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everlarkficexchange · 3 years

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Like The Stars Hold The Moon

Written By : @katnissmellarkkkk

Prompt 59 : "Katniss dad is a victor, he won his hunger games and is a mentor. Peeta is reaped for the games and Katniss begs her dad to help him win the games. [submitted by anonymous]“

Hi! It feels like there’s so much I need to say here and I can’t remember any of it now! This is obviously–if you read the summary, which I assume you did and that’s why you’re here hahaha–an EFE prompt. It was submitted by an anonymous person, so I don’t know specifically if this is what you wanted but I really hope this is good enough that you’ll be fulfilled?

I don’t think there is much more to say? I hope everyone who reads this has a good day! I wrote plenty of this on Easter so I’d like to thank Jesus for rising again. And I feel like the prompt alone is a sufficient summary but just so you know, this heavily features Katniss, Peeta (obvi), Haymitch and Katniss’ father, Hunter (I named him, that’s not canon, I know).

This fic I likely going to be a three-shot with an opportunity for a sequel three-shot. Oh and also, thank you to the anon who sent the prompt!

Oh and this got really long, so I’m just going to submit the first part on here and then I’ll add a link at the bottom to continue reading on AO3. I’ve never done this before so I don’t know if I’m doing it right?

Okay, if you read all my talking, bye now!

Rated T for the canon violence.

At the reaping for the Forty-Seventh Hunger Games, Matty Knick drew out the names of a ”very special boy“ and ”a very special girl“ from the reaping bowls. She read them off in a bright voice and matched the sentiment with an out of place perky smile. The girl’s name was Heather Branch.

And the boy’s was Hunter Everdeen.

Of course, everyone knows the story of Hunter Everdeen.

Year of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games.

"So Hunter,” Caesar Flickerman leans toward the victor, absolutely electrified, and says, “tell us, tell us. How excited are you for the games this year?”

The camera focuses in on gray eyes, the color of a storm cloud or a cleanly polished knife. Dangerous and hard and cunning.

Or protective and frightful and angry.

Or warm and loving and kind.

“I’m about as excited as I always am, Caesar,” he shoots back, not a trace of even so much as a smirk on his face. Not even so much as a lift from the corner of his mouth.

And still, the crowd of Capitol idiots burst out in laughter, as if they just heard the funniest joke in the world, as if this was Hunter’s desired response to the words.

As if the conversation wasn’t about teenagers—and some as young as twelve—killing other teenagers.

“And what about you, Haymitch?” Caesar asks next, segueing from one aggravated man to another.

“I’m looking forward to the free drinks,” Haymitch says while tipping back dark gold colored liquid into his mouth. Almost as an afterthought, he gestures wide and sloppy to the crowd, igniting cacophonous sounds from the population once more. “And of course, the social interaction with all you lovely people.”

No one in the audience recognizes the insult. No one understands the blatant sarcasm at their expense.

Here in District Twelve though, we do. As exemplified by Peeta’s laugh, vibrating against my back. “Shh,” I hush, laser focused on the enormous television screen before us.

“Daddy’s not speaking anymore,” Prim reminds me from the other room, where she’s currently flipping through a magazine our father sent.

“Well, be quiet before he does,” I snap, elbowing Peeta when he rolls his eyes now. “Stop it, I haven’t seen him in weeks,” I complain, fixing him with a fierce glare.

“I know,” he murmurs agreeably, gently kissing my temple. “But he’ll be home in a few days.”

As if they could hear our exchange from inside the television box, Caesar turns his attention back to my father. “Hunter, how excited are you to get home to District Twelve?”

At that, his eyes genuinely light up with ferocity. “I’m counting the minutes,” he replies, but still manages to keep his tone cool. He adamantly refuses to give away his true emotion to even a single soul in the Capitol. It’s his way of withholding power from their greedy, glitter covered hands.

But I see the change in him. Prim, from her position against the doorframe, sees it. I’m positive my mother, who’s watching with our brother from the comfort of our house sees it as well.

Our father’s eyes are now alive again, the permanent frown his mouth resides in on every televised appearance loosens a bit, his brows aren’t knit so closely together any longer.

Caesar Flickerman sees the change too evidently.

“Look at those silver coins!” He bellows, gesturing for the cameras to put my father in a close up now. “They just lit up like the stars when talking about home. Tell me, Hunter Everdeen, how’s the family back in District Twelve?”

At that, my father makes a considerable effort to transform his entire expression into a mask of indifference. “They’re good,” he states evenly, his tone clipped. Making it blatant to even the airheaded Capitol citizens that he refuses to speak publicly about his family.

“Because you’re not property of the Capitol, baby,” he told me once, while on a walk in the woods. “You’re not anyone’s property.”

“What about you and mommy?”

“You’re our responsibility, but not our property.” He’d knelt down to my height, which happened to be the shortest in my second grade class. “Property implies ownership, Katniss. And no one owns you. No one owns you or your sister. Remember that for me. And never let yourself forget it.”

“You’re daughters are both old enough for the reaping, am I right?” Caesar presses further, and my sister and I automatically sigh. Knowing the response that’s bound to come.

“What’s wrong?” Peeta asks, as he still remains completely clueless. I shake my head instead of offering an explanation though, leaning further into his chest.

Peeta won’t understand. He was raised in town by merchants—the owners of the bakery, to be specific. He’s never understood the fierce protectiveness, the instantaneous fury, the irrational tunnel vision, that appears when a victor’s child is mentioned entering the games.

Peeta’s never even met my father. I’m not impatient by any stretch of the imagination to put the two of them in the same room, to watch my father chew my boyfriend up and devour him alive, to abide by his rules and regulations that will surely come with dating.

He doesn’t know Peeta and I have even so much as shaken hands. I’ve never so much as left him even the slightest hint. Not even when I’ve accompanied him to the bakery for the occasional trade with Peeta’s father, the baker himself.

Like both Prim and I predicted, our father is now on edge, his breathing uneven and his nostrils flaring. “Yes. Both my girls are of age,” he says after a long beat, his tone hard and jagged.

Caesar though is either oblivious or is extraordinarily practiced at appearing obtuse. “Well, wouldn’t it be something if either of them were chosen for the games? Am I right?” He directs his questions to the audience. “Don’t we all love a family story?” His words elicit cheers and hollers and a murderous glint in my father’s silver eyes. The camera only catches it for a moment’s time before quickly flitting away, towards the much more enjoyable image of the Captiolites chattering like chipmunks at the very idea.

And suddenly I feel Peeta’s arm tighten around me, the vision of me—the only person in the world he’s certain that he loves—being taken away from our home here in Twelve and tossed into an arena with kids twice her size, too much for even his naïve mind.

“Don’t we all believe in Mr. Everdeen,” the talk show host continues to push and I feel my typical annoyance with the odd man bleed into anger. “I mean, he brought home Mr. Abernathy here.” And with one single hand gesture from Caesar, the entire interview’s focus re-centers on Haymitch.

And unlike my father, he doesn’t even miss a beat before replying.

“Barely,” he mutters with a last swig of his drink, cleaning the glass. “And he was stingy with the gifts.”

Next to him, my father relaxes a bit. Haymitch always brings out a bit of levity in him, even on his worst days.

After all, in my father’s eyes, the paunchy drunk is a symbol of hope.

Haymitch is the only person my father’s ever brought him. He’s the only other living victor inside the confines of Twelve.

Not to mention his closest friend.

And my surrogate uncle, I note, a bit ironically. Haymitch and I have a far different relationship than he has with anyone else in my family but he’s always been there, has known me since the day I was born, often has dinner at our house, rain or shine, no matter how much he annoys my mother, and he’s an irreplaceable member of my family.

The audience is still riled up from Haymitch and howling with laughter—a bit too much, in my opinion—but my father can’t let the subject of his children go before adding one last sentiment.

“Don’t worry, Caesar. If either of my girls are reaped, trust me,” he states, louder and far more pronounced than anything else he’s said the entire interview. “They will be the victor. There’s not a tribute in the arena that would survive against my girl.”

For as long as I can remember, my father had taken me to the woods. He sometimes claims the first time he looked down at me in my mother’s arms, at a mere two days old, he saw a familiar hunger in my eyes.

Not a hunger for food. District Twelve is the smallest and the poorest in the country of Panem, but luckily, my family is one of the richest.

Unlike my schoolmates, I’ve never once had to worry about having enough to eat for lunch. My parents never worried that we’d starve to death or that Prim and I could be taken from their grasp by authorities. They never worried about supplying us with whatever we needed—they gave us more than we ever could have wanted—and they never had to fret that we’d be sent to the mines for work one day.

No, we were far too wealthy and far too famous for any of that.

But my parents had a far different batch of worries to keep them up at night. Not about food or finances or anything remotely common in Twelve.

No, they had to worry about cameras peaking into the privacy of our home and photos being taken without our knowledge and my face or Prim’s face being splashed across every magazine and newspaper in the country.

They worried about the almost insatiable thirst the Capitol seems to have for more family dynamics among the victors.

Especially after the recent back-to-back sibling victories led the hunger games to higher ratings and revenues in the Capitol.

When I was a child, my mother coached me to never go into town without my father by my side. Which sounds easy enough, until my father’s extensive vacations to the Capitol are taken into consideration. For as long as I can remember, my father would leave at random stretches of time, for weeks on end. To go play puppet for a population so dumb, so completely isolated from the rest of the country, that they took his anger for sarcasm. They took his bite as charm. They believed his glare was an act, was part of his appeal, when in reality my father had rebelled against performing for the last twenty-seven years.

When he was gone, our lives became strict. Bedtimes came earlier, curtains remained drawn day in and day out, our mother never wanted to sing or dance or even so much as smile with her husband gone.

But when he was home, sunshine peaked in our windows again. It danced on the floor and it swept us away with its gentle affection.

There was music and laughter and sweets and toys. He never returned from the Capitol empty-handed. He brought back expensive jewels for our mother, he built me and Prim a fancy treehouse in the backyard, put up a large, golden swing-set, went as far as purchasing as many cakes and breads as he could hold from the Mellark Bakery.

Peeta’s parents bakery.

Since I was two, further back than I can even retain, my father would take me out to the woods, would hold my hand and tell me old stories of District Twelve’s past, detail insane urban legends, teach me about plants and berries and trees and the direction of the wind.

And for as long as I can remember, I idolized him. He was so confident and so charismatic and so kind. For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be exactly like him when I grew up. It felt like an honor to me that I received far more his end of the gene line than my mother’s. She was regarded as a beauty in her youth, but he was one of the most magnificent people in the country. Having his coloring and the same silver eyes felt like a special gift, awarded every single time someone marveled at how similar we appear.

But my father was gone often and the unpredictable lengths of his stays in the large, foreign city was one of the only constants my family ever knew. So it really came as no surprise when my mother phoned the cabin only minutes after Caesar’s interview was over.

“I’ll get it,” Prim says flatly after a moment, throwing a sardonic glance at me and Peeta on the couch. Now in a much different entanglement than we had been while watching the talk-show.

“Thanks,” I murmur unintelligibly against Peeta’s mouth, before closing my eyes in pleasure.

“Don’t strain yourselves,” she can’t stop herself from tacking on the end.

“We’ll try not to while you’re still here,” Peeta murmurs cheekily, moving his lips downwards, towards my neck, right onto my pulse point. I let out a somewhat ridiculous squeak in response.

“Hello?” Prim says lightly into the receiver, already knowing it’s our mother. No one else calls this phone, inside this hidden cabin, located in the woods surrounding Twelve.

The woods in which officials fenced off years ago. The woods in which it’s illegal to enter. The woods in which my father has taken me to hunt for families less fortunate than ours since I was a small infant.

It’s not a typical cabin found in the outskirts of Twelve. No, ordinarily a cabin out here—a cabin anywhere in Panem, really—is nothing more than a broken down shack. There’s normally nothing other than an unsteady foundation, a freezing damp floor and an unlit fireplace.

But somewhere along the lines, in the years before I was born, my parents resurrected this place from the depths of despair and expanded it, rebuilt it, refurnished and redecorated and turned it into a vast, warm, safe second home for all of us to run away to when we felt the need.

Prim listens into the receiver for a long moment before she sighs deeply and beckons me. “Katniss, can you?”

Instantly, I break away from Peeta’s embrace, cupping his face and pulling him back from my collarbone.

“What’s wrong?” I ask as I scramble off the couch, my anxiety abruptly spiked. “Did something happen?” I search Prim’s eyes as I take the phone from her but, to my utter relief, all I find there is blatant, unmasked disappointment.

I already know what my mother is going to say before I put the phone to my ear. “Hi?”

“Hi, honey,” she murmurs, her voice both strained and higher than typical. Which indicates she’s trying to put up a front for us right now, when she’d rather be moping in bed. “Your father just called. Evidently Effie Trinket informed him he has more scheduled commitments to fulfill before he can come home.”

I deflate, already prepard, knowing this was coming. Isn’t it always coming inadvertently? My father has never been home when he was scheduled to be in my life. No matter the holiday, the birthday, the emergency or event, the Capitol demands that they comes first to him. Not even my birth could upstage his commitments. He wasn’t allowed to return home to Twelve, to meet his firstborn child, until his press events were done and over with.

It’s no wonder he refuses to put on show for those people.

“Okay,” I mumble after a moment, not even convinced my mother is even still there on the other end.

“It’ll be alright,” she says, as positively as she can. “He’ll be home as soon.”

“Yeah.” I try and fail miserably to match her tone. I inherited my father’s ability to act. Or inability, that is.

There’s the faint sound of crying in the background, and my heart aches a bit. “I’m sorry, honey, I have to go check on Archer,” she apologizes as a way of saying goodbye.

I make my way into the kitchen as soon as we hang up. Prim is standing by the counter, staring at the same magazine our father sent three weeks ago.

Peeta comes up behind me then, his hand rubbing my back in comforting circles. “Your father delayed again?”

I nod silently, as my eyes focused on my little sister now. She’s trying her best to hold back the upset that’s threatening to take over.

And without hesitation, my instincts to protect my family from anything and everything painful kick in. “Prim, it’s okay. It’s probably only going to be another week before he’s back,” I console, stepping closer to her small frame and touching her back.

It’s all the initiation she needs before spinning around into my arms and clinging onto me tight. “He’s never around,” she cries into my neck—I’m not much taller than her—as her shoulders shake with tears.

I feel Peeta’s eyes on me, measuring my reaction to Prim’s words. He’s heard me cry the same thing time and time again, he knows the familiarity of this scene better than anyone should.

“He tries his best, Prim,” I whisper thickly into her long, blonde hair. She’s fair and light, like our mother. Like a merchant or peacekeeper. Looking at my little sister, you’d never consider her to be the daughter of a man from the Seam.

But you’d easily believe that she was a girl raised in Victor’s Village and I suppose that’s what counts. Where we were raised and not where we could have been, if things had gone different.

“He’s never really going to be ours though,” she weeps and I don’t have words to comfort her now. Because she’s right.

Our father will always belong to the Capitol, first and foremost.

And not even his children can upstage that.

Prim leaves not long later, to head home to Victor’s Village and more than likely curl up with our mother for the night. They’ve both always been so alike, so much softer and more hopeful than me. I half expect every trip of our father’s to double in time, if not triple. After a lifetime of disappointments, I can’t help but prepare myself.

It’s not that they’re weak for believing. It’s that I have too much Hunter Everdeen in me. I have too much pessimism crawling inside my bones to ever fully trust that he’s really coming home until he’s already stepped off the train in Twelve.

Too many hours of my childhood were spent, wearing fancy stockings and warm, fur-lined coats, standing at the train station, only to welcome a load of cargo and no father in sight. Too many times were phone calls answered in tears. Too many night spent crying, clinging to my father’s hunting jacket, so disoriented by the hazardous schedule in which our lives were ran, waiting for my father to phone, waiting for him to walk through the front door, waiting for him to sneak up on us in the middle of the night or pull us from class on a school day.

That was the true constant in my life. Waiting for my father to finally come home, knowing every moment we shared was on borrowed time. Knowing that he’d never truly belong to us. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting to hear my mother’s bedroom door slam and lock, waiting to hear Prim cry or Archer wail, waiting to see that defeated glint in my father’s slate gaze.

I close the cabin door behind my sister now, knowing with confidence that she’ll make it home alright, even with the sun currently setting in the faded blue sky.

Our father never took Prim hunting like he did me, never brought her out to the woods and taught her to shoot a bow and arrow, never showed her how to trap and kill an animal. But even still, the path from the cabin to our home in Victor’s Village is imprinted in our brains, like a birthmark or tattoo. We’d be able to find our way to and from, even if we were sleepwalking.

As would Peeta. Considering this is the place he spends the majority of his time.

Considering this cabin may as well be his permanent address.

And if it weren’t illegal, it very well might be, I think to myself wryly as I walk over to where he’s leaning against the doorframe now.

“Hello,” I greet again, hopping onto my tiptoes and kissing his lips lightly.

He grasps my hips, smiling against my mouth. “Don’t you have to get home too?” He hesitantly asks, his desire to keep me here bleeding through every caress of his fingers, as they trail underneath my loose shirt, sliding upwards and causing an electric current to ripple through the core of my body.

But I just shake my head at his inquiry, moving my mouth from his to kiss down the side of his face, underneath his jawline.

“Mmm,” he moans after a long moment, before suddenly putting a few more inches between us. “Are you sure your mother won’t miss you?”

Peeta’s always been considerate of my mother. Too considerate sometimes, if I do say so myself. Bordering on obsessive.

He is obsessed with keeping her approval, with never crossing any invisible line, with never even so much as mildly exasperating her.

I suppose it’s only natural though. She is the only parental figure he has in his life.

I’ve never been too enthusiastic to introduce him to my father and he’s never pushed the issue too far. Hunter Everdeen is a practical legend around Twelve—and beloved across the entirety of Panem—but he’s the reason, I’ve always privately felt, that I was isolated from all my classmates.

Sure, I’m already not the most friendly person to start with, in anyone’s book. As Haymitch never hesitates to tell me. But there was already very little chance of me making friends in school anyway. Being the victor of the Forty-Seventh Hunger Games’ child dropped the chances of play-dates or sleepovers drastically. My father trusts no one. Not with his children.

And I didn’t mind for the most part. I’m too like him to enjoy people much anyway. This whole notion was much harder on Prim, who adored her fellow classmates and easily endeared herself to them as well. But no matter how darling my little sister may be, nothing changed our father’s mind and when he was set on something, it was practically written in stone.

I can’t even imagine how Peeta must feel, having to live in fear for the entire last year of our little secret being exposed. I may be nervous about how my father will react, but Peeta has to be outright petrified.

“My mother will be fine,” I murmur, rolling my eyes as I lean back against the wall now. “She’s got Prim and Archie to keep her sane until my father’s home.”

Peeta chuckles at me, a mirthful smile in his eyes. “And you got me,” he teases, tapping my nose with his finger.

I giggle in a way I withheld until Prim left. I wasn’t about to give her ammunition to mock me later on. “All to myself,” I add, matching his expression now. “For unlimited hours of the day.”

“That’s my girl, looking on the bright side.”

I snort. “Yeah, that’s me.” I’m the exact opposite of an optimist. I prefer expecting the worse and setting expectations low. Maybe it’s a learned behavior but, at least that way, I’m not crushed like my mother when things don’t pan out the way I want.

Peeta mistakes the look on my face to be one of hidden disappointment. “You’re father will be home soon, sweetheart. They can’t keep him in the Capitol forever.”

“Can’t they?” I mumble, not expecting an answer. Before he can offer one—because Peeta is nothing if not a fixer—I quickly segue to a new topic. “Where do you think you’ll go when my father does come home?”

He just shrugs the question off though, completely unbothered. “Anywhere but home,” he says simply, his stunning blue eyes clear as the sky they remind me of.

“Anywhere but there,” I agree, my smile twisting into a grimace.

A year ago, when I was barely fifteen, President Snow—Panem’s true Gamemaker, my father always said—demanded every victor extend their stay in the Capitol, even after the games ended that year. He gave no outright reason and my father was cagey to speak on the subject, but in the end, the president’s word was law and there was no room for argument. President Snow can demand of us whatever he wishes.

It was a cold, dreary autumn that year, with early snowfall, which was the leading cause to the significant increase in accidents and injuries. My mother, the born healer, had more patients than she could handle, and even while training Prim as her assistant, she required my help. I was to head to town and purchase a list of herbs from the apothecary shop her parents still owned. The people who disowned her, who had little to no interest in her after she married a man from the Seam, victor or not. The people who never cared to meet their own grandchildren, to acknowledge our existence even as we passed right by their shop, in their plain sight.

I was dragging my feet the entire walk there, already with a sour taste in my mouth, when I heard the loudest wail my ears had every registered. When I heard sharp words being screamed out, when the sound of a boy sobbing filled the air.

And my instincts took over, my every sense focused on finding the hurt and helping them, altogether forgoing the trip for my mother’s herbs.

I followed the commotion to the bakery’s backdoor. Right through the open threshold, it was crystal clear, the baker’s wife—the witch, as many of the kids at school referred to her—had beaten her youngest son senselessly.

He’s in my year, I’d realized abruptly, staring with an agape mouth at his bloody face. His eye was swelling and his nose and lip were smeared scarlet and the only thing that crossed my mind at first, was I recognized him as the blonde boy with the colorful notebook, who could never meet my eyes and always wore long sleeves.

Of course, I snapped out of the daze after only a moment. The witch turned and caught sight of me, snapping that no Seam brat was going to get any free handouts from her and to scatter before she called the Peacekeepers.

Something about the unmasked prejudice against the Seam, a place where people in Twelve had next to nothing and were seen as lesser than the merchants, jolted me into action.

“Get your hand off him!” I’d demanded, using my entire body weight, just as my father taught me, to push the door open as she tried to close it in my face. “Let him go or I swear I’ll make you regret it.”

At that, I heard an ugly laugh and the door flew open again, my exerted force throwing it back into the wall.

“I’m serious, child,” she snaps, her blue eyes narrow and her mouth in a snide smirk. “I will call the Peacekeepers to remove you from my shop-”

I didn’t even let her finish. I wasn’t one to be messed with. Not when I just witnessed something awful firsthand, not when I had it in my power to do something.

I knew then I couldn’t bring my father home. He was owned by the president and the Capitol. To an extent, we all were. And I knew I couldn’t stop the games from happening or the possibility of my name being pulled from the reaping bowl. I couldn’t always make my mother come out of her room or even out of her bed, when her illness struck bad. And I couldn’t stop my siblings from crying for our father at night.

But I knew that day in the bakery, I had the power over Mrs. Mellark and I wasn’t going to let her get away with hurting her son anymore.

“Call them,” I dared, not an ounce of insecurity in my voice. “Cray is an old family friend.” He was actually indebted to my father, who’d kept the man’s secrets for too many years to count. But family friend rolled off the tongue more effectively.

“Head Peacekeeper is now making friends in the Seam?” She spat in disbelief. “No wonder this district is so rundown.”

She laughed humorlessly, but my focus was pulled towards the boy. He was covering the left side of his face, as if it hurt too badly to release. As if he was trying to stop his eye from swelling, stop his nose from gushing blood. As if he could hold his now split lip together with nothing more than the palm of his hand.

The sight hurt my heart to see. It burned a fire inside of me that only a true injustice could set alight.

“My father is Hunter Everdeen,” I snapped in the woman’s direction, not even basking in satisfaction when her face drained of all color. The idea that a scrappy little girl with olive skin and dark hair was the child of the most powerful man in all of Twelve struck a cord inside even the witch. “Still wanna make that call?”

The woman’s face was caught between anger and shock when I glanced at her again. And I hated her for it. I hated her and every single person in this district who hurt their kids, who took out their grievances on them, who made them cower and quiver in fear. Who raised them to be afraid of those they loved in a world already so awful.

I know I live a privileged life but, deep in my bones, I know even if things were different, my parents wouldn’t have laid a hand on us. Even if we were so poor I had to take tesserae, even if we were starving to the point of no return, even if we were practically homeless in the Seam, my parents would never hurt us.

“Leave,” the witch spoke then, but her voice was void of all emotion.

“Not without him,” I refused, my eyes planted on the wounded boy in front of me. The boy who was doing everything to avoid looking me in the eye, too busy covering his battered face.

I heard a sound caught between a groan and a shriek, before a cutting board was tossed across the room. “Just go!” She shouted at her son, causing him to flinch severely. “Just go with her!”

On her order, which sounded more distraught than angry, the boy had stormed out the back door and into the chilly evening air, still covering his face desperately, still looking utterly ashamed.

But he waited for me to catch up with him. He waited for me to guide him away from that awful woman he was forced to call his mother.

He didn’t flinch when I touched his arm nor when I took his hand. And when I led him away from the town and towards the village, he followed me without complaint.

Actually, he followed me without a single word.

I realized this just as my house came into view. “You never told me your name?” I whispered, looking up at him gently.

He had tears leaking from his eyes that he was doing his best to ignore, the bleeding on the left side of his face had barely even lightened up, his eye was swelling bigger and bigger, and yet, he chuckled a little at the question. “I’ve been in your class since kindergarten, Katniss.”

I felt my cheeks burn pink, even under the darkening sky. “I know.” But I still peered up at him, curiously waiting for him to tell me.

“It’s Peeta,” he finally answered, maybe a bit satirical.

“Peeta Mellark,” I suddenly recognized.

“Mhmm. Figured you’d pick up the last name.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s printed across the bakery in huge letters?”

“Oh.” He chuckled at my ignorance, causing my blush to deepen.

And I realized immediately how much I liked the sound of his laugh. How I liked being the reason for the sound.

My stomach did a complete flip at the notion and my ears abruptly felt hot, but I tried to push all this away, needing to get him to my mother.

“Wait,” he halted before I could even reached the front door. “Is your mother in there?”

I shot him a confused look. “Yeah, of course? Who else-”

I didn’t even get a chance to finish though. “I really don’t want anyone else to know about this,” he pleads, his eyes looking as frightened as they did with the witch.

“Peeta-” I start, opening my mouth argue, to convince him to go into the house and let my mother treat his injuries. To let me get him help.

But one look inside his desolated, defeated, terrified eyes and I couldn’t make myself do it. I couldn’t put him through any more than he’d already gone through. Not when he’d eventually have to go face the witch again at home.

“Okay,” I whispered, and I felt him squeeze the hand I didn’t realize I was still clutching. “Let me take you somewhere else. And I’ll try to fix you up myself.”

I wasn’t a healer like my mother and Prim. I was a hunter, just like my father, just like his very name, through and through. But I had witnessed enough of what my mother did—my father had forced me to witness enough of what she did, in case I ever needed the knowledge—and I was confident I had the expertise to help him.

My decision was validated by the relief in Peeta’s eyes, by the visible exhale he expelled from inside. He was ashamed, I realized, of his abuse. He was embarrassed to let anyone know what was happening behind closed doors.

I guided him by the hand outside the village, through the Seam—a place in which he’d never been before—and to the fence line.

“Isn’t it electrified?” He asked, his grip on my palm tightening. I liked the sensation for some reason. I liked the way his big hand felt wrapped around my small one. I liked how he wanted to hold onto me in the darkness.

“Nope,” I say, and let out a proud giggle. Or maybe a nervous one. Whenever I think back to this night, I can never tell.

“How do you know?” His blonde eyebrows knit together, still afraid in a way I’d never had to be. My father had taught me everything there was to know about the woods from a young age.

“Listen,” I urge softly, leaning my ear towards the fence.

He cranes forward too, waiting for the buzz of electricity to fill his ears. Only, just as I knew, it never does. Because it never has. The fence’s electricity was shut off long before we were even born.

I watched as his face registered the silence, as he realized and trusted I was right. And I beamed at him, before showing him the way my father slips beyond the fence and guiding him through the trees, towards the cabin, buried deep inside the woods.

It took an hour to find, not because of the blackened sky, but because Peeta’s face hurt so badly that his gait was slowed. But I remained patient, even though that was never my strong suit either. I waited for him to pick up the pace, to be ready to move, to find our way through the tall green trees. I pulled all the branches I could see out of his path, used the moon as our flashlight and didn’t complain once when he stumbled along the way.

By the time we got to the cabin, it had to be past Archer’s bedtime. My mother would be worried sick for me, but I soothed myself that she had plenty on her plate. I’m her firstborn. The child she understands the least, the one who’s like her husband in body and soul. I knew I was probably near the bottom of her worry list.

The very first thing I did when we entered the cabin was order Peeta to sit down in the dining room. I gathered my mother’s first aid kit from the bathroom, wet a rag in cool water and I got to work cleaning the blood from his face.

“This has to be gross for you,” he murmurs after a long stretch of silence. His eyes betrayed how self-conscious he must have felt.

Trying to alleviate his anxiety, I pretended to shrug it off. “My mother cleans wounds all the time. At our kitchen table, no less.”

Peeta made a noise that indicated he didn’t buy my act of ease. “I heard at school that you run from the sick and injured.”

I raised my eyebrows at the comment. No one at school talked about me. No one knew me well enough to. People stopped trying to get close to any of Hunter Everdeen’s kids years ago.

The longer I stared at Peeta in disbelief, the more he seemed to lose confidence in his statement. “Maybe I didn't hear it,” he finally amended. I brought the damp cloth back up to his face again as a reward, tenderly wiping away the blood, before using the clean side to set against his swelling lid, hoping to offer some pain reduction there as well. “Maybe I saw it,” he added sheepishly.

I furrowed my brows, even more perplexed by the elaboration. “Saw it?”

“When Leaf Barker tripped and broke his knee in Physical Education last year? You were almost green when you bolted out of the gymnasium.”

His words conjured up a vague image. Still though, something about this felt odd to me.

“How do you remember that better than I do?”

At that, Peeta shrugged. “I guess, I notice you sometimes?”

“What do you mean, sometimes?” I pressed, none of his words suddenly making a bit of sense.

“Why did you stick up for me tonight?” He abruptly segued, his expression shifting into something of defense, like he’s trying to deflect.

But I’m not one to be deterred. “I wasn’t going to stand there and watch your mother hurt you,” I stated, my voice remaining firm. “Why?”

He continued to walk around my question. “Is tonight the first night you ever noticed me?”

I pulled my hand and the damp cloth away from his wounded face, reaching in the kit to grab a white cream I’d seen my mother and Prim both use on swelling before. “Yes,” I finally replied, because I don’t know what else to say. That I saw him glance at me sometimes and then watched as his eyes flit away? That I noticed how he doodled in math class, because he found the subject boring? That I’d seen him lift a sack easily over his shoulder at the bakery and watched him beat almost every upperclassmen at wrestling, even while three years their junior?

None of that seems even remotely relevant to mention.

“When was the first time you noticed me?” I shot back, still being careful to apply the cream with only the lightest pressure to his battered eye.

“Kindergarten,” he instantly blurted out, his tone simple and bold.

I stared at him in disbelief for a long moment before chuckling, catching the joke. “Funny.”

“I’m serious,” he refuted, peaking his good eye open, the sky meeting a silver dollar as our gaze locked. And I see that he is serious somehow.

“What?”

“The first day of kindergarten,” he continued, after a long beat of me just staring him. His confidence had wavered once again and he was looking a bit regretful that he’d put this out in the open. “You were wearing a red velvet dress and brown stockings. Your hair was in two braids instead of one and your ribbons matched your dress. The teacher asked during music assembly who knew The Valley Song and your hand shot right up. She put you on a stool and you sang it, clear as day, for everyone to hear. Even the birds outside stopped to listen. And from that moment on… I was a goner.”

I just continued to look at him in disbelief, unable to put the pieces of what he’s said together. Finally, I whispered, “you’re telling the truth?”

“I’ve had a crush on you for forever,” he admitted, his singularly open eye giving away his nerves at the admission. “And I know you probably don’t feel the same way. I know you didn’t even know my name until tonight but I just wanted to say, in case we never have the chance to speak again-”

“Stop,” I cut him off, my mind already about to explode. “Stop, um…” I refused to look at him as I spoke, furiously staring down at my lap. “I need more time to… process this.”

He had a crush on me since the first day of kindergarten? He’d heard me sing and from that day forward he held a hidden candle for me?

And he never once worked up the courage to talk to me?

Dozens of moments suddenly race through my mind.

Cerulean blue eyes finding me in a crowd countless times and then pulling away as soon as I meet them. The time I wanted to play a stupid game at recess and a stocky blonde boy volunteered to be team captain, and then picked me first. The stunning drawing I found in my locker last year on Sweetheart’s Day, that I was convinced was put there by mistake, though it bore a striking resemblance to the doodles on Peeta’s notebook.

And before I could stop it, I felt myself begin to shake with nerves.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he apologized, seeing my frightened reaction. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just… I didn’t know if I’d ever get the opportunity to tell you again-”

“Shhh,” I hushed, picking up the damp cloth once more. “Let me take care of your face. And then…” I hesitated again, unsure what to say in this situation. I had exactly zero experiences to compare this to. “Tomorrow we can talk more.”

Peeta nodded amicably, staying silent for the reminder of my ministrations. I felt a terrible pang of guilt for not responding the way he’d probably hoped, but there was still a part of me too stunned to even fully register the confession.

I was an outcast. I’d never fit in with the kids at school, neither town or Seam. I don’t look like the merchants and I’m too rich for the Seam folk. I would have been alone all the time at school if it weren’t for Madge Undersee, the mayor’s daughter who sat with me at lunch and partnered with me in class.

How could anyone have even noticed me to be anything other than strange? I barely spoke, even in classes where I knew all the answers. And I hardly participated in games or gossip. I had a father who insisted most days on picking me up himself from school, not allowing me to walk home alone like the other kids.

But the look in Peeta’s eyes was earnest. He wasn’t playing some elaborate trick on me, he wasn’t trying to coerce me into confessing something as well so he could humiliate me. He was being genuine in every way I could tell. And I had my father’s senses.

The same senses that helped him win his hunger games.

A new thought struck me out of the blue. Peeta seemed too kind and too considerate to have a mother who beat him like this. He doesn’t fit the profile of the kids in the community home, brought there by even less abuse than I witnessed firsthand tonight.

The insane urge to get to know him more, to learn more about this complete stranger who I went out on an impulsive limb for suddenly surges through my brain.

It wouldn’t be a good idea, I told myself. He’s a merchant and I’m the daughter of a victor. Two titles that seem not far apart in theory but are miles away from the other in practice. And I’m not experienced with people the way he is. I don’t know how to make friends or how to maintain them. I don’t know what he expects from me but it’s surely more than I know how to give. I don’t know what to say in a situation like this. Haymitch always tells me I’m as romantic as dirt.

But is that what I want to be? I asked myself as I finished fixing Peeta up. Do I want to be romantic? Do I want to be that girl who holds her boyfriend’s hand in the town square and kisses him under the moonlight? Do I want to put an embroidered ribbon in my hair and wear an expensive dress from the Capitol to go to the Sweetheart’s Dance? Do I want to sneak in through my bedroom window at the crack of dawn so my father won’t know I’ve been out all night?

If I could learn to be romantic, would I want to be?

And naturally, the answer I’ve always known automatically seeps through my brain. No. I’m not like my mother and Prim. I’m practical by nature, rather than fanciful. I’ve never truly obsessed about falling in love or fawned over even the most incredible looking men on the television.

But something held me back now. Something inside me said that answer, the truth I’d always known, is suddenly not entirely accurate anymore.

Because I find that I did want those things I just described. I did want to have someone to hold, someone to laugh with, someone who conjured up that same flip in my stomach as Peeta did earlier when he laughed.

I wanted the same kind of love my parents had. The kind of love that brought them both to life, despite the horrible circumstances they’d both separately endured. I wanted the kind of love that they showed me was possible, even in a world as bleak and as inhumane as Panem felt at times.

I only realized how long I’d been silent, contemplating my inner desires, when Peeta offered a minuscule smile and stood up slowly to leave.

I opened my mouth to speak but when his eyes met mine, every thought in my head was magically wiped away. I had nothing to say, nothing that could be of any sort of consequence, that could mean anything in comparison to his confession.

“I should head back to town,” he murmured, trying to appear nonchalant. “Face my mother. Hope she’s in a better mood now-”

But I couldn’t stand the idea of him returning to the witch, the idea of going to school tomorrow and acting like his words weren’t still spinning around my brain, the idea of even sleeping soundly tonight.

“Peeta,” I called just as he was about to reach the front door. “Wait!”

He turned towards me, looking puzzled by my outburst. “What’s wrong?”

And I don’t know what came over me. I still can’t place what made me—a girl who had never been decisive a day in her life—fling myself across the room and smash my lips onto his.

He didn’t respond at first. I caught him too completely by surprise. His lips hung there, frozen, as mine pushed against his, with too much force and an overload of desperation.

But I felt an incredible stirring in my chest, an odd sensation that felt akin to a giggle amplified.

And when he finally recovered from the shock of it all, his hands both came to rest on either side of my hips, his mouth began to move against mine, his knees bent to reach my height with more success, and the stirring turned to a fiery spark. I know he felt it too, as the kiss was swiftly disturbed by his wide grin.

“Don’t go back home tonight,” I gasped out, looking up at him, wide-eyed and breathless.

His gaze melted as he took me in, he head bobbing in agreement without even needing to consider my request.

“Okay,” he’d whispered with a dazed smile, his blue eyes impossibly wild and sleepy at the same time.

His expression, his spirit somehow, was contagious, and I found myself somewhere stuck between a laugh and a blush when I replied.

“Okay.”

After that night, Peeta rarely went back home. I had called my mother and let her know I was staying at the cabin, but intentionally eluded telling her that the baker’s son was joining me. We’d spent the entire night talking in front of the fire, making each other laugh. The bashfulness I felt from my unexpected kiss stayed in my gut, causing me to bubble up with embarrassed laughter every so often.

But instead of that making things awkward, it cut the tension pretty smoothly. It was only months later did Peeta confess he’d felt just as nervous and just as shy about spending time with me. He was charismatic, I realize even that first night. Ironically funny. He was nice, in a way I rarely have found anyone to be. And, the more time went on, the more my desire grew to stay close to him. The more often I was around him, the more painfully I missed him when we were apart.

It was only a matter of time until my mother found out—not least of all, because my siblings accidentally caught us kissing in back of the school, a month to the day we first spoke.

I always imagined she’d be strict on me, the firstborn, when it came to dating. Especially in the world we lived in. Especially with my father’s position. I truly thought she’d forbid a relationship until I was of age. Maybe I was wrong about her. Or maybe she just saw how I looked at Peeta and understood that I wasn’t just being careless or rebellious. That whatever magnetic connection I felt towards Peeta wasn’t just an ordinary school-aged fling.

To my surprise as well, my mother seemed to take on a very similar stance to me when it came to Peeta and my father. Keeping the news of this entanglement from her husband’s ears was almost her idea.

“What are you thinking about?” Peeta asks me now, bringing me back to the present moment. His fingers tickle my neck as they brush my hair back behind my ear, touching one of the satin green ribbons weaved throughout my loose braids.

“You,” I reply coyly, shooting him a sly glance as I slip past him to head back towards the kitchen.

“Me?” He calls in mock disbelief. He trails up behind me, catching me by the waist and swinging me into his arms without warning.

“Peeta!” I exclaim, automatically wrapping myself around him as I try to steady my balance midair.

“What, baby?”

“Put me down, baby,” I mock, pressing my nose to his now, rubbing them together.

“I like holding you though,” he whispers, like he’s confessing some huge secret.

“Until your arms gets tired-”

“That was one time, Katniss.”

“I’m just reminding you,” I say with an air of superiority. “You don’t always appreciate holding me.”

At that, his demeanor falls a little. “I do when I realize I won’t be seeing you much in a few days.”

I feel my heart sink now too. As excited as I am at the prospect of my father coming home, after weeks apart, I always have to be a little more careful upon his first days back.

He always likes to spend time at the cabin and go for long walks in the woods upon his return. Spend more time in nature than the indoors, stay far away from people outside our family, sleep under the stars by the lake. The Capitol is apparently luxurious, but in my father’s own words, it is void of any true or natural beauty. Everything is artificial, man-made, concocted and orchestrated. There’s nothing that compares in his mind—or mine either—to a cool breeze on a sunny day spent in the meadow where the dandelions grow tall.

“But I’ll still see you in school?” I say, though my voice comes out as more of a plea. Peeta doesn’t always like to attend school these days, not when he knows his parents can easily track him down there.

His father, the baker himself, took the ambiguous loss of his youngest—his favorite—son particularly hard. It was only a matter of weeks after I intercepted his mother beating him that Peeta definitively decided to sever ties with majority of his family.

I’d like to say he made the choice all on his own but that’d be a lie. I watched as the physical bruises on his skin healed, as he began to peel back emotional layer upon layer to me, as he slowly told me what really had been going on in the Mellark’s family home. And I can’t say that I was impartial to his decision to cut the connection to a mother with a bruising fist and a father who closed his eyes and let it happen.

“Delly’s parents usually make me go to school so…” He shrugs it off, like it’s of no consequence, his arms hoisting me higher against his chest.

But I feel a sudden wave of gratitude towards the Cartwrights. They may be a little too jolly for my liking and their daughter, Delly, maybe can’t take a hint to save her life, but at least they always watch out for Peeta’s well-being. At least they cover for him when his mother come sniffing around and they feed him what they can afford and force him to attend class, where I’ll be able to see him.

“Good,” I murmur, at peace now. My father will be home soon and Peeta will be safely tucked away with his best friend.

I lean down and kiss his nose sweetly, reveling in the tender moment. His lips follow my lead and begin to plant themselves across my chin, underneath my jaw, causing me to squirm and squeal at the sensation.

“So,” he murmurs against my throat. “We have the entire place to ourselves, for the whole night, huh?”

His audacious smile elicits my own. “At least.” My father’s delays usually mean a minimum of two days.

Within a minute, Peeta has me on my back, against the softly quilted bed of my upstairs room. He takes his time helping me out of my clothes before I hurriedly shove his off, impatient and hungry.

He, of course, finds time to crack a joke. “Good thing Archie is too young to come here unchaperoned. Or else we’d never get the chance to do this.”

I roll my eyes and shove his mouth off my collarbone, utterly disgusted now. “Talking about my baby brother is one sure way to turn me off, Peeta.”

Archer, my three-old-brother, was an unexpected surprise, to put it lightly. My parents were done with two girls. My father joked him and my mother were both already set with one clone each, but alas, the year of the Seventieth Hunger Games was a year full of shocks.

A few months before the games that year, the coal mines—the industry Twelve is known for—exploded. Right in the middle of the afternoon, as everyone was obliviously going about their day.

It was a close call for many and one more reason my father is beloved around these parts. If he hadn’t been at the right place, at the right time, if he hadn’t volunteered to go with Prim and her class on a field trip down to the mines that day, there was a chance that no one would have noticed the gas leak.

It was too late to do anything by the time my father pointed it out, but his warning and the fact that people in Twelve take his word very seriously, managed to save the lives the inevitable explosion would have otherwise cost.

Through the outpouring of gratitude, and the overwhelming media coverage my whole family was abruptly bombarded with, my parents made the decision to pull me and Prim from school for a while, to hole up in the remodeled cabin, where no one could find us because of its illegal location.

I’ve never ask and I don't ever want to know when my parents conceived Archer. But about nine months after the vacation from the world, my mother gave birth to a little boy who looked identical to me and my father.

“Sorry,” Peeta whispers with a chuckle, collapsing beside me. “I’ll make it up to you.”

He moves to kiss my stomach, to trace circles on my hips like he always does. But I shake my head, a different request—or more like it, demand—on my mind.

“Tell me the story of how you first fell in love with me?”

Peeta rolls his eyes. Very dramatically. “You mean a year ago?”

“I mean in kindergarten,” I say with a smirk and then let out a shriek of surprise when he pounces on me, his lips attacking my neck.

“Aren’t you tired of that story yet?” He asks, his voice edging on exasperated.

“You never tire of a classic.” I give him a pout, knowing he never refuses me anything when I pull that trick.

I’m right, as per usual. “Fine,” he relents, but his eyes tell me that he enjoys telling this tale more than he leads on. “Come here.” He holds open his arms and waits for me to crawl into them, to settle against his chest.

I lay there for a long moment, my pointer finger running up and down the center of his bicep, as my ear rests against his heartbeat, patiently waiting for him to begin.

“It was the very first day of school. You were wearing a red, velvet dress…”

Read the rest on AO3

#katnissmellarkkkk #prompt 59 #Springtime edition 2021 #submission

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bookwormsid1015 · 3 years

Text

BNHA: This Time Around

[A Semi-CloudNight Oneshot]

“Aaahhh! It feels so good to unwind like this,” Fukukado Emi, best known as the Laughing Hero: Ms. Joke, laughs in relief as she leans forward against the bar countertop, a mug of whiskey in hand. She’s dressed in her civilian outfit, which consists of high waist blue skinny jeans and a light yellow crop top tee shirt with a bold white stripe stretching across her chest. Her mint green hair is held back in a low ponytail, and black slip-on sneakers adorn her feet; her outfit accented by a black choker around her neck and three beaded bracelets coating her right wrist.

Joining her at their favorite bar is Tatsuma Ryuko (Ryukyu), Takeyama Yuu (Mt. Lady), and Kayama Nemuri (Midnight). Nemuri’s rosy red lips tilt upwards into a sly smile, and she raises her glass of red wine to her lips. Unlike Fukukado, Nemuri is dressed to impress, with her beautiful dark blue dress fading to a vibrant pink as it travels down towards the helm of her dress, perfectly matching her light complexion. Black three inch heels adorn her feet, and her deep indigo hair is held over her head in a messy bun, staked into place by a black pin that distinctly resembles a fox tail.

Nemuri pushes up her crimson red glasses, still smiling. “Me too,” she agrees happily. “My agency has been so busy lately with all the League of Villain madness. It feels great to just be in the moment every now and again.”

Sitting on Fukukado’s other side, directly across from Nemuri, Takeyama stares down at her small glass of champagne, her eyebrows knitted together in exhaustion. The Giant Hero, like Ms. Joke, is dressed in casual clothing, wearing short blue jean shorts with a simple orange tank top and a single star-shaped golden necklace around her neck. Her long, wavy blond hair is tied back in a ponytail, which spirals down to her midback in beautiful platinum waves.

“I knew starting my own agency was going to be hard, but I didn’t think it would be this hard,” Takeyama confesses, exhaustion lacing her tone. “Like, I can’t effectively take down any villains because my size destroys so much property, and I hate that my fans only seem to like me because they want me to step on them! It’s so weird! People are weird and gross!” She drops her head onto the table and groans mutely into the polished wood. “And here I thought the big city would be different from home.”

Tatsuma places a gentle hand on Takeyama’s back and pats it reassuringly. Like Nemuri, Tatsuma is dressed for the occasion in a simple yet elegant violet dress with a chain of pearls around her neck and diamond earrings in her ear. It is no surprise Ryukyu would wear such beautiful jewelry, though given her status as a dragon, Nemuri wasn’t surprised. “Don’t worry, Takeyama. We all start off rough, but guaranteed your agency will become amazing,” the Dragon Hero encourages the blond heroine gently, and Takeyama’s shoulders only slightly relax.

Fukukado taps her chin, her dark green eyes thoughtful. “Come to think of it, aren’t you and Kamui Woods, like, a thing now? I heard his agency is successful, maybe you can talk to him about it,” she says, and Takeyama reaches across the table with frantic shushing gestures.

“Don’t say that outloud! We want to keep our relationship private! The last thing we need is the media crawling up our asses about it,” she snarls at the Laughing Hero, and Fukukado raises her hands in surrender.

“Oops! My bad!” Fukukado yelps and frantically checks around her in case anyone was listening in. Nemuri and Tatsuma make eye contact from across the table and snicker to themselves.

“Kamui Woods is a very dependable man, though,” Tatsuma adds. “I’m proud of you.”

Takeyama buries her face in her hands. “Can’t we talk about anything else?” she whines.

Fukukado’s smile returns full force, and a shit-eating grin splits across her face. “But why though? Everyone loves hearing about a good romance!” She cups her hands to her cheeks and swoons giddily. “Like, just the other day, I ran into Eraserhead at a coffee shop! It was so amazing, like something out of a romance novel!”

Nemuri’s cerulean eyes widen slightly. “Oh yeah, he told me about that. Didn’t he leave the second he saw you?” she asks.

Fukukado’s cheeks flush red, and she chuckles awkwardly. “Oh, yeah, he did. Something about not wanting to deal with my energy or whatever. But that just makes it so much more exciting! I mean, look at him, all dark and mysterious and broody~!”

“Not to mention a total hobo who forgets to shower half the time,” Nemuri adds. The other heroines at the table chuckle.

“AND he’s the only one who I haven’t gotten to laugh yet!” Fukukado goes on, ignoring Nemuri’s remark. “One of these days, I’ll get him to laugh! If not, at least smile! Yeah, that would be amazing.”

“Why not use your Quirk?” Tatsuma asks.

Fukukado shakes her head adamantly. “He erases Quirks, remember? Besides, I don’t just wanna make him laugh! I want to really make him laugh, you know? Something authentic. Using my Quirk would just be dishonest and mean.”

Nemuri shrugs her shoulders, though a part of her is secretly relieved. She’s known Eraserhead since high school, and knowing him, the main reason he wouldn’t want to try dating Fukukado would be because he doesn’t want to be influenced by her Quirk. Then again, this is Eraserhead they’re talking about. After what happened in high school, he probably wouldn’t give her a chance either way. He has trouble enough making friends, let alone dating. The cruel reality of hero work scarred him, and the mere thought of it hurts her heart. Fear guides him, and Nemuri desperately wishes she could do something to help.

“What about you, Midnight?” Nemuri perks up, and finds the eyes of the other heroines glued on her. Fukukado leans forward eagerly, her dark green eyes sparkling like diamonds. “Do you have anyone you’re with right now? With your gorgeous looks and bedazzling personality, I’ll bet yes!”

Tatsuma casts Fukukado a significant look. “Ms. Joke, your bi is showing,” she comments, startling a laugh out of Takeyama.

Nemuri glances down at her wine glass and slowly sways it around in her grasp, watching the dark red liquid roll within its transparent chamber. Her smile becomes wistful. “I’ve had flings, but serious relationships? Nope. I haven’t had any in years. Probably not since high school,” she replies honestly.

Takeyama lifts her head, blinking at the R-Rated Hero in surprise. “What? There’s no way. Your entire aesthetic is about intimacy! Especially the sexy kind,” she gapes, and Nemuri chuckles at her reaction.

“It’s true. I haven’t had a proper boyfriend since my third year in high school, and to be honest…” Nemuri’s smile becomes bitter, and she chuckles in spite of her hypocrisy. “I don’t think I’ll ever date again. Hurts too much.”

Fukukado grimaces slightly. “Oof, was he really that bad?” she asks, and Nemuri immediately shakes her head.

“No, no. In fact, he was amazing. He was the sweetest, funniest, most loyal person I’d ever met. He cared about everyone unconditionally, and he would always go out of his way to help people. Hell, this one time, he found a kitten stuck in the rain and brought it with him to school,” she reminisces, smiling at the memory of him. Even now she can clearly see his broad, glowing smile, and the image sparks an old pain in her heart. “He was my everything. Even though we wanted different things out of life-- with him wanting to start an agency with his other friends, and me wanting to start the Midnight Agency-- we still promised we’d be together. That we'd make it work.”

Fukukado’s brows are drawing together in concern, now, and acid rises in Nemuri’s chest at the realization in her eyes. “Wait, you’re talking about him in the past tense,” she says. “What… happened?”

Nemuri’s smile falls completely, and she utters a deep sigh. “The worst,” she responds. “About fifteen years ago, we were alerted to a villain attack in Tasomiya Ward, a giant monster with the ability to stockpile power.” Tatsuma and Fukukado’s eyes widen nearly simultaneously, no doubt recognizing the event, but Takeyama blinks at Nemuri in confusion; she’s too new to the career to know.

Her voice shudders, but still, Nemuri goes on, “All of us were there. Me, Eraserhead, Present Mic, and… him. We did everything in our power to stop the monster, but it was too big. We couldn’t do anything. I was evacuating everyone out of the area while he, Present Mic, and Eraserhead went to go stop the villain. Civilians got hurt; there’s no way to protect everyone. But he…”

The image washes over her, stealing away all her breath in an instant. She can smell the salty rain clouds, she can feel the slick pavement beneath her boots, the uncomfortable way debris clings to her sweaty skin. Above all else, she remembers rounding the corner just in time to see a cloud explode to life over a class of kindergarteners and their teacher, leaving them protected but him exposed. Their eyes made contact, and before Nemuri could do anything, before she could call out his name or take a step forward, a giant chunk of debris was upon him, and she was helpless to watch it swallow him whole.

The scene barely lasted for more than a few seconds, but she can still see it. The sickening crunch resonating through the air as his skull cracks open, the violent spray of blood from his head… She suddenly wants to throw up her wine and crumble into a ball. Old insecurities she thought she’d abandoned were suddenly creeping up the back of her mind, whispering terribly in her ears.

“Your quirk is useless. It couldn’t protect anyone, especially not your loved ones.”

“It’s because you’re so useless he’s dead.”

“Why are you even a hero?”

“Midnight?”

Nemuri snaps out of the memory and finds the other heroines looking at her in worry. She quickly realizes she’d dropped her wine glass to cover her face, and while thankfully the glass didn’t break, the wine was splattered all over the table top. It looks exactly like his blood.

“Midnight,” Tatsuma reaches out to her and gently takes her hands, leading them away from her face and gripping them tightly. Nemuri clings onto the contact, desperately wishing her hands were someone else’s. “Are you okay? Do you need a moment?”

Nemuri shakes her head slowly and slips her hands out of Tatsuma’s reach. She hates it when people look at her with those worried eyes. “It affected all of us,” Nemuri goes on. “Obviously, it hurt me. I lost my boyfriend and the guy I wanted to… but Present Mic and Eraserhead lost their best friend. Their brother.”

Fukukado shakes her head, tears springing to her eyes. “Oh, Midnight, I’m… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to open an old wound,” she whispers in horror, and Nemuri shakes her head again, this time with more resolve.

“It’s fine, really. It gave me a horrible wake up call, that above all else, we are heroes. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Every day we go out there and put our lives on the line. We could live, we could die, but what matters most is protecting others.” She glances down at the wine spilled all over the table, and her own reflection stares back at her with wary acceptance. She sighs, long and tired. “Watching him die made me realize how easily life can be lost, how tragedy can strike in an instant. That’s why I want to embrace my youth for as long as I can, so I can live enough for both of us.” Her reflection’s lips quirk upward into a trying smile. “That way, when I die, when I can finally see him again, I can tell him about all my adventures with pride.”

Nemuri looks up and finds herself staring into the wet faces of the other heroes. Tatsuma, Fukukado, and Takeyama are all staring at their senior hero with wide, tearful eyes, and Nemuri likes to think in this moment, they felt more respect for the seasoned heroine.

Nemuri smiles back at them and wipes the tears from her eyes. “Remember that, you three,” she tells them. “Go forward knowing nothing-- not even love-- is certain, but don’t let it scare you. The world is scary, dangerous, and even cruel, but what’s most important is cherishing the people in our lives.” She raises her wine glass and what remains of the wine sloshes around in its glassy imprisonment. “To living.”

Fukukado, Tatsuma, and Takeyama look between themselves. One by one, they lift their drinks to the sky, each glass a different shape containing a different drink. “To living,” they echo, and tap their glasses together with Nemuri’s. The R-Rated Hero smiles truly, her heart swelling with pride.

Nemuri drives home alone that night.

Of course, the four heroines stayed at that bar for hours, laughing and drinking together once the shock of Nemuri’s lost-love bombshell faded away. As their senior, Nemuri only drank a few sips of her wine every now and again (although the gruesome memories made her want to get wasted out of her mind), and she allowed the other heroes to have their fun and get as wasted as they want. Takeyama and Fukukado were joking around, having a blast singing old pop culture songs together, occasionally getting Tatsuma to join in whenever the Dragon Hero got over her shyness.

Eventually, Nemuri dragged the three drunken heroines back into her car (thankful they all decided to take Nemuri’s car there and back), and she drove all the ladies home, making sure they had all their possessions with them before leaving. Once she dropped them all off at their houses and made small talk with any partners they had waiting for them, she decided to gather her wits and go home herself. Today was a long day, and she was surprised to find herself emotionally exhausted so soon.

The bar is a fifteen minute drive from her house, but as soon as she leaves her car and strides up the driveway, she pulls open the front door and steps inside her dark home. Despite it’s nice size, being a two story house with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms, only Nemuri lives in it, though she’s not completely alone.

“Meow!” Nemuri looks down, and her heart lifts slightly as her tabby orange cat comes bounding over to her, high in energy despite his age. Nemuri kneels down to collect him in her arms, and she cradles the cat like a baby.

“Hello, Sushi-baby,” she coos at him as she kicks the front door shut and locks it behind her. “How are you doing? Were you keeping the house safe from big bad strangers while I was gone?”

Sushi meows in response and nuzzles her bust.

The house is big and empty now, but one day, Nemuri hopes she’ll marry and settle down, maybe start a family all her own. It won’t be for a while, and honestly, Nemuri is scared to start dating out of fear of herself or her partner dying, but she decided a long time ago to live by her words so she bought the house regardless. She’s getting older now, and at thirty-two, she knows she doesn’t have much time left. At the very least, Oboro would want her to be happy, even if her happiness isn’t with him. She just hopes she can find someone accepting of her tastes and interests, like he did.

Nemuri enters her living room and sits back in her recliner, pulling out her phone to amuse herself. Sushi immediately adjusts himself in her lap and kneads her legs with his paws, turning around in a circle before plopping down into a comfortable loaf. Nemuri scratches him behind the ears with a faint smile.

“We’ll be okay,” she says, more so to herself than to the cat.

Sushi’s lazy purring is her only response.

Nemuri leans back into her chair and sighs. Tomorrow will be a new day.

#Kayama Nemuri #Bnha Midnight #Ms. Joke #Ryukyu #Mt. Lady #My Hero Academia #Boku no Hero Academia #Bnha spoilers #Bnha manga spoilers #Shirakumo Oboro x Kayama Nemuri #CloudNight #My Writing #Bnha Vigilantes Spoilers #Bnha Vigilantes

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hypnomicimagines · 4 years

Text

⭐Fluff Alphabet: B⭐

B – Before (How did they act before the relationship/what was the relationship like?)

BUSTER BROS

Yamada Ichiro

You and Ichiro had been friends since he was in the orphanage, someone he’d always confided his worries in and who’d been there for him through a lot of the troubles he faced in life. You were someone he was always fond of and might’ve had a bit of ‘love at first sight’ with but he never acted on it as he was just too busy taking care of his brothers to worry about a relationship. You’d been close, practically family, for a long time before he finally knew he had to stop denying how he really felt and ask you out (hoping you’d feel the same so your relationship wouldn’t have to be awkward).

Yamada Jiro:

Jiro had seen you here and there, thought you were cute, but had never really thought too much about it. He had trouble talking to you and couldn’t think of any common topics at first so he felt the relationship was just doomed to fail but it didn’t mean you didn’t invade his dreams constantly to the point his crush on you persisted even after the two of you had stopped talking. He’s flustered when you suddenly pop up in his life and make the extra effort to get to know him, not letting him chicken out like he did before; he can’t help but match your energy, hoping that maybe fate is what had intervened and brought you back into his life.

Yamada Saburo

Your friendship with Saburo was almost exclusively online for a bit as you helped him help Ichiro out a few times with hunting down things on the internet, sometimes teasing him that he only ever came to you when he needed help. He was too nervous to ask to meet you in person and when he finally did to get a particularly sensitive piece of information, he wished that your relationship had just stayed online. What Saburo felt for you was too complicated for him to put into words as he feels like perhaps it was just his deep admiration for your intelligence and skills that made him feel the way he did about you but in the end, he was quickly figured out what he was actually feeling.

MAD TRIGGER CREW

Aohitsugi Samatoki

You weren’t even sure Samatoki liked you as a person considering how hostile he seemed to be, ignoring all your teasing (and especially you’re flirting) to keep business moving along. Yet, he always stopped to talk to you whenever he spotted you even if he acted like you were the single most annoying person he’d ever met and he seemed to take personal offense if someone unintentionally looked at you wrong. Even though your teasing does make him roll his eyes he doesn’t mind it that much as it’s clear you’re not actually making fun of him and sometimes, you can be funny even if he won’t admit it out loud. You’re the type of person he naturally feels like he has to protect which is where his fondness was born from and how his feelings for you ended up escalating to what they were now.

Iruma Jyuto

Jyuto was always polite but you couldn’t help but feel he kept you at a comfortable distance, never getting too personal and keeping most of his life to himself; he did have a deep distaste of when others pointed out his shady behavior in front of you, trying to keep his image as ‘clean’ as he could but knowing it’d all come to light eventually. You can tell Jyuto puts a little extra effort into how he looks when he knows you’ll be around and you enjoy seeing the man preen for you, suspecting it’s not something he did for others very often even if he was rather well put together normally.

Rio Mason Busujima

Rio was a friendly face that popped into your life every now and again, with you knowing he was someone you could lean on or unload your troubles on without much judgment coming your way. You found yourself making your way to his little campsite more as you grew more attached to his company, knowing he liked it when he could cook and take care of others. Rio was always polite and never brought up touchy subjects, but once he’d become part of the rap battles, you’d started to worry about him a little more and made the extra effort to check in on him. Rio noticed your worry for him and felt guilty about making you worry but he’d faced tough opponents before so he had no intention of backing down, simply thanking you and letting you know your care for him was appreciated.

FLING POSSE

Amemura Ramuda

Ramuda flirted with any cute person that came in his path and you were no different, putting an extra bit of attention on you; he bothered you at work, when you were out with friends, he seemed to have a constant radar that detected where you were at all times. You saw him as a lovable nuisance for the most part but rejecting his flirting, sometimes giving in but not entirely in the way he wanted, made him want you even more. Treating him like a person and not just a sex object certainly goes a long way to making Ramuda see you as a little something more and once his feelings for you are solidified in his heart, he cools it with his flirting (but not with his clinginess).

Yumeno Gentaro

You wished you knew what you were to Gentaro but he seemed to purposely keep you in the dark about that, consistently telling others you were his sister, his cousin, an acquaintance, a fair-weather friend- even you were confused about what your relationship actually was up until you confronted him about it. His lies were annoying to deal with and you wondered if you really wanted to suffer with not knowing what the truth was your entire life but you enjoyed his company enough that you were willing to overlook the glaring character flaw. He made up for it with a cute confession at least.

Arisugawa Dice

You felt like Dice’s parent most of the time as you offered him a safe place to stay and food to survive, with him always quite thankful that you take care of him, enough that he even helps around the house every once in a while. He’s fiercely protective of you because of this friendship and he’s a naturally loyal person, always looking out for your well-being and trying to not overstay his welcome. He finds he simply likes being around you which is why you’re his first choice for whenever he needs a place to stay.

MATENRO

Jinguji Jakurai

Jakurai’s true friends were few a far in-between not just because of his current job (or his former one) but because he was always busy doing this or that, especially now that he had his own Hypnosis Mic. So the fact that he even made time to see you, getting lunch or simply meeting in the park to catch up, meant you were someone who was very special to the hardworking doctor. He called you every now and again to check in that you were doing well despite the fact you crossed his mind daily, worried about pulling you into his dangerous life but also craving the intimacy of having a deeper relationship with you.

Izanami Hifumi

You rarely, if ever, saw Hifumi outside the club and when you did he was always wearing his jacket which made you think he was constantly at work; it threw you off as you wondered if he just saw you as a customer or if he thought of you as a genuine friend. He makes the effort to see you outside of work more when you bring the subject up but he can’t entirely abandon his coat if you identify as female, slowly getting more comfortable with the idea until one day he shows up jacket free. You don’t know what it means but he seems quite proud, a bit jumpier than normal, but still overly excited to see you.

Kannonzaka Doppo

The two of you had bonded over an office dinner that neither of you had wanted to attend, Doppo confiding in you his misery while you giggled at how far down the rabbit hole his self-deprecation could get. When you told him you enjoyed his company more than anyone else at works it was like an arrow to the heart and even if it was foolish, Doppo could at least get lost in the thought of actually having a significant other. Work seemed a little bit brighter when you were there and he’d even taken up to having lunch with you (when he didn’t have to work through it).

BAD ASS TEMPLE

Harai Kuko

Kuko, after very blatantly checking you out and even offering up a compliment, begins a conversation that truly goes down in history as one of the funniest things in your life. You’d never suspected he’d be a monk due to his overall appearance and attitude but you find he’s quite insightful, a good friend to have by your side when life got tough. Reaching out to him for advice feels natural at this point and you’d even gone to the temple a few times to bother him on your off days, with Kuko shirking his duties from time to time to visit you in return. It wasn’t any surprise that the two of you ended up dating as anyone who saw you interact would see it coming from a mile away.

Aimono Jyushi

Jyushi had admired you from afar for a long time, having known you since middle school but never feeling confident enough to approach you despite the things you had in common. You had always been friendly to him and had seemed quite guilty that you couldn’t protect him from his bullies, even profusely apologizing once you met again after graduation. He held nothing against you and from that point on you seemed to have an easy time talking with him, checking in on him, attending his concerts, doing everything you could to support him when he needed you to. His crush came back full force even as an adult and it left him even more determined to leave behind his crybaby status as you deserved someone who could stand up for you without shedding a tear.

Amaguni Hitoya

Hitoya had plenty of people come and go in life but even after that first chance meeting with you, he couldn’t get you out of his head; for an old man to fall so hard felt a little pathetic on his part but he just continued on with life as normal. He treated you like he would anyone else, looking out for you when he could, taking you out for dinner and drinks when he had a free weekend, normal adult things that you’d do with adult friends (the place where he desperately tried to keep you despite his romantic interest). He valued your friendship highly and considers you someone he can trust with his life.

DOTSUITARE HOMPO

Nurude Sasara

You were friends before he rose to fame and though you’d fallen out of touch after he started to grow busier, he could always pick your face out of the crowd when he performed; he’d make an effort to find you after shows but you always seemed to disappear or he’d get sidetracked, but when he did manage to find you he always took you out to catch up. He feels a connection and understanding with you even if you constantly shoot down his puns as unfunny and there’s a certain relief he has at being around you, knowing he could be himself without fear of you calling him annoying or overwhelming.

Tsutsujimori Rosho

You were the friend of a friend, someone connected to Sasara who he hadn’t really had any interaction with aside from in a group setting. He thought you were nice enough but he never read too deeply into it until he found himself talking to you alone, finding you were a bit of a different person when not around your own friends (not that he could blame you for that). Your relationship is still distant but friendly for a long time, with Rosho always being pleasantly surprised when you popped up while he was out with Sasara, the teasing from his longtime friend being the first clue that maybe he felt a little something more for you than friendship.

Amayado Rei

Rei is always out and about, never minding his own business, so it’s no surprised you ended up meeting him at a bar where he was seemingly gathering information from. You hadn’t thought much of him when he bought you a drink but he had his own charm to him, especially with how he didn’t bullshit what he wanted out of you (at first). Your relationship had always been a rocky one as it was far too easy to argue with the cocky man but he always seemed to warn you when danger was around the corner and came to you when interesting things were happening around town, claiming it was simply more info gathering though you suspected he wanted something else (which, to be fair, you were also wrong about as you hadn’t thought he of all people would be romantically interested in you in a thousand years).

#Hypnosis Microphone #Hypnosis Mic #Hypnomic #Hypmic #Hypnosis Mic Imagines #Hypnosis Microphone Imagines #Hypnomic Imagines #Hypmic Imagines #Fluff Alphabet #Yamada Ichiro #Aohitsugi Samatoki #Harai Kuko #Nurude Sasara #Amemura Ramuda #Jinguji Jakurai

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rockislandadultreads · 4 years

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Diverse Stories & Funny Laughs: a reading list

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

Wanted: One (fake) boyfriend Practically perfect in every way Luc O'Donnell is tangentially--and reluctantly--famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he's never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad's making a comeback, Luc's back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything. To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship...and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He's a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he's never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened. But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that's when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don't ever want to let them go.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items? • Enjoy a drunken night out. • Ride a motorcycle. • Go camping. • Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex. • Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage. • And... do something bad. But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job. Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit. But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…

Kaddish.com by Nathan Englander

Larry is an atheist in a family of orthodox Memphis Jews. When his father dies, it is his responsibility as the surviving son to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months. To the horror and dismay of his mother and sisters, Larry refuses--thus imperiling the fate of his father's soul. To appease them, and in penance for failing to mourn his father correctly, he hatches an ingenious if cynical plan, hiring a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to recite the daily prayer and shepherd his father's soul safely to rest. This is Nathan Englander's freshest and funniest work to date--a satire that touches, lightly and with unforgettable humor, on the conflict between religious and secular worlds, and the hypocrisies that run through both. A novel about atonement; about spiritual redemption; and about the soul-sickening temptations of the internet, which, like God, is everywhere.

Everywhere You Don't Belong by Gabriel Bump

In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home. Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America. Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.

A Star Is Bored by Byron Lane

A hilariously heartfelt novel about living life at full force, and discovering family when you least expect it, influenced in part by the author’s time as Carrie Fisher’s beloved assistant. Charlie Besson is about to have an insane job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon. THE Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s worst dressed list. She needs an assistant. He needs a hero. Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and an award winning actress, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in the iconic blockbuster sci-fi film. She’s also known for another role: crazy Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Fabulously so. Charlie gets the job, and embarks on an odyssey filled with late night shopping sprees, last minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows, Charlie must make a choice. Will he always be on the sidelines of life, assisting the great forces that be, or can he step into his own leading role? Laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly poignant, Byron Lane's A Star is Bored is a novel that, like the star at its center, is enchanting and joyous, heartbreaking and hopeful.

You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria

Leading Ladies do not end up on tabloid covers. After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow—until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez. Leading Ladies don’t need a man to be happy. After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worried his career is dead as well. Joining this new cast as a last-minute addition will give him the chance to show off his acting chops to American audiences and ping the radar of Hollywood casting agents. To make it work, he’ll need to generate smoking-hot on-screen chemistry with Jasmine. Easier said than done, especially when a disastrous first impression smothers the embers of whatever sexual heat they might have had. Leading Ladies do not rebound with their new costars. With their careers on the line, Jasmine and Ashton agree to rehearse in private. But rehearsal leads to kissing, and kissing leads to a behind-the-scenes romance worthy of a soap opera. While their on-screen performance improves, the media spotlight on Jasmine soon threatens to destroy her new image and expose Ashton’s most closely guarded secret.

#romance #fiction #diverse stories #diverse authors #reading recommendations #book recs #booklr #booklist #reading list #to read #tbr #library #public library #recommended reading #currently reading

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eryiscrye · 4 years

Note

34 for the prompts?

#34-Meeting at a Masquerade Ball

So... I uh... took liberties with the definition of short and therefore... I have put most of it under a cut. It IS shorter than a typical The Ties That Bind chapter though, so it’s still counts! I hope you enjoy 🥰 It’s also a high school AU!

When Brienne caught sight of the notices, taped onto every available locker and wall, her better judgment flew out the window and instead was replaced with the sweet stories of every single romantic fairy tale she had ever loved. It was a chance, possibly her only chance, and Brienne Tarth was going to do her best to take it.

She didn’t have a mother or any sisters to help her find a dress, or really any friends who would help her do so either, Catelyn having graduated and gone to Winterfell University the year before, but luckily the women at the small dress boutique down by her father’s dock took pity on her and had time enough to spend hours looking for something, anything, that would give her the best chance she had at not being recognized. Because that was what it came down to. She simply couldn’t be recognized at King’s Landing High’s bi-annual ball or else it would all be over.

She remembered the first and only other time she had attended… tried to attend one of the dances, Ronnet Connington throwing blood red roses at her feet in front of everyone before they had even entered the hall. She never wanted to feel like that again.

There were no girls at her school that were as tall as she was, but if the dress was floor length all around, she could pretend she was stumbling around in six inch stiletto heels. Her body was broad and boxy, but with the right bodice and skirt, maybe she could give the illusion that she was averagely sized and somewhat curvy. And if all else failed, at least KLH’s balls typically took place in terribly lit halls. She had once been callously told that all women were the same in the dark, but for once she hoped it were true.

Brienne smoothed her hand over the beautiful silver mask she had bought. It looked better in person than it did online and that only cemented her ideation that this was meant to be. A masquerade ball, how lucky was she that KLH’s student committee would decide upon that theme for the last ball of her high school days. The mask wouldn’t cover her entire face, but it would cover everything identifiable and unseemly about her: her nose, her lips, the giant scar on her cheek. The mask would even cover up the majority of the dirty smatterings that were her freckles, a thick layer of foundation taking care of the rest.

It would be enough. It had to be enough.

-///-///-///-

Like with every other ball since Jaime had bashed Ronnet’s teeth out of his head for humiliating her in front of everyone, he pestered her about attending this one too. They had known each other since they were kids, but that first high school dance had been the first time that he had seemed to take any real notice of her. Brienne learned the hard way that once Jaime Lannister took notice, he never didn’t again.

Well, ‘the hard way’ was putting it unkindly. He had been annoying at first, his penchant for popping up out of nowhere and incessantly teasing her grating, but eventually, when literal push had come to literal shove, he had proven to be her most loyal and closest friend. The scars on his right hand and the one on her cheek would probably bind them for life.

So it felt horrible lying to him. “I’m not going,” she said not looking up from her notes, knowing that he would instantly see the deception in her eyes.

Jaime flopped on the table beside her to try and shoot his big, puppy eyes straight into her soul. She turned ever so slightly away so that he couldn’t land a direct hit. “Come on Brienne, it’s the last one before we head off to university.”

“Good riddance.”

Jaime scowled and folded his arms beneath his head. His fists clenched, “Don’t tell me this still has to do with Connington.”

Brienne’s silence and the stiffening of her jaw was all the answer he needed.

Jaime practically growled, “Forget what that fucking useless lump of trash did. The bastard isn’t worth it. Come with me to the ball.”

For a moment Brienne imaged that he meant as his date, but he didn’t. He never did. And she needed to get her silly hopes under control before they moved in together at Riverrun University. “No, Jaime.”

“Then what will we be doing that night?”

“I’ll be helping my dad at the docks,” she lied, and hoped her father remembered to corroborate her story when Jaime inevitably pestered him, “You’ll be enjoying yourself at the dance.” At least she hoped.

Jaime frowned and poked her arm, “I’m not going to enjoy myself if you aren’t there.”

What he said was kind, although it was a blatantly untrue. “You’ve enjoyed yourself fine enough every other ball I haven’t attended.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then why do you still go?”

Jaime stayed silent.

Brienne thought so.

-///-///-///-

Jaime angrily pulled on his stupid tuxedo jacket. He had been so sure that he would be able to convince Brienne to go to at least one dance in all their high school years together, but not once had he succeeded. Even begging Selwyn to cajole her into going to this last one hadn’t worked, and Brienne’s father had simply chuckled all through out the phone call as though what Jaime had to say was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Even imploring him to give her the night off so that Jaime could at least spend it with her hadn’t touched Selwyn’s usually big, beating heart, and the man had simply told Jaime to just ‘go to the damn ball, son’. Unhelpful, everyone was being unbelievably unhelpful.

“You’re creasing everything,” Cersei said as she slid between him and the mirror with his bow tie, folded handkerchief, and cufflinks in hand, “It won’t do to look like a slob.”

“I don’t care.”

Cersei rolled her eyes so hard that it was a wonder they didn’t fall out of their sockets. “Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?” She smoothed out his outfit with several sharp tugs and stuffed the handkerchief into his suit pocket.

Jaime pursed his lips.

One of Cersei’s eyebrows lifted in a perfect arch as she threw the tie around his still popped collar and began to tie it with deft hands, “Have you tried the simple but straight forward, ‘I love you’?”

Jaime’s lips pursed even more. No matter how many times he had tried, Brienne had always added ‘but only as a friend’ to his blatant statement or airily laughed it off as though he would say it to just anyone.

“My god,” Cersei muttered, “She’s as thick as she is stubborn.”

“Cersei…” Jaime hissed in warning.

She pulled the bow taught, flipped down his collar, and patted his chest, “Not an insult. Wouldn’t want you to do to me what you did to the soccer team. Does she even know?” Cersei moved on to doing up his cuffs. His twin sister always had a knack for making him feel like an overgrown child.

“No,” Jaime muttered. The moment he had heard of the bet, he had put everyone involved in their place. No one in the world deserved to have that happen to them, much less sweet, softhearted Brienne.

“Do you think she’s going to finally show up this time?” Cersei asked, a smirk curling on her lips, “Give you a chance to finally sweep her off her feet.”

“Fuck off.”

“Because if you’re going to be in a mood all night, again, I’m not associating myself with you any further,” she straightened out both his sleeves, took a step back and nodded.

Jaime frowned. He hadn’t told anyone. He had definitely not told his sister, but still she knew that the only reason he still attended these damn balls was on the off chance that Brienne would decide to show up last minute and he could finally, finally, show her how he felt. It was stupid, but he loved those fairy tales too and hoped that maybe if he told her he loved her at a damn ball, she would finally fucking believe him. But knowing that there was no chance Brienne was going to be coming at all tonight… well… what was even the point?

Cersei sighed as she picked up the mask he had chosen for the night, “Blue really isn’t your colour.”

“I resent that.”

She set the mask down, “And you’re an idiot.” Cersei swept out of the room.

-///-///-///-

Brienne entered the hall, her nerves making her stumble at the threshold, even in her flats. At least she didn’t have to fake wearing stiletto heels.

As she had hoped, the whole place was lit quite poorly with splashes of purple and blue light mainly hitting and reflecting off the walls and spotlights only scattered here and there. Music reverberated through the air, overpowering the din of mingled conversation. The songs being played were a mix of pop melodies that were easy to dance to and waltz’s that carried the theme of the night. People were dancing everywhere, scattered among the conversations and tables filled with food and drink, rather than just on the dance floor, and it made the entire event feel somewhat surreal.

Some of the students she could identify quickly even with their masks on, Cersei Lannister’s shining golden ringlets and signature blood red lipstick making her prominent among the population, but most of the rest were like strangers in a crowd. She hoped she looked like a stranger too.

Cersei’s hair standing out so much in the dim lights of the hall gave her hope that it wouldn’t be so hard to find the one person she wanted to find. She just wanted to have one dance with him before the stroke of midnight came and they would live the rest of their lives out as the best of friends. It would hurt to see him date and bring back to their apartment girls he would assuredly meet and fall in love with in university, but at least she would always have tonight. That was, if she could find him.

It took her nearly an hour and unlike where she thought he would be, surrounded by guys and girls, laughing and enjoying the night under one of the glowing spotlights, she found him alone, standing in the shadows.

Nervously, she moved towards him. At her approach he instinctively seemed to recoil, and Brienne swallowed uneasily. Did he recognize her? Was he waiting for someone? She thought that he would have been happy to see a friend even if he did recognize her. Well there was only one way to find out.

“Um excuse me,” she murmured, her voice muffled and altered by her mask, “Would you like to dance?”

Jaime huffed, “Sorry, I’m no—” and then he turned towards her and seemed surprised that he had to look up, “I…” His eyes met hers, then sparked and glowed. “I would.”

Brienne couldn’t help but smile, her disguise had worked.

-///-///-///-

He had nearly bailed last minute, thinking that it would be better to just mope on the couch and text Brienne constantly until she just angrily called him. Then, maybe, he could at least lure her into chatting with him all through the night.

His little brother was the only reason he hadn’t though. Cersei wouldn’t lift a finger to protect him and Jaime knew that high school was liable to try and hurt him as much as it had hurt Brienne. Teenagers were ruthless, but especially so on the night of KLH’s bi-annual balls.

About five minutes after they had arrived though, his protective instincts were all deemed pointless. Unlike Brienne, Tyrion had a penchant for making friends, even if they were minorly unsavory ones, and he was off doing whatever he had planned to do. Jaime leaned against the wall, enjoying the slight anonymity his mask gave him even if he wasn’t enjoying anything else. At least he didn’t have to spend the whole night turning down dances from every girl who only saw the Lannister heir or his handsome looks.

About an hour after arriving, Jaime considered going home, changing into something comfortable and joining Brienne at the docks despite her and her father’s protestations. If there was no chance that she was coming, he would have much rather spent the night with her, trying desperately to tell her, again, how he felt. It was silly, he knew. He would have a million more chances, but it almost seemed wrong to move in with her before making his feelings utterly clear. If she didn’t feel the same way, wouldn’t his pining just one bedroom away bother her?

He heard the swish of skirts before he saw them and prepared himself to reject the girl. There was only one person he had wanted to dance with tonight.

“Um excuse me.” She sounded so nervous and so familiar. His heart beat loudly in his chest and he looked away. He already felt bad for rejecting her outright, but there was just no other way. “Would you like to dance?”

Jaime sighed, “Sorry, I’m no—“ and then he turned to look her in the face as he dismissed her and found that he had to tilt his chin up to meet her eyes. Her eyes. “I…” Brienne’s eyes. Oh god. Brienne was here! Brienne was asking him to dance. He scrambled for the only answer, “I would!”

Her eyes sparkled in a way that told him she was smiling, even though he couldn’t see the majority of her face and he wondered why it was she had chosen such a ridiculous mask. It hid all of the unique and precious features of her: her nose, her lips, her cheek.

Jaime’s eyes narrowed as he reached his unscarred hand up to brush against the only section of exposed skin. “Come on, then,” he managed to say as he pulled her out of the shadows and into a little stream of light. When he looked at her again, he realized that it hadn’t just been a trick of the darkness, she had covered all her darling freckles under a heavy layer of make up. Jaime swallowed as he beheld her. Did she think…? No. Impossible.

She looked nervous now, under the light, “Maybe we should dance over there,” she said, and pointed at the shadows.

Oh gods, she did. “No,” Jaime said with force, “Here suits me fine.” He took her hand and pulled her in, wrapping his arm around her waist.

Brienne gasped at his touch and he wondered if she was blushing. He couldn’t tell. And he hated it.

As they danced, Jaime wondered if he should tell her he knew who she was. It was obvious that she thought she had to hide herself from him, but he just couldn’t, for the life of him, fathom why. But as she tightened her grip on him and they leaned closer and closer as one song ended and another began, he found that he cared less and less so long as she was in his arms.

He nuzzled the hair at her temple and she sighed happily. He decided that instant, and without hesitation, that she had to know he knew it was her. “Brienne,” he murmured into her ear, and held her tighter as she jerked in his arms.

“How did you…?”

“Did you really think I could ever mistake you for someone else?” Jaime asked.

Brienne quivered, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—“

“I only said yes because I knew it was you.”

He let her draw away from him just enough so that they could see each other’s faces. “What?” she asked, softly, “Why?” her voice even more tender.

Jaime smiled at her, then lifted and span her mask so that instead of covering her face, it shielded them from the rest of the world. He was relieved to see that she hadn’t covered the rest of her freckles. His scarred hand went to brush her scarred cheek. “I’ve been waiting for you.” He leaned and kissed her.

#jaime x brienne #braime #my fics #kinda?#prompts #how do you add tags in when you're answering?#i'm like a senior citizen when it comes to tumblr #the internet in general really #THIS WAS FUN #I ALMOST DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO END IT #so i just DID #and they all lived happily ever after #i hope you enjoy anon!

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sazandorable · 6 years

Text

A compilation and comparison of Ghetsis’ USUM lines about Giovanni in ENG, JPN, and FR

awright so I was actually started on this over on twitter and actively encouraged, so now you get... this (harharhar). It’s long and rambly, sorry!

For clarity’s sake, let’s start with the official ENG localization. I’m linking random LP videos each time for convenience, but there are lots of others to find.

ENGLISH:

"In order to achieve this beautiful ideal, however, I have need of a useful pawn... And that man, the leader of Team Rocket, is a man of pure evil! If I can make good use of him, and set him up as a king, I shall be able to reign supreme above all existence!"

"I have found that humans, with their predictable ambitions, are easier to use and control than a freak without a human heart."

"It wouldn't do at all to have you get in his way, especially when I must establish him as my king!"

(text c/p’d from bulbapedia (bolding mine). conversely, please have a look — i don’t even mean read, just. look. — at the entirety of ghetsis’s USUM dialogue on bulbapedia:

look at all this bold. i love his freakout trips so much.)

So to recap:

- pawn

- man of pure evil

- useful, make good use

- set up as (my) king

- human

- predictable, easy to use and control

- don’t get in his way (doesn’t comply with my plans!)

Now for the original

JAPANESE:

この野望を叶えるには操り人形が必要です純粋な悪の思想を持つロケット団のボス… あの男…王としてうまく扱えばワタクシはあらゆる存在の頂点に立てるのです！目的がわかりやすい人間は人の心を持たぬ化け物よりはるかに制御しやすいのです！いいですか？ワタクシの王として彼を利用するためじゃまをされてはこまるのですよ！

(partly c/p’d from this blessing of a page which is basically the monolingual equivalent of this post, I’m laughing so much, same, bro, same)

I’m... Ok, I linked a video where the player reads the text aloud, but I’m still also going to transliterate this so you can “hear” it in your heads because. I really need you all to take notice of the sheer amount of “のです” in this extract. 3 out of 4 lines end with “no desu”. This is how Ghetsis speaks all the time. English localization did its best but still mostly lost this IMO: there’s two ways to read the formal, polite way JPN!Ghetsis speaks. One is the calmly threatening, quietly scary way in which the player acts out his lines in the video. The other way, the way I personally cannot stop hearing him, is like an affable, cutesy and harmless grandmother. Like a moe schoolgirl, even. Ghetsis once referred to himself & Team Plasma as being all “nakama” in canon. (EDIT: i actually remembered that bit as being worded “nakama na no desu” but alas, not quite.)

I just really need people to know this, okay.

Now that I’ve made this clear, as-literal-and-close-as-possible-and-thus-very-wonky-sounding translation by yours truly:

kono yabou wo kanaeru ni wa, ayatsuriningyou ga hitsuyou desu

“To fulfill this ambition, I need a puppet.”

Although “pawn” is a perfectly good translation choice (and adds a very appropriate chess theme), I also really want to let it be known that the original was “a puppet” (操り人形 ayatsuri ningyou). The kind with strings. (操る ayatsuru means “to pull strings” or “to manipulate”, in the literal sense.) Such a wonderfully creepy image too <3

junsui na aku no shisou wo motsu ROCKETTO-dan no BOSU... ano otoko... ou toshite umaku atsukaeba, watakushi ha arayuru sonzai no chouten ni tateru no desu!

“The boss of Team Rocket, of purely evil thought/idea/ideology... that man... if I can successfully treat him as a king / if I can make good use of him as a king, I will be able to stand at the summit of all of existence!”

The ENG used two verbs constructions here, but it's a single word. I am not savvy enough in Japanese to be able to tell if one or both nuances is stronger than the other here. But I do know that the verb (扱う atsukau) has the two meanings (“handle/operate” and “treat as”). And the ENG localization did keep “make use of”, too, despite the として structure being generally translated with “treat as”. I'm just saying, interesting double meaning within a single word here. V nice.

mokuteki ga wakariyasui ningen ha, hito no kokoro wo motanu bakemono yori haruka ni seigyoshiyasui no desu!

“A human with easy-to-know/understand objectives/motivations is far easier to control/keep in check than a monster without a person’s heart!”

... Okay usually I would have gone with “without a human heart”, like the localization always does, but the thing is he actually says “人間 ningen” (human) in the part about Giovanni. But not for N. In his usual pet name for N, he just uses “人 hito” (person). So. As evil as Giovanni is, Ghetsis still considers him human, unlike N (and N doesn’t get to be a person either). As lovely a dad as ever, huh. (Not about Giovanni but also noteworthy: the “freak” in the recurrent pet name is originally “monster” (化け物 bakemono). As far as I can tell, it’s always the exact same wording in JPN too.)

Technically this sentence could also be set in plural (no grammar cue at all), but since he’s clearly referring to N in the second half, I went with singular both times. In truth, he could be referring to humans in general (like what the localization went with), or simply to Giovanni specifically.

ii desu ka? watakushi no ou toshite kare wo riyousuru tame jama wo sarete ha komaru no desu yo!

“What about this? In order for me to make use of him as my king, allowing you to interfere would be troublesome!”

I ALSO JUST REALLY NEEDED EVERYONE TO KNOW THAT HE SAYS “II DESU KA?” HERE AND IT’S SO HARD TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO CONVEY THAT ACCURATELY. IT’S NOT QUITE “WHAT ABOUT IT”. IT’S BASICALLY. ASKING FOR YOUR PERMISSION. LIKE “MAY I?”. Except of course he’s not asking for your permission, it’s also like... “So, you see?” But basically. Basically he’s not just threatening you or explaining to you why he’s gonna beat you up, he’s like “See what I’m about? So, can’t you be a good kid and let me do this puh-leaaase? :)”

And the word choice in the rest of the line is also very “Look I’m a nice harmless grandma :) :)” and cutesy.

The verb for “use” is a different one this time, though, more straightforward.

And the last line is slightly ambiguous as to who you’d interfere with — either “I can’t let you interfere with my plan (which is to control Giovanni)”, or “I can’t let you interfere with Giovanni’s actions, since I need him to succeed for my own plans”. Ultimately that doesn’t change a thing, but the latter sounds a little like “heeeey don’t break my stuuuff, I need this”.

And by the way yes it’s literally “my king” in Japanese too, very conspicuously so, sounded super gay to me.

So to recap, this version gives us:

- puppet

- PURE EVIL MIND

- to treat him as my king (huhuh)

- human

- easy to understand, easy to control/keep in check

- puhwease :) don’t get in [his OR my] way

And now for the absolute funniest:

FRENCH:

“Mais pour cela, j'ai besoin d'une créature... Un pion facile à manipuler, un pantin pour distraire les masses...”

“Et soudain, voilà que le ‹‹ boss ›› de la Team Rocket, un homme à l'âme plus noire que son costume, se présente à moi !”

“Je n'ai qu'à faire de cet homme un roi, puis à tirer les ficelles en coulisses... Et je me dresserai au sommet incontesté de toute la création !”

“Il est tellement plus aisé de manipuler un balourd aux désirs primaires qu'une grotesque parodie d'être humain sans âme !”

“Comprenez-vous, belle enfant ? Et vous, Dresseuse ? Je ne peux vous laisser m'empêcher de faire de cet homme un roi.”

So much to unpack here. /rolls back sleeves/

First off, you can probably tell that the French localization loves to make Ghetsis RAMBLE. He’s very dramatic, flair and all, and his choice of words are absurdly purple (and often archaic). Yes, he noticeably has these traits in the ENG localization too, but FR!Ghetsis is that to eleven. I can’t manage to accurately convey this in these translations, but trust me, he’s just. Completely over the top in all ways, all the time.

Mais pour cela, j'ai besoin d'une créature... Un pion facile à manipuler, un pantin pour distraire les masses...

“But for this, I need a creature... A pawn, easy to manipulate, a puppet to distract/entertain the masses...”

Geez, FR!Ghets, how come your localization lets you have all the cool dehumanizing insults and creepy metaphors at once?!

Et soudain, voilà que le ‹‹ boss ›› de la Team Rocket, un homme à l'âme plus noire que son costume, se présente à moi !

“And suddenly, the “boss” of Team Rocket, a man with a soul blacker than his suit, presents himself to me!”

I treasure the shade in those sarcastic quotation marks, okay. These just. Come from absolutely nowhere. Quite possibly to poke fun at the fact that French localizations have used the word “boss” from the start of the franchise, and it would be weird and confusing to use something else to refer to Giovanni here, but it’s not actually a word we’d use naturally and, indeed, FR!Ghetsis would never use it unironically (it’s kind of slang and very much not-originally-a-French-word)...

Also: A SOUL BLACKER/DARKER THAN HIS SUIT

GUYS THIS WAS NOT IN THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT

Je n'ai qu'à faire de cet homme un roi, puis à tirer les ficelles en coulisses... Et je me dresserai au sommet incontesté de toute la création !

“All I need to do is to make this man king / make a king out of this man, then pull the strings backstage... And I will stand at the unquestioned/unchallenged top of all of creation!”

In this version he just says he’s literally going to make Giovanni a king. No detail as to how, but there’s no nuance that it’s just pretending or tricking him or anything. The words he uses also mean literally “pull strings” and “backstage”, exact same nuances as in English, so still totally reveling in the show metaphors.

Il est tellement plus aisé de manipuler un balourd aux désirs primaires qu'une grotesque parodie d'être humain sans âme !

“It is so much easier to manipulate a boorish oaf with primal/basic desires than a grotesque parody/repulsive joke of a soulless human being!”

... Again. Bonus extra shade. The original wasn’t complimentary by any measure, but this is so gratuitously extra mean. Amusingly, even though we have the word “ambitions” too, the FR localization opted to turn the JPN “objectives” into “desires”. Yes, same nuance as in English here too. “Désirs primaires” sounds insulting but also... kind of raunchy.

Also, “balourd” is a really funny word choice, intrinsically and also especially when contrasting with Ghetsis’ usual speech, it suddenly drops a few levels in formality to go almost colloquial. A “balourd” is like... think The Jungle Book’s Baloo, actually.

"Grotesque parodie d’être humain” was one of the (... many) things he yelled to N at the very end of B2W2, however it was translated a bit differently in BW, so this is the first reoccurrence French localizations get!

(... Because until then he had... quite a varied arsenal of these. “Marionnette” (puppet) and “aberration de la nature” (aberration/freak of nature) in B2W2, “MA CREATURE” (my creature/creation — Giovanni got this one too here!), “Il ne possède pas de coeur!” (He doesn’t possess a heart!) and “triste abomination” (sad/grotesque abomination) in BW.)

Comprenez-vous, belle enfant ? Et vous, Dresseur/Dresseuse ? Je ne peux vous laisser m'empêcher de faire de cet homme un roi.

“Do you understand, beautiful/lovely child? And you, Trainer? I cannot (afford to) let you stop me from making this man king / making a king out of this man.

This has nothing to do with Giovanni anymore but it’s some more extra creepy :) (HAHAHA YOU HAVE FALLEN FOR MY CUNNING TRICK i just wanted to ramble about Ghetsis’ awesome lines and speech patterns in general ok... don’t shame me...)

“Do you understand?” appears to be how the FR localization chose to deal with the “Ii desu ka?”, which isn’t a wrong decision, but they randomly decided to apply it to Lillie too.

“Belle enfant” is referring to Lillie, he calls her this through the entire scene. It sounds very archaic (calling to mind the Middle-Ages and fairy tales — it’s what someone would call a teenage Sleeping Beauty for instance) and also, you know, SUPER CREEPY. Also, despite this infantilization, he uses vous (= formal you) for both Lillie and the PC, which is very very odd for an adult speaking to a child. Like I said: extremely polite, overly so, unnaturally so.

... Until you beat him and he snaps, anyway, because then he switches to tu (= thee, informal/familiar you) and informal insults. <3

Anyway, in this version he says you’re in his way, not Giovanni’s.

So to recap:

- creature, puppet, pawn

- manipulate, pull strings, creation

=> overall, all the chess AND (puppet) show AND creator-god metaphors (later on instead of “ruler of this world” FR!Ghets literally calls himself “the demiurge”, I’m not making this up)

- “““boss””” of Team Rocket

- his soul is blacker than his suit

- simplistic, boorish oaf

- ... does not directly call him a human (just at-least-not-a-grotesque-parody-of-a-human-being)

- primal desires ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

- don’t stop ME from MAKING HIM KING

- (no “my king” :()

I wasn’t setting out to make a point but oh hey guess there is one: the level of ‘respect’ and amusement Ghetsis has for Giovanni’s abilities and evilness, as well as exactly how serious Ghetsis is about the whole king thing, vary from one version to another, and some things can also be interpreted in various ways! The reason why he attacks you also differs from “Uhhmm, I can’t let you get to Giovanni and ruin his thing, because I need him functional for my thing later, so I’ll have to stop you here” to “Don’t ruin my thing. Lol just try and stop me”. ... And I thought he called Giovanni something along the lines of “black-hearted” in all versions, but this post taught me that he doesn’t, just “evil”, so hey now you know that in French he does, isn’t it neat!

Also, Giovanni may be evil and basic, but at least he doesn’t speak to Pokémon.

Ghetsis, your standards.

#pokemon ultra sun & moon #team rainbow rocket #ghetsis #giovanni #baddabingbaddaboomshipping #remember this amazing ship name?#pokemon #pokemon usum #aza tries to translate japanese #la team française oh mon dieu #long post (under readmore)#jp en fr

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shipmistress9 · 6 years

Text

FTLOAP: Chapter 2: I know not if fate would have us live as one

Prologue; Chapter 1

Thanks again to all of you for the wonderful feedback I got here, on ff-net, and on AO3. You guys are awesome! :D

And, as always, credits to my beta-reader/editor/co-author @athingofvikings who sometimes comes up with the funniest bits of side plot ever ;)

. o O o .

In a daze, Astrid followed Timothy – or Tuff as everyone called him – out of the stables. All of her efforts went towards ensuring that her outward appearances were calm, typical, even placid – which was almost more than she could manage. Inside, her heart was racing and her head was a jumbled mess of thoughts and emotions, all centred around a single question.

What had just happened?

It had started so simply. She’d gone to the stables to see the new horses that House Jag’r had undoubtedly brought, hoping to spend a few hours in pleasant company, and, most importantly, not being the perfect Princess for a while.

And she’d found that, all right...

But she’d also discovered something quite... unexpected.

What just happened...

As discretely as she could, she took a shaky breath as an old memory surfaced in her mind. She remembered a visit to the southern seashore when she was a child. She remembered watching the tide come in, a wave of water that had quickly drowned the beach that she had walked across only hours before. Some of the children on the beach, digging for clams and the like, had barely been able to outrun the rushing water.

What just happened... it had felt like that. She’d been swamped by these unexplainable feelings and that… that vision... Like something was pulling her toward him, seemingly as inexorably as the tide.

Nothing made sense.

She fought hard against the urge to lift her hand to her lips, to trace where he’d kissed her. It was of supreme importance that, whatever she did, Tuff mustn’t notice anything. He couldn’t learn about what had just happened.

It was weird in a way, ironic even. It hadn’t been her first kiss. That she’d lost to Snotlout when she was seven. And it hadn’t even been her first real kiss either, because that one had gone to Eret two years ago – as part of an experiment.

No, it wasn’t just that he’d kissed her. It had been so much more than that.

She had felt it almost immediately, when he’d treated her like a human being, and not as an adornment or path to power. When he’d talked to her, had joked and laughed with her, had made her work, and had teased her. Even in those early moments, there had been something between them already, something more than just the thrill of being treated like a normal person. There had been a lightness, a feeling of rightness, something she’d never felt before, not with her brother nor with any of her friends.

When he’d first brushed against her, she’d felt like something inside had shifted into place that had always been slightly off before. She couldn’t describe it any better, but it had felt so… so… right! It had felt right to touch his hand, right to carefully caress his fingers, and so very right to nudge him during their bantering, as if she’d known him all her life. As if she should know him.

But when he’d kissed her…

There were no words to describe that feeling. The images his lips had conjured to her mind’s eye, and the sheer longing it had stirred within her. Longing for what she’d seen, but, even more so, a soul-deep longing for this man, this stranger who’d captured her heart and soul in merely a couple of hours.

And yet, it could never be.

Astrid balled her hands into fists at her sides to keep them from trembling. She needed time, needed to think and to put some order into her head. Right now, everything was just this chaotic mess. Just an hour of peace, that was all she needed. But she probably wouldn’t get an hour today anymore.

She wouldn’t even get a few minutes.

Almost without intending to do so, she wandered away from Tuff and the pathway back to the castle. Her gaze drifted to the small lake at the forest’s edge, and, as always, a peaceful smile crept across her face. It was a beautiful lake, a real lake, not some hand-dug pond full of gasping ornamental fish. The banks here were covered with reeds and cattails, and teeming with wildlife. It was her favourite place on the castle grounds.

Well, maybe except for the stables.

Her eyes were caught by the majestic swans gliding over its surface, and, as usual, there was this strange yearning deep inside her. A yearning to be as free as they were, and also a bit of jealousy at how they could chase off people that annoyed them and people seemed to respect that.

“Hey, hey, don’t you run off again, young lady!”

Astrid rolled her eyes, and sighed. Of course, Tuff wouldn’t let her have any more moments of peace today.

“I’m not running away, Tuff. I’m just…” she shrugged, trailing off. What should she say? She wanted to run away! She didn’t want to return to the castle, to the stiff rules, and the even more rigid expectations. Instead, she wanted to… to return to the stables, and back into those arms that had held her tightly, so tight that they’d almost crushed her.

She inhaled sharply at that thought. Freya, what was going on with her? Her mind drifted back to that toothy grin, to those lively forest green eyes beneath that mane of auburn hair, and she couldn’t help but smile briefly.

But it was nothing but a dream. As much as she might wish otherwise, she knew that nothing could ever come of it. She had to keep telling herself that. Her father would never allow it. As right as it had felt, and as much as she wanted it to come true, it still could never be. It was too dangerous, and she would not risk –

“Astrid, if you’re not coming with me right now, then I’m not responsible for my actions anymore.” Tuff had probably meant for his voice to sound threatening, but it just served to make her lips twitch in light amusement, despite her troubled thoughts. And it served to distract her, for which she was grateful. She shouldn’t think about this, about him. It could never be.

“Alright, Tuff,” she gave in, turned, and walked ahead of her warder, back toward the castle. “I’ll be good now. Just for you.”

“Oh, I’ll never understand women,” she heard him mumble almost incoherently. Then he added louder, “That’s good to hear, but I’m sure you’re not doing it just for me. Because I know that you wouldn’t want to miss Eret’s accolade. No, you can’t fool me. Even you can’t ignore an event like this.”

Astrid whirled around, and stared at him, eyes wide. “That’s today?” she asked disbelievingly. “His accolade is today already? Are you sure?”

Tuff shrugged. “As far as I’ve heard, yes. You see, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Of course, I thought you’d be at the stables, and that’s where I looked for you first. At the main stables. But those were filled with hundreds of horses and dozens of stable staff from House Jag’r, and none of them had seen you there, although the old goat was there, shouting orders and making everyone stressed out.”

“Tuff! You know better than to call Eret’s grandfather that!” Astrid chided him, glancing to see if anyone had heard the impolitic remark, and then leaned in to whisper, “At least so long as we’re not behind closed doors.” And regardless of how true it was, she thought with a grimace.

Tuff shrugged and continued with his tale of woe. “Then I went to Fishlegs at the physician’s chambers, because I know how much time you spend there watching him mix all those weird tinctures and paints for his master. But he said he hadn’t seen you all day, so he sent me to his wife in the kitchens. Which was a great excuse to swipe one of the pastries Heather had just made, by the way. You know, these small ones filled with – oh, never mind. She hadn’t seen you either, but she said she wouldn’t even have noticed you with all the extra work they had because of the accolade. Looks like your father decided on that one on a whim. Or your brother persuaded him to do so, which is more likely, I guess. That way, we can get rid of the old goat – pardon, Eret the Elder faster. Anyway, Eret is the only sensible candidate, so it has to be his accolade today.”

Astrid rubbed her forehead as she filtered the small bit of important information out of Tuff’s extended monologue. “And why haven’t you said so sooner?” she inquired, and turned to hurry up the path toward the castle again.

“I would have if I’d found you sooner. You see, after Heather and the rest of the kitchen staff confirmed that you hadn’t been there all day, I went to every other place I could think of. I looked at your herb garden, at the archery range… Odin, I even went to the library, before I remembered that House Jag’r sometimes uses these remote stables as well. And then I had to come all the way out here. Honestly, you can’t expect me to remember every tiny bit of unimportant information after such a hike.”

She took a deep breath, but didn’t comment any further. She could point out any number of responses; that Eret had been her best friend since they were children, that she felt closer to him than she did to her own brother, and that his accolade was something he’d been looking forward to for years. Of course, his accolade was important. But Tuff already knew all that, so where was the point. Instead of wasting any more time and energy, she hurried on up the hill, Tuff on his long legs right behind her.

Once they reached the castle’s main gate, however, she paused. She waited for Tuff to quickly put her hair back into order as best he could, his nimble hands working to get the braids back into what he considered acceptable condition, and then shook the last bits of dust and straw out of her skirts. He gave her appearance a last once-over, and then nodded grimly.

With deliberate calmness, she stepped out into the open.

As always, several people greeted her as she walked along the road that led through the gate, minor noblemen who lived in town, merchants who bowed in their usual exaggerated manner, and common people who gazed at her in wonder before hastily scrambling out of her way. Calmly, she walked past them, smiling pleasantly as it was expected of her. Astrid hated this public part of the castle. She hated always keeping up appearances, always making a show of dignity and aloofness. She hated being this puppet, this royal figurehead. She understood why it was necessary, why the royal family needed to show strength and control. Those were subtle reminders as to who was in charge – to the kingdom, to the distant offshoot branches of her own House, to the other nobles, to the Temple, and to the common folk. Although to those commoners and peasants, it was less a threat and reminder of who was the boss than it was a calming reassurance of prosperity and stability.

But she hated wearing this mask nonetheless. Because it simply wasn’t who she was.

The inner courtyard was surprisingly busy for the time of day. There were merchants with full waggons blocking each other’s way, and servants bustling about hastily. Meanwhile, the usual groups of children were running around, playing games, but their numbers seemed greater than normal, especially with the smaller groups of youth that stood off to the sides, taking breaks.

The commotion confused Astrid, but then she remembered what Tuff had said. Eret’s accolade was tonight. Of course, the castle was in chaos, trying to prepare an appropriate feast in time.

Inwardly, her pleasant smile turned into a smirk. All this effort, and the person of honour would certainly enjoy it more if the celebrations for his grand day would instead consist of telling scary stories around a campfire. But that was, of course, out of the question.

“Oh, hey!” a familiar voice called out to them, and Astrid turned toward the plump man running in their direction. When he reached them, Fishlegs dutifully bowed to her, and then turned toward Timothy.

Right… public ground meant that her friend wasn’t even allowed to talk to her.

“I see you’ve found her,” the physician’s apprentice said, gasping for air from his short sprint. He threw her a careful smile, hidden behind a hand over his mouth which she answered with a slow blink of her eyelids. The only form of friendly greeting they could risk, even with the wedding band glinting on her friend’s finger.

“Yeah, I did,” Tuff replied, lazily leaning against a stone column that supported a gallery overhead. “Guess what? She was at the stables after all. The other stables.”

“Not surprising,” Fishlegs nodded. “I thought that’s where you had looked first, or I would have suggested it.”

Astrid gritted her teeth as the men kept chatting as if she wasn’t there. It was the law. Lowborn as they were, they were not to address her directly. And in return, as a woman, she was not allowed to speak up anyway.

It was infuriating!

She was Astrid of House Hofferson, daughter of King Osmond the Kind and sister to the Prince and future King Daniel. Since the death of her stepmother four years ago, she had been the First Lady of the kingdom. And yet she could do nothing but stand and wait until her warder was finished with his chat. She wasn’t even allowed to walk on on her own, for Freya’s sake!

Not wanting to listen to her friends joking around without being able to participate, she tuned them out as best she could. It was a skill she’d learned early in her education, mostly in regards to her tutors.

“And Eret really arrived already? Are you sure?”

The mention of her friend’s name caught her attention, and Astrid turned her focus to the conversations around her without turning or looking in their directions. There were two young women standing close-by, chatting animatedly, and Astrid grinned inwardly at their topic.

“Yes, I’m telling you, he’s here already. So there’s no point in waiting near the road to accidentally fall down in front of him. Besides, my brother said he rode one of their stallions. You know, one of these really big horses House Jag’r breeds in the eastern plains. He probably would have simply trampled over you.”

“Oh, but I wouldn’t have minded. He’s so handsome, dying at his feet might be worth it.”

“You’re hopeless.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Astrid watched the girls walk away, chuckling quietly to herself. They were right, of course, Eret was handsome with his warm brown eyes, the broad chin highlighted with a few tribal tattoos, and the even broader shoulders. She’d noticed that much, alright. She wasn’t blind. And yet, it was still funny to listen to those girls swooning over him, when she knew that his heart belonged to someone else.

Cheered up by this encounter, Astrid kept listening to the conversations around her while she waited for Tuff to go on. Those other conversations weren’t as interesting and she listened to several at once instead of keeping track of a single one. Everyone was talking over everyone else, and keeping track of the individual conversations was quite a challenge.

“So, what is it about these apples you wanted to show me. Are they any special?” one young servant said to another.

Nearby, a pair of young men were chatting. “I’m thinking about taking the King’s shilling and joining the Prince out west for next year’s summer campaigning.”

“Well, they look delicious, don’t you think? Too bad we have orders to get the other ones. I would have loved to swipe one or two for later,” the second servant said.

“Huh, Trader Bartek. You've got a good haul this visit. What changed?" asked one of the Chamberlain’s men to a nicely dressed merchant, inspecting his cart.

“I dunno, Bobby. It’s still fighting, right?” the second young man said with trepidation.

“Oh, you would do that, wouldn’t you? Ah, but I agree. It’s not like it would actually attract attention if a dozen apples or so go missing,” replied the first servant.

Meanwhile, the first young man scoffed. “Aye? So? I’ve heard André got in on one of the nobleman’s ransoms from those skirmishes, and has been showing off the purse and that awesome scar on his calf. Ever since he got back, he’s had a bevvy of girls to choose from. So, what do you think, are you coming, too?”

“No, I’m not. He didn’t get that scar from falling off a horse, or something. And not everybody comes back, remember? Jack the miller’s grandnephew got killed. I don’t think I can do that to my mother and sister,” the second young man said.

"Ah, well, with that business out west, the high roads are safe to travel again," the merchant said, sounding satisfied.

“Don’t be such a coward, Greg. The chance of actually dying in one of the skirmishes is less than for the proverbial cripple to court the Princess. Practically non-existent,” the first young man said.

“Do you think we could get away with buying an additional bag of these? The Mistress surely gave us enough money for these orders,” the servants chattered.

"Oh? I know the knights usually don’t bother merchants, but what about the bandits? They used to be quite a pest," the Chamberlain’s man said.

“Hush, she’s right over there, you fool!” the second young man hissed.

The merchant cackled. "Aye, the new lord has a way with bandits. Join the army, or hang from a tree. One forest road was just filled..."

Suddenly shaking, Astrid forced herself to stop listening. With unseeing eyes, she stared at the cobblestones beneath her feet, trying to fight off the images those last words had conjured up in her mind. She needed to get away from here, to distract herself, as those images threatened to overwhelm her. She audibly cleared her throat to catch Tuff’s attention, and gave him a stern look when he looked up at her.

“Oh, right,” he said, pushing himself off the column. “We need to get going. Still lots to do for tonight.”

“Ah, yes. Me, too. Master Mulch wants me to get more caraway, centaury, and fennel. We’re going to need those after tonight’s feast. Lots of stomach trouble to be expected. Well, I’ll see you around, I guess.” He waved shortly, and then hurried to one of the merchant’s waggons on his short legs.

Without exchanging another word, she continued on her way, Tuff close behind her, watching her. She strolled down the hallways and up the stairs, past servants who swiftly made way for her, no matter how heavy the burden was they were carrying.

Once they reached her private chambers, her shoulders slumped down, and she let out a heavy sigh. She’d successfully run the gauntlet through the public part of the castle without inflicting harm on either herself or her reputation. It might have been only a few minutes, but the role was exhausting regardless.

“No time to lose, come on,” Tuff urged – ignoring the time he’d just wasted talking with Fishlegs – and dragged her on. “Ruff? Are you here? I found her.”

Ruff appeared from the dressing room, and rolled her eyes when she saw her mistress. “How do you do it?” she asked incredulously. “It’s mid-afternoon. I braided your hair this morning. How is it possible that it already looks like you were rolling in the hay with a stable boy? Unless that’s what you did, in which case I don’t want to know.”

Astrid flinched slightly, but covered any further visible reactions by walking past her servant and entering the dressing room. Ruff’s words were awfully close to the truth, but she couldn’t let her see that.

“Close enough. She was playing with horses again,” Tuff replied.

“I didn’t play with them, I rubbed them down,” she corrected, sending a small prayer of thanks to the Gods over this change of topic. She knew the twins wouldn’t be happy to hear that, either, but it was a fairly safe bit of information. Something that wouldn’t get a certain someone into trouble.

A someone with an incredibly dazzling smile, and an irresistible laugh.

“You did what? Oh, nooo. All the dust and dirt of days on the road, and it’s all on your dress now. As if my usual work wasn’t hard enough already,” Ruff grumbled, but Astrid didn’t pay her much attention. Rachel and Timothy had fairly little work to do in comparison with the other castle servants – even taking into account Astrid’s... tendency to rattle the bars of her gilded cage. “Okay, okay, over here now. Tuff, go and heat a little water while I get her out of this dress.”

As usual, Astrid’s focus relaxed a bit while the twins buzzed around her. Out of the dusty dress, a quick wash, and into a new, even fancier dress. Then it was endless combing of her knee-long hair before it got braided once again. She would have done parts of that herself, if only they let her. But no, works like these weren’t suitable for a Princess.

With nothing else to occupy her mind, her thoughts wandered back toward those wonderful hours at the stables earlier. She remembered how happy she’d felt in his presence, how her heart had felt so warm and her head so light. She remembered how his lips had felt as they’d moved with hers, how he’d tasted. Without her help, her hand began to wander up to her mouth, but she caught herself quickly. She mustn’t give away anything.

She remembered how hot his hands had felt on her neck and waist, how his heat had seemed to flood into her and ignite her heart and soul. How she’d never felt anything even close to the bliss that merely thinking about him at this moment kindled in her chest.

Then another, older memory rose in her mind, of another pair of eyes bulging out of their sockets, and a body twisting and twitching desperately beneath a tree branch.

With a low gasp, Astrid tore herself out of her memories. With wide eyes, she stared at her reflection, fighting to keep her hands from shaking and her breathing at a normal pace.

This was different!

What happened today… It was different from what had happened all those months ago. It wasn’t the same. It couldn’t…

Astrid was well-versed at keeping her emotions locked inside her. But it was still a blessing that the twins, who probably could read her better than anyone else, were busy getting her hair in order, or else they surely would have noticed the turmoil within her.

These blissful moments she’d spent with this man, with Hiccup, had been wonderful. And all she really wanted to do right now was to go back. She wanted to hide from the world, and pretend to be just a normal girl. But that was nothing new, she often thought those things. But today was different. Today, she didn’t just wish to be a normal girl for herself. Today, she wished she could be a normal girl, because the Princess could never be with a simple stable lad. Today, she wanted to be a normal girl so she could be with him.

But she wasn’t a normal girl.

This wish, this dream could never come true.

And she would almost certainly never see him again anyway.

. o O o .

It took almost an hour, but finally, Ruff placed the swan-shaped coronet onto her hair and Tuff declared her presentable. With mixed feelings, Astrid made her way through the castle and toward the main audience chamber where the accolade would be held.

It would be one of those events she usually dreaded the most. She wouldn’t need to do anything. She just needed to be present, to smile, and to behave while the men went about their business. She would need to wear this mask of aloofness and fake smiles all night, during the accolade itself and during the elaborate dinner afterwards. That alone would usually be reason enough for her to find some excuse, any excuse, to arrive as late as possible, to leave early under the pretence of a headache, or to not show up at all.

But for her best friend she could endure it all.

She arrived just in time to slip through the royal’s entrance into the massive, high-ceilinged and splendidly decorated room. She took her place in the smaller but still quite ornate chair next to her father’s throne. Daniel, who sat on the other side, gave her an amused smirk at her late arrival while her father threw her an irked and scolding look. Of course, he wasn’t happy about her absence earlier, but, honestly, what had he expected?

Beside them stood some of the High Priests, here to witness the accolade as well. Lord Alvin, the Priest of Odin, who was one of the King’s oldest advisors. Lord Throg, the Priest of Thor, who also was the King’s loyal general and defender of the kingdom. Lady Gothi, the Priestess of Frigga, who was older than any living being remembered, and who was said to be able to tell truth from lie, just like every member of her order. And Lady Mala, the Priestess of Freya, a beautiful woman who Astrid assumed to be more than simply another advisor to her father.

They stood to either side of them, the men next to Daniel and the women next to her, and, as usual, their presence made Astrid nervous. She wasn’t sure whether Lady Gothi needed spoken words to detect a lie, or whether she was able to see right through her mask anyway. And the services Lady Mala offered in the name of the Goddess of Love – well, no, they didn’t make her nervous.

They made her curious.

Beyond from the small group of people up on the dais, the room was brimming with people; the benches had been removed, and it was standing room only. Only a few strides from the foot of the dais stood the witnesses and guests, with the higher ranked members in front, and whatever servants had managed to sneak in or who were circulating through the chamber as needed.

Eret the Elder was front and centre, having emerged from his semi-retirement in managing his House’s third-largest stud farm for his grandson’s accolade, and leaning on his cane. Flanking him was what seemed like half of House Jag’r’s vassals, plus all of her father’s own immediate vassals. But that was to be expected; House Jag’r was one of the three great Arch-dukedoms – what had been princedoms in their own right before her grandfather had unified the kingdom – and their horses were widely seen as superior in quality among all of the local kingdoms. Other dignitaries, officials, a few prominent subjects from the cities, and anyone else that could beg an invitation were here.

And each and every single one of them seemed to be chattering on and on, their voices echoing off of the stone walls, the tapestries insufficient to swallow the noise.

“All Gods above, I probably don’t even need to fake a headache,” Astrid murmured, sure that nobody could hear over the deafening noise in the room. But Lady Gothi shook with what probably was silent laughter at her words, and her father threw her an exasperated look. Before he could say anything to berate her, however, the fanfares sounded. They drew everyone’s attention toward the big front gates that opened now to permit a small group of men.

At the front came His Grace Sir Eret II, Grand Duke of Eastervale, Head of House Jag’r. He looked regal as usual, and the sight of him served – somewhat – to calm Astrid’s unease. As annoying as all this was to her, it was still about people she cared for. Lord Eret had always been like a second father to her, and he was more like family to her than the distant branches of House Hofferson scattered all over the country.

Behind the Grand Duke walked the person of honour for this night. Astrid had to bite her lip to not laugh at the almost comically exaggerated formal outfit Eret wore. It was customary, of course. He was to become a knight in a few minutes. Of course, he had to look stately and noble and all. But she knew very well that he enjoyed dressing up like a pompous monkey just as much as she did. That being said, he did look very dashing in the brocaded silks and silver-chased chainmail, although the rampant horses embroidered on his deep blue tabard seemed almost excessive. The finely tooled riding boots, on the other hand – utterly impractical for actual riding, with the elaborate patterns embossed into the leather that would quickly be worn smooth and filled with dirt during any actual riding – were most assuredly over the top, however. And they looked so stiff and new that she marvelled he could walk in them.

As his party came closer, Eret threw her a wide grin and winked, and she couldn’t help but grin back. She hadn’t seen him in months, but those gaps had never been able to tear down their friendship. Of course, she could have met him earlier already if she’d been there to greet him and his father. But then, she actually had expected him to ride with their horses instead, so it was his fault alone that they hadn’t met earlier. Kind of…

Not that she actually blamed him. If Eret had been there to tend the horses, she wouldn’t have spent those wonderful hours listening to that voice like molten honey and watching those beautiful eyes gleam excitedly.

Eyes that suddenly flashed at her from behind Eret, and that made Astrid’s heart burst with joy and sink with fear at the same time.

. o O o .

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#For The Love Of A Princess #hiccstrid #hiccstrid fanfiction #Hiccstrid Royal AU #Hiccstrid Medieval AU #Honsty I'm so invested in this story that can't be healthy #But that won't sotp me!

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