#which makes perfect sense bc since they both accuse each other of lying you can only believe one of them

[seawitchkaraoke]

i just think. hmmm.

i think making a conflict between two individuals out to be about whether ‘‘women are often not believed when they come forward as having been abused by powerful men’‘ or ‘‘male victims of abuse are often not believed because people think men can’t be abused’‘ is a bigger or more ‘’real’‘ issue is....... maybe..... not ideal

[infinites-chaser]

Librarian! PH. 52 MLQC MC / Victor :)

HELLO ANON U WERE ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE TO RESPOND TO MY LIBRARIAN ASK GAME I’M SO SORRY IT’S TAKEN SO LONG,,, victor is just. hard to write. aLSO I'm doubly sorry since i’ll be combining this with the Victor ask from @truth-be-told-im-lying ​ hope neither of you mind T-T i don’t think my mind could do two victor ficlets akwlfjsdkls

ANyway I love you both LOTS AND LOTS hopefully this attempt at Victor isn’t extremely out of character;;; it’s a lowkey soulmates AU if that counts for anything :> aND this fic gets the special treatment of an actual Title bc True was wonderful enough to help me by typing Victor as an Enneagram Type One

okaaay and without further ado, 

49, 52 + Victor/MC

‘[He] wakes up in [his] bed, determined to begin again.’- These Ghosts Are Family, Maisy Card. (pg. 49)

‘As [he] pushes through the onlookers to meet [her], he is certain he is the only person moving.’- These Ghosts Are Family, Maisy Card. (pg. 52)

((pronoun changes in both quotes to better fit the ficlet))

spoilers for Victor/MC’s childhood!

spend my whole life searching

Victor doesn’t believe in soulmates. (After half a lifetime of searching turning up nothing, he doesn’t believe in much.)

Once upon a time, he might’ve. (He wanted to). His heart rate doubled and sped up to match hers— a carefree little girl skipping across the road, too far away to hear his nerves cry danger, too caught up in dreams and fantasies to hear his warning shout. Time slowed down so he could save her, and on that afternoon on the crosswalk, drops of rain suspended in the air, he did.

At that age, he hadn’t had the sense to wonder why a young girl like her had been crossing the street without supervision. Why her smiles had come freely, but had always looked a little sad, a little wistful. Why she’d been so eager to accept his baked treats. Why she’d been at the playground without a parent. Why she’d always been alone.

Now, seventeen years later, he wishes he did. Wishes he’d known something as simple as her last name.

He dreams of her. Of finding her again: the girl whose heartbeat matched his. The girl whose smile had slowed down time itself for him, as if short moments with her could’ve each stretched into a gentle eternity. He’d wanted them to. He’d wanted to capture every moment spent with her, to make them last, to savor them, so they’d pass slow and sweet like honey on the tongue.

Time had passed slow when he’d wanted it to. Those sunlit afternoons had been sweet, they’d been happy.

Only, time is a fickle thing. When he takes his eye off it, it races away, too fast for him to keep up.

The kidnapping. The experiments. The torture.

The escape.

She saves him. He’s too slow to save her.

And even if he can stop time, here’s the thing: he can never turn the clock back.

Still, he wakes up. Every morning, he gets out of bed. Gets dressed and goes to work. The world around him moves on, and demands he does, too, even if his heart’s still eleven years old and clutching her motionless body, eleven years old, the only sound in his ears his pounding pulse, the absence of the accompaniment of hers an accusation more painful than any hateful words.

It’s a recurring theme in his life, time. It’s ironic, really, when he thinks about it. That he can stop time without lifting a finger, and yet, when it comes to things he cares about, people he loves most, he’s always eleven years old again, always too late.

(His Evol’s time control, but perhaps, all this time, he hasn’t been controlling time, it’s been controlling him. He’s imprisoned by a single moment, a memory, a regret. A past that can never be undone.)

Whenever he has spare time, he devotes himself to searching. Resigns himself to the fact he’ll probably never find her, if all he has to go off of is a child’s face, once preserved in his memory, now fading. Hair color. Eye color. Age. A name. Nothing more.

The searches turn up nothing. 

He spends late nights in the office to distract himself, builds up a capitalist kingdom of a company, if only to put off for a few hours more the prospect of returning home to face his nightmares alone.

His father praises him for LFG’s growth over dinners filled with awkward silences. The name Victor Li appears more and more often in business newspapers. Investors approach him. He gets interviews. Gets offers for TV appearances, for sponsorships.

He takes them, these material successes. Wonders if any amount of them could ever make up for the failure from his childhood. If they could bring her back. He tells himself if he finds her, when he finds her, when he brings her back, it’ll be to a more perfect world. One in which he’ll never fail her again. It’s a foolish thought, but it keeps him going. With it in mind, he proceeds to work twice as hard.

Souvenir is what saves him. A small allowance, a self-indulgence, a seed of hope planted in what he thinks is his darkest time.

It’s for her, more than any of his frantic searching ever was. A dream, a foolish one, that one day she’ll step through his memories and through the restaurant’s door, that one day they’ll share a pudding together again, their hearts beating as one.

He doesn’t get to open Souvenir often; his job doesn't let him. He made sure of that, long ago. But when he does, after the last customer’s left, and he’s put up the closed sign, he cooks for two.

(The first time, Mr. Mills had taken a single look at his silent, still face, and his expression must've spoken volumes. The older man hadn't said a word, only helped clean the kitchen after, the normally gentle lines around his mouth pulled taut in a worried frown.)

He sets the second place at the table himself: carefully places fork, knife and spoon beside lukewarm appetizers, tucks a napkin under soup bowls going cold. Watches the empty seat and the untouched meal for an eternity before finally eating his own. His technique's impeccable. It has been ever since he'd aced his culinary lessons, since he'd bought out the school. He'd used the finest ingredients. He always does.

The food still crumbles like ash in his mouth. (It always does.)

Mr. Mills will find him there, nursing a glass of wine long into the night. He knows better not to question it, but sometimes he'll pull up a chair, drink a glass, too. talk of everything and nothing, talk of his parents, his sister's family, of times gone by.

Victor will never admit it, but the older man's presence makes those nights less hard. his stories, his memories — they keep the ice in his heart from spreading any further when it feels like nothing else will.

Ten years stretch into thirteen, into fourteen, into fifteen, into a broken clock, time stopped because does the passage of time mean anything if he measures it, measured it in time with her? If she's gone?

The meals shrink. First appetizers vanish, then entrees too, until all that's left are desserts, puddings that he stares at all evening, puddings a girl had loved once, that he can almost imagine her sitting there eating, her noticing him watching her and her answering blush and smile. His smile back.

Almost, because after all these years without her, he can’t quite imagine her face. Not as she would look now. Not even as she was, seventeen years back.

(He dreams and finds he doesn’t remember what her smile looked like, exactly. Doesn’t remember the sound of her heartbeat mingling with the sound of his.

Memory is cruel. Memory is imperfect. No matter if you can stop time, no matter how hard you try to memorize a moment, when you revisit it, it’ll never be the same as when you lived it the first time.)

Then:

The day starts like any other. He wakes up, gets out of bed, gets ready for another day of work, another night of searching. He scrolls emails while waiting for his espresso machine to heat, then puts his tablet aside when the coffee's done. He eats in silence. As always, he's done five minutes before he needs to leave for the company, the perfect amount of time for him to do a last-minute check in the mirror— his tie's straight, his shirt unwrinkled, not a hair on his head out of place. The reflection that stares back at him is unchanging; these days it barely shows even the passage of time.

He sighs. Shakes the thought off like the piece of lint it is on his otherwise immaculate state of being, and heads for the door, the lock automatically clicking behind him at eight o'clock am, exactly on schedule, exactly as planned.

He's about to take a seat in his car when an inexplicable urge to walk to work takes hold of him. He pauses. Calculates and re-calculates the time it would take (fifteen minutes, not accounting for rush hour traffic making crosswalks slow), and he's about to decide it's not worth it, it's a silly thought, but the urge intensifies.

Do it, the eleven-year-old in his heart seems to be telling him. You won't regret it.

He frowns and rubs his forehead— for a moment, he wonders if all his searching, all his foolish hopes are finally getting to his brain.

He decides to take the walk, anyway.

He regrets it, not nine minutes later, when despite the sun's light shining strong through the clouds, a light rain begins to fall.

Worse still, the traffic lights haven't changed once in the past ninety seconds. He won't be late, he'd accounted for this, but he's stuck in a crowd of pedestrians, and their chatter's beginning to grate on his nerves. He's considering calling the mayor about it after exactly one hundred seconds have passed— clearly, the light's broken, this is far too long for commuters to wait— but then, finally the walk sign flicks on.

He's already across the street when it happens:

First, a phone rings.

Then, the loud honking of a car.

Tires screech.

Time slows. Time stops.

He's back on the crosswalk in a matter of heartbeats, the inattentive idiot in his arms (it's a girl, it's always a girl, hair dark, eyes wide, expression shocked).

"You..." She says, blinking up at him with those wide, almost-familiar eyes. Distantly, he registers the echo of a heartbeat overlapping with his.

"Who are you?"

Who are you? His mind asks, but deep in his heart, he already knows the answer. It can't be.

"Evolver?" He says instead, shoving down memories that threaten to surface: another rainy day, another crosswalk, another heart that had seemed matched to his. He tells himself he's being delusional, that he thinks he can hear her heartbeat because she's in his arms, wide-eyed and fragile, her heartrate skittering back and forth like a fool— this isn't like his careful, methodical searching, this is a fluke beyond flukes, it means nothing, it'll lead to nothing in the end.

But she's in his arms, warm and soft against his protective embrace, she's in his arms and it feels so right it's almost painful, his pulse pulled into a panicked pace to match hers.

He sets her down abruptly, as if burned, and turns to go.

"Someone can't come to your rescue every time."

Around them, suspended raindrops begin to fall. The world, resumed. The world, once again predictable and mundane. Except for her.

He knows, without looking back, she's staring after him, her heart, his heart, still racing.

He allows himself a smile.

He allows himself some small sliver of hope.

(His frozen time starts moving again.)