#well if it's the wrong diminutive i can always change it later

[aloraanophis]

On the topic of the Werefolk and Therianthropic culture in general (Creative Writing/Fantasy)

As I dip my pen into the pot and begin to write upon the silicon once more, I wonder where I should begin. About which of the wonders I have seen I should tell you.

The fall of Atlantis? The Titans who reigned there? The Betrayal? The Dark Millennia and its internecine warfare? The crash of the Vampyr and the legacy of the ship and her children? The Fae-driven quest for colonialism?

Where, in short, do you begin when you want to cover the vast scope of the world? Captain America or Gilgamesh? Heracles or Superman? Plato or Angela Davis? In the vast swathe of human experience that is filled with laughter and terrified screams, where do you begin?

Where should I begin?

Perhaps, taking a dart and metaphorically throwing it at the board, we shall discuss the Therianthropes--the Werefolk.

When the words "Werefolk" are invoked, most people think specifically of the Werewolves and the Lycanthropic Panic that was started by Universal Films in 1913.

The studio's release of "The Werewolf," and the now well-documented Lycanthropic Panic saw the Werewolves flee from America's cities to hide in the rural spaces of the world. Europe, never a very welcoming place to Lycanthropes, saw that old prejudice flare up again, and it spread across the world. First across the British Empire before jumping borders.

But of course the fear and hatred did not stay contained to the Werewolves. All the Werefolk found themselves fleeing population centers and hiding wherever they could, where they remain to this day.

From the Werehawk to the Werelephant, the shapeshifting branch of humanity known as the Werefolk fled to the corners of the world that had not yet been overly touched by the rest of humanity. Here and there groups would form, often but not always along the lines of their kind, but communities of mixed Werefolk were as common as not.

And there they have largely stayed, only in the last decade or three beginning to probe the wider fabric of society as the latest generation, impossibly bored by the generations of exile, have begun making names for themselves as the world has begun to rediscover and embrace the weird and fantastical and magical alike.

There is no singular Therianthropic culture, just as there is no singular form they all take. But there are some fairly regular constants around Werefolk culture writ large:

Unlike some of the horror stories that have risen up in popular culture about them, the Werefolk are indeed human. Their form may have been altered by the Fae during the Dark Millennia but they remain firmly human, if at times something slightly more.

The concept of an "Inner Wolf/Animal" that fights them for control of their mind is a dehumanizing stereotype originating in England in the mid-1800's that was later used as an excuse for the Werewolf Hunts.

The concepts of Alpha, Beta, and Omega Werewolves (and sometimes by extension other Werefolk) are, as always, not true and never have been. This theory that found its way into popular culture was started by L. David Mech in his book The Wolf, and debunked by him years later, even if popular culture has failed to recognize this.

While it is true that in some respects Werefolk's human physiology is affected by the form they shapeshift into, it is generally agreed that the Werefolk Essentialist claim that the animal they become is the main predictor of their behavior are, in fact, wrong. No matter how loud the Essentialists are. A diminutive weremouse can be as aggressive as a Polar Bear, and a massive Wererhino as meek and gentle as a capybara.

Werefolk tend to form tightly knit communities that are generally insular, often around family-based "clan" cultures forced upon them by the Werewolf Hunts of the 1930s that, after all, were rarely satisfied with just hunting the Werewolves and often changed up their targets to other Therianthropes, from Wereotters to Weremoose.

While generally distrustful of outsiders, they are fiercely loyal to their friends and found family. Some have, in the last century, developed formalized bonds of social debtory via formal, pronounced pacts, colloquially known as Life Debts.

Unlike their portrayals in Popular Culture, Werefolk can generally transform from human to animal form within seconds in a usually painless procedure (see also: Permanent Therianthropism and Transformative Disabilities)

Despite what you may have heard from print and film, Werefolk rarely stayed alone in their communities for long. Indeed, the modern American hidden cities were all formed with Werefolk as a base, with other magical humans and creatures trickling in to hide as they, in turn, were targeted and had to flee.

An academic footnote on Life Debts: So-called Life Debts were only awarded for acts of extreme bravery and a highly formalized, culturally-specific form of alliance stronger than any other kind of bond. Stronger than friendship, stronger than blood. Life Debts were not declared on an individual level, but at the clan, family, and/or community level. Despite what the fantasy authors may tell you, there is not a single recorded case of a Life Debt on an individual level. They tended to last for at least 2 generations before being considered having been repaid, and often saw an intermingling of Werefolk involved in the Debt from the affected communities. Modern Therianthropic academics dispute the number of Life Debts that have ever been declared and fewer still that were called upon, but out of the thousands of examples in the historical and literary record, they suggest that fewer than three hundred were ever actually formed and less than half that number ever called upon. It is a colorful, though overhyped, example of Werefolk culture that has caught the imagination of popular culture. The historians additionally tell us that only the Werepuma, Werepossum, and Werebison communities have recorded examples of initiating Life Debts in their oral or written histories.

[vampire-named-gampire]

Carry On Countdown - Day 22

Wow, watch me use the @carryon-countdown to plug my skating fic lmao

I don’t know if this counts, since Angelina is an OC and actually, Baz would totally make friends with/practically adopt a 17yo Russian girl, so I don’t know how unlikely it is, but it’s here. And also, I just really want to share more of On thin ice content, but the fic itself isn’t ready to be published yet so have this instead. 

For context, Baz used to train in Russia aged 16-20, and now both him and Simon train in Montreal (no, idk why I chose Montreal out of all places but that’s how it is.) Also I think Gelya is the Russian diminutive/nickname used for the name Angelina, but I’m not sure. The fic is still in the works, so this scene is bound to change/expand (I did omit it a bit when writing because spoilers) but anyway, I’ll stop rambling now. 

Prompt: Unlikely friends Word count: 1950 Rating: This scene is G, although the whole fic will be T or M 

SIMON

The ride from the airport to the hotel is awful. Baz must’ve suspected this, because he made me sit in the front.

“Go on,” he said teasingly. “The only skater who has motion sickness.”

I have to say, sitting in the front almost didn’t make a difference. I may not know how to drive, but even I know you’re not supposed to drive like that. When the cab drops us off in front of the hotel, I don’t even bother hiding my relief. Baz laughs.

“I never want to experience this again,” I say, knowing full well that this is my life for the next week. The hotel might be close to the venue, but it’s still far enough for it to be a driving distance. I can only hope buses are less deadly than cabs.

“You know, Moscow traffic is actually tame compared to the rest of Russia,” Baz smirks, handing me my bags.

“Well then I never want to see the rest of Russia,” I mutter, slinging my duffel bag over my shoulder and stepping through the automated hotel doors. Baz scoffs and follows me.

This hotel is fancy – much fancier than the hotels we usually stay at. Baz doesn’t seem phased by it at all, the posh bastard. I bet the hotels he stays at when he’s on vacation are at least twice as posh.

He does, however, seem phased when someone yells “Basil!” across the lobby. Before either of us can register what’s going on, a small figure in a red jacket runs towards us at full speed and crashes into Baz, making him emit a surprised oof sound.

The moment I realize the figure is actually Angelina Nuriyeva is the moment she starts speaking in fast Russian. I don’t understand a thing, but Baz seems to, because he laughs and hugs her back.

I knew Baz and Angelina were friends, but I didn’t think they were this close. I mean, they’re the exact polar opposites; Angelina is an actual sunshine (she’s always hugging and smiling at everyone) and Baz is… Baz. (He’s a big softie, I know that, but he goes through great efforts to appear cold and closed off.)

But here he is, ruffling Angelina’s hair and telling her something in Russian. (I’m suddenly met with the realisation that being in Moscow means I’ll get to hear a lot more of Baz’s Russian. I am very much not complaining at this prospect, even if I don’t understand a thing of what they’re saying.)

Angelina is nodding along and she pulls out her phone to show him something, but that’s when Baz stops her, suddenly speaking in English.

“Wait, I think in the interest of Snow, we should switch to English. He already looks lost enough as it is,” he says.

“No, no, I’m fine, by all means…” I start, but I’m soon cut off by Angelina.

“Yes, of course! I’m sorry, Simon! Come here, it’s so good to see you,” she says and hugs me. (This is what I mean when I say Angelina is a sunshine.)

“Good to see you too,” I nod.

“I was just about to show Basil how his houseplants are doing. Do you want to see too?” she asks.

“Houseplants?” I don’t bother hiding the surprise in my voice. Since when does Baz like houseplants? His flat in Montreal doesn’t have any, spare the tiny cactus on the windowsill.

“I had a lot of houseplants when I still lived here, but I couldn’t take them with me on the plane when I moved, so Gelya took them in her care,” he explains, as if he’s reading my mind.

“Georgy is doing amazing but Ilya went a bit floppy. I changed his earth so now I’m hoping he gets better,” Angelina says, showing Baz a picture of two houseplants, side by side, one of them (Ilya?) looking slightly wilted.

“When it goes floppy, we say it wilts, and we don’t say earth, we say soil,” Baz corrects her. If I was Angelina, I’d probably be annoyed right now, but she just smiles at him.

“Thank you. It’s so much harder to learn English now that there’s no one here to practice with me,” she sighs.

“You know you can call me any time and we can practice,” Baz offers.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I stop them both. There is so much new information I have to process. “You had houseplants? And you named them Russian names? And you taught her English?” (That would actually explain why Angelina’s English is so good.)

“Yes, Snow, are you keeping up?”

“And when he gave them up, he wrote me a whole notebook on how to take care of them,” Angelina chimes in. “And another notebook with English grammar.”

Maybe I do have trouble keeping up. Who is this Baz? (And why is he so attractive?)

“I never thought of you as a houseplant kind of bloke,” I shrug. “You don’t have any houseplants in Montreal.”

“I’m still mourning the loss of my old children.” Baz deadpans before turning back to Angelina. “Show me Alyosha. He was always my favourite.”

-

BAZ

Unsurprisingly, the jet-lag catches up with me right when it’s time to go to bed. I don’t know why I was naïve enough to believe I won’t need melatonin when dealing with an eight-hour time difference. I better take it now, before it’s too late.

I sigh and throw the covers back before picking up my phone to check the time. However, a text message notification from Snow grabs my attention before I can do that.

Is he nervous again? It would make sense, since this is a big competition for him. Would I be able to sneak into his room and sneak out the next morning unnoticed? I doubt that. There are only athletes staying on our floor, the coaches, press and competition staff are all on different floors, and I doubt the athletes would pay us much attention, but it’s still risky.

I’d much rather risk a few weird looks than have Simon spiral into panic two days before a major competition, though. I decide I’ll go to his room if that’s what he needs.

Maybe I should check why he’s even texting me before I devise any plans.

SS: do u have melatonine? SS: jet lag

I sigh in relief. He’s not having a mental breakdown. He’s just jet-lagged. (Which is a bit strange for Snow, but I suppose even his circadian rhythm can take a blow from time to time.)

BP: It’s spelled melatonin and yes, I have it. You can come get it if you still need it BP: Room 254

SS: yes ik where u r SS: I’ll b right over

I sit on the edge of the bed and wait for Snow to knock on my door. He’s staying a few corridors down, in room 273, so it takes him a few minutes. I jump up when I hear his knock.

He’s standing in front of my door, wearing joggers, a hoodie and those damned glasses of his again. His hair is messed up, like he’s been tossing and turning too.

“I thought you didn’t get jet-lagged,” I say, stepping aside to let him in. He settles on the edge my bed while I rummage my luggage for melatonin supplements.

“I don’t get sleep jet-lagged, but I do get food jet-lagged,” he says.

“What does that even mean, Snow?”

“It means it’s lunchtime in Canada right now and I’m so hungry I can’t sleep.”

I bite back a laugh. He’s an idiot. (An adorable one but an idiot nonetheless.) “You don’t need melatonin, Snow, you need this,” I say, throwing a granola bar at him. He startles, but manages to catch it.

“You’re just giving this to me?” he asks, audibly surprised. (Which is ridiculous. He gives me food all the time and here he is, questioning my generosity over a fucking granola bar.)

“No, Snow, pay up. Fifty rubbles.”

“I don’t have any Russian money,” he laughs, tearing the wrapping open. He’s going to get crumbs all over my bed, but I don’t shoo him away. Instead, I finally find the melatonin supplements and take one with some water. “Do you still want one?” I ask.

“Do you have any more granola bars?”

I laugh and pass him another one before sitting down next to him on the bed.

“Are you nervous?” I ask, just to make sure he’s really okay.

“Right now? I’m just hungry,” he says, tearing open the second granola bar.

“Right,” I nod.

“Baz. Are you doing that thing where you’re worrying about me again?”

“A bit,” I admit.

“Stop,” he says like I can just turn it off like a tap. (I wish I could.) We sit in silence for a while, me thinking about how much easier my life would be if I just stopped worrying about Simon Snow and him chewing through his granola bar. “I didn’t know you and Angelina were such good friends,” he finally says.

“We trained together for four years,” I shrug, but it’s not just that. The training environment in Russia was intense. It’s a bloodbath to even get on the national team there, so of course it’s intense, but I think every other skater the rink was looking at me sideways because I was an outlier. I wasn’t Russian, I didn’t speak Russian and I think they felt like I didn’t belong there. (I know now that I really didn’t.) They eventually accepted me and by the time I left Russia, even the ones who refused to speak during my first year there were sad to see me go.

But Gelya was nice to me from the start. She was only thirteen at the time and didn’t speak any English, but she clapped for me when I did something well and cheered me on when I was having a bad day. (Thanks to her, davai was one of the first Russian words I learned.) She brought me homemade pyraniki on special occasions and when I got injured and had to go back to England to have surgery, she sent me get well soon cards all the way from Russia and she made the entire rink sign them.

That’s just who she is. She’s this nice to everyone and it didn’t matter to her if I was Russian or English, I was just another person at her rink who she could bring biscuits to. Over the four years that I’ve lived there, she became like a little sister to me.

“Baz?” Snow’s voice snaps me from my thoughts. “You seem tired. I’m going to go.”

I have half a mind not to ask him to stay here. (We both know we can’t do that.) “Okay,” I say instead. He stands up and throws the granola wrappers in the bin. I stand up too, to walk him to the door (I have manners), but he waves at me to sit back down.

“It’s fine,” he says.

“Will you be able to sleep?”

“If my hunger doesn’t get to me again, yes,” he laughs. He’s already by the door.

“Wait.” I stand up and grab the last granola bar from my bag, offering it to him. “Just in case,” I explain. I want him to stay here, to make sure he sleeps well and doesn’t spend the night worrying about the competition, but I can’t do that, so this is the least I can do.

“Thanks,” he smiles, tucking it in his pocket. Then he hugs me briefly and presses a kiss to my cheek. “Sleep well.”

“You too.”

And he’s out the door.

[feralrunaway]

Rat

Pairing: August Walker x teenage OFC (platonic)

Word count: ~1.5k

Warnings: homelessness, cursing, crime, implications of abuse, implied murder, August’s disdain for religion

A/N: I’ve never written for August before, so I hope I do this justice. This story takes place after MI6, several different timelines. Please heed the warnings before reading, thanks!

——————

Their eyes connected across the dark, crowded club.

A nostalgic smile touched her perfectly glossed lips, the slightest mirror of which ghosted along his rigid features, only for both to disappear before anyone could notice. A secret smile. An acknowledgment.

...mankind is drawn to his self-destruction like a moth to the candle.

A decade of transformation. Of skills honed. And yet the depth of connection over shared experience remained.

*A rooftop entrance. A door ajar.

Accessible once, and he hoped still. A place to lay low until he could reestablish contacts and repair his identity. One of the few places he could recall that even his trusted associates knew nothing of.

The lock had clearly been picked, alerting him to his safe house having been compromised. Not by the authorities, no. But by the lump of diminutive human lying under a pile of dirty blankets in the attic.

A cocked gun. A warning. The bored, disinterested girl shifted to sit under the blankets and stare petulantly in his direction.

“I found it first, Scarface. Get your own squat.”

It took a lot to surprise August Walker. But this live grenade of teenage attitude glaring daggers at him was enough to qualify. Her eyes briefly absorbed his expensive, if disheveled, clothing, danced over the gun in his hand.

“Are you a fucking cop?” she stood slowly.

August chuckled darkly, but the inherent threat in the sound was not perceived by the adolescent occupying the loft hideaway belonging to him. Was she brain-addled?

“I suggest you scurry along, little rat.”*

“Fuck you.”*

It is the first step toward the ultimate brotherhood of man.

Her mentor. After all these years, he hadn’t changed. Well, the scars were mostly gone. Only a slight puckering remained next to his right eye, easily concealed by an errant curl. But the same man occupied the expensive suit. Money had its uses. He had taught her that.

* A desperate time. A questionable meal.

“You got this where?”

She rolled her eyes as well as any youth.

“It’s clean. The grocery on main puts their overstock out every week.”

“You’re eating out of a dumpster.”

She scoffed. “So are you if you want to eat tonight. Never hurt me before. You’re free to come up with your own shit, moneybags. More for me.”

“What if I were to propose a solution beneficial to us both?” he eyed the slightly expired food and week-old produce. He had no intention of a recognizable face and bounty on his head making him settle for scraps. “Earn your stay in my safe house.”

She did well. Better than he had anticipated. He watched her walk down the street, charming a clothing shop clerk while nimble fingers pilfered this and that, changing both clothing and personality before his tracking eyes at each stop she made, until suddenly he gazed upon a simple, bookish young adult simply shopping for groceries for her family at home.*

His prodigy. A quick study. With a few lessons of her own to teach him.

*A midnight ambush. An unexpected out.

The rat was long gone before even August managed to divert himself safely away from the house. It had been a small team. Nothing he couldn’t halt with a few well timed fists. He was the Hammer after all. But now his hideaway had been compromised. And they had picked up his trail.

It was difficult, if not nearly impossible for a man his size with such distinguishable scars to make his way down a city street while avoiding pursuant agents from every angle.

A small hand tangled in his shirt. A barely pulled punch. Her finger to her lips, she tugged him down through the open manhole.

Filthy, stinking tunnels. Narrowing, narrowing until his broad shoulders barely squeezed through. Until finally they opened up into the broad arched chorus of entries leading to any path of their choosing.

“Welcome to the underground, old man. Pick your poison.”*

Today, mankind has been handed the opportunity to escape his destiny.

August worked best alone. He had never understood what kept drawing him back to her. Why the presence of this feral spitfire of a child was tolerable. Perhaps a mutual understanding of the true evils operating in the world.

*A special day. A present with meaning.

“It’s my birthday today.”

“Oh?  And how old are you now?”

“Fifteen.”

“…how long have you been on your own, rat?”

“Maybe a year and a half now.  I’m not sure.  Don’t get all sympathetic, old man.  It’s better this way, trust me.  I do just fine on my own.”

She needn’t understand that he felt no pity about it. He could relate.  He knew the type of things that would cause an adolescent to take a crack at life on their own.  It didn’t take much searching to discover where she had come from.  The child of a pastor, the kind that spit vitriol about sin and promised fire and brimstone. The kind of man that hid his own abusive deeds and indescretions behind a pious front.

Any belief in a spirituality with no other proof, other than the cravings to project one’s self over the rational thinking of the others must be eradicated.

Two days later, August was gone, only leaving behind one thing.

She read the headline of the newsprint again and again.

“Local church up in flames, two missing.  Officials continue the search.”

Under the headline, in elegant, efficient script:

Happy Birthday, Rat.*

...by averting disaster, they serve to delay a peace that can only come through an inevitable baptism of fire.

“I miss the Phantom of the Opera look. You should have kept it.”

“There is benefit in being inconspicuous, as I recall you saying once,” he murmured, eyes indicating the siren red dress and dripping diamond jewels framing her delicate face and body.

She laughed, loud and genuine. “There is also benefit to be had in boldness, as you and your devilstache well demonstrated to me.”

*A back alley altercation. A job gone wrong.

He hadn’t seen her in two years. Now he watched from above as she evaded multiple assailants. Ducking and twisting, the little rat managed to slip through their grasp time and again. Her small frame and wiley nature worked to her benefit. Until it didn’t. One punch to the gut saw her laid out, winded, one man hovering above her and another with a gun trained to her head.

August had seen enough. Four quick shots and they were down. He sauntered down the stairs and over to her prone form.

“Scarface. Perfect timing, you handsome bastard. I’ll just be on my way.” she was winded, but no less crass.

“Not a chance, Rat,” he pulled her to standing by the nape of her neck. “There are a few things you need to learn.” He held out a hand. She leaned forward, spitting several sparkling diamonds into his open palm. “The first being that blatant theft never leaves you an out. Learn your exchanges and plan for them well before extraction. When you have another party interested in the payload, you have well-financed protection.”

He secretly reveled in her education in hand to hand combat. He always preferred fists to weapons, whenever possible. Her squirrelly evasive maneuvers were intriguing and useful, evidence of her time on the street, filching whatever she needed a day at a time. But if she were to ever be overpowered, she had a long way to go.*

The suffering I bring you is not the beginning of the end. It is the beginning of a greater mutual understanding through common suffering.

Neither looked at the other as they observed the room.  Watched for their mutual target.

The comfort of working in tandem was welcome. She rarely utilized the assistance of others. There was, after all, only one man she had ever trusted.

 *A romance gone wrong.  A late night call.

“I need a place to lay low for a few days.”

“How did you get this number?”

“I met a man once who wore sin on his upper lip.  He taught me a few tricks.”

August smiled at the other end of the line.

“I will send you the address.  You will send me his name.”*

Here I will emphasize clearly that the judgement upheld against us will be one of human hands, not of a god or other wordly being.

Both of their gazes fell to the intended target as he broke away from the crowd.

“My buyer won’t be happy if I let him go.”

“Will we finally find ourselves at odds over this transaction, Scarface?”

“Hardly, Rat. Now scurry along. This one belongs to you.”

With that, he set down his drink. He walked toward the exit, fully trusting that this would be a job well completed.

And so, the cycle continues.

Casting one final glance in her direction, he realized that the unfamiliar sensation he always felt around her, that drew him like a moth to the candle, had a name:

Pride

(Nov 27, 2020)

[captaincravatthecapricious]

I Thought I Could Trust You- Prompt Fill

 CWs: panic attacks, mental health issues, suicidal thoughts kind of? (Jon wishing that if someone is going to kill him that they would just get it over with), paranoia, insomnia, season 2 Jon and all his issues. Yes basically same as last chapter.  Oh and Food and asthma.  

This is basically a follow up for It Was My Job to Protect You

For Someone on Ao3 whose name escapes me because I haven’t slept well or recently and I am so sorry.  If it’s you please let me know!

LAST BINGO! FINALLY.  I am taking "things you said" prompts, come drop me one of those prompts for Jon, Martin, or Tim!  I am very tired and can't remember if I proofread, so sorry in advance, or in past tense I don't know anymore time is fake and so is the order in which we perceive events.  Have a lovely stretch in your existence.  Card by the wonderful @celosiaa​!  Also very much inspired by @janekfan​

Jon can hardly keep his eyes open.   The stairs were almost too much for him.   Wavering before his eyes and pulling on his heavy limbs, aching and shaky from his earlier panic attack.   

It’s not like he can ask for help.  And even if he could, Martin is just as badly off.  And Tim... Tim scares him.  

Tim is loud.  Tim is angry.  Which is Jon’s own fault.  If he hasn’t been following Tim, Tim would be boisterous, not shouting.  Jon wouldn’t have learned to flinch when he talks.  To flinch when he moves.  

And he wants to trust him but he’s afraid.  And if Martin didn’t kill Gertrude, that makes it all the more likely that Tim did.  

But no.  No.  Tim is his friend, right?  Was his friend.  

But all worry of letting him into his flat vanishes when the climb steals his hard-earned air from his lungs.  Leaving him swaying and gasping on the landing.  

Tim’s speaking and Jon flinches away.  Almost teetering down the stairs, before he’s caught.  By Tim.  

“Oi, steady on, boss!”

Almost drown out by his breathing.  Narrow chest heaving with effort and none of it reaching his brain.  

“Hey Jon, could you maybe hold off on passing out on me until you give me your keys?”  

Is that what Tim had been talking about?  

Keyes, he can do that.  Right?  

But enervated fingers fumble with them in his pocket and he can’t grasp them.  To his unending shame, he feels tears on his cheeks.  

At least Martin is too out of it from his own panic attack earlier to notice.  Much as the comfort would be welcome.  It would also be stifling and even more embarrassing.   

“Jon?”   Still too loud.  Tim’s too loud too close still steadying him physically which is still sending him further off balance.  “Never mind, I’ll use mine.”  

Because right.  Tim had a key.  Which Jon has been regretting because too loud too angry Tim could slit his throat while he sleeps but he doesn’t have it in him to change the locks so he’s been putting wedges under all of his doors.  Ugly old wooden things that scuff the floor but that’s fine if it keeps him alive a little longer.  Warns him early enough to arm himself.  Although.  Dying quickly without any fuss sounds... like a luxury.  

Tim guides an overly pliant Martin to Jon’s understuffed and threadbare sofa.  He tries to guide Jon to the bedroom before Jon’s knees buckle but Jon doesn’t want to be put to bed.  He doesn’t want Tim in attended.  He wants to trust Tim.  But he can’t.  

Much as Jon wants to sink into his bed and make up for all the sleep he’s missed over... well over the course of his whole life, he can’t leave Tim alone.  Unsupervised.  

Can’t let Tim kill him.  Or poor, exhausted Martin on the couch.  Or risk some other person breaking in and killing them all.  

Jon isn’t sure if it would be better to be killed by someone he knows and once called a friend.  

He isn’t sure.  

But when Tim goes to the kitchen to make them all some food which Jon’s lackluster supplies, Jon follows. 

Jon can’t keep his eyes open.  Hyper vigilant to the sounds of the kitchen.  But he can’t keep his eyes open.  And… it might be welcome if Tim’s curry ends up killing him.  So long as the poison does its work quickly.  

He doesn’t want to die, not really.  He’d very much like to survive, but surviving is exhausting, and maybe he wouldn’t mind too much if he just… wasn’t.  He doesn’t want to be a mystery, but he doesn’t want to be afraid anymore… to Hurt anymore.  And he is so exhausted that he does Hurt.  Endlessly.  Not to mention the ragged holes in his skin, still inching ever closer to being ugly scars… or they would be if he could stop worrying them… making them bleed.  

But as tired as he is, it doesn’t stop him from being afraid.  Afraid of dying?  Or maybe just the fear of not knowing When the end is coming.  If he only knew, then he could relax until it was actually imminent.  Not just remaining alert every moment.  

Christ he wants to sleep.  

And… he does… in a way.  He dozes while Tim cooks.  

But he’s afraid that it’s poisoned.  He is afraid Tim will be angry if he can’t make himself eat it for fear… then again it probably won’t be dangerous because Tim and Martin will presumably also be eating…

He wakes up to a clatter of something.  He wakes up with numbed arms and a pounding pulse.  He wakes up with Tim too close holding a knife.  

And later he can parse out, Tim is only too close because he is picking up the cutting board that fell off Jon’s cluttered and diminutive counter, but all he sees is Tim with a knife, Tim cursing loudly.  And he can’t even scream because his chest is too tight.  

This is it.  This is the end of Jonathan Sims.  

He’s going to die.  He is certain he is.  

He shrieks.  And aborted, choked off sound.  Pathetic.  

And he almost thought he could trust Tim.  He almost thought he could trust him.  Almost.  

When Tim drops the knife and makes his posture as non-threatening as possible, Jon hates himself.  Still unable to draw a full breath, and he Hates himself.  

He’s broken Tim’s trust again by not trusting him.  Again.  Not even the first time today.  He wants to tear himself up from the inside out, flacking little bits of old and poorly preserved parchment.  Wants to make those lines appear and send tiny flakes of paper and dust flying and have no more of himself.  Nothing left.  Just this gaping chasm.  Which is all he deserves really.  Leaving nothing but a mess, just like always.  Horrible… wretched… selfish… guilty… pathetic…  What is WRONG with him.  This is Tim.  Tim.  His first friend at the institute.  Tim who has always been there for him.  Until Jon went and Fucked it up.  Properly fucked it up, with no way back.  And.. And… FUCK.  

He’s crying again.  Making a proper fool of himself.  

“Jon?”  

He can’t look at Tim.  Can’t catch his breath.  Catching and wheezing in a way that is pitting the asthma against the panic and making them both all the worse.  

Tim isn’t as gentle as he can be when he shoves the inhaler at Jon for the second time today.  But Jon’s been sitting at the edge of a panic attack for weeks, and this time, it had been his fault.  Not his fault that Jon’s been a jumpy paranoid wreck, but his fault for being loud and angry and threatening and waving a knife around in front of the nervous wreck that used to be his friend.  

“Jon, you’ve got to use the inhaler.  If you don’t breath, I’m gonna wake Martin from his nap.  And he’s gonna be pissed at me, and if he gets pissed at me, I’m gonna get pissed at you, and you don’t want that.”  

Probably a mistake to threaten the person afraid of you, but he can’t fix his anger in one day.  Not until Jon puts in the work too.  

Okay he gets it.  Jon can’t exactly help being paranoid.  He isn’t gonna shame Jon for having shit mental health.  That would make him a bloody hypocrite.  But… Jon did not handle it well.  You’re supposed to reach out if you’re having a breakdown!  (Yes he knows… he’s still a bloody hypocrite but Less of one).  So… Jon’s gonna have to make an effort, and Tim… will try to be less …threatening?  Loud?  Big?  

Jon stops stalking him, Tim takes a good snoop around his flat, they take turns keeping watch for monsters so maybe they can get some goddamned sleep.  Simple enough!  

If Jon can stop having a panic attack while he’s trying to cook!

No… No.  Not gonna be angry at Jon for having another panic attack.  Hardly even came down from the last one.  Still too paranoid to leave Tim alone in the kitchen, stubborn bastard.  And what kind of an idiot only has a few withered vegetables in his fridge?  

(The kind who is too paranoid to eat non-packaged food, Tim does NOT think to himself).  

Still.  Jon should have reached out.  should have said something before it got this bad!  This isn’t Tim’s Fault.  He didn’t help, sure, but it isn’t his Fault!  And he isn’t going to apologize and he isn’t going to forgive Jon.  (At least for now).  

Jon has to be better.  Try to be better.  Tim will meet him halfway, but Jon has to make the first step, and use the goddamn inhaler.  But the threatening just made it worse.  

Jon looking frail and skinny and tired, hands over his head again, bracing for an attack.  Just like in his office, just like on the stairs.  Crumped up in such a way that even if he weren’t having an asthma attack and a panic attack, it would probably still be hard to breathe.  

“Boss, you’ve got to breathe.  We did this earlier, I didn’t kill you then.  Not gonna kill you now.”  Tim moves slowly so Jon isn’t surprised, and guides him a little straighter in his chair, holding the inhaler for him, as Jon’s finger tips (and lips) are going blue.  

And Jon’s still fighting him, although quickly losing what little strength he had to begin with.  

It takes some soothing before Jon lets him near enough to get the inhaler in his mouth.  “That’s good, boss.  That’s it, bud.  Now breathe with me.”  

He has a hand on Jon’s narrow chest now.  Sticky with cold sweat, heaving unevenly.  And Tim can’t believe how fragile his friend(?) has become.  

But as soon as Jon has breath in his body, the apologies start flowing out.  

“Hey, now.  None of that now.  You can apologize until you’re blue in the face once you’re not, ya know… literally blue in the face.  I do want those, but not until you’ve gotten some sleep and you eat some of this damn fine curry that I am somehow making from your truly pathetic supplies.  I’ll take the first watch, then we can talk about it, and you can actually start doing better.  Because that’s what I want.  I want you to stop hiding from us.  I get it, you can’t trust right now.  Fine.  But what you’ve been doing isn’t okay.  You don’t trust me.  That’s …well not fine, but I get it.  I do.  But stalking us, and yelling at Martin, and hiding from us isn’t how to deal with that.  You don’t trust us, so tell us how to help.  How can we prove to you that we aren’t gonna hurt you?  So you can’t help being a paranoid wreck, that’s understandable, but you can’t take that out on us.  That isn’t okay.  So first curry, then sleep.  Then we’ll talk.  Okay?”  

And Jon nods.  Allowing himself to be helped to the couch while Tim finishes dinner.  

[sleepylixie]

That Mixtape Love- 2

Fantasy AU, College!AU, Bang Chan X fem! Reader

 That Mistape Love ||  Trailer || Part-1 

3.3k words, Angst/Fluff. Beware of: mentions of a bad household(not abusive, not explicit), inexplicit making out.

A/N: So it comes to an end. This story has been one of my biggest passion projects, despite only being a two shot. Once again, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this! Do let me know what you think about this final installation of Chan’s story in the Solis Universe, I’m all for critique and feedback ^_^

Drop me an ask || Masterlist

Under heavy skies in the rain, You're dancing in your bare feet, just like we're in a movie

“Chan look! It’s raining!!” Your eyes sparkled with excitement as you dashed to the nearest library window, eyes trained on the off-season rain. Chan watched your movement from his seat at your shared table . You’d been trying to get an assignment out of the way while he’d been studying for midterms when the rain struck- and it was like a switch had flipped in you.

You’d always been weak for peaceful rains, the ones that started as a drizzle and became a downpour, not loud or blinding with thunder and lightning. The rains had always fanned the small childish streak that lived in you and brought back warm memories from old times.

“Let’s go!” You rushed back to him, hurriedly stuffing your books into your bag, pushing Chan’s things towards him. “But where are we going?” Chan exclaimed-well, whisper shouted, because you were still in the library. “Downstairs, I want to enjoy it while it starts!” You giggled, pecking his cheek quickly before unceremoniously tossing his bag and books onto his lap. “Hurry!”

“Okay, okay, patience, Seashell.” Your eyes were still trained on the rain, an uncharacteristically free smile pasted across your face. Chan shook his head in amusement as he collected his things and you didn’t waste a second before dragging him across the library and outside, the warm scent of wet earth hitting the two of you head-on. You took a deep breath of the scented air, and it was like the stress of the college week had left your body. It felt glorious. Without a second thought, you dropped your bag, shucked off your shoes and stepped onto the cobblestones that led to the library, allowing the raindrops to hit your face and skin.

“Y/N, What are you doing?” Chan called out but you were lost to the world in your euphoria, the sheer joy that came with rare rains like this. “It’s called dancing in the rain, honey.” You laughed, your face turned skyward with the same free smile on your face. “You’re a walking romance cliche.” Chan chuckled as you twirled in the rain, your hair getting rapidly drenched by the downpour. “It’s the best feeling ever! Jen and I did this a lot back home.”

You finally turned to look at Chan and it was like his breath stopped in his chest- at that moment, there was nothing more beautiful than the way you looked, hair stuck to your forehead, barefoot on the cobblestones, with that gorgeous smile that rarely ever graced your face. It was  sight that prompted him to pull off his jacket and shoes and step into the downpour. You were right. There was something in the rain that grounded him more than he expected, the gentle pressure of the raindrops hitting his skin.

A happy shriek escaped your chest when damp arms encircled your body, lifting you and twirling you around. “I didn’t know you were a rain person!” You laughed when Chan set you down, turning around to push some stray strands of damp hair that hung over his eyes. He smiled at you, his eyes crinkling in that familiar way that left soft creases at the corners.

“I’m not, but for you, I just might.”

Coz baby we’re just reckless kids, Trying to find an island in the flood.

//

You make it look like it's magic 'Cause I see nobody, nobody but you, you, you

His lips felt like a different kind of warmth this time- not warm, hot. This kiss was different from the soft pecks you’d shared, this was open-mouthed kisses you couldn’t help but melt into. This was a red-hot passion that coursed through you, that pushed you closer to him, burying your hands in his hair as you tilted your head, letting the kiss deepen. Chan’s mouth was firm against yours, almost rough- but this time, he had to pull back with what felt like visible effort, hands tightening slightly around you. “You’re okay with where this is going, Seashell?” He breathed out, looking down at you.

“Yes.” You didn’t bother with too many words when he was standing in front of you,  looking at you with that... That hungry look in his eyes. Grabbing a fistful of his shirt, you pulled him down into another searing kiss, flinging your other arm around his neck. He gasped in surprise but quickly recovered, now letting his hands skim the bottom of your shirt to graze at the sensitive skin of your waist. You shuddered softly into the kiss- you didn’t know a simple touch could have you weak like this. 

The sharp zing of electricity sparked your veins when Chan’s hands slipped down to hook your legs around his waist, hoisting you up against him and the wall. The warmth your kisses had started with was now a raging wildfire, from the way your hands unabashedly attempted to unbutton the rest of his shirt and the roughness of his hands squeezing your legs and nestling himself further between your legs.

When he began placing breathy open-mouthed kisses against your skin, nipping gently at your jaw, earlobe, neck... you couldn’t help but let your head rest against the wall with a soft moan, his actions sparking a carnival in your head that you couldn’t help but revel in. He’d begun a gradual ascent up the hem of your shirt, his cool fingertips coaxing soft shivers up your spine. 

“We can stop whenever you want, seashell…” He murmured, pulling back and placing a kiss on your nose- an action so at odds with the lust-charged minutes you’d been sharing before. Your skirt shifted higher up your legs when you pressed your body closer to Chan’s, knowing full well that your action would work just as well as words, but-

“I don’t want to stop, Chan. I’m sure.”

I swear on my life that I've been a good girl Tonight, I don't wanna be her

//

This morning I said we should talk about it 'Cause I read you should never leave a fight unresolved

“Y/N, Come on, open the door.” Chan’s voice was loud, albeit a little muffled because he was on the other side of the door, locked out of your room.

Jennie had gone on a soul-searching trip for the weekend and you’d decided to stay back, claiming to be tired- the only thing that felt tired was your mind. The days had been dragging a little too much recently, and the overwhelming stress of university and part-timing had begun to get to you. It didn’t help that your power needed a good amount of control to keep from going haywire and changing the frequencies of all the auras around you. Jennie knew your moods, so she often left you to your own devices until you worked it out by yourself, sometimes pigging out over junk foods and atrociously bad horror movies with you. Chan, however, was new to this. So here he stood outside your bedroom door, beyond concerned.

You curled up further around the pillows on your bed,  head spinning and slightly deadened.  How were you supposed to voice the words for what you were feeling? A sigh escaped your lips when another urgent knock landed on your door, courtesy of your boyfriend.  “Chan, I’m fine. Just go back home, okay?” You called out, voice raspy from the disuse.

“No, I’m worried about you, Y/N.” Chan retorted from beyond the locked door. “You’ve been off for the whole week and you’ve been avoiding me.” His voice raised slightly from what sounded like mild annoyance. “Can you blame me for being concerned?”

You let your gaze wander to your room door. You hated looking weak. You hated feeling vulnerable like this, feeling like a liability to the people around you. How were you supposed to tell Chan that without coming off like a crazy person?

“I don’t want to see anybody right now, Chan, please.” You steeled your voice as you spit the words out, more acidic than you intended it to. “Just leave. I’ll text you later if that’s what you want.”

An exasperated sound ripped from Chan’s throat as he jiggled the doorknob again. “This isn’t about you texting me, Y/N! I’m worried there’s something wrong and you’re having to deal with it alone. I just want to help. Why can’t you just let me help?!”

Tears welled up in your eyes uninvited; there was an unfamiliar sharpness to Chan’s tone that you’d never heard before. Was he tired of you?

“Because I don’t want your help!” You yelled back, your voice cracking slightly. 

The instant, deafening silence that you got in response had the tears sliding down your face some more. Did he leave? God, why couldn’t you just be normal and accept help when you need it? A slight tremor shook your fingers as you dragged the blanket out of the bed with you, padding towards the door and unlocking it. Faced with the empty corridor in front of your now open door, a sob escaped your lips. Of course, he left. Why would he stick around after you screamed at him like that? 

Slinging the blanket around your shoulders, you dragged yourself towards the kitchen- only to stop short at the sight of Chan sitting on the kitchen counter, looking uncharacteristically diminutive with his hunched shoulders. The second he caught sight of you, he jumped off the counter, his soft grey aura barely a fuzzy field around him- thin like he had retreated into himself. Your heart wrenched uncomfortably at the sight- it was your fault he looked like that.

“I get it if you want to break up with me, Y/N.” His voice was quiet, lacking the usually bubbly sunshine that filtered through it. You stared at him incredulously through teary eyes. “W-what?”

“You’ve been avoiding me because you’ve wanted to break up and didn’t know how to say it. Am I right?” He was still speaking quietly, but there was suddenly a tinge of bitterness to it. Did he think that- “Don’t worry, I won’t hate you, I promise-”

“Are you crazy?” The words slipped out of your mouth uninhibited, along with the torrential outburst of tears. “You’re one of the best things that college brought to me, why would I want to break up with you!?” You wailed, sinking to the floor in a puddle of blanket and tears.  “College gets to me sometimes Chan,and my parents keep calling to yell at me, and my power goes haywire if I meet too many people and- and-” Your next words were muffled by Chan’s shoulder when he knelt next to you, pulling you into his familiar warmth.

“And I keep feeling like I’m not enough for you,” you mumbled out softly, but Chan’s proximity to you meant he heard the words. He pulled back, a confused look on his face. “I have a power I can barely control, I’m probably the moodiest person you’ve ever met, I’m not particularly pretty either-”

Before you could go on, Chan’s finger on your lips shushed you. “I’m not going to hear any more self-slander until you get yourself freshened up. Eat something, and we can slander ourselves to your hearts’ content. Sounds good?”

Something about that sentence had you giggling waterily, your face reflected in Chan’s eyes when they crinkled in a small smile. “Okay.”

As it turned out, the two of you didn’t indulge in the slander-session at all. Just junk food and atrociously bad horror movies, then Chan calling Jisung to get some of his clothes so he could stay overnight with you. It was warm. Nice. Unforgettable.

Stay, stay, stay I've been loving you for quite some time, time, time

//

I swear to God, when I come home I'm gonna hold you so close

“How’s home?” You asked, your voice quiet. You were perched on the window seat in your room, watching soft snowflakes float from the night sky down to the ground. “Home’s nice, Seashell.” Chan’s voice was a shot of warmth, shooting across your chest and down your spine. “My mom nearly kicked me out of the house for not bringing you home with me. The family’s dying to meet you.” You giggled into your fingers, the warmth being replaced with something colder, more...bittersweet.

It was halfway through Winter Break, and you’d chosen to come back home with Jennie, as had Chan, whose family lived in the same city as Solis University. While your family was overjoyed to have you back home, it was evident that you’d only returned to the same shattered semblance of a family you’d left behind. You spent your days either cooped up in your room in the name of studies or at Jennie’s place, her parents only too willing to have you over.

Chan, on the other hand, had been raised in a large, happy family that had never known separation. It was obvious, with the way he was so easy with his words, like he’d never had to think twice about his opinions. You wished you could see him in his element, back in his family home- surely he’d look as handsome as he always did, his smile lighting up his eyes and nose permanently tinged pink from the cold…

“I miss you, Chan.” Your voice was quiet, uncertain- saying your true feelings out loud still felt strange sometimes. Your aura shook sadly around you, pulsating around your heart when you heard Chan’s soft sigh. “I miss you too, Seashell. So much.” You could almost envision his grey aura retreating into his skin around him, the thought sending another pang of longing across your mind.

“I regret coming back here. It feels so cold and empty. I miss how Solis feels. With Jennie, and Jinyoung at work, going to Luna’s with you. All of that feels more like home to me than..than this shell I’ve come back to. I’ve always felt that I’d be better off if I never came back here, but I keep doing it anyway in the fear that it might be the wrong choice. They’re family after all. ”

This was no longer home for you. It hadn’t been for years. Home was the family you’d found in Solis University-  Jennie, your inner circle of crazy classmates, your manager at your part-time, Chan. Home was the shared apartment with your best friend, the lattes your manager would sneak to you mid-shift, banter with Chan at Luna’s…

“Seashell, if you want to leave, leave.” This was yet another thing you loved about Chan- when it came down to it, he was relentless in making sure you were safe and happy. It was a cutthroat protective instinct that drove him to provide unfiltered advice to anybody that came to him, wanting nothing but the best for the people he cared about- even if it meant destroying some part of himself. “I’m sure Jennie agrees with me when I say that your family hasn’t been a family to you for a long time. You don’t deserve that in your life. Don’t cut them off entirely if you’re not sure. But you came to Solis hoping to distance yourself from them. If you have nothing to lose from the distance, I feel like you shouldn’t wait and think about it anymore.”

His words only echoed the thoughts that had been plaguing the back of your mind ever since you came to Solis. Chan was right, you realised. You really did have nothing to lose. Maybe one day down the line, you’d come to terms with the effect your broken family had left on you, but until then..

Until then, you’d keep your distance, and count your blessings. It was time you learnt to rejoice the future’s possibilities, instead of being bogged down by your past.

“Thank you for being around for me, Chan.” You smiled, the new resolve rushing in your veins giving you a rare sense of peace. “I know it hasn’t been the smoothest time with me, but I’m so grateful you chose to stay.”

“What are you talking about, Seashell? I’ll always choose to be with you. For as long as that choice is in my hands, I’ll always choose you.”

And I'm not scared to say those words With you I'm safe, we're fallin' like the stars, fallin' in love

//

City of Stars, are you shining just for me?

“That was it for this gorgeous evening, everybody,” Chan’s grin is evident in his voice, you know it too well- you’ve heard it often enough for it to be etched into your mind. A soft smile fluttered across your face, your turquoise aura waving happy waves around your fingers. The buttery yellow of the sun had softened into soft pinks and oranges of a sunset, the day beginning to darken into night.

“Seashell, hope you enjoyed today… and now, it’s time for me to take your leave- Wishing you all an eventful weekend, this has been RJ Chris on Solis FM, we will meet again next Friday!” The usual outro song played, a familiar light melody that Chan and Jisung had slaved over for nights on end- only to be interrupted by the screen lighting up with a call- Speak of the devil.“Hello, boyfriend.” You grinned cheekily when you picked up the call, greeted by an amused scoff. “There are a million other endearments in the word, Seashell, and you still choose the most boring ones.” 

“What can I say, you clearly have the interesting nickname part down well enough for the both of us.” Chan let out a laugh at your response- the same familiar laugh that had butterflies erupt in your stomach. Even after almost a year of being with him, you were still blindingly smitten by the handsome sweetheart you could call your own.

“We’re on for Luna’s tonight, yes?” Your heart and your aura both fluttered identically at the question. Memories of your first date with him, the hesitance, surprise and novelty of it all - the two of you had come a long way since then. Chan had booked you for dinner, followed by the birthday party at your apartment that Jennie was setting up for you. “Definitely.”

“I’ll pick you up in 20. See you soon, birthday girl.”

You watched the sun set lower into the horizon, the warm colours giving way for blues and purples. A content sigh escaped your lips, feeling the lightness of your shoulders and the lightness inside you. Your aura flowed like the wind around you, the turbulence that you’d barely been able to deal with calming down as you began to blossom into your own. You’d made a more permanent move to your apartment in Solis soon after Winter Break, much to your parents’ chagrin. But you’d stood your ground and here you were, feeling freer than you had your entire life. Jennie was only too happy to move in with you, and Chan. Chan had been your anchor throughout the fast-paced change of it all, holding you when you felt your resolve crack and letting you fly free whenever you needed it. You didn’t expect to find love in college, too stuck within yourself to entertain the possibility- but you would be eternally grateful to have found somebody like Chan to prove otherwise.

Solis University provided students power in anonymity, but it also gave them the power of making their own choices. You made your choices along the way- with Jennie, your friends, your job and most importantly, Chan. You’d found joy, pain, laughter and fears but your found family had stuck through it all, unflinching and present. Looking back, you couldn’t help but realize you wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

And I found love where it wasn't supposed to be, right in front of me 

//

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[weirdfetishes123]

Blueberry Bottom Blaine Ripens Again (part 2) - deviantart

by juicybb

"Blaine, wake up!"

Tommy shook Blaine's shoulder as he awoke with a start. He rubbed his eyes. "Sorry T, was I shouting again?"

Tommy nodded. "You were dreaming about what happened the chocolate factory again?"

Blaine sighed. "Yeah, I just can't get it out of my head." As if to prove his point, Blaine tried rolling onto his back, but he was prevented by his swollen butt — a byproduct of what happened that didn't deflate during the juicing process.

Twiddle had been wrong though- after being juiced, Blaine hadn't blown back up into a blueberry. His hair had stayed a rich, deep blue, and after the juicing his stomach stayed the size of a beach ball. His arms and legs were still slightly swollen, and to Blaine's delight at first, his butt cheeks were the size of basketballs.

Blaine rolled in the bed, his blue spandex bikini briefs stretched around the plump cheeks. "Anything different about this dream?" Tommy asked.

Blaine yawned. "No- just reliving the events again. I keep filling up with juice and blowing up into a blueberry again."

Tommy looked down and saw that Blaine, laying on his side, sported a erection as he said it. "Just inflating like a big balloon, huh?" He smirked as he saw Blaine's bulge throbbing at the words.

In the three weeks after the factory incident, Blaine had tried to resume his life as he realized he wasn't going to stay a blueberry forever. He found pants with elastic waistbands to get over his giant rear, and spandex that wouldn't rip.

At first, the proud power bottom was addicted to the attention he was receiving. When he and Tommy and Rich would go out, all the boys would be whispering and pointing at his butt. One group even tried resting their drinks on the plump cheeks.

Eventually, Blaine came to realize that his butt was also a hindrance. The times that he'd gone home with a guy, even the biggest tops that he knew were unable to squeeze far enough past his enormous cheeks. Some were able to get their members in, but not far enough to hit Blaine's pleasure spot. The result was an awful tease for the poor big booty Blaine.

He also realized that his reputation was being changed forever. He'd always had a big butt, but the immediate swelling of his belly and butt, and his bright blue hair, were all that anyone could talk about. Blaine wasn't shy and he and Tommy and Rich didn't have any problem talking about what happened.

"Did you have plastic surgery or something??" one boy had asked.

"Nah," Blaine asked. "I had an accident at the Twiddle Chocolate Factory. We went in for a private tour, and I ended up having an accident and inflating into a giant blueberry."

"A... blueberry?" the boy stammered.

"Yeah," Blaine nonchalantly replied, beginning to subconsciously rub his swollen rear. "They got most of the juice out of me but there were some permanent side effects. I guess I'm part blueberry now!"

The nickname stuck, and Bottom Blaine also started becoming known as Blueberry Blaine. First it was only snarky behind his back, but quickly Blaine came to embrace it- having his friends call him that, and wearing blue clothes and chewing gum and blowing big bubbles that elicited comparisons to his spherical gut and butt.

Still, Blaine's hunger got worse and worse. He hadn't been properly screwed in over a month now, and he kept dreaming about what it would be like to be back in the factory, in front of his friends, blowing back up. As his sexual frustration mounted, he began to fantasize about it more and more.

That day Blaine had climbed out of bed, squeezed his taut balloon belly into a t-shirt.

Rich and Tommy were having breakfast, getting ready to go to the gym. "What's going on today, Blaine?" Rich asked, clad in a white shirt and shiny black workout tights.

Blaine pulled his breakfast out of the fridge- blueberry yogurt- and added more fresh blueberries to the cup. Rich and Tommy glanced at each other. "I think I need to see a doctor," Blaine said.

"You've seen plenty," said Tommy, who was dressed almost the same as Rich. "They've all told you, there's nothing you can do about your... bigger body."

Blaine sighed. "I know, it's just... I tried again last night, and the guy couldn't hit the spot."

"Again?" Rich asked.

"I know!" Blaine exclaimed. "And he's pretty big too- my cheeks were just too big and plump for him to get his hips up against mine."

Tommy looked at Rich, then back to Blaine. "What if we saw Mr. Twiddle again?"

Blaine's eyes lit up. "Do you think that would help?"

"Sure," Rich said. "He knows better than those doctors what happened to you. And besides, what could hurt?"

Blaine grinned. "Let's do it!" He bounded away back to his room, both Tommy and Rich staring as his big butt cheeks bounced in his blue bikinis.

Blaine returned a few minutes later, clad in the same shiny blue spandex suit from the factory the month before. It still fit him like a glove, and Rich and Tommy were surprised to see that he had held onto it. As the boys stared, he looped the bright red elastic belt around his swollen waistline, highlighting his enormous belly. "Still fits," Blaine said with a smile. "Let's go!"

The boys had phoned ahead, so Twiddle had been waiting for them at the entrance. As Blaine squeezed out of the car, Twiddle clapped. "Look at that blueberry boy!" he cried. "You make not have blown back up but you're still a sight!"

The spandex-clad boys all walked into the entrance with Twiddle, Rich and Tommy both flanking the plump blue boy in the middle. Twiddle ushered them along. "Unfortunately we're scaling up production tomorrow, so like I said on the phone, we're going to have to talk as I'm touring the factory."

"That's no problem," said Tommy.

"In fact we might actually get to see more of it after our last tour was cut short!" Rich said, shooting a look at Blaine who sheepishly grinned.

The group followed Twiddle into a large room with conveyor belts, lifts and chutes, where chocolate bars in various forms were moving around the room, being chopped, wrapped, and packaged.

"So my problem, Mr. Twiddle, is that I can't get my butt to go down," Blaine began to explain, hollering over the noise.

"I thought a boy like you was excited to have a big posterior!" Twiddle shouted in a surprised tone.

"I do!" Blaine said as he began his subconscious rubbing. "But my cheeks are too plump and it's made certain... recreational activities more difficult."

Twiddle and the boys walked into the next room, where boilers filled with concoctions rose 20, 30, 40 feet into the air! Each was spurting out candies and chocolates into sheets, and the loud sound of bubbling and steam whistles filled the air.

"I see, I see," replied Mr. Twiddle to Blaine. "But really you only have yourself to blame. I did warn you." Seeing the boy rubbing his taut plump rear end, he prodded it with his cane. "I see you're getting quite attached to the size, in fact!"

Blaine made a face and Rich and Tommy could swear they saw him blush a little — Blaine was never one to be embarrassed! — but that might have been the light and his bright blue hair.

"I need you to help, it's driving me crazy," Blaine exclaimed.

"Just consider yourself lucky that only a few of the side effects became permanent!" Twiddle said. "You can thank your friends here, for juicing you so quickly!" Tommy and Rich quickly looked away- they remembered how excited they'd been and how eager they were to release the juice from their friend's bloated erection.

They walked into the next room. This one was much quieter, with green vines hanging down from the 25-foot ceilings. The vines moved and shifted on their own like snakes, as a group of Twiddle's diminutive orange minions were carrying a giant strawberry out of the room. Once they left, the floor was empty.

The boys stopped. "What is this room?" Rich asked.

"Remember all the giant fruit that proved to be too much for poor Blaine here on your last visit?" Twiddle said. "This is where I make them. These vines are specially made to pump juice into the giant fruits. We make them on a daily basis- well, except for blueberries lately."

"Why not blueberries?" Blaine asked quizzically.

"Why, because you drained every last drop of juice out of my last blueberry!" said Twiddle. "These fruits are designed to be plumped up and then juiced, but not drained entirely. Since you sucked the juice out of my prize fruit, the blueberry vine here won't touch it." Twiddle gestured to one of the vines that was engorged and dripping blue, slippery liquid.

"I'm sorry! I didn't know!" Blaine protested.

Twiddle shook his head. "You think you're frustrated, this vine hasn't filled anything up since your visit to the factory."

As they spoke, the vine curled around, almost inspecting Blaine's rear end. The young man stopped rubbing his butt and twisted around. "What's it doing?"

Twiddle furrowed his brow. "Your rear end is plump and shiny and blue! I expect it's mistaken it for its old blueberry."

Blaine stared, transfixed at the phallic vine with the small opening at its rounded end. Blue juice dripped out. Blaine's sexual frustration boiled over, seeing the throbbing vine, and his spandex started tenting out under his taut belly. Rich and Tommy stared as Blaine's erection became more and more prominent.

"It looks... weird," said Rich.

"It looks funny," said Tommy.

"It looks delicious," said Blaine, his voice hungry and lustful. He stared as the vine began prodding each cheek, checking the plumpness of the blue globes.

"Let's move along," Twiddle said, "I've got a lot to do today and I'm behind production without my prized blueberry."

Blaine ignored him. All he could think about was something that could finally hit his spot. As the vine explored his rear, Blaine began to rock his giant butt back more. The vine leaked more and more juice, as it found the tiny rip in Blaine's suit.

"Watch out, Blaine..." Tommy warned.

But it was too late. With a loud juicy PLOP, the vine had entered Blaine. He shivered as the slick vine began to go deeper as Blaine's throbbing erection full tented out the front of his spandex suit.

"Oh man, guys, stop, its inside me!" Blaine yelled.

Tommy and Rich stared on. Twiddle blew into a whistle, and warned "That vine is plenty ripe, we'd better get it out of Blaine."

But the vine twisted and turned on it own. Blaine could feel the blue juice begin to pulse out of it, and he began to moan. "Guys, I'm finally getting to bottom!" His hands moved from his butt to his beach ball belly, bisected by the wide red belt. Blaine's eyes widened as he felt the juice pulsing in his gut as well.

"Blaine, you know what happened last time," said Tommy.

"Get it out before something happens," Rich said. Blaine heard them both but couldn't get past the feeling as the vine pulsed in and out of his massive butt.

Rich grabbed Blaine's shoulders, giving a quick break in his pleasure. "Dude, if you don't get this out of you quick, you're going to start inflating again!!"

With that realization Blaine let out a deep moan and his tent throbbed harder. "Dude... I want... this... inside me..." Blaine trailed off. Almost on cue, he felt the pulse of the juice quicken, and more began to pour into him.

The boys and Twiddle stared as Blaine's face flushed blue, matching his spandex and hair. His mouth framed in a moan, Blaine's blue eyes begged- for escape, Tommy wondered? Or for more?

Blaine's butt began to swell first, bigger and bigger until each cheek matched the size of his giant belly. He turned around watching it, feeling the juice pump it bigger and bigger. Sensing the shift inside, he began lifting his plump arms and looked down at his stomach.

The juice then began to swell his midsection, as the boy's belly inflated slowly. The red belt continued to stretch to impossible proportions as his belly went from beach ball to yoga ball sized, finally snapping with a loud POP! The boy's entire outfit and body was a bright blue now, his rear end sticking out prominently, and his taut juicy belly protruding over what was still a very visible tent made by his erection.

"Dude, you're blowing up again!" Tommy said.

Rich poked his belly. "Blueberry Blaine can't help himself!"

Twiddle smirked, "It doesn't seem like he wants to! Is that what this was about? You boys were looking for an excuse to help Blaine's inflation addiction?"

Rich and Tommy couldn't answer. Even though they had seen what happened last month, they were still transfixed by the sight of Blaine inflating into a giant blueberry. The young man was still swelling, his waist almost four feet in diameter. His arms flapped down as he felt his bloating body continue to get bigger and bigger. "Guys... I feel fuuuuunny," he said, once again understating his predicament.

Blaine's belly swelled in every direction — up, back, down, and out — the swelling midsection eventually reaching both his plumping butt and his tenting member. He began to lose mobility as his bloated legs and arms met his blueberry middle. "I'm ripening!" he gasped as he looked at his spandex-clad friends.

Tommy and Rich looked at Blaine as he once again plumped up into a full blueberry- his arms and legs slowly disappearing into his round body. The vine in Blaine's rear continued to pump more and more juicy as the young man groaned softly in ecstasy.

As Blaine once again fully ripened, the swelling slowed, his hands and feet pressed against the sides of his fully inflated, spherical body. His sighed as the vine twisted out of him, retreating to the ceiling high above the bloated blue boy and his two friends.

Rich and Tommy stared with wide eyes. Blaine turned with a few quick waddles to face them directly.

"How are you feeling, bro?" Rich asked cautiously.

Blaine looked at them with a mixture of contentment and lust. "I needed that- finally got to bottom for real this time," he said with a half smile. "I'm so juicy," he said, pressing his taut, plump, spandex covered blue body. "So ripe! I'm a blueberry again!"

Twiddle raised an eyebrow at the boy. "Tommy and Rich, you'd better get moving. You might be able to reverse some of the side effects permanently again if you juice him quick."

"Wait..." said Blaine, his deep blue face a mask of pleasure. "Take... your time guys, this feels... incredible..."

Tommy looked over at Rich. His eyes were stuck on bloated Blaine. Rich's shiny black tights gleamed, and Tommy couldn't miss Rich's tent in the spandex. Tommy realized that he had an erection to match in his own spandex pants.

Blaine eyed them both lustily. "Maybe... you guys... were a little... too quick... last time..."

Twiddle clucked his tongue at the young man. "I'm warning you Blaine, you got out lucky last time. The longer you wait before juicing, the more permanent the side effects will be! You could find yourself with an even bigger butt and bigger belly, or a blue face forever. Or you could simply blow back up into a blueberry after every juicing, constantly inflating and ripening and swelling up like a big blue blimp."

Blaine listened to Twiddle's warning and felt his erection throb harder. "Time to roll me to the juicing room... boys..."

Tommy patted Rich's butt in the black spandex, and the two then put their hands on their friend's plump, round, blue body. "Let's get going," Rich said, smiling at the newly ripened Blaine...

[petalshields]

[ MINA EL HAMMANI, SHE/HER, DEMIGIRL ]  —  [ KAIA DEMIR-ZERHOUNI ]  is a child of  [ DEMETER ]  with the power of  [ FLORAL HEALING & PLANT COMMUNICATION ] .  they were born in  [ 1996 ]  and have been in nemean lion since  [ 2019 ] .  with the change, they  [ ARE TRAINING IN ]  the  [ MEDICAL ]  role which makes sense since they’re usually  [ NOT TALKING AND TENDING TO HER GARDEN IN HER ROOM  ] .  if you’d like to meet them try the  [ SUN ]  building . @nlupdates

hello friends! its ya girl garnet and this is my newest baby. like this and i will not only find u...i will plot WITH u (threat).

Kaia’s pinterest is here!

BIOGRAPHY!

( near drowning tw, death tw )

Mystery shrouds the exact circumstances of Kaia’s birth, but there was no denying that her father was Ilyass Zerhouni. His tryst with Demeter lasted through the winter: a season of mourning for the goddess of harvest. Their romance extinguished in March, timed with the thaw into spring, and Demeter left Ilyass without a trace of her presence in his life. Ilyass did some mourning of his own before, as he always had, continuing his life.

However, Ilyass saw Demeter one final time when she revealed she gave birth to his child. The child was born in November, and she urged him to protect her from supernatural forces, even gods themselves. Demeter knew the pain that came with losing a child.

Ilyass named the baby girl Kaia: Norwegian variant of Kaja, the diminutive form of Greek Katherine. Tracing this history, the name Kaia is intertwined with two meanings: ‘pure’ and ‘tortured.’

Born in sweltering Los Angeles, Kaia wasn’t shielded from her godly heritage. Ilyass called her his ‘miracle baby’ but he didn’t anticipate the degree. There were no parenting books on what to do when his child fell off her bike but flowers sticking out of her gashed knees. This led the man to be overly protective of her, to ensure that she did not draw attention to herself by harming herself or provoking others to harm her. He attempted to round all the sharp corners of Kaia’s life for her own protection, but for the most part, Kaia grew up happy.

Her affinity for plants stemmed from her ability to communicate with them. Their voices weren’t something she could ignore. Trees sang eerie songs as they swayed in the breeze, branches scratching against heaven, and a chorus of grass blades gossiped whenever they were stepped on ( blows kiss to the sky: for rowan ). It made it difficult for her to sleep sometimes, their voices were so constant, but Kaia learned how to tune out the plants and filter their thoughts from her own.

NEAR DROWNING TW: At age seven, Kaia contacted meningitis after being left unattended in the pool by a babysitter. Thankfully, she recovered quickly, but she suffered from moderate hearing loss. This incident only deepened Ilyass’s protectiveness. His later wife, Yaren Demir, was raising a demigod child of her own and shared the desire to shield their daughters. As a blended family, Yaren and Kaia’s new step-sister Sila acclimated to Kaia by learning American Sign Language. Though hearing aids lessen the severity of hearing loss, Kaia prefers ASL to verbal communication. ( note: she has difficulty holding a conversation one-on-one without them, and being in a crowd with them causes her a lot of anxiety. )

Adolescence was, for lack of a better word, an adjustment. Kaia prided herself on being mysterious, well-behaved, and reserved, but she began to push against the concrete boundaries set by her parents. Specifically, her competitive nature drew her to sports, which her parents staunchly disapproved of. The more Kaia wanted to expand, the more that her parents increased their restrictions. She took matters into her own hands when she was seventeen. Enticed by promises made by her then-boyfriend, Kaia ran away with him.

What could go wrong? Kaia’s not naïve; she knew that being bested by your emotions was never the correct move, but he was her first love and that love was the poison she’d inject into herself, over and over. There were red flags that the relationship wasn’t the healthiest, but, like any romantic, she ignored them all. Until it almost killed her 🤪

DEATH TW/CAR ACCIDENT TW: Almost is the key word. If she were mortal, she would have died. The boyfriend was drinking and driving, and he swerved off the road while Kaia tried to coax him into letting her drive. She doesn’t remember much of what followed. Blinding white, the sound of her voice shrill as she screamed for him to help her. The slam of the car door as he crawled out from the wreckage, a black figure bleeding into the night. The tree whispering, life, life, life, as flowers broke out of the gashes, blooming along the split skin. After fading in and out of consciousness, Kaia healed enough to gain strength to crawl out of the vehicle’s skeleton and stumbled through the surrounding woods.

Too ashamed to return home, Kaia found solace in an abandoned greenhouse. As a token from her mother, goddess of harvest after all, Kaia was fed throughout her time “missing,” surrounded by plentiful edible plants that yearned for her to eat them. She grew used to her own solitude, the simplicity of her life in the woods, but her own call out to reconnect with her sister caused her to punch her number into her phone. Soon enough, Sila found Kaia and convinced her to accompany her to a strange place she’s only heard about in passing: NEMEAN LION.

Kaia’s been on campus for two years, and the constant chatter and people and all else that comes with their godly heritage are thoroughly tolerated; she is still the prideful girl she once was, but her trauma caused her to have heightened suspicions of those around her, and she’s now more difficult to get close to. Beneath her new armor, there’s still a soft core, most evident when she’s volunteering at the infirmary or trailing behind her sister or smiling at a plant ( weird vibes but ok ). 

WANTED CONNECTIONS!

FRIENDS/A BEST FRIEND: PLEASE SOMEONE GET THIS BITCH SOME MILK!! Or rather the ability to build an attachment to someone that’s not her sister.

ENEMIES: Kaia may not express it all the time, but she does hold grudges and she’s very spiteful. I think this would be interesting because this is a bit of a shadow-self that she never got to explore in her youth, but she’s more willing to lean into it now because, in her mind, everyone sucks and should not be trusted. We can develop in the DMs!

PEOPLE WHO HELPED HER WHILE SHE LIVED IN THE GREENHOUSE: in my mind? while she was "missing” there was a little gaggle of people who brought her essentials in exchange for her helping them out somehow. Maybe she was their healer, or maybe she posed as a distraction for them to do some shady shit. either way, this relationship was mutually beneficial!

OPPOSITES ATTRACT: throw her your sunshine-y muses but she can be a little finicky so this may be a bit hit or miss SKJSKFJ. However I think that it’d be cool to have a muse who doesn’t flinch from her intensity sometimes, or bounces off of it. idk fam i just think it’d be Neat.

INJURED/HEALER: Someone who she always treats at the infirmary? I imagine that she’s gotten a hold of her powers enough that she’s able to heal others on command. She will always cluck her tongue and shake her head and, if they’re close enough, try to talk to this person. This takes a lot of ironing out because it really depends on where their relationship stands but we can make this work

DEMETER SIBLINGS: Kaia feels very much indebted to her mother for keeping her alive while she was in the greenhouse, so! She has a soft spot for all the Demeter siblings because she views them as being all a part of her, in some way, so throw her more family!

COMBAT BUDDIES: ( kaia 2 me: buddies is a strong wor- ) no but her having people to train with. Kaia isn’t about killing people ( unless you’re her ex boyfriend ahahaha that’s to unpack later ) but ! she is about learning to protect herself and wanting to do so with the utmost competency. Therefore she throws herself into combat training, and it’s a way for her to work out a lot of the pent up aggression that she has from not processing a lot of the things that have happened to her.

HOOKUPS: absolutely no strings. With the exception of Taylor, Kaia isn’t the relationship type I’m afraid and isn’t emotionally available, but she still has needs!

OTHER TREE HUGGERS: pretty explanatory, stole this from rowan. A friend of trees is a friend to Kaia.

ANYTHING! LET’S MF GO I’m really down for also filling yr plot needs! 

[eirian-houpe]

The Pawn Shop On Main Street - Chapter 1

Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Mad Hatter | Jefferson & Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold

Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Mad Hatter | Jefferson, Grace | Paige, Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Widow Lucas | Granny, Red Riding Hood | Ruby, Jiminy Cricket | Archie Hopper, Grumpy | Leroy, Blue Fairy | Mother Superior, Emma Swan, Prince Charming | David Nolan, Snow White | Mary Margaret Blanchard, Henry Mills (Once Upon a Time), Sneezy | Tom Clark, Merida (Once Upon a Time), Cloe, Mother Trude, Dove (Once Upon a Time)

Additional Tags: Cursed Storybrooke (Once Upon a Time), Angst, Romance, Eventual Smut, Will add more as apropriate

Summary: Gold is suddenly awakened from the curse, not by the fail-safe that he programmed into his mind, but by the unexpected presence of his long lost maid, with whom he fell in love well before Regina cast his Dark Curse, Rumplestiltskin must now find a way past Belle's disbelief and fear. She is still under the influence of the curse. With the help of his dear - his oldest - friend, Gold seeks a way past obstacles so that he can rekindle the love which he rejected back in the Dark Castle. 

The story is set in the same 'verse as The Library Beneath the Clock Tower, and could be considered a sequel of sorts.

Chapter 1 - Old Friends

He felt drawn to her. He could not look away, his gaze transfixed as her eyes took in the fireworks bursting overhead. They paled by comparison. Nothing could compare.

…a brief flicker of light in an ocean of darkness.

The thought caught him off guard, as if he were standing on the edge of a fall, with a gust of wind buffeting him toward the edge. He felt suddenly thirsty - the earth waiting for the cloud above his head to burst like the sparkles and fizzles overhead.

All this time she had been right there, within reach, the meaning that had been missing for as long as he could remember - as long as he had been in Storybrooke. It made sense of everything he’d done, but at the same time made no sense at all.

Suddenly afraid, for no reason he could understand, he took a step closer, right behind her, caressing her fingers softly, before taking her hands, slowly, into his own. Their fingers entwined.

It flashed through him in a pulse; bright, vibrant, burning away the fog of years and realms.

She mocked him.  Regina mocked him - how dare she, and yet, he had no energy, and even less will to react to her impudence.

“Is this about that girl I met on the road?” She laughed and stalked the room, her hips swaying in exaggerated sensuality. It reminded him of Cora, and that did little to change his mood… the reminder of other betrayals, other… abandonments. Regina glanced his way. “What was her name? Margie? Verna?

Rumplestiltskin barely breathed her name. “Belle.”

Suddenly business-like, this evil queen he had created, said matter-of-fact as she fixed herself some tea - uninvited, “Right. Well... you can rest assured I had nothing to do with that tragedy.”

He stopped idly spinning the wheel and turned to walk toward her, all but willing pox into the cup she was stirring, “What… tragedy?”

“You don't know?” Regina asked as though scandalized, then chuckled as she cleaned the spoon with her mouth and set it down.  “Well, After she got home… her fiancé had gone missing.” He feigned innocence, but Regina knew. Her expression told him so. She took only a few steps away before turning around. “And after her stay here, her… association… with you, no one would want her, of course. Her father shunned her, cut her off, shut her out.”

Hope flared in his heart, and in an unguarded moment, he let the words slip from deep within that hope. “So she needs… a home?”

Regina laughed cruelly, though whether at what had happened, or at him for his weakness he was uncertain, then went on, “He was cruel to her. He locked her in a tower and sent in clerics to cleanse her soul with scourges and flaying. After a while, she threw herself off the tower. She died.”

She spoke the last two words with such careless triumph that the urge to throttle the life from the conniving bitch almost choked him… murdered his hope.

“You're lying,” he growled.

“Am I?” she countered, leaving him cold and dead inside.

He wanted to be angry now, to rail against the lies Regina had told him, blatant fabrications, right to his face, and yet… Here was his light.  Hale, whole and…

“You’re real,” he breathed. “You’re alive!”

He moved closer yet, moving his fingers again in a soft, quiet caress.  The curse was lifted, he remembered. Everything, and oh, how beastly he had been when they had last seen one another. When he had sent her away.

”I’m not a coward, dearie. It’s quite simple really… my power… means more to me than you.”  

She pulled herself up to her full, diminutive height, and looked him full in the face. “No. No, it doesn't. You just don't think I can love you. Now, you've made your choice. And you're going to regret it.”

His heart broke as her voice quivered - a roar of pain that almost drowned out her following word, “Forever.”

He curled his hands into fists. His hard, pointed talons left wheal marks in his palms, but he couldn’t allow her to see how much her words affected him.

“And all you'll have... is an empty heart,” her voice broke, and she forced herself to go on, “and a chipped cup.”

Her eyes were filled with tears, but she held his gaze, and he had to push his own rising tears deep inside lest he belie his words.  Not until she had turned, and walked away, out of the cell, and out of his life… forever… and he could no longer see or hear her, did he move - and then only to close his eyes.

Was she feeling this too? Did she remember?  A part of him hoped not; hoped that fate had delivered him a way to right the wrongs of his past; to woo her, to love her as she deserved to be loved, and yet, the Dark One knew that ‘loopholes’ was another word for lies. Gold wanted no more lies.

For a moment, one sweet, sharp moment she leaned against him, tightened her fingers around his, and he knew… he knew without any doubt that she remembered. At least in that moment, she remembered.

“Belle,” he whispered.

Then, like the icy fall of rain that dampened even the hottest fire, she snatched her hands from his, and he was suddenly frozen, bereft. Helpless to do anything other that watch with mounting fear as she turned to face him; tried with all his heart to let her see that she had been right all along - that she had the measure of him, and not only that - but now, in the face of seeing her again, though he wanted nothing more than to reach out and draw her into his arms, hold her forever - protected, loved - he was still a coward.

“Belle,” he whispered again, reaching too late to catch her as she picked up her skirts and fled.  He cried out for her, as he should have done then, in the Dark Castle - called her back, “Belle!”

His cry was echoed a moment later and he registered a familiar voice behind the calling. His friend, Jefferson. A Storybrooke friend, yes, but the Dark One’s only friend through all the ages. How could he not have known?

He stared. He stared after Belle, who stopped at neither of their calling, and he stared toward Jefferson, meeting the horrified expression that mirrored his own.

The Hatter seemed torn, glanced away as if to find Belle in the crowd, but ultimately turned his steps and hurried to Gold’s side.

"You knew!" Gold almost sobbed, and reaching out, grabbed Jefferson by the lapels of his flamboyant, silk tailcoat and pulled him closer, almost shaking the man. "How could you know… know me and yet say nothing?"

Jefferson’s long fingers closed around his wrists, not to prevent, but to anchor, as if the Portal Jumper feared to let go and needed to hold him close as he spoke.

"The man you are here and I said that?" Jefferson said, pained, and only then Gold saw the tears that were gathered in the other man’s blue eyes. "How could I, and not have you cast me away?"

For all that he saw, for all that he felt, still Gold gave vent to his own pain. "But you were my… we were friends!"

Instead of words, Jefferson answered with cry, almost of anguish, and suddenly releasing his wrists, clutched Gold close.

"We are friends," he sobbed, clinging tightly. "We are!"

At first, startled, Gold struggled, tried to push Jefferson away, but as the present melted away leaving just the two of them alone on the rise above where the other revelers were lost in their drunken celebrations of the night, Gold… Rumplestiltskin missed his friend, and already held tightly in Jefferson’s embrace, pulled the man closer still, and held him through the maelstrom of all that he was - pawnbroker, landlord, deal maker, sorcerer, master, Dark One, killer, father, husband, lover… coward - all of it, every little piece of him returning in a rush, he clung to Jefferson like a man drowning.

Eventually, both spent, they each slumped, exhausted to the ground, mute and panting for breath, though as he looked across at Jefferson, Rumplestiltskin saw that silent tears still ran down Jefferson’s face. Intuitively he knew the cause.

“I didn’t know,” he said, and Jefferson raised his face to look at him, incomprehension in his wet and shining eyes. “Grace,” Gold offered. “I didn’t know what Regina planned.”

“I know,” Jefferson whispered, before finding his voice. “I have always known it was her doing, and hers alone.” He reached out for Gold’s hand, and he took it without hesitation, listening as Jefferson continued. “For all that we didn’t see things the same way much of the time; for all that we fought, I knew and never once doubted that you’d ever do something like that to another man, another father. I saw what you did for Baelfire and—”

“Bae,” Gold interrupted. His voice hoarse and rasping. He felt Jefferson’s fingers tighten around his own, and he took a breath. “If I had the power,” he said, “to undo what she did.”

“No!” Jefferson sounded alarmed, almost terrified, then went on more calmly, “No. Not until we can be together. Not until I can be sure she won’t hate me for abandoning her. She can’t know.” His voice cracked as he went on. “Cloe’s her mother here. She knows nothing about a foolish man who made a promise and then broke it; who abandoned her to ignominy and hardship.”

“Jefferson…”

The other man blanched, and releasing his grip on Gold held up both hands in surrender, as if he thought he’d just delivered some kind of terrible insult.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Gold murmured quietly.

“Then whose?” Jefferson shook his head; argued. “I can recite a whole litany of ‘if I hadn’ts’ going all the way back to before we first met. Who else’s fault can it be?”

Gold fixed him with a level, uncompromising look.

“No,” Jefferson said firmly. “You are not responsible for all the ills of every realm.”

Gold was silent for a long time. He knew Jefferson well enough to understand that when he had his mind fixed on something - especially something self-deprecating - there could be no moving him; not until he saw the truth of it for himself.

Both men sighed, almost at the same time, and that made Gold chuckle just a little, with a good deal of his own self-deprecation, before he said, “And that… that, my good man, is why you are the Dark One’s only true friend.”

Jefferson let out another sigh, then offered Gold a smile through half-pursed lips, and then started to push himself up off the ground where they had both fallen.

“I’ll find her,” he promised softly. “Make sure she’s safe and gets home all right. We can fix this. We’ll find a way.”

“Ever the optimist, Jefferson.”

“Hardly,” the Hatter said dryly, before turning, ready to begin his descent from the hill. He stopped after just a few steps, and turned back. “Rumplestiltskin?”

Gold looked up, his head tipped to one side. “Hmm?”

“How long?”

Gold looked skyward, as if the position of the stars could give him the answer to Jefferson’s question, and they might well have - had time not been motionless in Storybrooke these past…  He shook his head. He knew the answer. It was written into the fabric of the Dark Curse, into the single drop of ‘True Love’ he had dripped onto the parchment; The single drop that would herald the arrival of The Savior.

“Twenty-eight years,” he answered quietly. “Twenty-eight years.”

[perikallis]

MEET THE MUSE POWER HOUR!! ━━ take a seat and REPOST this detailed little bio with criteria to introduce the world to your muse.     no reblog karma or tagging ━  if you see this on your dash, feel free to partake in it! ☆ ━ B A S I C S . NAME:: Zinon Konstantinou / Republic of Cyprus NICKNAME(S):: none actually, as his name comes from Ancient Greek; it’s possible that his name is already short for some other name that has been lost in time. But if you want to pay him back on his usual sweet talk and make him melt in private or embarrass him in public, you can call him Zinakis (Zinaki mou) or Zizis (Zizi mou). Note that these are Greek diminutives so they work under the assumption that your muse knows Greek too. In English I guess you can use Zino, tho he’ll probably wonder what’s the point of dropping just the last letter of his already short name AGE:: around 2,300 yo, says he’s 28 in physical age   GENDER:: male, he/him NATIONALITY:: Cypriot ☆ ━ A P P E A R A N C E . EYE COLOR:: green-brown/hazel   HAIR COLOR:: dark brown (dark enough that you might be fooled to think his hair is black until you see it flare copper in sunlight)   HAIRSTYLE:: a simple, short/medium haircut with voluminous curls falling over his forehead and the sides and back cut a little shorter (short enough that the curl texture can be hard to see fresh after a haircut). Maintains a careful hair routine to keep his curls looking their best and meticulously styles his hair every morning as in its natural state it can get pretty wild and frizzy   HEIGHT:: 174 cm / 5′8 1/2′’ WEIGHT:: 71 kg / 157 lbs   BUILD:: lean, broad shouldered, athletic... defined but not bulky, most of his muscles are in his legs from his running hobby TATTOO(S):: olive branch on the left side of his chest over his heart, and text tattoos on both of his forearms (on the inside as they’re not really meant to be shown off but exist more as personal reminders), the right arm reading “ΙΧΘΥΣ” (ichthys, fish in Greek but also a Christian acronym) and the left arm “ανέχου και απέχου” (anéchou ke apéchou, sustain and abstain), a motto from his favourite philosopher SCAR(S):: bullet entry and two surgery scars on his right shoulder, lash marks on his back that he refuses to talk about, lots of shrapnel from the WWs dotting his torso and legs, circumcision scar, various nicks and scratches on his arms and shoulders that he probably can’t (or doesn’t want to) recall the origin of. In case you were wondering, he has enough steel in him to set off airport metal detectors PIERCING(S):: left earlobe, usually wears a peridot stud there PREFERRED FASHION:: fitted t-shirts, chinos, and loafers for shoes, and if he wants to get fancier, he’ll throw a blazer on top. He likes quality (read: expensive) brands. Sometimes he’ll also wears button-ups outside of work but unless he’s going to the church, there is no force in the world that can make him button the shirt all the way up. He also likes wearing jewellery: besides his earring, he wears a golden cross necklace under his shirt and a thin golden band on his right ring finger (fake wedding band to ward off unwanted attention and uncomfortable questions about his marital status), as well as a watch... don’t expect it to actually help him be on time tho

TYPICALLY SMELLS LIKE:: woodsy and citrus-y cologne that may have been applied a little too generously, cigarette smoke that clings to his clothes and hair, whatever stuff he styles his hair with, and coffee breath ☆ ━ P E R S O N A L I T Y . POSITIVE TRAITS:: allocentric || appreciative || calm || caring || challenging || charming || creative || compassionate || dramatic || efficient || focused || imaginative || liberal || loyal || neat || non-authoritarian || observant || witty || NEUTRAL TRAITS:: stubborn || perfectionist || sarcastic || confident || prideful || competitive || rash || unsentimental || artful || casual || complex || emotional || honest || outspoken || sensual || NEGATIVE TRAITS:: abrasive || argumentative || blunt || crass || cynical || egocentric || fatalistic || hesitant || indulgent || irritable || lazy || libidinous || meddlesome || moody || neurotic || passive || possessive || vague || LIKES:: cooking and eating good food, drinking coffee, indulging his loved ones, plants and flowers, nature/green spaces, the colour green, running (away from his problems), reading philosophy and self-help books, saving money (but also shopping expensive stuff; his argument here is that buying a quality item is an investment), pomegranates, math, napping and sleeping in when he can, and watching Hallmark movies and chic flicks (a secret guilty pleasure)     DISLIKES:: being yelled at/criticised/scolded, admitting that he’s in the wrong or doesn’t know the answer, being stuck in traffic, things/people not working the way he thinks they should, falling short of his own (high) standards, someone calling Cypriot coffee Turkish (call it Turkish at your peril), answering questions about his personal life or socioeconomic and geopolitical Situation™, rain/snow, being cold, the smell of roses, high fives, cockroaches, and wearing socks PHOBIAS / FEARS:: failure, never being good enough, becoming corrupt, becoming a burden to his loved ones, being useless/unneeded and thus unwanted, losing his composure/self-control (and relating to his fear of losing control, he’s also somewhat emetophobic), thunder, public speaking, and horses HABITS:: carries a frappe with him about half the time, smokes like a chimney especially towards the evening, talks with his hands, sometimes drives his car with no hands, always fiddling with something in his hands (if nothing else is available, the komboloi comes out from his pocket), is casually affectionate with others both verbally and in gestures, and apologises a lot (istg “I apologise” has become his catch phrase)     ☆ ━ R E L A T I O N S H I P S . SEXUAL ORIENTATION:: gay ROMANTIC ORIENTATION:: gay RELATIONSHIP STATUS:: his life is a mess and he’s married to his job (and the other issue is with his ‘deviant’ sexuality... however it doesn’t mean he never has needs for intimacy and may occasionally seek out casual relationships)

☆ ━ H E A L T H . CHRONIC CONDITIONS:: depression, PTSD, neuropathic pain in his right arm due to nerve damage, chronic stress and insomnia (constant fatigue, restlessness/anxiety, tension headaches and occasional dizzy spells as by-products of all the other stuff) ADDICTIONS:: nicotine (stress smoker with roughly a pack a day habit) and coffee, likely also dependent on antidepressants to function

(drinks alcohol very carefully in polite company - never more than two drinks - but drinks quite heavily in secret... and also lapses into a drinking spree once a year around dates that have no good memories associated to them)

ALLERGIES:: N/A

☆ ━ H O M E . PLACE OF RESIDENCE:: two bedroom flat in Strovolos, Greater Nicosia, and a village house in Pano Lefkara (and also a villa in Paphos tho this one is rarely used) METHOD OF TRANSPORTATION:: by car if the destination is more than 5 mins away PETS:: considers himself too busy to keep pets, he has houseplants instead ☆ ━ W O R K  &  E D U C A T I O N. JOB:: has an office job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with his representative and diplomatic tasks as a nation (has enough paperwork that he often ends up burning the midnight oil to get through it all) SCHOOLING:: school of life he received his primary education from the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs, and was later educated mostly by Orthodox priests and bishops. He has been trained in the arts of war and diplomacy both by the Frankish kings and later in the Enderun Palace School in the Ottoman era. Most of his formal education is from the modern era and he holds degrees in Classical Studies, Medicine, Economics, International Relations, and Public Policy from the universities of Oxford and London. He hasn’t practiced medicine since the 60s and dropped the title of “Dr” with his most recent name change. He is still certified as a medical officer in the National Guard and has the skill set roughly equivalent to an EMT SPOKEN LANGUAGES:: Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot vernaculars, Standard Greek and Standard Turkish (both with a distinct Cypriot accent), English (with RP accent), French, Arabic, Farsi, Latin, Ancient Greek, Koine Greek, and bits and pieces of Russian, Italian (more specifically Venetian), Armenian, German, and Cantonese SKILLS:: cooking, gardening, lying, carrying secrets, handling various weapons, emergency/battlefield medicine, sewing, playing tavli (aka backgammon), playing the piano, calligraphy (his handwriting is really pretty to look at but then you look closer and realise it’s illegible), traditional and modern dancing, mixing drinks, interpreting and translating thanks to being fluent in like 7 languages, scary quick mental math ☆ ━ R A N D O M . QUIRKS:: follows Stoicism as a life philosophy (he seems sweet and unassuming on the surface but dig a little deeper and you hit the bedrock pretty quickly), cannot take a compliment (but secretly craves them), doesn’t like asking for help, collects komboloi (aka worry beads) - the nice ones made with real gemstones and silk tassels, has the patience of a saint but there is a limit to it and you don’t want to see what happens when that limit reached, is ridiculously sensitive to cold, battles an ongoing national identity crisis, and teeters on the edge of a burnout every few weeks

RELIGION:: Greek Orthodox Christian (devout in his faith but has a few personal issues with the church and its views)

THEME SONG(S):: What The Water Gave Me - Florence + The Machine

[frostsinth]

The Bard’s Bounty - Pt. 9

Parts 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8

GAhhh. I lied. I’m a liar. I did not have this part written like I said yesterday. And I had a really hard time writing it. But here it is. The almost last part. I hope you enjoy it. I’ll be posting the final part and conclusion tomorrow...

I’m kinda eager to be done with this story; it got much more dark than I originally intended. I have a few others kicking around in my brain to polish up and post. I might send out a poll or something to see which one should be next!

The room spun around him, and his breath came in thin, agonized pants. Some mixture of sweat and blood dribbled down his prominent brow, dripping from the tip of his nose to pool on the floor. A floor already so slick with his blood that his feet slipped each time he tried to stand. So he stopped trying, letting himself hang from the manacles at his wrists, waiting for the next blow. There was some relief in his chest that softened each strike and numbed the pain. All stemming from the idea that perhaps his entire existence was not completely wasted. After all, Iara was safe. At least he had managed to help one person in his life.

A pair of boots came into his view, and he stiffened involuntarily. The owner tucked a riding crop under the orc’s broad chin, forcing his head back to look up at him.

The Sheriff was not a large man. He might have come halfway up the orc’s chest if the pair stood face to face, though likely he would have fallen even shorter of the mark. But he held himself in such a way that one would never notice. Not for more than a moment, at least. Before the horrible feeling of dread leaked into you. Perhaps it was the short, hooked nose, or the slicked back blonde hair. Or the way he squared his shoulders and walked with such mechanical precision. 

If Balam had to pick a reason the diminutive man was so unsettling, it would be his eyes. Beady blue eyes that always seemed to be narrowed. One could almost see the nasty cogs turning behind them.

Now, each time he looked into them, all he could think about was the last woman he had tried to save. Balam tightened his teeth at the thought, looking up at the man with a grim expression knitted between his brows.

The Sheriff smirked, dropping the crop and letting the orc’s head fall back down into his chest.

“You were right, bard,” He announced, walking over to the table nearby where a variety of instruments were spread out for his amusement, “It is much more enjoyable to have you here alive-” He lifted up a nasty looking dagger, with a double barbed and hooked tip- “Worth every penny.”

Balam grunted, shifting himself a little. His chains, secured to the ceiling, clinked slightly with his movement. He glanced at the man out of the corner of one swollen eye. His body felt like a shapeless lump; each new instrument the man produced made him writhe in a pain he had never known before. But he had already resigned himself to this fate. Had already made peace with his end. Though he certainly hoped it would come sooner rather than later.

“Yeah well,” He mumbled, working his words out around a fat lip, “Sorry I’m such an expensive date.”

Resigned to his fate, yes. But not about to go quietly to it.

The Sheriff tossed his head back and laughed. When he finally managed to compose himself again, he sauntered slowly back over.

“Such a delight,” He said, tracing the tip of the blade along a fresh patch of skin, “Torture is all well and good, but without banter-” He flicked the tip up, slicing a tiny cut into his chest, “-It’s hardly better than boring old butchery.”

The orc stifled a grunt at the cut, shaking his big head and leaning it against one arm. “Either way you’ll get your pound of flesh.”

“Indeed.” Grinned the Sheriff, walking in a slow circle around him. “What a specimen you are! Certainly, you are quite the canvass to work on…” He dropped down into a crouch before his face, flicking him on the nose. “You’ll let me know if you’re enjoying yourself, hmm? You are my first orc after all. I want to be sure I manage it right.”

Balam didn’t get a chance to respond as the man hooked the tips of his knife into the softy fleshy part of his arm. With a deft flick, he yanked it back out, and the bard snarled and gritted his teeth.

“Then again, you are hardly a true orc, are you?” The Sheriff continued, standing. He seemed to have a thought, pausing by his side. “Though perhaps you can help me find another to play with. I am certain you didn’t just spring out of the ground. Your tribe or whatever you beasts call yourselves must be nearby.”

The bard spat out another mouthful of blood, rolling his bruised tongue about in his mouth. “I’ve half a mind to tell you. It’d be worth it to know they’d tear you apart.” The big orc couldn’t help but grin, “Your training is what we call a game meant for Tlaloc children.”

“Dear me, then I will have to find one of the ugly little bastards to continue my experiments on.” He began tracing the blade back down his captive’s side. “I will need a control group, after all.”

Balam growled, twisting weakly in his manacles. “You wouldn’t get within a hundred yards-”

“Why don’t you tell me where they are, and we’ll test that theory out for ourselves?” He cut him off, and the orc winced sharply as the Sheriff cut another notch into him.

They were interrupted by a loud banging overhead, and several panicked shouts. Sudden silence, then, after a few moments,  a soft, humming tune. Balam stiffened at the sound, raising his head. That tune. He had only ever heard it...

“Iara!” He gasped, a little too loudly.

The Sheriff turned, spinning back to the door to the cellar just as a guard barged through.

“Sir! There’s an intruder in the Manor!” He gasped, and a thin slice on one cheek led credence to his claim as he staggered into the room.

The Sheriff raised one thin blonde eyebrow at him. “What the hell do you think-”

Another shout, followed by a loud crash. Then a body came rolling down the stairs, slamming into the reporting guard and knocking him off his feet. The Sheriff ran to his table of torture instruments, grabbing his crossbow and swinging it around to bear….

.........

I followed the recruit down the stairs, leaping nimbly to the side. Just in time to dodge a bolt fired from somewhere within the room. Overhead there was chaos as the few remaining guards panicked between trying to help their injured comrades and following after me.

But for a moment, the world went silent. A pair of big brown eyes was all I could see, looking up at me from a beaten and worn face. I almost shook from relief. Alive! He was alive.

At first, a similar look reflected in his own eyes. It was soon replaced by horror. His fat lip curled back, baring bloody teeth at me. I almost laughed out loud at the site of his anger.

“What the hell do you think-” He started.

I didn’t have time to hear the end of it, dodging to the side as another bolt skipped off the stone wall where I had been a moment before. The sounds of the world came crashing back to my ears, and my head rang painfully with their echo. I rolled easily back to my feet and launched myself forward.

The Sheriff gave a delightfully panicked squeal of alarm as I slammed my shoulder into him. Knocking him sheer off his feet. He fell back with a satisfying plop onto his ass, and his crossbow flew out of his hands.

“That was easy.” I breathed, wiping my hands on my trousers.

“You!” Cried the Sheriff, bewildered as he looked up at me from his place on the ground. His eyes darted over my armor, then back to my face. “You are from the Guild! What is the meaning of this??”

“Change of plans.” I told him, reaching down and grabbing him by his lapels. I yanked him to his feet, then twisted his arm behind his back as painfully as I could manage. “You would be the Sheriff, I presume?”

“I paid you! I paid you!” He snarled. “The orc is mine! Fair and square!”

I twisted his arm more, and he gasped in anger and pain. “Sorry, that’s where you’re wrong-” I spun us around, glancing over at Balam, “-The orc is mine.”

“Gods you’re an arrogant twat!” He growled back, shaking his big head. “What the hell are you doing here?!”

“Saving your stupid ass,” I told him, turning my attention to the door, “But there will be time for thanks later.”

A handful of soldiers had managed to stagger down the steps, and the one toppled over by his fallen comrade was finding his feet again. I drew my dagger out of my belt and pressed it to the Sheriff’s neck.

“Hold!” I ordered the men, and they froze in place, eyes suddenly wide. “Drop your weapons.”

The Sheriff wriggled in my grasp, and I pressed my blade harder against his skin. He instantly froze, feeling it rasp against his throat when he swallowed. His beady blue eyes snaked back over to his men.

“Do as the bitch says!” He snapped.

The guards quickly dropped their weapons, raising their hands up by their heads. I jerked my own head towards Balam.

“Release him.” They exchanged looks, and I dug the knife a little deeper until the man gasped quietly. “Now!”

There was more scrambling as the men tried to find the keys to Balam’s manacles. But they did, and quickly freed him. He dropped to all fours with a heavy grunt, his arms shaking from the effort of holding himself up.

“Can you walk?” I asked him, careful to keep my grip firm on the Sheriff. I saw his eye roll back to glare at me from it’s corner. When Balam nodded, I jerked my chin at the guards. “Clear the way-” They hesitated again, “-MOVE! NOW!”

Again, they nearly ran each other over in their mad scramble to do as they were told. Slowly, Balam grunted, then growled, barely managing to get his feet under him. But he managed. My heart ached and I had a hard time pulling my gaze away from him as he used the wall as a crutch to slowly climb the steps. A pinch of the now familiar rage bit at my stomach, and I made sure the Sheriff was less than comfortable with my treatment. I followed close behind Balam, dragging the Sheriff with me. Careful to never turn my back on his men. They watched us cautiously, hands still palm up to let me see they weren’t making any unwanted moves.

Above the cellar was the kitchen, and the last guard still there was sprawled unconscious on the table, shattered remnants of pots and plates around him. Balam glanced at him, then shot me one raised bushy eyebrow. I merely shrugged, watching as the guards slowly followed us up from the cellar. I could see them growing restless. Their surprise at my sudden appearance was fading. And they were starting to get ideas.

“Unhand me, you savage bitch!” Snarled the Sheriff, finding he had a few ideas of his own. “I’ll have your hide! I’ll have both your hides!”

He twisted in my grip, so I kneed him hard between the legs. His gasping, sputtering breath accompanied us out of the kitchen and into the courtyard.

“Could you please move a little faster?” I complained, glancing at the bard out of the corner of my eye. “I know I make this look easy but-”

“Oh, just leave me be.” He growled back, shaking his great head.

I chanced a glance at him again and almost winced for the sight of him. Bloodied, bruised, and limping. But he was moving at least. I took heart in that.

Goda whinnied excitedly from her place beside the oak tree in the center of the courtyard, bobbing her head up and down. The big gelding tossed his own head, nostrils flaring nervously as we made our way cautiously towards them.

The guards fanned out once they exited the kitchen, their hands balling into fists. Their eyes narrowing. This posturing certainly wasn’t going to last much longer.

The sudden thundering of hooves made me groan, and I spun to face the small force of horses that swept in through the open gateway. Balam had reached our mounts and grabbed their reins. I stood between him and the others, dagger still poised against the Sheriff’s neck.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I hissed as Varius dismounted from the foremost horse and strode over.

There was a thunder on his brow I couldn’t remember having ever seen before, and with a flick of his wrist he signaled the other Guild members to fan out as well. Until we were surrounded. Guards on one side. Bounty Hunters on the other.

“Apologies, My Lord,” Varius called to the Sheriff coolly, pacing closer, “This is a… disgruntled former Guild member. We’ve come to take care of her for you.” One incisor flashed in the setting sun as he smiled. “Free of charge.”

“I don’t care what it costs!” Snarled the Sheriff, wriggling in my arms again. I tightened my grip, and he spat at the cobblestones before him. “Tell the Guildmaster if he gives me her head, I’ll double my usual payment.”

I thought I saw a twitch in Varius’ eyebrow, and Sigi came up to stand at his shoulder. She glanced between me and the half-elf. When he didn’t answer, she pulled an arrow from her quiver and notched it.

“Guildmaster Warrick is dead.” She proclaimed, loudly, as if announcing it to the whole town. “Varius is Guildmaster now.”

“Hail Guildmaster Varius.” Chanted the Guildsmen uniformly.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I thought silently to myself. There was certainly no love-loss between Varius and me. Bitter rivals since we were children. But I saw a shadow cross his face at his partner’s words. And something inside me shivered. Remembering exactly what kind of childhood we had shared. I wondered if he sensed it too, in that moment, as our eyes locked.

“Release the Sheriff, Iara,” He said finally, his voice cold, “Let’s not make this any messier than it has to be.”

“Iara,” I heard Balam whisper sharply behind me.

I ignored him, glaring back at Varius. “Warrick banished me, but he is dead. You are not beholden to his laws.”

The half-elf laughed, placing his hands on his hips. “Is that your way of asking to come back?” He scoffed, shaking his head, “You think I’m that stupid?”

“No,” I replied honestly, and his gaze met mine again, “No… But you make the rules now… So what kind of Master are you, Varius?”

I thought I saw him wince, but it could have been the dipping sunlight playing with the shadows around him. Sigi glanced at him, then at me, her eyes narrowing suspiciously at whatever kind of secret language appeared to be passing between us. I wondered if he had ever told her. Or perhaps he bore his scars the same way I did.

“Shut up! Shut up both of you!” Screeched the Sheriff, wriggling in my arms fiercely. “You are BOUNTY HUNTERS!! I place a bounty on her head! Both their heads! Bring them to me!”

Varius smirked, eyeing me. “You heard it yourself, sister. A Bounty has been declared.” He raised his shoulders in mocking apology. “No going back now.”

“SILENCE! Enough!” The Sheriff screeched again, twisting more violently. “Release me! You ignorant fools! You pustulous imbeciles!”

“If I might be so bold-” Balam began, but the arrow Sigi planted in the trunk of the tree by his head let him know he should not. He cleared his throat, raising one bushy eyebrow. Then glanced back at me. “Iara... if you can get yourself out-”

“I’m not leaving without you.” I snapped back quietly, not letting him finish.

His fists clenched. “There’s no point in both of us dying here, you stubborn mule! Just-”

“Shut up.” I twisted the Sheriff’s arm in retaliation, stubbornly glaring about. Daring the next person forward.

“Release him, Iara,” Varius called, “And I’ll make your deaths quick.”

“NO!” Snarled the Sheriff. “No! They will suffer! You will all suffer for your trespasses! I pay the bounty! I decide their fate! I am the law, you flee ridden-”

With a quick jerk, I drew the knife back; then plunged it hilt deep into the Sheriff’s throat. His eyes shot wide, and he gurgled on his own blood. I let his body slump to the ground.

“ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?” Balam half-shrieked.

“HOLD!” Roared Varius at the top of his lungs as everyone in the courtyard took one giant step closer to its center in outrage.

The Guildsmen turned their swords on the guards, who cried out in protest. The guards barely held their ground, eyes racing between the Guild and the Sheriff’s twitching corpse on the ground. More than one bewildered eye flicked to me.

I held up my hands quickly, tossing my other knife down to the cobblestones. Varius looked me up and down in unconcealed surprise.

“No Sheriff, no bounty.” I reminded him.

His eyebrow quirked, and I saw the corners of his mouth twitch upward. “... The city will have a bounty on your head,” He pointed out, “For killing the Sheriff.”

“You and I both know the city won’t be offering much,” I shrugged slightly, “Certainly not enough to make trying to kill me worth it.” I met his gaze solidly. “You know I won’t go down easy.”

“Apparently not.” He chuckled.

He considered me again, then glanced around at the gathered men and women. A deep sigh shook him, and he raised two fingers to pinch his brow.

“...Let them go.”

The Guildsmen moved without hesitation, clearing the exit while still keeping their weapons trained on the Sheriff’s guards. The guards roared their protest, but disarmed, they had no way of hoping to repeal the decision by their own means. And certainly city guardsmen would not have the skill to take down highly trained Bounty Hunters from a prominent Guild.

I jerked my head at the gelding, quickly moving to Goda’s side. I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Balam took the hint, mumbling quietly under his breath as he mounted. Goda was only more than eager to take us away, back out onto the open road. She had never liked cities or stables much.

Varius stepped into my path as we quickly moved to the gate. I slowed, glancing down at him warily. The half-elf rested one hand on the bay mare’s flank, staring at it for a long moment. Finally, he looked back up at me, eyes complicated.

“...The Guild will be different,” He told me softly, “... It will be what it was supposed to be.”

I opened my mouth with a sarcastic reply. But then stopped, closing it again. Instead, I nodded to him curtly. His smirk returned, and he shot me a haughty wink.

“Maybe I’ll toss the odd bounty your way… if you’re interested.”

I glanced over at Balam a few strides ahead, anxiously looking around. I sighed, then shook my head.

“I’m done. I’m out.” I turned back to him. “You’ll never hear from me again.”

He hesitated, then nodded as well. “...Good luck then… sister…”

I hardly waited for him to pull his hand back and step out of the way before I spurred Goda on. Balam heeled his own mount to match my pace, and we raced off. Dust spinning in our wake...

....

UPDATE: FINAL PART HERE

[imaginethatalena]

#213: Damian Wayne & Batmom!Reader

I discovered the beautiful lullaby “Bayu Bayushki Bayu” (the link is to my favorite version of the song) a few months ago. Those who know me know I came to America at a young age through adoption, so I never got to hear it when I was a child, but I hope to sing it to my kids. I thought this was a cute imagine idea for Damian. I feel like he’d love it. Russian lullabies are lovely but terrifying, just like Dami ❤ God I love my smol boi. 

P.S. I’m still struggling with Damian’s name. I think Damianka is the best I can do for a diminutive and I think it sounds sweet, but if anyone knows a better way to make Damian a diminutive, let me know.  

Tag List: @crazyfreckledginger​ @stella-nebella​ @honorarybastard 

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PART 1

You had become a light sleeper in your time knowing Bruce, so you woke up the moment he got into bed. You turned and groggily gathered your husband into your arms, feeling the tension in his body leave him as he pressed a kiss to your forehead. 

“How did patrol go?” you asked, raising your head to see what time it was. 3:00 am, a later night for the Batfamily, but Bruce always made it home eventually. 

“It went pretty well, actually. Damian did well against the Joker,” Bruce told you, but he could tell you’d tensed up. “What’s wrong Y/N?” 

“Nothing. Go to bed before you become an insomniac like Tim,” you mumbled. “Lord knows I try to help that boy but he always sneaks an energy drink past me.” Your attempt at humor didn’t deter your husband. Bruce could tell when something was worrying you, and he knew you weren’t getting back to sleep until you told him what it was. 

“When I was with Alfred in the Batcave I heard you radio in that the Joker was back again,” you told him. “I don’t know why, but I kept thinking about what Jason went through, and I knew I didn’t want Damian anywhere near that maniac.”

“I’m sorry.” Now it was Bruce’s turn to hold you, easily wrapping you in his strong arms. 

“You can’t control when that clown will rear his head,” you said. “I just wish I could stop worrying.”

“You’re the boys’ mother. It’s okay to worry.”

“That doesn’t mean I like it.” 

Bruce didn’t push you to talk anymore, instead allowing sleep to take him. He certainly needed it after a night with the Joker and a full day of work at Wayne Enterprises in a few hours. You, however, couldn’t fall back asleep. You carefully got out of bed once you were sure Bruce was fast asleep and headed down to the kitchen. While you were in the privacy of the kitchen you took a few minutes to call Jason and see if he was okay. You felt a little better after talking with him, and you let him get off the phone so he could get some rest. Once you’d hung up, you saw a small figure in a yellow cape walk past the kitchen. 

“Damianka?” you called out quietly as you followed him out to the stairwell. Your youngest son turned to face you with a guilty look. He had been heading up the stairs, clearly trying to sneak past you without you seeing him, but you knew what was up. Damian could be a ghost in this house, disappearing as he snuck around with no one knowing he was there. He had wanted you to see him. 

“Why haven’t you gone to bed yet?” you asked him as you came to meet him on the stairs. 

“I was just working in the Batcave for a bit before I went to bed,” he told you, never one to admit how he was really feeling. You got the sense that he was pretty shaken up, and you couldn’t hide your frustration. The Joker was a figure who scared everyone, even Batman sometimes. Of course Damian would be having a hard time after his first experience with him. 

“Let me tuck you in.” He was about to protest, but you shushed him. “It will make me feel better, Damianka. Come on.”

You both went up to his room. While he changed out of his Robin uniform and into some pajamas, you made sure he had extra blankets and a glass of water on his nightstand. When he was ready, he allowed you to tuck him under the covers. You gave him a kiss on the forehead and went to the light switch, about to leave and go back to your room, but Damian’s next words stopped you.

“Can you stay for a little while, Y/N?” Damian looked ashamed at having asked such a thing of you, but you gave him a smile and nodded. He allowed you to lay down next to him, hugging him to you and gently running your fingers through his hair. 

“Do you want to talk about what happened tonight or just sleep?”

“Sleep.” Of course he wanted to sleep, but you weren’t sure he would be able to. 

“Did anyone ever sing to help you sleep when you were younger, Damian?” When he shook his head, you asked, “Would you like me to?”

“If it’s some nonsense like Rock-a-bye Baby, I will have to say no.” His words made you laugh. He was always the direct one when it came to “childish nonsense”. 

“No. It’s a Russian lullaby my Babushka sang to me when I was younger,” you told him. “If you think it would help, I can sing for you.”

“If you think it would help,” he relented. You made sure he was comfortable and warm before you started, and once you did, his expression changed from one of doubt to one of rapture.

“Bayu bayushki bayu,

Ne lozhisya na krayu.

Pridyot serenkiy volchok,

On ukhvatit za bochok

I utashchit vo lesok

Pod rakitovy kustok.”

((I have the lyrics in English so it’s easier for you guys to look it up if you want to))

As you continued singing, Damian’s eyes started to droop. You continued to the very end of the lullaby as he drifted further into sleep, and when you finished, you were relieved to see he was fast asleep. That lullaby had worked on Dick when he was younger, and Jason and Tim as well. You were glad you got to share it with Damian, too, and you were happy that you were able to give him enough of a distraction from tonight’s events that he could sleep peacefully. 

You didn’t get up, afraid to wake Damian, instead choosing to sleep next to your son for the rest of the night. You had a feeling Damian would feel better knowing you had stayed by his side without him needing to summon the courage to ask you himself. One day the Joker wouldn’t be around anymore to wreak havoc on your lives, but until then, you would be there for your family to help them through it.

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A/N: To anyone who’s wondering, the song is basically a warning for small children to sleep in the center of the bed so they don’t fall off. Nice right? NOPE. This is Russian so it has to be, “Don’t sleep on the edge of the bed or a fUCKIN WOLF WILL GET YOU AND DRAG YOU INTO THE WOODS.” I imagined Batmom being worried about him while he’s on patrol, so kind of indirectly warning him to be careful and not stray too far after her experience losing Jason. I hope this makes sense. 

[goldeneyedgirl]

i think i posted the beginning of this for ficmas?

Here’s the whole thing. Eh, feeling fairly neutral about this. I think I was looking for an excuse to explore different coven types throughout the US. What I should really do is write down my personal canon for the international covens. 

FYI, I do plan to use sections of this for other projects, just not as it stands. 

He’s coming, he’s coming.

She rocks back and forward, her arms wrapped around her knees. The nurses roll their eyes and try to engage her, but she ignores them entirely, her eyes glassy and unfocused.

They write on the chart that she’s being difficult, refusing food and water, refusing to acknowledge anyone.

Dr Cullen frowns when he reads her file; Mary-Alice is a gentle girl, an easy patient. He is reluctant to even sign off on the poor girl’s electrotherapy, since Edward has already confirmed the truth – the diminutive creature is truly seeing visions of the future. There is nothing wrong with her. There was nothing wrong with her.

But there is little that can be done for her now.

The girl’s mind was destroyed by the so-called treatment and neglect before he arrived. He can smell the weakness in her blood, and knows that she will die sooner rather than later.

It is a despicable waste, and yet there is nothing that can be done to fix it.

---

He comes in the night, prowling the hallways of the basement floor, his footsteps virtually silent against the concrete.

Asylums are a god-send to vampires. Humans do not care about the ones they have locked up within them, and few of their ailments linger once they are changed. They are always grateful to be freed and willing to repay the favour in Maria’s army.

And they are also a limitless supply of food. No one cares when or how they died, they are simply disposed of.

He’s only even in Mississippi because Maria wanted intelligence on the Louisiana coven. The battles over Louisiana have always been on the small scale, but far nastier than they should be. Maria has held Monterrey for the best part of a century; no coven has held New Orleans longer than a decade.

And now he needs to feed, before he makes the journey back. Travelling through the south was always risky, he had to be strong.

The smell from the asylum drew him in. No cantante de la sangre, but he wanted it. Far sweeter than any of the slum girls in New Orleans, skinny peasants in Monterrey. It would be his, and he would savour every droplet.

--

He takes blood from her throat, her wrists, her snow-white thighs, and she is silent, aside from a shuddering breath, her thin fingers playing with his curls. He can hear her heartbeat, and it feels like a panicked butterfly – fragile and manic.

When he is sated, as much as he can be without destroying her, he watches her – her darting, glassy gaze. She is so neglected, she is more obscene than beautiful. Her cheeks dip inwards, her lips cracked and split, skin tight across bone. Bruises have blossomed along both her arms, her thighs, her torso. Some are pinpricks, from the drugs they pump through her (her blood has a bitterness to it, and he hates that for more than just his own palate); some are the result of rough handling of staff.

He brings her food, once or twice, food she picks at and barely tastes, her hunger eating away at her bones rather than recognise food.

Before he leaves, he lifts a tin cup of stale water to her lips and she manages a sip or too. He tucks her into bed like a child and uses his gift to lull her to sleep. And it is only his gift that tells him she understands him, adores him as he does her. Her feelings are light, are soft and sweet. Pure.

His are darker, sinister. He drinks in both her blood and her emotions, savours her body. And if that were all, perhaps he’d kill her or leave her be.

But this is the closest he’s had to love, and he wants to care for her, protect her.

He wants to change her, but Maria’s campaign is no world for this brittle girl, even in the form of a strong, new vampire.

Her sleep is shallow as he watches over her.

--

They blame each other when Mary-Alice vanishes from the hospital.

--

It isn’t just Carlisle’s friends who come to witness against the Volturi. Others come, curious and righteous.

She arrives with an older vampire – he must have been in his late forties when he was changed – short but lanky, clad in an ancient mourning coat and with the tiny girl on his arm.

She is exquisite, with glossy black hair that curls around her cheeks, and she is dressed like it is still the 1920s, with her coat and hat and gloves.

“Boston vamps,” Emmett sighs. The Boston covens are well known for their eccentricities, for the fact they never move with the times. Boston hosts the largest amount of vampires outside of the Southern Wars, the covens small and unspoken expectations to keep everyone in line.

When she sees the Cullens, her eyes light up and she beams, and the older vampire with her just looks sad, but with the ghost of a smile.

[sufeyfolkau]

Kiss It & Make It Better

rating: T word count: 3k

Steven stumbles upon a new power that, just like all of the rest, doesn't work quite like his mother's. It has some negative side effects that he's a bit reluctant to explain to the others.

Part of my “Feyfolk & Fiends” AU. Enjoy!

[Read on AO3]

-

Steven adores Connie.

This is probably obvious in everything he does. What began as a partnership, as a mutual interest in all things magical and fey, has become something so much more. It’s something he’ll always carry with him, forever.

So of course it’s with her that he discovers a new power.

Most of his powers are fairly standard fey stuff. He can summon a shield and disintegrate it at his will. He can summon wings, too; semi-transparent things that are hued an unnatural pink, insectoid and bizarre-looking even to Pearl, who knew his mother best. He can manipulate others, though it is a temporary thing and people are usually aware of the magical interference on their thinking if they’re not already strongly learning that way.

Then there’s this.

Steven presses a joking kiss to the injury on Connie’s finger, so mild that calling it an injury is hyperbole, and insists he’ll make it better. They laugh, both their cheeks blushing at the flirtatious nature of it all. And then they stare at each other in awe as the paper cut on Connie’s finger magically seals itself, the skin suddenly baby-smooth. Connie runs her fingers over it again and again, a “Whoa” murmuring out.

Steven winces at a prickling ache in his own finger. He looks down to see a paper cut there, in what might have been an identical spot to the one on Connie’s.

“I didn’t know you could heal,” Connie whispers.

“I didn’t either,” he confesses with nervous laughter.

Is that paper cut from that, just now? No. It couldn’t be. It’s just a coincidence, though he doesn’t remember how exactly he got the papercut in the first place. That’s fine.

“How?”

Steven shrugs, fingers curling into his palm, and hopes that Connie leaves it at that.

-

Of course, she doesn’t. Connie has always been inquisitive by nature, and it’s one of Steven’s favorite things about her. There’s nothing wrong with it, period, but it makes something like this… well, more than a little awkward.

“Describe what happened,” Garnet says in that stoic way of hers, and Steven feels his face heating.

“Okay, so!” Connie takes Steven’s hand in hers, a grin spread across her face. “We were just joking around, right? And I’d gotten a paper cut earlier today at school. And I complained about it to him, so he said he’d ‘kiss it and make it better.’ And then he did!”

“I’ve never heard of a fey healing a mortal with a kiss,” Garnet murmurs. “You weren’t using magic?”

“Garnet.” Steven laughs, high and awkward and nerves spiking. “You know I can’t.”

“All fey have access to magic.”

“Clearly that doesn’t mean me.”

“The skills you call ‘powers’ are all different forms of—”

“We’ve had this conversation!” Steven waves his hands, wildly, desperate to direct the topic elsewhere. “It doesn’t matter. It was a one-time thing, and it won’t happen again.”

He’s scared of what might happen if it does.

Garnet nods once, and though no expression forms at her lips or in her eyebrows, he wishes he could see past her visor to know what her eyes were saying. “We could ask Mother.”

Connie gasps, excitement bursting at her seams, but Steven pales. The idea of Sapphire finding out — she would take one look at him and know. He’s never been able to hide anything from her. She would probably ban him from every healing anyone ever again. Or maybe she’d be okay with this.

Or maybe Steven’s freaking out over nothing, because who knows if he got that paper cut from somewhere else that he just forgot about?

“I-I don’t know. Maybe this was just a fluke.”

“We could always test that theory,” Garnet suggests.

“Fine.” Steven knows he’ll regret saying it, but he acquiesces. “Let’s test it!”

He words it as a challenge, praying fervently that Garnet will read his mind and see that they should just drop this subject and leave it alone.

Garnet, however, is not, nor has she ever claimed to be, a mind reader.

-

“Ooh, this sounds like a fun experiment. And you are due for another sword-fighting lesson, Connie.”

Normally, Steven is ecstatic when Connie’s up for training with Pearl. She’s very much Pearl’s student, as graceful and diligent as her teacher. The brownie has always been willing to share the things she’s learned — not in terms of the skills she knows inherently, as a brownie, but the skills she learned and trained herself in and mastered. The two of them in the arena together are a brilliant, dazzling display.

But today’s lesson seems like it would be less for Connie and more for Steven.

“Don’t, uh. Don’t beat each other up too hard,” Steven says, as Connie follows Pearl to the fairy circle.

Connie laughs. “Oh, I’m gonna kick Pearl’s ass.”

“Profanity, young lady,” Pearl scolds.

It would get a giggle out of Steven if he wasn’t absolutely terrified.

-

“What are you doing in my room?”

“Go away.”

“This is my room.”

Steven doesn’t move. He stays exactly where he is, curled up behind one of Amethyst’s many piles of miscellaneous paraphernalia. Amethyst sighs, the sound so near a groan that he almost winces, and then he feels the shift of movement and cloth as she plops down next to him. He’s on his butt, knees up, arms wrapped around them and head pressed between, but Amethyst leans over him, almost on top of him. “What’s got you down, bud? What’re you hiding from?”

“Nothing, geez!”

“So you’re telling me that you’re in my room for no reason?”

“What’s the big deal? It’s not a full moon, is it?”

“Stop being obtuse, you dweeb.”

Steven groans. He shifts, pushing Amethyst off of him in order to look at her. “I just… well. Garnet and Pearl are training with Connie because they think it’s going to help me, but I’m pretty sure it won’t. So I’m hiding out in here so I won’t have to face them when they’re done.”

“Just tell them that.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Sounds like it is when you won’t tell me why it’s complicated.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Amethyst hums, but she sounds almost as if she’s bored. She isn’t; Steven knows her well enough by now, but as always, it makes his nerves spike. As if he’s burdening her by being here, when the very reason he’s here is because he knows she doesn’t see him like that and she never will. “Well, why don’t you ask Sapphire? Maybe her future vision can help out so you won’t have to say anything.”

Steven considers it. He has a feeling that Sapphire would be straight with him about it, but she would spell everything out, word for word. And he doesn’t know if he wants to hear her wise voice articulating the specifics of this strange new power.

-

Which is how Steven winds up in front of Ruby.

“What’s goin’ on, Ste-man?” Ruby asks, burning a Poptart in her hand right before she devours it.

“I gotta ask you for some advice.” The words sigh out him, almost like he’s deflating, as he plops into the seat at the counter.

Ruby blinks, stunned. Yeah, Steven isn’t surprised by that. The last time he went to Ruby for advice, she’d made him swear never to come to her again. “That’s Sapphire’s thing, I guess,” she’d said with a blush and a nervous laugh. But Ruby had lived for eons, just like Sapphire, and just because she didn’t have the korrigan’s future vision didn’t mean her insight wasn’t also valuable.

Especially when it came to said korrigan.

“So… how do you recommend approaching Sapphire when I don’t want to actually talk about something, I kinda just want her to know it?”

Ruby’s expression remains exactly the same. Stunned, bewildered. Steven’s wondering if he’s made some sort of mistake when Ruby says, “Sapphire… can’t read minds, Steven. You know that. Sure, she can see a bunch of different futures, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to know what’s bothering you right away.”

Okay, that makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s what he wants to hear.

“What’s up with my fave little man?” Ruby asks, hopping up onto the counter and swinging her legs over the side.

And, honestly? No one else is allowed to be so diminutive with him. If only because Ruby knows exactly what it’s like to be called that kind of thing, and she doesn’t get the privilege of growing up like he does. (Then again, she can choose whatever human form she wants.)

“Uh, so…” He knows Ruby won’t let this leak. Of all of them, she’s probably the most tight-lipped... except in her anger, of course. “Connie and I discovered a new power of mine, but… I don’t really know how to tell her that I think it’s got some pretty negative side effects? But she’s already working on it, so… I just wanna know if I should pretend it doesn’t work, or that it was a fluke, or whatever.”

“Huh.”

Ruby doesn’t say anything for a moment, tapping at her chin with a furrow to her brow. “Mind if I ask what kind of side effects?”

“Um…” Steven bites his lip.

Ruby sighs. “Well, if you’re not gonna talk about it with me, I don’t know how you’re expecting to talk about it with Sapphy. And Steven, we’re all gonna know sooner or later. Might as well rip off the band-aid now, y’know?”

She was right. Of course she was right.

“I guess I have the power to heal people,” he begins.

“Oh, like Rose’s tears!”

Ruby’s starry eyes make Steven laugh, tone high and awkward. “Uh, kind of. But through kisses. And it’s not just healing. I don’t know how Mom did it, but for me, it seems like… I can take on whatever injury they’ve got.”

“Oh.” Ruby’s expression changes immediately from one of excitement to one of concern. “You sure?”

Steven shrugs. “It’s only happened once and it was over a paper cut, but… yeah, pretty sure. Usually once a new power hits, I can kind of tell.” Emphasis on the kind of; they all remember when his wings manifested. That had been…

Ruby nods slowly, gears turning in her brain. “Well, we should probably tell people about this, right? You don’t wanna end up in a situation where you feel like you have to use it, and everyone’s expecting you to, only for that to hit the fan right then.”

“I-I guess?”

Ruby slaps his shoulder, and he yelps. Her touch burns his skin through his jacket. “C’mon, little man!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

-

“This assumption you’ve made is based on one single event.”

Steven nods slowly, though the lump in his throat is heavy. “Um… yeah. I would really rather not test it, if that’s what you’re about to suggest.”

Sapphire considers this. She is at about Ruby’s height — which is to say, she comes up this waist and no higher. He used to think that she used to look down on him despite this, and in hindsight, that’s pretty hilarious, because Sapphire doesn’t conceive of others that way. Korrigans are typically incredibly beautiful creatures, and though Steven would say that Sapphire fits the bill, many fey would not; for Sapphire, somehow, came into being with only one eye. Sapphire has been treated horribly enough by plenty of fey for that sole thing — Steven’s even heard someone claim she has “more in common with the monsters than with fey” — and while that almost made him go off, she insisted it was fine.

She even jokes that her future vision requires two, and her third is for sight. Steven isn’t sure what to make of any that, but he does know that she’s probably the least likely to look down on anyone else.

“We won’t do anything that cannot be swiftly remedied.” Despite the assurance, Steven finds himself hesitating. Sapphire gestures for him to follow her, so he does. “You know, Steven, that your mother’s healing abilities worked differently.”

He swallows. “Yeah.” Hers were perfect, infallible in every way. Her tears would heal injuries with absolutely no casualties. Supposedly she could heal fey on the brink of death — something quite difficult for fey to reach in the first place — and they would resurrect, good as new and fatigue restored.

Steven’s powers are almost always different from Rose’s somehow. Never quite as unique, never quite as special.

“What you may not have known is that they affected mortals differently than they did fey.”

He blinks. He looks up, trying to catch Sapphire’s gaze, but she’s too many steps ahead. He recognizes this path well; she is leading him to the fairy circle. When he was young, they built the house around it. Apparently some of his mother’s magic was able to make it so that this particular circle could only be accessed by those with the proper credentials, though Steven hasn’t the foggiest idea about how any of that works.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this circle is not composed of typical mushrooms, but of eternal fairy roses. Her namesake.

“Can you, um… elaborate?”

As they come to the circle, she extends her hand to him. He takes it, and together they step into the circle. A moment later their house is gone, their surroundings morphing into strange and new shapes until they settle on a familiar scene:

His mother’s fountain. Its water seem higher than ever as they exist the fairy circle, the statue of her higher still.

“Your mother’s powers were regenerative with injured fey; their heart would cease to beat, and your mother’s tears would inspire it to continue on, as if it’d never stopped. Broken bone would mend, lost limbs would regrow. But with mortals, it was very different. Their limbs would remain lost, her magic only causing the skin to heal over exposed bone. Their stopped hearts, when awoken, would be marching to an entirely new rhythm.”

Unease settles in his stomach.

“I’m curious to see if your power behaves the same on mortals and fey, or if it too finds different purpose in our differences.”

Steven stops.

They’ve come to the edge of the fountain. Sapphire smiles, and with a burst of magical energy, a dagger appears in her hand.

“N-no, Sapphire—”

“Easy, now.” Sapphire presses the dagger into the tip of her index finger. Steven watches, horrified, as her blood pools there, before slowly dripping to the stone floor in red speckles.

His stomach lurches again. He feels bile rise and he pushes it down, down, down. It’s just blood. There’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s just blood. And he can fix this.

The dagger disappears and Sapphire beckons him closer with her uninjured hand. Obediently, he comes to her side, but when she extends the injury to him to heal, he freezes. He stares at the blood, still dripping ever so slowly to the floor below.

 What, you can’t handle a little blood, Steven Universe?

“Let’s… just use Mom’s fountain. Okay?”

Sapphire pauses. Something odd crosses her face and Steven squeezes his eyes shut, begging her to do literally anything else but push her injury in front of him and insist.

“Okay.” His eyes fly open to see that Sapphire has turned from him, already dipping her finger into the pond; he nearly misses the shimmer from the water, and when she pulls her hand away, the injury is there no longer.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“I should have asked if this was something you were comfortable with before I insisted. Forgive me.”

Why does he feel like he’s just failed her?

-

He’s lying face down in his bed, curled up under the covers, when he hears a knock at his door. He shoots upright, untangling himself from the blankets as quickly as he can and ends up on the floor with a thud. “U-uh, come in!”

He’s just barely on his feet when Connie comes in, bruises all over her and a look of concern on her face. “Steven?”

 Oh.

In his haste to throw a pity party, he totally forgot that he’d forgotten he’d agreed to try to heal Connie’s training injuries. He scans her for a moment; she’s got a particularly nasty bruise on her elbow, but otherwise her injuries don’t seem too bad. She’s probably sore — will he inherit that, as well, or will he be spared it? If it’s just this one time, then this is probably fine, right?

“Yeah. C’mon in.”

She shuts the door behind her and comes in. He sits on the bed and she moves to sit beside him. He’s already taking her hand and bending down to kiss it when she puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back. He looks up, startled to see that concern still there.

“Steven… Ruby and Sapphire told us about it.”

“Us?” he squeaks.

“Pearl and I. I’m assuming Amethyst and Garnet probably know, too.”

His face burns. “Oh.” Slowly, Steven lets her hand drop, and he pulls his hand away from hers, sitting it back in his lap. He stares at them, fidgeting them while the silence grows. Connie seems to be expecting something from him, but he doesn’t know what it is.

“Steven…” Connie sighs. “Next time, please just tell me. Please just tell me something like this would hurt you, okay? We can always just go to your mother’s fountain. Or not! I don’t even go there half the time after training because these aches and bruises are earned, you know? So I don’t even need healing!”

He nods. “Yeah. Okay.”

Another beat passes. Connie gives a soft, gentle sigh, and she curls her hands around his face, pulling his eyes up to meet hers. “Steven. If healing someone is going to put you at risk, then we’ll just bandage things up and let them heal the old-fashioned way. Okay? Let me care for you.”

Steven presses his forehead against hers and offers her a slow, hesitant smile. “Okay.”

She presses a kiss to his nose, and for a moment, everything is better.

[miqojak]

Becoming

(( Tagging a @ketsuchikotetsu for reigniting a sputtering little flame. ))

I em exposed. Wholly. 

Bare, see-through, transparent - camouflage, armor, deflection, they don’t work.

I’m laid bare, the coward that I am. Small, afraid, and furious.

Not for long. Though that wolf will absolutely chew you up, and spit you out if you let him.

No. He wont. If he kills me in the end, it won’t be without every ounce of fury I can bring to bear...and I have plenty to go around. He will pay for what he takes, if it comes down to that.

He won’t, however. Not because he wouldn’t, but because I am so much more - I will be, at any rate. Stronger, wiser, more in control...in time. Ul’dah wasn’t built in a day, after all.

I am exquisite, and becoming - becoming more than the rest of the bleating sheep, tucked safely into their herd. 

I told him. 

I said it out loud...the smallest morsel of it, at least. What happened to Kesri.

You showed your belly to the Wolf. Jackals are not wolves, and he will tear you open.

“I will not live my life in fear. I will not let fear own me. I will not let those three-eyed fucking freaks win, all these years later.” She sank beneath the scalding water - save her ears - she absolutely could not bear water getting into them, especially so hot - hands scrubbing over her face as she breached the surface a second later.

“I am more than the beast they made me.” That black and red ribbon lay stretched along the side of her tub - black and orange mane sopping...and swept back - in a sudden gesture that made the muscles in her neck scream in protest - she could still feel his fingers buried in it - the biting tug at her scalp. 

Kicking, biting, clawing...raging, as she was dragged - fighting, always fighting. It’s why they did this to her. Because of her fire.

Fingers pinched at the bridge of her nose - careful with her wicked nails - as the pressure built. “They do not own me. I was small. I was weak. I was innocent, and they took that from me.” The diminutive woman shivered, despite the water that was probably a touch too hot - as if she might scald away that touch from so many years ago. Hands bigger than her head. Towering figures with that hideous deformity in their foreheads.

But he wasn’t wrong - fearsome Wolf, with his uplifting words and unrelenting hands. It was, after all, the memories that she sought to sear out of her...not his touch. He’d smirk at that, undoubtedly - but maybe he was right. Maybe it didn’t have to bring to mind horrors, anymore.

Could she let herself do that? That gave him power, though. It directly placed it in his hands...equally capable of the same torment.

“I think it’s too late to change my mind,” Softly, to herself, this time - loosing a slow breath. Calm...she needed to learn to get a better grip on those fly-away emotions...fear, and anger alike. “I think I made that decision when I let him into my bed moons ago.” The calico sank - nose just above the steaming water - the tub had been made for Hyur, most like, and it was...almost a bit too deep for her. Small woman, in a large world - spiteful, for the unfair hand she’d been dealt.

Her neck ached - throbbed, really, against the heat of the water - she’d grown...unused to his presence...and his lingering touch, the last few moons; and yet, how quickly the body remembered. Traitor that it was. Lengthy legs curled under her, as if to deny all part in the sabotage of her composure earlier.

She rubbed at the sore flesh along her neck, and sank an ilm deeper - growling into the water. She was glad of his return...even if she was equally on edge, and dubious.

That fucking smirk. 

It was nice to be seen, however - little monster that she was. To well, and truly, be recognized...even if the biting condescension stung as much as a bitten neck. 

Slowly, does she sink beneath the water, letting the heat beat upon her anew - if pride and ego were the cost, it seemed they’d just have to be sacrificed...at least in part, for a time.

Damn him. All the way to hell. Why does he have to be right so gods-damned often?

[sebastianshaw]

10: What’s your biggest writer pet-peeve?; 12: Who is your favorite author?; 39: What’s the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had? Bonus: would you join the Hellfire Club if asked & what powers/mutation would you choose? [admin/writer ask meme]

10. Sexism in writing. With male writers it’s usually women only existing as love interests/very cliche roles, with female writers it’s usually a Not Like Other Girls heroine and terrible internalized misogyny, and both just make my blood boil. I just fucking CAN’T. I also strongly dislike Protagonist-Centered Morality and heroes being able to just kill/torture/etc people and for us to be okay with it because they were Bad People, it gives me the creeps. 12. For “high” literature, probably Vladimir Nabokov. I did my thesis on his work in college. “Lolita” is definitely my favorite work by him (how cliche, I know) but his others are beautiful too---- Pale Fire, Pnin, Ada, etc. I’m always intending to finish his works and I never do. Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things” reminds me of his stuff, and that’s probably why it’s stuck with me too. For fantasty, I’d say Peter S. Beagle, specifically his most famous work “The Last Unicorn”, quotes alone from that can make me cry and I’m not someone who cries easy. Neil Gaiman, JKR, and Eoin Colfer also all have qualities to their writing that I very much enjoy and would like to emulate. I like Amy Tan too, I’m not usually into her genre AT ALL but she sucks me right in. 39: What’s the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had? God, I don’t know. I’ve had some VERY surreal ideas. Some were horror, some were just...strange. Some I actually wrote out, most I did not. Here’s a few: - In Japanese folklore, there’s a creature called a sazae-oni. It’s a giant turban snail that can take the form of a human woman. It removes men’s testicles. Seriously. I wrote about one setting up a sex-change clinic for transgender women to receive magical orchidectomies complication-free. - Santa retired his reindeer and now employs tigers instead. They eat the bad kids. - Little girl crawls into bed with grandmother. A giant wolf mouth grows from granny’s groin, eats the girl, and in doing so, restores grandma’s youth. - Every night, my house is underwater. - I went for a walk on the beach, and a cat speaks in my head and commands me to dig. In the sand are a nest of kittens, tiny kittens the size of shrimp, thousands of them. The cat tells me to stay with them in the hole and I do til she comes back, and she lets me go. Later, I see a coyote sniffing around that same spot, and he gets sucked under. I don’t think he’s getting released. - I have extremely painful sex with what’s implied to be Shub Niggurath or SOME kind of Elder God in order to birth a diminutive horror to be my familiar. - A girl hits puberty and lays eggs instead of having periods. When she grows up and gets a boyfriend, he becomes obsessed with eating one. He steals her latest, and when he cracks it into a skillet, what pours out is a human fetus---what would have been his firstborn son. - Everyone in my family has horrible acne. Me, my mom, and all my sisters...except one. Her skin is perfect and clear and we all hate her. One day, she gets sick. The doctors can find nothing wrong. She dies. Her autopsy reveals she had the worst acne of us all...it was just on the inside. - A village woman turns her neighbors into turnips by burying them up to their necks. They are alive the entire time. - An idol is found in a far-off land and brought to a museum, where a boy looks upon it. That night, he dreams of lush, humid jungle of vines and ferns, in a time when grass hadn’t even evolved yet---and humanity certainly had not. He finds her temple there, this monstrous goddess worshiped by things on this Earth long before man, and kisses her hoof. From her plant-sprouting body, a seed falls and lands on the back of his exposed neck. In the morning, his mother finds him, his chest burst open, his heart the site where all the foliage led back into. It no longer was an organ of flesh and blood, but a massive, transparent, pulsating golden seed. Somewhere far away in the desert, another seed had also sprouted, and life began to return where an ancient temple had once been long, long before man had even been a twinkle in the cosmic eye...and now will be there long after as well. BONUS Oh man I would WANT to but it’s probably not a good idea? I definitely love the IMAGE and AESTHETIC of the Hellfire Club, this den of opulence and corruption and decadence and sex, it’s the type of place I love reading and writing about...but I would not actually want to BE there? But I don’t think I could bring myself to turn down an invite if I were asked. As for my mutant power, I’d like to be a reality warper!

[vanithesquidwrites]

Waiting for Water - 2

Crosspost to AO3 for those who prefer to read there. Warning: 10k+ words post.

Maybe it's worth a try.

Maybe it's even worth thousands.

2 - SUBMERGE

You can't say that you've ever had much issue with yourself, especially not by Rhalâim standards.

...Well, much issue with your... physical self, that is. Your vessel. Your mind was a minefield as far back as you remember, and you always knew it, if not the full extent of it. Your body, however, had been reliable. Comforting in its constancy. Jittery on dry days, deathly sick on wet ones, and tense as a bowstring on all of them, certainly — yet nevertheless always there. Supporting you through thick and thin to the best of its ability.

Your lungs had admittedly been a complete disaster, especially early on, but you hadn't much cared once Letho took you in. Your scrawny limbs had come with the height expected of Aeterna, with quick footing, agile fingers, and genuinely impressive aim. Your thin frame proved an advantage when you first walked into the Pit, and when you finally put on weight, thanks to the meat and mushrooms victory let you afford, all of it was wiry muscle, strong and lean enough to dance along and around blades.

Your body hadn't merely been your vessel. It had been your temple. The one and only roof to have never caved in nor let you down. The single home to have held strong, no matter whether it was hunger, blades, bandits, or the Rhalâta itself banging on its doors. 

Yet for all of its usefulness, for all its speed and size and strength, your favorite of its features had never been any of those. No — it had been your skin.

You'd always been festooned with scars, even long before the Pit. You had chased every rat, you'd finished every fight — albeit on the floor — and you had climbed the walls in the most literal fashion, active yet weak enough to fall from every ledge and roof in the Undercity. But those scars had never been anything but an advantage, and all the more so once the Dust Pit came to add its own fair share. They were proof of a gift for enduring in spite of pain, proof of a gift for survival, in caves intimidation ruled second only to the Rhalâs. You might have carved some into your flesh yourself, had it somehow made it out of your childhood unblemished.

Through your years as a Rhalâim, on those nights wrath was not enough and memories faded away, you always found a measure of comfort in that scarred skin. Every last burn, pit and blemish was a testament to before, a world beyond the Rhalâta, resurfacing for air when the mask and the robes came off. A criss-crossing web of memories, stretching from toes to fingertips, wrapped around your bones more comfortably than silken cloth. On those nights — on nightmare nights — you would tiptoe between bedrolls, volunteer for any duty that would take you into the caves, and there, hidden in dark corners, you would take your gloves off to cradle yourself in your scars, in the little reminders of why you were there at all.

All of the others, your so-called family, had shunned the pain of life and the marks it left on their hulls. You had embraced it. Reveled in it. Relished the way each cut and bruise would sting against the Temple floors, throbbing along with your heart, a myriad small treasons you could privately indulge in. Letho's face would often fade, and wrath could sometimes abate; scars stood eternal, untouched by the Father's words. He had taken your family, taken your home, taken your memories, even taken your name, your hair, and your choice of clothes — but he could never erase the past from your skin, and every look at your bare hands, every glance of your exposed arms, kept the pain that propelled you ever onward fresh and new. Sharp. Honed and ready for battle, just like your body always was.

Throughout all of those empty years, wrath and revenge may have buoyed you, and lies and murder sheltered you, but it had been that blanket of old wounds that kept you warm at night.

And so here you fucking are, former Voice of the Father, former Champion of the Pit, petrified by the sight of soap.

You throw an angry glance at the offending object, still sitting in the mercenary's hand, on the other end of the bath.

You had been doing well, so far. Not one serious argument in three days, be it with the tavern patrons or the mercenary. One small scuffle on the first day, yes, but an hour spent chopping wood outside with the woman had calmed your nerves as efficiently as balm on a wound. From then on, nothing had gone amiss. Not even when the woman argued you should bathe before leaving. You'd carried the washtub upstairs, brought up your half of the water, offered the innkeeper to wash the linens afterwards if she would lend you a cauldron to heat water by the fire. You'd managed to undress. To sit in the water. You'd even managed to convince the mercenary that sharing the washtub would be practical, less likely to leave her with naught but cold water and you with nothing but silence to try and occupy your thoughts.

You'd much rather have slept alone, and bathed alone, and been alone — but if there is any lesson of value to take from the past few days, from the cliff and the travel and all the empty years before them, it's that you don't actually handle being alone very well.

All your small compromises with isolation had worked perfectly, too, from the forced politeness to making yourself share the bath. You hadn't slipped, not even once. Not until that damn soap, lying inconspicuous in the woman's outstretched hand, forcing you to acknowledge your skin all over again. To realize that your temple had stood on rotten foundations.

That its artificial flesh has never been yours at all.

You look down at the hands, clenching a wet rag in the lap. You look at the burns and the old scars, half-hidden under bloody grime and the wrinkles of bathwater. You try to find a truly old one, one that could precede the Rhalâta, the Dust Pit, the Father, the experiments. The time you had been daft enough to try and lift Letho's so-called kettle from the fire with your bare hands. The time you sliced your thumb open peeling potatoes with Torus, and Sha'Gun had to sew it closed herself while Letho held your arm. The time you threw Nessah's stupid old wooden bear onto the roof, and Letho wouldn't speak to you until you'd rubbed your fingers raw climbing to retrieve the damn thing.

You think, and look, and think and look some more, turning the wet limbs to and fro in the candlelight — but the years down in the Pit have made patchwork out of the skin, and nothing looks so much like an old childhood scar than scores upon scores of others.

You wish you could have fought with Brother Sorrow and survived, somehow. Or been disciplined by him at some point. Or even simply not — not done what you had. Perhaps then you would have something real to remember Letho by, rather than the tatters of a dead child's memories. But no, that would only be yet more masquerade, wouldn't it? Brother Sorrow was no more Letho than Brother Wrath was Tharaêl Narys, in the end. Just a pair of counterfeit echoes chancing to meet in the void, both pretending that they were real.

"Tharaêl?"

The name brings you back to the present, to the half-filled washtub and the mercenary you share it with. She looks even smaller, even more out of place, without her steel plate to add some bulk to her diminutive frame. Wrapped in nothing but a towel, she looks almost childlike; as if time parted ways with her when she was all of twelve winters and then chose to return only two full decades later, to carve wrinkles across her face and spatter her with the small burns you had mistaken for freckles.

She sits staring at you, black hair dripping dirty droplets, black eyes empty as ever — yet the tilt of her head manages to convey concern, somehow. The hand that had been holding the soap is folded onto her lap, the soap itself nowhere to be seen.

"I was trying not to interrupt," she says, sounding almost apologetic, "but you still haven't so much as begun to wash, and you've been staring at your hands for a good five minutes. Did I miss a sprain or bruise? Is something wrong with them?"

"...Aside from their not being real?" You stare at the mercenary woman in disbelief, uncertain whether to feel contemptuous or insulted. "What do you think?!"

"I don't know what to think, Tharaêl, which is why I'm asking you." She straightens herself a little, folding back her legs to bring her knees level with her chest then prop her arms on top of them. An innocent enough gesture, if you could not see all too well that its purpose is to create distance, to erect barriers of bone between her torso and your hands. "Whatever else they may or may not be, they are yours. This is your body. It's the same as twelve years ago, remember? That still hasn't changed."

You do remember, of course. After three days of calm and of the migraine receding, you remember perfectly well.

'The same as twelve years ago.' Comforting words, in the abstract, while stranded on snowy slopes and desperate for direction — but damning ones in retrospect, once able to think clearly. Twelve years ago means the Corpse Pit. Late enough to place arena and Rhalâta on your shoulders, while snatching home and family from underneath your feet.

To Tharaêl Narys, Letho and the Refuge.

To the man born among corpses, the Child Killer of the Dust Pit, Brother Wrath of the Rhalâta? Only anger, death, and the void.

All for nothing, twice over. No result, for no reason.

The soul is the same, the mercenary said. But in practice, what does she know? She has not studied the Rhalâs, has not read through the Father's notes. She has no idea what he did or how his experiments worked. She is self-taught, by her own words, guessing her way through your memories and the Father's soft-spoken lies. A talented Sleeper, but a Sleeper all the same.

"Can I?"

Your eyes return to the woman as her voice pushes past your thoughts, and you find her own open hands held out towards you.

"Look at them," she says, clearly mistaking your reticence for lack of comprehension. "Can I? It's fine if you don't want to, I just — I might see something you don't." 

You hesitate for an instant, torn between your constant desire for more information and your increasing reluctance to being examined. You enumerate to yourself the reasons for and points against, the whies and why nots of giving the woman insight into you, be it your vessel or your mind. Still, in the end, one thing alone affects the decision you make: that the woman was as disgusted with the Father as you were.

You give her your left hand, let her splay it over her knees. She angles it this way and that to better catch the candlelight, folding the fingers one by one, comparing the pulse to her own with a thoughtful frown. She pinches the false flesh, presses into it hard, indents it with a nail to observe how quickly marks fade. How fast the blood — if it is blood — resumes it flow under the skin.

"...It certainly feels and looks just as real as my own hands to me. You even have skin spots and ridges on your nails," she mutters, eyebrows arching upwards in interest. "I honestly can't tell that anything's amiss at all."

You can hear the awe in her voice. The wonder at the Father's work.

You always were my masterpiece.

You startle and jerk the hand back at the memory of the words, water sloshing against the washtub with the force of your recoil. His masterpiece. Hah. Yeah, right. As if someone half as careful and secretive as the Father would leave anything of value to rot in the Corpse Pit! What a fucking joke. To think that you even believed him, for a short moment. Had you been that fucking desperate?

You clench the hands together against your stomach, curling inward around them. Fuck this. Fuck it all. Fuck this— this— this casing the Father had padded with you. Fuck the Father for making it. Fuck the woman for fucking admiring his fucking work. Why did you even come here? What are you doing? Did you think this... this strangeness would somehow just melt away, if you distracted yourself long enough?

"Shit. Sorry. I — I shouldn't have said that."

You uncurl the hands again, staring at the shadow of what is passing for your veins, imagining the flow of whatever serves as your blood. How had the Father even put it all together? Was it built through magic? Grown in some vat? Did he sew the parts to each other somehow, fake guts, false skin and mock-up bone, then shove your soul inside like one would stuffing in a doll? How long had you laid bare on his table, like an insect pinned under glass, a trinket for him to toy with? Did he mold your vessel, did he mold your soul, like so much clay within his hands, just like he did those past eight years? Did his fingers roam beneath your ribs like yours once did through dead bodies, bits of flesh stuck under the nails, blood slathered up to the elbows?

Do traces of him still remain hidden inside of you somewhere? Some mark within the flesh, some signature on bone?

To think you'd believed he might have whored you off to some Sublime, once. Thought that that sort of violation was the worst he'd done to you.

"...Tharaêl?"

The thought makes your head spin, and you try to shake it away like you did headaches and nightmares, but no amount of force or speed seems to dislodge it from your mind. There you had been, mocking the other Rhalâim as they covered from head to toe, playing at pretend brotherhood while smirking at them in contempt. There you had been, the one true disgusting pile of flesh all along, and yet too much of a Sleeper to even begin to notice.

"Tharaêl. Wake up. Wherever you've gone, you're not there."

...That's right, isn't it? You're not here. You've never been here. Only some puppet of the Father's, thinking itself a long-dead child. Holding onto that dead child's memories of his just-as-dead brother, as if he could even recognize whatever you had become. Why would he? You had never met. What need did Brother Sorrow have for some delusional construct? What need did dead Letho have for pretenders clinging to his memory?

The arms hang limp and the chest feels hollow, heartbeat silent, skin gone numb. Air comes in unsteadily. Vision trembles. No, not vision — shoulders. Hands on shoulders. Not the vessel's hands. Shaking? Why would—

—pain erupts on the left side of your face, and your sight violently swivels. Punch? No, too light. You catch yourself on the wet wood of the washtub's edge, blinking in confusion, and raise your left arm to block any further oncoming hits as you turn your head to locate the source of the blow.

The mercenary looks back at you, right arm extended in what you guess to have been a slap.

Time seems to stretch for a moment, with her arm still held out, your own arm still held up, and your stomach churning with the disgust of your last thoughts. But the moment passes, and so does the tension. You let your arm lower, and the woman does the same.

"Thank you for not striking back," she says with an uneasy smile, but you feel so nauseous that you can only nod in response. "Are you alright?"

You almost want to laugh at the sheer stupidity of the woman's question — and you do, for a few seconds, your shoulders quaking all over again. But then the cackles turn to gasps and the gasps themselves into coughs, and you stumble out of the washtub to vomit on the inn's floor.

"Shit," you hear the woman say amidst splashing sounds, somewhere around the edges of your blurring vision. "I'll go grab some rags. Sit down. Here," her wet footsteps approach, and you can feel her put something between your hands. "Bucket."

You nod in silent gratitude, retching into the wooden pail until the vessel can produce nothing more but dry heaves.

The taste of vomit in your throat sends your mind back to simpler times. Better times, really, in the end. Knees in the gut in the Dust Pit, old bread just a little too old, water you'd forgotten to boil. Everything had been so clear, then. No questions of who you were — of what you were — or what you would do the next day. Only the routine of survival, of blades kept sharp and chainmail mended, your stomach filled with whatever had been within reach of your hands. No Seers nor mercenary to cast every word into doubt. No Father to play with your body and mind like you were his toy, to be thoughtlessly cast aside the moment he thought you broken.

"Do you think you can keep going?"

You raise your eyes from the bucket to meet the mercenary's gaze. She kneels off to your side, wrapped in a brand new dry towel, another bucket in her arms — that one filled with vomit-soiled rags. You take a breath in, let it out, wipe your mouth with the back of a hand.

"Yeah," you answer her, pushing your own bucket aside. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"And I'm Loram Waterblade risen from the grave to save mankind," is the woman's response, and you would snap back, were it not for her apologetic smile. "But you truly do need to wash. Well, anyway, I'm already done, so I can leave if that makes you more comfo— alright," she interrupts herself as you shake your head no. "If you want me to stay, I stay. But I am staying out of the washtub and putting on a shift."

"Why? No," you mutter, head still spinning. "I can—"

"—Overestimate yourself because you don't want to seem vulnerable, and end up making everything harder to do in the process? Yes, you can definitely do that," the mercenary retorts, voice kind and mellow to the point of condescension. "Which is why I am going to go cover up some more and spare your ex-Rhalâim arse the discomfort it won't admit to."

That's not— that's not it, your mind wants to scream as she turns to fetch clothes. That's not what the problem is, damn it. How can the mercenary feel so fucking self-important as to think you give a damn?! You've seen your fair share of bodies, each one more mundane than the last. You've seen them bared to entice, bared to humiliate, eaten alive by fleshmaggots and shitting themselves in the dust. You don't care about any of them, and about hers least of all, as long as their flesh never comes into contact with yours.

The problem isn't her stupid, small, weak mess of a body. The problem is that your vessel can't be kept at a distance. The problem is that you can scrub with all the soap the world can hold, and your skin will still be a lie. The problem is that if even the woman can't bear to see it like this, then the one person to have helped, the only one to have stuck by you in over twelve fucking years, will leave you over embarrassment, of all stupid fucking things.

And once she's gone, who will stand between you and the damn window? Who will pull you back from the cliff, the next time the void comes calling?

...Why are you even thinking this? This isn't you. You don't stop and ponder help and bare skin when washing. You don't focus on dying or on whatever the future holds. You're a survivor. You focus on now.

This. Isn't. You. This is only the vessel trying to assert control, to bend your spirit to its will by drowning it in emotion. Equations and chemical imbalances, all of it. You need to be more objective, to remind yourself of the chasm between sensation and truth. Flesh does not get to dictate to the mind what it should think. Let alone false flesh. You know better than to succumb to as petty an urge as this.

You exhale at the thought and squeeze your eyes shut tight, pinching the bridge of your nose between your fingers in frustration. From the Rhalâs to numbness to disgust right back to the Rhalâs. You have no other weapon with which to fend off intrusive thoughts.

That's the whole issue, isn't it. That tearing off your mask and brand can hide the Rhalâs out of sight, but that it will never let you carve it out of your bones, scrape it from underneath your skin like dirt from under fingernails. You can escape the Rhalâta, you can call yourself Tharaêl, but you will still remain a Rhalâim no matter what you do. Because for you to be able to call this mind and memories yours, you need to accept that the Father gave you your soul and vessel — and for you to accept the Father gave you your soul and vessel, you need the Rhalâs to force pain and disgust from your mind.

There's no way out. There never was. There'd been the fall, but you've fought it back long enough to grow afraid of the idea, to want to be pulled away from windows, cliffs, and banisters. To hear the mercenary talk of long-dead souls still stuck in place.

To wonder what happens to souls, once bodies shatter on the ground.

Maybe you should pursue another sort of radical option. Shock yourself out of your feelings by flooding them with stronger ones. Drink yourself under a table, hire the nearest pair of whores, get your life's worth of revulsion done and over with in minutes. You chuckle to yourself as you try to picture the scene: Brother Wrath, pissed-out drunk, framed by the Silver Cloud's harlots in some smoky parlor. Hah. As if.

You'd given it a go, of course. Twice, when you were... what, fourteen? Fifteen? You don't even remember. Coming out of the arena, with the bitch that used to work there. You might die any day, you'd reasoned, so why not try fucking first? But sex had turned out to be just as empty as lust and love themselves. The vaunted origin of half the bullshit in the universe, not to mention most of its art, hadn't been half as good a high as cracking skulls or breaking limbs, half as calming as a blade in your hand or food in your stomach. There'd never been a third attempt, and now... the mere thought of their hands on you disgusts you on the best of days, and these days are about as far from the best as you can conceive.

Something in the line of thought brings your mind to a grinding halt, as if whatever support it had been resting had gone and caved under your weight.

You frown, perplexed, your eyes lost on the still-wet stain your vomiting left on the floor. The idea is ridiculous, yes, but it should not warrant upset. Whores are as they are, certainly, and beacons of disease besides, but nothing to trouble the mind — nothing worse than the Corpse Pit was. And as for this day being about as far from the best as you can—

A strange, distant sort of numbness spreads through your chest and head, and for a moment you think yourself back up the mountain, severed from yourself in ways you cannot articulate. But the moment melts away just like the mountain snow did, and you return to the tavern, still sat on the wet floor, your head and shoulder leaning to the side against the washtub's edge. You look about for the mercenary, and find her sat nearby, in the bedroom's one armchair. Positioned so as to be close, yet face away from the washtub.

"...If I went and knocked up some girl," you mutter through the fading daze, and the woman turns her head back at the sound of your voice. "Would the child even be mine? Can I even— would it work at all?"

The mercenary's brows furrow as her head swivels further back still, but no words come out of her mouth. Her skill for talking your ears off seems inversely proportional to your desire for answers.

"And if it does work," you go on, raising your hands to indicate your chest. "If fucked someone with this thing that was meant to be empty from the start, will whatever child I father be—"

"Tharaêl," the woman interrupts you, pivoting in her seat to come properly face to face. "Do you have some girl that you want to go and knock up?"

"I — no," you stumble over the word, taken aback by the question.

The mercenary's lips twist into a sarcastic smile.

"I figured. And do you want children?"

"No."

The question bears no thought. Absolutely not. No children. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Even discounting your nightmares and the issue of your anger, you would make a dreadful parent. You are not father material.

You almost choke on the sheer irony of that last thought.

"Then let it go," the mercenary says, her voice more firm than you've ever heard it. "Look, I don't know you enough to know if this is how you normally act when grieving, or if this is years of repressed feelings falling on your brain all at once. But whichever it is, if you keep trying to think through everything at the same time, it's bound to spill over like this. No thinking of the future until you've been at home for a week, alright? Especially not things you don't want to do. They don't matter right now."

But they do matter, some part of you wants to scream at the woman. You would have wanted to— to— damn it all, you don't even know what you would have wanted. To wonder, maybe. To be able to ask yourself the question without the very idea making you feel faint and nauseous.

You would have wanted to have a choice, for once. Only a choice. It would have been enough.

...Yeah. And you would have wanted Letho alive, Sha'Gun decent, and a pretty pony besides. When has what you wanted ever mattered, and why should it begin to now? The world doesn't care, and it never will. Why do you?

You know better than this, damn it, you think to yourself as you gaze into the bath's still water. To the Black Guardian with what you want; busy yourself with what you have. You have a roof over your head, you have someone watching your back, you would have food in your stomach if you hadn't been a moron, and you have a damn bath to take.

You've clawed your way out of the Corpse Pit, fought your way through the arena, with nothing but determination and the willingness to face pain. This is nothing compared. So your flesh is artificial? Boo fucking hoo. At least it's there. Every last one of the fleshmaggot sufferers lining the caves would give life and limb to be you. You have two working arms and legs, two lungs and ears and eyes, ten fingers and ten toes and ten unfractured pairs of ribs, a head mostly screwed on straight and only five broken teeth besides. You're doing great, by all standards. You hadn't even noticed the body was fake until today. Why would you break down over this?

You're no longer young, frail, and weak. You no longer cough your lungs out everytime the seasons turn. What does it matter if that's because of the Father, sheer dumb luck, or Malphas and his so-called gods playing yet one more joke on you? You are a grown man, for fuck's sake. You can fight this the same way you fought your way out of everything: by gritting your teeth, steeling yourself, and choosing to move the fuck on.

Your mind is sound, and the vessel is functional. That's all that matters in the end.

You're not your vessel, anyway.

"...Yeah," you speak up, meaning the word both for both the woman and yourself. "You're right. It doesn't matter."

The woman's smile becomes a touch more genuine, for all that it still appears nervous around the cheeks and the eyes. You sigh and turn back to the— to your hands. Clenching and unclenching them, watching the way phalanges bend, muscle tightens and relaxes, skin wrinkles over pale blue veins.

It's still the same as yesterday, you remind yourself. Still the same as twelve years ago. Not Tharaêl Narys of the sewers and the Refuge, perhaps, but still Tharaêl anyway. The Tharaêl of the Corpse Pit, the Dust Pit and the Rhalâta. You can be certain of that much. It's not a comfortable truth, let alone a comforting one, but you are quite simply going to have to fucking deal.

You could handle being thirteen and covered head to toe in blood. You can handle being twenty-four in a synthetic vessel.

"Fuck this," you proclaim to the room, hauling yourself back to your feet, taking care not to slip on the still-soggy floor. You let out a long breath, step over the edge of the washtub, and sit yourself into the water, grasping for the white reflection of what you know must be the soap. You clench it between your knees, leaving it aside a moment more, electing to begin your task with a more familiar gesture: cupping your hands to hold water, and raising them to your head to let it cascade over your scalp. There is no shorn hair to rinse off, but the motion remains soothing.

"If I can do anything to help," the mercenary says, "just ask."

"No, there's no— actually, yes," you change your mind halfway through wishing that the woman would shut up. "There is something you can do. Babble. I'm told you should manage."

"Sure," she snorts, turning back within the armchair to face the wall once more. "What do you want to hear about?"

"Anything," you answer. "Something I don't know. The more of my brain is busy keeping track of what you're saying, the less will be free to ruminate on old bullshit I can't change."

"Like a mantra," she says, and you feel surprised that she even knows the word, until it dawns on you that she spent time in the Temple as well. Diligently listening to the Seers' sermons, at that.

"Exactly like a mantra. So do your thing," you tell her. "Ramble ever on. Distract me."

"I can do that," she agrees, and you practically hear her smile.

You inhale and exhale slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth. You let your eyes fall closed, shut them tight, concentrate on your breathing. Then you grasp for the soap, wrenching it from between your knees, and set yourself to the newly-unfamiliar task of washing.

Once upon a time, there was a castaway — a black-eyed woman from Nehrim, gone overboard while out at sea.

She'd had very little before, the mercenary says of her, and she'd had nothing afterwards, save for eerie visions and a bout of arcane fever strong enough to fall an Ogre. A passing sellsword rescued the poor woman from bandits, shared his work with her for a time, and then off to Ark she had been, in search of an explanation for her sudden arcane talents. The Order had offered some hints, but the woman had been distrustful, unwilling to tie herself to a creed she disapproved of.

And so she'd left, to remain free. For the woman was not only poor and black-eyed, but quite naïve.

Freedom did not fill her stomach, nor did it buy her Ambrosia when arcane fever came calling. She'd tried to gather some pennies, but Ambrosia was expensive — as were equipment and shelter, when one came with nothing but the clothes on their back. And soon, in a story that you know all too well, the woman had found herself stuck between the rock of the fever and the hard place of the Dust Pit.

She'd rebounded, after it all. Motivation could move mountains, more even than hunger at times. She had been so angry at the Masked Men of the Buried Temple, so disgusted by their request that she go and slaughter the lost, so desperate for a salary not filched from the hands of the poor, that she'd gone back to the Order. She'd thought to garner support there, naïve and foolish as she was. It never could have worked, of course; Enderal was no fair kingdom, and Tealor Arantheal not the wise king stories spoke of. But somehow, the woman's strange visions garnered her their attention — and a few weeks later, by the grace of the Sea, she'd found herself exalted Keeper of the First Sigil, in possession of enough goodwill and funds to buy her own house.

Then the castaway-turned-Keeper had been told the world was at risk, and sent forth on a mission as crucial as there had ever been: one meant to rid Vyn of the evil that had borne the Red Madness.

And she had told the world to wait, to come chase the Father with you.

For some fucking unfathomably stupid reason, you presume.

Reconciling the tale with your own experience proves quite daunting. Not because of lack of detail — the mercenary's prattling more than takes care of that issue — or because of the drain on your mind that the washing proves to be, but because of the insanity of the sequence of events. You walked down into the Dust Pit, found yourself looking on the fights of a competent Sinistrope, decided it was she you would try and hire into your cause. But then, some-fucking-how, you walked out of that very same Pit in the company of a Keeper. A Phasmalist Keeper at that, trailed by an ever-increasing army of dead souls, who could prophetize the future by seeing echoes of the past. Then you'd set out to take down the Father, took down the animate but soulless remains of Letho instead, and discovered yourself to be some sort of — some sort of construct. And, last but not least, you found yourself invited to come live in the aforementioned Keeper's own house.

Just like that. Wherever the woman came from, Rhalâim of eight years moving in with Keepers appeared to make sense over there. With not a single question asked, not one guarantee provided. 

All because you had volunteered to go hound Rasha that morning.

You have no idea how to feel about any of it, so you decide not to. You take the woman's story as the sequence of sounds it is, file them as pure information, and store them well away in that part of your mind where you keep the Rhalâs and Tharaêl Narys. Once you are fed and rested and as safe as you can ever be, then you will dig through the story again, try to excavate motes of sense from pile upon pile of chaos. You have enough incomprehensible things on your plate for now.

Regarding the woman herself, you only feel more and more torn. You are not so proud as to think yourself above all assistance; nor are you so daft as to spend too much time hesitating. But the lack of demand for reciprocity unsettles you. No one ever gives so much of anything for nothing. No one. That the woman appears to do so means you are blind to the cost — and the last time you were so blind, you woke atop a pile of corpses.

You stare at the backside of the mercenary's head, still reclining against the back of the armchair. You tell yourself that she would not betray you in such a fashion, that the woman has spent too much effort on keeping you alive to wish any harm upon you. But then you remember Sha'Gun standing by your bed and watching, and you remind yourself even years of kindness can hide treason.

By the time you leave the washtub, clean and all too glad to be done, the water is so cold and brown it could have come from the sewers.

You can't help but imagine it to be some sort of metaphor.

It's a matter of mere minutes, albeit quite a few of them, to leave the room as you found it and prepare to leave the Tavern. You get rid of the bathwater by way of bucket and window, while the mercenary makes the bed, sweeps the floor, repacks her bags. You help each other carry washtub and buckets back down the stairs, and, as promised, spend the next hours using it to launder linens, working in companionable silence by the kitchen's fire.

You worry, for a time, that laundry will see you leave late, but the woman explains that lateness is the purpose of the task. She is not eager to see you striding a Myrad's back, she says, so you will be leaving by scrolls — scrolls whose teleport runes lead right into Ark's bustling marketplace. Better to wait for late evening and for the streets to be empty. Less people to see you, less unfamiliar noise to stress you, less chances that the bright sky overhead might trigger your migraine.

You're unsure whether to feel grateful for her concern and foresight, or disgusted all over again by how fragile she thinks you are.

Once all the laundry has been hung and sunlight has left the windows, the mercenary gives your shoulder a tap — for courage, she says — and leads you outside Frostcliff Tavern to pass you a tightly-bound scroll.

"I'll go first and wait for you there," she tells you, giving your shoulder another tap. "Take a moment, if you need to."

You don't need to take a fucking moment to use a fucking scroll, you think, but you simply nod in response. No reason to be abrasive. You've done enough of that these days, and she is attempting to aid you, however clumsy her methods. What manner of fool would you be, if after so much time spent angered by the lack of help, you pushed its belated provider away?

You take a step back as the woman unrolls her own scroll, watches it consume itself in her hands as the magic takes hold, and smiles as her shape scatters into sparks swept by the mountain winds.

"See you at home," her afterimage says, vanishing into light.

You stare at the spot of thin air where the woman was just standing, then let your gaze wander about, taking in the Tavern, the snow, the jagged teeth of the mountains encroaching on the starry sky. You don't imagine you will ever see the place again. The cold and snow may be soothing, but there is nothing for you here. Only remorse, bad memories, and a grave so unbearable to dig you wiped it from your mind.

Letho's head rolls across the tiles, as if it was a ball that had fallen from his shoulders.

You shake the image from your head, like the dozens of times you've done so in the past handful of days. You take a few steps through the snow, hearing it crunch under your feet, feeling the wind prickle your eyes. It takes but a minute for you to reach some sort of outcropping, a ledge of snow-dusted rock jutting out high over the valley. The borders of the mountain range stretch out right underneath your feet, turning first into a forest, then the Dark Valley, further south. All of it hidden by the blanket of night and a sea of fog.

The world always seems so fucking big, seen from outside of the caves. An arena so long and wide, and so littered with obstacles, that there is no hope of flushing out every hidden opponent. No ways to avoid being flanked. No solid walls to put one's back to or to barricade between. No certainty of payment and food at the end of each battle. No formal rules of engagement, no announcer to warn of fights. No arbiter to call their end. No end to the fighting at all.

And there you are, empty-handed. No weapon at your hips, no armor on your back. Not even so much as a reason to defend yourself at all.

You throw a glance at the starry sky, the peaks it frames, the woods below. You set your gaze onto the ground, breathe in and out, steel yourself. You clench your hands into fists, straighten your shoulders.

Two hundred feet, or maybe three. Not quite as high, but high enough.

Last chance to jump.

                                                     ...But what is it that happens to souls, once bodies shatter on the ground?

                                                     You close your stinging eyes, let a shaky breath out, and untie your scroll with trembling hands to let the spell do its work.

Once gravity resumes its pull, leaving you stumbling to your knees on cobblestones sprinkled with dust, you feel, for an absurd moment, as if you have just walked right back into the Dust Pit's ring. The darkness, anxious dizziness, the dry dust against your bare hands, all of it feels so familiar — almost achingly so, after so many years spent kneeling and lying on Temple floors. The Dust Pit had been home, in a disturbing way. More than the Temple ever was, and in the light of retrospection, perhaps more than even the Refuge. The one place where you'd been celebrated as a godsend, rather than seen as a burden best cast aside and left to die.

For a ridiculous, irrational second, you find yourself missing Rasha. Her stilted attempts at concern each time you walked into the ring. That beaming grin across her face each time you made it out alive. The look of surprise in her eyes when you first came to claim her tax — and the fear that grew in its place, when you proved just as concerned with her welfare as she'd been with yours.

She never said a thing, of course. Dog ate dog, when coin was at stake. She'd taught you that lesson herself, each time you'd looked up from a kill to find her collecting her bets.

Your hands clench on the cobblestones as you will the memories out.

"Well, welcome home," a voice exclaims, and raising your head brings into sight the mercenary's pale face, smiling in the flickering light of an arcanist's will-o-wisp.

She does not mention the shudders running through your breath and your hands, so you ignore the way light glints in her suddenly wet eyes, and let her weak arms fail to help you up as you haul yourself to your feet. Your gaze wanders, following the wisp as it circles to and fro, illuminating here a stall, there an old tree, elsewhere some shrubs. Garlands of colorful fanions hang over the plaza like cobwebs, stretch from stone wall to chimney to greet an occasion you can't name.

Barely two hundred feet upwards, and it's already so different. Bright garlands in place of clotheslines. Cobblestones rather than cold mud. Moonlight in place of Starling lamps. Twenty years of soul-crushing work, and not a single thing had changed — but two hundred feet up or down, and there the entire fucking world went and shifted on its axis.

You'd expected as much, of course, but seeing low expectations turn into depressing truths never became any easier.

"The house is just a few yards west," the mercenary interrupts your thoughts, as she seems wont to do. She taps your shoulder once again, with much more assurance this time, even pulling on it a little as she begins to walk. "Come on. Let's get you settled in."

You follow her out of the plaza, distractedly, passing between a pair of buildings to access a stall-lined street. High wooden walls frame it much as they would in the Undercity, but here the road is wide and dry, paved just like the plaza had been, and most importantly of all open to the skies overhead. It seems bright even in darkness — even discounting the pallid light cast by the wandering wisp — and infinitely less cluttered than the main cavern's alleyways.

Had it already been like this, when you came up back then to try and plead with those two guards?

...You don't know. You can't remember.

The woman takes a turn left down the cobbled road, her hand still held against your shoulder. Smiling all the while, she points to a narrow house nestled under a tree, framed by an old smelter and a sharpening wheel. Perhaps a weaponsmith's workshop, before the woman had bought it. Useful to keep your own swords sharp, if nothing else.

Letho's head rolls across the tiles, and you remember, vividly, why you are never going to sharpen your swords ever again.

"There we are," the woman says, happiness dripping from her voice. It mixes with your memories of blood on slate and cobblestones like oil with water, leaving you staring at a fractured image — half bloody corridor to the Room of Paintings, half quiet cobbled street at night. You tear your eyes from the sharpening wheel, willing the thought away like you did those of the Dust Pit, just as the mercenary pulls a key out the lock. You hadn't even noticed her bring it out or put it in.

"It's a bit on the small side as houses go," the woman continues, "but it's really easy to find. If you get lost wandering town, just keep an eye out for the smelter, or ask people to direct you to the old market smithy. Everybody knows where it is."

She turns back to you, smiling still, standing atop the three stone steps of the house's threshold.

"Guests first," the woman proclaims, sweeping her arms in a flourish in the direction of the door.

You cast an uncertain gaze at the door, but shrug your doubts aside. Whatever this may be, you have done, and have survived, worse. Yes, it may be a trap, or a deception of some sort, but this is not the Rhalâta or the Refuge. You can change your mind. You can leave.

Decision made, you grasp the doorknob, push the gate open, and walk in.

From the moment you step indoors, you find that a lot of things change, some of them rather brutally. Most of all your understanding of what the woman means by 'small'.

Her house being 'small' means that it could hold three families, with room enough to spare for the children of a fourth one. A floor with a wide hearth and covered in carpets. A separate chamber, if one without a door. And shelves, so many shelves, all of them stocked with a moon's worth of grain and various pickled foods. What had seemed from the outside to be a narrow abode is also a long one, and what you'd thought a mere high roof turns out to be harboring an empty mezzanine, wide enough to be its own floor. One with a proper flight of stairs rather than a simple ladder, solid floorboards and airtight walls, and even its own small window.

A second floor which is now yours, you vaguely hear the woman say; to be handled as your own house and furnished at your convenience. You wish she would pause there so you could address your returning doubts, but the words keep coming, commenting on the sight from the window and on the banister. She'd offer you the room downstairs to give you privacy, she says, but cannot afford to do so: nightmares and sleepwalking have plagued her her whole life, and make railings and heights — not to mention staircases — a poor choice of environment for her to spend nights in. You can borrow it and her bed until you buy your own, she adds, but it must be available for her when she is not working.

She says even more afterwards, speaks of where to buy clothes and furniture fit for an Aeterna, but you barely listen, still lost in the concept of having your own floor.

You even take a moment to rest your hand on the banister, purely to reassure yourself you are not hallucinating.

The woman fills you a 'small' purse of gold from a casket by the chimney, to buy your furniture and clothes and other such necessities. You start to count the coins and trade bars as soon as she has her back turned, but find yourself stopping once you reach three hundred with pennies left to spare, a sinking feeling in your gut.

Those are likely not the same coins, but you gather the amount is more than simple coincidence. Four hundred pennies, all in all. You would bet your left hand on it.

The advance you'd paid her so she'd join your crusade.

You can't make yourself ask, and so you say nothing; you merely stand, back to a wall, watching as the woman smiles and prattles about her furniture. She lights a fire with a spell and prepares each of you a 'small' dinner of a bowlful of oats, practically overflowing, topped with a boiled egg and a thick slice of salted lard. She has to ask you to sit down before you can force yourself to, joining her at the, for once, truly small table that the room is centered around. Cutlery in hand, you find yourself wishing the bowl was smaller; used as you are to the fasting that the Rhalâs demands, you're quite certain your stomach will not manage to fit it all in, even as empty as it is.

"...Alright, so I may tend to hoard and overeat a little," the woman mutters when you point it out, sounding somewhere halfway between ashamed and grudging.

You take it 'little' too must be put up for amendment.

Not that you don't understand it — not the quantity, but the drive. It took the Rhalâta to wean you off of rationing, of stockpiling all you could find and eating only that which was on the verge of spoiling. Not even the regular meals of the orphanage had managed. You had always kept stashes, hideouts, small corners you would fill to the brim with dried mushrooms and stale bread. A true sewer rat, through and through.

But the amount of stored food is not the part that unsettles you. Nor is it the pile of linens the woman threw over whatever she keeps under the stairs while you'd wandered above, unwilling to trust the reality of 'your' floor until you'd walked on it. You can guess what that must have been — either some manner of religious memorabilia, or whatever tools she plied her Phasmalist's trade with. No, the unsettling part is how prepared everything is. There are two sets of plates and bowls, two sets of silver cutlery. Two mugs, two goblets and two chairs, even as the rickety table barely fits a single person. An upper floor kept clear and clean while the lower drowns in clutter, most of it bags and crates one would expect to find in an attic.

Has the woman been expecting you would need a place to hide? Did she join you on your quest while anticipating failure?

But then why—

"—I'm glad you didn't jump," the woman suddenly tells you, cutting short both your train of thought and your attempts to dent the mountain of oats in your bowl.

I know, you think. The woman wants you on your feet, that much is glaringly obvious. She is as daft as sellswords can be while still staying out of the grave, but she does not strike you as likely to trek down mountains for fun, let alone in the company of helpless, half-blind Rhalâim. Clearly, for whatever reason, she thinks she can draw benefit from your continued existence.

"Why do you care," you ask, bristling at the thought. "You won't take the money. I've brought you nothing but corpses. What do you get from this?"

What do you get from me, you studiously leave unsaid. But even unspoken, the words still hang thick in the air.

The woman looks up from her meal to stare at you, brows furrowing in that way you know to mean puzzlement. She sits almost unnaturally still for a moment, then hastily swallows the oats she had still been chewing.

"I'm just glad you're alive is all," she says, wiping her mouth. "I wasn't going to say it, but you keep looking at everything like you're not sure if it's real. I thought you might need to be told. You didn't jump. You're here. I'm glad."

You feel your hands clench the silver fork and knife as they would your swords, and force them to relax, to put the cutlery aside. The woman, oblivious, returns to her own bowl, the question seemingly resolved to her satisfaction.

Why? Fucking why? Where is the anger, the resentment for the mess you dragged her in? The demand that you quickly find a way to provide for yourself? The reminders that this is just for now, that you must soon be gone? Where is the trap? Is there a trap, or is she truly that naïve? And if she is, then how did she carve her way through the arena? Why did her naivety somehow shield her, when yours had left you drenched in blood and murdered Letho twice?

Why is she so fucking lucky? Why are you? Why is Sister Pride to be killed, Brother Hatred to be stepped over, but Brother Wrath to be brought home and fed and given his own floor? Why couldn't it be Letho living to share a house in the sun, instead of the murdering piece of garbage you've let yourself become?

Letho's head rolls across the tiles, and you can almost imagine the mercenary's by its side, dull black eyes unseeing, sallow skin flecked with red. You stare at the too-full oat bowl, the overfilled shelves and cluttered floor, trying to will consistency into your surroundings, to derive some reason, some meaning, out of the last twenty years.

You find none whatsoever.

"I would have shot you," you state as calmly as you can make yourself. "If that woman hadn't been there, I would have shot you. I would have opened that gate with your corpse and wiped the splatter off my face."

The woman's gaze returns to yours, as unreadable as ever.

"Maybe you would have," she answers, putting her spoon down with irritating calm. "You know, everything that can happen will happen, so if you—"

"I would have shot you, damn it," you snap at her, willing her to make sense.

Your voice echoes, vague and blurry, bouncing under the high roof and the empty upper floor. You instinctively cringe back at its sound. Habit. Useless habit, now. Sound does not carry as far up here as it does in the tunnels, does not risk calling the attention of patrolling Rhalâim. Does not risk drawing the ire of the First Seer upon you.

The woman only tilts her head, crosses her arms on the table.

"You think I don't already think about this all day long? Yes, Tharaêl," she says, looking you in the eye, her expression serious yet on the verge of pitying. "You would have shot me, and on some wave of the Sea, you did. I know it, because I saw it. In perfect colorful detail. Do you know what else I saw? That on some other wave, I defended myself, and you fed the temple instead. And then on yet another wave, we struck each other at the same time, and died bleeding out on the floor while feeling extremely stupid. I presume the Father found it very funny."

You open your mouth to retort, but she forestalls you, raising a hand, refusing to let you interrupt.

"But here," the woman continues, "on the one and only wave of the Sea that matters, you didn't shoot me. I didn't burn you. We walked our way down Northwind Peak carrying each other's baggage. We shared a room, we shared a tent, we shared a bed, we shared a pile of coffins of all things, and we even shared a bath. Since in spite of it all we both seem to still be alive and in each other's company, I think we may as well admit we make a pretty decent team, and let the Sea of Eventualities handle the shoulds and woulds."

...A team.

Has the imbecile even been listening to you?

"Alright," you pretend to concede, unwilling to argue the point with a wall any further. "Let's say we're a team. What now?"

"Blazes, Tharaêl," she chortles, that moronic smile returning to her lips. "Which part of 'don't think through it all at once' is it that you don't understand?"

"What now," you yell at the infuriating mercenary, forcing yourself past your urge to cringe at the increased volume — and you can almost feel satisfaction flow through your veins as the woman's smile fades and she backs into her chair. "What's the plan, huh? What does a reformed Rhalâim do in the Upper City, exactly? I can cut throats and break fingers, but I don't figure that's what Sunchildren look for in their employees. What happens when no righteous man will hire some Pathless Aeterna with scars all over his face? Should I just sit pretty like some prized hound on your oh-so-fancy carpets, while you dump some gruel in my bowl and pat my shoulder every once in a while? What about when you go and get yourself killed playing hero for the Order? What happens then?"

The woman stares at you a while, hands nervously grasping at her elbows. Taken aback by your anger, clearly, in a way she hadn't seemed to be before.

Good. Maybe reality is finally beginning to sink into her.

"...Thanks for the vote of confidence," she quips in a deadpan voice, and you find your hands clenching all over again, nails biting into flesh, pulse echoing through your fingers. "Look, we'll figure that out when I come back. First, I have to check in with Grandmaster Arantheal as soon as I can, and—"

"You're a fucking sellsword of three moons out to fight transcendent beings," you interject, quite done with the woman's nonsense. "You think I need coddling?! Alright. Fine. Fuck you," you snarl to punctuate the idea, "but fine. But do me the fucking courtesy of not making shows of promising grand tomorrows when you don't even know if you'll survive today."

"What? No," the woman practically exclaims. "Tharaêl, no, you're taking this the wrong way, I didn't mean—"

"None of this is mine," you continue, undaunted by what would no doubt be yet another attempt to drown you in false reassurances. "Not the food, not the house, none of it. I can't count on any of it. Stop pretending I can. Just— just stop."

"Tharaêl—"

"—I said fucking stop!"

She does.

...You didn't quite expect that. You thought she would — well, do what she always does. Poke and prod. Insist on ramming herself through doors, barging into corners of your mind where she hasn't been invited. But she merely stays sat, hands resting atop each other on the very edge of the table.

"...Sorry," she mumbles, looking as downcast as you've ever seen her. "You're right."

You practically deflate as she says so, and so does your anger, letting your hands hang limp at last.

The woman sighs, seemingly as drained as you are. She looks to her left, and you follow her gaze — past the chimney and into the shelves, through the rows of fruit and herbs pickled in small glass jars. She stares at them, at the much-too-many baskets of potatoes, the pot of aging vegetables and the sacks of wheat and oats.

Her head slowly comes to hang, and you almost feel guilty.

"Look, I don't have the slightest clue how to manage any of this either," the woman finally admits, and you can hear your breath come more easily as she does, feel some of the ever-building tension leave your shoulders. "I'm making shit up as I go along. I know it. You know it. And I know you know it. I just — I want this to go right, so I'm trying my best, and—"

"—It makes you sound either delusional or blind as a cave fish," you interrupt her half-apology half-explanation. "You want to help me. I understand that. I appreciate that," you emphasize, lest you come to sound like an ingrate. "But I need to know where this field's obstacles are to maneuver around them, and I can't do that if you keep blindfolding me with pretty words."

The woman lifts her head back up to look straight into your eyes, and sighs a second time, nodding.

"This next part is all true," she says, looking much more reliable with that fake smile wiped off of her face. "You're not pressed for time. Not that much. It's like you said: there's enough food in here for weeks. And you have the purse; you can save some and find some place to hide it, if you want. Take some of both, make them last, and you can find some inn room or shack and hunker down for a while. That'll see you through if... if you can't trust me."

By the name of the Sun, finally. Finally, the girl is beginning to talk sense.

Would that it didn't take yelling at her to make her speak in plain Inâl.

"Yeah," you answer her as you ponder her words. "I can probably do that, but only once I know the place enough. You don't improvise stashes of food and money. Unless you want them to be filched by the nearest rat or lowlife."

"I don't figure you'll accept 'open an account at the bank' as good advice?"

Your brow reflexively creases as the woman smiles, but the quirk of her lips is wry and sarcastic this time. Sincere.

A joke.

"No," you say through your own small, faint shadow of a grin. "I won't."

"Well then," she continues, lying back into her seat once more. "If you're determined not to trust local establishments, a day or two should suffice for you to find some sort of backup plan. Shave, buy some clothes and a hat, and wander a little to get the lay of the land. Just... ask people if they have anything they need done for a few pennies, enough to reliably pay for a room at an inn. Carts to load or unload, floors to clean, anything. Be patient, be polite and mindful of people's faith, and you'll find some odd jobs here and there. I did."

It would be a start, part of your mind concedes. A foundation to build on.

The rest of your mind, however, is not so easy to persuade. Working out and about in Ark, provided you even manage to find some work in the first place, means being in sight of the guard. Unable to retaliate, be it against word or blade, without bringing yourself to their attention. No weapon at your hips, no armor on your back, no weapons in your hands but discipline and temperance.

You sigh, eyes lost into the thick oat sludge that still sits in your bowl. 

"I can't convince you I mean any of what I say with words, can I."     

You blink at the sound of the woman's voice, and let your gaze return to her. She remains sat on the other end of the small table, head tilted to the side, a pensive frown on her face.

"No," you agree. "You can't."

It doesn't particularly please you to admit it. For all that you can never attest to her true motives, the woman has, at the very least, acted loyal so far, if in sometimes perplexing ways. You don't want to compromise it any more than you did in Frostcliff Tavern or the Temple. Not while you have so little else to rely on, so few options to look into.

Not with the cliff so close and the climb so daunting.

"Alright," she answers, nodding to herself. "So I have an idea. How about this." She straightens in her seat, looking into your eyes. "Pick yourself a new name, and I can get you added to the title deed of the house."

The muscles of your back tense all over again as the enormity of the offer sinks in. No one ever gives so much of anything for nothing. No one. Not Sha'Gun, not the apothecaries, and certainly not some random mercenary from the Dust Pit.

You open your mouth to argue, to try and find the secret flaw, the hidden cost of the proposal. 

"Why do you want to take my name," is what comes out instead.

You freeze at the sound of your voice, stunned by the sudden gap between your thoughts and words. How...?

"I don't want to," the woman replies to the question you hadn't meant to ask, forcing you to focus on her rather than on your racing mind. "But you're the only Tharaêl I've so much as heard of in my whole life. I've been dealing with the idiots in charge here for a while, and if there is one thing I know for sure about this city, it's that shady fuckers flock together. The Rhalâta deals in loans and in dirty money," she says, raising her left fist. "The folks at the bank, where you'd have to fill the ledgers, deal in investing and laundering," she continues, raising the other. "Tell me the twain never meet in back alleys and cushy rooms," she concludes, clapping both hands together in front of her face, "and I have sunlit fields in Thalgard to sell you. And with you saying the First Seer has ears everywhere..."

She shrugs.

It makes sense. You don't like it, but it makes sense. You've always been free with your deadname, convinced as you were it would never matter again. No doubt someone somewhere, some informant or spy, has heard of Tharaêl Narys, Voice of the Father.

"It's the middle of the night," you say. A weak retort, perhaps, but all you can manage, just as lost in the concept of having property to your name as you had been in that of owning an entire floor.

"And I'm a Keeper of the First Sigil, the Prophet of the Order," the woman shrugs. "What use is having rank, if I can't pull it on Samael Silren? Pick a name, any name, and I can promise you this. I can walk out this door and bring this house back to you, ink on paper and seal of the bank at the bottom. Right now."

You want to feel angry, somehow. To rage and rant at her as you had only mere moments ago. But the offer is more than fair, and well-trod ground besides. It isn't as if you've truly worn the name since the orphanage; only a litany of Dust Pit titles and nicknames, themselves soon discarded in favor of becoming Brother Wrath. You haven't been Tharaêl Narys in over a dozen winters. Haven't ever been him at all, really. Just a construct of the Father's, borrowing his name and memories.

You want to feel angry, but all you feel is numb.

"Letho," you murmur to the woman, hoping you will not have to explain your answer.

Not that you could, if she asked you to. There is no logic to the choice. Only the need to pull the name out of the void gnawing at you. To snatch it away from the Undercity and the Father and let it be spoken under the sun where it belongs. So what if you are not Tharaêl? Letho still existed, still deserved remembrance. And with the true Tharaêl gone, with Letho's body lost to the Father and to Wrath both, who will honor him, if not you?

You expect the woman to question, to argue, to call the choice a bad idea. But all she does is rise from the table and walk into her room without a single word. You hear her pull and rummage in her drawers for a while, even leaving something to clatter loudly on the floor; then she returns, inkwell, quill, and parchments in hand, as if nothing was amiss.

Perhaps she'd expected this choice just as much as your choice to pull back from the cliff.

"Letho it is," she says as she puts down the inkwell and quill by your hand. She unrolls the two parchments side by side on the table, and points to their bottoms, where what you guess to be her own signature lies. "Can you write 'read, agreed, and accepted' and sign these for me?"

You attempt to read the scrolls, but find the task impossible. The words are but lines of nonsense, letters refusing to coalesce into a coherent whole. Migraine? No, your head does not hurt. That... thing the Father called strangeness, perhaps? Wasn't it supposed to affect faces, not words?

Not that the words matter at all. You have no leverage with which to argue the terms of the contract.

No motivation to do so, either.

You sigh and simply sign the damn things, improvising some swirling curls to adorn Letho's name, then hold the parchments out for the woman to take. She does so with a slight frown, but does not comment, praise the Sun.

"Well, there it goes," she says, eyeing your cramped, uneven script. "These should be enough, as long as I'm the person bringing it to them." She shakes the parchments a little, takes a few seconds to blow the ink dry, then carefully rolls them back upon themselves. "We can go there together to discuss specifics when I'm ba— if I'm back. Or you can sort them out with Silren by yourself. Preferably soon. The bank is on the marketplace. Right at the opposite end of the central plaza, coming from here."

You understand the words. Intellectually, at least. You could define each and every last one of them, if asked. And yet somehow, to a degree, none of them register. As if the void had seeped out of you to sap them of their meaning, leaving only husks in its wake.

You look at the woman, for lack of better things to do, and the two of you find yourselves staring at each other, her standing, you sitting. Neither of you appearing to know how to proceed from this point.

A minute passes.

A second.

"Um," the woman eventually says, seemingly first to recover from your mutual lapse of consciousness. "Is there anything that would help right now?" 

...Good question. You don't know. Probably nothing. What possibly could help, short of erasing all that happened since your tenth winter?

"Just some quiet," you try to answer the woman, more out of rote than out of any actual desire. "A lot of quiet. For quite some time."

She looks at you again, still frowning, and her mouth opens and closes in silence a few times before she shakes her head and sighs.

"Alright," she answers you. "Fine by me. The spare key is on a nail above the front window. If you need anything, anything at all, you can ask Mimi, right out the door. She's there every morning, brown hair, blue dress, you can't miss her. I'll let her know my outlander Aeterna friend could use some help with directions. She'll take a message to me in the Temple if you need. You'll have to pay, but she's reliable."

You let the words run through your head, wringing what meaning you can out of them. Keys above window. Ask the woman in blue. Outlander friend. Why not. You suppose it could make a good cover story. You certainly feel out of place enough to be an outlander, and it would serve to excuse inevitable cultural gaps. 

It could work. It would work. It would provide a few tangible ways of handling your situation.

And you don't care.

Weren't you upset about this only moments ago?

You try to roll the minutes back, to retrieve the annoyance from out of your sudden numbness, or even simply remember why you had been upset at all. What words or poor turn of phrase could have possibly triggered it. 

Nothing registers.

You turn your head to the mercenary, thinking to ask her, only to find that she has retreated back into the room. You can glimpse her, or at least her back, clad in the white and reds of the Order and the Guard. Changing to make her words to the Bank carry more weight, you presume.

Funny, when you think about it. Only three moons ago you would have laughed at the thought of ever associating with a Keeper. And now here you are, dining — and presumably soon living — in the abode of one you've known for but a scant few weeks, most of them spent fully unaware of the woman's rank.

"Tharaêl?"

You blink out of your thoughts to find the woman standing next to you again, looking like any other Guard if not for her black eyes and her diminutive stature. A Starling parent in her ancestry, perhaps. She raises a hand towards your arm, then seems to think better of it and lets it fall back down, letting her hands clench together over her stomach instead.

"I'm not Yesha Sha'Gun," the mercenary says, and the words clatter in the void that has been settling over you like a chime thrown into a well. "I have no idea what else I will or will not do, but I'm not going to sell you out. Not to the Rhalâta, not to the Order, not to anyone. I'm going to do my best to do right by you. Please trust in that, if nothing else."

She looks at you, steadily, clearly expecting some form of response. But what can you even say to that? 'I know' ? You don't. 'I believe you' ? You don't even know if the woman believes herself.

"I'm sure Sha'Gun thought the same thing," you answer her, numbness making a mild rebuke of what you would ordinarily voice as violent retort.

The woman's eyes lower, leaving yours to settle somewhere around your clavicle. She nods, quiet, almost somber, and leaves the tableside, grabbing her pack from a spare chair on her way to the door. She opens it and slips outside without any more words, locking the door behind her with two turns of her key in the lock.

You can hear the sound of her boots down the three steps of the threshold, faint echoes in the night, taking your name with them.

You'd only just gotten it back.

A weary sigh escapes your lips, and you push your still half-full bowl aside to lay your arms on the table, then lay your head on top of them. Finally, some calm. Some time to rest, to think without a pair of eyes hovering over your shoulder. The woman feels like nothing so much as a new Seer at times. A kinder one, perhaps, but just as omnipresent in her oversight and her disapproval.

Pushing thoughts of the woman to the side much like you did your bowl, you allow the void and its numbness to blanket you in blissful silence.

You don't know how long you've sat still, head buried in your arms, by the time the sound of paper brushing on wood catches your attention. You jerk back reflexively, head swishing to the side to locate the origin of the sound — and you find it, innocently laying on the floorboards. A letter, slipped under the door.

You stare at it like you would at a dog, half upset by its noise, half pondering its provenance. Still, in time, you manage to push yourself to rise, and cross the room at a brisk pace to pick the letter from the floor. A simple bit of clear parchment, wrapped around other ones — a small note from the bank, demanding a meeting 'within the week', and one of the two deeds the woman has asked you to sign. Now amended with a few lines specifying your ownership of 'the attic', a new seal, and what you guess to be Samael Silren's signature.

Well, there it is. You now own an entire floor.

Just like that. Because.

You keep staring at the house deed as you return to the table, uncertain how to feel about the parchment's existence. You are about to sit back down, hopefully to resume basking in the silence for quite some time, when you notice that the wrapping of the deed and note is not as clear as you had thought it to be — two lines adorn its other side, ink slightly smudged by your fingers.

Keep these safe, says the first one, written in what you guess to be the mercenary woman's hand.

Please still be home when I come back, says the second, more haphazard.

Something in that second line settles uneasily in your gut, tearing a hole there not even the void had managed to open. You try to will it closed, but only find its breadth spreading, leaking into your chest, your arms, the tips of your fingers. You can feel your anger bubble back up from the void at long last, and you kick at the chair, frustrated beyond words.

The force sends it skidding right into the table, and the rickety mess of course picks this time to tilt over, taking its contents with it in its fall. You stand and watch, silent, as the pots and pan spill over, glass jars and earthenware crashing into shards all across the floor. The sludge of the leftover oats splatters the carpet and floorboards, leaving wet, greasy stains in its wake.

Congratulations, Tharaêl, you tell yourself, instinctively sickened by the sight of the wasted food. Five minutes into your tenance, and you've already wrecked the house.

What a fine piece of work you are. Letho would be so proud.

Letho's head rolls across the tiles, and you press the heels of your hands against your eyes, rubbing as strongly as you can. The memory fades back, but the feelings remain — rage and regret in equal measure, wrath and shame and longing and wishing that for once, just fucking once, the arena would let you go.

Well. What did the woman expect? You warned her. This is what you do. You break things for stupid reasons, then you regret it afterwards. And what did you expect, anyway? You knew you should have jumped. Then neither of you would be dealing with any of this.

You sit down on on your haunches, observing the result of your latest outburst. Glass liberally dusts the oats and the lard once held by the pots, making them inedible even if you scooped them up. The pan is unsurprisingly unharmed, and one of the pots seems to have survived the fall intact, but the bowls are thoroughly shattered, as are all three of the jars. At least they were empty, you comfort yourself as you think of the pickled meat lining the shelves. Wasting the lard is bad enough.

Letting out a long, tired sigh, you set yourself to the slow task of picking up your own damn mess, fragment after fragment, one small piece at a time.

There's no saving the broken things, but you can probably wash the stains out of the carpet.