bottom lip straight down the middle with a particularly vicious bite. There are bruises already blooming dark and possessive all over his chest and shoulders, the imprints of Zhou Zishu’s teeth stark on the pale canvas of his skin. His silver hair is a tangled mess underneath him, his robes equally dishevelled where they had been shoved aside to give Zhou Zishu room to work. As he watches, Wen Kexing releases his hip to drag one elegant hand up his own stomach, his long fingers smearing through the mix of blood and spend to swirl them together before he continues his dragging touch. He smears the mix up his own chest and then pops his fingers in his mouth as he looks up again to meet Zhou Zishu’s gaze.

“In that case, you can have me like that again, if you’d like,” Wen Kexing mumbles as he withdraws his fingers, seemingly uncaring of the mess he’s making of himself as he reaches down to scoop more of their come onto his fingers. Zhou Zishu reaches out to stop him with a hand tight around his wrist.

“Hurting you isn’t going to make me less angry about what you did.”

“Nor I, but it’s nice to get the energy out anyway.”

Zhou Zishu licks at a trickle of blood he can feel beginning to weep from his own split lip and Wen Kexing tracks the movement as if mesmerized by the briefest glimpse of his tongue. Zhou Zishu releases his wrist then and he expects Wen Kexing to return to his task of licking his fingers clean, but instead he drops his hand down again, this time to press his whole palm to the mess on his abs. Before Zhou Zishu can wonder what his fascination with it is, Wen Kexing is wrapping his slicked hand around his cock - and he goes properly hard again so quickly his head spins.

“Oh,” Wen Kexing says softly, eyes wide, as he strokes him just once and Zhou Zishu can’t help but shudder with a punched out little noise that he’s too late to stop. He squeezes his eyes shut and leans forward until he can rest his weight on one hand pressed to the floor next to Wen Kexing’s shoulder, his lips parted as he suddenly struggles to catch his breath. “Oh Ah-Xu, our first time when you can feel me properly shouldn’t have hurt you so much.”

“It’s only fitting that it should be too much,” Zhou Zishu manages to grind out. He opens his eyes to find Wen Kexing looking anxiously back and forth between them, his eyebrows drawn up in open concern, so different from the furious hunger of just a few minutes ago. “Too much - and not enough. Try again.”

“Mn?”

“Hurt me again.”

“Ah-Xu -”

Zhou Zishu catches Wen Kexing’s chin in his free hand, harsh and unforgiving. “Again, Lao Wen. You think I’ve been waiting for you to wake up all this time just for you to be afraid to touch me? Make me forget what it was like to feel you dead in my arms.”

That seems to do the trick. Wen Kexing’s eyes flash and Zhou Zishu isn’t even startled to find their positions reversed; the only concession for the stone floor that Wen Kexing gives him is a hand behind his head to keep him from hitting it too hard as he’s thrown down on his back - other than that he’s just as harsh as he was before. They’re already ragged and bloodied, it doesn’t take nearly as much effort the second time for Zhou Zishu to lose himself in the ache of Wen Kexing pressing on his new bruises, biting even fresher ones next to them.

He gasps and exhales a moan that echoes off the stone around them as Wen Kexing bites his neck hard enough to draw blood there too at the same moment he slides two spit- and come-slick fingers inside his body with absolutely no mercy. It hurts, but his Lao Wen and so he doesn’t complain. He’ll never complain as long as it’s Wen Kexing who’s the one bearing down on him, pressing into him, working him as expertly as ever even though so much internal attention isn’t necessary now that he can finally get hard again. It doesn’t seem to matter what he needs or doesn't - his entire being belongs to the man on top of him and he knows that Wen Kexing enjoys reminding him of that.

The only reason the second round lasts anywhere close to the same length of time as the first is because this time Wen Kexing forces him to wait every time he trembles close to the edge of orgasm, until by the time he finally allows it Zhou Zishu is so overstimulated it hurts as much as it pleasures.

“Enough,” Wen Kexing pants when he’s finished and they’re now both sporting the same messes on their chests. “Enough Ah-Xu, no more angry sex tonight. Alright?”

“Fine,” Zhou Zishu pants as he stares unseeingly up at the ceiling. “Tomorrow, then.”

“No.” Zhou Zishu closes his eyes as Wen Kexing starts stroking his cheek with his hand that’s still relatively clean, but he frowns when he feels the now-familiar sensation of shared qi flood through his meridians.

“What are you doing?”

“We’ll heal faster if we share it.”

Zhou Zishu darts his hand up to grab Wen Kexing’s wrist to force his hand away from his face and he opens his eyes with an effort to meet Wen Kexing’s confused gaze.

“Leave it.”

“Ah-Xu?”

“Penance.”

Wen Kexing blinks at him for a long moment and then the last of the fight truly drains out of him as he hangs his head, his hair sliding over one shoulder to hang between them and the rest of the room. In the moonlight backlighting it it almost seems to glow and Zhou Zishu’s breath hitches in his chest as he looks at it, this reminder of how much Wen Kexing had tried to give up. For him. He had never asked so many people to want to die for him. All he had ever wanted was the people he cared about to live, why were they all so determined to leave him behind anyway?

“Come back to bed,” Wen Kexing says and Zhou Zishu can hear the tears thick in his voice though he can’t see his face. “Please.”

Maneuvering up off the floor and righting their robes at least enough to make the chilly walk more bearable takes a surprisingly long time, but thankfully Wen Kexing had kept track of where he was going as he had followed Zhou Zishu through the armory and so he just has to follow behind him as they return quickly enough to their ‘bedroom’, for lack of anything better to call it. As they walk, his own anger ebbs back out of him, as it always does, to be replaced with a soul-deep grief. His anger is really only a poor cover for that lurking sorrow anyway, and it consumes too much energy to maintain the front for too long. By the time Wen Kexing is helping him out of his outer robes and nudging him in the direction of their bed he feels so weighed down by the ghosts of his mistakes that all he can do is obey and sit heavily on the edge of it.

“ ‘Penance’,” Wen Kexing muses with dark humor as he returns Zhou Zishu’s robes to their spot and begins to strip out of his own. “Are we not already paying penance having to spend the rest of our lives in the cold? Away from Chengling and Four Seasons Manor? It’s a price I’m willing to pay a thousand times over in order to live this life with you, but it is still a sacrifice. Don’t you think that’s penance enough?”

Zhou Zishu doesn’t even bother looking up from his hands between his knees as Wen Kexing talks to him, only raising his eyes with a sharp inhale through his nose when the other man comes to kneel in front of him, though he can still only stand to look around the vicinity of his chin.

“Ah-Xu. What are you punishing yourself for?”

“You have to ask?”

“I do. We’ve already forgiven each other for the lies we told, you don’t fool me. What are you really angry about?”

“I’m not trying to fool you, I am angry that you lied to me.”

“And you have lied to me. We’re even as far as I’m concerned, and I think it would be useless to keep score from here on out. What are petty disagreements to immortal lovers, hm?”

Zhou Zishu finally lifts his gaze the rest of the way with an effort to look Wen Kexing in the eyes. They still manage to shine somehow even in the dim light of the candles guttering in the corners of the room, and Zhou Zishu can’t quite resist reaching out to hold his face with both hands. Hands that can now feel how soft his skin is, how warm. He strokes his thumb slowly along the plush curve of his bitten bottom lip and the softness of it, the easy give of it beneath his touch, have him aching to bite him again. Again and again and again until he no longer feels quite so hungry for him, so desperate.

“Ah-Xu,” Wen Kexing murmurs seemingly for no reason other than to call for him. Zhou Zishu lets his thumb move with his lips as he does so, the drag of the warm, damp skin against his fingertip a concrete reminder that he hasn’t lost Wen Kexing. He’s here, alive and breathing and determined to live for the rest of their forever at his side.

“I want to stop seeing you dead,” he confesses, much less angrily this time than the first as he allows his grief and fear to take their rightful place at center stage. “I want to but I can’t. You were so cold, Lao Wen, the first thing I felt was you so cold-“

Wen Kexing’s brows knit together as he turns his head just enough to press ardent kisses to his palm, his long fingers curling around Zhou Zishu’s wrist to hold his hand still for it.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes and Zhou Zishu’s breath hitches in his throat. “I’m sorry, Ah-Xu.”

Zhou Zishu coaxes Wen Kexing into turning his head forward again with a press of his palm to his cheek only to meet him more than halfway in a kiss that’s messy and clumsy and perfect in every way he needs it to be. Wen Kexing surges up to deepen it, to loom over him and then press him back insistently with his whole body as he climbs onto the bed first to straddle him and then to lay him down, kissing kissing kissing all the while.

Even in what Zhou Zishu has come to think of as his ‘first’ life - his life before Wen Kexing - he doesn’t think anyone’s touch ever affected him as much as Wen Kexing’s does now. His hands, though they’re cool simply by virtue of where they live, feel like branding irons as they skim down his chest and arms, dragging his dishevelled sleeping robe off in their wake. He shivers in the chill of the cave as the cold air meets his flushed skin and even that, somehow, adds to the overwhelming flood of sensations from Wen Kexing’s hands alone.

“I’ll make you forget it all,” Wen Kexing promises as he drags those burning hands up to grip the sides of his neck, press his thumbs under his jaw to coax him into tipping his head back so he can kiss the bruises he’d left. “I’ll make you forget everything but me right here with you like this. Alright?”

“Alright,” Zhou Zishu breathes, at a loss for anything else to say. Why shouldn’t he agree? It’s impossible for him to forget it all but he’d like to try, and Wen Kexing has made so many impossible things happen already. Maybe this one is in his power as well.

He lets himself get lost in the way each kiss and caress feels brand new, and so quickly it could almost be embarrassing he feels his cock growing stiff again, his entire body reacting to each brush of fingertips or soft hair or lips against his skin like it’s the first time he’s ever felt such a thing. It’s the first time he’s ever properly felt Wen Kexing, at least, and he can’t help but think that that’s good enough; his first time feeling his zhiji’s touch the way it’s meant to be felt. If this is what he’s felt every time Zhou Zishu touches him then it’s no wonder Wen Kexing has so often begged and coaxed him to go just once more, to kiss for just a little longer, not to separate yet if they don’t have to. Not that Zhou Zishu hadn’t understood the desire to be close before, of course he has, but this really elevates things to a new height he had been incapable of even imagining.

Zhou Zishu sees stars the moment Wen Kexing leans in to take him into his mouth. He doesn’t come but it’s an extremely close thing, and there’s no stopping himself from whimpering and shifting restlessly as he tries to chase the pleasure Wen Kexing is offering him. He’s stopped by Wen Kexing’s wide hands heavy on his hips pressing him down into the bed and keeping him still so he can focus on working himself down the length of him painfully slowly. There have been times, usually in the afterglow of particularly good orgasms, when Wen Kexing has told him that if he could use all his best tricks then Zhou Zishu wouldn’t stand a chance against him, and Zhou Zishu has always scoffed, never believed such assertions could be anything but empty bragging. He should really know by now that Wen Kexing doesn’t brag without reason - if he says he can kill someone then he will. If he claims he can exact a fitting revenge against the world that wronged him, then he will. And now Zhou Zishu knows intimately that when Wen Kexing has said that he knows precisely how he wants to rip Zhou Zishu apart, he has meant every word.

He feels like he’s being slowly flayed apart, seen and known at every level of his being solely so that Wen Kexing can understand best how to destroy all of his defenses. Not that he should be surprised, of course - this is hardly the first time Zhou Zishu had thought he was fine only to suddenly find that his walls have been smashed to rubble and Wen Kexing is standing too close to him in the aftermath of it, smirking at him and leaning in to say something filthy in his ear to make him blush and snap at him even as he tries to pull him closer.

Zhou Zishu comes for the third time that night with his hands in Wen Kexing’s hair and his legs wrapped haphazardly around his ribcage, head thrown back and throat tight around a strangled moan that ends on something that sounds suspiciously like a sob.

Wen Kexing gives him absolutely no time to recover. He keeps his mouth on him until it turns genuinely unbearable and then he’s back, kissing him like he’ll die if he doesn’t taste every inch of his mouth at that very moment and slamming home inside of him between one breath and the next. Zhou Zishu doesn’t bother trying to restrain the pained noise that escapes him at the intrusion but Wen Kexing ignores it, instead just setting up a punishing rhythm that leaves Zhou Zishu no time at all to try to come down from his third orgasm before arousal builds in him again.

Wen Kexing is an absolute monster, and Zhou Zishu loves him so much it’s a physical ache in his chest. And there, at last, is the root of his anger. Wen Kexing makes him hurt so much, it’s only natural for him to want to protect himself from it, to put distance between them with frustration and bluster, to keep the unbearable ache of such consuming love from taking him over completely. It’s been necessary, until now, to maintain that distance even after they were in agreement that they were all either of them needs in this world. The fact then had been that Zhou Zishu was going to die and leave Wen Kexing behind to mourn him, a fact they had frequently done their best to ignore but at least Zhou Zishu had never managed it, and he was fairly sure Wen Kexing never had either. He’d spent so much time expressing concern for Zhou Zishu and his injuries, it stands to reason that he’d spent even more time thinking about them than talking about them, and any time the barest whisper of a possible cure had reached their ears Wen Kexing had always pounced on it like a street cat, vicious and single-minded as he’d dug in with his claws to drag out any information he possibly could.

Zhou Zishu’s fourth orgasm of the night leaves him feeling hollow and satisfied, finally, even as Wen Kexing spills inside of him, fills him up. As they share hot, too-heavy breaths in the aftermath, as Wen Kexing presses wet kisses to his lips and cheeks and jaw, as Wen Kexing settles his weight over him and slides a hand up into his hair to cradle him and hold him close, Zhou Zishu releases the anger that’s nothing but a smokescreen for the ache of loving too fiercely for his heart to contain it all.

“I love you,” he says into the intimate silence but for the rhythms of their living and breathing and the soft rustle of skin and cloth rubbing together as Wen Kexing readjusts his legs and attempts to get comfortable on top of him. “That’s what I’m angry about. I love you.”

“Reasonable,” Wen Kexing mumbles muzzily into his shoulder with a lazy kiss. “Will you elaborate or am I meant to just understand why loving me should make you so upset?”

“You expect me to believe that you don’t love me so much it somehow becomes other emotions as well just so your heart can contain it all?”

Wen Kexing is silent for a few long moments as their breathing slows in tandem, fingertips tracing slow, gentle circles around the ball of his shoulder as he turns his head a bit and shifts a few times until he’s settled even more comfortably.

“Ah..Perhaps I do understand, then,” he finally murmurs, and Zhou Zishu can hear a faint smile in his voice. “Is that what you’re seeking penance for? Loving me?”

“Maybe. Or maybe for everything else I’ve done before you. Maybe I have to pay for it to deserve being able to keep you until we get tired of this life and decide we’d like to end it.”

“Ah-Xu,” Wen Kexing tuts and he’s definitely smiling now. “You’ve said it yourself that if a man sets aside his weapons he’ll become good. I don’t believe you need to punish yourself like this. You don’t need to find a replacement for the pain of the Nails just because you’ve survived your torment.”

Zhou Zishu’s breath catches in his chest and he tips his head enough to try to look down at Wen Kexing. One of his eyes is visible at this angle and Zhou Zishu is unsurprised to find his gaze full of a quiet understanding.

“That’s...hm. Alright. I suppose it’s useless to argue that, I’m sure you already know exactly how to win against me.”

“Of course I do,” Wen Kexing replies with a tired chuckle. “But there’s also no point in arguing it simply because I’m right, and as I said before - what use is there in keeping score? Time and debts and the measure of good and evil are nothing to us anymore. We’ll do as much good as we can from here, and when we’re ready we’ll re-enter the world and continue to do good there until we die together. The past doesn’t concern us anymore.”

Zhou Zishu hums softly and finally finds the energy to raise one hand to begin combing his fingers through the snarled mess of Wen Kexing’s hair, keeping his touch light even when he encounters snags and knots. Wen Kexing melts into him as he works and when he starts breathing deeply, the rhythm regular, Zhou Zishu doesn’t bother resisting the desire to turn his head and press a long, slow kiss to his forehead. He lifts his free hand to curl his fingers around Wen Kexing’s wrist and, as has become a habit that’s as natural as breathing, he lets their energy circulate together, fitting himself easily into the familiar paths of his love’s qi and speeding up the healing process as much as he can, for both of their sakes, as the love of his life sleeps comfortably in his arms.

[imagine-darksiders]

Homesick - Chapter 2

Behind the door.

Warnings: implied child abuse, abusive parents, blood, nosebleeds, angst, themes of childhood trauma, ptsd

Tags: Darksiders, DeathxAzrael, hurt/comfort, angst, Reader, Found family, Reader needs a hug

Chapter 1

---

“What lays beyond that door?”

Azrael's innocent question causes you to stiffen and your steps falter on the landing, knowing precisely to which door he's referring, but unwilling to even spare it a backwards glance.

The momentary delay hardly lasts for more than a second and goes seemingly unnoticed by the angel, whose gaze appears too focused on the locked, mahogany door that stands quiet and guiltless at the furthest end of your landing. Hanging back near the top of the staircase however, with eyes sharp and turned just enough in your direction that they catch the hitching of your chest, Death does notice.

Then, he blinks, and you're suddenly twisting your head over a shoulder to look beyond Azrael at the door in question, a smile on your lips but not in your eyes.

“Oh, that's just a storage cupboard,” you say casually, waving a dismissive hand through the air and continuing your journey to the opposite side of the house, “I've been in and out of there all week stacking boxes of junk up to the ceiling. Now, come this way, all the best human-y stuff is stock-piled in my bedroom.” 

You're too quick to disregard the door, too eager in turning to walk towards your room on stiff legs and Death wishes the angel would turn to look at you so he might also see what the Horseman sees, if only to confirm that he isn't imagining things.

Alas, letting out an intrigued little hum, Azrael clasps his hands loosely behind his back and sweeps after you, all the while pivoting his head this way and that to take in everything your humble home has to offer.

------------------

You had so nearly forgotten what the joy of discovery looks like in another person. To see the eyes of someone else grow wide and bright with unbridled wonder at a world you've long since lost a taste for.

Azrael's fascination at the most mundane of human objects manages to put a genuine smile on your face, though the ensuing pain still throbs like the beat of an insistent drum every time your cheeks press against your bruised eye.

Luckily, the angel appears to have missed your subtle wince.

After first having dragged him away from your television, you've managed to introduce him to many of humanity's other wonders that lay dotted around your bedroom.

Before long, Death had even slunk inside to join you both, taking up the mantle of an uninterested observer and absently perusing your book collection in the corner whilst keeping a surreptitious eye on the goings on of his companions.

You've perched yourself comfortably in a bean bag, content to simply sit back and observe whilst Azrael explores your room, his wide, white wings folded neatly against his back in order to spare some of your ornaments from being knocked off their shelves. 

“This... ursine mammal,” he says, pausing beside your bed and poking a finger into the fur of an old, stuffed bear sitting atop your pillow, “Does it serve some purpose?”

You're too preoccupied with fighting back a laugh to answer him right away, and by the time you realise he's watching you expectantly, Death pipes up in your stead, cutting off any explanation you might have offered.

“I imagine it's only there for decoration,” he muses, casting a critical eye over your bookcase and the dozens of unread stories scattered about on the shelves, “But then, I have to wonder if half the things in this room aren't just ornamentation.”

Knowing what he's implying, you spare the back of his head a scowl. It isn't as though you've had a lot of time to read those books he gave you, not between rebuilding your own home and helping humanity come to terms with life post-apocalypse.

“Ah!” Azrael's head shoots up and he tears his eyes from the bear, glancing towards you instead. “It is symbolic, no? In resembling a most ferocious predator, this bear represents the perfect guard for your home.”

He looks so damn pleased with himself, you almost don't bother to correct him, instead wrestling your grin into a pensive frown and nodding slowly. 

“Uh, sure! That is a pretty... exciting way to look at teddy bears.” Hopping to your feet, you make your way over to the bed and sweep a few of Azrael's primary feathers aside, picking up the toy bear and squeezing it to your chest. “But mostly humans use these for comfort at night, when we sleep. We usually get given them as children. And, as we grow older, I... guess we just get too attached to get rid of them. Most humans keep their childhood toys long into adulthood.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Death huffs, shaking his head with a smile hidden beneath the bone-mask, “You humans will get attached to anything that sits still for long enough.”

Azrael, on the other hand, looks as though you've just revealed to him one of humanity's greatest secrets. Rubbing his chin in thought, he says, “Remarkable! I've heard that humans are rather famous for the bonds they forge with other species, yet I never imagined that could extend to inanimate objects as well.”

“Yeah, you'd better believe it,” you smirk, placing the bear down on your pillow once more, “Someday I'll have to tell you about the woman who married the Eiffel Tower.”

At once, the Archangel blinks hard, eyebrows nearly disappearing into his hair line. “A tower? Surely that’s a jape?”

So perplexed is his expression, you throw back your head and let out a bark of delighted laughter. “What are you, Shakespeare? Nobody says ‘jape’ anymore, Azrael!”

Off on his own side of your little bedroom, Death's neck twists around slightly to regard both you and the angel as you engage in a light-hearted back and forth about the use of archaic vocabulary. He doesn't even realise that one corner of his mouth has begun lifting at the sight. 

There is a truth about the Horseman that even he is reluctant to acknowledge, and that is that the constant slew of bad things happening in the Universe is... wearing. It’s wearing. To be on a constant path that always seems to lead towards battle or tragedy? Sometimes it feels as though his entire existence has merely consisted of one battle after another. 

He saves one world, only for another to be torn apart, he destroys a species, and another asks him to fight their war for them, he helps the makers but in doing so, inadvertently kills their elder. Century after century - a millennia of bloody battles and terrible sacrifices and trying to keep his siblings safe - If he ever stopped to think about it... 

Death’s eyes slip slowly shut. 

He has worked... so hard, hasn’t he? Is it really so wrong if he enjoys these moments of fleeting repose? 

All of a sudden, a strangled sound leaves Azrael's throat and Death is yanked from his peaceful reverie. “Y/n!?” the angel exclaims, his expression shifting to horrified in less than a second, “You're bleeding!”

Apparently, mentioning your name and blood in the same sentence is enough to get Death's voice to crack as he whips around properly and barks, “What!?”

Baffled, you raise a hand to your nose, dabbing at a sticky wetness gathered there whilst the taste of salty liquid drips onto your upper lip. “Oh, so I am,” you observe casually, only to have a pair of chilly hands curl unexpectedly around your forearms. 

Without warning, the terrifying visage of the Horseman is looming mere inches from your face and in another instant, one of his hands presses itself to your forehead and firmly – albeit gently – tips it backwards.

“Um... Death, we've talked about this. Personal space, remember?”

The Horseman remains eerily silent as he stares transfixed at the blood oozing from your nose and you squirm uncomfortably when the grip he has on your arm begins to grow even tighter. Meanwhile, his wordlessness allows Azrael to fret aloud in the background.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” the angel mutters, pacing back and forth behind Death, never tearing his eyes from the red straining your face, “You shouldn't be having all this excitement. You should be resting.”

It's difficult to hold back your groan of exasperation as you lift your arms and knock Death's hands aside, stepping out of his reach.

“Oh for - It's just a nosebleed! Honestly, what has gotten into you two?” With a hefty sigh, you skirt around the rigid Nephilim, dodge one of Azrael's wings as it tries to curl instinctively around you and march into your ensuite bathroom.

Almost immediately, the angel tries to follow, but he swiftly has the door pushed shut in his face before he can enter and soon, they hear your voice filtering out to them from the other side. “I'm not a baby, guys! Nosebleeds are no big deal, it's just happening because of... well, you know.”

Azrael's stomach twists itself into knots at the sight of yet another locked door standing between himself and his human friend. He's about to call out for you to let him see the damage when an icy chill sweeps across the room and he turns, his mouth falling open slightly at the sight of Death staring at him through unseeing eyes.

The old Nephilim's body has gone completely still and there's a haunted look about him, as though he's lost, or perhaps trapped in another time, another place.

“Horseman?” Azrael murmurs uncertainly, feeling the cold prickle at the hairs on the base of his neck. Seconds pass and he receives no answer. Hesitant now, the archangel reaches towards Death's shoulder and, when he isn't immediately shoved away, places a hand on the frigid, solid muscle that bunches under his gentle touch. “Death,” he tries again, and this time the Horseman's head snaps up to stare at him, as if only just realising he's there.

The angel ducks his head to better catch Death's eye, his voice soft enough that only the two of them can hear it. “Are you alright, old friend?”

A long silence stretches between them with only the faint sound of running water from your bathroom tap to fill it.

Then, giving a start, Death roughly shrugs the comforting hand off his shoulder and stalks past the angel towards your window, leaning his elbows heavily against the sill and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge Azrael's concern. He doesn't think the archangel has ever been that close to him before, close enough that the subtle scent of old books and clean linen invaded his nose and chased away the awful stench of your blood, effectively leaving his mind clear once again. 

'Idiot,' he chastises himself, eyes still wide behind the bone mask. How could he have frozen like that? In front of Azrael no less. Creator, he'd never live that one down. He had – for lack of a better word – panicked, and it's as embarrassing to admit to himself as it is to have been caught panicking. But...

The sight of your blood... The smell of it, sweet and strong enough that it even settled on his tastebuds...

It's pathetic, really. He is Death. He's seen and caused far more bloodshed than arguably any being in any realm. So why then does your spilled blood hold his dead heart in such a cruel and unforgivably tight chokehold?

The redundancy of taking a calming breath isn't lost on him, yet he does it anyway, tipping his head up to peer out of your window, chest rising and falling with motions he could only have picked up after spending so much time around you.

It's begun to rain, he notes idly. Tiny droplets of water patter down onto the dusty window panes and Death follows the path of one until it merges with several others and is lost in the fray.

Down in the streets below, many passers-by have dived for shelter, yet there are still two figures who remain. One is an angel, whose golden complexion shimmers when raindrops trickle steadily down his face. He's standing in the shadow of a water-logged bus stop and beside him, leaning just a little too close, is a serpentine demon, scales black and glittering like obsidian. The odd pair rest almost shoulder to shoulder underneath the bus stop's awning, each sharing a brief respite from the rain with what was once a well-loathed enemy.

Death blinks upon seeing that their hands are intertwined. Dainty, golden fingers curl loosely around clumsier claws and suddenly, the Horseman feels as though he's intruding on their secret moment, so he turns back to face your room.

Azrael has drifted closer once again and there's a knowing expression on his face that causes Death to frown. Sure enough, the archangel spares your bathroom door a hasty glance before he looks at the Horseman once more. “...Death,” he says slowly, “It's... all right, you know. If seeing Y/n’s blood upset you-”

Hackles are raised in half a second, a set of sharp teeth clack together and Death hisses, “You think I'm upset?”

Judging by the flat look he receives, that is precisely what the archangel thinks.

Despite the obvious vehemence behind Death's tone, he's careful to keep his voice down, ever mindful that you're only a room over. Perhaps getting defensive isn't the best idea.

“There is no shame in it, Horseman,” the angel coaxes softly, “Y/n is my friend as well. There has already been far too much human blood spilled this century.” He casts another, baleful glance towards your bathroom, quietly adding, “I didn't think I would be seeing it again, not this soon. And especially not from our human.”

...Our human.

Death is unnerved by how natural that sounds coming off Azrael's tongue.

Expertly, the Horseman wills his shoulders to slump and his muscles to relax, then, with an unmistakable air of indifference, he folds his arms across his broad chest and turns himself deliberately away from the archangel, glowering at your bedroom wall.

And Azrael, wise enough to read the standoffish behaviour for what it is, allows his mouth to fall shut because he knows that, as far as Death is concerned, the conversation is over.

He has a care not to release a weary sigh. But with you shutting him out physically and the Horseman shutting him out verbally, it's difficult for even the composed archangel to keep exasperation at bay.

Just then, your voice calls out to them from the other side of the door. “Ugh, sorry about this guys. It's slowing down, but it hasn't stopped yet. I'll just be a minute!”

“So long as you're all right,” Azrael replies.

When he receives no response from you and no further input from Death, he lets his head drop into a disappointed nod, pressing his lips together. Suddenly, his presence feels a little too big for the space he's occupying. He needs to think.

Azrael leaves your bedroom with a far heavier heart than he'd gone in with, raking his fingers through fine, white hair and expelling a soft breath from his lungs, as if that might alleviate the weight settling across his chest.

So far, this first visit to your home has not gone as he'd hoped it would. Through no fault of your own, mind. But trying to focus on taking in everything you show him whilst he knows you're in more pain than you're letting on is woefully distracting. That's without even mentioning the creeping sense of unease that has been hanging over him ever since he first stepped foot through your front door. 

Briefly, Azrael wonders if Death had noticed the way your breath hitched slightly and your reply had an almost imperceptible, underlying tremor when he asked you what lay beyond the door at the end of your landing. He'd have to ask the Horseman about that later, when he's in a more talkative mood.

Already, the archangel can feel the beginnings of a frown forging crevasses down the centre of his forehead. He composes himself in another breath and finally lifts his eyes from the carpet, only to stop in his tracks. 

That door – that unassuming door to your cupboard lays ahead of him, quiet and solid as all doors should be, just sitting there under a flickering light bulb, as though it had been patiently waiting for him to notice it.

And notice it, he does, because something about the door has changed since he saw it last, something so obvious, yet also entirely unsettling.  

Where it had once been shut tight, now it stands ever so slightly ajar.

Despite everything in him screaming that he must respect the privacy of his host, Azrael's curiosity grows too bold and he finds himself treading silently down your landing, his shoes making no sound on the grubby, cream carpet. Drawing to a halt, the angel's keen gaze sweeps over the wooden door, taking in hairline cracks and mottled rot that a hundred years has left upon it like battle scars on a warrior's face. Slowly, he roves his eyes down to the dull, brass door handle and he immediately falters, doing a double-take.

Sitting atop the handle is a very noticeable, very thick layer of dust.

His brows knit together until they nearly touch and he reaches out to swipe a finger delicately along the brass. When he pulls away, he lifts his hand for an inspection and, sure enough, the pad of his forefinger is now sporting the same, grey substance.

'Why would a door you claimed to use recently have so much dust upon the handle?' The feeling of unease that had been stealthily keeping to the back of his mind now pokes its head out a little more, creeping forwards, daring him to acknowledge it.

'Something's wrong...' a quiet voice tells him.

Azrael's hand reaches out once more, except this time, it curls around the handle entirely and rests there for a moment as the angel's mind starts to race. 'Y/n.... Are you hiding something from us?'

As soon as the thought enters his head, he can't shake it loose. 

Yes - he trusts you - he knows you'd have no reason to lie to him, and especially not to the Horseman. And yet... Clearly there is something beyond this door that you're trying to divert their attention from and whatever it is has you spooked.

Feeling more and more like a common criminal, Azrael keeps one ear on the room behind him and slowly begins to twist the door handle, wincing when its rusty springs catch and squeak in protest.

His wings shiver with anticipation as he pushes the door open.

What awaits him on the other side is decidedly not a storage cupboard...

“A... bedchamber?” he murmurs to himself. 

Within an instant, he's hit by an oppressive wave of must and wood rot. The smell spills like liquid from the room and seeps into your hallway, causing the archangel's lips to curl, though he's quick to smooth his expression out again because there's something far worse lingering below the initial stench, something that – even after a hundred years – still clings to the peeling wallpaper and broken, dust-choked bed in the corner of the room.

It isn't quite magic, more like the residue of a dark and terrible memory. Azrael knows as well as any angel that memories can be immensely powerful things and capable of haunting a place long after the living are dead and gone. Hesitating, he takes a moment to steel himself before stepping over the threshold and entering that old, foreboding bedroom.

At once, he notices that, as with the door's handle, absolutely everything is covered in a thick layer of grime and dust, the television on the wall, the various, glass bottles that stand on a table at the room's centre, amidst which sits a single, yellowing glass.

Against the wishes of his own nose, Azrael takes a brief sniff at the air and grimaces.

Alcohol.

Even the most pious of angels would recognise it.

He dismissively turns his attention from the bottles and glides over towards a worn dresser that stands to the left of the bed, a bed that stinks of an odour he desperately tries to ignore. Upon the dresser are a vast array of what you;d once called 'photographs,' all of which sit inside basic, wooden frames. Inquisitive, Azrael bends down and peers at them, a soft smile worming across his face when he sees a familiar human grinning back up at him.

You couldn't be much older than four or five, but he'd recognise you at any age. It seems even as a child, you possessed that same, mischievous spark in your eyes.

You're standing alone, and in spite of a clear gap where a tooth has fallen out, you're beaming up at the camera so hard, he imagines your cheeks had to have hurt. In fact, the more Azrael inspects the photo, the more he thinks your expression most resembles a grimace, not a smile. He shrugs it off however, and moves on. After all, the facial structure of humans is such that they're capable of expressions far more complex than those of angels or demons. Perhaps he’s only misreading it. 

The next picture sees you looking a few years older, sitting in the lap of a tall, angular man wearing a white shirt that looks to have been frequently stained by all manner of substances whilst his face is stretched into a grin that makes Azrael's skin crawl. Captured in stillness, it looks menacing and shark-like. Worse still is the large hand that seems to have secured itself like a vice around your thigh, squeezing noticeably into the little, blue leggings you'd worn that day.

You aren't smiling as widely in this photograph....

The archangel's face begins to fall as well.

Humming, he moves on to the next picture and in an instant, that creeping unease suddenly rings in his head like an alarm bell.

Again, you're older here, perhaps early into your adolescence, and the smile you'd sported before is barely there at all. The same man is standing behind you this time, and his long, gangly fingers are clamped down over your too-small shoulders, fingernails digging so hard into the bare skin, the resulting indents are even picked up by the camera.

Your lopsided wince that could be mistaken for a smile at a glance shows off one side of your mouth and in it, Azrael can clearly see that you're missing a tooth.

He may not be the most well-versed on human biology, but he's definitely heard that children only lose the same tooth once. And that the process is a natural one.

Through the lense of the camera, your younger counterpart seems to peer up past the glass frame, past the fabric of time and space and straight into Azrael's misty, pale eyes, a silent yet clear plea in the tilt of your brows and the whites of your knuckles.

'Help me.'

All at once, the archangel feels sick. He staggers backwards, away from the dresser and doesn't even notice the golden halo on his back is thrumming with protective magics, pushing them outwards to envelope your entire house.

He doesn't need Jamaerah's second sight to know that you were afraid of that man who's eyes are stained the same colour as yours. Hazarding a guess as to why you were afraid causes Azrael's throat to tighten.

Swallowing hard, he tries to regain his composure. The archangel has always considered rationality to be one of the greatest weapons in his arsenal and if there was ever a time to use it, that time is now. 

'Perhaps... I am mistaken,' he reassures himself, 'I don’t know human customs nearly as well as I-’ 

“Azrael?”

The angel gives a start and jerks his head around to face the door, only to find Death eclipsing it, his eyes blazing like twin fires.

Stepping forwards into the room, he hisses, “What are you doing in here?”

The Horseman is quite certain he's never seen Azrael look so guilty.

Instead of giving him an answer though, the angel slowly breathes, “Where is Y/n?” Soon, he droops in relief when Death throws a thumb over his shoulder and replies, “Still in the bathing room, tending to a bloody nose... You didn't answer my question.”

Beckoning the Horseman closer, Azrael keeps his voice to a hushed whisper and holds the last photograph up in front of him.

“What do you make of this?”

Azrael's behaviour strikes him as so uncharacteristically odd and secretive, Death actually hurries over to him and snatches the picture frame from his hands, making an effort not to appear curious about the room he's never been inside. The angel watches raptly as Death scans the photographs with his luminous, orange eyes. Then, all of a sudden, the Horseman's fingers tighten around the little, wooden frame, hard enough to make it splinter and Azrael knows his worst fears are being realised. He hadn't imagined it.

Death sees it too.

“You guys shouldn't be in here.”

A tiny voice, low and trembling calls from the doorway and the angel's gaze snaps up. Death, in the meantime, remains too fixated on the photograph to bother acknowledging your presence.

Azrael drifts towards you cautiously, as though you'll bolt at any second. He tries to decide whether it would be better to apologise for invading your privacy or ask you why you look so terrified.

“Y/n,” he starts, paying attention to the way your hands turn over one another incessantly, “We were only-”

“... How... How did you get in? The door was - it was locked! You can't be in here... Get out!” Your voice raises in pitch. There are tears leaking from your bruised eye, swiftly turning the skin underneath it slick and shiny and there’s still a trace of blood underneath your nose.

Death finally lowers his gaze from the photograph and holds you captive under a wide and menacing stare. “A storage room, was it?” he asks curtly, showing you the picture clutched between his ever-tightening fingers.

The moment you lay eyes on it, your back goes rigid and all the blood drains from your face. “Put that down!” you demand and lift your foot as if to take a step inside the room, but as soon as you cross over the threshold, you seem to remember something, and quickly jerk yourself backwards, stumbling into the hallway again and sucking down a ragged gasp, blurting, “Just – Just don't touch it!”

“Why not?” Death drawls and tilts his head to one side, calculating, “It can't be that important to you. You've had it locked in this storage cupboard for these past two years.”

He's pushing you, Azrael realises with a sinking feeling, he's trying to provoke you into an honest reaction, no doubt. The archangel doesn't like it, but he likes the look of that man in the photograph even less.

“That's none of your business!” you snap, heart pounding like a jackhammer against your ribs. Unfortunately, your response only seems to stir something in the Horseman, who draws his head back as though you'd struck him a physical blow and he growls, “I hate to disappoint you, but it is my business where your welfare is concerned.”

“My welfare stopped being your concern about two years ago!”

Death falls silent, jaw clenching.

He'd be remiss to say that your comment hadn't struck at a place he guards jealously. He's painfully aware of the angel's eyes burning a hole into the side of his head and he nearly squirms at the pitying look he's receiving.

It would seem that Azrael knows him a little too well.

“You never once stopped being my concern...” the Horseman mumbles, his gaze moving down to the image in his hand. A younger, smaller you peers back at him with woe caught like sleep-dust behind your eyelashes. Death's eyes shoot back up to you again, the softness gone from his voice when he growls, “Why did you lie to me?”

Tensions are high enough that Azrael doesn't think it prudent to mention you'd lied to him as well.

Apparently, a direct confrontation was not the best way to deal with this delicate situation, a fact that becomes clear when you cinch your jaw shut for a moment, gaze flickering to and fro between the angel and the Horseman.

Seeing two of your most trusted friends standing in his bedroom with a symbol of your shame and your trauma held quite literally in Death's grasp sends your heart rate skyrocketing, fear like poison dripping down into your stomach. You can hardly believe they'd invade your privacy like this. Death especially, who knows better than anyone the necessity for keeping some secrets buried.

He doesn't need to learn about that part of your history - neither of them do. You don't want to have them worrying. And God forbid they should pity you.

Squaring your shoulders, you spin about on a heel and begin to march purposefully down your landing to the stairs.

“Where do you think you're going?!” Death barks after you.

Chest heaving, you pause on the first step and cast a heavy frown over your shoulder at the Horseman, matching his ferocious gaze without a single blink. “If you won't leave that room,” you tell him, “then I'll leave this house. And I'll thank you both to be gone by the time I get back.” 

And just like that, you continue to descend your staircase and disappear below the wooden balustrades. Seconds later and there's an almighty 'slam' that signals you've had an altercation with the front door before leaving through it.

For some time, the house is weighed down under a blanket of silence as the pair of unearthly beings are left to stand in the aftershocks of their actions.

“Oh dear..” Azrael's stare is vacant, worried, and he has several fingertips pressed to his lips. “I fear I've reopened an old wound..”

“No. This... isn't your fault,” the Horseman sighs, “I should have addressed this sooner. I've known for some time there was something Y/n didn't want me to know. And, I suppose, I'd always suspected that this room might lead to some answers.”

Taken aback, Azrael turns a mystified look onto the Nephilim. He'd expected Death to lay the blame upon his feathery shoulders, after all, he was the one who first ventured into this so called 'storage cupboard' and upset the proverbial applecart. Still, he finds it somewhat odd that the Horseman – a nosy creature if ever one walked the nine realms – hasn't ever tried to see for himself what lay beyond the door. Tilting his head, the angel asks, “You never thought to investigate?”

At the question, Death averts his gaze and shrugs one of his pale shoulders. “Admittedly, no, I did not.”

“Well... Why?” Azrael presses, though he already has an inkling.

After a moment of frowning pensively at the photo in his hands, the Horseman turns to look at him and he's once again thrown off by the level of emotion in those wild, striking eyes. Death really has grown since knowing you.

“I never brought it up because....” 

“.... You didn't want to jeopardise your friendship,” Azrael finishes for him softly, and Death is only grateful that he didn't have to say it himself out loud.

At the same time, the two of them peer back at the photograph and the archangel is surprised at himself for the anger that boils in his lungs at the sight of that man’s hands on you. Death however, isn’t in the least bit surprised at the presence of his own rage. 

“Horseman...,” Azrael says, his voice eerily calm, “You don’t supposed.... Y/n might be trying to hide something else, do you?” 

"The bruise...”

Furious, orange eyes meet cool and misty white. 

“It isn’t out of the question,” Azrael breathes, “A random attack from human zealots? Or-” 

“- Or something a bit closer to home,” Death finishes as he tosses the photo onto the nearby bed and turns to face the door. 

Outside, rain continues to hammer relentlessly on the house whilst a streak of lightening illuminates the bedroom and the two, imposing beings inside, one with dark magics crackling at his fingertips, and the other with a halo of solid gold on his back that thrums with violent energy as the glyphs on his wings begin to glow electric blue. 

Without a word, the Angel of Death and the Grim Reaper slip from your house and stride out into the coming storm, their ancient minds focused solely on tracking down their human.

[lan-barbie]

Hello! I hope it's okay for me to ask you about this here - I didn't want to "comment dumb" on your not me high school au that you wrote for fun😂 I'm probably getting a bit in my own head about this, but I don't understand why you censored the self harm mention in the A/N, since ao3 has a really good filtering system w the tags/doesn't really do censorship the way tumblr for example does. To me it seems like you did a really nice job of warning for it, and treating it respectfully, but not saying the words makes it seem like a slur - like you shouldn't generally discuss it. however it does nothing for people who might be triggered by it. we will most likely recognise any "slang" version of the term that there's ever been. It kind of bugs me, since that "tabooness" was a big part of why it personally took me a long time to talk about my own experience with sh which was ultimately what really helped me recover because i destigmatised it for myself. maybe you have a reason and I'd love to hear your thought process about it - but it's such a sensitive topic so if you don't want to answer this I get it. Thank you for sharing the fic in any case, I really found it very sweet and have enjoyed it in the post-final wallowing 💜💜💜

Oh-- Most definitely I would have never gassed you for something like this. Talking about my experience with SH, i only censored the large word in my A/N, because it's like the first thing ppl see and in a story you can rather build up to say the word. I didn't wanna like immediately trigger someone in my A/N

For more my experience w/ sh you can keep reading :-)!

A little more personal - All of Black's character backstory involving sh and White's experience is straight from my own experience. I suffer terribly with sh, it's like my horrible habit I can't get rid of.

my senior year of hs I had bandcamp coming up. I was so freaking stressed about it and I went super maniac and just did my usually sh to calm down. Then i swear to God dread consumed because I realized I had to wear short sleeves because our camp is in the summer. Which my mania said 'yep, we're done. time to go!' and I tried to ya know -argh- myself that night.

I told my older sister the next morning, I took a very large amount of medication and it made me super sick and also insanely calm. I got medically instituted and I was PISSED. My boyfriend at the time had no clue, my phone got taken because I was texting my best friend terrible stuff. It was shitty, and I wanted to leave, because I never thought my sh was that bad... I had a terrible set of internet friends that egged me on and I just wanted to stop everything. It was while I was locked away that I realized that a lot of people cared about me. I just remember laying in my room just sobbing my eyes out with a photograph of my mom and sister in my arms, vowing I was going to get better for them.

First them, then myself.

It was in my journey that truly opened my eyes. I got really into death, caring for the dead and embalming. I was already really into gore because of my sh, and it was when I started realizing that it wasn't a fascination with blood and nasty stuff-- it was death. I kind of signed my ass up for mortuary school for a last resort, because I honestly didn't think I was going to live that long. It ended up being a super good decision, I love my job, caring for those mourning and dressing those to be viewed.

Just sometimes I'll get someone on my table, young people, my age, and I think to myself-- That could of been you bitch. Aren't you glad ur not dead in a ditch somewhere? It's harsh, but I'm normally super harsh on myself.

I still cut, I won't lie. I get in moods and it calms me, but it sucks, because I can't rid of the habit.

I think because I am revisiting a lot of my school experiences and projecting Black's character as a angry-version of myself, it's how it sounds so realistic, but still hold a joke because it's a funny joke to me. I think there are two types of sh ppl, the one's that can joke and the other that can't-- or is scared to. I am just one of those people that can read myself to filth and I put this trait on Black, because he just feels like the type of self depricating people.

It's a little different from both an outside pov and inside pov. In the Black/Gram fic, there is very speific part that talks about Black sh and -ARGH- himself from Gram while not truly talking about in Black's pov, because from an outsider pov Gram is hurt by this. Scared for Black while Black pov he could care less. He struggled with this for years and from me I never truly focus on my coping. It's just there and it's dumb but I do it. He's getting help and he still doesn't see it as a bad thing, which it is. I'm not saying do it lol.

My advice to you anon, from someone who has hit rock bottom and still sometimes will hit it, there's only up from there. Celebrate succession and don't dwell on failing if you do slip up. Su su na :-)!

-Barbie <3

[justice4harwin]

Light’s Corruption- Chapter VIII

Summary: With few friends at the Little Palace, Alina must work to win the favour of her fellow grisha and their commander, who makes her feel light headed every time she sees him.

After training in Os Alta for two years, the king grows tired of waiting and demands the Sun Summoner joins a western post near the Fjerdan border along with the rest of The Second Army to test her abilities.

Something happens. Suddenly, Alina wants blood to run down the rivers and those who stand in her and The Darkling’s way will be blinded by her light and swallowed by his shadows.

It won’t be pretty.

Pairing: The DarklingxAlina

Rating: 18+

Do I have a playlist for this story? Yeah

Do I also have a separate bff playlist for Genya and Alina? Duh

Click here for chapter 7 in case you missed it. 

Chapter 8: Alina the Baker

Grisha at the Little Palace had a day of the week off every other week, which meant that Alina could catch up on some precious sleep in the confines of her soft, warm bed filled with softer pillows. Even with the weak winter sun shining down on her, Alina could've slept all day and well into the night. In fact, it was even better, for she'd be warmer. There was no such thing as 'too much warmth' for her. The hotter, the better.

Curled up like a cat over the luxurious bed, the Sun Summoner intended to sleep all day and night.

Then there was a knock on her door.

She didn't hear it and rolled over in a most unnatural way.

The knocking got louder.

She began to stir.

"Get up, Starkov!" Genya yelled from the other side.

"Maybe if I don't make any sounds she'll leave." Alina thought, clutching her eyes tightly shut.

"You know I can go get the keys, but that'll only give me time to get angrier!"

Groaning, Alina threw herself onto the floor and made for the wretched door.

The redhead swung in with her usual grace, her kit in hand as she hummed a melody strange to Alina's ears.

Slowly, Alina followed her.

"Wash your face and come sit here." she instructed, pointing at the vanity.

After doing so, the Tailor began to work on her hair.

"Do I have somewhere to be?" Alina asked, yawning.

"No, but with the Winter Fete so close, I wanted to try some different styles for your hair and make-up, so we won't waste so much time on the actual day." she explained. "Besides, the Duke is still here, so the queen's daily naps have become longer, which only makes it harder for the Duke to talk whatever it is he wants to discuss with the king."

Alina made an odd face through the mirror; Genya smiled at her ingenuity.

"They've been fucking like ra-"

"Ah, ta-ta-ta, I get it." the Summoner closed her eyes and waved her hands, not wanting to picture any of it. "Does the king know?"

Genya snorted, joining two braids into one.

"Please, he's a dumb child."

Alina yawned again, loudly.

"Look, I don't think my hair matters too much for the Fete, so how about we take a nap?"

"Lazy."

"It's early."

"So?" a red, perfectly trimmed eyebrow rose softly. "Who would imagine the Sun Summoner herself wouldn't want to raise with the sun?"

"Technically, the sun is always out."

"I'm also using you as an excuse to get out of the Grand Palace."

"Can we do something else, then?"

"No!" she yanked Alina's hair once more and tied it. Leaning over her friend, she arranged the three mirrors which sat atop the vanity so the other woman could get a good look at it. "What do you think?"

Alina stared at her reflection. Two braids started at the top of her head and joined as one at the base of her neck.

"I like it."

Genya placed a slender finger to her lips.

"Too simple." With a flourish of her hand, Alina's hair was freed once more, falling in dark waves down her shoulders. "Turn."

When she did, her friend leaned over and took her face gently.

"I thought you were sleeping better." she mumbled as she ran her fingers underneath her eyes, ridding it of bags.

"I am, I think."

"Have you been summoning?"

"Yes, but, …"

"But?"

Genya leaned against the vanity, waiting patiently.

"I don't know." Alina said, looking down at her hands. "I know Baghra is horrible, and she still hasn't called back for me-"

"Then you go to her."

"I don't want to." Alina confessed, even though she probably should. Who else would teach her? The Darkling? He was always on and off the Little Palace grounds. "What if I mess up too bad and no-one's there to stop me?"

"So you haven't been summoning." Genya concluded.

"I have!" she fought back. "Just a little."

To prove her point, she closed her hand into a fist, opened up, and let a small orb of light fly up to Genya's face, not too close to make her uncomfortable. The Tailor watched the light with a small smile, and slowly reached out.

"I thought it might burn me."

"I think it would if I wanted to hurt you, or if I put more effort into it."

"But you love me too much."

"I tolerate you." she joked, moving the orb up and above her friend's head. "Now you look like a saint." she said, trying to turn the orb into a halo. It flickered and didn't exactly do as she commanded, only shone brighter over Genya's features.

The redhead shook her hand.

"Move. With this light, I can probably mask my age a bit more."

"Oh yeah," Alina said as she stood up, a playful smile on her face. "Because you're soooo old."

Alina didn't actually know how old Genya was, but she was sure they were about the same age.

"Tomorrow I will be a year closer to grey hair so," Genya's fingers went over her face, getting rid of imperfections Alina couldn't see. "One can never start too early."

"Tomorrow's your birthday?" Alina asked, starting to smile.

Genya didn't seem so excited. She merely shrugged.

"Yes."

"What are you planning on doing? Are you having a party? How many people will be there? Are presents mandatory? Cause I don't have permission to go to the city to get you one, and it doesn't really matter because I have no money and I don't have time enough to do something myself. What sort of ca-?

"Alina!" Genya had to raise her voice a little to get her overly excited friend to stop. "We don't celebrate birthdays here. It's just another day."

The Sun Summoner frowned.

"So, not even a cake? Or the day off?"

The Tailor huffed, amused.

"What for?"

"To celebrate." Alina was no longer bouncing on her heels.

"Trust me, the last thing anyone in these palaces would think of is to celebrate my silly birthday." she said as if it meant nothing.

Alina sat on the carpeted floor; legs crossed.

"That's depressing."

"If you say so." she remained indifferent.

She peered up at her friend and got an idea.

"Should we have some tea?"

"After I test how to work your face."

Later that night, standing outside the kitchens of the Little Palace, Alina ran her hands over her kefta and stood as straight as she could, putting on her best scowl. She hoped she had picked up a thing or two from Ana Kuya and Baghra

She entered the place like she owned it. At first, nobody took notice, too busy with their tasks. She cleared her throat.

Nothing.

She clapped her hands twice, like Genya did to call upon the attention of her miserable shrews -not that Alina considered the kitchen staff to fall into that category- and everyone in the kitchen turned to her, adopting various expressions at the sight of her.

No-one seemed to know what to do or what to say.

Trying to seem somewhat commanding, Alina cleared her throat once more.

"I need ingredients to make a cake." she stated.

One of the cooks swallowed hard before she began to speak.

"If you'd like a cake, Miss, I can make-"

"I want to do it myself, actually." she said, placing both hands behind her back and praying to all the saints she could remember -there weren't many- that they took her seriously.

Still, nobody moved.

Alina guessed that it wasn't every day that a Grisha showed up and demanded to cook something by themselves.

Not wanting the kitchen staff to feel offended, she spoke again:

"It's for a friend, you see, so I'd like to give her something I made with my own hands."

Slowly, the same woman who had spoken nodded, and then smiled tentatively.

"There's fresh eggs over there, Miss."

As it turned out, Alina did need some help after all. She knew how to make a basic cake, but as soon as she said it was a birthday cake, a middle-aged man jumped on her, offended on behalf of Genya.

"You can't just give your friend something so bland." he had said, his face red as he gestured widely at the cake, like it was a disgusting piece of work. One might have thought Alina had insulted his family. "You need to fill it with something, decorate it, give it life and flavour!"

Yes. That, she had no idea how to do.

He pushed her aside hastily.

"Saint can summon light but can't make a decent birthday cake." he muttered.

Alina's mouth hung open, offended, but she said nothing.

She hurried up the steps with a big cake held as if it were a precious new-born child when she heard him:

"Miss Starkov?"

"Holy Saints!"

She came to such a sudden halt, the cake moved precariously on its base.

"Yes, sir?" she called, tense, not daring to turn back.

"I am glad I came upon you;" The Darkling said, and she could hear him approaching.

It was so great to have him back, but why did he have to arrive at that time? Couldn't he have waited a few more minutes?

"Was there something you needed?" she asked.

"I can't believe myself, but please say 'no'"

"No, no, I just wanted to inform you that you shall start training with me tomorrow. I will see you at the entrance just before dawn."

"I thought you had no time for personal training." she was reminded of their conversation one season prior. "And that you didn't want to show favouritism."

It was probably stupid of her to say those things, to make him look like he couldn't make up his mind, but she find it hard to filter her thoughts when he was in the vicinity.

"I remember our conversation very well, Alina." he said, and she could hear his voice closer. It was so deep and smooth. Alina took a deep breath and tried to steady her heartbeat. "But some circumstances have changed, and I decided to make an exception."

Any other day, she would've melted at his feet at the way he spoke, as if it were almost a dirty, scandalous secret only meant for them.

But she had Genya's cake in her hands. It was big, and heavy, and he couldn't see it.

"That's great!" she said, and she meant it. "Thank you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have somewhere to go. Moi Soverennyi." she bowed, and then clutched her eyes shut, cursing herself silently. Nothing showed more respect for one's General than showing them their behind.

"Are you hiding something, Alina?" he asked, sounding far too amused to her liking.

"Nope."

"Right. And I am the Black Heretic." he almost snorted. Alina frowned; he sounded so…normal when he did that. She wanted to hear it more often, she realized.

She craned her neck so she could get a glimpse at him. His eyes shone with mirth; the corner of his mouth was tilted up. She wanted to freeze him like that forever.

"It's nothing bad or illegal."

He chuckled, and his nose crunched up a little. Alina found it adorable, and she wanted to kiss him again, cuddle next to a fire by him, and make him laugh until his sides hurt.

"Alright, then. I shall let you be on your way." he took a step back, and Alina took a few steps forward before stopping at the end of the stairs.

"It's good to have you back."

She climbed up the stairs so quickly one might've thought a Squaller was pushing her up, and didn't give him opportunity to say anything back.

Alina moved her tea table to the centre of her room, where she placed the cake and a few flowers she had stolen from the various vases around the Little Palace to give it more life.

Smiling like an idiot, she closed her eyes and called her light just as there was a knock on the door.

Her light answered and her hand shot up, leaving a thin layer of golden dust hovering near the ceiling, giving the space a lovely ambience.

Hastily, she made sure everything was in order. The tea was hot, and there was plenty of kvas and wine for at least ten people. The kitchen staff had been more than happy to provide for her when they found out who Alina wanted to celebrate. Apparently, Genya was well liked among the otkazat'sya who worked on the Little Palace.

She hurried to open the door.

Genya waited on the other side, standing straight, an eyebrow arched up.

"You called for me? Is it urgent?"

"Yes!" The Sun Summoner answered, taking her friend's hand and dragging her across the expansive room.

She turned abruptly and placed her hands on Genya's eyes, blocking her view.

"For all the Saints, Ali, I don't have time to play around." she complained as she was dragged some more. "Just because the queen is spending another afternoon with the Duke of Balakirev doesn't mean I don't have other things to do and-"

Alina uncovered her eyes.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" she squealed, taking a step to the side and extending her arms to showcase the cake.

It was rectangular, decorated with red, blue and yellow flowers all over it. No white. Nothing about that cake was white.

The Tailor stared at it.

'Happy Birthday, Genya!' it read, in black, messy letters. While the middle-aged man from the kitchen had done most of the decorating of the cake, Alina had insisted on writing the words herself.

Still, The Tailor stared at it, mouth agape.

Slowly, Alina's smiled dropped, and looking at her friend in the eyes, she was horrified to find them wet.

A tear fell down Genya's pale face, and Alina rushed over to remove it.

"Gen?" she asked, extremely concerned. "What is it?"

But Genya couldn't say anything. Her mouth opened, then it closed, and it opened again as a small cry left its confines, the tears falling freely now, like a turbulent river.

Alina hugged her, rubbing her stiff back in circles.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." she said over and over again. "I just thought you might like it. I'm so sorry. Do you want me to throw it away?"

She felt how her friend shook her head, clinging to her with a vice like grip.

Alina was the one who wanted to cry now, seeing her closest friend in such a state made her eyes tear, and, oh damn, she was crying now as well.

They stood like that for a few moments, weeping like idiots, the hug a bit awkward since Genya seemed to hover over smaller Alina.

Slowly, the Tailor disentangled herself from the Summoner, and her friend let her go.

Genya delicately passed a finger underneath her eyes and adverted her gaze, although Alina could see the red in her eyes.

"Thank you, Ali. Truly." she said, her voice slightly hoarse.

Alina was at a loss of words.

"It's just a cake, Gen." she shrugged. "I just thought, we could celebrate together, if you wanted. We can invite anyone you want." she suggested.

Smiling just a little, Genya looked down at her hands and played with her fingers.

"No, it's just…"she took a deep breath and let it out. Alina waited patiently. "No one ever really did this for me before." she said, raising her arm towards her cake.

"A birthday cake?" Alina asked slowly, her voice tremulous and trying not to sound sad. "Well, it's not a big deal!" she tried to shake it off, waving a hand with a forced smile. "Back in Keramzin there was only one plain cake per month for all the children so-"

"No, "Genya interrupted, her voice a mere whisper that cut through Alina's heart like a sharp blade. "I mean, celebrated. No one's ever done this much." her eyes were like crystal again. "Thank you."

Alina felt uncomfortable. She really did feel sad for her friend? Had no one ever truly celebrated her birthday? She knew she had been given to the queen at a young age, but even before that, had her parents ever made something for her? Or at least said anything on the day?

Alina didn't remember much of her parents, but she did remember once a year, her father coming up to her with a small, strawberry tart. He and mamma would hug her more than usual and kiss her cheeks and play with her all day until the sun went down and her eyes dropped closed of exhaustion.

"Chasing the waters." she thought, absentmindedly.

Even before the Little Palace, had Genya never had any of that?

"I'm just, sorry I couldn't do anything grander on such short notice." Alina tried to smile. "I have a present for you" she was now grinning, although so very nervous on the inside. She walked over to her desk and took the envelope. "I didn't have time to make something so… it was very last minute. She came back to stand before her friend and extended the envelope, which Genya took with a look in her eyes that resembled disbelief and wonder. Alina's cheek reddened. "It's nothing. Really. Open it."

Genya did as she was asked, and Alina bit her bottom lip, trembling as she recalled, word by word, what she had put down on the paper with her finest ink.

"I have a friend,

with bright, red hair.

She has a loudmouth,

and a brusque, yet marvellous touch.

 She and I have known each other,

for only a couple of months,

But I know that in my soul,

She's well settled for long.

 Some will say she's pretty

Others will say she's pricky,

and while those all ring through,

I know the person behind those needle-like replies.

 I have a friend,

with bright, red hair.

She's always there for me,

as I'll always be there for her."

It seemed as if an eternity had passed before the Tailor looked up, fresh tears in her eyes.

"Did you write this?" she asked, voice cracked. Alina nodded sheepishly, and Genya said: "This is the shittiest piece of poetry I have ever read."

The Summoner tried to not let her hurt show on her face, but a moment later she was being engulfed into another bear hug.

"I love it." Genya whispered almost fervently, clutching her tighter. "Thank you."

They spent the afternoon drinking tea, eating cake, talking and laughing. Genya had admired the piece for a long moment, as if trying to burn it into her memory, before she cut into the first two portions.

After a while, when there was no more tea and they grew tired of cutting, they sat themselves down on the carpeted floor, cake and all, and dug in directly from the base as they helped it pass through with kvas and wine.

"What do you mean?" Alina asked as they both laid on top of the soft, fur carpet of the floor, facing up, unable to move.

"Another rule of the General to keep his Grisha humble: no birthday parties." Genya answered, her speech slurred and the last part with a deeper tone, like she wanted to imitate Kirigan.

"That sucks!" Alina spat, just as drunk as her friend.

"Yeah!"

"Parties are…cool." she stated, raising her index finger as if to make a point. "There's cake,"

"Ugh." Genya's hand flew down to her stomach. "I can't move."

Alina ignored her.

"There's presents, if you're not an orphan." she giggled at her own misery. "There's more cake, and there's people."

"There's always p-people at the Tiny Palace." Genya reminded her, kicking off her boots.

Alina did the same, her hands blindly reaching up to the couch for the small pillows.

"Yeah;" one of the pillows hit Genya in the face, and the Tailor whined about it as she placed it underneath her head. "But there's no birthday cake, thanks to General Handsomest. And no birthday parties." She counted to three in her head, shot up, grabbed the blanket at the back of the couch, and let herself fall again on top of the rug.

Saints, how had she and Genya managed to eat that entire monstrosity?

She threw the blanket over her body and kicked until it covered her feet. Genya clumsily pulled at it so it'd cover her as well.

Alina frowned.

"There's people at parties."

"Yes, Alina." Genya closed her eyes.

Alina's frown deepened, some of the blurriness in her mind clearing.

"People talk at parties."

Genya opened one eye.

"Are you going to get us in trouble?"

Alina, who could barely put the dots together as she thought of how full of cake she was and how funny everything looked from where she was laying on the ground, and how handsome the General was, and how she wanted to kiss him again and slap him for leaving her like that, turned her face towards her friend.

"Only if General Handsome caught us." she said.

Genya sighed.

"Fine. But turn your head to the other side. I don't want your puke in my face."

Giggling at the disgusting image, Alina did as she was told.

Their hands found each other underneath the blanket in a soft hold.

"Happy birthday, Gen." Alina mumbled, the lack of sleep due to her preparations for the afternoon and all the alcohol catching up to her.

"Thank you, Ali."

A/N: Hope you liked it! This is probably the last sweet chapter before things gradually start to get darker *evil laugh*

Click here for chapter IX

[bloodyspade0000]

30-day knb challenge: Day 1- Favorite Male character

↳ Haizaki Shougo

I am not justifying Haizaki's behaviour. I think he needs a tall glass of respect woman juice and therapy. This is just meant to explain why he is my favourite character and help you better understand him as a character. Do not send hate or take my words out of context. You will be reported, deleted and cancelled. Thank you and enjoy. :)

My favourite character is Haizaki Shougo *dodges tomatoes* a lot of people in the fandom hate this guy for many reasons. It's kind of funny how many people hate him and the amount of hate he gets just for existing. Like bruh; he's sixteen, leave him alone. 😂

His whole existence is just sad. He was literally created to be hated.

Like straight up, Tadatoshi Fujimaki even admitted that he hated Haizaki. Haizaki's sole purpose of existing is to make the Generation of Miracles look better even though they’re just as problematic as he. No one is fucking perfect and is about time people woke the fuck up and realized it. Your faves are problematic move the fuck on.

Yes, the Miracles are redeemable but so is Haizaki. Yet, unlike the Miracles, he does not get redeemable. No, he disappears and is never seen again. Like bitch, what the fuck!? if you’re gonna introduce a character to only have them disappear for a long time and either have them show up again or just never mention them again. Wasting the potential they had to be a very good character or not having them redeem themselves while the other characters who were just as fucking problematic get a fucking redemption arc because they’re fucking main characters!? What’s the point of that character even existing in the first place? What kind of bullshit is that? Just to have them exist to make the main characters look good? How the fuck does that make sense? Like where is my Haizaki redemption arc? Do I have to write it on my own? I will write it. I am writing one.

Haizaki is the only character I could relate to. Being second best, struggling to find somewhere to fit in and overshadowed and replaced by someone everyone thinks is better than you. It's fucking depressing, okay? You spend your whole life thinking you’re not good enough, and it hurts. I don't feel like going too deep into it because I don't owe you a detailed explanation of my trauma, okay?. So I'll save that for my fics where I self-project half of it onto Haizaki. It’s a coping mechanism, okay? Therapy is fucking expensive.

The anime ruined his whole character, got rid of his whole arc and shorted it down, and made him worse than he really is.

A post explaining how the anime did him dirty and goes more in-depth about his character

I am not trying to justify his actions, i.e. him manhandling Alex and beating Himura up. He does terrible shit. We all do lousy shit sometimes, but that doesn't make us bad people. Making mistakes is a part of being human, and we're supposed to hold people accountable for their actions and help them realize what they’re doing is wrong, allowing them to grow and change. Not condemn them and ostracize them, which leads to isolation and a lot of psychological trauma and self-hatred, and as someone who has dealt with—is still dealing with all three. It is not fun. It makes living painful. Highly unrecommended.

Haizaki does not have a positive role model in his life nor anybody he can turn to, everyone has already given up on him. Even Nijimura and Kuroko didn’t even try to help him, being more focused on the Miracles. (Yes, I know kuroko tried to stop him from throwing his basketball shoes away, but that doesn’t fucking count because after that Kuroko just gave up on Haiazki too). Haizaki has probably grown grew up knowing only violence and not a single ounce of kindness, turning him into the bitter and angry little boy he is.

Haizaki had so much potential. But instead of making him a great villain that potential was WASTED on fucking Kise.

Also, the Kaijo vs Seirin match in the winter cup was completely useless because Kise already got redeemed and he literally got no character development from it.

And Seirin was gonna fucking win anyways because duh thier the main characters. 🙄

Now some headcanons I think about a lot:

1. He gets abused. Some psychological behavioural consequences of child abuse are unhealthy sexual practices and juvenile delinquency, and Haizaki exhibits all three which are some external behaviours of most (NOT ALL) male abuse victims. Haizaki's a womanizer, aggressive, hostile and violent. Yet, he backs down when someone stronger than him comes around and puts him in his place i.e. Aomine and Nijimura.

a factsheet explaining the long term consequences of child abuse and neglect

How to help a friend dealing with family abuse or neglect

How to Handle Abuse

2. He's a victim. And when you're a victim, you either become angry and cynical with everything and everyone around you, swearing never to be a victim again and struggle with gaining back control of your life. Not wanting anyone to see you being vulnerable because being vulnerable makes you weak. Being weak makes you shatter. You always shatter like glass, cutting yourself every time you pick up broken pieces, watching as blood trickles through your fingers.

Your body is constantly on high alert. The default is flight or fight—survival to the fittest.

Or you bite your lip and keep your head down, bottling everything inside and looking for escapes or seeking validation. You want to be wanted and loved because you struggle with loving and accepting yourself. There's always a voice in the back of your head telling you, you're not good enough or that it's your fault. That everything is your fault. Self-hatred and self-doubt are your tormentors.

Or it's a combination between both—a constant struggle.

And I believe Haizaki portrays both from the way he acts and presents himself. Especially since his motto is literally "Survival of the fittest,” and he had once told Kuroko, " there are bad guys and then the really scary people," or something along those lines, which I believe he is talking from experience. You learn from your experiences. They either make you or break you.

3. He's touch-starved.

What Does It Mean to Be Touch Starved?

4. He's bisexual and has a lot of internalized homophobia. I can just feel his internalized homophobia rolling off of him. Bruh, I just know cuz I am bisexual, and I have struggled with internalized homophobia and still sadly struggle with it cuz I grew up surrounded by homophobic people.

I still live with them. 😭

Also, we live in a society that thinks straight is the default.

What internalized homophobia is.

5. His sexual awakening was probably Aomine or Kise. Could be both 😂?

6. He cries himself to sleep every night.

7. He's observant and a great judge of character. It's a fact. This guy literally predicted the downfall of the Miracles. Straight up warned Kuroko too. Too bad Kuroko didn't listen to him.

8. He's hilarious. When he first appeared in the manga, he literally called Himura a loser, lol. XD

9. He's a closeted softie and a total tsundere.

10. doesn't know how to react to kindness and will think you're threatening him or will feel really awkward and uncomfortable but will cover it up with his scowl, or he'll have a breakdown.

11. needs a lot of reassurance and head pats

12. swears a lot. Has no filter.

13. His bother is in the yakuza or some high position of power, and he feels inferior to him. It also explains why Haizaki gets away with things because he would have been kicked out of school if his bother wasn't either-or. I'm talking about his bother being in the yakuza, lol. XD

14. He and Momoi dated for a while but broke up on a mutual understanding that thier relationship just didn't work out. They're best friends and hang out sometimes.

15. Haizaki's good with kids and just genuinely likes them. He would be a great father and try his best to raise his kids right.

16. He gets sick really easily

17. He's clingy

18. He has no friends, mainly because he doesn't want people to get close to him because he's afraid of getting hurt again. Also, everyone in knb hates him.

19. He watches cartoons cuz he was never allowed to watch them when he was a kid. His childhood is trash, okay?

20. He hides in the closet because that's where he feels safe the most—rhetorically and literally.

21. Sleep-deprived and only runs on caffeine and spite.

List of fics that portray Haizaki better than the anime:

Heavy is the head by extrastellar

Idle Hands by DarkWoods

Another Chance by regretting my username_ (777imou_offline367)

What Matters is that We're Together by StrawFairy

06:00:00 of Haizaki Shougo (4) by ReiClien

This Is Happening by SharkGirl

What is Love by voices_in_my_head

A completely uncalled catharsis by oddball

One-shots

intertwined, under a spell by kornevable

ԼƠƔƐ & ӇΛƬƐ by Arthuria_PenDragon

delirium by extrastellar

me with you by doublejoint

Turn My Camera On by wordsliketeeth

At Summer's End by doublejoint

Taste by Hibari1_san

I Can't Get Enough of You by HisDarkSecret

I don't care if it hurts by llowsywriter

Ashes by doublejoint

broken things by lowsywriter

Series:

Finally found each other by suzakukills

This Is Happening Universe by SharkGirl

DNA by flowerway

My WIPS:

Isn’t it lovely?

Broken Crown

Love me, Love me, Love me

Grey skies

Rabbit hole

A playlist of songs that I believe fit Haizaki

Kuroko’s basketball’s manga

In conclusion, You can hate Haizaki as much as you want. But just keep it to yourself. Haizaki is my baby and I will protect him with my life.

[maskved]

hello, besties ! this is ami (she/her) and i’m probably late with this intro ! first i’m sorry for mass-liking every post but i’m already in love with all your lovely muses. also i must confess that i’ve only read the first book ( years ago ) and watched the show because i have an attention span of - 10 seconds.  but at least i’m a soc hoe, so we can scream about that ... please ... !!! so if i get anything wrong pls let me know or you can also not let me know and i’ll continue being embarrassing 😔. anyway, if you are interested in some juicy plotting pls LIKE this post or message me ( if you want to plot on discord we can also do that 💖). I’M EXCITED.

PINTEREST  . discor*d     six of hoes🔪#7888  //  YEVA

[ viktoriya zobova ], an [ twenty six ] year old grisha in the little palace. she is  a [ tailor ] and are known in the little palace as the [ viscerotonic ]. they are known to be [ resilient ] and [ elusive ] and vaguely resemble [ kristine froseth ]. 

death tw

- viktoriya zobova ( however, prefers to be called vika because every time one calls her by her full name she might as well be in trouble ) had never been more than average. born to average parents ( although grisha their powers pale compared to others ) into an average family and of course as the middle child, vika strived for more than simply being overlooked.

- truth to be told, she dreaded to be tested. to her it seemed like the final reminder that she was nothing special, average, merely an extra to someone other’s story. she even wished, she wouldn’t be a grisha, fearing that like her parents she’d belong to the lower ranks. however, if she turned out to be a simple human without any power, at least she’d be special within her family or could even try to make a story up that she was adopted or something ( i hate her -- ).

- however, the moment she found out about being able to alter people’s appearances with her ability *atla vc* everything changed - 

- truth to be told she knew she was considered to be lower rank among others but what really fueled her arrogance and the sudden feeling of self importance was her knowing that she possessed a rare ability. she didn’t care others treating her badly for her rank because “hey i can alter appearances and that is lit ( she probably didn’t say it that way - )

- ALSO ( here comes the moment i throw in my found family trope bcs i’m a soc hoe and this actually plays a big role in her story ) she’d found comfort in the friends she met.

- (lemme add my childhood friends trope bcs why not ) as vika was never close to her parents ( to be fair her being taken away for the training at such a young age did not really gave her the time to really bond with her family ) her little group of friends became her second family. they called themselves “blood is thicker water” ( gang ???) bcs 1) vika really thought the saying was blood is thicker water and not blood is thicker than water 2) they thought they were incredibly funny.

- they were pretty much known as troublemakers, especially with vika being a tailor it was easy to sometimes shift the blame on others. truth to be told, it only caused vika to be more frivolous. all the fun they had blinded her judgment and she viewed her ability as harmless.

- well, lets say vika becoming more reckless did not end up being the best character development (lmao). as usual , everything started out as a harmless joke. her friend asked her to change his appearance. however, this time they wanted her to change their whole face. not just the colour of their hair or eyes. vika was reluctant at first, she’d never done it before but in the end she agreed to it and much to her surprise she succeeded. she even bragged about it and told her friends ( of the bloody “blood is thicker water” gang (???) ) .

-  to cut a long story short, their friend ended up dying because of it. i have two versions for their death ( i haven’t decided on it yet *clown emoji*)

1) the person they changed their appearance into apparantly was involed in some shady stuff and had some pretty morally questionable people around him. they thought vika’s friends was that person they were looking for (bcs of the changed appearance) and killed them for some reason.

2) vika’s friend was supposed to be part of some mission they didn’t want to go to, thus changed their appearance to escape from it. however, ended up having to do another mission and ended up being killed. 

RIP nameless but vital character to vika’s bio 

- vika pretty much blamed herself for it and maybe her friends of their friend group as well. this incident also ‘humbled’ vika and now instead of being proud of it she hates it.

- right now, she doesn’t really know what to do with her future. she has this ‘oh so grand’ plan that one day she might be able to change her appearance (permanently) and then leave the little palace and live under a new name and lead a life where she wouldn’t need to use her abilities anymore.

personality ( i’m trying to keep it short i swear, i’m just adding a bunch of sentence here bcs i’m throwing all my ideas into this paragraph)

- she’s known to be pretty social. she loves to talk and honestly doesn’t know when to shut up. she can’t deal with silence because it forces her to think about things she doesn’t want to think about. although, her tongue is sharp and trouble seems to follow her, she also loves to dance around the issue, pushing her feelings away and replacing it with a witty joke instead. as if everyone does it the same way, as if everyone is supposed to understand. 

headcanons

- although she was tempted to change her own appearance many times. she never did because she is a coward and doesn’t trust her skills as much others might think she does.

- she views her ability as a form of art, perhaps that is also the reason she used to love to paint. honestly, she was never really good at it. average and above average with practice. her friend ( the dead one lmao ) used to paint with her whenever they could sneak away but with them gone, she doesn’t see a point in it anymore.

- she secretly envies the other grisha’s who can use their ability to fight. recently, she’d find herself trying to practice some punches so she doesn’t feel that useless in case of a dangerous situation. she also sucks at that so she’s probably in need of a training patner aka someone who is willing to train her or she has annoyed that much that they were willing to help her out ( wc ???)

- being personally trained by the darkling, one might assume that she’s loyal or even thankful towards the darkling. however, contrary is the case and she wouldn’t even grant him a dust particle of her trust. she doesn’t believe that he has the best interest of anyone in his heart and if she could, she’d probably spread rumors about him and telling others that he has some serious case of stanky breath.

wanted connections ( just some ideas, which can be changed ofc ! or some wcs can be connected ) 

(0/3) “blood is thicker water” friend group  : they pretty much grew up together. the death of their friend ( the friend needs a name - i swear...) caused tension within the group. while, one might have blamed vika for their death the other doesn’t and just wants them to be how they used to be. nevertheless, no one can deny that nothing was what it used to be). (( honestly these are just some ideas and we can plot wtv sddm )

training partner ( can be more than one ): connection mentioned in the hcs ! they help her a little out to become physically fit and level up her combat skills of -10. maybe they want something in return for it. help her out bcs they’re just nice or bcs vika annoyed the heck out of them etc.

person vika changed their friend’s appearance into: honestly we can do wtv with it. i just thought it’d be fun to play with the idea and having the person running around when they actually “died” and everyone belieed them to be dead until they found out that it was vika’s friend. might be angsty bcs it might remind vika of their friend.

angsty exes: listen, i love some angsty shit and i love to blame vika for all the problems. they might have dated before the whole dead friend fiasco happened. although, viktoriya acted as if she was fine after the incident ( which she wasn’t ),it only made muse a realize that vika and them weren’t as close as they believed and how much vika tied to hide from them.  BUT tbh anything would work i love a good angsty ex connection djddnd

random idea but i just liked the thought that this person once went to vika for some enhancing stuff. however, this day vika was not really herself, distracted, head in the clouds. so she accidenally might have gotten rid of some important scar or something.

enemies : lbr, vika might prbly be the type who has some enemies. she has no filter and might has stepped on someone toes because of it. (Also maybe gimme some enemies to lovers trope , adding this here quietly to not expose myself as a hoe for that trope )

HONESTLY GIVE ME EVERYTHING, gimme angst, fluff, tropes !!??? more friends, unusual friends, shippy stuff, platonic stuff, family connections djdsd GIMME 

[stefciastark]

Vines

Rating: T

Characters/Themes: Tony & Peter (Irondad), Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Nick Fury

Genre: H/C

Words: ~1600 and counting

A/N: Originally made for Day 11 of Webpril (a little late, whoops), I have also published this into a separate fic. If you'd like to stay up to date with how this pans out for chapter 2-3, you'll find that on my AO3 or FFN on the 'Standalone Fic' links below :) x

~Read it on AO3 | Webpril | Standalone Fic

~Read it on FFN | Webpril | Standalone Fic

Peter had never thought he’d be afraid of plants. Alright, maybe poison ivy and rhubarb, but not vines of all things. He also never thought he’d see the day when plants came to life...well okay, plants were already alive, but sentient was a whole other can of worms that Peter wished was never opened.

“Remind me to add a herbicide feature to the suits next time,” Tony chimed in over the comms. Peter couldn’t see his whereabouts, a cloud of smoke barring his view. It seemed like no matter how many explosives or sheer blunt force they sunk into these things, they were getting nowhere.

“New York is struggling with the trees as is, Tony, I don’t think we need you nuking the last patch of grass in Central Park,” Clint fired back.

“Look, can we talk about saving the forests later? I could use some more hands on deck here.” Steve was about a block and a half away from the rest of the team, having appointed himself to ‘perimeter’ duty but had soon been confronted with a writhing mass of vines that sprouted from the ground like heads sprouted from a Hydra.

Steve’s request was met by an enthusiastic “coming!” from Peter, who promptly proceeded to assume the role of a modern George of the Jungle, but instead the jungle was made of concrete, and the vines were...well the vines were vines.

Peter locked on to the small speck of blue weaving in between a forest of green, and proceeded to deploy the four mechanical arms that erupted from the back of the Iron Spider. Each arm seemed to operate on Karen’s schedule, but Peter couldn’t complain; the AI had faster reactions than Peter ever would, and if he thought about that too much it scared him.

As each metal appendage slashed and carved its way through the thick stems, thick sap oozed out like blood, but as soon as the incisions appeared, they were gone, replaced by cell membranes that were multiplying way too fast.

“Uh, guys? This isn’t working…”

“You’re telling me,” Clint grumbled, feeling more useless than ever. It didn’t matter if his arrows were covered in acid, produced flames, or were laced with electricity - the outcome was still the same. As soon as Clint came to that realisation, he had perched himself on the balcony of a nearby highrise, not wanting to risk being caught amongst the chaos. There was many a time he wished he weren’t as human. Moreso, he wished he weren’t as fragile.

“Hold on, I’ve got this.” Tony rounded the corner of the sidestreet nearest to Peter and moments later as the suit brushed past Steve, a long thin pike that exploded out from a Tylenol sized capsule dug into the ground right next to one of the vines besides Peter.

Within less than a second, Peter felt a shudder beneath the ground, followed by a geyser of dirt. The vine writhed for a moment before falling limp with a heavy thud. It suddenly looked so much smaller, no longer resembling a gigantic green tube man from outside the local car dealership.

“Well that wasn’t so bad.”

Peter groaned internally, not needing his Spidey Sense to tell him that those would be Tony’s famous last words.

The vine began convulsing, and Peter was reminded of the nurses from Silent Hill. For a moment he wished they were; then he wouldn’t have to deal with something at least half the size of his apartment building.

Rising once more to its full stature, half a dozen smaller vines broke out from the soil beneath it. Now it really resembled a Hydra.

Tony registered simultaneously the resurrection-including-birth and his position that put him at the epicentre of it all. Firing all repulsors at maximum capacity, he took off aiming vaguely for Hawkeye’s vantage point on the balcony.

That would’ve been the plan.

One of the smaller vines had snaked its way around the suit’s foot, up the ankle, and began to relentlessly squeeze. Sparks were beginning to fly out of Tony’s right foot repulsor before sputtering and going dark, and in that brief window where full-flight momentum had been compromised, the vine arched back.

Peter watched with mild panic as Tony whipped into the ground with the vine still stubbornly attached. He knew the suit could handle a lot, but what he never knew - and he was fairly sure Tony didn’t really know either - was if the suit was going to be able to come back to the workshop in one piece, preferably with Tony in one piece in it. And speaking of the workshop, after the dust cleared Peter’s heart sunk as he took in the scuffs and the scattered uneven plates that normally fit together like a puzzle. Of course, with all of their recent calls to action over the last few days and most of the other suits undergoing major upgrades and testing during an almost two month long quiet period - which turns out was a major oversight - the only suitable suit candidate was already semi out of commission.

Tony’s communications stuttered back online, jarred momentarily by the impact, and a low groan filtered over the comms.

“Tony, you alright?” Steve was almost 300-feet away, jumping back in after spending an frustratingly inordinate amount of time trying to pull an answer out of S.H.I.E.L.D who had sent a few airborne vehicles to try and scan and triangulate.

“Just. Peachy.” Each word was punctuated by a forceful attempt to remove the vine’s grip from the suit. Tony didn’t want to admit it out loud, but the strength at which it was constricting was starting to hurt. A lot. He really didn’t want to think about how much pressure the baby vine had to be exerting for him to feel it beneath the suit. He was suddenly a lot more alarmed about the larger vines.

S.H.I.E.L.D used that moment to broadcast, Nick Fury’s voice filtering over the present team’s radios. “I see we might have a bit of a weed problem. I would’ve thought gardening was a bit below the Avengers’ paygrade.”

“Just tell us how to get rid of these things, they’re giving me the creeps.” Clint broke his silence, his time surveying the convulsing vines of chaos in Central Park not bringing him any answers.

Fury was all business now. “This thing’s set up camp over by the boat house to your north. Scans picked up a large form that looks like a bulb about 32-feet below the surface. Find it, kill it, and we can all go home.”

“Roger that,” Steve replied, shifting his shield to sit more securely. “Tony, are you rea -”

“I’m gonna need a bit. As kinky as being tied up would be in any other situation…” Tony never quite finished his thought, turning off his radio as the vine constricted once more and he gritted his teeth against the crushing pressure. More of the baby vines had seemed to smell the nearby prey and had turned their attention to his figure lying supine on the ground.

Peter winced, hearing the (almost) disguised strain in Tony’s voice. The parent vine didn’t seem to care about his mentor anymore, and if it had eyes, Peter was sure they’d be twinkling in a lazy kind of sadistic pleasure. It had minions to do its dirty work now.

“Alright Queens, you and I have got this.” Steve looked at Peter and nodded. Clint had one arrow left and that method of attack had so far proven incredibly useless. Except…

Peter swung his way up to the balcony Clint was occupying near the East Green section of Central Park. “Hey, can I have your last boom arrow? Maybe it’ll work, but I’ve got a plan.”

Clint raised an eyebrow, loathe to give over his last projectile and cementing how inessential he had begun to feel. Pressing his lips together, he reached behind him and pulled out his last arrow. “Just press this bit in the middle of the arrowhead, okay? After that you’ve got about five seconds before you need to get the hell out.”

“Cool, got it. Arrowhead, five seconds, run. Thanks!” And as soon as Peter had appeared, he had started his commute back towards Steve.

Tony was lying incredibly still. He discovered that if he barely twitched a muscle - which these abominations could somehow tell beneath a layer of armour - the rate at which the squeezing increased slowed down.

“Today would be great.” Tony turned his head towards Steve, who had just shifted his attention to Peter who had arrived with an arrow in hand. Steve at once understood the plan.

“Hold tight, Tony.” Steve’s voice dripped with an authority that Tony found profoundly irritating but Peter found comforting.

“Not going anywhere, Cap.”

Steve took off at a sprint next to Peter, who was using the surrounding trees and lamp posts as targets for his webs. The closer they got to the epicentre of it all, the more concentrated the vines were. What started as sporadically placed vegetation now looked more like a dense jungle.

Peter landed softly on the grass as Steve slowed to a jog. Looking up, they were confronted with a writhing mass that looked more like a Kraken than it did a plant.

As they deliberated their next course of action, Peter’s blood ran cold as over the radio he heard Tony’s agonised scream.

[echo-bleu]

FIC PROMPT: Kyle or Liz wanting to talk to Alex about his suicidal ideation.

There it is Beth! I couldn’t figure out a way to make this related to what Alex told Michael in 2x10, not without dealing with the whole kidnapping thing, but then I realized it didn’t have to be related. I’m not sure why this wanted to be post 2x06, but it is. Or, a slightly different version of 2x06.

My headcanons for Alex’s background here are the same as I used in setting fire to our insides (for fun).

[suicide ideation, mentions of suicide attempt, mentions of bullying and child abuse, vague description of a dead person, stab wound, vague mentions of the 2x06 scene]

spinning like a weathervane

“Hey,” Alex opens the door, blinking hard at the light. He squints and looks away from Kyle to wave him in, feeling like his head is going to split open. “Sorry.”

“Hangover?” Kyle asks.

“Yeah. It's fine, it'll go away.” Alex hops back on his crutch awkwardly, unstable. His left shoulder is too painful to take his weight, or he would have grabbed both crutches. Hangovers mess badly with his balance.

Kyle follows him into the living room. “I'm guessing that's not why you called me?”

“No. I, uh, I kinda got stabbed?”

“You got what?” Kyle stammers.

“Yesterday was...complicated,” Alex mutters. He sits down on his piano bench, both because it allows him to face away from the eastern windows and because he doesn't think he'll be able to get up again if he lets himself get comfortable in an armchair. He leans his crutches against the keyboard.

“Are you bleeding? Show me. When did this happen?”

Alex sighs and starts trying to takes his shirt−Michael's shirt−off. It was easier to put it on. Or maybe he just ignored the pain when he rushed to get dressed this morning, Michael and Maria's eyes on him and discomfort seeping into his bones. It's harder to ignore, now that his brain doesn't register any immediate threat. Plus, both his head and his leg are killing him. He spent the whole night with his prosthesis on, almost twenty-four hours of walking and riding in a car and fucking getting stabbed, and it did a number on his stump.

“It was cleaned up and treated, but I'm pretty sure it needs a couple stitches,” he says.

“What did this?” Kyle asks, coming to kneel down in front of Alex, setting down his medical bag. “Who did this?”

“Doesn't matter.” Alex grits his teeth as Kyle carefully rips off the bandage. Sure enough, the injury is still seeping blood. “He's taken care of. And it was an ice pick. Before you ask, yes, I'm up to date with my shots. Not my first stabbing.”

“That is not reassuring. Did you lose a lot of blood? Felt lightheaded?”

Alex shakes his head. “I, uh, fainted, but I think it was just the pain. The drive back was not fun.”

Kyle prods at the wound, making Alex hiss in pain. “This definitely needs stitches. I need you to give me a timeline here. When did you get stabbed?”

Alex watches him start to prepare his kit. “Around midnight.”

“Eighteen hours ago. And why didn't you call me right away?” Kyle asks without looking up.

“It wasn't that bad. Beside, we were in the middle of nowhere. Maria called Michael to tow us back.”

“You were with Maria and Michael,” Kyle states flatly.

“Well, just with Maria. We were tracking down a lead on Mimi's kidnapping. Guy attacked me, chased Maria, she knocked him out, and his twin shot him. Michael showed up and drove us back, and they patched me up.” Alex leaves the rest out. The awkward hours in the car, trying to breathe through the pain and not watch Maria only have eyes for Michael. How his heart broke in a million pieces, again, watching Michael so scared for Maria, watching them kiss. How he still couldn't take his eyes away from him, couldn't stand up and leave, call a ride-share or something, anything, anything not to have to watch this.

How Maria kissed him. How she grabbed his hand and put it on Michael's thigh. What could have happened, if Michael hadn't inadvertently elbowed Alex straight into his wound and Alex hadn't nearly passed out from the pain.

He will always wonder, probably. Call it morbid curiosity. By then, he was already floating far out of his body, his brain incapable of processing things. Disappearing, like he's always done when it gets too hard. Michael's shock brought him back hard, harder than any pain could have.

“And when was that?”

“We got back at dawn. Michael−” Alex pauses to grit his teeth as Kyle starts to stitch him up, “−drove me back here.”

“And none of you thought to call me? Or, you know, do what most people do when they're injured and drive to the nearest ER?”

Kyle's tone is sarcastic, but his worry is real. And that's exactly why Alex hoped until now to avoid having to tell him. “I was fine,” he says. It took him almost fifteen minutes to convince Michael that he didn't have to stay out of guilt, that he could go back to the Airstream where Maria waited. It took him almost a full hour to decide that the only way he was going to forget about that and finally sleep was the bottle of Patron in his liquor cabinet.

“That's when you decided to get hammered?” Kyle asks, finishing his last knot.

Alex shrugs. “Seemed better than just offing myself at the time,” he jokes.

Kyle's response is very much not what he expected−not that Alex knows what he expected. Kyle's face goes slack with shock and he stares at Alex for a solid thirty seconds, bloody hands and needles forgotten. At least he's already finished the stitches, Alex thinks a little hysterically.

“Alex,” he says slowly, deliberately moving his hands into Alex's sight so he doesn't come off as a threat. “Do you mean that? What you just said.”

Alex replays it in his head, quickly, trying to figure out where the hitch is. Oh. Right, regular people don't react well to that. He forgot, again. Last time Karl dragged him straight to the base hospital and he had to argue for half-an-hour with the on-call therapist that it was just a joke. And Karl knew way more than Kyle does about gallows humor.

Alex goes to deny it, go back on his words, but the thought of Karl−of his body sprawled on Alex's, eyes unseeing, heavy, so heavy, so still−makes him grimace against his will. And the moment has passed, it's too late to just wave it away. The concern is anchored in Kyle's eyes now and won't just leave.

Alex works his jaw, hesitating. “I'm not going to do anything.”

“But you think about it.”

Alex doesn't deny it.

“You know what it is, right?” Kyle asks, biting his lip. He's clearly unsure how to proceed, but he's not going to let it go. Alex wishes they could have this conversation at another time. His head feels far too heavy for his neck, and he wants to support it with his hand, but Kyle will be looking for any sign of distress, now. Which means that Alex won't get any respite. Fuck.

“Yes, Kyle, I've been to therapy. Still go. I know what suicide ideation is. Always had the thoughts. Never tried anything, beside the once, and I won't.”

Kyle's face shifts. And...fuck. Alex's brain-to-mouth filter is fucked, he's still half drunk. He didn't mean to let that slip.

“You attempted suicide?” Kyle asks carefully.

Alex swallows. “I was fourteen. I thought I'd hit rock bottom. I was pretty naive. Look, just because I think of it doesn't mean I actually want to do it. It doesn't work like that. It's just...thought patterns. That's where my mind goes when I feel bad, that's all. It's a coping mechanism.”

Kyle doesn't answer, and he goes back to treating Alex's wound, slowly and deliberately. More disinfectant makes Alex screw up his face at the sting. Kyle covers it in gauze and tapes a bandage over it, cleaner and better than Michael's was. Alex watches him, wondering if this will change everything between them. Once they got over their history, Kyle has been pretty good at respecting his agency, not mothering him because of his disability. But things changed with Karl, when he found out. It was just a few weeks before−

Alex shakes his head to get rid of the thought. He focuses on his wound instead, because physical pain is always easier to deal with. He rolls his shoulder to check his range of motion. Good enough, though using a crutch on that side will hurt for a while. Hiding it at work shouldn't be too hard, at least.

“Fourteen,” Kyle says suddenly. “That's when we stopped talking.”

Something cold settles inside Alex. “Don't you dare think it was your fault,” he snarls.

“Okay, okay,” Kyle physically backs off. “I just−I think about what I did to you a lot.”

“Look, you were a dick, but you were also just a kid. If you want to blame someone, blame my father. Not yourself.”

“As long as you remember that that's valid for you, too,” Kyle says with a raised eyebrow.

Alex looks away. He won't admit that Kyle hit a nerve, but this rings far too true.

“I'm done here,” Kyle changes the subject. “You hurt anywhere else?”

“No. Spent too much time on my leg, but that will heal on its own.”

“You need rest. I don't want you at work for at least two days. I'll write you a note, or whatever form you need to get medical leave.”

“Kyle, I can't afford my supervisors finding out what I'm doing with my free time.”

Kyle rolls his eyes. “Then taking a couple sick days because of your prior injury is better than showing up sleep-deprived and with a sore shoulder.”

“Fine,” Alex sighs. He could really use the sleep, he knows, but two days of running circles in his house thinking about Michael and Maria is not appealing. And that's if his brain doesn't decide that a little stabbing calls for a rerun of every trauma he's ever had.

“And Alex? Please at least call your therapist?”

“Yeah,” Alex breathes. “Yeah, I will.”

He doesn't see her regularly anymore, but he knows this is the right call. At least Kyle isn't trying to get him to do more, like seek inpatient help.

“Thank you,” he adds, without looking at Kyle who is zipping up his bag.

“You want me to stay?” Kyle offers. “Get some pizza, watch a movie or something?”

“You're just off your shift, you must be dying to get home,” Alex says.

“Nah. No one there waiting for me. I'll just do the same at my place. Feel like some company?”

Alex hesitates for a moment. “Sure.”

“Then get comfortable,” Kyle smiles, kicking off his shoes. He gestures at the TV. “You got Netflix on this?”

[finewalls]

#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES - When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag up to 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours.

I am lowkey late but I finally have proper time to do this fun thing! Thank you  @tomthenetherlands for tagging me (check her process here). I was asked to explain my process of making this lyric animation so here we go

[disclaimer: I’ve deleted everything but the final product from my computer so I’ll mostly explain with text only]

1. PLANNING: Okay first I got this request on my ask box bc I was lowkey doing a series, so I knew the style I was gonna go with: simplistic animation. That’s pretty much all the plan was fhgsdjkfhksda

2. BASEWORK: Now first thing I did is choose the best lyrics for the edit and started searching for videos best fit to use as the base for the edit. Immediately knew to use a clip from the movie 1917 because of the burning city scene, for the first lyric. Then a clip from walls as I wanted to insert Louis into it and went through some true blood ship videos to find a good one of two guys kissing dfhgsdjfsk and for the last one I originally wanted a wedding scene but the one I tried to use was way too difficult to work with it so I used another part from the same video as base. Now that I got my videos I open up photoshop and get working

3. PHOTOSHOP: Starting with GIF number 1

Just like with every GIF I import the video and choose the frames I want yada yada. Now first before I start the ‘animation’ process I sharpen the GIF once and then I over colour the whole thing. Like over saturated and massive contrast so it’s easier to work with. Also in this case made everything super warm like yellow and orange all over. Then comes the fun part! I started painting each frame making sure it’s not too flashy and clear enough so you recognise what’s happening. Since this was the first of the edit I chose a simple colour palette I could use in the other GIFs as well. Ones I was happy with the frames I resize the canvas to 600x400px and compressed the GIF once and then open it again, added the lyrics on top and standard GIF making again. 

GIF number 2! This one took me about 3 times until I got it right. I did so much recolouring I almost gave up hdgjkaslga

But just like the first one, colouring, sharping etc. and then again one frame at a time painting the scene and making sure you see human shapes. As you can still see the right side of the gif is a mess bc why did't I just paint it all black idk. But with this I recoloured it again after painting bc I wasn’t happy with the shades, and then again and again bc fun. But yeah, resize, compress, add text, tha-da

GIF number 3, my fave

Okay with this one I cheated a little to get it done quickly. So otherwise same as the others, but instead of going frame by frame to paint, I just put all the frames through a filter at once to get the result. Which is why it’s the smoothest of them all too tbh. But just had to fix the colours with colouring tools but rest is standard GIF making.

GIF number 4, the one that I hated the most

Now see like I said, i had a different idea for this at first, but bc it didn’t work I decided to try this part of the same video (a married couple walking with their wedding party) First I turned everything black and white bc I figured this will be like minimalist (and easier to work with). Now I wanted to get rid of the other people so i basically painted all black and then went frame by frame getting the two people walking. Had to add the shadow of them as it looked painfully stickfigure-y without it djsakdgdfsh. Once I was happy with the animation I slapped on a pride flag bc I wanted it gay u know.. But to match with the rest of the GIFs I multiplied it and warmed up the colours a bit. Then again, compress, add text, standard.

ADDING IT TOGETHER READY FOR POSTING: Then I made sure all the edits match or like look nice together and the text was in the same level and such nice things and made sure I got them all in right size (in these I did 600x400px normally I go with 530px width) then it’s time to open tumblr.com

POSTING: Like with other edits I did for this ‘’series’’ I chose more lyrics from the song and added them as caption along with who requested it and saying do request more (still taking in requests btw even tho i didn’t get into the animation school)

I used the HTML to get the colours I used in the edit into the caption as well (used this when I first learned how to do that) 

now with tags I like to be talkative

I have the standard blogs I tag and bc it was Louis’ lyrics I tagged dt and I always use ‘[insert initials] edit’ for everything for my own navigation. And then I obviously make my own comments, which in this one are 100% accurate and I stand by them. I peaked here. 

ALL DONE: then I sit back and wait for the notes to roll in :) hjfgsdjkf

That is all thank you for reading if you did! I would like to see the process from

@curlyhairedprince for these motherfucking edits

@ltpolari for this edit bc colouring icon

@thesemptysounds for this incredible edit bc it’s my favorite thing ever and now on my wall forever thank you

@queersue for this edit (and many others posts alike) bc colouring legend

and finally @tomlinsun​ for this lil drawing which is also on my wall bc i love it so much!!

As always feel free to not reveal your process:

Thank you for coming to my ted talk I’ll see ya later.

[starlessskies94]

Consequence (Joel Miller x OC)

Summary: What if Joel survived his injuries from the Abby and Fireflies attack but ends up with really bad amnesia. He can’t remember his wife, Ellie, or the Outbreak; only before. How will his family bring back the man they once knew?

Pairing: Joel Miller x OC

Note: Sorry I'm a little late posting an update. After so much sadness, why don't we take a break? We need some cute happy moments...my babies are too sad. :( Here's a flashback that is well needed right now. I hope you enjoy it <3

Chapter Six

The sun had long since set, the night unusually calm and still after a morning spent travelling and walking through the Wyoming Museum that Joel had surprised the girls with for Ellie’s birthday.

It had been fun and Ada had enjoyed every second of it. That was until they’d been separated and Ellie had seen the dead Firefly and his messages of hate and anger towards the group after they’d been forced to disband.

Ada had always wondered what would become of them after Marlene’s death, she supposed now she had her answer.

They’d set up their tents for the night with a roaring campfire burning away in between them as the horses grazed contently not too far away. The older woman sat a small distance from the campsite by the water’s edge of the deep pool flooded into the forest beds. Brown eyes stare into the lazy river flowing through the fallen rocks and dead trees, filtering through the cracks into a string of waterfalls that beautifully reflected in the soft moonlight above.

She watches the water move, her mind completely quiet and undisturbed. It’s strange even now to still have quiet moments like this. She’s so used to running for her life, constantly vigilant for the sounds of nearby infected or potential threats that sometimes find their way through. But now she can relax, she can breathe and it’s glorious. There’s just that tiny nag in the corner of her mind. It tugs gently until she can no longer ignore it. She glances back to the tents, towards the young girl that is currently occupying her mind. Ellie sits quietly by the entrance of her tent, headphones in her ears, comic book on her lap as she idly flips through the pages. While Joel tends to the fire, poking and prodding here and there to keep it burning long enough for their supper to be cooked. She’d made sure to pack enough for the whole journey but Ellie had  chosen to catch a few fish for tonight’s meal, what with it being her birthday and all. And as the teen was quick to remind both her and Joel…repeatedly...

My birthday, my rules.

It was the first time she’d seen it in Ellie’s eyes but it had definitely been there and it terrified her. That doubt. For so long Ellie had taken Joel and Ada’s words as fact, she had never brought up the Fireflies or what had happened in the hospital after they’d left so quickly. After all, what reason would they have to lie?

Ada felt her chest tighten at the thought. What would she say if the girl started asking questions? What would Joel say? For the first time in over a year, she was starting to feel guilty for hiding the truth of what really happened. Maybe Ellie deserved to know, maybe they never should have lied in the first place.

But as she glanced back across at her daughter, the fear went away. She was a mother and it was her duty to protect her child. No matter how old she was. And while she may not have been Ellie��s biological mom, she was every bit a mother to the girl whether they were related by blood or not. She'd raised Ellie from being a few days old after her mother had passed. And she had done the best she could with what she had.

She’s was so lost in her own barrelling train of thoughts, that she doesn’t hear Joel approaching until he sat beside her.

“Hey you doing alright over here?” He asks.

“Yeah I’m fine.” She lies and Joel instantly knows that something is wrong, the concern evident on his face as he leans closer towards her.

“No you’re not. You're worrying.” He says gently. “It's Ellie ain’t it? You saw it too.”

She doesn’t even have to question what he’s talking about. They both saw the look on Ellie’s face when they forced their way into the abandoned building and found the girl stood alone in the dark, her light illuminating the Firefly sign and the dark letters painted below.

‘Liars’

In a way it felt as if the very message was speaking directly to them. For what else could they call themselves for the stories they had spun, for the protection of a girl that they both wanted to save? That they both loved.

Ada said nothing as she moved to rest her head on Joel’s shoulder, the man sighing deeply, lifting his arm to wrap around her waist, his own head then rested upon hers. They held each other close as they’d done so many times before, staring out at the glistering water before them. The soft lapping of the water danced by the edge with the breeze of the night’s air, carrying with it the melody of chirping crickets in the long grass under foot.

“What are we gonna do?” The brunette whispers into the silence settled between them.

“With how things are going; I say we do nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“She ain’t asked about it, reckon there’s no reason to go pulling at strings until it’s time.” Joel reasoned. And he was right, Ellie was happy. She was making friends back in Jackson, learning new skills and discovering new talents. It wasn’t until Tommy had gifted her with a journal for her birthday that she actually discovered she was a pretty damn good artist. She had a bed to sleep in every night, a family to come home to, just like she’d always wanted. It was the closest thing Joel and Ada could remember from before; that somewhat resembled a normal life.

They had structure, a reason to get up in the morning. And it felt good. Eventually they moved from the water. Walking hand in hand towards the fire and sitting together, while Ellie continued quietly in her own little bubble, reading her comic book.

They glanced at one another and in that instant that their eyes met, it was decided they would keep their secret for a little longer. Ellie was happy and that was what mattered to them. Nothing more needed to be discussed.

Joel moved to tend to the burning fire, checking over the fish as it cooked above the flames. Though Ada had to quickly take over when the man sent her a lost look at the state of the food. The older man was talented at a lot of things throughout his twenty years of survival but it was obvious that cooking was not one of them. A trait that Ada found rather endearing about him. To meet this confident, strong and stoic man; only to then find out that he struggled to cook a simple can of soup without somehow managing to burn it to the bottom of the pan.

Although it was considered rather old-fashioned, Ada still enjoyed looking after Joel. After everything he had done for her and Ellie, something as simple as cooking him a decent meal made her feel like she was giving something back. She’d tried teaching him in the early days they’d arrived in Jackson but it seemed it was a skill Joel just couldn’t pick up, no matter how often she attempted it. It was a small thing but it made her feel better knowing that; even if she couldn’t control anything regarding Joel’s safety when he left on patrols, at least he wasn’t going out with an empty stomach.

With the food done Ada quickly served the meal, splitting the fresh fish between herself, Joel and Ellie. Who, as a typical teenager, said nothing as she took the plate from her mother and disappeared back into her tent, comic book under her arm and headphones still blasting in her ears. The older woman merely smiled, taking her seat back at Joel’s side as the two ate in a comfortable silence.

When they’d finished Joel had offered to wash up, a credit to his Texas manners as he moved towards the stream to fetch water. He heated it through after grabbing a rag from his backpack and once again found his place at Ada’s side.

She watched him as he worked, a smile tugging at her lips. It had been almost two years since she’d met this man and she still wasn’t quite sure what she’d done to deserve him.

If she was honest she had never loved anyone the way she loved Joel. It was almost laughable how irritating they once found each other when they'd first met. Constantly arguing over plans, ideas and routes to take to get to their destination. She’d wanted so badly to get rid of this gloomy grump, confident in her own abilities that she could find her way with Ellie on her own. And yet now she couldn’t even fathom the idea of living without him.

“Hey.” She called gently, grabbing Joel’s attention as he glanced her way. “ I wanted to thank you, for all this. Everything you’ve done for Ellie. I think this is without a doubt the best birthday she’s ever had. Back in Boston I could never really do a lot for her. Couldn’t even get her a decent present with those damn ration cards.”

“You don’t gonna thank me Ada, reckon this was good for all of us.” He said, wringing out the rag as he finished the washing up, then hanging it dry. Ada shuffled on her behind, grabbing her legs to cross them underneath her and leaned back on her arms to gaze up at him.

“Yes I do, you didn’t have to do this. And that tape you found her...I mean she loves it Joel.” He smiled at her words, his eyes moving to find Ellie still sat alone with her Walkman.

“You do realise she’ll be listening to that on repeat for months right?” She laughed with him. His face lit up with joy, it was the same feeling he’d felt when he gave her the gift in the first place. The pure wonder and glee when she played it. He looked back to Ada and his heart leaped in his chest when he saw the love in her eyes.

“Well...you know, speaking of presents, I do actually have something else.” He teased with a mischievous grin widening across his face. He kneeled down beside the woman, rummaging through his bag then pulled out a small vinyl cover. Ada’s mouth agape in surprise as she took the album from Joel, a small gasp leaving her, her smile hid behind the hand that rested on her chin.

“Joel...I...how did you…” She uttered, completely at a loss for words. It was a Fleetwood Mac album, one of her favourites in fact. The man beside her lowered himself back down, his hazel eyes level with hers.

“You said they were your favourite growing up, cause of your mom and I found a music store before we left Jackson so I figured...you know…” He explained and Ada was touched by how considerate he was. How sweet. She’d told him the story of her mother listening to the band throughout her childhood and teen years, when they’d first started to soften to one another while travelling through Pittsburgh. But that had been months ago and yet he had remembered every detail. A fact that Ada was quick to point out to him, but he just smiled and shrugged.

“I guess I do listen more than you think.” He simply said. And damn if Ada didn’t fall in love with this man all over again.

“I love it, thank you.”

“You’re welcome darlin’.”

She still hadn’t said the actual words to him yet. Which, when she thought about it seemed so ridiculous. She put the album to the side, unfold her legs and tackled the man in a hug. A reaction Joel clearly hadn’t been expecting as the force of it left them both in a tangled mess on the forest floor. Ada landing on top of him, as he let out a muffled grunt as he met the ground with his back. His arms wrapping around her middle and holding her in place, while hers found themselves round his neck, her fingers brushing through his hair.

“I love you.” She said breathlessly, her eyes never leaving his. She saw his throat quiver as he swallowed hard, his face softened as his calloused fingers caressed against her face. A gentle touch but one that still made her feel warm and giddy. He brushed her hair from her eyes, sweeping the brown locks behind her ear and smiled lovingly.

“I love you too.” He replied. The words said for the first time between them. He moved forward to kiss her, eyes sliding close, noses touching as they leaned closer.

“Oh come on guys!! Seriously?! Fucking gross!” Ellie bellowed, instantly killing the mood as Joel groaned letting his head fall back against the floor, his arms releasing Ada as she quickly scuffled from him and back to her feet. Hand reaching out to help Joel up.

Both adults stepped away from the other, attempting to put the distance between them as Ellie stared them down with a raised eyebrow.

“And on my fucking birthday, what are you trying to scar me for life or something?” She joked. But Ada and Joel were far too embarrassed to see the funny side. The girl continued with a deep chuckle, her tongue sticking out as she gagged and pulled faces at the whole thing.

“Oh man that image is gonna be stuck in my brain forever!” She groaned. “Get out! Get out” She whined tapping her head with her small fist as she squeezed her eyes closed. Turning on her heel and retreating back towards her tent.

Joel awkwardly cleared his throat when the girl had gone, looking anywhere and everywhere except towards Ada. The woman doing the same, her stomach fluttering and cheeks hot from endless blushing.

“Well that was uhhh...unexpected.” The man mumbled. Ada just laughed as she felt the tension melt away between them as Ellie shouted at the two to go to bed and jokingly threatened to ground them if they didn’t behave. Joel just shook his head at the girl and smiled at his love as they called it a night and headed towards their tent. Ellie watched them go and readied herself for first watch, taking the risk to glance through the tent door and seeing Joel and Ada had already fallen asleep. She'd never tell them but it was actually kinda cute when they cuddled up to each other. She was glad they were happy. It was nice.

Yeah  Ellie thought to herself as she settled in for the night.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

[consumedkings-archive]

ancient names, pt. xi

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt xi: what kind of man

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~8.2k (I’M SORRY)

Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.

Warnings: Gore/violence, Still Under The Influencer of drugs, uhhhh blood. There's a lot of mentions of blood and death and what have you. Elliot has a meltdown (surprise). Joseph is creepy (surprise pt. 2 electric boogaloo). People are confused about How To Feel. I don't understand how laws work and so I'm just literally out here trying my best, you know? Don't @ me.

Notes: I wanted to start off by saying THANK YOU everyone for your feedback! I was having a real hard time hitting my stride with the last chapter but all of your kind words has given me life. There's some still in these old bones yet and I really hope that you enjoy this one.

 Anyway I'm a clown and I'm sorry this chapter took so long. Joke's on you, it's always clown hour here! Thank you forever and always to @starcrier ​ for being the best proof-reader and somehow managing to make my incoherency readable?? Manageable??? You're an angel and ily! Also, @empirics ​, my writing aspiration forever, and @baeogorath ​ who makes me cry literally every time I read anything they have to say about my writing. Thank you thank you thank you!

John had never seen a person’s head blown in with a shotgun, and he wasn’t sure that he really needed to.

Ase’s blood had splattered when Jacob fired the shotgun at what he was sure could be considered point-blank range, the spray of it nearly catching them in the process. But no, it was mostly on Elliot, like she was some Carrie at her first prom, a real tried-and-true Scream Queen.

“I knew you’d find a way to fuck it up,” Jacob said, no absence of venom in his voice as he stepped away from Ase’s dead body like she was nothing—and sure, she was nothing, and John didn’t necessarily have any qualms with getting rid of her (he had blown a shell straight through her spine), but that wasn’t what was making him nauseated.

It was Elliot. Baby-blues eaten away by her pupils, blown wide with hallucinogens, drenched in blood, making a noise something close to a rabbit that thought it was going to die.

He didn’t have the energy to tell Jacob that the blow to her skull had been unnecessary, that there was no way someone could walk away from their entire stomach being blown through by a shotgun. That Jacob’s idea of “fucked up” was greatly, massively warped if he thought that Ase hadn’t been finished after shot number one. Even if he’d had the energy it wouldn’t have mattered, because the next words out of Jacob’s mouth were, “You put Faith at risk going back for her.”

The eldest Seed didn’t need to say what it was he meant; John knew. The words were “you put Faith at risk going back for her”, but what he meant was, Joseph’s going to be furious when he finds out.

“Get your pet,” Jacob bit out, “and let’s fucking move.”

John’s limbs moved of their own volition, kneeling down in front of Elliot and turning her face away from the grisly scene laid out next to her. If she recognized him, it didn’t show; she trembled, and her eyes never stayed fixed for very long, as though everything in the entire world was assaulting her senses at every second.

“Elliot,” he said, pulling her to her feet as the sound of voices rising in the distance peppered the air, “we have to move.”

Some kind of guttural sorrow welled up and out of her as he pulled her along and down the hill, her feet stumbling. Around them, the night hummed with gunfire and shouting. John was certain that he heard something like grief wracking the air at the hilltop above them, and he couldn’t bring himself to look back, afraid of what he’d see—that redheaded monster of Ase’s bent over her nearly-decapitated corpse, or worse: coming after them.

He kept one hand on Elliot’s arm and the other out in front of her case she tried to plummet headfirst down the hill—whether by chance or accident—and by the time they had reached the bottom, the strange agony sounds that had tried to burrow out of her had mostly ceased; her gaze was still glassy and dark, and there was an odd sway about her, but she looked only shell-shocked now.

Oh, John thought, absently, if that’s all.

Joey’s dark gaze darted between the two of them. He released Elliot to her without a word, his hand dropping from the blonde as Joey fussed over her. Faith swayed dreamily just a few steps away from Joey, humming a song mostly to herself; beyond her, Jacob stood, his arms crossed over his chest while he toted the shotgun in one of his hands, before he apparently got tired of waiting and grabbed Faith’s hand.

“If you want to stand around down here and chit chat, that’s fine,” he said, tugging Faith—clearly still drugged, clearly unaware of the carnage occurring around them—off to the trail that led away from the lake. “ We’re leaving.”

“Jacob—” John started. It was too late. The redhead had set for himself and for Faith a brutal and punishing pace to return them to wherever it was Joseph waited, and though he was loathe to admit it, Jacob was on the right track; pretty soon, the members of Eden’s Gate that had been sent up to wreak havoc on the Family would be dead, and he was certain that once Ase’s death was fully recognized, someone would want revenge.

“Are we going home?” Faith asked, giggling as she toddled after Jacob, barely able to keep herself upright. “That lady said John was going to come and rescue me.”

John’s chest tightened at the sound of her laughter. She was so completely unperturbed by everything—everything she had been through, had seen. He wondered how heavily they’d had to drug her, and if she would even remember half of it come the moment that she sobered up.

He exhaled, glancing at the top of the ridge above them where the lights of the cabins and flashlights and whatever-the-fuck-else those monsters had at their disposal glimmered.

“When,” Elliot said, the word grinding out of her mouth haltingly, “when... did Jacob-”

“Drink some water,” Joey murmured. She uncapped the half-drank water bottle and pushed it into Elliot’s hand and added, “And we’ll talk about it later, but right now we need to move, Elli.”

Elli, John thought, and felt a faint glimmer of amusement at the absurdity of such a soft, round nickname for a girl who was only sharp edges. Well, but she wasn’t so sharp now, was she? As he led them along the dark trail, her fingers brushing his on occasion, he would glance over at her and find her staring at him like he was a stranger, like she didn’t recognize him. Maybe she didn’t; he wasn’t familiar with the drugs they’d put her on, anyway.

“What the fuck happened up there?” Joey hissed, her hand firmly rooted in Elliot’s as she tugged her along—not unlike the way Jacob was pulling Faith. She had taken the water bottle back when it became apparent Elliot wasn’t interested in it. “Why is Elliot covered in blood —”

“She’s alive,” John snapped, “isn’t that what’s important?”

“I suppose you’ll be wanting a fucking award.”

“Stop it,” Elliot managed out. “Stop arguing. You both are so fucking loud.”

Joey’s lips pressed into a thin line. They ducked into the treeline far below Sacred Skies Camp, picking their way as quickly as they could through the underbrush, but the journey was slow and arduous; guiding Elliot through the trees had, in the last twenty minutes, become no easier than guiding a toddler. A blind, deaf toddler, who spared no interest in staying upright, and also had a metric fuck ton of psychotropic drugs in her system.

The walk there seemed to take much longer than it had going up, but John was sure that was his own adrenaline crash happening. He’d been stressed—about getting Faith out, about what he’d find, if he’d find anything at all or if they’d have done away with Elliot seconds after getting her.

Fuck . The thought filtered through his brain with dismay at the realization that he had been worried about her. Jacob was right; he’d really only needed to get Faith. But Elliot had been—she’d gone in there for them , and Joseph wanted her alive, and—

“Tired,” Elliot said, her voice hoarse and cracking with exhaustion as she took agonizing step after agonizing step. “I’m so tired, J—”

“I know,” John and Joey said, both cutting Elliot off and overlapping each other at the same time. Of course, John already knew what it was like to handle Elliot like this. They’d toddled through one field with Elliot clutching him like an anchor, drugged to the gills, once already; this was new territory for the other deputy.

Joey gave him a dark, turbulent look—the kind that implied murderous intent—and John turned his attention back to the task at hand: getting the fuck out of there.

As soon as the truck came into sight, running with the lights off, John let himself breathe a sigh of relief. He hadn’t thought Jacob would really up and leave them, but it also wasn’t impossible that he would have insisted and said fuck off if Joseph had protested. His eldest brother had been notorious for pushing back, for picking fights, and maybe—just maybe—he was pissed enough to follow through this time.

“About time,” Jacob said from the driver’s seat. Joseph did not give his input, which only served to further John’s personal unease as he opened the tailgate of the truck. Joey climbed in first, swaying just a little. He’d noticed that her pupils looked blown, too, though not quite as much as Elliot’s, so it must not have been fully out of her system yet.

John glanced up the hill absently. The sound of Eden’s Gate members still echoed. Not quite done yet, he thought absently, and then said, “Alright, Deputy, let’s get a move on.”

“Too high,” Elliot sighed, and he wasn’t sure if she meant the tailgate or herself. John turned her around from trying to clamber into the back and gripped her hips; her hands fluttered unsteadily before holding onto his arms.

“Don’t throw up on me,” he said.

She looked tired. Each second her eyes spent open seemed to demand more and more energy from her. “Expensive shirt, huh?”

“That’s right.”

He hoisted her into the back of the truck; she sat on the tailgate for a second only, and swayed forward like she was going to tumble right off; she steadied her hands on his shoulders, fingers gripping his shirt and bleeding warm against his skin.

“You did it too fast,” Elliot muttered, her voice verging on spoiled brat. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, John climbed in after her as she scooted to the farthest spot away from the tailgate. Jacob didn’t wait for the tailgate to close before he pulled out of the brush; the truck hit the dirt road with a heavy thunk that had his teeth rattling around in his skull. Fucker, he thought, slamming the tailgate shut before the dust kicked up beneath them.

Elliot had her back pressed against the window into the truck. Blood covered her face and matted strands of her hair where they’d stuck to her cheeks; the vicious edge to her was dulled, whittled down to the bone until she was just a small girl folded up into the side of Joey Hudson.

When her eyes had fluttered shut and the night had settled a chill over them, Joey’s gaze flickered across John for a moment before landing on his face. She was silent, studying him—in a most infuriating way, wordlessly —before she finally said, “What happened?”

John glanced out at the Montana wilderness stretching out behind her, late into the night; he thought about the way Elliot had balked at the sight of the treeline, like there was something in there only she could see, something horrible.

“Well, the boys and I thought it’d be a nice night to go out,” he replied flatly, cocking his head before looking at Joey. “It’s been a while since we’ve done anything fun, you know, so it was nice to get the gang all together again for a little fun .”

The brunette’s expression flattened. “The devil rebuking sin.”

“I shot the psycho and I got Elliot out of there,” John bit out. “What did you expect?”

“You, to leave her,” Joey snapped. “That’s what I would have expected out of you.”

The words shouldn’t have stung. They were coming from Joey Hudson, after all, the only person that Elliot really cared about and so clearly the only person that John could use against her. But these facts were minor details to him now, carefully pinned out somewhere in the back of his mind—always accessible, but no longer important. Hudson had stopped being very important at all when she stopped being something to dangle in front of Elliot. Now they stung for a different reason, something that John couldn’t put his thumb on.

That’s not very true, something in him said, rattling against the bones of his rib cage. You know exactly why that bothers you.

“Well, that’s on you, isn’t it?” John replied, keeping his voice sickly sweet. “I’ll have you know I took very good care of your hellcat.”

“Yeah,” Joey ventured dryly, “having her shoved into a cult that shot her so full of poison it was coming out of her eyes really showed some TLC.”

“I’m sure she told you the plan was different,” John bit out.

“She tried. Which is why I’m wondering why you even fucking came back for us at all, Seed.”

Though Joey’s voice was soft so as not to rustle Elliot, it was pounding with venom. Hatred. That was to be expected, he thought; after all, in the short time that she’d been his ward, he’d done his very hardest to lure Elliot in with her fear and then passed her off almost immediately to Faith. But still, the wording struck him—it was the same sentiment that Jacob had flung in his face after blowing Ase’s brains out.

You put Faith at risk going back for her.

I’m wondering why you even fucking came back for us at all.

It was never the plan to save Elliot. It was always: get Faith, get out, and if you can get the deputy too—sure. Why not? She’d be indebted to them. Even more so if they got Joey out with her. But Faith should have been the absolute priority first, and he’d left her down at the lake to go back up into the middle of a firefight to get Elliot and Joey out.

If we’re partners, you have to trust me.

“I don’t know why it bothers you so much,” he managed out, trying to keep his voice as clipped as he could. “Normally, when people are rescued, they’re thankful. ”

“You did kidnap me,” Joey snapped, “so you’re closer to us being equal than my being grateful, and even that’s pushing it. I just don’t know if the rescuing still counts as a good deed if you only did it for yourself.”

John stared at her, eyes narrowing and jaw setting, tense and tight until pain radiated up into his skull. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Deputy Hudson —”

“Then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”

Elliot stirred, eyelashes fluttering. She coughed into Joey’s shoulder—the gesture not lost on the brunette, who grimaced a little—and when her eyes landed on John there was an eerieness about them, like she was trying to pull him open and peer inside, peel back the vibrating tension and hostility that Joey Hudson’s interrogation brought of him.

“What?” John asked, barely masking his irritation. It shouldn’t have bothered him so much, but it did because he couldn’t get the way she’d said, John? out of his head, small and wounded so very afraid, with Ase’s blood drenching her.

“Just trying to figure out which John you are,” Elliot replied, her voice slick with exhaustion and the words rolling out of her mouth in something close to a slur. They sent an uneasy jolt through him. It was the drugs, surely—she probably said all kinds of weird shit while she was high. He didn’t know what she was seeing, anyway.

(—fucking hate you, John Seed, John Duncan, whatever the fuck your name is, whoever the fuck you are—)

The blonde sighed again. The breath sounded like some kind of exertion for her; she squirmed and tried to get more comfortable against Joey’s shoulder, the blood on her face staining the forest-green of the deputy’s shirt. John’s head ached. The memory of Joseph, silent while Jacob debated the logistics of getting a killing shot through Elliot, flickered through his mind, venomous.

(—should see yourself whenever Joseph says anything. You practically fall over to kiss the ground he fucking walks on—)

“Well,” he replied, settling more comfortably in his spot across from the two women, “let me know when you find out, why don’t you, Rook?” He let his head loll back against the lip of the truck bed, a dark, cloudless night spreading out above him. He wanted to brush aside the way Elliot looked at him, but he had learned long ago that was the quickest way to underestimate her.

“I’m just dying to know.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The truck came to a halting stop. John hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until the strange inertia-pull of the truck stilling rustled him from his sleep. It was hard to say how long they had been on the road, but if he had to guess—and, taking into consideration how Jacob liked to drive—he’d wager it had been only thirty minutes.

Across from him, Elliot was awake, murmuring something to Joey that he couldn’t hear over the sound of the engine giving one last kick before Jacob turned it off. There was a higher clarity about the blonde, now, one that implied that sleep had done her well—though the pupils of her eyes stayed wide, there was now a sliver of baby blue that he could see, if he looked close enough.

He grimaced as exhaustion burned through his body, and for a brief second, their eyes met; like before, they pried at him, tried to see something that maybe he didn’t want her to. 

As he lowered the tailgate of the truck and slid out, John turned around and instinctively reached to steady Elliot as she tried to climb down.

“I’m fine,” she said, more biting than he anticipated. Just coming down, John thought absently, his hands only remaining in the air for a second after her assertion before dropping to his sides again.

“Oh, yeah,” John replied, “I forgot that you’d rather I let you eat shit than keep you from falling over.”

She’s always been willful, he mused. The thought occurred as though John had known Elliot for a long time. In a way, he supposed that he did; fuck, he’d tried every goddamn trick in the book to lure her in, and she’d still spit her venom into her walkie at every chance she’d gotten. There was nothing that John didn’t try and dig up, nothing that he hadn’t racked his brain for in the brief moment that they’d visited all those years ago. And still— and still, and still —she—

“Hudson,” John said, offering his hand to her because he was a gentleman and certainly not because he enjoyed the way the gesture made her squirm.

“Fuck off, John,” Joey replied tersely, sliding off the truck bed as well. John smiled dryly.

He said, the needling coming to him like second nature, “So nice to have both of you here at one time. It’s what I always wanted, you know.”

Elliot shot him a look, one that sucked the wind right out of his sails. It was a wounded look, like he had suddenly reminded her of the things he had done, and John felt an uncomfortable twist in his stomach. He didn’t know why the words came out—a force of habit, maybe, or the way that Joey Hudson’s animosity (and closeness ) to Elliot made his hackles raise. As though Joey’s presence made a choice immediately clear for her, and she chose Joey.

The clench of his jaw sent pain radiating up into his skull. He thought that things had been much simpler pre-Joey Hudson, and he was regretting having helped her.

“I knew you’d come and save me,” Faith said, her voice breaking him out of the turmoil of his thoughts. She smiled at him, and it would have almost been endearing if her pupils weren’t absolutely blown to hell, reminding him that they’d probably done more than just drug her with some weird hallucinogen—the way she’d been acting when he’d seen her on the road had been something more akin to the kinds of things Faith had partaken of before.

He reached up, pulling her into a one-armed hug. “Yeah?” he replied. “You listened to those crazies?”

“They’re not crazy,” Faith sighed. Her voice bloomed with something like affection, and when she looked at him, there was a startling clarity about her expression—keen, and a little sly. Not so innocent, our Faith, he thought absently. “Just different, John. And you came, didn’t you?”

A prickling sensation crawled up the back of his neck. John glanced away from Faith, his gaze meeting Joseph’s from where he stood in front of the car; per usual, his expression was unreadable, obscured behind a mask of tranquility that provided no insight on what his brother was thinking or feeling.

“Go on,” John said, patting Faith’s back, “get some sleep. You’re going to feel like hell in a few hours, you know.”

She laughed, like maybe she didn’t quite hear what he actually said, and slid out of his half-embrace to wander around to the front of the car where Joseph was waiting. He turned his gaze away, swallowing back the feeling that he’d somehow failed a test—something that only Joseph knew the meters and results of, that he’d have to sweat until he found out about.

Elliot had already started walking away with Joey, taking her back to the same bunkhouse that she’d been holding up in prior to their little excursion. They spoke in low voices to one another; Elliot’s expression was even soft, softer than it had been when he’d found her sobbing into the grass in the field, when she’d been terrified out of her skin. Softer than when she’d had Ase’s brains splattered all over her.

John sucked his teeth, pushing the tailgate of the truck up until it latched. The adrenaline crash was starting to hit him hard, now. Every muscle in his body ached with the effort of moving, as though they’d all tensed and held for hours at a time; maybe they had. Gunfire and screaming still echoed in his head, while corpse after corpse, and Ase’s shattered head, lingered just behind his eyelids. They didn’t bother him, these images of glory and gore—but he couldn’t shake the way that Elliot had looked at him from the ground, drenched in blood, terrified.

Terrified of him.

“It’s always going to be like that, you know.” It was Jacob’s hard, steely voice that pulled him now, like his siblings wanted to take turns interrupting his train of thought. “She’s always going to pick Hudson over us.” His brother leveled him with one swift, hard look. “Over you .”

“Funny,” John muttered, “I didn’t realize you were a psych professional, Jacob.”

“Faith could have died because you went back for that girl,” Jacob bit out, his voice low but vibrating with something more venomous. “I know you know that, you aren’t stupid. And you went back for her anyway. So—”

“So, what?” he interrupted, trying not to let the frustrated venom from watching Elliot take Joey’s hand and walk off bubble out of him. “Faith’s alive, that crazy bitch is dead. What else do you want?”

“For you to get your shit together,” Jacob snapped. “Like I said, I know you’re not stupid, but do yourself the favor and prove it to me anyway. That girl —”

That girl, Jacob said, like the words didn’t suddenly fill John with some kind of poison. The eldest Seed gestured toward the bunkhouse, where inevitably, Elliot and Joey were conspiring; to leave, to kill. At this point, John wasn’t sure, and he didn’t think that either would surprise him.

“—is nothing. Don’t let nothing fuck everything up for us.” Jacob’s words were hard and cold. He gripped John’s shoulder and added, “Don’t let nothing fuck everything up for Joseph.”

That’s what it really boiled down to at the end of it all: that Joseph had seen like he always did, because nothing went without Joseph’s seeing, and maybe he wasn’t sure that Elliot was really worth the trouble anymore. Before, Joseph had wanted her to add to their little collection of misfits, just like he’d added the sheriff’s receptionist, just like he’d picked up Faith when she was Rachel, just like when he let Jacob tap into the worst parts of him for use, just like just like just like . Joseph was hard-pressed to find a vicious misfit that he didn’t want for himself, and Elliot Honeysett had been no different.

But a hard-to-break will cost time, and resources, and maybe with these locusts in their garden, that just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Not for Joseph. Not right now. Where was this, anyway, back at the start of it all? Back when John had wanted to do things his way?

“Whatever Joseph’s opinion on the usefulness of the deputy, Burke’s gone,” John said after a minute. Jacob’s hand still sat heavy on his shoulder; he passed a hand over his face and sighed. “That marshal, the one that was—”

“I remember.”

John grimaced. “He was with Faith, and Hudson, but he wasn’t at the camp that I could see.” He paused again. “Jacob, if he got out and he made it out of Hope County, he’ll be a problem.”

The red-headed nodded once, brisk. “A big fucking problem.” Another pause, and then: “Tell me you’ll get this whole issue with the deputy wrapped up.”

John’s jaw clenched. Tell me you can do this, Joseph had said. Tell me you’ll get this whole issue wrapped up. Hadn’t he proven he was capable of handling her? Hadn’t Joseph himself said that?

“There’s no issue,” he replied flatly, stepping around Jacob and heading to the church. “Never was.”

“Good.”

It was easy to say, and harder to believe. He knew—the rational part of his brain, somewhere inside of him—knew that he was jealous of Hudson. That he knew exactly what Hudson thought of him, and he hated that someone who hated him had Elliot immediately trailing after her like a puppy, as though the last three days—all of those moments hadn’t meant—

And what was he supposed to think, then, about the way that her lashes had fluttered when his fingers brushed her skin, the way the heat crawled under her freckles when he slid into her planetary pull? That it was just—passing? Nothing?

Does it matter?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  

Elliot was having a hard time.

That was to say, there were a lot of conflicting emotions that were welling up inside of her, crashing down like tidal waves. Normally, she’d be able to bottle those pesky things up and bury them deep inside her, to access later (which could be minutes, or days, or years—whenever); but with the drugs still wreaking havoc on her, she felt like all of her normal defenses were crashed and battered, maybe even beyond repair. Maybe even permanently decimated.

It was lucky that she had Joey, she supposed as she closed the bunkhouse door behind them, letting the noise of it soothe her over-worked senses; lucky, because Joey had always been her lighthouse in the times that she needed it the most.

“We have to get out of here,” Joey said, and the words immediately exhausted Elliot further. She took in a long, suffering breath and sat down on the edge of one of the bunk beds, rubbing her hands against her face. She was far from out of the woods; she thought maybe she was starting to come down, or even crash, because it felt like electrical pulses kept ricocheting through her body and they wouldn’t stop.

Elliot managed out, “I’m in no shape to go anywhere, Joey, you know that I—”

She saw the look on Joey’s face. Distress. John had kidnapped her, and terrorized her with whatever it was he had originally planned to do to her, and now they were here, in the compound, where it had all began. And yes; John had kidnapped Joey, and her, and yes, he was a fucking psycho, and—

And yes, he knew her well enough to shove a cigarette in her hands when she was stressed, and he didn’t complain when her nails dug into him when she thought the world was going to split in two around her, and yes, he did come back for her when he didn’t have to, and yes and yes —

‘And yes’ what? A nasty voice inside of her head said. A man so much as looks at you and all of a sudden you’re on the other side?

“I can try,” she offered weakly. “I can try, if you want to go now, but I don’t know where Boomer is and everyone from Hope County is—hopefully—already gone. I don’t have anything.”

When the words came out of her mouth, she felt the last thread holding herself together snap. I don’t have anything, the words echoing hollow inside of her, reminding her that everyone was gone, maybe they were dead, that she didn’t know where her dog or her mama were and maybe that meant that she didn’t have anything left inside of her, either, nothing left to give. That she had scraped and scraped to the bottom of the barrel and now she’d have to start breaking herself into pieces to have anything worthwhile to give anyone.

“I don’t have anything, Joey,” she said again, her voice wobbling and wet and fuck, she hated it so much, the burning of her eyes stinging against blood and viscera collecting in the tears. “I don’t, I’m sorry—I’m really sorry—”

Joey crossed the small space of the bunkhouse to crouch in front of her. She pressed her hands into Elliot’s shoulders, and she was saying something, but Elliot couldn’t hear it over the pounding of blood in her head.

She pressed the heels of her palms against her eye sockets, but the gesture brought no comfort; each time she closed her eyes, she kept seeing Ase, skull caved in. Surely, one shot had been enough? Surely, the second shot to her head was just—

Just John being himself.

“God, he fucking—he mutilated her, Joey,” Elliot managed out, her voice breaking on something like agony as the panic started to set in. Her hands trembled and she pushed the hair from her face, a movement that she was sure was just packing the dried blood in. She couldn’t get her eyes to focus on anything; everywhere she looked, she thought she could see the dark flicker of Ase’s clothing, the haunting corpse come to finish what she started. “She was dead—all of her, just falling—spilling out of her, like she’d been gutted, and I thought that he was done, and we’d go home, but then he shot her again—God, fuck, Joey, she’s all over me—”

“Hey,” Joey said firmly. “El. Take a breath and look at me.”

“I am.”

“A bigger breath,” Joey insisted, taking her hands away from her face and pulling her to a stand. “Just one.”

She did. I see, she thought and failed. I smell, I hear, I feel, but nothing came. She was drowning in it, whatever it was; Ase’s blood and guts on her, the memory of her glassy eyes as Ase reached for her, the feeling of Kian’s hands on her neck, the horrific monster lurking in the woods, and…

“Take another,” Joey reiterated. “Just one more.”

Elliot knew this trick. It was the oldest trick in Joey’s book. Just ask for one, and then just one more, and then just one more, until she was breathing like normal. She did as the brunette bid her anyway, and because her normal grounding methods had failed her, she instead thought, I’ll just count to ten. If I can make it for ten more seconds… And then another ten…

“You’re still sweating hallucinogen,” Joey murmured, squeezing her hands to help bring her back down. “You should take a shower. Come on.”

The journey between the main room of the bunkhouse and the felt both like it took years and happened without her knowing, as though she’d blinked and suddenly found herself standing in the bathroom, the fluorescent on the ceiling digging into her irises.

Her gaze flickered up to the mirror hanging over the sink. The person that looked back was a stranger to her; blood splattered every inch of her skin, matted in her hair, staining her in dark, carmine gore. Elliot thought about the strange voice in the woods, crackling and snapping and trying her on for size as it slid under her skin.

As the glass of the mirror seemed to pulse and stretch, the sound of running water snapped her attention elsewhere, hands limp at her sides. Joey pulled the knob that turned the water into a shower and said, “Okay, Elli, you call if you need me.”

“Okay,” Elliot murmured tiredly.

“Okay,” Joey repeated, watching her for a moment. And then she pulled her into a tight hug, and whispered, “For the record, I never doubted you’d be able to get me out. From John, or from the other place.”

The words didn’t offer her any comfort, but they were nice, nonetheless. She nodded her head and waited until the brunette had left the room before she started to undress, her movements methodical but unsteady; it wasn’t until water hit her skin and she saw the streams of thinned blood touching down on the floor of the bathtub that she finally felt some relief.

Even if it was only a little.

I don’t have anything, she thought tiredly, her eyes closing as she ducked her face under the stream of the shower. I don’t have anything left. What am I supposed to do now?

She had Joey. She didn’t have any idea of how to find Boomer. Hope County was gone, if they were lucky, and dead if they weren’t. She hadn’t heard from her own mother in--weeks? Or was it days? How long had this been going on?

It felt strange, to not be able to trust her own memory—to not know when the last time was that she got a full night’s sleep, or the last time that she curled up in her own bed, or the last time that she spent doing something that she enjoyed. As Elliot scrubbed the blood off of her face and out of her hair, staining her fingernails rusted-red, she thought that the idea of continuing on , of doing more, was so very exhausting.

They didn’t hurt you? John had asked, his fingers brushing the bruises on her throat where Kian’s fingers had gripped. It bothered her, when people touched her—grabbed her like they owned her, like she wasn’t in control of her own body—but when John did it, it was different. Even when he’d dragged his finger under her collarbone and said, I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you? Just over your heart.

John was only doing what he was meant to do all along: draw her in, keep her there, and Ase’s gruesome death was just a reminder of the person that he really was. She had forgotten that.

But she wouldn’t again.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The night felt sticky, sitting like a second skin on him. When John stepped into the church to find Jacob and Joseph talking in low voices, he felt a strange sensation prickle down his spine. It was anticipation, he realized, nearly a moment too late; by the time he was bracing himself, Jacob had turned and walked out the side door, leaving himself and Joseph alone.

“How is our deputy?” Joseph asked, his voice light and mild. John tried to lessen the tension in his jaw.

“Which one?” he replied dryly. “She’s fine.”

Joseph said, “You were worried about her.”

“Well, I did work really fucking hard not to kill her,” he bit out, and then sighed at the way Joseph’s brow arched, a visible change in his expression even in the dim, intimate lighting of the chapel. “Look, Jacob already gave me the whole speech about—”

“I think you’re doing a great job with the deputy,” Joseph interrupted, firm but not unkind, “and I want you to continue.”

John stopped. Maybe it was the adrenaline crash, or the way that he’d come into the conversation at what appeared to be the end of it, but he couldn’t wrap his head around what Joseph was telling him; especially after what Jacob had said to him.

So he said, very intelligently, “What?”

“Our friend the marshal got out,” Joseph supplied. “Hope County has evacuated, if they’re lucky. But you know, John, even if they come for us—even if they arrest us—there are…”

A pause lingered between them, just long enough for something close to dread to knot and writhe between his ribs.

“... ways,” his brother continued, placing each word meticulously, “to make a legal case like this one fall apart.”

I don’t know what you mean, John wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out of him. If Hope County was on the run, they might not ever look back; if the U.S. Marshal brought his buddies back, that would make Elliot the key witness in their case, while the other members of Hope County and the Resistance were…

“It’ll be all of them testifying against us,” John said after a moment. “I appreciate your confidence in my abilities, but—”

“You can convince people not to talk,” Joseph replied. He paced away from the table at the center of the chapel’s front room, absently scratching at his jaw, as though he were only just coming up with this idea; John knew that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t ever the case with Joseph. Nothing went without careful deliberation. “There are particular brands of persuasion that work better than others. But we’ll need more than just silencing our neighbors. We’ll need…”

Positive testimony, John thought, when the words didn’t come out of Joseph’s mouth.

“Yeah,” John murmured tiredly. “I know.”

“Good.” Joseph gave him a small smile. He reached out, gripping John’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, John.”

He stared at the wood paneling of the floor. Maybe he was tired; maybe it was the exhaustion from the last few hours, but Joseph’s words didn’t strike the same match in him that they had before. If Joseph noticed—and he almost certainly had—he didn’t let it show; rather, he let the distance between them grow, hand dropping from his shoulder as he walked for the door.

“You were going to let Jacob kill her.” The words came out of John’s mouth before he could think to stop them, before he could say to himself, it’s not worth the fight. He’s your brother, John. He gave you everything. Don’t you always say that you waited your whole life for something to say yes to?

He felt, more than he saw, Joseph pause in the doorway leading out of the chapel. A strange silence stretched between them; it was one where John thought he might have felt the scrutiny of his older brother’s gaze on him.

And then, in a voice casual and light, Joseph said, “You’re tired, John. You’ve had a long day. Get some rest, won’t you?”

John was tired. Tired enough to think that he might fall asleep standing up if he wasn’t careful. “You’re right,” he said after a moment, turning his head to look at Joseph over his shoulder with a small smile. “I will.”

“Goodnight, John.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Night passed more quickly than he would have liked. By the time morning had arrived, he thought maybe his conversation with Joseph was a dream; that he’d hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe some of the Family’s weird drugs had rubbed off on him while he was in there.

By the time early morning had rolled around, he’d dragged himself through a shower and into cleaner clothes. He half expected to find the bunkhouse completely vacated by Elliot and Hudson by the time he walked out with an armful of clothes, pleasantly surprised that Elliot was leaned against the door. Smoking, naturally.

“You look more like yourself,” John said as he approached. Her gaze flickered over him absently. She looked tired, but had since washed the blood and guts off of her face and out of her hair; as she took a drag of her cigarette and tapped the ash out of the end of it, her eyes turned away from him. Weird, he thought. He added, “I know you’ve got the whole blood-stained look, but I thought you might like to get into some clothes that are a bit cleaner.”

Elliot smoothed her boot over some ash on the ground, waiting for a heartbeat longer than normal before she said, “Thanks.” She sounded sour , like John’s mere existence was a chore for her, and not the way that it had been before—like she really meant it.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, watching her curiously. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, and the sickly rasp in her voice—it had probably felt nice to be high in that regard—she looked clear-headed. Normal. “How are you feeling?”

“John,” Elliot sighed, “let’s not.”

“Fine,” John snipped. “Where’s Hudson?”

“She went to walk the perimeter to try and call Boomer,” Elliot replied tiredly. “And then we’re leaving.”

Fuck, he thought, remembering his conversation with Joseph. Fuck fuck fuck. “Well, isn’t that lovely.” The biting venom welled up in his voice. There was a strange panic setting in now. She wouldn’t look at him, not for longer than a second, and her tone rang hollow and empty. He swallowed thickly, teeth clenching as he continued, “And how do you intend to leave, then? On foot? You sure seem like you’re in peak physical condition to be walking cross-country, Elliot. But I suppose if you have Hudson, then it won’t matter, because Hudson rescued you from those cultists and—”

“I don’t know, John ,” Elliot bit out, a real flex in her voice this time. It was comforting, to have her be anything—anything but ambivalent, anything but absent from their conversation. “I think I could get pretty far if I decide to start blowing people’s fucking skulls in with a shotgun, don’t you?”

John stared at her. “Pardon?”

“Oh, fuck off,” the blonde snipped, dropping what remained of the cigarette and stomping it out with her shoe. “Don’t give me your fucking clothes. If I change out of these I might forget that you splattered me with that woman’s brains.”

She turned and opened the door to the bunkhouse, going to close it, but John shoved his foot in the doorway to stop her, tossing the clothes onto the bed the second he got inside. 

“I didn’t ,” John seethed. “Maybe you were too fucking high out of your mind to tell—”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Elliot’s voice was flinty. “It completely slipped my mind that you’re incapable of taking responsibility for yourself. Remember, John, that time you rubbed it in my face that your fucking family made me into a murderer? Because I do, and the pure fucking irony —” She jabbed a finger into his chest, the anger seeping out of her now. “—of you trying to make me feel like shit for killing your idiotic little cultists and then obliterating a woman’s skull onto my face is palpable!”

“Are you deaf?” John snapped, snagging her wrist before she could turn and try to walk somewhere else again. “I didn’t shoot Ase in the head, Jacob did. I put both my fucking hands on you to get you off the ground. How am I going to do that holding a fucking shotgun, Elliot?”

“I don’t know!” she replied furiously. There was a reckless, high-color in her cheeks, her voice cracking and breaking on something that John couldn’t quite pin down, couldn’t quite get his hands on. Even now, he thought, even when she was spitting her venom she was so — 

“I don’t fucking know, John, you do—crazy fucking things all the time,” she insisted, and there was an uncomfortable wobble in her voice as her lashes fluttered. “Half the time I don’t know which John is going to open his fucking mouth—I don’t know if it’s—if it’s the John that kidnapped my best friend or if it’s the John that… That can be… With me, he’s...”

Her voice trailed off, weaker now, her fire spitting furiously as it tried to stay alight. John’s fingers loosened around her wrist, but didn’t let her go.

“There’s only one John,” he said, and his voice came out hoarse. “It’s just me.”

“I hate you,” the blonde managed out weakly, her lashes dark with unshed tears, soft and doe-like. “I’ve never—”

“Elliot,” John, tugging on her wrist, pulling her forward until she was in his space, until he could feel the warmth of her body and smell the wild on her—pine trees and ash and the mild shampoo she had used, “you’re going to have to come up with a new slogan that you actually believe.”

“John,” she tried again, and she was soft, soft and tired, “please, I’m—so tired of trying to figure you out—”

He closed what little space remained between them to kiss her; for a second, her entire body tensed like an animal ready for flight, stony and immovable against the affection, but he let her wrist slide from his hand, concerned that any moment he might spook her, that she was frozen because she was deciding when to run.

Her wrist slipped through his grip, catching at the base of her hand. She knotted her fingers into the front of his shirt and when his hand came up to the slope of her jaw, she leaned —like a flower to sunlight, blooming under his touch, just like that. Just that easy. John’s other arm slid around her waist to tug her up closer, and her mouth parted against his like instinct, like it had never not been this way between them.

The moment stretched; reality swung back in, the warmth of her mouth against his leaning back until a bit of space stretched between them. Not a lot, just enough for their noses to brush, and Elliot said, “I don’t know which—”

“I told you,” he replied, threading his fingers through her hair, “there’s just the one. This one, El, me. I want—”

“John,” she started, her voice overlapping his, "tell me that you're not lying when—"

He went to say, I want you to stay, I want to kiss you again, you hellcat, I’ve wanted to kiss you for days, but he didn’t get the chance because the sound of Joey’s voice outside the front door had broken the magic of the moment.

“Elliot,” Hudson called, “guess who I...”

The door opened, followed quickly by a scattering of dog nails as Boomer came racing inside. Without a second thought, Elliot had crouched down to wrap her arms around the dog John immediately took a step back and cleared his throat, feeling as though he’d been caught-out. Maybe, in a way, he had. He wouldn’t have cared, if he didn’t think that the idea of Hudson catching them would have made Elliot bolt instantly.

I should have kissed her again, he thought absently, watching Elliot fawn over Boomer with the kind of delight that she reserved only for him, her lips kiss-reddened. Before Hudson.

“He must have followed you here and waited,” Hudson said, looking at John with a narrowed, suspicious gaze. “Everything okay, Elliot?” she asked, even when she was looking at John. “I heard arguing.”

“Fine,” Elliot insisted, crouched on the floor to get as close to the Heeler as possible. “Everything’s fine. John was just—”

“Just dropping off some clean clothes for the deputy,” John interjected, despite the anxiety he felt sliding around inside of him when Elliot looked at him. The flush in her cheeks remained, and he knew that it wasn’t just anger there, anymore. Not really. 

Joey crossed her arms over her chest. “Great. So you can leave, then? We’re done with you.”

We’re, she said, like she spoke for the both of him, both herself and Elliot. We’re, like just seconds ago, John hadn’t been thinking about the way Elliot’s breath hitched when his fingers brushed her skin.

“Sure thing,” he drawled, taking a few steps toward the door. He almost walked right out the door, even with his hands itching for her again, but he stopped. I should just say it, he thought. I should just out it right now.

“What is it?” Joey prompted, her voice hard and flinty.

Elliot wouldn’t ever forgive him if he did.

“Nothing,” John replied after a moment. A little smile ticked the corners of his mouth upward, and for a second his gaze met Elliot’s. “Hope you get some well-deserved rest, you two.”

The brunette watched him with a dark, inscrutable gaze, and he stepped out of the bunkhouse, letting the door swing shut behind him. For just a moment, he paused outside the door; long enough to hear Joey go, “What was that about?”, and he started off across the yard.

Not done with me yet, deputy.

[xxgothickxx]

It Wasn’t Me

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This idea hit me while I was playing Among Us with a group of my friends. The only thing going through my mind at the time was “What if Among Us was scary? And put Bangtan in it?? And so, this story was born. This is my lousy attempted at thriller/horror, so sorry if I couldn’t get the feeling across just right. BUT I hope everyone who reads my story will at least have a little bit of fear striking their heart while reading this :> Also I apologies in advance if you’re upset at how the story plays out. Sadly, this is a horror story, based on a game about killing people and shitty decision making.

I also just want to take this time to say a big thank you to @bang-tan-bitches​ for the opportunity to partake in their Monster Mash competition. I had so much fun writing this and reading the other stories that partook with me! I can’t wait to read any future stories from you :D and also a big thank you to @nomimits7​ for letting me bother her so much for ideas and corrections on this story. I wouldn’t have had the balls if you didn’t push me to send it and post it!!

Words: 5.8K

Warnings/Triggers: A lot of dark places, lots of noises, OC Death, Character Deaths, Some gore (but not extremely descriptive), False accusations, Swearing (lots of it), One or two people have a panic attack (not extremely descriptive), Blood gets mentioned quite often, BTS MEMBERS DO DIE (You have been warned), Talking about dead bodies (I tried to keep it down on describing them), Memory Loss, My really shitty attempt at Horror/Thriller XD, Sorry if I missed anything :(

Music: I was listening to this while writing www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmTkm_o9Glo

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Everyone was quiet. No one making eye-contact, everyone except for Namjoon that is. He was pointedly staring straight at Jungkook with a harsh glint in his eye, or that could just be from his helmet visor reflecting the low light of everyone's flashlights strapped to their shoulders.

“I know it was you Kook, you can give up pretending like you were actually doing something” Namjoon’s words cut through the dimly lit cafeteria. His cyan coloured glove easily scrolling through his tablet searching for Jungkook’s name, the prompt for voting appearing.

“It wasn’t me! Guys I swear it wasn’t!” Kook pleaded to the others, giving up on trying to convince his elder.

“How isn’t it you JK? We last saw her with you!” Taehyung pipes up from his corner of the simplistic dinning bench. “We don’t even know where the body is guys, so everyone calm down we don’t really have time to throw around accusations with no substance to them.”, Yoongi’s apprehensive gaze looks over Jin’s shoulder, a red digital watch blinking as seconds go by threatening to cut their communication with each other.

“Hobi?”, Jimin looks in Hoseok’s direction. Nervous red gloved hands fiddling, his erratic breaths leaving his lips as he tries to keep it together. Tears turning his eyes glassy and unfocused, his mind recalling seeing your body ripped in half on the floor. “It was in Naviga-” his words faulter, a sob running through his entire body, tear stained face falling into his shaking hands.

Everyone looks on with heartbreak in their eyes, Taehyungs leaving the crying man to look at where you would have been sitting right across from him. He bites his bottom lip, swallowing down a sob of his own. Namjoon speaks up again, “Hobi, could you tell... tell if it was fresh?” “Namjoon!” Jin’s voice raises a few octaves, hand ready to slap the younger one behind the head but his arms are restricted by an unknown force and his pink gloved hand returns to his lap. Hoseok wails even more, but he shakes his head a faint mumble of ‘I couldn’t tell’. Jimin looks on, desperate longing to comfort Hoseok.

“Well then, where was everyone? State your current position, one at a time” Yoongi eyes the ticking red digits again, nerves clearly showing in his tone.

“I was busy here in cafeteria, I had to fix the wires!” Jungkook was quick to respond, desperation in his voice. “I was busy redirecting our power source through to our defences, I saw Taehyung with me. But it was dark, I don’t know what he was doing.” Jimin’s shaken voice calls through shortly after, his sad eyes resting on Taehyung. Everyone’s gaze shifted towards him, awaiting his answer. “I was busy downloading Electrical Bay logs, never got to it though so now I need to go stand there again.” A shiver runs down his spine, with his restricted vision in a place as isolated as their electrical bay, he’s sure everyone can relate to his distaste.

“I was with Yoongi in Medical, busy preparing the vial tests. I’m sure he was doing his scan behind me so he must be clear.” Jin’s voice echo’s through the dark room, his nod towards Yoongi is recuperated with a nod back. “Yeah, I was almost done but the... The... Y/A’s body got reported.” Yoongi fights with himself, unable to bring himself to refer to you now as a thing. A dead thing. Fuck, you were alive only minutes ago, he saw you run past Medical. You still gave him a wave of acknowledgement. His black gloved hand lifts out of its own, his fingers mimicking the wave he sent back your way at the time. Namjoon clearing his throat breaks Yoongi out of his trance. Unfocused eyes looking towards the man calling all attention.

“So then that leaves Jungkook, Hoseok and myself as the possible killer. I was in our administration room busy swiping myself into the system. Hobi I need you to pull it together man, what were you doing that side of the ship?” Hoseok’s body doesn’t stop shaking, but he tries to answer through his broken voice. “I just finished cleaning out the oxygen filters, I was on my way down to defences when I saw the blood trail leading to... to her...” His voice finally giving in, nothing but harsh breathing leaving his dry lips.

“Namjoon, I know you’re convinced it might be Jungkook but it’s not enough. It’s risky to vote someone out now. There's still the possibility the monster could be anyone, we don’t even know if there’s more than one. Keep an eye on JK for now, but it would be foolish to vote now.” Jin’s voice is soft, trying not to make his friend fly off the rails again with accusations. “Fine, this is a warning then Kook.” Namjoon’s cyan coloured gloved fingers cancelling his pending vote on Jungkook. Out of the corner of Taehyung’s eye he could see the visible relief in Jungkook’s body, his shoulders sagging and a held breath being pushed out through his nose.

Soon everyone scrolls to the bottom of the list of their names, all casting their votes on passing this meeting off as inconclusive. The digital timer behind Jin fades out, a scratchy robotic voice playing through the intercoms throughout the ship.

“5 votes Inconclusive”, the five crewmembers who voted, their eyebrows shoot into the sky in shock.

“1 vote Namjoon”, this made his heart race, someone is suspecting him? But who? His eyes dart into Jungkook’s direction seeing the youngest already looking his way, sweat gathering by his temples. It must be Kook, he’s trying to get rid of him!

“1 vote Hoseok”, dread colours his face, how can anyone suspect him of killing you? No, nonono this isn’t right. He was your friend; he could never bring himself to breath a bad word in your direction much less be able to kill you! He needs to partner up with someone, he possibly has a target on his back now. He needs to prove how innocent he really is.

“All members return to your duties”, and with that the intercoms shut down with a muted screech. As if their suits come to life, their helmets start shutting, visors sliding over their faces and locking in at the latch by their chins. Restricted vision in the already darkly lit ship with nothing but a low powered flashlight, everyone starts leaving the dinning bench. Jungkook’s purple helmet disappears into the shadows towards the upper end of cafeteria, Jimin and Taehyung running together towards the southern hallway. Namjoon still idles by the dinning bench, the emergency button tempting him into using his one and only use of it. His hands fist by his sides as he has an inner battle with himself, but finally he decides against it and follows Jin and Yoongi’s retreating figures that ran towards the west side of the ship.

Hoseok thought he was going to starts hyperventilating, he found himself alone in the dark. His mind repeating over and over again “target on your back... target on your back...” hesitatingly he runs towards south hallway in search of Jimin and Taehyung. Taehyung... he said he would be in electrical bay. Hoseok finally knowing his exact destination he disappears into the shadows as he searches for his green helmet friend.

Unable to speak to each other, Jin and Yoongi trod along towards Medical bay again. Not close enough to touch each other with stretched arms, but close enough to still make out each other's body in the shadows. Yoongi doesn’t know how long they’ve been on the ship, his memory completely wiped. But he does remember doing his duties and that was the only thing driving him at this point. He can only vaguely recall all his supposed friends faces but even that gave him a headache if he focuses to long on it. The faint thumping of boots can be heard behind them but that soon fades away, sounded far as well so neither of them grew concerned.

The green flickering lights of Medical bay soon lights up the entryway, the letters ‘cal’ completely busted and the letter ‘i’ flickering on and off. Here Yoongi stops and gets ready to turn, but Jin doesn’t follow him. Yoongi’s stress levels spike at this, Jin just continues walking further down the hallway throwing Yoongi two fingers over his shoulder, ‘Peace’. Jin is abandoning him. Before Yoongi could run after, he was gone from his sight. Just the faint thumping of his boots getting softer and softer till the only thing he can hear is the blood rushing in his ears and his panicked breathing.

“You can do this Yoongi, just do your scan and leave. All it takes is 10 seconds, more than enough before anyone can catch you alone.”, he tries to encourage himself, knowing no one can hear him over the busted communications in their helmets. Slowly he walks into the supposed Medical Ward. It was anything but that in his eyes.

The room looks like it hasn’t seen anything human in over 50 years. Ward beds lay toppled over or stacked against the wall to his right, some with wheels, others with what looks to be constraint-straps. This room wasn’t as frightful when he was in here with Jin. This ship is a lot better to handle in general when you're with someone else, he thinks to himself.

He accidently kicks over something that looks like a bedpan, nearly shitting himself at the loud clatter that echoes around him. His heart thundering in his chest, he shakes out his hands in front of him. ‘Fucking calm down Min Yoongi. Since when were you the biggest pussy on this ship?!’ With a neck roll he walks in deeper, passing the discarded beds he eyes the floor. There he sees it, the fucking vent. The second thing that drives a knife through everyone’s hearts. He hastens his steps towards the body scanner, he's been in here longer than he would like already. He hears boots running on top of the steel flooring close to the entrance, he holds his breath. The thumping gets louder but he can’t seem to pinpoint if it's from the left or right, just that it’s getting louder.

Deciding not to stand around and look like he’s not doing anything, he turns away from the door and jumps up onto the filthy podium. He can see his boot prints in the dust from when he was standing there previously before discovering your fate. His hand darts out and starts typing in his crew ID, the old machine groaning as it boots up. “Come on, come on, come on... Fucking switch on already you piece of shit!” as if the scanner could hear him it boots up, what used to be lime green lights settling on his form and so the program starts running.

Yoongi could see nothing, the scanner’s lights bouncing off his visor, barely able to see his own intel on the little black monitor in front of him. The whirling and beeping of the machine are deafening, drowning out the hurried footsteps he heard coming towards him. By the time he’s done, a simple 10 seconds he wishes never to experience again, he was climbing of the podium and sending his scan towards admin. Not waiting to see if the scan goes through, he goes running out of Medical while checking his right wrist for his remaining tasks. He heads east, thinking he’ll shortcut through cafeteria. There he bumps into a nervous Jungkook heading the same direction. They stood and stared at each other for what seemed hours. Yoongi could hear footsteps coming from south hallway, Jungkook’s head snapping towards it as well. Yoongi signals east and beckons Jungkook to follow and continues on with his journey. Weather Kook followed him or not, he doesn’t really care because he wasn’t going to look behind him.

Hoseok nearly ran head first into a stack of boxes when he entered Storage Bay. This room always gave him the creeps. Boxes of God-knows-what stacked high to the ceiling. He hates it, he hates it so much here. ‘I just want to go home’, he thinks to himself. ‘Where even is home? Do I have one? This place can’t be my home... right?’, his steps falter, inner monologue interrupted by movement. He swears he saw someone’s boot out the corner of his eye. “Buddy system Hobi, look for a buddy and stick by them”, he reminds himself, blinking away something wet from his eyes, not sure if it’s tears or sweat at this point. He slowly makes his way between unmarked boxes, vaguely remembering this is the path to the garbage shoot. He sees the silhouette of someone. His heart in his throat, he nears apprehensively, a yellow helmet coming to life. Jimin turns around and his mouth opens in horror when his eyes land on Hoseok so close to him. He goes tumbling to the floor, his arms thrown up in a defensive manner in the hopes it will make the killing blow less painful.

When nothing happens Jimin opens one eye and peaks through his arms. Hoseok just standing there waving his arms telling Jimin to get back on his feet. With a huff Jimin drags his body back into a standing position and eyes Hoseok warily. He dusts of his white spacesuit's pants, doing nothing but spreading the dust and grease over himself even more. Hoseok points towards the west, asking Jimin silently if he would go with. Jimin shakes his head and points east, he has tasks to do that side of the ship. Hoseok clasps his red hands together, contemplating if he should stick with Jimin or continue on his search for Taehyung. Lifting his right arm, he checks his task list. He needs to be at reactor. He waves to Jimin and leaves his yellow friend behind and continuous looking for Taehyung.

Jin leans back in the rickety chair inside security. The chair is missing two wheels and an arm rest but it’s the only comfort he can indulge in right now. He watches the security cameras in a bored haze. He was curious as to why Yoongi left Medical and went back to cafeteria and not come looking for him. Jin leans back as far as the chair will allow before hearing the plastic cracking. He didn’t like having his back turned to the doorway, much less the vent. He eyes the grated hole in the far corner away from him. It’s barely hidden in the shadows but he could still see the dry blood-stained metal in the low light. The room was practically empty except for a lone broken desk, document debris scattered on its top and the floor around it. He already searched through those notes; he still doesn’t know anything. If anything, he was even less wiser than what he was ten minutes ago. He turns back to the cracked monitors in front of him. He needed to find a way off this damned ship, even if it killed him while trying. He knew he had a family somewhere out there, he needed to get back to them. He watches on silently, his right wrist beeping red. He swears he could hear the creaking of metal on metal.

Jimin having turned his back on Hoseok, walked towards defences. The hallway felt longer and darker when he was alone. He could only hear his erratic breathing and his foot falls on the steel below him. He paused. The entrance of communications greeting him. He peered in but saw no one. The room was filthy. Nothing short of looking like a hurricane tore it apart. Electronic equipment shattered and broken litter the floor. Confusi9on clouded his brain, “What happened on this shi-?” A splitting headache seized him between his eyes at that very moment. He fell to his knees screaming himself hoarse. The feeling of hooks tearing his brain apart, membrane from membrane, he tries clutching at his helmet trying to pray it off of himself. Not soon after Jimin’s vision turns black, his body shutting down and his head bangs against the steel floor.

Jungkook walked quietly behind Yoongi, far enough to just see his elder’s boots in his line of vision. He wasn’t even sure if Yoongi knew he was still following him. He watched as they passed the ship’s gun room. It was more a laser shooter in Kookie’s eyes but he felt the time to bring up the debate of room names was not now. He looks down to his right wrist, red light beeping silently. He continues following Yoongi towards what looks like Navigation Room? Jungkook decides it was best to break off there and head into the oxygen maintenance room, his eyes following the cracking glass plant tank, from there he follows the banged-up pipes all along the walls. He remembers Hoseok saying something about cleaning out the filters here. He looks over his shoulder, hoping Yoongi would have paused and waited for him. No one but darkness greets him. With a shake of his head and shoulders he tries to calm himself down, he disappears deeper into the room in search of a small leaver.

He flicked open his left wrist, opening the small red map on his visor. He wonders if his brother has feasted yet, the idea makes his stomach rumble. He growls jealously at the idea, no, he needs to feed before he becomes unbearable, before he starts slipping up, before he gets caught. He goes for the easiest option, a low grumble of ‘Lights’ sets the mood just the way he likes it. Everyone plunges into darkness. All power gets cut in seconds, flashlights, wall lights, even monitor lights die.

Multiple running footsteps can be heard heading in his direction, he smiles and sticks to the boxes in storage. One set of footsteps are the closest to him, he focuses on the south hallway.

When Jimin comes to he realises he's on the floor, his face clammy and an incessant throbbing inside his head. Slowly he climbs back onto his feet, a shake of his shoulders makes himself feel dizzy, the feeling of vomit coming up his throat makes him turn green. After a few deep breaths Jimin tries to remember what he was doing, lost in thought standing in the even darker hallway. This makes him blink a few times, slowly realisation hits him, the faint blaring of an alarm ringing in his ears. He needs to head to Electrical Bay, hoping he chooses the right direction, he sets off.

Jungkook has never been scared of the dark, not that he can remember that, but he's never been plunged into this type of void before. His hands outstretched in front of him, making sure he won't bump into any walls on his way to see why the power system is failing. He calls out for Yoongi in desperation forgetting that they have no way to communicate with each other. He continues calling out regardless, some messed up way of soothing himself. His shin hits the cafeteria bench, he curses and bends down to rub away the pain. ‘Fucking stupid Kook, why are you even here? You’ve done nothing but make yourself look like an idiot, now you’re walking into shit as well! Fucking useless!’, his internal monologue deafens him from hearing footsteps approaching. The last thing Jungkook saw was sharp white teeth coming straight at him as he stood back up as the lights faded on.

All remaining members were seated at the dinning bench. One by one their visors opened and they quickly saw who was missing. Jungkook and Jin. The vacant seats mocking them.

“WHAT THE FUCK?! WHO THE FUCK KILLED JUNGKOOK? TELL ME NOW YOU FUCKING BASTARD!” Yoongi tried to jump from his seat but he struggled against his suit, as if he was glued to his chair. He was losing it, Kookie was right behind him. Right behind HIM. That means the killer was close by. It could have been him. It SHOULD have been him. He was to chicken shit to look out for Jungkook. He’s responsible for the loss of a crewmate. He breaks down, elbows slamming onto the table, black gloved hands flying to his hair and desperately starts pulling at his strands. Tears freely running down his face.

“Yoongi, it wasn’t Jungkook that I saw in there. I... I saw... Fuck... I saw Jin. He was... He was everywhere... I...”, Taehyung’s voice wavers, he’s staring at the table top but his eyes were watching something else entirely. Just blood, so much blood... was everywhere.

“Where TaeTae?”, Jimin wants to reach out towards his friend. Comfort him and clean his mind from the horrors he witnessed.

“Was in security. I didn’t see anything but I was with Taehyung. I had to go to reactor, Tae came with me so I wouldn’t be alone. He went right and I left and... now we’re here.”, Hoseok’s voice sounded lifeless. His skin was pale and ashy, dark rings decorated his eyes and his nose was raw and red.

“Jimin where were you?”, Namjoon’s eyes darts towards the yellow crewmate. Jimin quickly throws his hands in the air. “No, NO! It wasn’t me! Hoseok can confirm I was in storage and I went east towards defences. Hobi please tell them! There’s no way for me to get to security even with using the vents!” Jimin grabs at the sides of the dining table, his entire body shaking with unshed tears. “Hobi please!”

“Namjoon, he’s right. Even if it was... recent or not, there’s no way it could have been him.”, Hobi hangs his head, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake by defending Jimin.

“Where the fuck were you Namjoon? Huh? WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU MOTHERFUCKER?!”, Yoongi tries again to lunge over the table but still he was held to his chair. “YOU HAD IT OUT FOR HIM FROM THE GET GO! JUST ADMIT YOU FUCKING KILLED KOOK!” he was seeing red, the veins on his forehead and throat looking as if they will pop any second. “He has a point Namjoon... Where were you? I was in storage on my way to Electrical to check the switchboard and I didn’t see you in there”, Jimin tries to rub away one of the grease stains on his yellow glove, eyes refusing to look up.

“Yeah Joon, Taehyung and myself fixed the lights, you weren’t in Electrical Bay area at all.”, Hoseok’s the one with the pointed glare now.

“Why are you looking at me? I was back in administration, where the fuck were you Yoongi?” Namjoon was bringing up his defences, he puffed out his chest and tightened his hands into fists on top of the dull table. “I was busy in Navigation you fucker, WHY WERE YOU IN ADMIN AGAIN?”, Yoongi’s voice echoed all around them. Creaking of metal could be heard around them. The darkness filled with silence reminding the crewmembers where they were. A jarring reality compared to the screaming that engulfed them mere seconds ago. The scratchy robotic voice on the intercoms greeted them.

“Voting ends in 10 seconds” The faint blaring of an alarm sounds, slowly getting louder as the seconds tick by.

2 seconds was all it took. 2 seconds of making split-second eye contact and the crewmates were voting.

“1 vote Inconclusive”, no one was making eye-contact. Some breathing louder than others. Jimin could swear he heard Hoseok letting out a sob, or was it Taehyung?

“1 vote Yoongi”, Hearing this made him snap in Namjoon’s direction. “YOU MOTHERFUCKER, YOU THINK I WOULD KILL HIM? HUH? FUCK YOU, PRICK! YOU FUCKING MURDERER, FUCKING MONSTER!”, Yoongi was barely keeping himself together, feeling of rage taking over his being, that is till he hears the last casted voting announcement.

“3 votes Namjoon”, Yoongi breaks out in hysterical laughter. HIs voice bouncing back against the broke walls of the cafeteria. “Looks like you’ll be getting what you deserve after all!”

“You guys made a mistake, it’s not me. If you kick me out now, all of you will die. Please think about this, we can still go ba-”, “Like hell we are! Filthy scum trying to fool you all into trusting it!”, Yoongi was finally freed from his suit’s constraints to the bench. “Come on everyone, the votes have spoken.”, He stalks over to Namjoon, showing him to get up and start walking towards the airlock at the top of the cafeteria. Hoseok gets up and joins him in ushering Namjoon off the ship. Taehyung and Jimin remain at the table, refusing to partake.

Yoongi pulls the latch down, the solid metal doors sliding open with a hiss. With no protest Namjoon steps in, back still turned towards them as Yoongi pushes the latch back up. The doors creak and struggle to close, but seal after a few minutes. Hoseok has moved towards the windows looking out into the vacant space way outside. “This is for Jungkook. Rest in Hell.” With as much strength that Yoongi could muster he slammed his fist down on the eject button. His head barely had time to rest on the cold dirty metal of the airlock panel before their helmets started shutting again.

“Namjoon’s gone.” Those are the last words Yoongi heard pass Hoseok’s lips before they were sealed back into their spacesuits, voiceless. Little did Yoongi know he meant that his body disappeared.

Jimin was the last to leave the table this time. He was unsure of himself. Unsure if his crewmates made the right choice. His right arm beeped red, sighing he flicked open his task list. The flashing of the Reactor Room bouncing off his helmet visor. He didn’t even know which direction the rest of them went in. Slowly he got up, heading west. He heard faint footsteps getting louder the closer he got. The hallway was a mess, broken glass crunched under his boots. ‘Where did this even come from?’, His thoughts distracting him, not even noticing the creaking of metal on metal behind him.

Yoongi walks out of Electrical Bay with confidence, just finishing his tasks and not a soul knew he was in there. Deciding he should check out the security cameras and see where everyone was hiding, but before he could take a step towards the west side of the ship the alarms were blaring again. Oxygen was depleting, and fast. ‘Fuck!’, ignoring his original plan he made a dash for the administration room, hoping someone would already be at the top for the second half of the system reset. It was practically impossible to run into Admin. The number of boxes of files thrown everywhere had Yoongi nearly tripping five times just to get to the back of the room. Finally, he was able to get to the keypad, ripping the yellow sticky note off the monitor. He was squinting as much as he possibly could, barely able to make out the numbers. ‘Is that a six or an eight?’, smashing his thumb on the green button he got the code in with four seconds to spare. He didn’t even realise the depleting oxygen was making him dizzy. He stood in Admin for what felt like an hour, just taking deep breaths. “Where in the ever-loving fuck is everyone else?”, he asks this to himself out loud with no answer returned.

Jimin was a broken mess on the floor, not only did he get a fright when the alarm went off, but once he turned around to go towards the emergency, the doors sealed him in security hallway outside reactor. He pounded as much as his body could against the door, eventually cowering against the corner crying for help. He was convinced he was a goner. His eyes refused to look down the long empty and dark hallway. The only sounds around him the ticking timer of the doors, his sobs and the sound of dripping water.

When the alarm stopped screaming in his ears, not soon after the doors opening, Jimin was astonished that he was still alive. Counting his lucky starts he moved towards his final task in reactor. This room had more light than any other room on the ship, making Jimin squint for a few seconds trying to adjust his eyes to the brightness. Jimin stepped in a pool of water, the soft splash making him jump out of his skin. Jumping back, his eyes fall to the floor. But what Jimin sees might scar him for the rest of his life. He saw a red glove next to a red puddle. Jimin bends to pick it up but drops it instantly when he feels there was weight to it. He felts as if he was going to throw up again, his vision going double and he stumbles back, hitting the reactor door frame. “No, please no, not Hobi... Please not Hobi!”, His voice is scratchy to his own ears. His throat raw and painfully hot.

He heard the tapping of something wet hitting the top of his helmet. Slowly he lifted his head. His eyes were greeted with the horribly mangled body of his beloved elder handing from the wires dangling from the ceiling. Jimin not being able to tell the red blood apart from the red on Hoseok’s suit, he let out a deafening painful scream only his ears could hear and flicked his left arm, with panicked fingers he fumbles to press the report button on his suit.

One by one the visors open of the remaining crewmates. Jimin’s the last to open. Taehyung just lifts his hand and points at Jimin. “Yoongi, it was Jimin all along. I saw him, I caught him with Hoseok’s body. HE WAS STILL TRYING TO GET RID OF THE BLOOD ON HIS SUIT!”, Taehyung’s voice slowly raised into hysteria. Yoongi was confused, his head moving from Taehyungs direction and then Jimin’s and then back to Taehyung.

Jimin’s eyes widening, seeing how Taehyung could have seen this as a misunderstanding. “No! NO, IT WASN’T ME! Tae please you don’t understand what you saw! I found Hobi’s body there, I was freaking out BECAUSE HE WAS LITRALLY ON TOP OF ME IN THE CEILING! I wasn’t cleaning blood off of me I was trying to press my report button! Please this is just a huge misunderstanding, Yoongi, you believe me, right? Right?!”, Jimin’s eyes brimmed with tears, his words stumbling as he’s trying not to cry himself into hysterics while trying to plead for his life.

“Jimin... How... How could you?” Yoongi was speechless. It all made sense now. It was never Namjoon that killed Jungkook, it was Jimin. How did he not figure this out? He’s been quiet in every meeting. Used Taehyung as an alibi. He was in defences when he and Jungkook went to Navigation. Lights were killed and he could have easily offed Kookie behind his back. And now, Jimin wasn’t stopping the oxygen depletion because he was busy feasting on Hoseok’s body.

“Taehyung?”

“Yes?”

“Where were you this whole time?”

“I was busy in Weapons. Oxygen emergency popped up and I walked down to Oxygen Room and typed in the reset keycode.”

“And before that?”

“I saw Hoseok leaving cafeteria towards the west. You left south. Jimin stayed in cafeteria for a while, I stayed with him, but after a few minutes I decided to go do my last task so I left east towards weapons.”

Yoongi sat there for a long while, the digital timer in front of him placing pressure on him.

“Jimin?”

“Y-yes?...”

“Can you confirm anything Taehyung just said?”

“I-I can’t remember... Honestly I can’t! I left cafeteria going west, I didn’t see anyone passing me on the way back. As soon as I got into Security Hallway, all the doors shut on me. I went and hid! I thought I was going to die!”, Jimin was a blubbering mess at this point, he couldn’t see clearly, he could smell the blood on his suit drying.

“I’m not convinced... Die with the rest of your kind, monster. Your fake tears won’t work on me any longer!”

“NO WAIT!”, Jimin’s last plea fell on deaf ears. Taehyung and Yoongi placed their votes and Jimin had no other choice but to place his as well. The scratchy robotic voice lulled to life over the intercoms.

“1 vote Taehyung”, Taehyungs eyes widen at this, his eyes quickly darting between Jimin and Yoongi in panic.

“2 votes Jimin”, and at hearing his final fate Jimin wails. He screams and cries as loud as he could. Yoongi could feel the release on their suits from the bench and proceeded to walk towards the airlock. He pulled the latch down, the sealed doors opening with a creek and groan. Jimin refused to get up from his seat, holding on to the table as tightly as he could. He will make one last fight for his life.

Taehyung huffs at him. “You traitor. Hoseok trusted you. I trusted you. Every single one of us trusted you. How many did you kill while my back was turned to you? Huh?” Taehyung’s words cut through him like a knife, each lashing with his tongue made Jimin’s heart bleed. “Please Tae, please, please, please, it wasn’t me. What you saw was a misunderstanding! PLEASE YOU MUST BELIEVE ME, DON’T DO THIS!”, Taehyung walked up to Jimin and hooked his arms in under his armpits. He dragged the kicking and screaming man to the airlock. Yoongi was watching all of this unfold. His eyes never leaving Jimin, hoping that his disappointed face would burn into his mind. Taehyung threw Jimin on the ground in the middle of the airlock as if he weighed nothing. There Jimin stayed on his knees, elbows on the ground hunched in on himself, quietly sobbing.

Taehyung nodded in Yoongi’s direction, signalling him to do it. Without thinking twice, Yoongi pushes the latch up, waiting for the old doors to seal back up. The last words Yoongi hears from Jimin are, ‘It wasn’t me I swear’. He pauses, his finger just above the eject button. “Yoongi, do it. Do it so we can go home.”, Taehyung’s voice sounds stern, Yoongi follows through. He joins Taehyung by the window to watch Jimin disappear into space.

The first thing Jimin feels is cold. Extremely cold. He feels nothing at the same time, just his body floating in nothing. He tries to hold his breath for as long as he possibly can. As his body twists and turns away from the ship, his sight quickly fading, the last thing Jimin witnessing is Yoongi’s body against the window. Soon followed by a large splatter of blood and his lifeless body falling to the floor of the cafeteria. Jimin closes his eyes in a final goodbye, a single frozen tear stuck to his cheek as the void swallows him whole.