#to a life sentence! but i’m already a nightingale so too deep to go back this play through ugh

[skywitchmaja]

i learned that you can join the thieves guild without framing brand-shei and i am so mad at myself :-(

[pinkhairedlily]

goodbye to the clearest eyes

pair: kim namjoon/park jimin | minjoon, rating: G

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33675553

dropping a minjoon fic here as well (because why not)! :>

Namjoon glances at his phone for the seventeenth time that night, the digital clock blinking back 23:14 at him, and his screen flashing low battery warning since the 20 percent mark. He waits again for ten more minutes, closing his eyes and losing himself in the muted sound of the club on the street across and the passing honks of ubers. A ping stirs him up.

Disappointed but not surprised. He knows he set himself up for this.

“Joon hi. Hope you thought better - like before. I actually got a ride. Lucky huh. So anyway, please don’t mind my earlier texts. See you later.” Ironically, his phone thinks it’s the most opportune time to shut down, zero percent, no more warning. He softly thumps his head on the steering wheel, but his fingers are tightly gripping around it.

“I should stop this.” This is the same sentence he repeats for every conquest Jin conjures up every Friday of the week. He sighs, enraged but tired, and he starts the ignition.

Then his passenger side opens and comes in an angel.

“Excuse me?”

It’s Namjoon’s first expression. Blonde hair, lopsided smile that reaches his eyes, plump and pouty lips, flushed cheeks, and fair skin. He waves to his friends goodbye and reaches for the seatbelt.

He misses it and he chuckles. He tries again and almost gets it. Again, another hearty chuckle.

“You’re hammered,” Namjoon says. “But this is not an uber.”

The blonde man fits the seatbelt in successfully in his third try. He looks up at Namjoon, and he is disarmed by bright hazelnut irises which disappear in a wide smile. “Look I managed to wear my seatbelt.” His fingers, dainty fingers, meet each other to give himself a small, silent clap.

Namjoon’s heart is thumping. What is this is a new modus of a local gang? Using an angel-faced to lure innocents into their deaths? He clears his throat and tries to capture the blonde’s attention. “I would appreciate it if you get out of my car right now.”

Yeah, especially since I just got my license at 30 years old. Because Jin had his car towed.

The blonde is heaving and Namjoon knows what comes next. He opens the windows and gets ready to give him a paper bag stashed in his glove compartment. It’s actually reserved for Jin, waiting for its purpose for several weeks now, but at least a single piece gets to see the light for tonight.

The passenger waves away his offer of a vomit bag. He just lets his head loll on the side, eyes shut, smile still plastered on his cherubic face. Namjoon rakes his raven locks with his hand, and he decides then to fuck it. He’s in the neighborhood, he has an available car. He will do one kind deed today and bring this angel safely to his home.

But yeah fuck me too because my phone’s basically on coma and I’m geographically challenged. No choice then. “Hey you, I’m sorry but I don’t have the maps on. I can’t drive you.”

The blonde tries to sit up straight with his eyes still closed. “Can you first drive around? I don’t want to go home yet.”

This is a red flag, Namjoon knows. Far too many dreadful things have been happening nowadays and everyone is hardly to be trusted even when they have the most beautiful countenance he has ever seen. But he had too many losses this year, too many times he held out chances for someone who won’t return them back, too many hopes for beginnings but he got indefinite endings instead. Yeah, fuck it.

“Can you move away from the window so I can close it?” Namjoon asks.

“Can you leave my side open? I want to feel the cold air against my face,” the man replies. Now that Namjoon’s looking at him intently, he notices he must be in his early 20s, not more than 25 probably.

He stuffs the paper bag on his passenger’s dainty fingers (which thankfully he holds onto because dry cleaning would be a bitch) and drives towards the road he frequents when he gets stood up.

“It’s kinda cold.” His blonde locks are swaying with the wind.

Namjoon chuckles and checks his monitor. “Well it’s the transition between fall and winter. Do you want me to close it now?”

“No, not really. I love the cold. It makes my cheeks redder. It makes me aware of the blood in my body.”

“I like this season too although I’m not a fan of snowing. I’d rather walk than drive a car when it’s winter.” Namjoon steals a glance. “Looks like you really enjoyed tonight. Flushed and rosy cheeks are also good signs of life. Would you believe it’s a criteria males would look for in females they want for marriage and reproduction? Of course, this was back when patriarchy was still 100 percent practiced.”

Namjoon takes a right turn amid the dense canopy of hickory trees and into the tunnel. Now would be the most advantageous time for his passenger to kill him.

“Yes, I enjoyed tonight,” the blonde remarks. His hazelnut eyes are now open and trained on the road. “My friends and colleagues organized a farewell party.”

“Changing jobs?” Namjoon breathes slowly, waiting for the blonde to pull out a gun or knife.

“Nope, not really. I’m going away.”

Nothing comes for Namjoon’s life, and he feels the bubble of laughter in his throat. “Another city or abroad?”

His hazelnut eyes roll to the ceiling, and he ponders for a whole minute. “Yeah, abroad. That’s what I told them.”

The tunnel is empty, but Namjoon keeps a safe driving speed on the rightmost lane. Occasionally, a sports car would speed past them, the tires screeching with the echoes. He wonders if he should keep up the conversation, but gauging the other person’s responses, it seems like they don’t mind. “Oh that must be fun. I also went abroad after university, straight to Belgium. It felt freeing that time, but I realized just recently that I was probably running away.”

There he goes again, spilling his guts to a stranger at midnight in the middle of a tunnel. Namjoon’s mind now wonders if this blonde isn’t afraid of him. He’s bigger than this passenger, more muscular, and definitely taller. He can easily subdue him and drop him in the ocean.

“It’s somewhere I have to go to,” he replies. “I’ve never been to Belgium. Chocolates must be good there.”

“The roads are very bike friendly, if you’re curious.” Namjoon remembers the awe when he first set foot in Brussels. No annoying car honks, no bulky vehicles on the streets. Just people biking, in tune with nature, giving way to each other, the tiny bells ringing.

“Ah I also never learned how to bike. How disappointing.”

“It’s a nice skill to have, keeps you active, and obviously it decreases your carbon footprint.”

His passenger laughs like it’s a trill of a nightingale. “You have such a weird thought process!”

Namjoon’s voice wavers, part embarrassed, part socially anxious. He’s never good in dealing with extroverts. “Is it bad?”

The blonde shakes his head. “I’m saying it’s unique. Anyway, I won’t worry much about my carbon footprint.”

Namjoon clucks his tongue against his mouth. “You must be a mindful consumer.”

“Hmm, I’m not really sure. I guess I am?” His little pinky finger rests on the side of his lip. “But it gives me comfort that I’m alleviating Mother Earth’s illness somehow.”

They leave the tunnel and the smell of salt air arrests both of their senses. Namjoon opens the window on his side as well and breathes in the ocean. He normally frequents this area during sunsets, a few minutes when twilight sets in before it finally transitions to the night sky. His existence hovers in between those changes, all beautiful and all passing. It dawns on him that he took a plunge when he decided to drive here at this time. “Do you mind some music?”

“No, go ahead!”

Namjoon opens his radio, and the first notes of 400 Lux drifts from the speakers. The blonde lets an arm out on touches the air on the skin of his fingers. Namjoon notices this and mirrors him. The ocean greets them after a few seconds, quiet in its vastness despite the rhythmic buoy of the waves and the sound they make when they crash against the sandy shore.

“I’d like to visit many more places,” his companion continues. “Like Jeju Island. My grandmother plants the sweetest tangerines, and my ex-boyfriend would often come help out during harvest season. But I broke up with him just recently and cut off all ties.”

“Sorry about the ex-boyfriend,” Namjoon interjects. “He must be missing the tangerines a lot.”

“Let’s hope that’s the only thing he’ll be missing. By the time he’d miss me, he must have moved on already.”

The road comes a bit closer to the waters, and the wind drifts over some of the sea spray to them as the waves break against the side of the cliffs. “And here you are, sounding like you already miss him.”

“I won’t deny it.” He pauses and takes a deep breath. “I found that it’s healthy to acknowledge your feelings than keep them all repressed so I’m honoring our bond by honoring the grief.”

“Sounds like good advice.” The guilt creeps up on Namjoon, but he ignores this for a moment. Maybe he can take this bit, store it, and use it in the future. It’s good advice anyway.

“I also want to visit Disneyland. I’ve never been to one. Couldn’t afford it. But I hate roller coasters and pirate ships, anything that has to do with heights. Although, if given the chance, I would try all of them at once even if I vomit after.”

“The lines are freakishly long.”

“How much do you think would it cost if I rent the whole place for a day?”

Namjoon laughs. “Pretty sure it would have at least six zeroes.”

“Oh I thought it would have seven.” They both break into guffaws. After a few seconds, the blonde continues his musing. “I would also love to visit my parents and see them again every day.”

“Can’t you do it now?”

The man stretched his arms in front of him and wiggles in his chair. “I’ll actually drop by tomorrow, spend some time before I truly go.”

Namjoon slowly turns on a blind curve, weighing the last sentence in his mind. “I moved out when I was 18 into the university dorms, and then I got my own apartment after graduation. Most of us go through that linear phase, don’t you think – growing out of our childhood homes and leaving the ‘youth’ behind.”

“You don’t even look like 30 yet.”

“I’m flattered. And you don’t look like you’re over 20s.”

“I get that a lot.” The blonde chuckles, not bothering to hide another set of blush on his cheeks. Under the dim light of the moon, Namjoon briefly notices the redness in his ears.

“But wouldn’t it be nice to come back to it, to that safe bubble when life becomes too overwhelming?” Somehow, Namjoon also feels a hot flush on his skin despite the icy air that has set in their atmosphere.

“We both know there’s no bubble anymore when we go back.”

“I guess it will take you a long time to come back.”

The passenger nods, his hazelnut eyes leaving the road to focus on the ocean. “A very, very, very long time. I may not see them again after I go.”

He must be moving for good, Namjoon thinks. Or he’s cutting off ties. Like I did so many years ago.

“Hey, can we stop over for water? I’m thirsty.”

Namjoon spots the 24/7 convenience store on the side of the road. He remembers this is a junction close to a fishing port hence the all-around operations. He parks on the empty lot and waits for the blonde to finish buying his needs. He comes back with four bottles of water and two bowls of already cooked instant ramen. “Would you like to eat by the shore?”

Sure why not in the middle of almost-winter? Namjoon follows him nonetheless, even sitting on the damp sand cross legged with ramen in between his hands. They slurp the noodles in silence punctuated by the crashing waves and occasional noise of the seagulls and the horn of incoming fishing fleets. They do not talk, too engrossed with the hot food and spicy broth.

Finally finished, they combine their garbage in what was supposed to be the passenger’s vomit bag. Namjoon initially walks to the direction of his car, but the passenger decides to walk along the shore for the minute, barefoot, his black leather mules secured in his other hand.

“Would you look at that? It’s finally used,” Namjoon jokingly remarks about the vomit bag.

The blonde chuckles at his lame attempt to lighten the mood. Namjoon finally notices the muted loss in his startlingly beautiful hazelnut eyes, and the layers of sadness covered up by his songbird laughter, but he knows it’s not his place to ask.

“Have you ever thought about death?” The way he asked it was so blunt, so deadpan, so out of the blue, and so far removed from his lively persona that Namjoon interacted with in the vehicle.

It catches him off guard, of course. He never really delved into it, not when he was too busy running away from his feelings for his college best friend, not when he came back and tried to rekindle that friendship and connection again, not when he was too busy wondering if it was already too late.

He was too busy facing the consequences of his life. “In passing, maybe.”

The blonde walks further into the water, the waves reaching to his knees. “What do you think happens after?”

“I personally don’t believe in afterlife or in God or in heaven.” Namjoon scratches the back of his neck, aware that his being agnostic would sometimes earn an agitated reaction from people. “It just ends. You become food for the detritus, a fertilizer for the plants.”

“Lessening the carbon footprint?” the blonde brings it up again, and this earns a hearty chuckle from Namjoon.

“We could put it like that. You contribute to nutrient cycling.”

“That’s a nice way of describing rotten flesh being eaten by worms.” He turns towards the expanse of the ocean with his eyes closed and that constant smile that seems to hold him together throughout this night. “I….visualize dying as a new birth, a chance of being someone again, a reincarnation. Even if I live as a butterfly with gray wings, a disowned black cat because of superstition, a whale with an alien frequency, a deer hunted in the open season, I’ll welcome it because it gives me another day, another life. It gives me another chance to feel the cold air on my face, the hot flush on my nose and ears, the water between my toes. Another chance to meet people, another chance to fall in love and break and fall all over again, another chance to live.”

The whole monologue untethers Namjoon. It is as if the sand underneath him started shifting.

The blonde turns his attention on the sky, stars invisible behind the fluffy clouds which signal incoming rain. As he silently watches them move across the space, Namjoon follows the change in his expression, the surrender of the smile, and the explosion of dullness in his irises.

“I have a tumor in my brain. Cancer has progressed too far and too deep to consider chemotherapy. Doctor gave me three months at most.”

Namjoon feels like he needs the vomit bag more. He’s tongue tied and numb all over. He feels cold all over, but he doesn’t know if he should blame the season. All the sounds are drowned by a ringing in his head, and he barely hears the blonde come up to him and tap his shoulder with his smile back again.

“I want to go home now. Thank you for driving me tonight.”

---

Now in the safe enclave of his apartment with a fully charged phone, Namjoon composes a long message intended for Jin, his apologies running all the way back since college. An apology for not responding to his confession, an apology for running away, an apology for coming back and expecting everything is the same.

And an ultimatum of a definite conclusion – whether he can let him in or cut him off from his life – because he has spent a long time living in between.

The breakdown comes after he hits send, choking sobs hitched in his throat. A mourning for a blonde stranger.

---

“Have a taste of this.” A grandmother in her 90s offers a peeled tangerine to Namjoon.

He bites through the piece of fruit and the sweetness hits him in full. He relishes the burst of flavor in his mouth with his eyes closed albeit it’s actually a ruse to keep the flood of tears at bay. You were right, they’re the sweetest tangerines. “I think I’ll order a hundred kilos.”

“That’s too much, my son.” The old woman laughs and playfully slaps him on the arm. “So how did you find your orchard tour a while ago?”

“I can’t help but hear a songbird in the area. Must be coming from the nearby forest.”

“Ah, it started singing last year. Since then, we’ve always had a year-round harvest. He must be my lucky charm.”

[rockthistowninsideout]

So you might know that I’m writing an October Man fanfic. I’ve already published the cover and two chapters. What would follow would be chapter three, but that’s not finished yet.

What is finished, though, is chapter four and I want to share it with you because I’m really proud of it. Until further notice only here on tumblr.

Thomas Nightingale is not the only tragic gay practitioner from whom the War took everything...

When the door buzzed, I suddenly felt it: herbal liqueur, heavy machines stomping, a dust of coal that triggered a cough even though the air was as clean and fresh as a daisy.

A signare.

As I had noticed in my first KDA case, I was remarkably sensitive for magical traces even though I had never had anything to do with it beforehand. Thanks to that and the training I had received by now, I knew instinctively what was about to come. I pulled Tobi, whose frown told me that he had reached the same conclusion, behind my back and opened the door.

A sizzling werelight shot out of the door with a blazing white train trailing behind it. It stopped midway hovering above the weedfree pavement before it suddenly made a sharp beeline and came racing towards us.

I watched in horror - I was lucky if my werelights lasted longer than a minute and shone as bright as a flashlight - but then my view was blocked because Tobi yanked me back and stepped in front of me. A heartbeat later, the feisty werelight burst into a thousand sparks. I took a deep breath.

Tobi turned to me. "You okay?"

I exhaled relieved. "Thank you, yes. What about you?"

He just nodded and rounded the still open door. As I followed him I saw an elderly man now standing in the doorway, a rogueish smile gleaming in his piercing blue eyes. He might have been around eighty, judging by the crowfeet around those eyes and the many creases around his mouth that was curled upwards in one corner. His hair, though, was mostly still black. While my eighty-three-year-old grandpa needed a wheeled walker all the time, the man in front of us didn't; on the contrary, his stance was square and precise, despite the protruding belly, as if he'd been in the military before retiring.

"Paul Arno Rossbusch?" Tobi asked in a professional tone, though I heard a certain edge of wariness in his voice. He tried to make it not too obvious but I felt how he erected a shielding spell in front of him.

The man nodded. "The one and only." He huffed and scrutinized Tobi from head to toe, amused by something I couldn’t place. Maybe he knew that Tobi’s shield was useless against his repertoire.

Tobi and I held up our ID's. While I was a little impressed with his skills, I definitely couldn't let slide how he had demonstrated them. "You are aware, Mr Rossbusch, that your werelight classifies as attack on enforcement officers? That can earn you a jail term from three months up to five years. I guess that would not be the way you want to spend the rest of your pension" I said sharply.

Rossbusch just waved. "Nah, it was merely a test. Bianca had called and said that the wizard police was on their way."

We exchanged a glance. He certainly was a practitioner himself, why did he use incorrect terminology?

"So you call yourself a wizard?" Tobi asked slyly?

He laughed. "God forbid! I share a certain dislike for the police with my granddaughter, is all. But please, come in. There are no practitioners around here anymore."

We followed him into a typical GDR single-family house, the one we had seen countless identical times since leaving the A4 in Schmölln this morning. I supposed that the uninspired grey plastering was still original.

Inside, the vestibule was already crowded with only three people standing in it, before we proceded through the hall and then into the kitchen. Its floor was tiled in a black and white checkerboard pattern, footworn but polished, and the cupboard fronts were brown and a faded white, dulled by grease and dust and years of use.

"Do you want a coffee?" Rossbusch asked and turned to a coffee brewer, aside from the ceramic glass cooktop the only new-looking appliance here.

"Yes, thank you" we said simultaneously, then chuckled both. Before joining the KDA I would have said “Jinxed” to this but now I was more careful because I could actually get jinxed.

While the brewer was fizzling, Rossbusch leaned against the countertop and crossed his arms. "Bianca was reluctant to tell me what exactly brings you here, so please enlighten me."

Tobi stood up straight, scraping together all possible inches, but he was still half a head shorter than Rossbusch. Positioning his thumbs in the belt loops of his cargo pants, he said "We are investigating the incident on the A72 construction side. Witnesses say that there was a supernatural force involved."

"A supernatural force!" Rossbusch huffed. "What kind of supernatural is that supposed to be?"

"Actually, we are the ones asking questions" I said with a raised eyebrow.

Tobi lifted his right hand just a bit to shush me. "My colleague's actually right but because you might have useful information for us I'm gonna tell you. The witness said something about ghosts."

Immediately, Rossbusch's brow furrowed. "Ghosts? There? I don't know about that. And if, then they are either not recorded or haven't been ghosts for long. The only ghosts that I know of walk abroad in Peche, Geitn, Grimme, and Flößberch. But maybe that one stayed under the radar? Since my time in Flößberch, I'm out of sorts with ghosts. They're nothing but trouble." He snuffled disparagingly.

I had pulled out my notepad to keep track but stumbled over the places he'd named. "Uhm, sorry, could you repeat the towns?" I asked, still trying to make sense of the names.

He eyed me for long moment before said with a sneer "You're not local, aren't you. Pardon my Saxonian dialect. The official names are Pegau, Geithain, Grimma, and Flößberg, young lady."

"Don't call me 'young lady'" I muttered grouchily. Those places I faintly recognised from the map I had studied while we'd been driving to Rossbusch's place.

"What happened in Flößberg?" Tobi asked in a tone that raised my hackles. It sounded as if he knew of something I didn't.

Rossbusch seemed to have noticed that, too, because when I saw his cold stare another shiver ran down my spine. I hoped that Tobi knew what he was doing.

Just in that moment the coffee brewer beeped, and Rossbusch turned to fill us all a cup. After having taken a long sip, despite the coffee being scaldingly hot, he finally said "Flößberg was my Ettersberg. Did you know that Flößberg was a subcamp to Buchenwald? So you bet your ass that they did the exact same thing. Originally, I'm from Leipzig, taught by Wilhelm August Großmann, esteemed publisher and one of the most flamboyant practitioners of the 1920s -"

A shell-shocked "The what?" slipped from my lips before I could stop myself. If he had been a young man in the 1920s he shouldn't be alive anymore.

Rossbusch directed his cold stare at me now. "I don't like to be interrupted" he hissed.

I shrunk under his gaze and apoligizingly said "Sorry! Go on, please."

He cleared his throat and resumed as if I'd never interrupted him. "We met at the St. Thomas Choir. I was a pupil, just about fifteen, and he was the half-brother of our cantor Karl Straube. They disliked each other passionately, Straube was one of the first to enter the NSDAP while Wilhelm, considerably younger than Straube, was more or less openly homosexual and a big fan of jazz music. I realized pretty quickly that Wilhelm was interested in me in a way that surpassed friendliness. Today he'd be seen as a pedophile, and I agree on that now. But back then I was flattered and, yes, later on also hopelessly in love with him."

He took another sip from his coffee. I noticed that I'd held my breath and inhaled needily.

Rossbusch continued. "He showed me what he knew which was more than I could have ever dreamt of. He was a registered practitioner - that brought about his downfall. But I guess that Straube had his fare share in his brother's deportation by ratting him out to the authorities in 1932. He was sentenced to eight years in gaol before being deported to Auschwitz. It's not recorded what happened afterwards but I guess he was gassed upon arrival. I doubt that he was 'strong enough' to carry out any work."

He paused again and stayed quiet for a long time, his face a mask of unfathomable grief. I tried my best to keep my professional façade up but internally I was shaking. I wondered what had happened to Rossbusch.

After another stretch of silence he finally spoke again. "I was spared because I fled Leipzig right after Hitler's rise to power and hid with my parents who had a farm somewhere in the countryside. Still, they found me in '44 and deported me to Flößberg, for both being gay and a practitioner. They had offered me redemption by joining the army. But I refused. Because Ettersberg was bursting at the seams, and Flößberg was, as I said, a subcamp I was sent there. I guess that this saved my life. This and the fairies populating the forest. I'd strayed there while working on train tracks, and only emerged a few days before the camp was closed and we were all deported back to Weimar until the Allies freed the camp. The Folly raid had already happened, otherwise they might have killed me as well."

He shrugged. I shot Tobi a glance. The Folly was the British version of the KDA, led by Thomas Nightingale. He and his decision to train an apprentice were basically the reason why Tobi and I were standing here. By having an apprentice, Nightingale had broken a treaty between Germany and Great Britain. I was not too mad about it as it gave me the chance to become a practitioner myself. And I hoped that one day I would meet Nightingale and Peter. And if it was just to ask what exactly had happened in Buchenwald. The concentration camp that I had visited during my school time was Natzweiler-Struthof near Natzwiller in France.

I wondered why he had spoken so freely about his trauma when he had admitted earlier that he didn’t think too highly of us. But I realized that we were, beside his granddaughter, the only people he could disclose his true identity to. From what I knew, the Director had been the only registered practitioner for a long time. That’s why she’d been chosen as head of our Department. I suspected that Rossbusch was unregistered, despite some secret decrees on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War that required well-trained practitioners. Maybe he’d pledged himself to never serve an authoritarian regime after his experiences under Nazi rule.

“This is truly heartbreaking” Tobi acknowledged after some moments of reflection, “But I fear that we have to establish you as an unregistered practitioner. Usually, this is followed up by severe consequences for the suspect, especially when having gone unnoticed for so long, but maybe, considering the traumatic events in your early life a reprimand will suffice. That’s not our decision to make, though. Now back to the reason we’re actually here for.”

I bumped his shoulder with mine and gave him a long look. That man had just spilled his heart out, was probably right back in the camp after having torn his scarred wounds open for us, and Tobi wanted to go back to business just like that?

One of his eyebrows shot up, asking what I wanted from him, and I jerked my head sideways towards Rossbusch who just in that moment broke his mug because he’d held it too tight.

We both jumped while Rossbusch, muttering “sorry” under his breath, cast a cleaning spell. The splinters reassembled in the air between us until the mug was perfectly whole again.

“Err, Mr Rossbusch, what I actually meant to say is: If you see yourself able I would like to ask you one more question about the ghosts that you talked about. Maybe one of them turns out to be our suspect after all” Tobi asked more gently now.

Rossbusch chuckled. “I highly doubt that. But sure, I if it makes you happy I can tell you.” He refilled his cup, took a sip, and continued “In Pegau, in 1664, died a young man at the hands, actually at the beak, of a gander which slashed the man’s wrists and he bled to death. That happened as part of a morbid form of people’s merriment: The gander was hung between two poles and young men contended on horses to take the poor animal down. The young man’s fate is the late gander’s revenge, I suppose.

In Geithain, a cry of dismay can be heard every once in a while. It stems from a young choir boy’s ghost who died when he and his friends wanted to steal the young of a jackdaw. He had climbed up to the nest but refused to share the offspring and so the other boys let him fall down the tower. A stone at the church commemorates this incident.

In Grimma, a wedding was cursed when attending students sang reworked funeral songs that send the bride to a grave and prophesied her resurrection. Three days later, the bride died from the plague, a few days later also the groom and the bride’s two brothers.

And the camp in Flößberg was filled with ghosts. All those who’d died there haunted the place because they’d been left to rot in a mass grave only a few feet away from the barracks. Most of them were Jews, one or two I knew a little closer but most of them I had just seen a couple of times in camp before I’d disappeared. When I came back the camp was hopelessly overcrowded, and the ghosts just made it more claustrophobic. But they’re all at rest now since the place’s become a proper memorial site. I think that’s a dead end for you.”

“Please leave it to us what is and what isn’t relevant” Tobi said coolly before extending a hand. “Nevertheless, thank you for your time and my sympathies for the loss of your loved one.”

Rossbusch just waved and led us outside. After I’d said goodbye as well and we sat in Tobi’s VW I said “I think he’s right, you know. That his ghost stories are a dead end for us.”

Tobi admitted through gritted teeth after a moment of hesitation “Yeah, I know. But I still think it’s a good idea to check them, just in case. We should drive there and have a look.”

“But not today. It’s late and I’m tired. I count on our ghost to not kill anyone during the night.” I all but whined and tried to stretch myself in the limited space that I had.

Tobi nodded. “Yeah, it’s been a long day. And I suppose you’re also hungry?“ He smiled.

I grinned and asked in feigned surprise “How do you know?”

[elles-choices]

I Won’t Give Up (The Senior: Chris x MC)

Pairing: Chris x MC (Laura)

Words Count: about 1100

Summary: What would MC do if Chris had never flown to London to get her back? What if she was the one to take the first step?

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Choices by Pixel Berry

-----------

„I don't want to be someone who walks away so easily

I'm here to stay and make the difference that I can make

Our differences, they do a lot to teach us how to use

The tools and gifts we got yeah, we got a lot at stake

And in the end, you're still my friend at least we did intend

For us to work we didn't break, we didn't burn

We had to learn how to bend without the world caving in

I had to learn what I've got and what I'm not and who I am

I won't give up on us

Even if the skies get rough

I'm giving you all my love

I'm still looking up

Still looking up“ I won’t give up, Jason Mraz

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Laura walks quickly through the living room, pressing her hands together trying to ease her anxiety. She makes her way out on the balcony and tries to take a deep breath but it keeps stuck in her throat. She takes her phone out of her back pocket and goes through her contacts until she finds his name. She stares at it, her finger ready to call him but something is holding her back. She goes to Pictogram instead and does what she has been avoiding for weeks — she just want to see him. There is only one new photo and he was smiling, wearing his Nightingale uniform.

„I would be in this photo holding his hand If we were still together…“, she whispers and she starts to cry. Sobbing, she scrolls down through his photos and notices that he kept all of their photos together, even though it’s been two months since they broke up. „What am I doing?“, she asks, „Why am I still here?“. She knew deep down that it wasn’t what she wanted, that her decision to come to London was directly connected to her frustration with Chris for him not consulting her before taking the Nightingale’s job offer. However, instead of talking this out, she broke up with him. She sits down on the floor and buries her face in her hands with embarrassment, letting her phone fall on her lap. „I fucked it up so bad…“, she feels this feeling taking over her and she stays there for a while before picking up her phone once again. She dials a number and after someone answers on the other side, she says:

„Hi, my name is Laura Davis and I’d like to change the date of my flight, please“.

—————

After a long flight back home and being more than 24 hours awake, Laura takes a cab and drives to Chris football praxis. She doesn’t know if he will still be there but she doesn’t have much to lose now. Her mind is racing — she is excited to see him but she fears it is too late… too late for her to say sorry; too late for her to come back; too late for her to fight for this perfect thing they had together.

A few minutes away from the football field, she looks herself in the mirror and tries to cover the dark circles under her eyes with some make-up. She looks tired and she is but not only from the flight. Laura is tired of running away from what she wants just to prove a point. She knows, it could be too late and it probably is but she still has to try. 

The cab stops and her heart skips a beat. ‚It’s now or never‘, she thinks. She pays the cab driver, her luggage in one hand and she looks at her watch — she is 30 minutes late but she hopes for a miracle. She runs to the entrance but there is nobody there anymore. She lets her suitcase fall to the floor, breathing heavy and she walks a few feet into the field. She then sits on the turf for a moment, staring at the empty field where he was probably running around just a few hours ago. ‚It has to be a bad omen‘, she thinks. After a moment catching her breath, Laura stands up and feels her phone vibrating inside her jacket pocket. When she looks at it she realizes who is calling and her heart drops.

„Hello?!“, she feels her eyes already watering.

„Hey Laura… what do you think you’re doing?“, he says sounding surprised.

Laura turns around and sees someone running down the stands, waving at her on the way to down, „Chris… what are you still doing here?“, she brushes her tears away from her face.

„You know that I like to come here whenever I have some thinking to do“, he makes his way to her and hangs up. „Won’t you ask me what I was thinking about?“. Laura just looks at him, not believing her eyes. „I was thinking about you… about us... Imagine my surprise when I saw you walking through that entrance. I thought I was daydreaming”, he stops a few steps away, “There are so many things I wanna tell you, Laura. So many things I want you to know...“, but she cuts him off before he finishes his sentence.

„Chris, this one time I would like to go first…“, she says remembering the last talk they had. He looks at her big green eyes and nods nervously. „I’m so sorry for everything that happened since the last time we talked. For breaking up and leaving, when we actually should have talked this out. For not answering your calls and texts. For pretending I was having the time of my life in London and that I was over everything… but the truth, Chris, the painful truth is that I made a huge mistake. I missed you every second of these two months we spent apart. I never stopped loving you for one moment but I didn’t know how to come back from this“, she looks away trying not to crying and hears his steps getting closer to her. Chris pulls her into his arms and she can’t hold it anymore, „You have all the right to not want me back but if you still feel something for me… I’d like to spend the rest of my life making it up to you“, she sobs.

He kisses her forehead and whispers: „I love you, Laura… I will always love you and I should’ve never let you go, my love“. She looks up to him, gazing into his beautiful blue eyes and he slowly lowers his lips to hers kissing her gently, enjoying every second of the taste he has missed for so long, taking in the sweet scent that he thought he would never smell again. He lets his lips linger on hers, savoring the softness of her before he pulls away smiling, „It’s getting colder. Let’s go home… to our apartment!“, he cups her cheeks and brushes them with his thumbs.

Laura nods, smiling back at him. Chris puts an arm around her waist,  picks up her suitcase from the floor and they make their way home, enjoying this bliss they only feel when they are together. 

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Hello.

I’m here again with another blog award tag in the form of the Sunshine Blogger Award. I’ve seen this going around the blogging community for a while now (I’ve even done it before on the blog some point last year) and it’s always really nice to see everyone supporting each other in their multiple endeavours. I was recently nominated by Heidi at This Is My Book Blog, and Kate at Reading Through Infinity. I say recently but when it comes to me and my blogging scheduling, it would have been a couple of months ago.

Better late than never I suppose.

I’m going to do both sets of questions so this post will be incredibly long. Grab a mug of tea, coffee, or whatever beverage you so desire, some comfort snacks, find a comfy chair, and sit back and enjoy the ride!

The Rules: 

Thank the person who nominated you in a blog post and link back to their blog.

Answer the 11 questions sent by the person who nominated you.

Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.

List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog.

Heidi’s Questions:

1. What’s your most recent 5 star read?

Good job I had my reading journal to hand when writing up this post! According to that, my most recent 5 star read was A Trail Through Time (book 4 in the Chronicles of St Mary’s Series) by Jodi Taylor, although its sequel No Time Like The Past came very close to being 5 stars too. If you haven’t twigged by now, I adore this series of time-travelling historians and Jodi Taylor is constantly winding in twists I do not see coming!

2. Tell me about a book you loved, which was outside of your comfort zone (for example a genre you don’t usually pick up). 

Oh gosh, I’m getting stumped already. Umm, I suppose the only book I can think of is Stephen McGann’s, Flesh and Blood: A History of My Family in Seven Maladies. It’s like a autobiography on the subjects of genealogy, medicine and its deep-rooted connections to humanity. I don’t often read autobiographies as I find it’s simply fuel for the celebrity authors’ egos, but I decided differently here because I do like Stephen McGann and his scholarly interests besides acting. What struck me the most was how he managed to write about medicine and genealogy without losing any heart in the process. I found it really moving and it has influenced me to possibly start looking into a little bit of my own genealogy.

3. What’s a series which showed a promising start, but let you down in the end? It can be one you finished, or one you gave up on. 

I’m only recognising this now having re-read it back in December, but I would say The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. I did finish the trilogy and I feel let down by the main characters and their choices. To me, the relationship feels incredibly wrong and the ending felt like a regression, especially for Alina. I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that I don’t like it as much as I used to.

4. Tell me about an underrated book. 

Okay, so one book I can think of is The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild. It was advertised quite a bit in the UK a few years ago due to its nomination for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction but then it seemed to drop off the radar, and I’ve not heard anyone talk about it since. I think that’s a huge shame because it is a surprisingly good Adult fiction book about a slow-burning romance and the history behind a very valuable painting. It is also interesting to dive into the art world and see some of the history behind certain paintings because it isn’t a setting or perspective we really read from. I suppose one book it does remind me of is The Muse by Jessie Burton, another book that doesn’t seem to have the same hype as it did on its first release.

5. What authors/books did you love as a child?

These are just a short selection and a combination of both books and authors. If I said them all, we’d be here all day!

6. Have you always had a love of reading? If not, when did it begin?

As you can probably tell from all those books above, I’ve always loved reading! Like languages, it was instilled in me from an early age, and again by my grandmother. She taught me to read before I went into nursery and after that, I never went a week without finishing a couple of books.

7. What’s a tv series and/or film you recently loved?

I’ve not really watched any new films or tv series, but I loved series 7 of BBC’s Call the Midwife even if the last two episodes left me in tears and reminded me of harrowing childhood memories.

8. Do you ever read a book and have an actor firmly in mind to play one of the characters? If so, can you give an example. 

No, not really. I know this is not in the same vein as the question but whenever I do re-read Pride and Prejudice, I hear all the dialogue in the my head spoken by the cast of BBC’s 1995 adaptation, i.e. Alison Steadman with Mrs Bennet, Colin Firth with Darcy, Emilia Fox with Georgiana Darcy etc. I think because I’ve read and watched that adaptation so many times, my brain merges the two together.

9. Describe the plot of your last read in one sentence. 

Damn. Erm…

Travelling through time has never before looked so fiery, ghost-like and life-changing.

10. If there a person from history you’d like to read a fictional novel about?

Oh my word, so many choices! Nonetheless, Florence Nightingale, any of Henry VIII’s 6 wives instantly come to mind.

11. Are there any books you loved when you first read them, but think would not like if you read them for the first time today. 

I don’t know if I’d be a little hesitant towards the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth. I’d never read any dystopian novels before reading this for the first time a few years ago and so for me this trilogy set a benchmark for future dystopians and YA trilogies in general. I definitely know I’d be going into it aware of its flaws and any negative reviews.

Kate’s Questions:

1. If you could spend a day hanging out with one author who would it be?

Damn, Kate, why did you have to start off with such a hard question? Although I would probably choose someone like VE Schwab or Samantha Shannon.

2. If you use libraries, what’s your favourite thing about them?

I love how relaxed they make me feel. No matter how I’ve been feeling up until the moment I walk in, I instantly become calm and more amiable. Also, I love that they can be such a great community hub. My village library has become such a place since we managed to save it from closure and it is fabulous.

3. You can bring any meal or item of food from a book to life. What do you choose?

Oh gosh, I’ve no idea. Probably one of the Hogwarts’ feasts.

4. What was the last bookish event you went to?

At the time this post goes live, that would have been the Northern YA Lit Book Festival in Preston, the first I’ve actually ever gone to.

5. What’s one thing you’d like to change about the book community?

Whilst I know it has its moments and online drama, I don’t think I’d want to change anything.

6. If you could have one book adapted into a Netflix series and it was GUARANTEED to be great, which would it be?

A Darker Shade of Magic.

7. What’s the most misleading blurb you’ve ever read?

I don’t think I’ve come across one yet. I do sometimes say I was misled with The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen but I think that was more my own expectation of the book than the actual blurb.

8. Paperback or ebook?

Both. I do personally prefer to read paperbacks but ebooks are a blessing when I want to read books with smaller fonts.

9. What’s your favourite series of book covers?

I don’t think I can choose a favourite but I love these:

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10. Is there a genre you want to read more of this year?

I want to try to read more modern classics.

11. What’s one of the unexpected pleasures of being a blogger?

Oh, what a great question. I suppose everything that comes with the blogging territory is an unexpected pleasure for me. I love it more than I initially thought I would and it has opened up a community that I can truly feel at home in.  

Wow, they were some pretty great and tough questions!

Now to choose my own. Urgh.

I’m going to cheat a little and say, chose 11 of the 22 questions I’ve answered here. My yet again sleep-deprived brain cannot think today.

I also don’t know who to tag who hasn’t already been nominated.

I’m not picking 11 but I’ll go with:

Emma at Emma Reads Too Much Layla at Readable Life Mikaela at Journey Into Books Ash and Lo at Windowsill Books

As this post is long enough, I will leave it there.

Thanks for reading and have a brazzle dazzle day! xx

The Sunshine Blogger Award X 2 Hello. I'm here again with another blog award tag in the form of the Sunshine Blogger Award.