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hotchley · 3 years

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the waiting game

Lol, my laptop is at 2%. Look, I’ll be back in an hour to do my masterlist, I just really, really need to get this done because it should’ve been done many months ago.

It’s fine. Umm... yeah, nothing else to say :)

Trigger Warnings: child abuse, references to child abuse, death threats from a parent, bombings

read on ao3!

Jason Gideon always told new recruits that certain things about their jobs got easier with time and experience. He told them their hands would remain steady when they fired a gun and that the noise would not always make them flinch. He told them they would get used to late-night calls and sleepless nights. that they wouldn’t always find it so difficult when the people they loved walked away, unable to handle not knowing what was going to happen.

A lot of things about their job got easier.

The waiting game only got harder.

Because you learnt things

Gideon had been on the team longer than the other members put together. he knew what happened when each of his members ended up in the hospital. He’d made a point of taking Reid each time, just so he could be sure his order of events was correct.

Adrian Bale meant he’d had six less agents to remember.

That was supposed to have been the last time Aaron Hotchner ended up in the hospital, unconscious and barely breathing. Gideon had vowed to himself that no matter how difficult it was, Hotch would make it home to Haley and Jack every night.

But he’d failed.

Aaron hadn’t wanted Elle going home. he’d taken her to the same hotel Haley was in. Elle had felt a little uncomfortable being in the adjoining room, but her discomfort quickly faded. Haley seemed used to looking after Aaron’s second family and Jack was still willing to be held by strangers.

He’d swung by her place to make sure it was safe.

It hadn’t been, but he was the best shot in the BAU. No, not just the BAU, the entire Quantico building. He was so good that when he demanded that they passed Reid with flying colours, nobody questioned him.

There had been- in his words- a small scuffle but he was fine.

Everyone was too exhausted to argue or even notice. But Gideon knew he should’ve said something. He’d known Aaron Hotchner since he had been dragged in by David Rossi, somehow bright-eyed and cynical at the same time.

He should’ve known Aaron was more hurt than he was willing to let on. He always was. and he should have realised before he sent him into another building that contained an innocent civilian and somebody that they couldn’t really profile. Somebody that they couldn’t plan the endgame of.

It felt like Adrian Bale all over again.

Only everyone had known Aaron was going to survive the moment he pulled the oxygen mask off his face, demanded to know who was representing Bale in his trial before passing out again.

Now... none of that could be confirmed.

He hadn’t been able to stay conscious enough to ask for Haley.

“Tell me what happened,” he asked again. Morgan and Reid had refused the other six times he’d asked them. Six hours Hotch had been in the hospital. He still wasn’t awake.

“Gideon this isn’t going to help anyone, least of all you,” Morgan sighed.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“He was carrying Rebecca out of the building because it was on fire. Then he suddenly dropped her on the grass and keeled over, one hand pressed to his side. Morgan grabbed Rebecca, got her out. I tried to help Hotch, but he told me to run. And I did. And then the building exploded and-”

And that was when he’d got the phone call from Reid. Morgan had phoned the ambulance the moment Hotch fell. Reid had phoned Gideon, barely able to string two sentences together. It was as though his eidetic memory and IQ had just been taken from him.

Reid looked away, unable to say another word. His cheeks were stained with tears, his foot-tapping the only comfort he was able to provide himself.

“He wouldn’t have got hurt if I’d gone home,” Elle whispered.

“You can’t blame yourself,” JJ murmured, but she sounded distant. Like she was trying to stay in liaison mode but couldn’t. She hadn’t even been with the BAU for a year the last time Hotch had ended up in the hospital. She’d been terrified then. Now she just looked tired.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” Gideon added, wishing he could see what was going on. But the door to the room Hotch was in had been closed, the curtains pulled around. “If you’d gone home, in the state you were in, you wouldn’t have won. It’d be you in there, and Hotch would be pacing outside blaming himself.” Besides, he thought to himself. The only person that should be blaming themselves was him. He was supposed to have Hotch’s back. He was the one that was supposed to be able to read all his tells without even having to try and profile him.

Hotch was still in surgery. In all the cases that had ended with Hotch landing himself in the hospital, the surgeries had been minor. When Adrian Bale had struck, he’d spent four hours in surgery. In Gideon’s opinion, the injuries sustained from that had been more serious.

Hotch had been in surgery for six and a half hours. That didn’t fit the pattern. It didn’t fit the pattern and Gideon knew this time that it wasn’t a good thing.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself either,” a soft voice said from behind them.

“Haley,” he whispered.

Haley gave them all a hesitant smile. It was clear she’d been sobbing and was only being held together by the thinnest thread. “How are you all holding up?”

The laugh Garcia let out was slightly hysterical. “Mrs Hotchner, we’re not important. You are. So is your husband. How are you doing?”

The corners of her mouth turned downwards. “I don’t feel like it’s hit me yet. I’ve known for a very long time there’s a chance he won’t come down and I’ve always prepared for that, but it just doesn’t feel real. I keep expecting him to walk out that door with his arm in a sling and a goofy smile because of the pain medication.”

“We’ll be here when it does hit. And we’ll help in any way we can,” JJ promised.

Haley nodded, shaking as she wrapped her arms around herself. “I know. Aaron always said that he wasn’t afraid of dying. Not when he knew his team would be there to tell Jack stories and stop me from resenting the only piece of him that I would have left.”

“Where is the little one?” Morgan asked, both to lighten the mood and to change the subject. They’d never realized how much Hotch loved them all. How much he trusted them.

“With my sister. We didn’t- after Boston- oh my god, it’s just like Boston isn’t it? He’s going to, he won’t- I-” she whimpered, the dam finally breaking.

It was Garcia that reacted first. It was a stark contrast, Penelope’s brightness against the subdued pastels of Haley’s pajamas- and Gideon wanted to be sick, she must have been ready to go to sleep when she got the phone call- but it was needed.

When Garcia pulled away, not quite letting go, Haley wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry. It’s just, after Boston, we agreed that Jack- we hadn’t picked his name then, god it feels like yesterday, that we wouldn’t let him see us in the hospital. We wanted to let him believe his parents were invincible for as long as possible.”

Gideon knew that promise. he also knew that Hotch had promised to step down once Gideon returned. He had been selfish when he’d asked him not to.

“He’ll make it out,” Elle said.

She hadn’t witnessed Adrian Bale’s attack on Gideon. That’s how she was able to stay so positive. But everyone else had. They’d watched as twenty-two civilians had been taken hostage, as Hotch had gone into the building to try and negotiate with him, despite Gideon explicitly forbidding him to do so because Haley was waiting at home for him.

That was the one and only time Hotch’s anger had been directed at a member of the team. His eyes had darkened, his voice pitched lower than they’d ever heard it. He’d looked Gideon in the eye, no longer the scared recruit, and told him to go fuck himself.

He’d walked into the building. Without a vest. The only weapon being the gun in the holster that was attached to his belt. One of the hostages had been forced to take it from him. Aaron had given them the same encouraging smile he gave to all the victims they saved, to all the distraught family members that were scared of being the cause of their loved one’s end.

Adrian Bale had taken one look at him and laughed. That had thrown Hotch off. He had thought that seeing the lead profiler of the elite BAU team would make him sweat and give him what he wanted. He said as much.

Adrian Bale said that when he looked at Aaron Hotchner, he didn’t see the lead profiler or bad cop. He didn’t see the head of the Seattle field office or one of the best shots SWAT had ever seen. He didn’t even see the hotshot prosecutor he’d began as.

Aaron asked him what he did see.

Bale’s response haunted everyone. He said he saw a boy too afraid of his own feelings to ever truly love anyone. He said the only reason Hotch had walked in was because he was too much of a coward to leave his pregnant wife but if he died in the line of duty, well that was different. He said Aaron loved Jason Gideon and all he wanted was his approval.

The camera was grainy, but the tremble in Aaron’s hands was unmistakable.

Morgan had tried to run in. It was Gideon’s arm that had stopped in. It was Gideon that had said they needed to wait to get Hotch out. It was Gideon that had misread Aaron’s body language and sent six of his best agents in.

They didn’t need eidetic memories to have the look of complete fear on Gideon’s face when Hotch was blown away branded in their brain forever. Or the scream he’d released when they finally uncovered the body, the rise and fall of his chest barely noticeable. Or to remember how Haley had arrived two days later because of problems with flight bookings, face devoid of any colour, the swell of her stomach a stark reminder of everything that would be lost if Hotch didn’t pull through.

Elle Greenaway only knew SSA Hotchner: the man that stared down unsubs, barked orders at everyone, carried a back-up weapon because he was just that good and never smiled. She didn’t know him as Aaron, the man that hated hospitals so much that every time he regained consciousness, the doctors had been forced to sedate him for his own benefit. Or that the only person that had been able to touch him was Haley, his mouth trying to form her name but never making it past the first syllable, despite all his years of spinning stories to a jury.

Or that the only reason Hotch carried a back-up was because very few people would notice it was there. John Blackwolf had thrown him off, made him doubt again. Gideon had found it difficult to convince him everything was fine, so he didn’t. He just dropped him home to Haley and watched from his car as Hotch became Aaron, falling apart in Haley’s arms.

“I know,” Haley whispered, pulling Gideon from his memories.

“Would you like anything to drink? I can go and grab you a coffee if you want,” he said, needing to do something other than watch his team fall to pieces. Aaron was the one that sat and reminded them they were human, that it wasn’t their fault. It was the reason they would call him mom. Gideon was just there.

Haley shook her head. “I want you to be here. In case you’re needed.”

Because of course he would be. Haley Hotchner was Aaron’s wife, so she was automatically listed as his medical proxy. But Aaron never wanted her to be burdened by his job any more than she already was. Which meant if something happened in the field. the doctors were to automatically defer to Gideon. Haley was consulted if it was something non-case related.

“Of course,” he said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Excuse me? Are you all here for Aaron Hotchner?”

“Yes,” Haley said, the first to find their voice as the profilers tried to work out whether the news they were about to be given was good or bad.

“He’s out of surgery, there were no complications there and we’ve got him through the worst of it. But he’s still not woken up, and his breathing is shallow, hence the reason we haven’t taken him off the ventilator yet. So as much as we want to hope for the best, I want you to understand there is a chance he may not make it. His body has been put through a lot in the past year.”

Gideon did not want to think about every injury Hotch had been forced to suffer through since returning. The collar of his shirts had never quite hidden the bruised skin where Perotta had touched him.

“Can we see him?” Haley asked. She looked so young. So vulnerable. Gideon swallowed. She’d never been forced to hide her emotions the same way Hotch had. She’d never been afraid of being profiled. He doubted she ever had been, Hotch was too honourable.

“My colleagues are still treating him. I think it’d be better if we waited until he woke up. You should all get some rest, you look exhausted.”

Haley shook her head. “I’d like to be here.”

“Of course,” the doctor said, turning on their heel and walking away again.

“I’m just going to phone Jessica and ask her to keep Jack for a little longer,” she said, voice trembling.

Everyone nodded and chose not to comment when Haley vanished for ten minutes, returning with red-rimmed eyes.

“He trusted me to save his life when I hadn’t even passed my gun qualification,” Reid said suddenly.

“I know. He told me about that. He said he knew you could do it, that it would just take a bit of a patience and maybe an extremely stressful situation. Apparently, you do your best work under intense terror. Not that he wanted the two of you to end up hostages He also blamed himself when you didn’t pass. Thought he’d scared you so much when you were practicing that you got in your head and just forgot everything, even though that’s impossible,” Haley responded.

Reid’s head jerked up in response. “He actually said that to you?”

Haley nodded. “He tells me about all of you. He sees Sean- you met him didn’t you, yes you did- in you. You’re both young. Got the whole world to explore and yet you chose to do the one thing nobody expected.”

“I bet he always has bad stories about me,” Morgan teased.

“He trusts you. More than you think he does. And he wants you to trust him as well. He doesn’t listen when I say you do; you just show it in a different way. All you profilers show things in a different way. That’s what I’ve learnt. That there are some things you will never see the same way.”

“What does he say about me?” Elle asked, genuinely curious. She’d only met Haley in passing; the day they bought Jack in. And the time they’d spent in the hotel could hardly count.

“A lot. He’s scared this job is going to take your sense of humour away. He thinks that you’re going to wake up one day and hate him for letting this job consume your life. He worries about all of you though.”

“He worries about all of us?” that was JJ.

“Of course. He thinks that he’s taking your chances at happiness away from you by calling you in at ungodly hours, disrupting your vacations, making you look at what happens to happy couples and innocent children- I really shouldn’t say anymore I just always assumed you knew.”

“We don’t profile team members,” Elle said, slightly defensive.

“I didn’t think you did. I just assumed he spoke to you,” Haley said, but there was no accusation in her tone. Just the smallest amount of surprise and confusion.

The members of the team started staring awkwardly in various directions, suddenly aware of how little Hotch actually shared with them. Only Morgan had even known Sean existed, and that was only because he’d knocked on the office door that one time.

Loud shouts from the room Hotch was in drew their attention. Everyone immediately stood, Haley and Jason moving forward so they would be the first person the doctor spoke to. They were too far away to determine the specifics of the conversation, but from the volume and range of voices they could hear told him it was a group of doctors and nurses.

The shouting stopped soon after though, and Gideon immediately knew that the silence could only mean that Hotch had been sedated. A part of him was glad the other man had woken up, but he was mostly wondering it that was the last time it would happen.

A few minutes passed. Garcia was humming to herself. Morgan was sat, staring at the wall, eyes glazed over as he ran through every moment that led up to the explosion. JJ was biting her nails. Gideon wanted to tell her to stop but he couldn’t. That was what Hotch did. Haley tugged her hand away and grasped it. Elle placed her hand on Reid’s knee. He stopped tapping his foot, looking up at her with the same confused look he wore when someone referenced pop culture. Elle smiled slightly. Gideon stood to the side. He didn’t deserve them.

The same doctor as before exited the room.

“He keeps asking after his father,” she said.

Haley immediately jumped out of her chair and went over before Gideon could get a single word out. Hotch had never mentioned his father after ending up in the hospital. Sometimes he asked if Sean was safe. Most of the time he asked for Haley. Never once had he mentioned his parents. Jason did not know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but despite every part of him wanting to hope, he knew he was aware of the answer and that he was just too cowardly to admit it

“You have to let me in there,” she said.

“Mrs Hotchner with all due respect-”

“No. I know my husband’s medical history. You can’t keep sedating him, not when he needs to be conscious to answer your questions and not when there are only so many drugs his body can handle. But he isn’t asking after his father because he loves him. He’s asking where he is because he thinks he needs to work out how much more time he’s got before he needs to start pretending again. Let me in there, and he’ll cooperate.”

The doctor seemed to understand that there was no way they’d be able to win that particular battle. They sighed, then extended one arm to the door. Haley ran into the room, everyone else congregating outside.

“The painkillers will wear off in a few minutes,” the doctor told them all.

Haley nodded, immediately going to kneel beside Hotch’s bed, gently taking one hand and holding it tight, He was paler than anyone had ever seen him. His stomach was a mess of bruises and burns, some recent, others marks from a childhood that never should have happened.

Gideon watched, tears forming in his eyes. Hotch looked younger with his eyes closed. The pressures of the year seemed to fade, only to be made even clearer by the damage not covered by the hospital gown.

“Why isn’t he waking up?” Reid asked, five minutes later. His voice was shaky.

Haley’s grip tightened minutely. “Baby?” she whispered.

Aaron didn’t move. His heartrate remained steady, the beeping of the monitor the only sound that filled the room.

The doctors and nurses were preparing to do the rest of what they needed to do. Gideon felt his own heart slowing down. Aaron’s heart was beating but his eyes weren’t opening and the rise and fall of his chest was a shallow as when they’d first found him after Bale and none of this fit the pattern-

“I didn’t mean it, I swear, none of this was supposed to happen-” Aaron murmured, head rolling to the side.

Haley gasped and let go of his hand, just for a moment, before she realised what she’d done and grasped it again. “Aaron?”

Aaron’s eyes fluttered open. He struggled to keep them like that. “Where am I?” he whispered, southern accent coming out slightly.

That fit the pattern of his recovery.

“Mr Hotchner, you’re in Lockhart Hospital. Can you tell me your birth name and date of birth?” a nurse asked, voice firm but gentle.

“Hospital? No, I can’t be in the hospital, he’ll find me. He said he’ll kill mama and make me watch but I swear I didn’t come here myself, where is he, I can’t let him hurt them, I can’t-”

One of the members of staff prepared an injection.

“Don’t,” Haley warned, shifting closer to him.

“Mrs Hotchner-”

“Just a moment. I promise. Hey sunshine. It’s me. It’s Haley. You’re safe, I promise. He can’t hurt you. He’s dead now. He’s not here, and nobody is going to hurt you. Everybody just wants you to get better. Your team are here. You remember them right? Agent Gideon, Doctor Reid. Garcia and Morgan and JJ and Elle? Yes, you remember them. Well they’re all waiting for you to recover because they love you. I love you too. And nobody is going to hurt you. Do you understand?”

“Haley?” Aaron whispered.

Haley nodded. “I’m right here sunshine. And I’ll be right here when you’re ready to recover. So take a deep breath with me, that’s so good, I’m so proud of you sunshine, just keep doing that. Are you going to close your eyes? Okay. Just please wake- when you wake up, remember that you’re safe. Can you do that for me?”

“Safe,” Aaron repeated as his eyes closed, unable to take the pain he must’ve still been in.

Haley didn’t let go of her husband.

One of the nurses tapped her shoulder then quietly asked if she’d be okay waiting outside as they prepared the room for the next time he woke up, as they were no longer keeping him sedated and he seemed to be breathing himself, which meant they could move on.

Haley nodded and let go of Hotch’s hand. When she faced the team, Garcia immediately embraced her, and she started crying again.

“Let’s go back to the waiting room,” Gideon said, unable to handle the sight any longer. Garcia didn’t let go of Haley, choosing instead to wrap her arm around her as they left.

“When Aaron was seventeen, his dad broke his arm and then refused to let him go to the hospital. He passed out in the middle of a lesson the next day and the school were forced to call an ambulance. He didn’t become coherent till they got there, and he wouldn’t stop screaming. I’d snuck in and was the only person he wouldn’t flinch away from,” she said once they’d all sat down.

Elle’s jaw dropped. Garcia started crying herself. Morgan looked away. JJ and Reid grabbed each other’s hands. They’d all assumed something had gone on in Hotch’s childhood- he never spoke about his family, he was always rougher with unsubs that they profiled as being abusive fathers- but there was a difference between making the inference and hearing it from the person that knew him best.

“He’s lucky to have you,” Jason commented.

“Allowing him to feel his emotions and letting him know that he’s safe is doing the bare minimum,” Haley said.

He didn’t have a comeback to that.

Thirty minutes passed before the doctor came back. It was good news. The profilers could tell.

“He’s awake and stable enough to receive visitors now,” they said.

Everyone jumped out.

“Go on,” Gideon said to Haley, who dashed into the room and hugged her husband.

He made a small sound of discomfort, but still tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Hi Haley,” he whispered.

She laughed, sitting on the bed beside him. “You’re okay.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

The rest of the team filed into the room. Reid looked ready to cry again.

“Spencer, you cannot blame yourself. I told you to run because I wanted you to, and if you hadn’t, I’d be furious at you for always trying to be the hero. Elle, the same goes for you. I took you to the hotel. Nobody asked me to go to your house, so stop looking at me like I’m about to break. I’ll be fine,” he said.

Hospital painkillers had always made him lose his filter.

Garcia started laughing. “I’m sorry, it’s not funny, but sir your accent is coming through and it’s so hard to take you seriously when you’re laid up in bed with your hair all mussed and your accent but you’re still trying to tell them off and, it’s just, it’s confirmation you’re going to be fine.”

Hotch gave her a grin. Haley ran her hand through his hair, messing it up further.

“Thanks Hotch,” Reid said. He rocked on the balls of his feet for a few moments before muttering something that sounded suspiciously like fuck it and he too went and hugged Hotch. Haley shifted slightly. Hotch raised his arms to wrap around Reid’s back.

“Everything will be fine,” he whispered. “I promise.”

Reid pulled back with tears in his eyes but a smile on his face.

“No more close calls like that. You hear me?” Morgan chastised, patting Hotch’s shoulder.

Hotch rolled his eyes. “You aren’t the boss of me Morgan. I’m the boss of you.”

“Aaron,” Haley said.

He blushed, making everyone laugh. “Fine.”

The women of the team came over. Elle gave him a quick one-armed hug, whispering in Spanish so the rest of the team didn’t understand. Hotch wiped his eyes when she went to stand by the others. JJ hugged him gently, saying that he didn’t get to terrify them like that because he was mom and they needed him. Garcia’s heels made a comically loud sound as she walked over to him.

“You are the most self-destructive unit chief I know. But you’re also the most handsome, loving, sweet one as well. And I know you won’t stop putting your life on the line for our baby genius and chocolate thunder so let’s compromise: you can do dumb and reckless things but you’re not allowed to complain when we pamper you afterwards, okay?”

Hotch blinked a few times. “Sure Garcia.”

Garcia hugged him again, pressing a kiss to his forehead that left a pink mark behind. Haley laughed, which led to the analyst immediately shuffling over to the rest of their rag-tag family.

Gideon watched from the doorway as the rest of his team and Haley sat with Hotch, laughing and joking. He couldn’t bring himself to walk in there and comfort Hotch. Not when it had all been his fault. The team had saved an innocent girl. Hotch had pulled through again. There was a high that came with that, and he wasn’t about to ruin it for any of them.

But what happened when the high ran out?

Elle would realise her leader wasn’t the stoic man she once thought he was. Spencer and Derek would be forced to help Hotch pour his coffee and climb the stairs to his office because he couldn’t do it alone but he didn’t want to ask. Garcia would go home to an empty apartment, wondering which one of her family she’d almost lose next. JJ would have to deal with the media fallout of the case.

Haley would hold her husband, wondering how much more he would be able to give to his job before he broke. Before it broke them. Aaron would have more scars that he’d never be able to recover from.

Gideon would be forced to watch as they all returned to work, scared fractured but incapable of walking away. David Rossi had always said there would be people waiting in the wings to take over, but Gideon didn’t agree. Only the people that had seen the depths of depravity were willing to put themselves through the horrors of profiling.

Aaron looked up and met Gideon’s eyes. He looked terrified.

Gideon smiled. He had to.

But he knew.

He knew Elle would break. He could see she was already struggling with the guilt. He knew that one day, probably soon, he wouldn’t be able to look at his team without seeing their scars or the people he’d failed.

He knew Haley wouldn’t be able to handle her husband’s job forever.

Jason Gideon knew that each member of his team would fall in their own way. He did not know whether or not they would be able to get up. He did know, however, that it would be another round of the waiting game.

And it would only get harder.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fic #oh my god i'm so glad this is done #right #once my laptop is charged #because it is at one percent #i will do my final masterlist #aaron hotchner #sumayyah writes cm

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 4 years

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Moriarty 8 - 11 (FINAL) | HypMic 12 - 13 (FINAL) | Taiso Samurai 7 - 9 | Akudama 9 - 12 (FINAL)

Hopefully I’ll be able to get on to all that backlog soon, because...I don’t want it to keep accumulating and Skate-Leading Stars (first winter 2021 anime) already has an advance 1st ep. up...

Moriarty 8

(Moriarty 8 notes deleted accidentally…)

Moriarty 9

If you want a modern equivalent to the Baker Street Irregulars, then I’d suggest you look this way *jabs finger at Odd Jobs Yamada (from HypMic)*.

These CGI background horse and carriages are…kind of distracting…

I’m guessing back in those days, the Irregulars were better than Google at finding info…because Google didn’t exist until the internet did.

Moriarty 10

Just this ep and one more until the end…at least, until spring 2021.

Wow, the use of colour here is really striking!

White lilies mean…purity/chastity…?

I’ve never heard of “bending someone’s ear” until now. It means to talk to someone, especially to ask a favour or to talk at length.

Probatio diabolica: the devil’s proof. I didn’t even know that was a concept until now…(I never once studied law, as you can tell.)

“William” isn’t normally shortened to “Liam”…It’s normally “Will”…also, notice all the footprints on the floor…

Moriarty 11 (FINAL)

Last ep. before spring 2021.

LOL, kabedon.

The fishy thing about Brits is that they’ve named things across the world names from Britain. I know there’s a Doncaster which isn’t anywhere near Britain, for one thing…

Observe the weird finger-like marking made by one of the bloodstains and the scratches on the suitcase. The latter was probably forced open.

Considering the number of signs the killer left, he was clearly in a hurry…

Well, based on that shoeprint we can find the killer if we can find traces of blood on his shoe.

“Duram” (sic).

Ah! If it was raining in Durham, then there would be traces of mud on the killer’s shoes. I remember early on in Detective Conan Shinichi, then newly shrunk, deduced Agasa was running in the rain based on the mud on his pants…this is similar.

Chloral (hydrate…?).

The “washroom” (apparently a Canadian term, the British term is “water closet”) has privacy and a place to get rid of the evidence, to some extent.

What about the rest of Eddie’s clothes?

Considering there are still 5 minutes of the ep. left…there’s going to be some kind of stinger for the next season. I can feel it.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait…Director Holmes??? Y’mean, Mycroft?! That is a good stinger! See you next time.

HypMic 12

“Ever since I was born, there was never a time I’d felt I’d accomplished something.” – Aw, Doppo, sweetpea (<- this blogger calls people “sweetpea” when they’re feeling lots of moe feels for them). Please don’t say that. You’ve accomplished more than enough in your life!

…Oh, almost didn’t notice it until Hifumi hid behind Doppo and the angle changed to confirm the jacket was on the bed, but Hifumi doesn’t have his jacket on.

I think I saw a tweet that said something about a wall being wrecked (specifically “Wall: Ow…”) but I wasn’t sure of the context, so I saved it in my bookmarks…LOL, so that’s what it means?

Samatoki, I know you don’t like Ichiro…but please stop trying to preach what his 2nd character song says in the title…(i.e. Break the Wall, LOL)

Jyuto’s very much a “I’ll leave this problem to the other guy” guy.

When the Funi subs say “dame”, I think Samatoki is just referring to an “onna” (woman). It’s a bit of an odd choice, really…although I can’t go and interrogate whoever was responsible for it. I don’t have the authority or the contacts that will allow me to.

This is not the time for fighting one another!!!

Notably, in the manga, Jakurai was going to chaffeur Hifumi and Doppo to their place, but then he had to go to work and so they rode the train with their prize money. This “run from Special Forces” ending is better, I think, since people got grumpy at Jakurai for having to abandon them with the money.

“…permission to cover a story.” - Permission from…who?

*screams* I was thinking Tom, Rex and Iris worked for a foreign government! They work for Ichijiku – why didn’t I think of that?!

LOL, I couldn’t even tell what Tom was saying until I played it back…it’s English, just…said in a spot where you don’t expect it.

“…that scares me.” – This may be nitpicky of me, but osoreru is actually a derivative of osore (fear), so “it strikes fear in me”…? “It strikes fear in my heart”? What would sound right…?

Go, host mode Hifumi! (...but does that imply host mode Hifumi is the only “version” of Hifumi able to rap? Certainly, he was able to do Wrap and Rap without his jacket, right…?)

You can tell Tom still respects Jakurai after all this time because he (the former) calls him (the latter) “Sensei”. Also, this’ll be interesting, we haven’t seen many mics and speakers beyond the standard bad guy ones (depicted in both the anime and the manga).

My gosh! All I knew of this song was that m-flo, also responsible for Human Lost’s theme song (and notably they’re a hip hop group with techno influences), was responsible for this song. Man, this s*** slaps! It’s great! (Sorry, I’ve just never really had the chance to capitalise on all the info I gathered on EDM DJs when talking in terms of things from Japan…m-flo is basically the only act I know which does that, so I’m really excited…can’t you tell from how verbose I’m getting in this note?)

That’s interesting that Matenrou won and Tom still took the gold chair symbolism to represent him and the Secret Aliens as the victor instead.

Iris’s parts are awesome. M-flo has a female vocalist and so I’d assume Iris takes on Lisa’s (m-flo’s vocalist’s) parts.

…Hmm, Gentaro’s made a reference to the track “Me Against the World”, has he?...Maybe.

I’m not quite sure, but I think Ramuda said “majo” (witch) when he was referring to Beauty and the Beast in the English subs.

…gosh, what is up with that airhorn…? Still, next time is the last time. See you on Christmas…no, Boxing Day.

HypMic 13 (FINAL)

This is the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning…y’know, considering how stuff trended on Twitter, I’d say this anime’s gonna get a 2nd season, but you can’t really say that until it actually happens. I mean, Boueibu is much less popular than HypMic and that got a 2nd season…

This is the 1st episode where I woke up early enough to watch without spoilers and had no obligations to place over it, so…this is exciting, in its own sense, but in a sense, it could also be called “profoundly disappointing” because this experience is only available to me as of the final episode.

One of the tweets I saw a few weeks back came to mind – someone became interested in sakuga houkai (terrible animation, literally “animation collapse”) because of HypMic…I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing…

…Dude, you probably shouldn’t answer a call from someone who just revealed themselves to be a traitor last episode…*sweatdrops*

(Spoiler for rest of franchise) Hmm…Dice’s face is pretty straight. Assuming at this point we knew Dice was Otome’s son, this is a good poker face from him…!

This thing about gangs was mentioned in their profiles (although the words used implies they “went delinquent”), so it actually doesn’t surprise me.

I wonder if this subway exists in the mainline story…?

According to the next ep. preview I saw on Twitter, TDD will reform to take down the Secret Aliens. I’m not sure if that was a guess or whether that’s true, so I’m waiting for the shoe to drop on it.

Samatoki-san, not -sama. Hmm…

There was definitely the word “team” in Dice’s line, so it’s “what the legendary team was made of”.

…oh gosh…they’re still using that airhorn…?

Again with the play on “lonely thunder”. It’s a really fun pun, but one I’d like to see in the rest of the series more.

Notably, Iris’s rap in English missed the word “charisma” where it could have fit (unless I missed reading it the first time).

Note Samatoki does actually use the word “shinsensa” (freshness), so there’s no lie there.

I still love how much they went in on Rex’s theme, even in his raps.

Huh, that’s new. Never seen a tag team like this before.

It seems Tom’s signature is using a lot of English, which makes it easy for us English/Japanese pair translators.

Saburo didn’t actually say “Ichi-nii”, did he…?

…based on the rock intro, this is Rhyme Anima, the OP, or something that sounds similar. What I’d need to confirm this is the “nautilus” line and the “ends corruption” line, which are the OP’s two biggest tells for AMQ.

“rainmaking” – Hmm, another link from Gentaro to Rei. This might be a different part of Rhyme Anima (OP) that wasn’t used as the OP proper.

“this white light invites and heals” (<- paraphrased) – Sounds like Sensei, alright!

…now that (rainbow bit). That’s sakuga!

*a silhouette appears* - Oh nooooooooooooooo! Now they‘ve done it! They’ve included Rei! That’s more than enough spoilers to last a lifetime for y’all anime-onlys!

I wish someone would work on this collaboration between Saburo and Riou…

Hmm…what is the series endgame? Putting in Dice as the new ruler??? I mean, Dice is the worst possible politician ever. He’s far too lax about things.

*Nemu enters* - No! Nemu!

Not only is Iris a “ramen shop owner”, it’s Tom’s favourite food…No wonder ramen has significance to her.

…ooh! A new song! Update: I don’t know what this song’s name is, although it probably will become clear what its name is on the 13th. I’ll keep my eye on Twitter in case the answer is there.

…I knew it was far too early to say if there was an s2 – the DVD’s live events go until September 5th and the 2nd DRB finishes in March. That almost felt like a stinger right there. Oh well, I’m more than happy to call this anime a success, even if I would call it the worst of the arms of the franchise. All HypMic’s anime had to do was deliver fun, before anything else, and it delivered on that front. See you around!

Taiso Samurai 7

Anime burnout means I’m coming back to the anime after the day it finishes.

This dancing scene is kind of like the one at the start of ep. 2 of IWGP, except it has the owl to represent the setting as well as the dance stage.

Leo doesn’t seem to know kanji or katakana, only hiragana.

Even though this part of the anime is set in London, the characters are still speaking Japanese (lel…?).

LOL, Edward Scissorhands much?

LOL, these background gossips are like the Plastics from Mean Girls…haha.

…LOL, that’s not one of those dismounting moves, is it? It’s just kind of…jumping off the bar.

Lookit how Leo’s sticker is 90 deg. sideways from what it should be, haha.

I don’t think it’s true that Olympic gymnasts have never failed. Like other people at the top of their game, they’re probably failed millions of times, but only outside the view of most of the world. Persistence and passion are what’s key to becoming the best at what you are, no matter what field you’re in.

Now Aragaki’s what I call a “determinator” (see TV Tropes on what that is).

Taiso Samurai 8

Notably, the word used for “clothes” is specifically for Western clothing, like dresses.

Well, now we know why Leo can do those stretches…

They’ve clearly sped up the dance here, but…it’s basically the same sort of movements Yuri on Ice used to suck me in. I’m here for it!

Leo seems to be the type who tries to push away his worries by distracting people (including himself) with other things…I see. I didn’t have much of a grasp of his character beforehand.

Britney! F*** you, Britney!

Ah, that must be the (a?) fabled owl of Ikebukuro. I’ve never actually been to Ikebukuro…the closest I got was Akihabara (to memory) and even then, that was for electronics, not anime…so I’ve never seen the owl statue I’ve been talking about close up.

Rei does kind of look like her mother like this.

Ah! Rei and Kitty have a pair look now! “Twinsies”, they call it.

Amakusa’s head is located right next to Leo’s butt, so I end up staring at it…LOL.

The Hoover mission.

“I <3 Ninja”, LOL.

LOL, “Nyapoo!”

*sighs* The problem with being multi-talented is that you’re going to be told to one day put one passion above the others, even if you don’t want that.

LOL, you can be a ninja with this WikiHow article. (I was looking for Kitty’s quote, but found that instead. It seems to be a quote from one of Tomoyo’s movies.) Update: I was right.

There’s a movie in the back where the title is “Black Rainmaker”. (Tomoyo, I presume) Mifune is the 1st person credited.

Considering this is 2003…you won’t be on Mars in 2013, Kitty.

Wow, a tape! That brings me back to 2003, indeed.

Charlie’s Angels…so that’s what the tape was.

LOL, a shoebill.

“blade in your heart” – That would refer to the character for “ninja”, which has a blade over a heart. Y’know Kiss Shot Acerola Heart-Under-Blade (from Monogatari), yeah? Like that.

…you might think emails were out of place in 2003, but a virus from an email caused me to be an avid reader and that virus was unleashed around the late 90s – early 2000s.

LOL, Kitty’s cat belt buckle.

You said it, Rei. You said it.

Taiso Samurai 9

Lausanne, Switzerland.

I noticed one of the boxes at the start of the OP says “Horizontal Bars”, rather than some random name to make the boxes look like they were discarded.

Someone encoded the video funny…

LOL, BB’s getting possessive of his territory.

Fuku-chan the fukurou (owl) in Ikebukuro…LOL.

LOL, randomly there’s a skeleton with a hat in the background of Britney’s clinic.

Notably, one of the wall hangings says “heart” on it – alternatively, “soul”.

Notably, Atlanta was the 1996 Summer Olympics…there is no 1997 Lausanne Olympics, as far as I know.

Akudama 9

I watched the part where it glitches twice and I can’t quite figure out what that circular symbol is…maybe it’s Hacker’s symbol…?

Ah! Only now they properly confirm Swindler used to work in the Seal centre.

“Life that never dies is defective.” – Doctor

Does that mean Doctor is actually older than she looks, due to plastic surgery…?

Marker? What marker?

Apparently that flower is a cherry blossom…according to Detective Conan.

…I know this anime wasn’t made in America (it wouldn’t be “anime” otherwise), but Anime Feminist is going to have a field day with this one…if they haven’t abandoned it already due to their idea of morals.

…now I can even see parallels between HypMic’s authorities and Akudama’s. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

“Why did this have to happen when I’m chief?” – Sounds like…basically every authority during COVID and BLM, to be honest.

See? Akudama likes the S word. I told you.

I haven’t watched The Shining, but reading the synopsis, you can figure out why Cutthroat is the way he is…sort of.

How does the iconic quote go? “Heeeeeeeeeeeere’s Danny!” (or something…?)

They even copied the iconic eye shot! There you go!

Way to take a guy out (with the door, LOL).

…with all this killing, I can see why Akudama Drive was only in one magazine now. (Then again, HypMic was in basically all of them and that also has a tonne of problems…)

Akudama 10

万死 literally means “10000 deaths”.

Babel.

That police chief is such a mood, LOL.

I can see why people didn’t recognise Swindler, but Courier never changes his look, so…uh…

You can’t become a police chief without a sense of justice, no?

“Since when did you know that I’m not-“ - *facepalms*

Is this what they call an “ass-kickin’ Christmas”? (LOL)

Y’know, Sister, you could just do the whole “wherever you are, I’m also seeing the same sky as you” thing some other anime do.

Notably, there are shide (the paper strips) and a rope over the vault…they really do treat the shinkansen and its immortal children as a single god, huh?

Hmm? They don’t care about Sister anymore? Just Brother? (Somewhere along the way, the priorities must have shifted.)

In the end, the best ship is Brawler and Hoodlum (lel).

Akudama 11

One more ep after this. I’m gonna miss this anime, even if it was crazy over-the-top and I didn’t finish it until after the day it ended.

I think the scariest scene in all of Akudama Drive is the one where the “cleaner” tosses the girl aside.

“This nowhere place!” – Around this time, the bunny and shark’s shirts say “morning”/”afternoon” (shark) and “evening” (bunny).

The blue bird of happiness…literally. That character on the birds is the one for “happy”.

…LOL, that one glitched Courier looks more like Cutthroat.

Hacker’s drone matches Courier’s head angles, LOL.

I guess if you think you’re falling in Kanto, you’re falling in Kanto and if you think you’re floating (like Courier did), you float. I always liked that concept.

War Games. Now the title makes sense!

…but they can be together if they stay here in Kanto as vessels for the citizens? (That sounds mighty antagonistic of me, but…that logic does compute.)

Maybe swindlers play games with the truth…? (What an interesting concept.)

“Just fine.” – I think Hacker needs a “This is fine” meme.

“We can hear your heart talking.” – It means something like “We can hear you spouting your true intentions.”

“…worth every last penny…” – That’s a weird thing to say for someone whose life got changed by 500 yen…Just goes to tell you how American the subbers can be sometimes.

Swindler’s smug face is so good, LOL.

Akudama 12 (FINAL)

This episode isn’t named after a movie. It’s named after the anime itself.

The TV says “Please watch away from the TV”, i.e. stand back from the TV while you watch.

“They came and stole the offerings…” – At this point, bunny’s shirt says “freedom” and shark’s says honpou, meaning “wild, uninhibited, rampant, extravagant”.

…where did Shikoku come from? Is that where Swindler and Sister landed after they tried going to the moon?

Ohh! That Christian imagery! That’s scary!

Is Akudama Drive a tragedy? No, I think…on the contrary, it’s a story of hope.

LOL, “s*** guy”.

I thought the girl had a bomb. Turns out she has a gun, which is…far worse, come to think of it.

Instead of red characters which say things about the situation, now Shark and Bunny have Hacker’s symbol on them.

There’s no way anyone who wasn’t immortal would survive the attack Courier took…

…why is it that falling over represents vulnerability in children in all of these stores where a war has happened and/or there’s a chase? Hmm?

Wow, Sister did everything with heels on…?!

Anyways, that was a fun time. See you next time!

#simulcast commentary #akudama drive #Chesarka watches Akudama Drive #taiso samurai #Gymnastics Samurai #HypMic #Hypnosis Mic #Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle - Rhyme Anima #moriarty the patriot #yuukoku no moriarty #Chesarka watches Yuukoku no Moriarty #Chesarka watches HypMic #Chesarka watches Taiso Samurai

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duck-duck-me · 5 years

Text

A bit of an endgame fix-it bullet fic

Two years pass, and Bucky and Sam have been saving the world while old man Steve Rogers watches from the sidelines. It’s good to have him around but its not the same.

In april of 2025 Steve Rogers dies in his sleep. He was 98, it was more than his time to go

Bucky doesn’t speak for 3 days, and Sam isn’t really much better.

The first time Bucky does speak its in Gaelic (a language nobody knew he spoke) It takes 4 more days for him to start speaking in english again.

Wanda comes back to mourn her friend and stays

The funeral is pretty small, but the murals, the pop culture is prolific. There is a mural that would put the one at the Smithsonian to shame painted on Bucky’s apartment building

A year passes, and things kinda go back to normal

Peter Parker, journalism student at NYU kinda becomes friends with Bucky and Sam.

And on an unrelated note, that dude Spiderman has been seen kicking it with Captain America and the Winter Soldier

Captain marvel and King T’Challa swing by when they can, even Thor comes back to earth to check in every now and again. After all Steve was one of his favorite midguardians.

Bucky accidentally meets a teenage girl who calls herself Ms Marvel in the sewer and becomes her mentor (Look Wolverine isn’t in the MCU so having Bucky as Kamala Kamm’s mentor makes the most sense)

They have an Avengers again

And Suddenly Those avengers find themselves fighting the KKK (Still Banking on Son Of Serpent) and they are scrambling. Former members of Hydra, people who didn’t quite come back right, and a whole new bread of racism that sprung up in the time between the break up and the snap are attacking citizens with full force, and the avengers can’t handle it.

They need Steve Rogers.

Wanda suggests that they go back in time to get him, “We bring him back for the mission then drop him off right where we found him. It shouldn’t mess up the timeline too much”

Bucky and Sam begrudgingly agree and decide that its best to send Wanda and Peter back to get him.

Look everyone is going to know who Bucky is, and Sam never wants to experience being a black man in the 1940s

Later that night Bucky confides in Sam. “I don’t think I will be able to handle watching him leave again”

“I don’t think any of us will, but between you and me, I don’t think anybody would fault you for going back with him.”

“I really don’t think I would be able to handle that either”

Sam swings an arm around him and says “I’m sorry bud”

The next morning Scott Lang helps them find Steve Rogers in time. He’s pretty hard to track considering he exists at every point in time for a solid 100 years. Turns out that 37 year old Steve will be at a lunch counter in June of 1945 at about 3 pm.

Steve did go back to see Peggy. He got that dance, he warned her about what would happen to SHIELD, told her to be there for Tony in December of 1991 because he was going to need somebody to love him. He got his chance to say goodbye, because he hadn’t when she died in 2016 and that had been eating away at him for 7 fucking years.

Steve was going to go back to the pad. He really was, BUT first he was going to get something to eat from his favorite lunch counter that got turned into a starbucks while he was in the ice.

And when he walked in who should he see but an old friend and a kid from queens

He doesn’t even have time to ask questions before Peter says “Look cap, sir we came from 2026 and things are a little crazy. We need your help. After we stop King Serpent we can totally bring you back to live out your days with Agent Carter.”

“So I can do what? I was just about to head back to Bruce and Bucky and Sam.”

Wanda looks at him. She has seen that memory of Steve on the bench in Bucky’s dreams. She held his hand while he cried about it once. But Steve isn’t lying. “You didn’t come back to Tony’s funeral. A way older version of you met Sam and Bucky there. He was waiting. You passed on your shield to Sam. Told them you got a life. That older version of you died. You stayed in 1945 with Peggy. You had a wedding ring, and you refused to tell us about it”

“Peggy has a husband and Kids, I would never take that away from her… And I would never abandon you guys without at least talking about it before hand.”

And then it hits Peter (Look he doesn’t have a 4.0 in college and a swanky internship at the daily bugle for nothing) “Shit we are the reason you don’t come back to the funeral. We are going to bring you back 3 years later. You don’t stay in the 40s, you just kinda experience time out of order.”

Wanda is quick as they come too, “That means the older version of you didn’t come from the past he came from the future. We have an extra vial of pym particles. Peter take him to sam right now, I need to go to 2024. I am so going to regret leaving you two alone together”.

It is a terrible idea really, but somehow Steve and Peter manage to not get in trouble for the 5 minutes that they aren’t supervised

In fact steve Spends all of that time asking Peter what the hell happened and how Bucky and Sam are doing.

Wanda finds herself in Bucky’s house in 2024. She bursts into the room saying “I just brought you back from 1940”

Steve grins “I remember. I bet you have a few questions.”

“Understatement of the year really” She decides to ask. She could just look into his head. That would be the easy option really, but Steve is her friend. He wouldn’t lie. “Do we bring you back to 1940”

“Nope, I came back from 2086 during the funeral and waited on that bench.”

“Who has the matching wedding band?”

“Really? You don’t want lottery numbers or the winners of the next 60 superbowls? You don’t want to know how we beat the serpent?”

“I think we’ve messed with time enough”

“Who do you think?”

She grins, “When do you guys actually get married?”

“2028, once we get back together, which I guess is soon for you, we stay that way. We fell into our old habits and this time we never had to let go.”

So she has to grill him “Who officiated, and who are the best men?”

“T’challa officiated, Sam was Bucky’s best man and you were mine.”

“What made you want to come back, or stay back”

“Bucky died. It was peaceful, and we had been married for 58 years. I’m not really meant to live without him.“

She gives him a huge hug then zaps herself back to 2026

Wanda actually gets back to Bucky and Sam before Steve and Peter do. “Peter and I were the reason that Steve didn’t come back.”

Bucky doesn’t even have time to blink at her in confusion before he has an arm full of time traveling super soldier. He can barely breathe when he hears Steve say “She told me its been 3 years since the funeral… I’m so sorry Bucky. I never wanted to leave”

And suddenly Sam is hugging them both, and all 3 of them are crying while Wanda is whispering something about Starbucks to Peter.

Look he has enhanced hearing, but he isn’t really paying attention right now, he is too focused on telling Steve how much he missed him

It takes a minute, but Wanda, Steve and Peter are able to explain everything, and Bucky, still crying just hugs him again “Thank you for staying”

“Buck, I wouldn’t give you up for the world… Any of you”

They fight the serpent, and they win. And they keep on being the Avengers. And Steve stays with them the whole time.

Steve is more than happy to let Sam be Captain America. The Captain is a champion for the underdogs, and Steve doesn’t really fit that bill any more. PLUS The nomad suit that fury’s personal costume designer (Agent Armani he called her?) is actually really cool, and its nice to have a low profile. He still saves the world, but now he has more time to draw (His online comic about a bunch of superheroes all living together in a tower is actually very popular, and all similarities between his characters and existing superheroes is purely coincidental) , and to show Bucky the modern world, his modern world.

Steve also takes the time to hang out with his niece Morgan, she is a smart kid, and she makes him help her fill out her WWII study sheets.

A number of things make Bucky want to tell Steve that he is in love with him. but the thing that finally pushes him over the edge is watching peter parker propose to his childhood sweetheart Michelle.

Bucky has barely said the words “I love you” before steve kisses him within an inch of his life.

Life goes on, and for once, Steve, Bucky, and Sam actually get to enjoy it (Even though they still get shot at a lot)

#Stucky #captain america #Steve Rogers #falcon #sam wilson #Winter Soldier #Bucky Barnes #Marvel #wanda maximoff #peter parker #mine

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frauleinsmaria · 6 years

Text

The Facebook Flub (1/3)

Summary: When Emma accidentally sends a friend request to the wrong person, she doesn't expect much to come of it. But maybe this accident is the best decision she's ever made.

Rated: T for now, potentially high T/low M in the future

Also on AO3

A/N: Inspired by a comment I came across on Instagram asking people to share how their long distance relationships began: "I added the wrong guy on Facebook that I met at the bar...the guy I added lived in Germany and I was in Canada. That accident...is now my husband."

A few changes to make it fit Captain Swan, plus a whole lot of support and cheerleading from @wellhellotragic , @profdanglaisstuff , and @thejollyroger-writer later, here we are! Thanks a million, ladies, you’re the best.

Going out was the last thing Emma wanted to do tonight. She had a long week dealing with a tough case at work, the weather reports were calling for snow, and she had a headache- not to mention the fact that she didn’t feel like being hit on by some drunk low life.

“Those are all reasons for you to go out then,” Ruby insisted when Emma relayed all of this to her over the phone. “It’s Friday night. You need to come let loose with your friends and forget about whatever else is on your mind. And you know I’ll gladly fight off anyone who bothers you.” It took similar texts from Elsa, Graham, David, and Mary Margaret for her to finally give in and join them. Which is how she found herself sitting at the bar at one of their favorite burger and beer places downtown.

She was drinking one of her favorite beers, with Graham on her left side flirting with the guy behind the bar, and a stranger on her right who had been talking her ear off about some upcoming movie since he sat down an hour ago. Emma wasn’t all that interested- in both him or whatever this movie is- but she listened anyway. She didn’t have the energy to join the rest of her friends at the dart boards, and at least this guy wasn’t trying to flirt. So when he suggested she add him on Facebook before he left, she’d had enough to drink that she saw little reason to object.

It wasn’t until he was gone when she opened the Facebook app on her phone and realized she wasn’t one hundred percent sure of his name. He’d introduced himself when he first took the seat beside her, but that had been several beers ago, not to mention the loud music in the bar making some of his words hard to hear.

It had been something different that she’d never heard before. Killiam James, maybe? she thought as she typed it into the search bar.

“I should’ve known.” Ruby appeared behind her, holding a glass of whatever she’d picked for her poison tonight. “Don’t tell me you came out just to sit on your phone by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself. Graham’s he-” She turned and saw that the man in question had apparently slipped off with the bartender without her noticing.”Huh. Or maybe not.”

Ruby sighed. “Come on, Emma. You know you wanna watch Mary Margaret kick David’s ass at darts.”

That was a statement she couldn’t argue with. “Hang on. Let me do this first.” But Ruby instead grabbed her by the arm and dragged her toward the dart boards, causing Emma to hit “add friend” for the first option in her search results without paying much attention to the name or profile picture.

The guy from the bar and the friend request had been forgotten about by the next morning when she woke up with a pounding headache and wondered exactly when she’d started getting old.

The events of that Friday night didn’t cross her mind again until the next weekend. She’d gone to see Captain Marvel with David and Mary Margaret, who were always willing to join her to watch any superhero movie despite both of them losing track of the plot at least half an hour in. It wasn’t the same as getting to experience it with someone as invested as she was, but years of going to the movies by herself when she was younger made Emma grateful for their company regardless.

They arrived at the theater early, battling the lines at the ticket booth and again at the concessions stand for overpriced popcorn and candy. The theater was already filling up after they’d gotten snacks. Emma stepped on quite a few feet to get to the only empty three seats together. Once they were settled, she pulled out her phone and opened the front camera. “Smile, guys!” Mary Margaret got the memo, but David looked like a deer in headlights in their selfie. This was definitely getting posted.

She made a few adjustments to the lighting before posting the photo on Facebook and Instagram. It’s Captain Marvel time!

The lights in the theater dimmed as the first movie trailer began to play on the screen. Emma silenced her phone and dropped it into her purse before grabbing a fistful of popcorn and settling into her seat.

It was over two hours later when the movie had ended and the three of them had arrived back at David and Mary Margaret’s house before she thought to check her phone again. There was a new text from Elsa about the shirt she’d borrowed last week and a handful of social media notifications. She opened Facebook first to see the response to her pre-movie selfie. It was when she started scrolling through the list of various reactions that an unfamiliar name caught her eye. Of course since she’d tagged David and Mary Margaret in the photo, several people who’d liked it weren’t Facebook friends of hers or people she knew. But this one stood out- it belonged to a person she’d never heard of before, and one who was apparently on her friends list.

Killian Jones. She frowned and clicked the link to open his profile page. They had no mutual friends, but sure enough, they were friends with each other. The brief amount of information listed under his personal details told her he lived in London and worked for a company named Ship Shape.

Emma quickly began to question just how she knew this Killian Jones. They hadn’t gone to college together; his profile listed him as an alum of a university in London she’d never heard of. He wasn’t in her line of work, so that wasn’t a possibility.

What if he had been a previous one night stand? No, that definitely wasn’t the case. She rarely got men’s names when those happened, let alone befriended them on social media.

And there was no way she would have forgotten a face like his. His current profile picture was taken from a distance on a beach somewhere, which made his features a bit harder to notice. The handful of previous ones were closer shots though. There were a few that looked like they were taken at some kind of professional event and a selfie with a dog she presumed was his. He was gorgeous, she realized as she quickly flipped through them. Piercing blue eyes, a head of dark hair that successfully toed the line between messy and polished with a five o’clock shadow to match. Yeah, she definitely would have remembered him.

Emma scrolled through a few more photos before she started to feel like she was crossing some sort of line. She had zero ideas on who this Killian Jones even was, and yet there she sat combing through the details of his Facebook profile as if they were close friends.

Contacting him seemed like the most logical thing to do. She opened Messenger, still annoyed that the feature wasn’t included with the regular Facebook app anymore, and typed out a brief message. Hey. Sorry if this seems weird, but I was wondering how you and I knew each other?

Her phone chimed with a response only a few minutes later. Not weird, love. Although I was wondering the same thing considering you’re the one who added me.

She stared at her phone screen and read the message again. There had to be some kind of mix up. Her friends list was on the small side, mostly former classmates and coworkers, and the people she regularly interacted with now. What reason would she have for sending a friend request to Killian Jones all the way in London-

And then it hit her. “Killiam James,” she groaned, remembering the guy from the bar the weekend before. If that was even his name. Emma blamed the combination of beer and loud music for the mix up, which explained why she’d added this guy with such a similar name.

What was she even supposed to say to Killian Jones now? The truth was ridiculous, and she couldn’t think of a lie that sounded even moderately believable.

Honesty won out in the end. “What does it matter? He’s never gonna meet me anyway,” she muttered as she started to reply. So, funny story. I thought I was sending a friend request to a guy with a name that’s really similar to yours and I just now realized my mistake. I’m sorry again because I know how weird this all probably sounds to you.

She hadn’t expected another reply. He’d probably delete her from his friends list after learning the reason behind the mishap and forget all about their brief interaction. What she got instead was a huge surprise. That’s quite alright. I suppose it could have happened to anyone. But, while we’re here, can I ask how the movie was?

Movie? Oh, right. She’d gone to see Captain Marvel tonight. His liking her photo was what started all of this. I liked it a lot. Keep in mind I haven’t read the comics, so I don’t know how accurate anything was. But it’s a great addition to the MCU if you ask me. And the cat was awesome.

I’m glad to hear that. I don’t know much about the comics myself, I just like the films as well. I’ll have to keep my eye out for the cat you speak of when I see it for myself.

This conversation was already a positive changed compared to the ones she usually had about Marvel movies. Most people, men especially, would make fun of her or call her a “fake fan” when she admitted she wasn’t familiar with the comics and didn’t really have plans to change that. Not only was Killian Jones not making fun of her preferences, he actually seemed to share them.

Emma soon found herself discussing everything from Endgame theories to the newest Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer with him. It wasn’t until her eyes grew heavy and she started yawning that she realized it was after midnight. Had this guy really stayed up until five in the morning to talk superheroes with her? Crap. I just realized what time it is. I’m really sorry if I kept you up. You’re probably exhausted.

No worries, Swan- can I call you that? As coincidence would have it, I’m a bit of an insomniac. I likely would still be awake now regardless. Plus, I work for my brother, so he can’t fire me for sleeping on the job unless he wants to lose his kids’ favorite babysitter.

Swan is fine- after all, it is my name. Although I still feel like you may need to apologize to your brother on my behalf.

Truthfully, she didn’t expect to hear from Killian again. Sure, they’d had a long conversation about a shared interest of theirs, but that didn’t mean he had any desire to continue talking to a stranger in the middle of the night. Or at any other time, for that matter.

Which is why Emma was caught off guard when she received another Facebook message from him a few days later. Hello, Swan. I know it’s the middle of the day where you are so you’re probably working, but I just saw Captain Marvel with a friend of mine and I needed someone to discuss the end credits scene with since he’s not nearly invested in this.

Their conversation soon left movies entirely and shifted to their everyday lives. Within the next hour, she learned that he was thirty-one, worked as a marketing executive for the shipping company owned by his brother, was the proud uncle of a nephew and two nieces, and spent most of his free time hiking or reading whatever fantasy novel was next on his to read list. Emma was more hesitant when it came to sharing specifics about herself for several reasons: talking about herself wasn’t exactly something she enjoyed, she barely knew this guy, plus, what if he really wasn’t the person he claimed to be?

If there’s one of us that ought to be suspicious, it’s him, she thought. You added him first; you could be the one Catfishing for all he knows.

Their once sporadic conversations soon became a nightly occurrence, switching from Facebook Messenger to texts once they felt comfortable with sharing numbers. (The short amount of time this took didn’t go unnoticed to Emma. She refused to let herself think too much about it.) Over time, it soon became easier to open up to him about a number of different things. Some days it was her favorite color or flavor of ice cream, others it was conspiracy theories she believed that dealt with people like Marilyn Monroe and Kurt Cobain. Emma rarely brought up her upbringing or personal life, and he never asked.

On nights when Killian’s insomnia was particularly brutal, they watched Netflix together, one of the few pastimes they could share considering the distance between them. They usually chose comedies, preferring shows like The Good Place and Parks and Rec so they wouldn’t miss much of the story if they got caught up in whatever conversation they were having at the same time.

The first phone call happened by accident when they’d been talking about three months. Emma had just got in from work and was debating between Chinese and pizza for dinner when her phone began to vibrate. She froze at seeing Killian’s name on the screen. Why was he calling her? They had never talked outside of Facebook and texts. Phone calls had never even come up once in their conversations.

“H-hello?” she answered after a moment. “Killian?”

“Oi, Jones, is this your girlfriend?” Not Killian then, although another man with an accent who sounded far from sober. She heard some sort of commotion in the background, followed by, “Give me back my bloody phone!”

“Um, hello, Swan.” His voice sounded exactly as she’d imagined. (Not that she’d spent that much time thinking on the subject. Not at all.) The accent was there, of course, but his voice was softer and he sounded considerably more under control than whoever had greeted her. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine. Killian, don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you calling me? Where are you?”

“Well, you see, a few of us brought Liam to the pub tonight for his birthday, but I realized I’d forgotten to tell you about it earlier. I know you wanted to start Brooklyn 99 tonight since we finished New Girl. Anyway, I was in the middle of typing out a message to you explaining all of this when Will took my phone and called before I could stop him.” He sighed. Emma had a feeling Will would get an earful as soon as this conversation was over; she heard a lot about him from Killian, mostly complaints. “I’m terribly sorry, love. I’m sure this must be awkward for you.”

“It’s fine, Killian. I appreciate you for telling me, but I know you probably have better things to do on a Friday night than watch Netflix with a stranger in Boston.” Although that was the gist of their relationship from an outside perspective, Emma’s heart sank at her own words. She thought more for this virtual stranger than she did most of the people she saw in person on a regular basis.

“Don’t talk like that, Swan. Besides, it would’ve been bad form to leave you hanging without an explanation.”

She should have known he would be a stickler for manners, even for something as trivial as a regular Netflix binge. “Thanks, Killian. Seriously though, go enjoy your night out. Sing ‘happy birthday’ obnoxiously loud to your brother and maybe don’t let anyone else take your phone. We’ll catch up on Netflix later, alright?”

“Alright, love. Goodnight.”

The next time Killian called, it was intentional. Neither of them thought much of it.

The calls (via WhatsApp to keep from spending a fortune) soon became a semi-regular part of their “routine.” They didn’t happen as often as the texts, however, since it was harder to both talk and vaguely pay attention to whatever show they were watching at any given moment. Talking on the phone often made it easy to forget the difference in time zone and the ocean between them, even when Killian said something particularly British, like “tosser” or “knackered.”

She and Killian had their first shared experience with FaceTime the night before the surprise party she and Mary Margaret have planned for David. Emma had been asked to make cupcakes, something she now regretted agreeing to as she stood in her kitchen dumbfounded by the assortment of ingredients strewn out across the counter.

As if on cue, her phone vibrated.

Killian: How are the cupcakes coming along?

Emma: They’re not.

Do I really have to mix the wet and dry ingredients separately? They all go in the same bowl in the end. And how much batter do I put in the cupcake liners without them blowing up like mushroom tops? I don’t get why I had to pick a recipe that calls for baking soda AND powder too.

Basically, I need to be able to snap my fingers and have a professional chef in my kitchen to take care of this.

Killian: I’m no professional, but if you want to FaceTime, I could possibly help walk you through it.

Of course he could. She’d quickly learned that Killian Jones was one of those people who was unfairly good at most if not all things.

Emma opened the camera app on her phone to get a look at her current appearance. An old Rolling Stones t-shirt that probably should have been thrown out years ago, her-square rimmed glasses, hair thrown up on the top of her head in a messy knot, and no makeup, not to mention the zit on her chin that she hadn’t gotten the chance to get rid of yet. It would have to do. They were friends, and he already knew what she looked like thanks to social media. And she didn’t have time or energy to freshen up before she got the stupid cupcakes taken care of.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered.

Her phone screen was taken up by Killian’s smiling face seconds later. “Hello, Swan.”

“Uh, hi.” Somehow he was even better looking in real time. It wasn’t fair. “You sure you’re up for this?”

“Come now, love. How hard can it be?”

“Consider who you’re dealing with, Killian. I almost cooked an oven mitt last week.” She didn’t add that it had happened due to their intense conversation on nineties one hit wonders and she’d been so distracted she hadn’t paid attention to where she’d placed the mitt after taking pizza out of her oven.

He barked out a laugh. “Something tells me chocolate cupcakes will smell much better. Do you have the recipe up?”

“Yeah. I’m sending it to you.”

Killian, being the good sport that he was, spent the better part of the next two hours going through the recipe step by step with her. Which was much easier said than done.

“You mean to tell me that not only do I have to mix the wet and dry ingredients separately, but I can only mix half of each together at a time?”

“Aye, that’s what the woman recommends.”

Emma had long since forgotten the name of the woman who’d posted the recipe online, but she had quickly become her worst enemy. “I should’ve just told Mary Margaret to make the damn cupcakes herself.”

“I highly doubt she could’ve gotten away with making cupcakes for her husband’s surprise party in their own house,” Killian noted.

How was it that he seemed to know her own family better than she did. “Yeah, well, then I should have bought cupcakes from the store and brought them to the party on one of my plates.” It would have at least saved the trouble of having a kitchen covered in flour, butter, and the other dozen or so ingredients she’d added to the mix.

She had just began pouring batter into one of the slots in her cupcake tin when Killian spoke up. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Swan.”

“Killian, I may have the cooking skills of a dustpan, but I do know that cupcakes have to be baked.”

“Right you are, but what about liners?”

“Come again?”

“You know, the paper things? You’re going to have an awfully difficult time without them.”

Of course. “Shit!” Hurling the mixing bowl at the wall now seemed like a great idea. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about that.”

“Hmm.” She heard the sound of computer keys typing as Killian looked something up. “Do you have parchment paper? Several sites list it as a possible substitute.”

“Wouldn’t that look kind of tacky though?”

“You don’t exactly have a lot of options, love, unless you’re willing to make a trip to the store.”

Emma glanced at the clock above her oven. It was past ten. A handful of stores would be open, but she didn’t have the energy or motivation to change into decent clothes to leave the apartment. “Parchment paper’s fine, I guess. What does it say I’m supposed to do?”

He quickly walked her through the process, which was much simpler than she presumed. After cutting the parchment paper into squares and folding them around a glass that was the same size as the slots in the cupcake pan, the problem was solved. They rewatched one of their favorite episodes of The Good Place while the cupcakes baked. She was so caught up in the show that she wouldn’t have remembered to turn off the oven if Killian hadn’t reminded her.

“So far, so good,” she told him once the pans had been taken out of the oven and placed on her counter. “They smell incredible.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Killian groaned. “The only form of chocolate I have in my flat is unsweetened cocoa powder.”

“Well, that’s just depressing.”

The icing process, while tedious, went over much more smoothly than the baking had.

“Swan, you’ve got chocolate icing all over your cheek now.”

“Maybe so, but I’ve got two dozen nice looking cupcakes. Isn’t that all that matters?”

“I suppose,” he agreed. “Although you’re just giving me something else to make fun of you for.”

He laughed when she stuck her tongue out at him.

She’d gone this far without sampling anything, too concentrated on not botching the cupcakes. But the sound of her stomach growling reminded Emma she’d never eaten dinner. “You think I can justify having a cupcake now if I don’t eat one at the party tomorrow?”

“After all the work you’ve put in, I believe you could justify two.”

“You, Jones, are a bad influence,” she said, taking the nearest cupcake and pulling off the parchment sheet liner.

“A bad influence who reminded you of the importance of cupcake liners.”

“Ugh. I hate it when you’re right.” Emma took a hearty bite of the cupcake and couldn’t hold back the moan that escaped her lips. “Ohmgod.”

Killian was quiet for a moment. Then, “I presume it’s good?”

“It’s not good, it’s fantastic. I never thought I’d say that about something I made.” Another bite elicited the same reaction, her eyes closing as she savored the rich chocolate taste. This caused her to miss Killian blush as his eyes shifted away from the screen.

“Erm, well, I’m very glad to hear that.”

The cupcakes, thankfully, are a hit. Several people at David’s party ask Emma for the recipe, a few eve complimenting the unique choice of liners. Her own brother was skeptical that she’d made them herself.

“I did!” she insisted. “I mean, Killian provided moral support via FaceTime, but all the manual labor was my accomplishment.” Her family and friends have known about her unconventional friendship with Killian for awhile now. Most of them went along with the idea, although a few were skeptical that her virtual friend was really the person he claimed to be.

“You and this guy have gotten pretty close, haven’t you?” David was one of those skeptical people.

She shrugged. “Kind of. I guess we’re as close as friends can get when they’re on opposite sides of the pond and have never met in person.”

“And you’re sure he’s not, what’s the word, fishing with you?”

“The term is catfishing, David. And the answer is no, considering we FaceTimed during the cupcake ordeal and his face matches the one in all of his pictures.”

“If you say so. I just don’t want you to risk getting hurt.” He almost always went into Protective Big Brother mode whenever Emma referenced a guy in any capacity, and this was no exception.

“I appreciate that you care about me, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about considering the circumstances. The chances of the two of us meeting are basically nonexistent.”

A few days later, they were on their third episode of Schitt’s Creek of the night and discussing each other’s uneventful work days when he brought it up. “So, uh, Liam has been talking about sending me away for work sometime soon.”

“That’s cool. Does he want you to go back to the Dublin office again?” Emma remembered that he’d taken a short trip to Ireland for business not long after they’d became friends.

“Actually, no.” He paused. “He’s made a few comments about Boston this time.”

Any interest she had in the episode they’d been watching was long gone. “Oh really?”

“Yeah. Sometime next month, if nothing changes.”

Her next words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I know a semi decent tour guide who lives in that neck of the woods if you have some free time while you’re here. And, y’know, if you’d be up for that.”

“I think that could be arranged.” She couldn’t see Killian, but somehow she knew he was smiling.

Emma didn’t start freaking out until the day before his flight. She was at Elsa’s apartment with Mary Margaret and Ruby, drinking wine and eating Elsa and Anna’s homemade cookies at the kitchen table. She was on her third- okay, maybe it was her fourth- snickerdoodle, only half participating in the conversation when she glanced up and saw the three of them staring at her.

“Do I have something on my face?”

Mary Margaret gave her a knowing look. “Have you been listening to anything we’ve said?”

“Yeah, of course I have.”

“Emma, I just said that Granny was having surgery next month, and your response was, ‘that’s cool,’” Ruby deadpanned.

Her face flushed red with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. Just have a lot on my mind I guess.”

“Is something goin- oh!” Elsa exclaimed. “Aren’t you finally meeting that friend of yours from London tomorrow?”

“Yeah. His plane is supposed to come in at two, then I’m meeting him for dinner and a little sightseeing before his meetings start the next day.”

“That’s really all you’ve got planned for him?” Ruby waggled her eyebrows over the rim of her wine glass.

Emma rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Ruby. He’s just my friend.”

“Your very attractive male friend, who you talk either to or about nonstop,” Mary Margaret added.

She shot her an annoyed glance. “I thought family was supposed to be on my side.”

“I am on your side! I want you to be happy, and I’m just saying maybe you should be open to the possibility that Killian could have something to do with that.”

Leave it to her sister-in-law to bring Emma’s love life (or lack thereof) into the conversation. ““Don’t get any ideas, Mary Margaret. I love that you’re an eternal optimist, but everything else aside, he lives over three thousand miles away. I never thought we would actually meet.”

“People do long distance all the time,” Elsa chimed in. “Anna and Kristoff did for several months when he was away doing research about climate change in the North Pole. It wasn’t easy, but they got through it and are happier than ever now.”

She wanted to remind Elsa that her sister and her fiance had been together for over two years before this, but disregarded the thought. “I know you all mean well- even though it seems like Ruby just wants me to get laid- but can we change the subject? Killian is my friend. That’s all there is to it.”

Even as she said the words, Emma wondered for the first time whether that was actually true.

Her intention had been to sleep in the next morning since she’d gone ahead and taken the day off. But, much to her dismay, she was wide awake at seven. By ten she’d gone for a run, showered, eaten breakfast, and cleaned most of her apartment. It was tempting to blame the random burst of energy on wanting to be productive while she had the time to spend at home, but that wasn’t it.

She was excited to see Killian. And the closer that came to happening, it terrified her too.

For starters, what if they didn’t mesh as well in person as they did online or over the phone? It sounded silly just to think about, but maybe actually being in each other’s space for the first time would somehow change how their friendship worked.

The conversation she’d had with her friends the day before wasn’t helping matters either. What they’d said shouldn’t have been getting to her like it was. Every argument she’d made against their insinuations about her and Killian had been true.

Then why have you barely paid attention to other guys since the two of you started getting close? The thought came to her once she’d started walking laps around the apartment just to keep her busy. Dating for her had been a rare occurrence since Neal almost ten years earlier. Walsh was the one exception, and things with him hadn’t gone much better. One nighters happened now and then when she wanted to scratch an itch without having strings attached. But even one of those hadn’t happened in months.

She didn’t even know whether or not Killian had been seeing anyone. Her first assumption was no. He’d never once mentioned dating, and, regardless, he’d spent the majority of his nights over the past handful of months talking to her. His unconventional friendship with her on top of his job and his family didn’t give her the impression he had a lot of time for dating.

Emma glanced at the clock on her phone. It was just after twelve. “Dammit.” Even with traffic, it would be at least another hour and forty-five minutes before she needed to leave unless she just wanted to drive in circles around the airport.

“Screw it,” she said at one-thirty after she’d won her fourth game of solitaire. TSA might give her hell about parking if she had to wait a bit for Killian, but she couldn’t sit around her apartment much longer without losing her mind.

There was a knock on her door just as she was pulling on her jacket and boots. She went to the door and found her brother standing with his arms crossed over his chest. “Hey, David.”

“Oh, good. I was hoping I’d catch you in time.”

“In time for what?” she asked. “I’m about to leave for the airport.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m coming with you.”

He’d known she was going to meet Killian today for over a week and had yet to mention this to her. “What? Why?”

“I don’t want you going alone, Emma. It’s not safe; you’ve never met this guy.”

She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? I could understand if I’d met a guy on a dating site or something, but I’ve known Killian for months now, David. I’m pretty confident that I’m not picking up a serial killer.”

The frown on his face hadn’t budged. “Either way, I’d still like to meet him before I leave you alone with him. Gotta let him know what he’s dealing with if he hurts you.”

Emma checked the time on her phone again. “Ugh. Let’s go,” she groaned. “You’re not gonna let this go, and I don’t have time to argue with you about it.”

Any nerves she’d felt before had briefly been alleviated by the desire to strangle David. The drive to the airport was spent with her hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel so she wouldn’t wrap them around his neck instead.

“Are you gonna insist on spending the day with us too?” she asked as she pulled into the airport’s parking lot and looked for the garage for short term parking.

He shrugged. “Not sure yet. Ask me again once I’ve met him and had a chance to evaluate.”

“You’re insufferable, you know that?”

“I’m your older brother. That’s my job,” he insisted.

Emma parked in the short term garage connected to the airport. There was no point in trying to wait at the curb since she knew they’d be asked to move. She and Killian had decided to meet at the landside area, so she sat and waited for a text that he’d arrived and tried to ignore David tapping his fingers against the passenger door.

Her phone vibrated a few minutes later. Hello, Swan. Just wanted to let you know I’m waiting for my luggage and then I should be good to go.

Emma swallowed hard as she got out of the car on shaking legs. This was it.

She was too anxious to object when David followed her out of the garage and into the airport; she’d known better than to expect him to wait in the car for them.

When they’d entered the waiting area, Emma quickly scanned the room for a familiar face, coming up short. This was the place where they’d agreed to meet, wasn’t it? He’d sent her the text just minutes ago confirming their plans. What were the chances the nerves had gone to her head and made her mix something up?

She was so lost in thought she failed to hear the footsteps coming up behind her. “Someone in particular you’re looking for, love?”

They’d FaceTimed on several occasions and shared more ridiculous Snapchats than necessary. Emma knew what to expect. And yet, somehow, she’d been all wrong. His eyes were so much brighter and vibrant in person, there was no way to accurately capture that on camera. There was a tinge of red to his hair and scruff she’d never noticed. She liked it. A lot.

“Hello, Swan.” Shit. His already perfect smile was somehow better in person too. It wasn’t fair.

“Killian. Hi.” How could she have talked to him for hours on end over the past few months and be at a loss for words now?

They stood in silence for a moment, each trying to take the other in. Emma wasn’t sure how she was supposed to greet him. Was their friendship advanced enough to permit a casual hug? Or should she stick to a handshake?

David solved that problem for her, stepping between the two of them and extending his hand to Killian. Emma had all but forgotten that he’d come with her.

“So,” he said, using what could only be called his Protective Big Brother voice, “you’re the British guy.”

“Seriously?!” Emma hissed loud enough for only him to hear as Killian accepted the handshake.

“Aye. And you must be David.”

Her brother looked taken aback. He must have been under the impression Killian had no idea he existed. “Uh, yeah. Emma’s mentioned me then?”

“Oh, yes, several times. She tells me you’re quite the Orioles fan.”

Uh oh. This had the potential to be a recipe for disaster. David did not take comments about his notoriously terrible favorite team lightly. If Killian made any patronizing remarks about the Orioles, any chance at getting on her brother’s good side was doomed.

“I’ve caught highlights from a few games online before,” Killian continued. “Always admired Ripken.”

Emma let out an audible sigh of relief. Killian may very well have been lying through his teeth to appease David, but at least he’d avoided making a bad first impression. “Yes, well,” she butted in, “David’s just here for the ride. We’re dropping him off back at his apartment on our way.” She shot her brother a look that told him not to argue.

The first few minutes in the car were filled with awkward silence as Killian fidgeted in his seat, clearly used to a steering wheel in front of him on the right side, while she tried to ignore David’s presence in the back.

“How was your flight?” she asked after a moment as they headed in the direction of David and Mary Margaret’s building.

“All right. Bit of turbulence, but nothing terrible. The airplane food, on the other hand.” Emma saw him cringe out of the corner of her eye and tried not to laugh. “I’ll be more than happy to see what restaurants you have to recommend in the city.”

“Anything particular you’re up for? Most places aren’t gonna be busy at this time of day. And no, he’s not coming,” she added, glaring at David in the rearview mirror before he had a chance to chime in.

Killian pursed his lips. “Eh, would you judge me if I said I just wanted a good, American cheeseburger?”

She laughed. “That was the last thing I expected. But no judgment here, Tony Stark.”

“I’m perfectly fine with that comparison.” He grinned. “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist…”

“I’m sorry, playboy?” David questioned. Someone didn’t know his movie references.

They arrived in front of David’s building minutes later. “Okay, here we are, you’re welcome for the ride home, talk to you later, bye.” Emma must have gotten her point across since he got out of the car with no objection other than a shake of his head.

“I’m really sorry about that.” She glanced at Killian apologetically as she pulled back out into traffic. “I didn’t know he was going to show up and insist on coming with me, or I would have warned you.”

“It’s quite alright, Swan. He was just looking out for you. If I’m being truthful, not wanting you to be alone when you met someone you’d come across online isn’t an unreasonable request.”

“I totally get that to a certain extent, but I know you well enough to trust that you’re not, like, a serial killer. Unless you have something you wanna tell me.”

He barked out a laugh. “Rest assured, love, I have no blood on my hands. At least, none but my brother’s when we were lads.”

“Let me guess, it was always Liam who started it?”

“Sure. We’ll go with that.”

Traffic was light at that point in the afternoon, the two of them arriving at Emma’s chosen destination sooner than she was expecting. “This place might not look like much,” she told him as she pulled into a parking spot in front of Granny’s, “but she’s got the best burgers and fries, excuse me, chips, in town as far as I’m concerned.”

“And grilled cheese and onion rings as well, I presume?”

“You’re a smart man, Killian.”

The diner was fairly empty as well, just an older couple drinking milkshakes at the bar and a group of college students crowded around a table with a stack of textbooks.

“Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to sit?” she asked Killian.

“No. It’s your pick.”

They took a booth near the back of the diner. Emma handed him one of the plastic menus and flipped through one herself, even though her order had been virtually the same over the years. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt her to branch out a little more with her choices, even if it was just getting a burger or chicken club instead of a grilled cheese for once.

A waitress came to take their orders after a few minutes. Killian requested the cheeseburger he’d wanted with fries, the American term sounding foreign on his lips. She ordered the same.

“No grilled cheese and onion rings? Are we sure this is the real Emma Swan?” Killian asked, feigning concern.

She shrugged. “I’m trying to live a little. And for someone like me, that’s apparently as simple as ordering a burger. Or maybe you’re just a bad influence,” she teased.

“Oi! I wasn’t a bad influence when I helped you make cupcakes in your time of need.”

“Yeah, yeah, technicalities.”

There was a long pause as Emma tried to figure out what to say next. She wondered if Killian was having similar thoughts. This was an easier problem to remedy when they were texting or talking on the phone and she could turn the conversation to whatever show they were on at the time. Even still, there wasn’t the added component of having him across from her to sense any awkward tension between them.

Killian broke the ice. “I’ve been meaning to ask, Swan, have you ever seen One Day At a Time? Been seeing a lot about it online lately.”

“I haven’t actually.” She should have remembered most of their best conversations began with shows. “You know how I feel about good sitcoms though.”

“Aye. Perhaps we’ll add it to our unofficial to watch list?”

“I like the way you think, Jones.”

They talked for awhile about the season of Schitt’s Creek they were working on until the waitress brought their food a few minutes later. The conversation had somehow turned to which of Moira’s wigs would look best on him. It was hard not to laugh as Killian nearly swallowed his beloved cheeseburger whole.

“Don’t judge me,” he said through a mouthful of fries when he noticed Emma snickering. “I was bloody starving.”

“Clearly.” She dipped one of her own fries in the generous pile of ranch dressing on the side of her plate. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have so easily done away with all that English charm us Americans aren’t civilized enough to have.”

“What do you mean ‘done away with’? I’ll have you know I’m always charming, love.”

“Says the man who has ketchup on his chin.”

Killian’s face reddened as he grabbed a napkin and wiped off said ketchup. It was barely enough to be noticeable, but she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to tease him a bit.

As they ate, the conversation shifted from shows to Killian’s work and what he’d be doing in Boston over the next few days. She didn’t know much about his job, other than that he worked for Liam and their company provided parts and equipment for ships. While the company’s primary clientele was located in the London area near their home office, they were looking to expand to other areas as well, hence the meetings Killian had flown over to attend.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but why were you the one to make the trip instead of Liam?” she asked. “I don’t really know how a lot of business procedures work, but it seems like he would be the one to handle stuff like that considering he’s over everyone else.”

“Aye, you would think so. But the truth of the matter is, Liam’s tied up with so much within our office. Not to mention he doesn’t like making trips now since he’s got Belle and the kids. From both of those angles, it makes more sense for me to handle as much of the international business as I’m qualified for since I truly have nothing tying me down in London nowadays.”

Emma hated the way her heart skipped a beat at his words. If he had nothing tying him down at home, did that also mean there was no girlfriend there too?

(Could she ask him something like that without him seeing right through her?)

“That’s, uh, great,” she told him, trying to get back to the point of the conversation. “That you’re able to travel for him. I’m sure you get a lot of cool opportunities and stuff.”

“Opportunities like getting to eat an American cheeseburger while I have a face to face conversation about sitcoms?”

“Exactly.”

Killian asked a handful of questions about her job, how she liked her boss and coworkers, if she’d dealt with any major cases lately.

“Not really. It’s mostly the usuals, cheating husbands and deadbeat parents.”

He frowned. “Pity situations like those occur enough to be ‘usuals.’”

“It’s enough to make me want to throw in the towel sometimes if I’m being honest. These people are lucky enough to have a family in the first place, and they just throw it to the side like it means nothing to them.”

Emma didn’t realized what she’d said until it was too late. While she’d become comfortable enough with Killian to share certain details about her personal life over the past few months, her upbringing in foster care was the one subject she’d avoided. She’d heard stories of his and Liam’s upbringing by their single mother, who died when Killian was in college. The only family she’d ever mentioned to him was David, and he didn’t even know they weren’t actually siblings.

But that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have at Granny’s in the middle of the afternoon. She wasn’t sure how much time he had free to spend with her, or when she would see him again. If you even will, she thought.

Sensing her discomfort, Killian reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. “Is everything alright, love?”

The feeling of his hand in her own stopped Emma’s train of thought. She almost hated how comforting it was. “Yeah, it’s nothing.” She gave what she hoped looked like a genuine smile. There was no need to waste her time with him focusing on bad memories. “What do you say we pay the bill and go do some sight seeing? Boston isn’t New York or LA, but it can be fun. I think so anyway.”

“Sounds like a plan, love.”

They bickered at the cash register over who was going to pay. Killian wanted to be a gentleman, Emma wanted him to feel like her guest in some way. She somehow won. “You can buy me a bear claw at my favorite bakery later if you really want to,” she told him as she swiped her debit card through the reader and he stood to the side pouting.

She and Killian were heading for the door when a familiar face entered the diner. The sight of Ruby made Emma consider grabbing Killian and hiding him.

“Emma!” Her friends’ eyes lit up when she spotted them, red lips breaking out into a grin.

“Hey, Rubes. I didn’t think you were working today.” She would have taken Killian to eat somewhere else otherwise. Emma loved her friend, but something told her Ruby would have less of a filter than usual around him.

“I wasn’t, but Ashley had a doctors’ appointment and asked me to cover her shift.” She glanced around Emma to get a look at Killian. “Oh, is this the English guy? You didn’t tell me he was hot.”

The urge to crawl under the nearest table was tempting. “Uh, yeah,” she said, her face reddening, even more so when she realized it sounded like she was agreeing with Ruby’s comment. She turned to Killian. “This is my friend, Ruby. Granny’s is, well, her grandmother’s.”

Ruby held her hand out to him. “It’s so nice to put a face with the name. Emma talks about you all the time.”

Emma shot her a death stare as Killian accepted the handshake and brought her hand to his lips. “It’s a pleasure, love. I’ve heard quite a bit about you as well.”

“Such a charmer.” Ruby’s grin widened. “I love it.”

“Yeah, well, we were just leaving, and I know you have to get to work.” She grabbed Killian’s hand and pulled him out the door before Ruby had another chance to embarrass her. “Bye!”

Emma groaned as soon as the door to Granny’s had shut behind her. “I’m sorry about that. She means well, but she tends to come off a bit strong.”

“No worries, Swan. I can’t say I have many objections with a woman who so freely acknowledges my good looks.” He smirked, and she couldn’t help but think how much she wanted to kiss the smile off of his face.

Which she wasn’t going to do. Because that would be ridiculous. “Yeah, I’m never gonna let her live that down.”

She moved her car to a free public lot and spent the next hour with Killian, walking around downtown Boston to show him some of her favorite spots in the area. She pointed out the precinct where she often dropped off bail jumpers, the library, her favorite coffee shop, and the bakery that made the best bear claws in town.

“You can definitely return the favor from lunch now,” Emma told him when they entered the shop and she caught a whiff of something that smelled like butter and cinnamon.

“Whatever the lady wishes.”

“The lady definitely wishes for a bear claw. Or five.”

In the end she requested one, although Killian told the attendant to add another to her bag. “In case you’d like one for the weekend and don’t feel like making the trip.”

“Bold of you to assume I’ll let it go uneaten for that long.”

They sat at a bench outside the bakery since the weather was nice. Mid September in Boston was often ideal since it was still warm without being unbearably hot. Emma took one of her bear claws out of the paper bag and bit into it, letting the warm dough melt in her mouth. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” she told Killian, who had started eating his blueberry scone.

“I’ll take your word for it, Swan. You know I’m not fond of raisins.”

“Whatever.” She feigned disappointment. “More for me.”

It occurred to Emma that she had yet to ask another important question. She had no idea how long he would be in Boston, and if she would get to see him again after today. Killian had mentioned in previous conversations that he had a handful of meetings over the following two days, but nothing about what his schedule looked like or when he would be flying back.

Killian picked up on her unspoken apprehension. “What’s going on in that head of yours, love?”

She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Hadn’t she decided she wasn’t going to waste time worrying while he was there? “It’s nothing,” she insisted again. Killian’s expression suggested he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t press the issue.

“Did I tell you my nephew is into Peppa Pig now?” she asked, knowing he might like this change of subject. “He’s, like, fascinated with the British accents and tries to talk like the characters all the time now. It’s hilarious.”

His eyes lit up. “Is that so? I like this lad already. Although I do prefer Percy Pigs myself. It’s a type of candy,” he explained when her eyebrows shot up. A quick Google search provided a photo of what he was referring to, which was, as suggested, a gummy in the shape of a pig’s head.

It was weird, if she was being frankly honest, but Leo would love them. “Kid’s definitely getting an order of these for his next birthday.”

Emma finished her bear claw and wiped her mouth with a napkin from the bakery. But she must have not done an adequate job. Killian leaned over. “You missed a spot, love,” he said, brushing his thumb at the corner of her mouth. Any reply she had was forgotten with the gesture as she became hyper focused on the brief but startling feeling of his touch.

“Uh, thanks.” The words came out raspy and uneven.

Her reaction seemed to make Killian realize what he’d done. “Apologies, Swan. I wasn’t thinking.”

She couldn’t stop herself from blurting out the question that followed. “What are we doing here, Killian?”

#cs ff #cs au #captain swan #captain swan fic #captain swan ff #captain swan fanfiction #cs mc ff #meredith writes

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tammyhybrid21 · 6 years

Text

Words on Superheroes

Let’s talk about a trope that people like.

Or rather a concept that people like. Superheroes. Superheroes and superpowers. This comes more or less directly as a result of my brother constantly bursting into my room and discussing it... also as an aside, there’s also the face that Boku no Hero Academia is still somewhat popular. One Punch Man, and everyone still enjoys Marvel and DC so yeah.

Let’s talk about this.

Yeah, this...

So where do I begin... maybe with my own experiences with the trope... which y’know that’s always a good place to begin, whether or not it goes anywhere... so here I go. In my experience, superheroes are just one of those things that has crept into more or less everything... Or at least the concept of beings with otherworldly or otherwise alien/superpowers has crept into more or less everything. Whether it’s your typical super speed, telekinesis or super strength, or even flight, it’s hard to argue that it’s not something that we’re fascinated with.

So, what are my experiences with it...

Well, first off, let’s get the most awkward example out of the way... my Sonic Fandom days... Yes... you heard that right, Sonic Fandom. I uh... went through many phases while I was in Sonic... so you know that’s all good and cool, and...

But yeah.

I’d have to say that Sonic the Hedgehog and his fandom would be what first introduced me properly to the concept of characters with superpowers... before that I was vaguely aware of the superhero fandom, but not really interested in it or anything... I mean, sure there was Spiderman... but... anyway... let’s move onto why this is important...

Furries... And the Furry Fandom...

Yes, I cringe. I cringe because back in the day I was definitely on the fringes of it. Mainly with the Sonic Fandom, which was also where I got into the concept of superpowers, notably superpowered anthros. Because it seemed to be a fandom rule. If you had an OC, they had to have some kind of extra special ability. They couldn’t just be straight forwards...

Which lead to a slew of characters... and well, many of those characters are still around, albeit no longer as Sonic characters... rather... more... general anthro characters. And I’m not really going to talk too much about them... but it is something that I do need to mention... Especially since that’s a concept that I keep returning to in various different iterations as well.

And of course, there’re my surviving OCs who are still around and in use.

Notably, the Fox Triplets, Buziba, and Mana, yeah. Aside those guys, there’s Tony, Zeke, Tamara Alto, The entirety of the Solar and Luna Kingdoms, Vidiarka, Speedy & the rest of the Secret Freedom Fighters... and if I keep going I’m just going to end up with a giant list of characters who you’re going to have no way of decoding or understanding... all you people need to know really is... I have literally hundreds of characters from my Sonic Days...

And the majority of them have some sort of power or other oddity about them. Which alright... I can give my younger self kudos for creativity.

But that’s where I need to get to the point. In the context of the wider universe did it make sense to have over a hundred characters each with their own powers and abilities? Not really... Even as different and as varied as they are... it’s kind of ridiculous looking back that absolutely everyone seems to have some sort of ability...

And sometimes they couldn’t even use them.

Buziba with his telepathy/empathy and the inability to turn it off, Mana literally being time personified in the end... no literally, he was and still is. A small five year old known as the Son of Time... Weak in body, but in spirit and mind-- yeah not so much... And then there was Tai, the ten year old mutt with a “jinx”... And those are the simple ones...

“Simple”

Some like Tamara, my first OC, and kind of obvious self-insert was a bit more complicated with her electrokinesis that also gave her super speed and the ability to absorb electricity and withstand it... Of course I do vaguely recall that she had an upper limit of... I think it was around 50,000 watts? Maybe, I dunno, I can barely remember. And I apparently didn’t have it in her profile... So you know, that was a thing.

That was a thing...

I can’t find the full information on... Aside her, there was her cousin who was a pyrokinetic... and well, her squad of siblings. Who I can vaguely recall all had their own similar vein abilities. Runs in the family and all you know... her slightly younger brother was water, the twins were both earth, Freedom water... she was kind of the odd one out huh... then again fitting...

Of course, Sonic Fandom was also the fandom that spawned my habit of making young characters the most OP things ever--

Mana isn’t the only example of that...

There’s these guys.

These guys... known as the Emerald Children, or the personified Chaos Emeralds... and yes I still have them, and they still look like this. So I should probably give you the basic rundown... But that’s a bit... heh... kind of weird to think about... But for the basic of basic explanations each character had an assigned element and their name vaguely linked them to it.

Scintilla-Energy-Fennec Fox, Ignis-Fire-Chinese Dragon, Alchemy-Light-Gerbil, Hydro-Water-Bottlenose Dolphin, Noctis-Shadows-Honey Badger, Dust-Eartth-Mole and Aero-Air-Masked Owl

Pretty obvious and basic... and since they appeared as kids, of course they were going to be in the Chaos business. They’re kids... how could you expect them to be anything else? Also... I remember having a kind of logic behind their species... But I never really wrote down exactly what that logic was so...

All I’m going to be able to tell you is what their species even are... and before anyone asks... yes they are still those species, and they are still the personification of Chaos Children... Which is still a fun topic... but not one I’m going to get into...

Also these kids... along with Dino, and Inu existed long before Mana...

But you know... I’m not going to talk too much about that, since it’s not really relevant, aside the fact that yeah... really, really young characters with near godlike abilities... Each of them literally personified the element that they were associated with, along with the rest of the power of Chaos...

Which... you know... chaos in Sonic is a little bit ill defined... what even is it? Some kind of magic force, who knows.

It’s chaos we’ll leave it at that.

So... moving on from Sonic, the second fandom that really introduced me to Superheroes as a proper concept was Marvel. Which... actually happened because of a friend of mine. We had this whole concept, a whole story... A whole series actually planned regarding the Marvel universe...

And this is where things get... well weird. You see, I still have all the notes from that whole idea, and it was spawned with some help from the Superpower’s Wiki and the random generator. We both hit the randomize button, twice mind you.. and those were our powers...

If anyone asks, I’m not sure if I’ll answer what mine were but for a small hint of the endgame, the entire thing was to be called Unlikely Balance once it was all done and finished... why is this important...

Because this is where I started to think a hell of a lot more about the concept of powers and the world. At this time, I was still deeply into Sonic and the majority of my OCs were still getting random powers... Sometimes... rather literally.

You see, as a concept Unlikely Balance forced me to stop and actually ask some questions in regards to the world and the characters that we were using, particularly our main trio...

I mean, it was just the two of us who were going to Author it but...

Three main characters.

Genevive Stone/Vidal, Tamika Lore/Mortimer and Lachlan Garvin

And shit... 104 pages worth of discussion and ideas... which... wow... okay... looking at that is very, very intimidating. Especially with the understanding that it started as just us two playing around with the concept of us having powers and then kind of wondering, but what if...

Which lead to a buttload of discussion. And again, it was really the first time I had thought of powers beyond the small perspective of, a character with powers... Since the Marvel Universe really was quite extensive and wild... which meant that we had to figure some things out... especially in regards to how the characters met, whether they knew each other before and in the greater scheme of things what their powers meant...

Of course they begun as just... you know... kids. Kids who had to grow up...

They started the whole series as nine year olds, after all. Which meant we had to really factor in how having those abilities would affect those around them, and what protocols would be followed. How would their families treat them over the abilities and everything--

And I really don’t know if I would be able to really dig through a 104 page document to find all the most important details... Also, by the end it had shifted I remember, from being a Marvel story to potentially an original one... since all that we really needed were our main three characters and the plot.

There was a lot in there actually.

Politics, Laws and the ideas of what exactly is legal for a superhero, and the musings on Secret Identities... to a cult after our main trio because they had a greater destiny due to a time travel screw-up and paradox plot... which... wow-- what a detail to just remember right?

Also there was some stuff about growing up and dealing with that, because of course, they start as kids and the world has some lessons to show them. Which gets into the morality arguments of the whole issue.

Which were huge.

Morality.

Is it right for a superhero to kill, or what?

Which while I won’t go into too much detail... the whole issue is kind of hinted at with their names, along with their ultimate fates... which you know... I’m not going to spoil because there’s the hope that maybe we can or will finagle this into an actual story at some point... maybe.

Who knows?

I mean I sure don’t... right now it’s just a lot of discussion and chaos and well, you know. Needs a lot of sorting...

But on the topic of whether or not it was right to kill villains... well, the two main character’s had what I remember as being somewhat opposing views on death, and whether killing was alright... in fact it spawned a sub-plot where they have to deal with the whole issue... which is kind of funny when it comes down to it because the one who’s more... “morally upright” was the one who was more alright with killing and the one who killed first...

And isn’t that an issue.

But at the same time that’s a huge conflict right there... the plot of an entirely arc... Also I forgot how often a character dies and then comes back to life in this... which is another thing I suppose that I should touch on, but even in context it’s... weird.

Or tricky...

But you know, it was our loophole to deal with how often a superhero would die only to come back... and it was because of clones... Which you know, that’s a perfectly logical explanation one of the trio had the ability to make clones, and those clones would tie to the souls of them, so each time they died, they merely woke up in the body of one of the clones, keeping the experiences...

Which--

Which actually made their ages rather fuzzy if I’m going to be completely honest because the clones didn’t really age from the point that they were first made unless they were disconnected-- which also had a couple of clone villains involved and boy wasn’t that a whole huge mess...

I also don’t remember the order of events as clearly as I would like to-- I mean, I have each arc written but-- well that doesn’t matter as much.

But there was a lot of themes explored in that whole mess, because it wasn’t as simple as here are a bunch of characters with powers go. Unlike in the Sonic Fandom, where it was just... most people seem to have powers for one reason or another... or at least the majority of them do.

So we got into the whole, Mutants, Metas and Aliens-- which alright. There was also time-travel and the exploration of where these powers came from albeit only a base touch down. And since it was Marvel, you can bet we delved into what about the normal human population and all that.

It-- It was heavy.

But ultimately incomplete, and while that did delve into the darker side, it ultimately became just another story about growing up.

Just with superpowers.

Aside that there’s my... Lunia Series.

Which is actually funnily enough a bit of a BNHA story before Boku no Hero Academi-- what if, what if everyone in the world had powers? That was the entirety of the Lunia Series. And... there wasn’t actually all that much more to think about--

Wait

Actually

The Lunia Series started with one character, and one concept. Like legitimately it started with a character concept of someone with invisibility-- a character who struggled to be seen at all. I mean that was what I started with... and then came the royalty plot, and her “friend” Max-- it grew an awful lot.

And I mean a lot, there’s a whole series-- which actually means I need to stop and talk about this a little bit, because the Lunia Series was my first big project and one of the stories from it... well that was my first year’s NaNoWriMo story...

An absolute mess, I mean I definitely learnt from it... but the issue with that mess, was well-- I got to the word count and hadn’t even hit the first major climax in the story yet. Which okay fair, fair, guess it really was going to be a superhero story-- except Prophecy wasn’t.

It was a story set in the same universe, with another ton of wold-building and ideas like Unlikely Balance... but... You know...

I had a super, super vague idea of the plot for that...

guy writes a fake prophecy so he can run away from the throne, years and years later people are taking it seriously and they think that Ace is the prophecy child, No he's not, Ace decides he has to be and steps up into the role, Prophecy was never real letter found, Chaos, Wait but everything matches it, Ace continues to be Prophecy child... and eventually Rules the country because ??? that's what the prophecy was about...

But beyond that I never had too much of a plot direction it was just Chosen One, Unchosen One, wait he is the real Chosen One playing around with... And a lot of symbolism and doubt and family is super important... with some crossdressing for plot!

Which didn’t translate the best into an actual plot. But it did have so many concepts that I really want to come back to. Because wow, I loved these characters, still love these characters...

But those two stories. Invisibility and Prophecy weren’t the only ones set in that series-- and warning for a specific plotline, regarding Rape and Rape Tropes, but there was a third story called Survivor that I still have the plans for. And this one is where the morals of a society based around superpowers really came into play.

With a lot of questions over self and what constitutes as a crime, and how willing is willing and it was a huge mess. Because some powers muddy the lines, and there’s a huge question in regards to consent and choice...

Which you know, I guess that was something. Also a lot more on the topic of heroes and villains since it was set in a different country from either of the ones that were featured in Invisibility or Prophecy... which actually crossed over a lot closer than one would expect since Tecusa(Invisibility’s Protag) ended up receiving refugees from Dená in the story, refugees that were featured fleeing in Prophecy-- among other crossovers regarding the news and developments in both countries...

And then there was Survivor which was the most set aside of the three.

Taking place in a more traditional Heroes verses Villains setting because that was the way that country was laid out. Nitida, the country of heroes and villains. Set apart from the rest of Lunia by their constant chaos due to that culture... much, much more comic book here--

And then the main character was a rape victim...

Which ahhh... yeah. That was also where I hit that phase, toot toot here come the characters I designed from more or less pure spite because I hated how certain tropes were used and overused... so... I ended up with quite a few character’s who’re kind of-- well.

And no, this isn’t Buziba. Although he falls into the same category. This character was Benjamin “Ben” Chandler... And looking back over my notes... A transboy who’s family accepted him, which alright. Guess younger me had more than a few reasons for why things were happening, but it’s still really, really, really bad.

The execution could always be better.

But that’s why Survivor existed.

To explore those darker things. The crimes that happen, and people don’t want to acknowledge. And Benjamin is a more egregious example, I’ll be real. He’s... not a good character in hindsight, but hey A++ for learning...

Buziba’s a much better character in general and his backstory for it all makes, more sense. But at the same time, I’m not going to lie. My wild boy definitely has more than a few rough spots in his backstory and character that make him something of a cliché/stereotype for this... or at the least, that make the one doing this to him such.

I mean... LOOK AT THIS BOY!

Anyway... Ben did explore another side of the world... and I’m going to leave it at that because honestly. Not much more, to say...

So let’s get into the part of the whole superhero plot that people probably really want to know about, more than stories and themes-- powers.

And what ones I think are more, or less useful. More or less scary. Which ones are the most surprisingly dangerous? Surprisingly tame?

And this--

This is tricky

It really is. Like there are honestly a few powers that no matter what they’re kind of lame, like glowing, but there are others that seem useless, but can be downright terrifying when used in the right, or wrong way. There are some that are just unchanging, and then there are some that sound interesting but always get used in such route and predictable ways...

And then there are the powers that tumblr has gotten it’s claws into and turned into something of pure nightmare fuel by making you stop and think of the greater implications that they imply and the domino affects that they would have. It all matters. It all comes tumbling down. Thankyou tumblr.

But seriously, think about this--

Think about it--

Because how many, how many of these powers have required secondary abilities? If you turn invisible you have to have some other way of seeing things to be able to operate and function in the world to actually be able to live. Super strength and speed both require extra resilience. A healing factor is pretty much required for most powers, by default.

But seriously, how often do people think of these things...

Or the side-effects of healing either...

Aside what Boku no Hero Academia has been doing. Which you know that’s a first, we don’t see the consequences so much. And it messing up your natural healing, that’s good. Really good and interesting. Also... anyone else-- anyone else just generally freaked out by healers in general. You never know exactly where their healing comes from.

Positive or negative.

Also... those who know how to put you back together... typically also know the best way to tear you apart and to absolute shreds. So... you know, fear the healer.

No seriously. Fear. The. Healer.

Fear them.

I want more dangerous healers. Personally, I love my villain healers, villain doctors. Because wow. Break you and remake you. But whatever you know.

I mean, aside that, there’s also that one tumblr post about probability manipulation and wow, wow does that get scary when played a slight bit darker. But seriously, the general rule for this is really-- really down to creativity. How creative can you be with the powers nothing more nothing less.

I mean I even discussed it with a friend regarding fixing the Power of Three arc in the Warrior Cats series...

Which you know, there is a way to fix that. Although that’s an old cup and in general for Warriors I never got past the first arc and Firestar’s quest so most of what I know is generally, what the fandom puts out more or less... but then I’m the same with most of Naruto because the protagonist just rubs me the wrong way.

But he’s a good example of flaws in a system and disabilities and just... ultimately I don’t know...

But if anyone’s curious about fixing the Three... well, a small thing is it’s kind of spoilers for the vague, extremely vague plan I have regarding my Unbound Unleashed series following Tinderkit-- still, a small hint is the thematics of Mind-Body-Spirit... so do with that information as you will.

Also on that note, special abilities in Warrior Cats in general is an interesting concept, because aside communication with Starclan there is the concept of prophecies and seers, although that’s another pile of prey that I’ll have to get into some other time--

Maybe when my Warrior Cats muse actually returns.

So yeah...

I think that’s all I can really say on superpowers. There’s a lot to say, but I don’t really have much that I can cohesively piece together when I’m just kind of gushing and babbling to fill up my word count for NaNoWriMo, since this month is meant to be vent... so...

Yeah, done.

#THybrid Speaks #Tropes #Writing #Superheroes #NaNoWriMo #Just adding words to my count don't mind me #Gushing #This is pointless

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lostsolsdestinyblog · 6 years

Text

Whose woods these are I think I know.

Destiny has been for me, more than I ever could have dreamed when I first logged in back in September of 2014. It came into my life at a time when not a lot was really in the best place for me and it gave me an escape and a world I could throw myself into and, for a little while at least, forget about the problems of the real world.

I've experienced Destiny a lot of different ways over the last 4+ years. I dabbled in Crucible in Vanilla but strikes were really my jam. I would grind them for hours and hours as I leveled, trying to get the highest kill count and I loved how diverse and incredible they all were. I remember when Queen's Wrath dropped and I was still under-leveled for it and there was the strike in Winter's Run and I tried to do it but wasn't able to get past about halfway. I was disappointed and so I started really trying to level up more to be able to experience endgame and the next Queen's Wrath when it came around.

Of course there weren't more Queen's Wrath events, but there were the Nightfalls with their chances to get exotic drops and I wanted exotic drops. So at level 26 I headed into my first level 30 Nightfall solo. It was The Summoning Pits and the depth of the challenge was felt immediately upon walking to the first doorway and facing the Knights and Wizard. I don't know how many times I RTOd before putting together a successful run, but when I did, that run took me over 4 hours, but it was one of the greatest gaming experiences I'd ever had and I was hooked.

One of the coolest things looking back on those early days is again, seeing all the different ways I would play, level and progress. While soloing the Nightfall on all 3 characters would become the first thing I'd do each week thoughout year one, as we got to the end of vanilla and into TDB, I became completely hooked on Crucible and Iron Banner. I started in Crucible when I first got Suros and it was Dumbo's feather for me, giving me the confidence to feel I could compete. I almost immediately switched to MIDA and then in TDB found Coiled Hiss and Fusion Rifles.

Not everything was roses back then of course. The game had a lot of issues and growing pains, from the initial backlash to what shipped verses what players expected from pre-release hype, to TDB locking players out of Nightfalls, to the desire for matchmaking in raids because come on, Vault of Glass. Then HoW released and suddenly, as a solo player, it became much harder to play Destiny.

With the inclusion of Trials, there was endgame PvP with no matchmaking and Prison of Elders added even more PvE endgame that required fireteams but didn't add ways to be matched in-game. This was the first time I really felt like, as a solo player, that I really didn't have a place in the game in PvE and it sucked. I still did my Nightfalls, but outside of that, I was only playing PvP by the end of the expansion. The PvP itself was phenomenal and truly the Golden Age of the Crucible with everything at pretty much the height of its D1 power.

TTK was another shift. It made sweeping and dramatic improvements to the PvE experience. Grinding, leveling, getting gear and all the QoL changes were incredible, but it also marked the beginning of the end for what was D1 PvP. All our favorite year one legendary weapons were left behind and the great nerfening really began as Thorn, Red Death, MIDA and on and on found themselves neutered to shells of their former glory.

I had loved the TTK content release, but I found myself really struggling to find the same feeling HoW had given Crucible. Where I'd had weapons that felt so perfect and fit how I played so well in HoW, I couldn't find anything I liked in TTK and it got to the point where I took about a month off from the game and just wasn't sure if I'd keep playing, but then something happened. We'd started a community podcast to bring on everyday forum community members to talk Destiny and on our 6th episode I met RedWingGirl1999 when one of my co-hosts invited her on as a guest.

Once I met RWG, we became friends and the way I played Destiny changed again as I joined her raid team and we raided or chased Triumphs and Exotic quests pretty much every day through the second half of TTK. It was also from that point until the end of D1 that I started cycling through favorite characters. I really got back into my Hunter after we started playing together, then Rise of Iron was all about my Warlock and Age of Triumph saw me playing a bit of everything.

And Destiny evolved and devolved along the way as well. PvE got better and better, but the state of weapon balance and PvP continued to implode and those implosions all too often bled into PvE as well with the nerfs to ammo economies, artifacts and anything that players could blame for them not succeeding in the Crucible.

I want to take a moment to recognize that throughout this process, the developers were really trying to build the game they thought we wanted and while communication was not optimal in 2014, there were tremendous strides over the lifespan of D1. I know I have a special and more unique take on this because of the relationships and friendships I was able to make within the studio and I'm truly blessed to have gotten to experience, but from those experiences I've gotten a much more humanizing insight into the people who create this game.

RWG and I got to experience the D2 reveal event and all the hope and excitement going into the sequel and though there was the immediate uh-oh we had when they said PvP would all be 4v4 (we feared it would hurt 6 player raid teams that would no longer be able to stay together and play PvP, and unfortunately it did just that), overall the gameplay had been incredibly fun and felt like a genuine evolution of play.

At this point a thousand things can be said about what year one was and there were a lot of issues and things that didn't work how the developers had envisioned, but it was always extremely unfair to say the game was trash or a dead game. No one who still played and enjoyed year one ever said the game was perfect and everyone knew and everyone acknowledged it needed to be much better, but while there wasn't enough to chase and grind for, D2 was incredibly welcoming to be played how and when we wanted and also a lot of things that the studio felt would keep players invested with timed content to keep things fresh- Faction Rallies, IB, etc, just fell flat, and PvP that had been so reworked to be the best Crucible experience ever based on D1 feedback, turned out to not be what anyone really wanted.

Things went south.

When Bungie began to lose the streamers and YouTubers everything hit the fan and suddenly Destiny 2 found itself with the most toxic community in gaming and after initially turtling a bit (I'm sure out of shock as things went sideways), we started to see one of the most honest and open outreaches from a game company to their community as Bungie acknowledged the mistakes they'd made and started working feverishly to correct them, giving us road maps of what we could expect and when.

I got to be a part of the Community Summit and though there was a lot of mistrust in the community as to its goals and motivations, I felt very strongly that though it was mostly high profile content creators, that the fact that players like myself, Mercules, Aer0knight and others were invited showed that it wasn't just about the streamers and what they wanted.

I am incredibly grateful to this day for the opportunity to experience that and get to have so many face to face conversations about the game with the people who make it and these are really, really incredibly down to Earth and just awesome people. Anyone who thinks the developers don't care or that Bungie is just a greedy corporation just don't get it. They're just like you and me. They're human beings with lives, families, passions, dreams, loves, fears and hopes, and like us they are capable of success and failure, good days and bad.

That's called being human, and to be human is to understand that sometimes things don't turn out the way we or others want or expect, but life goes on and it's up to each of us to decide how to keep going forward and when we or others fail or succeed, we have a choice; to support and work to elevate them, ourselves and everyone to try to better things or as is all too common these days, try to bring people down to our level or keep them below us when we succeed.

I 100% know that everyone's voices are heard within the studio and that Forsaken has been a monumental turnaround for Destiny 2 and in many ways a real love letter from the Devs to the community, but I think that there has also been a larger focus on the community that play and stream Destiny for a living and I don't think it's a case of the studio trying to consciously cater the game more that direction, but rather an overcorrection in the desire to have them back onboard, because let's face reality, they have tremendous influence over how the game is perceived not just on forums, but also in print and social media.

Which brings me to why I'm writing all this today. Yeah, I write a lot about Destiny and I've covered a lot of this is past posts, but things are different for me in the game and I'm not sure the game Destiny is becoming has a place for me in it. It's so weird to actually write that, but I also know it's becoming increasingly difficult to feel like I can experience this game and universe how I want.

I play Destiny much differently these days from the last couple years and strangely, my experience has almost been a perfect bell up and back down to where I began. Our raid team mostly survived year one to the end, but our 6 player groups that used to PvP the rest of the weeks were no more and things really began falling apart with Spire and all its excessive mechanics.

We weren't a coordinated team anymore. We weren't a cohesive group of friends traveling the Destiny universe together and failures led to frustrations and tensions that didn't exist before, or were more muted by the ability to say “let's stop for the night and just play Crucible”. When suddenly the raid ends and people are left behind for new activities, it's a recipe for disaster, but Forsaken brought the hope of a new beginning and what ultimately did turn out to be an incredible Destiny experience and worlds, but again, just not for everyone.

The raid release was the end for our raid team. The pressure to grind 10+ hours a day trying to get ready (and for me getting drop after drop in spots I didn't need and below what was equipped because of the harsh return of RNG caused huge anxiety going in that I'd let everyone down not being high enough light). Still we all took off work and were incredibly excited to go into the raid, and the first forays in were just beautiful, but then like 99.999% of the players who stepped into Last Wish that day, we were all power checked.

We actually figured out the mechanics and understood how to beat the first boss about 20 minutes in, but after a couple hours of attempts, we knew we just weren't high enough light and that was it. We never raided as a group together again.

Of those of us there that day, everyone but myself has gone on to complete the raid. I've finished it up to Riven, but never completed that fight and it's just sad, and certainly there's more to our falling outs than how the game has been designed and content released, but it's also very true that for what Destiny wants to be a far as a social experience bringing people together, it has never done the best job of translating that into the actual in-game experience.

I kept playing after that, though mostly solo since and I do truly love the content in Forsaken, but I never really got to experience any of it how I wanted or felt excitement about drops that I knew I wouldn't be able to use consistently because of the incredibly punishing infusion system.

I loved year one and that I could play so many different ways, but always how I wanted and I could experiment with different weapons and armor at my choosing and not things I know I hate, but had to use because it's what I had at level.

A day into Forsaken, I stopped using shaders. There was no point when nothing has permanence and it was frustrating that here we had the content and things to do with the gear we loved that was so missing in year one and I couldn't play it with the gear I loved.

I don't know how others experience the game, but I played 850 hours of D2 Y1 and a large part of what kept it fresh for me was cycling through maining different characters and subclasses, as well as using all the countless new loadouts D2 allowed. So I continued playing all 3 classes into Forsaken. For the first 5 weeks, I ran almost every single powerful bounty in the game on all 3 characters and I found myself hating everything.

I didn't like any of my characters. I didn't like my weapons half the time and I started seriously questioning what I was grinding for if I couldn't ever use any of the things I got that I loved. So I took a big step back and started just focusing the Dreaming City each week since those were the highest drops and not running much else outside of teaming up with friends for Gambit, Crucible or a Nightfall occasionally.

All throughout Destiny up to Forsaken, I'd loved and played different aspects of the game and leveled up in different ways as those interests changed. Forsaken changed that. We couldn't just play strikes if that's what we loved, or PvP or Gambit, and I'm not saying that was necessarily a bad thing, but when it was combined with all the insane RNG (titles? Yikes!), punishing infusion and 100 level endgame grind, it was just too much.

I finally hit 600 halfway through November. I got there on my Hunter and Warlock and I hit 596 on my Titan and I just couldn't do it anymore. I hated my Titan desperately at this point, and not because the new subclasses aren't fun, but because I was tired of looking like a clown. I got a really good gear set on my Hunter, put the mods and shaders I wanted on him and I was done. With my other characters and with PvE. Destiny just isn't a game I feel I can keep 3 characters going anymore, and that's kinda how it began and I've thought that, well maybe over the next year, there will be time to go back...

Then Black Armory released and not only raised the power level another 50 levels, but brought back "meaningful infusion". This system championed by streamers who play for a living and has ultimately little too no effect on them. Most of them are already at 650, while 9-10 hours in, I'm up to 604 and I refuse to wear the higher gear I hate and I'm not burning my infusion cores. I'm up to 60 of them. I buy them everyday from Spider, but I refuse to grind for ghost fragments to then grind bounties for them.

I've played 280ish hours of Forsaken and probably 30 of those playing how I wanted using what I wanted, I'm not spending even more hours grinding content I have no desire to play just to be able to use what I want.

Even PvP as incredible as the sandbox is, is completely RNG who wins and loses as no sbmm means uneven teams and one team usually with one or two much higher skilled players than the rest.

Matchmaking was just addressed in the TWaB, but it's only Comp and the complaints of solo vs fireteams and low glory facing much higher glory and I don't understand how it's an issue in Comp, but solo vs fireteams and lower skill vs much higher in QuickPlay is perfectly okay.

I love the game. I love the community. I love Bungie and have friends there and care about everyone who makes this game and it hurts when days like Tuesday happen and things go sideways and there's more negative press, but that never should have happened. It's the exact same mistake that was made with the Last Wish raid release and power locking everyone but Joe and Jane streamer out of it.

So here I am, writing one more novel hoping for the best and maybe that is where we are and this is what Destiny needs to be going forward and maybe it's just not a game for a player like me anymore, but I still believe it can be everything it's wanting to be for the players it's trying to cater to without leaving a player like myself behind, and I don't think it would take a lot to get there.

I'm burned out on PvE and leveling because of infusion that adds NOTHING to the game and the inability to just play what I want and continue to level.

The daily and weekly bounties are fine, although the weeklies should drop higher gear than the dailies, but regular legendaries are deflating now. They are blues for all intents and purposes and they need to at least have a chance to drop higher.

Valor now gives Legendary drops every rank and it's tiered like Gambit, but those drops are meaningless because 1) I already have the gear/perks I want and 2) they drop 15-20 levels below my character power. Why not make them powerful drops? Who cares if I play an hour or two in Crucible for a powerful drop verses run around doing other bounties? To me it just adds to the experience. If you want variety and to experience a lot of different things in smaller portions, all those bounties are there. If we just love PvP, why can't we just play it and get drops at about the same rate (or a bit slower). Strikes could be tiered the same with ranks and resets.

I think about what it would be like to walk into the Destiny franchise for the first time right now and I can't even imagine how a player could ever begin to experience all of what the game has to offer with 150 levels to grind to endgame and starting with no materials, no cores, no Legendary shards, and yes games like WoW have those heavy investments and focusing on one character for a long time, but the way D2 is currently formatted, I don't see a near future where I'm able to or would want to go through this leveling experience again on my other characters if I'm going to hate them and (by proxy) the game because I can't play and use what I want.

So that's it and I'm not trying to bash or say the game is bad because it's not and when the teams are remotely fair, PvP is the greatest thing since HoW, but this world is really fucked up right now and my life outside the game is in an as bad or worse place than it was when I first stepped into these worlds, but I'm not finding escape and freedom anymore. I'm finding I'm stepping into a job that I don't want to be at and I wish things were different. Thank you.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

-R Frost

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inawickedlittletown · 6 years

Text

Walking The Wire (58/?)

Summary: Tony Stark always knew about Peter Parker. He didn’t know that Peter was going to get superpowers and become Spider-Man, but he always knew about Peter because Peter was his son.

This will span from pre-Iron Man up through the rest of the MCU (eventually including Infinity War) and will be for the most part canon compliant except where I’ve taken some liberties and interpreted canon a certain way.

Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Tony/Steve (endgame), Tony/Mary (past)

A/N: If you want me to tag you when I post new chapters let me know. This fic is also on AO3

I used Collider’s MCU timeline to stay canon and the title of this fic is an Imagine Dragons song that is just so fitting for Peter and Tony

Masterpost

Chapter Fifty Seven

Getting back to normal life after the crazy time in Germany with Mr. Stark and then the days spent at Avengers Tower made everything feel like a dream. Except that he now had a father and he had a suit that surpassed anything he could have ever come up with on his own even if he’d had the money to develop it. He was also sort of upset at May and that just wasn’t ever fun.

After Mr. Stark left, Peter had avoided having a conversation with May for about five minutes before she showed up at his door and he had known that he wouldn’t be able to avoid dealing with it.

“So, you know the truth now,” she said, not bothering to dance around the topic.

Peter nodded and couldn’t make himself look at her.

“Are you okay?”

May moved closer and lifted his chin up so that he would look at her. There was a concerned frown on her face, the kind that she usually wore when Peter was sick or not feeling well. It almost made Peter less angry except that how could she ask that when Peter clearly couldn’t be okay. He wouldn’t be okay for a little while at least while he was still trying to process everything.

“No, May, I don’t think I am,” Peter said, voice louder than usual and May took a step back. “And I don’t think you can explain this away because no explanation will just make this okay.”

The more he had thought about it in the time between leaving the tower and Mr. Stark leaving his room, Peter had realized that there was something extremely important that May and Ben had taken from him. It didn’t diminish that they were his parents in a lot of ways, but he could have had more. He could have had his father alive and well and had more than a few letters with Mr. Stark over the years. He would have had more than just a hero that he could admire from afar. All that time was lost to them now with no way of getting it back.

“We were protecting you,” May said. “It’s all Ben and I wanted -- to keep you safe.”

Peter closed his eyes. He didn’t want to fight and he just hadn’t realized how much it had actually hurt him because it wasn’t just anger. May had lied to him. He guessed that in the moment it hadn’t felt like that, at least not until he came to the realization that Mr. Stark hadn’t just swept his existence under a rug to be forgotten but had had to do that in part because of who he was, but also because his aunt and uncle hadn’t wanted him to be in Peter’s life. To think about Uncle Ben as this barrier between him and his father was painful, but Peter couldn’t ignore it.

“You could have found a way to tell me even if I didn’t get to meet him right away,” Peter said and he turned away from May.

“Peter, I’m--”

“May, can we not talk about this right now?”

May sighed and nodded and yet she still walked towards him and kissed the top of his head.

“I love you, Peter. I know this is hard, but that’s the truth.”

A part of Peter hated her a little bit for saying that because it made him feel like the bad guy getting upset because May and Ben just cared for him and wanted what was best for him and somehow to them him meeting Mr. Stark back then hadn’t been the best thing.

Trying to write to Mr. Stark after everything that happened was hard too. Difficult in a way that it had never been before because this Peter just didn’t know what to write because suddenly everything seemed too boring to write to Mr. Stark about. It also seemed weird to reach out to him now that the whole thing with him being Peter’s father was sort of hanging over his head.

Going out as Spider-Man seemed like the best escape and it was enough to just get the new suit on and swing around Queens. He hadn’t run into any kind of trouble lately either, which meant that he just got a chance to really get to know his new suit a little better and it was as amazing as any Stark tech could be. Everything felt better when he was Spider-Man. He didn’t have to deal with the sad looks that May gave him or try to come up with a reason to contact Mr. Stark and Peter rather liked the lack of pressure and how free he felt while in the suit.

It was a couple of weeks after the whole airport thing and finding out Tony Stark was his father — did that make him Peter Stark? — when Mr. Stark finally reached out to him.

Peter, I am your father: hey, kiddo, just checking in since I haven’t heard from you in a bit. How’s the spider thing going?

Peter hadn’t looked at the contact name that Mr. Stark had put himself under just because the easiest thing for him to do was avoid facing it especially after the number of hours that he probably lost just staring at Mr. Stark’s email, so he burst out laughing when he read it and somehow all the pressure that he’d been putting on himself over it fell away.

Peter: going well. Not much to report on.

Mr. Stark was quick to respond.

Peter, I am your father: hmm...well you’ve been all over Queens lately. I was just…

Peter, I am your father: I figured I’d check and see how it’s going.

Peter, I am your father: And hey, that’s an idea, how about we do some daily reports when you go out as Spider-Man? Remember we talked about low profiles.

Peter, I am your father: I suppose it could even give Happy something to do so you can send them to him if you want. Or me. Whatever -- whatever you want to do.

Mr. Stark texted fast. Faster than anyone Peter had ever texted before. Peter had barely tried to get a word typed in before another text of his came in followed by another before Peter had even finished reading the last.

Peter: That sounds like a good idea

Peter, I am your father: Excellent.

May didn’t know what to do. She wished more than ever that Ben were at her side dealing with it all too, because she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t handle Peter being upset with her and the way that he was still sneaking out and rarely ever home.

Worse was not knowing exactly what Peter was thinking or how he was dealing with such a huge change in his life because he wouldn’t talk to her. At least Tony Stark had left them both alone for the time being but it wasn’t going to be for long if the whole internship thing paned out and May was sure that it would because Tony wanted to spend time with Peter and he would find a way and that was currently the easiest one and May didn’t think that Peter would protest spending time with Tony.

Tony was his hero after all -- and after all that time that Peter had spent looking up to him this was more than he could have expected or hoped for.

May had considered reaching out to Pepper and finding out what had happened from her, but it had felt just a little too pushy and May had never wanted to be that parent. Her own parents had been too nosy and always in her business, never content with what May wanted to share and too quick to take issue with her choices. Knowing who Peter was and how sweet and smart her boy was made her believe that Peter would be alright and that he would talk about it all with her when he was ready to. Still, she couldn’t help but worry. That was just what being a parent meant.

May tried not to think too hard on it, especially since she knew that Peter wouldn’t stay too angry or silent on the matter for very long. It wasn’t in his nature. She just hoped that he would listen and understand their reasoning behind keeping the secret.

Tony eventually did have to take Ross’ calls. He had been putting him on hold every time he called or transferring him over to Friday who would then claim that Tony was out. It was fun, especially since Tony’s voicemail always seemed to be mysteriously full when Ross tried to leave a message. But, he had always known that his fun wasn’t going to last.

Pepper and his lawyers had made sure to make it clear to Ross that what he’d done in putting Sam, Clint, Scott, and Wanda in The Raft was unconstitutional and that it was a human rights violation. The UN council that was set up to oversee The Accords agreed with that assessment and because the public was entirely unaware of most of what happened since The Accords were ratified, Ross really had no leg to stand on. But, that didn’t make them any less fugitives because they had all still broken the law -- multiple laws and gone against The Accords directly. The UN was still trying to figure out what the right way to go about bringing them in and putting charges on them which meant that there were long meetings happening and no one was in pursuit.

The UN was talking about putting each of them on trial for their crimes, but Tony suspected that a trial against Captain America and the others wouldn’t go the way that anyone asking for them to answer for their crimes would want it to go. They had all done too much good to be chastised like criminals. It was just a matter of letting the matter lie and letting some time pass before they reappeared by which point Tony hoped to have The Accords looking entirely different and more accommodating to Steve and the others.

Barnes was a whole other issue. Tony didn’t even want to touch all that there would be to deal with there because just thinking about the other man made him remember how he killed his mom. Tony still had nightmares about it and sometimes when they were really bad even Steve made it into them and he stood to the side of that car telling Tony that it wasn’t Bucky. Those were the nights when Tony rushed to the workshop and tried to fix or create something.

On the afternoon when he finally picked up Secretary Ross’ call, Tony had been working on a brand new suit. One whose idea had made itself known to him in the middle of the night after waking up screaming.

“Oh, Secretary Ross, I am so sorry for all those times I never picked the phone up, but I’m a very busy man, you see, and I have no real team to speak of at the moment so I…”

“Cut the shit, Stark, you know where they are. Tell me where they are.”

Tony had known that’s where it was going to go.

“I’m going to prove you had something to do with them escaping,” Ross pressed.

“Tut, tut, Ross, my best friend was shot down from the air and he’s learning to walk again which is currently my main concern so I don’t really care where they are. I’ve been busy with that and trying to figure out if Vision and I are enough protection against any alien threats because I rather think not, but the rest of the Earth’s defenders are in hiding because you chased them away and didn’t listen to me when I brought evidence about the real culprit of the bombing. It is not my fault that the UN has taken you off the council due to your poor leadership. I have not been in contact with any of them.”

“Not even Barton,” Ross said,

Tony didn’t like that particular line of questioning because he knew where Clint was supposed to be which was the farm. A safehouse that no one knew about and that no one could know about. He had to wonder about Ross asking after Clint specifically.

“No, not even Barton.”

No one knew about his wife and kids either, so at least Ross wouldn’t have a way to use them as collateral. Ideally, if Clint decided that he would go back into retirement he would be the easiest to clear of all charges and then Ross really wouldn’t be able to touch him.

“Hmm. You really are no help, Stark, not even when you do pick up the damned phone.”

“I do try,” Tony said and then hung up.

The thing about Thaddeus Ross was that he was a man that wouldn’t give up. Tony didn’t trust that he would ever stop looking for Steve and Bucky and the others, but Tony wasn’t going to let him find anything. More importantly, he was not going to let Ross figure out that Tony had a son and that said son was running around Queens in a suit of Tony’s making with actual superpowers.

Chapter Fifty Nine

#mcuwriting #peter and tony fic #iron dad #iron dad and spider son #peter and tony #mcu #marvel #mcu fic

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joie-university-rp · 5 years

Text

Dear, SANTANA LOPEZ,

It is with great pleasure we invite you admission to Joie University! Welcome to the Thunderclap family!

–

Congratulations, MEG! Please be sure to check the New Members’ Checklistand send in your character’s account within 24 hours from now. We cannot wait to see all that you will bring to this roleplay! We love you already!

OOC INFORMATION:

Name/Alias; preferred pronouns: Meg, She/her

Age, Timezone: 27, EST

Activity, short explanation: On at least an hour a day

Ships: Brittana, Santina, Quinntana, Pezberry, Dantana, Santana/Chemistry, Santana/Ladies, Santana/Beards

Anti-Ships: Santana/No Chemistry, Santana/Male!Endgame

Triggers: N/A

Preferred photo for Character’s ID (please give a link): https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5816992f03596e7961cde70d/1551310304456-WUMEDVP6UMM352FJAT3V/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kCf3-plT4th5YDY7kKLGSZN7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z4YTzHvnKhyp6Da-NYroOW3ZGjoBKy3azqku80C789l0h8vX1l9k24HMAg-S2AFienIXE1YmmWqgE2PN2vVFAwNPldIHIfeNh3oAGoMooVv2g/3+%281%29.jpg

Anything else: I will be replacing Mike with Santana - and I will repurpose his blog for her as well.

IC INFORMATION:

Full Name (First, Middle, Last): Santana Isabel Lopez

FC: Emeraude Toubia

Age/Year at University (Freshman [1st Year], Sophomore, Junior, Senior, or Graduate Student): 21, Junior

Birth date: November 11th, 1997

Hometown (please be sure to check the hometowns listed for characters your muse is related to!): Miami, Florida

Gender/Pronouns: She/Her

Sexuality: CLOSETED Lesbian

Major(s): Medical Sciences

Minor(s) [optional]: Cardiology

Housing request (remember, only the president of a Greek Organization is required to live at a Greek House to be in it!): Mu Sigma double suite (or presidential suite since Spencer isn’t living there if that’s possible)

Extracurriculars: Cheerios (Captain), Lacrosse (Captain)

Greek Life Affiliation: Mu Sigma, Vice President

CHARACTER PROFILE:

Tw: verbal abuse, homophobia, homophobic slurs, internalized homophobia

As the third born child to Enrique Lopez and Maribel Ruiz Lopez, the first-born daughter, expectations had been placed upon her. As a woman, especially a woman of color, the world wasn’t going to be kind to her and she would have to work tirelessly for what she wanted. At least, that’s what she was told by her mother’s mother, Alma. While her parents, her father a world-renowned Cardiothoracic surgeon and her mother a District Attorney, were busy working, she was often in the care of her grandmother. The woman lived in the poorer part of town, refusing to take any of the money that her son wanted to give her so she could live in a better neighborhood, and she was brutally honest, to the point where she could be insulting, even to her own family. But despite the insults that her abuela threw at her, Santana admired the woman and tried to do anything in her power to get approval from her grandmother. Maybe that was why Santana had adopted the woman’s line of thinking, deciding to be brutally honest with people no matter who she hurt and to stand for what she believed in, hoping that her grandmother would be pleased. Of course, as to be expected, not many people enjoyed the honesty, especially when it came to the girl telling her relatives that their baby was ugly or telling her classmates that they were stupid, but Santana didn’t care. It was what she believed in, and it was who she was.

Only, it wasn’t. Underneath the façade of the brutally honest girl that grew up to become the HBIC of her high school, was actually a kind and caring girl, one that just wanted to fit in. While she may have put on a facade that she didn’t care about what people thought about her, the truth was the exact opposite, and she cared too much. But she knew that if she let people know that she cared, they wouldn’t respect her as much as they did, so she continued on with her act, and did everything in her power to make sure people saw her as the girl that didn’t care. There was one person, however, that saw through her facade, a girl that joined the cheerleading team during their junior year. She was kind, quirky, and rebellious and someone Santana never really thought she’d befriend until the girl suggested that they go to a frat party at the University of Miami, one that promised of good times. But the next morning, instead of Santana waking up in bed with a college boy, she woke up in the same bed as her teammate. Not wanting anyone to find out about what happened, especially her grandmother, Santana swept the hookup under the rug and ended up in bed with the Captain of the basketball team just two days after, wanting to move past what happened and keep her reputation intact.

But that didn’t mean that Santana hadn’t remembered what happened; even after entering a relationship with the basketball player, there was a nagging thought in the back of Santana’s head, one that told her that she liked the sex with the cheerleader far better than the sex with her boyfriend. Every time she tried to quell the thought, by sleeping with her boyfriend or doing other sexual favors for him or by trying to focus on her cheering and school work, it would always pop up, whether after a night with her boyfriend wherein she didn’t come or in her dreams. She hated it and she wanted to get away from Miami and try to put as much distance between her and the cheerleader she had sex with as possible. Thankfully, a couple of months before graduation, Santana learned that she received a full scholarship to the Joie University for cheerleading, so she took the opportunity to get away from Florida, and from her thoughts, and accepted the invitation.

Of course, just because she was no longer in Florida, it didn’t mean that the feelings weren’t still there. Whenever she passed by a pretty girl with a brilliant smile or long legs, she found herself staring just a bit too long before she caught herself, and she knew that she couldn’t stand that. Pouring her frustrations into her school work, and her spot on the cheerleading team as well her spot on the lacrosse team, Santana made sure that people saw her as a force to be reckoned with. She was a girl with beauty, brains and brawn - and she wound up making herself the captain of both the cheerleading and lacrosse teams as a sophomore. And rushing to her mother’s alma mater, Mu Sigma, only added her powerful presence.

The more involved she got, the more that people looked to her - and in order to keep them from questioning why she hadn’t settled down with anyone yet, she began to hop from man to man, changing partners on a weekly basis, and she began to date around. People called her slut, they called her a whore, but at the end of the day, those were far better than being called a “lesbo” or a “dyke”. After all, her parents didn’t care what she did as long as her schoolwork wasn’t affected, but being a lesbian? That was not something that no amount of good grades and athletic prowess could pass on - especially since her mother and her abuela disowned a cousin for marrying a woman despite her being a renowned orthopedic surgeon.

Everything that Santana does is to preserve her family’s pride in her. From being the indisputable top bitch of the school - one who isn’t afraid to state her opinion, even if it’s an unpopular one - to being one of the top-ranking pre-med students that’s already beginning to fill out applications to medical schools, Santana is proving that she is everything that her parents can hope she could be. Once she had secured her position as her father’s successor as a great Cardiothoracic surgeon, she could then focus on her personal life.

But damn, was that hard to do when she had to work so closely with someone that was so openly out and proud.

STUDENT CENSUS SURVEY: (Please answer the following questions IN CHARACTER. Responses can be as long or short as you see fit!)

What made you want to attend Joie University? Easy. The school is one of the best school’s in the country, and this bitch deserves the best. It’s why I’ll be going to Stanford to get my medical degree, because there’s no way in hell that I’m going to go to some mediocre, half-ass school.

What are at least 3 positive or neutral and at least 3 negative traits that you believe you possess? Negative traits? Bitch please, I’m perfect. I’m intelligent, I’m honest, and I’m ambitious. That’s right, putas… I’ve got beauty, brains and brawn. (She’s insecure, stubborn, and guarded).

Which of your traits do you value most? My intelligence. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing some misogynistic prick realize that I’m more than just a pretty face and a hot bod.

How can that trait benefit the University (or its student body) as a whole? That’s easy. With my intelligence, I’ll be able to achieve my goals of becoming a world-renowned Cardiothoracic surgeon and when people ask me where I got my start, I’ll tell them that it was Joie that made me the surgeon I am today - and then people will flock to the school and the admissions board will have to turn people away left and right.

What do you hope to gain from your experience at JU? I hope to kick ass in my undergrad years before I go on to med school… and I also hope to prove to all the conservative assholes that attend this school that a girl can do everything a guy can and then some.

What is a quote or song lyric that describes you? “Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.” - G.D. Anderson

#Accepted

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evil--isnt--born · 8 years

Text

Bleeding Hearts

Summary: Emma Swan has spent a decade killing the soulmates of those willing to pay for immortality, but being suddenly given a partner makes her question whether her life is now the one on the line -- either at the hands of her uncompromising boss, or at the hands of a stranger magic altogether.

also on ff.net and ao3

Big thanks to @nowforruin for stepping up to the plate on a rather last minute beta job (my fault) and for the excellent suggestions that got this where it needed to be.

I think I’d need another 18k to adequately describe how grateful I am to have @nightships in my life, but in the absence of that, let me just say that it has been an utter treat to get to write something for such a wonderful friend, talented writer, and birthday twin. Thank you for inspiring me on the daily to be a better writer and overall human being, and for giving me a reason to write about romance and murder. Happy Birthmas 2.0, fandom soulmate. I promise not to kill you.

The worst part was that they always looked happy.

Even through the scope of her gun, and even alone without their soulmates beside them, her targets all had that same sense of peace and belonging that practically made their skin glow from the inside out. If she caught herself at the right moment she could use that, sink deep into the part of herself that didn’t believe in love or happy endings, and breathe in bitterness until what she had to do became bearable.

Either that, or she reminded herself of everything that was at stake -- and of how far the man she worked for was willing to go to keep her locked in this bargain of theirs -- and did it.

She took a breath and focused on her target, let everything around her fall away until the wind whipping across the rooftop was nothing more than white noise, and the insistent twinge deep in her chest that she shouldn’t be doing this could be ignored.

She squeezed the trigger and of course she hit her mark -- one hit between the eyes, quick and clean and as painless as a shot to the head could ever be. She didn’t stick around to watch the aftermath, swiftly disassembling the long gun and packing it into the false back of an unremarkable backpack with practiced ease. She was off the roof in minutes, out the back door of the building, onto a side street, and walking calmly away from the scene as though she didn’t know what was unfolding on the other side of the building, as if she had had no part in it whatsoever.

It was a cold comfort, as she walked away with no one the wiser, to know that Emma Swan was very, very good at what she did.

-------

“Put it on the board,” Emma said, stopping unceremoniously in front of a large, carved wooden desk and staring down the short man seated behind it. “It’s done. Come on.”

“Impatient, aren’t we?” The look he gave her was all flat lips and hard eyes, stern words she knew too well sitting just behind them, but he stood nonetheless, leading the way to a large chalkboard taking up the entirety of one wall. It was full of numbers, a cryptic but extraordinarily detailed log of every deal he had ever made with people like her, and of how long he owned them for. He stopped by one numbered row -- not the first on the list by a long shot, but one Emma knew well. Her number, her row, her kill count, her debt written in clear numbers that he rubbed out and then rewrote, the figure dropping by nowhere near enough. But it would do for now. It had to. “Happy, dearie?”

“Thrilled.” She took the second warning glance without comment and followed him back to the desk, lingering without taking her eyes off him until he slid open the top drawer and tossed two plain white envelopes on the surface between them. She grabbed them both, nodding once in a warped version of respect before turning and striding from the room in the direction of the elevator without another word from him. Without glancing back she knew he wasn’t even looking at her, their business done. He had always kept things brief and only said what he needed to -- it was perhaps the only thing she liked about Robert Gold.

She stuffed the envelopes in her back pocket as she crossed the office building’s expansive and ridiculous marble lobby to exit onto a bustling street. For so long she had paused just outside the door of this beautiful building and wondered how the people who came through it every day, the occupants of every other office, even the people walking by on the street, could stay so ignorant of the man who took up the very top floor and the kind of business he dealt in. But she had been in it too long now to marvel at Gold’s low profile, so she simply melted into the crowd without a backwards glance as she made her way home.

-------

Emma waited until she was full of microwaved macaroni and cheese and three glasses deep in a bottle of wine before snatching the two envelopes from where she had dropped them on the coffee table an hour earlier. She opened the easy one first, the one fat with her cut of the last job, the percentage that didn’t go towards repaying everything Gold told her she owed him. The prices he charged for his services -- her services -- were exorbitant, but they were no more than a sliver of the price he put on lives that needed saving. So while she only took a slim cut of everything she brought in and lived in a glorified closet in a part of town that wouldn’t have been safe if she didn’t have a small armoury hidden under her bed, she was still so indebted she could barely see the end of it even if she did have several lifetimes to get there.

She had worked for Gold for the last decade, but his business had been going on longer than she’d been alive. Everyone in the world had a soulmate, and she didn’t know how or why, but somehow the universe had seen fit to make it so that everyone found that soulmate eventually, no matter how many years it took. You froze at twenty, stopped aging for ten or twenty or a hundred years until you found the person meant for you, and started aging alongside them so you could grow old together. In theory, it was beautiful. In practice, it meant that people like Gold could charge a premium to whoever was willing to pay to take out their soulmates, stall their aging again, and live on until the universe presented them with another meant-to-be. And then do the same thing again and again and again, immortal until they ran out of money.

The second of the two envelopes was harder, it always was, and as Emma opened the flap she thought that she should have finished the bottle of wine before diving into this one. Sometimes she dreamed of taking a break like she knew some of the others did, doing one job and taking her cut and disappearing for a month before coming back for another, remembering what being a person felt like instead of just being a gun for hire. But then she thought about that figure on the board, the dent she barely made in it even doing jobs back to back year after year, and remembered why she didn’t get days off. It had been her own naivety that had gotten her here, and she would bear the cost of it for however long it took.

She upended the envelope with a sigh, two photos and a folded sheet of paper falling out onto the couch. She ignored the letter because the basic target details were always the same, but the photos caught her eye. It wasn’t often that she got two targets at once, but it had happened before and it usually meant that the hit was even more personal than usual -- a key to immortality and a giant Fuck You to the couple all at once. It also meant that the price was higher and therefore her cut was higher, so while she hated jobs on couples, it wasn’t one she could turn down.

The first photo was of a woman, dark haired with the beginnings of laugh lines around her eyes. Emma swallowed heavily -- the ones who had aged were always harder. Somehow, knowing they’d had love long enough for it to show on their faces made taking it away hurt more even though the endgame was always the same. She picked up the second photo reluctantly, but when she saw the man, she had to look three times before she allowed herself to believe what she was looking at.

He was young. Or looked it, at least. The woman looked thirty, but the man looked twenty. Unless this woman had found and lost an earlier version of her soulmate before meeting the man in the picture, he wasn’t hers, and she wasn’t his. So why...

Emma opened the letter quickly, but all she saw were the usual details, except --

It didn’t make any sense, but there were only details for one of the people. For the woman. Emma flipped the letter over but the back was blank, so she flipped over the woman’s photo. Her first hint that something was well and truly off was that Gold’s writing spelled out Your Target on the back.

What cemented it was the scrawl on the back of the man’s photo: a time and date two days away, a location, and the words Your Partner.

-------

When Emma had been young and stupid, she had thought that soulmate magic would make everyone happy, getting to stick around until you found the person meant for you and getting to live the rest of your life together. But it took maybe a month of working for Gold for her to realize how much people were willing to pay to take their soulmates out of the picture, to get to live forever on a loophole the universe had unknowingly given them. She saw them all: the men who looked young but had money built up over decades paying to wipe out the soulmate they had just found; the forty- and fifty- and sixty-year old women who aged a little more every time soulmate after soulmate crossed their path, and who kept paying to make soulmate after soulmate disappear; and the classic vindictive hits on men and women alike who were unfortunate enough to be not-meant-to-be with a person who couldn’t handle the truth. They all paid for hits, and Emma carried them all out without argument, but always alone.

Except for once.

She’d had a partner once, another one of Gold’s people he had paired her with early in her tenure on a hit that was too big to trust her with alone. Or so he had said. She had worked with Neal on half a dozen hits before the big one, and she actually had been twenty then, and stupid. So, so stupid to believe that a good working relationship meant something more, that even though she wasn’t aging there was something between them. And he had led her on, let her believe she was someone to him, danced his fingers along her skin while they waited for clear shots and opportunities, and whispered things into her ear that she wanted to cut his tongue out for when she thought of them now. Despite the undeniable existence of soulmates, she had never really believed in love, at least not for herself, but he had gotten her closer to believing. Until the night he had pulled out a handgun on a hit and pressed it to her temple, told her it had been a test of her instincts and that she -- fatally -- hadn’t even seen it coming. It stung more than she let herself remember even now, but though she hadn’t said a word back, the quick draw of her own weapon and survival-driven, hesitationless shot told him clearly enough that he was an asshole, and he had been wrong about her.

It was that memory that had her sitting in a booth tucked in the corner of a nondescript bar half an hour before she was supposed to meet this supposed partner, two guns and a knife tucked away underneath her red leather jacket. Carrying around weapons was usually too much of a liability to bother with outside of hits, but she could still feel the ghost of warm fingers dancing across her skin, betrayal trailing in their wake. If this partner tried to lay as much as a gentle finger on her, if she caught a bare whiff of a trap, she was going to cut off his hand.

The door of the bar blew open with a gust of cool evening air, and with it came her partner. She recognized him instantly, the dark hair and sharp jawline, the swagger that fit perfectly with assassin. His eyes swept the bar efficiently, settling on her quickly. He strode over without hesitation, sliding into the seat opposite her and saying without preamble, “You’re early.”

This close, only feet away from her in a leather jacket and jeans, he looked dangerous and God, hot. But she didn’t let any of that show, simply arching an eyebrow.

“Do I know you?” she asked, eliciting a chuckle from him.

“You can save the act, but I like the poker face.” He leaned in closer, flashing a charming, painfully curated smile. “Nobody sits in the back booths of bars except for murderers and adulterers. Alas, I’m the only man here worth adulturing with, and I just arrived. Also…” He reached into his jacket pocket and slapped a familiar square of paper on the table, turning it around so she could see her own face smiling back at her. A picture she didn’t doubt had Gold’s writing on the back of it the same as the picture of him she had in her pocket. “I know your face.”

She fought a grimace at the picture. It was an old shot that had been taken before she had started working for Gold, and though her face hadn’t changed, there was something in her eyes that the past decade had erased. She hated that this was his first impression of her, but she bit back her frustration and just levelled him a frank and serious look.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked, because his photo had been his face, Gold’s writing, and nothing else. She had tried to find out who he was, of course, but had come up against the endless walls of nothing she knew he would have encountered if he looked into her, too. The sheer lack of any trace was a calling card for Gold’s people, but that didn’t mean much -- a lot of people worked for Gold, and this man’s employer was the least of Emma’s concerns.

“Your partner,” he said with a wicked twist of a smile. She had to roll her eyes at that, the self-satisfied grin and the knowing glint in his eyes that said you should be impressed.

“I’m not giving out gold stars for information I already know.”

“Good thing, because I like a challenge.” His eyes sparkled, and he held her gaze even as he pointed to her drink and held up one finger to the bartender. “What’s your name, Challenge?”

“Oh, as if,” she shot back, fighting the urge to roll her eyes a second time. “I got here first. You tell me yours.”

“We’re going to get to know each other eventually if we’re to work together. Why delay the inevitable?”

She just arched a brow and let the hypocrisy sink in for a moment. His eyes were still locked with hers, a hint of a challenge there, and she almost wanted him to start something -- wanted him to test her and see just how little she was willing to compromise.

After a long moment, though, he dropped his gaze to the table with a frustrated sigh, and her lips curled in a smile.

“Killian Jones,” he said, holding a hand across the table. She didn’t know him, but she hadn’t expected to. “At your service. Now you.”

“You don’t waste any time,” she muttered, ignoring his hand and taking a sip of her drink. His eyes tracked the movement, navy blue with something simmering beneath the surface that warned against teasing him, warned against stalling when he had kept up his end of the bargain. She could see how he and Gold, who was a stickler for a deal if he was anything, got along. But she supposed he had been a good sport, so she caught his gaze when she set her glass down and nodded once in lieu of the handshake. “Emma.”

“Emma what?”

She just shrugged and bit back a grin at the muscle jumping in his jaw and the frustration plain on his face. They had a target to discuss, and she didn’t make it a habit of being seen anywhere with any of Gold’s people for longer than was ever necessary, so she really shouldn’t have been wasting her time baiting him. But it was so, so easy to get under his skin, and if he was angry maybe he would be less careful with his words. Maybe he would admit what she already knew -- that partner jobs were never a reality unless they were traps for one half of the team. Since that first time, she had never stopped looking for the next test, and if Gold thought that blue eyes and a leather jacket would disguise it when it came, he didn’t know her well at all.

Killian had just opened his mouth to reply when the waitress came by with his drink. A pleasant smile slid onto his face so fast Emma would have almost forgotten his stormy expression from moments ago if she didn't know as well as he did the value of a good cover. The charming grin was so natural, though, and fit his features so perfectly that despite herself, Emma almost forgot how false even the best covers were. He busied himself with his drink while the woman walked away and Emma fell into the routine too, sipping her own drink and then launching into the start of a story about a fake pair of mutual friends until there was nobody in earshot. Before she could cut herself off, Killian did it for her, leaning in slightly and pulling her focus back to him, to the discussion that nobody in this bar would believe they were having even if they overheard it themselves.

“If you’re not going to work with me,” he said quietly, “then that’s up to you. But let me tell you something about Gold: if you screw up this hit because you want it to be the Emma show, he will end you. And me. And I’m not about to let that happen just because you refuse to cooperate. Is that clear?”

For a second she was frozen, just staring at him in disbelief because...no. No, he was not sitting here trying to educate her on what Gold was and wasn’t willing to do to them. No, he was not telling her she was the only reason they would fail. Her blood turned cold in her veins, and she could feel her expression turn a precise sort of calm that only looked calm until it was on top of you.

“Let me,” she said, voice even quieter than his, "tell you about Gold. He doesn’t do partners. Not ever. Not unless he thinks someone,” and at this she looked very pointedly at Killian, “isn’t doing their job, or isn’t doing it right, or is becoming too much of a liability to trust alone. He only assigns partners to walk someone to a six foot hole in the ground.”

“And how do you know I’m not the one walking you?”

“Oh please.” It was almost laughable to think Gold would give her that much of a chance. Yes, Killian was probably a test of her performance or her loyalty, but he wasn't an escort to her own death. Especially after the last time, Gold knew better than that. And so did Emma. "If that was his game, I'd already be dead."

Killian's gaze turned sharp, and tellingly so. He clearly knew Gold well enough to not only think he could school Emma on the man, but also to know how little Gold liked losing investments. Investments in people -- in trained killers -- most of all. Emma knew he could hear the certainty in her voice, though, and was smart enough to know that there was a history behind it to make her so sure that the rules which applied to everyone else didn't apply to her. She was Gold's biggest liability, and investment or not, it was no surprise how far he'd go to keep her from becoming a problem.

"Have you considered," Killian said finally, "that he has reasons for assigning partner hits he's just not told any of us about? That she" -- the target Emma assumed he had gotten the same information about as she had -- "is just particularly important? Or dangerous?"

She wondered who Killian was, that he could believe such a thing of their boss who he had to know was never as up front as he seemed.

"If you believe that," Emma said more gently than she would have thought possible, "then I can see why he's paired us up."

Killian put it all together instantly, her words and what she had already said about death, her certainty that she wasn't the one on the chopping block. He scowled at her and slapped a second photo on the table, shielding it casually with a leather-clad arm from any potential roving eyes. She was surprised he didn't walk away, but if he was a professional, she supposed worse things had put that storm in his eyes than just her saying something he already knew.

"How about we just work," he said. "We've a little over two weeks from the information I received, presuming you don't bite my head off first."

"Work it is." She ignored the biting comment for now, simply relieved that they were finally getting to the thing she was good at. What he said was exactly in line with the information that had accompanied the photo she had been given, and even though it sounded long, in their line of work two weeks was nothing at all. "Tell me what you know."

-------

What he knew ended up being exactly what she knew, which was not much. Emma wasn’t sure whether it was a coincidence or whether their target actually was someone -- or whether a thoroughly anonymous target was part of whatever Gold was trying to achieve with this partnership. She and Killian had spent an hour nursing drinks and figuring out what ground had been covered already, and though they had apparently looked into the same things and asked the same questions, they had both come up with the same nothing. So he had proposed a stakeout the next night -- proposed it right as she had opened her mouth to do the same, and she contemplated pinning his hand to the table with a straw through the palm because he gave her the cockiest smirk.

He left first, and she could see his profession in the lines of his body as he slipped smoothly between people at the bar. He had that same look on his face, though, as he pivoted to face her one last time before disappearing out the door, and she only put it all together when she lifted a coaster to wedge a bill underneath to cover her drinks and realized he already had.

Bastard.

Emma had agreed to the stakeout because it made sense, but nothing about this supposed partnership said she couldn’t get ahead in the meantime. The information Gold had given them both about their target had included a home address, and being parked in front of it for the last hour with no sign of the woman had given Emma a lot of time to stew about her so-called partner. Between the smirk and the leather and the eyes that said to forget everything else, between the cocky way he had introduced himself and the better-than-you certainty with which he had tried to educate her about a man she knew all too well, Killian Jones was trouble, and Emma knew it. But what she didn’t know, despite an entire evening and the last hour thinking about it, was what Gold was after with the man. Emma hadn’t been lying -- if Gold had any reason not to trust her, she’d already be gone. But if it was a capability problem he was getting at, she was going to make him eat his words. Thoughts. Whatever. She would figure out who this woman was, finish the job, and take the entire cut for herself before this Killian Jones got off his ass and bothered to come to work. And then she’d shoot the same knowing smirk back at the partner she didn’t need and let him meet whatever end Gold had planned alone.

Assassinations weren’t a team sport, and she wasn’t about to let them become one.

A red car rolled around the corner, slowing as it approached the house, and Emma sat up straighter. She could just make out the target behind the wheel, hands tapping casually on the curve of it. Even from afar, the woman looked nice -- exactly the kind of woman who didn’t really deserve to be killed. That was nothing new, though -- most of the people whose photos she got in those envelopes didn’t deserve what they got, either.

She had cared more about that at the start, but ten years was a long time to build walls between her better judgement and the necessary evil of her work.

The woman was just about to exit the car when Emma’s passenger door creaked open and the car dipped as another figure slid into the seat beside her. Even before she turned toward the person in the grey hoodie, she had a small knife in hand, palmed from where it always lived in the side pocket of her door, and bound for the intruder’s neck. But he -- it had to be a he by the way he filled out the seat -- was fast, too, and had a hand on her wrist with the tip of her blade inches from his skin.

“That’s not,” he said, drawing his hood down with his free hand, “any way to treat your partner.”

“Get out of my car,” she snapped, not bothering to drop her hand as she turned back to the woman’s house. The entire exchange between her and Killian had been moments-long so the woman was, luckily, still in the driveway -- lucky for Killian because if he had screwed this up for her, she would have left him in the gutter with her knife in his neck, partnership or not.

“I’d only draw more attention to us, not that this car does much by way of blending in.” He forced her hand down to the centre console between them, and she let it happen, if only because two people fighting over a weapon in a parked car really would have caused a scene.

“I don’t remember asking you to weigh in on my car; in fact, I don’t remember asking you to be here at all.”

“I like to think I’m thorough,” he said, leaning over slightly to look out her window as the woman started unloading bags from her trunk. “Besides, if you’re not going to invite me to do recon, I’m going to have to find you myself.”

“Were you following me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, love. I’ve better things to do with my time than trail a second-rate assassin.” He ignored the rage sweeping over her face and nodded out the window to the woman. “I’ve been following her.”

“And what the hell do you think it is I’m doing here?” she asked sharply.

“A lot of sitting, by the looks of it.” He squeezed her wrist in a bone-crushing grip until she dropped the knife between them, and while she thought about picking it back up, she settled for glaring at him and leaving it where it was. “And I found out where she works. What do you have to show for this little lounge-fest of yours?”

She ignored the barb for the moment in lieu of the other piece of information he’d let drop. “You did not,” she said flatly. She was really starting to hate this guy. “Where?”

“You know that bookshop cafe down the street from the office? Percolate & Parchment?” He paused a moment for her to catch up, picking absently at the woven strands of the shelf beneath her dash. “She works there. Barista, though when I went in she seemed more interested in selling me a book than making a cappuccino.”

“You went in?” Emma regarded him skeptically, but the faintly red tips of his ears gave away the truth of his statement. Gold had rules about interacting with targets -- ideally never, practically only when necessary if the target was big enough, if the hit was important. Emma herself had never actually met a target in person, even on big hits, and it had never been an issue.

Second-rate assassin my ass.

“Well, if it’s as I say and she’s important, then we should use whatever means available to understand who she is and how best to carry out the hit.” His eyes flashed away from hers for only a moment, but it struck her as off and then instantly she knew -- knew that behind the cocky grin and the uncompromising confidence was something a little more vulnerable, a little more human. And, more than that, it was something he didn’t want her to see. “And if it’s as you say,” he continued, “and my head’s on the line, what do I care what I do to get the job done?”

“Practical,” she said drily, turning back to look out the window to hide the softening she could already feel around her eyes, because his voice just then had sounded different than she ever would have expected from him. It sounded like late nights in empty cars and on cold, windy rooftops, like being alone with your thoughts so long you forgot there was ever anything else; like being on edge frequently enough that you stopped caring what happened. It sounded uncomfortably familiar, and she wasn’t about to let that take the divide between them and turn it into something murky and complicated.

The woman was just closing the trunk, her bags lined up neatly on the front porch of the house. She looked so civilized doing it that Emma had to wonder who had called the hit. She never met the people who hired her, but Gold usually put it on the information sheet that accompanied the target photos. Once the surprise of Killian had worn off the night she got the assignment, Emma had gone back to the sheet, but it was strangely empty this time around. No name, no profession, no hire details -- just this address and the deadline for the hit. It was almost sloppy in its lack of detail, but Emma knew better than to question Gold. She had known it even longer than she had been working for the man, long enough that the knowledge was in her bones.

And she had always been resourceful.

“What’s her name?” she found herself asking regardless, eyes still on the woman. She didn’t want to ask Killian, didn’t want to admit in doing it that she still didn’t know for herself, but he was here, and if he had met their target he probably knew. More than that, Emma needed the connection. It felt too invasive to sit here planning the end of a person she didn’t know even at the most basic level. Even if the hits had lost their edge over the years, she still needed to hold the names of her targets in her mind, the details of who they were and what they did and why they were at the wrong end of her gun. It didn’t make it better, but it made it feel...right -- right that she would carry these pieces of the people she took away with her for the rest of her immortal life, right that their memory would die the same way she eventually would, at the hand of the man who had ensnared them all in this in the first place.

“Belle,” he said quietly, gravely, like he knew why she had asked. Emma nodded once, turning the name over in her head, adding it to the paltry collection of details. Killian didn’t say anything for several long minutes, the two of them watching out of Emma’s window as Belle moved everything inside, and then for a few moments after until Killian said, “We could do it now, you know. We’re both here, it’s quiet, and if you didn’t see anyone since you’ve been here she’s probably alone. It’s a good opportunity.”

“We don’t know anything about her,” Emma protested. She was well aware that days of recon and stakeouts were not crucial components of a hit, and that they probably weren’t business as usual for him the same way they were for her, but the idea of doing the job and leaving while their target was still a stranger...

“I know, but when are we going to get a chance like this again?” He glanced in the back seat, but he wouldn’t find what he was looking for back there. “Do you have…”

“We could make it work,” she said, thinking of the knives hidden all around the car and the gun she had tucked away well within reach. It wasn’t her usual long-range rifle, but it would do if it had to.

“Are we going to?”

She held back what wanted to be a trailing sentence, a formless I… out in the air, because she knew what made sense. Yes made sense, yes was practical, yes was what a decade of this life told her she should say. But there was the fact that they still knew next to nothing about Belle except for her name and where to find her, and then there was the one thing that probably did make her a second rate assassin.

“Not now,” Emma said finally. “Not here.”

She could feel Killian’s gaze on her for a long moment, but just as she thought he was going to argue, he leaned back in his seat with a definitive nod and said, “Okay.”

She didn’t let her surprise show as she mirrored his nod in response, and didn’t waste any time putting the car in gear and pulling away from the house. She felt a pressure on her chest slowly ease as they turned onto the main road and out of Belle’s neighbourhood, the image that had been running through her mind slowly fading. It was a beautiful neighbourhood, and in the time she had been parked, she had seen two young families and several more yards with colourful toys that provided undeniable evidence of more. She pictured the lives these families probably had, careless and happy like she had dreamed of all through her childhood, and she couldn’t shake the image of one of those kids finding the body, of the stain her work would leave on the neighbourhood. She took lives, yes, but she drew the line at taking from children the peace and certainty and childhood she had never had.

“You can drop me off anywhere,” Killian said quietly beside her, and she clenched her teeth as she realized she had almost forgotten he was still in the car.

“Did you park somewhere downtown?”

“Took the bus.” He shot her a twist of a smile, the familiar smugness returning. “Your target knowing what you drive is just asking for trouble.”

“Only if you get noticed, which wouldn’t happen if you were any good,” she shot back, a wicked grin curling in return. “Where do you live? I’ll drop you off.”

“Nice try, love.” An eyebrow drifted up to his hairline, and she had to offer him a nod in concession. “You tried to stab me not fifteen minutes ago. You’re not getting within a hundred yards of my house.”

“Congratulations. You just passed Assassin 101.” She rolled her eyes but her grin didn’t fade. “I’m not just driving around with you for the rest of the afternoon. Tell me where to go, or I’m dropping you on a street corner.”

“Street corner’s fine.” He gestured in the general direction they were headed. “You know that grocery store on the corner of East and Pine? That’d be great.”

“What, you hitting a bag boy next?”

“No, but I do plan on putting an end to a frozen pizza later this evening.” God, he was quick. If he had been anyone else, she might have laughed at the quip. But he wasn’t, so she settled on keeping that twist of a smile for the next three blocks.

He didn’t immediately leave when she pulled into a parking spot at the store, instead pulling a hand up and through his hair and turning to her with a measure of hesitation in his expression.

“Give me your number,” he said. Now that she laughed at.

“Fuck you, no. Why?”

“Partners, remember?” He tossed his phone in her lap, unlocked and open to the contacts screen. “We’ll go to the coffee shop tomorrow. There’s a vacant office in the building opposite. We can figure out our plan from there.”

“And just meeting there wouldn’t work because…”

“Are you always this bloody stubborn?” He sighed heavily. “You have a work phone, I know you do. Just give me that. It’s not tied to you so I can’t somehow use it to your detriment, and you know Gold would let me have it if I did anything to jeopardize his operation. I don’t see what the problem is.”

He was right, and they both knew it, so Emma picked up his phone with a scowl and gave him the number to the nondescript phone Gold had given her years back. She didn’t use it much -- even Gold barely contacted her on it, and he was the only one who had both the number and a reason to call -- so it wasn’t really a problem. But...

“It’s the principle,” she said. “You don’t just go asking for girls’ phone numbers when you’ve just been talking about casual murder.”

“Not casual,” he snapped too quickly. “Professional, and frequent, but not…”

“Jesus. It was a joke.” She tossed the phone back in his lap with no small degree of frustration in her voice. “Now get out. I’ve got things to do.”

“Don’t beat around the bush, do you?” He had the audacity to look offended at her tone, but he opened the door and got out anyway, offering a sarcastic eternal thanks for your hospitality before he slammed the door.

She wasn’t even out of the parking lot, though, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and set it on her thigh as she turned back onto the main road, glancing down at the message on the screen. It was a number she didn’t know, but it could only have been one person.

Never say I’m not fair, said Killian Jones, his number in bright white figures on her screen.

-------

They met at eight the next night at the office building across the street from Percolate & Parchment, an hour and a half before the coffee shop was set to close. She saw Killian the moment she entered the building, lingering in the lobby like he had gotten here well in advance and had been waiting a while. In the moment it took him to look up, she cursed him for looking so good in his suit, a plain navy number with a crisp white shirt and red tie that suited him perfectly. When he did look up and caught her gaze with his, the grin he gave her told her he knew how he looked and had expected her reaction.

Not that, when his eyes travelled down over her simple patterned blouse and slim black trousers, he was very subtle in his admiration, either.

“Eyes to the front of the class there, Jones,” she said quietly as she came to stand in front of him, offering him a firm handshake that slotted perfectly into the cover that fell into place around them, two business professionals checking out a vacant office after hours.

“Only if you direct yours there also.” He winked as he released her hand, turning to lead her to the elevator. “Almost like we planned it, eh, love?”

“Can’t blame you for copying my moves,” she returned smoothly. It wasn’t necessarily luck that they’d both had the same thought about their attire, about what would fit in best if anyone happened to see them here. Her years of experience had made blending into the background habit, and she supposed it had worked the same way for him, even if she didn’t know whether he’d been in this life as long as she had.

“If I recall,” he ushered her into the elevator with a flat palm as he spoke, every inch the gentleman she knew he wasn’t, and turned to face her as the door closed, an eyebrow already arched, “I got here first. So by rights, you’re copying me.”

“I’d rather die.”

“I know I look heavenly, darling, but please do try to contain yourself.” He took the elbow to his side easily, only shifting slightly to take the blow near the front of his ribcage. As his jacket pulled taut, she saw the faint line of a shoulder holster under his arm, no doubt carrying a weapon that was an equal match to the gun she had tucked in the rear waistband of her pants, hidden neatly beneath her own jacket. The cover clearly only went so far for both of them.

“You’ll be looking even more heavenly when I push you out the window,” she said as the doors opened, gesturing to the wide-open, empty office and the large windows facing the street.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s where I’d go.” His voice was a shade darker now. He walked past her to one of the windows that had a folding chair set up in front of it already, but didn’t sit, instead lingering just beside the window frame and peering down at the darkening street below. “If you pushed me.”

The certainty in his voice made her pause for a moment, that darker note she knew too well from experience. She wished he had just stayed cocky -- cocky she could handle.

“Well,” she said finally, “I’d probably join you eventually.”

His eyes snapped to hers so quickly she barely saw it happening,. They were deep blue and full of something that wasn’t confidence and wasn’t teasing, and she didn’t know what to do with an expression like that coming from someone who was just as likely to be digging her grave as she was his. So she walked over to the window, taking a place on the side opposite Killian, and swept up a pair of binoculars from the seat of the chair. She could feel Killian’s gaze still boring into her even as she raised the binoculars to her eyes, and for another long moment afterwards as she focused on the warm yellow cafe across the street.

“So what are you thinking?” Emma asked. “Short range or long?”

“What, love?”

“The hit. Are we going in there with pistols and knives or are we doing it from here?”

There was a long pause as Killian caught up, and the delay felt distracted and sloppy even to Emma’s ears. “We can’t see the full shop from this far up,” he said eventually. “Close range would be more of a guarantee. But…”

“Messier,” Emma finished, nodding. “More chance to be seen, for her to scream or try to fight.”

“So long range, then. There are good shots from here. We could make it.”

“Easy.” Even though some of the back of the shop was obscured by the angle, there were plenty of opportunities for clear shots from this window. Early in the morning or late at night would be best, a clean shot between the eyes as Belle opened or locked up the double doors facing the street. Even at the counter would do, something a little more private. Emma could see Belle with crystal clarity standing behind the espresso machine now, could get a clear shot that would put her behind the counter when she fell, obscured from the eyes of the street. By the time someone found Belle, Emma and Killian would be long gone without a trace. “We’re going to have to take this stupid lawn chair with us before we--” Emma let her sentence drop off as Belle came out from behind the machine, sliding a finished drink toward a smiling woman across the counter in a white to-go cup with a distinctive black scrollwork P in sharp relief on the side, the cup turned at an almost perfect angle for Emma to see it clearly.

“She doesn’t own the cafe, does she,” Emma said to Killian. It wasn’t a question.

“No, she only started a few months ago. Place’s been here--”

“Forever,” Emma finished absently, not taking her eyes off the cup as the customer carried it out the door.

She was an idiot. She should have recognized this place, the name, as soon as Kilian had said it. It had been here longer than Emma had, one of the first places she had been to when she’d come to the city. It was a remnant of her past and she steered clear of it now, but she still should have remembered. It was the cup that flagged the memory, that curling P she had seen in a spindly hand and on the corner of a thick oak desk day after day for years. Even before then, it had been a constant fixture on bedside tables and a warm granite countertop and in a library she wasn’t allowed in.

She knew that cup well, and it changed everything.

“I know who called the hit,” Emma said, turning to Killian abruptly and shoving the binoculars in his hands.

“How--”

“Look at that cup.” She pointed in the direction the customer was slowly disappearing, and to his credit, Killian wasted no time in training the binoculars on the disappearing figure. “Where do you recognize that from?”

It was one moment, then two, then, “Bloody hell.”

“No kidding.”

“It could be a coincidence,” he said, even as he dropped the binoculars to look at her with wide eyes full of realization.

“A coincidence that Gold’s been drinking that coffee for--” sixteen “--years, except for the last few weeks?” She’d noticed the brand new in-office coffee machine and lack of white paper cups on Gold’s desk when she had gotten her assignment before this one. She should have known there was a reason for it beyond, Convenience, dearie.

“And that’s why this is a partner hit.” She could almost see the wheels turning as Killian put it all together. And because she was watching, she also saw his eyes harden and dart over to her right before he said, “I’ve got a rifle in the ceiling.”

“What?” Her voice sounded flat and harsh even to her own ears. “Do you know how much of a risk that is?”

“Of course I know,” he snapped. “But if Gold called the hit, and if he thinks she’s a risk…”

“We could do it right now and be done with it,” she finished. He was right, of course, and she had thought the same thing when she recognized that cup. It was what someone loyal would do, what a good assassin would do. If she were any good, she would have carried out the hit at Belle’s house yesterday.

But if Killian were any good, he would have carried out the hit from this window when he came to hide the rifle.

“Or,” Killian said, and she looked over at him with hope simmering dangerously in her chest. “We could recon one more night just to be sure, just to get a plan in place.”

“I wouldn’t mind a decent exit strategy. Or a contingency plan.”

“Then we wait.” He looked almost relieved, and she liked him just a little bit more for it.

“When? Tomorrow?”

“I’m busy tomorrow,” he said. “And the shop’s closed Tuesday and Wednesday.”

“Thursday it is, then.” Emma turned back to the shop and felt Killian turn with her, the two of them looking down at the warm yellow light seeping onto the street and the faint figure of Belle moving behind the counter.

“How many do you think he’s had?” Killian asked softly after a moment.

“What?” But Emma knew what he meant. Gold was centuries old, and soulmates weren’t a one-time thing. It was a gift, this thing the universe gave them, but it didn’t account for a business like Gold’s selling immortality one hit at a time. For Gold to look like he did, around fifty physically, he had to have had a lot of soulmates.

And had to have killed them all.

“I don’t know,” she continued. “Fifty? A hundred? More? I don’t even know how old he is.”

“Me neither.”

They stood in silence for several more minutes, Killian tapping an absent rhythm on the windowsill, Emma cataloguing every hit she had ever done to figure out whether any of those targets had been Gold’s soulmate. It was an uncomfortable thought that she might have done something he wanted, something for his benefit. She didn’t want to now, either, but she couldn’t see a way around it.

Maybe she’d let Killian take the shot. Maybe it would matter less if it came from him.

“Well,” Killian said finally, pushing off the wall and running a hand through his hair. “If we’re not going to do it tonight we might as well get going. Don’t want to linger up here and give anyone any cause for suspicion.”

“As if the rifle in the ceiling wasn’t enough.” Emma rolled her eyes but followed him back into the elevator. It was near closing time for the shop anyway, and she didn’t expect to see much more tonight that would tell her anything about Belle she hadn’t already figured out.

“It’s practical to keep a rifle in the ceiling,” Killian argued with a small grin. “Good for security.”

“Yeah, I’m sure any robber would definitely give you time to start popping ceiling tiles up to grab it.”

“You never know. Robbers these days aren’t what they used to be.”

“Shame.” The elevator doors opened onto the lobby, putting them face-to-face with a tired looking man in a dress shirt and jeans -- no doubt someone who actually did work there squeezing in some overtime.

“I do hope the space has everything you need,” Killian said smoothly, letting Emma step out ahead of him and nodding pleasantly at the man as they passed. “But please do phone if you have any additional questions.”

“I’ll talk to our facilities manager about the improvements we’d need to make,” she said, flashing him a business-grade smile as they crossed the lobby toward the door, elevator doors closing on the man. “But I think it will work nicely.”

“Glad to hear it.” Killian held the door open for her, and there was a definite sparkle in his eye when she allowed it, the cover silencing any protests. On the street now with late-night foot traffic flowing around them, there was no room for one more quip about the rifle in the ceiling or for a reminder that she hadn’t pushed him out the window upstairs. There was only one final, firm handshake between industry professionals, and then he was turning left and she was turning right and that was it.

She hadn’t really planned on making a window joke, but she found she missed the opportunity.

-------

Emma was nearly home when her work phone buzzed on the seat beside her. She glanced over absently at the first stop light, expecting Killian to add some detail about their meeting on Thursday he hadn’t gotten a chance to at the building, but it wasn’t Killian. It was the only other person who knew this number, and the one she wished didn’t.

Come to the house, it said, simple as that. She wanted to say no instantly, as she always did. Nothing from Gold was ever an invitation, and this was no different. It was a power play cloaked in pleasantry, but he wasn’t fooling either of them. With a long sigh, she hung a U-turn in the intersection and headed out of town.

Gold’s office was impressive, but his house was something else entirely. A sprawling building on a country property just outside of town, the money he took from clients and assassins alike dripped from every brick, and Emma hated it. It was a hulking structure, dark with mahogany and stone, the leaded windows sharp teeth when the light hit them at a certain angle. The sconces on either side of the door were on, and there was light shining through the front windows when she pulled up, a mockery of a home. The worst thing was that it almost tricked her every time -- coming up the long driveway from the dark road with the house glowing warmly in the middle of the property, it was almost welcoming until she got closer and saw Gold’s car parked in the driveway, saw the upstairs window that looked out over the road, and remembered who exactly lived in this house.

She knocked twice on the big wooden door, and the sound hadn’t even finished echoing through the yard when Gold swung it open.

“You never need to knock, dearie,” he said in a voice that would have been kind coming from anyone else.

“Visitors knock. I knock.” She let him usher her in and fought the urge to look back at the door as it closed behind her, to catch a final glimpse of her bright yellow Bug parked in the driveway, as if it was the last sliver of sunlight she was going to see for a while. “Do you have another job for me that couldn’t wait till the morning?”

“I just wanted to discuss your current target,” he said, leading her into a living room with deep brown leather furniture and dim table lamps casting heavy shadows in the corners. “And to see how you liked working with Killian Jones.”

It sounded innocent, but she knew Gold well enough to hear the edge beneath the words. Hearing him ask was shocking enough because he never checked up on hits, but with what she knew of Belle she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“I don’t need a partner,” she said because he would expect her to. “It’s one target. I can take the hit alone.”

“Team building is important, dearie.”

“It’s infuriating and full of itself, and the more hands on a hit the more likely things will go wrong.” She was surprised to find that she didn’t want to say those things, but she knew Gold asked her here to hear them. As well as she knew him, he knew her better, and while that grated harshly, she couldn’t fake a change of heart. “But…” she said, rolling her eyes and forcing a huff of breath, “he’s competent. I guess. And he hasn’t screwed it up -- yet -- so he’s fine.”

“Excellent.” She almost expected him to tent his fingers, but he just lowered himself into one of the chairs and looked up at her expectantly. “And your target?”

“Far as we can tell, she’s unremarkable. Young, works at a cafe downtown, lives alone. We’re going to do the hit long range, from the building across the street. It’ll be quick and thorough, done by the end of the week.” She scowled slightly and looked down at him with something edging on contempt. “It’s a straightforward job. I could have done it alone.”

“Well, maybe you can teach Mr. Jones a thing or two.” Gold looked satisfied, and Emma hated that she had given him that. “You should stay a while. I’m having dinner delivered shortly.”

“I have a few things to do before the hit,” she said, forcing a slightly bored tone to cover up the frantic energy she could feel building inside her, the panic at the idea of staying. “I want it to go well.”

Gold just looked at her for a moment, and she knew he knew she was lying. There was something too cunning in his eyes, and then a small smile curled on his lips. Everything was power with him, and he knew he had the upper hand here, as he always did. He had asked her to come, and she couldn’t say no. He had asked her about work which he herself had trapped her in, whose assignment he had dictated. And he had asked her to stay, and while she had declined, if he asked again, she would have to say yes.

The only reason he nodded once and jerked his head toward the door in a silent dismissal was because he was choosing to let her go, not because her words meant anything to him.

She didn’t bother with a goodbye, hustling down the too-familiar hallway and back out the front door. Five minutes start to finish, but the short visit was enough to remind her of her place. As if she ever forgot.

-------

Belle was Emma’s only target, so the next day passed unremarkably with no recon and no action to speak of. She was hoping for a quiet night too, something she didn’t get a lot of, and thought she was going to get it as the hour got later and she stayed sprawled on the couch with the TV on in the background. But just shy of midnight, the shrill of her work phone echoed through the apartment from where she had left it on the kitchen counter. She groaned, but her heart was in her throat, because if this was Gold again she didn’t know what she’d do.

She answered without looking at the screen, a simple and curt, “Yes?”

“Emma?” The smooth accent wasn’t Gold’s, and the ragged breathing behind it definitely wasn’t. Gold didn’t do anything for himself except sit at his stupid desk, so it could only be one person.

“Who the hell gave you the right to call me?” she demanded, taking the phone to sink back on the couch as she scowled at Killian through the receiver. “We said tomorrow. I’m going to be there tomorrow. End of--”

“Where do you live?” he cut in. “I need to come over.”

“Like hell! You got lucky with the phone number, buddy. I’ll see you--”

“Emma.” There was something in his voice that made her finger hover above the disconnect button but not press it -- not the confidence she had gotten used to, but not the vulnerability that seemed to lurk there, either. No, this was something that she would have called fear if she didn’t know better, and that a was a dangerous thing for anyone in their profession. “I’m...working. Asshole had a gun and he knew what he was about. I need to come over.”

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Emma knew what that meant. Between him calling her and that tone in his voice, she knew things had gone very south. If he meant what she thought he meant, and he was calling her because he couldn’t handle it himself, he really did need somewhere to go with someone who wouldn’t ask questions.

“Shit. Fine.” She sighed as she gave him the address, ignoring the fact that his rough thank you made something shift in her chest. She wasn’t expecting him quickly, but it was maybe fifteen minutes before there was a knock at her door.

“Lock’s broken on the main door,” he said in greeting when she let him in, shooting her a small grin even though his hand was clamped over his side and she could see a dark, wet mark on the fabric of his black shirt. “Not very safe.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a small armoury under the bed so I don’t care.” She had weapons hidden in more places than just under the bed -- one under the table just to her right, in fact -- but he didn’t need to know. She jerked her head down the hall and gestured for him to follow her. “Come into the bathroom, would you? I’ll never get my security deposit back if you get blood on my floor.”

“What a welcome.”

“I said you could come. I didn’t say I was a good hostess.” She let him enter the small bathroom before her, directing him to the side of the tub. “That shirt needs to come off.”

“Ah, I see your game here.” He waggled his brows but the gesture fell flat even if it did elicit an eye roll from her. He pulled the shirt off, his mouth a grim line as the movement pulled on the wound. He dropped it into her bathtub and clamped his hand over his side again in one smooth movement.

She caught herself looking as his eyes were on the bloody shirt in her tub, and though she told herself she shouldn’t be, she still allowed her gaze to sweep over him once, taking in the map of scars on his chest, the faint line where his neck met the paler skin of his chest, and the tattoos inked over his heart and on his forearm. She dropped her eyes just as he turned back to her, twisting the tap to hide the sudden movement and rinsing off her hands. “So, what happened?”

“My target was a policeman. He had his weapon on him and was a bloody quick draw.”

“Oh, so you get assigned a cop and think to yourself, I’ll just get him while he’s at work, armed, and a radio call away from backup? Great idea.” She crouched in front of him and moved his hand from the wound gently, ignoring for the moment the worry that bloomed when she felt his blood slick under her fingers. “Jesus Christ, Killian. You couldn’t dodge or something?”

“I was aiming at the time,” he said, grimacing as she prodded the edges of the wound. It didn’t look critical, but she knew he wouldn’t have called her if the bullet wasn’t still in there.

“Did you at least make the hit?”

“Of course I did.”

“Good.” She stood and wiped her hands down the side of her jeans, only realizing after that she would probably have to throw them out after this. “You can use your cut to pay the bill I’m going to give you when all this is over.”

“Viper.”

“Second-rate assassin.” She threw him a smirk she didn’t really feel and stepped back into the hall. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“Not like I’m bleeding or anything, love. Take your time.” She could hear the strain in his voice even as he teased her, and she didn’t want to be glad he was here making himself her problem, but she was.

She wasn’t gone long, shoving a three-quarters empty bottle of rum in his hands when she returned and folding an old dish towel on the bathroom counter before pulling a first aid kit out from under the sink.

“Drink that. It’ll help a little. Maybe.”

“Maybe?” He sounded so indignant at the word that she had to smile at it, but he twisted off the cap and took a swig nonetheless. His eyes screwed shut against the burn and stayed closed, his shoulders lifting as he sighed. “I do apologize for this, Emma. I’d have done it myself if I could see the wound properly, and you know Gold.”

Yes, she did know Gold, which meant she knew his rule about injuries on the job -- namely that if you got hit, you were slow enough to have been seen, which meant you could have been identified, which meant you found yourself at the wrong end of one of your colleagues’ weapons and nobody ever found your body.

“Thank me after you don’t die tonight,” she said tightly instead of saying all that. They both knew it, and dwelling on it -- or on the possibility that even if Emma fixed Killian up Gold still might find out -- wasn’t going to help the situation.

“I fully trust that you won’t -- Christ, woman!” That was because Emma had grazed the edge of the wound with a pair of tweezers. She looked up at him and arched a brow, tapping the bottle of rum.

“How the hell did you think I was going to do this? That’s what the rum is for, you ass.”

“Could’ve warned me.” He took a long swig from the bottle and tipped his head toward his side in assent.

“You came to me. That’s warning enough for you that things are going to hurt.”

“That’s alright, love.” The words came through gritted teeth as she probed the wound again, finding the bullet quickly. He was lucky it was small and hadn’t gone too deep, and that it hadn’t hit anything important. His breath caught once as she worked but he didn’t protest again. “I like it rough.”

His voice was gravel, and it was probably because of the pain, but the sound of it settled somewhere deep in Emma’s chest, heat blooming beneath it. She was suddenly and intensely aware that he was half-naked in her apartment, his skin warm beneath her hand, and that nobody had probably ever seen him this vulnerable. The pale lacework of scars on his chest spoke of previous injuries, but the ragged look to some of the larger ones said that those injuries had been tended sloppily and hastily. And alone.

“Well,” she said finally, “I don’t call digging foreign objects out of guys’ sides a good time, so enjoy this while you can if that’s what you’re into.”

“I assure you,” he breathed a curse as she pulled the bullet out entirely, “there are things I enjoy more.”

“Thank God for that.” She pressed the dish towel to his side, and he held it in place without having to be asked while she dug through the first aid kit for iodine and a long roll of gauze.

“You’d be a good paramedic, you know,” he said, swallowing another mouthful of rum. “You’re quite calm under pressure.”

“Oh, please. It’s a glorified flesh wound, you big baby. How do you know I wouldn’t be in hysterics if you actually were bleeding out on my floor?” She was aware as she said it that it was not, in fact, a glorified flesh wound, but she figured the banter would keep his mind off the burn of the iodine in a moment. At the very least, she was enjoying herself.

“I just know.” He hissed a little as she removed the towel and dabbed the wound with iodine, but he didn’t say anything. “I assure you, if it was you who got shot I’d be running around, arms flailing…”

“You would not.” She grinned despite herself, packing the hole with gauze and sticking a large white bandage over the whole thing. “There. I think the bullet was small enough that you won’t need stitches, so we’re done.”

“Just like that?” He twisted a bit to look down, running a cautious finger over the bandage. “That was quick.”

“If you want, I can take my time and dig around a bunch more. Be a little less efficient about it. Maybe invite in an infection or two.”

“Touche.” He stood, fingers ghosting across the bandage again as it pulled. “Thank you for this, Emma. When I asked for your number I didn’t quite intend--”

“Yeah, well nobody plans on getting shot.” She shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable in such a small space with him. “Seriously, it wasn’t a big deal.”

“We both know I was looking at an unmarked grave if Gold had found out, so yes, Emma, it was a big deal,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to let you brush this off without thanking you for it.”

“You can bring me coffee on Thursday and we’ll call it even.” She dumped the tweezers, bullet, and bloody towel in the sink before stepping into the hall and nodding towards the living room. “You want to just...hang out for a sec until I’m sure you’re not going to keel over on the street or something?” she asked, then gestured toward the rum bottle still clutched in his hand. “I’ll get you a glass for that.”

“No need, darling.” He held up the nearly empty bottle with a sheepish grin as he followed.

“Guess I’ll just get you a straw, then,” she muttered, directing him to the couch with a flat palm, and disappeared into the kitchen. She didn’t get a straw but did get herself a beer from the fridge, and then leaned back against the closed fridge door and closed her eyes for a moment, just breathing. She hadn’t given herself much time to think about it from the time Killian had called until now, but he had been in her bathroom with a literal bullet in his side. And he had called her -- had called her, and she barely even knew him. Could have brought him in here and held a knife to his neck a second time and not pulled it away.

She didn’t want to think that he trusted her.

With a final deep breath, she went to join him in the living room. He was sitting on the far side of the couch, eyes roaming around the spartan room. Emma had never had anybody over to this place, and it felt more intimate than it should have, knowing that he saw how few personal things she had, knowing he was putting together why.

“You want to watch a movie or something?” she asked, grabbing the TV remote from between them and flicking on the set before he had a chance to reply. “You don’t need to stay long -- just convince me you’re not going to die before you leave and I’ll be satisfied.”

“Didn’t think you’d be so concerned for my well-being considering you did threaten to kill me the day we met.”

“I did not, first of all. And if you’re not careful, I still might decide to use you for professional development.”

“It was implied,” he said drily, then jerked his chin at the TV. “What do you like to watch?”

“You’re the guest. You can pick.” She tossed him the remote and took a swig of her beer. Despite Killian here, still shirtless, she could feel the ghost of her quiet evening returning.

“You’ve done more than enough for me tonight, Emma. You can--”

“You just got shot. You pick. Stop arguing with me.”

He raised both eyebrows at that but kept the remote, muttering yes ma’am as he clicked through the channels.

He settled on a cartoon, darting a glance over at her to see if she’d object. She arched an eyebrow of her own but let it slide, tipping back her drink and tossing him a throw in place of the shirt now ruined in her bathtub.

“If you were to ask anyone what two assassins watch on TV on a Monday night, I bet nobody would believe this,” she said, eliciting a chuckle in response from him.

“I bet nobody would believe two assassins are hanging out on a Monday night, cartoons or not.”

She inclined her head in his direction by way of a reply, but he didn’t say anything more, letting the conversation lapse into silence. She was never not aware of him sitting a few feet away, but with the TV on low in the background and the day suddenly weighing on her, it was peaceful just to be there together with someone else.

Is this what life would have been like if she and Gold had never crossed paths? Quiet nights at home with friends or otherwise, people in her life to drink beers with after work, someone on her couch night after night breathing gently beside her, not demanding anything, just existing? She spent a lot of time angry at Gold for what he had taken from her and the person he had made her into, both inadvertently and purposely, but her anger always burned for bigger things, not for the quiet moments like this that she hadn’t even realized she was missing.

Over the course of the episode, as she thought about the other lives she would never get to live, she could feel Killian slowly drifting beside her, the adrenaline from the shot leeching away until all that was left was the haze of the rum and the weariness that came with the job. It became apparent very quickly that he wasn’t about to die, and she could have asked him to leave. Should have asked him to leave. But she convinced herself that they would finish the episode, and even as the credits rolled and a commercial ran, she couldn’t find the words to kick him out.

“How…” he started, turning his head lazily to look at her, his blinks long and languid with liquor, the bottle long empty. “How did you get tangled up in all this? With Gold?”

Her entire body tensed and she wanted to snap at him to mind his own business, but…

...but she had never had anybody ask. Never had anybody know what she did enough to wonder how she got into a line of work that was so outside the law it seemed absurd. Never really had anybody know her while she was working for Gold, period. So instead she settled on, “How do you know I didn’t seek it out myself?”

“I’ve met the people who do,” he said, the skin around his eyes tightening as he frowned deeply. “They’re not...methodical about things, and don’t do the recon, and don’t worry about the cover or about how to do things quick and quiet and get out fast. They treat it like...an art form, almost, and not in the good way.” His voice dropped slightly as he finished, “They’re not you.”

“How did you get into it, then?” she asked. “Because that’s not you either.”

He chuckled darkly and put the rum bottle to his lips before realizing it was empty. Emma wordlessly swapped the rum for her own half-empty bottle of beer and just waited, silent, until he took a swig and said, “I’m...older than I look.”

“Aren’t we all,” she muttered.

“No, Emma. Older. Not thirty, or fifty. Hundreds of years. And way back at the start of them, I had someone.” He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face, and she instantly regretted this line of questioning.

“You don’t…”

“It was a long time ago,” he said, dropping his hand. “It’s fine. She wasn’t my soulmate, but I cared for her deeply. We went to the market one day to buy fabrics and vegetables and spices for a voyage the next day, and when we came back to that port months later, one of the vendors was waiting for us at the docks. Short, mean as a viper...you know him.” Killian looked at Emma significantly until she breathed Gold’s name on a breath of disbelief, and he nodded. Hundreds of years. “She was his soulmate, and it was starting to show already on his face. He wasn’t subtle about it -- had a knife out the minute he stormed our ship, and I knew.” His eyes drifted shut, and this time they didn’t open again even though she could see his pupils darting around inside the lids as he remembered. “I fought him, of course, but he’d had probably at least a hundred years of experience already by then, and I was never going to be a match for him. Not when he was so angry, or so desperate for more years.”

He paused a moment, and she wanted to ask how. How had Killian gone from a man fighting Gold to a man working for him, killing for him? The depth of emotion in his voice betrayed just how heavily the years that had passed since sat on his shoulders, and she wondered how he could walk beneath the weight of it all every day and not have it show.

“I was lucky enough to impress him,” Killian said, though the word didn’t sound like luck, “and he asked me to come work for him. I declined.” His eyes snapped open then, and there were storms raging in the depths of the blue there. “And then he found my brother.”

Oh. Now this was a story she knew well.

“He explained his business, how many he had working for him, and the lengths he could -- and would -- go to to find the people he was after. And if I didn’t work for him, Liam would end up on a dock somewhere with a sword pierced straight through his throat.” He looked over at her, the horror of hearing that still plain on his face even after so long. “I saw his eyes, Emma. He meant it.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“Aye, I suppose you do.” He sighed and turned his head to the ceiling, and just then he looked exceptionally lost. “And the rest, as they say, is history. I quit sailing, left my brother to the Navy, and I’ve been working for Gold ever since. Because he travelled around so much, Liam got to live the last few hundred years with me. He found Elsa twenty years ago, and now I’ve got both of them to protect.”

“And the debt for sparing both their lives is going to keep you in this business until they’re gone,” she finished for him, her own eyes drifting shut at the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t a new story by any means, but it was worse hearing it from someone else’s mouth, about someone else’s loved ones.

“Aye.” He sighed deeply, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet, heavy with the vulnerabilities being spoken aloud. “And when they are, Gold will lose his leverage, yes, but I’ll also have lost any opportunity to know them without this bargain always looming on the sidelines.”

“Do they know?” she asked, voice barely more than a whisper.

“No. Liam would try to fight it, and Elsa would try to make it better, but then they would both have Gold marring their lives as he is mine. I don’t want that for them.”

“I wouldn’t, either.”

“Aye, I’m getting the sense that you know all too well what I’m talking about.”

She nodded, and the silence stretched as Killian waited for her to elaborate, the opening scenes of a new episode casting them both in flickering blue light. When she didn’t continue, he blinked once, long, and rubbed his hands along the legs of his pants absently.

“I should go,” he said. “I’ve imposed on your evening enough, I think.”

“Right now?” Emma gestured to the TV, a too-quick and too-transparent cover for the almost instinctive question that had practically come out on its own. “He hasn’t even gotten his milkshake licence -- could you really forgive yourself if you missed that milestone?”

He stared at her for one long moment, a soft grin slowly spreading over his face and lighting his eyes, the corners crinkling with faint creases, and then he leaned back into the cushions and tugged the blanket tighter around himself.

“No, I don’t believe I could.”

Killian ended up staying for two more episodes back-to-back, and by the time he finally did stand up to leave, they were both yawning and clumsy with exhaustion. He pulled his ruined shirt back on for the trip home, assuring her that the blood would be covered the moment he got in his car, and bid her a simple goodbye with another emphatic thank you as he exited into the hall.

She leaned in the doorway and watched him walk toward the stairs, his steps heavy and slow with the hour and the liquor and the confessions and the pain. His story and the years he had belonged to Gold still rang in Emma’s mind, along with the fact that he had called her, had come here, had trusted her enough to tell her how he had gotten caught up in this life. And yes, she had let him in, had fixed him up, had listened, but she hadn’t really given him anything, had she? And she didn’t want it to bother her, but…

“Killian?” she called down the hall, stopping him just before the stairwell. He pivoted to face her, and she could see his eyebrow cock even from a distance. “Emma Swan,” she said, a faint smile playing on her lips as he caught up with her words, as a brilliant grin spread across his. She waved once before he could say anything, stepping back into the apartment with a quiet don’t get shot again before Thursday tossed into the hall before she closed the door.

His faint chuckle followed her in and stayed long into the night.

-------

Emma beat Killian to the empty office on Thursday, the two days passing slowly without work to do. Sometime since they had last been there he had clearly been back because a second folding chair was set up next to the first by the window facing the cafe. She smiled softly at that, the mental image of him sneaking up the elevator in his suit with a lawn chair too ridiculous not to indulge in. She wasn’t in her fake corporate wear today, risking being seen in jeans and a sweater by whoever was still in the office at eight o’clock. At best, she figured she could pass off casual gear for work after hours in one of the other offices in the building. At worst, she still had a gun in her bag.

She sank into the new chair, grabbing the binoculars from the seat of the other and bringing them lazily to her eyes. The cafe was busy, a line half-a-dozen people long snaking in front of the counter, Belle moving behind it with a smile. Emma didn’t know the woman, obviously, but from everything she’d seen she couldn’t help but wonder how someone so sunny and bright was soulmates with the human equivalent of a sewer rat. She wondered if Gold had always been this way or whether all those hundreds of years ago he had been someone worthy of someone like Belle, and the universe hadn’t caught up yet.

The telltale hum of the elevator filled the space before she could go any farther down that trail of thought, and she was on her feet in a moment, gun drawn and trained on the door right as it opened. Killian stepped out and froze the moment he saw her, a smile spreading across his face as he raised both arms in mock surrender.

“If you’ve forgotten,” he said, “I’ve been shot recently and would prefer not to be twice in a week, if it’s all the same to you.”

“We’ll see,” she said with a twist of a smile back, but wedged the gun back in her waistband and reclaimed her seat. “How’s the wound?”

“Sore still, but I’ll live.” He winked as he sank into his own chair. “I had a good doctor.”

“Your doctor should be sued for malpractice on the grounds of operating out of a bathroom that was last cleaned...a while ago.”

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, probably.” She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep the smile from growing, but failed miserably. She handed him the binoculars and leaned back in her chair as he took them, watching the headlights from the cars outside striping along the ceiling as Killian looked out at the cafe. With no lights on, the room was dusky with the late hour and indirect street light, and it struck her that she was going to miss this -- the lawn chairs and the cavernous space, sneaking around with half-formed covers and constantly reminding herself not to forget the rifle in the ceiling when all of this was over.

She turned her head slightly to the side to make a quip about the rifle, but it died on her lips when she found Killian already watching her, his lips a serious line and the binoculars sitting in his lap.

“What?” she asked, peering out at the cafe. “Did something--”

“You like this, don’t you?” he interrupted quietly, ignoring the cafe entirely and gesturing to the space between their two chairs.

“What?”

“This,” he said. “Us. Someone else who knows who you are and what you do. Talking about it without being scared of chasing someone away. You pointing a bloody gun at my face and me not having to worry about whether my coat flaps open enough that my holster pokes out. No covers and no lies. All of it.” The words came out in a rush, his face so open she could tell they were raw and honest, ushered into the open before he could talk himself out of it. She didn’t know how, after being burned so badly by Gold, he could still be so open -- about his past, about this -- but he wasn’t wrong.

“Does it matter if I do?” she asked softly. “We do the hit, we get the payout, we go our separate ways. That’s how it has to be. You know Gold wouldn’t stand for two of his people together. It’s a liability, and we’d both end up dead.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He rubbed a hand over his face and up through his hair, the motion so weary she saw every year in the line of his body, the crushing weight of being alone for so long with so much to say and nobody to say it to. “I’ve just...enjoyed this, Emma. Swan. And I want you to know that.”

Maybe it was the melancholy in his voice just then, maybe it was the way no covers and no lies had settled just beneath her breastbone, maybe it was the way she was never going to see him again after this, or maybe it was because as much as she wasn’t willing to say it, it was nice to tell someone something and know they would understand. Whatever it was, she pulled her gaze from his and looked out the window again as she breathed I’m an orphan into the room.

Killian didn’t say anything in return, but she heard the squeak of his chair as he shifted to face her.

“I was left on the side of the road as a baby,” she continued. “I never knew my parents, bounced around the foster system a lot, until I turned twelve and got adopted.” An ironic smile twisted as she said it, because she still remembered the excitement -- nearing that age when she would be basically unadoptable and getting the news that someone wanted her when nobody ever had. “They said he was a single guy, widowed, but well-off and willing to give me my best life.”

“You’re not…” She had to give it to Killian -- he was smart and he picked things up fast even when she couldn’t quite bring herself to be direct.

“He had the biggest house I’d ever seen,” she said. “Out in the country, tons of property. I had a whole wing basically to myself, and a bedroom of my own, and there was only one room I wasn’t allowed to go in but I didn’t care. And he was…” She didn’t want to say nice because Gold had never been nice, but… “He was...different,” she settled on. “Different than he is now. And I know now that he was basically running a long con and none of it was real but...for six years, it was good.”

“And after six?” Killian asked, his voice low and dangerous in a way she had never heard it.

“I turned eighteen,” she said, shooting him a helpless, bitter little smile. “And he told me what he did for a living. And that he had picked me because he heard about my ‘street smarts’ and because he saw potential there. And that I worked for him now. And then he showed me how much he said I owed him -- everything from the past six years that I thought was mine had just been piling on and becoming debt, and the life of every friend I had ever made and anybody I had started to care about was turned into dollars and added on too. So you’re in this for your brother and your sister-in-law?” She laughed bitterly. “I’m in it for every person I was stupid enough to let in. I’m in it for a thousand lifetimes.”

“You’re Gold’s…” Killian swore emphatically. “That bloody bastard.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said, echoing Killian’s own words from the other night, but she could hear it fall flat. “But you asked how I got here. Tricked into it, same as you.”

What Emma didn’t say aloud was how much it still stung. She was angry at Gold for shanghaiing her into this life, yes -- angry that he was holding hostage the lives of the friends she had once been naive enough to make, punishing her for a life she had barely even gotten to live. But no, what still hurt was that once upon a time, he had given her hope. He had made her think that for once in her life, someone had wanted her. That she got to have the kind of youth she had only ever dreamed of. That she got to have a home, and a family, and a life that wasn’t just defined by what she couldn’t have. It was that he had given her all that and then ripped it away. It was that she didn’t dare to hope anymore, for anything, and she had him to blame.

“Swan…” Killian’s eyes were still slightly too wide, but his voice was blissfully steady as he reached across the space between the chairs and grabbed her hand. “Everything he did...you have to know it wasn’t you, right? He would have done it to anyone.”

“You don’t know my history, Killian.”

“I don’t need to.” His thumb rubbed along the back of her hand as he raised it between them, brought it up to his lips so, so slowly. She had every chance to pull away but her gaze was locked with his, drowning in a sea of deep blue and understanding she had never felt before. His lips against her skin were soft at first, a whisper of a touch, but they deepened as he traced the map of her flingers, her knuckles, her palm with his lips. “You’re worth more than that. You’re worth the world, Emma Swan,” he breathed onto her skin, pressing a kiss to the crease between her thumb and forefinger, the shallow crevice that--

She tore her hand from his and bolted from her chair, standing straight, body taut, in the blink of an eye.

-- the shallow crevice between her thumb and forefinger that hadn’t been there when she had spent an hour cleaning her rifle at home after her last hit the week before. An hour when her eyes had roamed every inch of her hands along with the equipment held in them.

Killian’s eyes were soft but careful as he looked up at her, utterly still. There were words in the blue of them, and his lip pulled slightly where he was biting it, but she didn’t need him to say anything. She knew what this meant, and everything about his expression and the line of his body curving towards her said he did, too.

She pivoted sharply and while she didn’t run, she didn’t waste any time making her way back across the empty space. Something followed that sounded like her name floating on a breath, but she didn’t care. She pushed through the door into the stairwell, and then she did run, feet a sharp staccato against the concrete steps, the sound a hollow echo in the space. For once, she didn’t care who saw, didn’t care about her cover. All she cared about was that her footsteps were the only sound, that the door at the top of the stairs didn’t slam open, that Killian didn’t follow her. She only slowed when she reached the lobby, though her strides were brisk as she crossed it and exited onto the street.

She didn’t look back at the building as she crossed the road and got into her car, but she could feel the imagined heat of Killian’s gaze. If she looked back now, she knew she would see the silhouette of a single figure against the upper windows, his cover also cast aside as he watched her leave him behind.

-------

Emma had never wanted a fucking partner.

Killian had drunk all her rum, but a quarter of a bottle of scotch had been waiting for her at home -- cheap, shitty scotch, but it did the job. Well--it didn’t stop her from turning her hand left and right in the scant light of her living room, studying the topography of her skin as if she had never seen it before, but the alcohol did dull some of the panic that clawed at her chest as her eyes inevitably caught on that one crease that had somehow snuck in all on its own.

Creases meant aging, but Emma didn’t see anyone. She didn’t do anything. She used self-scan at the grocery store and filled her own gas, went to the office and carried out hits from far away and came home to an empty apartment night after night, protecting the world and everyone in it from the fatal bargain that was knowing Emma Swan. She had been so, so careful all these years, and yet--

Emma tipped the scotch back, closing her eyes against the faint burn. Fucking partner.

Had Killian seen the evidence on her? Did he know that he was the only person she really saw, apart from Gold? She wished now that she knew more about soulmate magic, about whether if she ran right now and never saw Killian again, the clock would pause for both of them. Her job was enough proof of the negative, but she let herself dream for a single moment that this was a world that let her choose, that magic she had never asked for didn’t stand in her way.

She took another deep swig. Magic and Gold were standing in her way. Her debt to him was a constant reminder of whose lives were on the line if she tried to run, and though she hadn’t seen any of her friends in over a decade, she had no doubt that Gold knew exactly where they were and how best to hurt them if Emma set a foot out of line.

And then there was Killian’s family, the ways in which Gold would use them to make Killian suffer if Emma did anything. Killian who, despite her best efforts, had somehow gotten tangled up in the black hole that was Emma’s friendship. Killian, who had people to protect the same as she did. Killian, who hadn’t been wrong back at the office.

Emma emptied the final dregs of scotch as she finally let herself settle on the truth. Killian had been right. She did like someone knowing her, knowing what she did. She liked having company on stakeouts. She liked someone teasing her about the likelihood that she’d kill them, liked that the edge to that someone’s voice was grounded in reality, liked that they knew she might actually kill them one day and stuck around anyways. She liked someone else being in on the joke when she used a cover, and liked feeding off a cover as well crafted as her own.

More than that, she liked that that someone was Killian.

But because it was Killian, their future was impossible. He was just as tied to Gold as Emma was, with just as much to lose. Emma knew where that left them, and even though hope was a dangerous burn in her chest, she was glad she didn’t believe in happy endings.

If she did, the reality of this one would hurt that much more.

-------

It had been maybe two hours before Emma heart a soft knock at the door. A small, stubborn part of her considered not answering. She had spent so many years in this apartment with nothing ever changing that it was easy to imagine that nothing ever would if she just didn’t acknowledge that maybe it already had. But after a long moment stretched, filled with her hesitation, there was another knock. This one was more insistent, and she knew that as much as she wanted to deny that a future had finally caught up with her, it wasn’t going to stop knocking at her door until she let it in.

Fucking partner.

She found Killian on the other side of the door, as she knew she would. He looked almost hesitant himself, his smile crooked and sheepish, one hand anchored behind his ear.

“Makes sense now that you threatened to kill me the day we met,” he said, the levity forced but so, so welcome. “You know -- assassin…” He gestured between them, the space pregnant with soulmate.

“I didn’t--”

“Threaten to kill me, I know.” He rolled his eyes. “But it was implied.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“I don’t think I am.” And then suddenly it was about more than the day they’d met. Emma could see the weight of it settle on Killian all at once, his fragile smile finally faltering as he ran a hand up and through his hair with a sigh. “You going to let me in, or are we going to have this conversation in the hall?”

“I’m out of rum,” she said, stepping aside. “And you know I’m a bad host.”

“I had a bullet in my side the last time I was here. I think anything would be an improvement.”

“Yeah, well…” Emma’s reply died on her lips as it finally sunk in that this is what she had to lose -- this easy banter, Killian’s eyes shining with it even now. He seemed to realize it at the same time, nudging the door gently shut behind him and taking two cautious steps toward her until they were toe to toe.

“You didn’t know, did you?” he asked softly.

“We’ve barely known each other a week, Killian. Of course I didn’t know.” Then the way he had said it hit her. “But you knew, didn’t you? How the hell long…”

“A day. Maybe slightly more.” He ran a hand up and through his hair, pinkie tapping at a spot just behind his ear where she could just barely make out a small grouping of silver hairs.

“That’s impossible,” she said. “We’ve--”

“The older you are,” he cut in, “the faster the signs start to show. It’s magic, Emma. It doesn’t have to justify itself to us.” He sounded so ready to just give in to the inevitability of it, to let the reality of what they were overshadow everything else, and something in her chest caved at the sound of his voice because she so, so wanted to let him.

“No,” she said. Her voice was shaking audibly as she denied him this, as something in his eyes fell away while his expression remained solid, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “This isn’t allowed to happen. I’m locked in for a hundred lifetimes already, and I can’t put another person...Killian, I can’t do that to you. To me. You can’t do it to you. Fuck, and your brother…”

“Swan,” he took another step, his hand making calming, stroking gestures in the air as if to soothe a wild animal. “We don’t get to pick, love. You know that as well as I do.”

“Killian, we can’t. There’s no future here. You have to know that.”

“Emma.” He closed the final space between them, reaching up to cup her face in his palms, one thumb rubbing a gentle line across her cheekbone. His eyes were soft, too much in their depths to pull apart in this tangled moment. “Swan. I’ve been waiting three hundred years for a wrinkle or a grey hair or something to tell me life was capable of changing for me. And I know the circumstances are…”

“Gold’s going to kill one or both of us, and you know it,” Emma cut in.

“And though the circumstances are challenging,” he continued, “I’m not willing to give this up because of what if’s. I want this, Emma. And I want it with you. With every piece of you, knives to my neck and guns to my head and all.”

“You barely even know me,” she protested, but it was weak in the face of his certainty, and she still hadn’t pulled away.

“I know you’ve got enough donut shop napkins in your glove compartment to indicate a small addiction.” He offered her a happy, boyish smile, and she couldn’t help the way her eyes softened at the expression. “I know you like lagers, and I know you’re more invested than you should be in Spongebob Squarepants’ milkshake license. I know you like knives for their concealability but guns for their practicality, and I know you could survive a zombie apocalypse on what you have stashed under your bed alone.” He leaned forward, his nose skimming hers and their foreheads resting together as he breathed, “I know you won’t let yourself want this, but I also know that I plan to spend a blissfully mortal lifetime making the world turn out its pockets for you because you got screwed.”

She laughed softly, the sound dancing between them, and damn her soulmate was good with words.

“You’re going to have a hell of a time keeping us alive that long.” She could hear the surrender in her own voice, and by the smile on Killian’s face, so could he.

“Well then it’s a good thing I like a challenge,” he said, and then he closed the final distance between them.

It felt like lifetimes since Emma had been kissed, but what she remembered was nothing like this. This was soft and gentle, years of waiting finally come to an end, but there was a hunger beneath it that settled low in her stomach. One of Killian’s hands rose to knot in her hair, and the other fell to her lower back, pressing her closer. She went willingly, arms wrapping around his neck and fingers tangling in the soft hair at the base of his skull. The dim room felt warm and close, the two of them the only people in this world made of soft light and the white noise of tires humming against the road outside, and in that moment Emma forgot all the risks. She forgot about Gold and that one of them was probably going to end up dead, forgot about the hit, forgot about the years and years where hope wasn’t an option, and gave herself up to Killian.

They pulled away at the same time, both too soon, and lingered in each other’s space a moment longer. Killian’s fingers brushed up and down her spine, the touch both intimate and casual, and of everything she had ever hated Gold for, Emma was starting to hate him the most for taking this away before it had even begun.

“You know this can’t turn into anything,” she said finally, pulling back properly and taking one big step back.

“Emma…” Killian hadn’t moved, still standing where she’d left him, hand still suspended to trace the shape of a phantom body.

“No, Killian.” Her voice rose in volume, an edge of anger there as hot tears pricked the backs of her eyes. It wasn’t fair -- none of this was fair. “How would that look? How would making this work long-term actually look?” She pointed harshly in the direction of the bathroom, willing him to remember the night he had come here, bullet in his side the least of the perils of this life. “You know what we do. You know who we work for. With him standing between this being a possibility and not, do you really want to have to make that choice?”

“I’ve already made it.” The certainty in his voice chilled her to her bones, not because she didn’t want it, but because she did and couldn’t.

“Don’t be stupid, Killian. Think about this. Gold is going to find out eventually -- he’s bound to. When we both start getting older at the same time, you think he’s not going to figure it out?” She waited until he nodded slowly before plowing on. “And then what? You know he wouldn’t let us stay together and age out of our deals before our debts are paid, and you know those debts are more than just one lifetime long. So the way I see it, everyone we’ve been trying to protect all these years becomes leverage, and one of us is going to have to kill the other to stay young, to keep working right up till the end.”

“We could…” Killian started, but trailed off as he realized what Emma already had -- that there was nothing they could do.

“And then...” Emma said softly, gently, because she knew the idea of three hundred more years alone was hurting him. Because she could tell by the hardening of his expression that he would agree to kill her so at least one of them would be free.

She wasn’t about to let him, because she was going to do the same.

“And then,” she continued, “Whoever’s left is going to have to take on your debt too, keep your family safe, because that’s the least they can do.”

He caught on instantly. “You’re not doing that,” he said firmly. “It’s me or nobody. You deserve--”

“I deserve to know I did something worthwhile for once in my goddamn life.” She reached out and took his hand again, knitting their fingers together and looking down at them instead of at him. “You’ve got two people to protect, Killian. I have...more than that. And you’ve been in this long enough.”

He didn’t say anything more for several long moments, bringing their joined hands up and pressing his lips against her knuckles. When she looked up at him she could see him thinking, and when his gaze eventually locked with hers, the blue of his eyes was soft but deep with resolve.

“Then we kill Gold,” he said.

She laughed a little, the sound half-strangled and incredulous.“What?”

“If someone has to go in order for this to work, I vote him. I don’t want to have to compromise, Emma. I don’t want one of us to have to leave the other to an eternity of killing soulmate after soulmate to continue drowning in debt. I want to live, and I want you to live, and I want us to live -- actually live, and not hop from job to job -- and I want it to be together.”

“He runs a business built of assassins, Killian. We’d never leave the office…” We’d never leave the office alive, she was about to say. But what if they didn’t have to enter the office in the first place?

Gold never told any of his assassins where his house was, never let any hint drop about where it was that he was most vulnerable. Except for one.

“Middle of the night at the house,” she said, a true smile spreading across her face as it all became possible. “I know how to get in. I know where he’ll be.” She’d thought about it before, of course, but seven-figure debt and a long list of people who needed protecting had always stood in her way. But with someone else’s loved ones on the line, with someone else on the line, and with what could be a future standing on the other side, the plan practically formed itself. And she was all in.

“And you’re sure about this?”

“Yes.” Her smile turned wicked and she loved the irony as she said, “I hope you got the rifle out of the ceiling.”

It was only fair that the gun meant for Gold’s soulmate would do the job.

Killian’s answering grin was brilliant, his eyes glittering in the dim light. “One final hit,” he promised.

She finished his sentence easily, the future finally stretching before her in a long, shining road whose end she could finally see. “Together.”

#cs fic rec #cs ff rec #cs ff #cs fic #captain swan #i write things

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