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mandoalorian · 3 years

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I Believe In Love [Maxwell Lord x F!Reader] — Four: Lies

Summary: When you find your calling to leave Themyscira, you venture out to the World of Man with intentions of helping and healing a very specific person's relationship with his son. You've heard his voice before, but only in dreams. You've felt his pain and anguish and you've never been able to relate to anything more. But things don't come easy for you, and they certainly don't come easy for him either. [This series contains spoilers for WW84 and is my interpretation of what happens after the movie ends].

Warnings: brief mention of blood, allusions to an abusive household/family, mention of child custody battle, 80s typical misogyny, cursing.

Word count: 5,200>

Masterlist

I Believe In Love Masterlist

Previous - Chapter Four - Next

-—-—-—-

He'd lied. You read the name over and over again, the crumpled letter shaking in your hands. Lorenzano. Lorenzano. Lorenzano. He wasn't Max Lord, he was Maxwell Lorenzano and you had no idea how he could lie to you - or better yet, why he would lie to you? There was a reason for everything. You might’ve been new to the world of man, and you might not yet understand their conditions and way of life, but it didn’t change the fact that this hurt. He was your first friend - your first real friend who wasn’t a child. He accepted you into his home, and he even believed you when you told him who you are. You had opened up about being a literal goddess from the secret haven Themyscira, and he hadn’t even told you his real name.

And then, your visions of him… memories and dreams… they hit you one by one. Now you could finally put a face to the voice that had been haunting you. He was the child you saw when you had fallen asleep in Black Gold Cooperative, the child who was getting bullied for the clothes he wore, and his shoes. You felt foolish not realising it sooner. The image of ‘Little Lorenzano’ getting tormented perfectly paralleled the way Alistair had gotten cornered in the park earlier today. Your heart ached for them both.

Max Lord was clearly putting on a brave face in front of you. But now that you knew who he really was, you knew that he was deeply hurting, and he needed your help. He might not realise it, but this is why you were here. You’d come to the world of man to fulfil your duty as the Goddess of Home and Hearth for a reason and Zeus had deliberately connected you with Alistair and Maxwell. This was your purpose. They were your purpose.

You smoothed out the letter to the best of your ability, deciding that if you were to help him, you should probably read it. You had hope that it would help you understand things and allow you to piece together the puzzle. You glanced back at the speckles of his blood in the sink, and the smashed vase on the floor. Whatever was in this letter had clearly angered him.

I, Theodore Thomas IV, share a bond with Miss Grey and recognise that she is a caring and devoted mother. We are in full belief that Alistair Lorenzano would be better off, in the care of his biological mother.

A bond. You were quickly able to identify that Julianna Grey was the mother of Alistiar, although the bond between she and Theodore Thomas IV had not yet become clear to you. Your heart would usually find warmth in the revelation that Julianna was, in fact a ‘caring and devoted’ mother, but instead it grew cold. As the goddess of home and hearth, you could sense the lie in his words. You wanted to believe that Julianna was a good mother, but your intuition said otherwise. These were your powers - and there was no way you were wrong about this. Despite the immediate concern you had for Allistair, you pushed the feeling to the back of your brain and forced yourself to continue reading the letter.

Mr Maxwell Lorenzano and Miss Julianna Grey divorced on the seventh month of 1980 after being married for two years. Miss Grey notes that their relationship was strained since the beginning, with Mr Lorenzano too preoccupied with his career to focus on his family.

Marriage - Max and Julianna were married. It was something you had read about back on Themyscira when you had spent time educating yourself on the ‘way of man’. Marriage was, supposedly, a sacred ritual that joined together the spirits of two people in the name of love. And love was the fundamental principle that would create a family. At the core of a family, was love, and that was the most important thing. Your eyes flicked back up the final sentence of the first paragraph; “We are in full belief that Alistair Lorenzano would be better off, in the care of his biological mother.” You couldn’t help but shake your head profusely. These people wanted to take Alistair away from Max? There was no way. Theodore may think that Julianna deserves Alisitair, but it was never going to be about ‘deserve’. It could only be about love. And you knew for certain that Maxwell loved Alistair with his whole heart.

I have known Miss Grey since 1980, after working on her and Mr Lorenzano’s divorce case. As not only her partner, but also a trusted lawyer of our capitol’s legal enforcement, I can whole-heartedly ensure that sole custody of Alistair Lorenzano must be granted to Miss Julianna Grey.

Divorce was something you weren’t so familiar with, and you figured it should be something you ask Maxwell about at a later date. It was at this moment you learned that Theodore was Julianna’s partner, lover, even. No wonder he thought so highly of her. There was no question about it. You knew you had to pay Julianna and Theodore a visit to see for yourself. You had to see the truth.

Please find us at the District Columbia Court, D.C., in one week from the date stated on the letter. If you make no effort to show and fight your case, you will be banished from seeing Alistair until he turns eighteen years of age.

Banishment? The thought of splitting up Max and Alistair filled you with the most excruciating pain. You couldn’t let this happen. You wouldn’t let this happen.

Sincerely,

Ted

So Theodore was Ted and Maxwell was Max. If you had known that names in the world of man could fluctuate so much, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten mad so mad at Max for lying about his name. After catching the address on the envelope, you engrained it in your memory and carefully folded up the letter and placed it in the pocket of the Maxwell’s pinstripe shirt that he had given you to wear. Now you just had to figure out a way to get to the address on the letter.

You spent some time sweeping up the shattered glass on the floor, and cleaned up the sink before padding back into the living room and sliding your feet back into your gladiator sandals, buckling them up. You even picked up the lasso of truth and tied it around your waist so it acted like a makeshift belt on you. There was no way you were going to leave it behind. You took another look at the photo frame that was on the small table next to the couch and picked it up. You smiled as you felt the exact same love that Maxwell felt when he was in the photo, holding baby Alistair. Just looking at the family portrait filled you with so much joy. You knew that Max’s love for his son was genuine.

Turning the frame over, you opened it up and took the glossy polaroid out, placing it in the same pocket of your shirt. You loved the photo and you wanted to take it wherever you went.

It was cold outside, and the sky was a deep shade of blue. There was definitely a draft, and you wondered if you should’ve changed back into your Amazonian warrior gear. The oversized shirt that Maxwell had given you, as well as the gladiator sandals, didn’t really provide you with the greatest amount of warmth. You weren’t even wearing anything on your legs.

A small old lady with a zimmer frame was walking down the street. “Oh wow!” she exclaimed, looking you up and down, presumably judging your outfit of choice. “You have very nice legs, but aren’t you cold?”

You looked down at your legs, noticing the goose pimples, and nodded in confirmation. “Yes, but I’ll be okay. Do you think you could help me with something?” you asked curiously, watching as she raised her eyebrows.

“Me? Help you? What could little old me-”

You took the letter out of your pocket and pointed to the address. “How do I get here?”

She adjusted her glasses and squinted. “Thomas Family Lawyers,” she read out loud, before turning back to you. “Honey, this law firm is on the other side of Georgetown. You best call a cabbie, especially this late in the evening.”

“A cabbie?” you asked, shivering in the cold. “I’m sorry… I’m not from round here.” you shrugged helplessly.

“Let me help you.” the old lady said, reaching into her purse and bringing out an enormous 1984 brick-like cell phone. The contraption shocked you, and you even wondered how she had fit it in her bag. She pulled out the antenna and began to dial a number. “Hi, could I get a pre-paid taxi to Thomas Family Law Firm, Georgetown? Thank you,” She put the phone back in her purse and offered you a smile. “A cab won’t be long. I’m Mrs Stagg, by the way. Might I enquire… why are you going to a family law firm when you’re not even from the area?”

“To help a friend.” you returned the smile.

“Does your friend live in this neighbourhood?”

“He does. Um… his name is Max Lord?” you explained but the way it left your lips made it sound more like a question. Lord? Lorenzano? What difference did it make?

“Ah,” was the small sound that emitted from Mrs Stagg’s throat. “Max Lord, the oil guy. My son Simon is- was an investor for Maxwell’s company. From what I heard, the company is bust. A joke. Max Lord has been scamming the entire nation for years.”

“Scamming?” you asked, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Black Gold Cooperative have shares in oil fields all around the world, only, the oil fields have completely dried up, you know - with the Cold War and all. But he kept going… kept making those silly infomercials and selling his dream. ‘Anything you want, you can have it.’ or something like that.” Mrs Stagg scoffed, shaking her head incredulously. You recognised the quote from when you had seen him all suited up on the television.

“I don’t… I don’t understand. Why would he lie to the whole country?” you beckoned further, despite the conversation bringing you some uncomfort. Max had seemed like a genuinely good guy and a loving father up until this point.

“For money, I suppose. That’s all it’s ever about with folk like him. Money. I chastise my son for it too. He’s the CEO of Stagg Industries and the only reason I could live in such a beautiful neighbourhood like this one. He bought my home here,” she beamed proudly. “But, I don’t know much about Max Lord. Don’t really see him around on the streets either. He must be cooped up in his office most of the time. Hey, you’re his friend. Maybe you should ask him why he’s nothing but a low-life conman.”

Her words stung, and they weren’t even about you. You were completely lost for words, and surprised that she had so much hate in her heart for Max. Granted, if he was rivals with her son, it would make sense, but she did raise many questions that concerned you greatly. When the taxi pulled up, she paid the driver and helped you into the passenger seat. “I don’t know Max Lord,” she whispered from the other side of the car door. “But please darling, be careful.” She warned you before the cabbie whisked you away.

Your concept of time was slightly askew, but you figured the journey to the law firm lasted twice as long as the journey from Black Gold to Max’s home. You looked out the window taking in the stunning city at night. The buildings were all lit up and reflected against the windows, creating a glitter in your eye. There was nothing like this on Themyscira. No tall skyscrapers, no enormous shopping malls or company buildings. D.C. was booming, and it was beautiful. The journey allowed you to process Mrs Stagg’s words and think even more about Max. Clearly, both Julianna and Theodore had their reasons not to like Maxwell, and now, so did Mrs Stagg and her son Simon. You had to speak to Max and confront him. You knew there was more to him than what meets the eye.

Thomas Family Lawyer’s was a big building, not as big as Black Gold Cooperative, but it was still big. Just as you went through the revolving doors (which you had now grown accustomed to, due to your time spent and Max’s office) a group of girls began to file out. Whilst Raquel had been somewhat confused by your presence, these girls shot you the most evil of stares.

“Do you know what time it is? Office hours are closed. Why are you here?” One girl with sleek black hair spat coldly. You practically winced at the malice in her voice.

“Oh, I’m here to see Theodore Thomas?” you said slowly, nervously biting your lip.

“Who are you?” quizzed the same ebony haired girl.

“I’m a friend of Max Lord.” was the only thing you could come out with. Maxwell had warned you to refrain from identifying yourself as the ‘goddess of home and hearth’ in front of the public. He told you that people won’t believe him like he does, and that they’ll think you’re crazy. You had no choice but to believe him.

“Max Lord!” a red haired girl gasped, and a shorter blonde girl slapped her hand over the redhead’s mouth. “Sorry,” the redhead muffled as the blonde girl removed her hand. “He’s just so sexy.”

“But you know we’re not supposed to like him.” The blonde girl hissed.

“Huh?” you asked, knotting your eyebrows together. “Not supposed to?”

The ebony haired girl let out a longing groan. “Will the both of you just shut up?” she grimaced, glaring at the other two girls before looking back at you with that same mean stare. “Turn left, his office is the big one at the bottom of the corridor. You’re lucky he’s working late tonight.”

“Yeah, on his girlfriend’s case.” The redhead said weakly.

“Can you not keep your mouth shut?” Snapped the black haired girl. “Why would you say that in front of this hobo stranger when she’s just said she’s Max Lord’s friend. She doesn’t need to know that Mr Thomas is working on the custody case! It’s a wonder he hasn’t fired you yet for being so stupid.”

You had zoned out of the pointless conversation about mid-way through anyway. Those girls were nothing but rude to each other anyway. You slipped past them and down the corridor until you reached two double doors, not hesitating for a second to open them up.

There, with his head buried down into a pile of papers, was a dark haired man in a tight fitted suit. He abruptly looked up when you had entered his office, his mustache wavering in bewilderment as he took in the appearance of a girl who was wearing nothing but an oversized button up shirt and brown strapped gladiator sandals. “C-can I help you?” he gulped, relishing the sight of his body like it was the sweetest view he’d ever come across. You crossed your bare legs together awkwardly, feeling slightly vulnerable by the way he was staring at you.

“Are you Theodore Thomas IV?” you asked.

“I am.” the dark haired man confirmed, shuffling around in his leather seat.

You nodded, turning around to close the double doors behind you and walking over to his desk. You took out the crumpled up letter that had been addressed to Maxwell Lorenzano and slid it over the expensive oak wood. “What is this?” you questioned. Theodore took out his reading glasses before analysing it.

“Where did you get this letter?”

“Max Lord is my friend.” you gulped, folding your arms over your chest. “And this letter…”

“You mean Maxwell Lorenzano?” Theodore scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Listen, I’m not here to discuss that low-life loser, okay? I have more pressing matters to deal with.”

“So do I.” you persisted. “This letter…”

“Unless you’re his lawyer, and I doubt you are,” he snarled, looking at you up and down with the utmost disdain. “I will not be discussing the letter with you. Friend or not, it’s confidential.”

“I’m here to help him.” you gritted out, unable to believe the anger that dripped from your own tongue. It was true, you were angry. You were angry at the way everyone was so against Maxwell Lord, and you were angry at the fact the reason remained so unclear. Every new person you met didn’t like him, and you just wanted to know why.

Your words did pique the curiosity of Theodore, however. He raised an eyebrow and leaned over his desk, his gaze not breaking from you once. “Help him? You mean, you’ll be representing him in court?” You weren’t sure what that meant, but you nodded your head. If this was the only way you could get information out of Theodore Thomas IV, then so be it. “Do you even have any legal experience?”

“What? No. I told you, I’m just his friend.”

Theodore let out a boisterous laugh, the level of volume making you flinch. “Shit, he can’t even afford his own lawyer. I didn’t realise it was that bad,” he assumed. “Excuse me for one second.” he pointed a finger and dialled a number on the telephone.

Meanwhile, Maxwell was Julianna’s home. When Alistair heard his dad’s voice, he came running downstairs to greet him. “Daddy!” he called excitedly, running into his father’s arms. “You came back!” Maxwell picked up Alistair and spun him around, pressing a loving kiss to his son’s forehead.

“What do you want Maxwell?” Julianna sighed, tapping her foot impatiently against the marble floor of the lobby.

“To talk,” Max answered, placing Alistair back down on the floor. “Just us two. Uh- is Ted here?”

“Lucky for you he’s working late at the firm. Working on our damn case,” Julianna shook her head before turning to face her son. “Alistair, go to your room.” she commanded.

“But I want to see daddy!” Alistair cried, tears pricking his dark brown eyes.

“He can stay.” Maxwell negotiated but the comment was completely lost on Julianna.

“Go. To. Your. Room.” Julianna barked angrily, which sent a frightened Alistair running back to his bedroom.

“Shit Julianna, he’s just a kid. No need to talk to him like that.” Maxwell frowned, his ex-wife’s tone reminding him of his own father’s.

“Now Maxwell, I know you’re not giving me parenting advice, are you?” she asked sarcastically. Maxwell noted how bitter she had become, or perhaps, how bitter she always was. “I’m assuming you’re here to talk about the case. Try and change my mind. Well, you can’t.”

“Julianna, I know things have been rough between us since the divorce but I just want what’s best for Alistair. I love him so much.” Maxwell revealed.

“Bullshit!” Julianna scowled. “All you do, Max, is speak bullshit. You want what’s best for him? You’ll allow me and Ted to have full custody of Alistair. You’re a shit father and you know it.”

“I know- I know I’m messed up. I mean, I’ve messed up in the past but, something happened. Something inside me woke up and I’m ready to step up Julianna. I’ve changed, please just believe me. I love Ali-”

“You don’t deserve him,” Julianna growled. “You know what Maxwell? You’re nothing but a deadbeat. Just like your father was.”

Maxwell felt his face turn red with rage at his ex-wife's comment. He clenched his fists so hard his knuckles had even turned white. “I am nothing like my father!” Maxwell yelled defensively as the anger bubbled within him. He wanted to cry. Every time a memory of his own abusive father came up, it made Max want to curl up into a whole and cry. It broke him.

Before Julianna could reply, the phone on the wall began to ring. Julianna answered it.

“Hey, Julie?” Theodore was on the line, still laughing from his talk with you. “Baby, you won’t believe this.”

“What is it?” Julianna asked hesitantly, twirling the wire of the phone around her finger.

“Some girl- some half naked girl is here- in my office claiming to be a friend of Maxwell,” Theodore spluttered. You frowned at his tone of voice as he talked about you, right in front of you. Julianna turned to Maxwell in bewilderment, who was just standing there and had no idea what was going on. “She’s saying she’s going to represent him during the custody trial.”

“What?” Julianna spat. “Who the fuck is she?”

“I don’t know! Never seen her in my life. Pretty little thing though, I guessed maybe he’s fucking her? Not sure. She says she’s living with him.”

“Living-” Julianna couldn’t help but repeat her boyfriend’s words. “Teddy, Maxwell is here. Right now. Can you come home and… bring her with you? I want to have words with her.”

“Got it. See you soon sweetie.” Theodore finished before hanging up the phone.

Julianna turned to Max. “That was Theodore. He says some half naked girl has shown up to his office claiming to be a friend of yours.”

Maxwell’s eyes went comically wide as his greatest fears became realised. “What? No, no- there’s no way. That’s impossible. I told her to stay at home- how the hell did she get to Thomas Family Lawyer’s?”

“You’re asking me?” Julianna gasped in disbelief. “Who the hell is she, Max?”

Max was so confused and shocked, he couldn’t even find words. If you had found your way to Theodore’s office, that meant you had read the letter. It also meant that you knew his name. And finally, it meant that you had completely invaded your privacy. Part of Maxwell was mad, but an even bigger part of him was confused as to how you ended up on the other side of Georgetown in the office of his ex-wife’s current boyfriend. You weren’t even from round here, hell, you’d only gotten into a car for the first time today. Julianna and Theodore weren’t the only ones who had a thousand questions. Maxwell did too.

When you arrived at the Thomas family home, you looked at it with complete adoration, just like how you looked at Maxwell’s home. It was extensive in size, with beautiful pillars and adorned with flowers on every corner. Maxwell and Julianna were waiting for you and Ted in the dining room. Ted hung up his suit jacket on the coat peg in the lobby and you slowly followed him into the dining room. Unlike Maxwell’s home, which was covered with photographs of Alistair, you couldn’t spot a single picture of the bright eyed child in any of the rooms you passed. You wondered why.

When you entered the room, Julianna’s and Maxwell’s jaws both dropped in unison. “She’s wearing your shirt!” Julianna screeched, pointing her finger accusingly at you.

“Yeah? So fucking what?” Maxwell shot back. “I didn’t realise you can police my wardrobe now!”

Your gaze flicked between Maxwell and Julianna who were already arguing with each other. "Can we settle down?" Theodore intervened, placing his briefcase down on the table.

Maxwell turned to you and took a deep breath. "Why- why didn't you put on some clothes before you left the house?" he sighed, closing his eyes as he tried to keep his composure.

"I- I didn't have any clothes and. I didn't know if it was normal to dress like this in the world of man." you admitted sheepishly, feeling embarrassed that you'd made a fool of yourself and seemingly Maxwell too.

"The world of what?" Julianna scrunched up her nose. "She has no clothes? Maxwell, where did you pick this whore up?"

You stiffened up at her harsh words and Maxwell's dark eyes snapped open. "Don't call her that," he warned. "She's… different. Look, I can't explain now but-"

Julianna turned to Theodore. "I want her out of my house. She's a fucking prostitute."

"She's not a prostitute," Maxwell sighed, running his fingers through his dark blonde hair as the stress engulfed him. "She's just a friend."

"I want her out." Julianna reiterated, her voice like venom.

"I- I can wait by the car," you told Maxwell timidly. He didn't reply, instead just putting his head in his hands. You turned to Julianna and Theodore. "I apologise for any intrusion I may have brought upon you both." you said before walking away.

Even before you got to the front door, you'd heard them start fighting again. Maxwell wasn't yelling, but Julianna was so loud and accusing. You couldn't help but feel like she brought around such a toxic environment.

As you leaned against Maxwell's car, you looked up at the upstairs window. It was illuminated, signifying that the light was on. It was so cold and you couldn't help but sigh as you waited for your friend to return and take you home— if he still liked you, that is. After everything that had gone on, you wouldn't be surprised if he just left you on a street corner to fend for yourself.

You were delighted when you saw Alistair in the illuminated window. He poked his head around the curtains, smiling and waving immediately when he saw you. You grinned back, thankful to see the sweet boy and to know that he was okay. The smile on his face dropped and although you couldn't hear what was going on back in the house, you could tell by his expression that there was something wrong. Alistair disappeared from the curtains and you began to untie the lasso of Hestia from your waist. Swinging the rope around in the air, you attached it to Alistair's balcony and swung yourself up to the third storey of the Thomas family home. You quietly tapped on his window. After only a few seconds Alistair returned and let you in.

You clambered back into the house, finding yourself in the little boys bedroom. "Hey Alistair, how you doing?" you smiled, kneeling down and giving your friend a hug.

"I'm good, I'm so glad to see you again!" Alistair confessed with a toothy grin. "How did you get up here?" Alistair asked curiously, stepping out onto the balcony and looking at the long way down from where you had been standing by his father's car.

You gulped. "Can you keep a secret?" you whispered. Alistair nodded enthusiastically. "Okay." you showed Alistair your lasso, and he watched it with bright eyes as it glowed gold. If you could trust Max, you knew for a fact you could certainly trust Alistair. After all, they were your purpose. They were the reason you had found yourself in the world of man.

"Whoa, what is it?" Alistair asked, pointing his finger hesitantly, as if he wanted to touch it but not sure if it would hurt him.

"It's magical," you revealed. "My mother Hestia gave me it. It lets people see the truth, and speak the truth. It knows when you're lying."

"...And it helps you climb up really tall buildings? Like Spiderman?" Alistair asked with wide eyes.

You giggled. "Yes."

"Can I try?" Alistair beckoned further.

"Maybe one day," you promised him. "It can be difficult to learn, but I'd love to teach you."

You and Alistair both gasped as you listened in on what was going downstairs. You heard footsteps, and it sounded like Max was leaving. You rose to your feet and approached the window again, unravelling your lasso. "Hey, I have to go now. Listen, you can't tell Julianna or Ted that I was up here, okay? I don't think they like me."

"Oh, they don't like anyone who's associated with daddy." Alistair frowned, but nodded understandingly. "Are you going home with daddy?"

"I hope so." you replied, because there was really no way of telling where you stood with Maxwell at this point in time.

"Good," Alistair beamed, and in that moment, you recognised his smile to be the spitting double of his father's. "Because I like it when you're around daddy. He's not as miserable."

You tilted your head but had no time to question Alistair because you heard the front door open. Swinging back on your lasso, you attached it to the branch of a tree and dropped back down to the front of the porch where Maxwell's car was parked. Wrapping your lasso back around your waist, you pretended like you hadn't moved from the car— like you had been waiting for him this entire time.

"Good night!" Maxwell called but earned no response, only the slam of the front door. He sighed deeply and slumped his shoulders in defeat before turning to face you. His lips were curled into a frown and he shook his head as he approached you, sliding past you and unlocking the car door. "Get in." he told you, to which you obliged and slipped into the passenger seat.

Maxwell dropped his head to the wheel of the car in frustration. He wanted to scream. Cry. Yell. Curse. He hated this. He hated having to fight for what was already his. He needed Alistair— his life would be empty without his son. There was no question about it. And unfortunately for Max, he was beginning to lose all hope.

"Are you okay?" You asked, feeling as though the question was a stupid one considering the disheveled look on Maxwell's face. You placed a hand on his back with full intention to be comforting. He didn't reply. After a few seconds of silence, you heard his sobs. You heard his whimpers and chokes. "Oh Max." you whispered quietly, rubbing his back.

"I can't— I can't fucking do this," Maxwell cried, tears dripping down his cheeks and falling onto the steering wheel. "They're right— what they say about me— they're all right. I'm a monster."

You winced, shaking your head at his comment. "You are not a monster." you assured him.

"You don't even know me," Maxwell huffed before glaring at you, the tears still falling. "You're just— you're just some random girl who came into my life at the wrong fucking time and— I don't even know why you're here. Why are you here?" He said your name like it was poison and the desperation in his voice was enough to make your heart ache.

You swallowed. "When I found out your name, your real name, I knew for certain… Zeus brought me to you and Alistair for a reason. Everything is so clear now. Max, I'm here to help you."

"I'm screwed— we’re screwed. It's pointless. There's nothing we can do. We can't go up against them. Julianna is a fucking psycho and Ted is one of the best family lawyers in the state—"

"And I'm the daughter of Zeus and Hestia. I'm the Goddess of Home and Hearth and I will not let them rip you away from Alistair." you promised with pure determination in your voice. The change of your tone was enough to make Maxwell stop crying and look up to you like you were his saviour. His angel. And despite everything that happened, despite the feeling of complete hopelessness, he believed you.

The war began now.

-—-—-—-

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mysterioushogwartsrequests · 3 years

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Ceremony (Smugglers, Part 5)

Hello everyone! I am so excited to finally be posting Part 5 of The Smugglers Series! I am so sorry to keep everyone waiting for so long, but I really had a creative stump when it came to continuing this, but I finally figured out the structure. This will be the fifth installment of this seven-part series, the next parts will center around their honeymoon and the Battle of Hogwarts.

This piece is extremely long and I tried to shorten it, but after all the waiting the fans of the series have done, I couldn’t bear to leave anything out. I started writing Smugglers on a whim about two years ago after reading a Tumblr post and I cannot believe how much this story and this blog have grown. I owe you guys everything and I cannot wait to keep putting out work. I apologize for the long wait, but I went through a painful writer’s block regarding this story and I am happy to be releasing it.

Smugglers Series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

Taglist: @a-sweet-little-fangirl | @homowillraise | @fanfable

Just in case anyone was interested (and for my own visualizations sake) I compiled a picture of the wedding, maid-of-honor, and bridesmaids’ dresses, along with pictures of the various bouquets written in the story. If you guys would like to see them, please let me know!

Anyways, enjoy the long-awaited continuation of “Smugglers: A Charlie Weasley Fanfiction”

Romania. November 30th, 1994.

The Romanian Dragon Sanctuary was home to an array of dangerous species. The dragons held there ranged from both manageable and potentially deadly. But amidst the potential dangers, foul-smelling cages, and bitter weather, a certain couple spent their final month before they finally moved back to their shared home in Scotland.

Charlie Weasley, renowned Dragonologist, and fidgety husband to be proposed to master Gringotts Curse-Breaker (Y/N) (L/N) during the 1994 Quidditch World Cup surrounded by their family and friends. Encouraged by the outbreak after the cup and the realization that war could break out at any moment, the two worked quickly to organize and finalize their wedding.

But before going forth with their wedding, Charlie and (Y/N) were finishing up their tasks at the Sanctuary. The workers had safely transported the four dragons utilized in the first task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament back to Romania and they all settled comfortably into their respective nests. Luckily for (Y/N), her last mission reeled in far more gold than the Goblins had expected, and granted her some time off, which she gladly took to spend some time with her fiancé. She was truly enjoying her time at the Sanctuary, although she never encountered dragons while on her trips, she hoped that the information she learned from Charlie and his colleagues would prove useful in the long run. Charlie, on the other hand, spent his early mornings caring for the newly hatched Peruvian Vipertooths and his afternoons patrolling the grounds ensuring the dragons were safely secured for the night. Ever since his departure from Hogwarts, Charlie had spent most of his time studying the various dragon species held at the Sanctuary. During his stint there, however, he had never witnessed the ferocity of baby Vipertooths.

The nonnative Vipertooths were having a difficult time adjusting to the brutal cold of the Romanian countryside and Charlie worked day and night to ensure they survived. Although quite small, the dragons posed a large threat to whoever handled them due to their poisonous bites and their intense, unsatisfiable craving for human flesh which Charlie – charmed by their adorability – almost fell victim to them the first couple of days they were in his care.

The Sanctuary workers were in full swing, carefully preparing for the upcoming blizzard. Steady tents erupted near the dragon nests and each worker was tasked with creating protective barriers around them to protect any of the eggs and their mothers.

Back on Ridgebit Rock, (Y/N) trudged through the snow with a clipboard in hand and studying the contents of the wooden crates lined up along the center. Charlie pulled the collar of his jumper higher, hiding the lower half of his face in the turtleneck as he called out numbers to his fiancée. (Y/N) had grown accustomed to the hectic environment and considered the sanctuary a second home so she couldn’t help feeling nostalgic as they finished up the final task.

She looked around the surrounding forest, closing her eyes and breathing in the crisp cold air, shivering as a gust of wind blew past them. “I’m going to miss this,” she spoke up, clutching the board close to her chest, “You’ve spent so much time here, it feels bittersweet to leave it behind…” She understood that to grow, one must move on, but it was unusual to have their time at the sanctuary come to an end.

“Me too,” replied Charlie, gazing towards the heated tent that held the small Vipertooths, “I wonder if the Dragons will remember us when we’re gone...” (Y/N) giggled, cut off by a sneeze as another gust of wind blew through the forest. Charlie glanced over at his fiancée, his heart swelling at the tinge of red that spread across her nose and cheeks. “You’re cold, aren’t you?” He asked while (Y/N) blew hot air into her gloves, attempting to cover her reddening nose.

Charlie smiled sweetly, removing his scarf, and wrapping it around her to shield her from the cold breeze. He gazed at her face with admiration, running his thumb across her cold cheek as she leaned into his gloved hand.

“A little,” She admitted, setting down her clipboard and quill and slipping her hand into Charlie’s with ease, “But, I hope they remember us,” responding to his earlier statement while gazing over the hill where some of the dragons were kept, “They’ll be taken care of here and we can always come to visit.” (Y/N) grinned, squeezing her fiancé’s hand, “I’m sure they’d love to have their best Dragonologist back, not to mention their most handsome one.”

Charlie hummed in satisfaction, “You’re absolutely right,” He replied, pulling her in for a tight hug and pressing a kiss against her cheek, “We’ve done a lot here and I never properly thanked you for staying by my side” He muttered, his fingers playing with her hair as they embraced.

“And why wouldn’t I, Mr. Weasley?” (Y/N) teased, “After all, we said ‘til the end of the line our fourth year, remember?”

All the adventures, family outings, dangerous vault discoveries, and, of course, all the travels that helped them grow as a couple. The two had spent years together, watching each other go through the awkward stages of adolescence and all the hardships that came along with it. From the moment they met, they had each other’s back and although that fact did not need to be confirmed by a ceremony, they knew it was the next big step in their relationship.

“And soon we’ll be saying, til death do us part” Charlie added sweetly, pulling her scarf down and quickly stealing a kiss from her. (Y/N) smiled against Charlie’s kiss, placing her gloved hands on his cheeks, and pulling him in before pulling herself away from his grip, “But we need to finish taking inventory” she joked, picking up her clipboard from the crate and tapping her quill against it.

“Always so determined,” he replied, rolling his eyes as he attempted to pull her back into his grip and laughing as she ran down the snow, “Let's finish up so we can head home” Charlie smiled, catching up to her and pulling her along the Sanctuary.

Scotland. November 30th, 1994.

The warmth of their home quickly enveloped them as they stepped out of the fireplace, the green flames dying down at their feet. Although it was still rather chilly outside, it was nothing compared to the weather in Romania.

The two walked around the ground floor of their home, hanging up their coats and scarves in the entrance closet. Their usually tidy home had papers scattered over the countertop, along with different types of flowers, silverware, envelopes filled with wedding invitations, and other materials necessary for their preparations.

(Y/N) sighed at the mess they left behind. Planning a wedding proved to be more difficult than breaking curses at Hogwarts, and she always worried she would miss something essential while they prepared.

She rounded the kitchen counter, sorting the letters the owls had deposited at their house while they were away. Their wedding date was approaching fast, and the thought of their big day eased her worries but amplified them simultaneously.

(Y/N) tore open one of the letters, her eyes scanning over the neat cursive with a subtle smile on her face.

Dear Cursebreaker,

(Y/N) Selwyn, I wanted to reaffirm how honored I am to hold the position as stylist for this special occasion. I’m sure you’ll recall our previous correspondence where I told you not to stress about any of the fashion choices for your wedding. But knowing you, you’ve spent hours tearing through magazines trying to find the perfect wedding dress and bridesmaids’ dresses.

But I am a man of my word and I intend to provide one of my best friends an eye-catching gown with bridesmaids’ dresses to match. I have enclosed the finalized – and colorized – sketches of your wedding gown and the dresses the girls will be wearing. I’ve included three options for your dress and two for the bridesmaids’ dresses. You’ve never mentioned a maid of honor, but I designed a variant just in case you picked one without informing me.

Write to me as soon as possible so I can finalize the preparations. If all goes accordingly, your dress should be finalized before Christmas.

I hope you’re intending on wearing a tiara, I think it would tie everything together and I included them in the drawings so you could visualize it. In all honesty, I truly think this is my best work as your style-Wizard and I expect some well-deserved credit at your reception.

All jokes aside, take a look at the dresses and send me your response, along with the measurements of your selected maid of honor and bridesmaids. Also, tell Charlie to write back as soon as possible. I sent him his dress robes options ages ago and he hasn’t sent a letter back, I should honestly charge him for it.

That was another joke, I’m not taking any form of payment from either of you. That’s final so don’t even try to debate me on that.

I can’t believe you two are finally getting married. You don’t know how long everyone has been thinking about this day, I can’t wait to see everyone.

I hope you and Charlie are well.

Best Regards,

Your friend and best style wizard in all of Europe,

Andre Egwu

(Y/N) reached into the envelope and pulled out several pieces of parchment, each containing intricately painted dress designs in various shades of white, silver, and gold with a thin red sash tied around the waist. She smiled brightly at the letter and tucked the contents back in the envelope, setting it in the bin labeled “important” to remind herself to take a better look at them tomorrow morning.

She turned back towards the kitchen countertop, gathering the letters from Gringotts, as well as notices from the Ministry of Magic, and sorting them into their respective piles. Charlie came out of the entrance closet where he stashed his dragon-hyde boots and the rest of his fireproof gear to the sound of the rustling of papers. Shaking his head, he turned into the kitchen with a faint smile.

Even after all their hard work in Romania, she still managed to find another task to keep herself occupied.

“I don’t think so,” Charlie uttered, pulling (Y/N) away from the mess, and gently pushing her against the kitchen wall. Charlie admired her beauty once more, placing his calloused hand on her waist, “You’ve been working all day, I’ll be damned if I see you cleaning this late” He spoke, brushing a strand of hair away from her face.

“Charlie,” whined (Y/N), crossing her arms with a pout when her fiancé caged her in, “You know we’re behind on preparations,” she explained, placing her hands on his shoulders, and massaging them gently, “And you haven’t replied to Andre, he’s growing rather tense and so are you, it seems.” He caught himself admiring her once again, admiring how easy it was for her to read him. Charlie thought back to their years at Hogwarts and those moments where she would bring him exactly what he was craving for dinner or when she silently comforted him, even though he had not spoken about what bothered him. And even though he immediately eased up under her touch, his goal to keep her relaxed was unshakable.

“You, my love,” hummed Charlie, running his thumb against the apples of her cheeks, “Are going to take a nice, warm bath while I make you dinner.” (Y/N) smiled up at Charlie lovingly, wrapping her arms around his waist and nuzzling her face in his broad chest, “What if I want you in the bath with me?” She asked playfully, her hands sliding down his waist and into the back pockets of his work trousers.

Charlie chuckled darkly, his hands sliding towards the back of her thighs and lifting her off the ground, wrapping her legs around his hips, “Who am I to deny the lady what she wants?” boasted Charlie, tightly gripping the back of her thighs, and leaning his lips close to hers.

“Such a gentleman,” (Y/N) muttered breathily, her hands gliding through Charlie’s and her nose brushing against his. Her soft lips brushed delicately against his, close enough so he could inhale her breath and feel the warmth radiating off her skin. Charlie’s heart pounded harshly against his chest; the feeling of her lips so close yet so far sending a subtle shiver down his spine. Understanding why she paused, Charlie closed the gap between them, his lips perfectly molding against hers and she swore she felt time stop.

It did not matter how many times they shared a kiss, it still felt like that moment on the Quidditch Pitch. That moment when Charlie pushed through the crowds of cheering Gryffindors, the house cup forgotten in the hands of another team member, to pull her in for an electrifying kiss, one that set the course of their loving relationship. (Y/N) was so captivated by their kiss that she did not notice when Charlie expertly moved up the stairs and towards the master bathroom.

It wasn’t until he set her down on the bathroom sink that she opened her eyes, laughing wholeheartedly as Charlie bent down to open the warm water, his endearing chuckle echoing through the bathroom.

“You’re quite sneaky, aren’t you?” questioned (Y/N) teasingly, hopping off the countertop and making her way towards Charlie, her cold hands sliding underneath his long-sleeve making him jump.

“And what does that make you?” He retorted flirtatiously and gripping her wrists, pulling her against his chest, his hand trailing down to the side of her neck.

“Hm, a demiguise, maybe?” She asked innocently, her eyes shifting upwards in mock pondering and Charlie rolled his impatiently, tugging the hem of her jumper and slipping it off her body.

“Of course, how could I have missed that? The long hair honestly seals the deal. Although…” He trailed off, his eyes scanning her bare torso and sneaking a hand behind her, his fingers drumming towards the clasp of her bra, “I’ve only ever seen your eyes light up like that when your squirming underneath me–”

“Charlie!” (Y/N) exclaimed, gaping open mouthed at the blushing red-head and failing to catch her bra as it slipped down her front. She quickly crossed her arms over her chest, hiding her exposed breasts, and slid past her fiancée, “Enough playing around,” she stated firmly, turning her back towards him and unbuttoning her trousers, letting her panties fall on the floor with them and sliding into the warm water, “Get in before I change my mind” She grinned, splashing a handful of water across his chest.

Charlie scoffed, but pulled off his shirt by the neck, almost tripping over his trousers as he tugged them off with urgency, “Alright, alright! I surrender!” With that, he sunk behind (Y/N), pulling her against his chest and peppering kisses against her cheek.

The Burrow. December 5th, 1994.

“Oh, my dear!” Cried Mrs. Weasley, tears threatening to spill from her eyes as (Y/N) turned in her wedding dress. Andre Egwu stood behind her, proudly gazing and his handiwork and twisting the red sash so the diamond snowflake brooch sat comfortably on the left.

“Come on,” Andre crooned, “tell me I’m a genius” he prodded with a smirk, stepping back to stand beside Mrs. Weasley with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

(Y/N) rolled her eyes, but turned to admire herself in the mirror, “I’m going to have to admit it this time,” she acknowledged, looking back at the satin train of her A-line gown, the tails of her red bow falling shorter than it, “You truly have outdone yourself, Andre. I really can’t thank you enough”

Mrs. Weasley dabbed her eyes with her apron, sniffling as (Y/N) spoke, “You look radiant, (Y/N)! Charlie is going to faint when he sees you,” she beamed and walked to her, pulling her in for a tight hug.

“But I still think you’re missing something,” Andre chimed in, drumming his fingers against the old brown box sitting on the bedroom dresser, “Like we discussed, Mrs. Weasley?” He added and (Y/N) raised a questioning eyebrow as Mrs. Weasley scurried to the desk and opened the box, shielding its contents from the soon to be bride.

“It was Auntie Tessie’s wedding tiara,” Mrs. Weasley spoke up, beaming as she faced (Y/N), the sparkling headpiece held delicately in her hands.

(Y/N)’s jaw almost hit the floor. Of course, she had expected Mrs. Weasley to pull out all the stops for their wedding, but she never thought she’d be hiding such a luxurious piece.

“Mrs. Weasley– You can’t mean–,” stuttered (Y/N), shaking her head vigorously and her eyes jumping from Andre’s grinning face to Mrs. Weasley’s loving smile.

“I do, dear,” she reassured, beckoning for her to come closer, “Andre sent me the letter when you picked your wedding dress! Of course, he didn’t know I would have the perfect piece to tie everything together, but Auntie Tessie left this behind when she passed and she especially fond of Charlie,” she began to explain, gazing down at the tiara and turning it to set it on (Y/N)’s head, “She wanted his future wife to wear it down the aisle. If that’s alright with you, of course.”

(Y/N) turned to face the mirror once again, but this time focusing on the five sparkling rubies in the crystal tiara, “I don’t know what to say,” she forced out, overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of herself in a wedding dress, “And, yes. I want to wear this tiara, are you having a laugh?!” She exclaimed excitedly, tears welling up in her eyes as she threw her arms around her future mother-in-law, “You’ve been nothing, but kind to me all these years. I don’t know how I could ever repay you.”

“My dear,” sniffled Mrs. Weasley, “How many times must I tell you? Charlie is the happiest I’ve ever seen him and that is all because of you, (Y/N)” she explained honestly, her hand rubbing up and down her back as they embraced, “All these years, he’s only spoken about you. How you make him feel and how important you are to him.”

“Mrs. Weasley–”

“I think it’s high time you started calling me Molly, dear” interrupted Mrs. Weasley, pulling out of her embrace and holding (Y/N)’s shoulders tightly, “You’re going to make a wonderful bride, my darling”

(Y/N) let out a small sob, her arms wrapping around her fiancé’s mother once again, “Thank you, Molly” she whispered, wiping her tears away and smiling down at her as tears streamed down both their faces.

“I hate to interrupt,” Andre chimed in from behind them, the grin still evident on his face, “but I think we should get (Y/N) out of that dress before Charlie ruins the surprise.”

The women nodded in agreement and (Y/N) removed the tiara, handing it to Molly, who returned it to its velvety cushioned box.

“I’m going to go work on dinner, I’ll see the two of you down there in a bit,” She announced happily, exiting the room and descending the stairs to her kitchen.

“Andre–” (Y/N) started, holding her friend by the elbows, “I have to find some way to repay you. After all these years– I mean, you made my first date outfit for Godric’s sake and you’ve never let me pay you once–”

“And I never will.” he retorted defiantly, “Your friendship is far more precious than some stupid galleons,” Explained Andre, placing his hand on her cheek, “You helped me find my passion in fashion design, you and McNully taught me how to become the best Keeper Ravenclaw house had ever seen and,” he paused, shifting around so she could look at herself in the mirror, “even though we’re not at school, you invite me to all your adventures and Ministry events. You and Charlie have given me so much and you don’t even realize it.”

Andre took a step back, holding (Y/N)’s hands in admiration, “You deserve the very best on your wedding day, and so does Charlie. I’m just glad I’ve been along for the ride, but if you’re so adamant of repaying me,” he grinned, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, “Save me a dance the day of your wedding, that’s all I ask for.”

The waterworks came once again, (Y/N) let out a small sob as she threw her arms around her long-term friend, “Of course, Andre,” she agreed, her voice wavering while they embraced, “Thank you so much for everything.”

Andre smiled, his hand resting at the back of her head, “Anytime, Cursebreaker.” He muttered, “But we should get you out of that dress, I need to fix Charlie’s dress robes before dinner.”

(Y/N) nodded in agreement and stepped out of his grasp, watching Andre head towards the door, “Make sure he doesn’t look better than me!” She joked as the door opened and Andre let out a hearty chuckle.

“Wouldn’t dream of it!” He shot her a wink and slipped out of the room, the door closing gently behind him and his voice booming down the stairs while he yelled for Charlie.

(Y/N) laughed when she heard Charlie’s startled yell and the door to his bedroom slamming open. Her hands slid down the soft satin of her dress, the rhinestone straps glinting as the sunset over the horizon and the ghost of a smile decorating her relaxed features.

“Only a month away,” she thought joyfully and hung up the dress in its black garment bag before joining Molly in the kitchen.

Scotland. January 5th, 1995.

Wedding preparations were in full swing at the home of Charlie Weasley and (Y/N) Selwyn. The family of the bride and groom ran up and down the house, folding the seating arrangements and fixing any stray flower bouquets that remained in the kitchen.

“George!” Bellowed Mrs. Weasley as he and Fred slid down the bannister, their ties around their heads and vests unbuttoned, “You two better straighten up before the guests arrive!”

“Molly dear,” Mr. Weasley spoke up from behind her, his hands running down her arms soothingly, “They’re just excited, I’m sure they’ll settle down soon”

Mrs. Weasley placed her hand over her husband’s while the other soothed the velvet of her elegant green dress, “I’m sure you’re right, Arthur. I just want everything to be perfect for Charlie and (Y/N)’s special day.”

“I know, Mollywobbles,” he muttered, pressing a kiss against his wife’s forehead as she blushes furiously, her cheeks turning as red as her hair.

“Come now, Arthur,” she urged, but unable to fight the smile that formed on her face, “Let us go finish up the tent”

Outside stood Charlie, running up and down the wedding tent, yelling orders to his younger brothers who had, apparently, never seen this side of Charlie before.

“No–! Percy!” He groaned, straightening the ribbon against the back of it, “Over and under, like this!” Charlie twisted the ribbon, leaving a delicate bow to decorate the pearl white chairs.

“I am perfectly capable of tying a ribbon, Charles.” declared Percy pompously, demonstrating his bow-tying skills on the next chair, but struggling a little more than Charlie had.

Charlie let out a small sigh, adjusting his tie and the lapels of his red and black dress robes, “I know,” he admitted solemnly, “I just want everything to be perfect, (Y/N)’s spent so long planning this–”

“Don’t worry,” Percy interjected, “With William and I here, everything is bound to go smoothly.” He grinned, placing his hand on his older brother’s shoulder, “We’re the most responsible and we’ll make sure everything goes smoothly, for you and (Y/N)”

Charlie sighed, but this time out of relief, his arms wrapping tightly around Percy, “Thank you for being here, Perce. I know it wasn’t easy to get time off.”

Percy let out a small scoff, “You think I would miss my brother’s wedding? Mr. Crouch’s cauldron bottoms can wait until after the ceremony, even though it’s rather painful to put off my work for this long.”

Charlie fought back the urge to ruffle his brother’s hair, “When did you get so grown up?” He asked playfully, “I still remember you killing spiders for Ronnie.”

Percy rolled his eyes at his remark, but smiled nonetheless, “We all grow up eventually, Charlie. Just look at today, I could not be prouder of you and I know Mum and Dad are too.”

Charlie thanked Percy with another hug, but their moment was interrupted by Bill, who was waving his wand towards the marital archway, making light silvery roses appear in between the bright red ones, “Oi! Guests are arriving in twenty minutes, we’ve got time for friendly chats later, but we really need to get everything together before they apparate!”

Percy nodded in agreement, striding down the silver carpet and clearing out a path through the snow, raising another set of tents from the entrance of their house towards the wedding tent. Charlie joined his brother near the archway, clapping him on the shoulder and waving his wand so the rest of the flowers appeared on top of the seat ribbons.

A gaggle of women hid inside the master bedroom on the second story of their home, a half-empty champagne bottle resting on the vanity with six empty glasses surrounding it. Six girls stood around the bedroom window, gazing down at the boys in the garden with wide grins, “This dress is quite beautiful!” exclaimed Rowan Khanna, turning to examine herself in the mirror, “Andre truly has outdone himself!” Her dress was slightly different than the other girls. It was still made out of the same silver fabric as the other ones, but her’s contained an array of silver crystals covering the left side of the bodice while a ruched one-shoulder sleeve came up and around her right shoulder

“I agree,” chimed in Penny Haywood, twirling around in her floor-length silver dress, “I can’t believe the day is finally here!” she squealed. Her dress also contained a ruched one-shoulder strap but lacked the bodice crystals in favor of a criss-cross fabric belt around her dress, “Tonks! Stop messing with it!”

Nymphadora Tonks shifted in her seat as Penny attempted to soothe her bright pink hair, which she had grown out to shoulder length for the occasion, “It looks too neat!” complained Tonks, ruffling her unnaturally straight hair, and curling the bottoms of it with her wand. Tonks and Tulip were wearing the second variation of Andre’s dress, it contained the same details as the others, the only difference being the two straps in contrast to the one-shoulder Penny and Merula wore.

“I think it looks quite nice,” muttered Merula Snyde, gazing at her straightened hair, “Don’t you think this color brings out my eyes?” She asked absentmindedly, her hands running over the chiffon gown.

“Oh, please” groaned Tulip Karasu with a grin, “That’s what you said during the Celestial Ball!”

Merula glared towards Tulip, “And was I wrong?” she asked, throwing one of the satin dressing gowns they wore while getting ready. The two girls broke out in a fit of laughter, launching the dressing robes at each other and dodging them swiftly and the other bridesmaids joining in until the sound of the bathroom door opening caught their attention.

“Merlin’s beard,” gasped Rowan at the sight of her best friend standing underneath the doorway, an angelic glow radiating off her, “(Y/N), you look–”

“Breathtaking,” finished Merula, her lips curling into a devious smile, “Weasley is going to lose his mind when he sees you.”

Penny nodded in agreement, rushing to (Y/N)’s side and taking her by the hand, “I promised you I wouldn’t cry, but I honestly think I am going to break down during the ceremony.” admitted Penny, and the other girls joined her around the bride.

“You guys,” (Y/N) smiled sheepishly, gazing around her friends, and pulling them all in for a messy group hug, “I can’t believe this is actually happening,” she admitted, a sniffle resonating through the room as she pulled back, “And you’re all here, what more could I ask for?”

“How ‘bout a sack of galleons from your boss at Gringotts?” joked Merula, slapping (Y/N)’s arms and laughing along with the rest of the girls. Rolling her eyes, (Y/N) returned Merula’s slap with one of her own and stepped towards the vanity table to add the finishing touches to her hair.

“Oh! Let me help you,” exclaimed Rowan, rushing behind (Y/N) and picking her wand up from the table, “I’ve spent hours reading hair-spell books, I want to be the world’s best Maid of Honor!” She ran her fingers delicately through the curls of (Y/N)’s hair, waving her wand and uttering an incantation so a thin stream of hairspray sprayed out of the tip. Unlike ordinary hairspray, this magical substance would ensure the curls stayed intact even if she stood in a hurricane zone.

(Y/N) smiled at Rowan through the mirror, fighting back the tears that were welling up in her eyes, “Rowan, I’m so glad you’re here, I still remember when we first met and the wonderful scarf I picked out for you”

Rowan laughed as she sprayed another curl in place, “I still have that scarf, it was approved by Andre and everything so you should start calling yourself a style-wizard as well.” As the two best friends reminisced, Penny and Tonks were opening the brown-leather box, gaping at the tiara with admiration and carefully wiping it with polish to amplify its shine.

“Some guests are arriving,” Tulip announced, looking out the window with Merula, the two of them craning their necks to see the small group pass through the snow led by Percy and Molly Weasley who bore wide grins.

In the sitting room, the groom and his groomsmen gathered around the kitchen island, six glasses of firewhiskey resting on the countertop, “No, I-I really shouldn’t” Charlie pleaded, raising his hand out to block the shot glass his best-man, Andre, was forcing into his grasp.

“Just one!” urged Andre, wiggling the glass in front of him as Bill and Barnaby raised their own in celebration, “(Y/N)’s had her champagne! I saw the glass, I promise!”

“I’m even having one, Charlie!” added Ben Copper, raising his glass to meet Barnaby and Bill, earning a laugh from Jacob Selwyn as he rounded the corner of the island, his own shot glass in hand.

“Charlie, I know you and my baby-sis talked about it and in all honesty, mate…” started Jacob, his eyes scanning Charlie’s tense behavior, “You need to loosen up a little, I saw you yelling at chair ribbons before the guests arrived.”

The groomsmen laughed, earning a small scoff of amusement from Charlie, “Alright, alright!” He boomed, snatching the glass from Andre, and raising it into the circle with the rest of his men, “But I’m making you all take three at the reception!”

“That’s fine by me!” cheered Barnaby Lee, “We don’t have drinks at work; they’re all a bunch of prats really” he jested, gazing at the firewhiskey bottle longingly, “I’ll do however many you want!”

“Enough talking! To Charlie and (Y/N)!” bellowed Bill Weasley, flashing a toothy smile while Jacob patted Charlie’s back encouragingly. Jacob’s relationship with (Y/N) had strengthened significantly as years passed and although he loved having a younger sister, a part of him always wanted a brother. And, after months of getting to know him, finally found one in Charlie.

The groom and his groomsmen down their shots, slamming the decorative glasses down on the countertop and filing out of the house, excitedly patting Charlie on the back as they urged him out the front door. Several minutes later, the girls, in their matching silver dresses, came down the stairs excitedly waving their red and white bouquets.

(Y/N) came down the stairs, her dress and veil trailing behind her as she gripped the banister, her other hand carrying her much larger bouquet which contained a set of additional black roses mixed in with the red and white ones to match with Charlie’s robes. With the guests settled in their seats, Jacob ran back into the house and past the curtains dividing the tent connected to the front door.

“Look at you...” He gaped, his eyes wide in admiration when he finally caught sight of his little sister in her wedding gown, the sparkling tiara sitting perfectly atop her head, “I wish Mum and Dad could see you.” added Jacob in a whisper, reaching for her hands and smiling softly as their eyes met.

“Me too,” added (Y/N) earnestly, “We’ll visit their grave before the honeymoon, it’s not much, but it’s the least we can do.” She proposed and Jacob nodded in agreement, squeezing his sister’s hands while she spoke.

“I’ll tell you this, though,” chuckled Jacob, sneakily glancing out the tent as the music started, “I’m surprised Charlie isn’t sweating bullets, he looks more nervous than that time he asked for my permission.” The two siblings broke out in a fit of laughter, heading closer to the door as, unbeknownst to them, the wizard officiant began making his way down the decorated aisle, waving happily at the guests.

“It’s almost time,” muttered (Y/N), butterflies fluttering in her stomach as they stood behind the icicle wedding curtains, “Oh my god, I’m getting married.” She could feel the nerves overcoming her excitement, a small lump forming in her throat as she worried about the many things that could go wrong, one being tripping down the aisle.

“Hey,” Jacob spoke out, turning her by the shoulders while Charlie and Andre strode confidently down the aisle, the soft violin accompanying them as the sound of cheering whistles followed after them. “You, my dear sister, have dealt with cursed ice, magical ciphers, loony and manipulative professors, and – not to mention – spent the last few months taking care of hordes of dragons. The most dangerous creatures, according to the Ministry registry,” He explained comfortingly, his hands running down the side of her arms, “I think you can walk down this aisle and meet the man you love, and more importantly, who loves you without anything to worry about.”

(Y/N) bit her lip at her brother’s words, throwing her arms around him and pulling him into a tight hug, “Thank you, Jacob,” her voice wavering, “Thank you so much.”

Jacob rubbed her back comfortingly, looking over her shoulder to see the bridesmaids making their way towards the archway, “Anytime, baby sister. Anytime.”

“But” he added, pulling away from their hug and grabbing the first layer of her veil, pulling it over her face with a gentle smile, “I think Rowan is about to walk down and the only tears I want to see are Charlie’s.” Pressing a kiss against her cheek, Jacob turned his sister towards the curtain, bright smiles pulling at their lips.

Charlie stood nervously at the archway, conspicuously twiddling his fingers as the song changed and the icicle curtains were pulled open by an unseen force of magic. At the sound of the change, Charlie looked up and as soon as he met (Y/N)’s gentle expression, all his worries slipped away, and his mind blocked out everyone else at the venue.

He wanted to burn the image of (Y/N) in her stunning white dress into his memory. A sight he had been dreaming of since their one-year anniversary, one that surpassed the vision of her during their first date or the ones of her during the Celestial Ball. As she was led down the aisle by Jacob, Charlie made a mental note to thank Andre with the largest slice of cake or some-kind of present because this was, honestly, the perfect gown for (Y/N).

The dazzling white pleated crisscross sweetheart neck bodice fit perfectly, the red sash around her middle accentuating her waist most breathtakingly. The small snowflake brooch on the left side of her sash sparkled brilliantly, matching perfectly with the delicate rhinestone straps that fell delicately over her shoulders. His eyes trailed upwards, his grin faltering at the sight of Great Auntie Tessie’s tiara underneath (Y/N)’s veil and he finally took notice of the tears that spilled out of his eyes. He hastily wiped them away, stepping down towards the carpet to meet (Y/N) and Jacob a few meters from the archway. Charlie grasped Jacob’s hand tightly, giving it a stern shake before taking (Y/N)’s hand delicately into his own, leading her in front of the officiant.

Charlie held both of her hands, looking her over and sighing in amazement as he pulled the veil back, exposing her flushed face and the dazzling tiara, “You look–” He breathed out, unable to find an appropriate word to describe how incredibly gorgeous she looked.

“Breathtaking?” She finished with a mischievous gaze and placed a kiss against Charlie’s cheek who blushed furiously as they turned towards the officiant.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the sing-song voice of the officiant who raised his arms in acknowledgment to the couple as a collective silence fell over the crowd, “We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two beautiful faithful souls.”

The wedding guests watched avidly, some moving towards the edge of their seats with intricate handkerchiefs as the couple turned sideways, their hands intertwined.

“Do you Charles Septimus Weasley, take (Y/N) Selwyn to live together in marriage? to cherish in friendship and love today, tomorrow, and for as long as the two of you live, to trust and honor her? to love her faithfully, through the best and the worst, whatever may come, and if you should ever doubt, to remember your love for each other and the reason why you came together with her this day?”

Charlie was nodding eagerly before the officiant had even finished his spiel, tears streaming down his face but an unwavering smile decorating his freckled face, “I do. More than anything in the world.”

(Y/N) beamed back at him, squeezing his hands tightly and releasing them momentarily so Charlie could slip the wedding band onto her finger. The officiant turned towards (Y/N), the smile on his face widening as he opened his mouth to speak.

“Do you, (Y/N) Selwyn take Charles Septimus Weasley…” the words floated away from (Y/N)’s mind, she registered the officiant speaking but she could only focus on the man in front of her and how his hands felt in hers. The way his dress robes fit perfectly and how they brought out the color of his bright green eyes. She felt her hand moving on its own to grip the golden band and the words, “I do” sliding past her lips and she recalled it being the easiest phrase she ever had to say in her life.

The two of them did not register the happy sobs of Mrs. Weasley in the front row or the audible sniffles of Barnaby, Penny, and Rowan beside them. They even blocked out the loud trumpeting noises at the back of the wedding venue that undoubtedly came from Hagrid with Professor McGonagall dabbing her eyes an aura of dignity by his side.

The two of them only returned to the present moment when the officiant uttered the words, “Then I declare you, bonded for life.” With that, a stream of glittering snowflakes came out from the tip of the officiant’s wand, spirling over (Y/N) and Charlie’s heads.

“Come here,” Charlie practically growled, twirling (Y/N), pulling her in by the waist, and pressing his lips against her. At that moment, it felt like all the planets had aligned to create a timeless- one passionate moment that defined the future of their relationship. Overwhelmed by happiness, Charlie turned his wife in his arms and dipped her in front of the whole crowd, the sound of thundering claps and booming cheers filling the tent while they kissed. (Y/N)’s leg was lifted beside him, stretched perfectly and peeking underneath her gorgeous gown as the heat rose in her cheeks, that familiar sensation of liquid lightning coursing through her body.

The newlyweds turned upright again, pressing their foreheads together as they laughed and returned to the tumultuous crowd surrounding them. Charlie and (Y/N) raised their intertwined hands and the excited guests rose from their seats, their chairs disappearing only to be replaced by the reception tables and an ample dance floor. Overlapping ‘congratulations’ came from the numerous guests, patting the couple in support as they made their way towards the dance floor with their wedding party.

“I love you, more than you’ll ever know,” Charlie spoke out, spinning (Y/N) as they shared their first dance, the lights dimming around them as the crowd watched them.

“I love you so much, Charles,” replied (Y/N), placing her hand on his cheek and leaning in to steal another kiss, “And I’ll spend every day showing you just how much.” Charlie let out a gleeful laugh, spinning his wife around the dance floor and pulling her towards their table once they finished.

“Mr. and Mrs. Weasley,” a soft voice caught their attention and they both turned to see Professor Dumbledore, McGonagall, and - to both their surprise - Professor Snape standing in front of them.

“Professors!” (Y/N) exclaimed, “We’re so glad you could make it! We thought with the tournament it’d be difficult to get away-”

“Nevermind that!” dismissed McGonagall, placing her hand on the bride’s shoulders, “I’m so proud of you and Charles,” she gushed, unlike her usually composed self, a small hint of moisture underneath her eyes, “Professor Dumbledore insisted we attend.”

“Yes,” added Snape in his usual tone, unlike McGonagall, he was devoid of any emotion, “Even I have to congratulate you on this joyous occasion,” he explained, his black eyes scanning over the crowd and back on his former pupil, “It seems Selwyn- or must I say, Weasley, that you have grown into a capable young witch. One Slytherin house was very proud to have.”

(Y/N), overcome with the emotion of the celebration, wrapped her arms around the Hogwarts Potions’ Master who returned her embrace with a very stiff pat on the back, “Come now, Severus.” Dumbledore added gleefully, his eyes twinkling with excitement, “I’m sure Mrs. Weasley is just happy to see you.”

Charlie let out a small snort, unable to contain his laughter as Snape recoiled and his wife returned to his side, “But Minerva is right, we are all very proud of you and I am not one to miss a wonderful evening to celebrate love.”

“Please, help yourselves with food and drink!” urged Charlie, gesturing towards the tables and bar, “We’ll be resuming the dancing shortly, we’re so thrilled to have you here.” He finishing confidently, shaking Dumbledore’s hand who returned his smile with one of his own.

“Will do,” He agreed with a nod of the head, “We’ll leave you two to it then!” With that, the three Professors trailed off to speak with Charlie’s parents who stood excitedly at the bar.

“Do you think I went a bit overboard?” asked (Y/N) cautiously once they left, a small giggle overcoming her as Charlie vigorously shook his head, “Are you mad? It’s our wedding day, we’re allowed to go overboard.” He reassured, pressing a kiss against her forehead.

“Well, if that’s the case… I could use a drink,” she whispered coquettishly but was interrupted by their wedding party clearing their throats behind them.

“Wow, Weasley,” Merula pipped up, “I thought you were an excellent Legilimens, if you were, you could’ve heard us coming from a mile away” she teased with Rowan waving a shot glass as (Y/N) turned around.

“You’re not allowed to tease today, Merula!” She exclaimed happily, taking the shot glass from her and pulling Charlie along so he could grab his from Andre, “I’m a married woman now! I get a free pass!”

Merula rolled her eyes but gave in to her request, “As long as you take this drink, I won’t say anything!”

“Who knew it only alcohol to get Merula to lay off?” Barnaby quipped, earning a small punch which hurt her from than him due to the considerable amount of muscle he gained throughout the years.

“I’m not going to wait any longer!” threatened Ben, raising his shot glass towards Charlie, “Ready?” he announced and everyone raised their glasses in a circle, “To life and happiness!”

“To life and happiness!” They bellowed in unison, downing the chocolate vodka liqueur and extending their glasses towards Bill, who had hidden the bottle behind his back.

“Charlie did say three!” He announced, replicating the sing-song voice of the old officiant, “So everyone better have an excellent tolerance tonight because we’re celebrating until dawn!”

Tonks threw an arm excitedly around Penny’s shoulders, almost spilling the contents of their shot glasses but laughing as Bill continued to pour their drinks.

“You better switch up the drinks then!” Tulip muttered while sniffing the glass, grimacing at the strong scent of alcohol that practically burned her nostrils, “I’m more of a firewhiskey girl.”

“I’m going to have to agree,” nodded Jacob, “Not about the girl part, but I do like to mix things up… I wonder if they’ll prepare my specialty drink at the bar,” he pondered, looking longingly at the bar with a mischievous smirk.

“On three!” Andre yelled, catching everyone’s attention and he gestured towards Rowan so she could join in on the count down.

“Three!” Andre and Rowan finished chanting, throwing their heads back and swallowing their drinks before bellowing out indistinct cheers.

“I know you guys said three-” whined Penny, shaking her hands in front of her glass but it was snatched away by (Y/N) so Bill could pour their final shot, “Oh, come on! At least let me breathe!”

“You’ll breathe when we eat and dance!” dismissed Tonks, forcing the glass back into Penny’s hands who reluctantly raised it towards the happy couple, “Your turn!”

“Ready?” Charlie asked (Y/N), a dark blush spreading across his cheeks as he felt the early onsets on the alcohol affecting his body, “Let’s do that arm thing we talked about…” he whispered excitedly, pressing soft kisses against her cheek making her giggle.

“You’re so in love, Mr. Weasley,” She muttered with a small shake of the head, “But so am I” (Y/N) pressed a kiss against his nose and linked her arm around his, “On three!” she exclaimed, forcing her glass as close to her lips as possible. On three, the wedding party downed their third shot of the evening, some of them shivering as the alcohol coursed down their esophagus.

“Alright, let’s dance!” yelled Ben and Barnaby, pulling the bridesmaids away towards the dance floor to join the rest of the excited guests.

“If you don’t mind,” interjected Andre, extending his hand towards (Y/N), “I do believe you owe me a dance?” he reminded her, and (Y/N) quickly slid her hand into his.

“You’re quite right, most notable style-wizard of all Europe,” she replied, shooting Charlie an apologetic look but he only smiled, “Don’t worry,” He reassured, “I’ve got to see Mum and Dad.”

Andre pulled (Y/N) away towards the dance floor, the two of them spinning away towards the middle with wide grins. Charlie joined his family, who overwhelmed them with hugs and kisses, including his thirteen-year-old sister who had traveled with Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Hagrid to be there for the occasion. The rest of the guests danced and conversed excitedly, eating away at the delicious food the white-robed servers had brought to their tables.

Jacob Selwyn sat at one of the farthest tables, exchanging stories with his sister’s old prefect, Felix Rosier who was accompanied by Angelica Cole, the former Gryffindor prefect. Sometime during the evening, Hagrid appeared in front of (Y/N) and Charlie Weasley in his mole-skin coat and tears streaming down his face, lifting them both up from the ground as he happily embraced the two of them.

“So grown-up” cried Hagrid, wiping his tears away when he set them down, “I remember when yeh were both this tall” he gestured downwards, replicating their heights during the first-year and the couple nodded happily, red tinges on both their cheeks as the giggled at Hagrid’s remarks.

The rest of the night went by smoothly, exchanging numerous conversations with witches and wizards they could hardly remember their names of due to the amount of alcohol in their system. (Y/N) was spun around the dancefloor but all of the Weasley siblings, even performing an impressive three-person tango with Fred and George, who seemed to have more to drink than the newlyweds themselves. Charlie was joined on the dance floor by his mother and father, his best man, and, at one point, Jacob who had raised him onto his shoulders at the climax of the song.

While they were dancing, Ronald Weasley explained his blunder with Hermione at the ball to (Y/N), who automatically dragged him away to the muggle-born witch to correct his mistake and giggled excitedly when she saw the two twirling in a small circle with Harry and Ginny at their side. Some of the guests began to politely excused themselves by midnight, waving the couple off after leaving the gifts at the respective table and heading out towards the garden to the designated disappartation point.

The celebration did not stop until the first hints of sunlight gleamed over the horizon. At that point, most of the younger guests had retreated inside the home to sleep on transfigured mattresses set up throughout the newlyweds’ home. Rowan and Bill had to forcibly escort (Y/N) and Charlie away from the dance floor since the two expressed their desire to stay until the sun shone above them but kept closing their eyes as they embraced.

“Come on, little brother” chuckled Bill, winking at Rowan as he pushed Charlie, who continued to hum the processional song, up the stairs. Rowan blushed furiously at Bill’s actions but kept her eyes on (Y/N), who was spinning Great Aunt Tessie’s ruby tiara in her hands at the rhythm of Charlie’s humming, “I’ll have to thank you for that,” whispered Rowan excitedly, gazing longingly up at Bill and successfully getting the couple into the bedroom.

Bill removed their shoes while they giggled on the bed, exchanging several kisses while Rowan secured the tiara in its leather box, “Think we should help them change?” asked Rowan, turning towards Bill, but quickly realizing the answer to her question.

“I think that’ll be a no,” declared Bill, running a hand through his hair and extending the other towards Rowan, “Let’s go before we see something we don’t need to see. I think I saw an empty mattress in the room Andre is staying in.” Rowan nodded stiffly, sliding her hand into Bill’s and quickly closing the door behind her, locking the door for good measure.

On the bed, Charlie shrugged off his overcoat and threw it to the side while (Y/N) pulled on his tie, undoing it and tossing it with the rest of his outfit. His lips mashed against hers, his tongue pushing past her teeth as she gripped his head firmly, locking him in their embrace as she fell back on the mattress and her dress pooled underneath her.

“My dress,” she moaned against Charlie’s lips and he let out a small laugh, shrugging his dress shirt off and reaching behind for the zipper of her dress, “Of course, we can’t desecrate such a delicate creation,” he mumbled against her lips and lifted her up so she could wiggle out of it. (Y/N) laughed as the cold air hit her body, winking at Charlie as his eyes widened at the sight of the bright-white lacy lingerie she had hidden under her dress.

“Like what you see?” she teased, attempting to wriggle away from his grip, but he caught her by the waist and pulled her onto her back, “Don’t you dare, my darling” growled Charlie, pressing harsh kisses against her neck and pulling her stocking-clad thighs around his waist.

“I love you,” gasped (Y/N) as Charlie groped her breast, her fingernails digging into his broad back and her hips grinding upwards to meet his, “So so much.” Charlie cupped her cheek, harshly pulling her up to exchange another kiss, not satisfied – no matter how mesmerizing they were – by the previous ones.

“More,” groaned Charlie, his red-hair falling over his eyes as he pulled away to mutter against her lips, “I love you more” he breathed out, pressing kisses in between each word and pulling his wand out of his trousers, and uttering inaudible silencing charms towards the door.

The two of them grasped messily at each other, running their hands over each others’ bodies and leaving marks that would surely be visible in the afternoon.

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statticscribbles · 3 years

Text

My Dearest, My Dead

Summary: Evelyn/Edgar, A look at what they want from The Farm

Evelyn writes; she keeps unsent letters and journals in the records rooms; with everyone’s files. Edgar says it’s her way of coping, the rest of The Farm just think they’re her records of everyone. She doesn’t think back to when she’d been told. She blocks out how she’d gone to Edgar sobbing, inconsolable with pain blurring her entire being. Edgar carefully took her in his arms and they spent days in bed. They didn’t have the Farm; they didn’t have their family to support them as they do now. Edgar talked to her softly, gently explaining how they can build a family, how they can create The Farm. How Evelyn will need to be the first to be harvested. He can’t take her pain of course, he reminds her; but she can help the cause. She agrees and when she wakes up it’s like nothing has changed; the memory of what happened buried under the stitches and bandages.

Edgar sits with her as she recovers, the stitches he gave her barely there, they dissolve within two weeks and she barely has anything more than a faint line on her side. She writes when he suggest it, a way to keep her feelings her own, but not let them fester inside her. He never asks her to read them, but when she wakes screaming and sobbing from nightmares she’ll read to him in her shaking voice until she calms enough to sleep.

In the places before Riverdale they do not dwell on those they had to leave. Evelyn does not write to them, she burns the records, she does what Edgar says. He promised her they’d have their family and as they move on from the last town they’ve taken from Evelyn can’t help but be relieved it’s one step closer. She does not have doubts she knows Edgar will succeed and they’ll have their family, have their farm and everything will go back to how it was. She wonders if they’ll move back to the first town they took from, she decides she’d prefer not to, she likes the idea of Riverdale, of it being their final home; where they started is where they end. She finds it poetic; Edgar agrees. Evelyn is far too excited to start their plan, Edgar reminds her they might still need to move, still need to leave. ——————————————————————————–

In the sister’s of quiet mercy, past the Gargoyle King’s chamber, beyond the tunnel that leads out; there’s a room locked from everyone’s eyes. The only two who have seen in are Evelyn and Edgar. Edgar told Alice it was the room where they’d ascend. It was a way to stave off her curiosity, to hush the reporter’s urge that still bubbled under her skin. Evelyn had caught her trying to sneak down; Alice was understandably confused when all Evelyn did was start sobbing; broken wails and injured animal sounds drowning out any of the farms regular noises; even the pipe system was drowned out under her crushed voice. Edgar was there in moments, snarling into Alice’s ear and telling her how Polly would be punished for her sneaking around, grip on her arm almost breaking it. Alice doesn’t understand where the viciousness comes from, how it vanishes the instant he moves from her to Evelyn; it’s not love she reasons, but something darker. The way Evelyn folds into him mumbling nonsense and dates long past has Alice wondering what exactly that room is meant for. She mentions it to Charles when she sees him next; he promises he’ll look into it.

Charles brings her half used information, snippets and pieces of the past members in the Farm, they all talk of similar doors, similar rooms, and how Evelyn always fell apart at the idea of others in the room The door was always locked, bolted and there was no window, no way to see what was inside. They’d spoken how no one entered and no one left. It was thought to be the records room; until the records room was mapped out. The room big enough to house two people, with bed on either side. Alice shot down that idea; Edgar and Evelyn already had their own room; they had no need for another one. —————————————————————–

Evelyn wakes to Edgar’s arms around her, she doesn’t move wondering if he’s awake as well. “Betty’s staying with us.” “That’s good.” “She’s smart, bound to figure out some part of what we’re doing.” “That’s bad.” Evelyn frowns her headache coming back as she remembers the nightmares she’d had; she can faintly remember Edgar sedating her but she’s not sure if it was last night or months ago. “I had to dear, you were going to start screaming, can’t worry anyone now can we.” Evelyn nods letting him kiss her forehead as he pets her hair. “We’re having another group today, would you like to join?” “Maybe; I know today is; tough for both of us.” He nods nudging her to lie back down so they face each other. She watches the way his eyes track her face, and as he brushes his thumb against the corner of her mouth she knows he’s not seeing her as she is now. She wonders which version of her he’ll see the most today. “We’ll be together; through all of it. Like always.” He speaks softly nodding to her, his hand running down her arm as he pulls her close.

She’s not aware she falls asleep again, just as she’s not aware she’s awake once more. She’s aware she’s sitting in a chair. She knows Edgar helped her, she can smell his soap on her skin and the shampoo he uses in his hair on her own damp locks. She turns her head to see not only her journal, but a new book and a fresh vase of flowers. She reaches for the flowers wincing when the IV tape tugs against her skin. She grabs the book easily enough and starts to read. She glances at the almost full bag, she knows she’ll have hours left.

She’s barely a third through when Polly walks in. She’s reading, thankful she decided to leave her daily journaling to before bed. “Oh sorry.” Polly’s about to back out of the room when Evelyn watches Juniper fussing in her arms. “Tilt her chin up.” Is all she says before she flicks another page in her book; Polly’s surprised when Juniper quiets. Alice asks to talk to her, and Evelyn declines. “Evelyn.” Alice starts and watches how she turns her head, regarding Alice nervously. Alice isn’t sure why she’d been so anxious recently but it seems like every sound had her on the knife’s edge of panic. In the group session earlier some sort of beeping alarm went off and Edgar had to sedate Evelyn. She looked terrified even when she was sleeping. Betty has theories about Evelyn’s guilt, about her knowledge of the organ farming but Alice knows she can’t share it with her daughter, she just hopes she’ll be able to get her and Juniper out before anything else happens. ————————————————————-

Evelyn knows she’s dreaming, she always knows when she’s dreaming after being sedated; everything is too dull or too vibrant. She can smell too much, everything is too crisp, too clear it makes her wan to close her eyes, to turn away; but she knows she can’t. She must look to understand. She watches her husband, her Edgar, always trying to do good, always trying to help people; why he’d become a trauma surgeon in the first place. She knew he was going to help thousands. She didn’t understand why she had to be one of the first. The car had swerved too far out, it had been dark and icy, it would have happened to anyone. She knows this is what the doctors tell everyone, that they never stood a chance in the tiny car against the truck, against the weather and the distance from the town, from the hospital. Edgar saves her, she knows he does, she can smell the soap and shampoo he uses, unchanging since they’d met in school. He knows it comforts her.

She lets the dream happen, she knows she can’t wake herself, she’s tried time and time again, she knows not when this will twist from dream to memory unsure if it already has. She follows the gurney; the ambulance no longer makes sound, she can’t hear the shouts, the screams from the doctors. She knows this is a memory with how everything seems to settle for a moment, the saturation dropping, the sound no longer fogged. Her vision no longer blurry. She sees her own face, blood covered and she can’t help but gag with her memory self and she tries to breathe, she looks up and it’s a dream once more, Edgar rushing over, his hands running up her arms promising her he’ll save her, the fact she can see him the giveaway it’s only a dream again. She knows she’s dreaming and she can feel herself crying already; she watches herself on the gurney, reaching to the other one, Edgar moves them both closer despite that they’re going to different operating rooms, despite that she knows Edgar can only save one. She wonders why he chose her. She can hear screaming from the other room, she knows she’s dreaming but she cant help the panic, the need stop the screaming, she shakes on the gurney, twisting and trying to shout, only managing to choke on her own blood as someone that’s not Edgar pricks her with a needle and a mask is placed over her mouth and nose.

She wakes shaking and gasping scrambling off the bed trying to pull herself free of wires and tubes and IV’s that are no longer there. She sobs, throwing herself from the bed and trying her best to stand and move towards the door. She’s sure she’s the source of the screams, the pained broken animal that bubbles from inside her chest. She can hear footsteps and collapses into the arms that open the door. “I’m sorry; I’m sorry, what about Elizabeth, you need to fix her, she knows; she knows, she knows! You left her; you left her!” She chokes on her own sorrow as Edgar’s arms hold her up. He kisses her forehead once more, not bringing her back to their room, but to the common room, he sits with her; both Cheryl and Polly appear instantly, worry on their faces. Fangs and Kevin bring her a blanket and she sits, confused and blinking in the sunlight filled room as they stay next to her. Cheryl smiles, running her hand up her arm in comfort. Polly braids her hair. Kevin and Fangs start talking about something they saw on TV, a distraction she thinks. Edgar sits next to her and she reaches out for him. “Elizabeth she-“ “It’s alright Evelyn, it’s alright.” He rubs circles on her back as she starts to cry again, confusion on her face. She watches Betty back out of the room, she watches the look her and Alice share before Alice smiles at Evelyn trying to be comforting. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Everyone chorus’ Edgar’s voice, concern and confusion lacing their words. ——————————————————————————-

Evelyn doesn’t need to ask, she waits until its far past anyone being awake, Edgar rouses her she’s still confused about how she ended up asleep on the common room couch, her hair braided and one of Fang’s hoodies around her shoulders, but she lets Edgar wake her and walk with her. She knows he doesn’t need to support her but he does it anyways; the closer they draw to the room the more pronounced the limp she has gets; he can tell she’s nervous. The door opens with a hiss, it’s been sealed to prevent decay; she’s not sure how it works, only that it does. Edgar steps in first, letting the lights flicker on before Evelyn steps through. The door hisses closed behind them, sealing them in with the rest of room’s content.

“It’s beautiful, Evelyn runs her hands along the bed frame, the side table where Edgar’s notes and drawings sit is where she touches next; where he keeps most of his medical supplies from his days as a surgeon is the last she touches, always in the same pattern. Evelyn’s fingers tangle in a blanket, letting the soft fabric run through her fingers. They catch, as they always do on the bloodstains that haven’t been washed out. “What troubles you about today love?” “We’re home; we’re back we- We shouldn’t have come into her room without her.” Evelyn trembles and Edgar’s arms wrap around her. “Dear, she’s here remember? In the hospital, we just have to bring her home, once everyone agrees to ascend, we can bring her back. One human soul has to be given back if we give up hundreds. It would only be fair, of course.” His fingers undo the braids in her hair.

“Can we visit her?” Her voice is small and Edgar nods, they don’t need to sneak out, but still they do, taking the tunnel the sister’s had closed up. Moving past the hospital security is easy enough, and as they both stand outside the room, Evelyn starts to cry. Edgar wipes his own tears along with hers. They nudge the door open, the room exactly the same as it was two years ago. Everything the same, just as if they stepped out for only a moment. “Hey Elizabeth, how’re you doing sweetheart?” Edgar offers into the darkness, only the beeping of the machines answers him. Evelyn’s grip on his arm tightens, he knows this is too much for her, but he nudges both of them closer. He needs to see her face. “Please.” She whimpers and he nods, sighing as they step back towards the door, a step and a half and they’re back in the hallway. Edgar carries her back to the Farm, back to their room.

“You did so well this time, you got all they way into her room. I’m so proud of you.” “Shouldn’t have to be.” She mumbles upset at herself; Edgar shakes his head kissing her softly. “Remember what the doctor’s said, you can’t blame yourself for what’s happened to her, just like I can’t blame myself for not being able to help her. I saved my wife. I saved the love of my life. You’re safe, you’re alive because of me.” Evelyn nods swallowing. “You should have saved our daughter.” Edgar tenses. “I will. I’m going to bring her back; I’m going to wake her up. I swear.”

Evelyn wakes up alone, she’s told Edgar is performing pain removal on someone and she nods letting him have his peace, she’s seen his notes, his drawings and ideas, to create enough pain to draw his daughter’s soul back to the living; to give up the soul’s from the farm, to trade for hers. She’s fairly sure it won’t work, but she’s foolish enough to let Edgar’s hope and delusions infect her like the pain he inflicts on others. She wonder’s what is worse, living with her pain, or what he’d take away to free her from it.

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#edgar evernever #edgar evernever x evelyn evernever #evelyn evernever #riverdale #riverdale imagine #riverdale request #the farm #this was written like at the beginning of the farm plot being introduced so its kinda old #the farm riverdale #stattic

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megamanxfanfics · 4 years

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What the Hell is going on w/ Ep. 5?????

Hey World,

I just wanted to pop in and say what’s been going on, as it’s been a whole Season in between episodes.

So... I guarantee you, I was working on it. Pretty diligently at first. I don’t know how many sessions, but I did X6 playthroughs while pausing and writing out the stage directions and reactions, etc. etc. Some of this was humdrum and boring and then ideas popped out at me where I took some risks and really opened up the creativity. Whenever I do that, I always think it’s shit at first. But then upon a second or third look I get a different feel and decide whether it’s okay or not.

So, I promise you that it wasn’t really a Motivation thing. Not X6 wise, anyway. The episode is roughly 7/8ths finished. That’s for sure. The file for Ep. 5 was last modified on July 26th, so what the Hell happened?

What stopped me was Life, itself.

...We all know that in April, my Mother passed away. Right when I was in the midst of Writing Ep. 2. Somehow I plowed through that. Then, in May and June life became about working out, eating right, exercising and going on dates actually, believe it or not! I was writing Ep. 3 and even 4, during that time. I was making some decent progress.

But then... Dating wise, things fell apart.

And this is where I need to spare the details, because this is a MMX Blog and not a Relationship blog. However, you could basically say that for the month of June I was enjoying myself with someone. Then, when that didn’t work, in July I quickly moved on to someone else and then That didn’t work out either. Like, at all. And a combination of the two events just shut me down in August.

I just got hit so hard with the timing of everything. I thought I was ready to date, but I really wasn’t. And for the first time in my life I was straight up couch-ridden depressed. Like, actually not wanting to do anything. No video games, no shows, no music... not eating... Not working out... and Certainly not writing MMX6.

So... I had to pull myself out of it. And how did I manage that, you might ask??

Well... for the entire months of August and September (and even now), I’ve spent a LOT of time working on myself. For everyone, this is different.

But for me, I found a great comfort in writing out everything that has happened. And I’m talking about really digging deep and diving into all of my life choices for the past 5 years of my last relationship.

My Diary Entries weren’t just about the relationship, but also Life before Covid. It was very nostalgic, therapeutic and cathartic once I got to the hard stuff and really analyzed what the Hell happened here and there. (This Project was part of those entries as well.)

My favorite writer, Brian Michael Bendis says, “A Writer writes every day.” And no matter how true that is for you, I definitely found that to become my own form of therapy. Getting over myself, as it were.

And within days and weeks, I was enjoying this new project of Self-Reflection while listening to new music on Spotify. Having the company of just 1 friend to do puzzles with and stuff, and eventually play video games again. The shows came back. Soon I was living my life and this project was becoming it’s own chore. Even the exercising and eating right came back, although not in full force as it was before.

I also can’t forget that as of August and September, our Federal Help situation drastically changed. So I had to get over the rut of seriously looking for new jobs again. At this point, it still sucks, but I’m used to it now.

My life is applying for jobs and then treating myself to either my Self Reflection Project or any other hobbies that I’m feeling that day.

Video Game wise, I enjoyed finishing the MMZ saga and finally delving into MMZX. What I can say there is that I loved MMZ3, which is a pretty popular opinion. MMZ4′s story was too different for me to care. They did a serious disservice by eliminating the Guardians in 3. But either way, I surprisingly Loved ZX. I thought by then, I wouldn’t care. But I actually thought Vent was awesome. I really appreciated their nostalgic throwbacks to X1 with Giro (clearly being a Zero, boss figure) and Area D-3 being the frickin Central Highway stage!!! That lightened my heart and made me so happy, even though the game is so different. And those transformations into the Guardian Model Letters, (beyond X & Z) was just really well done. It was the next phase in the evolution. Despite the Metroidvania open-map being confusing as Hell. I enjoyed the attempt a lot.

[Save-assist states also really enhanced this experience for me.]

MMZX Advent however... The only positive thing I have for that one is that, I actually LOVED that you were Model A the whole time. I always kind of wanted an Axl game, and in a way, this was it. But... that game is very flawed, and transforming into all of the psuedoroids on Top of gaining all the Model Letters (including ZX) was a bit much. Meeting Aile as Model ZX, in my play through as Grey was probably the only nice throwback to the canon of that game. It’s sad to know that when you play it on hard there’s a cliff-hanger that could’ve lead to the Legends series. But as someone who was never into the Legends series, I’m fine getting the Normal/Medium ending where Grey & Aile save the day and now they just want to live and travel around. I also liked any open-ended chemistry they had. (Would they have been an item in a future game? It doesn’t matter anymore.)

Lore rants, aside, playing through the ZX series brought me back to X6 a lot, because it made me wish I could play through the game in the same way that I’ve been writing this Anime Fic. That you could just press a button and freely transform into your Falcon Armor or new armors that you acquire.

So what brought me back was a long-term plan in a way. That friend who did the puzzles with me, as I mentioned expressed a Serious interest in reading my Long-Fic. So I told her the best jumping on-point to get into Season VI stuff, which is actually starting at Xtreme2. And I was so excited that she’d be reading it, that I relived it myself too. [I even made some important edits to Duff McWhalen along the way.]

From there, as I’d go through my routine of job-hunting and soul searching, I’d also treat myself to reads of Xtreme 2, which turned into new routines of reading Season IV and V first, then applying to jobs, then going about my Self-Reflection Project. Video Games wise, I also just decided to go through the whole MMX Legacy Collection. So very quickly I went through X1 and X2. X3 took a whole night. X4 was a pretty quick Afternoon. X5 was a decent day and X6 took a while (to play through in the way that I envision this fic.)

And then in the past week, you could say I’ve finally caught up, in more ways than one. Self-reflecting wise, I’ve actually caught up to April 2020, right at the worst moment of the year. And it was good for me to go through that. Video Game wise, X6′s playthrough only spoke to me for the 1st Arc, mostly but it gave me a little more of an idea on how I’m tackling certain bits of the 2nd Arc. The 3rd Arc is still a God damn mystery as is the exact ending, but I’ll figure it out. Ideas are slowly forming.

And lastly Season VI wise, I quickly reread up to Ep. 4 and just opened up the file to Ep. 5 today!

I made new edits, came up with an Episode Title like I thought I would and at the stopping point, of course I was let down, but I was left with some new ideas on where to go from there.

Now I find myself actually wanting to rediscover what can happen next.

I have things to do today, and obligations weighing on me such as job-searches and stuff. But now that my Self-Reflection thing is quickly catching up to the current day, I’m looking forward to alternating my writing days with X6 again.

Music is coming back to me, and funnily enough, someone swiped on me in September!! So I started dating again, lol. I’m not half as invested as I was in the Summer. I know what I want more, this time around and yeah...

Other than the whole Job thing, life is good for the most part.

...I’m looking forward to getting the next episode out soon.

And finishing the 1st Arc by the end of the year. That seems like a reasonable enough goal.

Until then, folks.

#Season VI #Writing Diaries #What the Hell is going on with Episode 5?????#Life #Covid-19 #Unemployment #Dating #Depression #Job Hunting #Soul-Searching #Self-Reflection #Moving Forward #Gaming #Reading #Writing Again

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prorevenge · 5 years

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I literally made my nemesis/bully repeat his Sr. year over. - LONG, but worth it!

I grew up in a solid working class town without a lot of wealth in it. The very few wealthy people worked in a bigger city 25 or so miles down the road, and mostly sent there kids to private schools in that town. However, we certainly mingled and played with the kids during the summers, etc.. Football is king in my part of the country. Our high school programs play in front of thousands, it is table talk year around, and youth football starts as early as 6 years old. We played in backyards, schools, ALL the time.

I always had a football in my hand and was generally a highly regarded player in my neighborhood. However, there was one kid who dominated us. His name is Mike M. the IV. Yes, he was the the "Fourth" He was one of the rich kids and he was seriously 6" taller, faster, and stronger, than the 8th grade boys while he was still in 6th grade. He went to the private school, so outside of neighborhood football, I only competed against him in track & field in the spring. But we saw him all the time and he was a piece of shit bully to all the kids. The "4th" was always talking down to the rest of us "poor pieces of shit", throwing our stuff into the creek near the field we played in. Anytime we had success against him he claim some piece of cheating, beat one of us up, or piss and moan and walk away. During the regional and state championships in middle school track, he beat me both years in the 100 and 200 meter runs. We finished 1st and 2nd at every meet.

Once we moved to high school, football ramped up big time. Now we were prepping to play HS ball for our school and our town. We all assumed Mike was going to continue to play at the private school he had attended. Much to our dismay, there was Mike in full pads on our first day of football practice our freshman year. It was then that I found out why Mike was so much bigger/better for his grade level. Mike was pretty old for being a freshman. He had an October birthday while mine November. Not much older you say, except the cutoff for starting kindergarten was Sept. 30. We had both missed that cutoff when we were little, except my parents enrolled me anyway. My birthday was Nov. of '84 while Mike's was Oct. of '83.....so I thought. We also found out Mike had failed 3rd grade at his private school and had to repeat. His birthday was actually in '82. He was 25 months older than me and we are competing at the same grade level. No wonder he was so much bigger. That slightly worked against him because the catholic athletic league had rules about age limits in their high school sports, so Mikey had to go play with us poor kids at the public school in high school

Freshman year, Mike makes the varsity as a backup QB and I am relegated to Junior Varsity. His ego really stepped up then. He was a freshman playing varsity in a town where football is king. In addition, he got his Drivers License and a new Camaro. Also, he was the only rich kid at our school. I envied, yet hated him so much. He was always reminding us of our place in the social world and constanly making quips about having to walk, ride bikes, go to Goodwill, etc..

The next summer Mike spent at various football and speed camps. Us poor kids just played ball. Sophmore year comes and Mike is the starting QB, but I am his best wide receiver. Mike truly was a great passer, but his athletic superiority over the rest of us is diminishing as we start to mature. We both get All State honors, finished the season 13-2 while losing in the state semi-finals. Mike is starting to get noticed as a potential college QB. His head gets bigger. Junior year comes and Mike tries to become a team leader, but his arrogance and constant belittling wears everyone down. I am now a solid 6' 3" and looking Mike eye to eye, and faster. We both get All- State honors again, but we finish 7-4 with an early exit in the playoffs. Mike is furious about the horrible players he is surrounded by. I am also starting to get some recruiting letters.

Spring of that school year, our long time football coach becomes ill and chooses to retire. The school district brings in a new coach with an entirely different offense. No more drop back passing, but rather a primitive form of what we see today in American college football. A mobile QB with lots of options. Prior to the summer, the team met with our new coach and he laid this out to us with some suggestion on how we can utilize the summer to prepare for our Senior season. Mike was super pissed about this all because it didn't suit his style of play. His family tried to sue the catholic athletic league from his former private school about their policies so he could play there, but that didn't work out. His family then tried to move to another city to play in their school, but they had missed a deadline. He was stuck. He spent the summer traveling to various football camps around the region to raise his collegiate status. These camps are essentially a college tryout in front of college coaches. I spent the summer with a plan to finally fucking beat Mike and become the QB. I had talked this over with our coach and he told me the best QB will play in the fall. I worked in the same field of our youth the entire summer with various other players practicing the playbook we had been given. Mike was trying to improve his footwork, while the rest of us were learning the playbook.

Summer ends and we begin fall practice. This was the first time I had seen Mike all summer, and he shit a brick when the coach told us to separate into groups and I walked into the QB group. I was now the bigger, stronger, and faster one. I had been practicing all summer, and I was had done so with our teammates. Given his status as a 2 time all-stater at QB, he was granted the starting role, but it was obvious who was better on the field. I easily played the role of wide receiver, but maintained the backup QB role. I was not happy about it, but it changed after we lost our first game. Mike didn't comprehend the playbook so well, was horrible at his option reads, and generally sucked. Our second game started with Mike getting crushed by a sack and fumbling that lead to a touchdown for the other team. He was not injured at all, but the head coach insisted he sit out a series to recover. I took over as QB and NEVER gave it up. I was pretty iffy passing those first few games, but the game started to become easier for me. We rolled off 14 straight wins until losing in the state finals. I was All State at QB, and Mike was a benchwarmer. All of his recruiting dried up.

I accepted full scholarship to the university down the road and got to play in front of crowds of 100,000. I had moved back to wide receiver and had a pretty solid career there. I was no where near NFL talent, but got to travel to bowl games and was generally the hometown hero as the poor boy who went to the big school and played on ESPN. Many of my friends from college played on Sundays (read NFL) and pretty sure one of those will be wearing a yellow jacket as an inductee to the Hall of Fame. I think most of these things would have happened had I not wanted to beat Mike at QB, but Mike's life would surely be different.

While not playing dried up his major Division I offers, he still had plenty of interest from smaller colleges. This did not sit well with him. He decided to replay his Sr. year at a private school several states away. His family sent him to a private boarding school in Pennsylvania which had no age limitation rules, where I understand he was absolutely miserable. Here, he was the poor kid, and almost 20 years old at that.....in high school. From there, he went on to play Junior College football, and ended up walking on to the directional school in that same state. He never played there, and returned to our hometown to take over his daddies car dealership.

I stayed in the same town as my university as a financial planner for a mentor I had met in college. His grandson had competed against me throughout our younger years, he had followed my entire athletic journey, and he was very proud of the local boy. He was a big name in the community and had taken me under his wing when I first stepped onto campus. John stepped away from the business a few years back and left me with his entire life's work on the condition I have a position for his grandkids/great grandkids should they choose that line of work and have a college degree.

I am not entirely sure what happened to Mike? He sold the dealership, but his house had gone into foreclosure. He was married with kids, but they moved. I hope he was humbled enough to no longer be a piece of shit, but perhaps I'll never know. You'll always be a piece of shit to me.

(source) (story by ProbstCO)

#prorevenge #by ProbstCO #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

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stattic-writes · 5 years

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My Dearest, My Dead

https://statticscribbles.tumblr.com/post/639099629845233664/masterlist

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#edgar evernever #evelyn evernever #Chad Michael Murray #Zoé De Grand Maison #riverdale imagine #riverdale cw #riverdale fandom #riverdale #riverdale season 3 #written

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slashersteve · 5 years

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Forgotten Love Letter 💌

pairing: Peter Parker/Gender Neutral Reader

summary: Peter discovers a letter you had intended to give him in freshman year of high school before you started dating.

warnings: mentions of blood

note: I got inspired by letter writing in numerous fics I’ve been running into and tatbilb ofc 💕 enjoy :)) first imagine ive written in over 2 decades, it’s been sitting in my drafts for that long too- now she’s out here in the world thank u thank u

•••

The school week was officially over, and you could finally relax over the weekend. It had been an exhausting week with numerous amount of homework (it’ll be this way in college get used to it now teachers said or claimed) You still had homework, but it wouldn’t be due until the end of the next week, so Saturday was officially for you.

Your boyfriend of a year had promised you two would hang out at your place and watch a movie, but after his nightly activities. You knew Peter was Spider-man, an internet sensation everyone was crazy about including yourself. The only way you found out is because Peter has never been great at keeping secrets. He saw you on the street one time, and just waved, “Hey (y/n)!” He yelled, completely forgetting he was Spider-Man and not another high school student who can nonchalantly say hi to their significant other. You were hella confused and had awkwardly waved back, recognizing his voice but not quite sure if you heard it right.

It took you all night before you had put two and two together. From those late nights he wouldn’t answer your texts or would answer your text, weird bruises and aches he sometimes had, and his ability to climb through your window despite the fire escape being farther away from your 7th floor bedroom. And his voice. You quickly got to work and went to school the next day wearing custom made Spider-Man gear to see if he catches on that you know and he looked completely touched by the fact you were wearing it.

“Did you- figure it out when I said hi to you?” Peter asked one day underneath the bleachers during lunch before Ned came to join you two. You had smirked and said, “I thought the point of the mask was for people to not know who you are, especially the ones you know.” He blushed of embarrassment and you kissed him on the cheek and said, “Secrets safe with me...” with a wink.

It was after that when Peter would come to you after nearly every night patrol he did, he’d come into your room in the full suit to tell you about his day, what he had done, what kind of crime he fought and other times he’d come when he’s injured. Those were the nights that worried you the most and made you lecture him on being much, much more careful. You didn’t care if he’d heal fast- he’s not invincible.

You hadn’t expected him in early today though, knowing he was spending the entire day with his Aunt May before going on “patrol”. So you spent most your Saturday laying sround, sleeping on and off and texting Peter. Your mom was out all day working and you didn’t expect your dad home till the next morning because he’d just left for the graveyard shift. You were bored out of your mind after every favorite movie was watched and decided to clean up the mess in your room you ignored the past week.

An hour of picking up and vacuuming later, you then decided to organize your closet. That’s when you found it- a medium sized white wooden jewelry box with flower and swan designs on it your mother had gifted to you when you were eight. After putting all your clothes back and some in a box, you sat down on your bed, legs crossed as you wound up the music and then opened the box, the melody of Swan Lake playing the moment you lifted the lid. You smiled at the swan figurine that slowly spun along to the music. A feeling of nostalgia bursted through you as you were reminded of being a child, humming the tune wherever you went and drawing swans randomly. Your eyes shifted to look at the contents inside, letting the music continue to play.

There was anything but jewelry in there, In there was instead a few notes you and your best friend from middle school used to give each other, filled with silly stuff and inside jokes. There was even old letters from a pen pal you had in 5th grade! Her name was Elizabeth and she was from the UK. About a half hour had passed with you reading through them when you eyes caught the light pink, folded paper that was at the very bottom. You picked it up, setting the others aside.

You flipped it around, not remembering what the letter was, what it contained or who it was for right until you saw the name “Peter Parker” with a heart around it. Instantly your eyes widened, the happy nostalgic memories being replaced with the cringey memory of that one afternoon on the bus ride home writing out your feelings for your new friend from Science class. You felt your cheeks heat up at the memory, and slowly small tidbits of what you wrote were coming back to you.

Just as you moved to open it, there was a sudden loud knock on your window. You jumped in your spot, the letter falling from your hand and you turned to see the man himself in his Spider-Man suit, waving at you and pointing at the window asking you to let him in. Instantly you relaxed and quickly shoved the letters back into the box and shut it, the room becoming silent.

Hopping to your feet, you went to unlock the window, saying, “You’re here early did May-“ but your words got caught in your throat when you saw he was cut up and bleeding. He pulled his mask off, his brown locks of short hair sticking up in nearly every direction.

“Peter what the hell!” You cried, gently touching around a bruise on his left cheek and then looking down at his cut up suit to see the damage. It was pretty bad, but he just gave a pained toothy smile that you glared at, already knowing what he was going to say.

“It’ll heal- I dunno about the suit- but ill heal I just need to get kisses from you and lay down for a while and I’ll be better in no time,” he said, pecking your lips then walking passed you. You were baffled as he had one hand over his side and used the other to grab a towel to put over your bed before sitting down on it. You’d honestly never seen him this hurt- you’ve seen bruises, mega painful looking bruises, and few cuts but this was just bad. His suit was cut up. What kind of people did he run into for them to do that? He noticed you staring and sighed, “I know what you’re thinking (y/n), but really I’m okay! You should’ve seen the other guys.” He joked but you crossed your arms not amused.

“Other guys? Looking at how you ended up- I can only assume you killed them,” you said in a serious tone, but he laughed like it was a joke. When he saw you weren’t laughing he let his head fall downwards for a moment.

“Can you not lecture me right now- this really hurts,” he motioned over his wounds and you sighed once more, hands falling to the side as he gave you those puppy dog eyes now. You didn’t say anything as you wandered over to your door and went to retrieve some things to clean his wounds. He may heal pretty fast, but you’ll be damned if he’s going to lay there all bloodied up and in pain. Peter watched you go and pushed himself more onto the bed, before swinging his feet up and knocking over the music box on your bed. He raised a brow, and grabbed it, realizing it was a music box when he saw the wound up in the back. He opened it after twisting it, smiling at the soft tune that began to play out like you had done. He curiously looked at its contents and he would’ve left it alone because it was clearly private if they were in a box, but his eyes caught sight of a “-rker” and when he moved the other papers he saw it was his name. Curiosity got the best of him as he pulled out the pink, folded sheet of paper and laughed softly when he saw it was his name written in your handwriting in the center of a near perfect looking heart.

He glanced at the door to see if you were coming back, and saw you still werent back so he gently opened it, seeing a full page of writing and a date at the top, Peter recognizing the year as freshman year, the year you transferred to Midtown High and the first year you met. He felt his heart warm up as he realized what this was.

It was a love letter.

Dear Peter Parker,

I know we’ve only just met, but every time I’m around you I feel butterflies in my stomach and my heart races 100 beats per minute. You’re very sweet, funny, and really smart and I couldn’t help but feel these feelings for you even if we’ve only known each other for a month or two. Everyday spent with you has been the best days of my life! I came to this school with no friends and dreaded having to have to do a partner project in biology. You were kind enough to sit by me and ask me to work with you. After that, I couldn’t stop myself from falling in love with you. I feel silly for writing a letter, but I’m not really good with words and I am not sure you feel the same. I’m currently writing on the bus ride home, hoping to god the person behind me isn’t looking over the seat. I would be so embarrassed! But- I really hope you do feel the same way, I’ll be crushed if you didn’t. Please don’t think I’m a fool for writing this letter

With love,

(y/n)

By the time Peter got to the end, the smile on his lips were so wide. He found this completely touching and adorable because it was dated about 3 months before you two even began to date towards the middle of freshman year. The fact that you already liked him so much before then also made him a bit giddy.

You had just gotten out from your parents bathroom, having been in there a while trying to find the first aid kit. When you walking back down the hall towards your bedroom you stopped when you heard Swan Lake.

“Oh...oh no-“ your heart dropped as you remember what was in that box and you ran into your room, eyes widen when you saw Peter holding the letter in his hands, “What are you doing?!” The music ended on queue and Peter snapped his head in your direction, seeing your horrified expression. You set the first aid kit onto the dresser near the door and reached to take the note away from him but he dodged your hand, “Give it! Please don’t read it! It’s from a year ago please Peter!” You begged, “I don’t even know what’s in it, it’s probably horrible!” Peter hadn’t said anything, just smiling playfully and keeping the note away from you as you leaned over him, still being aware of his injuries. Although he’d forgotten about his own injuries being distracted by your letter. He fell backwards and groaned in pain swinging his legs over the side of your bed. Your eyes widened.

“I already read it by the way,” Peter said, looking up at where you sat next to him, one leg crossed over the other, “I can’t believe you didn’t give it to me! We could’ve been dating way sooner!” You tilted your head, cheeks heating up as you snatched the letter from him and scanned over it quickly.

“Dear god no- this would’ve slowed things down! This is so- so bad,” you claimed and looked back at him with a major cringe on your face. Peter shook his head disagreeing with you, “I barely knew you- are you telling me you wouldn’t of been freaked out by this? It’s kind of stalkerish.”

“Nope!”

You shook your head in disbelief, and looked back down at the paper, embarrassed by the horrible confession of love whereas Peter was grinning like a child next to you.

“It’s cute that you’ve always had a crush on me,” he teased you, you became flushed and began to fold the sides of the paper nervously, “hey, hey why are you so embarrassed? I liked you too you know.” He admitted, pushing himself up now clenching his side lightly. You set the letter down and got the first aid kit.

“I don’t know why I’m so embarrassed,” you admitted as you took the same spot next to him, “We’re literally dating. And I feel like I can’t even look at you.”

“Well- you got what you wanted,” Peter said as he tapped on the spider logo on his, his suit loosing up and falling off his shoulders to reveal the bloody wounds. Normally when he had his shirt off you wouldn’t able to concentrate, no one should let the nerd demeanor throw them off, he was pretty built and it was nice. The wounds were your main focus, along with that embarrassing letter though, there was no time to ogle.

“Oh yeah?” You asked, a smirk on your lips as you got out the supplies, “And what was it I wanted?”

“For me to return your feelings, thus us beginning to date, you got it all!” he explained, wincing when you began to clean around his wounds, “Why did you never give me the letter? It was really sweet...” he said in a strain voice, you pursed your lips together and looked at him.

“I don’t know, I remember coming home that day and just setting it into the music box and never letting it see the light of day again.”

“There must’ve been a- ow,” he closed his eyes and bit his bottom lip and you seized cleaning one of the bigger wounds, looking at him with a sorry look, “a reason!” You licked your lip as you began to think back to that day, and it suddenly hit you. You laughed sadly.

“The next day, I ran into this girl and she was crying. And I asked her what was wrong and she said that she sent a long text to her crush about how much she liked him and he completely ignored her, and that he wouldn’t talk to her,” you explained, Peter frowned, “So as you can tell...that really discouraged me.”

“What a damn jerk,” Peter said raising a brow, “I wouldn’t of done that to you, I mean- look at us now-“

“Me cleaning up your wounds after a year of dating?” You chirped and he smiled fondly.

“Well- we could be doing more!” He teased and wiggled his eyebrows and you rolled your eyes, “Woah! I meant watching a movie together and cuddling! What were you thinking?”

“There will be no cuddling because you’re hurt,” you gestured to his wounds and he scoffed and put out his bottom lip. You continued to clean up in wounds in silence, suppressing that smile on your lips.

When he was all clean and bandaged up, you dug into your extra clothes and handed him a pair of sweatpants and then gave him one of your large sweatshirts you wore in the colder weather. You helped him get it on, pulling the sweatshirt gently over his back and stomach. He wasn’t hiding the fact that it hurt, and you pat the spot next to you.

“Thought we were going to watch a movie,” he said, crawling next to you onto your bed and settling down facing you, propping his head up with his right arm. You shook your head.

“M’ kind of tired,” you mumbled, fluffing your pillow. Peter blinked, and noticed that he was pretty tired too, Aunt May knew he was going over to your place, so sleeping over wouldn’t be the worst thing. He leaned over, catching your lips into a kiss and with a cheeky grin he said, “Thank you for taking care of me (y/n), I don’t know what I’d do without you. Everyday spent with you has been the best days of my life and I can’t wait for more!” Your eyes widen and you flicked him in the shoulder as he laughed loudly, falling into his back. You nuzzled your head into his arm, not wanting to lay on him due to his injuries.

“Everything in that letter was true by the way, Peter.” You said, closing your eyes. Peters eyes were already closed, but there was a smile on lips before both of you fell asleep.

#peter parker imagine #peter parker #spider man #peter parker x reader #peter parker x gender neutral reader #spider-man x reader #spider man imagine #my imagines #mcu imagines #leslie writes imagines again #marvel imagines #enjoyyyyyyyy

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thehappymessproject · 5 years

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81/100 - Giving ourselves focus and love by choosing one word for the year

This is very exciting for me to write about : I’ve never really done it.

A little bit more than five years ago, I just had discovered the incredible work of Dr. Brene Brown on vulnerability and courage, and it simply blew my mind. I felt like I was reading about one of the most important things I could ever educate myself on.

The books and her TED talks already had changed my daily life in subtle touches, but I wanted more. I also knew I needed more. I was afraid to forget about it in the next few months and hated the thought. So, I took some time to reflect, and over a couple of weeks, came to a big decision (especially for me who used to be commitment phobic in so many ways).

I would spend a year learning courage.

It became one of the most exciting years of my life. For me, learning how to be brave was essentially about saying yes to a lot of things I would have usually say no to out of fear, and no to a lot of things that would bring me comfort in the moment, but preventing me to do things that really mattered to me in the long run.

I tried out a lot of activities I had never tried, but felt curious about like climbing, sewing, baking pastries...

I paid a lot of attention to those moments where I would feel afraid, ashamed or uncomfortable, and pushed myself to be brave in my way of dealing with them.

Choosing to tell a friend that I was feeling hurt and set a boundary rather than silencing myself in hope it doesn’t happen anymore.

When really down, channelling more energy to do anything that would bring myself self-loving comfort rather numbing comfort.

Breaking off relationships that felt depleting to me.

It was a tiring year, sure. But it was also one of the most empowering ones. Each time I would choose the brave path instead of the comfortable one, I would feel stronger and more centred. Embodying the experience of bravery, training those courage muscles.

I realised at the end of the year, when I was feeling really sad about seeing what I called my brave year coming to a year, that I didn’t want to give it up, but I also didn’t want to repeat it as is either. I also noticed that overall, being brave for me had a lot to do with exploring my creativity.

So I decided to make the next year my creative year. I had so much fun!

I started taking way more photos, tried to learn guitar and piano for a while, spent a few months sewing like a crazy person, I wrote more that year than in the decade before, and towards the third trimester of my year devoted to creativity, started to paint with watercolours and do the lettering you can now see on my artsy Instagram account.

Both activities were those bringing me the most joy while allowing me to let my guard down : when painting, I was less attacked by the voices in my head trying to bring me down and discourage me. (ah, the joy of defence mechanisms bullying us...) I was finding more easily ways to bypass them than in any other setting.

I noticed that creating (and doing anything that mattered to me in my life) was only possible for me when I would take good care of myself. When I would commit to loving myself everyday by showing up. But self-care was so hard for me...

So... Yeah you guessed it, I took my practice to a new ground by declaring the following year my self-care year.

I had just discovered the existence of the Find what feels good channel on Youtube a few weeks before, I had ended my creative year with The artist’s way, a 8 weeks program using Julia Cameron’s wonderful book to discover or recover our inner artist, which had taught me how to journal in a way that would connect myself to my heart better than ever. And I had dabbled for a few years on and off with meditation. I had all the tools lying before me already.

As often when we live an intentional life, the Universe (or call it luck if you’re more comfortable) was helping in subtle ways that can only be noticed when we pay attention to the opportunities we are presented with, and allow ourselves to take them.

So I did just that. I finally found the courage to take better care of myself and making it a priority. That year was full of softness and whole heartedness. It felt like discovering the essence of who I was.

Since I was struggling with commitment (still), I focused on one self-loving activity at the time. A few weeks mostly meditating. A few weeks mostly doing yoga. A few weeks getting back to journaling. I thought I could choose which activity I would keep, but realised they all were giving me so much, and yet so differently that I wanted to keep them all.

I would still create more and more, and take my work as a psychologist to another level, and was struggling to make everything fit in my daily time. Now that I knew better what kind of life I wanted, I felt stuck at making it work as a whole.

So I dedicated last year to finding Balance. I loved it so much. It was like deepening everything I had built in the previous three years. The courage, the creative energy and the love.

It taught me how to be more flexible and finding way to make things stick, one step at a time, one day at a time and to honour my pace. I set up a few challenges to help on the way. Strengthened my morning routine that felt easier and more necessary than an evening one (currently working on that).

I explored how my love for art, psychology and writing could be intertwined. It felt like coming home to myself.

This “year” actually took a little bit more time. I used to choose my word of the year at the end of summer. But last September, I felt stuck. I had just moved to the other side of the globe (another marvellous consequence of all that personal inner journey), felt completely thrown out of balance and quite depleted.

Then, a few weeks ago, after a few months finding my footing back, it was suddenly obvious. What I struggled with and had to practice the most lately was letting go : finding ways to trust myself, my intuition and the process. I’d say in short : trusting the universe and finding the flow.

So this year will be my year of flow.

I started by deciding that my practice could now fit better at the beginning of the year rather the school year, the end of the year being a perfect time to reflect and gather our bearings, taking stock.

When I’m down, finding flow is about giving myself the time and space necessary to heal, letting go of the shoulds and musts.

When I’m really happy, it’s more about finding pace, not over doing it.

It is already teaching me how to let go of things, people and spaces that were really important at a time, but became depleting over time. I have never ever felt as free and can’t wait to see more of what this year is going to teach me.

Choosing one word to devote every year to has with no doubt changed my whole life from the inside out. Like a soothing lighthouse in the dark, it gives me a focus point to always rely on.

I am never feeling like time passed by without my awareness anymore, being intentional makes time pass more slowly and mindfully. It is helping me to remind myself over and over what is important, and what gets in the way and distract me. It is teaching me more about myself than I ever felt possible. It is allowing me to create the life I really want.

If reading that essay inspired you to find your own word, I would love nothing more than to know which one you chose and maybe why f you would feel comfortable sharing.

Here are a few questions that can help to start : What are you feeling like you lack of? What would your ideal 2019 be devoted to? What is preventing you from living your best life right now?

Write your answers down and any word that come up too : it will help you a lot to make it real, tangible. The right one for you will spark something in your body when you write it or if you start making art around it. Let yourself feel it, and trust it. Your heart knows.

See you soon, Love, L.

#intention #meaningful #personal #personal journey #focus #100 days project #100 days of writing #the happy mess project #psychologist #counselling #therapist #bravery #creativity #self learning #self care #balance

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thanks-for-understanding · 5 years

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Thought you were just passing through.

When i met you, just under two years ago, i was in the worst part of my life i had experienced yet. I was actively destroying myself, trying to dismantle months and years of abuse and mindwashing from my dad and ex boyfriends. I was also pushing memories of my best friend away, who had died.

I had shut down, an empty husk of someone who drew, wrote, and made music constantly. My eyes had sunken and i never ate, i was paler than the moon at dusk. So when we met in March time, i thought nothing of it. I thought; "he'll just need my help for English and then i'll go, i won't stay, he won't stay." And for two months, i didn't step away from that.

I pushed you away, scared of how much i began to like you. I was, as you say... helpless. Just like Eliza, when you walked in to any room my heart went boom. Every single time.

You had this charisma, this earnest and honest charisma that i loved. Your face would light up when you talked and you lived in a world i desperately wanted to join you in.

After that, we began to text a lot, i had 21 thousand questions. Writing letters, almost. I didn't realise, at the time, i was falling in love with the boy i'd love for the rest of my life.

At the time, i felt like Hamilton. The only offerable things i had at the time were my brain, and my academic achievements. You took me, Hamilton; Someone fiercely independent but on a crusade to die for a cause (or lack there of) and turned me into Eliza; Soft and weighted; warm and full of hope.

I didn't expect you to stay around me long, but time spent together only increased from there on in. That night truly was a blur and i went home cradling my heart, wanting to give it to you right there and then.

A year and so many months later, not much has changed between us, but almost everything has too. I've never felt more comfortable and at ease around someone, nor have i ever felt safer or happier.

Ive never loved like this before, never mind been lucky enough to love someone like you; intelligent, talented, unforgivably hopeful and determined. There's a fire in you that if our kids get a lick of, the world will be lucky.

you were always enough, more than i ever thought i deserved. But now, with this fear of tomorrow and this overwhelming want to kill myself, i realise i'd be throwing away someone i was lucky enough to even know.

The thing is, i love you, and i cant throw that or you away. You don't deserve that.

I know things are tough right now and we can't compete with all that, but i'd still give you ten thousand reasons to keep me around.

A love struck Romeo says, "you and me babe, how about it?" (talking about marriage, you've actually said that to me, (i loved it)), and i'll tell you the answer to your question that'll plan the rest of our lives; yes.

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richrubies · 6 years

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Part IV: M is for Making Up

Warning: trash rap lyrics by me / inaccurate representation of min yoongi / lots to read - click a letter in order to go to the next chapter

E N E You are here -> M I E S

It had been over a month since the incident with Min Yoongi, and thanks to the paparazzi, more articles had been released after photos of you at the after-party had been released, and the slight bruising of your body could be seen.

You hadn’t confided in the boys about what had happened, but you really didn’t have too. They were smart enough to know that you’d argued with Min Yoongi, and they were smart enough to figure out how you got the bruises.

The company had been in an uproar over it, even Kiseok had wanted to take Min Yoongi to court, but you’d decided against it. It would only cause your label to be surrounded by press, and with everyone already working towards their own tours, you didn’t want to mess up the company’s flow.

You had been warned, however, by all of your protective friends, ‘If he does it again, beat his ass. Then tell us straight away so that we can beat him too!’

Currently, you were sitting in a meeting with Bang Shi-Hyuk, who had heard about Min Yoongi’s behaviour and had wanted to apologize on his behalf.

‘You were one of my favourite contestants,’ Shi-Hyuk tells you as he sipped at the tea you’d made for him, ‘I was surprised when the judges didn’t vote for you.’

You nodded, ‘Me too,’ you tell him honestly, ‘But there’s nothing that can be done now.’

Shi-Hyuk nodded at your brazen response and set his cup down, looking around your private studio. The door swung open and Sunghwa and Kiseok both walked in to listen in as Shi-Hyuk states, ‘But I didn’t come to talk about the old days. I know there is a lot of angst between your label and Yoongi. Before, it wasn’t a huge deal but no–,’

‘What do you mean it wasn’t a huge deal?’ you ask with a raised eyebrow as you sat back and crossed your arms, ‘Are you talking about it not being a big deal when it was only me who was affected by it?’

Flustered, Shi-Hyuk struggled to come up with a response to your harsh fact. It was true. Now that you had bitten back at Min Yoongi, the press had begun to love the tension and had reported on it non-stop. Even worse was the speculation of the bruises you’d gained at the party after last being seen with BTS’ spitfire rapper.

‘What is it that you want?’ you ask, ‘A reconciliation?’

From the way that Shi-Hyuk sat in silence, you knew you’d hit the nail on the head.

Kiseok spoke up, ‘That bastard deserves to be hounded by the press. We won’t go through with whatever bullshit idea you have.’

Shi-Hyuk nodded with a sigh, ‘I understand that there’s a lot of heat between you two, but why should it affect the rest of his group members? They’re under just as much fire right now.’

‘You should have thought of that before you let your rapper release a dis track about our Y/N. You’re just as much to blame for this as he is,’ Sunghwa says with a frown as he leaned against the door frame.

‘Let’s just think about it, huh? Even if you continue to hate each other behind closed doors, that’s fine. I just want it to be kept out of the public eye before it damages the rest of the members. You must want the same thing for your own team.’

You could see Kiseok ready to lurch with another one of his rants about Min Yoongi and how the articles have never bothered your label before, when you stated; ‘Fine. Let me think about it and get back to you.’

Thanking you, Shi-Hyuk took his leave moments later whilst you slumped back in your chair, listening to Kiseok’s angry protest towards the idea of collaborating.

No matter how much the boys would protest against settling with Big Hit, or how much they told you that the tension between the two labels didn’t affect them, you knew otherwise.

The best solution was to settle the feud and protect the same people who had always protected you.

‘Let’s do it,’ you tell Kiseok quietly, ‘Let’s just settle and get this over with.’

I can handle Min Yoongi, you thought as you ignored Sunghwa’s protest in the background, 파이팅!

~*~

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Jay asked for the millionth time as you prepped your studio, cleaning the dust that had managed to reach your panel.

‘What else can I do, 형님?’ you ask as you cleaned, ‘If it keeps our business out of the eyes of the media, I’m all for it. And Shi-Hyuk is right. Our members are affected by it is well. I don’t want to get in the way of everyone else because of a piece of trash like Min Yoongi.’

‘Still,’ he tells you as he moves to plug in your neon lights, lighting up the room with a pink glow that emitted from your sign ‘Strength and Passion’.

‘It’s okay,’ you tell him, ‘I’d rather do this than have everything about our feud out in the public.’

‘If he lays a hand on you, I swear I’l–‘

‘You’ll what?’ Min Yoongi asks from the door of your studio, behind him stood one of the groups manager’s Se-Jin and CEO Bang himself.

‘I’ll beat your ass,’ Jay tells him confidently and without hesitation.

Se-Jin clears his throat awkwardly while you bow and greet him and Shi-Hyuk, clearing the tension as you say, ‘Welcome to AOMG.’

Min Yoongi says nothing as he enters the room, kicking off his shoes in the process and moving over to the long bench space that served as a desk.

~*~

You’d read over the lyrics many times since agreeing to collaborate on a song, placing your own ideas and input on to the paper. It was originally written by Min Yoongi, so you had expected he would have resistance to changes, once you two actually sat down and read over the lyrics together.

‘You can’t just change someone’s artistic work!’ Min Yoongi argues heatedly whilst you sighed in frustration.

The day had not gone well at all – you’d spent the two hours talking to Min Yoongi through his manager, only being graced with his comments when they were degrading your studio and your style of music.

You had a headache from hell just from putting up with him, and now that he was currently sulking over his lyrics being altered, you’d finally had enough, ‘Why are you such a child? Are you really twenty-five?’

‘Yah!’

‘What?’ you retaliate, ‘Your lyrics are good,’ you tell him with honesty, ‘But they don’t suit what we’re trying to do here! You can’t release a reconciliation song with one person rapping about their hatred for the other!’

‘Well what do you suggest? Huh? Like you’d have anything better!’ Min Yoongi argues, equally as frustrated, not seeing why the song had to have a meaning.

You were trying to snub out the articles and rumours about your beef, so what did it matter what you sung? As long as it was done together, the public would eat it up like it was their first meal in years.

‘Let’s start something from scratch,’ you tell him, rubbing your temples, ‘Something genuine. If it’s not genuine, no one will believe that we’ve finished feuding.’

It took hours, just to complete a quarter of the lyrical sheet, and by time Min Yoongi left, you were exhausted and regretful of ever having agreed to do the song, ‘It was easier having beef with him,’ you complain to the boys who were all gathered in the common room, sitting around and eating pizza.

‘You can hate the guy, but you can’t deny the fact that he has talent when it comes to rapping,’ Jukyung says with a mouth full of food.

‘I don’t hate him,’ you say as you pick up a piece of pizza, with all of the guys turning to look at you like you were crazy after stating so.

‘It’s him who hates me. I just have a strong dislike for him considering he’s always acted like an asshole towards me.’

‘You don’t hate him, even after all you’ve been through?’ Sunghwa asks.

‘Not really. It’s what brought me home to AOMG,’ you tell them cheesily as you snuggled your way between Hyukwoo and Kiseok as the men in the room cooed at you.

~*~

Min Yoongi turning up at your studio became a normal thing over the next week – he’d come unannounced and would stay until late as you both worked on beats, still not agreeing on the lyrics. Your conversations had upgraded from grunts and one-word replies, to small sentences, which was an improvement. Even better was the fact that Manager Se-Jin had trusted you both to sit a room without killing one another, which was even more of an improvement.

It was late in the evening when Jay knocked on the door and brought in food; he was like a mother hen that you were eternally grateful for.

‘That’s it?’ Min Yoongi questions at the one portion that Jay had brought for you.

Jay rolled his eyes, ‘Why would I buy you anything?’

‘Jay-형님 …’ you complain as they bickered, ‘I love you, but please don’t start this now. We’re working at a good pace right now.’

‘Fine,’ Jay shrugs as he backs off, ‘Let me know if you need anything,’ he says as he ruffles your hair for good measure before leaving the room. You pushed the food aside and continued to work on your computer. Or at least you tried to, but the sound of Min Yoongi’s stomach growling caused you to stop moments later with a sigh.

He’d gone back to being stoic as he aggressively scribbled on a paper, ignoring the fact that he was hungry. Letting out a sigh at his stubborn attitude, you tentatively opened the container to find your favourite dish from the local Japanese ramen house down the street from AOMG.

Grabbing the wooden chopsticks, you placed them into the bowl and placed it beside Min Yoongi, ‘Eat it. You’re probably hungrier than I am.’

‘Forget it,’ he grumbles, sour from Jay’s treatment.

‘Why do you have to fight me with everything?’ you ask exasperated, as you grabbed the lid of the container and moved to cover the bowl, ‘Jesus Christ, you can’t just say thank you and eat what I give you?’

Min Yoongi looked up at you in surprise as you ranted, your cheeks flushed red, embarrassed by the rejection of your kind offer.

Without thinking, Min Yoongi grabbed at the hand that was covering the container and muttered, ‘Sorry. Thank you for the food.’

You froze at his action and watched as he gently placed your hand to the side and took the container, reopening it before grabbing the chopsticks.

Taking a step back, you watched as he ate, shocked at the turn of events.

‘Stop staring at me,’ Min Yoongi says as he slurps at the noodles, not taking his eyes away from his own screen, causing you to blush and turn away from him, flustered.

You had been focusing on your computer when you felt a tug on your shirt. Looking at Min Yoongi who pushed the container towards you, you raised an eyebrow at the half-eaten food, confused.

Clearing his throat awkwardly, he told you, ‘You need to eat as well.’

You nodded, unsure of how to act. This kind of behaviour was weird for the both of you. As you pulled the container closer, Min Yoong rubbed at the back of his neck and asked, ‘Have you got another pair of chopsticks to eat with?’

‘I don’t need them,’ you tell him with a shrug, grabbing the pair he’d just used and digging into the food, much to his surprise. Eating happily, you continued to work, not noticing the way Min Yoongi observed you with interest.

When did she become so pretty? He wondered, taking in your messy hair and baggy hoodie and track pants, how is she so pretty, even in the worst of clothes?

~*~

Masterlist

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overbakedone · 6 years

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this is the first time i've ever started writing my thoughts and feelings anywhere before. this is not easy.

instead of writing things and then deleting it all because its not good enough or it sounds stupid i'm just going to write it now and stop backspacing. i guess i should start with where i am in life right now so there is some perspective.

im 25, im a bakers apprentice, i live with my parents, i have a girlfriend, lets call her ‘C’ who for the first time feels right to me despite everything, i barely have any friends, they don't ever want to see me, i don't have much time in my life right now, i work all night and struggle to fit sleep into my schedule. but things are really the best they have ever been for me. i just started an AFL 9′s competition, weird i usually have no confidence going into these things and will either quit after the first practice or not even show up, i really kinda enjoyed it and am excited for next week.

i've wanted to start writing anything for a few months now, i guess now i have some time. time is so fucked up, i wish there was more of it, i wish i could sleep without wasting my day, i wish i didn't have to compromise sleep for everything but i do, i guess its part of being a baker, its a job i am loving and i think i've found my life passion but it has its ups and downs. my partner C expects a lot of my time i guess, she can be very needy at times, demanding almost, sometimes i feel pressured by her to sacrifice my sleep, personal plans and hobbies and interests for her, but i know what she feels, she wants the same thing i do. she has problems making friends, or keeping friends, she feels isolated and alone, and she wants my companionship, and i want that too and despite anything i feel in the moment i always feel happy about her at the end of the day.

i should be grateful for the relationship i am in right now, i really should be grateful for a lot of stuff, my parents for allowing me to stay here still, being so supportive and also allowing and accepting of me and really tolerant of the shit i do. ok so i do smoke week every day right so that's already something to do at home that's difficult, i'm pretty sure they know and don't care or even agree that my life has been better since i started smoking, fuck i used to be on antidepressants, i took one every day at a certain time, it made me feel a bit better, ok sounds just like smoking right, expect when i didn't take this pill i got nausea, headaches, severe episodes of depression, i couldn't eat my appetite was so fucked up i was eating one meal a day and it was like a piece of bread or takeaway food. since the smoking started i've found some actual passion in life, i don't feel like a useless number anymore i guess.

one of the things on my mind always is my friends, since i was in highschool i havent really had a group of friends, i feel like i am a social person but then when it comes to it i feel like i just get burned. a lot of my old friends turned out to be secretly hating me and not wanting me around, some sort of pity friendship, i was an asshole in my time and honestly was not a good friend myself, do you pay for the dumb shit you do as a teenager, the people you fuck over go from your life completely yet new people you meet do the same things to you like they know. i had/have a long term best friend, J, we had been mates for years, we worked at my old job dominoes together for a bit, and kinda hung out a few times, but not until we got into PC gaming together did we form a bond. after that we would chat every day, play games together, watch the footy together, go places even though he lived across the city from me. one thing that changed massively in my life was i quit drinking alcohol, and then i felt like all my friends both disagree with my choice and resent me for it, like for some reason i have to take the same drugs they are taking at that time to be their friends. so J has just grown more and more distant, i get that we are older now, we both have partners, jobs that take a lot of our time, but then when we hang out or talk he seems disinterested, more interested with his friends that i introduced him to (from our discord server) and has seemingly replaced me, none of these guys i really like at all, in fact the only one of the new group i like is the one girl in it because she actually has interesting things to say.

fuck that was a paragraph, i guess i should talk about alcohol.

alcohol has fucked up my life, i cant repair the mistakes and stupid things i did while drinking alcohol, so they are there, i guess its just talking about it left. to start off, when i drink alcohol i have a hard time finding my limit, i feel like i swing from nothing to completely blacked out, puking, sobbing and basically hating myself very quick, i feel sick for days after drinking, barely able to eat, leave bed, move, i feel so nauseous and tired, its so fucked up what it does to your body, but oh your mind is even worse. i've broken off relationships, cheated, threatened people, gotten into fights, brawls, got my arm broken, hurt myself repeatedly, gotten arrested and a criminal record that may prevent me from going to canada next year, and is currently delaying booking flights, ive missed work, shown up drunk same clothes no shower to work, but the main thing that alcohol does to me is makes me sad. alcohol makes me so fucking sad, it makes me reach into the deepest pits i can think of and brings out all the emotions that are in there, my ex being the main one. every time i used to drink id think of her, call her, text her, go on her facebook, look up her instagram her twitter, fuck it drive my car to her house to see if her cars there like that does anything or means anything just fucking alcohol is so stupid. i never want to feel like that again, i never want to sabotage my life, sabotage and self destruct my relationships, but i guess losing my friends is the thing i have to take in consideration. australia is a fucked up place, where drinking heavily is the social norm and if you don't get fucked up or even have a beer with mates you're a loser.

i just want a deep connection with my friends. when i was in newcastle with my partner, i met her friends there that she had been living with, despite the fucked up things that happened to her there, she lost a lot of friends herself and a long time friend, had trouble finding new ones, trouble fitting in, the friends she had there were the most honest and truly welcoming, connecting people ive met, and i miss that. i miss having a friend you can just, go over to their place, sit around for 3-4 hours talking shit, laughing, listening to music, relaxing and sharing stories and shit. weird that people can have such an effect on you in a short time. the life i live here is full of making plans, only for them to be cancelled, inviting friends over, for nobody to show up, cancelled plans all the fucking time, i've never been asked to just come over and chill, never its always some group thing that i'm invited to as well. i even try talking to them about this, i told a group of girl friends i have, i miss you all and haven't seen you in so long, we need to have a casual hangout, and the message was almost completely ignored, i asked them all to come to mind to watch the grand final, the house was free, i got a big projector screen, big comfy couch, live central right in the middle of everyone, nobody even replied or brought it up again, yet the second someone else that lives in the far corners of perth brought it up everyone started chatting about their plan to go. so if that's not my friends making it obvious they don't want to see me, they only include me then thats fucked up. i don't know what to say, this happens all the time, my 21st birthday i invited 65 people, and less than 15 people showed up. its hard to keep trying, always trying, i always try to make social events, i always ask friends what they are doing, when they can see me, make plans, they get cancelled, they are busy, they say they're coming then don't show up, most of the time i never hear a word too, they just dont show and don't even apologize, is that a fair thing to do, yeah sometimes i dont go to my friends events, i'm too fucking tired or just don't feel like going, somethings come up, i tell them straight away i cant make it i'm sorry this has come up, yet i don't get the same courtesy.

am i an unlikable person

the guys at work seem to like me, so i started a baking apprenticeship, basically i started watching great british bake off and picked it up as a hobby, making cakes and stuff, actually i should go back. so i used to work in some shitty small software company in the city, 9-5, peak hour traffic, office drama, workplace bullies, understaffed, overworked, red tape and bullshit everywhere, i quit after 2.5 years for mental health reasons, i made a lot of money but had to move on, so i spent a year off , it was only supposed to be a few months, go on a holiday road trip with my then partner, S, she broke up with me via a text message right after eagles lost to melbourne at home, basically the footy game was more disappointing, we had a shit relationship, i think i resented her, i cheated on her, yeah i'm an awful person and deserve everything, she was an emotionally manipulative person, terrified of her own body and sex, tried to dominate my life and change me, im glad we broke up. so i stayed unemployed for a long time, over a year, barely looking, until i found this baking apprenticeship, not only did i apply for the job and write a completely custom cover letter (im so fucking lazy i usually close a job application the second it requires anything more than an apply button) AND i called back a few weeks later when i heard nothing, well turns out that call landed me the job, the apprentice they hired instead of me was useless, had no passion and was a slow worker. so i got the job, and basically have been killing it ever since, i get a lot of praise at work (lots of criticism too) baking is one of those things that takes time, its all about time, so i got a lot to learn but i am actually confident once in my life, holy shit i have a job i like and am good at. is this the dream?> lol

so today i started writing my feelings down, and its kinda felt good, but i'm exhausted now, and my fingers hurt, so this is the end of my first post, i hope nobody reads it, its really just for me but i don't know.

thanks for listening i guess

#self #baking #life #thoughts

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patricia-von-arundel · 6 years

Text

The Boarding House AU: Elsa & University

Rating: T

Summary: Shardsverse AU. After escaping a death sentence, and forced to come to terms with the idea that she can never return to Arendelle nor see Anna again, Elsa finds herself in the unexpected position of sharing a room with a poverty-stricken young scholar of magic…

Part I: Elsa & Alarik | Part II: Elsa & Christmas | Part III: Elsa & Romance Novels (I) | Part IV: Elsa & Romance Novels (II)

Elsa was doing better - and worse. And Alarik was at a loss.

The nightmares came every few nights, and he could see her terror, her desperation, but despite his own similar nighttime tortures - less frequent now, but far from extinct - he didn’t know how to help her.

He had always placed his faith in books, evidence, results - until the frightened young queen of Arendelle had arrived, and suddenly the variables were beyond his control. He just wanted to help her.

He wanted to protect her. To once, just once, not fail to do so.

But he had no right to do so. What he needed to do was find a better place for her - safer, more secure, cleaner and neater.

Until then, he instead took to visiting Mrs. Gustavsson’s bakery on the way home from work, in hopes they had stale chocolate croissants, and adding a few more drops of water to his ink, or blowing out the lights an hour earlier. Sometimes, he was lucky enough to find only Agne behind the counter in the bakery.

She had asked him, the first time he went in, “For the pretty young lady with gloves but no cloak?”

Alarik felt his face redden, but he nodded. “Elsa. Her name is Elsa.”

“A pretty name, too,” Agne said, and Alarik was glad his hair covered his ears as the flush moved north. But she might have seen anyway, when she leaned close to whisper, “Don’t tell Mother.” And she slipped another croissant in before tying the paper closed.

“Thank you,” Alarik said, with all the warmth he could infuse into a murmur.

And when Elsa whimpered and fought in the night, pulling him from work or from sleep, he lit a lamp, called her name until she found her way to consciousness - never touching - and hold out a croissant. She always took it, and usually managed a shaky smile.

It was more than enough.

They rarely spoke during those times. He did try - an awkward, uncomfortable, “Do you want to talk about it?”

But she shook her head. “No. But... thank you.”

He didn’t know what to do.

She didn’t complain, even when circumstances kept him late, running home with bread under one arm, whatever he could find that was cheap and filling under the other. She never complained about the food, the long days spent cooped up in cold silence, or about anything at all. he almost believed she feared what would happen if she dared to question the circumstances of her life - and considering what had happened when she had tried flee the role into which she had been born, such fears were understandable.

He understood far better than he was yet prepared to let her know. But for now, it seemed cruel to ask her to share that burden - he had agreed to take hers, with no understanding that she would do the same with his. And as January dragged on, and he saw some tiny, almost incidental improvements, it seemed quiet had been the best course of action.

The result of her frightened flight, the first day he had left her, seemed to be a reluctance to go out at all without immediate permission, no matter how many times he said it was not necessary, or however many piles of skilling coins he tried to leave for her use. So he took to coming home for lunch when he could - two days a week, at most three - to make sure she had a midday meal, and never mind how enticing was the enormous, roaring fires of the university reading rooms. She smiled now, usually, to see him, and that was a kind of warmth, too.

But better still, after her brave trip out, alone, into the blizzard, she sometimes asked - offered? - to do the same again. But she only did so if he was there when she left, and when she came back. He certainly wasn’t going to argue - it was frigid outside, the streets slick with ice - besides it being a sign he took as hopeful.

It had been a long time since he’d been responsible for someone, and never for someone as fragile and brittle as Elsa. But even he could see the pride in her eyes when she managed things for herself - or even better, for both of them. He liked seeing it.

She has inclination to push herself to exhaustion, her father had once written. She believes there is control in perfection, despite the impossibility of the latter.

In the years since - maybe just in the time from July to December, a scant few months - some part of her had cracked and fallen to fragments. If a trip to the shops might begin to glue her back together, if she could see herself accomplished in buying bread or a bottle of milk, then it became his job to encourage her. If she wanted perfection, let her be perfectly free.

By mid-January, she even sometimes returned with clear pride at finding a better deal than he had anticipated: “I know you said chicken was on special, but the herring was even better, for how much you get at the same price.”

And he wondered if he would ever stop being amazing by some of the things she did, completely unconsciously. “You worked that out on the spot?”

She looked to the side, but allowed herself to smile. “I’ve always been good at arithmetic. Poor Anna hated it.”

The herring lasted three days, where the chicken might have gotten them through two meals, and no more. He didn’t have to water down his ink that week, and there was enough left to buy her two small squares of chocolate on his way home.

“For helping me,” he said, self-conscious as he gave it to her.

“What?”

“The herring. I always just buy what’s most obviously cheap. But that... I had a little left over.”

“Really?” She took the chocolate - but instead of eating it, she placed it very carefully, still in its tissue-paper wrapping, on her tiny pile of personal belongings. There was half a chocolate croissant there too, and he hoped it meant she was getting enough to eat.

“Really. Thank you.”

Again, she wouldn’t look at him, but her smile was almost sunny. “I’m glad. Especially because... herring’s my favorite.”

“Even better,” he said, then added, “I like herring, though cod’s always been my favorite.”

She went to the market for him the next Saturday, and was gone long enough that he grew concerned - but how could he hope to find her in all the crowded stalls and people? If she needed help, would she have the courage to ask?

But the memory sent a chill through him, deeper than the frigid air: she had asked for help, before, and had trusted blindly an utter stranger. She said she hadn’t, and of course she had the means to protect herself, and it had turned out fine, but he couldn’t let things happen to her as they had once happened to him. The circumstances had not been ideal, but still, he had chosen this life. Elsa had been forced into it.

And he would never forget Anna’s letter, the last line before she signed her name: All that I know to ask is that you find her a place of safety, where I cannot.

He watched out the window - the one he already thought of as Elsa’s window - and hated his inability to do as Anna had asked. This was not a place of safety - this was poverty and rot and despair. Elsa deserved a warm, dry room of her own, good food served on china plates, security and love.

None of those things could exist, could survive, in the world Alarik had chosen for himself.

He had to find her somewhere else to go.

Especially since he had been here, already, for over a year - and, dutifully paying off past debts as he was, there was no way to avoid a trail, receipts and notes and bank letterheads, that would eventually be followed. He was six months, perhaps a year, from paying all he owed. He thought - hoped - that it would be easier to disappear then; they would have to ask questions, risk getting some in return, and as long as he wasn’t an outright threat - which he had no intention of being, whatever certain others believed - it might be deemed safer to leave him be. And then, perhaps things could improve: more money. Secure lodging intended for the long-term. Wood for the fire and a pantry for food and shelves for his books.

There would be, for Elsa, what Anna had asked.

But if his debts took longer than anticipated to be paid? If they found him before then?

She had been here for a month, and every day had been a threat to her. It was time to do as Anna had asked.

She finally came back flushed and happy, oblivious, it seemed, to the almost two hours she had been gone, and she looked so unburdened that he swallowed the desire to demand explanation. He got it anyway - she had a paper-wrapped parcel, and unfolded it, smiling, almost grinning, to show several small cuts of fish. “Cod!” she said. “The man cutting fillets said usually the pet-meat man buys the ends, but he’d sell me half a pound. And I had enough left for an onion, and the boy gave me a potato for free!”

She was so proud of herself. And he was astonished, again, not just at a free potato, but at her clear knack for thinking quickly and spending well. It didn’t seem likely she had been taught it - it wouldn’t be part of training for a king’s daughter any more than it had been for a duke’s son. And she had shown a talent, already, far superior to his own.

And so he grinned back, sharing her thrill, and pleased himself that she had not only remembered what he liked, but found a way to get it. Cod-ends for day-old chocolate croissants: it was a trade he would take.

But it’s still time to send her away.

He didn’t say anything. Not yet. They ate cod and onion and potato, and he slept, in his pile of blankets on the floor, for once with a full stomach.

He considered his colleagues at the university carefully, trying to gauge them in a manner never necessary before: who could be trusted with Elsa?

Not those who, like him, were still early in their careers - though most came from wealthy families, with no lack of money whatever the university paid them, Elsa would be a trifle to their likes, a temporary adventure until they grew bored or were expected to marry some socially-approved girl of highborn status - not as highborn as Elsa, but that was now, of course, a moot point. Alarik was well aware of the scorn most of them felt for him - they had no idea of his own aristocratic birth, and would remain ignorant of it; his research brought enough risk without inviting more.

And, too, there was the concern of her magic - of who could be trusted to know about it. He was one of few in his field - physical science - who found the investigation of what many believed to be a dying phenomenon worthwhile. The Tsandskiyi retreated further and further from modern civilization, and considering how they were still viewed and treated, was it really any surprise? Alarik had gotten to work with a small population in the remote lands between Austria and Russia, but no others had ever been willing to speak to him. The tiny human population with magic - like Elsa - were rare, often living in careful solitude if they survived to adulthood, and almost as distrustful of those who expressed interest in their strange abilities as the rest of the world was of them. They were born in uneven waves, but still, finding them in his present circumstances was all but impossible. Since earning his doctorate, he had expanded his research, of necessity, examining the historical appearances of what was called magic - but even more, he considered cellular properties in more accessible subjects; plants, mostly.

Shards cells had appeared groundbreaking, attention-getting research but not so very long after, he and everyone else in his academic circles had yet to find an real value to or use for their discovery. He had earned his doctorate, and had, since, done whatever he could just to keep himself afloat. The older academics, he thought, felt something akin to pity, but the younger ones, with their comfortable allowances and sizable donations made as they presented themselves for doctoral consideration, looked at him with derision. Because who was he to them? A poor scholar, Chaucer’s Clerk, who had managed a momentary glory and so was afforded a reluctant place among them.

If he was fair, maybe they were not all like that - but he could see none of them agreeing to give Elsa a safe place to live, a place where her nightmares might subside and her smiles come from more than buying cast-off ends of fish. A place where her magic would not be her defining characteristic - and her chains.

His oldest colleagues were equally unlikely. They generally fell into two categories: those who doddered, monotonous, through the same material they had been teaching for decades, and those who had turned to zealots, paranoid and mad-eyed. And why would any of them, most of whom had adult children and grandchildren, agree to take on Elsa? She couldn’t pay for the lodging, and neither could Alarik. Anna might be able to help, but that would put both her and Elsa in greater danger.

That left him with those ten or twenty years into their careers. Some of them, too, had families of their own, but just as many did not. He also wondered, briefly, if Elsa might make a good nanny or tutor, but the magic might be an issue. Still, he broached the topic after dinner one night in early February:

“How do you feel about children?”

She was sitting on her usual perch by the window, watching night fall over the city, holding her cup of tea from dinner, though it must have long since grown cold. She placed it on the sill before turning to look at him with her eyebrows raised. “Children?”

“Do you... like them?”

For a long moment, she just stared at him. “I... haven’t spent much time around them.”

He pushed his hair back from his eyes, mostly just to have something to do. “No, of course not.”

“Why?”

“I’m... trying to, uh... find a better place for you. Better than here. I thought maybe...”

“Oh.” She looked down at her hands, folded now across her lap. Her silk gloves were torn and stained, but still she kept them on. “I’m not safe to be around children.”

“You’re not...” But he swallowed back the rest.

Still, she shook her head. “I’m not.” She was still staring down at her hands.

A few days later, around midday, he was called out of a lecture by a very nervous-looking boy he didn’t know: “Dr. Andresson wants to see you, sir.”

Dr. Andresson was the head of the physical sciences department - Alarik had spoken to him perhaps twice in all the time he had been here. Alarik shared “office” space with three others in a tiny, windowless room; Dr. Andresson had a long, modern office, a secretary in the anteroom. That secretary looked curiously flushed as he looked up at Alarik and said, “Dr. Geatland? They’re just in there.”

He didn’t have any idea what to expect on the other side of the heavy door, but it certainly would not have been Elsa. She was on the straight-backed chair in the corner, her hands locked tightly together - and the room was noticeably chilly despite the fire. She glanced up and quickly down again, but even that was enough that he saw the fear in her eyes.

Dr. Andresson cleared his throat, drawing Alarik’s attention. “This young woman was asking for you in the porter’s office, Dr. Geatland.” Andresson was a heavily-built man in late middle age, confident of his own position in life - and Alarik’s much lower one. “Do you know her?”

Elsa looked like a reprimanded child, staring at her feet, still and silent.

“Yes,” Alarik said. “She’s... she’s my neighbor.”

Dr. Andresson nodded slowly, and steepled his hands before his face. “Mm. I see. That is the extent of your... ‘relationship’?”

Alarik felt the flush in his cheeks. “Yes, sir.”

“And what, then, is her business here today?” Asked as if Elsa could not give an answer herself, or was too far below his notice to be bothered with. Alarik felt a flare of irritation - at Dr. Andresson, but also at Elsa.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know.”

“No, sir.”

The silence that followed was long and painful. Elsa was gnawing at her lower lip, brows knit, while Dr. Andresson watched her. When he cleared his throat once more, Elsa started, but Alarik didn’t think Dr. Andresson noticed the frost that bloomed on her skirt, beneath her torn gloves. She herself noticed, of course - her eyes widened, just slightly, and she quickly adjusted the folds of material to hide it.

“I suppose that this time,” Dr. Andresson said, “we will call it a warning. But I would advise you, Dr. Geatland, that if you intend to remain in academia, you would do well to pick your... neighbors... carefully.”

The flush had risen to his ears. “Yes, sir.”

“I will have the porter escort her out. You may go.”

“What were you thinking?”

Alarik had tried to tamp down his anger, his frustration - there was no reason it should be directed at her. And he might have managed it if the porter wasn’t such a damned gossip, so that word spread quickly and everyone was jesting him about “neighbors” all afternoon. Even more irritating, he hadn’t been able to come up with any better explanation or excuse for her presence.

But as he should have learned from the last time, she did not respond well to anger. She crossed her arms - tightly - and looked up at him with a face the portrait of a queen. “I was bringing you lunch.”

“What? Why?”

“Why not? You walk home for lunch several days a week. I was trying to... to return the favor.”

“You can’t do that!”

There was more ice in her voice than he’d ever seen from her hands: “Why. Not?”

He rubbed a hand over his face. How much more of this would there be - things he had never anticipated, things he had no way of knowing he needed to both consider and convey? “Women can’t... they’re not allowed on university property. Here, anyway.”

For a moment, she just stared at him - a rare occurrence. Two bright little spots of red grew on her cheeks. “That’s... that’s barbaric.”

He turned away from her, finally, to look at nothing in particular - the shadowy hint of a blank wall, all but lost to the onset of night - outside the window beside her. The anger and frustration, finally, were dissipating... leaving him at a loss. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

There was too much she didn’t know - too much to keep up with. And he was tired, so very tired. Tired of trying to get by, tired of living in squalor, tired of struggling, tired of stress and uncertainty and most of all...

Most of all, he was tired of her.

He had always been terrible at hiding his emotions, and something of this must have shown on his face - she started to speak, but he shook his head, balling his hands to fists at his side. “I’m... I’m sorry, I... I think I could... use some air.”

He almost ran - desperate, suddenly, to be gone before she had a chance to respond. Heedless - and coatless - into the frigid cold, hands tucked deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched against more than just the bitter wind.

What would happen if he just never went back? He had done it before. Just kept walking. Refused to look back.

Icy streets, dirty snow piled and frozen against dirtier stucco, someone nearby shouting, the sounds of a meaty slap and a wailing child. A dirty, ugly city in a dirty, ugly world. Anywhere he went, it was more of the same.

He had never asked for this. For any of this. But most of all, he had never asked for Elsa. For broken, struggling, frightened Elsa.

No more than she had asked for him. Broken, struggling, frightened Alarik.

He stopped, shivering, beneath a broken street lamp. The word was gray - the buildings, the sky, the snow. In his mind he saw her: blankets pooled around her waist, holding a croissant, using both hands because of how they trembled. Her eyes finally meeting his, just briefly, and the tentative attempt at a smile.

But he had to stop thinking of her as helpless. He was the problem. And she had not asked to be here. She had not asked to be dumped into a wholly alien world - one where she was now trying so hard to understand and grow. Her father had written of her struggles, and she struggled still, but...

Cod! And the way that she had smiled.

He slumped against the lamp post. He wanted to cry.

Instead, he walked home again. And she turned to him, and he let the words come as they might: “I’m sorry. I’m... God, I’m sorry. I’m just... I’m an idiot. The whole administration and the rules are... are ridiculous. The whole thing is stupid, you’re right, you’re completely right, I had never even thought about it, but... I guess... what I’m trying to... to say is... thank you. And... and I really appreciate... all that you’ve done for me. I... I know it’s hard for you.”

A moment of silence - but he could have sworn, after, that he saw a ghost of a smile cross her face. “Apology accepted. And... you’re welcome.”

He did smile. He didn’t mind. And when she cocked an eyebrow and looked away, shaking her head, it only got wider.

The real problem, he realized later, waiting for sleep: not where he was going to send her... but what sending her away might do to him.

#frozen #frozen fanfiction #the boarding house au

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queenspirituality · 3 years

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to benzo,

ive decided to take some time out of my life to write a letter to you and for me too. Benjamin, I have been truly lucky enough to have the privilege of having you in my life for six years. I would like to take this moment in time to share with you my deepest gratitude towards you for lessons you've taught me, memories we've made together and special moments we have shared that i could never replace.

I sit here with my heart on my sleeve expressing to you my most heartfelt appreciation for our six solid years of dedication and perseverance with enduring this rollercoaster of a friendship. I am glad that we have stayed in contact with each others amongst all the other drama of our separate lives. I will forever cherish our connection for the rest of my life as it is unlike any other and I wouldn't change it for anything. These six years have been life-changing, and I mean that. I think we can both agree that these past six years have been eventful to say the least.

I was intending to only write this one single letter to you however I am now starting to realise the full extent of just how many precious moments we have shared over the years and I feel i won't be able to sum everything that I want to express up in one letter so with that being said I have decided to take my sweet time writing this letter and if I have any further thoughts id like to share with you I'll write another letter, and another and another until I have exhausted all brain motor and cognitive functions.

Anyway, I suppose I am steering off track a tad, so let me redirect your attention back to some of the good times weve shared together, particularly the first year of us dating each other and making so many unforgettable memories that I love dearly. When I reflect over all of our memories weve created over these years, it takes me back to the good times we've had, like and challenging times also, came to the beautiful realisation of how deep our love runs for one another.true depth of how far weve come from our first awkward encounter our past memories just how manycertain Heres to our many naive new beginnings and heres to our endless and countless promises of change, success and hope, of fresh starts and second chances that sadly never saw the finish line. We never stuck to our word or kept our promises to each other.

Nevertheless, from the very start, I believe 2017, you and me, we were honestly inseparable during our innocent and lust-filled honeymoon months. At the beginning of our goofy, naive and a little overly codependant relationship we shared together, you made me very happy for once in my life and I really developed a deep and intimate bond with you that I hadn't ever discovered with anyone else before in life. You were really special to me in that period of my life, you were my only real support system and best friend who I shared my deepest secrets, fears and insecurities with. You were my rock, my soul mate at that moment in my life, my bad-decision making bad influence of a boyfriend who did a lot of drugs which I wanted to partake in with him.

Even after our lowest of low moments, like our messy breakup which involved me asking your sister to pick you up because you were simply too emotional to pack your belongings or that other time when we were friends again but soon enough you practically moved right back in with me when I was living at Cornwall St. always making sure you were absolutely imposing upon my personal bubble, even when many times I asked for space which only resulted in you getting more clingy of me and deepened your attachment issues with me. It felt as if whenever I would demand space and time, you would decide to latch on even more, eventually leading me to give in and surrender to you.

The honest truth is there were difficult times with you exhausted me Ben. Both during the relationship and outside of the relo, in and out of our relationship, even when we were just friends with no strings or expectations just surrendered to your problems and gave my undivided attention to majority of the time I had to compromise my own wellbeing and personal integrity and wants and needs for myself because you were so expectant and needy of me to provide you with my undivided attention and affection when you attached to me like this, for me it was the easier path to take, even though it truly compromised my wellbeing and happiness your persuasive pleads an begs for my attention and affection many drug-filled and chaotic nights many nights, icking you out of m home, regardless if we were intimate or platonic at the time somehow lity we have someone managed to always gravitate back to each other over the endurance of six wholesome and adventurous years with you and for that I am endlessly grateful. naive feeling, overly codependant relationship with my little clingy but cute teenage stoner boyfriend who just wanted to smoke weed (4/20 blaze it) every day, talk skating with his boys and share his pure goofiness and love with those closest to him.

This letter was written for you and for me. For me because of my own self healing and to finally start my next chapter of life without you for a while (don't fret, i am to discuss this in greater detail for you further along in letter). We have to let each other respectfully go for good, for now.

I wrote this for you simply because i realised the depth of our history together and what better way to say one final farewell than to honour all those cherished memories we shared together over six intense years knowing each other. You deserve this so much and I care about you more than I truly express.

truly what a journey in life we have say shared together. Starting from our very first extremely awkward and absolutely cringeworthy 30 second encounter at one of mollies usual weekend gatherings she would throw any chance she could get, to our most recent and adventurous all night benders spent in cheap motel rooms, laying dead still in your room at your grandmas off limits house, to locking yourself inside my bathroom anxiously anticipating being busted by either my brother or my ex partner. All of the memories we have shared in between our initial meeting and most recent encounter I want to write abouts mainly for my own healing and growing but also for you, so you might just see things from my side of the fence.

Prepare yourself, as this will be one hefty and long-winded letter containing a rollercoaster of emotions and relayed past events both positive and negative, hopefully all neatly summarised into one final reflection of my feelings between us and this journey in life we've shared at the end.

So Ben, here goes nothing. I will start with when we first met at mollies place. Truthfully I couldn't keep my eyes off you, it was as if a magnet was attached to me and one to you and I was uncontrollably getting more invested and interested in finding out about you. I distinclty remember where you were sitting as I became more curious about you, next to Tobias on the couch beside the wall. I think you stayed sat there for the majority of the night, but nevertheless my eyes kept wandering back to you. I took some mdma caps that night and stupidly and spontaneously decided to go for a long ass nighttime bush walk with some guys from your high school (if I recall correctly it was ethan jensen and tom merrigan) through mollies creepy dark bush creek park she lives next to. Now that I think about it, I don't even think they were eager to come with me but they didn't want me going through that dangerous bushland area alone, especially in my state.

At that point during the night, to say I was way out of my mind would have been an absolute understatement as these narcotics were working in overdrive now, taking over my mind, body and any common sense i may have employed sober. Since this was still one of the first experiences I had with taking mdma, the experience was super intense and half of the night I felt as if I wasn't actually conscious or if I was conscious I had replaced old rubi with an upgraded, much more brave rubi that was suddenly in the mood to go walking straight into a potentially dangerous bushland area where hobos have squatted in before, did I mention at night, pitch black in there, with no street lighting except our eye vision. It was as if I did not care for danger or threats because I felt so high up on this cloud of euphoria that no one could touch me and I was totally protected from harm. Yes, my sober brain dies have more common sense and logic than that, however that one single feeling of pure euphoria pulsating through me was enough for me to want more of it, and more and so on and so forth.

And that is when i gained the confidence to start a conversation with you, or rather attempt to put a sentence together without looking proper munted from the drugs. I think we did speak briefly by the pool area and I recall you mentioning that you were in a relo with a chick named Emily. I didn't care about anything you were saying, I was so fucking ecstatic that somehow we ended up chatting to each other, even if it wasn't for long. I made a mental note of you in my head. I wanted to know you before I really had an idea of you. To sum up this first story, so now you know what my initial (& may I politely add extremely intoxicating) encounter with you from my perspective was like and my first impression of you: for me it was always from that very first glance of you that I became intrigued and I couldn't shake it one bit, even when you mentioned your relationship status with your cool girlfriend at the time. I wasn't listening, you were talking to a brick wall disguised as a pretty girl. I just remember how badly I wanted to know more of you, and I just had a gut feeling we would see each other again soon.

P.s. originally I was going to write one big letter to you and I yet I've realised just how many memories we've shared that I must write about. So instead I have decided to write each letter as a past memory or reflection of our experiences we've shared together over this six year rollercoaster.

First letter is completed, see you soon my friend.

P.p.s. OKAY YES, I can be super annoying (thoughtful, caring, kind, mindful, loving) and know JUST how much you truly cherish and adore (hate, despise, resent) my little life pep talks and lectures so benzo, especially for you I've decided to leave you some of my personal and unique little words of advice and wisdom rants just for you cos YOU DESERVE TO HEAR THEM SO READ THEM FOR ME FOR ONCE IN YOUR MEDIOCRE LIFE AND LET THEM SINK INTO YOUR BRAIN FOR GOODNESS SAKE YOU WONDERFUL BUT SOMETIMES LOST HUMAN BEING who deserves someone who will write personalised care letters because they are valuable and worthy and deserve love and lots of it.

10.10.2020

Word of advice #1:

Please take care of yourself, if not for yourself just do it for your little sister, she needs you more than you know. Feed yourself that second plate of homemade spaghetti bolognaise which YOU cooked with extra cheese and pasta, go mental person crazy in the shower, sing as loud as your lungs will fully permit you and sing those sad fucking sappy love songs you hate to love because they make you feel something instead of being aimlessly numb all day. AND FUCK, JUST do it, go ahead and get that girly lavender soap for your grandma because she let's you live in her temple and she means more than words could describe to you, write her a little letter too, go on and show your grandma some emotion for once, she worries about you and wants to see you prosper before she leaves you on Earth. Write about how lost in life you feel, or ask how lost in life she feels, maybe she's hurting too.

If nothing else, try remember that in life, we have one giant society consumed with human beings that can be very harsh and cruel and judgemental of your every GODDAM action.

In this clusterfuck of what society has labelled a life", we have constructed some outrageous and unrealistic expectations and laws and rules and ongoing policies and guidelines for our fellow law-abiding aife experiences, I have endured the worst kinds of days that stretch on and on, these days feelyo7u like you aren't contributing to society's overall desire for successful people and you keep missing the mark and when does it ever get easier for you, the past few years have just felt like one big snakes and ladders board game where you're piece is broken and won't stop descending down the snake, slowly slipping into the dark abyss of your april fools joke of a life (i say april fools because ive legit had some of the most soul-cursing life experiences that've got me full depressed to the point where it had a comedic level of patheticness may have this mindset at times, or not, that's ok. I frequently do. I do know when this dark never-ending tunnel or abyss or however you personally envision the dark periods in your life, has got me trapped so bad I may as well be submerged in sinking mud on a deserted island called 'No Hope Island a large can be hard to climb out of the sinking mud of your patheticness cietysh because it feels good, wash because people are cruel and you've been corrupted with their silly bullshit and you don't need their scent on your skin anymore, scrub your body until you can longer scrub, scrub your skin and don't stop until it is raw, red and numb. Don't call your that mate of yours today, hes doing hard drugs, he can't think straight therefore doesnt care for you as a genuine mate would and wants to see you in pain just as much as he is because in reality, it makes him feel slightly better about his pathetic situation because he has someone on the same level so now he feels less disgusted of who he has become. Tell me, is that a friend to you? A good friend who gets literal twisted pleasure and comfort out of watching you stick a needle in your arm and sell your soul to the devil. That same sinister devil who awaits you always so very eagerly every high you take. That devil demon who is always patiently waiting for you at the finish line of your come up. This monster you have let in, he has made himself a home in yours, he lays right beside you, breathing in your air and covering the room with dark shadows so you aren't reminded of how peaceful the daytime light looks in your bedroom. Yes, I assure you, as I have met him before in my sleep. He has told me that sometimes he watches over me in the darkest corner of my ceiling while I sleep, waiting for my fears and anxiety to emerge in my sleep. He is my sleep paralysis monster. He follows me everywhere I go now, i have no privacy from him. He is always there, watching and waiting for weakness. When I am weak and vulberable once I have had my dose of drugs, he likes to play a game called hide and seek. He hides and I seek. Sometimes I hide and he seeks. He hides himself deep within me, the way he enters into me is through my auraus just after I have taken narcotics and opened my auraus right up, when one is the most vulnerable to evilness of spirits. When I am anxious, he makes me go seek. I never want to seek inside but I am not to disobey his orders for that is when he will truly punish me with the insidious sleep paralysis, sleep deprivation, shadow people watching as an audience, inner demons invited on stage to surround you, the sickest feeling of fear and paranoia washing over your soul like sticky slime you can't remove off your skin no matter how many scratches you've inflicted upon your skin. Because of that one night with that one friendeedle,

Laying right beside you ou in your bed, as an unwanted shadow, n anticipation, the devil when your come down is creeping over you with a sheepish grin upon his face. has begun andat the end of your reality has set back in and the come down is creeping up on you of your high for you. Go ahead, if that's the life you want, nants you to go down like him, and that is just not part of hesgo to bed early, read that self-help book, try, just try to listen to your parents (even if they suck major sweaty hairy balls right know and are in the typical parent stage of not being completely and pathetically oblivious to you as a evolving adolescent boy that needs help and support and guidance from his parents because he feels sort of invisible and worthless in life right now and has been questioning for some time now his place in this world and what he means to anyone that cares for him and if his worthiness is even worth anything now or is he just too far gone to make it or start over fresh.

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omniswords · 6 years

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Keep What Remains, Part V [Gladiolus Amicitia/Reader]

“What do you think about holding onto something when you’ve lost everything else?” Remember how Gladio mentioned getting a girlfriend during all those years of darkness? Here’s how that happened. Spoilers up to Chapter 13 of the game, so proceed with caution!

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

You probably wouldn’t have recognized Iris if she hadn’t recognized you first. At Cape Caem, she was a bright little thing with a penchant for clashing patterns and mid-heeled boots and collecting seashells near the haven along the beach. Her hair was cropped short back then, and her eyes were as full of possibilities as her voice was full of expectation and conviction.

Now she sat across from you at a restaurant in the middle of a worn-out Lestallum, toying with a braid that hung just past her shoulders and clenching her fists in a pair of worn fingerless black gloves. She’d traded in the tartan skirt for a cropped leather jacket, but her old wristbands and the heels on her boots had stayed, at least. And the light wasn’t necessarily gone from her eyes, but it was dimmer now. Carved into something that didn’t hesitate to kill. Something you thought was never supposed to belong to her.

She didn’t speak much, only examined the menu with a raised eyebrow, then sighed as she peeked over it and laid it on the table. “Okay,” she finally said. “Talk.”

“I feel like I should be telling you that,” you mused, only pausing your conversation to place your orders with the waitress who came by.

“Yeah?” Iris traced one finger around the rim of the glass. “What gives you that idea?”

Your answer, amid the dull roar of other conversations, was to gesture vaguely at her with a pointed look, and she laughed and tossed her braid over her shoulder. As if that were meant to excuse just about everything.

(Well. At least she could remember how to laugh in all this.)

“I’ve been around,” she said between sips of ice water. “You know. Selling clothes to leftover glaives. Training with an immortal marshal the minute I turned eighteen. Kicking ass and taking names.” She grinned, entirely proud of herself. Maybe she should have been. “They call me the Daemon Slayer now, did you know? I guess you could say made a name for myself in three years.”

“I probably would, if the Daemon Slayer had thought to call every once in a while.” You paused. “Wait… you trained with Cor Leonis?”

“The one and only. I’d still be the fighter I was six years ago if it weren’t for him.”

“Assuming you fought at all six years ago.”

“You’ve obviously never seen me take on some imperial goons with my brother.”

“Of course not, considering I only just met your brother a few months ago.” You rested your elbows on the table, your eyes never tearing away from hers. “Were you ever planning on introducing us, or was he doomed to be Tall, Dark, and Beefy for the rest of my life?”

Iris nearly choked on her water as she laughed, thanking the waitress for her concern once the food arrived. “And risk some twisted parent-teacher conference type thing? Gods, no way.” This time, she was the one to pause, brow furrowed and lips quirked. “How’d you run into Gladdy, of all people?”

Without meaning to, and even though she really should have gone first, you talked, related what you wanted to of the time you’d spent with Gladio and left out the parts that were better left thought about in the quiet dark. When you were finished, you settled back in your chair, fork and knife in hand, and waited for Iris’s verdict.

Which was, of course, a raised eyebrow and a smirk. “You hear that?” she said.

“Um.” You blinked. “Hear what?”

“Wedding bells,” she said in a gleeful whisper, with everything she used to be in between those algebra equations. You hadn’t realized how much you missed her mischief. The chances she had to be young.

You rolled your eyes. “More like the sound of you distracting from the real matter at hand. As usual?”

“Uh huh. The real matter being?”

“How you became… well…” You managed a nod in her direction, just as vague as before. “This.”

Silence fell between the two of you, and Iris’s expression grew solemn, stony. Like she’d aged those six years all over again, right in front of you. “After the Scourge hit hard,” she began, voice dipping eerily low. “Back when Noct—uh, the Prince—disappeared. Things started happening. Things I wished I’d never had to see, and believe me, I’ve seen plenty.” Her grip on her fork tightened, knuckles whitening under the streetlight. Her eyes were hard and glittering again. “The daemons ran me and Talcott out of Caem. You remember him, right?”

Of course. How could you forget? He was the one kid who made Cactuars worth tolerating. You worked them into extra credit questions any opportunity you had—it made success all the more vindicating, personal, when he got them right. You didn’t want to imagine him—young and impressionable, with his whole damn life ahead of him—in the face of a daemon, fearing for his life and looking for a place in the dark to run. Hadn’t the loss of his grandfather been enough? Hadn’t he already grown up too fast?

“He’s all right, isn’t he?” you asked.

“As all right as anyone scared out of their home could be. He’s in Hammerhead now, helping out wherever he’s needed. Kinda makes for a good distraction, I guess. Or maybe it helps him feel like he’s doing something good for the world. Hard to tell what goes on in his mind these days You know Cindy Aurum?”

You pursed your lips. “I know… of Cindy.”

“Yeah. He and Prompto are pretty much at her beck and call these days. She really knows how to keep the guys under her thumb.” There was that spark in her eyes again, the thing that made them light all over again. “Oh, wait, have you met Prompto? He’s not around here much, but he comes from time to time. Sometimes Lestallum has supplies the garage doesn’t, and he’s always the first to volunteer to drive up.” She rolled her eyes. “Gee, I wonder why…”

You shook your head, and Iris looked away, something wistful in her expression. You wondered if maybe you should have known him. If you were supposed to have met him, once upon a time.

“He’s a character,” she finally declared, covering up her expression with a smile as muted as her voice, one you had a feeling had become more typical over the years. “I hope you see him soon. Eyes like his? You can’t miss ‘em.”

“Now who’s the one setting off wedding bells, huh?”

Iris laughed, hollowly, and shook her head, peeling off her gloves and shrugging out of her jacket, revealing feathery streaks of ink along her arms that you recognized almost instantly. “Nah. No time for stuff like that,” she said, with all the despair of someone who’d been hoping for it her whole life.

She told you a lot of things you’d never expected her to say between bites of food. That half of the time she hunted alone—partly because she knew she could do it, and partly because Gladio did, too. The other half of the time, she worked alongside some ex-mercenary from Niflheim, as though she was worth trusting. Said they sometimes went out into the wilderness together—“Slay for Pay,” Iris called it with a proud grin, like she’d made up the damn slogan herself, and she probably had—and sometimes took on relief efforts together. But who was there to relieve when people were cooped up in pockets of the world or slowly succumbing to this darkness and disease that was older than any of them?

Or were they relieving half-deteriorated people, salvaging what they could and doing what they willed with the rest?

You swallowed hard. Your grip on your fork tightened.

Aranea Highwind, Iris said her name was. That was a name with command. A person worth aspiring to. You’d never met her, either—though maybe, based on description alone, you’d seen her pass through town once or twice—but Iris’s words were enough to convince you, and maybe herself, too. As though she still needed convincing, after working alongside such a woman for so long.

She called it all—thriving, loving, anything—she called it “stuff like that” as though it hadn’t meant a thing to her. Or as though it had, but wasn’t supposed to anymore, not in the face of all that training, all that fighting, everything for whatever greater good she was working for. It wasn’t worth asking yourself how long Iris had lived like this, or forced herself to, or how much of it she’d picked up from her brother; an invisible hand snatched your heart and clenched all the blood out of it before your mind was halfway through the question.

Before the two of you parted ways that night, and after you’d exchanged phone numbers to keep in touch again, you jammed your hand into the pocket of your jeans, fingers curling tight around the dog tag, and asked, “Iris? what’s your last name?”

With a curious expression and without missing a beat, Iris replied, “Hester, why?”

You frowned, unwavering, the chain digging into your palm. “What’s your real last name?”

The expression faded almost as quickly as it had come. “How did you know?”

This time, you managed a weak smile and shook your head, thumb pressing into each engraved letter, feeling for that traitorous A. If she had secrets of her own, then who was to say you couldn’t have yours, too? “You and Talcott never looked anything alike.”

With a look that toed the line between amused and defeated, and a smile that pulled her lips taut, she sighed, and spoke more to the ground than you as she pulled her gloves back on, covered up her ink. “Amicitia. Iris Amicitia. And if anyone asks, I never told you.”

———

You’d been thinking about it for days.

Gladiolus Amicitia. That was his goddamn name. Of course it would roll off the tongue better than Gladiolus Hester, but all this time you’d chalked that up to some unfathomable reason that he went by “Gladio” instead.

There wasn’t a damn person in the country who wasn’t familiar with the Amicitia name. It was almost as famous as the line of royalty—practically required reading for a history class. For as long as there’d been a Lucian king, there’d been an Amicitia beside him, protecting him right down to the teeth. You’d known plenty of that from the news alone—the name “Clarus Amicitia” was just as ingrained in the news as “Regis Lucis Caelum.” Journalists and news broadcasters alike called him the Third Wall of Lucis sometimes. Said there was no way the king could fall if his shield didn’t fall first.

(They stopped calling him that after the treaty signing. Maybe it seemed disingenuous to remember him for a role he couldn’t fulfill.)

And how long had Gladio and Iris had to grapple with this, anyway? Did they even allow it, or did they keep it to themselves all this time?

You could have noticed the signs of hiding in Gladio, at least, as much as he probably didn’t want you to know about it. You should have noticed it, by all accounts. The hesitation whenever you mentioned his family or where he came from, the knit in his brow and the pauses in his response, the way he said so automatically that protection ran in his blood. Like he was supposed to be a third wall of his own. Or maybe a first, all things considered. Of course it made sense to you, in the moment, to attribute that to the fact that everyone had lost someone in all these years. Maybe you weren’t supposed to realize the scope of what he’d lost. Maybe he’d spent all these years trying to suppress it himself.

You hoped to the gods that wasn’t all you were good for, ins his eyes.

Your fingers found the solitary A more easily now that you were alone in your apartment—sometimes when you didn’t even want to find it. It was almost like it wanted to be found, every single time, to remind you of what you weren’t sure you wanted to know. Absence was supposed to make the heart grow fonder, and so was the weight of the dog tag, or so you thought. But every time you clasped it in your hand, it seemed to deflect all your warmth, hold every possibility you didn’t want to think about.

Not the least of which was the possibility that it would never return to him.

You shook your head.

For all the times you held onto the dog tag, there was still a part of you that couldn’t take it out of your pocket. A part of you that wanted to hear whatever his explanation was, and not whatever proverbial words you were putting in his mouth. Why he’d held this information out for so long, why he didn’t seem to trust you with it the way he trusted you with his taste in books and his safety in the middle of the night, why he’d outright lied to you—

No.

Your heart twisted in its cage. You couldn’t call it lying. Even if you should have, even if it made it easier to parse out or justify whatever unnameable thing you felt whenever you tried to imagine this Cindy character at work in your head, you couldn’t. She had nothing to do with this besides.

Because you weren’t married.

And Iris, what about her? Of all people—you could still hear the phrase in her voice, crisp and jagged with war instead of crystalline—you would have figured she’d be proud of her own heritage. That she might have gone around brandishing the title of Lady Iris, or touting something about never underestimating the power of an Amicitia, because that was what they were. The kind of superhero strength you only ever read about in comic books. So what was she doing slipping around dark alleyways and half the Lucian kingdom, saying that she never told you what she told you? Or, rather, what you’d pulled out of her?

What in the world was there to be so secretive about when identity was next to the only thing people had in all this mess? When they hadn’t had salvation or light or a goddamn prince for years upon years?

And what in the world were you doing sitting here waiting for the answers to just come to you like some information dump?

Iris had given you enough to work on. There was a library in town. You could look up whatever you needed—whatever Gladio was to you, his lineage wasn’t exactly under lock and key. It wasn’t as disingenuous or, frankly, creepy, as looking up a total stranger you’d met eyes with more than a few times on some social media platform.

Or, at least, that was how you tried to convince yourself in the moment. And if that didn’t work, then what was wrong with hitching a ride to Hammerhead yourself? Talcott was a good enough reason to go; there was no reason he wouldn’t remember or welcome you. Maybe he was unreadable these days, but you’d be hard-pressed to believe there was no longer a genuine bone in his body.

Hell, you could go right now. What was stopping you? Gladio had been gone for a week and a half now, with no sign that he was okay but the unspoken fact that he wasn’t supposed to die yet, and Iris’s last words to you were still ringing in your head.

“What are you doing with your life?” you’d asked her before you parted ways, like maybe you could make sense of something before you were left to your own devices.

Iris only took a breath, jammed her hands in her pockets, and said, “What I’m meant to do,” before turning on her heel and hopping up onto the pickup truck just outside of town.

And so was Gladio, wherever he was.

And so was the prince—or so you and everyone else alive hoped.

And so were you. Or, at least, you were about to.

A knock at your door, slow and heavy, drew your attention just as you were grabbing your satchel. You weren’t expecting any company, hadn’t invited any students; in fact, it was supposed to be your day off. For a moment, you cursed yourself for not having a peephole, and years of looters and fake-polite strangers had taught you to keep an aluminum bat by your coat rack.

With a deep breath and cautious motion, under the scrutiny of a near-invisible eye, you curled your fingers around the grip of the bat, muscles tensing as though ready to strike—and you unlocked the door.

The last thing you expected to see was Gladio standing there, a death grip on the doorway far above your head and a half-soaked bandage wrapped around his middle. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat with every sharp but quiet breath, and his eyes flickered toward yours, full of whatever light they caught from your living room. There was a wear in his expression, something that said Help me and I told you so all at once—something that drew you in so much that you barely registered that you could see his bare chest at all.

Still, your bat fell to the floor with a clatter, thudding mutely where it hit the rug; if Gladio winced, it wasn’t because of the sound. You took a step back, but he didn’t take a step forward. He stayed stationary in the hall, like some supernatural creature, risen from the half-dead and only mobile on your word.

Gladio said, “I’m not staying at the Leville.”

You said, “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

#ffxv fanfiction #ffxv reader insert #ffxv spoilers #gladiolus amicitia #gladio x reader #fic: keep what remains

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