#the only reason shes caught in this time travel fate loop is because of her own actions and basic kindness and love

[nenestansunsthings]

hi gang guess who blorbo bleebused the assistant girls

anyway. one guess who my ultimate favourite character is /j

[moreespressoformydepresso]

I was thinking about your Pup time loop au and what if scenario where he wasn’t the only one looping. Like, what if Treech was also caught in the time loop - they’re both trying to save Lamina for different reasons.

Pup doesn’t realize Treech is also looping because he doesn’t like Treech (still viewing Treech as an obstacle to Lamina winning) and doesn’t pay him enough attention to any Not-Lamina-Tribute to notice Treech is doing things differently. Treech does realize because Pup starting to act differently every time is Very Obvious.

Maybe Treech tells Lamina he’s in a loop and it makes her try to get both of them out (of course, that doesn’t work, and Treech doesn’t tell her in the next loop because he doesn’t want to watch her die for him again).

(And the inevitable discovery that both of them are in a loop and begrudgingly working together until an eventual ✨friendship✨ because there’s only so many times you can redo the same week before warming up to the only other person who remembers.)

Genius

Pup only figured out Treech was looping after around 100 retries of about 300 or so? It takes a while to get the games cancelled in a week okay? And even then the first day of the games still starts with all the tributes alive.

Treech caught on by loop 3.

Actually, he noticed immediately that Pup was acting different, but chalked it up to him just not paying attention or being uncharitable the first time. Or maybe the butterfly effect is at play here? Well, the second time around he was paying attention. There is nothing he could’ve done to cause this. So yeah, he picked up on not being the only time traveller really quickly. However, he also caught on to Pup’s dislike of him and wasn’t about to open that can of worms if he’s gonna keep going back in time anyway. What’s the worst that can happen? Death? So Treech isn’t saying anything and Pup just straight up doesn’t realize, which causes quite the amount of shenanigans.

It’s pretty obvious they both want the same person to win (to Treech) so he tries very hard to use this to his advantage. It doesn’t work because Pup keeps changing up his strategy, but it’s gotta be effective at some point right? So he tries everything. Being violent to draw the other tributes’ attention away from Lamina, hiding like the first time but specifically to keep her safe, causing distractions whenever the pack starts approaching her, leaning very hard in the performer angle to get sponsors to help Lamina with, you name it. Sometimes he involves Lamina in planning, sometimes he keeps her out of it. Especially after that time she died for him in hopes of getting them both out. The performing one really makes Pup loathe him though. Something about “stealing” sponsors from Lamina? Ha! Jokes on this guy, Treech was gonna share anyway.

Then he slips up.

After weeks upon weeks of pure Hell, groveling and suffering and dying to get Lamina home and constantly failing, he breaks. Rambles about her deaths and the more notably horrible ones like Circ and Coral with the snakes (they almost always die of those stupid, horrible, disgusting snakes. At least they don’t remember, unlike him) or Bobbin’s bashed in head those few times he came across it. Less often as loops come and go, but still a horrifying sight. Once he gets those off his chest, his stupid mouth can’t quit and starts talking about his own deaths. The snakes (down his shirt, dragging him down, all over his body. Bites in his neck, in his legs, in every inch of his skin) and the trident and the pitchfork and the broken neck and the drones and the powder in his eyes and the cold and hunger and everything else. Later, he plays it off as just a nightmare he let get to his head. Luckily, she just hugs him. What sane person would jump to time travel as their first conclusion anyway?

Well, turns out fate ain’t on his side because Pup decides to try and separate the two in that exact loop. Lamina gets mad when he insists the two will get over each other just fine and shouts that Treech is her friend and she won’t abandon him. When he tries to convince her she cares more about him than he does her, she brings up the “nightmares” as proof that he’s worried sick. Which he is, and he did admittedly spend the most time breaking down over her deaths, but still. The one she told Pup about specifically is a little too recognizable for Pup to not notice, and three loops later he has the epiphany. And confronts Treech. Yay.

They have an argument that ends with a tenuous alliance once Treech finally manages to convince Pup they both want Lamina to win here. Despite this teamwork, the two remain frosty and uncomfortable with one another, mostly because Pup is still hardcore dehumanizing every tribute that isn’t Lamina. Though Treech doesn’t like being around more Capitol people either. He’s still figuring out how to feel about Vipsania. By now, he’s managed to admit to himself that aside from one loop where he murder-hobo’ed as many mentors as possible because the Capitol’s bullshit broke him, Vipsania always ends up caring about him. Kind of. She never really gets there, or if she does it happens during the games at which point it doesn’t matter because he’s already dead. Treech is a little too busy figuring out how to feel about that seeming change of heart to worry about Pup of all people. He’s going to die no matter what so it’s not like it matters.

Switching to Pup’s POV as he is the main character for this AU:

Finally, Lamina wins. Treech has to sacrifice himself and dies slowly for it to happen, but Pup can’t bring himself to care when Lamina is finally out and safe. The boy was gonna die anyway, it’s not like he matters all that much. Except Lamina isn’t happy or relieved or even numb. She’s inconsolable! Nothing he says helps, and if anything he’s making everything worse! And then he’s right back at the start of the week again. Treech… doesn’t talk to him. He already knows she won, and that it didn’t matter. He clings to Lamina, and for the first time… Pup actually sees him. Not just another tribute or an obstacle, but a kid. A terrified child who’s died over and over and over again, only to find out that it meant nothing. They don’t talk that loop. Treech doesn’t respond to anything he says. But the next time, Pup brings food for Lamina and Treech and talks to them both. Not about the games, but about them. And this unfortunate partnership becomes a bit of a camaraderie. Pup’s the only one that knows about the loops and he’s happy to sit on the other side of the bars, hugging the other boy as much as possible while he sobs his heart out about the horrors he lived through and about how much it hurt to die.

That’s when Pup really starts working to fix the problem, rather than the symptom. Losing a girl he cares for a symptom of the disease that is these horrific games, and Pup starts to plan. Treech can’t do much for now, so he lets the boy mentally pull himself together for a few loops while he collects info from his classmates on who would be willing to help him.

I’ll come back tomorrow or something to write down my thoughts on how this will conclude. Now I wanna write this lmao but idk if I should.

[12th-shavie]

So I've been playing Radiant Historia Perfect Chronology lately and I have many thoughts that plague me

Spoilers under the cut

All of this is from reaching both basic and true ending, the PC ending with the singularity, all side quests, possible history quests and no second run with clear data for the extra ending. Also I played it on friendly difficulty and it's a good thing I touch at the end of my thoughts.

I mostly want to ramble about the different characters in the game, in somewhat of an order so I'll start with my dear boy Stocke.

I really liked Stocke. He's not particularly chatty, but we get to see a lot of what's going on his mind through the story, including every decision he has to make that can lead to a bad ending and he ends up very well-rounded by the time of the ending. He clearly grows to care a lot about everyone around him, which makes his fate particularly cruel when it's only because he made all these connections that he can be the sacrifice, but it's also the reason why his sacrifice is such a heavy blow for the others. His status as a man whose soul hasn't been his for a long time unbeknownst to him heightens the value of his growth as a person and as a friend, showing how he could still grasp the opportunity to see value in the world beyond himself and his own lifespan (that was technically over since quite some time). He's willing to use the power at his disposal to try to get the best outcome for anyone he can help, even when it seemingly doesn't do much for the world at large, he's just really helpful. Stocke is also very funny to me in the many ways he deals with his time travel. Especially in the ways he casually transports a bunch of items through the timelines, and never explains how he knows information he has absolutely no way of knowing at the point in time he's in. He also doesn't seem to question the fact that there's a big part of his life missing, or at least that's what I understand the Ernst memory wipe as, and seems to just adapt to whatever the timeline has in store for him at any given time. But he's also a Sad boy™ and deserves the world for everything he's been put through. Especially having to kill Rosch that one time.

Ah, Rosch. My poor sweet bulky boy whom I really tried to use every time he was available but it seems it was never enough and even in post-ending he's not quite caught up. The mana spring dlc also shows just how big his armor truly compared to his actual body and I respect the huge suit of armor that makes his silhouette a little silly. I wasn't a big fan of his romance with Sonja at first until the alternate history in Celestia and his bigger arc, where we get to see some more of them that made me appreciate them more (and Sonja upgrading his Gauntlet has to be some of my favourite interactions between her, Rosch and Stocke).

Raynie and Marco are cute as characters Stocke is close to but I really couldn't care less about Raynie's romantic subplot, or her in general. My interest in her never rose higher than my interest in her gameplay, which is thankfully fun to me so it doesn't feel like she's wasting my time. Marco was a little better, especially with the Mimel sidequest where he shows another facette of himself in the bad ending where he goes nuts and I respect that. But ultimately, they're only involved at first because Heiss made it so, and neither their past not their relationship to Stocke or the others was delved into all that much, which is kind of a shame given how present they are during the game.

Which bring me to Heiss. Heiss' first appearance just threw me in a loop of "wow, this guy is so obviously evil but he called Stocke his best boy so now I really want the game to surprise me with a turn of events where he's not one of the Big Bad™. I really wish I could trust this guy in the slightest but that character design is screaming EVIL very loudly". He then proceeds to turn out to be the main villain. Except he still very much cares about Stocke, and always has, even when his other intentions are very nefarious. And even at the very end he still cares about his favourite nephew. And I'm a sucker for that kind of character development, so needless to say Heiss now lives rent-free in one of my mental tabs that run in the background on my thoughts. He does have one portrait where he looks down, in a content but sad way, as if reminiscing of a happier past and it really gets me every time. I did not expect to care so much about the guy, yet his character arc really did it for me. From the bitterness cranked up to eleven by the Black Chronicle's past owners and his huge soft spot for Stocke to his own actions of granting Stocke a chance at a non-royal, non-sacrifice life that he himself never got as Heinrich being the key to the only positive future there was for the world ? Gorgeous arc ! Until the true end where he just never gives up on the only thing he truly cared about, Stocke's future. The PC ending where he joins forces with Stocke, Nemesia and the others was also a satisfying moment, seeing how he's reminded of when he went on adventures with Ernst (again with that softer portrait I am very weak to), along with one of the possible histories where you get the key to his desk (which had plagued me from the moment I tried to snoop around his office much earlier in the game) and it contains an old portrait of Heinrich and Ernst, probably the only trace had kept from that part of his past, showing that despite all the scheming and lack of remorse on other fronts as the main villain, he's still an old man whose life was never completely his own, and who tries to break the cycle for the one person he cared about who was condemned to the same fate. In other words, Heiss is absolutely a magnificent bastard but also very human underneath and I am not immune to that.

On the other hand, a character I had to warm up to gradually was Eruca (I've seen her design from the DS version and I feel robbed, that little sprite had so much more personality !). She starts out kinda generic, as the princess stuck under the terrible reign of her stepmother who secretly leads her dead brother's rebel group, and I only started garnering interest when she joined the party and was armed with a gun. I had gotten a gun before but had no idea they were for her, and it was extremely refreshing to see how she fared in combat despite her lower availability. Her relationship with Stocke was also made so much better by that one moment around the end where it goes back to their first time meeting in standard history and shows exactly what she was dealing with when interacting with Stocke, knowing full that he not only was her dead brother living with a borrowed soul, but also had yet to be aware of his role in the grand scheme of things. I was afraid the whole ritual bit would get in the way of her character development but it didn't and she ended up being one of my favourite characters in both story and gameplay. Ice magic nukes are very nice.

Aht is adorable and I knew she'd be in my top three from the moment I saw her in the animated opening in which she gave me some Just a little guy™ vibe which is sufficient for me to be interested. Her voice acting was also very endearing (then again all of the voice acting worked really for me) and she was just as fun in gameplay with her trap set-ups and big combo potential. And then the story dropped all sorts of hints that she clearly was aware of something very big and plot-relevant and that really makes her go from Babsie™ to Tell me your secrets you adorable little scoundrel™ and that's absolutely my jam.

I wish I had a stronger opinion on Gafka. He's pretty neat, I like the combos he brings to the tables, the way he learns additional skills with Bergas makes sense to me and is cool, but I wish his character spoke to me more. The one thing I would say about him is that he has this trait where he has a hard time distinguishing humans and uses nicknames based on other visible parts of them, but does eventually come to recognize Stocke with his name instead of "Red One" and that's a new bit of development he got there.

I wish Viola was playable. Girl's got so much potential with a title like the Valkyrie but only gets so little story presence, but she's a highlight of every scene she's in and that's fine by me. I find her design very soft yet powerful and inspiring, as befits a character with her renown and charisma.

I can also say I really appreciate Raul, he's not the most appealing character at first, but the genuine effort he clearly puts in supporting however he can from the back lines and devising all of the larger scale tactics and stuff really elevates him as guy who's trying to make the best out of a bad situation where he can't turn his back on people who need help he can provide after not opposing Hugo more directly even though he suspected him to be up to no good.

Speaking of Hugo, he has me a little confused on what exactly his motives were, where his loyalty lied and what he was really trying to accomplish, especially regarding Noah and the possible histories surrounding him. I'm not a fan of letting him around with Noah and not facing more consequences for his actions. Noah himself is also a little weird, being both this mysterious prophet who just wants what's best for his people and this calm guy who seems to know more than he lets on but hasn't really tried to stop Hugo or find another way to reach the people without his name being exploited. I wonder how he could've affected the timeline if he didn't just vanish from the public eye after the possible history that saves his life in the alternate history.

Dias and Selvan are most definitely meant to be read as an evil power couple. You can't throw in a sidequest where it is shown they get a hotel room in the middle of the day and Selvan immediately resorting to threatening to kill a little girl the instant he sees Stocke menacing Dias, and not tell they're not in some kind of very close relationship that is never described as friendship, not even once. Also they'd seemingly betray anyone in a heartbeat except each other and I will read the subtext as I please. There is also that one line from Selvan in alternate history when Dias is dead and he says something along the lines of "But now Dias is slain, and I am broken". And that's without mentioning the possible history where they didn't set Protea up as queen but Dias directly, and an NPC says that "Dias wears the crown, but Selvan might as well sit on the throne" and I'll gladly interpret it as Selvan sitting on the throne with Dias on his lap. Moving on.

Friendly difficulty is a godsend that should be in many other games. I love being able to progress rapidly through the combat heavy parts of the story and only be forced into important fights which I can appreciate without wearing down my gameplay experience. I cannot show grateful I am to be able to enjoy the story to the fullest with no downsides in my opinion. It even gives me a reason to someday try out the DS version to experiment with combat a little more, and also see the game in all its original stylized glory (mostly Stocke's grittier self, Eruca's pixie cut, Heiss balding forehead that makes him less magnificent of a bastard and Dias looking less evil for some reason)

I also intend to finish RHPC with my clear data to see that final final ending, just to see what it brings to the table.

[rynnaaurelius]

Titan’s Curse But Make It Time Loop: Nico di Angelo Edition

-Okay so I’m at work and not doing much and who wants to actually edit your shit drafts for your actual WIPs so that they’re less bad? No one, that’s who

-So I had an idea: The Titan’s Curse. Also known as the book where people start to die. It sucks to be a demigod in this book--for the first time in the original series, it really does.

-Not everything is fixed, not everyone is saved, and people start to have to make really tough decisions.

-So we fix it. Not by throwing Percy, or Annabeth, or Thalia, or, hell, even Bianca or Grover into the mix.

-Throwing the marginally more grown-up, more trained, and more knowledgeable demigods into the fire, who’d get everyone alive and safe by the third time ‘round? Nah.

-We’re making Nico fix this.

-Because here’s the thing about Nico di Angelo: Sure, he grows up to become a major badass, the Ghost King, so on and so forth. But not yet.

-For now, Nico is baby, a ten-year-old whose experience with any kind of fighting consists of one (1) Capture The Flag game and who’s still half-reliant on Mythomagic to explain what the fuck is happening.

-He’s also got the worst knowledge makeup possible! He knows he’s a son of Hades, which is bad, he knows to stick monsters with the pointy end of swords but nothing else, he knows that Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace are Very Big Deals (But also doesn’t know why beyond parents), and he’s, at best, vaguely aware that there’s some kind of bad prophecy hanging around.

-Also by the end of the book, he’s just been told his last immediate family who isn’t Hades is dead in one of the worst ways possible, and he--pretty irrationally IMO, but Nico’s a kid who has been through a lot recently, so we’re not holding that against him--blames Percy Jackson.

-Literally, you probably can’t pick an angstier or worse choice to run through the time travel trope. I love it.

-We’re making this kid save Bianca’s life via time loop, which happens due to. . .hmm, we’ll say the Fates did it.

-So, Loop 0 = Canon, only at the end of the day on December 21st, after the conversation with Percy, Nico falls asleep only gods know where only to wake up the day he meets Percy Jackson:

Loop 1:

-Nico doesn’t actually change anything meaningful at first.

-Spends most of it shellshocked and not unconvinced the last week (For him, anyway) wasn’t a horrible nightmare; shellshocked and staring at Percy Jackson, anyway.

-(Percy’s wondering what’s up with the silent kid his sister had talked up as a cheerful chatterbox)

-It’s only when Bianca agrees to join the quest for Artemis that he starts kicking up a fuss; demanding to go, screaming that she can’t leave him even more, not again.

-(Bianca hesitates; briefly, enough to remind Nico that she loves him. But she’s not their mother, and she needs this)

-Bianca still dies. Percy comes back pale and guilty. Nico doesn’t yell at him when he returns--he already knows. He accepts the Hades figurine so that he can throw it into the lake.

-He slinks off back into Cabin Eleven and falls asleep, hoping desperately that he gets a third chance.

Loop 2:

-He does.

Loop 3:

-After a very painful death at the hands of Dr. Thorn, Nico, generally being a straightforward person at this stage of life, takes the obvious path this time around: He tries to tell Bianca--who brushes it off as a dream.

-Annabeth still goes over the cliff when Nico takes the initiative of attaching himself and his sister to Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace at the dance. He tries to tell Percy and Thalia when Bianca still joins the Hunt, promising Nico that whatever he saw, she’ll be extra careful.

-(Bianca’s fearful of what Nico's saying, and thinks that if these sworn sisters can’t keep her safe, who can?)

-Artemis gives Nico a speculative look but agrees when he begs her to protect Bianca at all costs.

-He doesn’t get on the quest. Being a reasonable demigod of questionable parentage, he sneaks out of camp.

-He gets caught, because despite being aware of his awesome new powers, he doesn’t know how to use them, and is still a ten-year-old who can barely hold a sword the right way.

-He gives Percy the puppy dog eyes and shows off said awesome new powers. Percy forces him back.

-Nico follows him.

-Repeat until Percy dies saving Nico from the Nemean Lion in Washington, DC.

-Nico can’t find it in himself to be terribly sad--especially when he doesn’t make it much longer.

Loop 4:

-He’s really stuck like this, huh?

-Oh, Di Immortales.

-(Before Percy gets his chest ripped to shreds by a lion and Nico meets skeleton cats, he learned how to hold a sword properly and curse fluently in Greek. Percy probably only meant to teach him one of those things)

-In unrelated news: Having a big crush on a guy who thinks he’s only known you for a couple hours? Terrible.

-Trying to hate the guy who let your sister die when he’s that stupid and nice? Even worse.

-That stupid lion.

Loop 5, 6, 7, 8, 9:

-Nico repeats: That stupid lion.

-Somewhere in Loop 7 he starts to steal supplies out of the camp store when he follows Percy following the quest.

-They forcefeed the lion enough trail mix and frozen ice cream in Loop 9 that they don’t die this time.

-At least until someone called the General shows up and Nico’s dead before he can raise his sword.

Loop 10:

-Nico wakes up in his and Bianca’s room in Westover and starts crying. Bianca tells the headmaster they’re both sick and Nico lets her hold him all day.

-They fall asleep and Nico swears he won’t let her die again.

Loop 11, 12, 13:

-He wakes up and he still can’t get out of bed without feeling that blade cutting between his ribs, burning like it’s on fire.

-Gods, he’s so sorry, Bianca. Dispiace tanto.

Loop 14:

-He can get up without feeling like he’s about to die again. Bianca fusses but assumes it was just a bad dream.

-Nico is caught stealing and can’t follow Percy until it’s too late.

-Everyone assumes this means he’s a son of Hermes, however, and Nico can’t correct them without opening his mouth and letting the sobbing laughter out.

-Figuring he’s about to get another chance next round anyway, he takes Travis and Connor Stoll up on their offer to learn a thing or two so that he doesn’t get Cabin Eleven slapped with kitchen duty from now until Doomsday.

-He likes the Stolls. He spent most of the time, pre-looping, actively avoiding everyone at camp as he waited for Bianca and Percy to come back, but they’re not that bad.

-Percy comes back with the figurine and no sister and Nico remembers why he’s stuck.

Loop 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23:

-After Loop 12 and being killed in Washington DC again, Nico realizes: He needs to learn how to fight.

-Unless he gets killed early or refuses to leave Westover, the loop resets after seven days. So, he has seven days to train each time.

-He gets to camp, finds the arena, and meets Clarisse La Rue. He demands she teach him how to kill monsters.

-She laughs, and tells him that attitude in his size will make monsters easy to kill, they’ll laugh so hard.

-Clarisse teaches him how to swing a sword each time--but only after mocking his unamused face.

-Somehow, Percy coming back with news of Bianca’s death only hurts more each time.

Loop 24:

-Nico wakes up before Bianca this time. He looks over at her bed and knows. He’s got to try this time.

-It’s disturbingly easy making friends with Percy Jackson after the last loops.

-Bessie’s new. Cute, but new.

-Nico wonders just how much he’s missed in the past--he thinks of Annabeth Chase, and hopes she hasn’t been dying each time.

-Percy doesn’t even argue when Nico shows up in the stables with a bag slung over his shoulder, and the sword he’s been stealing out of the shed strapped to his hip.

-Nico suggests the ice cream--again--to Percy in DC before

-Nico might be getting the hang of this.

Loop 25:

-Nico is not getting the hang of this.

-Zoë Nightshade’s refusal to accept Percy and Nico on the quest--violating a prophecy, and gods, Nico’s curious if that prophecy ever mentioned this--has so far gotten them attacked and killed by spartoi once.

-And again. As Nico bleeds out on the floor, he watches a panicked blond man--a demigod--plead for mercy.

-Isn’t he on the other side?

Loop 26:

-His name is Luke Castellan and he apparently wants the gods dead.

-Nico can relate at this point.

-The General is Atlas, and Nico knows enough about Greek mythology, real and wrong, at this point to know that is bad.

Loop 27:

-Twenty-six tries, but they finally make it out of DC. Threatening the questers with Atlas killing them all is more than enough.

-For the first time, Nico doesn’t know what happens next. He glues himself to Bianca’s side and glares at anything suspicious.

-With help that Percy refuses to name, even when Nico tries his hardest, they go to New Mexico.

-There’s a boar and it’s so close, they make it to what the others are calling “the junkyard of the gods”.

-Nico sees the Hades figurine on the ground.

-Bianca grins in delight and picks it up, calling for him.

-He can’t help it.

-Nico starts screaming.

Loop 28:

-His sister’s murderer was never Percy Jackson.

-His sister’s murderer was a force of mechanics that makes Nico fully understand, for the first time, what the gods are, beyond stats on a card.

-Talos.

-Nico is going to destroy him.

Loop 29:

-She dies.

Loop 30:

-Again.

Loop 31:

-Again.

-Loop 32, 33, 34, 3536373839FortyFo r t y O n  e--:

-Again. Again. Again. Again again againagainagainagainAGAIN--

Loop 42:

-Nico gets out of bed. He finds Percy Jackson at the dance, hugs him, and tells him he’s sorry.

-Nico walks outside and waits for Dr. Thorn in the snow. He can feel the shadows curling at the edge of the wood like a sixth sense, now. Waiting for him to summon the restless dead out of them.

-So many attempts to save his sister, ranging from sacrificing himself to sacrificing Percy--not that Percy needs the push, Nico has found--to any and all members of the quest.

-She dies. Always, always dies. Whatever Nico does, that junkyard is full of the death of Bianca di Angelo.

-He tried avoiding it. Once. Loop 33. Nico threw such a fit he’s surprised he wasn’t sent back to Camp Half-Blood by the Hunters, but it kept them out of the junkyard.

-He tries not to remember how little was left of his sister’s body by the monsters that time.

-Son of Hades. After all this time, Nico’s beginning to wonder if this is what it means. Death and death and death.

-Dr. Thorn walks outside, and Nico can feel a ghoulish grin crossing his face that has no place on a ten-year-old.

-One of them is going to die, this loop. And Nico will not go to New Mexico.

Loop 43:

-Nico wonders if there was a past life of his he needs to remember. Who could he have made this angry?

-He lies to Bianca and they stay in Westover again this time. Better than death, anyway.

Loop 44:

-Nico tries a different tack this time. A more roundabout way of things.

-He takes Bianca and throws the two of them in the way of the battle with the manticore.

-After all this time, he still doesn’t know much about Annabeth Chase. She gets kidnapped and returned safely to Percy every time, to the best of his knowledge.

-Nico dies holding up the sky, but at least Bianca lives, under the protection of Artemis.

Loop 45:

-Nico looks in the mirror and studies the new grey streak with fascination. And, maybe, some hope.

-Things can change.

Loop 46, 47, 48, 49, 50:

-Nico gets kidnapped a few times. Once, he’s killed in a rage by a Titan with horns, but it’s quick. Mostly, he holds up the sky to get Artemis out.

-She looks at him strangely each time and Nico wonders if she can see what he’s done.

Loop 51:

-They figure out he’s a son of Hades. They offer him Olympus. Olympus and Bessie--the Ophiotaurus, rather.

-Nico says no.

Loop 52:

-Nico says yes.

Loop 53:

-Being on the verge of overthrowing the gods and keeping everyone he’s grown to care for--in the case of several Hunters, against his will; in Percy Jackson’s case, Nico loves him as much as he hates him at this point--doesn’t do much, apparently.

-Nico stays in Westover again. He resists the urge to tell Bianca that would-be destroyers of Olympus don’t need to brush their hair, whatever she says.

Loop 54:

-Nico goes over the edge of the cliff again, but with Percy Jackson.

-This isn’t the first time; in Loop 46, Percy had taken the sky for both the sake of Artemis and Nico until it killed him.

-What’s different, is Nico’s in the middle of what’s become the usual panic attack when he’s about to die for the hundredth time, and his powers react.

-Percy holds him close and calls him cousin. Tells him he’ll never leave Nico.

-You have no idea, Nico whispers. You can’t leave me.

-You think I want to? Percy whispers back. You’re not alone, Nico.

-Nico’s sobbing sounds like laughter.

Loop 55:

-Nico tells Percy the truth for the third time. This is the first time he hasn’t told Bianca first.

-They’ve just found the Erymanthian Boar, Thalia’s told Nico his goth needs work--whatever that means--and Nico’s bracing himself for the junkyard again.

-Getting kidnapped by the Titans really gets old after a while.

-He still has the grey streak, and no number of excuses will fully soothe his sister, but the Hunt’s a good distraction from it.

-Nico doesn’t blame Bianca anymore for it. He thinks.

-Nearly a year into this loop and Nico’s finding it hard to blame anyone for much of anything, anymore. Especially when he sees what she’s faced. Again. And again.

-For now, this time, Percy Jackson is staring at Nico with wide eyes at what Nico’s told him--through these loops, Nico’s starting to wonder if he now knows more about Percy than Percy’s own best friends--and says he believes him.

-Once, Nico would’ve exploded from joy. Now, he just sighs and nods.

-Percy tells him how to condense the conversation for the next loop. He advises Nico to research Talos, “like Annabeth would.”

-He advises Nico to warn Percy’s next loop self about Annabeth’s kidnapping. Nico wonders if he’s gone insane that he’s considering it.

-Bianca dies.

Loop 56:

-Nico makes the executive decision this time to try and befriend Annabeth Chase. As such, he takes Percy’s advice.

Loop 57:

-It takes him two tries to befriend Annabeth Chase and learn about Talos.

Loop 58:

-Three times.

-But the nail. The nail in the ankle of Talos.

Loop 59:

-He hangs back at camp again this time and meets Charles Beckendorf, head of Cabin Nine, and son of Hephaestus.

-Nico figures that short of finding the god himself and committing temporary suicide--not that it hasn’t crossed Nico’s mind--his son will have to do.

-(He’s tried his hand at summoning ghosts, but Daedalus refuses to show, for some reason)

-Beckendorf frowns and tells Nico he would have to see Talos himself.

-Nico hadn’t realized just how much cursing he had picked up off of Percy and Thalia until that moment.

Loop 60:

-Nico knows what the prophecy says. One shall be lost in the land without rain.

-He knows it’s why he’s been failing so much.

-The trouble is, he no longer cares.

Loop 61:

-It took him a try, but he gets Beckendorf on the quest, prepared to defeat the Talos prototype.

Loop 62:

-Strike that, two tries.

-Nico really hates the Nemean Lion.

Loop 63, 64:

-Nico has solved half a problem: How to defeat Talos without putting someone inside the robot.

-The other half of the problem is now that they are all electrocuted by a dying automaton for their efforts.

Loop 65:

-Beckendorf’s crush--girlfriend? crush, they’re both insisting--Silena Beauregard comes along this time. Nico won’t complain over the extra manpower, even if he’s positive that eight campers and Hunters are patent overkill for one quest.

-Silena pulls Bianca out of the wreckage. Nico’s heart stops.

-Silena’s crying when she mentions that if they had been a bit earlier, she could have been revived.

-Nico wonders if Thalia’s going to stab him as he starts whooping. And takes notes about where Talos falls.

Loop 66:

-Nico swears, if Percy Jackson tries to sacrifice himself for Annabeth Chase one more time--

Loop 67:

-Bianca.

-I found you, he sobs. I found you.

-Gods damn the Hoover Dam.

Loop 68:

-And again.

-Despite having the distinct inkling at this point that he doesn’t much like like girls, Nico could kiss Silena Beauregard and Thalia Grace when they manage to revive his sister each time.

-She’s shaky and leaning on him and was dead, he could see her soul floating away--

-But she’s there.

-Nico refuses to let his sister out of the sight at the Hoover Dam and Percy befriends the Naiads this time.

-At least, until the Titans--who Nico made the very big mistake of taunting at DC--sends monsters he can’t control.

Loop 69, 70, 71, 72, 73:

-They keep dying in various combinations at the Hoover Dam now that Nico’s figured out how to save Bianca.

-At least, until he gets separated from Percy in Loop 73 and he meets a redheaded girl with a penchant for calling Nico pint-size.

-Athena dislikes Percy, Nico, Bianca, and Thalia in equal measure. Having learned of the Great Prophecy in Loop 16 and Percy’s mooning over Annabeth in. . .well, every loop, Nico can’t quite blame her.

Loop 74:

-Her name is Rachel Elizabeth Dare and Nico likes her. She takes none of their shit and if it weren’t for the fact that they already have eight people on the quest, he’d want to take her along.

-Bianca gets in a fight with the Old Man of the Sea. Thalia electrocutes him when he throws Bianca in the bay.

Loop 75:

-Nico wakes up in Westover with the distinct feeling that he was drowned on dry land.

-He stays in bed shivering, that day.

Loop 76:

-Atlas is the father of Zoë Nightshade. Nico learned this around Loop 50. He had realized around five loops ago that this probably meant she was going to die “by a parent’s hand.”

-He hadn’t realized that it was going to hurt to watch.

Loop 77, 78, 79, 80, 81:

-Now that he’s figured things out to about San Francisco, it seems the world is out to get him. The number of fights or mistakes that he either makes himself or has to head off are ridiculous.

Loop 82:

-Nico is so very tired. And wishes he felt ten years old again.

Loop 83:

-If Thalia gets in one more fight with Nereus, Nico's going to walk into the sea.

Loop 84:

-He wanders off, in this one. Grover had been killed in Hoover Dam, so Nico’s waiting for the reset at this point.

-In the meantime, Nico figures there are worse things to do than enjoy a good afternoon in San Francisco. He even meets a boy in a purple shirt.

-His name is Jason and he has hair like the sun.

-If he ever fixes this, Nico wants to find him.

Loop 85:

-Nico’s not fast enough in the junkyard.

-In San Francisco, he tries to find the ugliest, biggest trouble he can find.

-He finds a pair of teenagers in armor who yell Latin at him instead.

Loop 86:

-There’s a dragon that will attack them in the Garden of the Hesperides if they make it angry enough and Nico is so tired.

Loop 87:

- Zoë Nightshade is dead. They’ve won.

-Funny definition of “win”, considering they’ve all almost died this loop about a dozen times each, and Nico can’t explain why he’s crying on the body of a Hunter he only met a week ago, in their eyes.

-She hates him, some loops. More loops, she looks at him with ghosts of old grief in her eyes and hands him a knife.

-The gods execute Bessie, and then, Nico watches as his father turns to him and Bianca with sorrowful eyes.

-Nico should’ve figured, after almost ninety loops.

Loop 88:

-Luke offers one of them the entrails of Bessie again.

-Nico takes them.

Loop 89:

-For all the good it does. Nico wakes up as he does every time now: Powerless, in bed, and with only a grey streak to show for his efforts.

Loop 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98:

-Nico doesn’t know how to save Zoë Nightshade. Bianca, he could trick and fight his way into it. Beckendorf and Silena and Percy and a loophole in lost could save his sister.

-Her, she just. . .dies. Sometimes in DC, sometimes in San Francisco, sometimes on the hills of Mt. Tamalpais. Always at the hands of Atlas.

-Always, being murdered by her father.

-It’s not as gutting as watching his sister die, but it aches more in his chest, somehow.

Loop 99:

-He sticks close to Zoë this time. Same as he’s done with Percy, Annabeth, his sister, Thalia, and Grover, time and time again. But not her, Nico is realizing. Not the clinging he’s achieving now.

-Hoping for. . .something.

-He knows better than to tell the immortal Lieutenant of Artemis the whole truth. The loneliness is enough.

-She’s less frosty to him from the start than to, say, Grover or Percy, after Annabeth goes over the cliff again. When he shows up in DC, she’s much less angry than he’s seen her.

-Along the way to New Mexico and then San Francisco, he listens. He’s grown better at it, this far in. When the others are asleep, when Bianca is being fussed over after Talos, when everyone but them is asleep by the fire, he listens.

-And she tells him about her sisters. About her father, when the world was young and Atlas had looked on every daughter of his with pride. She tells him, pride glistening in her eyes, of the battles she has seen, the hunts she has overseen at the command of a goddess, the monsters she has killed, and the epithets she has been given.

-He doesn’t ask anything of her. Not until they’re in the house of Annabeth’s father, drinking lemonade the night before the battle, and Nico knows she is about to die again.

-What do you want, he asks. You’ve done everything. What’s left?

-She stopped, ice seems to creep over her again, and Nico wondered if he’d hit some sore spot.

-He’s opened his mouth to make his apologies when she answers, so quiet and quick he thinks he’s imagined it.

-To be remembered. When my lady has taken another lieutenant, as she must, and I have gone to where all gods go when they die, I wish for my memory to remain. And. . .

-Nico waits, and ignores the sudden, terrifying thought that he no longer knows what he wants.

-I wish to see the stars again. I was born a nymph of the sunset; starlight is precious to me. I want to see it again.

-Nico dies to preserve the memory of Zoë Nightshade.

100:

-Nico di Angelo wakes up in Westover Hall. He hopes for the last time.

-He does everything right: Annabeth goes over the cliff, his sister joins the Hunt, Percy is soon his friend, and he convinces Silena and Beckendorf to join the quest.

-The Nemean Lion never stands a chance, and Nico is glad to be rid of it.

-His sister lives.

-Nico watches Percy watch Rachel Elizabeth Dare go, looking like he’s just taken a frying pan to the face, and fights the urge to snicker.

-Thalia doesn’t start a fight with Nereus, but Percy certainly does. Nico could’ve sworn he saw the boy with sun-hair again, watching with curiosity.

- Zoë Nightshade dies in the arms of Artemis and is made into the stars she loves so dearly. Nico promises her soul that he will remember.

-For, he has found, the dead have a tendency of remembering things they shouldn’t.

-Annabeth and Percy now have grey streaks to match Nico’s, and Nico can’t wait to spend the rest of his life trying to explain that.

-It’s closer than he would like, but much less close than other lives with Olympus. The Ophiotaurus is alive and safe, and they are all alive.

-As Nico walks out of the council, he looks off to the side. By the fire is the familiar girl with red eyes--the Lady Hestia, looking much closer to Nico’s age than that of the Olympian she is.

-Besides her are three old ladies. Nico’s heard about them from Percy, in Loops 26, 53, 61, and 62.

-One lady holds a ball of string that is the color of a warm umber. The other is knitting what looked suspicious like socks. The last. . .

-Scissors, in one hand. Just as expected. Nico swallowed.

-In the other, was a knot of burnt string, tied to the socks. Behind her, Nico could see discarded string of all colors: an electric blue, a stormy grey, a black that seems to glisten with the promise of a storm, string the soft, hopeful pink of love, yarn run through with bright copper.

-Glowing threads that Nico could only describe as the color of starlight.

-As he walked out, firmly between Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace, the Hunt of Artemis behind him, Nico hears one last promise:

It is done, Nico di Angelo.

[ampleappleamble]

—

Chomp. Slurp. Smack.

He glanced up at the group of foreigners. Nothing.

Slorp. Crunch.

Still nothing.

Hiravias was beginning to wonder if he was wasting his time.

He knelt over the still-warm deer carcass, watching the strange little party as they stood just beyond the treeline, talking and stretching and tending to one another's wounds while he licked the blood from his fingers, pulling each digit from his mouth with a loud sucking, popping noise. Ordinarily he'd never eat so ostentatiously– it was never a good idea to draw attention to oneself while eating in the wild, unless one liked having one's hard-earned kill stolen away by something bigger, stronger, and hungrier than oneself. But they still wouldn't look his way, and by now he was starting to feel full. Wael's bowels, how much more loudly am I gonna have to chew before they hear me and decide it's worth investigating? Maybe I should just throw a handful of offal at them instead.

It was unlike him to be so indirect with his intentions, but one never could tell how some estramorwn would to react to a tiny, hairy man openly approaching them with a toothy smile and copious amounts of blood smeared all over his hands and face and clothes. So he had decided to play it safe and try to lure them to him, although he had apparently underestimated either the foreigners' capacity for curiosity or the limits of their sensory perception. These foreigners were the strangest he'd seen out here in a long time, and he was dying to talk to them– for instance, there was only one Dyrwoodan among them, if their accents were anything to go by, and he actually seemed to be taking orders from the orlan in the group. That alone was reason enough to try to insinuate himself into their company, just to find out what was going on there.

He had a few other reasons for seeking their attention, of course. And they were curiosity-based, too. Mostly. Hiravias let his gaze drift slowly over the orlan woman as she allowed the feathered Ocean folk to lay her hand on the curve of her furry hip, a soft, golden glow emanating from the Godlike's fingertips. The orlan woman sighed in relief as the bruise marring her tawny skin faded in the golden light, and she smiled up at the other woman with gratitude, her thick, full lips parting just so, her long eyelashes fluttering.

He pulled his thumb from his mouth with a loud, wet pop.

The Ocean folk woman whipped her head around suddenly to face in his direction. "We are being watched," she hissed, her hawk's eyes narrowing as she searched the underbrush.

Finally! He feigned surprise at being "discovered" as best as he cared to, freezing and holding up his gore-streaked hands when the adventurers charged over, cautious but not aggressive. Yet.

"Woah, there, sorry if I startled you," he grinned, relishing the looks of confusion and disgust he was inspiring on the shiny new faces before him. "I was just enjoying the bounty of nature a little too enthusiastically, I guess. By the way, this isn't your forest, is it? Because if it is, you need a better game warden." He turned his head and spit out a wayward wad of gristle before wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and the wood elf in their party actually gagged and turned away. Hiravias couldn't help but feel an odd sense of satisfaction at that.

The orlan woman, on the other hand, seemed to relax a bit at his words. "I don't think Stormwall Gorge is in my jurisdiction, no. You took this deer down by yourself?"

"A stelgaer killed it, actually," Hiravias replied, smiling pleasantly. Not quite a lie. "A rather large and ornery one. Although the deer had a badly malformed heart and would have been dead within the year even if the stelgaer had never crossed its path. I'd show you, but, well, it was also a very delicious heart." He gestured to the carcass, spreading his arms wide before him. "Here, be my guest. There's no way I can eat all of this myself!"

The dwarf actually stepped forward, her eyes lighting up like stars in the night sky. "I call the shank," she said, drawing a knife while the fox at her knee slavered, panting eagerly. Everyone else remained where they were, their grimaces slowly intensifying.

"And here I thought Sagani was the only raw-meat-eater I was liable to encounter in the Dyrwood," the orlan woman chuckled, indicating the dwarf woman with a tilt of her chin. "You don't cook either, huh?"

"What, and burn out all the flavor? Wreck that incredible texture?" Hiravias scoffed, shaking his head. "Galawain would strike me down where I stood for disrespecting one of His beasts in such a manner, and for damned good reason, too! I mean, look at this–" He dug into the creature's guts and pulled out a fat, juicy loop of intestines. "How is this not appetizing?"

He held the viscera out to her, trying valiantly to fight the mischievous grin twitching into place on his face, but he couldn't quite help himself. "Here, go on. It's the best part! You won't regret it!"

She fixed her eyes on his, a smirk of her own slowly crawling across her lips as she crossed her arms beneath her ample bosom. "You first," she murmured, her voice low and smooth and sultry.

Well, shit, woman, say it like that and how can I refuse?

Feeling a bit sophomoric, but determined not to give up, Hiravias defiantly returned her stare as he stuffed the pink, glistening tube into his mouth and began chewing– and of course, instantly regretting it. "Mmmmm," he managed, performatively rubbing his belly even as he winced and drooled. "S-so... good..." The taste of shit and lingering digestive acids mingled in his mouth. So much for my full stomach.

The aumaua towering above them all choked out a half-laugh, half-groan. "My friend," he declared, "I somehow seriously doubt that."

"Desgant," the bird woman spat, baring her teeth in a disgusted scowl. She didn't look away, though, so Hiravias counted that as at least a partial victory. The dwarf and her fox watched, too, silently filling up on strips of raw venison with only mild bemusement on their faces. He was definitely in there.

Finally he swallowed, although it took him a couple of tries. "Well! Now I know it had elderberries for its last meal. Praise be to Wael for the revelation!" He wiped his mouth again, shuddering, and held out his filthy hand for a shake. "Name's Hiravias, by the way. It's been a good long while since I've shared a meal with such pleasant company, so... thank you for tolerating me." The little woman nodded, smiling, but she kept her hand out of his.

The Dyrwoodan snapped his fingers suddenly, pointing at Hiravias and grinning as though he'd finally solved some great and vexing mystery. "Oh! I got it. You're Glanfathan, ain't ya?"

He barked a short, sharp laugh in response. "This is the brains of the operation, then?"

"What Edér lacks in intellectual prowess, he more than makes up for in other fields, trust me." The orlan woman's smile turned kind as she gently patted the folk man's wrist. "I'm Axa Mala, the... the Watcher of Caed Nua." She almost seemed to have to force the words, as though she wasn't quite used to associating herself with that title just yet. It made him think of the Autumn Stelgaer, a pang of sympathy striking his heart. "What's a nice Waelite like you doing in a place like this, then?"

"Me? Oh, seeing what there is to see, eating what there is to eat, experiencing the wonders of this strange and beautiful and world the gods have blessed us with." He dipped his head low in reverence for a moment before peeking back up at her. "I'm a Druid of the Circle of Hawk and Ivy of the Fisher Crane tribe, you see, and I've been all over Eir Glanfath a few times over now, even pushed into the Dyrwood where I thought I could get away with it without having to face down a bunch of drunken meatheads calling me a hairy little face-painting catfucker. But I have to say, throughout all my travels over the years, I've never had the good fortune to meet a Watcher before."

Her smile broadened even as her eyes narrowed. "And you'd like to see more of this Watcher, is that it?" She may have taken a while to get rolling, but she sure caught up fast. "Well, a Druid's talents could certainly be a boon to us, as well as a native Glanfathan's knowledge of the land and the locations of Engwithan ru– uh." She stopped abruptly, her face blanching as she reflexively readjusted her satchel, pushing it a bit further behind her back. "Not that– we don't– I mean, uh..."

Right. There was that. He'd been so caught up in actually talking to other kith again– another orlan, at that, and not a Dyrwoodan orlan with that depressing, beaten-down, high-strung, constant-victim-of-horrendous-bigotry baggage they tended to suffer from– that he'd almost forgotten that they were a bunch of grave-robbing ruin defilers. He'd watched them descend into Lle a Rhemen hours before, and then he'd watched them emerge with their rucksacks bulging, and although his old protective instincts had flared up inside of him, the familiar rage and indignation wrapping around him like a fiery blanket, instead of shifting and pouncing on them or bidding the earth to open up beneath them, he'd just... watched. Waited. Thought. And now, in place of any lingering urge to gut them, he found himself wanting nothing more than to walk with them, talk with them. It had been so long since he'd run with a pack, and even though they were estramorwn with no respect for the land or for the Builders, they were at least kind to him and easy to talk to. And he knew he'd be lying to himself if he said he wasn't itching to find out what secrets lay buried inside the ruins of the Builders, just a little bit...

"You don't what?" Hiravias huffed, hands flexing at his sides, clenching them into fists over and over. "I didn't see you do anything. ...Maybe the gods did, and if so they'll rend your soul asunder when it passes the Veil, as would be your richly deserved fate, but..." He shrugged, forcing a smile. "This eyepatch isn't just for show, y'know; I really am half-blind. So maybe chance had it that my blind side was facing you when you did... whatever it is you did or didn't do."

Axa scratched at the back of her neck, blushing, not quite able to look at the Glanfathan. "Yeah, I, uh... noticed your Eye of Wael, there." The conversation lulled awkwardly for a moment, until suddenly she smiled at him again, her whole face lighting up. "Hey! Wanna help us track down some assholes who stole scripture from a temple of Wael? Maybe it'll redeem me a little in Their eyes, if indeed I've offended Them."

The aumaua brightened up as well. "Ondra's teeth, I'd very nearly forgotten about that! Will we go to Searing Falls as well?" He leaned toward Hiravias, his smile as bright as the sun and twice as big. "We were asked to go there by a priestess of Magran, you see, on a quest to realize a mysterious vision from her fiery Mistress..."

Edér frowned. "Hey, you said you'd take us to that battlefield where my brother died, look for clues there. ...I guess he ain't gettin' any deader, though, so it's no real rush. Just... you know. Be nice to get some answers, if we can."

Axa gave Hiravias a pointed look. "Well, you heard. Scrolls of Waelite wisdom, mysterious visions, and answers from beyond the grave. We'll have you if you'll have us. You in?"

He ran his tongue over his pointed teeth, smile broadening as he shouldered his pack. "With a pitch like that, how could I resist?"

—

[mooswords]

Home

Pairing: kuroo tetsuro x reader

Word count: 3k

Tags: red string of fate au, historical au

Ramblings: part of the lost collab, all based on the prompt ‘only when you are lost does the red string of fate appear’ organised by the lovely @yacoka​​ who is a wonderful writer and an even better friend 😚 also a big thank you to remy for beta-ing <3

---

You stare in exasperation as the red string fades into sight, the familiar warmth wrapping back into existence around your finger. It was only visible when one of you was feeling lost, and you certainly knew where you were. Tetsuro was only meant to be coming home from town - how did he get lost? 

You pluck at the string.

Seriously?

An answering pull against your pinky. 

Shut up.

Rolling your eyes, you turn back to the horse in front of you.

“That man, eh?” You scrub the brush along a thick-boned leg, scrunching your face away from the cloud of dust that puffs out. “Probably one of the smartest people this side of the island, knows the stars like the back of his hand, but can’t even find his way across his own fields.” You huff, watching as the string disappears again. “The cows know their way home better than he does, honestly…” 

Bess rattles her head, mane flying, and you sigh. “Ahh, you’re right, I guess we love him anyway.”

“You guess?”

You start, twisting at his sudden presence. 

“Stop! Doing that!” You huck the brush at him and he ducks, grinning. 

“Hear that Bess?” he sings, sidling up to the horse and scratching her forehead as she noses at his pockets. “She loves me.”

“And I married him too,” you lament. “What was I thinking?”

“Something I ask myself every day,” he says softly, eyes alight. You mellow, as you always do for him, and wonder if you will ever get sick of that look. 

“How’s town?” You ask instead, snagging a new brush.

“Good. Got offered a job.”

“Oh, who with?”

“Nekomata.”

You hum. “Down at the docks?”

“Not... exactly." You flick a look up when he doesn't elaborate, only to find him determinedly pulling Bess' forelock into a crude braid. 

"And?" you prompt.

"He wants me as the navigator." He swallows, fingers still twisting in the coarse hair. "For an expedition.”

“Really?” You scrub at a particularly stubborn splatter of dried mud. "I thought he had given up on all that. What’s he planning?”

He doesn’t reply for another long moment. 

"Depends on how quick the ice melts." 

You tear your eyes away from your work; he looks wary. "But with what he mentioned to me, we’d be away… a year? Maybe longer?"

“Oh,” you breathe. Really, for a sailing expedition, that’s short. But it’s still a year. You're thinking of money, and supplies, and who will take over teaching his students while he’s gone, and he’ll definitely need a new coat, and oh that's such a long time-

“I don’t have to decide immediately.” You pull your gaze back into focus. He still looks nervous, but you know him - he might not always be the most expressive person, but he wears his passions with pride. And there are few things your Tetsuro loves more than the stars. 

“You should go."

“Really?”

“Yeah.” You bite your tongue and start sweeping the brush along Bess’ broad back again. It’s not till he gently pulls your hands to a stop you notice how they shake. 

“I don’t have to go,” he offers softly.

You sigh, not quite able to focus any higher than the hollow of his neck. “No. You should.”

His fingers are light under your chin, and you reluctantly let him draw your gaze up. 

“Are you sure?” 

And you are. Despite your reticence, you are; because at heart, he’s always longed to explore the world. You remember sitting with him in the summer, feet dangling in the creek and listening to his rambling dreams of travelling to the far corners of the world. He loves teaching - weaving stories from geography homework, gently coaching the younger kids through their sums - but you’ve caught him many a time just staring out at the sea, eyes unfocused and longing.

"I’m sure," you tell him with a genuine smile. "It just means I'm going to have to do all your chores while you're away."

He tsks, but there's already excitement building under the mock-glare. Giving Bess a final pat, he meanders back to the house. You listen to his cheery whistling and tell the pang in your heart he'll be fine. 

He always comes home.

--

“Have fun. Don’t kick Yaku overboard, OK?”

“What’s this, huh?” The string hums as he twirls a finger through it, his voice low and amused. He twists it into a bow around a lock of your hair, an achingly familiar action that has the string glowing brighter against your skin. “You can’t be lost without me if I haven’t left yet, sweetheart."

He frowns, and you etch the image into your memory - it will be months till you see that pout again. 

“Oh, hush you.” 

Eyes bright and fond, he grins down and pulls you into his chest. For once, you stop thinking about tomorrow and just enjoy this final moment with him; the gulls’ cries tearing across the sky, the winter sun across your back and stiff breeze sweeping through your skirts. He is constant and unshakable, heartbeat steady in your ear, his chin pressed against your hair.

You draw back and poke him in the cheek.

“You come home, you hear me?”

The string continues to flutter between you, dancing in the seaward breeze as he presses a sweet kiss to your lips.

“Always.”

--

The second plate stares back at you. 

Right. Of course. 

You press your lips together and return the other plate to the shelf for the third time this week. Your lonely plate looks pitifully small on the uneven table, and the red string that sinks down to drape across it only adds to the ache in your heart.

You grip the string tight and try not to cry.

--

The drumming rain is muffled as you duck under the barn’s eaves. Shaking the water from your eyes, you peel off your now sodden coat. In the flickering lantern light, you can see how the heifer is huffing, swollen belly already heaving.

Crooning to her, you run a tired hand over the heifer’s rough hide and crouch down.

You shove wet hair off your face and sigh. The late nights and bad weather were only exacerbating an already stressful time of year, and of course this had to be the year your entire herd was calving. You wearily draw a pail of water and tsk as you grab the last towel off the side of the stall - it seems tomorrow will have to be a washing day too.

There’s a wet nose. There’s also a tail.

“That’s… not right.” you mutter, stumped. 

It hits you a moment later - twins. She’s having twins.

“Ohh… uhh…” You know you can’t panic, but your thoughts just continue to speed up, desperately flicking through your memories because you know how to deal with a breech birth, but twins? Where do you even begin? There are two calves in there, and that's twice the number of things that could go wrong. Think. It’s only a few minutes over the hill to the Kagayama’s, maybe they-

The gentle tug at your hand startles you. The string is there, looped around one of the cow’s ears and floating out into the pouring night. Another tug comes, a little firmer this time. 

You suck in a breath.

You send him a grateful tug back and get to work.

It’s messy and stressful, and the deep ache in your arms will definitely be worse tomorrow, but there's a pile of knobby legs and liquid eyes in your lap that more than makes up for the pain. You snag the old towel off the straw and gently wipe the nose of the first calf before helping it struggle to its feet. The cow blinks around and lowes softly. You grin and quickly swipe at the other calf, blowing gently on its nose till it snorts.

Your eyes are heavy, and you are already compiling a list of the thousands of things to do tomorrow. But with pride singing through your tired bones, you are content to sit, half-wishing he was here with you to listen to the rain beat down on the tin roof and proudly watch the calves take their first, wobbling steps. 

--

“Endeavor."

“E-N-D...” Natsu scrunches her nose and you nod encouragingly, “E…”

The string appears. It’s sudden; not the usual fade-in of realization, but a tidal wave of colour that has it crashing into existence all at once.

“-A-V-O-R. Endeavor.”

You clear your throat, pushing past the lump. “Correct. Let’s have an early lunch everyone.”

The clatter of chairs is immediate, and you wait for all the kids to race out the door before sinking shakily back against the desk. You rub the string between your fingers - it’s hot and trembling, swaying drunkenly as if buffeted about by the wind.

You pull at it, questioning.

You pull at it again.

Again.

There is no reply but it stays, curling in the corners of your vision for the rest of the day.

--

The next morning it is still there. You bite your lip and bundle his old coat around you to go collect more firewood. 

--

Day four. You stare into reflected, apprehensive eyes for too long before shakily wrapping the everpresent string into a bow around your hair. For some reason, it doesn’t feel the same as when he does it.

--

Yachi reads you off your total and you freeze, hand clutched around the small bag of flour. She looks at you oddly as your hair falls free around your shoulders.

There is a soft tug against your finger, faded by distance and ringing with reassurance, as the string finally, finally disappears from sight after the longest eight days of your life.

“Is everything OK?” she asks, mystified.

You dash the tears and drop the coins into her hand with a smile.

“Everything is perfect.”

--

The string fades in for the third time today and you snort. You’d like to imagine you can feel his annoyance even halfway across the world.

You give it a sharp tug for good measure.

Lost again, huh? 

He pulls grumpily back, and you bite back a giggle.

“How’s that pain-in-the-ass husband of yours doing?” Ukai Jr. asks from behind the bar.

The string bleeds away.

You think of a ship navigating the perilous ice, of unknowable depths and old sailor's tales, of the maps you watched him plot that stretch into expanses of blank parchment.

You think of jokes thrown across candle stubs and empty plates, of a crew that have become more of a family than either of you have ever had.

You think of the furrow he gets between his brows when he’s puzzling something over, his poorly hidden glee at the sight of the open sea.

The string fades in again, and there’s a pull from his end before you can do anything.

Don’t.

You grin. “He’s doing just fine.”

--

You wake to birdsongs. The sun is just peeking over the hills, the red string curled quietly on his pillow. You send three tugs, watch the string ripple out the window and imagine it stretching out, out, out across the seas to him.

Today was usually a day just for the two of you; no chores, no work. Just sunshine and bad jokes and the simple enjoyment of being together. One time he had pulled you along to the neighbouring town's county fair. Last year, you had taken him to the waterfall for lunch.

It was meant to be his choice this year.

You twine the string around your fingers as you wait. It glows softly in the morning light, a physical manifestation of how deeply lost you feel on this special day. He's not gone; he's still here in the scuffed shoes tucked under the bed, in his notes piled high on the desk, but they're not quite the same as hearing his hisses from the kitchen, or being able to sink into warm arms at the end of a rough day.

His returning tugs are delayed, aching and soft - one, two, three.

Sighing, you force yourself out of bed - the cows aren’t going to feed themselves.

Happy anniversary, love.

--

Most days the string isn't visible at all. And that's fine. Really, it is. It means he's not lost, and no news is good news, right?

Anyway, you’ve become quite content in your own company. He’s been gone long enough that you’ve found your solo rhythm and it's by no means easy, but you manage to keep busy enough.

And yet, the string is a double-edged sword - a reassuring and tangible connection between the two of you, but one that fills you with longing heartache all the same. There are days when you so keenly feel his absence; days of no special importance, but days where his company would just make the monotony more interesting. The mundane days, where you find yourself wanting a hug and instead having to settle for imagining the blur of red in your periphery.

You can lose minutes simply staring at your hand, trying to will the string back into colour. Wishful thinking isn’t something you can afford to indulge too often, but some days, if you focus hard enough, you think you can feel the invisible string pressing around your finger. 

Some days, wishful thinking is all that keeps you going.

--

“Hello, sorry.” You ignore the cheeky pull of the red string. He knows how you hate admitting you need help. “I’m a bit lost. Do you know where the blacksmith is?”

The man points up the road, explaining you need to go up past the post office and take a - twitch goes the string - and then follow the path that - another pull - and you should be there. Oh, but don’t - tug - because that will take you out of town.

You bite your tongue and thank the man, fond exasperation simmering in your chest. You might desperately miss him and his stupid antics, but you had almost forgotten how relentless his needling could be. 

As you lead Bess away, you pull sharply on the string. Much to your dismay, it doesn’t deter him in the slightest - an incessant barrage of tugs pull against your pinky, singing with his amusement from half a world away. Huffing out a sigh, you carefully flip the string around your hand. It’s smooth in your grip as you wind it around your palm and close your fingers over it-

And yank the string sideways.

Silence.

A single, pouting yank back.

Pushing down the smile tugging at your lips, you stop infront of the woman sweeping the front step of the post office.

“Hello, sorry. I’m a bit lost. Do you know where the blacksmith is?”

--

A laugh is pulled from you, glee ringing through the air. Hinata’s hand is sweaty in yours, and you grip it tighter as you swing round and round to the music echoing across the field. The wedding party is still holding strong, even this late into the night, and the chatter and music is rvight at home in tonight’s warm summer breeze. 

The song ends to cheers and you yell with them, high, unfiltered joy singing through your body. You drop into a chair, watching Hinata pull a giggling Natsu off the sidelines and head back out as the band striking up another well-loved tune.

The ever-present twinge of sea salt mixes with the sweet scent of the apple blossoms floating over from the orchard and you are content. The food was fresh and plentiful, Kiyoko looked gorgeous. And, you think smugly, Suga had cried before Tanaka did, so now Kinoshita owed you a beer. 

The music slows, and your finger aches at the sight of everyone else partnering up. You had promised yourself you weren’t going to let memories overshadow your fun tonight. There’s too much love around for you to fully feel his absence anyway, but you still catch yourself missing him above the crowd, searching for the wink he’d send across the room before returning to his own conversations.

Someone clears their throat. The string curls and sways between bodies as Takeda smiles down at you, eyes crinkled in understanding. 

“May I have this dance?”

--

You push hurriedly through the crowd, ducking between market stalls and wagons. There’s no string to follow, but you don’t need it to find him today. Asahi scrambles for the bolts of cloth you knock into and Suga yells something that gets stolen by the wind as you continue to run heedlessly towards the docks. 

Lev is on the dock already, only just visible through the small crowd gathering. Yaku yells directions from the ship, and you can see Shibayama sitting up on the boom, Kai pulling the jib down, so where is-

There.

He’s talking with Nekomata, gesturing up at the mast. You know it’s probably important, that there are things to be done on the ship before the crew can leave, but he’s been gone 402 days and you’re calling his name before you can stop yourself.

He twists around, and for the first time in over a year you watch his face split wide. The crowd parts for you as you’re darting forward and he vaults over the side of the ship. 

There are yells and whistles behind him but you couldn’t care less as you are swept into a tight spin, stumbling with him as you laugh. His salt-crusted shirt is coarse under your fingers, and when he kisses you he tastes like the sea; like salt-spray and dry rations and freedom. 

As soon as your hands find his cheeks you pull back sharply. There's a scar, a puckered pink line that cuts across his cheek and up into his hairline. He watches you carefully as you trace it with a feather-light touch.

“I thought I told you to have fun,” you admonish gently. 

“Who said I didn’t?”

You tsk. “What am I going to do with you?”

He grins, wilder than you remember, twisted a little by the scar, but full of familiar trouble. “Kiss me again, hopefully.” 

(How you’ve missed that grin.)

“Can’t imagine why I’d do a silly thing like that,” you say, even as you press your own grin to his.

Maybe he’s still a little wobbly on his feet, and he’s definitely thinner than when he left, but when he twines your hands together - no string in sight - your heart settles. 

He’s home, and you can’t really ask for anything more.

[alsanderecho]

Tales of San Derecho: The New Press Secretary

The formation of a whole new state from the parts of two others should have been a surprise for the nation after a national election but it wasn't. Its new boundries encompassed part of southern California, as well as land in Arizona. There was very little fuss about its existence for the general public, as if it had always been there.

But there were those who did ask questions about how this new territory came to be. Some of them traveled to the newest state in the union, seeking the answer. These are their stories, along with those who found themselves now residing in the state of SAN DERECHO...

====================

"Shannon, something strange is going on."

The reporter looked with one raised eyebrow at Sheila Gerrolds, his editor. The both of them work at the Q-News, a website dedicated to reporting on national events and international happenings important to the LGBTQ community.

"Strange, how?"

"I mean, do you remember Joaquin Guerrero?"

Shannon had to think for a few moments before he remembered the outspoken gay Latino activist, which immediately struck him as being wrong somehow. Hadn't he done an interview with him during last fall's gubernatorial election in San Derecho?

"Y...Yeah. But not until you mentioned his name, Sheila. That's...weird."

"Exactly my point, Shannon. And he's not the only one..."

The editor rattled off about a dozen more names, and memories of these gay and lesbian activists flooded Shannon's memories. And again, he was at loss at how he could have forgotten them, considering some of them had been long-time friends/

"What's going on here? Where did they all go?"

"That's what I want to know. Over dozen of the most prominent LGTBQ activists go missing  on the West Coast over the last year and no one is raising a stink about it? There's a story here, an important one."

Shannon nodded in agreement, his mind already honing in on who might be responsible for these disappearances.

"And you think the new governor might be involved somehow."

"Precisely. You know what his platform was during the election, and now some of his biggest critics are missing? It just stinks to me."

"Right, I get it. Guess I'm going back undercover..."

Sheila nodded, aware that her best reporter had spent a good portion of the election last year infiltrating a certain candidate's campaign. Despite the success of getting on the inside, the whole thing hadn't turned up any actionable material.

"Yeah, but I want you to be careful. We don't know what is really going on here."

"I get it, but we've got to find out the truth. And maybe, we can bring this bastard down once and for all..."

====================

Getting an invite to the governor's mansion had been pretty easy, as Shannon's cover identity was intact and uncompromised. Still, he was being careful, as this whole thing was more than a bit like walking into a hungry lion's den carrying chunks of raw, bloody meat. If the governor or any of his people got even a hint of who he really was, it could go very bad for him very quickly.

Maybe that's why he waited in the car for so long before finally mustering his courage to approach the front door and ring the bell. The wait for an answer seemed to drag on forever until the door clicked open. Standing there was the governor's chief of staff, Jonathon Grey. Dressed in a dark grey suit, the man was the very image of the hyper-conservative types that the chief executive of the state San Derecho liked to surround himself with.

"Ah, Mr. Jones. So nice to see you again. It has been awhile, hasn't it?"

Shannon nodded affirmatively. He hadn't been this close to Grey since election night, and he was trying to ignore how attractive he found the man. It was a little bothersome because he reminded him of someone else...

"Yes, Mr. Grey. I needed sometime to figure out things after the election. But now, I think I know what I want."

"Excellent. The governor will see you in his study."

This surprised Shannon, who hadn't been aware that the governor even knew who 'Shane Jones' was. Every instinct the reporter had was screaming this was a set-up of some kind, but it was not something he could walk away from. Because despite the danger, it was an opportunity to get even deeper inside this crooked administration and find out what happened to his friends...

"Lead the way then."

====================

The study was a comfortable room with oak paneled walls and high shelves stocked with numerous leather bound books. In the fireplace, flames crackled and suffused the room with a flickering glow of yellow light. Shannon was ushered inside by Grey, who remained outside but closed the doors behind him. An almost faint click told the journalist that he had been locked in as well. He took a few cautious steps into this den of conservatism until a voice called out for him to "take a seat."

Said seat was in a thick leather chair with a high back and wings on either side of its occupants head. It was set in front of a dark oaken desk behind which sat the governor himself, his fingers steepled and a grin on his face. On his desk was a framed picture of him and his blonde wife. Shannon couldn't quite recall her name before his host spoke.

"Shane, welcome. So glad you've come for a visit. Can I offer you a drink?"

The gray-haired politician motioned to a small bar set into a wall behind him. Shannon shook his head to say no as the governor seemed amused at the response. The older man's expression then became serious.

"Now, can we dispense with this pretense, Shannon?

The millennial reporter was caught off guard by his real name being spoken aloud by the governor. He tugged nervously at the maroon sweater he wore, trying to laugh it off. But the man behind the desk wasn't having any of it.

"Please, don't insult my intelligence or that of my staff, Shannon. We've been aware of your true identity and the website that employs you for quite some time now."

"I..I..I don't know what you're talking about..."

"I said to NOT insult me, Shannon."

The gay journalist shuddered slightly, as the governor's voice resonated with a surprisingly arousing air of authority. He had to keep his head about himself.

"Alright, fine. I am who you think I am. Do you know why I'm here?"

"Of course. You're here to investigate what happened to my most outspoken critics in the LGBT community. I did wonder how long it would be before you or your editor would notice. Anyone really..."

Shannon said nothing, trying to remain focused on his surroundings. If this man was this free with his words, then this had to be a some sort of trap...

"Please, please. Do relax. I'm perfectly happy to tell you everything."

"Is this some sort of trick?"

"No, it's merely the truth, Shannon. Isn't that what you really want to hear? The truth?"

Shannon nodded, feeling a calm settled over himself. It was strange, but the words coming from the Governor's mouth seemed to be the source of this new tranquility. The smile of the older man's face confirmed it.

"So, shall we begin?"

====================

Shannon sat there, dazed. He wanted to get up, and flee this place but for some reason, he found himself just sitting there listening to the Governor talk.

"You see, I think there is someone inside you who wants to come out. A better you, a hetter you, Shannon. All you have to do is listen to my voice, and let it guide you to a new....perspective and understanding..."

The reporter nodded numbly in agreement.

"This modern world is losing touch with its past. Things were so much simpler before all of this social justice nonsense overtook everything. Black and white, right and wrong. Don't you think?"

Another nod, but it was accompanied by a rippling of Shannon's clothes. His sweater seemed to moving of its own accord, the material clinging closer to his body now. Sudden, it pulled itself so tight that it ripped apart at the shoulders, and revealed that underneath were the sleeves of a crisp white button-down dress shirt that hung a little loose on his arms.

"A simpler time....black and white...right and wrong...man and woman..."

The part of the sweater that remained was fluttering as most of it split into two thin straps that looped over his shoulders, reconnecting into a y-shape via a triangle of brown leather from which another strap clipped its to the back of his jeans. In the front, the new suspenders settled into place as brass snaps clamped down Around his neck, a heavily starched collar unfolded itself, sending a line of buttons down the front of the dress shirt. A rustle of fabric revealed that the last piece of his old sweater had curled itself under the collar and knotted itself into a long tie.

"Black...White...Right...Wrong...Man...Woman..."

The words battered into Shannon's head, as he tried to understand what was happening. He was afraid as he could something or someone stirring in the depths of his subconscious, drawn to the power of those words. If he'd only realized that his fear was only going to quicken the pace of his transformation...

====================

"You're not the first to hear my message, Shannon. Far from it. And you won't be the last, But I digress a little. I did say I'd tell you the truth, didn't I?"

Shannon couldn't respond, his body frozen as new changes begin to effect him, this time below his wait. The jeans he'd been wearing were shifting, denim softening into a light blend of cotton as blue was leeched away and replaced with a dark brown. Crisp creases snapped into place down the front of the developing trousers.

"You see, I didn't always have this...influence over people. I'm not sure where it came from really but it showed up when I was just starting my political career. I discovered that my words had an effect on people, especially those who disagreed with me. Not only did they come around my point of view, but some of them actually completely changed!"

A leather belt slid into the loops at Shannon's waist and tightened itself as as if locking him into his fate.

"Do you remember Lizzy Dion? Probably not, I suppose. She was my opponent for mayor during my first re-election campaign. A very outspoken advocate for gay rights, and a tough debater. That old bag really had me on the ropes during our first head-to-head if I'm being perfectly honest. Might've beaten me too, but oddly she disappeared before election day."

The governor chuckled a little, as if at some private joke before he stood up and came around the desk to seat on its corner. Shannon wanted to curse at him but...why? After he'd done a lot for this reporter, hadn't he? He didn't realize he was starting to grin.

"Of course, I'd soon meet my beloved Lisbeth and she became my first real supporter in my rise to the office I currently occupy. The perfect politician's wife really."

Shannon nodded in agreement. The governor's wife was a real smart cookie, and quite the looker too. He blinked, not sure why he found a woman to be attractive, let alone that woman. But his cock? It knew what it liked and that blonde matriarch really got its attention!

"Getting back on track, with my wife by my side, I ascended the ranks of the Republican party swiftly. I had a great staff as well, picked up all along the way. You'd be surprised how many times I got asked where I found so many loyal and dedicated people..."

The clothes which had been hanging a little loose on Shannon grew more fitted now, as his lanky frame began to fill in with muscle. It was still lean, but now held more strength than one might expect. His butt tightened up, as his old sexual practices were wiped away. He'd do a lot for a story but letting someone get past his backdoor? Never!

"Like me, boss?"

"Exactly, my boy. How are you feeling now?"

"I feet great, boss. But I'm still a little confused about why you're telling me all of this..."

The governor grinned at the still changing reporter, who was coming along nicely. The fading Shannon's feather and poofed hair was starting to slick itself back, darkening from brown to black in the process. His once smooth chin had squared itself out, and the first signs of his trademark five o'clock shadow were gracing with each passing moment.

"Just a little refresher, son. After all, you're working on my next address to the state, right?"

The reporter nodded enthusiastically. He'd been working on a real firecracker of a speech for the governor. His grin widened to reveal a set of white teeth that seemed to sparkly. A thump came the floor next to him, where his smart phone had been pushed out by his transforming pants. It had shifted and twisted, glass splintering into nothingness as it became a leather-covered notepad out of which stuck his favorite pen.

"Good, good. Now where was I again?"

"You were talking about your loyal staff, boss."

"Right. I don't know what I'd have done without you or Joaquin..."

Looking up from his notepad and the notes he'd been busily scribbling in it, Stanley Journo stared blankly at his employer and mentor as the strange name crossed his lips, A shrinking part of who he used to be seemed to be rallied by its mention.

"Who, boss?"

"Jonathan?"

"Oh...right."

And just like that, that last bit of Shannon faded away as he realized what had happened to Joaquin Guerrero. But the man sitting in the chair now didn't really care about that anymore, because he had more important stories to cover.

"That's should be enough for the speech, boss, I'll have it on your desk first thing in the morning."

"Great, Stanley. But I do have one more task for you tonight. In your capacity as my press secretary, I need you deliver a message for me..."

The governor pulled out a tape recorder and presented to the retro-styled journalist. The snarky grin was now permanently plastered on his ruggedly handsome face, as he tilted up the fedora resting on his head.

"Whatever ya' say, boss..."

====================

Sheila had not left the offices of the Q-News, her concern for her best reporter telling her that she needed to be here just in case. But she didn't even notice that she could no longer recall that reporter's name as she spoke to her girlfriend on the phone.

"Listen, Elle, baby. I'm gonna be home late tonight... It's a big story and I'm waiting for...

A knock on the door caused Sheila to jump out of her seat a little. As she finished up on the phone, the door swung open to let in a tallish lean man dressed in a dark grey vest and brown slacks. A cigarette hung from his lip while a old-fashioned press pass rested in the band of the fedora that rested atop his slicked back do.

"Heya, Chief. I got a scoop you just gotta hear to believe..."

*CLICK*

"You see, I think there is someone inside you who wants to come out. A better you, a hetter you, Sheila... All you have to do is listen to my voice, and let it guide you to a new....perspective."

[bitchloveskcbaseball]

Rifts Apart

Pairing: Edward x MC

Tides of Fate Part 2

Part 1: Losing Resolve

Trigger Warnings: Violence/torture, death mention, language

A/N #1: So initially, I thought this was going to just be a two-part piece, but as a began writing it, it sort of took on a life of it’s own and is now a four-part piece. Just thought I’d give you all a head’s up!

A/N #2: Also, I apologize in advance if there for any errors there might be in here. I struggled a bit with this one and now I’ve read through it and reworked it so much, I’m not sure I’d notice if I’d spelled my own name wrong lol Also if I think about this too much longer I might be tempted to delete the whole damn series, so here we go lol

“Have I given you reason to think I’ll not?”

“Well, no. But…” Peyton trailed off, wishing that she could see Edward’s face. She did not want to be having this conversation with his back.

His grip on the door knob tightened to the point that his knuckles were turning white. “I am not going to pry the words from you, Miss Bellamy.” There was a cold emphasis to the way he said her last name that made her physically flinch. He’d never been so upset with her in all the time she’d known him.

Defeat washing over her, Peyton tried to shift her body to where she’d be able to stand, wanting to retreat back to her own bed to tend her wounds – both physical and emotional. However, when she slightly twisted her torso, the pain from what she could only assume were at least a couple of broken ribs intensified so sharply that it stole her breath and her vision began to swim. Her eyes slammed shut and she collapsed back against the pillows as she fought desperately to not pass out. It was several minutes later before she even realized that Edward had returned to her side, kneeling on the floor next to the bed while he ran his fingers comfortingly through her hair.

When she was finally able to peel her eyes open again, she found him staring back at her with concern and something else she was too afraid to let herself hope for. “Just what do you think you’re doin’?” Edward asked, the bite that had been present in his tone having vanished.

“Going…back…to my…own…bed…”

“Why?”

“To…leave you…in…peace…”

He let out a hearty chuckle before telling her, with a smile playing at his lips, “I’ve not had a moment’s peace since we met. Your sleeping arrangements have no bearing upon that particular situation.”

Peyton leaned into his touch and his hand stilled so that her cheek was resting against his palm. With her eyes still locked on his, she turned a little further and let her lips brush against his skin as she whispered, “Is that so?”

His eyes seemed to darken and he leaned almost imperceptibly closer, as if there were a string drawing him in. She searched his gaze, looking for any remnants of his anger and finding none. It left her feeling a different kind of breathless, with her heart hammering in her chest. Despite her mind warning against it, hope that he would finally give into this pull between them and place his lips upon hers flared within her. But as quickly as the desire flared in his eyes, it was gone and he was visibly putting his walls back up around him. He stood, pulling his hand back to his side with a shake of his head. He had to clear his throat before he could speak, but the distance in his expression and his voice wiped away the intimacy of just seconds before. “Miss Bellamy – “

“Sit down with me?” Peyton cut off whatever excuses he was likely about to make before presumably taking his leave of her. It had hit her suddenly that she needed to tell him what had happened during the time rift. She had to warn him. And, if she were being completely honest with herself, she wanted to tell him because she desperately wanted him to comfort her.

When Edward didn’t move, instead just staring at her apprehensively, she muttered, “I…I wanna tell you what happened. How I got hurt.”

He hesitated for just a few seconds more, but then lowered himself back to the spot he’d occupied after getting her settled in his bed. She longed for his touch, to let it give her the strength and comfort she was going to need if she was going to find a way to put what she’d experienced into words, but she didn’t dare reach out to him. With his walls back up, she was terrified that she would scare him away by pressing too hard, so she looked everywhere but him trying to distract herself. Even still, as her gaze settled on the waves crashing outside his window, the only thing she could focus on was how he was so close that his warmth was radiating over her, making her feel safer than she ever had before.

“Miss Bell…” Peyton’s eyes narrowed as they flashed up to Edward’s, causing him to trail off with a shake of the head. “Peyton. I believe you had something you wished to tell me?”

“Right! Sorry, I uh – “ she shook her head to focus her attention and give herself a moment to organize her thoughts. She let out a deep sigh before diving into her tale, “So, I’d been feeling restless all night and I’d finally given up hope of getting any sleep, so I decided to go out on deck. Thought maybe the sounds of the ocean and the fresh air would soothe me. And it was working until I started feeling that damned familiar sensation. It’s weird as hell, but I’ve come to realize it means I’m in a time rift, so I wasn’t altogether too concerned.”

She paused to let herself catch her breath, but also to gauge Edward’s reaction. While he was right when he’d said earlier that he’d never given her a reason to doubt that he believed her, he’d also never actually said that he believed she was from the future. And even if he did actually believe that, it wasn’t like it was an easy concept to understand. Hell, she was the actual time traveler and she still had no idea how or why it happened, let alone when one of these damned rifts was going to occur. When she decided he didn’t look too confused, she continued on, “Problem was, this time when I opened my eyes, Robert was standing in front of me, talking as if we were in the middle of a conversation. Having his face be the one I saw in that moment was more than a little disconcerting.”

Concern grew in Edward’s eyes, but they never left hers and it gave her a sense of comfort. She let it wash over her, giving her the confidence to continue on, despite how afraid she was that he’d be disappointed in her once she admitted what a spectacular failure she was. Not wanting to see that disappointment reflected on his face, she let her gaze drop to where her fingers were fiddling with a loose thread in the blanket across her lap. “He took advantage of how disoriented I was and got the jump on me.”

“Got the jump on you?”

“Yeah… He, uh…he charged at me, slamming me into the railing. My side caught the brunt of the impact.”

Edward took her hand in his own, then, and her breath hitched.  “Tis the reason you were screaming when I found you?”

“Um… Not exactly. That…that, uh, comes a bit later.”

“Then what – “

Peyton lifted her face to give him a pleading look as she cut him off. “I’ll get there. Just…please let me get through this, okay?” He simply nodded his head once and gave her hand a quick squeeze. Drawing strength from his touch, she continued, “He then delivered several swift kicks to the same spot for good measure, until both he and I felt my ribs crack. It…it was so excruciating I was afraid I was gonna pass out.”

“Christ.”

This time it was her squeezing his hand in an attempt to comfort him. Truth be told, she still hadn’t gotten to the worst part yet. The pain she could handle, would take any and every day over what came next. “Anyway, as he was tying me up, the rest of his merry band of misfits brought you and the rest of the crew out on deck. Lined you all up in front of me.”

There was a lump growing in her throat and she slammed her eyes shut in hopes of keeping the tears building there at bay. She desperately didn’t want to relive this part, but she reminded herself that he needed to know. Edward’s free hand came up to cup her cheek again, this time brushing away tears she hadn’t realized were falling. Leaning into his touch, she let out a sigh of relief when he didn’t pull away. The reassuring warmth of his hand on her skin was giving her the strength to relive the horror she'd had to endure.

After clearing her throat, she whispered, “Apparently I was the one he was most angry with. And since he had realized how important you all have become to me, he decided that the best way to get back at me would be through you guys. Especially you. He started with you, delivering a cut so deep that you would eventually bleed out, but not so deep that it would be quick. He wanted to make sure I would have to watch you suffer.” Her voice, which had been cracking, finally gave out with a sob.

Clearly trying to be careful of her injury, Edward slid forward on the bed and gently gathered her in his arms. He let her bury her face against his chest, while he rubbed circles against her back, but it did very little to soothe her. Peyton’s sobs tore through her body and she soaked his shirt with her tears, but even the pain in her side wasn’t enough to stop the onslaught. Seeing this man – the one she’d realized, with such clarity as she watched the life drain from his eyes, that she loved – suffer so brutally, die so brutally, was more than she could bear. And now that she was thinking and talking about it, it seemed to be playing on an inescapable loop through her mind.

“Peyton, I’m right here. Tis naught but a dream.”

Pulling back from him, Peyton practically shouted, “Did that” – she gestured angrily towards her right side – “look like it was a fucking dream, Edward?!”

“No. I suppose it didn’t,” Edward sputtered.

“I had to watch you literally be tortured to death! Had to watch everyone else be executed mercilessly. And then… Then they left me there, just tied up to the deck. Because Robert wanted to make it as excruciating as possible. And he was smart enough to realize that me having to wait for dehydration or exposure to take me could leave me there staring at your bodies for days.”

“I –”

“That is what I was screaming about! That is what you brought me back from!” Another sob choked her voice before she whispered, “That is our future!”

Edward pulled her against him again, wrapping his arms tightly around her and she bit back a whimper at the way it sent a searing pain through her. She needed to be in that spot more than she needed the ability to breathe. Burying his nose against her temple, he murmured, “I have no intention of letting such a fate befall us.”

Peyton sucked in a breath, and immediately regretted it. Her vision was swimming once again as her broken ribs wailed in protest. Edward eased her back so she was more fully stretched out and she forced her eyes open to gaze into his. Between desperate pants for oxygen, she asked, “How do you plan to stop it?”

His eyes hardened as he stared at a spot over her head, “You’ll not be here to find out.”

“What?!” Pressing her hand to her ribs in a vain attempt to counter her movements, she forced herself back up into a more upright position. Her voice was frantic as she asked, “What do you mean I won’t be here?”

“I’m sending you home. Immediately.”

Part 3: Becalmed

Tag List: @anotherbeingsworld @burnsoslow @mvalentine @rebel-alpaca @crazynutella @princess-geek @edgiestwinter

[theonceoverthinker]

When Will My Life Begin? (Fair Game, 17/?)

Summary: Tangled AU. Clover Callows has been confined to a tower for all of his life, and given the threat that his Uncle Tyrian says his semblance poses to his safety, he accepts that fate. It’s the only life he’s ever known, after all. But when he’s offered the opportunity to fulfill his greatest dream after a chance encounter with a thief -- or bandit, as Qrow Branwen insists there’s a difference between the two -- both Clover and Qrow will discover joys that they never knew life could offer them before. AO3

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Mercury Black had had a long day, and at this point, all he wanted was for it to be over already.

The theft of General Ironwood’s brooch had been nothing short of a pain in the ass, both as he distracted the pathetic masses and guards alike with his fire-powered boots and ran to catch his frustratingly quick accomplice before he made off with what was supposed to be their treasure.

Or rather, it was supposed to be his treasure, once he betrayed Qrow Branwen, that is, and took it for himself.

But that’s not what happened.

He got away. He got away, and what’s worse was that Mercury practically gave him the escape.

How could he have been so short sighted? Branwen clearly wasn’t, and he was definitely a better thief than him.

All the same though, it was Branwen who got away, and not him.

No, his suffering had only begun at Branwen’s betrayal.

Getting caught was so, so much worse. 

Mercury had tried to get away, but those damn Ace Ops knew how to work together too damn well, and even without their leader’s semblance at their disposal, they still had every aspect of his capture covered with next to no trouble.

He was all but dead in the water once Marrow got close enough to him to use his semblance. That semblance slowed him to a crawl the instant it made contact with Mercury. From there, Vine’s semblance-fueled arms stretched out all the way to him, and surrounded Mercury’s body before pulling him towards the rest of his team. 

And finally...it was Elm’s turn with him. 

There were worse ways to be careened around a forest than in his captor’s arm, bound as if he were hugged from behind.

That list wasn’t very long though.

Elm’s semblance allowed her to stabilize herself at any time, regardless of any resistance she might meet...or rather, regardless of any resistance Mercury attempted to put up in order to fight out of her grasp.

That was the way they’d walked for the past few hours, or at least, she walked. Elm, by her own admission later, intentionally held Mercury’s body in a way that left his feet just inches off the ground, leaving him helpless to walk alongside her as they walked through the forest. No, instead, he had to be carried at his waist like an unruly child, unable to do anything but complain.

Because of that, he made sure to complain a lot.

Maybe, just maybe, that complaining would annoy the Ace Ops enough for them to decide it wasn’t worth it to keep him and let him go. With all the time Mercury had at his disposal while the Ace Ops continued to search for Branwen -- added to the fact that he didn’t even have the brooch anymore -- it was certainly possible.

However, that didn’t happen, and in this awkward way he and Elm continued to travel.

Stubborn guards.

Mercury supposed he’d better start getting used to stubborn guards. Soon enough, they were all he was going to see.

Well, at least he’d get fed and sheltered in prison, not to mention away from some certain...uncomfortable presences currently plaguing his life. Maybe there was something to be said for that.

Based on the limited knowledge that Mercury had about the forest, assuming there’d be no more breaks to scope out the nearby areas, it would take another few hours to return to the kingdom’s capital. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to that -- being paraded through the capital as a prisoner, held in Elm’s clutches and unable to even shield his face while getting laughed at by Remnant’s citizens as he witnessed the last glimpses of a free life he’d likely ever see.

Gods, couldn’t this day just be over already?

It seemed like it was going to be soon, now that Branwen had appeared to have completely escaped and Harriet seemed to be without a plan as to what to do next.

But then Cardin showed up.

Mercury knew Cardin, albeit only in passing. He’d gone to his boss’ pub a few times for a post-heist ale on more than one occasion, and Cardin was a busboy there. Cardin had a mean demeanor about hime, one that was likely created to try to compensate for his lack of strength relative to everyone else at that tavern, but instead just made people hate him and notice his cowardice all the more.

It was curious to see him all the way out here, especially still in his uniform from work.

However, once he spoke, it became clear why.

“Br-Branwen,” Cardin said through laborious breaths. “The thief Qrow Branwen. W-we have him.”

Well, that was unexpected, and peculiar for more than one reason. 

As Cardin continued to confirm for everyone present that it was indeed Qrow Branwen who they had, Mercury tried to make sense of how that had happened. 

Branwen wasn’t the type to stop for an ale in the middle of a heist, especially not with one of Remnant’s most valuable treasures in hand. And even if he did for some reason Mercury couldn’t so much as hazard a guess at, Lil’ Miss Malachite’s was in the other direction from the nearest black market, and despite how fast Branwen had proven himself to be, there’s no way he’d be able to get to the black market, sell the brooch to the highest bidder, and then back to Malachite’s in that amount of time. It just wasn’t possible.

So why had he gone backwards from his destination?

If the Ace Ops -- or Ace Oops, as he had now taken it upon himself to call them in a further attempt to annoy his way to freedom -- actually managed to capture Branwen, he’d certainly have to ask him...in between beating the crap out of him for causing all of his torment today.

With Cardin’s lead, the Ace Ops -- and by extension, Mercury -- were on the move again. Upon seeing Mercury’s...unique means of travel, Cadrin walking beside Elm, snickered.

“Shut. Up,” Mercury grit.

“Or what?” Cardin mocked. “You seem a little too indisposed with your cuddling to do anything about it right now!” He proceeded to laugh his head off.

Mercury seethed on the comment, but before he could bark out another threat, Elm sighed, glaring at Cardin.

“Less talking, more walking, okay?” she ordered, clearly just as annoyed with Cardin’s comments, and voice, and...everything as Mercury was.

It seemed to do the trick, effectively shutting Cardin up the rest of the way to Malachite’s.

Mercury had plenty of problems with Elm, not the least of which was her style of holding him -- though he supposed it could have been worse seeing as how he wasn’t plopped over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes -- but he had to admit that he appreciated her stopping that mocking.

That seemed to be the only thing that had gone right for Mercury today, and after everything that had happened and was sure to happen, he could appreciate that just a little.

Once they arrived at Lil’ Miss Malachite’s, Harriet looped her horse around the neighboring horse post, and signaled for Elm to wait outside with Mercury until she received further orders. As the minutes continued to pass and pass, Mercury found himself curious. 

If the staff at Lil’ Miss Malachite’s had Branwen like Cardin said they had, then why hadn’t the Ace Ops brought him out yet? Why hadn’t Mercury heard so much as a bit of Branwen’s voice? He heard everyone else’s just fine -- the other Ace Ops, Robyn, Sun, and the Juniper Jaggers were all coming in as clear as day, even through the closed door.

However, there was no sign of Branwen.

Mercury was pretty sure even Elm had picked up on that, as he could feel a certain rise of tension in her grasp and abs.

Suddenly, the door flung open, with Harriet on the other side.

“Brawen got away,” she grunted. 

“He escaped through a hidden tunnel in the bar,” Marrow supplied. “It was actually a little cool.”

“Marrow,” Vine scolded.

“It was!” Marrow defended, “But whatever -- we’ve got to go after him!”

Harriet nodded at him before turning back to Elm. “Elm, chain the prisoner up to the horse post. I’m going to need your help to capture Branwen.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Mercury howled, trying once more to pull against his restraints. Still, Elm’s grasp remained as relentless as ever.

Harriet snorted. “Afraid not, thief.” She walked over to her horse, took a set of chains out of his saddle bag, and gave them to Elm. Elm then carried Mercury over to a nearby horse post just across from the tavern’s entrance. 

Mercury loudly groaned upon feeling the cool, harsh metal bind themselves to his wrists, one after the other just after the chain that connected them was looped through the open piece of the metallic horse post. 

Grimacing, he looked at his new situation.

On one hand, he could finally move around a bit more, no longer contained to just Elm’s clutches and finally able to walk now that his feet were on the ground again.

On the other hand, this may have been worse.

Mercury was so close to his freedom, but the metal of both his chains and the horse post stood as quite the barrier between the two of them.

Jeez, even Harriet’s horse was only bound to the post by rope -- not metal!

Did he seriously get more restrictions placed on him than a horse?

How was this his life right now?

“Don’t worry,” Elm teased, a chuckle under her breath as she pat Mercury’s shoulder. “You’ll just be here for a few hours. Then it’s off to the kingdom’s prison!”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Mercury sneered.

“I’ll leave that interpretation to you.”

Elm then casually ruffled Mercury’s hair before walking towards Malachite’s entrance, her body moving away just in time to perfectly avoid Mercury flailing head attempting to hit her. She seemed amused with herself at that development, still chuckling as she joined up with her team.

Great. Now on top of everything, his hair looked like a disaster, and without the free use of his hands, he could only do so much to fix it.

Mercury could, even without seeing his reflection, feel it -- so messy and unkempt, just like his former accomplice’s locks.

“Branwen!” he shouted out in frustration.

No one responded to his cry -- not that Mercury expected anyone to, given that he was supposedly gone. Instead, Mercury just heard the jovial sounds coming from the bar he stood outside of, muffled through the tavern’s closed door.

Oh yeah, and how could he forget? He wasn’t just chained up -- he was chained up right outside of Lil’ Miss Malachite’s, too, and in broad daylight, no less.

So now he didn’t even have the dignity of the relative privacy he received while traveling as the Ace Ops’ prisoner. People -- people Mercury knew and had a reputation with -- would see him helplessly chained up, and given how word tended to spread in this kingdom, it wouldn’t be long before everyone in the capital knew of this as well.

How much more humiliating could this day possibly get?

If the Ace Ops didn’t get to do the honors first, he was going to kill Branwen for this personally.

...And then move somewhere where absolutely no one knew him.

...And then change his name, too, for good measure.

“Mercury,” a man’s voice called out from behind him.

Surprised, Mercury jumped in place, ever so slightly. He’d hoped whoever was behind him wouldn’t have noticed, but given how the rest of his day had gone so far, he didn’t hold his breath.

Mercury tried to turn around to see his new guest as best as he could, and succeeded, if only a little, giving him a half view of the man behind him. 

That turned out to be all he needed, for upon turning around and seeing him, however poorly, Mercury realized that he recognized the man -- Tyrian, he believed. Yes, Tyrian. He was hard to mistake for anyone else -- lanky in his build, but by no means weak, adorned in white clothes, sporting a scorpion’s tail, and hosting eyes that all but promised a trouble that he could no doubt deliver on if he so desired. 

What was he doing here?

“Tyrian? You’re one of Salem’s minions, aren’t you?”

Whatever was the right thing to say to Tyrian, Mercury soon learned it wasn’t that.

“I’m more than just her minion, boy,” Tyrian sneered.

“Well, you’re not Cinder.”

“For now, at least,” Tyrian muttered underneath his breath.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Mercury mumbled, rolling his eyes. 

Tyrian made a ‘tsk’ noise, giving Mercury an unimpressed look. “Don’t mumble. It’s hardly befitting of one of Salem’s men.”

“Well, I’m probably not going to be one of Salem’s men now. As you can see,” Mercury said, flinging his chains as well as he could, “my last mission didn’t exactly work out as expected.”

Tyrian smirked. “Yes, you’re absolutely the epitome of failure right now, aren’t you? Caught by the Ace Ops and with no brooch to speak of. What a stroke of bad luck.” 

Mercury grit his teeth. “Don’t talk to me about bad luck. I’ve had more than enough of that for one day.”

Suddenly, Tyrian’s tail slinked out from behind his back, brandishing its small, yet sharp point at Mercury before it started to move towards him.

Oh Gods...what was he going to do?

Mercury knew Salem didn’t take failure well, and he also knew that poison lived in Tyrian’s tail the same way ale lived in a keg. Was this going to be his punishment for a job poorly done? 

But no, Tyrian didn’t do that, and that didn’t seem to be his intention. Instead, he let his tail slowly move towards the lock of one of his chains, but stopping just short of touching them. 

“Well, then this should come as a pleasant surprise because luckily for you, you’ve caught me in a deal-making mood. I’d like to offer you something for your freedom, as well as my silence to Salem on this little problem of yours for the time being.”

“What’s that?” Mercury asked, unable to keep every last bit of the vulnerability out of his voice.

Tyrian took a step closer to him. “I need you to get the man Qrow Branwen is traveling with away from him. From there, you can just leave the rest to me. Simple, no?”

Mercury grunted. Deals with Salem’s forces always started out easy at first, but they had a habit of never staying that way. He’d been cheated out of untold amounts of gold over the fine print of those little deals, and forced to agree to more just to stay afloat.

Right now though, it looked like he had something of a choice. It couldn’t hurt to push his luck just a bit.

After all, what else did he have to lose?

“And what if I’m not feeling in a deal-making mood myself?” he snipped. 

Tyrian eyes flashed -- as violent as a storm for the briefest of seconds, but then settled, replaced instead by a  smirk. Calling it unsettling would be something of an understatement. “Oh I think you’ll find yourself very quickly in a deal-making mood, unless you wish for me to tell Salem of your failure to grab that brooch.” Immediately, Mercury’s eyes bulged. 

“I don’t think I need to tell you that she’ll be...less than pleased to hear that news,” Tyrian continued. “And let’s be honest -- not even the guards and the prison cells in the capital will be enough to protect you from whatever retaliation our goddess will see fit to bestow upon you for such weakness.”

Mercury felt his blood freeze. Gods, damn it.

“Besides, Tyrian added, “you’ll get more than just your freedom and my silence out of this little exchange of ours.” 

“Oh?” Mercury asked.

Grinning, Tyrian grabbed his satchel and took out something Mercury hadn’t expected to see again any time soon. “If you do this, you’ll get this back,” he said, flashing the emerald brooch in front of Mercury in the same way a wealthy man might flash a crust of bread at a starving beggar. “You’ll have an opportunity to redeem yourself in our queen’s eyes, but that’s not all.”

Mercury gulped. “I’m listening,” he said.

Tyrian’s smirk widened. “You’ll also have your chance to get back at the man who took it from you -- Qrow Branwen. Once I have the man he’s traveling with, Branwen is all yours to do with as you see fit. So, I think your choice should be obvious, but I’m not the presumptuous type -- what do you say?”

Unfortunately, Tyrian was right. There was only one thing to say.

And so he said it.

“Deal.”

“Good.” Immediately, Tyrian pushed his tail the rest of the way into the lock of one of Mercury’s chains. Once that one unlocked, he got to quick work on the other.

When they were both undone, Mercury massaged his wrists, taking a deep breath of the open air.

Free.

After this long, lingering, humiliating day, he was finally free.

However, just as Tyrian’s tail had given Mercury his freedom, with a pull of his chin that was sharp in more ways than one, he took it away just as quickly, pulling Mercury towards Tyrian so that he was just under his harsh, wild gaze.

“Don’t forget,” Tyiran added, smiling serenely. “I’ll be watching you very, very closely, even if it doesn’t seem like I am.” Suddenly, Tyrian’s smile dropped, and he began glaring at Mercury. “If you fail to meet your end of our little deal, there won’t be so much as a stone in Remnant you’ll be able to hide under where our goddess won’t be able to find you, you wretch. Understood?”

Mercury felt devoid of all manner of speech, simply nodding. 

“Wonderful,” Tyrian said, his smile blossoming back like a rose. His tail released Mercury, causing him to almost trip.

Then...Tyrian took off, and Mercury was alone, or at least, was as alone as he could be with Tyrian’s promise in mind.

Gods, Mercury didn’t even know where Branwen was, much less who was his traveling companion that Tyrian seemed to care so much about.

What would he do?

What could he do?

Mercury looked at his surrounding, no longer bound to them, but instead able to use them as he saw fit.

And then, he saw what it was he should do.

Well, if he was going after Branwen, he couldn’t just rely on his own foot power. No, Mercury needed a horse, and right now, he had the pick of the litter. He looked at the other options -- a black steed with a gray mane, an orange steed with a cream mane, a chocolate-colored steed with a matching mane -- but quickly decided that none of those would do.

No, it was the horses with a white coat and white mane -- Harriet’s steed, in fact -- that would do the trick.

Not to mention, it would serve as not just a great means of travel, but also as a great means of revenge, both to the Ace Ops and soon enough, to Branwen.

It looked like Mercury was getting a bit of an upgrade. 

Even still though, the work he now faced was anything but enviable.

His long, long day had just gotten a lot longer.

[rantceratops]

Just gonna get some of my Little Nightmares 2 thoughts out and under a spoiler tag. Need to get it out of my system. SPOILERS BELOW CUT.

First, a Fun Fact: I went into Little Nightmares 2 fully expecting Mono to die. Yet I still got attached to him. I was expecting him to die, but I was NOT expecting him to get the fate that he did. I knew that Six was a morally questionable character from the first game, but tbh it never crossed my mind that she’d be responsible for his demise. At least, not until the bridge collapsed between Mono and Six in the Signal Tower. I immediately knew that either Mono was going down with the bridge, or that Six would drop him. But it still hurt like a bitch.

1) My least favorite theory is one of the more popular ones I keep seeing, which is that the Secret Ending somehow proves that Six dropped Mono because she “knew she was just going to eat him anyway”, so she dropped him to “save” him from herself.

This one is a big NO from me. That is not at all what I gathered from the Secret Ending. First of all, I’m not sure in what universe that dropping your friend into a flesh void to rot in hatred and betrayal for decades is somehow “saving” them, even if you were planning to cannibalize them. If you really wanted to “save” them, pull them up and then just run away from them or tell them to stay away from you, etc.

Secondly, it was clear that Six’s stomach growling at the end of the Secret Ending was meant to be the FIRST time she ever felt the Hunger. Six goes the entirety of Little Nightmares 2 without once feeling the Hunger, whereas in the first game she seems to barely be able to go a couple hours (or in game terms, she can’t go a single chapter without it happening) without having to eat, so I highly doubt she could go the entire second game without eating.

This theory is just not sound to me, and I refuse to subscribe to it. I obviously like to hear most theories because it’s always interesting, but this one straight up makes me roll my eyes every single time I read it.

2) I also don’t much like the theory that because Six saw Mono without his paper bag on for the first time when holding him on the edge, she was able to study his face for several seconds and realized that he was the Thin Man. Unfortunately, I as much as I don’t like the idea of this, I can’t exactly debunk it, as Six does indeed spend several seconds just holding him there for some reason or other. Whether it was in pure indecision, or pure malice as she relished his helpless state before she dropped him(I hope not), or whether she was absorbing his power to leave through the TV*, or whether it was in fact because she was somehow able to put two and two together... idk.

My main issue is that Mono and Six are like 9 years-old, how could she look at a 9 year-olds face and tell that it matched a man that appears to be in his 40s? Just seems a bit far-fetched. But again, as much as I’d like to, I cannot debunk this one.

*This is something that confuses me. Six was able to leave through the TV, but Six was never able to travel through TVs. That was Mono and the Thin Man’s power. Six was not there for the defeat of the Thin Man and so couldn’t have taken his powers, so was she absorbing Mono’s powers before she dropped him? Usually she seems to need to eat her victims to gain their powers. The lack of visual cue that she’s taking his power is also strange. I’m starting to think it was just a weird oversight on the Devs part. There is no logical reason Six should have been able to leave the Tower unless she somehow stole Mono’s powers. (earlier in the game we even see Six pressing against a TV trying to escape from the Thin Man, but she cannot, and it’s not until Mono reaches in and grabs her hands that she is able to start phasing through.

3) Mono = Thin Man = Hanging Man is also a strange theory. Though there is a certain uncanny resemblance with not only the door with the eye on it and the chair, but the pants and shoes and long-limbedness of the Hanged Man himself. However, as far as I recall there are several doors with eyes on The Maw(correct me if I’m wrong please!), so I don’t really consider the door that big of a deal unless I’m wrong. Eyes are kind of a big motif in these games.

My biggest question with this theory is why or how would Mono be on The Maw? How did he get there? Why was he there? Which version of Mono is this? I have so many fucking questions with this one it’s not funny.

4) Time-loop theory is the most popular. I’m on the fence. There is evidence to support it’s a Time-loop, but my initial reaction to the ending was that Mono was replacing the Thin Man, not that he was the Thin Man the entire time. I largely just accept Time-loop as it does seem more likely at this point... I’m not sure how Mono being a replacement would change the narrative... hrm.

5) I really just want Mono to be okay. :’(

6) I already reblogged another post and ranted about this but: People are overthinking why Six dropped Mono. There are one of two reasons that she dropped him, and imo it’s not hard to pick up on.

Reason One (Least Likely): Six was perhaps using Mono the entire time, and simply decided to drop him at the end once he’d served his purpose. To me, this seems less likely of the two, even though Six can be very selfish and sadistic, this just doesn’t add up to me. If this one is true, then the question becomes what was Six’s goal? What was her purpose, and what means to what end did Mono serve? Because imo I am not seeing a dark purpose here with Six... which leads me to the second and more likely reason Six dropped Mono--

Reason Two (Far More Likely): Six felt betrayed by Mono. This was my FIRST thought when I realized Six was going to drop Mono. My immediate thought was that it was out of pure spite from Mono not helping her when the Thin Man grabbed her. To me this is so painfully obviously her motive.

Six and Mono spend the majority of the game helping each other; opening doors, boosting each other, catching each other across gaps. There are so many times Six could have been selfish and left Mono to his fate, but she didn’t. She pulls him out of the TV again and again because she knows something is wrong.

Mono saves Six so many times; she gets captured or separated from him and every single time without fail, Mono comes back for her, he does everything in his power to save her. When Mono finally unintentionally lets the Thin Man lose, Six tries to get Mono to run with her. She stays next to him trying her damnedest to get him to grab her hand and run with her, before she runs off alone because Mono isn’t listening to her. Then, she trips and reaches out for Mono, but Mono is scared and cowering under the bed and does not grab Six in her most vital, vulnerable moment.

Six sees this as a betrayal of trust. Despite the fact that if Mono had come out to help her they might have likely both been caught, and despite the fact that the Thin Man’s presence generally seems to hurt and slow down Mono, and despite the fact that Mono STILL comes after her to save her. Mono tries to pull Six out through the TV, and even after he defeats the Thin Man, he goes to the Signal Tower to save her. He NEVER EVER gave up on her.

But for Six that obviously wasn’t good enough. Mono, however unfairly, lost her faith when he didn’t grab her hand in that room. And to add icing on that cake, Monster Six tries to let Mono play with her music box because she obviously has some memory that she trusted and liked him, and then he smashes it with a hammer. In her twisted state, that was another heinous betrayal stacked on top of the previous one, and I think even after she was reverted back to normal the resentment of Mono smashing her music box remained. Six began to see Mono as the cause for all her problems and a betrayer at that. Regardless of whether the theory that she also saw in his face that he was Thin Man before she dropped him, I still very much think the main catalyst here was the perceived trust betrayal.

Mono never really did anything wrong; in fact, he did everything right, but in the end he still got his undeserved fate.

There is no world or theory which makes Six dropping Mono justified in my eyes, but it is interesting to see how things got all twisted and dark for her to the point that she felt dropping him was in her interest.

I’ve never hated Six, but I’ve also never been fond of Six even before LN2. But I do honestly hate her in that moment that she lets go of Mono. It was fucked up. It was disgusting to be frank. Mono got one of the most horrible fates I’ve ever witnessed such a pure-hearted character get. It was fucking heartbreaking, I get sad all over again just listening to End of the Hall on the soundtrack and remembering the scene and what happened to him.

I teeter back and forth on whether or not Six is even meant to be a true protag or not. She certainly feels rather anti-hero. I also sometimes can’t decide whether she truly did care about Mono or not, but I do feel like there’s a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that she did at some point.

IDK. All I know is Mono was just a good boy and I really wish he could somehow get a happy ending at the end of all this. T_T

[aaliyahcrosses]

The Art of Letting Go

Most of the time, a good story is a straightforward one. On rare occasions, it comes in loops. This one - well, it isn’t exactly good, but it’s one that goes backwards.

Or: Calendar girl who is lost to the world / Stay(s) alive

notes: 

made for coai week 2019

may incredibly be confusing at times

barring the prologue and epilogue, the chronological timeline of this fic actually starts from the last one, going up. (If you feel confused, you can give the fic a read on its chronological order. It might make better sense for you.)

-

PROLOGUE

“No, no, no.” A man groans as soon as he was pushed out of the blue doors. He tries to open them, even with keys, but to no avail. “You can’t do that to me! You can’t lock me out!”

There was no reply.

Nearby, there was a huge building, where he most definitely can hear gunshots.

He huffed.

“Fine. But it’s just this one time. One time.”

-

SEVEN

Time

"Happy ever after doesn’t mean forever. It just means time. A little time.”

“Come on,” the girl says, “Come with me.”

Stupefied by the shock, all Conan can really do is take her offered hand and let himself be led. She leads him in through the Aquarium.

Ai's safe , she didn’t die. She’s okay . But he has so many questions, all of them at the tip of his tongue. He just doesn’t know where to start.

The take down of the Organization happened two days ago, and Haibara had been missing since then. He remembered it. Everything was going wrong. The full force of the authorities wasn’t cutting it, and he was desperate to save Ran to even do a thing about their enemies when Haibara volunteered on “bringing them down to their knees.” He really didn’t know what it meant. He hadn’t even said anything in reply when she ran off.

A few minutes later and there was a huge explosion, with Haibara Ai nowhere to be found. He’d expected the worst.

Earlier today he received a text from her phone, and he scrambled to go. Only to find her unharmed.

“How did you survive?” was the first question that left his mouth.

She laughs - a real, real laugh - and he doesn’t know how to deal with that. “Why?” she replies coyly. “Didn’t want me to?”

“Haibara,” he practically growls the name in warning.

He asks her more questions - where she was, what happened - all of them she evaded easily.

And then she lets go of his hand and stops walking, only to stare at the huge display of jellyfish.

“Do you know,” she said after a while, “why I called you here?”

He shakes his head - he really has no idea. For the past few days everyone had believed her to be dead, the only one who can find the cure to the drug. He was thinking about coming clean to Ran.

She turns to him. The lights from the jellyfish aquarium illuminate her face. She was smiling, in a sort of bittersweet way.

“Because I wanted to say I love you.”

Everything after that felt like a blur. The next thing he knows, he’s standing in his room - Kudo Shinichi’s room - all alone, with the gateway back to his former life, the cure to the apotoxin, on his hand.

On his cheek, a kiss mark leftover by a lipstick.

-

SIX

Wish/Dream

“You don’t run out of the people you care about. Wish I was more like that.”

When Haibara Ai… no, when Miyano Shiho was young, so young, she had a cot - a crib, and a mobile over it filled with stars. Maybe it was a memory, or maybe it’s just her imagination, but she remembers it. She remembers a sister, looking at her with a smile, remembers a father, patting her fondly, and remembers a mother humming a song until she falls asleep. She remembers, and sometimes she dreams of these memories.

But there are days she remembers something else . She remembers a father, leaving the house much more frequently, until he rarely ever does come back. She remembers a mother doing the exact same. Little Miyanos, left by their parents to fend for their own. And so Miyano Shiho began to devote herself to studying.

It was the wrong choice. Because everything her parents had been preventing to happen she managed to do within just months. She’s sent to America, to do what she’s good at.

Miyano Shiho was merely seven when she realized the mistake she had made. She was ten when her parents were killed. And thirteen when she decided to keep her sister only partially informed on what she does in the Organization. Pushed Akemi away, bit by bit, and only realized it too late when they told her about the death of her sister.

When she heard about her sister’s death, she’d decided to run away die. She was set on it. But she didn’t die. Fate was cruel like that, she supposed. And so she does the one thing she knows: she runs.

But then. But then she’s met him. An impossible boy.

Don’t run away from your fate.

“Are you sure about this?” The man asks her worriedly, wringing his hands. He's at the door, hesitant.

With her were things she’s collected from their travels, and the cure for APTX4869.

She smiles. “You told me, didn’t you? And he did too, I suppose. But you showed me. Rule number seven.”

He grins in remembrance. “Never run when you’re scared.”

She nods, and echoes, “Never run when you’re scared.”

"See you around, Ai Haibara."

She stays there until he's fully out of sight.

-

FIVE

Blood/Weapon

“The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth [...] You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons.”

For a long, long time, this is what she’d believed: that in order to protect the people she cared for, she should pull away from them, before they get hurt. That’s what her parents had done, and that’s the only thing she knows how to do.

But today she was given a chance. Today, she’s standing in front of Karasuma .

She might have looked small and tiny and very young, but Haibara Ai is also Miyano Shiho, who is not someone small and tiny and very young.

Truth be told, all she wanted to do was leave him there. Let him die underneath the rubble when the place explodes.

But killing him would make him succeed. Make it seem like he’s controlled her, much more than she originally thought.

She speaks. Measured and calm and clear. She doesn’t shout. She asks about her parents, about why they had to die.

She hears the police sirens outside.

She stares at him. One. Two. Three. Four -

“Haibara,” she remembers what that man said when he took her back here. This was something not to be done. Dangers of the universe imploding and all that. But she’d begged and pleaded and here she is now, in front of the Boss, explosion coming, and the chance to bump into a younger version of herself increasing, all within a few minutes.  “Whatever you do, I won’t think any less of you. I won’t blame you. You’re forgiven. Always and completely.”

And in that instant. She knows what she’ll do.

“I’ll show you mercy,” she whispers to this cruel man - the cause of the deaths of her family, the cause of the deaths of a million other people. “I’ll show you mercy, because that’s the one thing you’ll never understand.”

Haibara Ai makes sure Karasuma Renya lives .

-

FOUR

Song/Dance

“Always… When you need it the most… There is a song.”

She'd woken up to find no one around, and had run to the doors in a worry. Finding the door open, she peeked out, and found, to her surprise, a party.

She walks out, cautiously, at first - for all she sees are adults everywhere, and Ai looks like a child. She tries to blend in.

It wasn’t long before she found herself arguing with someone.

“Of course someday, we’ll have the answers. That’s why science's there,” she points out, “to answer the unanswerable. That’s how it works.”

The person she was arguing with - a tall man with a tousled mop of silver-grey hair and an aging thin-laced face - shakes his head. He leans down, and whispers, “Why? Is gravity really the reason you fall in love?”

She pauses. In the same exact moment, she sees him across the crowd.

He was dancing with a woman. The woman might not see him, for she had her head on his shoulder as they swayed, but Ai can. And she sees his eyes. All sorts of feelings on his eyes.

A lovely couple. A picture perfect one. He wore a formal tailcoat with a white bow tie, while the woman wore a long black dress. They make quite the pair.

Beside her, she noticed the old man look on at the two fondly. “She’s the wife,” he whispers almost conspiratorially to her, as if telling her a secret.

“What, her ?” She gestures to the female half of the dancing couple they’d been watching.

He nods with a smile. “And here’s a gift from me.” He hands her a box. “More from the missus, really, but -”

“But I don’t know you.”

His eyes twinkle. “Oh, but you do.” He laughs. “Goodbye, Ai Haibara.”

She watches him leave, and was surprised to see herself , well, at least someone who looked an awful lot like her older self - like Shiho ,  but with longer hair - falling into step with him.

She figures she was just imagining things, and carefully opens her gift. It was a lipstick, with a note on it. It’s hallucinogenic , it reads, Do take care when you use it, sweetie.

She looks at the leaving duo again - but they were already gone.

And then all of a sudden, she was being engulfed in a hug.

“Ai. Ai Haibara!” He’d just been kissed on the lips, if the stains were any indication. Not to mention his bow tie is missing. He laughs - the one where you seem to giddy to even feel anything else. “Never trust wives. Never, ever! Went and drugged me, she did! And just after I caught her from falling off a ship too!”

Later on, after she’d managed to get the drugged man out of the party and asleep on a bed, she thinks of the argument she had with the old man. She thinks, gravity might not have been the exact reason one falls, but it still causes a pull. You gravitate towards the one you love, after all. Although that isn’t really the important thing, is it?

Why one falls usually isn’t the relevant question, when it comes to such things. The important question would be: would someone catch you if you do?

-

THREE

Choice

“The name you choose, is like… it’s like a promise you make.”

"You." He looks at her closely, and she glares, because when will he learn personal space? Does he just not have a concept of one? He's impossible. And infuriating. She managed to save the day, hadn't she? "You were about to let yourself just die. Ai Haibara. The little girl who's not a little girl. Why? Why'd you do that?" "Because it was safer," she says. "No!" He snaps. He moves away from her, begins walking back and forth. "No it wasn't! You could have waited for me. Could have listened, maybe. I had a plan. One that didn't involve anyone getting hurt." "No you didn't!" "I had! But you went and had to ruin it. You could have waited, or you could have asked me for help..." he paused. And then he's back at looking closely at her again. She hates that. "You did that too, before. When I met you. You were doing that too, weren't you? You were just sitting there, waiting for the explosion..." "So what if I was?" She challenges. He stops, sighs. And then sits on a chair. "Your name. What does it mean?" "What?" "Me, I chose my name. A promise of sorts. Never cruel, never cowardly. Never giving up or giving in. A promise," he repeats. "Your name. Ai. Sadness. Why?" "I chose it," she replied simply. "The person who gave me the name - the professor - he'd wanted to make it to mean love. But I don't think..." She huffs, looks down, mulling on what to say. And then: "I'm a criminal." She looks at him, gauging his reaction. "I've helped in the killing of so many people. Been the cause of their deaths." He smiles wryly. "What?" "Oh, Ai Haibara. Haibara Ai. You've yet to realize lots of things," he says in reply instead. And his eyes were so full of emotions that she had to look away.

-

TWO

Stars/Space

“You and me, time and space.”

He's a madman and a genius, which means - and she knows this by experience through another boy - that he's also a huge idiot. She realizes this fully ten minutes later, after he spoke in technobabble that she could barely comprehend, and then walks out of the door with only a screwdriver in hand. This is their first adventure. It's full of running and solving and speeches against enemies, and at the end of it all, Ai feels exhilarated. She feels the adrenaline. They end up back inside his ship with their back at its doors. She finds herself laughing. "You... you should know... I'm not really... I'm not really a little girl." The man smiles at her. "So what do you say, not-so-little girl?" He wears a bow tie and loves the color blue. Wears glasses too (he tells her earlier he doesn't need them, not really). Loves puzzles, loves mysteries, and takes her along to solve them. "Travel with me?" He asks. "Where?" Of course Ai sees the similarities - "We're in a time travelling spaceship!" He runs around the console like a child, pressing buttons and flipping switches. He stops back in front of her. "Where and when do you think?" - it's just there's a lot of differences too for her to ignore them. "Okay." She nods. "Okay."

-

ONE

Crossover/AU

“Think about that. Impressionable young girl, and then suddenly this man drops out of the sky.”

She meets him - a ridiculous man who's both brilliant and mad and has a penchant for bowties - the day they’d stormed the Organization headquarters. A good explosion would let her die, save her newly acquired friends - family too, sort of - and everything the Organization held dear. But instead of death, there is a grip on her wrist, and a man. "Hello, little girl. No time to explain," he said, "but run." And run they did. He leads her to a blue... phone booth? - she briefly reads the word 'police' atop it (So, a police box, huh?) while he struggles with the key; and then she's dragged inside. Inside, was big. Very big. Impossibly so. Police boxes as big as telephone booths shouldn't be this big inside, right? There are lights and sounds and it's all very odd. The man, who has already let go of her was at the center of the room, pressing knobs and pulling this and that. He stopped to turn and grin at her. "Go on then," the man wearing a bowtie said, "say it." She grinned back. "It's an alternate dimension. A pocket one." The man gaped, and then frowned. "You weren't supposed to say it that way!" he protested. "You were supposed to go," he continued in a higher voice, 'it's bigger on the inside!'" She only laughed in reply. He tells her his name is the Doctor. She tells him her name is Ai Haibara. They look at each other and know they both kinda lied.

-

EPILOGUE

She travelled, for awhile. Germany and Belarus and Egypt and Thailand and Netherlands and Canada and much, much more. She sends postcards to the professor, every once in a while.

She likes the uncertainty of moving. (Or maybe she’d missed the travel, or maybe she just missed him.)

One day, however, while she sat alone at a park in London, the sound of wheezing and groaning, and she knows.

She runs, and finds herself staring at the face of the old man she’d argued with about science and the pull of love at the party she’d accidentally attended. He was standing just outside his TARDIS.

“It’s you,” she said breathlessly. “You’re him.” She laughs in wonder. “You’ve changed.”

He smiles. “Guess I did. But so did you, Ai Haibara - or should I say, Shiho Miyano?”

She smiles.

Once upon a time, she hurts when she hears that name. She feels scared, because one mention of that name might bring destruction to the people she’d held dear. This time, she just feels incredibly thankful. This was her family’s first gift to her: her name. And she’s so glad that finally, she can use it again with nothing burdening her.

“Yes,” she says in reply, “I think Shiho Miyano will do, Doctor.”

-

The pages keep turning, I'll mark off each day with a cross And I'll laugh about all that we've lost Calendar Girl who is lost to the world Stay alive

-

[zodiacal-dust-and-curls]

Meant to Be

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: None that I can think of. Let me know if you see any!

A/N: I hope y’all are ready. This is a little ridiculous, but I had fun writing it. The reader’s character has a name! But her perspective will be in second person and physical description will be vague. (Sorry, I needed a pretty distinct name for this.)

Thank you to @im-justatrashcan for the request and as always a big thank you to my proof-reader and PSM @mollymarymarie

All your life, you’d had the name ‘Ben Jones’ written in black ink on the inside of your wrist. A common place for a soulmark, really. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about it. Including the name.

It was very frustrating, honestly. It had exhausted you since you were thirteen and everyone else started meeting their soulmates left and right, literally. You’d watched both of your best friends, at the ripe old age of 15, turn opposite directions and bump into their soulmates.  From that day forward, their marks had been so beautifully colored and their soulmates never too far away.

But ‘Ben Jones’? That was like finding a needle in a haystack. Your wrist might as well have said ‘John Smith’.  It haunted you.

By the midpoint of senior year, ninety percent of your schoolmates had found their other halves and you were still alone.

Then one day, in early 2012, you noticed something. Your mark no longer said ‘Ben Jones’. It now read ‘Ben Hardy’ and you felt like life was just about to get more complicated.

Ben had always wondered how he’d meet you, the mysterious ‘Cheyenne Williams’. Tattooed on his tricep, destined to be his forever. Just from your name, he could tell you weren’t English.

It excited him. He always wondered where life would take him, and he knew for sure he’d get to travel at least part of the world.

Growing up, he was never too concerned with meeting his soulmate. Lots of his friends met theirs between 13 and 18. But it never seemed to bother him. He knew he’d find you one day. It certainly seemed like it wouldn’t be anywhere near his home.

When he started his career, he worried about you being able to find him. He had to change his name, there was just no way around it. Even if it was just a stage name, it would still be the easiest way to recognize him.

He worried over something else, too. Because of his career choice, he’d need to cover his mark. It felt like he was hiding you from the world. Even though he hadn’t met you, he never wanted you to think he could be ashamed of you. That just wasn’t true. He just didn’t want anyone to lie to him and use your name to hurt either of you. It was hard to explain your motives to someone you still hadn’t met.

You were the only one that noticed the change in your mark. As long as the first word was ‘Ben’ and it was still black, no one else really seemed to care. Which, helped you avoid a lot of trouble, honestly.

You really had to fight the urge to google the new name. The development had you stuck somewhere between worry and wonder. Worry for your soulmate’s safety, could something have happened to him? Wonder for yourself, had anyone else ever had their mark change?

The best course of action was to not call any attention to it. You didn’t want to become a case study. There was absolutely no one that would be helped by that. Well, out of the people you were truly concerned for (yourself and your soulmate), no one would probably be helped.

Years after the change, only your mother and best friend had noticed. It took them months to see any difference at all, and it wasn’t the mark that caught their eye. It was your demeanor. The girl with a slightly bitter heart and too many choices had finally seemed hopeful. It threw each of them for a loop, but they’d each asked as curiosity got the best of them.

One day in 2016, your best friend, Tyler, convinced you to see a movie with her. She seemed really excited about it. She said it was going to restart the X-Men franchise and give rise to a whole new generation of superheroes. With all her excitement about the film, you couldn’t say no.

That’s how you found yourself transfixed on the pouty blond angel only a few minutes into the movie. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but you felt like you’d seen him before. Somewhere. . . But where?

To say that Ben was a little disappointed that he didn’t find you  while shooting his first American film wouldn’t be incorrect. He tried to reassure himself that he’d only seen a small part of the country during pre- and post-production, and there would be plenty more to see later. His career was just starting, really.

There was still plenty of time.

Oh my God. Was that really him? You were so glad that Tyler had run to the restroom immediately after the post-credit scene. You needed to talk yourself out of this. Now.

There was no way your soulmate was an actor. Let alone one that had acted alongside some of your favorites. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna d-

“Chy? You look a little lost there. Are you okay?” Tyler was back. Oh man, this could be really bad.

“I’m fine, Ty.” You smiled at her, storing all your thoughts away to freak out over later. “Let’s go get dinner, yeah? That movie was crazy long.”

With a roll of her eyes, she agreed. “Leave it to my bestie, with the freaky Mark, excuse me, the mutant Mark, to have that look on her face because she’s hungry.”

You just stuck your tongue out at her and promised yourself that you would check his IMDB later for interviews. Maybe life would be interesting after all.

By mid 2018, Ben still hadn’t met you. He felt like he’d traveled a fair bit. Met new and exciting people. But you were the only person he was just dying to meet.

Okay, maybe that had changed for a hot minute in 2017. He was cast to play a living legend. Could you really blame him for wanting to meet Roger Taylor (the drummah from Queen)?

Ben decided you could probably let that slide. It was just one small request on his growing pile of things to ask forgiveness for.

Hopefully, the upcoming press tour would help him out.

Except that he wouldn’t be going on the American leg of the tour (all the boys had agreed that the name was definitely American, more than likely Southern) due to work. Fate, what game were you playing?

Stalking may have been a tad excessive to describe the ferocity with which you watched a certain Mr. Hardy from that fateful day in the movie theater to now.

You’d looked up several of his interviews, especially any that mentioned his mark, or rather lack thereof. He never brought it up on his own and always seemed ready to deflect with some other comment when asked. There was no way he was your soulmate. He clearly was just one of the UnMarked and wasn’t comfortable talking about it.

It hadn’t even shown up in any of the candids or BTS content you’d seen. He just didn’t have one. It was that simple.

That didn’t stop you though. You still managed to see all his projects. The latest one seemed promising. He was set to play Roger Taylor, yes the Roger Taylor your own mother was in love with as a young girl, and they would even have a press tour stop close to your home town.

Ty had, of course, figured everything out that first day and encouraged you to chase it.

(“He could just be a really private person, Chy. What if he covered it up to protect you?

“Right Ty, I’m sure that’s exactly what some English actor that knows nothing about me did.”

Tyler just narrowed her eyes at you, wishing you would regain a little of the hopefulness you’d had back when the change had happened. “I’m right. Just you wait.”

“I certainly will wait, but don’t expect me to hold my breath.”)

So, you and Tyler had made plans to go to the stop. It could be fun, and maybe you’d finally know if she was right.

“Cheyenne Montgomery Williams, get out of the bathroom or you are gonna miss the whole thing. Jeez.” Ty screamed through the door at you. What were you even doing here? He wouldn’t be here and you knew he didn’t have a mark. He’d never confirm that in interviews, but you just knew it.

“First of all, that’s not my name and you know it.” You pushed the door open with enough force to bump Ty back a little and leveled her with a narrowed glare. “Secondly, so what if I missed the whole thing? He isn’t here.”

“Excuse me?” You heard a voice come from your side. “What did you say your name was?”

You looked in the direction of the voice and released Ty from your stare. “I didn’t. She -,” you used your head to gesture to Ty, hands still poised on your hips and stopped. Joe Mazzello was looking at you with a ridiculous amount of glee in his eyes.

Ben’s phone buzzed from beside him. It was late evening in Rome, where he was filming his newest project.

Joey: Oh, Benny Boy. You aren’t going to believe this.

Benny Boy: Believe what?

Joey: On second thought, I’ve decided not to tell you.

          Yet.

          When will you be able to visit me in the states?

Ben just shook his head. He was sure Joe had good motives, but all he wanted to do after this film was go home and sleep for a few days. He missed his bed and his Frankie.

Benny Boy: We talked about this.

                      I’m going to go home for a bit. I can come visit you in December.

Joey: That’s so far awayyyyy.

           But I shall wait for you.

           Until then, Jonesy.

JM: Are you ready?

The CW: Nope.

JM: Perfect. It’s showtime.

You had just pulled up to the shop Joe had been bothering you about. The man loved donuts and apparently these were the best in Dallas. It was a bit too far from your hometown for you to be overly familiar with the area, but you allowed Joe his indulgences.

It was weird to think that you got a celebrity’s phone number. Much less for such innocent reasons. He really did just want to check on you and figure out who you were before he introduced you to Ben. There was a good chance Joe was more nervous than you were.

“Mate, why am I filming you eat this donut?” It was the one question Ben felt Joe could actually answer. It wasn’t the only question he had, just the only one he thought he could get an answer to.

“It’s going to be transcendent.” Joe fixed his gaze on the prize in his hand, which was possibly the shiniest donut Ben had ever seen. “ Just shut up and point the camera at my face, Jonesy.”

“Really, Joe? Is that anyway to treat your friend?” Ben could have sworn he’d heard that voice before. It sounded like home, but with a drawl.

“Really, Joe? Is that anyway to treat your friend?” You smiled at Joe over the blond head in front of him.

“You know what, Chy? I think it is.” He couldn’t help but grin back at you. “Besides, this one,” he gestured to the man seated in front of him, “has kept the both of us waiting long enough. Don’t you think?”

It seemed like it took him an eternity to turn around and face you. But when he did, you couldn’t look away. Those eyes, the same ones you’d seen all those years ago projected in front of you, were even more breathtaking in person. The mouth that you’d watched form countless words in dozens of interviews, was right there and you waited for it to move.

“I think you’re absolutely right, Joey.” But you couldn’t tear your gaze from Ben. He was here. He was real. It was finally time to see if Ty was right.

“Cheyenne?” He breathed out with a sense of wonder, as if trying your name for the first time.

“Cheyenne?” Ben couldn’t believe this was what Joe had been hiding from him for 2 months. It was you. He found you, the only thing that was still missing from his life.

“It’s very nice to finally meet you, Ben.” Your voice was like music to his ears, especially when you said his name. He didn’t think he could ever get tired of the sound.

He had honestly never tried to imagine you, and he’s very glad he didn’t. Whatever he would have dreamed up wouldn’t have been as good as what was standing in front of him now.

Hesitantly, Ben stepped toward this astonishing woman that was meant to be his. Joe was basically forgotten behind him as Ben moved in to hug you.

The next thing you knew the two of you were moving towards each other. You reached out and hooked your right forearm behind his left shoulder and pulled Ben to you.

Distantly, you could hear Joe cheering. Two of his new favorite people were finally together. First contact had been made. It was finally time to see if Ty and Joe were both right or if they’d just been feeding you false hope all these years (and months).

But he didn’t intervene immediately. Joe let the two of you lose yourselves in the embrace. You were grateful for that. After 20+ years of waiting, at times not so patiently, you felt like you’d finally found your home.

“Okay, lovebirds. You don’t have to completely disentangle, but there’s something I gotta see.” Ah, Joe. He’d waited as long as he possibly could. But Ben supposed he was owed this. To be the first to see his colored Mark.

Ben felt a little wistful for not taking a minute to admire it in the mirror this morning. He wished he would have known that he’d never see the familiar black script on his skin again. It had been replaced with some vibrant color. He was sure of it, and the possibilities of the new discovery left him a little giddy.

Slowly, Ben pulled you to his right and twisted his left arm forward. Sure enough, there in a jeweled red was the name he’d been looking at all his life. But now he had new hope attached to it.

Joe was possibly the most impatient person you knew at this moment. All you wanted to do was hang on to Ben a little longer. You weren’t ready for reality to come crashing down on you.

Ben slowly pulled you to your left and started to twist his arm.

You decided it was time to take the plunge and glanced down at your right wrist. There in a striking red was his name.

The sight brought tears to your eyes. You thought this day would never come. You thought that Fate had been playing a cruel trick on your whole life. But here it was. Living proof.

“Oh. love. Don’t cry.” Ben heard a sniffle come from your  direction. He paused his celebrating to take care of his soulmate. He really could get used to that, his soulmate. “What’s wrong?”

“I just,” you were still fighting tears in the little shop, “I just never thought this day would actually come.”

To hear that broke Ben’s heart. He had always justified his actions to himself (hiding his mark, deflecting in interviews, letting Roger Taylor take your spot as the #1 person he wanted to meet) and now it was time to justify them to you.

“Let’s get out of here, yeah?” Ben rested his forehead against your own. “We can go talk somewhere private.” His voice had softened and taken on a concerned undertone.

“That sounds good. Let’s go.” You waved towards Joe and blew him a kiss. You could see the excitement on his face for the both of you. He was a good friend, truly. You’d have to find a way to thank him for putting the two of you together.

Ben was so relieved that you took him to a park towards the outskirts of the big city. He preferred to think and talk while moving, It helped him focus.

“So I’m sure I owe you some explanations.” He began. He made sure to loop your arm with his not wanting you to get too far away or for his voice to get so loud that passers-by would hear your conversation.

“Yeah, just two really.” He was shocked that you agreed with him. Most of the soulmates he’d seen were so instantly in love, he wasn’t ready for any push back.

“Which one would you like first, love?” If there were two you wanted now, he wanted to be sure they were the ones you wanted and not the ones he thought were most important.

“Why did my Mark change?” That . . . may have stopped him in his tracks a little.

“Your Mark . . .changed?” He was a little confused. He’d never heard of Marks changing.

“Yeah. One day it said ‘Ben Jones’ and the next it said ‘Ben Hardy’. I always worried that something bad happened.” You looked up at him and back down quickly before admitting the next bit. “I may have googled you after X-Men came out and found out that it’s just your stage name.”

Ben wracked his brain for an answer to that one. “I don’t know about that one, but we can figure it out together.” He smiled at you.

“The next one is why haven’t you admitted to having a Mark?” There it was. His biggest fear to have to explain to you. Of course, you would want to know. It probably would have gotten you together faster if he’d just made it public information.

Ben stopped and pulled you closer to him with a hand on either side of your face.

“That was the hardest decision I’d ever had to make.” He looked so sad as he met your eyes. “I wanted to protect you, and myself. I wanted this life and career. I made this choice. You didn’t.”

“Are you joking?” You blinked, a little dumbfounded. “I am never going to hear the end of this from Ty.” You shook your head and grabbed his wrists to pull his hands away from your face.

“Let’s see it then.” You fully met his eyes, a new determination in your own.

“Well, alright.” Ben gave you a cocky smile and  turned around to pull his sleeve so that you could see your own name in a startling blood red on his skin. “What do you think?”

Before you could respond, you reached out and ran your hand from his elbow to his shoulder following the path your name made. “It’s incredible.”

Ben had just watched your face and taken in the quiet astonishment that played across it. He could never have guessed that you really thought this day would never come.

Quickly, he fixed his shirt sleeve and turned back to face you. “Can I see yours?” He asked quietly.

You extended your wrist out towards Ben and he took it carefully, almost as if you would break. He brought himself around to stand next to her so that he could read his own name appropriately.

“I can’t believe it’s really there.” He took in the wine red stain on your wrist that was his name and rubbed the pad of his thumb delicately along it. “Ben Hardy. Who would’ve thought that it would change to my stage name?” He asked mostly to himself.

“I certainly didn’t, but I’m so glad it did.” You placed your hand on top of where his thumb was tracing your Mark and gave him a genuine smile. The one you got in return was absolutely blinding.

“I guess Fate decided that we were meant to be.”

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! See y’all sometime next week. I’m going to go be murdered by these two tests. Have a good day, lovelies!

Taglist: @rogers-wristbands @deakydeckme

[a-cai-jpg]

this is a very stilted post.

I have a collection of songs that make me cry.

I'm not in the habit of playing them very often. I don't even save them in my YouTube favorites, or my wormhole of a Spotify account. I kind of leave it up to fate for the familiar melody and lyrics to find me again, and on days where I feel especially brave, I'll queue it up on a drive. But only on a drive.

I watched a variety show about songwriters a few months back, and one of my favorite contestants said something along the lines of, "I think everyone has a theme that they just can't touch."

Sometimes, it's because the pain is still too raw. Sometimes, it's because we're too fearful to truly reckon with the sorrow, unwilling to drink it in, let it roll around in our mouths as the bitter flavor penetrates our tongue, and feel it burn on the way down.

I don't listen to the songs often because I'm afraid I'll become desensitized, that the most humane and most compassionate part of me will become numb.

But also because I'm not in the business of seeking out pain.

I used to be obsessed with tragedy, chasing it with a sort of masochistic relish because I thought you could never be as human as you were when you cried. It's kind of like why people really like those sad, touching Thai commercials that make you bawl your eyes out without fail every time.

But as I grew older, I realized there really is something that I can't touch. Sometimes, I tongue the edges of it, prodding with caution, but only on very, very rare occasions do I peel away the protective layer. There are some things I can't watch, can't listen to too closely, or else I'll feel myself unravel around the edges.

And not gonna lie, but now is not a time I'm willing to tug at the ends of the thread. So instead, I'll let a past me do that.

When I was a sophomore in university, I submitted a monologue for the annual Asian cultural show. It was submitted anonymously, because at the time, it wasn't something I was ready to talk about.

(it still isn't, but i have gotten more practice talking about it in the years that have elapsed.)

See, what had happened was, I was watching Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo (disappointment of my life, sorry the Chinese version is better even though the Korean cast is bEaUtIfUl), and suddenly, I had a mini-panic attack about death.

It was the dumbest thing. I was watching Park Soondeok try to woo Wang Eun, and the silly girl--bless her heart--hunted a whole bear to express her love for him. I remember the scene had startled me, because she popped on screen with a bear skin covering her body. And I was like, "Uh that's like, a lot of bad karma right."

And I don't really know how karma works, but I suddenly remembered something that my grandmother had said a long time ago. She said that she was a sinner, because she's "killed" so much for our family.

In Chinese, the words she used were 杀生, which literally means "kill life" but generally, animal life.

She said it because she is the main chef of our family. Whenever she visited China, our family would go through a bit of crisis because that meant either my grandfather cooked or my mom's boyfriend cooked.

Once, my grandfather served me Palmier cookies and the same fried rice we'd eaten for a week for dinner. Often, my mom's boyfriend chopped up carrots and celery to dip with ranch for dinner.

It was great.

(no, but our family barely functioned when my grandmother was gone. those six months would be us sitting silently around the dinner table, daring each other to be the first to try a dish.)

Weirdly, that little thing she said stuck with me. And in that moment, sophomore year of college, sitting in my top bunk watching Scarlet Heart Ryeo, I panicked.

I can't really dissect why I panicked. But the result was this ridiculous plan that I had to stop eating meat for the rest of my life to collect all the good karma for my grandmother.

(yeah, so that didn't last because I literally got sausages that weekend cus hello, continental breakfast.)

It wasn't that I never thought about death or my family members dying before then. In the second grade, I read a story about the friendship between a squirrel and a leaf, and cried and cried and cried when the story ended and the leaf died, not because the leaf died but because the leaf promised to be reborn, and would be reborn at the turn of the year, but humans wouldn't be.

But for some reason, all of the separate moments of panic and fear dispersed over a decade culminated in that moment, as I watched Soodeok pull the bearskin off of her head, and I started crying so hard I couldn't breathe.

So I wrote a monologue. The original draft was very, very long and very, very detailed, and I probably went through half a box of tissues writing it. I eventually cut it down and didn't save the first copy because I never wanted to read it again.

The theme of the monologue comes up every time I talk about my Chinese American identity. It comes up in personal statements, in creative narratives, in discussion groups, and in the Facebook likes I dish out whenever I see a relevant Subtle Asian Traits post. It's the sense of biculturalism and the accompanying endeavor to somehow reconcile my reality with that of my immigrant parents and grandparents. It's the weary acceptance that ultimately, there may be no reconciliation, and all that's left is regret.

Whenever someone asks me what my favorite food is, I would say spring onion noodles. But this is the funny part--I will never order them in a restaurant. Some time in middle school, I went on a family trip with my extended relatives in China. Every time we stopped to eat, my aunt would order me a bowl of spring onion noodles because she knew I loved it so much, and every time, I would make a face and say, "Grandma does it better."

See, I don't know if she actually does. I just knew I liked hers more.

After my grandmother returned to China, I started making spring onion noodles myself, because it tasted more like home even if I never got it right.

I also really like dumplings. My grandma makes the best dumplings, but I'm afraid to ask her to make them, because the last time I did, they were too salty. Now, I'm afraid to ask her to make spring onion noodles too, because maybe my memories tasted better than the real thing.

But the real, real reason I'm scared is that I'm scared she's getting old. I'm scared her tastebuds are not the same as they were when she lived in Monterey Park, cooking in our second floor kitchen.

In my senior year of college, I called my grandmother for the first time on my own. The moment I heard her voice, staticky over the long distance call, I started crying, and it was stupid because I had to pretend I wasn't crying and I was trying to talk normally and it was awful because it was the kind where your voice came in hiccupy stutters, and she definitely knew I was crying because she kept asking, "Why did you call? What's wrong?" while acting casual, for my sake.

When I was in the eighth grade, I was walking a friend's German Shepherd that ended up dragging me across the pavement in the park. It's a story I tell a lot, because it is truly hilarious in hindsight, but the ending goes like this:

I go home crying, because my glasses broke and I have cuts on the back of my left hand and down my face. I take a bath, something I grew out of doing years ago, and my grandmother doesn't reprimand me. She sits next to me and speaks in that vaguely disapproving voice of her, the tone of so many old Asian ladies, and tells me that life is hard and you will meet people that you don't get along with, but you just have to suck it up. And I start crying harder, because she cared.

That day, she also followed me from the front door of our house to my mom's master bathroom, asking, "What's wrong?"

We talk a lot about the Chinese zodiac in our household, more when my grandmother and grandfather still lived with us, but my aunt brought it up a few days ago. In the Chinese zodiac, the ox and the sheep are foils to each other--me and my grandmother. When I was little, I would say, "Ugh, this is why we fight so often." A few days ago, my mom said, "That's why you and grandma never got along," and I stayed silent.

I sometimes tell people that my grandmother is more like my mother figure, and my mom is more like an older sister. And my mom hates it. But, it's because everything that others associate with an Asian mom, I associate with my grandmother. All the memes about immigrant mother bringing their children peeled and cut fruit are about my grandmother, fending off my complaints about having to eat apples every single day, and stubbornly bringing me sliced apples and pears. All the stories about immigrant parents expressing their love through the words "Come eat. Food is ready," is my grandmother who singlehandedly kept her family together through sheer will and a kitchen stove.

Sometimes, when I'm brave enough to talk to people about how I feel about her, I would say that I would gladly give her half of the rest of my life, just so we can leave together. I'm scared her life would be less than perfect, and I wish I made money earlier so I can take her to Cambridge and Rome, but I'm also scared that I'm selfish and weak and unable to give her what she really wants.

Anyways.

Four tissues later, here's the monologue:

I am obsessed with time.

I am obsessed with time, but I hate the way the second hand moves relentlessly in an endless loop on the face of an old clock. I am obsessed with time, but I hate the way the mention of it tightens my throat, squeezing until the pressure travels to my heart and lungs, and finally settling somewhere deep in my gut.

I was told that time is linear. The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Chaos and disorder grow infinitely—there is no going back.

When I was little and time was but a tiny grain of sand in a large, foreboding hourglass, I believed in guardian angels. They were the ones who caught me tumbling from a swing, having flown too high on my too weak wings. They were the ones who waited outside the gates of my elementary school—a familiar face of comfort floating amidst a crowd of foreign visages. They were the ones who promised me plates and plates of hand-wrapped dumplings, and most importantly, they were the only ones who could cook spring onion noodles with a sunny side up egg the way I liked it, and no restaurant could ever hope to get the taste just the same.

But also, when I was little, I believed that guardian angels existed outside of time. They were immortal, they gave me life. But as the number of years they conferred to me increased, they seemed to become more and more human.

Sometimes, I’d blink, and for a terrifying moment, I’d catch glimpse of an elderly couple, backs hunched and hair splattered with grey, standing in my kitchen.

This is me, a girl obsessed with time. I had the liberty of being born and raised in the United States. My Chinese immigrant parents labored long days at work, and my grandparents were given the roles as my primary caretakers.

My grandfather was the quiet one, a retired electrical engineer who made it his mission to somehow teach me to love mathematics. My grandmother was the loud one, previously a librarian—the irony, I know—who never went to college but could calculate prices of groceries faster than I could pull out a calculator. I grew up dancing around their peculiar dynamic, seesawing back and forth between going ant-watching with my grandfather as I recited the Chinese timestables and trying to finish too many platters of food my grandmother piled in front of me as she told me stories of life back in China—in the good old days.

Growing up in California, it was inevitable that I saw the United States as home to both me and my family. It was where I had spent nearly two decades of my life—and where my mother, grandmother, and grandfather had spent nearly two decades of their lives.

And yet, two decades was not nearly enough time. Space could not be reconciled, and time was rendered obsolete.

Home, for them, was not our little town in the suburbs of LA. When my father passed away, my mother said, “We don’t have enough money to bring him home.” She’d said it carelessly in front of me, perhaps thinking 6-year-old me wouldn’t notice, let alone understand. But 6-year-old me did. Home, I realized, for them wasn’t home for me.

The thought was terrifying. I realized that there will come a time, when I’d return home, and it wouldn’t be the same place my mother, my grandmother, and my grandfather returned to.

I began to play with the idea of condensing time and space. How great it would be, if home was simultaneously California and China. Time differences, traveling time, the Pacific Ocean would be utterly abolished, and our hearts would return home together.

But time flew by and the pile of sand grains at the bottom of the hourglass grew without my noticing. I hadn’t yet the chance to tell my grandparents about my meditation on time and space, and suddenly, my grandfather decided to return home. Time had seemed to warp, fastforwarding the years I’d taken for granted, and now refusing to slow down.

Here’s the thing—I do not wish to be selfish. I want my family to be happy—to return home—but I am terrified that my own fragile notion of home will shatter in return.

Because the reality is, home isn’t physical space. Home is, in all truthfulness, time. Time I’d spent with my family, and the years I have left to spend with them.

I’d let time slip through my fingers as I tried to come up with this theory of “home.” I’d tried to condense “home” into a condominium, apartment D, a large peach tree shading the backyard. Yet now, the tree has been cut down, and my mother speaks of moving to a city forty minutes away. What then, I ask myself, is home?

Home is the promises I’d made to my grandparents—promises I’m no longer sure I can keep because I cannot cover large enough distances with so little time. Home is the way I could never tell them “I love you,” and the regret that builds in my heart as I realize that home is a ticking time bomb that threatens to throw the world into chaos. Entropy increases. Things fall apart.

In a little bit, home will be too many miles away, too many hours away, for me to return to. Home will be in a foreign city surrounded by a peculiar amalgamation of unfamiliar modernity and history she’d lived through. Home will be on the opposite shore of an ocean I cannot swim across, with no one to cook spring onion noodles for.

I am a girl obsessed with time. I’d been blessed with a lot of time, and yet, I’d tossed it all out of the window of my second story bedroom. I am a girl obsessed with time, and I’d trade in my soul for it to reverse, so I can make home a little more concrete, a little more happy, a little more lasting. I am a girl obsessed with time, and when I wake up 2:30 in the morning, I think I can see the sands rushing down the chute of the hourglass, and the sight of it tears me apart.

I am a girl obsessed with time, and I would like to apologize to my beloved mother, grandmother, and grandfather for taking so much of it for granted. If I had another run at these eighteen years, I only hope to reach this conclusion sooner and fulfill my promises.

Dear grandma and grandpa,

I am a girl obsessed with time. Every day, I pray to God to give you a little more. How had the time flown by so quickly? Was yesterday not the day you brought me on the airplane for the first time? I can still taste the juice of the grapes a stranger had given us—snacks for the little girl—in the back of my tongue. Yet now I’m no longer the toddler you held in your arms. Grandma and grandpa, time is rushing by on a train I cannot seem to catch. Will you forgive me for reaching our home a little too late?

Love.

(i included my favorite part in a creative narrative project i did for a class in college. if you want to hear it in my voice: here.) (pls don’t click for the sake of my voice bc i sound like a literal duck. click for my grandparents wandering around hangzhou.) (also, if it is different its cus i tried to fit it in somehow with a longer poem i was writing.) (i don’t like poems.)

The reason I wrote this isn't that I wanted to pick at a scab. I heard a song recently, from the same songwriter variety show, that I had blindsided a few months back. I heard it at around 1 am in the morning, and I cried.

Here is the collection of songs:

橘子 by 邓见超

考试考得好不好啊？ how did you do on your test? 有没有拿到大红花 did you get the big red flower? 老师夸我是个乖仔啊 my teacher said i was a good kid 奶奶自己保重圣体吧 grandma, take care of yourself 长大了 出息了 要晓得回家 when you grow older and do big things, remember to come home 别忘了这里的青山和路弯 don't forget the green mountains and windy roads here 记得要带一瓶辣椒在身上 remember to bring with you a bottle of peppers 还时常跟妈妈报平安 and often let your mom know you're doing fine ... 房子旁两棵树都被砍掉了 the two trees by our house have been cut off 墙上还贴着小时候的奖状 my childhood awards are still plastered on the walls 一个字一个字 好像昨天啊 each word, each word, like it was just yesterday 宝贝儿子啊 吃饭了 son, it's time for dinner 再不回家妈妈要教训你了 if you don't come home now, mom's going to be mad 这个淘气的孩子跑去那里玩了 this mischievous kid, where did he go? 找他都找不到人了 i'm looking for him, but i can't find him.

一荤一素 by 毛不易

一张小方桌 有一荤一素 a small, square table with one vegetable and one meat 一个身影从容地忙忙碌碌 a figure good-naturedly bustling about 一双手让这时光有了温度 a pair of hands allowed this time some warmth 太年轻的人 他总是不满足 the one who is too young, he's not satisfied 固执地不愿停下 远行的脚步 stubbornly unwillingly to stop the footsteps traveling far away 望着高高的天走了长长的路 looking at the far, far sky; walking a long, long road 忘了回头看 她有没有哭 he forgot to turn around to see if she's crying 月儿明 风儿轻 >the moon is clear, the wind is light 可是你在敲打我的窗棂 is it you, knocking on my window? 听到这儿你就别担心 now that you've listened till here, please don't worry 其实我过的还可以 actually, i'm doing okay ... 你又可曾来过我的梦里 have you been to my dreams lately? 一定是你来时太小心 you must've been too careful when you came 知道我睡得轻 knowing that i sleep lightly 一定是你来时太小心 you must've been too careful when you came 怕我再想起你 afraid i'll miss you

父亲 by 筷子兄弟

时光时光慢些吧不要再让你变老了 time, time, please slow down. don't let you grow any older 我愿用我一切换你岁月长留<<br>i'm willing to trade everything i have for more years and months for you ... 微不足道的关心收下吧 please accept my inadequate care for you 谢谢你做的一切双手撑起我们的家 thank you for holding up our family with your hands 总是竭尽所有把最好的给我 always doing everything to give me the best ... 我是你的骄傲吗还在为我而担心吗 am i your pride? do you still worry for me? 你牵挂的孩子啊长大啦 the child you think of has grown up now.

时间都去哪了 by 王铮亮 (this is a cover)

时间都去哪儿了 where has all the time gone? 还没好好感受年轻就老了 haven't even truly experienced youth, and i'm already old 生儿养女 一辈子 took care of children my entire lfe 满脑子都是孩子哭了笑了 all i can hear is the cries and laughter of children 时间都去哪儿了 where has all the time gone? 还没好好看看你眼睛就花了 haven't even looked at you carefully yet, and my vision is already blurring

if only... by ozi

如果可以把時間退後 if i can rewind time 別讓命運把妳給帶走 i won't let fate take you away 對妳能說著我最近做些什麼 i want to be able to tell you what i've been doing these days 希望別再錯過 i hope i won't miss it again 如果可以讓我跟她說 if only i can just tell her 願意付出我所有為了 i'm willing to trade everything i have 能換一點時間just to see you again for a little time just to see you again 別再擔心著我 so you don't have to worry about me anymore

[tesruinedmylife]

6 for all your ocs, 25 for any in the dark brotherhood!

This one took me way longer than it should have, i'm sorry! It was a lot of fun though

6. Does your oc have a family of origin? How many members of their FoO are still living? Do they have a good relationship? How much contact does your oc have with their FoO? How in-the-loop is your oc's FoO about your oc being Dragonborn/HoK/Nerevarine?

Isa grew up as the only child in a rather wealthy noble Breton family, yet her youth wasn't the most ideal one, which strongly affected her relationship with her relatives. Her father always acted cold and distant (mostly because he wasn't her biological parent, which she didn't know), her mother was all nervous and angry around her, and they both made her believe that if she didn't fulify their every wish, she would never escape this situation. As one could imagine, after she stole a significant amount of money from them and ran away, their relationship only got worse. The only time she ever spoke with them again was when, chased by the guards, she made her way into their manor and pleaded for their help, which they declined. She was sent to the Imperial Prison and they never heard from her again. Of course, the stories about Oblivion Crisis made their way to the province of High Rock, and at some point they realised the Hero of Kvatch bears the same name as their daughter, but they didn't pay it much attention - they didn't want to.

Livia's situation was a bit more complicated. She spent most of her childhood with her father, priest of Mara, until he got mysteriously murdered and she was taken in by her mother Theodosia, by that time married to a Redguard officer of the Imperial Legion. The girl had a rather good relationship with both him and his son, though she couldn't get really close to them due to Theodosia's way of bringing her up. The only member of her closest family who was still alive when she found herself in Skyrim was her step brother Aurelius, and they reunited in Solitude a few months after the Helgen incident. She was so delighted to see him, to find out that he's not dead after all, that she couldn't stop herself from telling him about everything that occured since they last met - including the fact that she found out she was the Dragonborn.

Xander and Anuyan, who spent first few years of their lives drastically different, were both adopted by a certain Nord mage, Solveig the Storm-Brought. She is very much alive (and not planning to die anytime soon), and kept quite a good contact with her sons until they ended up in the Imperial Prison. Due to the rather extreme circumstances in their lives, the family was separated for a good amount of time, until Anyuan accidentally met Xander a few years after the Oblivion Crisis. They then traveled back to their family home and reunited with Solveig, and, being the Champion of Cyrodiil and the Nerevarine, they had many stories to tell.

Elenine's closest family, on the other hand, is all good and alive. It consists of her mother and father, both well respected Sapiarchs, and her two sisters, one happily married and the other one still to young to think about her future. Since her parents couldn't provide her a place in the college as an acolyte and had a huge fight which resulted in her going on a journey to the main continent to "work independently" as she put it, their relationship got colder, but she still wrote to them regularily and received some money in exchange. She kept closer contact with her older sister, and letters to her described what was going on in Elenine's life at the moment in much more detail. As she got robbed, caught up in the Imperial ambush and thrown into the middle of the mess the province of Skyrim was, she could no longer message her family as often as she did before. The first letter she wrote to her sister some time after she found out she was the Dragonborn, and informed her about the fact - but only her. At that point she already heard much about Thalmor's wrongdoings, and, since her parents had ties to the organisation because of their high status, she stopped trusting them with anything altogheter, leave alone a sensitive information like this.

25. If your oc is part of one of the more morally questionable or outright evil factions, how do they justify it to themselves? Do they still consider themselves as morally good? How well known is their affiliation to these groups? Do they have separate personas (e.g. Dragonborn to some people, Listener to others?) Do their family/friends know? If they have seperate personas, how do they keep their less than righteous activities secret?

The deal with Isa is that with every bad thing she did in her life, her views on morality became... less and less strict. Starting on stealing from her parents, through robbing men with the Sirens gang, then killing her girlfriend's murderer and the man who hired him, ending on her joining a literal guild of assassins... Each crime eventually led to another one, and she found herself doing things she wouldn't think she is capable of - and, with time, she even stopped feeling much remorse for her actions. The Dark Brotherhood gave her a purpose, a family, power, and it made her feel like she was in control of her life - even if at the cost of theoretical "goodness". The situation changed after Lucien's death, though, and she only fulified her duties as the Listener to honor his memory. By joining the Blades and helping Martin she tried to "redeem" herself to some extent, but she never started thinking of herself as morally good. She was still lying, after all, to everyone: not a single person outside of the Dark Brotherhood recognised her as the Listener, and she took very careful steps not to let this information slip (for example, she always visited the Night Mother's statue at night, and sent the coded information about the new contacts through a well-payed messenger).

Livia, on the other hand, joined the Dark Brotherhood because of the influence of her mother, an assassin as well. She was actually raised for it, ever since Theodosia took her in after her father's death - from a young age she trained sneaking, fighting, deceiving... She was made believe that this is the only task in her life, the only reason she was born: to serve Sithis and the Night Mother, to kill in their name, and for the sake of her family, which was tied to them by fate. It was the destiny she was prepared for and she wasn't going to question it. Part of her, the one still left from the childhood spent with her father on praying to Mara and helping the poor, the tiniest part that her mother didn't manage to root out, knew it was no good, but she tried her best to silence it completly. When it comes to her identities, she did separate them, and tried to keep both her occupation as the Listener and the Dragonborn a secret from general public - the second one being obviously harder to hide as soon as a dragon would attack a city and most people would see her absorb its soul., that is. Many people ended up finding out about it, but way less knew about her affiliation to the Dark Brotherhood - honorable mentions go to Marcurio and her brother Aurelius.

[darkmindsthinktwistedthoughts]

Have you heard of the hanahaki disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It ends when the beloved returns their feelings (romantic love only; strong friendship is not enough), or when the victim dies. How about the mc having this condition because she thought that it was a one sided love from her to mitsuhide. Can you make this angsty please because I love to see a desperate mitsuhide

@bat-yo-us It took me a while but I hope this little tale meets your expectations.

Warning: Obviously its angst and death of someone so please read responsibly.

---

If the Princess of Azuchi had beentold that within three months they would have fallen hopelessly in love shewould have laughed. Then again, she also would have thought you were a littlecrazy for saying she was about to time travel thanks to a wormhole. But thiswas the reality of it.

She had not known for sure when ithad happened only that for some twisted reason, she had found herself lostcompletely to the man. It must have happened slowly, creeping up on her untilit had invaded every aspect of her body like ink seeping into water. He hadchanged her in ways he had no idea of and as much as she wished to tell him theopportunity never seemed to come.

He had tried to make himself asabsent as possible of late. The newest addition to his lord’s castle was acharming and energetic female who against his better judgement had become asource of distraction to him. They were so expressive he couldn’t help but bedrawn to her. Teasing her so he could witness her pale skin become tainted bythat crimson blush and enjoy the myriad of emotions clearly visible in thoselarge clear eyes as they looked up at him. She was so warm and bright comparedto his chilled darkness that he had found himself longing for more. As if she wassome sort of bewitching poison to his soul. When was the last time he had allowedhimself to become so distracted by someone? No,it was better to stay away. Time heals all wounds after all.

Except no one informed the sneaky tricksterthat time can also make the heart grow fonder.

---

Nobunaga had sent him on a missionthat would last several weeks if the intel on it was to be believed. He had notmissed the worried expression playing on the Princesses face when she had cometo the gates to see him off. He had told her to not waste her time on someonelike him and to instead focus on someone that could match her. “There is a muchbetter man for you to spend your time worrying about than me Little Mouse.”

Her face dropped and he could seeher bite her lip as she held back the words she was wanting to say. It tookevery ounce of strength he had in him to not wrap her in his arms right then andthere. To tell her that he had found himself wandering late at night around thecastle’s gardens observing the cherry trees beginning to grow their buds in themoonlight and gazing up at the lamplight of her room.

How often he had found his eyesdrift in her direction and followed her every movement without her knowing. Howher voice made his heart tremble in a way that had him curse himself later inhis room for allowing his desire for her to fill his head with foundationlesshopes and dreams. She could never know. He couldn’t let her find out. Thedanger to her would be too real. She deserved a kinder, safer life than any hecould provide. And still, he hoped…

---

She wandered the castle like a ghostlyspectre, worrying both the staff and the warlords. The joy she usually embodiedseemed to be replaced with a soul-sucking void of nothingness. Her feelings itseemed were forever doomed. She could not bring herself to say them to his faceand whenever she came close to it, he expertly avoided the issue and vanished. Am I really so bad that he would hate methis much?

Her nimble fingers moved over thelayers of silk following the line of the needle and thread as she joined thesections of cloth together. Her thoughts drifted as they often did to themissing warlord. He always seemed to look so lonely when she had caughtglimpses of him during times when he thought no one was watching.

Her heart gave a painful thump inher chest. Warm tears fell from her eyes rolling down her cheeks landing insmall drops staining the silk. Her breathing became laboured as she silentlysobbed before it turned into a coughing fit. Her throat felt dry and scratchybut no matter how hard she tried to breathe it felt like the oxygen around herwas being denied entrance to her body. A metallic taste filled her mouth andshe covered her mouth quickly only just avoiding ruining her work as brightfresh blood leaked from her lips with something quite unexpected.

---

His dreams were disturbed thatnight. It was the eve of his return to Azuchi and for some reason, his usuallydreamless sleep was interrupted by a vision of the Princess. She was smilinghappily, running towards him surrounded by warm sunlight and pretty littlewildflowers. It was such a blissful sight he found himself wishing that hewould never wake up. A sudden shift in colour pallet had the dreamworld turn togrey. The Princess was no longer smiling. Her face was contorted in pain andshe was screaming. Screaming on her knees in the middle of what could have beena battlefield running in rivers of blood. He jolted awake aware of how hisclothes were clinging to his sweat-soaked skin.

“Princess!”

He all but ran from the roomgrabbing his prepacked bag thanking his past self for its foresight and rushedto locate his house from the stables attached to the Inn he was staying in.

It was all a dream. Logically heknew this, but he could not settle his heart. His whole body was screaming athim to hurry and he was in no fit state of mind to go against it. He needed tosee her. He had to tell her. Even if she should reject him. He had to tell herthat she had cast a spell on him and he was hers to use as she wished. Nothingshe could ask of him would be too much he knew he would do anything for hersmile.

He rode hard as if to outrun the ill-fatedomen he felt gnawing at his back.

---

Morning light came along with a newday. Another day without him here. Another day feeling so twisted up inside asif someone had taken every nerve in it and tied them in knots. She had no appetitebut faked a smile as she accepted a bowl of soup from Masamune.

“What is it, Lass?”

“It’s nothing.” She looked up fromthe bowl and found his sceptical blue eye looking at her. “Honestly I’veprobably just been overdoing it with work recently. I’m a little tired that’sall.”

The one-eyed dragon didn’t exactlybelieve her excuse but accepted it none the less. Nobunaga had told thePrincess to relax in her room and recover from whatever illness plagued herafter becoming aware from Hideyoshi and the maids tending to her that she hadnot been herself.

Masamune had seen it just as theothers had. The way she looked at the Kitsune. Not one of them had tried to interfere,they only wished for her happiness. Mitsuhide, by contrast, seemed to be theonly one unaware of it. He was usually so observant but when it came to this,he seemed to be totally blind.

The day passed uneventfully in herroom, punctuated only by moments where she had found her mouth filled with palepink petals and an increasingly harder struggle to regain the ability to breathe.

Each time it happened her mind tormentedher with his face. Memories they shared playing on a loop like a haunting movie.Her body twisting in pain as it echoed the throbbing in her heart. It was nouse she had to get out of the castle even if it was only for a short time. Shewanted to have some fresh air. She wanted to escape the confinement she felt…

---

He rode at a steady clip into thecastle courtyard. Dismounting fluidly from the saddle as if he had turned hisbody to liquid and simply melted. It was growing darker by the second astwilight had already brought with it the encroaching shadows of nightfall toreplace the ones from sunset.

Most of the staff were gone except fora few that had some small night duties, tending to fires and makingpreparations for the next day. This meant that his journey to her room was mercifullyuninterrupted. He knocked on the sliding frame but received no reply. Thinkingit to be odd he pushed it open a sliver and found only an empty room. He wasabout to slide it shut again and return to his manor for the night, convincinghimself that this is a sign from above that his foolishness could wait tillmorning. When his yellow eyes fell on what looked to be a trail of flowerpetals that led right up to the door.

Looking up and down the dimlyilluminated hallway he saw a few yards ahead of him more of the same. Somedelicate petals covering the ground as if to call for him to follow.

---

When was it they had opened? She couldn’tremember exactly when they had bloomed only that it seemed like magic when ithappened. One day nothing then the landscape transformed in pale pinks andwhites as the cherry blossoms covered the trees.

Each step she took felt like astruggle, every part of her body felt like it was begging for her to stop, butshe was determined to see those flowers close up. A couple of steps more andshe stumbled. The coughing from earlier gave way to full-blown contorted vomitingas a stream of petals and flowers flowed from her mouth, stained in that samefresh scarlet she had begun to be all too familiar with.

Crouching down her legs finally gaveout. Her mind was racing with thoughts of him and how she would have liked tohave seen him one last time. How she never did get a chance to tell him sheloved him. To tell him that he didn’t have to be alone.

---

The trail led him to the gardens. Ofcourse, she would come out here. She loved flowers and whenever she had a sparemoment or was feeling down, she could be found here like a mythical creaturehappily gazing at the plants. The relief he felt at discovering her locationwas short lived.

No longer a few clumps or thinscattering of petals, this was a carpet of blossoms. It could have been seen bysome as beautiful had it not been for the morbid touch that glistened in the fadinglight outside.

His body moved as if possessed,following the trail before him as if he were walking a horrific red carpet. Thepale pink was stained crimson the further he went and his heart lurched in hischest begging him not to continue but also spurring him onwards at the sametime.

As the pathway curved, he found the one he had beensearching for. His eyes went wide as he took in her crumpled figure on thegravel and he was running to her side in an instant. Dragging her limp body upto him cradling her head on his lap brushing her hair from her face.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream but instead, he foundhimself unable to do either. She was so cold. The warmth with which she hadglowed had left her. Those clear expressive eyes clouded over and frozen inplace. This was his nightmare. How had this happened? It made no sense. She wasgone. He couldn’t tell her he had tried to keep her away because he was a weakman full of fear. Fear that she would only be hurt by trying to be at his side.How he had wished for her to chose him despite all that. How she had gifted himone thing he never thought he would be allowed to have, Hope.

Something in him at that moment snapped. He dug his kneesfurther into the gravel beneath them clinging on to her body, crushing itagainst his. The tears he never shed despite the losses he had suffered in hislife tumbled from his eyes blurring his vision of her in his arms. That nightthe residents of the castle and its town heard the wailing mournful cry of akitsune.

---

[bazwillendinflames]

Here I Am, Pry Me Open (Norkus)

When Markus visits Washington, leaving North behind as his second-in-command, she finds herself desperate for her best friend to return. Finding herself comforted by an old human story of connection, she waits for him to return. Or, the story of the red string of fate, as shown by a pining North desperate to pull Markus back to her.

Read on Ao3 

North can’t stand human cliches. She can’t stand most humans at all, truthfully, but something about their little collection of sayings irk her. They’re misleadingly optimistic phrases for a species that have brought nothing but destruction and hate for as long as she can remember. (And there’s so much more she can’t but if she could, North knows she’d be furious about that too.)

But, there’s one story, one little saying, that she likes a little. The red string of fate. It’s old and almost sweet (as if she’d use the word sweet ) and a strange comfort as she watches Markus walk away out the window of a dusty church. He turns for a moment, finds her somehow, smiles one last time and North could have swore she felt a tug on an invisible string linking them together.

Despite all the shit she’ll get for it later, she smiles back at him, waves goodbye, ignoring the urge to pull him back to her on string no one else could see.

Androids didn’t sleep - they either go on standby mode or recharge mode - neither are needed every night the way humans rest. But, on the first night Markus spends travelling to Washington, North is restless.

She kept imagining an endless cord of red unravelling between them as he got further and further away; it was the furthurest they had ever been apart before.

It was a big step for deviants - Markus was allowed in the human section of a plane for one - the Washington negotiations were key if they wanted to follow up on the equality they had fought for nation wide.

Despite this, there was a selfish part of North that wanted Markus to stay. Washington was unfamiliar territory. He was smart and diplomatic (and calm : something she’d always be jealous of) but she couldn’t bring herself to trust the human politicians to look past their prejudices to see that.

Even with so much talk of peace, North couldn’t help but worry he was flying into a trap. With him hundreds of miles away, she couldn’t have his back like she usually did.

North pulled on the invisible string on her fingertip, hoping it wouldn’t snap in the ever-growing space between them.

    “It has been confirmed that deviant leader, a rare RK-200 model by the name of Markus, has arrived in Washington earlier this morning. With the situation in Detroit still tense, the negotiations between human and deviant representatives are more important than ever. Now, to our Washington correspondent.”

North crossed her arms, watching the blurry footage of Markus being escorted from the airport whilst journalists crowded around shouting questions.

“North?”

Ignoring the obvious concern in Josh’s voice, she frowned at the tablet. “He looks like a right idiot in that outfit. I mean, seriously, a suit?”

“He probably felt like it would help him fit in with the humans,” Simon replied from behind her.

“Markus shouldn’t have to fit in. His long grey coat would work better. Makes him look like a real rebel.”

“I think you’re the rebel in your relationship.”   

She frowned at the implications of the word relationship (it was, god forbid the curse of human cliches, complicated).

“North, you’ve been watching the news all morning. The talks don’t even start till tomorrow.” Josh caught Simon’s eye and they exchanged some kind of worried look, before he continued, “it’s helping you.”

“I’m just keeping an eye on things.”

“Markus put in charge of operations,” Josh added, never one to back down from anything.

“I can multitask.”

“You can’t keep an eye on the news and Jericho.”

Josh made a grab for the tablet. “Come help us sort out supplies.”

“Please,” Simon added.

“What kind of supplies?”

“Medical.”

“Boring.” Still North got up to follow them. “But, I’m checking the news again in an hour.”

They walked through the Church together, back to the friendly teasing she was used to.

The red string of fate didn’t always have to be romantic. North imagined a trio of strings tangled in the space between the three of them: companions for life. She also imagined two more strings connected to Markus in Washington, maybe not as tight or well monitored. But, always present if you knew where to look.

    The string of fate was red because it was human story. It was supposed to represent a heart string. By that logic, for androids it should be a blue string, for blue blood connecting blue hearts.

But North loved red. It was the colour of flames burning elastic underwear, the colour of broken code, the colour of artificial blush she never worked out how to turn off that only Markus’ soft words sparked.

So, their strong of fate was red. And now it was like an endless loop that stretched to Washington and back, threading back through the place on the tablet where Markus’ heart was.

For most of the androids at Jericho (despite the gossip), the meeting between Markus and North could be seen as a weekly update about their cause. For those who could visual the red link between them, it was clearly more.

“I want to have at least one signed treaty before I come back,” Markus continued, “I need something solid to prove we are moving forward.”

“How long do you think that will take?”

“A while. Washington isn’t as forward thinking as they wanted us to believe. They still look at me like I’m some kind of liberated toaster.” Markus laughed at his own joke. “But, there’s some progress. As long as they don’t think it’ll cost too much, we might come out with something.”

“If anyone can convince them, it’s you.”

There was a moment before he replied, the connection was flickering in and out.

“I hope so.” He leaves forward. “How are you?”

“Jericho is still running. We’ve been organising the new medical unit-“

“No, I asked about you . Obviously I care about Jericho. But I care about you too, North. So, tell me how you are, all the little things.”

“Okay, I feel…” feeling was part of being deviant but it wasn’t easy to talk about, usually she just showed him, “overworked. I’ve been managing the Jericho emails and it gave me a lag when I logged in. I don’t get how you do it.”

“Well, I type in the password-“

North laughed, for the first time since Markus had left. “Okay, idiot.”

He was smiling at her.

No, more like… he was looking at her like was something precious. She was the source of his smile, that much North was certain of.

“What?”

“Nothing, the screen froze that’s all.”

“Damnit, stupid computer. Was I pulling a stupid face?”

“No, you just looked really happy for a moment. It was-” Markus shook his head, looking at her in the insufferable fond way, “anyway, you said you were feeling overworked?”

They kept talking until the signal finally died and left North staring at a black screen.

The endless string of fate knitting them together was stretched out again and when she put her hand to her chest, she could have sworn she felt it tugging on her heart.

    Androids didn’t sleep but whenever North recharged, she never felt safe to do so unless she was with someone to watch over her. She hadn’t realised how used to that person being Markus she had gotten until his trip.

Despite the fact North’s energy levels were in the red, she was still yet to recharge. Instead, she paced around Markus’ office, trying her best to avoid looking at the plush airchair she usually recharged herself on. The door may be locked but North couldn’t quite bring herself to sit and put herself into recharge mode.

It was embarrassing to admit that the reason she had always gone to Markus’ office was because he made her feel safe . He made everyone feel safe, which was why so many androids looked up to him.

But, sometimes it seemed like he had a special kind of safety he reserved for her. The kind of kinship from bringing freedom to their people side by side, now carried over to her recharging in his office, knowing he’d never leave her there vulnerable and alone.

Androids didn’t sleep but they dreamt (maybe just deviants dreamt) and when North she dreamt, it was with Markus watching over her, like an angel.

Now, as she put herself on recharge mode without him, it felt like she was missing a key part in her routine.

(Truthfully, she was missing him.)

    “Confirmation that congress are drawing up an agreement with the androids, as represented by deviant leader Markus, suggests the previous silence towards policy about androids may be broken. President Warren is still yet to make any press statements about the deviants since they revolted in 2038 but it seems like congress's plans suggests a change in policy. Speculation on exactly what rights deviants will be granted is yet to be confirmed. Back to you Josh.”

“I knew he could do it.”

“It seems like diplomacy works after all,” Josh replied, a little slyly.

Ignoring his jab, North turned her attention back to the news.

“I need something solid to prove we are moving forward.”

North wasn’t going to admit it, but part of her excitement was more selfish than about progress for the deviants cause. If Markus could make a deal, pass an act, make his mark, he’d come back to Detroit victorious.

He’d come back to her, shorten the stretch of string connecting them.

He’d come back to her and she’d feel safe again.

    Human congress took long enough to pass acts as it was but the human protest at anything to do with android rights slowed it down further. (How Josh could justify any kind of peace with people who had defended their imprisonment for over a decade was a mystery to her. Who were petitioning to get Markus kicked out of Washington. North had woken up due to the cruelty of a single human man. She hadn’t closed her eyes since.)

Markus, to his credit, never shouted back. He looked almost regal, with his calm walking, head held high. There was something admirable about it really, North would have snapped after a single comment and blown something up. (Exactly why she was left behind.)

“He kinda looks like a rock star,” Simon muttered, glancing to check Josh hadn’t heard. (If she and Markus were complicated, Simon and Josh were just idiots. If it wasn’t so fun to tease them, she’d intervene.)

“He looks better than that,” North replies. Simon looked up and they shared a brief nod of understanding. Markus was… well there was something about him that meant they weren’t alone in thinking of him as some kind of hero. Heroes were always attractive to people. North would hate that kind of attention, although she was aware some of the androids must look at her in the same way.

Most of Jericho looked at Markus like he was made of gold or something. And, somehow, he chose her to intertwine the string connecting their artificial hearts. If she looked at him like he was golden, Markus looked at her like she was equally precious. (Precious was different to delicate. She appreciated that.)

    Another month crawled past and North started to feel more confident in her temporary position as Jericho’s leader. She called Markus for advice weekly (although the topic always wandered away from that.) Still, she was happy to return to second-in-command as soon as Markus had sent the message he was coming back. It was exclusive - a whole three days before the news ran headlines on the Android Work Visa Act - but her joy at progress was overshadowed greatly by the news that Markus was booking a flight back to Detroit.

(That was how much she liked him. Before, she was willing to die for their cause. Now, she wanted to survive for a life with Markus.)

She crowded in the projector room, between Josh and Simon, watching the live press coverage.

“Markus, Markus!” They yelled eagerly.

“Total rockstar,” Simon muttered. She elbowed him.

“Will this act take work away from humans?”

“Not at all. There’s been a huge need for people to take up the roles left unoccupied since we got our freedom. Now, we can work together to keep our cities clean and supported.”

North grinned; he was wearing the long grey coat, the back of it flying in the wind like the rebel leader he was.

    “You’ve done your hair.”

“Shut up Simon.”

North pushed back a loose curl behind her ear, suddenly self conscious. She may have twisted her hair back into a carefully styled bun for Markus’ return but she had hoped no one would actually notice. It would probably only further Jericho’s gossip circles.

Markus’ flight had landed an hour ago and she was with the office door open. It made her feel like some kind of housewife.

“No, it’s nice.”

“Stop pulling that face.”

“You’re not even looking at me.”

She shut off the tablet and turned around. Simon may be wearing a neutral smile now but she could sense the smugness underneath. (And after she hadn’t mentioned that Josh wore his sweater in last week's meeting. Traiter.)

“Lucy wanted your help. She’s in the conference room.”

“We only use that for emergency meetings.” North pulled on her jacket. “Is it an emergency?”

Simon shrugged. “She just messaged me for your help. You know you’re Lucy’s favourite, right?”

“As I should be.”

    The conference room was in the basement of the Church, a location mostly chosen as it was insulated by thick walls.

“Lucy?” she called, pushing the door behind her, “Lucy?”

“Not quite.”

North turned around at the familiar voice. It was the first time in months she had heard it in person. “Markus?”

“Hey.”

“You- how did you get in without me noticing?”

“Back exit. I needed some time to recover before everyone questioned me on my trip.”

“I might question you on your trip.”

“Oh,” Markus smirked, “sure. Do you want to know about negotiations or policy first?”

She laughed, still half-convinced she was glitching or something.

Markus moved towards her so they were standing an arms reach away.

“I’m not going to say I missed you.”

“I was going to say I missed you.”

North chuckled despite herself. “Okay, I did miss you.”

“Wait,” Markus pulled a small package from his pocket. It had been wrapped in Washington newspaper. “I got you something.”

“I hope it’s a bomb.”

“North.”

“Joking.” She unwrapped it carefully, finding a little glass dome in her hands. “A snow globe.”

“It’s the Washington monument. I didn’t get to see much of the city but-”

“I’ve always wanted a snow globe.”

“I know,” Markus said, “You said it was one of the few human traditions you found cute. Like a tiny world to rule.”

“That was months ago.”

“I can’t forget anything. And… I wanted to get you something. Take it as proof that I was thinking of you.”

North put it down on the table, watching a glittery snow storm fall around a tiny Washington. “I don’t have anything to prove I was missing you.”

“I know,” Markus said, moving his hand to his heart, “I know.”

Just like that, North was reminded of her own heart and the string connecting them, now shorter than an arm's length after months of being stretched out of shape. When Markus touched his heart, he seemed to shorten it further, pulling them closer and closer together, until North was looking up at him.

She had kissed Markus before but it was the same day that Jericho sank and they fought and won their freedom. They hadn’t done it since, even if they stood side by side eyeday.

Now, they were standing chest to chest. The last of the red string faded away as North leant up on her tiptoes to kiss him.