#there's only one right answer and I refuse to silence myself any longer

[pit-and-the-pen]

I’ll Crawl Home to Her- Prologue

A/N: Prologue for a reader x Azriel fic I've started writing. The events from under the mountain are told from the readers' perspective. There is some dialogue from the actual book so all of that, and the characters of course, belong to Sarah J. Maas.

Quick Flip to Azriel's POV somewhere in the middle because I wanted to.

Warnings: Cannon Typical Violence.

Word Count: ~4k

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist for this series! I'm already working on the next part and have the rest of the series planned out!

Forty nine years. Forty nine years away from my court, from my friends. The only thing that has let me keep a semblance of my sanity was that I was here with my brother. Rhys. As selfish as it was, knowing he was here helped me from going out of my gods damned mind. 

I laid in the room I had been assigned, bandages wrapped around my chest covering the latest punishment from Amarantha for my backtalk. She had made some vile comment about Rhys and when apparently threatening to rip her tongue out and nail it to the wall had not been the right thing to say to her. Wincing as I rolled over onto my side, I would do it over again just to know that I got under her skin. There were very few ways to have any semblance of fun here and antagonizing that bitch, much to Rhys horror, was worth every cut and bruise I had received. 

A knock on my door interrupted my thoughts. All I could do was weakly call out for them to come in, anyone that bothered to knock was most likely safe. I pushed myself up into a sitting position and was met with Rhys’ violet eyes staring at me. 

“I thought we talked about this.” He all but growled at me. I shrugged, biting down the pain that flashed through me. 

“You should see the other guy.” Trying and failing at keeping the shake out of my voice. That earned me his signature glare. 

“Try that again when you can sit up on your own.” He sighed, walking over to the edge of my bed. He put his head in his hands. “You can’t keep doing this. She’s going to kill you one day over some stupid comment.” I had never heard him this scared before. Guilt sunk like a stone in my heart.

“I’ll try to be better. It’s just so hard when I hear her talk about you like that,” I sighed heavily, regretting it at the ache in my lungs. “She can do whatever she wants to me. But you. At least I can pretend I can protect you from her.” We both know that was the furthest from the truth. If she didn’t have the tendency to call for Rhys longer when I spoke back, I would fight back more. But I refuse to allow my brother to suffer more because I can’t control my temper.

We both just sat in silence. I could feel my back desperately fighting to heal itself. It would still be a few days until it healed fully with the bits of my powers Amarantha had stolen. But anything felt better at this point and it was enough for me to finally let my shoulders sag. 

Rhys stayed until I started to doze off. The adrenaline had finally worn off and I felt the tiredness in my bones. He pressed a small kiss to the top of my head as I curled up in the middle of the bed. I let my eyes flutter closed and drifted off to dreams of anywhere but where I was. 

✦✦✦

A gasp left my lips as the attor dumped the poor girl onto the floor before the dais. Still wearing a thin nightgown she must have fallen asleep in. 

“Bring him in.” Amarantha called wicked delight practically dancing around in the throne room. I felt the faint pressure of Rhys’ hand against my arm as they dragged Tamlin into the room kicking and screaming. As soon as I felt it the touch was gone. 

When he was situated beside the red head, she asked, “Is this her?” Tamlin froze as he surveyed the shaking figure in front of him. His shouts died in his throat and he didn’t respond to her question. At the lack of an answer she repeated the question to my brother. 

“Yes.” 

That was all it took for Amarantha to lash out her powers. My ears rang as the girl in front of us started to scream. Rhys’ whole body went tense besides me. The all too familiar feeling of his power pulsed around us and I didn’t even what to think about the torture she was being put through. Rhys’ powers in his own hands could be deadly but in hers they became something far worse. 

I tried to hold back the bile that raised in my throat. Tamlin didn’t so much as flinch, keeping that firm mask but there was something. Just a small tick in his right eye that hit me like a ton of bricks. Whoever this female was, this wasn’t the girl Rhys had seen in the spring court. Anger surged through me. Of course, a random human life wouldn’t be enough to get a reaction out of the High Lord. I wasn’t entirely sure how he would have reacted if it even was her. Maybe I was expecting just a glint of those claws, itching to sink them into the soft flesh of Amarantha, but he stood fae still. The rise and fall of his chest was the only indication he was anything more than a statue. 

The hours dragged on. If this went on any longer I knew I was going to puke, I already knew the moment I moved again it would happen. Slowly, the screams started to ebb and I knew Amarantha was reaching the end of whatever fun she was pulling from this. With the lack of reaction from Tamlin, I knew she was growing bored. I released a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding the moment the girl, Clare, had finally stopped screaming. My head was pounding at the tension in my shoulders. And I could feel the slow healing wounds in my back roaring in pain. 

“You’re all dismissed.” Amarantha called plainly. I didn’t need to be told twice. It took all my restraint to not run from the throne room. I felt Rhys walk behind me, stopping ahead of me as I paused behind a pillar. He didn’t look at me as I rose, just handing me a handkerchief as I went to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I muttered my small thanks as I took it from him. 

“Are you…” 

“Don’t even finish that sentence.” I groaned at him. I closed my eyes but quickly opened them when I realized that I could still see her sitting there on that dais, still smelling the coppery tang of her blood in the room. My stomach curled again but I swallowed the feeling down. 

“It’s over. Our one chance is gone.” Rhys said plainly. My eyes darted around at his bold words. It’s one thing to talk about this in private, in our minds where no one else could hear us. But in the halls, with everyone vying for the chance to earn Amarnatha’s favor. It was as good as a declaration of treason. He said nothing else as he started walking again and I was never so thankful to not hear my brother's voice 

✦✦✦

I had never felt horror like this in all my years under the mountain. My eyes grew to the size of saucers as I heard her speak those daming words, “I’ve come to claim Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring  Court.” 

My head snapped to Rhys, the horror frozen on his own face told me everything I needed to know. Panic surged through me. Selfishly not for the human in front of me but for my brother. She would not allow the action of lying to him to go unpunished. I reached out for his mind but he pushed me out so violently I almost gasped. 

My mind was racing so much that I missed most of the exchange that was happening in front of me. I caught bits and pieces but I couldn’t string together a coherent thought let alone try to follow along with Amarantha’s scheming. 

My heart was beating out of its chest as I caught up with the turn this conversation had taken. A riddle. You solve the riddle, and his curse will be broken. Instantaneously. I won’t even need to lift my finger and he’ll be free. 

I flinched when I heard her voice ring loud and clear in the room. “Give her a greeting worthy of my hall.” My hand went to hold back Rhys as we both heard the sickening crunch of bones echo in the silent room. 

✦✦✦

If I could have kissed Feyre on the mouth, I would have. As it was, I had to hold back the laughs that threatened to rack through my body as Amarantha stood stock- still in front of her. The bone Feyre had thrown at her feet sticking straight out of the ground. Pride racked through my chest because I knew if I was in her shoes I would have done the same thing. Except I wouldn’t have missed. Maybe if we managed to survive all of this, I would offer her training. I shook my head at the ridiculous thought. I knew that if she survived this, I would never see her again. I spoke into my brother's mind but he seemed far away when I risked a glance over to him. In perfect form, Feyre held Amarantha’s stare before she turned on her heel and walked out of the throne room. For the first time in a long time, I felt a kernel of hope. 

✦✦✦

Rhys had officially lost his damn mind. He must have. That was the only explanation for the sight currently in front of me. Feyre dressed in black glossimer, a dress that would have made me blush to wear. But it wasn’t the dress that held my attention, it was the swirling blue-black mark that now rested on her hand. A bargain. What had Rhys promised her in exchange for the position she was in currently. I started to walk over to my brother, having half a mind to pull him from the room by his ear and cursing him out for bringing her into this viper den before I saw her freeze in front of Tamlin. Much to credit, she didn’t let her chin dip once during Rhys’ and Amarantha’s exchange. I truly questioned both of their sanity before I heard Amarantha dismissing the two. I didn’t want to think how much this little stunt would cost Rhys in the long run. The pair slinked to the back of the room, everyone's eyes trailing over them. Watching to see what Rhys was up to. He handed her a goblet and after a few moments of what looked like a very heated discussion, Feyre downed the cup of faerie wine. 

Shit really hit the fan after her third glass. I watched the pink flood her cheeks and her eyes glass over. Rhys pulled her onto the dance floor and I decided I had enough. I walked out of the room. Refusing to watch her body move against my brothers. Realistically, I knew what state she had been in when she walked out of that last challenge. I knew what my brother had offered in return for her actions right now. And I knew from the way that the smirk didn’t reach his eyes that he was not enjoying himself at this moment. For whatever reason, he was protecting her from the consequences of healing her. 

Eventually, I heard the music from the night fading away and I knew that the party must be over. It would be another few hours before Rhys would slink into my room to lick his wounds. When he did show up, the berating words I had planned died in my throat. It could wait for later I decided as he sat down in the center of my bed. I never spoke first. I let him decompress as he needed to. Sometimes we would never say a single word and I was perfectly content to just let him sit in the room with me. I had long given up on reading books here. But he was sitting in my room, the sound of the crackling fire filling the quiet space. If  I closed my eyes hard enough, I could pretend we were both back in Velaris. The rest of our family loudly argued over some trivial joke. My mind wandered to what they were doing at this moment. 

✦✦✦ Azriel POV

Azriel still doesn’t know how he has lasted this long. Mor and Cassian sit with him, the silence that has lingered around the townhouse for the last 48 years sits even heavier today. Heavier because Mor had said Rhys’ name, had said your name. And he felt the hole in his chest stretch just a little further, ripping itself open again. He had long stopped trying to listen for the all too familiar voice in his head, a power you and your brother both shared. But he couldn’t help it as the pair next to him were talking once again about a plan to get the two of you back home. 

If he let himself think about it too much it was going to tear him apart. The terrified part of him that would spiral if he thought about how he might never get to hear your voice again. How he would never get to see Rhys smile. He longed for those stupid fights they would get into more than anything in the world right now. 

Azriel will never forgive himself for telling her where her brother was heading that day. What use was the spymaster when he couldn’t see that stoney determination on her face as she turned and walked away from the too?. He should have known from that one look what she was planning to do but he and Cas had both been called away later that day on separate missions. He didn’t even get to say goodbye to either of them. What hurt the most was the simple message he received later that day from Rhys. Don’t come after us, stay in Velaris. The reminder that if all of the inner circle left Velaris’ centuries-old protections would be lost was the only thing that kept any of them put. It didn’t stop the hope that there was a way out of this but as the years dragged on it was hard to think of new ways. 

As Azriel started to tune the now fighting pair around him out, he felt his shadows swirling around him. Letting the turmoil that was his mind show to his family. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Cassian placed a firm hand on his shoulder but knew better than to try to say any words of comfort, they had all been long spoken and neither of them believed them anymore. 

✦✦✦

Days passed, and every night Rhys would parade Feyre around the throne room for everyone to gawk at. And every night I would tuck away in the corner until I could sneak out early. 

The second challenge came and went. Feyre getting one step closer to breaking this curse. I kept the kernel of hope tight to my chest, refusing to truly accept it until it happened. Maybe not even then. I found myself dreaming more and more about life in Velaris once we got out from under the mountain. Hope wasn’t supposed to survive down here but in spite of myself, I trusted this human girl to be the thing to save all of us. It was an unfair burden to place on her shoulders. 

The night of the final task snuck up on all of us. Everyone was called to the throne room as usual but something was different. This was it. Feyre would either survive and it would all be over, or she would fail and it would be over anyways. Rhys and I had spent the night in silence, the only sound was me sobbing. I didn’t know whether it was out of fear or relief. 

Feyre was marched out, flanked on either side by attors. As if she would try to run now. 

“Two trials lie behind you,” Amarantha let her voice ring around the room. The room was so silent you could hear a pin drop. “And only one more awaits. I wonder if it will be worse to fail now- when you were so close.” I tried to steady my ragged breaths. I caught eyes with Rhys and saw my own horror reflected in those violet eyes. 

“I love you. No matter what she says about it, no matter if it’s only with my insignificant human heart. Even when they burn my body. I’ll love you.” And from her words, I knew she meant it. Somehow this brave, selfless girl managed to fall in love with Tamlin. The cruel words I once screamed at him flickered into my mind. The person who ever truly loves you will be the most miserable person to ever exist. I meant it but looking at Feyre, I know that could never extend to her. Not after all of this, not if she managed to pull this off. 

Tamlin didn’t respond to her declaration of love and I realized how angry I was for this girl. He couldn’t break that mask enough to say it back to her. She was looking death square in the face for him and he didn’t have the decency to say a word back. 

Movement in the corner of the room caught my eye and my eyes went wide as three faeries with bags covering their heads were marched in. My stomach lurched when I saw that ash dagger brought in behind them. She was going to have to kill them. A life for a life. When I looked back at Feyre, she looked truly horrified. Horrified at Amarantha’s reminder that they were all innocent. 

Slow as a fae, Feyre took a step on shaking legs in front of the first figure. I saw the tremor in her hand as she reached for the dagger. Her skin turned a ghostly white as the hood was ripped off of the male in front of her. I closed my eyes, turning my head away. I couldn’t watch, couldn’t listen to the pleas of the male in front of Feyre nor the members of his court as they now recognized him. I heard a loud sob from Feyre and the sickening crunch of something cracking through bone and I knew she had done it. Tears ran down my face. I had killed people before but doing it in this setting, for this reason. I could only imagine how much this would cost her. 

I couldn’t turn to look for the second death. I only muttered along with the desperate prayer I heard her whisper. Let me fear no evil. Let me feel no pain. Let me enter eternity. The most sacred prayer to our people. I fought the urge to reach out with what little of my power was left in my body to turn her pain off. To take her mind away from the death that was looming right in front of her but I couldn’t reach out. It was like my power was stuck in my body. Coward. It screamed at me when I reached for it again. When I heard the splatter of blood, I knew it was too late. One more. 

The words that were spoken by Feyre were enough for me to snap my eyes open. “Not…Not fair.” She choked out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rhys blanche. I felt like my own air had been ripped from my lungs as she just stared at Tamlin. She paused over the ash dagger. Freezing. I could see the gears turning in her head as she tried to find any way out of this. The whole room seemed to be holding their breath as she stood silent and still. 

I heard Tamlin suck in a breath as Feyre went to reach for that last dagger. Her whispering “I love you” was enough to bring more tears to my eyes and I couldn’t find it in myself to look away as she plunged the ash weapon into the center of his chest. 

Tamlin cried out in pain and I heard the clatter of metal against the floor of the room. It was as if an earthquake cracked through the room. When I looked at the dagger, I saw the bent tip. A heart of stone. The words pulled themselves from some deep part of my mind. The final part of the curse that Amarantha wouldn’t have known about. Something even I had forgotten about until it was staring me in the face. Feyre must have figured it out.

“She won. Free them” I couldn’t stop the words as they tumbled out of my mouth. And my heart threatened to completely stop as she turned to face me.

“I’ll free them whenever I see fit.” 

Feyre seemed frozen to her spot when Amarantha turned back to her. You. I’m going to kill you. I didn’t stop the scream as I heard her bones crack. Time seemed to freeze around us as I was stuck, unable to look away and unable to move. I vaguely heard Rhys scream Feyre’s name over and over. Couldn’t process his movements as he went to collect the ash dagger and lunged at Amarantha himself. He went flying against the wall was what broke me from whatever had paralyzed me. I was over by his side before I even knew I was moving. I tensed my whole body, ready to protect Rhys with my life as she screeched at him, at Feyre. 

Feyre was dying. I could sense it in the air. Could feel her fading away. The world seemed to completely freeze as she whispered. Love. The answer to your riddle is love. Her final words before the sickening sound of her spine snapping filled the room. 

All hel broke loose in the throne room. The masks of spring court citizens fell to the ground and I felt my long- missing power flow back into my body. I stared down at my hands in disbelief. I could barely hear the cries of Amarantha as she pleaded for her life. I didn’t spare her another glance. She would be someone else's problem. I rushed over to the girls' side. Ignoring Lucien and the other High Lords that started to surround her. Each opened their palm to drop a small glittering substance onto Feyre. One by one, the high lords all repeated the action. Rhys placed a hand on my shoulder as he did the same. Tamlin was last. And we all held perfectly still as we stared down at the broken girl in front of us. When I looked up at Rhys the pain in his face was enough to make me start crying again. 

Feyre gasped as she sat up, blinking heavily. She looked down at her arms and I saw the realization crash over her face. High Fae. The points of her ears and slight shimmer of her skin would make it impossible to deny. That was all I needed to see. I pulled my brother into my arms and rushed us out of the room. I hugged my brother for the first time in as long as I could remember. I crushed him as tight as my arms would allow me. I sobbed as I realized what this meant for us. I reached out my powers. They practically purred as I was finally able to use them again. I reached into the minds of my family for the first time in almost fifty years. 

We’re coming home.

[jdeclerc]

a brother's intervention - part two

part one

pairing: eris x reader.

summary: Eris struggles to voice his feelings...can he find a way to do so before he loses the one fae he needs most?

author's note: a longer than anticipated answer to the cliffhanger that is part one...and a little something for the Lucien girlies ;)

warnings: adult content

word count: 4,654

“You can’t love me, not in that way.”

It’s the hurt and following disbelief I see flash across his face that suddenly has anger replacing the tears I had only moments ago.

“And why is that? Is the thought of me feeling this way toward you so nauseating you can’t even entertain the thought?”

His voice returns the anger in mine, his eyes holding nothing but fury as they meet mine.

“Don’t you dare believe you are the problem in this situation, not for a moment.”

“Then what is the problem?! You have given me no other explanation, no other way to interpret your words.”

“Me!” He shouts the words, his voice laced with defeat as he continues. “I am, as I always have been, the problem.”

“Eris...”

“Please, do me the kindness of sparing me from words to try and attempt to dissuade me from seeing myself for what I am.” He throws his hands up in exasperation, gesturing down the length of himself. “To love me is to love a monster, one born and bred to be lethal, undeserving of the love of a fae as extraordinary as yourself.”

“You can’t possibly believe that! Eris, look at what you have accomplished in the last 5 years…you have brought the very thing you say you are undeserving of back to our home.” As I move to close the distance between us, he raises his hand, halting my steps.

“All that I have done is to make up for all that came before. No amount of time or effort can erase the darkness I’ve laid upon our lands.”

“Eris, your father –”

“Whether by own hand or his makes no difference, I had a part in it all the same.”

His anger is once again replaced by defeat. Mine, however, increases ten-fold.

“I have never thought you to be a fool until this moment Eris Vanserra. Are you that self-centered to believe yours is the only opinion that matters in this moment? That I say the words I did with no thought or consideration for who I am saying them to?” He doesn’t stop me this time as I approach him, stunned into silence by the rare occurrence of my wrath being turned on him.

“You forget that every sin you have committed has been done with me by your side. I have taken every step in darkness with you, have walked by your side through it all. Do not believe, for one moment, that all of Prythian does not follow your name with my own when recounting the evil reaped by the Autumn Court over the centuries.” I let out a breath before I continue. “To call yourself a monster is to call me the same.”

I can tell by his expression that he is remembering the same memory I am.

---------

It was a rare moment when my composed exterior gave way to my baser instincts. I distinctly remember the lesser Lord of Autumn cradling the hand I had broken when he dared to think he had claim to any part of my body. He began screaming of the monstrosity he believed me to be, having missed the Lordlings who approached him from behind. Without a word Eris came to stand between myself and the male, Lucien taking a position at my side. As the male cowered in fear, Eris requested that Lucien take me back to my rooms and that he would follow along shortly.

I do not know what transpired in the time it took him to see after my well-being, Eris refusing to tell me even to this day. But what I do know is that he carried the scent of copper, had changed his clothes when he did, and that the next time I saw the lower lord he no longer had a right hand to cradle.

---------

We came out of the memory at the same time, his expression angrier than my own.

“And the reason you were dragged into that life is obvious. There’s a common presence through it all. And that makes it worse, doesn’t it? I wasn’t satisfied being a monster by myself. I was selfish enough to mould you in my image, to create a force just as dangerous and evil as I am.”

“If you think you dragged me into anything Eris, then you don’t know me. You don’t make my decisions for me, you never have, and you never will, no matter what title you carry. Every choice I have made is my own and I live with them every day. But that doesn’t matter to you. No…as long as you’re a monster, pushing everyone away becomes that much easier, doesn’t it?”

The grate to our voices is evenly matched, neither of us conceding to the other.

“Easier?! You think it’s easy to watch the members of my court, my own family, find their happiness? Trust me when I say it has never been easy not being sure enough of myself to find my own. It isn’t easy to have the voice of my father constantly reminding me I will never be worthy of love.”

“Then you’re the coward of the two of us. You’re not your father Eris, you never will be. I’m tired of that man continuing to hold you captive.”

“Y/N, stop.”

“No, I want to know. What is the worst that could happen if you let someone get truly close to you?! What, truly, is there to lose?!”

“Y/N…” Eris’ voice was that of a High Lord, dark and commanding. I matched it with my own, only louder.

“Tell me Eris! What. Is. There. To. Lose?!”

“Everything!” His voice carried the very fire that ran through his veins, I had never heard his anger laced with such desperation. “If I say what I truly wish, I could lose the one thing that means more to me than anything, is that what you want to hear?”

I put the last embers of my anger into my next words.

“No…I want you to say it! Stop being a coward and say it!”

“I LOVE YOU!”

Everything stops in that moment, the forest going deadly quiet. Neither of us making a move toward the other.

Then, all at once, the forest comes to life. Birds are singing, the sun shines past the trees overhead, the leaves begin dancing around us, and his hounds begin letting out excited yips and howls. All in response to what is happening between Eris and me.

It is as though I can see the thread forming and making its way to each of us. Its glow dancing through the air, showing off just how special and beautiful it is. It is with a sharp pain that I feel it reach my chest and snap. Quickly followed by an all-encompassing warmth spreading throughout my entire body.

A sea of emotions flows toward me as I look toward Eris, finding he is already looking at me. As we look at each other for a moment, smiles begin to overtake both of our faces, transforming into laughter.

“Cauldron boil me, what fucking fools we are!” Eris exclaims.

He closes the distance between us, his hands coming to rest of either side of my neck as I look up at him. My own reaching to either side of his waist.

“Forgive me for being fool enough to miss what was right in front of me…my mate.” His words coming out as a whisper, a wave of awe flowing down the bond as his eyes lock on mine.

A look of uncertainty takes over Eris’ expressions, his next words laced with painful meaning.

“I will not force you to accept it, I will not do to you what was done to my mother. Should you choose it, I will step back from you…forever.”

My grip tightens at his waist, my eyes never leaving his.

“Eris Vanserra, hear my words…I love you, for all that you are. I choose you; I am not leaving you…you never have to feel alone again.”

“You must know I have always loved you; every piece of my scarred and broken heart belongs with you.” He leans his forehead against mine, both of us basking in the waves of emotion crashing through the bond.

“Eris…” The desperation in my voice escapes of its own accord, my need for him apparent to us both.

“I have been yours for centuries, say you are mine and I will make it so.” His want is evident in his voice, his eyes darkening as he speaks, as though he is done hiding from me. “Be sure, my love, for I have no intention of letting you go if you say the words.”

I don’t even take a moment to hesitate, having known my answer to such a question for centuries.

“I am yours; now and forever.”

Eris’ gaze searches mine once more, looking for any traces of hesitation or regret…he finds none.

Every ounce of hesitation leaves him as his lips crash into mine.

My arms wrap around his shoulders, bracing myself against the force of his kiss. His encircle my waist, pulling me impossibly closer. Eris kisses me like a male that has been starved for centuries; finally receiving what he needs.

His breaks our kiss for a moment as he commands, “Jump.”

I obey without hesitation, my legs wrapping around his waist and Eris’ hands coming to rest beneath my thighs.

“Good girl.” His voice impossibly deep as his lips find mine once more. Eris begins walking us backward, my back hitting bark. One of his hands comes to the back of my head to prevent it from hitting the tree.

I can’t help but laugh, my words coming out breathless. “Every the gentlefae, Eris Vanserra.”

“What can I say? My mother taught me well.” I raise my brow at that, not being able to resist teasing him for his choice of words. “Don’t you start, we are not doing that, not now.”

“Then what are we doing?” I say as I undo the buttons at the top of his tunic, my hands skimming the exposed skin. I feel Eris tremble beneath the contact, sending a wave of desire down our newly found bond.

“This.” He connects his lips to my neck, finding a particularly sensitive spot just below my ear. A hum of approval coming from him at my responding gasp.

Eris’ hips push into mine to support me against the tree as his hands trace up my sides, thumbs brushing the underside of my breasts. My hips respond with their own push forward at the feeling of his hardness and the brush of his thumbs.

I bring my hands to the back of his neck so I can tilt his head, his groan of protest being replaced by a deep gasp of his own as I begin kissing along his jaw.

I stop only when I reach his ear and brush my lips along it as I whisper, “What else did you have in mind, my High Lord?”

“What else do I have in mind?” Eris lets out a small chuckle at that. He leans back so he can meet my eyes, his expression so intense that I can feel the warmth as it colours my cheeks. His hand comes to rest on the front of my throat, applying just enough pressure to ensure I have to hold his gaze. His voice comes out as a growl and is laced with desire as he says, “Love, I have a centuries-long list of what I plan to do to you. And you using my title isn’t helping the last hold I have on my restraint.”

“I don’t want or need you to restrain yourself, give me everything Eris.” My hips grind into his once more, my words having their desired effect on him. His eyes close of their own accord, and his head tilts back as he releases a shaky exhale.

“As much as we would both enjoy that Y/N, I don’t plan for the first time I fuck the future High Lady of Autumn to be against a tree.” I can’t help the whimper that escapes me at his words, his hand tightening the slightest bit more around my neck at the sound. “No…I plan to take my time with you. Leave you so thoroughly sated that my name leaves your lips like a prayer, and you are unable to rise from our bed on steady footing.”

“Promises, promises…what about the things I’ve dreamed of doing to you?” I begin sliding my hand down his front, painfully slow as I whisper, “Alone…in my room…with nothing but my hand to keep me company?”

He grips my wrist before it can reach where we both desperately want it to be.

“You’ll be showing me exactly what you would do and telling me about every desire your brilliant mind has conjured, of that you can have no doubt.” He brings my hand up to his mouth and brushes his lips over my knuckles. “But I believe it was you said we can’t be late for dinner and if we don’t resume our journey now, the sun’s descent will arrive before we do.”

“Shit.”

Eris makes no move to release me from his hold. He leans in and rests his forehead upon mine. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“Part of resuming our journey is your letting me down Eris.”

“Allow me the indulgence of savouring what may be the most perfect time of my immortal life for a few more moments…please.” His voice is quiet. It’s almost as though he didn’t mean for the words to pass his lips.

“I suppose we can spare a moment.”

We both chuckle at my words but fall into a comfortable silence shortly after. Time seems to lapse as we breath each other in.

Through the centuries I have seen Eris truly at peace only a handful of times. I refuse to take it from him now, punctuality be damned.

After what is too short a time for my liking Eris leans back, “I’m ready.”

“You’re sure?” My hands come to rest at the back of his neck, rubbing small circles with my thumbs.

“I’m sure…but promise me this: we stay no longer than necessary to be polite. I have waited for and wanted you for centuries, and I intend to have you, in every sense of the word, before this day is done.”

“I swear it.”

Eris leans in and kisses me deeply, nipping at my bottom lip as he pulls away and steps back from the tree. He lowers me so gently that the leaves don’t make a sound as my feet hit the forest floor.

The smokehounds jump up from where they have been resting and race to our sides. They begin jumping and weaving around us, refusing to be left out of such an important day. Eris gently pushes them back, promising the best the cook has to offer when we return home. I can’t help but smile, knowing a piece of his heart is reserved only for them and their 10 siblings. He catches me watching and a smile of his own overtakes his features.

I take his arm as he offers it and rest my free hand against his bicep as we begin walking.

“Lucien is never going to let us live this down, is he?”

“I believe my brother will take great joy in being the one to brings us together. I’m sure there are plenty of “I told you so’s” in store for both of us.”

“Both of us?” I glance at Eris in question. I can see embarrassment start to creep into the tops of his cheeks, his sudden nervousness apparent.

“There may have been a time or two…or fifty…that I made the foolish decision to confide in my brother regarding my falling hopelessly in love with you. The only difference between you and I being that I didn’t resist the urge to punch him when he deigned to call me a coward for my continued silence…on more than one occasion.”

“Hopelessly, huh?” I couldn’t suppress my smile at the colour in Eris’ cheeks.

“Hopelessly, helplessly, every word you can use to describe it…that has always been me when it comes to you. My brother has never let me live it down and I look forward to you doing the same.”

“Never.” I tighten my grip on his arm and pull him to turn toward me. I rest my hand on his chest, over his heart. “I will never weaponize your vulnerability. Not now, not ever. Do not ever be afraid to show it to me, I want to see every part of you.”

He rests his hand over mine, falling quiet for a moment.

“Thank you, truly. That...it means more than you can know.”

He leans in and kisses me, lingering for a moment. As he pulls away the corners of his mouth are upturned in the purest of smiles.

“Let’s hope the Mother allows my brother to do the same.” He offers me his arm once more. “Shall we go find out, my Lady?”

I can’t help but grin as I take his arm, enjoying the glimpse of the carefree, playful side of Eris.

“We shall.”

---------

Eris isn’t sure how long it takes he and Y/N to reach their destination. For all that he valued efficiency and punctuality in his court operations, he couldn’t give one flying fuck if they ever reached Lucien’s home.

A mate is something Eris never let himself dream of having. He had seen firsthand how his father handled their sons being involved with those he deemed unworthy. Beron had taken so much from his brothers, his mother, Eris himself. He refused to even open himself up to the possibility of finding a partner to stand by his side.

What a cruel twist of fate it was to have her by his side for as long as she has been. Eris had denied himself time and time again, knowing that loving Y/N meant opening her up to further abuse from his father than what she already suffered. He had vowed to keep her safe and he was learning that, without him fully realizing it, she had done the same.

Y/N ensured he never walked in darkness alone. She had pulled him from the brink of destruction more times than he could count, and he owed her more thanks than even an immortal fae life could provide.

He keeps sneaking glances down at her as they walk, marveling in the possibilities that lay ahead of them. For the first time, more so than any other point of his life, Eris dares to dream. He begins imaging the foundation they would build for their life together, how it would grow and prosper.

He thinks, perhaps, he does owe his brother thanks. If not for Lucien’s remarkably stupid plan, he may never haver felt what it was like to feel the utter contentment coming from deep within his chest. Felt what it is to have Y/N in his arms, her body responding to his every touch, and the flow of love she had been unable to hold back from the bond. Eris meant it when he said it was the most perfect moment of his life, nothing else had ever come close to what happened in that grove.

They turn the final curve in their path, Lucien’s cottage coming into view. It is not the grandest sight to behold but it is priceless, nonetheless. The cottage was built to house nothing but love and family. Eris had ensured Lucien knew he would always have a place in the Forest House, but his brother wished for his own space. A place in which he could heal from the wounds inflicted by his own mate and a place in which he could fall back in love with his home court.

What the cottage had become for Lucien was more than Eris had ever anticipated.

Lucien waits on the front step, his expression one of smug satisfaction as he takes in the two walking joined to one another.

Eris can hear the happy squeal and pitter patter of small steps before he sees who they are coming from. The source creates a smile on his face like no other can, not even his newfound mate.

“UNKY ERI! UNKY ERI!” The young fae runs by her father with nary a glance in his direction. At a meager two years of age, the youngling is already living up to the fire that runs through her veins. “Up, up, up!”

Y/N has seen this type of greeting enough times to be wise enough to take a step back and Eris shoots her an appreciative smile. He ensures she feels the gratitude he has for the small gesture with a push down the bond.

Eris crouches and opens his arms just in time to scoop his niece from the ground. He swings her in a wide circle, her excitement echoing throughout the forest. They’re both laughing by the time Eris settles her on his hip.

“Hello little flame, did you get into any trouble today?”

“Nooooo…Mama and papa took me into town. We went into all the shops, had cake for lunch, and then papa bought me books from Mama’s store. And then I was waiting for you and Auntie Y/N to get here so I could show you all my books.” The young fae’s hands excitedly wave in the air as she tells her uncle of her day.

“And I would love to see them. I’ll even read one to you before bed if you would like.”

She screams in excitement at the possibility, Eris gives a slight cringe with the sheer volume his niece can reach. She places her small hands on either side of Eris’ face and plants a sloppy kiss on his forehead. Eris can’t help but glance over at Y/N, for the first time allowing himself to imagine having a family of his own. Y/N’s eyes show the first sign of tears as she gives me a loving smile. Both of them knowing they can allow themselves to dream.

“I love you Unky Eri!”

“And I love you, little flame!”

 She starts making grabby hands at Y/N and Eris happily passes the youngling to her aunt. Allowing them the opportunity to have their own hello, albeit a much less loud one.

Eris looks up at his brother and feels some of his earlier anger return. Lucien must read this in his expression based upon his next words.

“Jesminda, I think your mother would love to have you help her prepare the table for dinner.”

“Only if Auntie Y/N comes with me.” The girl crosses her arms in a pout.

“It would be my honour.” Y/N sets the girl down but before she can take her hand Eris grabs her wrist and pulls her into him. He leans his head into her, his hand tightening where it sits on her waist.

His lips brush her ear as he whispers, “Only as long as needed to be polite, my love. You won’t like who I become if I’m kept from you longer than is necessary.”

Y/N’s responding look has Eris thinking she would like that very much indeed.

“As you command, my High Lord.”

As she steps aways Eris knows she selected her words specifically to elicit a reaction from him. It is only the need to speak to his brother that keeps Eris from leaving Lucien’s immediately and giving into his need to have Y/N all to himself behind the closed door of their chambers.

Y/N takes Jesminda’s impatiently waiting hand and they begin making their way into the cottage. As Y/N reaches the porch, she gives Lucien’s arm a reassuring squeeze and Eris can tell by the look of surprise that flashes across his face that he smells the mating bond. Lucien waits for a moment after the two have entered his home to begin making his way toward Eris.

“I can’t tell, Brother, whether I should be waiting for your thanks or your ire.” He flashes Eris a smile as he says it.

“Given the situation, I would say it warrants both. Wouldn’t you agree brother?””

After a moment’s stand-off the two move to embrace one another. They agreed long ago to not waste any more of the time they have together, their father having already robbed them of so much of it.

“I knew the two of you belonged with one another, but mates? Now that, I could not have predicted.”

“It would seem as though the Mother herself was waiting for the two of us to get over ourselves and admit how we feel.” Eris falls quiet for a moment and is met with his ever-persistent struggle to communicate his feelings. There is a catch in his voice as he speaks. “I can’t…no words will ever…”

Lucien rests his hand on Eris’ shoulder, understanding his brother’s struggle better than anyone.

“After all that you have done for me Eris, abandoning you in the words with the love of your life is the least I could do.” His humour alleviates the tension that had built, both of them having a much-needed laugh.

“All that I have done is given you back what was stolen.”

“And so much more, you must know this.” Lucien gestures to the cottage in front of them and the future inside that waits for both of them.

Eris regards his younger brother for a moment.

“I’m still learning to.”

Eris lets the last embers of his anger bleed into the grip he puts on the side of Lucien’s neck as he says, “But I swear on this very court brother that if you ever place Y/N in a situation like that again we will have words. And not even my mate’s grace will save you.”

His grip loosens almost as soon as he puts it there but the flash of trepidation across Lucien’s face tells Eris he believes it, nonetheless.

Lucien steps back and puts his hands together in front of himself.  

“And on that cheerful note, shall we head inside? You can tell me the story of today and begin the first of many thank yous that you’ll be begging to give me.”

Eris shoves his brother much like they did when they were kids.

“And you can go fuck yourself.”

They both break into laughs as Lucien turns toward the cabin, beginning to make his way inside.

“I love you too Eris, I’m glad to have you by my side…our family is lucky to have you,” Lucien calls as he turns to face Eris for a moment before reaching the porch.

“I’m glad you’re finally admitting it.” If the finger Lucien throws up over his should is any indication, Eris knows his brother hears his words as he crosses the threshold of the cabin.

Eris stops for a moment and tilts his head to the sky. He closes his eyes and breathes in.

What Eris didn’t tell Lucien is that he is the lucky one. That he cherishes every moment he gets to remove the cold mask he dons every day and simply be himself.

“Would you like to come in for dinner or is standing alone in the forest how you would like to spend your evening?”

Eris opens his eyes and meets those of his mate. Y/N is leaning against the doorframes with a look of pure adoration on her face. Eris can’t control the smile that spreads across his face as he makes his way toward her.

He takes her extended hand in his and it’s as though walking into the cabin is walking into their future.

A future that Eris can’t wait to be a part of.

[seeingivy]

something new 

megumi fushiguro x gn!reader

you and megumi take a walk on the roof in the dead of night

read on ao3

- 

You can’t figure out which side to sleep on. You usually sleep on your right, but the hotel window is really big and the light down the street is too bright. You would sleep on my left, but the air conditioner makes your wet hair feel frozen and you’ve exhausted all efforts in trying to turn it off. You would sleep on your back but that reminds me too much of how dead bodies look in coffins. 

You’ve exhausted all efforts to sleep tonight. If you’ve resorted to likening yourself to a dead body, you’re well aware you will not be sleeping tonight. You reach over to your nightstand and swipe the hotel key. 

If you walk around for long enough, you can tire yourself out. Then, you’ll have to go to sleep. Maybe you’ll be so tired you’ll pass out in the hotel lobby on the way back to your room. As you shut the door to the hotel room, you’re confronted by how quiet it is in the hotel hallway. 

The light directly above the room is flickering, the silence palpable. The red carpet looks different than it has in the past two days and the hallway is suddenly longer than it was before. 

You shuffle down the hallway, feeling the need to look over your shoulder to make sure the room I came from is still there. 

You say a prayer to make sure no ghosts follow you. Every ghost story Nobara has told you comes back at this moment. 

As you walk past two doors, you jump at the sound of the toilet flushing. You turn back and count the doors, realizing I’m only three doors down from your own room. This is Itadori, Todo and Megumi’s room. 

maybe you can knock if they’re awake too. maybe todo or itadori can walk with you for a little bit and convince you to be less nervous about tomorrow. 

It’s probably Itadori. Itadori has been your friend since you were in the fourth grade. He peed himself in the second grade when you had to perform for choir because he got so nervous. If anyone is going to have indigestion tonight, it’s him. 

You knock quietly on the door, hoping it was loud enough for him to hear. It feels illegal to break the silence, but you do it anyway. 

You hear an abnormal amount of shuffling behind the door and realize it might be Todo. Todo is deathly afraid of ghosts. When we went to the Capital in the third grade, he refused to sleep all night because he was convinced a ghost moved his things around in the room. It ended up being Nobara looking for his wallet in the dead of night,

As the lock clicks and the door swings open, it’s not Todo and it’s not Itadori. 

“If you’re knocking on my door for help with your apple juice, I’ll throw you out the window myself.” 

Heat rises to your cheeks, equal parts embarrassed and happy that Megumi answered the door. 

“In your dreams, Fushiguro. I heard the toilet flush and figured Itadori was having diarrhea again. Is he awake?” 

As he swings the door open a little more, you peer in and see that Itadori and Todo are dead asleep on top of each other. There are three singles in the room, the third bed still neatly made from the day before. 

“That can’t be comfortable.” 

“That’s what I said, but they insisted. They’ve been sleeping like that since the first night.” 

“At least they can go to sleep.” 

He looks over at you in the dark, the only light shining on you two being the one flickering down the hall. The door is half open now, the eerie feeling gone from the hallway. He squints at you in the dark, like he’s trying to discern something written your my face. 

“Okay, I’ll go with you on your walk.” 

As he locks the door behind him, you walk in silence. The hallway is loud, the sound of your heart pounding destroying any silence that existed before. He reaches the end of the hallway, a chipped white ladder moving up to the roof. 

“No way. We’re not even allowed to go up there.” 

“Yes, we are. There’s literally a patio up there.” 

“This is a sketchy way to get up there, let’s just take the elevator.” 

He rolls his eyes and climbs up without you. You’re standing alone in the hallway, figuring out what to do. The hallway feels scary again, your heart pounding for a different reason now. You give in and climb up the ladder as your rings clink against the metal. 

“Knew you’d give in.” 

“Do you have a mute button?” 

As you reach the patio, the breeze is swinging the yellow umbrellas in the dark. You move to sit on one of the leather couches but Megumi walks all the way over to the ledge of the hotel. He slides his feet over the ledge, his ankles dangling over the edge of the building. You hop on and join him. 

“No protest this time? This is objectively scarier than the ladder inside.” 

“Just…be quiet. I wanted to see the view.” 

There’s a dozen lights glittering over the view of the city. A few of you had been called to exorcize a few curses in the country, at an entirely different pace than what you were used to. This was your first mission fighting alone and the fear was petrifying. The green hills at the ends of the city take up most of the space, a few tiny buildings marking the downtown area. It’s quiet, with one car passing by every few minutes. The city is dead asleep. 

“Move closer, I’m cold.” 

As you shuffle closer to him, your knees knock against each other as the breeze gets stronger. You’re still looking out, but you can tell from the twinge of light down the street that the tops of his ears are pink. His hand makes his way to the top of your hair, patting down the stray hairs moving in the breeze. 

“You should have told me your hair was wet. You’re going to get hypothermia.” 

You feign shock and place the back of your hand on his forehead. 

“Are you feeling okay? Did you get a fatal illness in the five minutes we were sitting here? Who knew you were capable of human empathy?” 

He swats you off and rolls his eyes. He’s laughing. You wait for a bite back. It doesn’t come. It feels weird. There’s usually no absence of talk back from Megumi. Ever since the the first grade when you were suddenly made aware of his presence, it feels like he’s never been quiet since then. Always 

biting back, arguing with you - making his presence aware. But in the dark of night, you’re not sure if he’s even here. You reach and poke into the side of his shoulder, just to make sure I’m not imagining the entire thing. 

“You’re different here, y/n.” 

“Being alone on a roof, hundreds of miles from everyone else we know, with the possibility of death tomorrow will do that to you.” 

He takes a beat, squinting his eyes trying to discern the writing on my face once again. You swear his eyes pinch in concern, but push the thought away all together. 

“Good different, y/n.” 

You don’t respond. You feel the heat rise to your cheeks, biting your cheeks to avoid showing him the effect his words have on you. The two of you turn back and look at the hills over the few buildings, the sky turning from dead black to a dark, navy blue.  

- 

The next morning, you trudge to breakfast with your eye bags darker than usual. Your contacts couldn’t be pried into your swollen eyes so you mentally prepare myself for the jokes that will be made at breakfast. 

Some part of you thinks you dreamed the night before. It doesn’t seem like something that would actually happen. Megumi saying you were different, running his hands through your hair? Impossible.

As you reach the buffet, you reach to slide in the seats in between Itadori and Todo, who have clearly had the most restful sleep out of everyone at the table. As they’re all screaming at each other, you look up and see Megumi sitting there, eating (stabbing) a very sad looking stack of pancakes. As we make eye contact, you smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. 

maybe you did dream about what happened last night. 

You reach for the Martinelli’s apple juice bottle at the center of the table and twist the cap open on the first try. 

“Itadori, look! I opened it on the first try. I told you I could do it.” 

He rolls his eyes at you. 

“As if. Megumi opened it before you got here.” 

As everyone gets side tracked into their own conversations again, you look over again. He finally smiles back, the tips of his ears pink once again. 

[green-typewriterz]

Some Kind of Animal, Cannibal

Sam Winchester x gn!reader

Summary: You and Sam get lucky when trying to find the missing people…the luck being you both get taken too.

ASK: N/A

Warnings: angst with a happy ending, illness, injury, refusing to eat, kidnapping, cannibalism, talks of feeling sick, it’s basically all angst, early seasons Sam (3-4)

Author notes: VERY INSPIRED by Possibly in Michigan - Animal Cannibal, Reader is smart and took criminology in college. loosely based off of season one episode fifteen, I thought of this when talking to myself at 12:03 am as any good fic writer does.

word count: 4012

The three of you had been in the small town of Bayfield, Wisconsin for almost a week now and still barely anything had come up about the seven missing people. From what you had figured out, there was a sort of pattern; they were always taken at night and it was always in pairs.

Dean assumed it was a demon, but something didn’t feel right to you. Demon’s were vicious, masochistic, it didn’t make sense for them to take a person and not parade the kill about the town for all to see. Sam thought it could be a vamp, maybe even a rugaru, but you weren’t sure.

”How’s the research goin?” Dean asked nonchalantly as he walked back into the damp motel room, a bag of beers and snacks in his hand. You looked up from your uncomfortable position on the bed with an exasperated look and Sam leaned back on his chair. That was all the answer he needed. “So we’ve still got no clue at all?” He continued, turning to look at you, “and you’re sure it’s not a demon.”

You shook your head, “not completely, but it just doesn’t make sense for the profile.” Sam smiled slightly as you spoke; you could’ve been an FBI agent (meaning you probably would’ve ended up crossing paths anyway) but instead you chose the hunting life. Despite this, the criminologist in you snuck out sometimes, something very useful to the two. “If it were a demon, it would be an outlier, one who had either devolved or worked differently.”

There was silence for a while and Sam sighed, pulling his hands through his hair. It was getting longer now, the tips of it tickling his jawline  every so often. “What if they’re human?” He began, “nothing about this screams monster.” Sam turned to look at you, wanting your input.

”Well what would you prefer, a monster who we know how to kill, doing something we’d expect, or a human, who may be completely insane, doing this purely because they can.” Somehow the second option seemed scarier to the three of you.

Time passed the three of you in comfortable silence, interrupted only by the low humming of MTV reruns coming from the TV Dean had put on. Sam was the first to fall asleep, leaning his head gently against his book. Dean followed soon after, his ability to fall asleep pretty much anywhere was something you had always envied. This left you in a half-awake stupor, trying to get some last few moments of research in before falling asleep like the two boys in front of you.

Eventually, you called it quits and closed your book, heading over to Sam to do the same for him. You gently replaced John’s diary with a small pillow and were placing Sam’s coat over his shoulders when you heard a crash outside. This area was known for raccoons but the noise sounded too loud to be an animal. You shook Sam awake and pulled the knife from your waistband, preparing for whatever might be outside.

Sam blearily looked over at you, standing up quickly despite the tiredness that clung to him when he saw the look in your eyes. He followed soon after, his gun firmly in his grip as the two of you walked out the door.

It was almost impossibly cold outside, the mist of the early morning clinging to your clothes. You pulled your jacket closer to you and turned round the corner into the alley, both of you with weapons raised. “Are you sure it wasn’t just a drunk guy?” Sam asked tiredly as he slowly lowered his gun. You shook your head in confusion and turned round to face him.

”It could’ve been, but something just…felt off.” You replied. It had always been impressive, your intuition - Dean had called it witch-adjacent. Neither of you were concentrating on your surroundings, talking quietly between yourself when Sam’s eyes widened and he went to raise his gun again. Though, you didn’t get a chance to fight back as pain bled through your skull. You fell to the floor as the sharp crack of Sam’s gun went off and the final thing you saw before darkness clouded over your eyes was Sam’s unconscious figure beside you. 

⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖ng 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎... ⋙

This is where you are now, waking to an unbearable pain, cold metal stinging against your skin as you come to your senses, your body racked with shivers. You sit up slowly, trying to adjust to the darkness of the room. The only light that streams through was from a dirty, mould ridden window that tints the area with a sickly green. You can hear the sharp breaths of another person from across the room and small, pained cries echo across the dark every so often. “Y/n.” The voice whispers, out of breath and harsh. You move slowly, eyes flitting across the darkness to find the source of the voice.

Sam sits in a cage of his own, hands harsh against the iron bars. His hair is damp and slick against the side of his face, face hollow and pinched from the fug of the basement. “What the hell is going on?” You reply, voice sharp from sleep.

You can see the surroundings through the thin strips of light, sun warping itself around cracked glass - it was day. “I don’t know. You’ve been asleep for a while, maybe three days. God, I thought you were dead.”

Silence spreads like a cancer. It’s been three days. Where was Dean? Did he know you were both gone? Did he care? Of course he did. You push the thought from your mind and move across the cage, hands clasping cold metal. The area wasn’t tall by any regard and you had to crouch to walk across - you felt bad for how uncomfortable Sam must be.

Eventually, you reach the other side where Sam was sitting and look at him with the same, unnatural quiet. He reaches a shaking hand across the space and clasps it over your own. He is cold, hands sweaty - though you find that you don’t care. You and Sam had always been close, leaning against one another during research or allowing him to plait your hair (and you to him if he was stressed). You run your hands over his in repetitive, soothing motions and lean your head against the rusty metal.

Sam sighs, though you aren’t sure of the emotion behind it. His hands work over your knuckles, almost as if he was massaging them, though he moves away quickly when a door opens at the top of the stairs. It shines a new light in, one that’s warm and forgiving - it feels like a new world.

Eager heeled footsteps click down the endless stairs and come to rest by a third cage, her hands laying on the side as if it were simply a wall. “Thank goodness, I was wondering when you’d wake!” She speaks cheerily, hands now clasped together. The caged woman edges closer to the light, you can see a shining, silver cross necklace resting against her chest, the metal contrasting against her dirtied skin.

There’s an almost silent click and the door in front of you swings open, creaking and worn. Sam is first to exit, his hands being chained to a small lead she holds in her palm. You felt like a dog, some kind of rabid animal she was trying to tame. She leads the three of you up the stairs, metal chains clinking miserably against your wrist.

The two of you look around your surroundings, surveying every corner, crack and door with a pinprick precision. You can see Sam’s hand instinctively move to his waistband - though you know there’d be nothing there. The three of you are led into a small dining area, lit with the homely glow of candles. You could almost laugh at the difference.

Lori, as she had introduced herself, sits you down with a smile and places a plate in front of you. It’s warm and suddenly reminds you that you haven't eaten in a while. You share a wary look with Sam and lean back in your chair, you’re not an idiot.

The girl opposite you, a tangle of sinew and bone, eats silently, hair withered and face gaunt - God knows how long she’s been here.

She’s pretty, she would’ve been. The girl has a sharp hooked nose and deep brown eyes, skin dark and warm. But she’s lost her hope, and with hope goes will, strength and livelihood. Though beauty seems to have stayed.

From her, you come to the conclusion that the food wasn’t poisoned, but you don’t want to test it anyway - you won’t accept food from someone who kidnapped you.

The room is quiet, the only sound being the crackle of candles and the repeated scrape of a fork on a plate. 

It’s a winding path to sleep, something Sam doesn’t seem to be blessed with any more. His hands shake in yours, his eyes screwed shut. This is you, sitting, waiting for the path to end, withering resolve and aching eyes. This is you, standing on the shoreline as Hero - a goddess' daughter - as your Leander’s searchlight dims. This is you, letting time slip from your fingertips like golden blood.

The routine continues like a paper mobius strip, one that’s tearing. There’s an end, you can see it carving itself into marble - but it’s an ending you do not want for Sam.

It’s in this routine now, that you wake, hold a slowly succumbing hand in yours, refuse to eat and you hold Sam’s hand once more. It’s made you think more than you’d like, about time. About stories. Sam shivers, almost like clockwork now. His shirt is baggy against hollow bones and the tattoo on his breast seems wilted, like it won’t offer protection. He whispers too, short sentences you can never grasp.

The only word you’ve ever understood is a drawn out, yearning, “Please.”

There had been an offer of treatment, of safety. But Sam had seen to have found a sanctity in his suffering, he tells himself it’s a blessing, reminding him his limbs still ached, his body still yearned. Sam spits at the feet of his saviour and is rewarded with a harsh whip-like slap across his cheek.

He crumbles, rocks slipping from a cliff face, and grows still. “Sam?” You whisper, afraid. You were afraid most days now. 

There’s a moment, then a breath and you lean forward to brush the hair from his eyes. Dean would know what to do - he had always known. Instead you hold his hand again, there’s not much else you can do.

The woman in the corner weeps. It had been the first time she had dared to make a sound, perhaps the violence had scared her.

“Oh, my dear.” Lori speaks soothingly, smiling with bared teeth of mock sympathy. “Come along, let’s calm you down.”

The words feel like an attempt to cajole a scared kitten, but the glint in her eyes shines radiant in the dark. You and Sam don’t see the woman again.

⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖ng 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎... ⋙

“Where do you think he is?” Sam asks, leaning against the bars. A welt has risen on his face and a large cut streaks across his angled cheek from Lori’s ring. He looks like a corpse, a victim of an illness that never stops taking.

You don’t reply, he nods. Every so often, Sam holds your hand, rubbing your palm with his thumb, and you’d be Hero once more, seeing Leander for the first time at the festival. Though, he lets go eventually (he always did) and as he pulls away, his livelihood drowns - searchlight fading.

In the evening, careful hands guid you up the stairs once more, careful not to touch the raw skin around the handcuffs. Hunger picks at you, stretching your skin over your bones. You look at Sam, allowing a mournful sigh to escape from you. The both of you are dying, it’s something you have accepted, but you can’t bear the thought that he’ll die before you.

You’ve listed every single thing that changed in your mind, every time he shivers, every time the bags under his eyes darken. Maybe it’s become a way to cope. The both of you sit and Sam’s near shoulder length hair falls in front of his eyes - it was an indication of how much time has passed. The both of you have no choice tonight, you have to eat.

This was the choice. You sit, silent, and know that you are giving in to the final piece of defiance you have. You watch while self-loathing washes over Sam’s face as he too is forced to make the same choice, his body weaker than his mind. This is the choice; let go of your morals. Or die.

It’s almost funny how quickly morals leave you in the face of death.

You find there’s no way to delay it either. You have already analysed every movement of Lori’s. Every breath is calculated, every smile is vicious and hungry. So, with one final look toward your closest friend, you bite into the grey meat, the taste of something akin to pork overwhelming you. It’s stringy, but it still tastes like the best thing you had ever eaten - perhaps it was the amount of time you had had in between meals. You take a bite of the mash on the side and feel something cold and metallic in your mouth.

You breathe in sharply and sit in place, slowly moving your hand toward your mouth. There’s a moment of emptiness before your realisation, a stillness as you hope the silver cross necklace you had pulled from your teeth did not mean what you thought it did. You release a shaky breath and hold a hand to your mouth, feeling sick to your stomach.

You had eaten her.

“Sam.”

The whisper is almost inaudible. You’d never spoken at the table before and, though it was allowed, you feel as though you’re breaking a rule. He looks up and his eyes widen, seeing how quickly your face has paled. You look down at the plate, then back at him, shaking your head in a warning motion.

It’s only now he sees the necklace in your palm, pieces of dried blood sticking to it. Lori hadn’t even bothered to clean it - she had probably meant to throw it away. You lean back in your chair, looking out the window to your left and seeing how the trees stretch for miles past it, leaves heavy with snow. You weren’t sure when it had snowed. You try not to cry.

“Are you alright dear?” Lori asks, tension cutting across the room. Your head turns slowly, tears falling down your cheeks like hot tar, eyes wide, sucking in quick breaths. Sam seems scared - you look animalistic.

You hold up the necklace. “Did you make us eat her?” Your voice is unnatural, toneless and uncaring - a stark difference to the look on your face. Lori smiles. All she ever fucking does is smile.

You stare silently, face set with fear as she approaches, placing a manicured and veiny hand on your shallow cheek. You turn your head to the side, but her hand never leaves your face.

“Did you enjoy it?” It almost wasn’t a question - not when she knew the answer. You turn back to face her and her hand moves across your face, coming to rest by the corner of your mouth.

If you were to be treated like some kind of animal, that’s what she’d receive. You bite down hard, ignoring the scream as your teeth carve through her finger. You get to bone and pull, degloving the skin and muscle from her finger and holding it in your mouth like a dog. Then, just as she looks back to you, you spit it onto your plate with an almost smile.

Sam looks at you with an unreadable expression. You meet his eyes, ignore the feeling that settles in your stomach and simply reply, “We’re done with our meal.”

Lori pushes you down the staircase and into one singular cage, being in too much pain to open each individually. This is your plan. She closes the doors and snaps the keys. This is your plan.

Sam is withering, flu-like and scared. “Why?” he asks quietly, moving from your arms. “Why would you do that?” his eyes are wide, begging. Tears litter his cheeks. He’s given up thinking there’s a way to be saved. He’s grown accustomed to dying behind rusted metal bars.

You don’t reply and with blood stained lips you kiss him, trying to offer reassurance. He returns your kiss with a sigh, his pained fever making his skin hot to touch. He leans into you, hands holding your waist as if you’d disappear. You pull away and cradle him, gently brushing shaking hands through his hair. You kiss his forehead every now and then, staining his skin with darkening red.

Everything about you is strangely calm. You don’t fear Lori, not now you have seen her bleed. She could die. She would. You fall asleep almost smiling; she would, she would.

Lori wakes you in the early morning, hand bandaged and face stern. There’s no more smiling. Thank God. Your confidence chipped at her, annoyed her. It’s your turn to smile now. She unlocks the cage to move you to your own - you knew she’d had a spare key, she loved theatrics. As soon as you stand to move to your own cage you sprint, knocking her to the floor.

You knew you would’ve won, but weak monsters always bring a weapon when they feared the Hero the most. Though, you refuse to be Hero. There is no Leander, there is no searchlight. It’s you and Sam: wild eyes, knotted hair and blood stains. 

A knife pushes you off of her, sinking itself into your abdomen with aim and anger. Lori had known you’d bite again.

Your breath escapes you, blood seeping from your sullen skin. You fall into the agony, screaming out to the sky. It’s not the single cut that would’ve killed you, it's the anger. Lori stands now, placing a foot against your throat. “A rabid dog bites three times before it’s greeted with death's hands, a rabid human? They get one chance.” She whispers, her words distant.

Behind the both of you, Sam slowly rises, hands clenched in fists, teeth baring. Her head hits the floor first, a horrible crack echoing in the basement. Screams had a way of sinking into you, biting at your heart, but these made you strong. You stand beside Sam as he hits her, ripping the fabric of your large jacket to tie around your wound.

You let him kill her.

Sam lifts you up the stairs and you help him walk through the cold, each taking turns to keep the other alive. You walk through the snow, damp and ripped clothes doing nothing to keep you warm. It feels as though it’s been hours and eventually, Sam collapses into you, the both of you falling to the soft snow. 

He kneels forward into you and you hold his face gently. The image was almost too familiar; Sam falling into the arms of someone he loves, face slick with tears and body weak. He had died too much already, you wouldn’t let it happen again.

You kiss his jawline so softly it might’ve been a snowflake landing on his bruised skin and he lifts his head. “Sorry.” he mutters repeatedly, a slurry of vowels and tears. You don’t dare to shush him, it wouldn’t help anything, it wouldn’t stop him. “I’m so sorry.”

You kiss him again. “None of this was ever your fault,” You whisper, voice tired and teeth stained. After a while, you try to move again, stumbling over only the iced floor. There’s a cough from Sam that pushes blood to his mouth, then he’s losing his footing again and falling into you, his hand pressing into the wound on your abdomen. You cry out, collapsing to the floor, spilling red on the pure white snow.

It’s his turn to hold you now, muttering endless apologies and ripping his own clothes to rebandage you; his skin is pale, a majority of his muscle eaten away by time and hunger. He looked like a corpse. You lie there, cold and silent as his hands shake, tying knots as though it’s routine. He pushes past his own pain, placing a blood stained hand on your cheek and whispering to you. You shiver under his touch and it shocks you how much you’ve missed being near him. You smile gently, and bury your head into his shoulder. The both of you sit there for a while, slowly freezing and holding each other with a softness you hadn’t felt in a while.

Eventually, you reach the road and lean against a barrier, slowly, softly. He kisses your collarbone as he leans into you and you both wait to die.

“I love you.” You whisper, ready to close your eyes and not open them again. He sighs almost contently, his lips finding your skin again. Your fingers were red and sore, blood picking at the frost.

“I love you,” he replies.

Just as the two of you close your eyes with a sad acceptance, there’s a roar of an engine you recognise. The wheels screech, a voice yells, but neither of you respond. Sam’s fallen asleep now and you don’t have the energy to speak. Hands grip your shoulders, press down to stop the flow of blood, scream your name. You can see him in a blur, but there’s not enough in you to react. Your eyes close and it’s something you’re ok with.

⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖ng 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎... ⋙

You wake up slowly, bleach biting at your nose. The room is stark white and clean - beeping rings in your ears. You’re alone. You climb out of the hospital bed and wince, the wound clean, but still painful. It didn’t take you long for you to find Dean, his voice loud against the hush of the ward. He turns, eyes locking onto you and grins, running over and leaving the doctor he was talking to behind. His arms wrap around you, soft and welcoming. “Thought the both of you had left me. Took me a month and a bit to find you.” He pulls away, smiling, “You’re both too strong, found your own way out.” He’s happy, Sam’s alive.

He sees the look in your eyes, he knows. “He’s inside, not awake yet.” He replies, voice softer now. You spare one more, thankful glance at your best friend and make your way to Sam’s room.

Sam lies there, still and peaceful. His cheeks are brighter and his bones hidden by strength once more. You sit by his side, eyes tired, and wait for him to wake up. He will, he has to. Eventually, sleep takes you and you lean against his bed, head resting on his chest to feel the gentle rise and fall. Your hand holds his, there’s not much else you can do.

“Aren’t you meant to be in your own bed?” A voice asks and your eyes open to see him smiling at you. His hair is brushed back and his skin is clean of dirt. He sounds okay.

You laugh slightly, smiling for the first time in a month and reply, “I had better things to do.” You lean forward, kissing his lips softly, careful not to hurt either of you. He returns the sentiment, hand tying itself into your hair. You hold his face, thumb tracing his jawline, and smile as you pull away.

He stays there, noses touching slightly. You’re centimetres apart. “You’re lucky I’m not infectious.” He whispers. You laugh again and move your hands to gently clasp the back of his neck.

“I wouldn’t care anyway.”

Sam kisses you again.

[ladylynse]

Chapter 14 [FF | AO3] of Revision: Maddie can’t deny it any longer. If ectoplasm can become blood, there’s more to this story than she ever realized.

Beginning | Previous

-|-

“What could she have possibly meant by that?” Maddie said to Alicia as she paced around the kitchen. Alicia was sitting at the table with her cup of coffee, watching Maddie’s antics with a long-suffering expression on her face and using silence for the deadly weapon it was. “She’s important to Danny, and I doubt it’s a stretch to say that he’s important to her, so if she had something important to say, why wouldn’t she have told him earlier?”

Alicia took a long sip from her coffee. Or she pretended to, anyway. Maddie wasn’t convinced she wouldn’t have burnt her mouth if she’d really done that, considering she’d just made it. Much as Alicia pretended (however poorly) to be above drama, she did love her theatrics. And making a point. And watching her sister stew, which Maddie was, which only made this worse.

“Don’t tell me I should have asked her,” added Maddie, “because you know why I couldn’t ask her.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking it.” Alicia hummed a noncommittal note that had Maddie scowling. “You were.”

“If you’re so sure of what I’d say to you, why are we even talking about this?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense!” Maddie stopped and turned to Alicia. “Think about it. What does my being here possibly change that makes talking to Danny suddenly more important than it was before?”

“It was you being you, if I recall correctly,” drawled Alicia, “which is a turn of phrase I’m assuming means a mite more to you than it does to me.”

“It should,” groused Maddie, “but instead, everything is making less sense.”

“Because everything in your life makes so much sense.”

“It used to! Or at least— At least I thought it did.” Maddie pulled out a chair and finally joined Alicia at the table. She rested her head in one hand, pushing back her hair as she looked over at her sister. “How are you just—accepting all of this? You were never drawn to the paranormal like I was. Doesn’t this unnerve you?”

“You know what I’ve been through and you think this is going to unnerve me?”

“It unnerves me,” admitted Maddie as she straightened up to lean back in the chair, “so sue me if I’m a little surprised that you seem to be taking to this like a duck to water.”

“Not sure I’d say that myself. I don’t have a nose for this kind of thing like you do. For me, it’s the reality right now, so I’ll deal with it. I’ll take whatever’s thrown at me and roll with it before I crumble in front of those kids when they need me.”

There was a familiar stubbornness in Alicia’s voice as she said the words, and Maddie realized that Alicia was simply refusing to acknowledge the possibility that this might ever get to be too much because she simply wouldn’t let it. She’d been Maddie’s rock for ages, she was a beloved pillar of her community, she was going to be there for Danny and Danielle in whatever capacity they wished—

That mindset would take her far, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t crack under the pressure eventually.

“You don’t need to take all of this on yourself—” started Maddie, but a bark of bitter laughter cut her off.

“I’d decided to take on everything by myself long before the ink was dry on that divorce paperwork. I’d been doing it for long enough by then already, and I’m not about to change now. You might be happier facing things with Jack by your side, but I’m better off now than I was.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing. The kids need me, so I’ll be here for them. That’s that. Why do you think Danny came to me in the first place?” Alicia’s tone made it clear she wasn’t going to wait for an answer, so Maddie didn’t try to get a word in. “You’ve all visited me often enough that he decided he could trust me. Do we need to go through this again?”

“No, no, I just— It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about you.” Maddie chewed on her lip. “But I can’t see how I’m supposed to factor into this, either. What changed?”

“With Danielle? Might’ve been you staying and not shooting. Far as she’s concerned, that’s a change.”

Maddie winced. “That’s not what I mean. I— You’re you. Meaning she knew just by being in the same room as me that I’m not a ghost and I’m not being overshadowed. But if that were even being called into question and she could determine who I was on sight, why wouldn’t she have done that in the first place?”

Alicia hummed, took another sip of coffee, and then said, “Maybe she didn’t want to risk being wrong as much as she didn’t want to risk being right.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Which should fit right in, considering you’ve been saying how much sense this whole situation makes.”

Maddie huffed and crossed her arms. “Don’t pretend like you understand everything.”

“I don’t. But I can accept that I won’t understand everything, ‘specially not right away, unlike a certain someone I know and love.”

“But it still— I didn’t do anything differently!” Maddie threw up her hands. “I don’t understand what changed. Why she really wanted to see me when I don’t think she wanted to see me at all. Why that confirmed whatever it is that she has to talk to Danny about.”

“Have you considered that maybe she didn’t want to tell him?”

“What?”

“You know how protective he is of her. Maybe that goes both ways where it can. Maybe she wanted to protect him from whatever this is and now she realizes she can’t, so the best she can do for both of them is loop him in.”

Maddie frowned. “Even if that’s the case, she’s in no state to protect anyone, and she must recognize that. I know why she wouldn’t have said anything to me, but would she trust you enough yet to ask you for help on it if she wanted to keep it from Danny?”

“Would you trust someone that much if you only met them two days ago, even if they’ve been helping you?”

“In these circumstances? I would if I knew I couldn’t handle it myself. Which is why I’m worried. There’s something else going on, and we’re going to misstep if we can’t plan for it, but— I can’t even broach the subject with her. I know she doesn’t trust me, and I don’t expect her to trust me, but I don’t want anyone getting hurt because of what she knows and we don’t.”

“So is now my cue to tell you—”

“I’m not going back upstairs to ask her! If you’ll recall, I just said I couldn’t.”

“I was going to say, ‘Is now my cue to tell you Danny’ll fill us in if we need to know?’”

“But if it’s important, we will nee—”

“If what’s important?”

Maddie startled and turned to see Danny standing in the kitchen entrance. “Whatever Danielle has to tell you.”

Danny grimaced. “Yeah, I talked to her before coming down here. I’m not entirely happy that you saw her when I wasn’t there, but it was her choice, and she made it for a reason, and we can talk about that later. But it’s….” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Can you just, like, not question everything I say for two minutes?”

“Oh, sweetie—”

“She can if I duct tape her mouth shut,” Alicia offered, and the smile on Danny’s face at the prospect was the only reason Maddie didn’t snap back a retort.

“No tape necessary, I promise.”

Danny joined them at the table. “Okay. Here goes. I thought Vlad had given up on the whole cloning thing—”

“Cloning?” Maddie exclaimed, only to let out a yelp as Alicia kicked her under the table.

“—but apparently he hasn’t,” Danny continued without acknowledging her outburst, “and apparently Dani hasn’t been travelling the world as extensively as I’d assumed. She’s been staying off Vlad’s radar because she knows how to do that better than me, but ever since we stabilized her, she’s been growing into her powers and— I don’t think that part matters. Point is, you didn’t catch her because she just happened to be passing through town.”

Maddie opened her mouth, but the roiling dread inside her drowned any words she could think to say.

“I don’t think Vlad’s original plan matters at this point because he’s going to be making things up on the fly, but you need to believe me when I say he’s up to something. And if you can’t do that, I’ll just— I’ll ask Dora if you can stay with her until this is sorted out because at least Vlad can’t track you there.”

This was not the time to ask who Dora was (though the name was vaguely familiar) or why Vlad wouldn’t be able to track Maddie—or anyone, presumably—at her place.

Clearly, though, Danny did not think it was the time for her to question everything else he had said, despite Maddie very dearly wanting to question it.

Cloning? That alone opened up a terrifying can of worms, mostly because she doubted Danny was talking about cloning bacteria—or a ghost’s ability to duplicate themselves. And the rest of it….

Danielle knowing enough about Vlad’s methods to stay off his radar—not an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination, she was realizing—and being in town because she was trying to counter whatever he’d planned now? Something Maddie had apparently interrupted? Something that Danielle had still thought—somehow—she’d had handled until she’d seen Maddie herself?

Or had Danielle not thought that she’d handled it but thought she’d still have time to handle it, whatever it was, only to now realize she didn’t?

That seemed more likely, though that possibility brought Maddie no closer to determining what was actually going on.

“I believe you,” Maddie said, since she’d be a right fool to deny Danny now when she still had proof of Vlad’s plan, whatever it truly was, tucked away in her pocket, “but I would like more details if you have them.”

Danny blew out a breath. “Jazz basically pushed a kill switch on anything Vlad had in the field, but obviously that didn’t work. I’m not sure he’d have been able to counter that without Jazz noticing, so maybe he divided up his resources and set up something Tucker hasn’t found yet to deploy all those beetles. Both sets of them, I mean. Not just the ones that were attacking Dani.”

“So you and Tucker—and Sam—check up on him routinely to keep track of what he’s doing?” Maddie asked carefully, hoping Danny wouldn’t take the question the wrong way. She didn’t mean to question their competence or the necessity of it, but the ease with which he said it….

It was like he was talking about a long-running family prank, a game in which the warring sides had gleeful fun with each other, not something as terrible as what was apparently the reality.

How bad had things gotten if he could say something like this so offhandedly, as if it weren’t an absurd thing to do, to need to do? As if doing so carried little to no risk? For it to be so commonplace as to be routine—

“We try, but at this point, I’m wondering if he struck a deal with Technus and set up something in the Ghost Zone to work on all the shady stuff where we wouldn’t immediately know where to go to trash it. Dani hasn’t found it if he did, but….” Danny shrugged. “He’s got something somewhere, even if it’s just farther underneath his mansion. I mean, if he was working with you to find me, he must’ve let you on his computer at some point, and there’s no way he’d risk letting you find that stuff yourself. Plus whatever the deal with Dad is. You might want to think it’s coincidental, but Vlad has to be behind Dad going missing in the Ghost Zone or someone would’ve found him by now. Assuming Dad’s still in the Ghost Zone.”

“You’ll find Jack before anything too terrible happens to him,” Alicia commented. “Man might not have the memory of an elephant, but he’s certainly resilient as a cockroach.”

Danny’s lips twitched. “I hope so. But Vlad doesn’t just want Dad out of the way, he wants him out of the picture completely. And if he can distract you….” Danny hesitated. “Look. I don’t know how to put this delicately, but you remember when I said Vlad tries getting my DNA all the time?”

“I really don’t like where this is going.”

“Yeah, it gets worse.” Danny made a face. “Vlad’s been relatively quiet for a while. He stopped sending Skulker to kidnap me and played at being the dutiful mayor and everything—”

“Kidnapping?” She and Jack were well aware of the possibility, of course, because Jazz and Danny could both be targets of a particularly stupid ghost, given that they were the children of ghost hunters, but she hadn’t—

“Just— Ignore that for now. It’s not important. Point is, I let my guard down, Dani let her guard down, and Vlad got the better of us both. Dani feels rotten because she’s convinced this is her fault since she didn’t figure out what Vlad was doing until he’d mostly done it, and then she tried to deal with it herself and—”

“None of this is her fault,” Maddie interrupted. “And if you’re thinking it, this isn’t your fault, either.”

Danny sighed. “I know that, and you know that, but put it aside for now, okay? That’s just context for this next bit.”

“All of this is just context?”

“Vlad’s experimented with human cloning,” Danny said bluntly, “and I don’t mean stem cells or whatever. And when he gets what he wants, he’s got some way of accelerating aging. I dunno how he does it, but that always messed with his clones. Pretty much one wrong move on their part and they’d start turning into goo. But now he’s figured that part out. They don’t destabilize anymore.”

Maddie stared.

Alicia didn’t move, her coffee cup frozen halfway to her mouth.

Danny, apparently, was through pulling his punches. “I know he didn’t get a mid-morph sample from me, but maybe he decided his clone didn’t have to be a perfect clone of me and instead could be a chimera and he stabilized them with his own mid-morph sample. Except Dani thinks he didn’t just stop at me this time, because I’m not the only one he’s ever wanted.”

Maddie opened her mouth again, but words still failed her.

“Look. There’s no sugar-coating it. It’s as horrifying and straight up gross as it sounds, and I’m not one hundred percent sure of Vlad’s endgame, but I know he won’t settle for an inferior copy if he thinks he can manipulate his way into getting the real thing. Which always used to involve getting rid of Dad and then swooping in and marrying you, except now that you know, well, enough, that’s a harder sell and he knows it.”

But Jack was in the Ghost Zone. Missing. Going in had been his idea, but Vlad had encouraged the idea of him going alone, and now—

Danny must have told Danielle about Jack.

Had Danielle thought that Maddie might not be the person who’d terrorized her but might instead be another tool of Vlad’s? And something about seeing Maddie had tipped her off that Maddie hadn’t been replaced even if she’d suspected Vlad might make such an attempt? Had Danielle agreed to see Maddie in order to verify her suspicions? Had Maddie’s persistence in wanting to see her been what had made the difference? Had it been the fact that she’d traded in her usual HAZMAT suit for casual clothes—and then burned those and found herself in an old set of Alicia’s?

Alicia huffed. “Regular bullets won’t hurt him, I’m guessing? Gotta be those special ghost ones?”

“Alicia!”

“Just saying, if you need anything, it’s all still stored in the same place. Broom closet and corner cabinet in the back room. Trigger lock on the gun’s got the combination you think it does.”

“We are not going to shoot him.”

“Mom’s right, it wouldn’t help,” Danny said, as if that were the problem and not the fact that she’d very recently learned that having all the appearances of a ghost didn’t mean one had no humanity. Alicia hadn’t been joking—Maddie wasn’t sure if she’d meant shoot to kill or shoot to maim, though admittedly she had her suspicions—but as sickening as the situation that Danny described clearly was, there had to be proper channels for them to go through, hadn’t there? On the ghost side, if not the human one?

Not that a human cell could hold a ghost without modifications.

Not that very many humans outside of Amity Park would believe any part of the story.

Did ghosts have their own laws? Their own legal system? Was there a ghost jail?

Could a ghost jail hold a human or would it be as effective as a human jail trying to hold a ghost?

“He’d just go intangible,” continued Danny, “steal it from you, and turn it on you. Way safer not to pull any weapons on him. Unless Mom thinks she can make something out of the broken tech she scavenged. That would work. Or at least distract him. But I don’t know how much time there is to do that.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Maddie said. She pulled the beetles—whole and pieces—from her pockets and took some small comfort in the weight of the metal in her hand. Weaponry was familiar ground for her. She and Jack had made do on scraps before; she could do so again, even on a time crunch, now that she had something concrete to start with.

“I’ll go grab one of my toolboxes,” Alicia said as she stood. “You two keep talking; I’ll catch up.”

“There’s not a whole lot more to say,” Danny admitted as Alicia walked out of the room. Maddie knew Alicia had a supply of commonly used tools in the kitchen, meaning she rightly suspected Maddie would need a wrench to get into the guts of this particular invention. “This is who Vlad really is. It’s one of many reasons Jazz and I hate his guts.”

“Danielle, too, I’m assuming.” If she didn’t, she’d hardly know to keep an eye on him in the first place.

“Yeah, but it’s complicated.”

How?

Maddie bit back the question. With everything Danny had just told her, if he’d wanted to elaborate, he would have. If she asked, he wouldn’t answer.

Right?

Was she respecting his boundaries if she didn’t push him for information or was she giving him the impression that she didn’t care and had only been pretending, be it for well- or ill-intentioned reasons? Was he giving her an opportunity that she wasn’t taking or would he be grateful she didn’t ask for a story he didn’t think she deserved to know? Was there a way to ask any of that without it reflecting poorly on her?

Maddie asked the important question instead: “How do we protect Danielle?”

“You do that,” Danny said, waving vaguely at the broken technology on the table. “I can charge up your final project if it doesn’t work on its own like I do with the thermoses.”

Maddie blinked. “Wait, you’re the reason the Fenton Thermoses work after sitting in the lab for a few days? It’s not that they’ve absorbed enough residual ecto-energy to maintain a constant level?”

A sheepish smile crossed Danny’s face. “There might be a few things I should probably tell you guys about your inventions. They’re, um, not usually as broken as you think they are.”

“I can imagine,” Maddie murmured. Then, because she couldn’t think of a way to put it delicately, she asked, “Is there something of ours I should try to mimic with this?”

“Not really. Based on what they were shooting earlier, your max output is probably going to be somewhere between a lipstick and a wrist ray. I kinda doubt you have what you need to build a Spectre Deflector or a Plasmius Maximus.”

“A what?”

“It’s what Vlad used on me when he stranded us at his cabin in Colorado. It shorts out ghost powers.”

When Vlad had stranded them—? No. No, now wasn’t the time to ask about that. She needed to know about this invention. “How?”

“I dunno. It looks like a taser. It shocks you. It hurts. It takes a few hours to recover. I didn’t take the thing apart before I destroyed it; the last thing I wanted was to get caught with it and for you to get ideas.”

Maddie pursed her lips. For someone like Danny—like Vlad, like Danielle—a shock to the system at a high enough charge might indeed be enough to scatter their ghostly energy. She knew from earlier experiments that ghosts could be destabilized and reform into the same ghost—or at least a new ghost with the same ecto-signature as the old one—as long as the initial spark of their core wasn’t completely destroyed.

Well.

Destabilized was the wrong word, really. Destabilized implied that it couldn’t reform. Dispelled or dispersed were better ways of describing it.

Depending on its strength, a ghost could ignore or be weakened by a mild shock, knocked out by something a bit stronger, dispelled by something stronger still, and only completely obliterated at levels of coulombs she and Jack had deemed too dangerous to build into their weaponry. Unlike with their ectoplasmic-based weaponry, a human could be hurt just as easily as ghost with that sort of weapon, and the current levels of a stun gun wouldn’t cut it when it came to destabilizing ghosts that were more advanced than the blobs they’d typically trapped and studied. The ectopus Jack had caught the one time had been entirely unfazed by something that would stop a human in their tracks.

She and Jack still used electrical discharge in some of the weapons—she rather favoured the compromise she’d settled on with her staff, even if it did operate at non-obliteration levels—but they’d been coating their syringes in Fenton Anti-Ghost Goo long before they’d been filling them with ecto-suppressants. The chemical suppressant hadn’t come until after their experimentation with electricity. They weren’t the equivalent of tasing a ghost but did contain elements of phase-proof foam.

Jack’s first attempt at Ecto-Dejecto had been a failure, strengthening ghosts instead of weakening them, but further trialling had allowed them to realize they could achieve their goal by hampering a ghost’s ability to control its own ectoplasm. Ectoplasm that came in contact with their phase-proofing formula was rendered inert, temporarily losing its ability to turn intangible, so taking elements of that formula and tweaking it into something less viscous, something they could more easily inject into a ghost to the point that it couldn’t escape—

That they couldn’t escape.

That a ghost like Danielle wouldn’t be able to escape.

“Mom, are you listening to me?”

Right.

The problem at hand.

Danny could have been giving her important details before he’d noticed that she wasn’t giving him her full attention—or any attention, really.

Maddie felt her face warm as she realized Danny’s reprimand had come with Alicia’s return. “Sorry, honey. I’m afraid I got distracted thinking about our ecto-suppressants. I can’t mimic the formula—I don’t have the right materials—but I might be able to deliver a strong enough shock to Vlad to disrupt his ghost form.”

“Shock?” Alicia echoed as she dropped a toolbox and two cases of wrenches on the table by Maddie. “Do I need to run to Johnson’s for a cattle prod?”

“That might help,” agreed Danny. “It would be easier than booster cables and a car battery. I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to rig something like that up without, uh, bad things happening. It would be safer for you guys, too, since that won’t kill you even if Vlad does get his hands on it.” He paused. “I think.”

Maddie sighed and pulled the set of Allen wrenches towards her, hoping Alicia had a small enough set buried inside the larger case to be useful. “Please let me try talking to him before you attack.”

“Talking doesn’t work,” Danny said. “If anything, he’ll just use it as an opportunity to make you hesitate. Or doubt me. Again. Despite ample evidence. Believe me, this is not the first time he’s done it.”

“I know more this time. It’s not going to be like other times.”

“Only if you don’t let it be like other times. Trust me, okay? I’m not saying you have to shock him or blast him with whatever you can make the second he shows his face, but don’t stop me when I do it.”

Maddie looked to Alicia for help. As far as the law was concerned, Vlad wasn’t a ghost. A premediated attack would hardly reflect well on them if this went poorly—which it may, given Plasmius’s strength as a ghost and Vlad’s fistful of strings he could pull to get some human help. Alicia might joke about using weapons not meant for ghosts, but surely she would realize what crossing that line would do if she thought about it?

“You hate the idea, huh?” Alicia didn’t look surprised—but then again, neither did Danny. “You forget that he already attacked Danielle? We’re back on my property, and I’m more than willing to protect her from someone like him.”

“I didn’t forget. I’m simply….” Maddie worried her bottom lip as she tried to gather her spinning thoughts. “Vlad’s powerful. From the sounds of it, he’s perfectly happy to use his wealth to get exactly what he wants. If he goes after us, we can’t defend against that. Neither of us have the funds to cover the cost of going to court to fight this if it goes wrong. Jack and I would have to sell off our lab equipment and patents just for lawyer fees, and you….”

“Okay,” Danny said, “I’ll admit Tuck and Sam and I are still working on gathering evidence of him infringing on your patents, but he’s done enough that we’ve gotta be able to get him on something.” His pause was too short for her to formulate a response, and he’d continued before she had a chance to open her mouth. “I’m assuming Jazz told you he’s supplying the Red Huntress with all her stuff? Second suit aside, since that was Technus? Anyway, we’re trying to gather solid evidence for all the other definitely illegal stuff, too, not just the creepy stuff. So, if it’ll make you feel better, fine, you two can fight solely with weapons meant to target ghosts. Doesn’t mean you can’t break apart a cattle prod and use it for parts.”

He had a point.

“Would Johnson’s even carry cattle prods?”

“Wouldn’t suggest it if they didn’t.”

Maddie still didn’t like this—didn’t like any of it—but Danny had a better handle on the situation than she did; pretending otherwise was foolish.

And having a few more functioning parts to work with would help. She doubted Alicia would have been keen on replacing half her kitchen appliances after Maddie was through looking for things she could use.

“All right,” she said, trying to muster up a smile for Danny’s sake, “let’s see how much we can get done before….” Before Vlad shows up. Before everything turns on its head again. Before the mistakes of the past come back to haunt me. To haunt us. Because I never looked for the signs or acknowledged them when they were right in front of me, because I kept making assumptions and mistakes and not listening and—and—

“Before— What’s your polite way of saying it, before crud hits the fan?” Alicia suggested dryly.

Danny smirked. “That’s one way to put it.”

-|-

Continued on FFN | AO3

[hiiragi7]

We suspect that we are intersex- won't get into the specifics of our complications or the variation we think we may have. We know for a fact that our parents were considering putting us on hormones as a kid as well. We were purposefully shut up in appointments as a kid by our parents when we tried to talk about anything related to what we suspect.

I was wondering if you perhaps knew of any resources for people who don't know what kinds of appointments may be necessary. Or just that can be helpful to intersex people in general. Sorry if this is inappropriate- we just have been trying for months to find someone who knew of good resources or similar and perisex people have constantly been pushing us aside. (you don't have to answer this- you can just tell us to fuck right off or ignore this as well).

I really should just get to making that intersex resources carrd I was planning to make... I keep putting it off.

The only resource I have on hand right now is InterAct, but I encourage anyone who has more to add on.

I get this question frequently, though, and having been through the diagnosis process myself, I can give you advice on that part.

Firstly, you'll want to make a list of all your symptoms, even ones you think are unrelated (ex. heart issues, joint problems, musculoskeletal issues). List ALL of them. Your doctors will not be getting the full picture otherwise and many intersex variations cause a wide range of symptoms unrelated to sex, and many variations also have higher comorbidity rates with certain disorders that may give your doctors insight as to where to start. If you are unable to see a doctor, you should probably still make a list so that you can compare your symptoms to your research.

I also recommend making a list of historical symptoms (symptoms you had in the past but no longer have). I'd also write down what your puberty was like, what age it started at, and any other details that stick out (Such as your parents wanting to put you on hormones as a child and the silencing during appointments).

You can also try requesting your medical records, though this won't always give you answers (A lot of doctors will leave details related to being intersex out on purpose).

After all this is done, you'll generally go through this process:

Primary -> Gynecology/Urology -> Endocrinology -> Genetics

Not everyone follows the same process, some people start with endocrinology for example, and a lot of people have to go back and forth (ex. Gynecology -> Endocrinology -> Gynecology -> Endocrinology -> Diagnosis). But if you're looking for where to start on appointments, you can use this as a guideline.

Generally, your primary provider will look at your symptoms, potentially order some basic blood tests, and refer you to one of the other specialties (Usually they start with Gynecology/Urology to rule out obvious physical causes and for radiology, you'll likely have to do some ultrasounds and physical exams).

Gynecology/Urology will likely be a lot of describing your physical symptoms to the doctor and being physically examined. In my experience it's a lot more based around scans, MRIs, physical exams, and symptom history intake than specialties like Endocrinology. Important to note with this specialty that you are always free to refuse a test or stop a test if you find it too anxiety-inducing or painful for you, because they will be in sensitive areas.

Also, if you have a uterus/ovaries, be sure to read up on how many adrenal disorders involve ovarian cysts, because they will try to diagnose you with PCOS if your scans show cysts and that may not be an accurate diagnosis. Make sure they are ruling everything possible out before considering PCOS. NCAH appears very similar to PCOS and commonly comes with ovarian cysts.

With Endocrinology, you'll likely be doing a lot more blood tests. Expect a lot of "It could be this, go get these tests, see you back in 2-4 weeks."

If everything else fails and nobody else can figure anything out, you may be referred to a geneticist - However, if you aren't recieving fertility counseling, many doctors won't really want to refer you to them. It's also important to keep in mind that this will only give potential answers if you have a genetic variation, which not everyone does.

If the geneticist can't find anything, you're back to Endocrinology again. You will have to keep pushing them, ask them to ask their supervisors about your case, switch endocrinologists if you need to. It may be a bit of a long journey, but if you're so symptomatic that your parents acted the way you described, you do likely have something going on and you have a right to know this information about your own body.

Long post, I hope this helps as a starting place.

[chiffiorra]

╰┈➤ These Scars of Mine; They Look Like Diamonds, No?

➜ Synopsis: Related to Leave Scars as a "what if" where reader stuck around a little bit longer.

➜ Pairings: Platonic!Haruchiyo Sanzu x fem!reader, minor Takeomi Akashi and platonic!Senju x reader

➜ This Fic Contains the Following: Reader is Takeomi's girlfriend, Sanzu's a little scared to see you 💔, small description of injury and bandages, crying and comforting, author cried a little ngl, she swears that the next prompt with Sanzu will be better ;^;

➜ WC: 1,257

➜ Note: i have no excuse except this was in my docs for a long time and i wanted to share with others and maaaaaybe make myself and possibly others a little sad in the process ♡

It has been almost a week since you last visited the Akashi residence. You were much too busy with work, school, visiting some relatives faraway, and personal matters to spend a lot of time with Takeomi; much to your dismay. Because of all of this, you missed visiting your boyfriend and spending time with him so much. You also missed seeing his younger siblings, who took a liking to you almost immediately when you first met them. Haruchiyo and Senju were always such sweethearts to you, sometimes wanting to take you away from their elder brother unintentionally or not, which always annoyed the latter.

But yet for some reason, Takeomi has been a little distant lately. You noticed that whenever you had any small free time out of your busy week to see him, it was like he had guilt in his eyes if you looked closely enough. Talking to him wasn't working as he would just brush it off, which was unusual of him as he was the type to talk any issue out. Shinichiro, your good friend, seemed to act that way too but it was worse, as if he carried a huge weight of guilt on his back. Your poor friend also looked like he aged ten years as well in a matter of days, and that worried you greatly.

Benkei and Wakasa weren't much help either as they didn't know what was going on, they were just as lost as you.

When you stepped up the door and rang the doorbell, you were pleased to see Takeomi, who smiled and kissed you when he saw you. Senju was just a few feet away from him when he opened the door. When she saw you, she yelled your name and literally jumped for joy. You laughed as you knelt down and was almost tackled to the ground when she hugged you tightly.

"Hello Senju! It's been a while, no?" You say, standing up to carry her on your hip.

"'Omi said that you were too busy to visit!" She answered, pouting.

"But she's not busy anymore, so you'll see her more often," Takeomi stated, rolling his eyes. He wrapped his arm around your shoulders as he pulled you and Senju closer.

It was almost like you guys were a happy little family... except there was one person missing to complete it.

Immediately you begin to ask, "Where's Haru?"

A sudden silence filled the room at your question. Confused, you looked up at Takeomi. He looked away from your gaze and said nothing. As for Senju, she only looked down as she played with a piece of your hair as a distraction, she looked sad. The same guilt ridden expression was on her too, just like with her brother and Shinichiro.

"Where's Haruchiyo?" You didn't want to assume something horrible happened to him, but you needed to know and the silence was already killing you.

"His room I think," you barely heard Senju whisper. Now wanting to see Haruchiyo and wondering why everyone was sad at the mention of him, you gently put Senju down and began walking away to look for him.

"Wait, before you see him- there's something you should know-," Takeomi began walking after you, but you refused to let him catch up. You sure as hell couldn't wait any longer to see Haru.

"I'll see for myself, let me go alone," your tone was enough for your boyfriend to back off.

As you turned a corner to the hallway, you noticed that the door at the end on your right leading to Haruchiyo's bedroom was open with just a crack. There appeared to be darkness, not a single light was on in his room.

"Haru?" You called out, walking slowly towards it.

A small voice could be heard from the room, whimpering out your name before you heard the following, "Don't come close… please…"

You were confused, "Haruchiyo? What's wrong, honey? I just wanted to see you, is there a reason why you don't want me to come closer?" You asked, using a gentle tone. Not even a minute after greeting him and you could tell something was up. This was already so unlike him, he was always happy to see you.

"You won't love me anymore if you see me. I'm hurt badly," he responded. It already broke your heart.

"Haru… I'll always love you no matter what. You're beautiful, baby!" You coaxed. "You could never make me dislike you."

"Really?" He sniffled.

"Really. Now come on out silly, I missed you."

After five seconds of silence, the door finally opened more and the younger Akashi finally stepped out into the light of the hallway and slowly walked up to you, but he was covering his face with his hands.

"Sweetie, let me see your face please? It's been a long time since I last visited," you smiled down at him.

What you saw next made a chill run down your spine and your breath hitch.

As Haruchiyo did what you said, slowly removing his hands and looking up at you, there they were: two large bandages on the corners of his lips. You couldn't help but widen your eyes in horror; just what the hell happened when you were gone?!

You gently placed your hands on his cheeks, "What happened to you, Haru dear? Who did this to you?" You asked, kneeling down to his level.

Haruchiyo's lips quivered as he struggled to speak, trying to hold his tears back, "I- I fell."

Something was seriously wrong here and you could easily tell from the way he was close to tears and his whole body shaking as if he were cold. But what he said next shattered your heart completely:

"It… it doesn't hurt at all, don't worry," he gave a tiny smile. He wanted to give a bigger smile but he couldn't risk tearing his injuries open. It just made you frown even more, and even tear up.

You gently pulled him into a hug, stroking his hair as a tear slid down your cheek. "I won't force you to tell me, you can tell me whenever you're ready, okay?" You whispered, giving him a slight squeeze in reassurance.

Haruchiyo finally let himself cry, his little hands clutching the back of your shirt in fists. His tears landed on your shoulder as he kept his mouth shut as he struggled to keep his sobs from escaping, letting only whimpers escape.

He never wanted to lie to you, but he wouldn't bear upsetting you even more than he already did if he told you what really happened. He didn't want Mikey in trouble with you nor did he didn't want you to hate him nor Shinichiro. He knew Mikey loved you as much as he did and also saw you as a big sister. If he told you the truth, you could possibly cut off contact with the Sanos and he didn't want that to happen, Haruchiyo would never forgive himself.

You knew that something horrible happened and no one was going to tell you so you were going to wait as long as it takes, nag Takeomi or Shinichiro until they finally spill, or until you forgot it all together.

Whatever happened to Haruchiyo was something that was going to be kept in the dark so you just needed to brush your curiosity aside for now.

Your little brother had already been hurt enough, what he needed now was a warm figure to guide him through his tribulation.

[streamsofstardust]

Call the Hunters

in collaboration with @tlexx

Chapter 5:

word count: 4,751

content warnings: cursing, more asshole jake, detailed descriptions of violent acts (including gore), homicidal ideation/threats, threats, emotional moments, mentions of past trauma, very minor physical fighting, danny being soft, non-sexual use of restraints, mentions of death

a/n: not much to say for this one. lots of emotions being shared, jake is still a dick, danny is my sweet baby, and magic is really cool. happy hunting🖤

Yelena followed Daniel out of her bedroom and into the living room where Jake was waiting rather impatiently. She gave him one brief glance, not allowing any emotion to show on her face. She was done letting him believe he frightened her; she refused to give him the satisfaction. Walking past him, she grabbed her cloak, a different one than she had been wearing the past few days, which had gotten horribly filthy. 

She looked between the two hunters, disgust filling her body at the sight of Jake, and something she could only describe as minor disappointment as she looked at Daniel. She couldn’t get over what she saw just moments before. Part of her truly believed they had made some sort of progress, especially after he opened up to her, but apparently not. Any semblance of trust that had been building evaporated at the sight of Daniel’s hand reaching for that arrow. 

There was a profound feeling of sadness at the realization that she had been right to be concerned by Jake’s arrival. Daniel hadn’t easily given in to his older brother, but it was foolish to believe he would have put up a genuine fight. Daniel knew his place, and Yelena felt ridiculous for thinking that would have changed.

“I don’t suppose either of you will give me a moment to bathe myself?” She asked, already knowing the answer.

Jake rolled his eyes, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Your comfort or lack thereof is the least of my concerns, witch. We have somewhere to be. Stop stalling or you’ll find those shackles wrapped around your flesh once more.”

Daniel sighed at his brother’s comment. “Jake.” A warning, but one that likely held little weight.

Jake looked over at Daniel. “I said I wouldn’t kill her, I said nothing about being kind. She’s gotten more than enough of that from you lately, I presume.” He smirked at the end of his sentence. He fully planned on tormenting Daniel about his feelings towards the witch.

Yelena scoffed, muttering under her breath, “Barbarians.”

As the trio walked out of the cottage, Yelena turned around to get one last look at her home. She had no idea when she’d see it again, if she’d see it again. She couldn’t even be certain she’d be alive this time tomorrow. 

She kept her distance from the two men, allowing Jake to lead the way. Daniel had looked back at her a few times while they were walking, his face much softer than it had been while he was alone with his brother. He wanted to speak to her, to provide an explanation as to why he didn’t argue more about going back to the kingdom, but he didn’t. She refused to spare him a single glance, and for whatever reason, it wounded him. 

No one was speaking, and the silence was deafening. There was a thick tension surrounding the three of them, and a bit of fear towards Jake. Neither Daniel nor Yelena would openly admit the latter, though. 

Two hours of quiet walking became unbearable for the witch. Yelena was tired, angry, and even a bit hurt, and all she wanted to do was get some rest. She loudly groaned upon realizing she hadn’t even been home long enough to enjoy the comfort of her bed, a fact that only made her angrier at the whole situation.

“What could you possibly be complaining about, witch?” Jake asked, not even turning around to speak to her directly. 

“Just thinking about how I was home for no longer than a few hours before you decided to show up and rip me from my safe haven once again.” She spoke with a smile on her face, the anger in her voice clear as day. “Tell me, hunter, do you find pleasure in torturing those around you with your presence?”

Jake stopped walking the moment she finished her sentence, causing Daniel and Yelena to follow suit. Daniel looked between the two, his hand slowly reaching for the dagger on his right hip just in case. Jake was eerily quiet for less than a minute before he turned around, a terrifying grin plastered on his face. He stared into Yelena’s eyes and inched towards her as if he was a predator instilling fear in his prey. In a way, he was.

“Occasionally.” He answered, stepping closer to the witch, leaving mere inches between them. Jake’s breath tickled her neck, eliciting a cascade of shivers up her spine. “But I find much more pleasure in killing those who disrespect me. Slowly, methodically. Watching as the last bit of light slips from their eyes. Listening for that final breath of life.” 

Yelena was stunned into silence, having no ability to conceal her fear this time. Even Daniel was in shock, never having heard his brother speak so horribly. All four of the hunters had killed their fair share over the years, but they never enjoyed it. For a while, they’d mourn the loss of life, wishing wholeheartedly things were different. But Jake’s words, his horrifying and brutal words… 

Daniel didn’t know what had happened, but the man before him wasn’t his brother. He simply couldn’t have been, unless someone had done something so awful to him it changed him entirely. He opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find any words at that moment. 

Jake smirked, an evil looking expression taking over his face. He was enjoying the fact that he had clearly frightened Yelena, and stunned his brother into silence. He basked in it, actually, smug and disgustingly prideful. With nothing else to say, and a metaphorical win under his belt, Jake scoffed and turned around, resuming his walk.

Yelena was frozen in her spot, her thoughts racing a mile a minute. It didn’t matter that Jake had explicit instructions not to kill her, she couldn’t find it in herself to fully believe he’d listen to that. She could no longer deny that she was terrified of the hunter. The lack of rest she had been getting, the constant running, and the stress of everything that had been going on was getting to her. She was exhausted in every sense and on the verge of collapsing. She didn’t know how much more she could take. 

Daniel hesitated to continue walking, finding it impossible to not look back at Yelena. He couldn’t blame her for being so frightened of his brother; he was feeling the same way. The difference was Daniel suspected something was off with Jake, and Yelena couldn’t have known that. As far as she was aware, he truly was that horrific. 

Daniel wanted to console her, tell her that everything would be fine, that she was safe. But in all honesty, he wasn’t sure that was the truth. He wanted it to be more than anything, but even Daniel had his doubts stemming from his brother’s abnormal behavior.

Eventually Yelena calmed herself enough to walk, keeping a wide distance between her and the hunters. She felt all of the anger and frustration of the past few days clawing its way through her body. She wanted to scream, to collapse to her knees on the ground and scream at the sky until her lungs exploded and her throat was raw. She hated this feeling, hated that these hunters had seemingly destroyed her life in the blink of an eye. 

She wasn’t sure what the appropriate action would be: drop to the ground and sob, or use her magic against the hunters and kill them where they stood. She felt the rage bubbling up inside her, an unfamiliar feeling that she had typically done so well to ignore was preparing to consume her. This time, she considered allowing it. 

Yelena knew what came with being a gray witch- her access to black magic. She knew how quickly she could become the very monster they all believed her to be. She spent her entire life finding a balance between black and white, light and dark, to prevent that very perception from clouding the minds of those around her. But after everything she had been dealing with lately, she felt less and less inclined to continue doing so.

She wanted to destroy the hunters. To tear them limb from limb and cause them a degree of pain they had never imagined in their lives. She wanted to be that monster that haunted the dreams of the mortal children. She wanted to cause that pain and destruction. To burn everything they knew and loved to the ground without a second thought. They had caused her plenty of pain, now it was time for them to get a taste of their own medicine. 

It was easy for her to picture herself ripping Jake’s head from his shoulders. To torture him extensively, watching as the blood poured from deep gashes on his body. To watch his own brothers’ faces twist in agony as they witnessed her completely eviscerate their leader. The hunters were nothing compared to her. They relied on weapons and wit to get them by. She had power beyond their wildest dreams. They had no idea what she was truly capable of.

And yet when she moved to think about ending Daniel’s life… she couldn’t.

For some reason, Yelena felt a pang in her chest at the thought of hurting Daniel, especially after all she had learned about his past. He’d been through plenty of hardships and trauma, events of immense pain that she believed shaped him to be the man he was. She couldn’t be angry at that, or rather she didn’t want to be. Jake was a completely different story though. 

Daniel, despite capturing her in the first place, had helped her and cared for her in his own way. He was thoughtful for the most part, even kind at times. She wanted to hate him, she wanted to have nothing but pure disgust for him in her heart. But the longer she spent time with him, the more she realized she just… couldn’t. 

Regardless, she was furious. Furious that he didn’t fight Jake more. Furious that he didn’t stand up for himself. Furious that he was so quick to follow in Jake’s monstrous footsteps. She didn’t think Daniel would kill her on his own volition, but she saw how he reached for the arrow. She couldn’t help but think if Jake demanded him to fire that arrow straight into her heart, he would.

After a few hours, the sun had gone down and it was clear it was no longer safe to walk. No one had spoken since Jake made his earlier comments, and the tension was palpable. Jake had stopped walking first, resting his hands on his hips and looking around. 

“Right, well. Time to set up camp.” Jake said, completely unphased by the silence that had consumed the three of them. 

“Did you not judge me for doing the exact same thing?” Daniel bravely spoke.

“I’d advise you against making comments right now, Daniel. And don’t think for a second this is the same thing. The minute the sun begins rising we’re heading out.” 

“Fine. But we’ll need a fire.” Daniel looked at Yelena and called her name, noticing how small she appeared. She looked up at the hunter, her eyes glazed from having zoned out completely. “Can you make a fire for us?” His question was posed softly, not wanting to come off demanding when she was clearly out of it. She nodded, lifting her left hand in preparation of conjuring a small flame to keep them warm.

“Absolutely not.” Jake spat, lifting his pointer finger in Yelena’s direction. “I’m not sitting here while the witch casts spells.” Yelena furrowed her brows at his words. 

“I’ll grab firewood, and Daniel, you can babysit.” Jake left no opportunity for a response from his brother or Yelena. He turned around and walked further into the forest on his own, his right hand resting on the hilt of the sword sheathed at his hip.

Daniel figured that with Jake gone, it would be a good time to speak with Yelena about what happened at her cottage, to give an explanation that he knew she wanted. The problem was, he didn’t even know where to begin.

“Yelena.”

She was sitting on a tree stump, refusing to look at him. There was too much going on in her head. The loss of peace, the possibility of never going back to her home, the uncertainty of what was to come. And Daniel. How could he go from sharing such a personal and intimate detail of his life with her and then moments later reach for that arrow? She couldn’t look at him, certainly couldn’t speak to him. Especially not without exploding and the last thing anyone needed was a witch who couldn’t control her magic. She didn’t want things to get that out of hand.

“Yelena, please look at me.” Daniel was almost begging. He could see the gears turning in her head, and could tell how hurt she was. 

She lifted her hand, conjuring her powers without the need for a single incantation, and swirled her fingers, the magic flowing in between them. She hadn’t even looked in the hunter’s direction, but she saw in her peripheral vision that he had ceased moving towards her. 

“I highly recommend leaving me alone, hunter.” Daniel was taken aback at her tone. She hadn’t referred to him as that in some time now. He didn’t listen though, despite being slightly worried about how she might use her magic against him. He felt she’d be justified in whatever she chose to do, but he was tired, physically and mentally, and just wanted to have a civil conversation. 

He continued slowly walking towards her, his hands raised in front of himself to not come off as a threat. “Yelena, please let me explain. I know you must have heard something Jake and I discussed, and I-”

Yelena whipped her head around to face him. “You what?!” She stood up, walking towards him much faster than he had been moving. “What you could possibly say, Daniel? I heard everything. Every. Fucking. Word. I saw the way you rolled over like a pathetic dog the second Jake got you alone. The big bad hunter is just so scared of his brother, huh? You didn’t even try to argue with him. Just accepted his word as the final say. I don’t consider us friends, hunter, but I didn’t think you’d sell me out that fucking quickly.”

Daniel had yet to make another attempt to speak. He could tell there was more she wanted to say, so he gave her the chance to do so. 

“You don’t understand what it’s like to be on the run all the time. You have no idea what it's like to be hunted for sport just because you’re different, because you’ve been blessed with the ability to do things others can’t.”

“Yelena, ple-” Daniel started.

“No! Just shut up and listen!” She felt the anger coursing through her body, an unstoppable warm fire spreading over every inch of her. If she was in the right frame of mind, she’d be worried about it, but she wasn’t. He closed his mouth and waited for her to continue, as if it was against his own will.

“You and your remorseless, evil, brothers have taken everything from me! My home, my family, my life, my fucking sense of self. Everything. And you do it because what? It’s your job? Do you know how many people have been hurt? Killed? Just for being like me? You ruin lives without a single shred of care because ‘it’s your duty.’ Well you know what, Daniel? I don’t care. I’m done. I thought for a moment that maybe there could be peace, or at least some sense of civility between us, but clearly I was wrong. It was stupid of me to think a hunter could ever give a shit about someone like me.”

The fire was spreading, and she could feel it subconsciously, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. Daniel saw as the color of her eyes began to change, a bright glow overtaking the soft sage green of her irises more and more the further enraged she became. He knew it had something to do with her magic, but he didn’t think she’d take well to him interrupting her to point it out.

Yelena moved even closer to the hunter, only a mere foot of space separating the two, and continued yelling at the hunter. 

“All I wanted, all any of my people have ever wanted, was to be left alone! We’ve done nothing to you! And yet for centuries you’ve been slaughtering us and I’m tired of it! I’m so fucking- UGH!”

Yelena shoved Daniel as she finished her sentence. He barely moved, as she was a fraction of his size, and though he initially moved his hands to stop her, he lowered them, realizing she needed to get her frustration out. She continued the action, switching between shoving the hunter and punching his chest over and over.

“Fight back hunter! I could kill you if I wanted to!” She shouted at him.

“No, Yelena. I’m not going to fight you.” His voice was soft and he spoke calmly, hoping she’d do the same soon enough.

“Gods, you’re the worst! I should kill you for everything that’s happened!” She continued punching the hunter. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” 

“Yelena.” Daniel’s hands wrapped around her wrists, effectively stopping her hits. She made an attempt to fight back, but it was fruitless. Pounding against his chest, howling as she did. “Yelena, stop.”

“Let go of me you wretched, vile monster!” Yelena twisted her arms, trying to get herself out of his grasp.

“Yelena. Yelena.” Daniel understood being calm was useless, she wouldn’t listen to his voice. “YELENA!” He shouted, shocking her into a stunned silence. The intensity and volume of his voice had her stopping her movements immediately, her eyes returning to their normal shade, but her breathing no less erratic. 

The two stared at each other, Daniel still refusing to let her go. At this point, he was panting just as much as the witch, his own body temperature feeling hotter than normal. Neither of them dared to speak, but when Daniel looked closer at her expression, he noticed tears welling in her waterline, nearly spilling over. 

His own expression softened, feeling a pit in his stomach at the sight. Without giving it a second thought, he pulled her into his chest, holding her tightly. His right hand came up to hold the back of her head, while the other gently rubbed her back. Within seconds, she had begun sobbing, her hands gripping the leathers across his chest as her body shook. 

Daniel let her cry, deciding to stay quiet. He knew Jake would likely be back soon, and he was fully aware that his older brother would have plenty to say about him consoling a witch. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, though. He felt genuine guilt for what had happened, and the animosity that had surrounded the two of them had become a pest to him.

“Yelena, please let me explain myself.” She made no effort to move, nodding her head against his chest and wiping away the last few tears.

“You said you heard everything, but I feel as though you’re not telling me everything. You saw us too, didn’t you?” Yelena froze, feeling like she was caught red handed. She had no actual reason to be embarrassed, but she whispered a soft ‘yes,’ not having the energy to speak at a normal volume.

“Yelena, I wouldn’t- I know you saw me reach for the arrow. I wouldn’t hurt you like that. Not after everything. I hate that it took me so long to realize how bad things have gotten, how out of control, but you’re right about me and my brothers. We’ve hurt too many innocent people in the past and I just… I can’t do it anymore. I’m done hurting people, I promise.” Daniel moved Yelena, separating her body from his so he could look at her directly as he spoke. “I know you don’t know him, but something is wrong with Jake. Something very, very wrong. I don’t know what happened, but the version of him you’ve seen… it’s not him.”

“But you-”

“I know what you saw, I know what you thought. And I know you have no reason to, but I need you to trust me. I need Jake to think I’m on his side right now, okay?” 

“I need to get back home to my brothers. I have to know if what’s happening with Jake has happened to Sam and Josh too. But I knew that if I left you alone, Jake would take advantage of the opportunity to do something awful, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. So please, please, trust me.” He reached up to move a piece of hair that had fallen in front of her face, tucking it behind her ear. Her breath caught in her throat at the action. 

Yelena thought over his words, taking the time to process everything he told her. She could tell there was genuine concern for the well-being of his brothers, there was no doubt about that. She was finding it hard to maintain the anger that had previously consumed her, and as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t find a reason to continue being mad now that he had provided an explanation. 

“Okay.” She whispered, her throat raw from yelling. Maybe revenge wasn’t the best plan for Yelena. Daniel had done enough already to spare her, he may deserve the same understanding that she was receiving from him. “But if I feel threatened by anyone other than Jake, I cannot promise that I’ll hold back.”

“Sam and Josh aren’t like that.” Daniel tried to reason, but he knew that all Yelena could see was the King’s crest branded in their leathers. 

“They are hunters.” She stated plainly, as though it was all the explanation she needed to defend her previous statements.

“But they’re reasonable.” 

“Witch hunters.” She emphasized.

Daniel smiled the slightest bit, a breath of a laugh fluttering past his lips. “So am I.”

Yelena looked up at him, searching for any sign not to trust him. It would be easier that way. She grew up being told that hunters were the most vile, wretched, unsavory of men; yet when she searched his face all she saw was kindness. 

“Just don’t leave me alone with them, Daniel.” The two stared at one another, taking in every detail of each other's face. A warmth spread through Yelena’s body that was foreign and indescribable, but she did know it made her feel happy. Happier than she had felt in years.

The sound of breaking tree branches made Yelena and Daniel separate frantically, they would not allow Jake to find them like this. It was too dangerous. 

“You should be sitting, witch.” Jake appeared from the shadows, a stack of firewood piled in his arms, looking calm and unbothered. The hunters were fit and skilled, and that made Jake all the more threatening to a witch.

“Yes, sir.” She teased with a roll of her eyes. There was no point to fight Jake anymore, not for her sake but more for Daniel’s. Looking over at Daniel, she noticed the smallest twitch of his lips at her sass. The crooked smile that took place on his face was endearing, and she couldn’t deny she enjoyed the sight of it.

Jake scoffed, throwing the wood on the ground. Her change in demeanor, being more calm, pissed Jake off. He liked her terrified, preferred her in that state, actually, and he relished in her fear. Now he was left disappointed and agitated.

Daniel avoided Jake’s questioning gaze. It was evident Jake was able to tell that the two had spoken, but he didn’t care enough to pry - it wasn’t worth his time.

“Danny, do me a favor and watch your… pet.” Jake knelt down, forming a fire pit in the center of camp. Daniel didn’t comment, choosing to sit on the ground while keeping his eyes on Yelena. He was hardly bothered by the orders he received from his older brother. 

“Oh, I’m a pet now? Well, let me show you some of my tricks.” Yelena crossed her legs, one over the other, and with a sassy point of her right index finger, a roaring fire erupted around the wood Jake had dropped. 

Jake jumped back, showing an emotion he hadn’t yet - fear. Magic was something that he couldn’t explain, and the unexplainable was the root of all fear. 

Daniel stifled a giggle, covering his mouth with one of his hands, a direct opposition to Yelena’s loud laugh, a mistake on both of their parts. Jake got up quickly, making a direct line towards Yelena. If it wasn’t for Daniel’s just as swift reflexes, Jake would have had his hands tightly around the witch’s neck. 

Daniel held his brother back, keeping his back to Yelena, but Jake had his black eyes locked on her. Spit flew from his mouth, skin red as the flames by his ankles, finger threateningly pointed at Yelena. “I said no magic!”

“Jake!” Daniel tried the same tactic he used on Yelena, yet this time it had little to no use. Jake grew angrier, pulling from Daniel’s grasp to knee him in the stomach. Daniel toppled over, having no choice but to let go of his brother. Yelena shifted in her seat, ready to rush over to him, but was barely able to move an inch before she was attacked by the older hunter.

It only took Jake two steps to get Yelena in his grasp. One hand choked her, while the other pulled her hair. Yelena looked in his eyes to try to find some sense of humanity, but there was nothing there. He was seemingly void of a soul.

“If it wasn’t for the King, I’d happily let your blood stain my boots.”

“Yeah?” She choked out. “Calling me a pet, but look at you. You’re such a good boy, Jake, listening to orders like a dog.”

Jake choked her harder, taking away her ability to breathe completely. “When he is done using you, it’ll be my hands that take your life.”

“Can’t wait.” Yelena spat through a strangled gasp. She wanted to murder Jake just as much as he wanted to take her life. But when she looked over to Daniel, who was still on his knees looking anxious and confused, his words repeated in her head. ‘This isn’t my brother.’

“Let’s just get you and that pretty little gem back to the King, shall we?” Jake pushed her away from him with a smirk. 

Yelena fell back, gasping as she took in ragged breaths and holding her throat which was undoubtedly going to be bruised. Jake had revealed that he knew, he knew all along what Yelena held in her possession and what it was used for - something she wasn’t even aware of.

“I cannot believe I’m doing this, but I don’t trust you. Either of you. We will be back home an hour after sunrise, then I’ll happily remove you from my body.” 

Jake looked disgusted as he pulled the shackles from the leather belt around his waist. He ripped one of Yelena’s arms in the air, popping her shoulder in the process. Yelena screamed out in pain, causing Daniel to rush forward.

“Jake you’re being ridiculous, stop it!” Daniel tried to reason.

“If it wasn’t for Samuel, you’d have the same fate as your witch.” Jake turned to look at Daniel, securing the shackles without having to look at them. Yelena yelped at the unnecessary harshness he was using against her. Jake pointed at his brother, his eyes narrowing as he spoke. “You’ve betrayed me, Danny, and that won’t be forgotten.”

Yelena and Daniel looked at one another, scared and asking the other for help. It was no use, they should have run when they had the chance. Daniel’s only hope now was that his other brothers would be willing to listen to his desperate pleas for help. No longer just for Yelena; but for his tortured brother, Jake.

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[yergink]

So while I don't see myself ever finishing this fic at this point, I still want to put some of it out there.

Here's some slightly disconnected scraps of my sci-fi fusion ofmd au (mostly inspired by Lethal Company) all consolidated in one place, in case there was interest.

Corporate billed their scavenging positions as an opportunity to enjoy peace and quiet out in the lost frontier of space. Ed couldn’t help but fucking laugh any time he saw one of those pamphlets, because that description couldn’t be farther from reality. 

---

“Q17, eh? You don't see these models in circulation much anymore, what a beauty. You must take good care of her.”

Ed crossed his arms. “Yeah. I make do.”

The man’s grin twitched. “Oh, sorry!” He held out a black-gloved hand. “Stede Bonnet.”

Oddly fucking chipper for a flight inspector. Ed took his hand in a firm, but curt, shake. “Ed Teach.”

---

“I used to fly, but only recreationally.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. There’s no real piloting required on our end, it’s all automated. You just plug in routes, and the ship takes you there.“

Stede frowned. “Well, that sort of takes all the fun out of it.”

Ed blinked at the bluntness of his statement. “Yeah. Yeah, it does," he agreed.

---

“I can’t figure it out,” Ed said into the dark. 

The ship’s whiny fucking air filtration system kept whirring, refusing to allow any silence to follow his words. 

He could hear Stede shuffling in the bunk above him. “Figure what out?” he asked, after a moment. 

They were separated only by a slightly sagging metal panel and one ridiculously thin mattress. Ed’s nose was practically pressed to the underside of the upper bunk. 

It felt like too little distance, in honesty, but somehow, it made him feel less guilty to pry when they were like this. While he didn’t have to meet Stede’s eyes.

“What it is you’re running from,” Ed answered. 

He heard more rustling, and suddenly Stede’s head popped into view, over the side of the opening. He’d moved abruptly enough for Ed to startle, which he did, clanging into his sleep cubby’s metal back wall with a barely repressed, “Fuck—”

“What makes you think I’m running from something?” Stede asked. 

In the dark, he couldn’t really make out what sort of expression Stede wore, and even then, Ed couldn’t hold his gaze. He watched the blinking light on the terminal monitor mounted to the opposite wall instead. “Dunno if you knew, but no one takes this sort of job when their life’s going well, mate. Every scrapper I’ve known’s been running from something.”

Stede hummed. “Every scrapper?”

“What I said.”

“Does that include you?”

Ed paused. The silhouette of Stede’s head cocked to one side. 

There hadn’t been any snark, or malice in his asking, Ed realized. Just genuine curiosity. 

When Ed didn’t answer right away, Stede continued softly, “The scavenger contracts last five years, but you’ve got logs dating back a lot longer.”

---

The factory was a goddamn maze of looping service corridors. Tentatively, and after some discussion, they decided to split up to cover more ground.

Ed was sitting on the ground unscrewing the door off a storage locker, one hand on the radio to guide Stede through the process of taking apart a winch crane he'd excitedly discovered, when the line went dead.

It wouldn’t be enough to cover it, to describe the feeling like being dunked in ice. Static buzzed suddenly from the speaker where there was once life and voice, and Ed may as well have been jettisoned into fucking space.

The task at hand evaporated. He was on his feet in an instant—flashlight, tools, all abandoned on the soot-stained ground.

“Stede,” he said into the transmitter.

No answer. Just more static.

Ed’s heart started fucking racing. The stupid alarm on his visor flashed an irritated red about it.

He'd started running before he realized it. Like that old shitty jukebox on the ship skipping a record forward, he was sprinting without having made the decision to be, absolutely fucking gunning it back up the metal grate stairs and over the creaking catwalk and into the tunnels where he’d seen Stede off.

The plastic ridges of the walkie groaned in protest from how hard Ed was squeezing it. He pressed the button to speak, managed to bite out between exerted breaths, “Stede, pick up the fucking radio, this isn’t a game.”

He meant for it to be angry, but in the end he just sounded scared.

---

“Ed! Hi!” He sounded…delighted. At ease. Like nothing was wrong, like Ed’s blood pressure wasn’t actively soaring on his account. “Sorry we got cut off. One of these pipes burst and I suppose the steam was thick enough to scatter the signal. It’s sorted now!”

“Sorted,” Ed echoed. “Steam pipe. Right.”

He could hear it, listening past his own pulse roaring like gunfire in his ears. The faintest hiss of steam as it flowed through the rusted pipes secured along the tunnel walls.

“Look,” Ed said. “You—stay where you are, alright? I’m gonna come find you. Stay there.”

When the walkie beeped again, there was a half-second of hesitation before Stede said, “Okay, yes, I hear you. Alright.”

Another beep, and a moment of air, like Stede had something more to say. Ed waited.

The line closed again, wordlessly.

So, fine. Safe to say Ed gave a shit. And really, that put it lightly.

[roguelioness]

in this land of broken stars

Fandom: FFXIV Pairing: Alyzen Kaide & Urianger Augurelt Rating: T Words: 1672

(Read on ao3)

Even now, weeks after the defeat of Lakeland's Lightwarden, the people of the Crystarium still celebrate the return of the night sky. Fewer in number than that first day perhaps, but the looks of awe and wonder on their faces is a sight Alyzen will never tire of.

She stares at the sky herself, at the myriad constellations, so similar, yet so different to the sky that covers the place she calls home. The stars, as Urianger had described it, gleam like diamonds scattered across a rich velvet robe. Their light is gentle and kind, so unalike the harsh, relentless brutality of the Light that scoured the rest of the land; it’s incredible to think that this was hidden behind that nigh-impenetrable veil of lucence. 

At her next inhale, claws of acid rake her insides. Her vision blurs and she stumbles, hand pressed desperately hard to her chest. Whatever is within her presses against her nerves, attempts to gnaw on her bones, and it is only her stubborn refusal to give into it that drives it back.

When the pain recedes, she exhales, and fear rushes in, panic fuelling the rapidity of her pulse. Something is happening to her, she knows it, and yet no one will give her answers. Worse, she cannot even talk about it with her companions, for they would worry and fret. What they have to accomplish is too important for them to stop and search for answers.

She scoffs, frustrated and despairing. What else is new? This is how it has always been; her nature as a weapon far more valuable than her status as a person.

But this new kind of pain – whatever it is – in this new, unknown place frightens her enough to seek out answers. 

She finds Urianger in the Cabinet of Curiosity, seated at ones of the tables furthest away from the main entrance. As she’d expected, a plethora of tomes are stacked neatly atop the wooden surface, the man himself poring over a particularly thick, leather-bound volume. Alyzen smiles at the sight of his pale hair, no longer hidden by a hood. Norvrandt has changed him, and she is pleased for it, gladdened at how he’s grown in both confidence and self-assuredness.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you?” she asks, a hand resting on the back of an empty chair.

Urianger looks up at her and smiles. “Thine company is ever welcome,” he leans over to adjust the chair so she can sit. “Should thee not retire and partake of slumber? Thine struggle with Rak’tika’s Lightwarden was most arduous.” 

“I could not sleep,” she murmurs, her eyes taking in the book titles but not really registering them. “Too many thoughts in my head, I suppose.”

“Wouldst thou share them with me, so I may attempt to lessen thy burden?”

She gives a wan little half-smile and shrugs. “What Emet-Selch said, about those murals… do you think he was telling the truth?”

Urianger carefully marks his place in the book with a thin strap of leather before shutting it close and setting it aside. “I knoweth not what to believe,” he clasps his fingers together. “To hearken such a somber tale doth disquieten me indeed. Never would I perpend mineself of harboring any sympathy for mine enemy, and yet I find myself pondering over the Ascian’s words. Nevertheless, I balk at the veritable discord his kind hath sown, and the countless deaths they hath contributed to. Certain am I that our path is true.”

“You’re right,” she murmurs. “If the Ascians are truly tempered to Zodiark, I suppose it makes sense that they are driven to act as they are. Still, I am surprised that he’s aware that he is tempered, and yet chooses to act the way he does instead of finding a way to break the tempering.”

“He hath made his choice. ‘Tis most futile to scout for the reasoning behind it.”

They fall into an easy silence. Aly idly thumbs through the book nearest to her while Urianger returns to his perusal of his tome. The question is on the tip of her tongue – what is happening to me? – and yet she can’t seem to find the courage to push it out. 

It’s only when a bladed ribbon of pain curls around her rib that she’s able to blurt it out, though not as elegantly as she’d hoped. “I overheard you and Y’shtola talking.” When he stiffens but doesn’t look at her, she continues in a ramble, “About me. About the aether I have been absorbing. That’s why she thought I was a sineater at first, isn’t it? There’s something wrong with me, Urianger, and we both know it.”

“I–”

“Don’t try to pretend it isn’t there,” she hates that her voice is cracking, hates even more that she can feel the tears build up behind her eyes. “She told me about it. Is that why it– why it hurt after I killed Rak’tika’s Lightwarden? Why it sometimes feels as though there’s something inside me that wants to devour me? Please, Urianger,” she places a hand on his arm, her fingers gripping onto him as though he were a lifeline, “will you not tell me what’s happening to me?”

His gaze, when it meets hers, is deeply troubled. Urianger hesitates a moment before placing his hand atop hers. “It grieveth me most deeply to deny thine request,” his voice holds within in a plea for her to understand, “Know that I doth not refuse thee for malice. There are forces at play that need must be navigated with the utmost of caution–” he trails off, breaking away from her eyes.

Aly wants to cry. Her fingers curl into her palm, nails biting into the skin, and the bite of pain holds her steady. She has to clear her throat and take in a deep breath before she can continue; it’s a challenge, but she’s pleased with how she’s able to keep her voice low and calm and even. “You will not tell me, even when it’s affecting my life? When there’s a chance I might die? There are two more Lightwardens I must slay, Urianger,” she beseeches, “at least allow me the comfort of knowing what is happening to my own body so I might prepare for it.”

His head droops to hang between his shoulders. “Forgive me, my friend, but I cannot grant thee thine request, though thou art deserving of elucidation.” There’s anguish in the depths of his eyes when he’s able to look at her again. “Pray, do not quit thy faith in me. Upon mine honor, I vow that I will do naught to misplace thine trust.”

She wants to be mad at him. She wants to rage at him, to scream and pour out the entirety of her fear and her stress and her anger at being used this way, at constantly being used as a weapon, at how little of a person she’s become ever since the mantle of Warrior of Light was laid across her shoulders, but… what is the point? He is not to blame for all that has befallen her. It’s not his fault that her life is the way it is. In all the years she’s known him, her trust in him has never faltered, not even when she knew him to be working with the Warriors of Darkness.

Even if she dislikes his secrecy, she still trusts him.

Even if it means his lack of answers might lead to her death.

“I trust you,” she says, very quietly, her unshed tears clogging her throat. He looks so distressed she has half a mind to reassure him, but her own fear and anxiety have left her jittery and shaky. Still, she’s unable to keep herself from being just a little spiteful, just a little petty. “I trust you.” She pauses a second, then adds, “Like Minfilia trusted you.”

Alyzen takes no pleasure in the way he flinches.

“Forgive me,” he murmurs again, his head bowed so low his forehead nearly meets the table.

Her heart aches at his hurt, at the way he seems to have resigned himself to being painted a villain, and she regrets her pointed barb. None of this is his fault; he is as much a mummer in this play as she is. Has he not always watched out for her, aided her in ways she did not know she needed help? He has never failed her in her moments of need. Though she might not know the reason for his secrecy, she cannot deny that his schemes, elaborate as they are, have been for the greater good. Placing a hand on his shoulder, Aly gives it a gentle squeeze as an apology for her unwarranted cruelty. “I already have,” she says softly. “I do trust you, Urianger. I always have. I always will.”

“All shall be laid bare with time,” he says, grave and somber. “Know that I dislike this concealment as keenly as you. For the sake of this world, and our own, must I keep mine own confidence, even should it inspire mine allies to displace their belief.” 

She knows he’s referring to Y’shtola, and she doesn’t know what to say, for she knows as well as he does that Y’shtola is deeply suspicious of both the Exarch and Urianger’s silence. “We’ll figure it out,” she says, in an attempt to console him. “You are not alone.”

He tilts his head to press his cheek against her hand, his shoulders rising and falling with the force of his sigh. Aly awkwardly strokes his hair with her free hand, half-expecting him to pull away, but he does not; instead, he takes the hand on his shoulder between his own, clasping it like he’s attempting to shield it – shield her – from all she is yet to face.

There's no need for words – they stay there in silence, the warrior of light and her friend, each offering the other comfort in the way they know best.

[sirthisisa-wendys]

PLEASE DOOOOOOO OMG THANK YOU

The Protogé (Part 3): Toji Fushiguro x Fem!Reader

wc: 1k

tw: fluff (like a tony bit)

previous part 👺 masterlist 👺 next part

"You will lose your sense of time on the mountain," Toji shouts ahead of you, his black hair whipping in the wind while you trudge through the freezing snow. "Days and nights are the same. You can forget who you are up here, especially in a snowstorm."

"Is that what you did?" you toss back, but Toji refuses to answer. His silence drowns out the biting cold, tainting uncovered skin in light red and indigo hues.

You clutch the knife at your side, holding onto the only source of protection available to you in the bleak midwinter. It's like a lifeline, one that you'll need should danger present itself.

And on the mountain, you know the possibilities are high.

When you look up from your weapon, Toji is gone. Snow powders down on the fresh footfalls.

"T-Toji?" Silence echoes back to you. "You can't just leave me up here by myself!" You half expect the man to reappear and laugh at your frustration, but nothing happens.

The path ahead is purely white. You continue onward, holding your dagger even tighter. The whole ordeal feels unfair, but you don't add to your misery by moping. Instead, you pick up your feet and crunch through the packed frost, cursing Toji in your mind.

Once the trees begin to thin out, the air feels less dense, and you lose your train of thought.

You can forget who you are up here.

Your eyes scan the horizon, the flat grey and white glaring back without mercy. It's empty. No sign of anything except the faint roar of the wind and the crackling of sticks underfoot.

"I'm going to turn around," you announce to no one. You make your way back toward the tree line, gritting your teeth. But before you can re-enter the forest, you stop dead in your tracks.

Fear courses down your spine before settling into the pit of your stomach. Two black eyes stare back at you, holding your gaze for what seems like eons. The bear sniffs the air, takes a few steps toward you, then pauses. Brown fur bristles; you're frozen for a moment. You consider calling out for Toji to save you, but there would be no point. If you cried out, you'd alert the bear to your fear. Should you play dead? Walk backward?

A caw calls your attention, and the bear also looks toward the sound of the bird. An opportunity to escape.

You sidestep out of the sight of the bear and give it wide berth, taking your time climbing down the mountain. Meanwhile, you keep your eye on the massive shape of flesh, praying to whatever is above you that it wouldn't catch your scent again and attempt to attack you.

Toji's absence begins to bother you again, causing you more irritation than anything else. "When I get back," you grunt. "I'm going to make you wish you'd never--"

"'Make me wish I'd never' what?" You nearly crawl out of your skin. The voice that drifts from high up in the trees filters down to you with wood shavings, each piece catching the wind and tumbling into the snow.

"You bastard!" You point a finger at the man lounging on a high branch, his demeanor unaffected and uninfluenced by your rage. "You left me alone to face a bear!"

"I'd never leave you alone. Didn't you hear Kokoro?"

"No," you grit out, shivering. "I didn't see anything! Except for a bear!"

"Oh," Toji muses, dropping the sharpened stick into the snow. "It must've been Kioku, then."

"Where did you go?" You scream, throwing your arms out. "You seem so unaffected by all of this. My life was in danger."

"It wasn't."

"It was!"

"Just because you encountered a bear doesn't mean you were in any real danger. You did the right thing by sidestepping it."

"I--" You pause, clenching your fists at your side. "I want to go home."

"It's about time for dinner, anyways." Toji leaps down from his wooden seat and lands in front of you. "Lead the way, y/n."

The trek feels even longer as you return to the house, and night begins to fall as you enter the home. "Are you hungry?" Your stomach doesn't growl, but the deep feeling of exhaustion settles into your bones as you take a seat by the dead fire.

"Not really," you sigh, closing your eyes. "Why did you have me go up the mountain?" Toji doesn't glance at you while he chucks wood into the hearth.

"Time is different on the mountain," he murmurs. "You need to become comfortable with losing your sense of time while you're on your journey. If you feel like you've wasted it," he grunts with the effort of striking a match. "Then you've lost it. Time is never wasted. Every second you use looking for someone to make use of your time is another second you give away." Toji chuckles, staring into the blooming flames. "But the bear was entirely coincidental."

Another bowl of soup is produced, and Toji sits beside you, warming his bare fingers in the heat. "Eat as much as you'd like. I'm going back out briefly to retrieve the deer I trapped. Stay here." When he leaves, you set the warm bowl aside, staring into the flickering fire with little on your mind except for a reprieve from the grueling day.

You're not sure when you fell asleep nor when Toji returned with the smell of venison and blood on him. But you awaken in his arms, feeling the sinews of his muscles holding you close. Green eyes stare dutifully ahead, and the mask... is gone.

You shut your eyes to avoid looking, but curiosity gets the better of you. You only catch a sliver of a scar on Toji's lips before your skin meets the sheets, and you close your eyes to feign sleep.

Toji mutters something to himself as he covers your frame with a blanket, his voice addled by drowsiness or perhaps his own deep exhaustion. You don't catch the words, but you do feel a hand press to your forehead, smoothing away the hair stuck to your face. He pats your skin once, twice, then lifts his hand and begins to retreat.

You want to call out to the man to ask him to stay for a little while, to tell you a story, even. But before you can muster the courage to reveal your wakefulness, the door shuts, leaving you alone in the darkness.

[thecoffeelorian]

The Bad Batch: Burn

Title/Series:  Burn/”The New Aftermath” Category: General Word Count: 2,181 AO3:  Link Here Summary:   A tale in which two family members are rescued; one believes themselves to have been abandoned by everyone; four more find themselves at a loss; and the sixth refuses to stand by a moment longer. Inspired by 1x08; various Tumblr posts; and a few narrative promises that the writers seem to have forgotten. Special Tags: @omegathebadbach​

Burn

There's someone new in the medical center today. A very important someone, or so I guess to myself as soon as I hear shouting and running toward the tents. I look up slowly not knowing what to expect, only to see exactly four flashes of red, white, and black rushing at the incoming ship. I start rushing in after them, too, because there's only one reason Hunter would start yelling into his comm like that.

He's coming.

He's coming, and they're bringing him to us. Some more rogue clones who got freed of their chips and who managed to break in and out of Kamino before things got too hot, or so the voices over the lines tell me. I don't need to hear any more than that, though. None of us do. We just know that he's here, and that we need to see him. We're going to see him, and maybe we can also--

"--Stand back! Move away, this one's a security risk!"

What...?

A risk?

No, no, that can't be right. They remembered to take the inhibitor chip out first, didn't they...?

Someone begins forcing us out of the path of the stretcher with a sweep of their arm, Wrecker protests, and three more medics start pushing us all back. They're even setting up barriers now, one on each side leading to the nearest tent. What's going on? Why can't we go to him?

"Hunter...?!"

He doesn't have any answers for me. None of my brothers do. We can only watch in a horrified silence as we finally see him, and--oh no, what's happened? Is it gone? Or do they have to get it out right here instead...?

I don't have much time to look, but I think I see that little white bandage against his brown, weathered skin as they rush past us. I think someone's finally taken it out, which is really, really great, but--but that's not all that I see. That we see.

He's bandaged in at least three places, there's signs of broken bones, and--and we can't see much more than that, but I think we can already guess what happened after we saw each other last. After half of us almost died.

It's so much worse than we thought, and something tells me this is just the beginning.

......

They make us wait outside the tent for what feels like hours, but once the medics give us the go-ahead, we don't waste any time going inside. I don't waste any time, because there's so much I want to tell him, and I'm almost running to his bedside, and there's a big lump of feelings that want to make me hurt from the inside out if I don't decide to share them. Wrecker's got my right hand, Hunter's got my left, and Tech and Echo lead the way just in case anyone needs them to pitch in. A part of me hopes that they don't have to...but then again, none of us knows what we'll be seeing in there. We'll just have to be ready, no matter what.

"Cross...? Are you awake?"

Hunter's the first to speak up, a soft question sent out to try and get this reunion going. He's been worried about everyone lately, so the fact that we're all out of the Empire's reach--at least at this moment--must have brought him some relief. I squeeze his hand just a little to reassure us both that nothing bad will happen here. That we can talk this out a lot better than last time, that there won't be any more fighting, and that we can help Crosshair start to get better.

When I lean in a bit closer to try and see his face, though...that's when the smells come. There's the metallic smell of blood and the smoky smell of burns and--oh no, are those the IV drips...? He's hurting. He's hurting so very much, and I can't see his face because he's in a darker corner of the tent, and I really wish I could--

"...Don't act so damned pleased with yourselves."

Oh, no...

His words burn my skin just like the heat of that engine. He knows that I'm here, that I'm standing close by, and that he hates every single minute of it. It takes almost all of my nerve to try and talk back, but just the same, my voice shakes.

"C...Crosshair...?"

One second later, he lets out the coldest laugh I ever heard, and the burning turns to ice.

"So, you do remember me. How comforting..."

Oh, but he's testing me somehow. I can tell by the edge to his voice, and the way he's got to be facing the canvas even though I can't see that much of him. Is he angry at me? Or is he just using me to get to Hunter...? I can't tell. It scares me that I can't tell.

"Do you remember me, though...?"

Just the same, I try. I already know that he's sedated from the color of the drips, so any movements he makes will be a bit slower than normal. I also know that there's one restraint peeking out of the shadows on his right-hand side, so he can't attack. And third...there's no way that anyone else in this camp would let him pick up a weapon just yet. Not when we don't know how he would plan on using it.

"Do you remember how I tried to help you? Or am I another traitor, just like our brother said--"

"Don't. Say. His. Name..."

There's more ice from him, only this time, it feels like it's crumbling down on me from above. He doesn't like how close I've gotten to Wrecker. He might even feel a little, well...jealous of me. At least, that's what this sounds like.

"Why not?!"

Wrecker's not about to take this from him, though, because he's not afraid to take a step closer. I'm going to get a little closer, too, if only to try and keep up with him.

"I'm right here, same as you. I lost myself t' that chip, same as you--"

"--Don't say it, Wrecker--"

"--So what's with the bad mood? You're not the only one here who's had problems--"

"--Shut up, Wrecker--"

"--And you can quit pickin' on the kid, too, she's not the reason you're here--"

"--'Not the reason I'm here'?!"

That's the moment where, no matter how much he's sedated, Crosshair lets his anger down on us like his own brand of explosives...and all five of us flinch.

"You go off on your little joyride around all three Rims, you take her with you and you don't bother looking for me, and now...now you tell me, 'she's not the reason I'm here'?"

More cold laughter from his corner spreads through the entire tent, and we're all feeling its chill. Nobody else dares to speak up. Nobody knows how to...and even if we could, I don't know what in the galaxy we could say that would heal this hurt.

Unfortunately, it sounds like Crosshair's finally done with listening.

"Well...you take a nice, long look at what she's done, and see how much you like her then...! "

He's not done talking to us just yet, though, because the next thing we see--

--Oh no, oh no, oh no no no--

--is the sight of his eyes, once a dark shade of bronze, but they've been burned out--

“--Wrecker, get her out of here, it's too soon--”

--Burned out to a bright chrome, not focusing, not seeing a single thing--

“--ARE YOU PROUD OF HER NOW--”

--and suddenly, there's a lot of screaming and the medics are running back in and--

“--ARE YOU PROUD OF YOURSELVES? IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED? TO GET RID OF ME AND PUT HER IN MY PLACE?!"

-- Hunter and Wrecker are taking me out of there and I don't know what to do--

“--LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE DONE! WHAT YOU'VE ALL DONE TO ME!"

--I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do--

"RUN AWAY, DAR'VODE! RUN AWAY! RUN LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO!"

--Except hide.

We go off together to hide until his rage finally breaks...but not without hearing all of his curses echo in our minds. Not without feeling the burning go on long after we've walked out of the fire's path.

Run away, dar'vode.

Run away.

Run like you always do.

I hate not knowing how to help.

......

It goes on for about ten minutes more, the howls and curses of a broken man who believes he's got nowhere else to go but down, down into the pit of his own misery with no way of getting out again.

I don't know if he knows that Tech and Echo are still right there with him, desperately trying to get through his walls any way they can...or if he does know they're still there, and just doesn't feel like caring any more. That they're as good as dead to him, if not also the other way around.

I don't know what they must be thinking when the screaming ends, or how they're feeling after it's all over. I don't know if Crosshair pulled out of his restraints, or if they just had to tighten them a bit more. I don't know what to say to Wrecker or Hunter to get them to smile again, or how to keep myself from tearing up. I just know that it's ugly, and that his screaming sputters down into laughing and crying, and that my hands are shaking when there's finally quiet. Everyone else must be shaking on the inside, too, because I see the way they glance at each other when they're all out of the tent.

They hate everything about the Empire now, and I'm right there with them.

I also know that as of five minutes ago, we're lost.

We're stranded on a planet that we might not ever get to leave, because others will be looking for us no matter what.

We still don't have a single credit to our names, and there's probably no more hope of work since we failed our last two missions.

We can't even seem to get along with each other any more, because outside of Crosshair's rage, nobody knows how to find any hope coming from this. Echo won't even look at Hunter any more, Tech looks like he's planning an Imperial murder, Wrecker's about to break down any second, and Hunter himself...oh no, he looks like he wishes it had been him who was taken first, and not Crosshair at all. Maybe...maybe he's thinking of trying to undo everything that happened all on his own, if only to fix things for everyone else with himself as the price paid.

Maybe if the rest of us aren't careful enough in the next few days, he just might try and turn himself in to the Empire if it means saving the rest of this squad. Saving all of his family this time, even if he couldn't do it before. I can guess this from the pained look in his eyes, and I don't like the thought of what this could mean for everyone else.

For good or for bad, I don't think I can just keep standing by and watch my squad hurting like this. Not the ones who have already helped me so much, but also not the one I should have helped twice as much, but didn't. I know this now, even if it took me some time to figure it out. I might not have been the one who forced him to attack his family, but if I don't tell him what I heard before I was also taken off Kamino--that my rescue team was the same one who took him out of harm's way, even if they did have to split into two teams to do it--then I'll be the one who refused to help end this. I'll become the one who stayed silent, and allowed him to hate his squad for the rest of his life...but only if I don't speak up, and fast.

This is exactly what I need to do to fix this, if not to fix the others' problems as well.

So, Crosshair...when we talk again in your tent--and there will be talking, whether you want to hear me out or not--you're going to learn the truth. You're going to know how your brothers really feel about you, how we always planned on getting you out when it was safe enough, and that nobody, nobody, planned to throw you away for my sake.

And once you've listened to me enough--really, really listened--I hope you can find a way to calm that burning fire inside you.

Clone Scout Omega, 19 BBY

[rufflesome-blaggart]

Having thoughts about family dynamics and shit because it's the holidays and that is the time it rears it's ugly head.

Grew up the eldest of two, and the responsible child. The old soul, the wise beyond their years, the sensitive one, the book smart one. You know the stereotype. This is by no means a dig at my sister, who is both very smart and very responsible too, but resents me in some ways because of it. I don't blame her - I resent that she had a free pass to fuck up as much as she needed, and everyone would rush to her aid for any little thing. She never got proper credit for how hard she worked or how well she did in school - to this day our parents generally consider her greatest achievement to be being the one of us who is properly married. I can understand entirely why she feels the need to rub her achievements in people's faces and to judge harshly those who do not live up to their potential. I can understand why she holds it against me that I am still the one people call upon first for help or to talk to because I am the reliable one, or whatever reasoning they have based upon this older sibling/younger sibling dischtonomy they have forced us in to. But I am not thinking about my sister's achievements right now, despite how I made sure to applaud each one.

I am thinking about the burden of expectation. I am thinking about how when my sister chose to take lower level courses in high school so she could attend vocational school on the side to pursue her talent for cooking, she was encouraged to do what felt right and best for her. When my grades began to suffer due to a tremendous depressive episode on top of obtaining a job and I asked to switch to lower level courses so that some of the burden could be eased, I was told it would ruin my GPA, that colleges would not accept me, that I was wasting my potential. When my sister came home and cried because a boy broke her heart or she called me or texted me our code so that I would pick her up from a bad date or go and fetch her things from a boy she feared would grow violent or even scare off the ones that would not take no for an answer, I did so. But when the first boy I ever let see me naked told me to keep my clothes on and the first boy I tried to have sex with would not take no for an answer no one comforted me or held my hand, no one chased them off or offered to find them and make them pay. Because I was responsible for my own actions, wasn't I? I had a good head on my shoulders. I could take care of myself.

When my mother screamed herself hoarse and threw things across the room at us and then cried into the arms of others, she was encouraged to go and get help. When she did and she went on a pill and it was no longer a game to guess which version of her we would come home to, she was told she was strong and brave for doing right by her family. When my father would work himself half to death and never see us and then drink himself half into oblivion to silence his terrified mind because it was preferable to sleep, he was given an ultimatum to change or lose his family. That is an unkindness that was done to him that I will never forget. Nor will I ever forget that when he was drunk he was not angry, he would only tell me 'I am so sad' when he was drunk, the closest I could get to a real conversation with him because he was expected to be the man of the family. He had to get his act together, keep his shit together, he was supposed to be the reliable one. Then, when my sister would cry herself to sleep and spent 2 years on the floor of my room because she was too scared to sleep alone and could barely go a day without tears, she was told it was okay, everyone struggles, let's talk to a doctor, a therapist and she refused, that was okay too. Because yoga and changing her diet helped. But when my depression became so severe that I did not want to live any more, when I tried to reach out, I was met with anger. How could I say such horrible things? Didn't I know how hard it was for them to hear that? Didn't I know how lucky I was to be provided for? What did I have to be so sad about? And when the pills and the blades and the car and the bleach didn't do their fucking job I tried therapy and that didn't work, either. The pills now (my prescription this time, not just whatever was in the cabinet) help, but sometimes the hole is so dark and so deep I can hear the call to jump again and again and again. And when my sister told me that my mother had told her in confidence that my pain and my sadness was 'too much to handle', when she admitted to me herself that she did not know what to do with me, that my pain was unfathomable to her, I think that was when I cracked completely. How could I feel this way, when I am so smart and so responsible and doing so well?

My father held my hand when I would panic myself into tears while the medication altered my brain. "It will be okay". He told me, because he had been there and he knew and I could see the same deep, dark hole I stared into reflected in his expression and knew he gazed into it too. We will drop everything the moment someone else needs help because we carry our own weight every fucki day but we will help you carry yours, too, so you don't have to do it alone. We will struggle and claw our way into saving ourselves and people will ask 'why didn't you just ask for help?' because we know that the help is not there for people like us. People who are expected to be fine. After all, we can take care of ourselves. We are the responsible ones.

[terrabear2003]

Tw: Mentions of killing and death

It was quiet, yet loud. I couldn't concentrate. My mind was full of memories and fear. However, I had to do this. I couldn't back out now. I pulled my hood up and pulled up my mask, leaving only my eyes. There he was, just standing there as if he was a statue. I readied my bow, aiming right at his head. I took a deep breath and another memory entered my mind.

~~~~~~~~

"Your mission, is to kill the prince. His royal bloodline stops at him. We can't let it go on."

I looked up from the table, "And... if I refuse?"

My boss stared me in the eye, "then your family will die."

I stood, that was enough motivation for me. I gathered my things and left, heading to the castle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I shook myself away from my thoughts. No, I couldn't fail. It's his life or my family's and I'm determined to keep my family. Pulling the arrow back further, I prepared to shoot. Tonight would be his last night and then I could be the ruler. I could help my family, I would be free.

Or... would I?

Another memory came to me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What do you want to do with your life?" He asked me.

I looked into his dark eyes, I wasn't quite sure what he was asking but yet I knew my answer.

"I want to let people live, not hurt them."

He chuckled, his laugh was deep and somehow comforting. He gave me a soft smile.

"You already do that, you know?"

I shook my head, if only he knew. A moment of silence passed between us.

"You're keeping me alive. You're the only reason I'm here and willing to take my place as king."

I felt a stabbing pain in my heart, but my face stayed emotionless. I didn't know how to respond. If only he knew...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Could I really do this? He's the only one who's ever shown me any kindness. He's spared my life countless times. Each time I deserved to die, he refused. The realization hit me. The prince cared for me, I would even say he loved me.

But, I didn't love him, so why is this so hard to do? Just let go and it'll be over with. Let go and I can be free. Let go...

I trembled, the fear and doubt taking over me. I retracted the arrow and dropped to the ground. Releasing my weapon, I hugged myself, the pain of everything hitting me. No matter what I chose, I would never be happy. Even if I became the ruler and saved my family, the regret of him would be there. If I didn't, then my family would be gone. I would have the blood of them on my hands.

So, what was the right choice?

I grabbed my bow and arrow, drawing my aim again, silently watching him as he gazed at the night sky. I remember him telling stories of how there was more out there. He had revealed his love of the stars to me as if it was some deep dark secret that was never to be shared. I closed my eyes, I couldn't let any more memories distract me. Releasing my grip, the silence was broken, but only for a second. It was done.

I felt as if a weight had been lifted from me. I stood there a moment longer. Looking at the place where he once stood. A few stray tears fell down my face before I turned, my cloak moving with me. It billowed behind me as a light breeze came through.

As I walked away, the moon seemed to darken as if it was mourning.

I was just glad that he was now among the stars.

For The Shadow Lady had attacked once again.

[docockdork]

Acediaverse! Kingpin Fic

Summary/AN: Haha not tagging this one. You might have questions... and you are in the right to have them... I don't have answers and I am sorry for that.

The Kingpin in this is the version @hollowsart has designed for her spiderverse/sona.

My nostrils burned from the dusty air in the dark, impossibly large drawer I had been slammed into. Pens longer than I was tall and other office supplies of surreal sizes surrounded me.

I kept myself as still as a statue. Refusing to move a single muscle. What was going to be a quick swiping of a paperclip or pencil had turned dangerous! The Kingpin had returned to his desk much earlier than I had expected.

“Mr. Osborn… this better be good,” he huffed. The cadence of his voice caused my world to shutter. Or maybe it just felt like it.

“Nice to see you too. Sir.” a calmer, clearer voice sounded off in the distance. “It is. I have some intel on our cryptic culprit.”

Slowly, cautiously, I moved one of my feet to step forward. If I could find a hole or crack in the drawer, I could slip out.

 A creak that seemed to cut through the air emitted as I eased down, causing me to wince.

It wasn’t until my elbow smacked against something, the men paused for a second. It felt like I was a present part of their conversation, like they had caught me committing a social faux-pas.

Kingpin took in a sharp inhale, “Well, that will be all Norman, you can head out…”

The other man gave an affirmative “Mmhm,” as the sound of footsteps descended away from the desk. The door shut, and I let out a breath I didn’t even know I had been holding.

“...As I take care of another problem!” Light flooded in as I nearly lurched forward! The tape dispenser I had hunkered down behind provided no cover as a large hand snatched me up.

The tightly wound fist released over the surface of the desk, dropping me haphazardly down onto the lacquered wooden surface.

“You! It’s about time we met.” He exclaimed. His arms encircled me like silky purple prison walls. “I was worried for a second that Norman’s intrusion would’ve given you a chance to slip away.”

A heavy gulp trailed down my throat as I backed away from the giant man that had ensnared me. The gentle brushing of a large palm on my back caused me to leap forward, as if it were a hot iron.

“Oh? Now not so brave now that I’ve caught you…” his thumb wrapped around me, pushing me against his fingertips. “I know it’s you who has been playing those little tricks on me.”

I struggled against his grip, my voice erupting fourth as if he squeezed it from me “Let me go! I won’t cause you any more trouble!”

He chuckled, “Oh, I don’t want you to leave…” He watched me struggle, bemused. “You’ve made me quite curious with your bold actions.”

My mind had all but one thought, and that was “Get out”. I paused my kicking and thrashing for a second, staring at his thumb before I bit down. Hard.

I released, only to bite down again. Pulling on the calloused skin I had pinched between flesh.

A hard press from his thumb into my rib cage. The air in my lungs was squeezed out of me. I was forced to unlatch. “Stop that!” He scolded. His jaw clenched in an angry scowl.

I stared up at him before biting right into the pad of his thumb.

He huffed, lifting me in towards him. The sudden darkness of his shadow as he drew me near made me release my jaw.

“Fine. If you cannot behave…” he sighed as he pressed my feet down into his breast pocket, “I will just wait until you’ve calmed down.”

A large finger pushed me down into the smothering fabric, “Hey! No! Stop!” I protested, fighting against him as the silky lining engulfed me, silencing me and my pleas without mercy.

His voice was much more imposing now that I was right against his chest. I felt it in my core as he said “Just, settle down.”

I made a small dejected huff, looking up at a small, white wrinkle where light filtered in through. Shifting around, I positioned myself to be more comfortable in the stifling fabric.

The low, steady thumping of his heartbeat made it’s way to my ear, providing a strange yet comforting ambience as I settled my head against his chest.

His thick chest muscle below strained against his suit with each inhale he took, padded with a layer of fat. The motion reminded me of a rocking chair.

For a second, I could forget I was in the pocket of a large crime lord… and instead maybe in a nice sleeping bag, snuggled away on a camping trip.

I shut my eyes, curling up in a small ball as I let sleep take me. The smell of his cologne replaced the dust that had burned into my sinuses earlier.