#would have shards of glass to navigate around

[slytherinslut0]

MATTHEO RIDDLE- Beg For Me

Chapter Nine-Info: You and Mattheo have been butting heads for months, since you were assigned as his tutor, and one day during a session full of tense bickering, he has enough.

(This will essentially be a toxic book where we are Theós fucktoy. No love here, very minimal fluff.)

Tags: 18+, SMUT, Sub!Reader, Dom!Mattheo, Dirty Talk, Toxic Behaviour, Jealousy, Possessive Behaviours, Manipulation, Gagging, Choking, Fingering, Denied Orgasm, Degradation Kink, Praise Kink, Slight FreeUse Kink, Sexual Aggression, CNC, DubCon.

***FIND THE REST OF THE CHAPTERS HERE.

"What's it like tutoring him twice a bloody week?" Emily said, her wide eyes pinned on the rowdy ruckus emanating from the Slytherin table, where Mattheo Riddle was of course reigned at the very center. "I'm surprised you even have any hair left. I'd probably pull mine out within the first two seconds of being alone with him."

You chuckled at her words, seemingly brushing her off, but your mind couldn't help to race with the thoughts of how fast everything escalated. In just a matter of weeks you'd gone from absolutely despising eachother, Mattheo seemingly not giving two shits about you or your tutoring sessions--to being unable to keep your fucking hands off each other every chance you got, while Mattheo somehow manages to get grades higher than he's ever gotten in his entire life.

Yeah, the guy was bloody fucking insufferable, and you still couldn't stand him on a day to day basis, but Gods you loved the way he touched you. You loved the way he made you feel.

"Believe me, every moment I manage to keep myself from throttling him is a miracle," you muttered under your breath, shifting your gaze back to your own table, silently praying the blush creeping up your cheeks went unnoticed. "He's beyond insufferable."

"I heard he fought someone for you," Emily's gaze fixated on you, her curiosity palpable as she leaned over the table toward you. "And not just someone...Berkshire, of all people? What on earth happened there? I can't believe you didn't tell me!"

Your stomach twisted into knots. You had managed to evade Emily's inquiries about Friday's incident by stealthily steering the conversation toward her favorite book, immersing yourself in studies, and strategically avoiding her whenever possible. Yet, you knew this conversation was inevitable. You had just honestly hoped it wouldn't come today, especially not when you were mere minutes away from your first reoccurring Tuesday meeting with Mattheo's brother.

Navigating this topic was like stepping on shards of glass, the memory of Mattheo's fierce defense cutting through your thoughts. Each recollection was a visceral experience, the clench of his fist, the predatory glint in his eyes, all etched into your mind like a painting of unrestrained intensity. The mere thought of his protective stance sent a shiver down your spine, leaving your skin electrified with the memory of his presence. Discussing the incident meant confronting the pulsating heat between your thighs, a tangible reminder of the way his concern wrapped around you like a cocoon.

"Mattheo skipped our tutoring session, so I ventured into the Slytherin common room to find him," you explained, your voice steady but your hands trembling slightly. "The entire Quidditch team was there, and Berkshire, well, he got upset over something I said and things escalated quickly."

Her eyes widened in anticipation, the unspoken question hanging in the air. "So Mattheo stepped in to save you? Defend you?"

"Both, technically," you responded, your voice laced with a mix of frustration and resignation. "But it was his fault to begin with. If he had just shown up for our session, none of that would have happened."

Emily's eyes widened in concern, her brows furrowing. "At least he had the audacity to step up for you," she said, her tone torn between disapproval and understanding. "He's been unhinged lately, picking fights with anyone who glances at him the wrong way. I even heard he got into it with his own brother...have you seen Tom's face? It looks like a bloody war zone."

Dread coiled tightly in the pit of your stomach, a sinking realization seeping into your veins. You'd taken nothing but a small, fleeting glance at Tom yesterday in class, avoiding eye contact in a desperate attempt to avoid any type of conversation--but anyone from a twenty mile radius could notice the blackened skin around his eyes, the split in his perfect plush lips.

The thought of facing him tonight clawed at your insides--the pretense you'd have to maintain, acting as though you were oblivious to the reason behind his battered face, felt like a weight pressing down on your chest. You knew the truth, you knew all too fucking well why he looked the way he did, and the knowledge hung between you like a fragile web, waiting to shatter at the slightest touch.

"I haven't," you said, steeling your shoulders to seem convincing. "But I heard that as well...nothing about that boy surprises me anymore."

You lied not out of malice, but out of self-preservation. Admitting that you knew the real reason behind Tom's injuries wasn't even in the question, wasn't even a thought to be had. Your lie was a desperate attempt to shield yourself from the storm you could see brewing on the horizon, a storm that threatened to consume everything in its path. So, you played your part, hoping that your facade would hold long enough to keep you out of the fray.

"Well, it should. He's mad, that one. I'd avoid him at all costs. Tutor him and run," she said bluntly, her words carrying a weight of caution as she packed up her books. "What are you doing tonight? We should study for Herbology."

Your stomach twisted again, tying into a tight knot as her words echoed in your ears. If only she knew the truth behind you and Mattheo's situation, if only she knew how bloody deep you were ensnared in his web. Desperate to change the subject, you cleared your throat, realizing you hadn't even told her about the fact that Tom had asked you to meet with him on Tuesdays.

"I...I can't...I'm meeting Tom tonight." You said, tentatively, pausing briefly in order to choose your next words carefully--knowing that regardless of how you explained it, she was bound to absolutely freak. "He asked we meet one-on-one each Tuesday, in addition to the Thursday guild meetings..."

Your words hung in the air, a heavy revelation that seemed to catch Emily off guard. She blinked, her previous endorsement of Tom Riddle echoing in her mind, seemingly frozen for a moment until her eyes widened with a spark of excitement.

"Woah, woah, woah..." she practically threw herself across the table at you, unable to control herself. "Why? What exactly did he say?!"

You hesitated, unsure of how to explain the complexity of the situation without divulging too much. "I don't know," you replied, your voice low. "He just...requested it, and I didn't feel like I could refuse."

"Oh my stars! I must be a fortune teller!" She giggled, revelling in her previous comment from last week. "Do you know what this means?! Do you know the opportunities this can open up for you if it turns into something more?! Imagine the scholarly collaborations, the doors to advanced research, and prestigious circles you could access...your academic reputation would soar, paving the way for extraordinary opportunities in the future-"

"Yeah, Emily, it's all very...exciting," you cut her off, your voice laced with a grumble, your mind racing with thoughts of Mattheo and the impossibility of being with someone like Tom, no matter how perfect he seemed on the surface. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, please."

"But, this is a golden opportunity!" Emily exclaimed, her brows furrowing in confusion. "I mean, it's Tom Riddle we're talking about. The doors he could open for you, the knowledge you could gain from him--it's practically a scholar's dream! Why aren't you more excited about this? Don't you see the incredible possibilities waiting for you?"

Your internal irritation churned like a storm, each pushy comment from Emily adding fuel to the fire. Mattheo's face, his touch, his words claiming you as his echoed in your mind, reminding you of the complexity he brought into your life. Despite the impossibility of a relationship with Mattheo, the mere thought of Tom felt like a betrayal, a path you couldn't tread because of fear of Mattheo's reaction.

"Gods, I get it, Emily," you snapped, your tone sharper than you intended, the pressure of your conflicting emotions bubbling over. "But not every connection is a ticket to social or academic advancement...sometimes it's about...something deeper." Your voice softened as you attempted to mend the sudden rift, regret colouring your words. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound so harsh...it's just...complicated, and I don't really want to rely on someone else for career or academic opportunities, it just...feels like cheating, you know?"

Emily nodded slowly, understanding dawning in her eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so pushy...it's just, you've never had a boyfriend...and Tom, well, I just think he'd be perfect for you." There was a warmth in her words, a sincerity that softened the edges of the conversation. "I have to meet Michael in the courtyard, we're going to study...I'll see you later tonight then, yeah?"

You managed a small smile, appreciating Emily's concern despite the frustrating conversation. "Thanks, Emily," you said, your voice softer now. "I'll see you later."

As Emily got up and left the table, a mix of relief and lingering irritation settled within you. You couldn't shake the internal turmoil, the conflicting emotions that came with both the budding relationship with Tom and the unrelenting thoughts of Mattheo. It was as if you were caught between two worlds, neither of which felt entirely right.

The tension in the air was almost tangible as Emily's footsteps faded away, leaving you alone at the table. The flickering candlelight danced on the polished wood, casting intricate shadows that seemed to mirror the complexity of your emotions. You felt like a character in one of the many novels you'd read, entangled in a plotline far more intricate than any you'd ever encountered.

As you rose from the table, your eyes met Mattheo's from across the room, his gaze piercing into your soul with a knowing intensity that sent shivers down your spine. There was something in his eyes, a depth of insight that left you feeling exposed, as if he could see through the layers you desperately tried to conceal. The unspoken connection between you both hung in the air, an invisible thread that refused to be severed.

Making your way to your dormitory, you couldn't shake the memory of Mattheo's gaze. It followed you like a ghost, haunting the corners of your mind as you picked out an outfit for your meeting with Tom. The anticipation hummed in the air, the atmosphere crackling with a strange energy. You opted for a slightly revealing top but still professional, a conscious choice to make an impression, to assert control over a situation that seemed increasingly beyond your grasp.

Walking down the dimly lit corridors of the castle, you felt a knot of apprehension tighten in your stomach. The library loomed ahead like a sanctuary of secrets, its ancient walls holding the wisdom of centuries. As you pushed open the heavy oak doors, your eyes met Tom's bruised face, seated in a secluded corner of the room, the evidence of Mattheo's anger etched into his skin. It was a stark reminder of the forces at play, the dangerous dance you found yourself entangled in.

You moved toward Tom cautiously, your footsteps echoing in the hushed silence of the library. His eyes met yours, and for a moment, you saw the reflection of your own turmoil mirrored back at you, a depth of intensity in his stare that seemed to pierce through your very soul. As you approached, he rose from his seat with a fluid motion, his tall, commanding figure casting a confident shadow.

With a faint, enigmatic smile, he extended his hand in a gesture of greeting. "Top of the evening, darling," he said, his voice velvety and composed, the words hanging in the air with a subtle weight. "It's a pleasure to see you again."

As he spoke, his eyes never left yours, his unwavering gaze drawing you in further. "Evening, Tom..." you replied, your voice catching slightly as you took his hand, a rush of warmth spreading through you at his touch. "Pleasure to see you, as well."

With practiced elegance, he pulled out the chair for you, his movements precise and deliberate, a testament to his controlled demeanor. You allowed him to guide you into the chair, feeling the subtle brush of his fingers against your skin--once seated, Tom resumed his own place, his posture impeccable, exuding an air of sophistication and confidence.

"You're looking particularly lovely tonight," he said, his tone low and smooth, his dark eyes dipping over your chest. "I've been looking forward to meeting with you again more than I'd like to admit..."

Blush flooded your face, warmth spreading through you. "You are much too sweet, Tom...I'm not sure what I've done to deserve such compliments."

"I appreciate your modesty," Tom leaned back in his chair, smirking subtly. "Perhaps that's precisely what makes you so deserving."

As you engaged in conversation with Tom, your mind raced with thoughts of Mattheo, his presence lingering in your mind like a ghost in the room. Your gaze flickered involuntarily to the fading bruises on Tom's cheek, the scabbing split in his lip, and you simply couldn't ignore the discomfort in your throat. Despite your efforts to suppress it, an uneasy feeling settled in your stomach.

Tom's flirting, though subtle, only intensified your discomfort. You knew all too well how possessive Mattheo could be, and the mere thought of him overhearing even a hint of this conversation made you squirm internally. With a subtle shift in your tone, you ventured to inquire about an answer you already knew; hoping to solidify your innocence, your voice laced with nothing but concern.

"I couldn't help but notice the bruises," you murmured gently, your eyes flickering toward Tom's face. "If it's not too personal, may I ask what happened?"

"It was my brother," Tom admitted, his tone carrying a hint of exasperation. "He can be quite...stubborn, and tends to resort to physicality when he feels strongly about something. But it's nothing I can't handle. Sibling disagreements, I suppose. We've had worse."

He offered a small, dismissive smile, downplaying the severity of the situation, although his eyes betrayed a glimmer of frustration.

In response, you nodded, smiling softly. "Makes me glad I'm an only child."

"I imagine it has its perks," Tom replied, a subtle smile tugging at his lips. His gaze lingered on your face for a moment before he shifted the conversation. "By the way, how has your tutoring been going with my brother? I know he's quite the handful...I imagine your sessions are quite...intellectually stimulating."

Your lungs stalled, pulse quickening in your throat. There was something in the way he said it, a flicker of curiosity mingled with a hint of something else that made your stomach twist with unease.

"Oh, intellectually stimulating is one way to put it," you replied, trying to keep your tone light. "He's certainly...unique to work with, but we manage."

The room seemed to constrict around you, the air thick with tension as Tom's gaze bored into your soul, searching for hidden truths. His eyes, sharp and discerning, followed a deliberate path across your face, lingering on every contour as if trying to decipher the secrets etched in your skin. His fingers played with the pages of his book, tracing the edges with a calculated precision, a tangible unease settling between you.

His scrutiny intensified, his eyes dipping lower, skimming over your lips, then your chest, before locking onto yours with an unwavering intensity.

"You know, I've heard what you've done for my brother..." he continued, his voice a mere whisper, yet it echoed with a resonance that sent shivers down your spine. "Improving his grades in just a few short months...it seems you have a talent for reaching him in ways others couldn't, considering how resistant to tutoring he's been..." his tone darkened, a challenge flickering in his eyes. "I can't help but wonder what methods you employ to achieve such...drastic results."

In the charged silence that followed, you shifted slightly in your seat, feeling the weight of Tom's scrutiny like a physical presence. The room seemed to shrink around you, the air thick with tension and unspoken questions--you could tell he was pushing for something, but you refused to even give an inch.

You held your ground, meeting Tom's intense gaze with a steely resolve. "Teaching is about understanding individual needs and tailoring the approach accordingly," you replied, your voice firm. "Every student has their unique way of grasping concepts, and it's my job as a tutor to find that approach. It's not about methods; it's about recognizing potential and fostering it. Mattheo has the intellect; he just needed the right guidance to unlock it. That's what tutoring is all about; guidance, patience, and a genuine belief in the student's abilities."

Tom's lips curled into a knowing smile, his eyes narrowing slightly as he leaned closer. "A unique approach indeed," he murmured, his voice laced with intrigue. "Understanding someone like Mattheo requires more than just conventional tutoring methods, I suspect."

You felt a flush creep up your neck at his insinuation, his words hanging in the air like a tantalizing threat. There was an unspoken challenge in his gaze, as if he dared you to reveal the depths of your connection with Mattheo, and you were growing increasingly more uncomfortable with each passing second.

"I find your insinuations rather perturbing, Mr. Riddle," your voice dropped to a near-whisper, laced with firmness and defiance, your eyes narrowing in challenge as you leaned in closer, the tension between you palpable. "Mattheo may have a reputation, but he's a student here, just like the rest of us...he deserves a fair chance to succeed, without unnecessary assumptions clouding his progress. Don't you agree?"

The intensity in your gaze dared him to challenge your statement, refusing to back down in the face of his probing scrutiny. His lips curved into a sly smile, his eyes dancing with intrigue.

"Indeed, darling," he replied, his tone smooth like silk. "A commendable dedication to your students. It's a quality not often found in tutors."

The glint in his eyes hinted at a deeper curiosity, leaving you with the sense that he was far from convinced by your response, but when he changed the subject, seemingly dismissing it as though nothing even happened, you found yourself expelling a long breath of relief. You engaged in conversation with Tom for a while longer, the topics ranging from academics to shared interests in literature and the intricacies of magical theory. Despite the undercurrent of tension, you found yourself drawn into the conversation, momentarily forgetting the complexities of your situation.

As the night grew darker, Tom glanced at the time and offered to walk you back to your dorm room. You accepted his offer, and together, you strolled through the dimly lit corridors of Hogwarts. Emily's words from early bounced around in your mind, reminding you of how good for you Tom could be, if you let him--but despite the intellectual conversations and the surface-level connection, something fundamental was missing, a spark that failed to ignite the depths of your soul.

In the silent moments between words, you couldn't help but compare the encounter with the electrifying energy that Mattheo stirred within you. With Mattheo, every glance, every touch felt charged with a raw intensity, a potent magnetism that left you breathless, angry, and alive. His presence had a way of awakening something dormant inside you, a flame that burned brighter in his proximity.

You could light fires with the feelings you felt for Mattheo--a passionate hate, one inexplicable by words.

When you arrived at the hall leading to your dormitory, Tom turned to face you, his demeanor exuding a dark, enigmatic energy that sent a shiver down your spine. There was a lingering hesitation in the air, a palpable tension that neither of you acknowledged, yet it clung to the atmosphere like a ghost. With a smile that held secrets you dared not explore, he leaned in, his gesture carrying a weight that made your stomach twist with unease.

"I enjoyed myself tonight." His lips brushed your cheek in a touch that was both gentle and possessive, leaving a cold trail in its wake, his hand curling around your waist. "Until next time, little witch."

His voice a mere whisper against your skin, his words sending an aggressive chill down your spine. His stature remained stoic and composed, his eyes holding a darkness that seemed to mirror the shadows lurking within the castle walls as he pulled back--in an attempt to hide your discomfort, you shot him a small smile.

"Goodnight, Tom." Keeping your voice steady was impossible. "Thanks for walking me back."

With one last knowing glance and a chilling smirk, Tom spun around, his footsteps echoing off the cold, empty corridor as he made his way back into the shadows, disappearing from your view. The silence that settled in his wake was thick with unspoken words, leaving you standing there, heart racing and mind clouded with a sense of foreboding.

You spun around, eager to continue your path down the hall, only managing to make it a few strides when the hushed whispers of the night were abruptly drowned out by a sudden rush of footsteps, too swift and too silent to be anything ordinary. Before you could react, a strong arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you back into the shadows.

A door to a small closet was whipped open, and you were abruptly pulled inside, a gasp catching in your throat as you were abruptly slammed against the door as it shut behind you, your eyes widening as you found yourself face to face with Mattheo. His dark, stormy eyes bore into yours, a dangerous glint flickering within their depths. His hand pressed firmly against your mouth, silencing any protest that threatened to escape. The contrast of his icy touch against your skin sent a shiver down your spine, and a strange mix of fear and something else, something inexplicably alluring, tightened its grip on your chest.

Trapped in the narrow space between the unforgiving wooden door and Mattheo's overwhelming presence, your entire body roared to life, sparking dormant nerves. It was as though he had uncovered a realm of feelings you never knew existed, leaving you in awe and fear of the power he held over your senses. The memories of a time before his stifling dominance became elusive, fading like distant echoes as you grappled with the reality of his suffocating control.

His influence was a dense, intricate web that ensnared you effortlessly, making it difficult to discern where he ended and you began.

"You're a filthy little slut," he hissed, his words laced with dangerous venom, the lingering scent of cigarettes filling your nostrils. You tried to shake your head, but his hand kept your skull pressed firm to the wood behind it. "God, you're fucking filthy, Raven...look at you, dressed like this to meet with my fucking brother..."

You squealed into his palm as his free hand travelled down your stomach, wasting absolutely no time before slipping between your thighs and grazing over your sex--a low, deep growl reverberating through his chest as he pressed you against the door, suffocating you in a whirlwind of barely-restrained sadistic rage.

"You're so fucking lucky I didn't kill him...you're so fucking lucky I didn't rearrange his face until he was begging me for mercy just for fucking looking at you the way he was..." his grip over your mouth tightened, his words a demonized growl in your ear, your body reacting in inexplicable ways as he slipped his hand under the band of your leggings. "Fuck...I think you need to be reminded of your fucking place..."

You mewled, melting against his body and fusing with the wood of the door as he circled two fingers over your clit, teasing you with a quick swirl before he slid lower, slicking his fingers through your rapidly increasing wetness. When he pulled his palm off your lips, he didn't give you a mere second to gasp for air before he gripped your face and forced your jaw open with his thumb.

"So fucking wet for me already." His thumb pressed on your tongue, eliciting a gag, long fingers stretching over your cheek and entangling in your hair. His voice was a growl against your flesh, teeth grazing your jawline. "Tell me who the fuck you belong to."

"Fuck-" you gasped, crying out against him as he slipped a finger inside your cunt without warning, the blissful stretch inspiring a world of sensations you'd never known to exist--your pussy feeling full beyond comprehension with just one of his fucking fingers, every inch of your body trembling in response. "-you!" 

"Shut the fuck up," he hissed, shoving his thumb deeper, hand shifting to grip the bottom of your jaw now, nails digging deep into your skin. "Fucking hell...you're so fucking tight, Raven...you can barely take my goddamn finger..."

A whimper escaped your lips, your hands clenching onto the fabric of his shirt as if it were your lifeline, your legs trembling uncontrollably beneath the weight of his touch, slowing finger fucking you while his thumb twirled over your clit, your entire body spasming with pleasure against him, your chest heaving for air, and your eyes rolling back in sheer ecstasy. You couldn't comprehend the overwhelming waves of pleasure consuming you, leaving you in a state of blissful delirium.

"Yeah, that's fucking right...feel that tight little cunt stretch for me..." his voice flowed like molasses, his curls tickling your cheek. "Fuck...how the fuck do you ever plan on taking my cock, hm?"

"Gods..." A haze of pleasure was clouding your vision, drool spilling from your mouth as he massaged your tongue with his thumb. "Oh, fuck...."

"Tell me who you belong to, Raven..." he ordered, voice a deep growl in your ear. "Tell me who this tight little cunt belongs to."

"You-" you choked, voice hiccuped through your moans and squeals of pleasure, words distorted with his thumb still planted between your teeth. "I-it belongs to y-you..."

"Yeah?" He pushed against you harder, lips attacking your neck, his aggressive erection pressing against your thigh, his body heat swarming you, suffocating you whole. "And who am I, princess...say my fucking name."

His fingers quickened their pace, sending jolts of electricity through your entire body. You convulsed in response, beads of sweat soaking the fabric on your back, the intensity of the moment leaving you breathless. He withdrew his hand from your mouth, leaving you gasping for air, and shifted it to your chest, groping and squeezing your tits like his life depended on it. His chest was rising and falling against you as he fingered you, brushing his thumb past your swollen clit, rocking his hand against you. Your pulse picked up, your breath coming faster, head spinning with the rapidly approaching climax on the horizon.

"Matt-" you choked, hardly able to string a cognitive sentence. "Mattheo...oh..."

Mattheo groaned, yanking down your shirt until your tits were fully exposed, his hungry eyes burning wounds into the soft flesh, his fingers working your cunt faster, bringing you directly to the edge of pleasure, ready to explode in his fucking hands.

"Mhm...dirty fucking whore..." his free hand toyed with your tits, his chest rumbled with a deep growl, echoing the intensity of the moment, while you struggled to stifle your cries, attempting to maintain some semblance of control over your escalating noises.

Despite your best efforts, your attempts at silence proved futile, shattering into desperate gasps as Mattheo sank his teeth into your neck.

"You want to cum for me, pretty girl? You want to cum on my fucking fingers?" You bobbed your head frantically, throat more arid than the desert. "Use your words, Raven..."

"Please," you whispered into the fabric covering his shoulder, hands clasping his arms. You couldn't get out much else as he grazed your clit again, bolts of ecstasy halting your ability to make words. "Please, please..."

"Please what?" he said, driving his finger deeper into your cunt.

"Let me cum," you said, voice torn with your irregular breath. "Please let me cum!"

At your words, Mattheo exhaled sharply, his fingers retreating from your cunt, leaving you stranded on the precipice of euphoria. The abrupt cessation of his touch left you in a tormenting state, teetering on the edge of an elusive climax, aching for fulfillment. Your frustrated moan of despair reverberated through the room, a raw manifestation of your desire. But before the sound could fully escape, Mattheo silenced you, his fingers forcibly invading your parted lips, triggering an involuntary gag reflex while his other hand closed around your throat, exerting a firm, possessive grip, ensuring your gasps and cries were swallowed in the stifling air of the closet.

"No," he hissed, voice a dangerous growl against your ear. "Only good girls get to cum...and you...you've been a bad little slut...remember when I said bad girls get fucking punished, Raven?"

A soft whimper escaped your lips, a harmonious blend of need and vulnerability as Mattheo's hand constricted around your throat, cutting off your oxygen supply. The exquisite agony of air deprivation was intertwined with a delightful buzz, amplifying the tingling sensation from your cunt to encompass your entire body. You felt every nuance intensely: the synchronized rhythm of your heaving chests, the pulsating restraint of his touch, and the restrained anger emanating from him like a tangible force.

"Wait until I get you alone tomorrow, Raven..." he murmured, voice laced with a promise of punishment. "You just fucking wait."

With a sudden, abrupt motion, he let you go, his grip loosening as he reached past you to pull open the door. The rush of cool air brushed against your skin as he swiftly exited through the door, leaving you in the aftermath of the intense encounter, your senses still tingling with the lingering traces of his touch.

———————————-

Chapter ten here->

[chronically-ghosted]

and in their falling, rise again (lover, share your road - part ii) series masterlist | AO3 Link | part i | part iii

chapter rating: T

word count: ~25K

chapter summary: You and Ellie have adjusted to the Miller homestead in your own ways. Much to Sarah's delight, these roots you've planted have grown a bit deeper than any of you initially expected. But figuring out how Joel is feeling about all of these changes is a complicated dance you worry you're stumbling through — except when he takes the lead.

chapter warnings/tags: reader is described as skeletal early on but that is due to food scarcity not her natural body type, psychological/mental effects of domestic abuse, allusions to domestic abuse, underground spaces, one dead body, brief moment of gore, guns, aggressive behavior, father/daughter relationship dynamics, slow burn, praise kink in a trojan horse of "making friends"

a/n: this would have taken months longer (or not at all) without the support and guidance of @toomanytookas. everyone please say thank you! please note the update to the series parts on the masterlist - we're doing four (you have @toomanytookas to thank for that as well!)

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine - Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

part ii:

Dawn comes slowly to Dalhart, a place hardly anyone knows about, the last stop on the railway line where the forgetful or the sleepy end up because they’ve missed their stop somewhere else. The wheat boom made this place swell with life, with the blood of eager men, with the sickness of greed, and now the boom has burst, the guts and blood of hopes and dreams splattered up and down the dusty streets. Still, the next year people believe they can conquer the elements, conquer nature, their own hubris leading the way in the dark, following the guidance of a false sun. So they who came have stayed, mostly — mostly because they follow promises like fireflies, winking in the night with just enough light to convince themselves the darkness won’t last.

It’s for this reason, these stragglers with misbegotten illusions of grandeur, that he moves without light, embracing the dark. The lock on the back door was rusted from the wind and dust storms, easily broken against the butt of his gun, but he moves, low and fast, as fast as his knees will allow, relieved to find the windows still boarded up and threads of curtains still covering the dirt-smeared glass. The office in the back is windowless, which will make rifling through it, checking for false bottoms and loose walls, easier. This building is technically abandoned but getting caught will mean he has to answer questions he’d rather not answer – to himself or anyone else. Which means moving quick through the front reception room and maintaining the utmost silence is paramount to –

crunch

Joel whips around, the grip around his Colt tightening briefly, and locks eyes with the fourteen-year-old behind him, crouched as low as he is. 

A red handkerchief around her neck, she scrunches her nose up in a grimace, teeth stacked in her mouth. Oops. Sorry. My bad. 

Dropping the barrel of his gun lower, he points to her other foot, frozen in the air, inches above another cracked plate of glass. He indicates it with the jerk of his gaze and she nods, hands raised, slowly backing up and off another potential alarm. Shaking his head, he eases forward on protesting knees, his own thick boots shuffling flat against the floor. He feels eyes on the back of him, watching how he navigates the shards littering the ground. 

Briefly listening for movement, he knocks back the office door with his shoulder, rising slowly in spite his screaming thighs, scanning the darkness before flicking on the light. The girl behind him shuffles in and shuts the door after her. 

He sees Ellie blink rapidly against the light, scowling behind her raised hand, before she takes a look around. 

“Shit, man, did a fucking bomb go off in here or something?”

People, like most pack animals, tend to react instead of think in moments of fear. Fear, like when their town’s only doctor takes off in the middle of the night with no warning. A bad omen, an egg forgotten until it starts to stink. 

“Dalhart got all pissed off when Eldelstein split. Came here to either ransack the place or take what they thought they were owed.” Joel moves to slides his gun into his waistband, but the muzzle keeps getting stuck on his belt. 

“Guess they thought they were owed a lot,” Ellie muses as she kicks over a broken plank of wood, adding to the debris that litters the dust-covered floors. She watches him struggle tugging his shirt out. “I can carry the gun, if you want. You know, if you need a hand free.” 

He responds with that glare, the glare that he often reserved only for her. Disapproving, unamused, but . . . Ellie smirks, hands up in the air. 

“Sorry I asked, man, just trying to help.” 

Joel nods sternly. “You heard what your aunt said. Help, but don’t touch. D’you need the list again?” 

She waves him off, wandering over to the overturned couch. “Nah, I know what I’m looking for. And you know she’s no fun anyway.”

He watches her, hesitant, as she crouches down by what used to be a consulting couch and peels back the wood planks and torn wallpaper. This isn’t the first time she’s done something like this – scavenging for supplies – and he is reminded again of the bits and pieces of Ellie’s old life he has picked up on over the past few months. Every time, it knots his stomach. 

Jaw tight in his head, grasping at that relentless focus that seems to be eluding him as of late, Joel overturns what used to be a desk to look for the latch you told him might be there. 

Just by the top drawer.

Your shoulder, then the crease of your arm had touched his as you leaned in towards the rough sketch you make of a doctor’s desk. You smelled like lilac and sunlight. There was a curl of hair on the back of your neck, loose as it curled down your throat, by your pulse. 

It’ll be small. Just a latch.

Your fingers had brushed his wrist, eyes downcast, lashes soft against the curve of your cheek. There was a smear of something green on the sleeve of your dress. Fresh grass, maybe? Herbs from the garden? The light behind you illuminated the thin skin of your ear, the supple drop of your earlobe.

You won’t need much pressure. Just a flick. It should open up under your thumb. You can’t miss it, Joel.

Joel.

“Joel!”

“What?” 

Ellie rolls her eyes at his nearly-bared teeth. “I’m gonna have my aunt look at your hearing, ‘cause there’s definitely something wrong with you.”

With a grunt, Joel kneels down and reaches into the far back of the desk where it is still held together in the corner, resolutely smothering the high flutter in his chest. His fingers touch something metal, something other than that green felt and split wood. He gets his thumb around it and it clicks.

“I found gauze and iodine,” Ellie says, holding up half a bottle and some dirty wrapping. “That wasn’t on the list she put together, but we probably need it, right?” 

He feels something give way, but it isn’t clear where. He eases the desk back further to try and lift it to the light. 

“Iodine is meant for keeping infections out. Wounds clean n’ all that.”

Ellie huffs, more exasperated this time. “I know that. That’s why I was asking.”

“Planning on getting wounded any time soon?”

“Fine, you jackass, I’ll just throw them out –,”

“Put ‘em in your pack if you’ve got room. Otherwise, we only take what we came here for.” 

With a light press, a small drawer eases open. Just a crack and barely enough to get his fingers inside, but he can see the bottle. Clear, made of glass, and filled with little white pills. 

Morphine. 

It had been his first idea when Sarah’s condition started to deteriorate, but the papers and medical journals he ordered in at the supply store about addiction kept him from ever really considering it as an option.  But with you here – and you had already done so much for her recovery – with you here –

I can manage it, Joel. They’ve done wonderful things with rehabilitation and comfort. I promise I will monitor her closely.

He knows a line should exist about what he would and wouldn’t allow for Sarah’s treatment, but as of late, that line has become so blurred he sometimes has to scramble to find it. 

Would and wouldn’t.

Should and shouldn’t. 

His feet are starting to sting from balancing on that knife’s edge these past few months.

He hears the pills rattle as he drops the bottle into the bottom of his canvas rucksack. Ellie’s buckling hers as Joel stands and joins her search of a knocked-over cabinet. Not much there either but cough syrup and penicillin. 

“What else you got?” 

“Some bandaids, a handful of calcidin tablets, and a busted hot water bottle that I think we could melt shut.” She adjusts the straps, her face serious. “Maybe he kept the good stuff for himself upstairs.” 

He nods to the fourteen-year-old with a knife in her sock and a hard scowl on her face. “Yeah, maybe.”

He objectively can see the absurdity of supply stealing with a girl barely older than a child, but in this world, in Dalhart, at the end of the line, there is always more innocence to be lost. He knew Sarah’s own childhood was not a normal one, not one that any fussy school marm would deem appropriate for a young girl, and so if he isn’t working himself to the bone in the fields, he is working himself tirelessly to shelter whatever is left of her youth. But, like so many other things, it feels gone already, passed on in a cloud of dust. 

He thinks, had her life been different – that look in her eyes only comes from being exposed to violence – Ellie might have been a bit softer at the edges, no different from any other teenager. He wonders, briefly, what happened to her that made her believe she has to carry a knife with her everywhere.

“We’ll go check but you’re gonna follow the rules, right?” 

Ellie’s shoulder slouch forward, buffeting air between her lips. “Stay behind you, stay low, and stay quiet. Oh, and help but don’t touch. I got it, I got it. ” 

“And here I thought it was physically impossible for you to listen,” he mutters as he flicks off the light and opens the door again. He crouches low again, easing out into the front hallway as bruised morning sunlight peaks in between the boarded windows. 

“Only one of us is deaf, old man,” she mutters gruffly over his shoulder. 

Across from the reception hall is where Eldelstein would receive and treat patients. Most likely the first place that was ransacked, but there might be things missed. He makes a note to circle back after checking the apartment upstairs, but now with it getting light out, he knows their time is limited. 

The Colt at his side, Joel shuffles up the wooden staircase, dirt and dust sitting heavy between the crevices. Without much surprise, he realizes he can barely hear Ellie behind him at all, as if she took to his flat-footed approach. 

In the few months that have passed, he’s come to learn that Ellie is a very quick learner. 

The second story is almost the exact layout as the office arrangement downstairs. A brief hallway with two doors. He glances over his shoulder, rewarding her trust with an opportunity to lead, and Ellie’s eyes widen in understanding. She frowns at the two closed doors, thoughtful, and then she shrugs. 

“I’ve always felt good about being a righty.”

With a shallow huff, he moves forward towards the right door, hand gently twisting the knob, finger hovering over the Colt’s trigger. The door squeaks open as it swings back, Joel against the doorframe until he can give the space one quick sweep of his gaze. Then he’s opening the door wider and pocketing the gun.

Here the damage is less. Less rage and more morbid curiosity. The few narrow beds are shoved haphazardly around the room as if someone went about kicking them aside. Old gray sheets lay in tangled bundles on the floor and the mattresses. Beat-up infusion stands are rusted and broken in the corner, one halfway stuck in a torn-up chunk of wall. A thin door at the far end of the room shielding a dark bathroom is missing its handle. Drawers are torn open, left hanging like loose teeth, violence as enjoyment. A patient recovery room, most likely, for those needing overnight care and –

She gasps sharply behind him before sprinting across the room, the floorboards shrieking.

“Ellie!”

“Joel, look, it’s a radio!” 

It’s about the size of her head, turned away and tilted on the back of a long shelf below the window, but she drags it forward, setting it in front of her and her fingers immediately fly to the knobs.

“I’m gonna shit a brick if this works–”

A faint crackle and her own gasp of delight. It’s not much, it’s hardly music, but there’s something there. She spins the dial, moving across radio waves, the faint yellow light flickering behind the numbered notches. Just as a voice breaks through the dusty speakers, the box hisses and the radio goes silent. 

“Okay, but you saw that, right? It worked for, like, ten whole seconds! If we take it home, I bet–,”

“No.” 

“Aw – what?” She frowns. “Why? C’mon. It’s one radio.”

“It’s too big and we can’t travel light with it.” 

“But I’ve got room in my pack –,”

“No.”

“Fine!” She flicks one of the broken dials off, scowling. “Whatever.” 

Her back turned to him, Ellie yanks open a nearby cabinet door, the lines of her shoulders tight. Joel watches her rummage around, a heavy weight in his gut, before he rights a fallen bedside table to get to the counter behind it. 

He finds scissors, a stitch kit, and saline solution. Behind him, he hears Ellie load her pack. 

The silence stretches, a handful of conversations pressing up to the back of his teeth before fading on his tongue. Sarah is rarely ever this annoyed with him – especially not as often as Ellie seems to be – and it doesn’t sit well with him, knowing Ellie is over there, stewing. 

He doesn’t want her angry with him, for no other purpose than she made Sarah happy. 

No other purpose at all. 

He’s reaching up, checking above a tall wooden wardrobe, when his hand bumps into something, a jar, and he remembers those comics she told Sarah about. Maybe some of them are around here somewhere. 

“Hey, Ellie, uh–,”

“Why hasn’t anyone found out about your homestead yet?” Ellie asks suddenly, her arm digging around behind a chipped bureau. “Or raided it? It’s just you and Sarah out there and people could . . . how do you keep it a secret?” 

His fingers close around the cool jar and he pulls it down. 

Luxor, the label reads. 

Hand cream. 

His dirty thumb smears brown over the lip of the jar. He thinks of delicate skin, raw pink, a painful pink. The thing he has in his hands would soothe that ache. He thinks this might form the words I thought of you when his own mouth fucking can’t. The muscle between his shoulder blades twinges painfully as he takes off his pack and slips the jar inside. 

The radio really would be too much weight, but . . .

“It’s complicated.” He tells Ellie. Across the room, she stills, turns around and looks at him straight on. This is the niece of someone who almost shot two Texas Rangers, who at fourteen carries a knife in her sock and won’t hesitate to use it. There is something wild in her eyes. 

“I don’t think it is.” Her tone edges the line between curiosity and taunt. Her eyebrows ride high on her forehead and her lips slightly purse, mouth centimeters from a smirk. She speaks quietly, honorifically. “I think it has something to do with why those ranger guys were so fucking scared of you they nearly shit themselves. I think it also has to do with Sarah.”

Eyes narrowed, locked across the recovery room. Careful. Be very careful. The jar offsets the distributed weight of his bag. 

“I don’t think anyone actually knows about her condition or how well the homestead is doing. And I think you’d fuck up a whole squad of those assholes to keep it that way.” The silence stretches but it’s sticky now. Ellie grins up at him, the secret she plucked from him sitting in her smile. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

She smirks with the confidence of youth, a spark of naive innocence.

Joel scuffs his shoe on the ground, his hands going to his hips. “You’re right. I’d do anything to protect Sarah. To protect what’s mine.”

That smile drips off her face when he lifts his gaze. He lets it grow hard, weary – a warning. 

“I have done a lot of things – things I never want her to know about – to keep her safe. Those men, this town – they’re right to be afraid of me.” 

Ellie swallows around the weight of the room, her gaze metallic, bright and sharp. Her mouth is a straight line of barely contained victory. I knew it. 

She lifts her chin, hands curled at her side.

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you make them afraid?” 

He can see a flash of bone between her lips – teeth, eagerness. And then in a blink, it’s gone. Wiped clean from a youthfully smooth face. Ellie drops his gaze, deflates, and stares at the floor. 

“I mean – it just seems like a lot – keeping it all a secret.” 

“It’s not. Not when it’s for her.” 

And it’s like he’s pressed roughly on a fresh bruise; she curls further into herself for protection, almost wincing. He suddenly remembers her half-snarl when he said there’d be twice as many mouths to feed if he took them in. A burden, twice as heavy. 

“Yeah, of course, she’s your kid.” 

Her rough voice is as physical and real as she is as she pushes past him, marching out of the room and twisting the handle of the closed door across the hall.

“It’s not much of a choice then, is it?” She says, loudly, the door squeaking as it opens. 

Behind him, over his shoulder, the door to the bathroom slams shut – a draft. His heart pitches in his chest – he’s seen how you and Ellie have reacted before at loud noises and certainly slammed doors before – he hears her soft gasp, her narrow back tight in the frame of the door, but it’s different from one from the one he expects, one of learned skittishness. It’s a boneless sort of horror, wet, sudden, cold – he fights the urge to tug her out of the room by her collar. But she’s already seen it. There’s no taking it back.

The smell is horrendous. The blockage by the door must have masked the stench because with the door open, there is no denying the scent of rotten flesh. 

Someone who was unlucky enough to get caught up in the crazed fervor of the lynch mob meant for Eldelstein? Someone who deserved it, maybe? Whatever and whoever they were, they make up a mutilated shadow beneath the far window, the soft bits of their flesh a home for flies and maggots. The room is dark, drained of sunlight and the sense that anything living ever existed inside its walls. Boarded up and stale, it stinks of a graveyard, but one without coffins, where the bodies are left to ooze and decay and spill out into the wet soil. It stinks of putrefaction, of tainted earth and poisoned air.

But Ellie doesn’t scream. Doesn’t turn. Doesn’t run. Doesn’t cry. 

Just stares wide-eyed and inhales. 

Joel watches and waits for her. Watches because he recognizes that hard, blank look on her face, one that is familiar to him and far too old for her. Waits because he doesn’t know how to react because this activation is so unlike Sarah. 

There are not many fourteen year olds who would barely flinch when eye-to-eye with death.

He stands behind her, a physical presence larger than herself, something bigger and scarier than all the flies and maggots in the world. 

“Is this your first time seeing somethin’ like this?”

Her answer doesn’t entirely surprise him: she shakes her head. 

He nods and takes the handle from her. He gently shuts the door, inches in front of Ellie’s face. “I think we got all we needed. Ready to go?”

She nods, then heads for the stairs, not taking another second to look back at the room with the radio.

The metal teeth of the cultivator catch and drag over a large dirt clod and with a grunt, you shatter it with a few good thwaps. When you stand, sweat races down the back of your neck and between the cotton straps of your bra, cooling the heat of your skin. Your muscles throb pleasantly beneath sunlight. It’s a sensation you’d never had before coming here, to Joel’s homestead, but one you had quickly gotten used to. 

You are not the same girl who came here all those months ago.

You first noticed it when stepping out of the bath one summer morning and your eyes caught yourself in the mirror. 

There are no divots in your hips any more. The deflated skin around your ribs has filled in. Your body – a thing that had merely housed you and sometimes betrayed you to slow down and eat, and ached when you didn’t – had changed. Without you knowing, seemingly overnight, your clay sculpture had been remade. Rebuilt and reborn. For the first time in what felt like years, you wondered how you appeared to another person. 

Thin and skeletal, you had offered nothing to anyone because there was nothing for you to give. But, at the homestead, around Joel with Sarah and a kitchen and abundant food, that had changed. Things swelled here, near him, made ripe and sweet. A vitality returned, flooded in, and you, with your thin petals and wilted spine, blossomed. There’s now the inkling of a person in the mirror, one that hadn’t existed with your husband and now you wondered who she might be. 

And yet, while you flourished with regular meals and the stability of Ellie’s safety, the vitality of the land itself had seemingly dried up to a trickle. The last rain was days ago, the downpour offering even less than the previous one. 

You squat to your ankles, balancing the cultivator against your weight, and press your fingers into the ground. Dry. Delicate. An absence, and an unusual one at that. The dirt trickles off your fingers like sand. The sun’s heat prickles your entire back, oppressive and stifling. A drop of sweat slips off your nose, a finger wagging at you: you can’t deny this anymore. 

This is the same baked and dry earth that had been found on the southwest edge of the property, beneath the waves of dust that had blown in, covering the crops and grass in a gnarly, heavy film. Joel decided to cut his losses there and replant what he could, closer north, nearer to the river. But the look in his eyes was beyond frustration or annoyance. He moved with quick, long strides covering the fields with his tools and the horse. Agitated, maybe – a shark rechecking and double checking the edges of its territory. 

And then the next morning, in the blue of dawn, with the smell of fresh coffee drawing him out of his room and down the stairs where you stood trying to decide whether or not you liked the taste, he asked if you knew how to rake crop stripes.

No, you told him honestly. That didn’t seem to surprise him, but he postponed the lesson you had for Ellie and Sarah that day to diligently walk you through the tools that hung on the wall of the barn. He wasn’t satisfied until you knew them all by name, what their purpose was, and how to properly maintain them. Then, he broke down the pieces of the plow – what they’re called, how they connect, and what to check for before loading up the plow onto the horse.

Sarah and Ellie gleefully watched from the porch that following morning– their chores mysteriously done faster than a blink of an eye – as he had you strip down the tack, clean the leather, and reassemble it. Then he made you haul the plow onto Everrett, never once offering to help. But by the set of his jaw, you knew it wasn’t out of cruelty or distaste. By the time sweat was pouring down your back, the afternoon sun beating down on your exposed ears and neck, you realized he wanted to make sure you could do it all on your own.

By the end of the week, you knew as much as any farm hand. In practice at least. 

But another week went by and Joel never mentioned the lesson, or any further ones. 

Until the morning you came downstairs to find a man’s work shirt and pants waiting for you on the kitchen table. 

Your thin dresses wouldn’t protect you from the sun, he posited, his broad back to you as he poured himself a cup of coffee. The hat he left you was a little too big, as were the clothes. You’d never seen him wear them, but you kept your questions about the original owner to yourself. He didn’t seem to mind when you altered the pant’s hemline and brought in the waist of the shirt. 

Who’s Annie Oakley now? Sarah giggled when you tried on the hat for the first time. 

You could hardly recognize the woman underneath it. 

From there your lessons became about crop rotation, polyculture, and agrochemicals. He had you walk beside him in the rows of crops as he pushed Everrett along with the plow, identifying out loud any signs of vascular wilting, necrosis, and soft rot or tumors. Bacterial diseases were particularly devastating to crops, he said, eyes forward and sweat rolling down his temples, the muscles of his shoulders straining beneath the tight straps of the suspenders hooked into his belt loops. The heat of the sun spreading to your cheeks, you were grateful for the excuse to keep your eyes trained on the ground. 

Leaf blight, he warned, was also very common in young crops – caused by the fungus Cercospora carotae. You asked him then if Sarah had been taught any Latin. His cheeks were flushed pink, but that was probably due to the heat more than anything else. 

Over time and at Joel’s side, you eventually felt confident in your new knowledge. Memorization had never been a problem for you and witnessing the theoretical application of the knowledge in real time helped significantly. However, it was the physical application where things got difficult. 

The day he let you push the plow, he wore a familiar expression all morning. Jaw clenched, Jaw tight, nostrils flared, it was the same look he wore when you approached Sarah during her first fit. He was helpless when you angled the share into the dirt and tore the ground apart. The sight of his furrowed brow knotted your stomach, but you pressed on. You pushed forward, one step after another, just as you had seen him do more than a dozen times. You could almost retrace his steps in your mind’s eye.

With him a hair’s breadth behind you, quickly barking out commands if you strayed a centimeter out of a straight line, something occurred to you.This was no longer a job for you. This was living proof you could take something in your hands and make it better. All your life you had been subservient to someone; a doctor at the hospital, your manager at the diner, your husband in that goddamned dug out – they all held power over you and your choices. But you knew this was different. You knew if you could eventually prove to Joel that you were worthy of being trusted with his land, then he would treat you as an equal. So you pressed on. You pushed yourself until your skin baked in the sun, until sweat dripped from your neck, until blood spilled from your cracked hands. 

Under Joel’s supervision, you fed the land with your blood. 

And six weeks later, the blisters on your hands had calcified, proof and reward of your dedication. You had muscles, hard and lean, strengthened joints and flexible tendons. The molten steel of your body, your form, had finally solidified. 

Your days started alongside Joel’s now, instead of divided by domestic spaces. Some days, he lingered inside even longer than you, polarized positions of where you stood weeks ago: you unlocking the barn, loading the horse and driving out into the fields while he stood at the window, a mug of coffee in his hands. He never made you wait for long, usually offering you a full canteen of water for the day, a single nod before you worked opposite ends to meet in late afternoon. 

But there were times – instances, occasions – that you think, you wonder, if, from the window, he still was watching you. 

Thoughts of his face, all lines and dark eyes, as he held your palm up to the heavens that night in Sarah’s room trickle in when you rest idly, in the seconds before you sleep. When you let your unconscious awareness drift. Which, fortunately, didn’t often happen out in the fields, especially not when Joel had told you about another threat to the crops; what to look for and where to find it. 

And worrisomely, you had – again: dry, inhospitable earth. 

You frown at it beneath your hat, the sun’s touch hot around your shoulders and spine, a low skirting wind by your ankles. An infection spreading. Joel won’t like this, not at all, but he’ll know of some way to shelter the crops. An alteration with the irrigation system, maybe? 

Flora huffs at you, eyeing you with a twitching tail. How much longer are we gonna be out here?

“It’s hot, girl, I know, I’m sorry.” You pat her speckled rump. “We’ll be done soon.” 

Whenever Joel gets back. 

Dusting your knees off, you stand and take a small stake with a white flag from the cart. 

Beneath the bag of staked flags sits your handgun. It hasn’t been used once in these past months, but Joel never lets you go into the fields without it. More often than not, he makes you keep it physically on your person – in a pocket, in your socks, somewhere within reach – but the sight of it sickens you, the horror of what you almost had to do that night you met Joel. How easily you were willing to do it for Ellie. How easily you’d do it again, to keep her safe. 

But now he expects you to do the same for Sarah and this homestead in his absence: protect at the cost of violence. 

The longer the gun sits out in the open, glinting sharply in the sun, the guiltier you feel. 

The breeze comes not a moment too soon. It breathes across your clavicle, the muscles of your throat. It draws your gaze up, outward, to the line of white flags peeking out of the ground. Soldiers in a row, surrender fluttering in the wind. Grave markers of failed crops. You forget the gun as your stomach turns at the sight of the fields full of little white flags.

The land is ill. You can’t deny this anymore.

The breeze thickens to a harsh blow and you grab your hat to keep it steady. Under the rush by your ears, you hear your name. By the house, under the wired row of drying clothes, Sarah waves to you – too far away to hear anything distinct, but she’s pointing and waving to the road and a cloud of smoke barreling down it. 

No, not smoke. Dust. Two figures atop a white horse racing through the chalk of the earth. 

Ellie.

And Joel.

Flora lets out an audible groan of relief when you take her reins and pull her back towards the house, the cart of flags clicking behind you. You wonder if he’ll see the line of flags from the road.

The barn is quiet in the late afternoon heat. You hear june bugs chitter in the rafters as you unclip Flora from the wagon and lead her to a stable. Fauna’s big ears flap towards her sister, brown eyes sparkling, almost bragging.

Ha, ha, you had to be in the fields today.

“None of that,” you scold, as you loosen the leather cord around your jaw and let your hat fall back against your shoulders. “You’ll be getting it soon enough, missy.” 

“You know, talking to animals is the first sign of going crazy.” 

Sarah slides silently through the side door and offers you a towel. She smells of soap, her bouncy hair pulled back today, her smile soft and warm, and you take it, rubbing it up behind your neck. 

“Well, at least I get a warning,” you grin. Sarah was no longer the same plagued girl you met those months ago. 

The ground had shifted in more ways than one the morning of Sarah’s recovery. Of course, there was still pain and soreness, but for the first time in months, she felt strong enough to walk around without her braces. She couldn’t run, couldn’t move fast, but standing next to Ellie, there was nothing that would suggest them any different. She seemed taller, hair bouncier, a focused glint in her eye that wasn’t there before, as if she alone had decided something rather vital. 

Her treatments of warm compresses and exercises went from daily to weekly to now every other week. Once she’d seen you walk through the steps of her therapy, she started to do it on her own in her room. Preventative and calculating. 

The days she can now spend outside doing laundry and planting fresh herbs have done her good. Her healthy skin glows. 

But there’s something delicate about the way she does, or rather, does not look at you now in the barn. An energy you can’t quite place, one that seems to hum louder as the months pass. She watches you, a placid smile on her face, her shoulders halfway turned to the barn door as if she wants to be the first one to see them open. 

“Has Ellie come by yet?” She asks breezily, her fingers lightly running against the edge of the stack of towels tucked up under arm. “I saw my dad walk off to the house, but she wasn’t with him.”

“No, I haven’t. But if they’re back, she should be around here somewhere. Is there something wrong? Are you alright?”

Sarah inhales, round eyes widening – caught – but she shakes her head. “No, of course not. I just . . . I’m just wondering if they had a successful trip.” 

If you knew her better than only for six weeks, you’d think she might be anxious. She goes quiet as she watches the barn doors. The arch in her neck belies tension. You realize she has one of your dresses folded over her arm. 

“Sarah, are you –,”

Everett’s irritated whinny cuts you short and the barn door is thrown back as a short figure tugs the off-white horse into the cool half-light. 

“Yeah, I know I smell. It’s not like you’re a bucket of roses either, pal.” 

At least crazy runs in the family. 

“How was the run?” Sarah asks immediately as Everett clops by dramatically, the weight of the world seemingly on his hooves. The kerchief around Ellie’s neck is crusted over with dirt. 

“Good. Really good, actually. Got a shit load of supplies.” 

Ellie, another changed casualty in all of this. Except, instead of shedding an old skin, she’s grown a new one. The original. Something that, perhaps, always was there. 

She removes the saddle with practiced ease, despite it being nearly twice her size, and puts it on the stock post, just as Joel had shown her. She returns to Everett with a brush and a blanket, because the sun is going down soon and the night will be cold – just like Joel had told her. She banters a bit with Sarah, the work almost mindless with her confidence.

She has taken to this life like a fish takes to water, as Anna would have said. 

But what would your sister think of this life you had rushed her daughter into? Are calloused hands and thick, ruddy skin – supply runs into ghost towns – all that she wanted for her only child?

This, among threads of Joel, keeps you up at night. 

But these are the least of Sarah’s concerns about Ellie. Her fingers dig into your dress as if to physically stop herself from lunging forward. 

“What’s the town like? Are there people still there? Has anyone new come in?”

Ellie shrugs as she unhooks Everett’s bridle. “Boring, like four, and I probably wouldn’t know.” Ellie’s eyes widen, a small smile unfurling across her lips. “But we found a radio. Joel said we couldn’t keep it but – oh, wait, Joel said he was looking for you. Had something he wanted to show you.” 

You blink as Ellie and Sarah, in twin movements, glance to you.

“Oh? What was it?”

“I dunno. But he’s up in the kitchen unpacking the supplies if you wanna go ask.” 

“Was there–,” The corners of Sarah’s mouth goes red as she is suddenly seized by a violent, hacking cough. Both you and Ellie move towards her, but she waves you off. She steps back, turning her mouth into her elbow, her back shuddering as she gasps in air only to choke on it again. 

“Must’ve – breathed wrong–,” her eyes are watery. “I’m – fine.” 

In recent weeks, despite the rest of her body prospering, Sarah’s cough had turned rather rough. But every time you check her airways, she’s clear. Still, the concern lingers – you see it in Ellie’s eyes too. It’s not the kind of cough that comes from polio, you know this. You self-soothe with this. But you think of the white flags in the fields and something sour rolls down your spine.

You meet Ellie’s gaze while Sarah’s back is turned. Excitement, agitation, they had been bringing on more and more coughing spells – whenever Sarah tried to breathe too deeply. Ellie shakes her head at you, jerking her head back towards the house. I got this. In a low tone, she offers Sarah some water who drinks it gratefully. 

 It’s not the kind of cough that comes from polio.

The last bit of sunlight drips down below the horizon, lazy and pungent. A quick glance out to the fields, you can barely see the flags in the periwinkle distance. The air is warm, buzzing with a lingering heat from the escaping sun. You inhale, closing your eyes just for a moment, as you slope up the creaking wooden steps to the porch, and exhale, a chaff of tension sliding off your shoulders. 

When you first came here, you could barely stand the thought of being alone in the same room as him, just like with any other man. But eventually you learned that Joel Miller is unlike any other man in the world, unlike anyone you’ve ever met before. The foreign alchemy of his quiet nature, his diligence over the land, and his deep, endless well of love for Sarah was all at once confusing and – strangely – exciting. 

Earning Joel’s trust precipitated a steady climb or thundering fall – you just weren’t sure which yet. 

Despite the lateness of the hour, Joel hasn’t turned on the kitchen lights, coating the kitchen in a film of purple, blurring edges, and spreading shadows. His broad back greets you first, arm still deep in his pack at the table, when you shut the back door and move for the sink. 

“Ellie says the supply run went well. I hope that means you didn’t run into any trouble.” The rushing of the faucet saves him from having to answer, but you feel his eyes on your back, your shoulders, the flat seat of your hat between your shoulder blades. Brown muck runs down the drain. 

“It was fine. Did she mention anything?”

“No.” You shake your head, digging at the dirt under your nails with another hand. “Why? What did you find?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, at least.” 

Joel never rushes unless he means to. He holds everything in before he speaks, each word as deliberate as the sway of his shoulders, the crunch of his knuckles. But this – how he talks now as if the words he says are chosen at the very last second – it feels like he’s hiding something.

In the failing light, you face him, eyebrows tugged down. 

“Joel? What is it?” 

At the table, he’s no longer digging around in the pack. With one hand on the table, fingers lightly pressing into the wood surface, he stands as if bracing for impact. He works his jaw back and forth, eating letter after letter, word after word, until –

“C’mere.” 

The deep timber of his voice strokes the back of your neck, releasing a quiver down your spine, heart suddenly up in your throat. It’s not fear you’re feeling, not exactly, but it makes you break out in goosebumps all the same. 

You go to him without question. 

But like a magnet repelled, he steps back the closer you get. With his gaze, he points to the array of supplies. On the table, in almost a sterile, clinical order, is the cache of medical items you requested. Medicine for Sarah, potential treatments for burns or cuts. The bigger items like splints or canes aren’t there, you didn’t expect them anyway, but you could treat the four of you for months with what they’ve found. You open your mouth, praise and appreciation on the tip of your tongue, but he still hasn’t looked up, hasn’t looked at you. He stares at the pack on the table with trepidation.

Wordlessly compelled, you reach into the nearly empty pack until your hand closes around one single item.

You draw it out, the jar cool against your overheated skin.

Luxor. You can’t tear your eyes away from the glass jar. 

His voice is so rough it barely makes it out of his mouth.

“For burns.” His gaze drops to your hands, which have since healed after the night of Sarah’s fit. Weeks ago, in fact. “It wasn’t on the list, but –,”

Oh, Joel. Your throat is sealed shut. You have to nearly wrench your jaw open to push words out of your mouth.

“No, no, that’s fine – that’s –,” you press the glass to the spread of your clavicle to ease your pounding heart. 

This wasn’t on the list. And yet he . . .

Your choice was either to look at him or shatter apart. 

How can a man almost fifty years old look so boyishly uncomfortable? 

“This . . . I . . . this is wonderful. Thank you, Joel. I mean it. Thank you so much. ”

You can already smell the rose water. You wonder if Joel likes the smell of rose water. His jaw unclenches enough, relieved, and his lips almost form – a memory, a dream, an aspiration of – a smile, and he says: 

“You’re welcome.”

In the half-light, you stare at him far longer than you ever have before – and he stares right back. 

In the half-light, you hear it, louder and more cruel than before:

You can’t deny this anymore.

“Okay, who can tell me the difference between genus and family in biological classification?”

One hand in the air.

“Yes?”

“A genus contains one or more species. A family contains one or more genera.”

“Correct. And how does this relate to our lesson last week?”

“We were identifying different species of crops, but how they often overlap in genera.” 

“Correct again.” 

You bend over and pick up the basket at your feet. In the motion, you can feel your dress unstick itself from the warm dampness clinging to your skin beneath your armpit. The summer day is hot, scorchingly so, and only made worse by the lack of a breeze and the immobile stench of cow in the barn air. It’s a different kind of smell than the one that soaked your husband’s dugout – burnt cow chips –  but it is still gut-churningly familiar. You wonder if Ellie remembers that smell as intensely as you do. 

But if she does, she doesn’t show it. Ellie always could hide her emotions better than you. Head down, she draws circles on the wooden table with her finger, side-by-side with Sarah. The girls’ chairs come from the dining room and the table is an old woodworking mount that Joel repurposed for your classroom. It’s uneven and heavy, but the wood is as smooth as butter. After the harvest, he promised a new one, but you don’t think you could bear getting rid of it.

Ellie jumps when you drop the basket in front of her. You return to the back of the barn, gather up another basket, and leave this one with Sarah, whose eyes grow wide when she catches a glimpse of the contents inside. 

With the single square of chalkboard, made from paint and grout, and a rapidly-dwindling nugget of chalk, you write three words:

Genus

Common name

Poisonous

The chalk clicks as you press a small circle beneath the question mark. 

“You have ten minutes to identify the genus of each of the mushrooms within your basket, as well as its common name and whether or not it’s poisonous.” 

Sarah sits up even further in her chair, eyes bright and mouth a sharp line. She loves pop quizzes. 

You had thought of Ellie’s strokes with her knife outside at sunset, her physicality with the animals, and her near abhorrence for traditional learning when designing this particular test. Despite her resistance to any sort of structure, Ellie had been quick to follow directions and provide support as Anna got sicker and sicker. Ellie would make a good nurse – a good anything – but that potential only simmers, never indulged. Anna would have known how to bring it out in her, you often think. The best you can do is try and adjust your lesson to make this at least partially entertaining for her. 

Her forehead shining, her gaze brushes each mushroom in the basket with slow intention.

“Licking them probably won’t help, right?” She smirks at you as she plucks one out and spins it with her fingers. Smartass, as always, but for once – engaged. You try to muffle the spark of excitement in your fingertips.

“That’s one way to determine if they’re poisonous or not,” you reply just as flippantly. “But you’d better be sure.” 

Ellie’s smirk lightens to a grin, her head tucking down as she starts to rifle through her basket. Sarah already has her basket empty and is sorting her mushrooms into the corners of her table. She hasn’t once looked up from her task since you set the timer. Head down, eyes bright, lips tucked tightly between her teeth, you can almost hear her reviewing her notes in her head as she carefully picks up each mushroom, testing the spongy flesh with her thumbnail, watching if any flakes fall off, and glancing at your handmade chart of the animal classifications every few touches. 

Ellie merely sniffs hers. 

You turn, hiding your grin to catch a glimpse of the outside blue sky.

The timer goes off and Flora groans at the loud noise. Sarah correctly identifies all the mushrooms, while Ellie only knows the poisonous kinds. Close enough and perhaps most practical. 

“Just so you know,” Ellie begins to Sarah, head again in the cradle of her palm, her eyes watching you as you swipe the mushrooms back into the basket, “most pop quizzes aren’t fun like that at a real school. Usually it’s just math and the clock makes an annoying little ticking noise the entire time.”

Sarah’s eyes brighten, I love math clearly on the tip of her tongue, before she settles a bit and she scoffs, sophomorically indignant. 

“Yeah, of course, I know that.”

“So you better hope they keep the school shut down for a long, long time.” Ellie leans back in her seat and presses the soles of her sneakers to the edge of the table. “That place is the worst.” 

Sarah shrugs, practicing some of Ellie’s casual indifference. “You’re probably right. It’s definitely lame. Just . . . it would be kinda cool for a change of scenery or whatever.”

“Um, you’re not gonna get a better change of scenery than this.” Ellie bats her eyelashes with her eyes crossed, tongue out, and Sarah giggles. 

“Oh, whatever,” she swats Ellie across her shin, “like you wouldn’t go crawling up the walls if you had to live here every single day, day in and day out.”

You slow in your collection of your supplies, something she said the day of the supply run scuttling up the banks of your memory to prod you in the back of your head. Ellie concedes by crossing her arms, contemplative. “Still better than school.” 

“How long did you go to the school in Dalhart?” You ask as you erase the white chalk on the board. 

“Since it opened,” Sarah replies. “I hadn’t gotten sick yet and it wasn't anything special. It was kinda far from here, but Dad always made sure I got there on time. He always wanted me to get an education, focus on school and studying. He never wanted me to be a farmer like him.”

That sends the front leg’s of Ellie’s chair to the hard, packed dirt. “Really? Why?”

“I dunno. But I guess it all worked out. I’m better at memorization and trig than I am at carrying a saddle.”

“What’s trig?” Ellie asks, head tilted. 

“It’s a kind of math –,”

“Advanced math,” you interject. 

“Yeah, I guess. But my teacher at school really made it fun! She’d stay after class and show me things that weren’t in the textbooks, or even in the syllabus. And Sam, he’d –,” 

All at once, Sarah’s mouth snaps shut, her eyes diving to the floor. She tugs a bouncy curl behind her ear as Ellie’s frown deepens.

“Sam? Who’s Sam?” 

“No one. He was just – this boy – in my grade and he was really good at trig too and he lived right outside Dalhart for years and sometimes he’d help me when I got stuck on certain problems,” Sarah rambles, her voice a tick higher. “His family left the year they shut the school down.”

You stifle a grin. A crush. Sarah Miller has a crush on a boy. Even at the end of the line, at the end of hope. 

Ellie, however, remains completely baffled.

“Yeah and? He’s just some guy.”

Sarah blanches at the suggestion that she might have to defend him past being “just some guy” while trying to keep her secret of him being “the guy” all at once, so you step in and save her.

“Did you ever spend time with Sam outside of school?”

Sarah shakes her head no. 

“Not even with a group of people?”

At that, she bites the corner of her mouth, the heel of her brown boot circling in the dirt. You know her cheeks are fire-hot.

“No. My dad totally would have found out.” 

Ellie stares at both of you as if you had started speaking gibberish. And then she blinks.

“Oh – you mean like a date.”

“Who’s going on a date?” 

The three of you jump at the masculine voice that breaks out from the back of the barn. Those thick brows furrow in as Joel visibly wonders if he walked into something he shouldn’t have. On the days you have class, he spends his time repairing things around the farm, often taking stock of the cellar in preparation for the harvest and then the winter. Whatever he had been working on has a wet flush peeking out from under his collar – not the heated lather that comes from the fields, but a run-off of the hot summer day. He wipes his brow, mouth parted slightly.

You stand upright, as if the headmaster had just strolled in. Well, to a certain point, he had. 

Ellie, with the least amount of skin in the game, rolls her eyes.

“We were talking about boys.”

One of those dark eyebrows twitch up as his gaze roams from Ellie to you to Sarah, who you think you see sink a fraction of an inch in her chair. 

“Oh.”

“We were learning about poisonous fungi as part of the curriculum on important flora,” you say pointedly to Ellie. “That particular topic came up at the end of the lesson. Both girls scored very well on their pop quiz.”

Joel nods, wiping his hands on his shirt. 

This Joel, the By-the-Light-of-Day Joel, is different from the Joel that meets you on the purple, blurry edge of night and day. The shadows that soften the world soften him too, the hidden planes of his face affording you delusions of further softness regarding his own feelings towards you – feelings of, if not companionship, at least respect. There were times you were righteously sure of how and where you stood in Joel Miller’s eyes – he appreciated you enough to watch over his land and his daughter – and then there were times you could have been on entirely different planets. A twisted Space Family Robinson, alone and lost in the cold vacuum. 

The Joel that gave you the cream for your burned palms is not the same Joel that stands before you. He fidgets with the rag in his hand, weight shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. Sweat leaks into your hairline, and you are suddenly overcome by the desire for him to look at you. 

“Given how close it is to the harvest, I thought having some extra hands who know what we’re looking for might help. Might be useful to you.”

“Yeah.” He nods slowly, as his gaze falls to Sarah. “But I don’t want you overworking anything.” 

Her eyelashes flutter as she rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “I’m not overworking myself. I’ve been studying, like you asked.” 

“And it shows in your work.” You smile. Sarah pins you with her own vulnerable gaze. “You’re an excellent student, Sarah.” 

The tension in her shoulders eases and she sits up straighter, grinning. 

Something flashes across Ellie’s face out of the corner of your eye and she leans forward, mouth twisted with a thick smirk.

“Bet you were a lot better student with Saaam around!”

“Ellie, shut up!” She springs up in agitation, her eyes wide, her jaw tight as she rounds on the other girl.

“Who’s Sam?”

“The boy Sarah’s going on a date with–,”

“I am not!” Sarah snaps, her voice wavering at the end. 

Those dry lips curl up, a smile hidden somewhere beneath that wiry beard, and Joel puts his hands on his hips. “I know that’s right. No dating ‘til you’re thirty.” 

Sarah’s grip tightens around the back of her chair, her mouth tipped down, eyes blazing. 

“That’s not funny, Dad.”

“I’m not tryin’ to be funny,” he replies, very seriously. “Just want you to know the rules.”

Whether or not Joel actually has any rules around Sarah’s dating life, it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point.

The point is that he very clearly, unintentionally or not, brushed up against something that, for Sarah, was very, very tender. 

She stands, awkwardly lurching out of her chair as it catches on the dirt floor. Her delicate fingers clenched into fists, she darts off for the back door.

“It’s not like anything’d ever happen anyway,” and she’s out into the sunlight. 

By the shocked look on Joel’s face, that might be the first teen tantrum he’s ever witnessed. Instinctively, he takes a step forward, an apology in the curve of his lips, but you reach out with a hand, even though he’s several feet from you.

“Joel –,” your fingers flutter close, politely rejecting the implication they know what his skin feels like. “Just give her some time.” You glance at Ellie, whose expression is dark, confused. “Both of you. She needs some time to cool down.”

Joel frowns at you, more at your words, evidently just as confused as Ellie. Of course a man could not fathom why it would feel so ridiculously cruel to a girl to be teased about a boy by her father. You smile at Joel’s instinct, your own father never possessing such a level of concern. A girl could be such a fragile thing after all.

“Would you talk to her? After she, hm, has some space?” 

His thumb anxiously edges the ridges of his forefinger, then his palm. He looks at you, uncomfortable, as if his request is particularly unwieldy, too much for anyone but him to bear. But, to you, this gift is lighter than air.

Joel’s trust makes your heart soar. 

Only to come crashing down. 

You are not capable of this kindness, this nurturing, guiding hand that some women and men ingratiate on instinct alone. You’ve failed Ellie, you know – you feel it in the distance between you and your niece – the best you can offer is a teacher, a thoughtful friend whose insular life is a world away entirely. No more, even when she needs it the most.

Nurture. It’s not what you do. 

“I – I can’t – I don’t know what – would she even listen to me because I don’t think –,”

There’s a conviction in his eyes as he looks at you that wasn’t there when you first set foot on the homestead, an acquired belief that had grown over the past few weeks with you as you learned and serviced the land under his guiding hands. 

That ping of his steel gaze against the porcelain of your skin. It makes something within you sing. 

  “Alright, Joel. I’ll try.” 

Quietly, without much conjecture or fanfare, Sarah has taken over doing the laundry for the whole house.

She rises with the sun. Not the blurry violet light smearing shadows, but the dawn – bold, bright, loud and full of thunderous color. She rises in the gold morning and, arms full of sweaty, dirt-thick clothes, she gathers them all into a white wicker basket and takes them out into the backyard near the spigot and the wide, low-set wooden basin. From the time you see the screen door shutter open until the moment you and Joel guide the heat-lathered animals back into the barn, she scrubs the dirt loose on the metal washboard then pinches the clothes high in the white, dry air.

And then, in the falling darkness, she carries her wicker basket, attached to her hip, around the house, laying out towels in the proper cupboards, and folded shirts smelling of sun-drenched air inside heavy dresser drawers. She tucks her dresses inside the line-thin wardrobe and, occasionally, she lays yours out on the bed. 

So it’s not entirely surprising to find her in the room you share with Ellie – the room that used to hold storage, old suitcases, and paintings, things of Joel’s foremothers and forefathers, where Ellie has now started to store her collection of unearthed arrowheads and snake skins – standing at the foot of your bed, with your yellow dress between her fingers. 

What is surprising, however, is the reverent, almost-delicate way she touches the buttons, strokes the faded lace, pinches the thin fabric between her fingers, like it’s made of threaded gold. Like it’s so much more than just a dress.

You watch her for a moment, from the shadows of the hallway. With Ellie, you never had to pick apart her feelings – either she made them known or would snap and snarl at anyone who dared to coax them out. Anna had eventually stopped coming to you for advice as you both got older, deciding to handle her personal problems all on her own because everything you said turned out wrong. You worked so well with your hands because your mouth couldn’t be trusted to be of any help.

And yet, looking at a girl who is brave and curious, but perhaps as lonely as you are – maybe you could just speak from the heart instead. As you get closer, under the sloshing anxiety, curiosity tugs on you: why did she come here – to your room? 

“My mother gave me that.” Sarah jumps at your voice, the late afternoon sun through the window coaxing the russet out of her curls and her large brown eyes. She drops your dress as if she had been snooping around in your things as opposed to simply doing her self-assigned chores and steps back. 

“I’m sorry – I-I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just . . . it’s pretty.” 

“She made it by hand,” you say. “But you have dresses just as pretty, Sarah.” 

You slide away from the door frame to touch the dress on the bed. It had been your mother’s. You always hated it. You thought, briefly, when she first tossed it to you, that it might be cursed. Might bring down your father’s eye towards you, away from her for once. And you had been right – sort of. He came for you all the same, the dress nothing but a waving flag that to him signaled your own complicity. But Sarah stares at it with a certain fascination, roused into alertfulness by something awakening inside her. 

The conditions of the farm, of being field hand, barely lent itself to the constriction of being beautiful, of being lovely and soft. You, like every other challenge that had been placed in front of you, swallowed that fact whole; an acceptance that Joel didn’t seem to care what you wore because he didn’t care to look at you at all. 

You sit on the bed, watching the young girl in front of you. She’s made improvements, her health not the underlying current in every room for weeks now, but now, sitting so close to her, you can see the weight of that disease. The weight of an unconscious consumption in a conscious body. Sarah’s hand trembles as she touches the dress again. 

“I don’t have anything of my mother’s,” she says simply. “I don’t have anything I didn’t make or my dad bought in Dalhart.” 

The dress means so much to her precisely because it’s your mother’s. Sarah doesn’t know how she fell apart, just that she raised you. Staring at your mother’s dress, you are quite confident that she would hiss and spit at the hard woman you’ve become. For once, and gratefully, this dress no longer feels like hers, or yours because you had avoided the same fate that befell her while entombed in this dress. And you weren’t about to subject Sarah to your family’s curse. 

You stand and pull out a blue pin-striped dress from your drawer, one that you’d had since you were her age, but one that never seemed quite right and over the years had grown too short on your calves and too small around the waist. You take it out and hold it over her shoulders.

“I think this is about your size.” You inspect it thoughtfully. “Have it. Wear it for the next school year. Or, one day, on your first day as a freshman in college.” 

She peels the dress away from her body like it sticks uncomfortably to her skin and laughs – a huff, a sharp release between tight ribs. 

“I don’t think so.” 

“You don’t like it?” Your heart seizes – did you say the wrong thing?

“Oh, no, no, no – I do – it’s beautiful, I’m sorry, I mean – but school – college – I don’t think it’s for me.” 

The dress bunches in her fists as she holds it in her lap. She hasn’t drawn it towards her but hasn’t set it on the bed. You frown. She is capable enough to pass the entrance exams and she knows it too. This is something else, something you could see she didn’t want to address directly, or simply couldn’t. 

Your mother’s yellow dress was a signal for you too: a blazing icon, a silent voice screaming –  you don’t belong with these people with whom you share only blood. You do not belong to them.

The silence stretches thin, lean and taught. You don’t know how to pick up the threads of her denials, so you simply march forward, into the crux of things.

“I was wondering if we could talk about today.” You start over. “An outburst like that isn’t all like you at all, Sarah, and your father and I are concerned. You know he was just teasing you.”

Her hands tighten their grip around the folds of your dress. “I know.” She squeezes her eyes shut. The silence lingers, sitting down heavy on the mattress underneath you. What do you say to a fourteen year old whose girlhood was vastly different from yours? Who has a father that loves her and a safe place to sleep at night – how could you possibly compare? As dozens, if not hundreds, of compassionate but meaningless comforting cliches race through your head, you take her hand and squeeze it and you decide to tell her what you at fourteen always dreamed of hearing.

“It’s okay if he doesn’t understand you, Sarah, but he loves you. He’d do anything for you.”

“I know. “ She repeats in a voice that says she doesn’t. The back of her free hand pressed against her lips, she lets out a sound like a hiccup and sob. Sarah closes her eyes with a sigh. “You’re right. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t get it. And even though Ellie and I have gotten really close . . . she doesn’t get it either.” 

You scoot closer to her and squeeze her hand again. “Doesn’t get what, darling?” 

Sarah lifts her gaze and you see hope in her shiny gaze. A flame, small, but bright – flickering, building as if swelling under music, a tune that existed without shape or ears to hear it until this moment. 

Until something sang out to it. 

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you see the world?” 

You sit back and she leans forward, the blue dress tighter in her hands than ever before, that spark in her eyes burning.

“I want to be like you and go to Boston. I . . . I wanna see skyscrapers and ride in taxis and take elevators as high as they can go. I wanna ride across the country on a train and eat in beautiful restaurants. I want to go to college, to learn, and carry textbooks, and go to a giant stadium and watch football – and I –,”

She swallows down a gulp of air, hands shaking from the tension in her knuckles, and in the pause, you touch her shoulder, like you would Flora if she were agitated. That completely derails her train of thought and she lets out the air in her lungs with a sigh so fast, it’s almost a hiss.

“Sarah, darling, why do you think you won’t ever have those things? Your dad wants you to be happy, to follow any dream you have –,”

“But I can’t leave him.” 

Sarah’s thumb rubs the thin fabric almost mournfully. When she speaks, her voice is tight, cramped with grief. 

“He’s given everything he has to keep me healthy and safe, especially because it’s just been the two of us for so long. More than anything, I want to make him proud, and so I study, and I study, and I work hard the only way I can –,” she swallows, her long lashes fluttering against her skin. “I can’t abandon him. I won’t. Not for something this . . . silly.”

Calmly, she puts the dress on the bed and stands, her hand and shoulder slipping out of your grasp, the wicker laundry basket still at her feet. 

“Thank you for the dress. But I think it'd be better if we just . . . forget about this.”

There is so much of you in her, it hurts to accept she is not yours, in any capacity.

“Sarah, do you know what rouge is?” 

The resignation melts from her face, those curls twisting towards you in curiosity. 

“I think so? It’s what women wear on their faces, right? To make their lips . . . um, redder?”

“Have you ever worn it?” 

Eyes go wide; a dawning and the enforcement of protection for a vulnerable thing all at once. “No?”

“Would you like to?”

You stand and go to the tan, leather trunk. It’s old, out of time, bears the marks of the frontier before it was settled and it keeps the last few talismans you’ve dragged to the ends of the earth. Your hand goes to a small cloth bag at the bottom.

Sarah is like you in many ways, but then again, she is nothing like you.

The day you and Anna ran away from home was the best day of your life. So much so, it became your escape strategy for everything. Run and hide for cover until the storm has passed. Staring up at you, her brown eyes blazing with hope as you gesture for her to come back into the room, you know Sarah has never run away from anything in her life. So, in this moment, you decide to bring everything else to her. 

“My sister and I lived next to an old woman when we were kids. Our parents were always out working, so we stayed with her a lot. And she always let us play around in her cosmetics.” You sit, the click of blush compacts and mascara loud as you dig through the bag“A girl in school must always look her best.” You pause and pull out what you were looking for. “This is real rouge from Lancome. Would you like to wear it?”

Eyes wider still, she drops onto your bed as if her knees suddenly gave out, her head nodding vigorously. She watchest the small tail of the brush twist in your fingers, around and around the pot, gathering the paste like dust on a wet cloth. 

“Open your mouth. Just a little bit, soften your lips. Yep, just like that.” 

She jerks back, half her mouth as pink as a sunset and curled up into a giggle. “Sorry, that tickled. It’s cold.”

“Feels weird, right?” You wrinkle your nose at her with a smile. She nods, grinning.

“Sorry, I’ll be still, I promise. Keep going, please.” 

You finish her lips and return to your cosmetics clutch. The metal lining is cold, as if it had been left in the dark. With care, you push the realization that you haven’t touched this bag in weeks out of your head. 

“You know, my sister loved getting all dolled up like this. Tilt your head to the window.” 

“Really?” Sarah murmurs. “From how Ellie talks about her . . .”

“Hard to believe, right?”

She doesn’t want to move again, but the eye contact she makes with you is all the sheepish nod you need. 

“By the time Ellie came around, there really wasn’t much time to spoil ourselves like this.” You smile softly, adding a few more strokes of blush against her high cheekbones. “But, a long time ago, Anna was an artist.” 

Sarah hums noncommittally, her gaze hovering around the edges of the window sill. When the blush kit clicks close, she looks at you. 

“My uncle Tommy was – is – that way too.”

“How so?”

“He liked writing stories, which I guess is a different kind of artist. But he’d come up with these crazy fairytales and I always thought he got them from books, but he said he made them up, off the top of his head.” She quiets when you take out the small palette of eyeshadow and tell her to close her eyes. “I think that’s why he left in the first place. He didn’t want to stay on this farm his whole life.” 

Her skin is soft, forgiving, as you dust the powder over her eyelids with your ring finger, the lightest touch you can offer. 

“Have you seen him since he left?”

“No,” she says, staying as still as possible. “Dad says if he wanted to see us, he’d make the effort . . . or he wouldn’t have moved out there at all.” 

Her words slide a stint up into the crevices of your heart, the reasoning behind her hesitancy to leave all the more apparent, but you close the two-color palette without saying anything else. With a few flicks, you finish her glamor with some light mascara.

“Now,” you say as you close the black tube. “Would you like to see yourself?”

Sarah’s eyes spring open, the russet vein of that thrumming, hopeful fire bright.

“Yes. Yes, please.” 

Despite the erosion of the very core of you brought on by the sheer enormity of what it takes to survive in this world, this little tarnished gold disc is the weight of your own vanity in the palm of your hand. Yet every time you open it, you hoped for a glimpse of Anna’s beautiful blue eyes, the curve of her smile, the bounce of a dark curl the way she kept it as a child. The mirror rarely felt like a mirror, more a clear window into the murky cold fog of your past. 

To every cop and ticket-taker on a train who looked through your purse, you kept a compact mirror for vain, silly reasons because, as a woman, you are a vain and silly thing. 

But at the look in Sarah Miller’s eyes, as you reveal the great and powerful secrets of ancient sisterhood to her, this compact is a mirror, and a window, and a weapon all at once. 

“This . . . is what I look like?” Her voice is barely a whisper. She turns her head slowly back and forth slowly, the powder shimmering on her cheeks, a queen surveying her jewels. “H-h-how?” 

“Practice.” You hand her the compact and she takes it, her own hand trembling. She hasn’t looked away from the mirror for an instant. You sit beside her on the bed, her crossed knee pressing up against your thigh and you wait. You wait until she’s had her look, until she’s absorbed her image from every angle, and you slip the cosmetics bag into her lap. She stares at it, and then her eyes widen. “And the right tools. With that, you can do this anytime you want. Do anything you want.” 

“Really?” Small. Hesitant. Hopeful. 

“Really. It’s yours . . . to do what you want with it.” 

“Then I want to do it to you!” Sarah’s smile erupts across her face immediately, her fingers digging into the soft pink material. “I have to practice somehow and I think Ellie will come after me with that knife of hers if I try it on her.” 

You grin, already picturing Ellie’s hackles going straight up if she sees Sarah anywhere near her with that bag. You nod and Sarah actually squeals. You can’t help but grin as she flips through the jars and compacts in the bag.

“Okay, okay – it’s easier to start with any concealer – this one. I didn’t use any on you because you’re far too young and beautiful to need it.” 

Sarah flushes as she unscrews the pot and takes up the brush you hold out for her. With familiar diligence, Sarah’s hand is steady and her dark eyes are clear and focused. She absorbs every instruction you give her, every tip you offer. 

For a minute, there is no farm. No debt to be paid. No pain or disfigurement. Only a bond, one willingly given and one willingly taken. For once in your life, connection is wonderfully easy. 

“Did you know it’s Ellie’s birthday tomorrow?” You ask after a while, mouth stiff as she applies rouge to your lips.

Sarah stops, her eyes widening. “No! She hasn’t said anything!” But then she makes a face. “Actually, I think I’d be more shocked if she did.” 

“I know there isn’t much I can offer her all the way out here. But . . .” And maybe this is where you take it a step too far. All Joel asked of you was to make sure Sarah was alright. None of this had anything to do with the argument she had with her father. Maybe this is incredibly selfish on your part. But, whether you – or Joel – like it or not, you care for Sarah, in a way that was entirely different and exactly like how you cared for Ellie. You couldn’t help but want more than to make sure that Sarah is just alright. You pull away from the brush in her hand and hold her gaze. “I was wondering if you wanted to help me make her a cake.” 

Sarah’s face nearly shines with joy.

Cool. 

A sensation that draws heat, soothes aggravation, exhilarates that which is dry.

Water, fresh and clear, anoints your forehead and sinks into your hair. It pours off your shoulders, catching the soft skin near your hips, your calves. Droplets pepper your toes like embers from a fire. 

Another splash and the water spills over the crown of your head, through the thickness of your already damp hair, threatening to drip onto the back of your neck and send a flood of chills down your exposed skin – 

But a warm hand cups you near the base of your skull and a new sensation flutters awake, this time from within.

“Good?” His voice. You hear it more in your chest. It’s deep, rumbling. Patient. 

You can’t find enough of your body to tell him, yes, Joel, yes, feels so good.

His wide hand slides down your bare back, a warm stone against the river of your skin, and another spout of water drenches you again. 

A second hand joins the exploration of your body, massaging and squeezing all at once. Slow, steady fingers curl around the wings of your ribs, then where your skin thickens and swells, his nails scraping across the low curve of your breasts.

Oh. Oh, Joel. 

“Tell me you want this.”

That voice prickles your ears, the rough scrape of a beard nebulous on your shoulder, just as you had always hoped it would be. Water splashes you again and every inch of your shudders.

“I won’t stop.”

Don’t. Please. 

“I won’t stop. You just have to pick it up.” 

His hands are gone, his warmth evaporated. 

The water is suddenly slick, lichen-drenched, and stagnant. It lurks by your ankles.

Pick it up. 

The stone walls at the bottom of the well ring with coldness. You shiver, naked and alone. Afraid, as frozen as a block of salt. 

Don’t just stand there. You’ll never do it. Just pick it up. That voice. You hate that voice.

The barrel of the gun brushes against the edge of your foot, the head of a snake gliding in the water –

You grab wakefulness by the throat and use it to yank yourself out of the nightmare. 

The familiar silence of the early gray morning in the kitchen that had become comfortable as of late is decidedly – worryingly – not. Your shoulders are taut, straight as a board from end to end. Over the suds and the dishes your hands move mechanically, ignoring the clatter of knives and forks and the rush of water. But above everything else, it’s the expression on your face that concerns Joel the most.

Even when you’ve worked yourself to exhaustion, there’s normally a light in your eyes that settles something restless inside of him, even after hours of labor. A source of strength that he finds himself eager to chase, to let it flood him – but right now, as you stand at the kitchen sink, you’re gone. Elsewhere, disappeared into blackness where that brightness used to be. 

If he were a different man, a man capable of this sort of concern, he could ask you about it. At the very least get you to look at him. During breakfast, amidst the girls’ playful bickering, you hadn’t even noticed he, or anyone, was there. You had eaten as though your spine had been sealed to an iron rod – stiff, painful. Ellie and Sarah had run out a while ago, Sarah leaving to gather up the laundry and Ellie to let the animals out to pasture. He isn’t even sure if you noticed that he stayed behind, but that stirring behind his chest, one that’s become more insistent when you’re around, froze up to a painful knot at the thought of leaving you alone like this. Like you were caught someplace where you might not come back from. 

So, straddling this widening gap he fears slipping off of, Joel lands on the only thing he knows where there is some common ground:

“Don’t think I said anything before, but Ellie’s a pretty brave kid.” 

At her name, you blink. Slow the scrub of soap across the plate, then stop. You look at him and the darkness is not so deep in your gaze. He busies his hands with picking up a rag and beginning to dry the stack of plates to your right.

“Oh?” Recognition flickers over your face as if you’re suddenly aware of who you were talking to. A tender crease appears between your eyes. He dries off another plate and turns to face the sink, to hide the curve of his mouth from you. 

“You’re surprised.” 

You blink, glance down at his hands, and pick up the sponge again. 

“No – I’m not – I mean, I know she’s a good kid, but . . .” You swallow, brow furrowed again. “What did she say to you?”

“Hm, not so much said anything as just listened. Stayed close, kept quiet. Left no rock unturned.” The edges of his sleeves are damp. You have your dress sleeves pushed all the way up past your elbows; it’s Saturday, a brief respite from the cycle of labor in the fields. The skin over your forearm and wrist looked particularly delicate against the breakfast table, now hidden by the soap and the water. Joel dries the cup in his hand with a bit more force. “She’s smart too. Knew all about iodine and what it’s used for. Had some idea how to seal up a hot water bottle. I’s glad to have her with me.” 

You actually snort – without an ounce of respectability – and he stares at you, transfixed by a noise he’s fairly certain he’s never heard you make before. You duck your head as the small smile falls off your face, scrubbing the fork in your hand a bit rougher.

“Sorry. It’s just . . . Ellie doesn’t get along with most people, or . . . anyone for that matter. Sarah – well, Sarah could make friends with a feral cat so I’m not surprised they get along. But you . . .” You trail off and Joel shifts his weight back and forth, all the possibilities of what you meant reverberating in the spaces between his ribs. “I guess I’m just glad she didn’t piss you off.”

“Oh, it takes a lot to piss me off. ‘Cause I’m a casual and easy-going kinda guy, y’know.” 

You freeze again as if he had just tried to convince you the sky was green and you should be looking for some sort of head trauma. He lets a small grin spread over his mouth, even brighter as your eyes widen. A joke. He is teasing you. 

A soft, barely intimate gesture. 

You smile. He feels something shift in his chest. Whatever else happens today, he’ll keep that smile in his breast pocket. He clears his throat.

“Nah, she’s a good kid. Just needs an outlet, I think.” 

You stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him at the sink. The cream lace curtains drawn horizontally across the window block out the brightening horizon. An early morning breeze smooths across the pasture grass, the light weak with the sun still low in the sky. The silence that follows is easier, something he can stomach. In the sink, the water sloshes, silverware clatters, and the plates squeak when he dries them off. The faint curves of your mouth he sees out of the corner of his eyes embolden him further.

“She, hm, ever mentioned any interest in music?”

You shrug. “Ellie and her mother loved dancing to our neighbor’s radio in our apartment in Boston. Why do you ask?”

“She found a radio while we were in town the other day, and she was curious. But with no radio here, the best I can do is a guitar – I know’ve got one around here somewhere and I figured she might like to learn some chords. But I wanted – hm –,” that goddamn tickle in the back of his throat, “wanted to make sure it’d be alright with you if I showed her a couple of things.” 

Eyes wide, soft lips parted – he doesn’t know where to carry the look you’re giving him now. 

“Y-yeah, Joel, that’ll be fine. If you think that’ll make her happy, then . . . of course.”

He nods, slowly, the hot realization that he’ll now have to approach Ellie with an offer for guitar lessons pricking the back of his neck. Her bewildered expression probably won’t look much different from his own.

“‘Least I could do, after what you did with Sarah.” He means going to talk to her, not the immense relief you’ve provided her physically the last few months. He still hasn’t said thank you for that – or that you indulge in her every academic desire or curiosity. There’s no question too outrageous or problem too difficult that she brings to you – and curiously, you seem delighted every time. “She, uh, she’s getting older and I don’t always . . .” It’s an admission of his own shortcomings and it twists his gut. But then that radiant smile returns to your face and he thinks he feels that restrictive choke of guilt ease . . . just a bit.

“She’s very special, Joel. We had fun.” You finish laying out the last bits of damp silverware and a plate or two on the drying rack, your hands all white with soap bubbles. And then you pause. “She . . .”

He catches the brush of your gaze as you look away, shoulders suddenly rigid. You were about to say something, something you assume that he doesn’t already know about Sarah. You have something precious of Sarah’s and you don’t look willing to share.

“What?” It comes out a bit rougher than he means, but his heart rate is up a tick and the corners of his mouth are dry. “She, what?”

You unplug the drain, your movements slow, hesitant.

“She has dreams, Joel, just like every other teenage girl.” 

“Of course she does. I know that.”

The murky water swirls low with a gurgle. You follow it with your eyes, the timbre of your voice low, but firm. “If you want to go out there and ask her what they are, then by all means, go talk to her. But she trusted me to keep her confidence.” 

He swallows, as much as your words burn him – deeper and hotter than he expected – you’re right, of course. But now, for the first time, there is a visible crack between him and his daughter. A wet slippery feeling snakes around the bottom of his spine, tying a knot in his stomach and grinding his voice down to a growl. 

“That is not your decision to make.” 

Your mouth is set firm, but the brightness of your eyes has faded, more distance between you and reality. More space, on the edge of a protective cavern. You step back, about two arm lengths away. 

“Joel,” you begin. “She is entitled to her privacy.” 

The knot in his stomach expands up into his ribs. His heart beats faster, attempting to stretch away from the hot iron in his gut but he can’t escape it. “What did you two talk about?”

“School. Makeup. Clothes. Her life here. ” 

His hands sweat. “What about her life? Is she unhappy?” 

“Oh, God, no, Joel, she loves you and she loves being here with you. She just wants –,”

“What? What does she want?” You stiffly turn to put away the dishes, to close him off, but he steps closer, over the already blurring lines. “Look, I took you and Ellie in off the streets – I hired you – to come here and look out for her – act as her nurse, her teacher – to keep her safe. Not to keep secrets from me.” 

Your spine goes rigid, just like it was at breakfast, as you gingerly put the plates down on the counter. 

“And we’re enormously grateful for your kindness. You know that.” Hands pressed flat onto your hips, you turn and look at him, blank-eyed and drawn thin. You stare at him like he’s a stranger. Something completely foreign and unfamiliar – he hates that look. “Are you asking me as my employer?”

What else are you to me? 

Someone at least worth the weight of a jar of hand cream. 

He shoves back that thought as the fog of a dozen others crowd in to take its place.

“I am. I appreciate your help earlier, but this is the line. Is Sarah alright or not?”

You glance away from him, as if he might find the truth in your eyes. “What she’s experiencing is perfectly normal for a girl her age. You wouldn’t understand.” 

The ground trembles, unsteady, beneath him. Where had he gone wrong? He didn’t feel the earthquake but now can see the broken faultline, the great maw opening its jaws beneath his feet. Fear, so dark and deep – it threatens to swallow him whole, but he gets his hands around it, by the throat, and snaps it clean in two. Joel narrows his eyes. 

“Somethin’ I do understand is Ellie’s been eyein’ my gun since day one. What kind of fourteen year old girl s’after that? ” 

At that, you blanch. It’s like he can see the bile rise up in the back of your throat, sit on your tongue and stay there. You’ve gone totally still, barely breathing. Joel isn’t sure if he’s satisfied or not that the remark landed its blow so thoroughly. 

“She’s just a c-child who wants to pretend she’s an adult. Just like S-Sarah.”

His fist curls around the damp rag in his hand, desperate for something to hold onto, to squeeze until the ground feels solid, but his anger isn’t fortifying him anymore. The next words out of his mouth are disgustingly desperate. 

“Is that what this is about? Did Ellie say something to her?” 

“Ellie? What? No! No, this has n-nothing to do with Ellie.” You look at him, something tender and wounded flashing there and it chills the heat rising in his chest just for an instant. “I would tell you if it was something serious. Don’t you trust me?” 

But you can’t come between him and Sarah. Nothing should.

The black chasm that he feels compelled to claw back against breeches open again. Edges crumbling beneath his fingers. Sarah, Sarah –  is the only one who matters. 

The muzzle runs its clammy tongue up the back of his spine, releasing a landslide of heavy dread across his body. His anxiety peaks in a wave and as it crests, he slams his hand on the counter, a blown fuse. 

“No, goddamn it, I don’t!” 

Jaw locked, he whips his head up. Whatever sits sour on his tongue, when he looks at you, it turns to a block of ice.

Where it bubbles up like black tar behind his chest, a thing that possesses him, you watch him with horror. Eyes wide, lips drawn so tight they’re practically nonexistent, hand around your throat as if to protect it preventively.

The bracing skeleton of indignant rage melts from his body so fast his brain goes fuzzy. He wasn’t thinking – wasn’t thinking about how you flinched, tears in your silver-dollar eyes, at the loud sound that time he accidentally knocked a pot to the floor. He had never seen you so bewildered and terrified – until now.

“Look, I’m–I’m not . . .” he swallows, “I didn’t mean it.” 

He watches your eyes drop to his hand curled around the edge of the counter and he intentionally relaxes the muscle. He stands up right, but leans back from you, giving you space. The tension in your shoulders eases only a fraction. “She doesn’t . . . doesn’t have to tell me everything, but I just wanna make sure that she’s safe, and happy. Can you at least give me that?”

You’re breathing rapidly, eyes watching his hand at his side as if anticipating it curling into a fist. He turns his palms up in supplication – he really, really didn’t mean to lose control like that –  and he steps back until he’s up against the door leading to the cellar down below. The wood is warm against his back, but his shoulder bumps into the hinge and it pinches his skin.  

Your hands are no longer wrapped up in tight fists. With a deep inhale, you close your eyes, as if steadying yourself against a torrential wind. When you breathe out, it’s unsteady and shaky. 

“Physically and m-mentally, she’s fine. She’s j-just . . . just growing up.”

All this time, bits of you have been growing towards the light as the days and weeks pass. He’s watched you transform, can’t take his eyes off you some days, into this woman where before he had seen you as just a tool, another a rake or a trowel. Now you’ve curled back into yourself like nothing had ever happened between you and him – all it took was too-sharp a snap. Sarah always said his bark was worse than his bite. 

Joel takes a half a step forward and you take three steps back. Your hand is over your heart, fingers curling into the fabric, eyes still as wide as they had been the night in the general store, facing down those rangers entirely by yourself. Shit. 

He wants to ask you why you fear loud noises, wants to know who did this to you and why.

He’s not that kind of man who does this sort of thing, someone who scares women.

But he’s also not that kind of man who knows how to navigate the aftermath. He doesn’t know how to be anything other than a father and a worker. Hasn’t cared to be anything else for a long, long time, and the muscle has atrophied. Can’t be a friend. Not a companion. Not whatever paints his dreams with streaks the color of your eyes. 

“��M gonna go find Sarah, talk to her, like you said,” he mutters, shuffling towards the back door. “If you – need – if you want –,”

His throat finally closes, shame making his gaze slippery and it slides away from your face. He doesn’t stay long enough to hear if your breathing has settled as he shuffles out the door and towards the barn.

The metal of the iron flares to an ugly, angry red, and you wipe your forehead before the sweat can drop onto the stove top and sizzle. With your teeth mashed together so tightly your jaw aches, you lift up the six-pound metal wedge up off the stove, shake it free of as much ash as possible, and then press it down onto Ellie’s collar shirt on the floor. Immediately you sweep up and down the length of the shirt, careful not to linger too long on any one spot, but sure to flatten the wrinkles.

Sad irons, is what Anna called them one day after taking in the laundry from the washing line outside. She had heard a few of the neighborhood bitties tittering about them and found the term hilariously apt. Sad irons because they’re more work than they’re good for. 

Truth be told, you liked ironing, only in certain instances though. Moments when you wanted physical exhaustion to serve as a numbing agent to the battle of emotions building between your ribs. Sweat drips down your neck, your knees aching from pushing into the hardwood floors, your arms and shoulders burning from lifting the hot iron up and down, as you rock back and forth to clear away every last wrinkle. 

Joel’s hand smacking against the counter echoes in your mind again and again and again, as the kitchen and the homestead and reality bends away from you as you tumble through memory after memory – distracted, the iron brushes up against your flesh and bites in.

You yelp, sucking the flat back of your thumb into your mouth to ease the sizzling burn, and you sit back onto your heels. 

Yes, the pain is bright and it stings, but not enough to draw tears to your eyes, and yet they well up all the same.

A single image breaks through the numbing barrier of pain: the jar of Luxor in your room. You want nothing more than to sink your scalded thumb into its cool gel, but instead the image alone threatens to crack a sob out of your chest. 

He wouldn’t have done anything. Nothing like your husband.

You know that, and you hate yourself a little bit that you reacted like that, even after all this time. Why couldn’t you stand your ground, even for Sarah? God, if you had cried in front of Joel – the mere thought of that embarrassment burns hotter than the sting on your thumb. 

He had gotten so close. Too close to the truth. What had Ellie told him about the gun, even by accident? Joel didn’t seem intent on calling the police, but he’d left so fast. He must have been so angry just to leave like that. 

As you open your eyes, a thought occurs to you and the strength of it nearly disconnects you from your body: what if you left?

Your gaze darts to the blue sky just outside the window, too low to see the gold ground but you know it’s there – just as wide and open as it had been that first night in Dalhart. 

What if you gathered up Ellie right now and ran? It had worked before, and this time you didn’t leave the evidence in the bottom of a well. He couldn’t prove anything, just the ramblings of a fourteen year old girl. 

Shit, what the hell did he know?

“Hiya!” Sarah skips in through the back door, arms full of fresh herbs in her basket.

“Be careful!” You snap at her, your thumb throbbing, tears and hasty decisions receding. “Don’t track in dirt – I just mopped.”

She freezes, catches sight of the iron and Elllie’s shirt. You haven’t looked up at her. Slowly she unlaces her boots at the door and steps gingerly onto the wooden floor. You can feel her eyes track you as she walks to the kitchen counter and drops off her basket. The anxiety pulsing beneath your skin ratchets up your heart rate, hot blood pounding in your ears. 

“So, um, anyway, I was wondering if we could talk about Ellie’s birthday. I know she loves chocolate, but Dalhart hasn’t had that in years. But I think we might have a bit of vanilla in the cellar. Do you want me to go look?” You don’t miss the way her eyes flit over her shoulder to you, the question posed as if she was sticking a tree branch through the bars of a tiger’s cage on a dare.

“Um, yeah, that’ll be fine.”

Ellie never had the language to find the source of your anxiety and over the years learned either to leave you to your physical work or silently help you with it. Joel evidently – obviously – was a better parent than that:

“Are you okay?” Sarah asks.

You stop, in daze, then slide the iron off the clothes and onto its side. It seems ridiculous but you can’t remember the last time anyone asked you that. Ellie, your only connection to family, knew exactly what you had to do to keep you both safe, so the question was always irrelevant. So when did you let another person in enough for them to care that much to ask?

“Just, uhm, busy. Need to get this done.” 

Sarah narrows her eyes at you. “‘Cause you don’t sound like you’re okay. In fact, you actually sound really bad. What’s wrong?”

“I’m . . . I just didn’t sleep well. Had a bad dream. That’s all.” 

The lies knot in your throat; it’s insufficient to call it bad – it’s insufficient to call it a dream, the thing that had scared you so badly, even Joel picked up on it. 

“Wanna talk about it?” 

You glance up, still on your aching hands and pinched knees. She watches you with those same endless brown eyes as her father’s but immeasurably softer, arms wrapped over themselves, eyebrows furrowed with concern. You had snapped at her when she didn’t deserve it and she just . . . moved on.

“No, Sarah, I-I don’t want to burden you . . . it’s nothing, honestly, I’m just being silly.” 

She rolls her eyes, that wise stare cracking in half. “Fine. Don’t talk to me, but you should talk to someone. Talk to my dad. I know he doesn’t look like it but he’s a really good listener.”

Your cheeks go as warm as the iron beside you, making it impossible to keep looking at her. “Sarah, please, I am his employee. That is entirely inappropriate.” 

“Oh, please.” She swats away your concern and turns back to the herbs. She pulls out canning jars from below the sink and begins to organize by food or medicine. “Fine. Don’t tell me. When do you want to start working on Ellie’s cake?” 

The iron is no longer nearly hot enough to be effective but you run it up the shirt again, to smooth the uneven threads of your own feelings.

“Maybe tomorrow morning, when she’s out with the cows.” You pause. “No, wait, we’re spraying pesticides tomorrow. I can’t.”

Again, in that flippant teenager way, she shakes her head. “Dad’ll let you have a morning off if you tell him what is for.”

Joel’s anger, the smack of his palm – they reverberate in your head again as if someone had struck you with a bell. Your chest tight, you say,

“I don’t think your father wants anything to do with me right now.”

The excited buzz that always follows after Sarah like floating dandelion seeds settles eerily. You bite your lip – why did you say anything? – and watch her back stiffen, rosemary in one hand and a jar in the other. 

She is the daughter of your employer; you cannot forget that, but you had – you had forgotten, and so easily too. She was well within her rights to –

“What did he do?”

You blink. “What?”

She lets out a frustrated groan. “God, I swear that man likes the taste of his foot in his mouth!” Sarah turns around, rosemary and jar back on the counter, her hands on her hips and you feel like you’re the one about to be scolded. “What did he say to you to make you upset?”

“Nothing, Sarah, I swear.” She raises an eyebrow. You break instantly. “We just had a disagreement. He wasn’t . . . pleased with my work, and he told me so. Which is perfectly fine, given that I am his employee.” 

She shoves her palms into her brow, groaning. “But that’s not all –,” she shakes her head. “That’s it. I’m gonna go talk to him.” 

“Sarah, don’t –,”

You struggle to your feet, your knees stiff and popping, hand outstretched after her, but she’s too fast. She opens the back door and lets it slam shut behind her, leaving you blinking on the floor. 

He’s been staring at the back wall of the wooden shed for twenty minutes. Hadn’t made a move to grab a single tool, or pick up a bag of feed. Behind him, the wind dives into the fields, scuttles apart the branches of the oak tree by the river in a soft crackle. In the barn, one of the cows lets out a loud groan.

The back of his neck is starting to grow hot from the sun. Sweat peaks at his brow. His hand on the door, the other by his side, his fingers ceaselessly twitching, taking on physical shapes of his anxiety. But he can’t move away. If he moves, he’ll make the wrong choice again.

He’s angry. He’s still angry.

But that anger is fueled by a churning ball of fear that sits right on top of his chest and lashes at his skin like steel wool. It itches like hell and he can scratch at it all he wants, but it never goes away.

This was all a mistake. He sees that now. He could have handled another season on his own. He didn’t need another farm hand – he’d done it before and could do it again. Sarah was smart enough to read the right books all on her own and if she didn’t have the ones she needed, he’d go get them – wherever they might be. 

Sarah didn’t need anyone either. She’d make friends with kids soon enough, in town or whenever the school reopened. She was smart, always had been. They’d figure it out, together. 

He could have lived the rest of his life without another living soul crossing the boundary onto the Miller lands. 

And yet he hadn’t. 

He’d let someone in. 

As a general rule, he tried not to think of you in any capacity outside of work, education, and medical treatments, but he found that he had no defenses against the presence of someone who lives in his house also taking up residence in his mind. Against someone who cooks his meals and makes his daughter laugh. Who has a fraught relationship with her niece and yet would quite literally kill for her. 

That he understood, even if you and him seemed determined to prevent yourself from relating to one another in any capacity - which was fine with him. But he saw it in you, even if he didn’t recognize it at first in that bar in Dalhart. And then he saw it again the morning you and Ellie saved Sarah. The instinct to protect, to secure. It had been years since he’d seen it on someone else, and had never seen it that strong. 

And that’s what had gotten him into trouble today. That instinct he’d had all his life suddenly butting up against a tender feeling that is so foreign to him he doesn’t know what to do with it. Doesn’t know how to hold it, carry it, so it goes everywhere, soaks him down to the bone. 

All his life, he’s only ever enjoyed the company of two people, now one. He knew that if he took care of the land, it would take care of him and his family, so he never needed anyone else. But Sarah had a caretaker and a friend and nurturer but still clearly wanted more. Something he couldn’t give her. Something that never would have come to her otherwise if he hadn’t taken in you and Ellie. 

In his hardest of hearts, he both highly praised and deeply, deeply resented you for that. 

For coming here and upsetting everything. 

Fuck. 

His thumb catches on a splinter from the doorframe, tearing his eyes away from the blank wall, the brief pain causing his anger to flare brightly, the slice of wood embedded deep in his skin. His eyes snap to the back wall, looking for pliers to yank the damn splinter out – but his gaze catches something on the back wall first. 

Your work gloves, on the shelf. As broken in and soft as his. Taking up space beside his own as if they had belonged there all along.

In direct conflict with everything he thought he wanted, everything that he understood about himself and his daughter and the land he protects, you and Ellie had become embedded in the homestead such that now he's not quite sure he could picture it without your presence. It's a permanence that, he could tell, you all had sorely needed.

You, unlike him, did need someone else to survive in this world, one that isn't built for or kind to or willing to value women like you – and yet he got the impression that you never had a soft spot for people either. Been on the receiving end of harassment and cruelty too much and too long to find anyone or anything meaningful outside your family. It was narrow-minded and perhaps selfish, but not a perspective he would ever disagree with.

Ellie, unlike Sarah, had a caretaker but lacked a friend, someone to nurture her emotionally, tenderly, despite her vocal protests. He can see in the dark well of her eyes every time she watches him out of the corner of her eye when he cocks his gun or saddles up the horse. Like you, the ability to share a burden had been beaten out of her.

Now, what does he do with –

“Dad!” 

He jumps, the bark of her voice so loud and brash it rattles his heart for a second. Christ, is that what he sounded like?

He looks over his shoulder to see Sarah striding over to him, fists clenched, eyes blazing, dark hair turned light in the harsh glare of the sun. Sometimes – oftentimes –  he was surprised that a tempest like her came from him. 

“Dad!” Sarah barks again, the smack of her boots in the dirt launching puffs of earth by her ankles. She grinds to a halt in front of him, hands on her hips. “She’s my friend! What did you say to her?” 

“I haven’t seen Ellie since breakfast –,”

“No. Not Ellie.” The pitch of anxiety plummets into his stomach. He knows what she’s going to say before she opens her mouth. “Her aunt. You said something to her that made her upset, and I want to know what it is.” 

Where her fists lock onto her hips, one hand curls onto his hip as it juts to the side. With a sigh, Joel wipes his eyes with his fingers.

“Sarah . . .” 

“Oh, don’t Sarah me! And don’t act like I’m too young to understand, either! You raised me better than that.” Her footing shifts slightly and Joel sees an opening, small, flickering. He sees her pouting at five years old, wanting to stay up past her bedtime not for the sake of being disagreeable, but merely to spend more time with him. 

He tilts his head. “I don’t think you’re too young to understand, Sarah. Come to think of it, I’ve probably let you see and hear too much. Put too much on you.”

Her boiling anger simmers and the frown on her face softens. 

“That’s not . . . that’s not it at all, Dad.” 

With half a sigh, he extends his hand towards her, a peace offering as much as he was capable of. “C’mere, let’s get outta the heat. You and I gotta talk.” 

Her eyes fall to his outstretched hand, lip bitten between her teeth, as if under some obligation not to take it. He lets it fall, as much as it stings a very delicate part of him, and turns back towards the cellar doors. Attached to the house near the water pump, they face west, spending most of the day in the shade. Where he would sit to catch his breath after laboring in the fields all day and she brought him water and they would talk – about anything and everything. 

Joel slides down into the dirt, dust clinging to his shirt, his pants. He looks up at her, waiting, holding his will silently against hers without demand, and with a huff, Sarah drops down next to him. They sit in the shade, like they’ve always done. 

This place has always been a place of safety for him. Not just this land, but this spot, this shaded seat next to her. Joel looks at her, his smile wan. “So, if that’s not it, what is it, baby? ‘Cause I clearly haven’t got a fuckin’ clue what I’m doing. I’m sorry I made you so angry. I promise you, I was just teasin’.”

She always liked it when he spoke softly to her, maybe bringing back memories of when she was small and slept for hours on his bare chest. He turns his gaze to the yellow land, the distant dirt roads, and the sprawling emptiness beyond them. This land, that is his responsibility to keep safe. 

“I know, Dad.” He listens to her scrape the heel of her boot back and forth over a pebble. She feels warm against his side. “I’m not mad about that. I mean, I was, but not anymore.”

“But you’re mad about somethin’?” 

She’s not ready to meet his eye, he knows. That’s okay. He can wait. 

He smells lavender as her hair flutters again, her gaze joining his to watch their fields, the fields held by their family for three generations. The memories of her illness –of so many nights spent in fear, in anguish nearly as painful as death itself, as she cried and cried and cried and he could do nothing to stop it – overwhelm him out of nowhere and, like a fist has settled around his throat, he can’t breathe right for a moment. His hands flex and strain where they hang over his knees.

Air returns to him when she rests her head against his shoulder, and he is suddenly more grateful to you for bringing back his little girl than he’s ever felt towards anyone in his life. But the taste of his words he said to you lingers on his tongue. He had been so terrible.

“I like learning.” Sarah says. The wind tugs on her hair, the hemline of his pants. He resists the urge to press his face into her curls and instead settles for breathing in her scent, her warmth. He closes his eyes. She is his whole world. 

The heat of the sun toasts the air around them as the wind settles. He opens his eyes to the solar star far beyond this planet. Another world entirely. It feels particularly close today.

“I know you do. You’re good at it, always make me proud.”

Sarah lifts her head and he feels the traction of her gaze. His stomach knots, but not as heavily as his heart swells. Her eyes are older than he’s ever remembered seeing when he finally looks at her, and he’s felt a lot of his years recently. Her hands curl around his elbow, like she used to do when she begged him for a new book or a new dress. Pleading with him, to make him see her.

“But I think I’ve learned all I can . . . here.”

Joel breathes through the gaping wound and surge of pride in his chest. She watches him, brown eyes wide, mouth set. The same little girl he’s always known, and nothing like her at all. How had he missed it, this fundamental and irrevocable change? Where had the time gone? 

“I know, baby. You have to go.” 

He expects something like a girlish squeal, maybe little dance, a yelp of joy – throwing her arms around his neck, making promises to be on her very best behavior – 

But instead –

“But not right now.” Her eyes fill with tears, voice small, uncertain. Vulnerable in a way only a child’s can be.

He puts his arm around her shoulder, between her and the dirt-crusted house on the land that is now his, was his father’s, and his father’s before that, and hides his own wet eyes from her by burying his face in her hair. Her arms are wrapped so tightly around his chest, his heart nearly stops.

“No, not right now. But some day.” 

They who have been alone together all their lives sit and hold their other half for a long, long time.

The sun hovers in the late afternoon sky, unwilling to let time march forward, but it always does. It always has to. 

With a gruff grunt, Joel pulls away and wipes at his eyes with the palm of his hand. Sarah sits up more, sniffing, her delicate fingers smearing away the dampness on her cheeks. He clears his throat again. 

“C’mon, enough out here. Ellie’s probably out lookin’ for you, and I need to help, um –,”

“Dad.” He drops back down the half inch he pulled himself up. Suddenly, with a grin and a mischievous light in her still-wet eyes, she looks as young as she is supposed to be. “We haven’t talked about everything yet.”

“What do you mean?”

Her dark eyes flit back to the house, a pointed look. A knowing look. He doesn’t know why but it makes his stomach churn and his heart rate speed up, ever so slightly. That grin on her lips evolves into a full fledged smirk. 

“You were a jerk. Now you have to make it up to her. How are you gonna do that?” 

Joel’s mouth twitches. “I’m out of ideas.” 

“Good. ‘Cause I’m not.” Sarah heaves herself onto her feet, then stands, and dusts the back of her skirt with a few good thwaps. “It’s Ellie’s birthday tomorrow. Me and her aunt are gonna make a cake, so you’re gonna get her a present. You’re also in charge of distracting her while we get everything ready.”

Joel chuckles lightly as he stares up at her, one eye squinting against the sunlight. “Yeah? And what am I supposed to get her?”

She extends her hand and he takes it. Together, they get him on his feet. She dusts off his sleeve, then grins up at him, her smile wide and full and loaded with secrets he knows he didn’t tell her. “I can’t give you all the answers, old man.” 

It’s nerves. 

It’s nerves and that’s why you can’t find the vanilla you know is down here. For the fourth time, you get on your toes and look at the far back of the top row of cellar shelves. Joel had organized the cellar by least perishable to most, and vanilla beans stayed intact for years if kept out of the sun or moisture. Sarah was distinctly confident that they had at least a handful, far more than enough to flavor a cake, and this was Ellie’s cake. You owed it to her and Sarah –and shit, since he’ll be eating it, Joel – to not give up the search. 

But by the time your line of sight got to the second shelf, your mind was already wandering. 

He had taken Ellie out onto the front porch for a guitar lesson. 

After the terrible things he had said to you this morning.

After you acted like he was a cruel man whose viciousness knows no bounds.

He wanted to teach Ellie something, after he had asked you first. 

Came out of the hall closet with it in his hand, and while his dark expression was distressingly unreadable, his voice was light when he offered to teach her some cords. Ellie, who was nose deep in another Space Family Robinson, nearly launched herself off the couch: “HELL YEAH!”

Standing at just an angle that allowed you to see the living room from the kitchen, you could have sworn he smiled. A muffled thing, but it drew up the corners of his cupid’s bow in a beautiful twist, the long expanse of his throat looking warm as he turned his head to give Ellie the guitar, his hair curled in reckless waves at the nape of his neck. He smiled at Ellie and offered her a lesson – 

And you haven’t been able to focus since. 

You stop halfway on your fifth search, press your forehead to the wooden post, and sigh. 

The silence in the cellar is different from other silences on the homestead. More compact, more dense. You suppose that has something to do with it being buried several feet underground, but the strength of it is comforting in a way you’ve never experienced. Since you were sixteen years old, you’ve worked a full time job, sometimes two, sometimes three, for just enough money to eat and keep your sister housed. You often have trouble sleeping because you can still hear the noise of all those people, gears in your mind churning, despite the physical exhaustion of your body, always thinking about tomorrow’s to-dos and where your next meal might come from. You’ve been going so hard and so fast – barely surviving – you forgot what true, thick silence sounded like. How much easier it was to breathe and smother that runaway train of thought. 

Despite your initial apprehension, the cellar had become your most favorite place on the entire homestead. The silence was almost friendly, protective; you could whisper your secrets to it and know they’d be safe forever. Surrounded by abundant food, lovingly grown and cared for, you too sometimes feel as if you too had been raised, had been grown to ripeness, on this earthen floor. 

For the first time in hours, your heartbeat slows. With a grin, you lean into the wooden shelf, its corner sticking into your shoulder like a hand would press into your skin. 

“I’m trying to do something nice for Ellie. You know she deserves it,” you grumble into the silence. The wood is soft, gently carved. If you try hard enough, you think you can still smell the wood grain. “Having some vanilla flavoring would really make her happy, and that kid needs a win.” You shuffle, standing up right, and the toe of your boot kicks the post. It shudders slightly. “I –,”

In the momentum, something falls off the shelf and plops into the dirt to your right.

Vanilla beans.

You grin as you pick them up, trying half-heartedly to find that watchful eye. Just before you click off the light, you affectionately rub the corner of the wall.

“Thanks.” 

If talking to animals is the first step in going crazy, talking to holes in the ground must be a pretty bad sign. 

“‘kay, it’s real easy.” He clears his throat again, shifting, and the wood panel squeaks beneath him. Crickets echo in the shadows beyond the light of the porch. “This is gonna be your C – your A – your G, and your D. There’s only twelve you really gotta know. From there you’ll get the basics and can start to –,”

“Where’d you learn to play?” Ellie asks abruptly. She sits with her back against the wooden post outlining the porch, her knees tucked up to her chest. Joel is reminded of the look Sarah once gave him after he silently helped her chop the rest of the wood before a rainstorm came – he had told her she couldn’t do all of it by herself, and she had adamantly refused, but he didn’t rub it in her face when he came to help. They narrowly avoided the downpour but had enough firewood to last them a week. 

Grateful, was the expression he remembers. 

The heat of the day still lingers in the air, the sun just beneath the horizon. Flies and gnats swarm and tangle around the exposed bulb over the porch, thickening the shadows of his hands over the neck of the guitar and beneath the porch steps. 

Joel’s fingers still, the music of fluttering wings and electrical zaps taking over. “My dad taught me. He taught me . . . and my brother.”

Maybe it was the talk with Sarah that had loosened something, at least temporarily. He doesn’t feel like he’s been torn open, spilling his guts, when he tells her about Tommy. He wonders briefly if Sarah had ever mentioned her uncle and if she didn’t, why. He can see the question build behind her eyes, thoughts shuffling, looking for a memory if he had ever mentioned a brother before. 

“We got pretty good for a time. Played at school, church. Had a guy come through town once and tell us we could really be something.”

“Like a Hank Williams kinda something?” 

Joel eyes her, impressed she knows one of the greatest artists who’s ever lived.

“I dunno what he meant,” he says. “But that’s never why I did it anyway. Just wanted something to do with my little brother. He had some good lyrics too. He was always talented that way, with his head, you know? I think sometimes that’s where Sarah gets it. ‘Cause i'snot from me.” 

Joel smiles and Ellie grins back, an inside joke they didn’t know about yet. He strums quietly.

“I think he wanted to be that Hank Williams kinda somethin'. But it’s hard when you’re no one from nowhere. And I think him leavin’ would’ve broken our mama’s heart.”

“Tommy . . . right?” Joel glances up at her, the name so foreign on someone else’s tongue she could have meant someone else entirely. “Sarah – she, um – she mentioned him, once. And that he left for California – a while ago.” 

Joel nods, again in search of that anger to wield as a weapon, but the guitar digs into the place in his chest where it hurts the most. 

“Is that why the guitar was in the trunk? ‘Cause you’re pissed at him?”

It’s almost funny, the way she needles through to the center of things. He could lie, but what’s the point?

He hums. “I stopped playing this thing long before Tommy left. No time. Even with his help, you gotta fight with this land to grow anything. Then Sarah got sick, and now there’s all this fuckin’ dust . . .” 

He puts a hand on the belly of the guitar to stop the vibrations. He looks up at the stars, blinking into existence as night falls like a dropped curtain, and shakes his head. It felt like an excavation of something haunted, when he pulled the guitar from a trunk in his bedroom closet. Truly, he hadn’t thought about this guitar in months and taking it out again was just asking for something dangerous to befall him. Maybe something already had, given how much he had started to care for the girl who carries a pocket knife in her sock. 

Joel’s gaze drops to that girl now, her wiry little fingers wrapped around her ankles as she stares right back. He had forgotten they still made people like her.

“But it’s good. It’s good to remember.” Joel slides the guitar off his lap and onto the wood step between them. This guitar is older than Ellie and he hands it to her. “Now let’s see if you’ve been paying attention.”

She stares a second after he leans in to point out the chords before she tries to match his fingers on the strings. But then Sarah opens the screen door, out of breath and the tip of her nose pink as if she’d been standing over a fire. 

“Dinner’s ready.” 

Joel stifles the urge to roll his eyes; his girl was many things, but subtle was not one of them. As she disappears back inside, Ellie hands him back the guitar and meets his eyes with a confused look on her face – what’s up with her? Joel shrugs, then tries not to groan as he stands up, his knee acting up again. Odd, given that it only used to ache when a storm was coming, like a warning. But the skies had been clear for weeks.

“Good first lesson, kid. I’ll put this up, you go see what they got cooked up.” 

“You sure?” Her gaze drops to his knee, observant as her aunt. 

“ ‘M fine. Go on.” He knows there’s more affection than gruff in his voice, but at least Ellie doesn’t seem to register that. 

He follows her inside, the air warmer in here due to the oven and a lack of a breeze. When she moves towards the kitchen, he goes to the closet beneath the stairs and opens up the trunk at the back. 

He isn’t entirely sure he can forgive Tommy for what he did, but at least he understands it. Beneath where the guitar laid, there’s a scrap of crumpled paper – a telegram he thought about tossing in the fire when it first arrived. Instead, he is glad he just wanted it out of his sight. 

It is blank except for a few letters and numbers: a forwarding address. 

He can’t pick it up and look at it, not right now, but maybe. Maybe someday, when he needs his brother.

“Holy shit!”

Joel smiles as he shuts the trunk lid and stands. Not today.

When he finally makes it to the kitchen, Ellie stands at the head of the table, her shoulders by her ears, arms out, as if preparing to be tackled to the ground. Her eyes are bigger than he’s ever seen them.

“Happy Birthday, Ellie!” Sarah yells from the other side of the table, the words bursting out of her. “Do you like it?”

“Like it? I . . .” Wordlessly, she slides into the chair, her face glowing in the light of the candle sunken deep into the top of the cake. The shadows, thick and heavy around her mouth and under her eyes, blur the emotions on her face. 

“Ellie?” You say, tentative. That crease is back between your eyes and Joel wants to press his thumb to it until it goes away. “Is this okay?”

Slowly, she lifts her eyes. The shadows cannot hide the wet shine there. Joel has to look away, something hot expanding under his ribs. 

“Uh, yea-ahh . . . this is fucking okay.” He hears the slight chuckle in her voice and he looks back. Her smile is stretched from ear to ear. “And this is dinner too, right? We get to eat cake. For dinner?”

You smile, relief and excitement giving your own face a special glow. And then, your eyes fall to him and that hot band in his chest thickens to his throat. He’ll dream of your eyes again tonight, he knows it.

“Mr. Miller has extra storages of flour in the cellar,” you say, gaze slipping away before he can hold onto it. The band in his throat hardens when you refer to him so distantly. “We used just a bit of cream and milk –”

“And sugar!” Sarah blurts out. She is practically vibrating next to you. “We have to really conserve sugar, only for special occasions, and what’s more special than a birthday?”

Ellie tears her gaze up from the candle and, for a second, she looks very small. 

“You used it for my birthday?” 

While Sarah nods vigorously next to you, he watches as your face falls. He knows that look, felt it screw up his face too – you feel like you’ve failed Ellie somehow.

“Of course, Ellie.” You say quietly, your hands knotted in front of you. He watches as the words get caught in your throat, all the right ones and the wrong ones. “You . . .”

“You’re a good kid.” Your eyes jump to him, wide, as he steps closer to the kitchen table. He puts a hand around the knot on the back of Ellie’s chair. “Is what your aunt means to say. Happy birthday, from all of us.”

Ellie’s gaze is so gentle, she looks timid. She glances between Joel, you, then Sarah, and back to you. 

“Um, thanks, guys. I guess.” 

In the soft silence, she takes a brief moment, her eyes closed, and then leans forward over the candle and promptly blows out the flame. The kitchen falls into darkness, a second before you reach for the light. 

Sarah claps her hands, the amber electrical light softening her already smooth skin. “What did you wish for?”

Ellie’s smirk returns, her hard edges returning. “Can’t tell you or it won’t come true.”

Sarah rolls her eyes as you gather the plates you and Joel had cleaned just this morning. “I always thought that rule was so stupid. It’s no fun.”

You grin at her as you hand Ellie a plate and then Sarah herself. 

“It’s the secret that gives the wish its magic. All the good things are best kept secret.”

Your hand extends a plate out towards him, but it’s your gaze that meets him first. Mouth slightly parted, you watch him from beneath your long lashes. The light that softens Sarah emboldens the curves of your cheeks, the slope of your nose, the entanglement of your hair against the nape of your neck. A table between you, he hasn’t been this close to you in what feels like days, when it had only been this morning. This morning, when he had never felt further from you, when his own fear had gotten the better of him. 

For so long, the circle of his love ended at the property lines and he had spent years of his life etching in that demarcation, digging in and digging in until the wet earth swallowed him whole. There was nothing else but Sarah and this land because he could not afford to lose either of them, so he held on tight and burrowed deep.

But this deep down, the earth he loved might as well have been a coffin. A tomb. In order to stabilize his daughter, the land, and himself, there had to be less of him. Less to carry. Less to burden. 

Less of him to share. 

He thought – maybe hoped – that those bits of him that had fallen away would always stay gone, another sacrifice in addition to his blood and his sweat into the soil. It was easier to mourn a loss if you never had it in the first place.

But, as he looked at you from across the table in the low light, as your fingers touched his beneath the plate – even for a fraction of a second – the pieces he’d left behind roared to life once again. 

Heat warms him up his arm, down into his chest – and it keeps going. The smell of you, of sweat and sugar and honey and sunlight, invades his head like a dirty wind and the fire inside scorches him as it flushes down his ribs, through his stomach, and right into his groin.

You all but drop the plate into his hand, pulling your fingers away from his touch, gaze diving away. But he can see your nervous swallow, the way your hand shakes when you pick up the knife to cut the cake. 

“Let’s eat.” You smile at the girls, but it’s as weak as your voice, crackling, trembling, overwhelmed. As if you too had been consumed by years of dormant want out of nowhere and now couldn’t possibly put those feelings back into hiding even if you wanted to.

Even if you begged.

The cake is gone in a matter of minutes. 

Ellie lets out a groan, leaning back in her chair, her hands resting over her full stomach. “That was so goddamn good.” 

“It’s inappropriate to lick the plate, right?” Sarah asked, sponging up crumbs with her finger. 

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Ellie grins. She snatches up her plate and with her tongue flat against her chin, licks up every last morsel. Sarah snorts, laughter bursting out of her, before doing the exact same thing. It’s not long until both of them are making grotesque noises. 

“You girls act like you haven’t had a proper meal in weeks.” Joel sits across from you, his arms folded across his chest, a faint glint in his eye as he glances back and forth between them. He sits low in his chair and his shoulders look especially broad across the back of it. “Y’all are gonna eat me out of house and home.” 

Sarah giggles and wipes her spit-covered chin. “Ellie said she found a really good spot out back to look at the Milky Way. Can we go look?” 

You expect him to ask that they clean up the table first, at least put the dishes in the sink, and not to stay too far into the dark. He’s watching Sarah for a beat too long before he opens his mouth again.

“But then when will Ellie get her present?”

His eyes lock onto you.

“THERE’S MORE?!” Ellie screeches.

The heat in his gaze sends a tangible shock down your throat, across every single one of your ribs, right into your nipples. Your faint gasp is overshadowed by Sarah and Ellie’s yelling – oh my god you didn’t tell me about this what’s wrong with you – please please please can I see it I’ll clean the bathrooms if you just lemme have it please –  but the look is gone a second later when he stands up and jerks his chin over his shoulder to the living room. The girls sprint into the room before he can take his first step. He doesn’t look at you as he follows them, slow, confident, teasing them just a bit.

“What is it?!”

“Is it more comics?”

“More marbles?”

“New clothes?”

“Ew, that would suck.” 

As if deaf to their pleas, Joel slowly walks over to the chest in the corner of the room and just as the girls are about to burst from excitement, he bends down and picks something up from behind it.

A radio. 

The radio.

The same one they had found in town. 

Ellie and Sarah’s eyes widen to the size of the dinner plates sitting on the kitchen table, covered in spit and cake crumbs. They drop to their knees, fingers outstretched like they approached a feral kitten.

“Now, it doesn’t work right.” Joel says, his arms crossed again. “But I thought it might be a good project for you girls. Something to work on together. Maybe learn about magnets and electricity n’shit.” 

His eyes fall on you again, as if you knew all about “magnets and electricity n’shit.” Joel grins again, this time just for you, and something inside of you snaps in half, melts, sparks open; some great weight, one you didn’t even know was there, has been lifted off your shoulders, your heart, and you can breathe properly again. You sink into the blue sofa, hands in your lap to keep them from trembling. 

The idea that you would ever willingly leave this place is laughable.

The idea that you would take Ellie away from this, from Sarah, is agonizing. 

They’re both fiddling with the buttons and twisting the jobs, the novelty of it perhaps the most fascinating. They are silent, more reverent than if they are on hallowed ground. 

“I’ve got some pliers and a screwdriver if you wanna –,”

Perhaps it was the witchcraft of the sisterhood. 

Perhaps they had managed to work out some secret code.

Perhaps they were just lucky. 

The radio lights up and the tear of a trumpet whines out of the speakers. Their yelp of delight is muffled beneath the white-hot music of a jazz band. 

Joel watches with what can only be considered bemusement as the girls leap to their feet and start dancing like no one had ever taught them about rhythm. 

The sofa squeaks, the cushion under your butt tilting up, as he sits down next to you. 

“Not likely to win any competitions any time soon,” he mutters quietly, presumably to you, as you both watch Ellie’s jerky knees and Sarah’s dizzying twirls. You sit, hands in your lap, perched on the edge of the cushion, while he leans into the sofa, arms back in place over his chest. With the way you are positioned towards the radio and him facing straight on, your knees almost touch. 

You wonder if he’s as aware of that chance as you are. 

“Listen, I wanted to say I’m sorry.” His voice is deep enough to be heard over the music. He glances at your hands, and then your face. The sincere regret in his eyes makes the blood in your wrists pound. “You didn’t deserve all of those things I said to you this morning. Both you and Ellie have been . . .” he struggles for the word, his bottom lip moving with the swipe of his tongue, “a good change in our lives, and I regret saying the contrary.” His gaze falls back to your hands, your thumb tucked into the hole made by your other fingers. You wouldn’t look away from his face if it was the sun itself. “The fields have been well taken care of . . . and I know Sarah’s grateful for everything you’ve done for her. You’ve changed her life for the better. You’ve changed m–,”

It’s like his voice crumbles and slips off a cliff. His broad shoulders sag forward and then he looks up at you, a desperate sort of hope in eyes. Hope that you understand what he’s trying to say, and hope that you don’t make him say it. 

Oh, but you want him to say it. You want it so badly. 

You nod, this crumb sweeter than anything on the kitchen plates. On some heady sugar high, you smile at him.

“Well, I meant what I said.” He frowns and your grin widens, but then teeters and topples over. Your wrists ache. You have to lose his gaze for what you’re going to say next. “We are very, very grateful you took us in. I know it wasn’t a decision you made lightly, risking so much of you and Sarah for two complete strangers.” You shake your head with disbelief. “I’ll spend the rest of my life proving that you made the right choice, if I have to.”

You glance up at him – and immediately wish you hadn’t. 

It’s that same look he gave you when you handed him his plate over the kitchen table. Lips pursed, brow slightly furrowed, with a wary uneasiness in his eyes. Like he’s finally figured out what kind of woman you are, and he can’t quite tell what to do with you.

“C’mon you two!” Sarah yells and that hazy bubble that envelopes you bursts. He blinks, as if not remembering where he is. “You gotta dance!”

“Yeah, you old farts!” Ellie pants, red-faced and nearly out of breath. “It’s my birthday so you have to do what I say and I say, let’s boogie!”

You lunge at the chance to be distracted; you turn away from Joel and arch your eyebrow.

“Oh, you’re dancing? Is that what you’re doing? Can hardly tell.” 

Ellie sticks out her tongue while Sarah starts kicking with one foot then bounces to the other, flicking her wrists. “I saw this move on the school’s television!”

Ellie immediately stops the flailing of her limbs and watches her moves. “Teach me!”

Sarah slows it down until Ellie gets the hang of the bounce. Sarah looks much more natural in the rhythm, but at least Ellie is partially on beat. 

“And then I think you do this–,”

Her foot dangling in the air, she loops her ankle around Ellie’s and starts hopping in a circle. Ellie lets out a giggle.

“No way this is a real thing!”

“It is, I swear!”

“You got any moves like that?” Joel asks quietly, but still ensnaring your attention completely. He sunken completely into the sofa, hips low, legs wide. His thumb taps the beat on his thigh. Something about the way he has completely relaxed allows you to unclench your fists and loosen your foot tucked behind your ankle.

“Me?” You chuckle, leaning back on the arm rest. “I never had the time to go to the dancehalls, much less learn complicated moves such as the – Sarah, what is that dance called?”

“Hell if I know!” They’ve switched feet, trying to go counterclockwise this time.

“Complicated moves such as The Hell-if-I-know.” He rewards your terrible joke with a low chuckle. 

“Me neither. I can’t dance for shit.” 

As though he had called her name, Sarah stamps down her foot and rolls her eyes at her father, Ellie trying to follow along with the instructions the singer is giving over the speakers.

“Yes, you can. You taught me The Dip.” 

“That’s not a real move, Sarah–,”

“You can teach her!” Sarah’s brilliant smile extends to her eyes as if she had just announced the best idea in the history of ideas. “Then she’ll know at least one!”

Your fingers return to their fists. Joel stiffens beside you.

“Yeah, you should.” Ellie yells over her shoulder distractedly, one arm raised and the other leg straight out – in complete opposition to what the lyrics said. “Can’t have her embarrassing me in public.”

“C’mon, Dad, just one dance!” Her brown eyes flicker to Ellie and sweat-damp shirt. “It’s Ellie’s birthday!” 

“And for the party, we – must – dance!” Ellie strikes a dramatic pose and Sarah, giggling, swishes her dress with a flourish. With a brief glance at you, she rejoins Ellie, her skirt twirling.

The sofa squeaks as if he’s moving, a soft hand comes to rest high on your back, and panic leaps into your throat.

“Mr. Miller – Joel – you don’t have to – Sarah is just being silly –,”

“Well, it's not like I’m going up there by myself.” 

That rough palm slides over your scapula, then your shoulders, and down your arm. Tugging gently, a soft pinch around the bone of your elbow nearly pulls you to your feet, but sense-memory has you folding your arm back up towards your chest, your knees locked and heels heavy. Immediately he senses your rejection and stops. 

The warm light above threads gold through strands of his silver hair, the ends of his curls long enough to disappear into nothingness, into the halo around him. 

Joel Miller would never, ever hurt you.

Joel Miller is not your husband.

Joel Miller could be your friend.

His light touch releases and just as his fingers drop from your sleeve, your arm unfurls towards him, taking him by the bicep. His eyebrows lift slowly, watching as your fingers curl around his arm. Drawn towards his light like a sunflower, you stand, closer to him than ever before, and smile up at him. Friends go dancing together all the time, right? 

But all the standards and regulations of propriety and social mores were flung out the window the second you, an unmarried woman, stepped foot onto the land of an unmarried man. Nothing about this, about any of this, could be considered conventional.

A step or two away from the sofa, he holds your waist in one hand and yours aloft in the other, fingers interconnected. Respectful. Decent. A good man. No boundary crossing here. 

“Ready for your next lesson?” he asks, a little breathless. Maybe he forgot the steps and he is simply nervous to perform – hm, teach. He does a bit of adjusting, watches his own feet adjust as you stand still in front of him, waiting to be moved.

So, you open your stupid mouth and say,

“See, teaching isn’t so easy, is it?”

You grin and finally his eyes meet yours. Soft as leather, warm as a saddle in sunlight. It’s your turn for necessary air to be drained from your lungs and he decides then to move.

“Gotta lead up to it,” he grumbles, the corner of his mouth lifted. “Can’t just dive right in.” The way he leads is completely out of sync with the music, but you see that it’s intentional, a choice to slow things down. Not quite what you’d expect at the Boston dancehalls, but something far more precious and memorable. He sways with you, as supple as a blade of prairie grass in a warm wind. 

The curve of his shoulder is warm beneath your fingers, your thumb inches from his collar. He is more solid than any other person you’ve ever touched – including Anna. He could stand at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and never be washed away. You cannot imagine what that stability feels like, but you crave it all the same. 

There’s a respectable distance between your hips and his, but you can still smell the sweetness of the cake on his breath, the hot earth he tends to so lovingly, and the tang of sweat. 

“I know you’re a fast learner.” You turn your head towards him, but he gazes straight on. For a moment his face is so stoic you start to wonder if he actually said anything, but then a smile, a small one, flickers across his face. He turns his head towards you, his nose brushing yours, and suddenly you are too close together. Instinctively you pull away – your head, your shoulders, your hands – then find yourself frustrated that this is how you still react. You don’t even mean it. You don’t even want it, this temporary separation. But still Joel stands. He waits for you and sure enough, you sink back into his arms, your palms separating for only a second. “We made a regular farmhand out of you in a handful of weeks. Could get you to a full Dip in days.” 

He’s talking too softly to be easily heard over the banging percussion, the scream of trumpets, the boozy warble of the singer, so you bend closer. Over his shoulder, Ellie and Sarah take turns curtseying and bowing and then locking their elbows together and spinning each other in circles, giggling. 

“They’re alright.” The words hum in your ear, heat warming the air after a flash of lightning, and you fight a full body shudder. You tear your gaze back to him and his smile. His hand hasn’t moved an inch on your back. You worry your palm is getting sweaty. “Just focus on me.” You nod. 

From the radio, the song ends and the band slows to a discordant crash, as exhausted as the ones who danced to their rhythms. Men raucously laugh over the airwaves at their own created chaos and the two girls collapse onto the couch, red-faced and sweaty and laughing. 

“You trust me?” His eyes are brown and dark and smoky, firewood kindling. He really intends to teach you something. You nod slowly. The memory of his hand smacking into the counter breaks apart when his palm slips further down your back, his leg shifting in between yours, and he leans forward to lean you back. Back, back, back, off the edge of the earth. Hair slips off your shoulders as you hang, suspended above the floorboards, cradled by his hand and his thigh, the other hand holding yours to his chest. The world is upside down – in more ways than one. 

When you lift your head, he blocks out the light above for just a moment. Joel, for a moment, is all you can see. He holds you like you weigh nothing, gravity a suggestion to a force of nature like him — and a moment later, he pulls you both upright. 

Your cheeks are burning, your heart roars in your chest, in your ears, and there is no other way this would have ended: you glance at his mouth. He looks at yours. The fingers entwined with yours tighten. 

And then the radio dies. No preamble. No warning. Just ringing silence.

“Welp, it was fun while it lasted.” Ellie huffs, out of breath, smacking her hands against her thighs. 

Sarah wipes away sweat from her forehead with her arm. “Nah, we’ll get it back. I know we can fix it. Right, Dad?”

Joel Miller is still staring at your mouth. 

He’s quiet too long before he drops his gaze and clears his throat. Caught in a daze, you blink and suddenly his warmth is gone. Your hand floats in the air, empty. Joel pulls on the waistline of his pants and turns back to the sofa, nodding.

“Course, we can fix it. But not tonight. Get to bed, both of you.” The gravel of his voice makes his words harsher than they need to be, but Ellie just rolls her eyes and Sarah throws herself onto her feet. 

“C’mon, teenie bopper, I found a mouse skull the other day I forgot to show you.”

Ellie’s eyes widen as she follows Sarah up the stairs. “Like a skull skull? No meat, just bones? Was the rest of the skeleton there?”

Her interrogation continues as they move around the second floor and you can almost hear every word of it. A stark and abrupt reminder that this house echoes – any noises or sounds made can be heard anywhere, in any room, by anyone. 

Your gaze drops to Joel like a stone and with the added weight of whatever he was thinking, it all becomes too much for him. He turns away, denim shoulders nearly up to his ears.

“I’ll clean up.” He waves his hand vaguely to the kitchen. Cake. Plates. Flour on the counter. Oh, that’s right. “You cooked.”

A trade, a sharing of responsibilities between two equal partners. There’s some part of you that knows you should argue, cleaning was what he hired you for, but this is not him telling you as your employer. 

This is . . .

“You did good today,” he says, quickly, his hands on his waist, a step forward, as if he remembered something mid-stride. “It meant a lot, to the both of ‘em. I know you don’t think much of it, but you’re good at this.”

Your face heats, a familiar zing from his words racing down your spine into the bowl of your hips. The next breath you take is a shaky one. “Thanks, Joel. I think I’ll turn in for the night.”

He swallows, then nods. “Night, then.”

“Good night.” 

You might have let yourself believe you had imagined the whole thing, as you walk down the long wood floor to your bedroom, the girls’ chatter now just noise in your head. You might have believed that, after half a decade of being unwanted and undesired, abandoned at the edge of civilization, you extrapolated sentimentality from the first man who looked at you. All your life you doubted yourself; doubted your ability to keep Anna safe, doubted that you’d ever be something more than a pathetic replacement for Ellie’s mother, doubted your own sanity at times when you sat in that dark, dank dug out and listened to the scratchy winds tear apart your husband’s finances. 

But this – this you did not doubt. You did not mistake, or dream up, or lie to yourself. 

Before he let you go, Joel had squeezed your hip, rubbed his thumb against the waistband of your skirt. Let his fingers snag and catch in your blouse.

Whether it was trust or companionship or something ultimately more terrifying, he felt some kind of way about you. 

What kind of way you felt about him, you couldn’t answer honestly. 

And yet for a moment, for a brief moment, you had stepped into his light and, goddamn it, you were right. 

It was warm.

END OF PART II

series masterlist | AO3 Link | part i | part iii

[frantic-fiction]

Reoccurring Nightmares

(Gif: margonite-seer)

Astarion x GN!Reader / Astarion x Good!Durge

Summary: A night reveals that maybe the past is not left behind, and maybe old urges have begun again. As people always say healing is never linear.

Triggers/Tags: Implied mentions of self harm. Violent topics. Angst Hurt/comfort.

Minor spoilers for Durges plot line nothing very specific but you have been warned.

Word Count: 2.2k

(Quick note I gave reader Tav's name so hope y'all don't mind)

Cold damp earth thunders under your feet as you run, each step echoes in the silent woods. Your chest heaves, each breath a meager attempt to fill lungs that can't seem to feel satisfied. 

Why are you out here? 

The forest is a maze, and you navigate it with urgency, propelled forward by the rhythmic pounding of your heart. It threatens to break free, like a wild creature desperate to escape its cage. You don’t stop, fueled by the momentum and the all-consuming fear clawing at your throat.

Why were you running?

This isn’t the first time your memory has betrayed you, leaving you disoriented in the unknown.

Ducking beneath a fallen tree, the rough bark scratches against your skin. You turn sharply and press on, the underbrush snapping beneath your hurried steps. The surroundings are a blur, darkness shrouding any discernible features. The moon, a mere sliver in the night sky, casts an eerie glow through the dense canopy.

A plan forms in the chaos of your thoughts. The distant sound of water becomes a lifeline; a river might offer refuge from a pursuer. You move toward the sou-

 Your foot snags a root, and you collide with a rock. Blood fills your mouth, the metallic taste jarring, familiar. In the darkness, your hand tightens around a shard of glass. The moonlight reflects off its jagged edges, casting faint ethereal patterns on the forest floor.

Frogs and crickets harmonize in the night, their symphony a stark contrast to the turmoil within. The beauty of the scene clashes with the disarray of your mind. A brief moment of clarity emerges, allowing you to catch your breath. 

What happened? 

You examine the shard of glass, uncurling your fingers for a better look. A deeper wound reveals itself, and the blood flows unabated. The taste and sight is both revolting and comforting, a paradoxical sensation that grounds you in the reality of pain.

Where did the glass come from? Memories fracture, and images of a shared life flood your mind. The house on the outskirts, memories of love and healing. Someone's absence looms, silver curls and sharp teeth; Astarion, a question unanswered. 

Knees pulled to your chest, you notice the blood-soaked clothes. Panic sets in; that part of you, the monster believed buried, threatens to resurface. Did his blood taint you again? Did you harm Astarion?

Jerking to the side, you vomit, the weight of imagined horrors overwhelming you. The riverbed offers a cold sanctuary, and you scrub the blood away. The water numbs your body, but you persist until your fingers ache. The raw emptiness grows, time stops, and the world holds its breath in shared grief. You can’t face your friends; the word "friend" is tainted by your actions. Astarion’s absence is a void you can’t bear.

Wasn’t this the fear? The fear that kept you awake, haunted by the possibility of losing control. The dark whispers that the urges would resurface. 

Your reflection in the river, blood-soaked and tormented, triggers waves of self-loathing. The glass shard gleams, a macabre symbol of your descent into the abyss.

Fingers graze the cold surface, and a distant voice interrupts your thoughts. 

“Tav!” The sound pierces through the chaos, freezing your movements. 

“TAV!” Astarion’s voice, a lifeline in the disarray. 

Frantically searching, he emerges from the trees, disheveled and relieved. He is by your side in a moment joining you halfway into the river. He cups your cheek, his touch offers a brief respite, a moment of grounding in the maelstrom. 

Words are cement in your mouth. You're mystified by the reality that is facing you. Astarion is here, in front of you. And, in fact, very much alive. You reach up with a shaky hand to barely caress his cheek, as if a more stern touch would shatter the fragile moment. He grabs your wrist and kisses your cold palm softly.

“You’re alive,” you choke, collapsing into his chest sobs rolls through your body.

He momentarily freezes in confusion at your words before refocusing at the current urgency of your state. Pressing you tighter against him, Astarion strokes your hair and gives you a gentle kiss to your hairline. Maybe he had just fed before finding you, or maybe it's a testament to how long you have suffered the freezing night, but he’s warm. You bury yourself deeper in his embrace, hiding your tear-streaked face in his neck.

“Of course, my love,” He softly says and holds you a moment longer, allowing you to feel the truth of something he’s not quite understanding but knows is important just the same. But little by little, he begins to pry you from his body.

“No,” you make a pathetic whine in protest, desperately trying to stay attached. Too afraid that once you let go, he’ll disappear and the truth of what you did will be brought back into the moonlight.

“Hush now, my sweet,” Astarion stands up suddenly and removes the heavy jacket you had given him. Kneeling back down, he drapes it over your shoulders.

“You have been in the middle of the woods in freezing weather for gods know how long. And you've had a bit of a swim.” His thumb brushes the line of your cheekbone. “Let’s get you home so I can warm you up, and if you are feeling okay tonight, we could discuss what my darling was doing alone out here.”

He doesn’t leave room to argue, and you have none to give. So he takes you in his arms and begins to walk. You’re too tired to speak, so you simply curl closer into him and resume your position, face tucked into the crook of his neck. His scent invades your nostrils, and finally, since waking up in the woods earlier this evening, you breathe a sigh of relief.

***

You don’t remember falling asleep, but you awake on the plush sofa in your living room. Astarion must have moved it because it is now as close to the fireplace as safety would allow. The only thing standing in its way was the intricately sculpted metal table Dammon had gifted you for a housewarming gift. 

What seemed to be the entire house's stock of blankets was now piled on top of you, effectively cocooning you in cotton and silks. You try to sit up, but find that no strength is left in your bones.

“Stari?” You croak, your voice hoarse from your sobs.

There is not an immediate response, just the crackling fire and the rustling of dinnerware from the kitchen. You don’t bother to call out again; you know he’ll be in to check on you soon. When it comes to you, Astarion’s mother hen tendencies rear their head with great urgency.

 While you wait, you stare transfixed into the fire, mesmerized by the crackling wood and swirling ash. The chaos of fire has always been interesting to you. In small quantities, fire can bring warmth to a home and light to darkness. But uncontrolled fire burns, burns everything in its path. No mercy, no complexities, just fire and fuel; anything in between is insignificant in the grand scheme. It's familiar, too familiar.

Maybe this topic was best left untouched; maybe you hated fire. After all, fire is made to burn.

“Oh good, I was just about to wake you,” Astarion sets a tray on the coffee table. “I made tea,”

He starts to unearth your body from your blanket tomb and helps you into a more seated position before moving to the armchair. You catch his wrist; his crimson eyes meet yours. You're not entirely sure what you want; you just can’t bear him being so far. Not after thinking he was lost to you forever.

“Hold me?” The words are barely above a whisper, hesitant as if Astarion has ever denied you anything. “Please,” you tack on for good measure, though you're not sure why.

“Of course, my sweet,”

Handing you your tea, Astarion motions you to lean forward so that he can slip in behind you. Sandwiched between his legs, he wraps an arm around your middle and eases you against his solid torso. 

He’s warm; you must have been right. During your trek in the woods, he must have stepped out to feed. Now that the winter is approaching, he’s been hunting larger game; he likes to be warm, says it’s not always fair when you're the only one bringing heat into the relationship. 

He silently urges you to drink your tea, and you do. It’s quiet; neither of you speaks; you simply drink your tea and Astarion comforts. Hands gently trail up and down your arms, in between peppering tender kisses on your neck and shoulders.

You know what he’s doing. You’ve done the same tactics on him plenty of times in the past. He’s waiting. Waiting for you to speak first. To share with him why you were in those woods. What horrors brought you there. It’s an unspoken rule between two very broken people. You offer each other comfort, the safety each has lacked in the past and wait. If or when the person wishes to speak, the other listens.

But how do you even begin to describe the night that has occurred? The terror, the guilt, the hatred. It all just boils in your chest like wet tar. You can’t even really explain what happened to yourself. Once the tea is finished, you pass the cup to Astarion, who in turn returns it to the tray.

With a deep breath, you say simply, “I thought it happened again,” he knows immediately what you're saying and holds you just a bit tighter. 

“I-I-I don’t know what happened, b-but I was just running. I was… Gods, Astarion, I was so scared.”

Pushing the blankets further away from you, you turn in his arms and wrap around his neck. His eyes reflect the same sadness and fear you are feeling. “I was covered in blood, and then…then all I could think about was you,”

Tears begin to roll one by one down your cheeks; he collect them with his thumbs. Tears of his begin to follow a similar path. “I thought it finally happened,” you're crying harder now, hiccuping between words. 

“I thought he finally made me kill you,” words began to fail you from there. You pathetically tried to say more but the only sounds that escape are choked hiccups and wet sobs. When you know you have no hope of continuing you simply hide your face in your hands, no longer wanting to face the world.

“We’re okay, little love. Everythings okay.” Astarion is rubbing soft circles into your back, repeating calming phrases until they stick. “I’m here, nothing can change that. You’re okay darling.” 

It takes a lot of lovely words and small touches before your breathing calms down and you seem to have run out of your tear supply for that night. But even then Astarion doesn’t let go. You two stay interlocked, warmed by the slowly dwindling fire. He clears up your scattered thoughts. 

Astarion's voice, tinged with concern and a hint of reassurance, breaks through the remnants of your panic. "It was probably just one of your nightmares," he offers, a familiar acknowledgment that nightmares are woven into the fabric of your existence. In the quiet aftermath of your ordeal, the weight of his words settles in the still air. 

As he gently extracts one of your hands from your tear-streaked face, the dim light catches the glint of a heavy bandage wrapped around your trembling fingers. The glass shard, a cruel messenger, the night will leave its mark. With a tender touch, Astarion guides your gaze to the bandage, and then, with a careful motion, he lifts the fabric of your pants to expose a larger wound on your thigh, neatly covered in thick gauze.

The size of the injury is alarming, and the realization dawns that stitches would have been a necessity. Astarion's eyes reflect a regret that mirrors your own. "I should have been there, I'm so very sorry, my love," he whispers, his voice carrying the weight of an unspoken vow to protect you from the horrors that lurk within your own mind.

As you open your mouth to argue or perhaps offer words of comfort, Astarion anticipates your protest. "Regardless of what you are going to say," he interrupts, his words cutting through the heavy air, "from now on, I will be feeding exclusively when you are awake." The admission reveals a vulnerability in his eyes—a fear that lingers from the night when the scent of your blood permeated the air, and you were nowhere to be found.

"There was nothing more frightening than coming home to the smell of your blood and you gone." His hand begin to play with a strand of your hair. "Not to mention the absolute nightmare of a talk I’m to receive once I call for Shadowheart come morning, because I’m still not convinced you didn’t contract hypothermia during your midnight swim.” 

A small smile plays on your lips, a silent acknowledgment of the impending lecture from Shadowheart, whose disapproval you can almost taste. Astarion seems to relish in your smile, and he cups your jaw, pressing his forehead to yours in an intimate gesture that transcends words.

"That is all behind us," he declares, a note of determination in his voice. "Our wounds are still fresh, but we are here, and we are healing. We'll get through this, we always have." His smirk carries a promise of resilience, and you nod in agreement, surrendering to the irresistible urge to find solace in the warmth of his lips pressed against yours.

Author's notes: Oh boy I haven't posted any of my writings since 2018 but damn BG3 has sparked something in me. Astarion is something special and I love him. If anyone has some ideas they would like to throw my way I would loved to see them.

Feedback is welcome, hate is not! Have a nice day, cheers.

[ddarker-dreams]

Sore Loser.

Yan Alhaitham x Reader.

Warnings: Yandere themes, unhealthy relationships, manipulation and unbalanced power dynamics.  Word count: 1.1k.

“In case you somehow missed it while storming in here, I want to inform you that my work hours are posted outside my office. You should note that I’m not currently on the clock and am under no obligation to hold an audience with you.” 

You knew this would be no simple task. That’s why you’ve spent days — perhaps weeks, if you’re being totally honest — mentally preparing for this confrontation. Countless hours have been spent running mental simulations of this imperative moment. Still, despite your best efforts, you never achieved a breakthrough that’d navigate you through the obstacles lying ahead. Hence why you’ve been delaying this tête-à-tête no matter how much you recognize its needs to be resolved, and soon. 

Some might call it procrastination, or delaying the inevitable, but not you. You think of it as self-preservation. What small amount you have left to cling to, anyway. Today, that thin, already fraying self-preservation was pulled taut enough to snap. 

Which leads you here. The last place you want to be, paired with the very last person you want to see. 

Your gut tells you the feeling is far from mutual. Alhaitham’s expression might be schooled, betraying nothing that floats around in that sinister mind of his, but you’re certain he’s deriving some satisfaction from your disheveled appearance. It could be the nearly imperceptible quirk of his lips or how he went to such lengths to keep his words slow, as if savoring your attention. 

“Oh, trust me, I saw your little plaque.” 

“It comes as a relief to know you’re literate.” 

The creature seated before you cannot be a human being. There’s no way. You’ve dealt with some irritating men throughout your academic tenure — sometimes you wonder if the trait is an unspoken prerequisite to being accepted in higher education — yet none come close to this. The nonplussed air, that monotonous voice that is about as passionate as one reciting instructions from a manual. Oh, how it stokes a seething rage inside you that burns red hot. 

You slam your hands on his desk hard enough to jostle the various writing instruments and memorabilia. This little outburst earns a raised eyebrow, yet nothing else. It’s clear that the floor is yours. You’ll need to make every second count. 

“I know what you’ve been doing,” you whisper. Still nothing. No guilty body language that’d give himself away, his intense eye contact doesn’t even falter. Yours almost does. “Admittedly, I don’t know the specifics. I just think it’s interesting that ever since we broke things off, I’ve been receiving the cold shoulder from the academic world. An area you hold immense sway over.” 

He straightens out a pen that went askew from your previous action. “A quick correction: you used the incorrect pronoun.” 

“... Huh?” 

“You said ‘ever since we broke things off’ when the correct phrasing would be ‘ever since I broke things off.’ That was entirely your decision. I had no part in it.” 

It takes a few seconds for his words to register. What was once a steady yet contained flame ignites into a wildfire, seeking to smolder everything nearby into ashes. You can’t believe you saw something in him once. That you granted him a special residence in your heart, the door left unlocked so he wouldn’t need a key. In the wake of his forceful eviction, you’ve boarded up the windows and chained every potential entryway shut. There’s no fully surveying the damage left behind that you’ve been forced to clean up. 

Piece by piece, shard by shard. You knew picking up the jagged glass would hurt — you never could’ve fathomed how much it’d make you bleed. 

Unfortunately, he isn’t finished. While you mentally scramble to recollect your thoughts, he swoops in, talons sharp and ready to pierce your flesh. 

“Additionally, I don’t see why we’re having this conversation if, as you said yourself, you have no evidence to back your claims. This alleged abuse of power would be better discussed with the matra. I’d be cooperative with any investigation they open. In fact, why don’t we go visit them together—” 

“Stop it,” you cut him off, and surprisingly, he listens. “Is this— is this your way of tormenting me? Getting revenge? Does destroying what I’ve spent my entire life building satisfy your ego?” 

Alhaitham places his elbows on the desk, rests his chin on steepled fingers, and leans forward. You know that look. You were once intimately familiar with it. This is the posture he adopts when he’s studying. Analyzing every variable presented to him and unearthing what remains hidden. There is no secrecy beneath his scrutinizing gaze. Where some see a stubborn wall, he views a vast ocean of information, waiting to be absorbed by those who know how to find it. 

“You haven’t been sleeping well,” he notes. His voice is quieter. Almost tender, if such a word exists in his lexicon. You’re convinced it doesn’t. “Your foundation hides the worst of the eyebags, but I’m familiar with your normal complexion. The slightest change in pigmentation is enough to give you away.” 

You hug your arms close to your chest. “Who do you think is to blame for that?” 

“You wouldn’t like my answer.” 

His hand reaches for your wrist. You tense, your breath catching in your throat, yet you allow him to unfurl your protective stance. His skin is familiar. Warm, calloused from years of dutifully scribbling onto documents. You feel his eyes boring at and through you. Cataloging your every reaction, retrieving past memories to best advance his goals. 

He’s never quite as detached as you wished he would be. 

There’s an underlying fondness when he speaks your name, gentle as a soft breeze, and almost as indiscernible. 

“You must be at your wit’s end if you’re coming to me unprepared like this,” he sighs. The spell is broken, the hypnotist’s wristwatch frozen midair. You go to jerk your hand back, only for him to tighten his grip, not enough to hurt, but enough to effectively communicate his point. 

“I’ve always been partial to you, so I suppose a little overtime wouldn’t hurt just this once. I believe I have a solution for the predicament you’ve found yourself in. We could discuss it, if you’d like. How about over dinner? It’ll be my treat.” 

You did come here searching for a solution — though this is the last one you’d ever want. 

“... How much of this did you plan?” 

“I’m unsure what you mean,” his tongue might wax deceit, but his lips offer a glimmer of truth. They curl into a content smile. “I take it that’s a yes. Our usual spot, then?” 

It’s occurs to you that you were worried about the wrong thing all along. 

There was no point in fortifying your defenses after you ejected him from your heart; he never intended to undergo a forceful re-entry. 

No, according to his design, you’d be the one undoing each lock to meet him outside. 

[enj4s]

VAMPIRE BOY, BITE ME IN THE MOONLIGHT! ᡣ𐭩 .

─── ˚୨୧⋆ PAIRINGS; subaru sakamaki, 𖥻SUBARU x fem! reader ｡˚ ⋆

─── ˚୨୧⋆ 𝙒𝘼𝙍𝙉𝙄𝙉𝙂𝙎; smut. swearing. fem!dom! reader. reader is mean, again. pegging. (lil) hair pulling. hickies. crying. toxic relationship. both are fucked in the head.

★ Author note 😆😆!!: Whoever requested ts excuse my dramatic ass, I LOVE drama as you can see. (sorry btw) enjoy 🤤‼️ yallyal request I got nun to do other than rot in my bed 💔

It was one of those days-

You were a patient and laid-back person, or so you and some people thought. But your anger issues have gone up the roof since you met the seven diabolic, unhinged brothers.

Their mothers and Karlheinz were just as bad, if not even worse. The Mukamis could not redeem themselves but they were bearable, especially Azusa who was just less annoying and irritating, or atleast didn't make you wanna dig your nails in your skin and clutch hard till it bleeds, like the others. You had an exception between the seven Sakamaki siblings as well, whom was Subaru.

Subaru was one helluva person to deal with. If not for Karlheinz introducing you to his past, you would've kept your first impression of him, which was he had rabies.

That boy was as layered and complicated as an onion, and trying to navigate through his mind and emotions was gonna drive you mad. One moment he's calling you a dense ass for dropping a pencil or getting bitten, and the other he's glancing at you all soft like a high school girl in love would.

You swore you have spent and used more brain cells on trying to see through him than you had on maths. He could be downright cruel at times, and even dismissed you so harshly that you favored the men-whore final boss (Laito) over him for some while, which didn't last long when he forced you so adorably in a 'relationship' with him or is what you thought, since he ordered you to resist if any of his brothers try to bite you. What else did it mean?

He would become absolutely feral when he got jealous. It was pretty easy to make him reach that point, but dangerous. He would start yelling at you and destroying everything around him in blind rage when he saw you talk to a male teacher or student or his brother's, going as far as attempting drain you of plasma. It was all too tiring and frustrating, you wanted nothing but quietness, to be left alone and ignored.

His delusion of you being his was so utterly nonsensical, but you went along with it for your safety and sanity, it was wise to sometimes give up and give in to his delusions, which he used as a control and power element. Resisting only meant to get bit to near death, where you'd start to see stars and lights that you thought only existed in cartoons, or, like these times, when he'd strangle you.

-where you'd snap.

"Shut the FUCK UP!" You'd yell at the top of your lungs, couldn't you even be strangled to death silently? His yammering of you being a betrayer was so damn irritating. Subaru jolted and flinched away form the volume of your voice, that look on your eyes, he backed up slightly, his grip on your throat weakened. In a swift movement, you dug your nails deep into his unhealthily pale wrists, shoving him away with every ounce of strength you had left.

Subaru stumbled backwards, catching himself quickly, his white boots stepping on a broken shard of glass from a vase that you bet was supposed to be cherished. You felt guilty for using one of his traumas against him to make him halt, stop. Yes, but did it save you from getting choked? Yes.

The anger was incredibly contagious, you bite your lip to hold back all the insults and traumas you could bring up, knowing that it would just bring you brutal death and a quick burial in dirt in the next hour, you shut your mouth, trying to find saliva to relieve your sore throat that was deeply in dire need of moisture.

The grip he had on your throat just now had been so tight you could've sworn he had actually meant to kill you for a second. Your breathing became labored. Your heartbeat was stubborn and didn't wanna settle down. Your eyes stared back at Subaru's with a mixture of tears and fury, you blink. Trying to help your eyes get used to the light again.

Both of you had your flaws and toxic traits, you suddenly found yourself on top of Subaru, a hard grip on his hair that matched his on your throat earlier, you wipe salty tears away, everything was a blur. You swore you couldn't remember a thing. You'd insult other people for not controlling their actions, yet you couldn't keep yours in check either.

"Sorry," You murmured against his pale skin, kissing alongside the hickies and bite marks you left on his neck. They looked painful. He was a vampire, so you didn't worry too much. They'd heal in an hour or two. You were still between his thighs, cum dripped down his hips and legs.

"You just piss me off sometimes...It's so childish when you start yammering and yelling, creating scenes when I talk to anyone," You watched his wine red eyes trail down in something like shame. His mouth was sewed shut, he was already embarrassed from moaning as loud as he yells. He was cuter when he was quiet, you note, and grin silently, propping yourself on your knees to thrust inside him again without warning, tearing a shriek from the albino beneath you, he drops his head down on the pillows, you were making him feel way too good, as rough as it was.

It almost seemed like you were still taking your anger out on him as you pounded inside him harshly. Subaru felt his stomach coil and he tightens, when you'd lean down to whisper sweet nothings in his ear that didn't match your humping.

“C-ca- ah! Can’t! Hah..” Subaru whined shakily, a sound he'd drop dead before making if he was in his right state of his mind. He hiccups and whimpers as he covered his face with his hands. “So full..hic- too much," His legs dangle like a rag doll's from your shoulders as you plundge inside him deeper and deeper with each delicious thrust.

You lean down with a sigh, catching Subaru's lips in a kiss, and grab at his long bangs, tugging hard to tilt his head upward, and swallow down the loud wail that was about to wrack from his body as he came, vibrating slightly and hips thrusting up pathetically in the air. His fangs poked at your lip a bit painfully as he tried to bite down his noises, now chasing after your lips and the little blood that threatened to spill.

Getting strangled or beat again later from a flustered Subaru wouldn't be surprising after wracking his shit, but it was worth it. You could only laugh as he emptily threatened to break your arm after this, complaining that he couldn't feel his legs and that you're a perv.

─── ˚୨୧⋆ @enj4s ♡ @un0rin ♡

don't repost or copy I know where u live 👁

[that-irrelevant-ricecakeaddict]

SIC PARVIS MAGNA Pt.1: "Streets"

DC Birds of Prey x ATEEZ

an AU by @that-irrelevant-ricecakeaddict & @seventhcallisto

Masterlist & Character profiles

Heavy edm booms throughout the night club, barely heard over screams of distress, punches landing and the shattering of glass bottles. You winced in pain as you nursed the bruise on your knee, a souvenir of your clumsy attempt to get to the bar counter that you were now crouched underneath. You tugged off your heels, knowing that they would likely cause more trouble for you than protection from whatever miscellaneous trash was littered throughout the checkered nightclub floor. The mahogany counter you were leaned up against suddenly shook with a loud ‘thud’, causing you to jump backwards in your hiding spot. Cautiously getting on your knees, you peeked over the counter top, in hopes of at least locating your friends. The scene before your eyes was chaos, a blur of fists and bright disco ball lights flashing inconsistently, doing little to help your eyes navigate the already dimly-lit room. Looks like you were gonna be there for a while. 

Your thoughts were interrupted when a large black figure was thrown over the counter and against the wine cabinet behind it. Glass shattered everywhere, prompting you to gasp out loud and shield your face from any flying shards. The figure slammed to the ground, and awkwardly rolled under the counter next to you. A sigh of relief escaped your chest when you realized it wasn't one of the tattooed thugs that had come barrelling through the club's entrance earlier on. It was a man with flaming, yellow-streaked orange hair, dressed in long drapes of dark fabric. His lowered face was obscured partially by a black cowl with pointed tips. As he tried to push himself up, he shook violently and doubled over even more, evidently reacting to a painful injury. You instinctively reached out to try to help, but he didn't notice you, instead ripping off his bat-shaped cowl and disorientedly raising his head. 

Oh my god.

Nothing could have prepared you to see the face behind the mask. 

One day earlier…

“Hand over what's in the cash register, and no one gets hurt!!” 

Shit. Not again.

Turning around in your spot from behind the cashier, you came face to face with the poorly-dressed man who had entered the store just a few minutes ago. His bloodshot eyes raked your raised hands as he brandished his scratched-up pistol at you. 

Fuck, I knew he seemed off when he walked in.

You mentally cursed yourself for not refusing service to him the moment your gut feeling had kicked in. Now you were stuck behind the cashier of the convenience store, having to choose between forking over the little money in the register and being shot at the scum standing in front of you. Not that this was new to you. In fact, having lived in the crime-ridden city of Seoultham for long enough, you're rather desensitized to being robbed. It just sucked that it had to happen when you were working your shift at the local 7-11. For the 3rd time in a week. When your rent was due in a few days.

Despite the familiar anxiety that overtook you whenever you were looking down the barrel of a shooter's gun, you managed to reach into the beat-up register to grab the few dollar notes, while hardly breaking a sweat. You stared longingly at the crumpled notes as you handed them over to the thief. 

Guess I'm not getting paid this week. Whatever… I'll just ask Taehyun-oppa to send some money early. 

A cry of dissatisfaction broke your thoughts, bringing you back to reality. The thief had counted the money, and he looked nothing but happy. 

“What the fuck is this?! There's barely enough money ‘ere to rent a whore!”

“That's all there is, man, I swear…”

“Yer lyin’! Scoot over and lemme see the register, or I'll shoot!!”

“Dude, it's 11am on a weekend- This place hardly gets any business in the morning! You got some money anyways, so just get out!” 

You eventually gave in (persuaded more by the gun than the obviously uneducated fellow that wielded it), moving aside to let him rummage through the register. He gave a huff of displeasure at the empty metal drawer, before making his way out of the automatic doors. You let out a sigh of relief.

Fucking finally.

☆☆☆

A visit from the patrolling policeman, a couple texts to your boss, and a few hours later, you walk past the next shift's staff and out of the store. Relief washed over you as you walked the familiar path home. 

What a day.

Pulling out your phone, you turned off the Do Not Disturb setting, and was immediately met with the buzz of groupchat messages. The notification bar was flooded with texts from your girl friends. You couldn't help but smile a little at the most recent ones. 

Nayeonnie 🐰: KANG Y/N AND YOO JEONGYEONNNN

Nayeonnie 🐰: Answer ur phones RN. 

Nayeonnie 🐰: omg don't leave me hANGING 😭😭😭😭😭😭

The moment you clicked the notification and opened up the group chat, Nayeon’s contact number popped up on screen, causing you to nearly drop your phone. You quickly stuffed your coat into your tote bag so that you'd have a free hand to answer. 

“Hello? Nayeon?”

“Y/N you're alive!!!”

“I was at work, dude, my phone was on silent mode.”

“Aww you can't even look at your texts while manning the counter?”

“I would if I could, trust me. Anyways, I would've been screwed today if my phone was buzzing with notifications during work.”

“Whaddya mea- Ohhhh shit, did the store get robbed again?!” 

“Why do you sound so surprised?” You murmured, Nayeon sighing out loud on the other end of the line. 

“You really gotta find a safer place to stay. Jeongie and I's door is always open for you. I gotta go now, but I'll text you about this new club I wanted to check out later!!”

She ended the call, and you stuffed your phone inside your pocket, looking up as you turned round a corner. The sight of a dilapidated 4 storey building up ahead greeted you. Home sweet home. 

Halazia Apartments was dead as usual. The apartment complex is still standing on bare concrete and broken foundation, which you doubted you'd come home to because of said things, but with it still standing everyday you were pleasantly surprised that it wasn't rubble and dust. Maybe you're not giving the place enough credit. As you take your steps up the entrance stairs a familiar shadow is on the other side of the door, pushing out. 

“Oh hey,” Your sweet old land lady's only daughter, Chungha, greets you, phone in one hand and her thick brown braid twirled around the other. Despite being older by a fair amount, she looked effortlessly gorgeous yet laid-back (as usual) in her pastel tracksuit. A stark contrast to your windblown hair and wrinkled tee that still had a few glass pieces from the earlier break-in. What wasn't usual, was the stranger standing next to her; a tall, thin man with faded red hair. Something about him made him almost fade into the background, you didn't even notice him at first. His pale skin had a slight tinge of green to it, and his eyes looked like bottomless pits. Not creepy, but more mysterious.

Is that her new boyfriend? 

Your eyes flicker between the two for a moment, internally deciding not to question one of your very few friends. This doesn't go unnoticed by the cute stranger. His figure shrinks a little and he moves closer to Chungha, his big frames almost sliding down his hooked nose. She doesn't react, as if she was used to it, and instead spoke to you again. “If you happen to see that Song guy, let him know the elevator is getting maintenance and he shouldn't try to use it. Don't want a lawsuit." Chungha crosses her fingers and clicks her tongue, as if the problem isn't as serious as it is. Considering you'll have to walk up the many flights of stairs. Fuck, could it get any worse? “Yea sure,” you nod and slip past the tall man (who's still clinging onto her). 

“Thanks, sweetie. Hwa, c’Mon, let's go,” Chungha hums a word of appreciation as she tugs on the man’s baggy sleeve. He was quick to react, eagerly following her out of the building. You could hear her infectious chuckles outside as you started to walk towards the staircase. Shaking your head, you push the mystery man out of your thoughts and headed to the row of mailboxes next to the staircase. 

Multi-colored graffiti decorated the once-blank walls that surrounded the mailboxes. Not that you minded. It gave a somewhat lively feel to the still and dead air of the place. You reached for your assigned mailbox that was labeled ‘#03-01’, only  half of the ‘3’ was scratched off. 

Inserting and turning your key, a grumble escaped your throat when you realized that the mailman had mixed up your mail for the nth time. The heavy envelopes inside were all addressed to ‘Song Mingi’, aka your infuriatingly absent neighbor that lived a level below you. 

Whatever, I had to go tell him about the elevator anyway. If he's even home this time.

Jogging up the stairs to the 2nd level, you crossed over to the first door in the pin-drop silent hallway and knocked, expecting to be met with even more silence . To your surprise, there was a ‘click’ followed by the door squeaking open. Your giant of a neighbor stood in front of you, looking like a lost puppy. He scratched his flaming yellow-and-orange hair, muttering, “Can I…help you, Kang?” 

Honestly, you were taken aback for a moment. It was the first time you'd seen him up close before, heck it was one of the first times you'd ever personally seen him at the apartment. He lived there, but rarely left his unit from what Chungha told you. You didn't see or hear much of him, besides clunking of machinery, aggressive clacking of keyboards that you could hear through the thin floors, or occasional loud conversations between him and the friends he had over. You couldn't help but let your eyes rake over his sharp features for a moment, before snapping yourself out of it and showing him the stack of yellow envelopes addressed to him.

“Our mail got mixed up…again.”

“Oh shit, ‘m really sorry you had to go through the trouble-”

“It's fine. At least you're here for once to actually receive your shit. I wouldn't wanna leave it outside your unit again like some threat from a loan shark. By the way, uh…the elevator’s down again. Chungha said to use the stairs for now.” 

Mingi offered you a crooked smile and took in his mail, nodding and mumbling a low “thanks” before clumsily re-entering his apartment. 

Well. That was awkward. 

And this leads you to where you are now. 

Caught in the midst of an intense nightclub fight, crouched beneath the bar counter with increasingly sore legs, and face-to-face with that exact same downstairs neighbor; holding a cowl in his hands, looking absolutely petrified as he stared right back at you.

The two of you gawked at each other like goldfish, the loud music and fighting nothing but white noise in that moment. 

Just as Mingi was about to speak up, there was a shrill cackle coming from the front of the bar.

“Batsy!!! Where ya at??? The cops are coming, we gotta bounce, you fucking beanstalk!!” 

You could hear a deranged man speaking and punctuating his words with punches and crashes of bar stools. 

Mingi's eyes lit up at the sound of his companion's voice and he quickly shoved his cowl back on, tugging up a baggy hood over his striking mop of hair for extra measure. He caught your gaze, offering a “please pretend you didn't see anything” look back in return. And in the blink of an eye, he was gone. 

Soon enough, the rowdy bar fight was broken up by the cops. Police sirens and yells of “Freeze!” rang throughout the room, prompting both innocent bystanders and troublemakers alike to attempt to flee. You stayed exactly where you were, too shocked by the revelation that you'd just made. 

What the hell was Mingi doing here? Is he a vigilante? Why'd it have to be him to run into, out of all people? 

It wasn't long before a police officer found you huddled under the counter. He'd asked for your name, but took your silence as a sign of shock from the night's events. As you were being escorted out of the club, you could hear groups of police officers discussing in hushed tones as they tried to round up as many thugs as they could. Amongst these officers, you spotted Officer Seo, your elder brother’s friend. Curiosity overcame you and you broke free from the officer's hold to clumsily hobble over.

“Changbin oppa!”

The beefy policeman whipped around at the sound of your voice, and caught you just in time before you tripped. “Y/N! You were caught in the fight??” “N-no, I mean yeah, but I was hiding behind the counter most of the time…” Officer Seo heaved a sigh of relief at your response, muttering, “Taehyun would've killed me if you got seriously hurt.” You couldn't help but smile as Officer Seo waved off the officer who had been escorting you out. He'd always looked out for you, ever since he got to know you and your elder brother through a mutual friend, Yeonjun. “You were here with your friends?” “Yeah, only I don't know where they are…I lost them in the crowd ‘cause I was on my way to the toilet when the fight started. And I left my phone with one of them, so I can't exactly make a call.” You ranted. The reality of your situation was sinking in. The man sighed in exasperation this time, sweeping off a few shards of glass that were stuck in your hair. “Give me their names and a description. I'll get my colleagues to find them. We're holding witnesses outside for questioning, I'm sure they're there.” Officer Seo chuckled at the relieved look on your face. 

“Do you know what happened, Changbin?”

He scratched his head at your question, evidently irritated at the mess surrounding him. “Yeah, buncha thugs came in to stir shit with the club owners. Witnesses say the Birds of Prey had arrived and were tryna take out the troublemakers, but they clearly,” he waved a hand at the ruined bar, splintered chairs, and smashed disco ball before adding on, “left behind a huge mess for us to clean up. As usual.” 

Officer Seo continued to ramble as you gathered your thoughts on everything that had happened. Birds of Prey? Seoultham’s infamous group of vigilantes that would disappear as mysteriously as they came? You chewed your lip and you couldn't help but ponder.

Is Mingi part of them? 

After the nightclub had been cleared out, Jeongyeon and Nayeon had came running, nearly suffocating you with their tight hugs and cries of “Thank fuck you're okay!!” (Jeongyeon was crying). Officer Seo had personally driven the 3 of you back to your respective apartments; Jeongyeon and Nayeon to their shared unit in another part of the city, and you to Halazia Apartments. By the time you got home, it was almost 2am, and you'd quickly gotten ready for bed, exhausted from the night. Right as you were dozing off, you swore you could hear some commotion from Mingi's unit on the floor below…

The next morning, you were still deep in thought. Even as you were making your way to school. Before leaving the building, you'd considered going to Mingi's unit to interrogate him, but decided against it after the complete silence at his level. Normally, in the mornings, you'd hear some sort of heavy machinery operating. God knows what that computer science student, and apparent vigilante, was doing. 

As you turned the corner to walk out of Felony Alley, a man with red-streaked black hair practically threw himself at you. “Y/nnie!!!” The two of you fell to the ground with a thud. Hearing the familiar voice, you immediately relaxed. It was just San, the sweet and bubbly (and very affectionate) mechanic from the nearby bike shop. He snuggled into you as you struggled to get up. “Hey- good morning to you too, San…Can you get off me?” Once you two were up, he hooked a muscly arm around yours while you walked along the sidewalk, eventually leading you to the small shophouse that he lived and worked at with Yunho, who was crouched over a red motorbike at the entrance. “Good morning, Yunho,” you greeted him as usual. Limitless Mechanics was located almost right outside Felony Alley, meaning that you'd pass by it everyday while leaving for college. Over the years, you'd befriended the two mechanics that worked there, and you and your busted-up bike became regular customers. 

Upon hearing his name, the lanky man leisurely turned in your direction. But his face dropped for a second when he realized it was you. “Oh. Good morning.” A wave of uncertainty washed over you at this. Yunho wasn't as physically affectionate and bubbly as his business partner, but he always greeted you with a warm smile. A warm smile that was nowhere to be seen at that moment. You bit your lip out of anxiety, wondering if you'd done something wrong. San seemed to notice, and he quickly started talking to bring focus away from the weird tension. But even he sounded nervous about something.

“So, Y/n! I heard that you were caught at Arriba's bar fight last night…did you- see anything out of the norm?”

“Uhm…” 

An image of Mingi's stunned pikachu face flashed through your mind.

“...as unusual as a bar fight gets, I guess.”

“Ah, I see…glad you're safe.”

The air went stagnant between the 3 of you. Between Yunho's unusually stoic demeanor and San's fidgety yapping, it was nothing but awkward.

Fuck, how many times have I been put on the spot these past few days? It's getting ridiculous. 

“Well, I'll uh…be making my way to college now. See you guys…”

San opened his mouth, presumably to say goodbye, but a look from Yunho made him opt for a wave instead. You turned and walked away as fast as your battered sneakers let you, feeling Yunho's piercing gaze stabbing daggers at you from behind. 

Talk about uncomfortable…

Thankfully  your mood had lifted a little once you reached the college campus . Meeting with Jeongyeon and Nayeon for a light breakfast at the campus’ cafe took things off your mind a bit before you could head for your lecture. The two girls had avoided discussing the previous night's events, likely still shocked at what had transpired. Not that you minded. You'd had enough of weird happenings and situations for the day. Or so you thought, when you ended your lecture on DNA analysis and started heading for the biology lab. 

Since you only had one lecture on your schedule, you'd opted to go help out at the biology lab as the professor's assistant, as usual. A side gig to earn some extra pocket money. You walked into the small storage room connected to the lab, stretching slightly as you put down your bag in a chair, grabbing one of the lab coats that was hanging from the clothing rack next to the door. The biology professor hadn't briefed you on what lecture he was carrying out for the day, so you'd have to wait. A clammy hand suddenly reached out and touched your shoulder.

“AH WHAT THE FUCK-”

You jumped forward, screaming out in surprise at the same time. Whipping around, you came face-to-face with a man that you hadn't even noticed when you'd entered the room. It took a moment for you to realize that it was the same guy that was leaving Halazia Apartments with Chungha just yesterday. He was wearing a baggy brown plaid vest, and a few pins in his faded red hair to hold stray strands in place. His eyes were wide, clearly more scared than you were. “I-I'm sorry…you were standing in front of the test tube cabinet, and I need to get to it…” 

You quickly moved out of the way, muttering an apology as you watched him gingerly open the wood cabinet. Were his hands shaking? Now that you saw him up close, he seemed rather timid and soft-spoken. His bony hands didn't have much color on them. 

“Sorry, I didn't get your name…” “O-oh. That was rude of me. I'm Park Seonghwa…” “Well, nice to meet you, I’m-” “Kang Y/n. Halazia Apartments level 3, right?”

He blurted out suddenly, taking you by surprise yet again. A few cogs seemed to turn in his head at your reaction, and he quickly started stuttering.

“C-Chungha told me! I'm friends with her, and I ran into you yesterday, r-right? She told me you were one of her mom's tenants at Halazia…” “Ah, don't worry, man, I didn't think you were like a stalker or something.” 

Seonghwa looked visibly relieved at your response. Your eyes traced over the test tubes that he was now clutching tightly. “So why're you here?” “Uhm, I got a job as a lab assistant here…” “Really? Same here. I've been working as Professor Li's assistant for some time now. Guess we're colleagues now!” Your attempt to sound chirpy went unnoticed by your new associate. He was just as nervous and fidgety as the day before. Clearly, it wasn't gonna be easy to get to know each other. “Are you Chungha's new boyfriend? Your two seemed,” the memory of him clinging desperately to the older woman flashed through your mind,”...close.” Seonghwa looked uncomfortable at your question, and his figure shrank even more. It reminded you of a plant wilting. 

The room went silent for a moment before he spoke up again. “Professor Li said…you don't need to be here today. He told me to inform you if y-you came around… I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier.” You let out a breath that you didn't even know you were holding. Deep down, you felt alleviated that you didn't have to spend 2 hours working with such an introverted, withheld colleague. Not after the chaos and rapid fire of uncomfortable situations that had ensued in the last 48 hours. It was draining. You shook away those thoughts as you hightailed it out of the college building. You sent a quick text to Jeongyeon and Nayeon that you were going to miss out on your usual lunch, noticing a new text notification. 

Tae oppa (personal atm💵): dongsaeng-ah

tae oppa (personal atm💵): come down to the museum

tae oppa (personal atm💵): I'm in the city for a bit so hurry up or you'll miss me 🙄

Perfect timing on his part. Taehyun, your one and only elder brother, messages just as you're heading home. With a quick-witted response back (A thumbs up emoji) you're on your way to see him. The museum, that he would go to whenever he was in town, was thankfully nearby your apartment. God, you haven’t seen him in a while. You should probably thank him for covering your rent this month. Like he has for the past couple of months… yeah. An in-person thank you was long overdue.

The doors rattle as you push forward into the Visage of History Museum, aged over time. And in the center, after a few steps in, you notice the familiar jet black hair of Wooyoung talking to Yeonjun. Yeonjun was yours and your brother's childhood friend, as well as his current business partner, so Yeonjun would be around whenever your brother came to visit. Wooyoung, on the other hand, worked at Seoultham’s museum, which was a business partner of Taehyun and Yeonjun. “Oh! Y/n!” Yeonjun flashes his signature smile, and during that split second after your name was called, Wooyoung's head whips your way. “Hey Yeonjun oppa, hi Wooyoung..” you toss your head in acknowledgement, glancing at Wooyoung. His stare - unlike his usual playful one, is wide and clouded in an emotion you can't quite tell. You flinched slightly at the suddenly defensive look in his eyes.

Seriously, what is up with everyone today?

The awkwardness of the unnerving stare makes your eyes flicker back to Yeonjun. “Where's Taehyun oppa?” You mumble, rounding the counter to meet them on the employees only side. Yeonjun clicks his tongue but doesn't mention it. “Wow, only a hey? Not even a hug or anything?” Yeonjun pouts. And unlike usual, Wooyoung doesn't interrupt his friend, only observes with his arms crossed over his chest. Your eye twitches in worry, but instead of mentioning it, you pull Yeonjun into a side hug to shut his whining up for the moment. For a second he’s tamed, and just as he goes to speak once more, Taehyun is rounding the corner to one of the art exhibits. You quickly turn, hoping to briefly step away from Wooyoung’s stony stare.

“Here's the man of the hour,” Yeonjun gestures, patting your back heavily - an irritating thing he's done since you were young. Your older brother's eyes meet the edge of the counter before settling on you, a satisfied grin spreading over his cheeks. “Oppa” you yell while waving enthusiastically, and Taehyun grins back, jogging up to the counter to bring you into a full fledged hug. “Have you eaten? It's already lunchtime.” His grin is contagious, and you scratch the back of your head, laughing nervously. “Uh, no.” 

Taehyun scolds you with a small ‘aigoo’, clicking his tongue. “It's a good thing we ordered pizza!” Yeonjun piped up, waving his phone, which had a delivery app opened up on it. “Pizza? In a museum? Wow, Jun, I thought you'd be more responsible,” Taehyun rolled his eyes at his colleague before adding on, “I'm kinda craving a coffee, honestly. Jet-lag is crazy. Y/N, what's the name of that place you bought me that really good black coffee the last time I visited? The one with that barista who called you a caffeine-addicted ninny?” “...you mean Nightbrew Cafe?” 

You plastered on a smile, trying to ignore how Yeonjun had doubled over in laughter at how your brother remembered your favorite cafe. Nightbrew was the local cafe/coffee shop, and was located practically in the middle of the college, Halazia Apartments and the museum. Naturally, when you first moved to Seoultham, you had started frequenting it as it was convenient. Over time, you even befriended the main day-shift barista, Jongho, who took a liking to you the first time he served you and you blurted out a “You too!” when he said “Enjoy your cake”. It was awkward and embarrassing, but it did lead to you becoming good friends with the muscly man. 

“Jongho didn't call me that, by the way!” You fumed, smacking Taehyun's shoulder defensively. “Oh, is that his name? But I remember it so clearly! He definitely did. Maybe I'll ask him, I wanted to go down to grab another one of those delectable coffees anyway. Go with me, sis, I don't know where it is.” Wooyoung had been quiet this whole time, but he suddenly blurted out after hearing that Taehyun and you intended to interact with the barista.

“H-he’s not working today!” 

“Who?”

“Uh- Jongho… he took an emergency leave today….”

You crossed your arms, looking suspiciously at Wooyoung. He immediately avoided your gaze, opting to state at the ground and shift slightly in his platform sneakers. 

“You know him?”

A hint of panic flashes across Wooyoung’s face. His eyes darted around hesitantly for a few moments, almost as if he was thinking of a lie.

“We…we're neighbors.”

“Hm. Okay.” You noted his odd behavior, once again reminding yourself that it was a far cry from the usual flirty and big-mouthed man he was.  After living in Seoultham for a few years, it was odd to you that your favorite barista and Wooyoung knew each other, and you didn't know. After all, the city population was generally low, and most people knew each other. 

Taehyun and Yeonjun looked uncomfortable as the two of you exchanged blank stares, before Taehyun hesitantly spoke up. “Dongsaeng, I'm actually not craving coffee anymore…let's go grab some snacks at a convenience store?” He rubbed your back soothingly, obviously trying to cut the weird tension between you and his business partner. Both him and Yeonjun could tell that there was something unpleasant going on between you and Wooyoung. You brushed off your elder brother. “Sorry, oppa, I'm kinda tired after my lecture. And Beomgyu said he wanted to play an online game with me too.” You quickly made up an excuse to leave as you added on. “By the way, thanks for paying my rent again, there have been way too many robberies at my workplace lately.” “Hah! You'd think with so many vigilantes here, there'd be fewer of those incidents,” Yeonjun scoffed jokingly. 

Wooyoung subtly chewing his lip in response to Yeonjun's words didn't go unnoticed by you. 

Later on in the evening…

“Beomgyu! Dammit! The guy on the left!” You yelled in frustration, the controller beginning to creak under your harsh grasp even as you slammed the buttons. The distant crackle sound of Beomgyu cut through your headset, his loud voice booming in your ears. “My left or yours!?” and bam! You were suddenly shot and dead, you tossed your controller next to you in anger, groaning into the microphone when your revival rate depleted when the guy who'd shot you started t-bagging your downed body. “What a dick.” You grumbled, groaning once more when your partner, Beomgyu, had died just as suddenly as you did. The screen flashing to whoever won the match when they got the final kill. “Dude, you suck.” Beomgyu’s static voice irritated you. 

“Shut up, it’s your fault we lost” You mumbled, throwing yourself the rest of the way onto the couch you currently sat at. “Excuse me!?” he retorted, but you drowned him out, glancing to the clock. There was a knock on your door. 

“Someone's at the door- I gotta go, bye oppa-” “Dude! I'm not done-” you shut off your console. Stretching before another set of knocks rang through your quiet apartment. 

“God, who the fuck’s here at this time-?” you fumed under your breath as you crossed over to the doorway. The handle of a battered baseball bat snug in your hand as protection in case whatever behind the door was trouble. You yank open the multiple locks on your door, a little harder than you intended, still agitated at your last game. You weren’t prepared to come face to face with one of the people you’d been dreading to see. 

“...Song?”

“Uhm, you can call me Mingi…” 

Mingi fidgeted under your heavy gaze as you looked him up and down. He took up nearly the entire door frame, but seemed to shrink in front of you in that moment. Your eyes lingered on his wringing hands and crumpled t-shirt. Almost as if he suddenly remembered something, he straightened up. “We- we need to talk. Can I come in?” You hesitated before stepping aside, allowing him to make his way into your apartment. Whatever he had to say, it was definitely going to answer some of your suppressed questions. 

Minutes later, Mingi sat on your two-seater couch, looking impossibly tense. He was fiddling with a piece of paper that he had produced from his pocket, putting it away when you’d re-entered the room with 2 mugs of barley tea. Was he looking at a fucking script?? You scoffed under your breath at the idea, before sitting in the armchair opposite the couch. 

“So? What’d you want to talk about?” 

“I…uhm…the bar fight at Arriba! You were there, right-?”

“Yes, I was there.” You decided not to give any confirmation that you’d indeed seen him that night. You still didn’t know why he’d come to talk to you about it. Shouldn’t he be informing his fellow vigilantes? Or…is he taking out the witnesses? Your grip on your lukewarm mug tightened, secretly preparing to smash it on your neighbor’s head at the first sign of threatening movement. Mingi’s jaw visibly shifted at your short answer, but he pressed on. “Did you…did you see anyone or anything weird, by any chance..? Anyone…familiar?” 

Wow, straight to the chase. 

You opened your mouth, ready to give another vague reply, when you fully took in Mingi’s form. You’d been so focused on watching out for danger, that you didn’t notice his expression and the look in his eyes. The poor guy looked like he was about to cry. You couldn’t help but feel bad for him, so you let down your guard. “Song, if this is about me seeing you without your mask, I-” 

*BANG!!* The door to your apartment suddenly slammed open, prompting you and Mingi to whip your heads toward the red figure that was barrelling through. 

“OH MY GOD, WHAT THE FU-” 

Before you could even fully process the situation, you were dangling by your sweater collar, pushed up against the wall. Your eyes raked over the rainbow-streak-haired man who was holding you up. The man who currently had a jagged knife pressed against your throat. Mingi was hurrying over from behind, yelling in protest at his apparent associate. “Joong-hyung, put her down! She doesn’t mean any harm!” “Ha! We don’t know that yet! You were takin’ too fucking long to interrogate her, so I had ta’ step in. You’re welcome, Batsy!” The (obviously deranged) stranger punctuated his last word by applying just the slightest bit of pressure on his weapon, drawing a drop of blood from your neck. You cried out loud at the sting. You were beginning to feel dizzy from how fast everything was going, not to mention from the sharpness of the blade on your skin. Is this it? Is this how you were going to die? 

No. Hell no. 

Sudden adrenaline rushed through you, fuelled by desperation to survive the situation you were involuntarily put in. You sent a kick to your captor’s stomach, forcing him to loosen his grip on your collar and drop you. Landing on the hardwood floor with a thump, you rolled away. The escape drills that Changbin taught you a few years back were being put to use. Your baseball bat, leaned against the couch, came into view, and you immediately dived towards it. “Kang- Y/N, please calm down-!” Mingi attempted to grab you, but not before you got your hands on the bat and brandished it at him and his associate. “I swear to fuck, Song, I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I took Judo for like, 5 months when I was 14, so you better keep your hands off me.” He stared helplessly in response, his associate hobbling over to him. A combination of scattered voices and hurried footsteps at the doorway pulled your attention away. A spark of hope, albeit rather preposterous, bloomed in you, deep down hoping that it was Chungha, or your friends, or your brother - anyone who could get help. 

Oh my days.

Instead, 6 men came jostling in, and your grip on the bat tightened. They were all dressed in variations of dark-colored clothing and masks, yelling different things at the one that had almost killed you just a minute ago. A red-haired man draped in an oversized, dark green suit, who was the only one not wearing a mask, irritably waved a hand at the other 5, effectively silencing them. He stepped forward with a hand out. “Miss Y/N, please calm down, I assure you that we mean no harm, and we just want to talk…” You were distracted by his features for a moment. His skin was almost glowing, prominent cat eyes and a hooked nose, his hair a bright red. He looked like an olden day Greek sculptor’s rendition of a siren; alluring and mysterious. The hand that he had extended towards you had tiny vines entwined around them, twisting around at his fingertips. It didn’t take a degree in criminology to figure out that he was one of the most prominent names in Seoultham’s vigilante scene. “Y-you… aren’t you-?” “Yes, that’s me, I’m Ivy.” The infamous hybrid vigilante, known for his captivating charm and plant-like abilities. His voice was silky and had an aura that made you relax. Just a little, though. You were still on guard. After all, there were 8 strangers in your house, one of them being your neighbor who you’ve barely talked to. Ivy lowered his hand before approaching the man on the floor. 

“Quinn, are you okay?” “Don’t use that name, V, we don’t know how much this chick knows!” Quinn, the rainbow-streak haired man, scoffed at Ivy as he stood up from where he was crouched earlier. “She’s no harm, dude, I sweat!” “Its ‘I swear’, Hawke.” “Oh, sorry…” You had to do a double-take at the 2 who spoke next; a tall masked man in a coat, and another who had a pair of large, feathered- are those fucking wings?? You couldn’t help but gawk at him. The rest of the group included a feline-like man wearing a cat mask, a silk-masked man in a dark leather jacket, and a brooding, hooded figure with their face concealed entirely by a stitched-up mask. Mingi stepped out from a corner, hesitating before speaking up. 

“Can we…can we talk to you?” 

Christ. What have I gotten into? 

[i-am-a-l0st-gh0st]

When I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave- Alhaitham x Gn!reader

“Cause I loved you, I swear I love you… Till my dying day…” T/w- cheating, angst no comfort, mention of blood (metaphor), unrequited love(?) Summary- You still loved him, even after all that.

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Alhaitham wasn’t usually the type of person to flirt with other people but lately, he seemed to be getting rather friendly with another colleague. He never touched anyone else shoulder except yours, he never looked at anyone except yours. But now… they were here.

And what the hell were you supposed to do? He would deny anything, and if you said something you were scared it would ruin your relationship. Maybe they were just really good friends. There was probably nothing to worry about.

About a few months after you noticed his change in behaviour, he started to get more friendly especially after she said she was single. Almost like he was gonna swoop in, but he wouldn’t right? He loved you… Right?

Well, that is what you kept telling yourself until you decided to say something to him.

“Hey haitham.” He had his headphones ignoring all the noises from the outside world. Until a text appeared on his phone.

Hey haitham!

It was that person again. You were the only person allowed to call him that… He never let anyone else do it, you thought you were special. You tapped him on the shoulder, just trying to get a little of his attention, something you had been lacking for a while.

“What's up y/n?”

“Can we talk?”

His face remained that same stone-cold expression, he didn’t even soften for you anymore… You really were losing him, you just didn’t think it would hurt this bad.

“What about?”

“You.. and that person you always seem to hang out with.”

“What about her?”

“You seem to really like her…”

“Can’t I have friends anymore Y/n?”

“No no it’s not that, I-”

“Your too controlling, she's just a friend.”

You could see he was lying through his teeth. The way he avoided your eye contact, his shift in tone. This only made it hurt more. 

A few weeks after this, he only grew more and more distant. He did a seem little happier. It just hurt that you weren’t the cause of this. Maybe you should just leave him? You’re both hurting each other, it’s like you’ve gripped onto a pretty shard of glass, but it makes you bleed. 

The final push was when you saw him kiss her. 

“H-haitham?”

“Oh Y/n…”

“You- You said…”

“I know what I said.”

You turned around and walked the other way, tears covering your cheeks… You knew it… but why were you still holding on? Especially now since he’d cut so deep…

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@pandragonsoul

[danosrosegarden]

heart for brains - karl heisenberg x gn!reader headcanons (NSFW) ౨ৎ ˙⋆.˚♡

{contents ♡ turbulent feelings, a good mix of fluff and angst, somnophilia, penetrative sex (genitals of reader not specified)}

{word count ♡ ~700}

{author's note ♡ this piece was originally going to be this year's kinktober day five, but i just couldn't wait! i'm new to the resident evil fandom, so if this is horrifyingly ooc or "he would not fucking say that" in any way, please avert your eyes and pretend you saw nothing. enjoy!}

♡ a bizarre flurry of emotions fluttered through your veins each time you looked at him. it was unfamiliar territory, whatever it was you two had going on. you were both navigating without compasses. the thick, sugary-sweet warmth of another body laying in bed next to him was something karl never thought he'd want. the comforting wrap of arms around your shoulders was something you never thought you'd need.

♡ but it was all a far, confusing cry from picturesque. you spent hours at the end of most days trying to piece together the shards of broken glass scattered around the frame.

♡ sometimes you raised your voices. sometimes you went to bed with any gently glowing, good memories snuffed out by the scorching hot anger you felt pulsating through your body. yet still, more times than you'd like to admit, you felt pools of tears glistening like dirty, shameful rivers in your eyes. goddamnit, why did you care like you did? if you were to be dancing this dizzying, aching tango with any other man, you would have ruled a long time ago that he just wasn't worth it. what made heisenberg so fucking special?

♡ the good moments did exist. you thought of them with a skipping heart and soft smile. how deeply those moments moved you. those moments where he'd let you run your nimble fingers through his hair. those moments where you'd let him sew tender kisses onto your neck. you knew it didn't come easy for either of you.

♡ you should understand something crystal clearly: it wasn't that he didn't care for you, too. karl reran the tapes in his head constantly, in fact: your sparkling sunshine smile. your wild, unbridled laugh. the slow, honeyed drone of your quiet singing voice that he secretly listened in on when you thought he was out. he truly didn't want to lose what he had, but it was just easier to push you away when the blackened claws of the lonesome past held a suffocating grip on his heart.

♡ it would be difficult not to think of...certain other moments as well. the moments of desperate grabbing and blazing hot desire. chaotic passion, reckless love. was it actually love? the word grabbed hold of your throat and pushed with might. it was entirely overwhelming, and you preferred not to think of it. emotions make you weak.

♡ sex was best served after marinating in your wrath for awhile after another pointless argument. that's really what they all were...pointless. you couldn't even remember what you were angry at him for as you felt the warm appetite shimmer between your legs.

♡ it crossed your mind every once in awhile, what something slow might be like. something soft and malleable like clay, something where the walls fell down and all those hidden feelings bubbled to the surface and spilled over.

♡ and it happens, one night where you wake in the inky dark of midnight to hear soft sighs spilling from his lips where he laid next to you. you could feel him shifting, could hear the rustle of his hand on the fabric of his trousers.

♡ "you could've woken me up."

♡ you feel his body jump. "didn't know you were awake. sorry." his rasped, half-hearted mumble gives you a chuckle.

♡ your emotions make you weak. you can't seem to bring yourself to care about that when he takes you up on your offer and slips inside of you, hands wrapped around your chest. "back to bed, sweet thing," he whispers.

♡ maybe you were weak. maybe you did crave to let your heart override it all. god, it felt good to let yourself tumble down the silk-soft staircase of unconsciousness as the hot, tingling knot coiled itself tighter and tighter in your gut with each gentle thrust. drowsy with sleep, drunk off the feeling of the mild stretch and warm breath on your neck.

♡ there'd be the days that upset you. sour snapshot memories that you'd look back on with a pit in your stomach. but you love him. you think of the bright days and you're sure of it.

[cringefail-clown]

here's something different but ive been trying to come up with some concepts for the kids planets in turnabout! since their session is no longer void i had to come up with some ideas of how their lands would look like in a "normal" one and it's... a lot of work ngl lmfao

some more info about the lands in under the cut

First one is jakes! still not sure about the name but ive been thinking of Land of Sparks and Peaks (LOSAP) or something along those lines. the land is covered in glittering golden grass hills and mountains full of caves, perfect for exploring. the consorts are pretty friendly and helpful to their hero. jakes quest would have something to do with gaining the confidence in himself to use his aspect (achieving his peak you could say ehehe)

dirk's a fun one. it's a Land of Roots and Reflections (LORAR). absolute eyesore of pastel blues and pinks, roxy loves it, dirk not so much lmfao. the whole land is covered in huge forest with gigantic roots that make trekking through it a challenge. leafs are made of shards of reflective glass, which can be pretty dangerous to navigate through them. the consorts are absolutely useless - something happened to them that makes communicating with em impossible, they just wander around kinda souless. dirks quest would be to fix whatever happened to those guys, probably through breaking something, was thinking of some kind of mirror

now roxys is a huge work in progress, i was thinking bout Land of Darkness and Sands (LODAS) but we'll see. its a desert planet void of basically all life. it's pretty dark out there all the time, and the water that once flown through the land turned into some kind of tar-like substance. the consorts are few and far between, travelling through the land in small groups. her quest would have something to do with restoring the oasis that once existed and was home to all of the life on the planet

and that's basically it, it's still very much just a concept so i'd like to know what yall think!!

[lasatfat]

Hey welcome to DADWC

"A hand mirror, its glass irreparably shattered" from the artefacts of thedas list. For Gideon Lavellan/Dorian

artefacts of Thedas | @dadrunkwriting

Risk My Hands to Pick Up Shards

“Ouch!”

Dorian snatches his hand back, and instinctively shoves his stinging finger into his mouth. The taste of copper tells him that he has, indeed, drawn blood, and apparently rather a lot of it. With his good hand, he fishes a handkerchief from his pocket, and wraps it around the wound.

“Fasta vass, and thank you very much!” he tells the offending box of…well, he was still in the process of ascertaining what exactly was in the box when something inside decided to fight back. A lot of useless trinkets, so far. Peering in, he can see the culprit: a shard of mirror glass, now bearing a glob of carefully curated Tevinter blood, sticking haphazardly out of a rather handsome frame. Shame, it would be a pretty thing, if it wasn’t now a collection of shards and glittering dust.

The door creaks open behind him. “Dorian? Are you alright?”

Oh, joy of joys. Of course the universe would conspire to make Dorian look like either an incompetent fool or a dishonest blood mage in front of the Herald of Andraste. The former is marginally less damaging, so he decides to push for that interpretation.

“Gideon!” he says, brightly. He holds up his covered finger, as the handkerchief is rapidly becoming saturated. “I wonder if you might be able to help me. I’ve finally met a mirror that doesn’t like me.”

The joke might have landed, if Gideon had been less concerned. He hurries over, and kneels beside him. “Let me see.”

He pulls back the handkerchief, examining the cut with sharp eyes. Fresh blood oozes over Dorian’s finger. The wound is not quite as large as he’d thought, but it seems to go rather deep. Even so, Gideon appears less worried than he had before. He pulls a fresh cloth from a pocket on his belt, folds it over the handkerchief, and squeezes tight, drawing a hiss of pain past Dorian’s teeth.

“Ir ab…sorry,” Gideon mutters. He lifts Dorian’s hand over their heads, his grip like a vice. “I need to stop the bleeding.”

They sit in that odd position, in an uncomfortable silence. Gideon may be new to the political game, but he has perfected the impassive mask essential for navigating it. He watches Dorian’s elevated hand, his brow furrowed slightly in thought. Dorian can’t parse anything from him now, other than maybe he’s concentrating on the job at hand.

“What were you saying there?” he asks, if only for something to talk about. “Ir ab?”

“Oh, ir abelas. It means, ‘I’m sorry,’” Gideon explains. “I didn’t think you’d know much Elvhen.”

“Not as much as I’d like.”

“Well, the exact translation is ‘I am filled with sorrow for you,’ but that’s a little overly dramatic.” Gideon smiles, companionably, and Dorian smirks in return. “In any case, I am sorry I hurt you. I can heal this up in no time, but not while it’s bleeding like that.”

Dorian chuckles. “Yes, I know. It’s not the first time I’ve sliced myself open on something. Accidentally, of course,” he adds, hurriedly.

“I assumed as much,” Gideon replies. “I imagine if you’d done it on purpose, you wouldn’t have shouted ‘ouch.’”

“No, I’d imagine not.”

The time passes a little more pleasantly after that. Gideon teaches him ‘andaran atish’an’ and ‘dareth shiral,’ and Dorian teaches him ‘avanna’ and ‘vitae benefaria’ in return – while Trade is the common tongue in Tevinter these days, a little Tevene might go a long way. Eventually, Gideon cleans the wound – he pulls the stopper from his waterskin with his teeth, which is far more alluring than it has any right to be – and suddenly, it looks more like Dorian has suffered a small cut and less like he has been savaged by a wild animal.

Gideon meets his gaze, soberly. “Would you like me to heal it for you?”

Perhaps it’s a courtesy to ask in the South, or among the Dalish. Perhaps it’s simply a quirk of personality. Either way, it’s quite endearing. “By all means,” Dorian replies.

With a small nod, Gideon rests Dorian’s hand on his marked one, and passes his right over the both of them. A soft, blue glow suffuses their gathered hands, settling in the divide in his flesh, shrinking to a thinner and thinner line as it pulls the split pieces together. Finally it disappears, as the skin closes.

Dorian lifts his hand, examines the finger from all angles. “Not even a scar,” he says. “Excellent work.”

“Thank you.” Gideon looks over his shoulder, into the box, and his gaze falls on the shattered mirror. “That’s seven years of bad luck, isn’t it?”

Dorian laughs. When Gideon stands, and offers a hand to help him up, it feels like the furthest thing from bad luck.

[opiopal]

OK

So I’ve decided that I’m going to into dump about my Mc(since like four people mentioned they’d read it lol), with the inclusion of pictures, I’ll try to keep it organized, making a list that goes, basic info, details, relationships, and add on’s, but I’m not that best with organization especially when it comes to my own characters.

This will be a mixture of canon stuff to the OM universe and my own stuff, I’ll go into my own personal headcanons and junk to. Fair warning this IS going to be long. Sorry if she seems a little bit to much of a main character lol. I tend to go overboard a lot of the time.

(ALSO I did redesign her basic look because I wasn’t really feeling it)

Basic info: so to start out, My Mc’s full name is Opaline L. Shards, though she introduces herself as Opal, since she thinks Opaline is a mouthful. She uses she/they pronouns, and is Pansexual. Throughout the series she is 21-24 years old, she was born and raised in Oregon state. She is about 5’5, 5,7 with her skates on. Her family consists of her mom(divorced) and her two other siblings. She LOVES anything and everything colorful and shiny and is generally curious.

Details/facts:

Opal is mostly blind, as in she is missing an eye and already needed glasses before losing said eye, so obviously it’s hard for her to see things. She prefers to work off of muscle memory and the blobby shapes that are people to her, which that is also why she likes/prefers things to have color to them. She though of course does have glasses, but prefers to wear them when she’s alone to work on things in her room so then no one can see her full face.. so she has a lot of homework. But is still fortunately a straight A student. Upon her very first night staying in the HOL, she waited until everyone was asleep to just, walk around and know her surroundings, who’s rooms were who’s and what was where. She removes her skates and anything clanky on her person before going, to avoid being caught ofc.

Her and her sheepiness

I like to imagine she isn’t a 2ft tall sheep 100% of the time throughout(because imagine trying to work at a desk or navigate massive school hallways as a stuffed animal), and that it’s really just a little enchantment that was put onto her to keep her safe, like a spidey sense, if there is danger around in RAD or in town or anywhere at all, she’ll POOF! Into a sheep. But instead of it working off of if they themselves feel threaten it just works off of if there is something that plans on hurting her around. So when that first day scene of over hearing two demons talking about eating her right then and there it’s just,

“Hey isn’t that the human exchange student? Let’s go eat then there’s no one arou-“ POOF! Scitter scitter “… what”

Speaking of RAD, clearly she isn’t wearing the uniform in its full-couch cushion looking entirety. She had texted with Barabatos to ask basic questions about dress code and asked if she could do add ons or remove a piece or two, and I’m guessing since thirteen basically mangled her uniform and didn’t get any shit for it, her wearing a sweater instead of the jacket is more then ok.

Speaking of her uniform, her hair is tied up, which isn’t really that big of a deal, but I like to imagine Lucifer does her hair, why? Well, her hair is a fluffy mess, and she really only brushes it in the morning, so Lucifer stops her from leaving first day and tied her hair up so then she looked presentable as to not embarrass him. Why did I make this a thing? Because I think it would be funny as hell that during the events in the beginning of season one, no matter what happened the night before, no matter how much they hated each other at the moment, every morning she went, knocked on his bedroom door, he opened silently, she handed him a hair tie and her hair brush, turned around, he did her hair, then she left silently and he continued to get ready to leave. Because I’m a sucker for the whole “we hate each other but we’ve made a routine and we’d rather die then not follow a routine”. (Opal also cannot handle when there is a change in any part of her unwritten routine or else she’ll be off for the rest of the day.)

Her pact Marks:

So I guess I have a reason for each of the placements/designs for the marks, for starters they’re so big because I can imagine since it’s pacts with the avatars of sun themselves the pact marks are a bit more dramatic(also I can imagine the pact marks are usually black/grey, they only glow with their sin when that magic is being used or the sun is being felt, ex: opal is pissed off, wrath glows, opal feels prideful of something she did, pride glows, ect.)

So Pride is placed on her chest, like puffing one’s chest out in pride. I just added on more stars and stuff to make it look fancier

Greed is placed on her right hand, or her stealing hand since its her dominant hand. The dots within the ribboned design represent gold coins and stuff, the mark swirls all the way up to her elbow then stops.

Envy is on her lower back over her tailbone, it’s a spot that’s a bit more out of place and is most likely to be covered by clothes then the others, so even the mark as a reason to be envious. I just added onto the water droplet and arrow design and made it stretch more onto her front as if it’s trying to be noticed more.

Wrath is on her left hand, being left handed is associated with the devil and junk so by default I think it would be cool it it landed there. And also it’s for throwing hands. The triangle design represents satans spiky tail. The mark trails up to the elbow then stops, just like greed

Lust is placed over her uterus and creeps up her stomach, I think that’s obvious. But the mark itself is in the shape of an upside down uterus. I tried to make lust look like the more elegant of the pact marks.

Gluttony is on her upper/center back because it’s a place where fat tends to accumulate more. (I promise it’s not a “big back” joke btw, I’ve had this mark placement way before it even got to be popular), a lot of the add ons are just to match the others, BUT I added four k-nine teeth, two on the top and two on the bottom. cause, yk, you need teeth to eat.

And finally sloth is on her outer left thigh, I… don’t have much of a reason as to why I put it there, apart from the fact I had nowhere else I could think of. I could say that it’s because you don’t use your legs when you’re lazy or it’s the plushest part of the body, but yk. The add ons I did was just add two more stars and two crescent moon shapes.

Relationships:

So for relationships with the other characters I did this chart I used off of google since it was the only one I could find with all the characters(I wanted to make my own but by the time I moved onto making the chart it was around 2 am and I was tired). I will explain every relationship going from brothers, demons, angels, then thirteen and Solomon.

Lucifer: she personally views Lucifer in a fatherly way, she grew up with her dad only in her life for her first 5 years of being alive and he wasn’t great. So when she did meet Lucifer for the first time not only did he vaguely look like her dad but also acted a bit like him. Which to her was more then enough reason to not like him. But over time it went from “ugh he reminds me of my dad…” to “oh! That’s my dad!^•^”. He is the first person she goes to when she needs assistance or guidance and she cares about him a lot, she has forced him to take breaks through bringing him tea or a few snacks and sitting down with him to have a conversation. And it doesn’t really help that he clearly favors her, she is very honest and polite, so I can imagine that warmed him up to her.(honestly I kind of wish there were more platonic fics with Lucifer Bc in my own brain he’s literally mothering, but alas,)

Mammon: so just from the chart, he is her best friend and also partner. I know it was probably unnecessary to add the best friend and partner arrows because your partner should be your best friend, but I added it anyways. Opal is probably a little to in love, but so is he. She goes along with pretty much everything he wants to do because she either one: wants to have the learning experience, or two: want to spend time with him. They often sleep in each others rooms, they rotate out, some days they sleep in his and others they sleep in hers. When they want more privacy or just to be alone with each other I can imagine they go to his room most of the time. She absolutely steals his clothes for herself whenever he’s gone during the night because she can’t help but be clingy, and you know she’s tackling him the moment he walks into the HOL. Overall they are both stupidly in love with each other.

Leviathan: levi is definitely one of her best friends, she loves his room since she really adores anything ocean. She likes to go to his room when she’s feeling overwhelmed or like to go find him during social events when overwhelmed since it’s most likely guaranteed he’ll also be hiding. She loves listening to him ramble about anime and stuff that he bought recently, and of course she likes gaming with him. And that one morning when levi was complaining about opal constantly shooting him in game is definitely common for her to do. If she see’s he’s on a online game she will join and mess with him. Mammon has probably woken up to her on her laptop cackling because she keeps killing levi in game.

Satan: once again someone she’s close with and would consider a best friend, I can imagine they do homework together often, and he wouldn’t mind reading things out for her. She is kind of an animal magnet, so whenever they both go out there is a high chance she’ll suddenly be holding a stray cat and they’ll both stop for like an hour to give it so much attention.

Asmo: another bestiee, after gaining a pact with asmo she definitely gets a little closer to him because of the fact that he does more “girly” things. They go shopping together and she lets him dress her up and style her hair. He is actually the only other person apart from mammon that knows she’s missing an eye, why? Well because her natural hair color is actually black, and she thankfully befriended him before her roots fully started to grow in so one melt down later she asked him for help with dying her hair, which, he’s also the only one that knows red isn’t her natural color.

Beel: she was very close with beel pretty much right off the bat, since she was already feeding him. She’s a bit of a picky eater, so she separates some foods from the foods she will definitely eat, she feels bad about leaving a bunch of left over food so beel is the garbage disposal friend. So every single “are you going to eat that?” Is always met with a cheery “nope! You can have it!”. And canon Bc of the chats, she helps him when he works out, like sitting on his back during pushups or just simply hyping him up.

Belphie: she is still very unsure with him. Though she knows he feels guilt about LITERALLY KILLING HER. She hasn’t quite forgiven him, though she is still polite and helps him out when he needs it. She isn’t close with him in the slightest though, if you asked her to describe him she would just say “uh… he sleeps!” And that’s it. Though of course she’s probably still around him often due to beel and belphie being twins and the anti Lucifer League 

Dia: another best friend! Despite the fact that they don’t hang out often, they still try their hardest to chit chat! Like her going over to have tea with him occasionally on his free days, she talks about how things are going at the HOL, with school, and other little hobbies, and she lets him complain about work and talk about other things. They are literally sunshine character+sunshine character. It’s inevitable that they would be close! She had also used her first bit of grimm to buy him roller skates! She got them custom made and surprised him with them because he mentioned that he liked hers and was really intrigued by them, so after buying him the skates they skated around for a while, linked arms and her teaching him the basics.

Barbatos: barbatos is someone she felt like she could trust right away but she was also intimidated by him. Though she ignored the intimidation and just continued treating him as normal. She constantly wants to help him and feels a little bad whenever he does something for her or gives her something. She really loves fruit so whenever she’s visiting dia there’s always a plate out for her, and whenever Barb refills it she’s always like “oh! Thank you- you don’t have to though I’m probably eating to much anyways” “nonsense, please continue to enjoy yourself” “ok:,)”

Mephistopheles: they are both unsure of each other, though he is very open about the fact that her, I am a strong believer that it’s probably just a mask. Despite rarely seeing each other she is very respectful towards him and offers assistance with smaller things, if he ever asked for help with anything relating to the news paper club she would absolutely be HYPED.

Simeon: she loves seeing simeon when she can! She thinks he’s really chill and likes being in the presence of another creative, they’ll often talk about things related to writing or drawing, really it’s just back and fourth questions. But whenever she goes down to purgatory hall she loves to just sit and talk about whatever comes to mind while drinking tea.

Luke: that is her little brother and no one can tell her otherwise. But in reality she knows what it’s like to be the youngest in a room and not be taken as seriously, so she makes sure his voice is heard(or at least he feels like he is heard.) and she is decently protective of him. Her mom actually owns a bakery so she also knows a lot about baking! I like to imagine that when they both bake something they exchange their goods with each other, and other times when she’s at purgatory hall they bake together.

Raphael: she doesn’t know him very well but still finds him pleasant!

Thirteen: she thinks thirteen is super cool! She definitely unintentionally boosts her ego, a lot. Opal is the type to speak her mind(or just think out loud), so it’s very common that when thirteen show’s off something she made or something she plans to make it’s met with a “oh! You’re so cool thirteen,”. Opal really enjoys having another fem presenting person around to, though they don’t see a lot of each other.

Solomon: she definitely appreciates having another human around(even if solomon hardly even counts as a human being anymore,) she sees him as more of an older brother to be completely honest, an older brother that’s MUCH older then her, like an older brother that already had a wife and kids when she was born kind. So she introduces him to trends and stuff and they reference random things to each other randomly. I can imagine they both like to mess with demons by basically doing improv in public. “Hey has your skin started shedding with month yet?” “No… but I can feel the skin on my face starting to dry up, I only have so much moisturizer,” “here I can get you some extra lotion if you need it,” “Aw, solomon you’re such a Girls girl!” Or “Solomon, was it batman or Superman who helped in ww2?” “Superman,” “thanks, I always forget” BUT they do have a mutual respect for each other, solomon is more then aware that opal may turn out to be stronger then him, and opal is aware that solomon has more knowledge then her and is strong.

Add ons/more background on Opal:(some violent stuff is mentioned and a very main character ass backstory fyi so be ready)

So let’s talk about her family and what life was like before RAD, there’s her mom and her two siblings. Her mom’s name is Mary, she is a shorter women but is very sweet, she owns a bakery called “charlottes web”. then her two older siblings who are twins, Diana and Travis, they are her half siblings, so they don’t share a father. Both of her siblings dabble in magic and area little well known. Travis is more silent and looks menacing but is secretly just a very anxious person. He looks very gothic but underneath every hoodie is a bright pink anime shirt from an anime he likes called “origami kittens”(my own thing), an anime about a teenage girls origami kitten coming to life and being her friend! Every episode a new one with a new personality is made. Diana is very rough and tough, she is rowdy and very tomboyish, her and Travis bicker a lot but are literally inseparable. They both love their little sister to pieces. But, none of them are apart of the descended bloodline of Lilith, her dad is actually one of the descendants.

Her dad was originally very kind and curious, like her, but when Mary was pregnant with Opal, he started to get into some shit he should have and suffered a head injury that caused a whole personality shift, he got very boastful and prideful, and wanted everything his way or no way. He still loved his family dearly but grew very violent very quickly. One night when opal was five Mary and him got into an argument in the middle of the night, opal had walked downstairs to see what the noise was about and in a fit of rage her father threw her through a closed window, causing a mild concussion. Of course nearly immediately Mary divorced his ass and that was the last time Opal ever saw her dad, no one ever ended up learning why he had changed. He passed away when she was about 12.

Growing up she was very curious and also energetic, but, because I love this kind of stuff, she indulged in the seven sins. She had a short fuse, she had a bit of an ego, she shop lifted sometimes, that kind of stuff. But one summer when she was 14 she went to stay with her grandma out of state and met her girlfriend Elora, and let me tel you they were IN LOVE, though the town in which Elora lived in had a lot of supernatural drama, so they both kind of became ghost busters/mystery inc type people. Though they had a lot of fun doing so and had a blast learning about that kind of crap. Eventually opals family moved in with her grandma and opal started going to school with Elora, unfortunately by the time that they had both turned 17 they were more public about their relationship, which is unfortunate because it was a very religious town. So some assholes had harassed them for a while before attacking them, Elora sadly did not make it and Opal in turn had lost her right eye. So she walked out of that experience with no girlfriend, no eye, and plenty of different types of trauma.

It took her a while to recover and she started to dye her hair and let it grow out, originally she had short hair with blue tips, but a lot of her hair was cut off, representing being stripped of her pride. Eventually once she was recovered physically and mentally she decided that she wanted to go back to school and decided to respond to a really good college that offered her a scholarship. But of course once she was classified as a student she ended up being picked for the exchange program and of course we all know what happens from then on.

Now onto some more light hearted stuff,

Obviously as I’ve stated she naturally dyed her hair red, mainly to separate herself from both her father and her past. She prefers to cover most her face with her hair and that simply just works because cartoon logic.

She is very silent, maybe even a little dumb at times, as in she has a hard time with things like social cues and when to quit. She is a straight A student because she easily jumps right into each class because she finds it very interesting! Like hell yeah she wants to learn about different demonic species! That’s so cool!

She doesn’t like drama though she loves talking about it, her and asmo definitely gossip to each other often and they keep tabs on everyone they talk about, one time they were both sitting at dinner, opal checked her D.D.D., gAsped, sent whatever she saw over to asmo, then made eye contact with him and motion for him to look at his own phone, he also gasps, and immediately they both leave the room to start talking.

I can also imagine that it was not KNOWN that she couldn’t see that well for a little while, until eventually there was maybe a small dinner party at dia’s castle, she mentioned that she was going to the rest room, then barbatos offered to lead her there, which in turn made a few of them look confused like “but they’ve been here before, why would you need to show them to the restroom?” “Ah, because they can’t see, why else?” “BARBATOS NO-“ then she has to awkwardly explain that she’s blinder then a bat after he apologizes to her. I’m sure some of them already knew but she did NOT want the other brothers to know because she knew damn well they would make a big deal out of it.

Alright, let’s get some pictures in here,

Starting off this is her bag! It’s older and she’s torn it a good few times, so she patches it up herself, obviously there’s a little sheep mc key chain that’s totally not a lesson 16 reference, she also has a little mc sheep pin, a random :3 face pin, a set it off pin and a destroy boys pin(two of my own personal favorite bands)

Next we have her D.D.D. And her headphones, she probably won both the case and headphones in a give away for some astronomy thing she is into, of course she added the Kirby sticker herself. But yeah.

Next is her ominously labeled journal, why did I label it as such? Well because she writes and draws some interesting stuff. The way she learns about things is to draw and dissect them in her brain along with a series of “what ifs” so one thing she ended up doing out of her own curiosity is pull a dungeon meshi and think “what if i drew the boys as different foods?” Which lead to her making detailed drawings of different parts of them as foods. Obviously she would never ever even think of doing such a thing, but her mind wanders. Apart from that the rest is a little normal, doodles of people and animals she’s seen, little diary entries, that kind of stuff.

Lastly there’s this necklace, seems a little random BUT, this is a reference to one of the beach events from the OG game, when mammon finds a shell and gives it to MC, obviously it wasn’t stated what type of shell it was, only that it was spiky, but opal most definitely kept it and turned it into a necklace she rarely wears.

Smaller stuff is that she loves fruit(as mentioned previously), like LOVES fruit. If there is cut fruit at a party she’s going to beat beel to it and eat as much as she can handle. And it actually sometimes works to her disadvantage, if for example, mammon wanted to go “look” around the demon lords castle, but opal is over here like “mams you know lucifer doesn’t want you to do that since you can’t keep your hands to yourself” giving her a plate of fruit not only will stop her from snitching, but will also keep her in one place silently until she’s done eating, because her brain is just “fruit fruit fruit fruit fruit- oh no more fruit- wait where’s my boyfriend- oh no.”

She also makes it her personal mission to pet everything that she can, street cats, people’s dogs, horses, you name it. So she makes it her mission to befriend that silly three headed dog in the basement, which she eventually does successfully by offering raw steaks and treats.

Along with that she likes to garden, but not like a normal person with fruit or flowers, but instead carnivorous plants. If she learns that there is a man eating plant that she can buy in town she is getting that plant, slapping a bow on it and falling it princess. I like to think that Lucifer eventually lets her take over a small part in the backyard of the HOL for her plants.

And she is very very clingy, but also hates being touched. So it’s kind of torture for her, because she would LOVE to get a hug from beel or let asmo paint her nails, but within her first year there she just doesn’t trust any of them enough to not hurt her. But mammon ends up being the exception, because as they get closer to each other she just can’t let go of him, ever. They’re always holding hands or linked arms, she’s always pressed up against his side or lowkey cuddling when they sit, and of course mammon would love the attention and would be equally as clingy.

Another thing is that she eventually learns shape shifting magic, mainly because she thinks it would be funny. One morning lucifer is acting weird, then all of a suddenly a second Lucifer walks in?? Lucifer #1 Bursts out into giggles and suddenly is opal.

She also binds her chest, cause anxiety and self confidence issues, along with anxiety she has a few scabs on her fingers at all times from digging her nails into the skin.

I am done as far as I’m aware, but I’ve been writing for like two hours with breaks, I appreciate if anyone actually read all of this all the way down to the bottom! I would’ve been more detailed in some areas but I realized that Opal feels like such a main character, I don’t want to change her lore but that doesn’t mean i’m not a little embarrassed about her lol. She’s my silly and I love her but I probably went overboard with all her fine details. Also here’s the full drawing of her

[toodleoorblx]

Wild horses

Agatha Harkness x Fem!Reader

Word count: 2,235

۫   ּ  ֗  ִ  ִֶָ ׄ . ִ  ۫   ּ  ֗ ִֶָ   ִ  ⠀ ִ  ۫   ִֶָ ּ  ֗  ִ  ִֶָ ׄ . ִ ۫   ּ  ֗  ִ  ִֶָ ׄ . ִ  ۫   ּ  ֗

Summary: I would like to ask if you could make a story of Agatha and reader after WandaVision ep 9? A new resident arrives in Westview, Reader, and since her arrival Agatha manages to free herself from Wanda’s control but when she is totally free, Agatha realizes that has no magic although she feels a nearby magic source (reader). Agatha plans to use Reader as a charging battery but eventually she falls in love with reader

Warnings: cursing, gore, panic attack, hurt/comfort, angst, that’s all??

A/N: Hi anon, I wrote this pretty quickly tbh so here you are I hope you like it! <3

Agatha crumples to her knees, the impact sending a cascade of picture frames crashing to the ground, their glass shattering like her own fragile composure. The glass cuts and penetrates her hands as she falls on palms. Her breath comes in ragged gasps, her once-imperious demeanor now shattered along with the frames.

Fucking hell.

She's finally broken free. How long she's been trapped within the confines of her own mind is a torment she can scarcely fathom. Endless days spent watching Agnes, mundane and oblivious to the turmoil within. Agatha couldn't bear it any longer. But now, finally, she's liberated.

It took unraveling the intricate complexities of her own psyche, centuries of meticulously constructed mental barriers crashing down around her. The memories she'd buried, the traumas she'd sought to forget—all laid bare.

And Wanda, that infernal witch, had been the catalyst. She'd inflicted wounds deeper than any spell, leaving Agatha weakened and vulnerable. But it's not the defeat by a fledgling witch that preoccupies her now; it's her own fragility.

Her body rebels against the sudden release from Agnes's grasp, blood filling her mouth as if to remind her of the price of freedom. She coughs up blood. But it's her magic—or lack thereof—that truly unsettles her. The once-potent connection she'd wielded like a weapon is now a mere whisper, Wanda having stripped her bare, leaving only a threadbare semblance of power to sustain her.

Pushing herself up against the wall, Agatha winces as she feels the bite of glass embedded in her palms. Blood mingles with the shards. Agatha's lip bears the imprint of her teeth as she bites down hard, the taste of blood a bitter reminder of her own vulnerability. The tears she once shed freely centuries ago now elude her, a distant memory of emotions long suppressed.

Magic. She needs it like air, like sustenance for her waning existence. Summoning every ounce of her dwindling strength, she forces herself upright, her body protesting every movement.

With cautious steps, Agatha navigates the shards littering her path until she collapses onto the couch, her hand hovering above the wounds on her palms, unwilling to aggravate them further. And then, amidst the pain and despair, she feels it—a faint whisper of magic, a glimmer of hope in the darkness.

Her breath catches as the sensation washes over her, familiar yet elusive, like a long-lost friend returning home. With each heartbeat, the magic grows stronger, pulsating with untapped potential.

A plan begins to form in Agatha's mind, fueled by desperation and necessity. She senses the magic's proximity, its untamed energy waiting to be harnessed. It's close—perhaps even within her own neighborhood.

Agatha knows what she must do. With a newfound determination, she pushes herself off the couch, ignoring the protest of her weary muscles, and makes her way to the front door. Each step is a struggle, but she refuses to yield.

As she steps outside into the cool night air, Agatha is consumed by a singular purpose—to claim the magic she so desperately needs to survive, no matter the cost.

__

Agatha stands at the threshold of the quaint, blue house, the cold night air clinging to her bloodied skin, a stark contrast to the warmth emanating from within. With a shiver, she raps lightly on the door, but to her surprise, it swings open effortlessly—apparently, its inhabitants are heedless of the dangers lurking outside.

Stepping into the cozy interior, Agatha's eyes sweep over the chaos of unopened boxes and scattered furniture—a clear sign of recent relocation. Her instincts lead her to the kitchen, where the air thrums with a potent magical energy, but she's met with an unexpected sight.

A young woman lies crumpled on the floor, your ragged breaths punctuated by stifled sobs, tears streaming down your face in silent anguish. Agatha watches, transfixed, as pure white magic dances and swirls around the room, a stark contrast to the darkness that courses through her own veins.

The woman's eyes, when they finally open, are pools of untainted light, brimming with raw power and vulnerability. Agatha's heart twinges with an unfamiliar pang—a desire to help, to ease the woman's suffering. She doesn't like it, but she… feels the need to help the woman. Besides, she can't absorb erratic magic. It's dangerous.

Agatha kneels before the trembling woman, her expression softening as she addresses her gently. "Can you hear me, dear?" she asks in a soft tone, her head tilting slightly in concern.

The woman's response is barely perceptible at first, but eventually, she nods slowly, acknowledging Agatha's presence amidst the turmoil of her own emotions.

"Good. You're having a panic attack. I need you to tell me what's going on, I can... help." The word feels unfamiliar on Agatha's tongue, a relic of centuries spent prioritizing self-preservation over empathy.

"I-I can't b-breathe, it h-hurts," you manage to choke out, your voice trembling with fear.

"That's your magic, darling. It's okay. It's normal," Agatha reassures you, though inwardly she curses her own inability to offer physical aid.

You don't reply, but your condition worsens, sending a surge of concern through Agatha.

Damn it.

With shards of glass embedded in her palms, Agatha can't provide the touch you so desperately need. Instead, she settles beside you, her own body throbbing with exhaustion. Gently, she shifts closer until her arm brushes against yours.

"I need you to try and tell me what you can feel. Can you do that for me honey?" Agatha prompts, her voice steady despite the turmoil in her own mind.

You nod weakly. "I-I feel, the floor, the counter, and... you."

"Good girl. Now, tell me what you see," Agatha encourages, her presence a grounding force amidst the chaos of your panic.

Your eyes scan the room, your breathing beginning to steady. "I s-see my kitchen, the blue counters, the broom, and the mop," you respond, your voice gaining strength with each word.

"What do you smell?" Agatha continues, guiding you through the process of regaining control.

"The- the um, coffee I was b-brewing," you murmur, biting your lip as you struggle to maintain composure.

"Good. Now, what do you hear?" Agatha prompts, her attention focused solely on helping you find your way back to calmness.

"You. J-just you," you reply, taking a deep breath as the panic begins to recede. But as you glance around the room, you notice something unsettling—the air crackles with white magic, swirling faster and faster, causing plates and cutlery to levitate.

Your heart rate quickens once more, but this time, Agatha is by your side, her presence a beacon of strength in the face of uncertainty.

"N-no," you rasp out, your breaths coming in short gasps. "No, please, not a-again." Tears stream down your face as you clutch onto the nearest thing—a lifeline in your sea of panic. And that lifeline happens to be Agatha.

Agatha stiffens at the unexpected touch, her body tensing with discomfort as warm arms envelop her. Your hand cradles the back of her head protectively, while the other holds her lower back in a gesture of support.

She's not accustomed to such intimacy, such vulnerability. Uncertain of what to do with her own hands, she holds them slightly up, feeling the tears dampening her sweater and the soft sobs reverberating through her.

When you tighten your grip, she flinches, unaccustomed to the sensation of being held. "What's wrong with me?" you whisper, your voice tinged with anguish.

Agatha's heart clenches at the vulnerability in your voice, the rawness of your emotions. She's not used to being the one to comfort another, the one sought for solace. But despite her uncertainty, she finds herself running her wrist soothingly over your head, offering what little comfort she can.

Gradually, your sobs subside into sniffles, your trembling gradually easing as Agatha continues to offer gentle reassurance. The magic around the room fades away, and finds its way back inside you. The plates and utensils fall. Eventually, you release your hold, your faces mere inches apart. And in that moment, Agatha is met with a pair of human eyes, the most beautiful she's ever seen.

You're about to launch into a profuse apology, but your words catch in your throat as your gaze falls upon Agatha's bloodied hands, barely supporting your waist. The shards of glass protruding from her palms. The sight elicits a gasp from you, your brow furrowing in concern as you meet Agatha's deep blue eyes once more.

"Did... did I do that?" you ask, your voice meek with worry.

Agatha hesitates, her gaze flickering away momentarily before meeting yours again. "N-no. No, you didn't. I... did. By accident," she admits reluctantly.

"Those need medical attention. I have a med kit in my bedroom," you assert firmly, your tone leaving no room for argument.

"It's fine—"

"No," you interject sternly, your resolve unwavering. "You need... help. You somehow helped me. And I'm able to give it. So I will."

Agatha sighs, resigning herself to your insistence. This isn't what she had intended, but she supposes it's the least she can do after receiving your unexpected aid.

"Fine," she acquiesces reluctantly.

You offer a smile, one that sends Agatha's heart into an erratic rhythm. Slowly, you rise to your feet, weariness evident in every movement. After wiping your eyes, you lean down and grasp Agatha's arms, pulling her upright. As she stands, she takes in your form—a few inches taller than her, dressed in worn jeans and an old band t-shirt.

"I'm Y/N Y/LN. And... Thank you. For helping me. I don't know what's happening to me," you admit with a huff of mirthless laughter.

Agatha shakes her head, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "It's... no problem, hun. Just... glad to help," she replies, though the words still feel foreign on her tongue. "I'm Agatha Harkness. Pleasure's all yours," she adds with a smirk, her usual bravado returning in the face of uncertainty.

You smile once more, a gesture that sends a flutter of something unfamiliar through Agatha's chest, and lead her into your bedroom, settling her on the full-sized bed before retrieving the med kit.

Standing in front of Agatha, you gently take her wrists, your touch eliciting goosebumps on her skin as you carefully begin plucking out the glass shards with tweezers. Agatha winces and curses softly at the pain, but your steady hands provide a measure of comfort amidst the discomfort.

After a few minutes of focused silence, you break the quietude with a question. "When I was having my... episode, you said something."

Agatha is pulled from her reverie of studying your features. "Hm? What?"

You chuckle softly, a sound that stirs butterflies in Agatha's chest—a sensation she begrudgingly acknowledges. "You... said something about magic. Is- is that what's happening to me? Magic?" Your gaze locks onto Agatha's, intense and unwavering, drawing her in despite her reservations.

Agatha sighs, meeting your gaze head-on. "Yes. Yes, it is."

You clench your jaw, your expression a mixture of determination and uncertainty as you continue tending to Agatha's hands. "This... isn't the first time this has happened, you know. The panic attacks. It's happened a few other times. The doctors said I was crazy, seeing things and that I should get therapy but... no one mentioned something like magic except for you."

Agatha's gaze softens at the vulnerability in your voice, the weight of your words sinking in. "Humans are naive, angel. They know nothing of our world."

"Our world?" you echo, curiosity lacing your tone.

Agatha considers for a moment before deciding to share a piece of her truth with you. "You and I... are what's called witches. Polar opposite witches, might I add," she adds with a snort, a hint of humor in her eyes despite the seriousness of the situation.

You tilt your head in confusion, the revelation of magic sparking a myriad of emotions within you. "A- a witch. A year ago I would have laughed. But now... wait. So you're like me?"

"No, sweetheart, you're like me," Agatha corrects gently, a small smile playing on her lips.

You chuckle, the sound a mix of disbelief and wonder. "So... I have magic? I thought magic was supposed to be some wondrous thing, why is mine so different?"

Agatha's smile fades, replaced by a solemn expression. "No, dear, magic is very dangerous. If you're untrained, it can kill as easily as a knife. You have what's called light magic, so it's... different from the normal kind."

"There are 'kinds'?" you inquire, your brows furrowing in confusion. "How come I've never heard of this before?"

"It's very, very secretive, the witch community. You're not alone, Y/N. There are many of us," Agatha explains, though she doesn't mention the darker aspects of her own history with witches.

You nod slowly, absorbing the information, but your gaze soon drifts to Agatha's lips, a momentary distraction from the weight of the conversation. Agatha's heart quickens at the intensity of your gaze, a flush creeping onto her cheeks as you reach for a tissue and gently cup her face, tilting it upwards.

Agatha holds her breath, praying that you can't see the blush staining her cheeks, as you delicately dab at her lip. The touch is tender, and Agatha barely registers any pain, too lost in the moment, too captivated by the sight of your face.

[p5x-theories]

So uh you recently posted all of the glass shard images from all out attacks, if it’s not to much trouble could you post all the cut-in images? Like when a character gets a critical hit and their eyes cut out across the screen? If not that’s totally fine too no worries!!

Oh, sure. Those are, again, scattered around the blog, but I haven't had a post compiling them all together in a while.

Do note that Okyann and Puppet don't have these in the files! They show up in the loading screen for the game, but this art isn't actually implemented in-game (I assume since it would never appear for a navigator). I'm actually not sure why Phoebe and Wind's are in the files; Wind's actually didn't seem to be added until Version 2.1.1, even though she herself was added in Version 2.0.

[patxhwrk]

greetings. could u write a little imagine thing for ethoslab? watcher!reader or dsmp!reader thanks! preferably male reader. take ur time if u do write it. stay hydrated.

my fuck this is such a good idea thank you anon for being so smart

anyways dsmp reader with angst sorry about that

completely forgot u asked for an imagine so have a whole fic instead. I might write a seperate imagine for this one too tho

-ˋˏ✄— Bubbling Memories

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ Ethoslab x Male! DSMP! Reader

Pronouns: he/him

"You're more home to me than any house is."

.navigation. // .hermitcraft & empires smp masterlist.

CW!!

—Mentions of character death

—Implications of self-harm & attempt su*c*de

—Blood

—Derealization(?)

Every second spent in that lawless server—ironic, considering it had been laws that started wars—was spent in the echoes of left behind misery. There was never silence in that world. If you managed to stumble upon even a sliver of quaint and quiet, you would find that it would have been better to have the ear piercing noise.

Y/n was lucky enough to have been left with one life. The last thing he remembered from the old server was the sorrowful eyes of his friends waving goodbye as he left. The portal—it vaguely reminded him of a nether portal if it was pink—shrunk as Tubbo's and Ranboo's backs turned to leave.

He hugged the blue stained yellow sweater closer to himself as he turned towards the new server—his new server—as the habitants greeted him with warmed welcome arms.

He was half afraid of building something that took effort. But one reassuring conversation with Xisuma—the man somewhat resembled Dream. Why was his mask fucking green?—coaxed him into building one of the biggest and best things he had ever created in his life. Well, it was just an "improved" Logstedshire, but it was the thought that counts, right? Building it reminded him of the time he spent with his brothers—though one had been a ghost, it was fine. He even put a bell where he and Tommy would—!

His hands stopped swinging the bell.

Tommy was dead. His younger brother had visited Dream in the prison where he was left to die. And he left his brother because he was too much of a pussy to confront the same man who had tormented him until he had a knife barely glazing at the skin of his throat.

He shook his head, running his hands through the mop he called hair as the bell ringed a final time. It silenced before it stilled. And then Y/n left his base.

Voices rang in his ear—was it his?—as he scolded himself for building something that gave him so much horrible memories more than the good ones. Why can't be just be like Ghostbur? Forgetful of the sorrows and always looking at the sun even through dark clouds.

His arms found comfort in himself, wrapping around each other as his nails dug into the skin under the yellow sweater. Wilbur wouldn't mind if he stained it, right? Wilbur would reassure him that it was fine, he was fine, it was all fine. And then he'd take the sweater and wash it. Because Wilbur was a good big brother.

No, Wilbur's dead. His brother was long dead before Philza killed him. Ghostbur wasn't like Wilbur, either.

He walked aimlessly around the server. He would have reminded himself of Ranboo's enderwalking state if he was in his own head. He watched as he passed by builds, ignoring the calls of concerned friends—friends? He had friends now?—as his feet brought him further and further from the build that he longed to blow up. Longed to tear into shreds bare handed as the memories of a pain long buried but never forgotten bubbled back to his head. Longed to feel the blood coat his fingers as his fists crashed through the shards of glass that showed the reflections of himself—a man who was too much of a coward to save his little brother. Too much of a coward to stop his father from killing the brother he looked up to. Too much of a fucking coward to just shove the knife through his chest, in the same place the sword dyed the sweater blue.

He longed to let his hands, his arms, his whole body fucking hurt. The seating hot pain that followed, the ache, the numbness, before it disappeared and he'd wake up with one less life left.

A hand was placed on his wrists. Cold, it was so fucking cold, as it pulled his shaking hands away from the yellow—now red stained sleeves—sweater.

It jolted him awake. Whether it was the cold, the tug of his arms, the way his voice called to him, or his concerned eyes searching for something—just something—in Y/n's unfocused stare.

"Y/n, hey," Etho's voice was gentle. He was patient as he tried to bring Y/n's eyes to his own. "Hey, hey, I'm here."

"I—Etho?" Y/n's voice was barely above a whisper, almost inaudible to Etho if he hadn't been paying close attention to him. "What—?"

Etho's arms wrapped around his midsection, pressing him against himself as his hand raised to hold Y/n's head gently. "Thank void you're okay."

Hesitantly, Y/n wrapped his arms around Etho's neck. He hadn't realized his legs were shaking until his whole weight was leaned against him. But Etho didn't complain, he was strong enough to carry Y/n if he ever needed. And he did now.

Y/n sniffled. He didn't stop the tears flowing out of his eyes as he buried his head on Etho's shoulder. And Etho let him. He buried his head on his hair as Y/n's whole body shook.

Pressing a feather light kiss on the crown of his head, Etho whispered in the quiet forest. "It's okay, you can cry. But it is never your fault. None of it is."

Y/n's eyes searched the distance, and he realized just how far he walked when he spotted the world border a distance away. He sniffled and hiccuped as Etho gently and patiently combed through his hair.

He shook off his thoughts before it could remind him of a memory long past and buried himself further into Etho's clothes. It smelled like redstone, and the glowing red dust was enough to tell Y/n that he was working on a project before hand.

"Let's get you home, shall we?"

"No, not my place. Please don't bring me back there, not again."

Etho nodded. The pain in Y/n's voice stung his heart, and he knew he had to make him feel better. He kneeled down for a short second just to hook his arms under Y/n's knees and bring him up to carry him easier. Y/n's head still nested on his shoulder as he took off to the direction of his own base.

"My place, then."

"You don't have a proper base yet, Etho." Etho felt the upwards tug of his lips. His eyes glanced down to Y/n's whose reddened eyes watched the path they took.

"Hey, it's a home to me and it'll be a home to you!" He laughed to lighten the mood. Y/n's quiet chuckles followed after him and he smiled down at him.

"Thank you, Etho."

"Anytime, sweetheart."

Y/n could take down improved Logstedshire when he felt better. Then, he wouldn't have to do it bare handed. Or alone, he reminded himself, as his eyes found dual coloured eyes.

Right now, he was just content to be with Etho.

—PATCHWRK !

[clumsiestgiantess]

First chapter of Alexis and Erica’s story (idk what to call it yet but suggestions are welcome)

all chapters linked here

A sudden explosion vibrated through the ground beneath me.  Blinding light scorched my eyes for only a moment, and my ears rang in the silence afterwards.  Someone was calling me, but I was too shocked to respond.  

What happened?

[They were trees] 

Another blast of thunder startled me from my stupor; I looked wide-eyed out the basement windows as rain flooded the ditches beneath them.  I hadn't realized how bad the weather was until then.  Sure, I’d heard the rain, but I'd assumed it was just that: rain, not a raging storm.  My dad had been calling me to see if I'd heard the thunder.  Of course I had.  Was there anyone within a five mile radius who hadn't? 

As I sat staring out the rain-drizzled window, another bolt of lightning touched down so close I could see the tree in our yard that was hit, now blackened and charred on one side by the strike.  I stood up, backing away from the window beside my head.  Suddenly, I didn’t feel very safe, even if I was underground where the storm supposedly couldn’t get to me.  The summer storms were early this year.  They’d come back in full-force.  As alarming as they sounded, I had been enjoying their rumbling ambiance — until now.

Yet another flash nearly blinded me and I stepped another few paces away from the window.  Its explosion still rang in my ears.  The few basement lights my dad had so lazily forgot to replace sparked up with new life, and for a quiet few seconds, everything was fine.  Then, along with another eerily soundless flash, the bulbs that had been shining before crackled, buzzed, and shattered.  I looked around dumbfounded as all the lights flickered out, like candles all snuffed out at once.  Dad yelled something about the house being struck, but I could hardly focus on his voice while my vision dazzled in the afterglow.

I was so shaken that I couldn’t move from my hunched-over stance that I’d taken at the very last minute to protect myself.  Thunder rolled overhead, accompanied by the sounds of my family scrambling around one floor above me.  The basement, being mostly underground and without many windows, was almost completely dark without any working lights.  Where the ping-pong table and bar stools stood a minute ago, gaped a black void littered with glass from the shattered bulbs above me.  I straightened slowly in the dark cavern of the basement, unsure what to do.  I couldn't step any further forward.  The lights had shattered, meaning the way upstairs would be lined with shards of glass that I'd have to navigate through blindly. 

Another rumble of thunder rattled the small windows behind me.  I turned around towards them, hoping to gain at least a little more light, but with the sky an ugly blackened grey, it didn't help much.  The couch I'd been sitting on had to be right in front of me, though I couldn’t see it — my phone too.  My phone!  My phone has a flashlight!

Reaching for the couch so I could get my bearings, I felt around as my heart pounded in my ears.  I would be fine, so long as I had some light.  However, the couch I’d been sitting on a few moments ago was no longer right in front of me.  My stomach dropped like I was standing somewhere extremely high up instead. 

I stumbled backwards, falling onto the kids table behind me just as another blinding flash filled the room, illuminating the little cityscape my brother and I had built together on its surface.  As I fell further than wherever the floor should’ve been to stop me, electrical currents lashed through the air and seized my body like miniature versions of the lightning in the sky.  They burned, making me reach out for something, anything, to pull me out of whatever I was trapped in.  Light cascaded out of the darkness, filling my vision as sparking veins surged down and around me.  More and more currents of crackling electricity continued to latch onto me, tearing through my body as I writhed in pain.  Everything hurt like I was on fire.  Then everything was gone — lost to an ever-growing light as I tumbled through nothing.

Oof.  Less than a moment later, I landed forcefully on my back, knocking the wind from my lungs.  My vision slowly adjusted to the painful brightness that surrounded me moments after standing in almost total darkness.  I quickly shut my eyes and lay there, dazed.  Slowly, I moved a shaking hand to massage my temples, trying to ease away the pain as I sat up. 

After a long moment to recuperate, I shielded my eyes with a hand and tried to look around.  What the..?  I was in a field, with grass below me and the glaring sun shining high above me.  Even weirder still was the fact that there wasn't a cloud in the sky, except for a few small wispy ones on the horizon.  Where am I?  What happened to the storm?

Once my eyes finally adjusted, I stood.  Keeping my hand up to shield the sun, I looked around, but nothing seemed familiar.  All I could spot was a forest and mountains in the distance, so I started off in that direction, hoping I'd come across a trail or cabin or some form of civilization when I got there.  As I trekked the distance to the forest, I realized that the grass beneath me was all pristinely short.  The field couldn’t be natural; the grass should've grown up to my shins at least. 

That’s good, right?  One of those 'signs of civilization' I’m looking for.  If I followed the cut grass I might find a house or a park entrance.  Twice I had to stop to rest my legs, which spasmed unexpectedly.  I had my suspicions that the electrocution I experienced earlier was behind it.  I was very lucky I hadn’t died. Determined to find out where I landed, I kept walking towards the forest.  Surely there would be someone out there who could help me figure out where I was.

However, what I'd thought was a forest at a distance seemed to be something else entirely when I got closer.  The 'trees' were really just low bushes that only came to the edge of my knees.  It was strangely unsettling; a whole field of small bushes with no actual trees in sight.  These must be some kind of fruit bushes, right?  And the grass is cut because this is someone's farm and this is their garden.  That was a much less unsettling explanation.

Why I randomly appeared in the middle of someone's field, I had no idea, but if this was a garden, I didn't want to go trampling through it.  I changed course and walked along the edge of the bushes for a while, hoping against hope it would lead me to whoever owned the place.  As I walked alongside the bushes, I began to notice more and more concerning details.  There seemed to be multiple types of strange bushes all clumped together here, and some open patches there.  In fact, nothing was ordered in any obvious way and there wasn't even a fence around it to keep animals out.

My train of thought switched paths.  It's a wild patch of bushes.  Those exist, right?  Of course they do.  Whoever owns this property, whoever mows the grass here, must've found the bushes growing naturally and decided to mow around them instead of cutting them down.  Deep in thought, I didn't react in time to avoid the rock sticking out of the ground in front of me.  The tip of my shoe hit it at just the right angle so that my leg was thrown from under me.  When I tripped, I fell directly into the bushes.  Ow.  My face was a bit scratched up; I felt it on my hands and knees, searching for any major cuts.  Thankfully I hadn't gouged my eye out.  I glanced around the underbrush, pulling myself up from the ground.  The scenery under there was vaguely.. familiar — like I’d seen it before, though it wasn’t that same thing.  I froze, and an unnerving thought crossed my mind.  Slowly, confusedly, I lowered my head all the way down and looked up at the bushes from the ground.  They were trees.  From ground level the bushes looked exactly like trees.

I quickly scanned my surroundings and found that, from my new perspective here, the grass would in fact be up to my knees, if not higher, and the distant forest I thought I saw earlier really was a forest at this height, with underbrush and shrubs to match.  What is this?  I could feel my heartbeat quickening as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. 

Hearing a bird call, I tore my head from the ground and sat up, dreading what I would find.  A flock of birds flew from a bush-tree nearby.  Every bird was about the size of a pin.  The whole flock combined was still smaller than any real bird I knew, besides maybe a hummingbird.  What is happening!?  Am I going crazy?  I tried to think through everything that had happened, kneeling in the field surrounded by small broken trees.  None of it made sense.  The pieces didn't fully click until I heard a scream echo from the edge of the woods.

My heart flew into my throat and I flinched at the sound.  Still in shock, I slowly shuffled over to where I’d heard the noise, bending my head lower to see under the treetops.  At first I saw nothing, only empty forest.  Then some small movement caught my attention as something disappeared behind the trunk of a nearby tree.  Without thinking, I grabbed the tree, or bush, or whatever it was.  I meant to pull it back so I could see behind it, but I ended up pulling it right out of the ground instead, misjudging my strength. 

Another scream pierced the silent air followed by someone faintly shouting "Run!"  I watched, too shocked to move, as a young couple ran deeper into the woods, the taller of the two couldn't have been much larger than the length of my hand.  I sat up, my vision spinning.  Everything, the plants, the birds...  This wasn't my brain misinterpreting strange things, the whole world was somehow shrunk to an incredibly small scale.  Either that, or I was somehow massive.  Both sounded ridiculous — too impossible to be true.  Yet, I was holding an entire tree in my hand.

After I finally snapped out of my daze, the people had long fled.  I stood wearily and dropped the slightly crushed tree, a fresh sense of fear overcoming me.  Is this my world; did the weird light grow me somehow?  Did it take me to a really small world?  And if this is an entirely new world, how do I get back to mine?  How do I get back home!? 

I dashed off in a panic, running off the way I came.  This time I had no trouble getting across the field — adrenaline doing most of the hard work for me.  When I arrived at the spot I'd first woken up in, I stooped, desperately looking for any signs of the strange electricity, or any familiar thing I could use to get home.  Nothing.  I was trapped.  I scanned the horizon in all directions, searching desperately.  The sun was just starting to set, soon it would be pitch black out here in this empty field, and I was starting to dread the possibility that I'd be sleeping in the grass that night.  

Tears balled up in the corners of my eyes as my vision blurred.  I sank to my knees and curled up, wishing I was back in the basement of my house.  Being in a dark room during a power outage in a monster storm was infinitely more comforting than this.  At least then I'd know where I am; what world I'm in.  With blurred vision I looked to the sky, begging for whatever brought me here. 

Please!  Please take me back!  I want to go home!  Above me, the sky had faded from blue to gold to pink, and finally settled on a bluish inky black.  My tears had dried on my face, and I was exhausted.  I curled up on the ground and accepted defeat.  Maybe if I sleep and wake up all of this will be a dream.  After what seemed like hours of laying dreary and restless in the grass, I heard what sounded like machinery rumbling.  

I got up instantly.  My head spun from sitting up too quickly as I tried to pinpoint where the noise was coming from.  As the strange sound grew closer, I could tell the source of the noise was behind me, where the forest was.  It grew louder while I searched the field; the thing was getting so close that I could hear it making more of a whirr than a rumble.  What is that sound?  Suddenly, lights flickered on in the sky and I stood, thinking they must be flashlights, held by people my own size.  But as they neared and the noise grew even louder, more and more light filled the field in front of me.  My hopes of being rescued were short lived at best.  An awful sinking feeling came over me as I realized I was not being saved.  

Helicopters the size of my forearms came barreling up the field faster than I could react.  Blinding floodlights suddenly attacked me from all sides, and I could hear faint unintelligible shouting over the cacophony of the helicopter blades.  I could just make out a man’s voice yelling “Take it down!”  My brain screamed at me to do something, so I did the only thing I could do: run.  I ran like my life depended on it, which it probably might.  I had no time to think; I just ran like mad towards the darkest place I could find, half blinded by light and half blinded by darkness at the same time.  

Through my confusion, I could make out a large shadow ahead of me.  Another part of the mountain range loomed in the dark up ahead and I dashed towards it.  The mountains were a few feet taller than I was; if I could just get further ahead of the helicopters, I could hide in their dark shadows.  With an extra burst of speed, I was able to put enough distance between me and whoever was chasing me to find a place to hide. 

Scrambling over cliffsides, I was able to find a craggy overhang that jutted out significantly from the rest of the mountainside.  The crag cast a large shadow beneath it, big enough for me to fit under.  Quickly, I slid under the overhang, slicing my leg on a rock in the process, but that was the least of my worries.

Alone and in pain, I watched wide-eyed as floodlights circled around overhead.  Whoever was up there searched the ground thoroughly, but I was safe under the cover of the shadows, which only darkened with their lights from above.  Finally, my pursuers split off in different directions, giving me a moment to breathe and think. 

How did they know I was here?  The only answer I could think of was that the people I ran into in the woods earlier had called the army after me.  Or maybe a plane had spotted me overhead and now the government was out to get me.  Whatever happened, one thing was certain: I was stuck there until those helicopters left.  What happens when morning comes?  The thought had only just occurred to me after I'd been sitting there for about an hour.  Once the sun rises they'll easily be able to see me here.  

My only options were to keep running or turn myself in.  If I turned myself in, whoever was searching for me up there would probably lock me away and do experiments on me or whatnot, so I guessed I'd just have to keep running.  I groaned silently at the thought, my legs were tired enough from racing through the field and being hugged up tight to stay under the rock above me, nevermind the fact that my right leg was throbbing from the cut.  Thankfully the slice wasn't too deep, I hadn’t lost too much blood.

I couldn’t tell how long I’d been under the overhang for — not even by the moon; it wasn't in the part of the sky I could see in front of me.  Everything ached from sitting scrunched up under the rocks for so long.  I so badly wanted to stretch myself out, but then it would only be a matter of time before the helicopters spotted me.  Wait.  What was that? 

The noisy churn of an engine silenced my thoughts.  Soon, a rugged vehicle came barreling down the trail that passed by my overhang, seemingly following the helicopters.  It came to a sudden halt as the trail abruptly ended with a wall of rock.  Someone, presumably a park ranger of some kind, stepped angrily out of the car.  "I guess I'll wait out this crazy search party from under here.  Don't know what they're looking for, but it can't be good."

I held very still as a figure stepped beneath the ledge I'd been hiding under.  Really?  I thought, exasperated.  Of all the places someone could stay in the entire mountain range, why did they pick this one?  What are they even doing out here in the middle of the night, anyway?  Silently, I begged him not to notice me, and for a while he didn't.  The man stayed in the front of the overhang, looking out into the dark while I pressed myself into the rocks behind him. 

"Ugh, ew, what did I just sit in?"  A small light flickered on in front of him, illuminating the rock I'd cut myself on.  "Is this.. blood?"  Oh no.  The ranger returned to his truck and a fog light suddenly cut through the shadow I so desperately hid in.  The beam of light traveled agonizingly slowly.  Sliding down the bloody trail, to my leg, then all the way up to my face.  The man gasped and stumbled off the truck once he saw me.  

With the light pointed at my head, all I could see of the man was his silhouette, outlined by the glow of the searchlight as he slowly backed away from me.  "Oh god, oh shit, what are you?  I- You must be what they're looking for up there.”  I held completely still, a bit shocked at how small his voice sounded, though I knew I shouldn’t be.  Step by careful step, the ranger backed away from me until he’d cautiously slid the driver’s seat door open and reached inside.

“Fox Den, this is Scout Four, I have a.. I- I don’t know what to call this in as, but-“  "No, wait!" I cried out, "Don't let them know I'm here!"  Talking only made it worse.  He spoke through his radio in a hurry now, waving his arms wildly at the sky as the helicopters circled back at the sound of my voice.  "IT'S OVER HERE!"  Two of the spotlights to my left turned and started heading my way; I had to stop him.  I didn’t want people searching for me on the ground as well as in the air; they’d find me in no time.

Like a reflex, my hand shot out and grabbed him, but to my surprise he wiggled free and started screaming louder.  The choppers were closing in, there was no time; their droning hum echoed loudly off the cliffs.  I slammed my fist down on the light and reached for him again, grabbing him as tightly as I could and yanking him back under the ledge.  With the floodlight destroyed, the shadows quickly covered any trace that I was there.  A few nerve wracking seconds passed as the spotlights flew by overhead and I breathed a sigh of relief.  They hadn't spotted me.

"Don't scream," I whispered once I felt it was safe, "and I'll let you go, I promise."  I didn't want to scare this poor person.  They were already freaked out enough as it was. The man was silent in my grasp, so I slowly unclenched my fist.  Little snaps and crackles echoed as I released him, and his body limply fell into the palm of my hand.  Oh no.  No, no, no.. 

Quickly, I scrambled into the moonlight, staring in horrified shock as his corpse — mangled beyond recognition — was revealed.  I screamed, dropping his body and clinging to the rocks in terror.  What have I done!?  I desperately rubbed the tears from my eyes as blinding light was thrown into my face for what felt like the millionth time that day. 

"No!" I yelped in terror, "I didn't mean to kill him!  I swear I didn't mean to!"  Choking on a sob, I tried to run blindly, but only tripped and raked my hands over the rocks surrounding me, tearing up my fingers.  Blood trickled over the mountainside as I grasped the rocky cliff to right myself.  I turned to the choppers just in time to see projectiles launching directly at me.

I squeezed my eyes tight as tears streamed down my cheeks.  I could only hope that my death would be quick.  When the projectiles struck, electricity surged through me and I cried out in pain.  They weren't trying to kill me, they were trying to subdue me.  It would be easier for them to drag me away if I were knocked out.  More rounds were fired off as I desperately fought to stay conscious.  I refused to be put under.  But as the second round hit its mark, I spasmed and my vision went dark.

I hope y’all like this because there’s a lot more to come.

[cozy-the-overlord]

The Little Thrall Girl

Summary: A young Viking thrall sent out after dark to collect firewood finds herself hopelessly lost in the freezing cold woods. Desperate to warm herself, she turns to magic, but luckily for her, her inexperience ends up catching the attention of a benevolent god ...

Word Count: 4,874

Pairing: None

A/N: So I wanted to write something for Christmas this year, but I couldn't come up with a Christmas-y prompt that interested me enough to work on, so instead I decided to do a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," which is something I've wanted to do for a couple of years now and is Christmas adjacent. Big thank you again to @lokislittlesigyn for doing all that pesky research for me and acting as beta reader <3 For reference, I pictured Drifa as around ten years old.

Also I wanted to shout out @maiden-of-asgard's A Thief In The Night, which I think I may have been subconsciously inspired by. Hers is a much different story than this (it stars a much older protagonist and is nsfw) but the opening concept is pretty similar and I realized about halfway through writing mine that that was probably where I got the idea lol. Also all of her work is absolutely fantastic in general, so I wanted to mention it <3

Thank you so much for reading, and happy holidays!!

Warnings: Slavery/references to child abuse

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae @whatafuckingdumbass @the-emo-asgardian @imnotrevealingmyname @electroma89 @lokislittlesigyn @moumouton4 @theredrenard @justdontmindmetm @lostgreekgod @naterson

If you want to be tagged, feel free to send an ask/message :)

Read it on Ao3!

Drifa is freezing.

It’s her own fault, because she—stupid, idiot girl!—forgot to fetch firewood before supper as she had been bidden, and now darkness had fallen and her mistress had discovered her mistake. The woman had beaten her bloody and dragged her by the hair into the cold, instructing her master’s guards not to allow her back in until she had collected enough to last the night. Drifa had cried and begged, but it was useless.

She stumbles through the snow, groping blindly in the dark for the feel of tree-bark against her fingertips. There’s a panic building in her throat, icy and sharp. She should have reached the woodpile by now. In the daylight, Drifa has never had the slightest issue navigating the woods around her home, but now, with the moon cloaked in a thick shroud of storm-clouds, she can barely make out the shape of her own hand. She turns to go back, but the flickering light of the longhouse has long disappeared into the black of the night. So dark is it that she can’t even find her old footprints in the snow to follow back home.

She’s lost. She swallows, trying to peer through the labyrinth of shadows for a sign of something, anything familiar. There’s nothing but blackness. Drifa thinks of the tales the old serving-women like to tell, about the bloodthirsty beasts with curling horns and daggers for claws that roam the woods after nightfall, hunting for some luckless little girl to drag back to their lair and slake their hunger on. You must never walk the woods after dark. She wants to cry. I didn’t want to walk them! I didn’t want to! I just want to go home!

A branch snaps in front of her and she shrieks, frozen in place for what seems like an eternity as she waits for something to emerge from the darkness. What does she do if it does? Could she run in the snow? Scream for help? Would anyone hear her? Would anyone care?

But the seconds tick by, with no other sound except the blood pumping in her ears. After a moment, Drifa takes a shaky breath (the cold feels like shards of glass in her throat) and continues trekking on.

Deep in the woods now, she shivers, so violently it makes her bones ache. Originally, she had taken a cloak with her – although really, it was more of a ratty cotton sheet than a cloak, something she tended to use as covering when she slept – but it had gotten caught up in the branches of a tree not long after she started out, and in trying to tug it free she had lost it in the snow. Now, she’s in only her smock, soaked through from falling against the ice.

Without anything to cover it, the metal collar around her neck has grown ice-cold, burning her skin everywhere it touches. She wishes she could take it off, but the collar designates her state as a thrall, and removing it would earn her an even worse beating than the last. Her forehead stings too, more piercingly than it ought to. She thinks she must have cut it when her mistress threw her out, although now, she can’t really remember. Everything seems hazy.

Warm. She must get warm. The need drowns out all other thoughts. If only she could make a fire. If there was wood, she might – one of her many roles is tending to the fire, and she’s usually very good at it. Usually. Drifa bites away the tears, the skin of her lips so cold it feels like glass against her teeth. She could do it, if she only had some wood, but she can’t find any – the ground is covered with snow, and the trees towering over her hold their branches above her head, far too high to reach. It’s as if they’re mocking her.

She cries out when her fingers brush against something brittle. It’s a rock, a large one, jutting out of the snow like a miniature wall. Drifa leans against it, her breath coming in fast little puffs of mist. She knows she shouldn’t stop – out in the cold, winter is liable to put you into a sleep from which you’ll never wake – but everything hurts, and her eyelids are so heavy. It’s only a moment before her legs give out entirely and she collapses on the ground against the rock. Her lower half has gone completely numb, and she wonders if she’s turning to ice.

Fire. I need fire.

Maybe … maybe she could magick one? Her master has talked about seidr before, how witchy women can spark up a flame with only a flick of their wrist and a click of their tongue. Drifa often listens to his conversations with his men while she kneels before the fire. He doesn’t seem to like seidr much – “cowardly and villainous,” he called it, something no woman deserving of respect would ever touch. He wouldn’t be happy if he knew one of his slave girls was considering it, but Drifa is so cold she can’t bring herself to care.

A flick of the wrist and a click of the tongue. Her mouth is so dry that the sound only barely comes out. The forest remains as cold and dark as ever. Maybe it needs a spell? Drifa doesn’t know any spells. She can’t feel her hands anymore. Her eyes are burning. She tries it again, whispering words that sound right. Fire, burn, alight, warm, please, please, please please please please—

“Oh dear, that’s not the right incantation at all.”

Drifa snaps up her gaze and shrieks – or she would have, had the sound not frozen in her throat. A shadow stands across from her, the slender form of a man looming amongst the trees, crimson eyes glittering through the darkness. Her heart jumps to her throat. It’s the monster from the stories. She tries to move, tries to push herself away, but her legs are leaden and heavy and won’t work properly, and so she can only sit paralyzed in terror as he approaches her, the snow crunching beneath his step.

He’s going to eat me … he’s going to bite my head off and carry me back to his lair and feast on my bones … she lets out a soft cry, squeezing her eyes closed as hot tears finally break free, running down her cheeks and freezing against her skin. Oh, why didn’t I remember the firewood earlier?

When the creature speaks again, Drifa can’t make out the words over the sound of her own whimpers. What she does make out is the familiar crackling that follows, a warm, pleasant sound that washes over her … no, it’s a warmth in more than just sound. She looks up, fear giving way to confusion.

The forest is awash with light. It almost hurts her eyes, so accustomed to the dark has she become. As for where it’s coming from – I must be dreaming. A man stands over her, a roaring fire burning in his outstretched hand. She blinks, but the sight does not change. His hand is on fire. It doesn’t seem to be harming him though – the man appears as relaxed as can be, his burning flesh untouched and unaffected, as if the fire wasn’t even there at all.

He’s a normal looking man too, aside from the flames dancing in his palm – no horns or talons or any of the particular beastlike qualities she had been bracing for. No, just a normal man, with his dark hair slicked back and a cloak of black feathers draped over his shoulders. Even his eyes are a green-tinted blue, not the red she could have sworn she saw in the darkness. They sparkle as he smiles down at her.

“Seidr can be quite the tricky little beast,” he says. “You ought to be more careful in your attempts with it. You never know what you might summon.” Drifa gapes as he kneels before her, holding the fire as though he expects her to take it from him. Instinct keeps her hands frozen in her lap, even as the heat beckons her with its soothing warmth. He can’t mean that, can he? Fire … fire hurts. She’s singed her fingers trying to start one enough times to know. You can’t just pick it up in your hand … and yet that’s exactly what he’s doing.

The man seems to sense her turmoil. Chuckling softly, he holds it closer to her, and Drifa nearly starts crying again from how good the heat feels. “Go on, little one. It’s quite safe.”

Biting her lip, she reaches out towards the flame, ready to flinch back the moment it hurts. But the pain never comes. Instead, it’s a warm, tingling sort of spark that travels up her arm, chasing away the cold as it settles in her chest. Drifa gasps as the feeling returns to her fingers, any sense of caution melting away as she reaches for the fire with her other hand. So warm …

She’s almost forgotten that the man is still there when he clasps her arm. She flinches – it doesn’t hurt, but his hand is large enough to wrap entirely around her wrist and then some, and her fear comes flooding back.

But he doesn’t yank her arm out of its socket. Instead, his voice is as soft as his touch.

“You’ll want to cup it,” he says, guiding her hands together to hold the flames as one would a cupful of water. “Like so. That way you’ll have the most control over the spell.”

Drifa pulls her gaze away from the flames to look back up at him, and he smiles at her again. He appears to be wearing leather beneath his cloak, but his leathers look different than any she’s ever seen. Intricate pieces of black and green interlock over his chest, with just the slightest glimpse of glittering gold. Gold on his leathers. This man must be wealthy – far wealthier than her master, at the very least.

If he’s really a man at all.

She inhales a trembling breath. “Are … are you a monster?”

The man throws his head back and lets out a merry laugh. “Oh my,” he chuckles. “I suppose that depends on who you ask.”

Her eyes widen – what does that mean?—and he must notice, because he chuckles again and shakes his head. “No, I’m no monster. Not in the way you fear. My name is Loki.” He reaches towards her and she tenses, but he only tips her chin up with a single tender finger, eyes intent on her neck. It takes a moment to realize he’s looking at her collar. “And who might you be, little thrall?”

Her voice catches in her throat. Should she tell him? Her instinct is to obey –  if he is as wealthy as he seems, her master would be furious if she showed him any disrespect. Although Drifa somehow doubts her master would have much respect for a man who practices seidr. Goodness, she hadn’t known that men could practice seidr at all … that’s not natural, is it?

But Loki is smiling like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “It’s alright, lovely. I promise I don’t bite.”

The thought makes her glance at his teeth. They seem quite normal sized, at least. She looks back to the fire, then closes her eyes, her voice coming out in a shaky exhale. “Drifa …”

He hums, pleased. “It’s good to meet you, Drifa.”  His finger drifts from her chin to her cheek, slowly stroking up the side of her face. She shudders, but it’s a pleasant feeling – there’s a warmth to his touch that feels nice against her cold-numbed skin. “You’re a small little thing, to be out so far on your own.”

She hiccups. “I had to get firewood …”

“Firewood?” He’s frowning – Drifa can hear it in his voice. The pinpricks of panic that the heat had melted away spring back in full force. Did she say something wrong? Is he angry? She opens her eyes. His gaze is dark – oh goodness, he is angry – but before she can determine what she’s done that’s earned his ire, he presses his fingertips to the bruised cut on her temple, and Drifa gasps as the stinging turns to tingling, then melts away entirely. She looks up at him in shock.

But Loki says nothing. He pulls away, eyeing her collar once more.

“Has your master sent you out on such a mission so late at night,” he asks at last. “With neither hatchet nor torch?”

Drifa stiffens. “I was supposed to get it earlier …” Her voice is hoarse. Even with the fire in her hands, she feels quite cold. “I forgot …” Goodness, how long has she been gone? Her mistress had told her to hurry – that feels like hours ago. Her vision blurs. Norns, she’s going to be in for the beating of a lifetime—

“Oh lovely girl.” There’s something soft about Loki’s voice as he shifts to sit on the ground beside her, something calming. Gentle. Drifa’s not used to gentleness. It makes her cry harder.

She hardly notices when he shucks off his cloak, only when he’s wrapping it around her shoulders like a blanket. “It’s all right, darling,” he soothes. “No need for tears. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

Drifa inhales shakily. The cloak is warmer than any blanket she’s ever known, the feathers soft against her cheeks. She wishes she could burrow into it and never come out. “But I’m lost …”

“Well, that cannot be, as it seems I have found you.” Loki gives an easy grin. “One can hardly be lost and found at the same time, now, can they?”

She turns back towards him (how he’s not shivering without his cloak, she has no idea). She supposes he’s right – she’d certainly feels better here with him, with his cloak and his fire and his magic, than she had alone. At least it’s not as dark anymore …  

A rustling in the bushes to her right slices through her thoughts, and Drifa shrieks, slamming her hands into the ground in a frantic attempt to push herself away. The fire hisses when it hits the snow, dousing the clearing in blackness once more. It’s coming. It’s finally coming. The monster finally found us—

She cries out again when a hand grasps her left shoulder, but it’s only Loki, calm as can be as he hushes her softly. He mutters the words from earlier and another fire ignites in his free hand. The bush is still moving – something’s trying to crawl out. Drifa whimpers, but Loki rubs her shoulder soothingly.

“It’s all right, dear,” he whispers with an eager smile, holding the light higher so that she can see better. “Look!”

Drifa can’t believe her eyes.

It’s a goose, feathers as white as the snow across which she’s waddling as she wriggles free from the shrubbery. She pauses, tilting her head as she considers them, then with a little honk! that makes Drifa jump, the bush rustles again and six grey, fluffy goslings come scampering out behind her.

Drifa gapes. How is this possible? It’s far too cold for any goose to be here, let alone babies. This can’t be real. And yet here they are, waddling past her like nothing’s wrong. The goslings scurry to follow their mother, letting out squeaky little chirps as they run past her. One stops at Drifa’s boot and pecks the leather with its beak. She giggles – it’s such a tiny thing, she can barely feel its beak on her foot – and it chirps again, stumbling back into the snow. Across the clearing, the mother goose lets out another honk, and the gosling dashes off to join its siblings as they slip away into the dark.

Next to her, Loki is smiling. “See? No cause for alarm.” There’s a playful sparkle in his eyes, as well as the dancing reflection of the flames, and she finds herself wondering if the unnatural winter geese were magic in the same way as his fire. But before she has the chance to ask, her stomach lets out a mighty growl.

Loki’s gaze flickers down to her torso. “When have you last eaten, little one?”

Drifa bites her lip and looks down, crossing her arms over her stomach. When had she last eaten? It was long before she set out for firewood – the mistress had pulled her away before she had a chance to eat her table scraps. Someone else has probably eaten them by now …

Her stomach rumbles again. She’s very hungry, she realizes. She was so cold for so long she must not have noticed it. It feels wrong to complain though … Drifa’s not sure what to say. “I …”

Loki lets out a huff. “On second thought, I believe I can glean the answer myself.” There’s the sound of something being stabbed into the snow – Drifa looks up to see that the fire is now a torch, firmly planting in the ground in front of them. Loki does a strange flick of his wrist, and before she can blink he’s holding out an apple to her.

She hesitates, gaze shifting from the apple to his face. Is he angry? He definitely sounded displeased, and he’s not smiling anymore. Did the sound of her hunger irritate him? Besides, fresh apples are a rarity in the winter – certainly not to be wasted on the likes of her. Is it a trick?

But he only holds it out closer. “It’s all right. You can take it.”

It feels wrong, but with his encouragement the demands of her stomach are louder than her sense of decorum, and so Drifa takes the apple in trembling hands. Her first bite is a small one, just enough to pierce the skin and taste the sweet juice on her tongue, and it’s nearly enough to send her into tears yet again. Oh, it’s heavenly – luscious and ripe and perfect, the most delicious fruit she’s ever brought to her lips. She chomps down hard for another bite and the juice dribbles down her chin but she can’t bring herself to care. The flesh is somehow crisp and soft at the same time, and she tilts her head back as it melts in her mouth, euphoric.

Loki smiles. “That’s a good girl.”

The apple does not last long—Drifa practically inhales it, slurping the juice off her fingers like an animal. Maybe under different circumstances she’d be embarrassed, but right now it feels right. Beside her, Loki hums in amusement. She glances back up at him. Now that she’s seeing him without his cloak on, his clothes look even stranger. There is gold on his leathers, a swooping curve across his chest, as well as matching shoulder plates and bracers. It doesn’t look like regular armor though – certainly nothing like the bulky breastplates she’s seen her master’s men wearing.

“Why are you dressed so funny?”

She freezes almost as soon as the words leave her lips – such an insolent question, what was she thinking?! But Loki’s smirk only widens, eyes twinkling with mirth.

“Not such a timid little mouse now, are we?” He shakes his head, grinning as he sits back against the rock. “I’m dressed in the fashion of my people, lovely. My clothes would be considered very normal where I’m from.” His gaze drops down to her collar. “Yours, on the other hand, would be seen as quite unusual.”

“Oh …” Drifa pauses. She’s never seen anyone dress like him before. Although she supposes she hasn’t seen many outsiders beyond visitors from settlements near to her master’s longhouse. “Is that far away?”

Loki nods. “Very far, I’m afraid. But it’s a far kinder land than this. Much more forgiving.” He lets out a soft chuckle. “Warmer, too.”

“Warmer?” she frowns. “But it’s winter.”

“It is,” he agrees. “But we have our seidr to weather the cold.” He nods his head towards the fire, still flickering brightly on its torch. After a moment, he grins softly. “Besides, you’ll find my home is … a bit more eternal than anything you’ll find here.”

Drifa is quiet for a moment. She imagines what that must be like, a sturdy house free of ice and snow, glowing with the constant warmth of magical fires. Maybe there were more cloaks like this one too, blankets that never let in the cold no matter how the temperature dropped. She allows herself a soft grin against the apple core.

No need for firewood.

It’s a nice thought. A scary one too, though – goodness, what would her master say if he knew she was fantasizing about living in a world of magicians? That she was sitting here with one now, enjoying his seidr fire and seidr apple? What was it he had said? Cowardly and villainous.

Drifa purses her lips. “My master doesn’t like seidr.”

“Your master is an imbecile.” Her eyes widen. He didn’t – he couldn’t!! She whips back to look at him, but Loki stares ahead, his features blank, as if he’s only made a statement about the weather.

“Besides,” he adds after a moment, turning to give her a wink. “I rather doubt you hold his opinion on the matter in very high regard. You were trying to work it yourself, when I came upon you.”

His voice is teasing, but Drifa feels as though she’s plunged into a frozen lake. “You … you won’t tell him, will you?” She inhales, throat tightening. “I wasn’t trying – I was just so cold, and—”

But Loki only laughs again and wraps an arm around her back, giving her shoulder a gentle pat. “Sweet thing. Your secret is safe with me.”

It’s a strange feeling, having his arm around her like that. Being held. It feels so safe, like a shield, protecting her from the darkness. She likes that. It’s nice to be protected. Warm too – that must be magic, how he manages to still feel so warm despite being out in the dead of winter in such thin clothing. Without thinking about what she’s doing, Drifa leans against his side, resting her head on his chest. Loki stiffens, but she hardly notices. His leather tunic is soft against her cheek. Warm and soft and safe. He relaxes again after a moment, his hand coming back to rub her upper arm in easy, gentle strokes. That feels nice too.

She’s nearly drifted off to sleep against his chest when he speaks again. “Do you have any family, Drifa? Brothers, sisters?”

Drifa shakes her head. As far as she knows, she’s alone in the world. “Do you?”

“I have a brother. A very loud one at that.” He chuckles. “You’d probably be frightened of him, skittish little mouse that you are. He’s well-meaning though.”

For some reason, the thought of Loki, with his soft voice and even softer step, having a loud brother makes Drifa giggle. “Can he do seidr too?”

“I’m afraid not – at least, not in the way that I do. He prefers a more conventional way of life.”

“Oh …” She wonders what conventional is, when you live in a magic land where everyone has seidr and it never gets cold.

The forest falls silent for a little while. She’s not sure for how long. Laying against his chest, she can hear his heartbeat, a faint, rhythmic lub-dup, and wrapped in the warmth of his cloak, it’s nearly enough to lull her to sleep. When Loki clears his throat, she can’t tell if it’s been minutes or hours since he last spoke.

“Now, darling,” he says. There are snowflakes in his hair, she realizes – when did it start snowing again? “As lovely as this little picnic has been, I fear the temperature is dropping even further, and you can’t stay out here forever.”

All at once, the panic returns. “What do you mean? Are you leaving?” He can’t leave, he can’t leave her here, if he leaves he’ll take the magic and the fire and the cloak and everything and she’ll go back to being cold and lost—  

“Oh sweet girl, no need to fret,” he soothes, stroking her side. “I have no intention of leaving you here. I can take you back to your longhouse – it’s not too far.”

“Oh …” She … she should feel relief at that. Hadn’t she hoped he might rescue her from her peril? She should be overjoyed that he’s kind and willing enough to see her back home. Home. The word feels empty.

Loki is studying her, his eyes glittering in the faint light of the fire. “Unless you don’t wish to return?”

“I …” Drifa hesitates – why is she hesitating? Would she rather slowly freeze to death out here? No, of course not … But what will be waiting for her when she returns, hours late and without the very thing she was sent for? A shiver runs down her spine. She knows what will be waiting for her. But … what other choice does she have?

“I have nowhere else to go …” she whispers finally, looking down at her hands to hide the tears once again pooling in her eyes.

 Loki lets out a low hum. “Well, there is an alternative.” He tips her chin up so that she’s looking at him. His features are serious. “You could come with me, back to my home.”

She inhales, so sharply it hurts. “Really?”

He nods. “You’d be safe and cared for and want for nothing. No more of this—” his hand drifts from her chin to her collar, slipping his fingers between the metal and her skin. He wrinkles his nose in disgust. “—mistreatment. This I can swear to you.” He pulls his hand away, looking at her somberly. “But if you come with me, you’ll not be able to return here again.”

She bites her lip. Is it bad that she wants it? He said he lives far away, but she has no idea where … she doesn’t even know if he’s even a man. Shouldn’t she return to what she knows? But she thinks of her mistress’ shrill voice and violent hands, the meager rations she receives, the hard floor upon which she sleeps … Drifa doesn’t like what she knows.

Her voice is hoarse, but strong. “I want to go with you.”

“Are you certain?” There’s a weight behind Loki’s gaze as he regards her. “This is not a decision to be taken lightly, little one.”

She nods. “I’m certain.”

Loki’s smile is as wide as it is warm. “Very well. Hold on to me, love.” He reaches forward, wrapping one arm around her back and the other beneath her knees before he scoops her up as though she weighed nothing more than a feather. Drifa gasps as he stands – he’s so tall, she’s never been this far off the ground before. She burrows into the feather cloak and clings to his shoulders, digging her fingernails into the leather as she hides against his chest. He chuckles.

“Just one thing more before we go..”

With deft fingers, he unlatches her collar, pulling it free from her neck with only one hand. Drifa’s eyes widen – she’s not allowed to do that! Except … she supposes she is, now. He drops the collar on the ground with a muffled thunk as it sinks into the snow. Drifa lets out a shuddering breath and reaches for her throat. Her skin feels raw and exposed, but free. She feels herself grin. When she looks up, Loki is grinning right back at her.

“You’ll want to hold tight,” he says. “Our method of travel is … rather unconventional, at least to you mortals.”

“Wha – Mortals?” Her head spins with sudden recognition. “You – you mean—”

Loki smirks. “I mean that we’re going to Asgard, darling.”

…

There were precious few awake at that hour to see the flash of color that lit up the sky, for it lasted only a moment. It wasn’t until morning, in the embers of the untended-to fire, that it was discovered that the girl sent out for firewood never returned. A meager search was attempted – the master was not one to take the loss of his property lightly. They found her cloak first, a torn, ratty little thing frozen stiff in the snow not too far from the longhouse, then her collar about an hour’s walk away from that. With the snowfall in the night, any tracks had been lost, but it seemed safe to assume that the child had been dragged off and devoured by some beast of the forest. The mistress was irritated. Why the little fool wandered into the woods, instead of sticking to the woodpile as she had been told, was beyond her.

None of them had any idea of the magic and glory with which she had been swept away to the Realm Eternal, or that she now lived amongst the gods as one of them.