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sonofthedunes · 8 months

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in celebration of this blog’s first month, my first proper luke/andrie fic! the majority of this is set about a year after anh…except for the last paragraph. the quote about jewels and fire is lifted from the film the ten commandments. some kissing and swearing, but otherwise safe for work.

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

For the longest time, Luke isn’t sure how to describe the color of Andrie’s eyes.

“They’re blue, aren’t they? Same as yours,” most people would shrug. But they aren’t the same, Luke would protest. Andrie’s eyes are a few shades darker, contain depths his never have. When they pin him in exasperation, he withers; when they light on him in affection, he’s fit to burst. He could stare into them all day and never tire of their shifting hues. And yet, when he ponders what they might be compared to, he comes up short.

Andrie has no such conflict. “You know what your eyes remind me of?” she tells him once as they hike through the pine forest on Krant. “The sky on Tatooine.” (She doesn’t say “back home.” That place was never truly home to either of them.) “A clear, cloudless day, where you can see all the way to the horizon.” Ducking her head in embarrassment, she snorts. “I’m sorry. That was awfully poetic of me.”

Luke doesn’t remember what lead to him asking her this-or if he even asked in the first place. What sticks with him is the pleasant flush spreading over his face and neck, the astonished realization that someone had cared enough to make that comparison. It sets him on a quest: to find an adjective worthy of Andrie’s eyes, the pair he has grown to care for more than any in the galaxy.

He dismisses the sky right away-mostly Tatooine’s. Where Andrie sees an expanse of beauty and endless possibilities, he sees only emptiness. If he concentrates, he can still conjure the bitter taste of envy on his tongue as he squinted against the twin suns, longing for a way off that desolate rock and into the stars. He would never want to associate his sweet girl with that.

Could her eyes be like a gemstone? Luke ruminates on this during a mission to Corellia, when he catches sight of a star sapphire glittering on a woman’s necklace. Certainly the color is right, and the way the facets reflect the lights of Coronet City are striking; the image of Andrie leaping into his arms after the Battle of Yavin, whooping for joy as unshed tears gleamed behind her lashes, suddenly surfaces. But this too he rejects. A jewel has brilliant fire, but it gives no warmth. Andrie radiates warmth in spades: her temper, yes, but her determination too, and her loyalty. And most of all, her love.

His father’s lightsaber blade is blue…could that be the answer? In its own way, the Jedi weapon is as precious to Luke as Andrie is: a link to his past and a key to his future. The lightsaber can destroy (he’d seen that firsthand), but it can also protect. In their brief time together, old Ben had described blue sabers as representing justice and bravery, and who is Andrie if not one of the bravest people he knows? Still, even this metaphor doesn’t ring true. He hefts the hilt in his palm and admits he can’t associate the girl he loves with a possession, even one as meaningful as this. So he keeps searching…

And finds nothing. And nothing, and nothing again, amid the fleeing for their lives and fierce bursts of combat with the Imperials. Perhaps he never will.

But as they say, when the Force closes a blast shield it opens a view port.

“Easy, kids. You smear that up, you’re cleanin’ it,” Han drawls as the Falcon makes its approach through the low-hanging clouds of Manaan. Sitting behind the pilot’s chair, Leia smiles at Luke and Andrie pressed against the cockpit glass. Their eyes are wide, mouths agape, as they behold the first ocean they’ve ever seen outside of staticky holovids.

“Majestic, isn’t it?” the princess asks her friends. “Once we’ve landed and set up camp, we should head to the beach. You ought to see it up close.”

As usual, Leia’s words prove wise. No sooner have the tents been pitched than the children of the desert follow her to the shore (Han declines, being of the opinion that if you’ve seen one ocean you’ve seen them all)…and are stunned speechless by the vast, rolling water before them.

After a few moments, Andrie finds the appropriate sentiment. “Shit,” she whispers, the breeze tugging a few strands of hair free from her braided bun. “It’s so…big.”

“Yeah,” Luke agrees lamely, brain attempting to grasp just how big it probably is. He reaches out with the Force and senses the life teeming within, the fish and plants, all untamed and vital. He wishes Andrie would open up her own connection and feel it too.

Leia, meanwhile, has already pulled off her boots and socks and is currently rolling her uniform pants to her knees. “Come on, we’ll wade in a little,” she says, then laughs at the slight panic on their faces. “I didn’t say we were swimming-I know neither of you are comfortable with that yet. We’ll stay in the shallows. All right?”

Still a bit uneasy, the pair nonetheless copy her motions and soon three sets of feet are bathed in Manaan’s surprisingly chilly ocean. Andrie shrieks a bit when the foam first touches her and Luke can’t suppress a body-wide shiver. It feels…strange. But good-strange, like trying a delicious alien cuisine. The air is laden with salt, as is the spray misting their faces. Birds cry in the distance. In a steady push-pull the flow curls around their ankles and drifts back, then surges forward again. Leia wanders out to her knees, reaching down to touch the water. “Feels nice,” she calls back. “You two okay?”

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it,” Luke replies with a measure of confidence. “I think I like the ocean.”

“Andrie?”

“You weren’t lying. It is majestic,” the other woman accepts, hugging her arms around her torso. “Could do without it being so damn cold, though. If I lose any toes in here I’m blaming you.”

They all share a laugh at that, enjoying each other’s company and this fleeting relaxation before they search for the missing Rebel scouts. Luke turns to look at Andrie as the giggles die down, and she boldly stares back at him, a playful grin stretching her mouth. She pushes back the wayward hair from her eyes-

And it hits him like a herd of bantha. That’s it. That’s what her eyes evoke: the sea. Not just the deep blue, but the turbulence, the ripples of life, the complete refusal to be controlled by anyone or anything. She can tear you apart in her fury, or calm you in her embrace. Of course. The sea.

“I figured it out!” he announces excitedly as he splashes over to her.

Andrie quirks an eyebrow. “I already told you, Luke, I don’t want Jedi lessons-“

“No! No, this is different. Your eyes, I know what they remind me of now.”

“What the hell are you-”

“They’re the ocean, Andrie,” he goes on with a grin. “They’re-they’re wild and stormy, but they’re gentle too, and-I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’ve been trying to come up with something since you told me mine were like the sky and…this is it.”

Andrie studies Luke, biting her lower lip. “You’ve been thinking about this a while, huh?”

He nods, a little self-conscious about his enthusiasm now. The tide of her gaze runs almost midnight blue and he wonders what it might be like to drown in it.

A kiss, soft as the sandy beach at their backs, lands on his cheek. She hums contentedly as she pulls away and remarks, “That just might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“You mean it?” he questions, arms snaking around her waist to draw her closer.

“I’m a Mykarrah. We only say what we mean, starboy.” Tapping the tip of his nose with her finger, Andrie amends, “Or I do, anyway.”

“Well,” Luke remarks slyly, “there’s only one Skywalker, but he says what he means too.”

“Such as?”

“You’re beautiful.”

A roll of her lovely eyes. “As beautiful as the sea?”

“Even more than that.”

“You flatter me, Skywalker.”

“You don’t seem to mind,” he murmurs, nuzzling against her temple. A little sigh escapes her and her grip on him tightens. He smiles, just knowing Leia is shaking her head fondly at their display. “I love you, Andrie.”

“You and me, Luke,” she promises him in a hush. It isn’t the first time or the last, and he readily completes the other half of their little creed.

“Down the line.” He kisses her on the mouth this time, the sky meeting the waves. Despite the salt water on her lips, nothing in the galaxy tastes as sweet.

Many years later, he stands on the weathered cliffs of Temple Island and gazes at Ahch-To’s restless sea. How fitting for the misery of exile, he thinks, to be surrounded by this evocation of her. To be constantly reminded of all the terrible ways he’s hurt her, of the potent final cruelty of leaving her behind. He will never be free of her anger and despair the rest of his days, buried there in the blue.

It’s what he deserves.

#andrie #luke skywalker x oc #also a taste of the upcoming angst headcanons #including a little visual aid!#luke skywalker

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shadowxamyweek · 4 months

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Hello! How are you doing?

To Rouge:

Basic Question: What experience caused you to become interested in collecting jewels?

Curious Question: How many jewels do you think you have collected throughout your lifetime?

Weird Question: What would you do if you had your arms and legs swapped?

Rouge: My my, very personal questions you're putting my way today. Don't you know it's rude to ask a lady about the nature of her jewels~? Still, I'd be remiss if I didn't brag a little... 💎 ～(^▽✧人) [Rouge makes a point to run a hand across one of her ears. Both glitter with a multitude of small gems. It's not enough to be conspicuous, but certainly more than any normal person would wear in the middle of the week during daylight hours.] Rouge: I've been interested in the glitz and glam of gemstones for as long as I can remember. Precious, semiprecious, they're all stunning to me. And acquiring them is certainly part of the appeal. I love a good facet cut just as much as I love a good security system. As for how many I have collected? Well... don't take this the wrong way, kid, but that's a question only a cop would ask. [She grins. However, it quickly slips from her face once she rereads the third question.] Rouge: And I am not answering that last one.

#rouge the bat #AskRouge #anon #ask #jasl;dfjla;sjdf I had a lot of fun answering this #Also please- know I mean no harm- I honestly just don't think she'd answer that last question #interesting to think about though- are you coming from a body horror perspective or- ?#because that's some shit old-school eggman would pull and it's mildly terrifying #ALSO HELLO I'm doing very well! Hope you're also having a good day!#SonicCharacterAsk

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madam-melon-meow · 7 months

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The Good, The Bad, and The Alternative: a homestuck fanfiction. Chapter 23, an excerpt.

Gamzee placed his hand on the doorknob and turned to her.

"You ready? Imma make myself motherfuckin' scarce once I pop this so y'all can get some mano e mano going."

Vriska slowly inhaled a full breath, then let it out. She was already here- no reason to turn back now.

She nodded. Gamzee twisted the knob and pushed the door open, gesturing her forward.

Vriska stepped into the room and.

There he was. Not looking like a day had passed. Gauzy wings and glittering eyes; boyishly handsome with lips that seemed to eternally quirk up into a grin. Only now, instead of being clad in garb of leaf and hide, decorated with feathers of impossible color, he wore a plain t-shirt, unremarkable jeans, and an expression of something other than whimsy.

The light caught his faceted eyes, and Vriska wondered what he saw. She'd changed a lot, after all.

His arms were rigid at his sides, and his wings twitched.

"Hi. Wendy."

"Peter." Her voice nearly cracked. Again, she was standing in her tower room, window ajar, looking up at him- flying, fists on his hips, laughing into the starstreaked sky. Vriska blinked and looked at him. No. He was standing, unsure. In the room he almost looked small.

"I'm glad you-" He swallowed. "I'm glad you remember me."

"It's hard to let go of hope. Even after it's out of reach." Vriska said. Her feet wouldn't move one step further from the doorway.

Curious? You should read the fic!

#vriska #vriska serket #tavros #tavros nitram #gamzee #gamzee makara #jade #jade harley #rose #rose lalonde #the good the bad and the alternative

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kootiepatra · 8 months

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#FFxivWrite2023 - Day 6: Ring

The speaker of the house of lords exhaled deeply, having just returned to the sanctuary of his own home after a particularly grueling day of debates on the floor. He reminded himself that he was grateful to participate in such a debate at all—it marked how far Ishgard’s reform had already come, and pointed towards a brighter future for them all. It did naught to mitigate how very demanding the work was, unfortunately. At least it meant it was worthwhile.

“Welcome home, Ser,” his steward said, as he helped relieve him of some of the heavier outer pieces of his regalia. “Tea is ready for you at your convenience, should you wish it.”

“Thank you, Martineaux,” he replied. “I shall take it in the drawing room.”

With a polite, practiced bow, the elderly Elezen manservant disappeared towards the kitchen. Aymeric took a detour to his chambers to change into his house clothes. By the time he arrived in the drawing room, his staff already had tea service laid out for him, boiling hot, well-presented and comforting. The curtains were drawn for privacy against the already-darkened Ishgardian sky, and the fire was freshly stoked, blazing away in the hearth.

A few letters were waiting for him by the tea tray. Hmm. Those were bound to be somewhat less relaxing. He reached down and leafed through them, skimming their postal markings. It was too early to have realistically yet heard from Keimwyda on her latest journey, and sure enough, none of the missives were from her. So they could wait.

He dropped them back onto the table and looked around. Tired as he was, he yet felt a bit restless. He had much on his mind this eve.

His eyes wandered up to the painting above the hearth: the Lord and Lady de Borel, his foster parents, casting a dignified gaze over the room. They were younger on the canvas than they were in his memory. They bore sterner expressions, too—but then, such was the style of family portraits among the Ishgardian nobles.

He missed them.

He made his way towards the mantel and leaned against it, taking a minute to contemplatively peer into the glass-top case which was installed there. It was full of mementos of the late couple: miniature portraits, a brooch, the viscount’s military medals, a jeweled hairpin that the viscountess always wore. They were by no means the only keepsakes of theirs he had—indeed, this whole manor was still suffused with their presence and their sensibilities. He had changed precious little since their passing.

The changes in the city, however—those had been rather more stark. He wondered what they would think of it. He could not but believe they would approve. At the very least, he hoped so.

With a careful, reverent touch, he prised open the clasp on the case and lifted the cover. In the center was a blue velvet box, only a few ilms wide and high, its lid emblazoned with the crest of his house. He opened it. His mother’s wedding ring.

He carefully retrieved it, and turned it over in his fingers. It was a stunning piece of craftsmanship—a large, rectangular diamond, cut to as many facets as it could bear, glittering in the light of the fire. It was surrounded by tiny sapphires, set into a masterfully-carved gold filigree that more than a little called to mind the silverwork wrought upon Naegling. Inside the band was simply etched the sign of Halone, in whose eyes all marriage vows were sealed. No doubt some among the higher houses would find some reason to declare that this jewel was not so fine after all, but he knew full well how little stock he should place in their opinion.

He remembered sitting upon the viscountess’s lap when he was very young, gingerly touching this ring, fascinated as any small child would be by its colors and shine. She had bade him be gentle with it. She had told him how special it was—that before it was hers, it was her husband’s mother’s, and her husband’s mother’s, passed down from one lady of the house to the next. He could not now remember how many generations she said it had spanned, but it was at least those three. Those who married into the line were bestowed it when it was time. It was a mark of their acceptance, of their place of honor: an affirmation that they were truly of House Borel.

As he studied it now, he thought also of his mother by blood. He had never met her. He never learned what became of her. He often wondered if she was even alive—although he could not but doubt it. At the very least she had likely been driven from Ishgard as one of the Holy See’s many secrets that were never meant to see the light of day. He wondered how much say she had in his surrender. He wondered if he would have loved her like he loved the people who raised him. He wondered if the man who sired him had loved her at all in the first place.

But alas, these were answers which the Archbishop had not deigned to give in life, and now could not give from the grave.

He studied the ring and thought of his own place in this house. By all rights he shouldn’t be here. Against all odds, he was. The bittersweet ache of all that lay in his past sat heavy on his heart, but just as potently, he felt gratitude to those who had loved him and given him a future. ‘Twas no surprise that the entire estate fell to Aymeric’s charge as sole heir—yet it had not been lost on him that his mother’s will had specifically cited this ring. It served for a sign: he truly belonged to this house, and now it truly belonged to him, to bring it into his future however he saw fit. She trusted him with it. He did not bear that lightly.

He considered the size of the piece—it was a beautiful antique. A bit large perhaps, though not inelegantly so. Yet it would certainly not be practical for anyone who regularly worked with their hands.

Aymeric supposed that was just as well. It probably wouldn’t fit on a Roegadyn finger, anyway.

Startled at his own thoughts, he snapped the lid shut.

…He was probably getting ahead of himself.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2023 #aymeric de borel #wolmeric #implied wolmeric anyway #let me tell you that I DID try to think of something else for the prompt of “ring” but #I do have a wolship #It was inevitable

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moonrivcr · 2 months

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❀ *◦ ning yi zhuo. cis woman. she/her. bisexual. ⇝ hey, isn’t that mingxia "millie" ruan? i think that the twenty-three year old from fremont county, colorado works as a vet technician at happy villagers vet clinic and a cashier at the raven house, but outside of that people describe them as icicles glittering in the rising sunlight, fleece blankets littered everywhere, a clear night sky, a ring of skeleton keys, and antique dollhouses meant to be looked at and not touched. i hear they are gullible & flighty, but they are also known to be trusting & open-minded. consider giving them a visit at their home in kingpin trailer park and get to know why they’re called the stargazer.

-partially blind, sheltered little bean -book smart, not very street smart -is used to being babied and full of unearned confidence -wasn't properly socialized as a teenager, a tiny weirdo -not a lot of life experience, but she's doing her best to come into her own -doesn't realize that her long-lost sister is in anchorage -is lowkey having prophetic dreams, but she's not fully aware of it -excited to explore her new home (with her trusty seeing eye dog at her side)

pinterest / playlist

tw: ableism mention, kidnapping mention

always a riddle in the world, she said, always a riddle inside my head: lore.

Childhood:

Born the youngest of the Ruan siblings, Millie doesn't remember much about her life before she was adopted. But despite the lack of knowledge about her origins, there was always one consistency that persisted among her siblings, even long before they were placed under the care of their loving adopted parents: Millie was always to be shielded and protected from anything that could potentially hurt her, something that became a central facet of her upbringing throughout every stage of her life.

Her adopted parents', already teetering on the edge of overprotective when it concerned their children, were even more cautious with Millie thanks to a childhood diagnosis of optic nerve hypoplasia just after she was born. Though her sight wasn't entirely gone, her vision was much more limited than other kids her age, which came with its own set of challenges.

Paired with a general delay in her cognitive development in the earliest years of her life, her parents took extra care in looking after their youngest. But despite their best efforts to give Millie whatever she needed to succeed in life, their helicopter parenting became a hallmark of her childhood, with the girl rarely allowed to leave their side and venture out on her own for fear that she might unintentionally hurt herself.

Millie appreciated their warmth and unwavering support, but even as a child, she was frustrated that there were milestones she wasn't allowed to reach on her own, eager for the room to explore and make mistakes like any other kid.

Still, despite the initial obstacles, Millie had a penchant for learning new things, eager to soak up information and discover how things around her and out in nature worked, even if it took her a little longer than other children to fully understand and retain the information. This desire lead to a natural curiosity about science and history, as well as a fascination with animals of all shapes and sizes that persisted long into her teenage years and adulthood.

Adolescence:

Though she was already confined to her own personal bubble, the whole world seemed to change for Millie the day that Mei disappeared. Sure, her parents had always been extra cautious with her, erring on the side of slightly controlling over the baby of the family, but that only seemed to ramp up in intensity when Mei was taken. And with Millie considered particularly at risk due to her limited vision, they became downright paranoid over her safety.

On the cusp of turning thirteen, she was not allowed to do anything that ordinary teenagers would've been doing: joining clubs, going to sleepovers, or even volunteering at the local animal shelter. But even despite her natural curiosity, Millie didn't mind her new, more isolated existence all that much. A part of her figured that her parents were right, that they were only keeping a close eye on her to protect her from being victimized the way her sister had been. No, the restrictions on her personal freedoms didn't hurt half as much as losing her big sister. That was what haunted her the most, not knowing what happened to Mei.

So Millie spent the formative years of her adolescence keeping to herself, learning to navigate life with her deteriorating vision, and fostering her interests within the safe confines of her house. Her only saving grace was that she managed to convince her parents to allow her to remain in public school, though she was barred from doing anything outside of attending her classes.

Even when she eventually graduated from high school and began her collegiate studies, Millie wasn't allowed to live on campus or attend any parties with the other kids her age. Instead, she spent all four years being driven to class by her parents and living at home. But she took solace in her studies, eager to learn as much as she could from her professors and dedicating herself to her academic pursuits, hopeful that one day she would get to put that knowledge to good use outside the walls of her childhood home. Pretty soon, she was walking across the stage at graduation, elated at what she'd accomplished and looking forward to whatever the future held.

Present Day:

That was when the dreams started again. Millie had always dreamt in fully opacity, frequently dreaming of simple mundanities that seemed to occur in the near future like clockwork. She'd never really thought much of her dreams before, chalking their occasional accuracy up to her overactive imagination creeping little slices of her life directly into her subconscious. Nothing more than a simple question of probability and suggestibility, that's all. But this time, she dreamt of a place entirely unfamiliar to her, something outside of the safe bubble that her parents had constructed to keep her safe: a snow-dusted forest, a cat sleeping on the windowsill of a cozy bookstore, and a sign that reads "Welcome to Anchorage."

She originally gave the idea very little thought, brushing off these dreams as nothing more than something she must've picked up in a geography class, or perhaps a nature documentary she'd seen in the past. But the visions of this place became more persistent, more vivid in her sleeping mind, and Millie was having a hard time finding a logical reason for her newfound fascination with this place, a city she'd never even thought about before, with her mind's cautious insistence that maybe it was a sign. Maybe there was a reason she was meant to go here, something beyond her largely unchallenged, more scientific worldview.

Her parents were apprehensive to allow Millie to leave Colorado, especially as her vision was bound to only worsen over time. But after years of doing exactly what was expected of her, of taking their helicopter parenting in stride, she was more than ready to start her own adventure and explore the world at large. But is Anchorage really the right place for Millie to venture out on her own and start to forge her own path, to test the waters of independence in a place with unknown dangers waiting around each corner? Only time will tell.

always a thing of wonder, the way we come to be: stats.

General Info: Full Name: Mingxia Allison Ruan. Nicknames: Millie, Mimi, Xia (only really used by her family). Age: 23. Date of Birth: July 12th, 2000. Zodiac Sign: Cancer. Gender: Cis woman. Pronouns: she/her. Sexual Orientation: Bisexual. Romantic Orientation: Biromantic. Alignment: Chaotic Good. MBTI: ISFP, the Adventurer.

Appearance: Faceclaim: Ning Yi Zhuo. Height: 5′2. Eye Color: Brown, partially blind in both eyes. Hair Color: Jet black. Tattoos: None. Piercings: A single earlobe piercing on each ear, a helix piercing at the top of her right ear (her twenty-first birthday present to herself and her one small rebellion).

Background: Education: Graduated with a bachelor's degree in veterinary sciences from Colorado College. Occupation: Vet technician at Happy Villagers Vet Clinic and a cashier at the Raven House. Residence: Kingpin Trailer Park. Class: Middle. Ethnicity: Chinese. Language(s) Spoken (in order of fluency): English / Mandarin.

Identity: Label: the stargazer. Positive Traits: easy-going, trusting, open-minded, forgiving, curious. Negative Traits: naïve, tactless, foolish, forgetful, flighty. Quirks/Habits: has a loud laugh, jiggles her leg when she's anxious/feeling restless. Love Language: Quality time. Hobbies: Knitting, listening to audiobooks and podcasts, watching documentaries, journaling. Likes: shapeless dresses, knit sweaters, overly blushed cheeks, fuzzy socks, trinket dishes. Dislikes: feeling like a burden, feeling inept. Fears: being tricked, never standing on her own.

#anchorintro

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wiseabsol · 7 months

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Angelic Shadows - Shiny Edition, Chapter 1: The Mission

@cosmermaid asked and now they will recieve!

ANGELIC SHADOWS: SHINY EDITION ___

CHAPTER 1: THE MISSION

"Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, And ever changing, like a Joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?"

- "To the Moon" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

___

Through the window of a ranger's cabin, a humanoid creature gazed out at the forest, his hand on the cold glass pane. Beneath the wind, the branches of the trees, thrusting heavenwards like bony arms, entangled their fingers together as they swayed. Above them dense clouds churned and snow pelted down, building into dunes. Upon occasion, the wind stirred up flurries of glittering dust. As he watched, the moon peeked between the clouds. For a moment the world was bathed in a ghostly glow…before, once again, the scene was plunged into darkness. Yet even in the shadows, the winter world was beautiful, with the clarity and fragility of faceted glass, needing only a glimmer of light to make it shine.

However, the beauty of this place was not limited to the wilderness outside. There was beauty inside the cabin as well.

Turning to face the fireplace, he looked at the blankets strewn a meter from it. The flickering light revealed a young woman sleeping beneath them, her black hair falling in a tangle over her shoulders. Her clothes were in a pile not far away, having been tossed there hastily earlier in the night. He'd helped her with that, one of his claws catching on a button and tearing it off, but she hadn't minded. Warmed by the memory, he walked back to her and sat beside her. Her arms were curled close to her chest, fingers cluttering the blanket around her shoulders. She'd kicked in her sleep, though, so her legs were exposed. He tucked her in, careful not to touch the soles of her feet. She was ticklish there, and while it was tempting to wake her up laughing, she needed to rest.

He brushed his fingertips across her cheek and paused as she stirred. Her eyelids flickered and she tensed, as if bracing for something…but then she relaxed and muttered, in a low, slurred voice, that he should go back to sleep. At this, the corners of his mouth tucked upwards in a rare smile. "I do not take orders from humans," he reminded her. "Especially ones who can barely string their words together."

She opened one eye to peer at him, the iris grey as moonlight. "Liar. I ordered you around plenty earlier."

"Did you? I thought that was begging," he teased. When she flipped him off in response, he chuckled, leaned down, and pressed a kiss to her temple. "We can debate this more when you're not half-asleep."

"I'll win," she insisted, cuddling deeper into her blanket. She was probably right. He didn't mind doing what she asked, especially in that context. Contentment warmed him as he remembered the evening they'd shared. It had been worth the struggle of the last few weeks; worth the pain of the last few years. He had his angel…his dear, dark angel….

But what would happen to them now? They might have escaped together and earned this night of peace, but the fight wasn't over. That man would never let it be over. As exhaustion at the thought rolled through him, he closed his eyes and attempted to push it away. They could deal with it in the morning. But despite his efforts, it continued to weigh him down, spoiling his happiness. But then again, when had the world ever allowed him, Mewtwo, to be happy for long?

___

Giovanni Maki had never been someone who accepted defeat. Some even referred to him as a croconaw who, after biting down on something, never released it. This held true whenever someone did manage to best him. Sometimes the victor would go missing shortly afterwards. More often, they were made an example of, if only to make it clear who was stronger. Nothing could be gained from trying to fight him.

Tonight, that was what drove him to visit the Team Rocket dormitories. His right hand, Agent 009, code-named Domino, trailed behind him, wrinkling her nose at their surroundings. He could understand her disgust. He didn't come here if he could help it, despite it being where a majority of his underlings lived. In most cases, he would summon the one they were visiting to his office instead. However, for this mission, he thought it best to take a more personal approach.

They stopped at Unit 150 and Giovanni rapped his knuckles on the door. After a few moments, during which a shouting match a few doors down was all they heard, the door opened a few inches. Though the hallway was dimly lit, thanks to a few of the lamps being broken (what did he pay the housekeepers for, Giovanni wondered peevishly), the light was enough to reveal the occupant of the apartment: a young woman with tired eyes and greasy hair, who was bundled in a bathrobe. However, her eyes sharpened as she looked at them, and she didn't appear to care about them seeing her so unkempt. She instead opened the door further.

"May we come in?" Giovanni prompted, when she didn't move to let him in. He thought he had taught her better than that.

Agent 004, code-named Corvo, nodded. "Be careful where you step. It's messy."

As they stepped into the apartment and the door closed behind them, Giovanni saw what she meant. It was a small space, structured like the other single apartments in this complex. Across from the entrance was the kitchen: the refrigerator set into the far corner, bare of photographs; the crumb-strew counters extending on either side of the stove and the sink; the grease-spotted microwave and other appliances shoved into the other corner. There were dishes piled in the sink, with empty cans of pokémon food and takeout containers next to them. Beside the kitchen was the bathroom, with a hamper of dirty clothes overflowing by the door. To their left was a closed closet; to their right, a short wall divider with a flat-screen television on top. Beyond it was the woman's bed, the blankets and sheets twisted together. In the center of the space was a table cluttered with papers, used mugs, and wax from a melted candle. Finally, there were metallic glints on the carpet: blades, halfway polished and then set aside.

"Try not to slice your feet open," Corvo said, crossing barefoot to the bathroom, presumably to make herself presentable.

Giovanni and his right-hand agent, keeping a wary eye on where they stepped, reached the table and its empty chairs intact. As they sat down and waited for Corvo to join them, Domino attempted to relieve her building boredom and distaste for being here by counting the number of cracks in the paint of the walls and ceiling. As she followed one down to the bed, she startled at the red eyes glaring at her from beneath the blankets. A shiver crawled up her spine, but then the bathroom door swung open, and when she looked back, the eyes were gone.

Domino noted with irritation that her fellow agent hadn't bothered to dress in her uniform. The dark grey jeans and sweater she was wearing lacked the signature crimson R of their gang. Couldn't she put in more of an effort when their boss went out of his way to visit her? Everyone else had to show their allegiance to Team Rocket by dressing the part. Why did Corvo think she was an exception? Well, Domino knew why, but that didn't make it any less annoying.

Corvo went into the kitchen and started scooping coffee grounds into a filter. "Do you want coffee or something else, Domino?" Corvo asked her, knowing that Giovanni preferred coffee, but that Domino only drank the stuff when it was thoroughly drowned in milk and sugar.

"Do you have a soda? Or something harder?" Domino said, keeping her voice honey sweet, hoping to needle Corvo. She was more fun when Domino could crack that calm facade. Not that they spent much time together. Not by choice. But they'd known each other for years, and Domino knew how to get a rise out of her.

Giovanni abruptly looked very tired and rubbed the bridge of his nose, but didn't interrupt.

"You know I don't," the other agent said. "I might have a raspberry tea, though?" she added, gesturing to one of the cupboards.

"It's fall. Don't you mull cider each fall?" Domino asked. She didn't really care, but usually she could count on that when they worked together this time a year. It was some sort of tradition for the other agent. Probably something from her mother? It definitely wasn't something she got from Giovanni. The only drinks the man made were mixed.

Corvo paused. "I haven't gotten around to it."

Domino glanced around the apartment again. Yeah, obviously, Corvo was letting things slide. Thank god her work ethic didn't suck as hard. "Forget it. Coffee's fine."

Corvo stared at the coffee maker and tapped her fingertips on the counter as the brew percolated. She poured three cups, heated the milk, and mixed in the amounts of sugar and milk they each liked - Giovanni taking his black, Domino's with more milk than coffee, and her own a reasonable tan color. Then, remembering something, she reached into a cupboard and tossed a package at Domino. It crinkled as Domino caught it: maple creme cookies. Well, at least she'd bothered to have the right kind of snack for the weather.

"Thanks," Domino said reluctantly, tearing it open and nibbling at the first cookie.

During this time, Giovanni firmly employed the virtue of patience - he excelled at patience - and waited for them to finish their exchange. There had been a time when he'd hoped the two would become friends, but that hope had died the first time he'd had them train together. The property damage had been considerable. It didn't help that Domino was jealous of Corvo and had, at one point, considered her a rival. It also didn't help that Corvo thought that was ridiculous and told her so. Domino hated when people didn't take her seriously (except her marks, who weren't supposed to). She'd worked hard to become Giovanni's right-hand, after all. Ultimately, the two women were similarly shaped, but incompatible gears, at least when they didn't have a mediator. Giovanni had tried and failed. Silver had been much better at it, but Silver wasn't here anymore. So Giovanni just had to wait this out.

He took a sip of his coffee and was amused at the expression on Domino's face as she drank hers. Namely, that she didn't hate it. She drank it faster than she normally did, but she also glowered at the folder he'd set on the table, so he guessed she wanted the caffeine to get her through the next ordeal: discussing Corvo's mission.

Corvo looked at the folder with a neutral expression. She sat down and sipped her coffee, wishing it was mint tea instead. Given the thickness of that folder, she had hours of study ahead of her, though, so she might as well keep the pot on warm.

Setting her mug down, she said, "So who am I killing this time?" Please let it be a rival Team leader. She almost felt good whenever she killed one of them.

Domino nearly choked on her drink at Corvo's lack of tact. It was probably for the best that Corvo was rarely sent undercover. Her lack of subtly would get her caught in two days flat.

Their boss, however, wasn't perturbed. "Not who, but what," he said, pushing the folder to her.

She raised a dark eyebrow and opened the file. Giovanni watched to see if she would have a reaction to the photograph inside, but she only seemed mildly curious. "The creature I would like you to hunt is known as Mewtwo. Dr. Fuji created it for my use." He ignored Corvo's startled look at the name and added, bitterly, "However, it managed to escape from our control…twice."

A few years after the incident on Mount Quena, he'd found rumors about a mysterious feline, recounted by his agents on the Unovan coast, to be rather unsettling. His informants had described the creature as a bipedal cat with white-and-purple fur, which could sometimes be spotted soaring through Castelia City on moonlit nights. They'd guessed that it was psychic in element and - given that the trainers they'd sent after it had turned up later with holes in their memories - a high-level one at that. And since no studies turned up what it could be, they concluded that it must be an unidentified and likely rare pokémon, and so of interest to Giovanni. After he had received blurry, distant snapshots of the creature, he'd been inclined to agree. Especially because there seemed to be something so...familiar...about it. However, he'd initially hadn't pursued it further. There were more important projects to focus on. But it had festered in the back of his mind until, finally, he couldn't ignore it anymore.

Following a hunch, he'd asked his fellow Gym Leader, Sabrina, if she knew anyone who was skilled with unearthing buried memories. It had taken feeding her a sob story about Silver for her to loan him one of her people - she didn't trust him, but she'd also gotten sentimental after reconciling with her parents - but she had delivered. Her expert had found entire banks of memory that Mewtwo had hidden. Telepaths could not erase memories, after all. They could only suppress them with varying amounts of success, depending on the energy spent and the skill employed during the wipe. Afterwards, Giovanni had searched his archive and found the confidential files on the Mewtwo Project, verifying that what he'd remembered was true. He'd debated what to do next - clearly, the artificial Legendary wasn't to be trifled with - and decided that trying to capture Mewtwo again would be fruitless. But he also couldn't let it continue to make a fool of him.

Breaking him from his thoughts, Corvo said, "He."

Giovanni blinked. "Pardon?"

Corvo glanced up at him. "He. The medical and psychological reports say that Mewtwo is male. "

That shouldn't matter to her. "Perhaps," he said, "But it a pokémon, not a person, and an artificial one at that."

She tilted her head slightly. "He's not a robot. He's a living being."

"Not for much longer," Domino said crossly.

Corvo gave her colleague a slow nod. "But why do you want him dead? It took a fortune to make him. You'd be throwing that away."

Giovanni reminded himself that he'd wanted a left-hand who would ask question and not a mindless automaton. "Mewtwo is dangerous. It might be content to wander around another continent for now, but what if it decides to strike back at us? What if it allies itself with one of our enemies? Or they find a way to control it? It has the power to level cities. Better to deal with the threat now than regret it later," he explained.

"Or you might be provoking him by sending me," she argued.

Not in the way she was thinking. "I'm confident you will succeed where I could not," he said.

She did not look convinced. She glanced at Domino, who was enjoying the last cookie from the pack. "What about Domino? She has high-level dark pokémon and experience dealing with him. Wouldn't it be more practical to send her? Pokémon usually fall into her area of expertise." Corvo was sent to deal with humans. Guard pokémon were the most she dealt with in her line of work.

Domino glared at her. Giovanni sighed. "Domino has turned this mission down. Given that she was one of Mewtwo's victims, I do not blame her. And as I said, I believe you have a better chance of success than anyone else."

Domino scowled, while Corvo continued to look skeptical. But she did have more combat training than the other members of the Team Rocket elite, so perhaps he was right.

"Will you accept, Agent Corvo?" Giovanni asked.

What did she have to lose, except her memories or her life? She choked down a laugh and said, "If that's what you need."

Giovanni gave her a satisfied smile. "Excellent." Then, seeing that Domino had finished her coffee, he said, "Domino, if you would wait outside for a few minutes? Corvo and I have a personal matter to discuss."

Domino gritted her teeth and said, "Sure thing, boss." She closed the door with more force than necessary as she left.

He would have to have a talk with her later. He understood that she didn't like or understand Corvo, and that she probably knew what this conversation would be about, as much as it was a family affair. But if she thought her temper was going to change anything, then she was overestimating her importance. That and it wasn't as if Corvo was going to challenge her for her job anytime soon. He'd tried to teach Corvo how to run the gang and navigate the politics between its factions. But managing people was not something she cared about, and the mystery surrounding her wasn't a replacement for charisma. At best she could spook the grunts into compliance, but intimidation only worked when you were seen as something more than human. And if anyone else saw the inside of her apartment, they wouldn't make that mistake.

"Should I hire a cleaner?" Giovanni asked.

She looked thrown. "What?" He gestured to the mess. "It's fine," she insisted.

"Archer will expect better from you," Giovanni said.

Her eyes hardened. "That would mean something if he hadn't ignored me for most of our lives."

He suppressed a wince. She wasn't wrong. Archer had looked at her and seen an orphaned ward, quiet and dull as a sparrow. That he'd changed his mind recently had nothing to do with who she was as a person. Still, perhaps that might change as they got to know each other. They were adults now. Surely they could put the past behind them? "He's noticing you now," he said.

"Only because Domino isn't an option," Corvo reminded him.

And wasn't that a surprise? Giovanni would have thought that Domino would jump at the opportunity to tie herself to his nephew, his heir apparent. Instead she'd laughed in Archer's face and told him she didn't need him to get what she wanted. And that she had more taste. He was pretty sure Archer would have arranged a car bomb for her, except that Domino had people spying on him, and would have found him out before he had the chance to set it. It was a shame, really. They would have made a fearsome couple.

"He told me over dinner that you've become a beautiful swan this last year," he said. "That he was a fool not to see it before."

Her laugh was harsh. "You're joking."

"You don't believe in true love?" he asked.

She gave him a deeply unimpressed look. "He wants me because he knows you favor me." That and Silver wouldn't let Domino hunt him down if Cassandra would be caught in the crossfire. "Even though I'd be shitty at your job."

"Only because you won't try," he said.

"Because I don't want it," she reminded him. "Domino wants it. She'd be good at it. Give it to her."

"She's not blood," Giovanni said tiredly. This was an old argument. "The family requires that."

"I'm not either," she pointed out. "I'm not your daughter."

That stung. "You are in the ways that matter," he said quietly. "Or does me taking you in when you were five not count?"

Her eyes went unnervingly blank at that, before her shoulders slumped. "I know. But you're the boss. Why not change the rules?"

If only it were that simple. Archer's faction might be smaller than Domino's, but it held more of the purse-strings. "What do you want, Cassandra?" he asked instead.

She stared at him, then said, quietly, "Maybe I just want to be done. With all of this."

Absolutely not. He hadn't spent years training her for her to throw it all away. "And who would replace you? We're going to be taking on the League soon. Do you think that will go smoothly without you?"

There was a flicker of disappointment on her face. She slumped in her seat and looked away from him. "You can kill people without me," she said.

"With ten times the agents, who would do your job half as well. At a certain point, it becomes a numbers game. And I'm not letting my personal assassin bow out because she's tired. We all need to pull our weight, Cassandra. You can rest after we take Kanto," he said.

Her eyes met his. "And that will make you happy?" she asked.

It would be a start. But perhaps she had a point. He had been working her hard lately. "How about this: you do this mission for me. And when you're back, you take Archer's offer. You take a well-earned break. Then he will take on more leadership duties." He would need a loyal officer to run Kanto when he expanded Team Rocket's reach, after all. "You protect him. Maybe he meets an unfortunate accident, maybe not. But that will take up most of your time. I'll only be able to send you on a few missions afterwards. The family will understand."

She looked tired, but she didn't immediately shut the idea down, either. "And what else will he expect from me?"

"Not much. He has his...companions. And a child by one of them. He shouldn't need you for that," Giovanni said.

"You're sure? I don't...." She grimaced. "I don't like people that way."

Oh, he knew. If only she and Silver had loved each other like that. Then all of this would be much easier. But Silver had a girlfriend he wouldn't talk about, and Cassandra.... "Perhaps you haven't met the right one?" he said.

"Sir," she protested. She didn't sir him unless she was mad. Good. He'd rather have her angry than listless.

"Do you think I want you to keep living like this?" he said, gesturing to their surroundings. She could have luxurious quarters like the other elite did, with personal cooks, cleaners, even escorts, if that was what she wanted. Why did she stay here when she could have so much more? She barely spent the money he gave her. He'd checked. "You're making your life harder than it has to be."

She stared at him. "I am?"

What was she implying? "You were never going to have a normal life, Cassandra. You know that. You were born into this organization, and you were born different. I know what I ask of you is hard. But I also know you can handle it." Just like her father had. "And you don't do yourself any favors by ignoring the perks of your position."

"You want me to party like there's no tomorrow?" she asked.

"It might do you some good. You're in your twenties. You should live a little wildly. Before you joints start to ache," he joked.

She gave him a weak smile, before it wilted. "And all I have to do is marry a man I don't like?"

When she put it like that, it made him sound horrible. "I married someone I didn't love," he confided in her. "But we made it work. We even had some good times." He reached over and placed his hand on hers, and ignored how hers jumped under his. "It won't be so bad. He knows who you are and what you've done. He won't judge you for it. Do you imagine anyone who isn't us would say the same?" She belonged in Team Rocket. With him. "I want you as my family, Cassandra. Please say yes."

He watched her resistance finally crumble. "Fine," she whispered. He had obviously made up his mind. And the boss always got what he wanted in the end.

The smile he gave her was heartrendingly sincere. "Thank you," he said. "Archer and I will begin making the arrangements."

"You have fun with that," she said, standing and collecting the mugs.

"You would be surprised how enjoyable picking flower arrangements is. Any requests?" he asked.

Would yellow carnations be too on the nose? He probably knew the symbolism, though. "Whatever you think would be nice," she said.

Maybe she wouldn't have to worry about this. Mewtwo might kill her. What she'd read of his file so far showed that he was capable of it. And if he didn't and Archer tried something - she could handle him, couldn't she? It wasn't like she would be drinking anything. All she would need to do is threaten him if he got frisky, and then call up one of his favorites to entertain him. It would be simple. She would be able to make it work.

And afterwards, she would have a break. A nice, long, bloodless break.

"Your plane will leave at six hundred hours tomorrow. Your luggage will be sent ahead of you," Giovanni said as he went to the door.

Cassandra nodded and waited until her let himself out. Domino was going to be furious, but when wasn't she? Looking back at the folder on her table, Cassandra sighed and went to refill her mug. First she had to get through her mission: kill the psychic kangaroo-cat monster. She sat back down and began reading in earnest, starting with the clone's history.

Back when Team Rocket was under Madame Maki's leadership, her second-in-command, Miyamoto, was charged with finding the legendary phantom pokémon, mew. Believed to reside in the Andes Mountain Range, this pokémon was said to be the rarest and most powerful in the world. While Miyamoto regularly sent radio transmissions with updates on her progress, these transmissions eventually stopped. Investigators who looked into her disappearance eventually concluded that she died in an avalanche. The search was then postponed. However, after Madame Maki passed and Signore Giovanni Maki inherited Team Rocket, the search resumed. It uncovered an excellently preserved mew fossil: an eyelash with intact roots. Signore Maki then commissioned Dr. Fuji, Kanto's leading expert in the field of cloning, to recreate a mew from the remains.

Dr. Fuji accepted the commission under a condition: that Signore Maki would allow him to create other pokémon clones and one human clone as well, which would also have a portion of the fossil's DNA spliced in. Since mew was said to be immortal, Dr. Fuji argued that medical advances could be make through the additional experiments, and that the other pokémon might have increased combat potential. Signore Maki agreed, though soon learned that Dr. Fuji had ulterior motives. The human clone, he learned, would be derived from Amber Fuji, Dr. Fuji's deceased daughter. Despite this conflict of interest, Signore Maki allowed the program to continue. Since a mew had not been seen in centuries, and because Signore Maki wanted the clone to be stronger than the original, genetic modifications were made to the eventual embryo. Dr. Fuij and his colleagues named their creation Mewtwo.

As the clones grew, the researchers discovered evidence that Ambertwo and Mewtwo were communicating telepathically. The other clones, Bulbasaurtwo, Squirtletwo, and Charmandertwo, soon joined in. The researchers speculated this ability was due to their shared mew DNA, but unfortunately, they didn't have a chance to study the phenomenon for long. Four of the clones, including Ambertwo, experienced an unexpected and sudden collapse on a cellular level, disintegrating in their gestation tanks. Only Mewtwo survived. Its brainwaves grew erratic afterwards and its powers threatened to go out of control, and so Dr. Fuji and his team had no choice but to sedate it. Mewtwo's brainwaves normalized afterwards and it grew to adulthood without further complications.

However, its temperament proved to be violent. Footage found in the New Island Laboratory's black box showed it destroying the facility and its creators within minutes of it waking up. However, Signore Maki managed to pacify it and bring it to the mainland. In the year that followed, the clone fought in the Viridian City Gym under his command.

However, the clone lashed out again after a year, breaking free from the armor that was suppressing its power. It destroyed the facility housing it, which Signore Maki was visiting at the time. He was miraculously unharmed. After another year of searching, Signore Maki and his second-in-command, Domino, found the clone at Mount Quena, a nature preserve in Johto. Strangely, there were other clone pokémon accompanying it, though where they came from is a mystery. Giovanni Maki speculated that Mewtwo had made them itself, though this was never confirmed. Through the use of state-of-the-art capture drones, Mewtwo was apprehended and the other clones rounded up.

Unfortunately, due to the meddling of several trainers and wild pokémon, Mewtwo was released. It then moved itself, its companions, and the spring of Mount Quena to an unknown location. Similarly, Giovanni Maki, Domino, and the rest of our operatives were moved back to their staging base, with no memory of why they were there. It was later confirmed that Mewtwo had used its amnesia ability to wipe their memories of its existence. Fortunately, that was not enough to stop our leaders, Giovanni Maki and Domino, for long.

Well, clearly the two of them had fans. Must be nice. Cassandra wondered what the report was missing, though. There's been an entire year between Mewtwo running away and being found, and a few between the events at Mount Quena and now. That was a lot of time to get up to mischief, including somehow making other pokémon clones? That suggested that he was extremely intelligent and resourceful, even if this report suggested otherwise. And why had Mewtwo killed his creators, including Dr. Fuji? She hadn't been comfortable around the man - not when he'd been so curious about her own genetic code. One of her fondest memories of Giovanni was him putting his foot down and saying that it was none of Dr. Fuji's business, and that he would deny his grant from the League if he kept prying. It was the first time she'd felt safe with him. If she had to guess, Dr. Fuji had put his foot into his mouth again, except this time, he'd pissed off someone as powerful as a god. He probably had only himself to blame, as extreme as Mewtwo's reaction had been.

And she couldn't feel too bad for Dr. Fuji. Not after what he'd been trying to do with Ai. That clone, Aitwo - it wouldn't have been her, even if she had lived.

Was that why she hadn't been introduced to Mewtwo? Because Giovanni hadn't wanted to open old wounds? He usually made sure she knew all of the major players in Team Rocket, even if she never worked with them. Maybe Giovanni had thought it was too risky, considering that Mewtwo had murdered nine people within minutes of his birth. With a sigh, she sipped more of her coffee, which was rapidly cooling, and went over the other files. Good medical prognosis. Excellent combat abilities. Standoffish personality. An aversion to touch. Questionable breeding capability? She didn't envy whatever doctor had tried to figure that out.

As she continued her studies, an ebony-and-gold fox squirmed out of her blankets and padded over to her. When he leapt up and settled on her lap, she smiled and scratched behind his ears. He leaned into her touch, closing his ruby eyes and purring.

"Good evening, Shadow. It seems I have another mission," she said.

"Umbre," he rumbled, baring his fangs at the file.

"You shouldn't worry so much. I can handle whatever Giovanni throws at me." If she was too tired afterwards to clean her apartment, so what? Shadow didn't mind, and it wasn't like she ever brought anyone over. Domino stopping by to deliver the occasional letter from Silver didn't count.

He opened his eyes just enough to glower at her. "Breon."

"Yeah, I know you don't like him. Or Domino. I think you scared her earlier."

Her umbreon's laughter sounded like stones being ground together. Cassandra stroked him down his spine. They'd been together since she was sixteen - an anonymous gift. She'd woken up one day to find a runt of an eevee outside her door, mewling for food. She hadn't gotten a pokémon when she was younger. She'd known Giovanni's hopes for her, which included a lot of travel and more danger, and it hadn't seemed fair to involve a pokémon in that. But it would also have been unfair to turn the little guy away on an empty stomach, and so she'd fed him, and then he'd curled up against her palm purring, and she hadn't had the heart to send him away afterwards.

When she was done with the file, she carefully lifted Shadow from her lap and set him on the floor. He watched her dart around the room, packing up the blades and doing some hurried cleaning, knowing she might not be back for a week or more. Afterwards, she went to the closet and flung it open. Lining the shelves were more weapons, along with vials of various chemical concoctions, some to knock people unconscious, some to cause memory loss, and others with more lethal results. She didn't bother with those; getting that close wouldn't be wise. She would need the infrared - she would ask Giovanni to throw in whatever version they had that picked out clone physiology - and maybe a gun or two? What about a rifle? Sniping him from a distance was probably the safest play. While she determined what to bring, Shadow jumped onto the table, curious who her target was.

Oh. This was. Not good.

He looked back at Cassandra, concerned. He should stop her. Nothing good would come from her trying to kill the shadow of mew. But how could he explain that to her? He could convey simple concepts to his human, not...everything that she was missing here. She didn't even seem worried. She kept packing her clothes with a soldier's efficiency. How was he supposed to protect her from this? Maybe he could get her to take him with? But when he mewled and pawed at her leg, and jumped into her suitcase to make his point clear, she lifted him out of it and said, "No, Shadow. As much as I'd like you with me, I'm not putting you in danger. Don't worry, I'll set your fountain and your feeder up before I go."

As if it was himself he was worried about! With a huff, he grumbled a prayer to the Legendaries, then went to check to that she wasn't forgetting anything important.

At dawn the next day, Cassandra drowsed as her flight took off. The sky was overcast and rainy, but despite the weather, a flock of pelipper escorted them to the edge of the ocean. She watched them wistfully, wondering what it would be like to only have breakfast to worry about.

"Miss, would you like something off the cart?" the flight attendant asked.

Cassandra, not feeling hungry, shook her head. Once the attendant moved on, though, she felt the seat behind her shudder. She twisted around and saw two grubby hands clutching the headrest. A child with messy black hair and blue eyes stared at her. His red-haired mother was asleep in the seat beside him. "Have you ever been on a plane before?" he whispered, not wanting to wake her.

His mother really should be paying more attention. Not her child, though, so not her problem. "Many times," she said. Though usually not ones quite this long. She usually worked in Kanto and Johto. Once she'd gone as far as Orre, but Unova was much farther away. It would be at least another ten hours before they reached land again. The jet leg was going to be awful, even if she did manage to sleep through the flight. And then she'd have to adopt a nocturnal schedule when she arrived. Mewtwo only came out at night.

Tugging her from her thoughts, the child said, "Oh. I haven't. How long will it take?"

For a child like him, with nothing to do except play with his Gameboy and watch bad in-flight movies? "Forever," she said.

He made a face, then asked, "What are we supposed to do?"

"Sleep, if we can," Cassandra said, feeling a headache forming. She'd been up most of the night preparing.

"That's boring. We could talk instead?" he suggested.

"I don't think your mom would like you talking with a stranger," she pointed out.

"But you seem nice," he protested. "And you have cool eyes."

He'd raised his voice loud enough to wake his mother. She spotted him standing on his seat, swore, and wrestled him back into it. "Don't bother the other passengers. I'm so sorry," she said quickly to Cassandra.

Cassandra couldn't help but smile. "That's alright. Apparently I have cool eyes."

The mother groaned and began to lecture at the boy, who looked sullen. Cassandra turned around and settled against her airline-issued pillow. Cute kid. Probably would be a charmer when he grew up. Her eyes were nothing special, though. Grey, even a grey as pale as hers, was a boring color.

___

By dusk the next day, Cassandra was refreshed and ready to begin her search. Her luggage lay open on her hotel bed. She changed into her uniform, grateful for the crispness of the autumn night. It would make the padded black silk of her vest bearable. She added blades to the sheathes strapped to her arms, stuffed her lock-picking tools into her belt pouch, checked that the infrared camera was working, and made sure all of the rifle parts were accounted for in their case. It had been designed to resemble a viola case - a wink on Giovanni's part. As far as the Unovans would know, she was an overly bundled tourist who might try her hand at street music at any moment. She'd had a flashier uniform than this, once, but practically had won out after the first few missions. At least this would keep her warm. Whether it would be enough to blunt telekinetic force was another matter.

There was no time like the present to find out. It was time for her to kill Mewtwo.

#Will see if Zach I mean Archer stays #He might still be written out #We'll see #Here you folks go have fun #Angelic Shadows #WiseAbsol #My Fanfiction

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thecreaturecodex · 2 years

Text

Xenostelid

Image © Paizo Publishing, by Eric Deschamps

[Commissioned by Soluman Blevins. This is a conversion of my own work! “Horrors of the Daelkyr” was one of two articles in Dragon Magazine that were entirely mine, and I contributed to another two. All four, unsurprisingly, were monster focused. I remember being annoyed with the artwork for the xenostelid at the time, but I can’t remember why. It looks fine, although I do wish the head looked more like that of an actual arthropod. As with other late 3.5 era Paizo monsters, this was pretty close to Pathfinder 1e in terms of balance, but not quite. I ended up lowering the Strength a little, increase the AC a little, and slotting it at one CR higher, a CR 18 as opposed to 17. This also lets it work well in encounter building with my take on the daelkyr.]

Xenostelid CR 18 CE Aberration This horror stands taller than a two-story building. It appears as a hybrid of various types of monstrous vermin—it has the body and head of a centipede, four meaty claws like those of a scorpion, and eight spidery legs. Its multiple faceted eyes glitter over a set of slicing mandibles.

The xenostelids are living siege engines in the employ of the Dominion of the Black. They were designed by the daelkyr, fleshwarped from monstrous spiders, centipedes and scorpions and their carapaces laced with bioactive adamantine. Despite their horrible and animalistic appearance, a xenostelid is of human-like intelligence, and is a savvy combatant as well as a physically powerful one.

A xenostelid usually wades into melee, using its claws and jaws to devastating effect. It can punch holes in armor, shields or stone walls with ease. Their venom combines the most painful aspects of scorpion, spider and centipede toxins, and those slain by it are often disfigured beyond recognition from internal bleeding and necrosis. They prefer to target spellcasters above other foes, as they know that these are particularly dangerous. A common strategy is to coat front line fighters in webbing in order to keep them locked down, and then move to the back ranks to fight mages and healers.

Xenostelids may accompany Dominion invasion forces, but their size and lack of subtlety means that they are deployed only in the late stages of an incursion. Despite this, a few xenostelids have been found in the wild—they can breed true and live long, slow lives when not being used as weapons. Wild xenostelids prefer to live underground near a source of water in order to have ample prey, and collect shiny objects such as precious metals and gems. These wild xenostelids have a sense of their original purpose—they worship the darkness between the stars as if it were divine, and may choose to work with other aberrant horrors if it suits them.

Xenostelid CR 18 XP 153,600 CE Huge aberration Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +29, scent Defense AC 32, touch 11, flat-footed 29 (-2 size, +3 Dex, +21 natural) hp 310 (23d8+207); fast healing 5 Fort +16, Ref +13, Will +16 DR 10/adamantine and magic; Immune mind-influencing effects, poison; Resist cold 20, fire 20, sonic 20; SR 29 Offense Speed 60 ft., climb 30 ft. Melee bite +25 (2d6+10 plus poison), 4 claws +25 (2d6+10/19-20) Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft. Special Attacks rend (4 claws, 2d6+15), screech, web (8/day, +18 ranged, DC 30, 23 hp) Statistics Str 31, Dex 16, Con 29, Int 10, Wis 17, Cha 14 Base Atk +17; CMB +29 (+33 bull rush, sunder); CMD 42 (44 vs. bull rush and sunder, 54 vs. trip) Feats Awesome Blow, Critical Focus, Greater Bull Rush, Greater Sunder, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Critical (claw), Improved Initiative, Improved Sunder, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Staggering Critical, Stunning Critical Skills Acrobatics +29 (+41 when jumping), Climb +46, Knowledge (engineering) +26, Perception +29 Languages Aklo, Undercommon SQ adamantine strikes Ecology Environment any land or underground Organization solitary or pair Treasure incidental Special Abilities Adamantine Strikes (Ex) A xenostelid’s natural weapons count as adamantine for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction and hardness. Poison (Ex) Bite—injury; save Fort DC 30; frequency 1/round for 4 rounds; effect 1d6 Str damage, 1d6 Dex damage, 1d6 Con damage; cure 2 saves. The save DC is Constitution based. Screech (Su) As a standard action, a xenostelid can give a horrific screech, dealing 11d6 points of sonic damage to all creatures and unattended objects within 60 feet (Fort DC 30 halves). A xenostelid can use this ability three times per day, but must wait 1d4 rounds between uses. The save DC is Constitution based.

#xenostelid #dragon magazine #commissions #about the author #D&D #eberron #dominion of the black

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thespacelizard · 1 year

Text

Just a Crystal, Nothing More

@fluffbruary day 17 - some slightly angsty, reminisce-y Glasya/Mammon today. up on AO3 here.

In which Glasya comes across an old trinket.

Why is it, if Malbolge is a part of her, that she can never find the thing she wants when she wants it? Oh, certainly she could make a new dress, but that’s besides the point—recreated angel-feather drop-sleeves are not the same as the genuine article. She’s hardly going to make the impression she wants in imitation celestial sacrifice couture, now, is she?

With a huff, Glasya hauls another iron chest down from its shelf. The walk-in closet, deep in Ossiea, stretches back an unnecessary series of miles, and she’s already wasted most of her morning scouring them. Archdevils don’t tire the way lesser beings do, but metaphysically she’s sweaty and exhausted and about ready to overthrow a small mortal nation for the stress relief.

The suffering she endures is honestly too much.

“If it’s not in here, I’m sending a hunting party to Mount Celestia,” she mutters under her breath. “Daddy dearest can just cope.”

Glasya is, of course, precisely the kind of person to start an interplanar incident for the sake of her own vanity. Or such is the image she likes to cultivate, anyway.

The chest thuds to the floor and Glasya thuds next to it, legs akimbo, highly unglamorous, but there’s no-one around to mock, so she’s safe to indulge. She scratches one elegant copper claw over the lock and it falls open with a faint sigh. Within are piles of fabric, which is a promising start—she plunges her hands in and tosses out item after item in search of that unique softness that only comes with angel feathers.

This would, she knows, be easier if her palace weren’t wholly warded from locating spells. Truly, the sacrifices one makes for a pittance of security in the Hells are never-ending.

Then, just as she’s ready to give up and go crusading into the Seven Heavens; “A-ha!”

She lifts a waterfall of shimmering grey fabric into the light; long skirt, sheer bodice, and those perfect, perfect sleeves that will trail like broken wings from her perfect, perfect arms. Shining patterns of vivisected angels weave across the material in pale thread, their agony almost audible. She presses the dress triumphantly to her chest. See Baalzebul say no to her in this, there’s no way he’ll—

A glint at the bottom of the chest catches her eye. Glasya lowers the dress, cocking her head. Setting it carefully aside, she grasps the glint and lifts out a small, clear crystal. A golden sheen dances over its glittering facets as she turns it in her hands. It sends a whisper through her fingers that lights up her veins with the desire for more, and she has a brief yet powerful urge to own everything.

Even before she looks into the heart of the crystal, she knows what she’s going to see.

Herself, pressed against the side of another Archduke with beautiful, dark gold skin, and a scattering of verdant scales along his shoulders and sides. Her hand is resting on the centre of his lean, muscular chest, slightly curled—his own partly covers hers, his other arm around her shoulder. The image is cut off at the waist, but she remembers clearly that she had knelt on the snake-coils of his lower half; had to climb up on them to get high enough to fit them both into the enchanted image.

In the crystal, Mammon is looking at her, endlessly, like he loves her. In the crystal, Glasya is looking at him, endlessly, like she—

She tosses the crystal back into the chest and slams the lid shut. She snatches up her dress and, with a neat little kick, sends the chest spinning down the long and improbably endless miles of her closet. She has what she came for.

She stalks back to her rooms and finds that the dress no longer fits. In a fit of pique, rather than altering herself, she tears off the sleeves and goes to her meeting with Baalzebul wrapped in shedding angel feathers.

She gets what she wants. She always does.

Except for the times she doesn’t.

#fluffbruary #fluffbruary 2023 #my fic #glasya/mammon #glasya #forgotten realms #forgotten realms fanfiction #dungeons and dragons fanfiction

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grandhotelabyss · 1 year

Note

I recently watched Donald Cammell’s WHITE OF THE EYE, which you prefer over Zulawski’s own 80s cult classic POSSESSION. When you speak highly of a film on here I take it seriously, and was not let down: a narratively, thematically, and aesthetically rich (and just remarkably weird) desert southwest giallo slasher of sorts with sinister performances from David Keith and Cathy Moriarty. As I can no longer find the post where you first mentioned it, would you speak more to why you like it?

Thank you, and I'm glad you liked it! I had trouble finding the original post too—Tumblr's tagging system used to use hyphens for spaces and now doesn't, making even reasonably labeled things hard to rediscover—but I did manage to dig it up. I hope you don't mind if I simply paste it in here since a lot of newer readers probably missed it. I only saw the movie once and won't try to recapture the (over)enthusiastic prose I wrote upon the first viewing. Tumblr is also bad at date-labeling things, but I believe this dates from summer 2021.

___________________________________________________________

I now believe White of the Eye (1987) is criminally unheralded in the semi-arty horror-thriller pantheon (do not, please, speak to me of Ari Aster).

Being a philistine, I like White of the Eye better, for instance, than the connoisseur’s go-to ’80s cult object, Żuławski’s Possession, which I find unendurably over-stylized despite its other merits. Fun fact: Possession was co-written by novelists’ novelist Frederic Tuten, who once received the most extravagant blurb from my beloved Cynthia Ozick, as friend-of-the-blog @danskjavlarna pointed out: “What an amazing, glittering, glowing, Proustian, Conradian, Borgesian, diamond-faceted, language-studded, myth-drowned dream!” exclaimed our greatest living Republican-voting novelist (remember that Cormac McCarthy doesn’t vote). Tuten, by the way, is not to be blamed for what I call Possession’s over-stylization, which is a matter of performance not script. But I don’t want to get into a hipper-than-thou spiral, “My cult movie’s better than your cult movie,” to be trapped in a crisis of Girard’s mimetic desire or Bourdieu’s cultural capital—merde, but the French are depressing, “too human, too historical,” as Deleuze complained in acclaiming “the superiority of Anglo-American literature.” The work of art has formal, affective, conceptual intrinsic qualities, not just extrinsic social determinants, and White of the Eye is, I argue, intrinsically spectacular.

Speaking of performance: White of the Eye was directed by Donald Cammell, the co-director with Nicolas Roeg of the classic 1970 film Performance. Again a philistine, I could never get into Performance—never even watched it all the way through—even though it sits at the nexus of two of my early influences. First, in a Comics Journal interview in the mid-’90s, English artist Bryan Talbot credited Performance’s jump-cut montage techniques for inspiring the storytelling innovations in his graphic novel The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. The underread Arkwright is the lost key to comics’s British Invasion—without it we wouldn’t have had V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Sandman, or The Invisibles. (It’s also a key to this movement’s cryptic politics, as Talbot stages a Jacobite uprising as anti-fascist revolution, precursor to Moore’s much more famous but still baffling ancom in Guy Fawkes garb. Is all anarchism Tory anarchism?) Second, Performance was a particular interest of Professor Colin MacCabe’s, whose class on James Joyce, with its mind-altering 12 weeks on Ulysses, helped to make me the reader and writer I am today back in that explosive landmark year, 2001. Protagonist of an epochal affaire in poststructuralism’s history and erstwhile director of the British Film Institute, MacCabe later wrote a book on Performance, which, alas, unlike his books on Joyce and Godard, I haven’t read.

I like White of the Eye better than Performance as I like it better than Possession, though. Mysterious symbolism, desert desolation, languorous eroticism, and, yes, some montage. The scorching, doomed marriage between a fanatic Western audiophile—he looks like the young W. Bush—and his breathy, no-nonsense New York wife; a Paglia-esque misogynist rampage (“that fuckin’ black hole…if that’s not female, I don’t know what is”) in an arid outpost of the Reagan-era bourgeoisie and its multicultural fringe: it all evokes the inherent evil of the American landscape that Burroughs observes in Naked Lunch. It has that ’80s quality of emotional amplitude not just between but within scenes. At every moment you might ask, “Is this sad, funny, or horrifying?” and answer, “Yes.” I do see filmmakers today working in the same vein and aspiring to the same compass. Witness the already famous Jacques Derrida High School in David Prior’s ultimately disappointing Empty Man or the scarcely resistible vaporwave dreamscape of Anthony Scott Burns’s also ultimately disappointing Come True (can’t anybody end a movie anymore?). But White of the Eye does it without effort or self-consciousness, as the very essence of its being an artwork at all—an artifact from a lost civilization.

#donald cammell #nicolas roeg #andrjez zulawski #colin maccabe #horror #horror film #cinema #film criticism #frederic tuten

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lovedrunkheadcanons · 1 year

Text

Chapter Contents

(Arranged Marriage Fic) Read on Ao3

Rated M

It was often said that memories need to be shared, but Satoru was fairly certain that phrase wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

He would have to ask Shoko about this later.

For reasons unknown, whenever he held Hannah’s hand as she dreamt, he saw into what could only be her memories. It’d been going on for the past few nights and he still had difficulty reconciling with the fact nobody could see or hear him. His body walked through everything like a ghost.

So, where’d she take me this time?

The jujutsu sorcerer blinked and spun around.

Ormolu furniture. Colorful Savonnerie carpets. Curio tables showcasing topaz medallions, chunks of uncut aquamarines, and magenta spinels faceted to metal rods. A chimney fire burned brightly in its hearth, lighting the office space. Satoru spotted a man, studying what looked to be a raw sapphire under a magnifying glass. The gentleman was impeccably bespoked in a slate-grey suit and gold cufflinks. His raven black hair was perfectly coiffed and un-receding. His waistline didn’t show signs of a glutton. However, his many jeweled fingers, one of which showed a gold siren wrapped around his pinkie, gave him away. Satoru grimaced.

It was Lord Jacob Thames, albeit a younger, much slimmer, and far more handsomer Thames than Satoru remembered. Practically unrecognizable.

There was a knock at the door.

A lanky butler entered the room. Satoru could see the mounds of sweat collecting above his brow. His gloved hands shook. He was beyond nervous and had every right to be.

“Collins,” barked the earl, still looking through the magnifying glass. “What the devil took so long?”

“M-My sincere apologies, milord,” stammered the butler, stooping low into a bow. “The girl only just arrived.”

The earl’s expression became shrewd, magnifying glass clanging to his desk. “Well, don’t just stand there,” he huffed, rolling his eyes. “Send her in.”

The butler dashed aside for a tiny auburn haired girl, no older than four, to step into the room. They’d stuffed her in a mustard colored jumper three sizes too big to adequately fit her doll-like frame, giving her the appearance of a ruffian. Her eyes were equally as apprehensive as the butler’s.

“Leave us.”

The head servant scurried out and closed the door, leaving the young girl and earl alone.

“Do you know where you are?”

Hannah’s hazel-green eyes deferred from the rubies glittering in a display case, and glanced up at the earl. “W-Wasserton, sir. Wasserton House.”

“Did the nuns tell you that, or the house staff?”

Abashed, the girl looked down at her tiny shoes and bit her lip.

Lord Thames observed this and hummed, nodding. “Then do you know who I am?”

The girl looked up. “You’re Lord Thames, ninth Earl of Graivmor and current owner of the estate,” she swallowed the lump in her throat, “They say you’re my uncle.”

Lord Thames unveiled the lighter in his pocket and casually lit a cigar as though he hadn’t heard her. Pretty well spoken for a four year old, he thought. How irritating. The earl exhaled a thick cloud of smoke and sneered.

“I didn’t want to bring you here,” he said, giving the cigar another puff. “But laws are laws, and God knows I have enough shit to worry about than arguing with a bunch of meddlesome priests, who feel it is their job to lecture me on ‘mercy’ and ‘forgiveness’ on behalf of my whore excuse of a sister.” The earl grew more impassioned as he said this, speaking ill of his deceased sibling as though she were an apostate. There was no remorse in the brother’s eyes, Satoru could see. This was a man unwilling to forgive and punish his own niece in the process. “So let me be clear,” he continued, getting his nose right up to the girl. Satoru felt the urge to reach out and pull her back. “During your stay, you are to remain in the servants quarters. At no point are you to step foot in the upper rooms, unless I bid it,” his voice deepened, “You are not to be seen. You are not to be heard. These visits are out of obligation and nothing more,” he paused for a final moment, “Do you understand?”

Hannah‘s frightened eyes stared into his, her lips quivering. It wasn’t really a question.

“Y-Yes, sir. I understand.”

The earl smiled. “Splendid.” He walked behind his desk and pressed a button. The butler re-emerged from the door. “Now, get out — and Collins.”

Collins stood at attention. “Yes, milord?”

The earl flicked his fingers, indicating he wanted a word in private. Both Satoru and butler came forward, bending their ears to listen. “If you or the staff notice anything…off about the child,” Lord Thames grumbled, glancing briefly at the girl waiting by the door. “Do let me know.”

The butler dipped his head. “Of course, sir.”

The servant swiveled around and guided Hannah down the hallway to the servant’s quarters. The fire crackled in its hearth and the earl settled back into his chair, puffing away on his cigar. He studied the signet on his pinkie for a moment longer and muttered something before the first memory faded to black.

“You’ll be the death of me, Elizabeth.”

The office dissolved into smoke.

As if watching a film reel, Satoru suddenly fast-forwarded to when Hannah was lodging at a boarding school in Germany. She looked to be about seven years old, so small you’d think her growth had been stunted. She was easily the smallest of the children and routinely bullied. From what Satoru could tell, she was the only living soul who could see cursed spirits.

During this particular memory, Satoru witnessed Hannah becoming too afraid to step inside after recess because a curse, grade 3 or above, was hovering above the entrance, a rarity in Europe. She wanted to warn the other children to get away, but they didn't see anything other than a petrified girl, staring wide-eyed at thin air. So they laughed.

One older boy laughed louder than the rest and got right in Hannah’s face, taunting the girl in high-pitched German while spitting on her cheeks. Satoru didn’t know what the kid was saying, but he would’ve loved nothing more than to hoist the snot-nosed brat up the highest flagpole by the seams of his underpants and watch him cry like a baby for someone to get him down. Yeah, see if he’d be laughing then, the prick.

Meanwhile, none of the other children rushed to Hannah’s aid, gawking and circling around the little girl like vultures. If he were in her place, Satoru would see to it that these losers couldn’t speak to him like that without gaining a black eye because the only way to deter a bully was to make it clear they couldn’t bully you. Satoru was lost as to why Hannah didn’t fight back, taking their insults the way sorbothane absorbed shock waves; No retaliation. No snide, witty comeback, her fearful eyes too focused on the curse preparing to lunge at any given moment. Why was she showing kindness to people who didn’t deserve it?

A teacher entered the fray, putting an end to the torture session. All the children were assembled inside, but Hannah was sent to her room for some inexplicable reason, which almost had Satoru crying foul. The curse had flown off.

Satoru trailed Hannah to her room which was kept separate from the others, likely due to the terrible screaming brought on by the visions. Originally a janitor's closet, the lonely bedroom still shelved outdated cleaning supplies, coated in dust. The sun was starting to set. The ceiling lamp hanging above them emitted little to no light, but Satoru’s Six Eyes saw the twin-sized mattress stationed in the far corner below a small arching window. Forming a line along the windowsill were several seashells and rocks collected from the beach, and underneath the bed Satoru spied three heavy textbooks: The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies, Exploring Creation with Botany, and Basilius Besler’s second edition of Florilegium. Not exactly light reading for a seven year old. Wonder how she got them.

While sent to her room as punishment (supposedly), Hannah was in no mood for repentance. She was too busy fussing with a bundle of blankets and rags knotted together to form a long rope. Looping one end of the rope over the bedpost, Satoru watched her pry open the latch and throw the other end out the window along with an empty rucksack, letting it wave outside like a victory banner. She gave the rope a good tug.

It held.

With relative ease, Hannah crouched through the open window, held tight to the knotted rags, and planted her feet on the brick wall to support her legs, and like a spider attached to its spinneret, she carefully lowered her tiny body down the rope, one step after the other, and dropped to the ground when the blankets went no further, opting to land on her side and roll several times to lessen the impact. Suffering no broken bones, the little girl flew to her feet, grabbed the empty rucksack she had haphazardly thrown out the window, and ran for the coastline up ahead. Never more than a couple steps behind, Satoru witnessed his young wife trip a grand total of five times before they neared the beach, hearing her soft giggles ringing in the blustery air at her own clumsiness, glad to be free from that penitentiary excuse of a school.

As they reached the coast, a flock of seagulls were feasting on some helpless crustaceans washed ashore by the tide. Little Hannah charged at the seabirds, breaking into a bellyful of laughter as they scattered, her smile positively infectious. There’s a gap between her teeth, Satoru thought.

Approaching the water, the seven year old knelt to remove her worn leather shoes and bloodied socks.

Hold on. Bloodied?

Satoru failed to hide his unease at seeing the cuts, some of which were still bleeding. He didn’t know it then, but the other kids liked to put glass shards in her shoes and sometimes Hannah forgot to check before slipping them on. Why hadn’t he noticed them earlier? Though she didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the lacerations and welcomed the salty waves to fold from blue to white around her toes and wash away the blood. Satoru winced. Salt water and open cuts didn’t exactly mix well. Didn’t that hurt?

Evidently not.

When the waves receded, Hannah’s feet were looking a lot better - Actually, scratch that - They appeared almost fully healed. Weird. Maybe it was all that excess dried blood. Satoru wasn’t sure.

Anywho, once cleaned, Hannah stuffed her blood-stained socks inside her shoes, placing them both in her rucksack. Her hazel eyes then darted animatedly from left to right, scouring the shore for anything valuable she might find. Using her bare hands she began digging holes in the wet sand, sifting through the many fish bones, bird feathers, and plastic bottles, until she unearthed what looked to be a round husk the size of a baseball; an old abalone from the looks of it. The shell was rough and ugly, like the jagged rocks buffering the waves, but hidden inside the shell lay the covetous mother-of-pearl found on dish cabinets and lacquered furnishings. Whether Hannah knew this was anyone’s guess, but the fact she dropped the abalone into her rucksack implicated as much; Another addition for her windowsill.

Husband and wife spent the remainder of that evening digging for seashells. Well, Hannah dug and Satoru watched, using his Six Eyes to spot the better looking ones.

“No, here, Hannah,” he would laugh, pointing to the ground. “There’s more over here. See?” But the child walked right through him. This was a memory, after all. He wasn’t actually there. Never had been, though he was enjoying this excursion more than he should’ve, watching the smiling girl loot the beach for buried treasure. As Hannah found new sand to plunder, the world's strongest sorcerer took a moment to appreciate the view, taking off his shoes for the heck of it.

While these weren’t his memories, Satoru could easily imagine the ocean spray hitting his face as wave after thundering wave pounded against the rocky bluffs up coast. The sun sparkled atop the water and clouds creamed the sky in hues of gold and pink from the oncoming sunset. Wow. Which part of the Atlantic was this again? The Baltic? If given the chance, Satoru would stare out at it for hours, contemplating the deeper meaning of life. He felt a presence standing next to him and turned to see who it was.

Time skipped. Hannah was no longer a care-free seven year old with a gap between her teeth, but a beautiful woman yet to be his bride. She was still short, of course, barely reaching his chest. The setting sun picked up the red in her braided hair. He could see the green in her hazel eyes and the cute freckles dotting across her nose, but something wasn't right. Like him, she too was staring out at the sea, except she wasn’t smiling anymore. The rucksack carried around her shoulders was gone. Her expression held no emotion, as if all the happiness she exuded from earlier had been sucked right out of her.

He couldn’t distinguish the twisted feeling in his gut when that first tear fell. No, don’t. His hand lifted to wipe it away. I hate seeing you cry. Just as his fingers brushed against her cheeks, however, a panicked voice called out from afar.

“Hannah!”

Satoru froze and pivoted to see a middle-aged nun hobbling up the beach, her brown veil flying every which way in the breeze as she frantically called Hannah's name.

Meanwhile, Hannah hurriedly dried her eyes. “Hier drüben, Schwester Hilda,” she called back, raising her arm to get the nun’s attention.

Hearing her voice, Sister Hilda turned and placed a hand over her heart. “Gott sei Dank!” she exclaimed in relief and raced to them as fast as she could, her brown veil billowing in the wind, “Wir haben dich überall gesucht. Wie oft haben wir es dir schon gesagt. Kein weglaufen.”

Satoru saw the way Hannah’s shoulders slumped. “Es tut mir leid,” she answered apologetically.

The nun waved her over, shaking her head. “Schnell, schnell,” she placed an arm around the young woman, ushering her back inside. “Es ist nicht sicher.”

Hannah obeyed like the good girl she was and together they walked back the direction they had come, taking no notice of the jujutsu sorcerer standing near.

Satoru didn’t understand a lick of German, but the desperation ringing in the poor nun’s voice unsettled him. Surely, Hannah was just wanting some fresh air. What could be wrong with that? Why the urgency?

He caught one last wisp of auburn, before the two women disappeared beneath the sand dunes and tall sea grass. A storm loomed beyond the shore. The sun dipped below the water. And the memory faded to black.

Satoru then found himself standing outside an old farmhouse. The air was chilly and a dense fog overtook the acres of forest as night became dawn. It smelled of mulch and aging wood. A rooster crowed in the background. Nope, definitely not the Baltic.

A teenage Hannah emerged from the farmhouse, equipped in a plaid button-down flannel and denim overalls. Her rubber boots squeaked atop the dew covered grass as she carried an empty tin bucket up to the barn, a bright red bandana covering her hair. For a shortie she was hightailing it pretty good. Satoru had to break into a light trot. Why so fast?

“Salut, Charlie. Clyde,” she greeted quietly upon sliding the barn doors open, almost completely out of breath.

Two of the most humongous looking draft horses Satoru had ever seen, each strong enough to pull a freight car, stuck out their heads from behind their stalls, ears perking at the sound of their names. The young girl stood on her tiptoes and offered her knuckles to one of the gentle giants, looking like a fairy as its massive muzzle nudged her hand and sniffed. The creepy thing about this was when the horse’s eyes followed Satoru as he walked by. It could see him, but Hannah was too busy to notice and returned carrying a large bale of hay. She broke down the hay-bale and loaded the grass into Clyde’s trough, doing the same for Charlie. Lifting the lid off a long plastic bin, Hannah scooped some grain for each horse and observed the geldings munching away as she checked their water supply and shoveled their manure before opening the neighboring stall on the right.

“Désolée, Bertha,” she whispered.

Bertha, a brown dairy cow getting on in years, mooed lowly at the girl, unhappy she hadn’t been milked at her usual hour. Hannah quickly fed the cow similarly to the horses and grabbed the empty bucket she’d brought up the hill and set to placing her rear on an old wooden stool. She slid the empty bucket underneath the cow, strapped on a pair of latex gloves from her back pocket, and commenced to milking. It was quite the exercise, applying just the right pressure on the udder with her thumb and index to squeeze, but Hannah handled it like a pro. Satoru was so absorbed by the fact that his wife knew how to milk a frickin’ cow, he didn’t notice the tiny grey kitten attempting to eat his shoelaces, only to come up short.

“Oi, quit it,” he muttered, kicking the little beast away with his shoe, which did absolutely nothing. These were limited edition. “Scram.”

The kitten peered up at the Six Eyes wielder with big round eyes too large for its small fluffy head and released the tiniest “mew.” Hannah stopped milking.

“Well, there you are,” she cooed in English, having discovered the feline wallowing alone in the corner. “Que fais-tu là-bas, hmm?” She took off one of her latex gloves and lowered a hand for the baby to sniff. “Where are the rest?”

The rest? Satoru’s Six Eyes were drawn to the stacks of hay-bales lining the wall to his right. Suspicious, he transitioned to infrared and spied four orange blobs hiding amongst the bales.

Knowing what to do, Hannah stood up from the wooden stool, grabbed an empty bowl from a shelf nearby, and crouched under Bertha, squirting some milk into the bowl till it filled halfway and placing it on the ground. “Bon appetit,” she sang.

The kittens came scampering, toppling over each other like furry rollie pollies to see who could get to the bowl first, their fur matted with straw and dust.

“Heathens,” Satoru chuffed, shaking his head and watching the siblings fight over their food like a pride of lions at the zebra kill. Obviously Hannah didn’t hear this comment, but giggled as though she had. A bell alerted them to the changing of the hour. They had thirty minutes.

Quickly, Hannah covered the milk bucket with a cloth as best she could, locked Bertha’s stall door behind her, and rushed out the barn, leaving the animals to eat their breakfast in peace. The way she maneuvered down the uneven slope, it was a miracle the milk didn’t slosh everywhere. She reconvened inside the motherhouse and inadvertently led Satoru to the kitchen. He watched her hoist the bucket over a marble countertop, cracked in the center from an accident gone awry - either that or the surface was too old - and began raiding the cupboards. Finding a metal strainer, she whipped out a clean glass jug from the bottom drawers and (shakily) poured the raw milk into the jug to be pasteurized later, leaving the strainer to trap all the excess fat used to make cheese and butter. Satoru didn’t see her pause to take a breath. Twisting a lid on the jug and plopping the fat in its own container, she placed both produce in the fridge next to the fresh eggs. The dirty bucket and strainer were left in the sink. Hannah washed her hands and eyeballed the clock. Ten minutes.

Trying not to make too much noise, she tiptoed up the stairs to her bedroom, a monastic cell less than premium, and quietly shut the door behind her with a soft “click.” Now, it was at this point Satoru should’ve known better. He should’ve known women need their privacy, but since he could see through clothing anyway, the message failed to register. Hannah was already shimmying out of her overalls, naked in only her bra and underwear, till the Six Eyes wielder got the hint and turned to face the wall. Whoops. He could already envision Utahime landing a scathing slap across his cheek. “Pervert.” All he was missing was a dunce cap.

Waiting to recover his wounded sense of pride, Satoru focused on the rustling of fabric as Hannah changed and the sound of tiny beads rattling against each other. He glanced over his shoulder.

His mouth parted.

Her red bandana had been replaced with a white coif and veil, hiding her auburn hair. The plaid flannel and overalls were now a long black robe, poncho'd in a sleeveless tunic. A belt of rosary beads cinched her waist as she strapped on a pair of velcro-laced shoes typically worn by old people. The novitiate standing before him gave Satoru pause.

It could’ve been so different, he thought, struggling to wrap his head around the blatant concept; Hannah? A nun? He wasn’t sure he liked that idea. Not that he felt entitled to criticize the lifestyle itself. How people choose to live their lives was their business, and if it left them fulfilled, then more power to them, but he couldn’t picture Hannah as a nun. Like so much about these memories, it felt…wrong.

She didn’t belong here.

In those clothes.

In that veil.

You’re mine.

No mirror to check her reflection, Hannah flattened the creases in her habit as best she could, sighed a deep breath, and opened the door.

Having been following the Eightfold Path since he could crawl, Satoru had only stepped foot inside a church twice. Once when he was sent to retrieve (kidnap) Amanai from school, and the other on his wedding day. He and Hannah were the last to arrive at the chapel, joining the other twelve or so nuns praying solemnly in the pews. Their veils weren’t white like Hannah’s, Satoru noted, but funeral black. A priest sauntered in shortly afterwards, wearing green vestments while holding the Gospels over his head as the nun’s lead a processional hymn.

The Mass was terribly dull and lasted way too long. He was bored through most of it, not knowing French or Latin, though Hannah’s singing rang out like soft chimes in the small church, which was pleasant enough. He resorted to counting the cracks in the ceiling as the service dragged on and on. When the priest held up the offerings for the consecration and everyone got on their knees, Satoru walked right in front of the altar, leaned real close, and squinted hard. So this was their God, eh? Some flat bread and fermented grape juice. Yup, Christians sure were weird.

The end of Mass was followed by the Abess reading from the pulpit along with a short sermon and more prayer. He was glad when it was over.

Released from their purgatory, Hannah was allotted a quick breakfast - a baguette slice with a dollop of freshly churned butter and a soft boiled egg - which she devoured ravenously. Then on to lessons.

The teenager went back to her room for a satchel and trudged up a flight of stairs to the attic, where a nun welcomed her with a smile, gesturing to the vacant desk centered in front of a large chalkboard. Geometry. That was the lesson for today it seemed. Good, a subject Satoru actually liked. It would be Medieval History at one o’clock, however; Mmm, not so good. He peered over Hannah’s notes as she jotted everything her instructor wrote on the chalkboard. Aha, so she’s a leftie. Interesting.

Hannah was scrubbing floors next. Although the brush she was given looked more like a brick and washed like one too. The bristles were dense from re-hardened soap, effectively becoming a thick block of lard. Kind of gross really. The sound the brush made as it scraped along the floorboards had his skin crawling, but Satoru didn’t want to mosey off somewhere and leave her. What the hell were these floors made out of anyway? Finishing her scrubbing, Hannah tucked any loose strands of auburn back under her veil and glanced up at the clock above the door mantle. The bell rang. Time for, you guessed it, more prayer.

After the office of the None, Satoru was willing to theorize whether bashing his head upside the wall, really, really, hard would help wake him from this snooze fest, but naturally no wall was impenetrable. He walked through every solid object, every person, lurking anonymously wherever Hannah went like an invisible shadow. Seriously, where’s the exit? All this loitering about was making him hungry and some deep-fried manju would be really good right about now.

At three o’clock following lunch, Hannah was tending to the vegetable gardens outside: carrots, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, other bulbs and tubers. She had to change back into her overalls and rubber boots. The sun was sweltering down on them (her) like a tanning bed, but the heat didn’t seem to affect her none. Satoru watched the teenager parse a handful of dirt between her fingers, testing the fertilizer and de-weeding the ground, making sure the cabbages were watered by their roots so the leaves wouldn’t catch a fungal infection. A sweet smile graced her lips. She looks natural, Satoru thought; Gardening.

The evening slowed to a snail’s pace once Hannah changed back into her habit and communed with the other sisters inside the chapel, which Satoru gathered was meant for, what, choir practice? The nuns formed three rows, opened their hymnal books, and began singing in unison before breaking into separate harmonies. Hannah’s sweet soprano came out like distilled water, crisp and clearer than the rest. The Abbess would stop them if the piece was sung even a little out of key and force them to repeat the verse. This went on for roughly an hour, ending the day with a perfect “Salve Regina.”

Hannah returned her hymnal on a shelf with the others, waved goodbye to the nuns, and made the silent pilgrimage back to her cell. Under the aid of candlelight, she spent her last waking hours finishing homework and repairing the holes she’d torn in her overalls with a thread and needle, pricking her fingers a couple times as she stitched. She didn’t change out of her habit and veil. Instead, the teenager blew out her candle, slipped off her shoes, and crash landed onto the bed with a resounding ‘whop,’ knowing it would start all over again come break of morning and there’d be no escaping it. Not once had she complained. Not once had she tarried or refused the work.

Her lids slowly closed.

A bell tolled in the distance.

Everything faded to black again.

A few seconds passed and soon the cold stench of antiseptic stung Satoru’s nose and tongue like salt inhalants, along with a sharp tang reminiscent of something metal. The black void surrounding him materialized into placid white ceilings above placid white walls on placid white floors. The window outside showed a wintry scene with snow falling to the ground, while a skeletal figure slept on a bed beside beeping machinery, an IV dripping into a vein that wasn’t blown. His skin looked as though it hadn’t been washed in days, growing dry and leathery with patches collecting on his bedsheets like dandruff, and his face was so gaunt from weight loss that Satoru could see every protruding bone jutting around his cheeks and eye sockets. Although, he was most alarmed by the man’s jaw. It hung in such a grotesque angle that it was likely impossible for him to close it, making him appear as though he were left permanently screaming in a Van Gogh painting. The dude was in rough shape. Satoru estimated he didn’t have much longer.

“Good morning, Richard,” Hannah chimed, wheeling in a cart topped with a meal tray and towels. She was still in a white coif and veil, except she wore a white knee-length dress and tights with a Red Cross on her chest. The makings of a hospice nurse.

Richard initially didn’t stir or open his eyes, enticing Hannah to lean over the bed and gently tap his arm. “Richard,” she whispered. “It's morning now. Time to get up.”

The man opened his eyes in a panic, looking utterly confused, not knowing where he was. Hannah rushed to comfort him. “My name’s Hannah, Richard, remember? Han-nah? I’m the one taking care of you.”

For a moment Richard managed to make eye contact, but he was incapable of seeing the woman. The cataracts clouding his vision were too thick, and judging from his odd behavior, his hearing was probably deteriorating as well. Hannah eventually succeeded in settling him down, his mouth still hanging agape.

“Alright, we’re going to lift you up now,” she said as another woman in a veil and dress entered the room, and together the two caretakers worked to carefully flip the man on his side. Richard moaned in pain, his emaciated body too weak and feeble to do anything, no muscle to pull himself up. He was bare underneath the hospital gown. Satoru could see the bedsores blotching his heels from being confined to the mattress for so long and watched Hannah gingerly remove the soiled underpad from him and wipe his bottom and drain the collection bag from his catheter before changing the bedding. The smell alone would’ve left Satoru gagging, but like two well-oiled machines, neither hospice nurse so much as coughed. Fully cleaned, they placed the man back down on the hospital bed. The other nurse took the dirty sheets to be washed and entrusted her colleague to finish the rest.

Keeping him warm, Hannah draped a new blanket over the man. “There, that’s better, isn’t it?” she soothed, tucking in the edges like a mother would her child. She was so patient. “Are you hungry?”

A vacant look in his eyes, the cripple responded with a gurgling noise from the back of his throat. What that meant, Satoru didn’t know. Hannah brought the cart over to his side and parted the lid off the tray and — Aw, man. What the fuck was that supposed to be? Oatmeal? Who in their right mind would eat that?

From there, Satoru found it very difficult to watch Hannah try and spoon feed the dying man. He couldn’t chew or swallow the porridge correctly, wearing most of the mush on his chin, but Hannah cleaned it up with a napkin and threw the plastic spoon away after four small bites. That was it. The man would eat no more and quickly shut his eyes and fell asleep, fatigue winning over.

I’d rather they put a gun to my head, Satoru thought grimly, moved with pity for the man. The youth always think they’ll live forever, quick to forget that all things must come to an end. Would this be his, he wondered. A slow, agonizing death, with no one but a sweet orphaned nurse to care for him? Afterall, when you die, you die alone, right?

As her final act of kindness, Hannah wheeled the meal cart to the corner, washed her hands and arms in the sink, and made herself comfy in the closest chair near Richard’s bed. Crossing her legs, she flipped open a little pocket book from her skirt, and stayed by his side until the moon’s pale face shown out the window, falling asleep in the chair.

The hospital room faded from view.

Chapter Contents

#fanfiction #satoru gojo #jujutsu kaisen #gojo satoru #gojo x oc #gojo x reader #jjk fluff #jjk fanfic #Gojo Takes a Wife

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