#you can keep your promise

[etherealpapercut]

prompt: i was feeling pretty heartbroken on remembrance day. writing is my therapy so this... just... popped out.

~*~*~*~

you can keep your promise

~*~*~*~

fandom: post-endgame mcu

pairings: gn!reader x grieving!stranger!thor

genre: it’s angst. all angst, dammit.

warnings: cold. candles. reader is indicated to be christian, or at least suffering from religious trauma. graveyards and everything that ensues. mentions of grief and other sad scenes. the works.

word count: 2.3k

summary: y/n visits a graveyard on remembrance day and ends up meeting a grieving norse god.

a/n: i have nothing to say for myself :(

~*~*~*~

you shake in the cold as you stand with your friends. the poppy on your coat threatens to stab your heart.

the blank stones on the unnamed soldier’s graves stare back at you. the crypt in the midst of all the other tombstones seems so very calm.

you have a little candle in your hands. so do the rest of your friends. the tiny flames fights the chill of the air.

there are things that separate you and your friends, though.

for example, you have gloves.

your friends have mitts. one of your friends doesn’t have anything on their hands at all.

you all know that they’ll be okay.

your friends have family and other people to visit in this graveyard.

you don’t.

the cold is taking over your bones. you have to move.

it looks like you’re smoking. the chill of the air is turning your breath into floating ice.

november is the one month where tradition strikes the hardest for you, and you are expected to pray for the dead every day if possible.

back home, you have aunts and uncles and great-grandparents buried six feet deep under the frost-bitten soil, but today you are in the city. your companions were planning to visit this graveyard today anyway. they say they brought you along because you know all the good prayers for the souls.

you’re just good at speaking from the heart. most prayers are made up. “hail mary’s” and “our fathers” are mostly used when you don’t know what to say.

you’re talking to God when you pray. it’s a conversation. or supposed to be.

you don’t always seem to get an answer.

still, your friends walk away from you. you’re not really needed.

tradition compels you. you look for a grave to pray over.

the cold and harsh november afternoon light falls over the field of stone.

bones and rotting flesh lie far beneath you. you try not to think about it.

you walk past the crypt. a family name is engraved over the door. sheer concrete walls seem desolate and empty from this side.

you silently beg that you don’t end up walking over someone’s grave. you pray and you pray so very hard so that you won’t walk over a grave.

you reach a tombstone in the middle of a row and set down your candle in the snow.

you have to brush a layer of frost off the front to read it.

sometimes prayers have to be made personal. it’s good to know who you’re praying for.

his name is george. he died in 2008 at the age of 32. 

you make something up:

don’t let him suffer in death, you say to the heavens.

you can’t come up with anything else. it’s harder than it looks.

you dutifully recite an “our father.”

that’ll do it. you can’t stand still in the cold much longer. the blood in your fingers slows down and cools. you have to move again.

you pick up your candle and continue to walk through the cemetery.

it’s a large graveyard. so many people. so many tombstones. you see another crypt in the distance. 

and suddenly you see a tombstone all by itself.

it’s in the middle of a memorial section. that means there isn’t a body buried underneath it.

it’s in its own row, unlike many other stones throughout the graveyard. 

either a reserved section, or a recent grave in a new row.

you’re drawn to it. something seems a bit off.

sometimes you get those kinds of feelings.

it’s tall, shaped like a dome that ends in a point. upon coming closer and under further inspection, you can see that it’s carved to look like the stern of a boat.

there’s a rope that fences it off. it looked shorter in the distance. it’s much taller than yourself.

this tombstone amazes you. you don’t have the words to describe how foreign it feels. out of place. out of time.

it belongs somewhere else. sometime else. definitely not in a mass manhattan graveyard.

the light is shining on this stone in particular. the sun has melted the snow away. no ice remains. it isn’t cold enough for that yet.

you sneak under the rope and put your candle down in front of the tombstone and something inside tells you to sit a while and stay.

someone needs you, the voice says inside your head.

you try to start a prayer for the soul.

you’re in a daze. you forgot to read the tombstone. you don’t know who this is.

you hear someone behind you.

you’re not scared right away. you’re not sitting in front of the grave, in case you made a mistake and there is someone buried underneath you.

the candle is supposed to indicate that you are praying. people will know.

the most they’ll assume is that you were close in some way to the person that this header belongs to. they’ll assume you have a right to be there.

you don’t.

you’re scared when the person who you heard behind you also steps over the rope and sits down next to you.

he is quiet. you turn to have a look.

he towers above you, even though he is hunched over.

long, dirty blond hair hangs in disarray. some strands are braided. one braid has black hair tied in it. you can’t see his face clearly. his clothes are rumpled and well-loved. a denim jacket lined with fur and farm jeans. he holds his hands clasped. fingers woven into each other. a pendant swings from a homemade cord round his neck. you can’t tell if it, too, is made of stone, or iron

he barely moves. the weight of the world is with him. he’s seen a lot.

this is a man who has been grieving.

you can’t see his eyes but you can tell he’s looking at the gravestone in a way that tells you he knows who the grave site belongs to.

you look for dates on the tombstone.

~964 A.D.–2018 A.D.

you were never good at math, but you figured the lifespan was well over 1000 years. you blinked. 

the rest is suddenly incomprehensible. the sunlight hits it just so that there are no shadows in any crevice and the rest of the engraved words cannot be seen.

you reach your hand out to the man sitting next to you. he notices your movement and looks down. 

he takes it in his opposite hand, shaking in a friendly manner.

you expected his hand to be as dry and warm as it was.

you didn’t really expect his voice to be so deep and hoarse.

“thor odinson, at your service.” he says. he’s having trouble getting his words out. he’s holding back so much emotion. 

“y/n l/n,” you reply.

you had meant to hold his hand in a comforting act. you phrased this to thor. he seemed a bit taken aback, but took your hand anyway, swallowing it up in his and the two of you sit in silence.

you can see the tears slowly dripping from his chin. he looks at the stone with a steady gaze.

you shiver. you are in the shade of a tree planted by the end of the grave. the shadows in november are always the most unwelcoming. even december shadows have no such bite as these ones.

“tell me about this memorial header, thor,” you whisper. “tell me all about the person to whom it belongs.”

you still have the intention of intercession.

tradition still drives you forward.

thor turns to have a good look at your face. the tears suddenly fall faster.

“for some reason,” he says to you, “when i saw you sitting here, i thought that i knew you. i thought that you knew who this memorial belonged to. and yet you are but a stranger to me.”

you nod. to many people you seem familiar. you seem to have one of those looks.

he thanks you for your kindness in staying with the grave. his voice is ever the more husky.

you are under no real obligation to stay with this man. 

still, something keeps you here. 

thor smiles at the stone.

“my brother is remembered here.”

he nods to himself.

you cannot help but to think, your brother is always remembered, everywhere, in everything you do. you have that sense of grieving.

it’s been quite a couple of years since thor’s brother has died. you read it in the stone.

you can feel how fresh the wound is to thor. it radiates from him.

“his name was loki.” thor says. “you–are you sure you didn’t know him? he did keep many secrets. you may have been one of them. and the rope is an enchanted barricade, no one who is not familiar with the remembered can enter or come close.”

you simply shake your head, then nod. enchantments didn’t work. not on you. they weren’t real. you belonged to a religion that prevented their use and effects.

you really didn’t know loki. however, his name tickles something in the back of your mind. you can’t seem to recall why.

thor smiled through his sigh, allowing it a little bit of a merry sound. it still wasn’t quite right. “he was a nuisance, my brother. he messed things up. big time. all the time.

“he wasn’t the best being to ever walk the nine realms,” thor continued. “he had that sort of aura that he wasn’t even meant to belong here, at times.”

you knew what thor was talking about.

some people were mistakes. and while some mistakes were embraced, some were continually rejected. they didn’t belong to this existence, even though they existed.

“he was a mischief maker. my mother didn’t really help, teaching him magic. he was the god of lies.”

the man beside you chuckled. he was suddenly lost, delving into memories.

“loki stabbed people, too. he stabbed me. he was ambitious, that one. sometimes to a fault. he even tried to take over new york city some years ago.” 

you blinked. you now remembered why the name seemed familiar.

“loki wasn't always–loki wasn’t good.” thor said. he looked down.

the final blades of grass were dying at your feet.

“but i still loved my brother.”

thor choked softly on his words.

the light dies fast in november. when you looked up, you could suddenly see the rest of the words carved into the stone on loki’s tombstone.

not that it mattered. you couldn’t read the words anyway. the stone didn’t have any of the normal sayings carved in it.

it was covered in runes.

you were at a loss for words.

how were you supposed to pray in this scenario?

the two of you bow your heads.

your candles sputters, drowning in wax.

thor breathes in. behold your hands a little bit tighter. 

“i’m sorry, loki,” he says.

he’s lost in reverie. you won’t be able to reach him if you spoke right now.

"i made a promise," he says. "i can’t keep it, though. forgive me, my brother."

you wonder what the promise is. you wonder if it’s your place to ask.

the voice inside tells you to ask.

after a pause, you do. you ask thor what promise he made to loki.

thor can’t respond for a long time. you let him take all the time he needs.

your friends, wherever they are, can wait.

this is whom you gut told you to wait for. you can wait for him a little bit longer.

thor finally speaks again.

“as loki was dying in my arms, i promised him that the sun would shine upon us again. i can’t keep that promise, y/n.”

you can feel the sadness from thor creep like the frost and start to invade your own body.

a promise like thor’s made to the living-now-dead is a promise that can rarely be fulfilled.

you stand, thor’s grief threatening to take him over. his hand is limp. you hang on tight. 

it’s not easy to tell which way is up when you’re drowning.

thor stands with you. he’s not as tall as he seemed before.

you pull him right to the stone. you pull him out of the shade cast by the tree.

the sunlight is still harsh and cold. it’s still unforgiving. but it’s still the sun.

“you can keep your promise, odinson.” you speak directly to him.

you demand his attention, and stick it right to the carved likeness of a slender, dark haired and elegant man on the stone.

thor seems to contrast the image greatly. the two are polar opposites. you still have no doubt that they are brothers. there is something in the carving that tells the viewer they share a mother.

there is a certain look that brothers have sometimes. it makes them seem like they were meant to be with each other. thor and loki were destined to be brothers, even if loki was never supposed to exist

“make sure that loki can be illuminated by the light.” you say. “make sure that you are, too.”

thor moves to make sure that the image is still in the sun.

he has let go of your hand. you let it drop.

the sun is shining on them once again.

you can’t seem to cry, but thor can.

he forgets you and leans on the stone, hand pressed up close to loki’s carved image. he gasps once, and the floodgates of the heaving waterfall open.

something has closed, though.

a little bit of thor’s wound that tore wide open when loki died in his arms has had its closure.

you step over the rope. you’re expected by your companions now. you’re ready to leave the graveyard.

you don’t bother to retrieve the candle.

it's gone out.

[teddybeartoji]

my last little thirst for you mickey <3

wolf! toji, that hunts down pretty little bunny! reader because he got the smallest whiff of your sweet scent and needed to track you down.

when he finally catches up to you, he pins you down into the forest ground, finally getting a chance to truly take in thay saccharine scent that he'sbeen practically fiending over. (he could've easily caught you in just a few minutes, but he can he say? he enjoys the hunt)

next thing you know- wolf! toji is biting into your nape while rapidly pounding into you, wanting to knot you, pump you full of his pups, and claim you as his own.

he still isn't finished, even after wolf! toji made sure that you were filled to the brim with his seed. He steadied himself over your pliant body and sprayed all over you, making sure every inch of your worn-out body was covered in his piss.

Now you were his- inside and out <3

OH WOLF!TOJI LOVES CHASING YOU DOWN SOOOO MUCH. IT GETS HIM GOING SO FUCKING FAST GRAY HOOLY FUCKING SHIT.

he's not even running or anything at first... he knows he's gonna catch you, he has your scent and he won't lose it; he let's you run and run, he's letting you tire yourself out. he loves seeing all riled up and panting, your eyes twitching ever-so-lightly when he finally finds you.

he loves to get you dirty, he loves to push you into the ground. he likes to see the smallest little scratches and the smallest little bruises that form under his rough hands. he licks at your neck with a mean grin as you shiver in his hold, and he loves to listen to your racing heartbeat. it's all just so, so much. it feels so fucking good.

he's gonna pump you full and he won't let you waste a drip of it. he's gonna plug you with his thick knot and he's gonna hold you to his chest as he does so. he takes in all of the sharp breaths and the little mewls that keep slipping from his tiny bunny. he hisses at the tightness, but he doesn't allow himself to get too distracted. he toys with your nipples and gently nips at your ear, determined to make you cum on his knot aswell.

you're so fucked out, eyes hidden in the back of your head and your tongue lolling out - he loves it. so fucking much. he loves the mess of it all. your slick is running down his heavy balls and your saliva trickles down your own chin. he presses a haste, sloppy kiss to your temple as he works you through your third orgasm.

"nasty little bunny, hm?"

[hydrachea]

Explorers of Sky is a good game.

[lowpolyshadow]

forced to once again remember how shadow is laughing when he says "i think i figured out what the ultimate lifeform is! it might be you!"

[frownyalfred]

Things you might not realize are affecting your ao3 readership:

Putting unrelated fics into one compilation instead of series or collections

Not tagging your fics/“haha I’m so bad at tagging!”

Tagging all of the ships in a fandom instead of the relevant ones to the story

“This is my first fic ever”/ “I’m really not a good writer” / “sorry if this is crap”

Summaries that say “sorry don’t think I will update much” or “might be abandoned idk”

Tagging “r@pe” or “unaliving” etc instead of the actual tag so people can filter/exclude

NOT tagging major, relevant tags or kinks without using the “creator chose not to use archive warnings” option

Telling people how bad your writing is and how you hate it so much and how they shouldn’t even be reading your fic (self deprecation)

Weird punctuation: not starting new quotes or descriptions on a new line, and/or putting extremely long blocks of text on the page without a break

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

wooooo warlock Wally and his delightful totally normal patron

[emry-stars-art]

Have you ever heard the noises axolotls make? its kinda quiet blub!, when they reach the surface of the water to gulp down some air. Anyway any time i see JellyNeil my mind immediately goes to Neil just making that noise

I HAVE NOW. wow I made a reel for the first time in forever just so I could get this across properly, here you go

(Audio from this YouTube video)

Find the mer au masterpost here 💕

[writer-room]

Hey. The Finders have no idea that Bonzle was captured. Fritz and Spitz are still waiting, playing video games in the Monastery, for Cole to bring their sister out of hiding now that the blood moon is over. Geo is still sitting by the window, watching and waiting for a dragon on the horizon to return his kid safe and sound. Cole took a very unsure Bonzle, assured them all everything would be okay, and they'd be back soon. He promised he'd find a way to protect her.

Don't think about how they'll smile when Cole finally trudges back, happy to know he's okay. Especially don't think about the Finders stopping, looking out over the group, and how Cole can't look them in the eyes when they turn to him and ask; where's Bonzle?

[krysmcscience]

I will be the first to admit I'm not the best at drawing animal or furry characters, but I wanted to get something scribbled down in my Non-Goof style, anyway. Plus, I've been enjoying the many reference pages folks were posting of their own designs for the Lamb and Narinder, so, uh. Here's mine, I guess! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

do not comment on how long narinder's tail is or i swear to the lamb i will make it even longer next time >:]

[manygreetingsfriend]

i’m sooooooo normal about the god of war series. so incredibly normal i liked it a normal amount and would be so chill talking about it. don’t worry about the sign

[necrotic-nephilim]

in lieu of having posted any writing/headcanons/asks in the past few days because i have been *so* busy and unable to do anything fandom-related which is terrible and evil, i have a poll out of morbid curiosity and self-indulgence. i've been meaning to ramble here about how i feel about DC's lack fo Deaf representation and which Batfam members i would personally make Deaf, but i am mildly curious about the larger opinion and now i will subject you all to the question, i would love to hear thoughts/opinions/headcanons on any specific choices. (would love d/Deaf/HoH opinions esp but i'm mostly expecting this to reach the hearing crowd, so opinions from hearing ppl are ones i'm very curious about. if you've never given it thought before you are going to now or else /lh)

[strqyr]

me: summer could be salem's lieutenant at beacon looking for the crown like if she's still alive, that's the way to do it, the build up is there for the taking

also me: for plot reasons tai could be guarding the crown in some way, but emotionally he's still waiting for summer to return like have you heard 'treasure'? he's the dragon guarding the treasure but the real treasure for him is to be by summer's side once again

also also me: ... ... HOLD UP??? IT FITS??????

[crimeronan]

God. Luz finally working up the courage to tell Hunter he's a Grimwalker only to introduce the subject as "Okay. The bad thing that Belos told me about a while ago. It has something to do with you, and I think you should know what it is." Hunter's mind immediately goes to awful no-good bad places such as "Things that were meant to be kept in the non-Luz family specifically" and then Luz just says it's that he's a Grimwalker and Hunter lets out the BIGGEST SIGH OF RELIEF EVER. To which Luz is ???

:(((

kiddos....

i can imagine hunter probing luz for information on what a grimwalker is & luz explains the clone thing & hunter is like "oh. am i.... real....?"

and luz is like. OF COURSE you are. of course you're real of course you are. you're hunter you think and feel and love just like any other witch. you're my hunter you've always been my hunter

and hunter is like. well all right. then why would i... care...?

luz, getting increasingly upset: you weren't the only one. he kept learning more and more about how to make you all closer to what he wanted and i kept messing up-

hunter: oh. huh.

luz: what do you mean, 'huh'??

hunter: ....that actually explains a lot.

luz: i'm so sorry, i-

hunter: what?? no no luz this isn't your fault. i don't care about any of this. you think it matters to me?? all i've ever cared about is making sure YOU'RE not what he wanted. i don't Care what happens to me. as long as he left you alone. you know that. i can be anyone, i can be anything. it's Okay, luz. as long as i can keep you safe

luz: but i have to keep you safe too. i have to keep you safe too, you're family-

hunter: --and you did. you already did. he's gone, luz. he's never going to touch either of us ever again. YOU did that for me. it's OKAY.

& then luz grabs onto him and just. cries into his shoulder for a while.

[plulp]

hey guys. remy design

[puppyeared]

Been LOVING your lil magician folks recently please continue they're beautiful and very cute and cool and also very well-designed!! 🥺❤️

thank you for the kind words !!! im not much of a writer, but i do have some sort of story in mind for them.. theyre bitter rivals who end up as roommates bc of their scatterbrained elderly landlord lol

[ananke-xiii]

A spell goes wrong and somehow Dean travels back in time to when he was 7 or 8 years old and Sam goes well into his future, a few weeks prior to his final death. The only way to go back to their timeline is for Dean to find someone who loves him unconditionally and for Sam to establish a real, meaningful connection with another person.

It takes them some time to get it but they eventually manage:

Dean understands that no matter how hard he tries whatever happened, happened, the damage is there and yet there's a way to change the past, you don't need to change events but you can change your relation to them. He understands that the only person who will ever unconditionally love that child/him is himself, he can heal his own wound by pouring all the love he has to give to that scared little child who'll forever live beside him.

Sam understands that he doesn't have to be the spectator of his death as he thinks he is of his life, he can take matters into his hands by establishing a real connection with that old man/his own self. Whatever happened, happened, the trauma is there but he has the possibility to take it slowly to the foreground, to talk about it, to talk with it because it is a part of him that will never change, sure, but he can modify his relation with it in order to take control of his own story. He can create a connection with himself.

Dean goes back to the future after he's hugged himself as a child and told him he'll forever be loved and Dean will never forget about him, it's a promise; while Sam goes back to the past by holding his hand as his future self dies and telling him not to be afraid, that they still have time and Sam will do whatever he can to make every second count, it's a promise.