#I don’t draw him sad that often but the point still stands
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SO IM LIKE AN HOUR LATE SO I COULDNT DO MORE BU T
Happy Let Sans Rest day!!! Home boy deserves it lol.
#undertale#sans#letsansrest#I don’t draw him sad that often but the point still stands#I love drawing this goober actually looking happy#I had. many more ideas for this but it’s 1 am in the morning and my brain is just microwave noises now#But I’m happy with what I got here#listening to music#hugging a capybara#talking about science#joining a precariously balanced snuggle pile#yep#that sounds pretty restful to me#kinda jealous ngl#anyway#goodnight
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Heroic Betrayal: part five
Read part one here
Continued from this point here
*~*~*~*~*
What kind of idiot were they to be stuck here? Hero should have told Sidekick when they got the tip about Villain… they should have told them that they were going to rough Villain up a bit, get the information they needed on Other Villain’s whereabouts and beat the shit out of them. Just a little revenge for touching a hair on Sidekick’s innocent head.
Even if they managed to catch Villain and mete out justice on Other Villain, they would have beaten the ever-living shit out of the wrong person, and that was something Hero didn’t want to think about in that moment.
That Flynn…
Their Flynn was the one who put Sidekick in the med bay.
Sidekick, who was still in the med bay, where Hero should be, but no. Instead, they were here, powerless and bleeding and it was all their fault.
Hero didn’t know how long they sat and stewed on that thought. Long enough that their nose stopped bleeding anyway. Hero tentatively reached up to their upper lip, their hand came away from it dry, the blood caked and flaked onto their face now.
“What happened to your face?” Hero angled their head down from where they stared at the ceiling to see Flynn standing on the other side of the cell bars.
“Fuck off, Red,” Hero grumbled, and fought the wince at their casual nickname for Flynn slipping out of their lips. “I’m not in the mood.”
A jangle of keys and the cell door was open, footsteps approaching Hero in their cot in the corner. Hero’s heart ached with every beat as Flynn came into their line of sight, concern drawing his features together.
How many times had they seen that same concern on his face? Told Hero it was going to be okay. Cleaned their wounds, laughed about the bruises the next day?
How much of it was a lie? — Hero wanted to ask. The question burned a hole on the tip of their tongue, but they didn’t dare speak it. They just stared up at the ceiling as best they could.
“What? You piss someone off already?”
Hero sighed. Flynn sat on the edge of the bed, moving closer to Hero, his hands going to inspect the damage like he so often did. It made something ache in Hero’s chest. Hero slapped their hands away, tears burning in the back of their eyes.
“Don’t fucking touch me, Flynn,” Hero bit out. “You don’t get to betray me and then pretend to be my friend and concerned about me.”
Flynn stared; eyes sad as he said: “okay. Guess I deserve that.”
“You deserve so much more,” Hero said, eyes burning with hatred, voice barely above a whisper. “How many of our friends died because of you? Hmm?”
“Hero, not all of it–” Flynn began then stopped, huffed out a breath of air through his nose, hand running through his hair. “Not all of it was a lie. I am your friend. I do care about you.”
“Oh really? Then you’d never use your power on me, right?” Hero demanded, echoing back Flynn’s words against him. Flynn had the audacity to even look guilty at that, and Hero leaned forwards, hands on Flynn’s as they said: “I forgive you, okay. I forgive you if you let me go. Flynn, please.”
Flynn’s eyebrows knit together, clearly conflicted but he said nothing. After a moment, Hero let out a breath of disbelief and sat back against the wall again.
“Yeah,” Hero scoffed, “we’re friends.”
“You have blood all over your face, Hero. You really want to just leave it?”
“Why the hell not?” Hero said, trying to force their tone into some form of neutrality.
Flynn sighed and stood up from the cot. “Supervillain wants an audience with you. I was sent to retrieve you.”
Hero rolled their eyes but got to their feet no less. “Of course,” they said, pushing past Flynn to the door. “God help you actually wanted to see how I was doing.”
“Hero—”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Let’s just go.”
“Hero that’s not—”
Before they could get the fourth word out, Hero had whirled on them eyes blazing hotter than any hells furnace.
“Fair?!” They asked incredulously, their voice jumping two pitches at the sheer audacity of the word on their lips. “Is that what you were going to say?”
Flynn didn’t back down this time. Instead he stepped forward, looking down his nose at Hero.
“Yes. That is what I was going to say.”
“You are unbelievable!” Hero snapped matching Flynn with a step forward of their own. They held their cuffed hands up in Flynn’s face as if to remind him exactly why Hero was there in the first place. “If you’re my friend you’ll take these off.”
“Hero you know I can’t—”
Hero didn’t let him finish. Instead they placed their palms on Flynn’s chest and shoved them as hard as they could. Flynn looked about as bothered as if a fly had flown into the room.
“I can’t uncuff you Hero,” Hero said, lowering their voice to mimic Flynn’s and shoving him back again. “I can’t let you go Hero.” And again. “I can’t fucking think—” shove “for myself” shove “Hero.”
Hero glared up at Flynn trying to fight back the frustrated tears building behind her eyes. Anger was easier to focus on in the moment rather than that vast aching pit twisting uncomfortably in their gut.
“But I promise I’m your friend, Hero,” Hero mocked, shoving him back again until Flynn’s back hit off the wall. Flynn’s eyebrows curved down and it left a pang in Hero’s chest that they hated. “And then you have the gall to look hurt. As if I betrayed you.”
Hero ignored the tears that fell at the last sentence, or at least tried to. They tried to be firm and act tough, but saying the betrayal out loud, acknowledging it when it was just the two of them was too much.
“Would you trust me if the roles were reversed?” Hero asked, not even wanting to look at Flynn for the answer. The more they saw the conflict on his face the harder it was to hate him. Flynn however, didn’t take this into consideration when he put his hand on Hero’s face and tilted it back to face him.
Hero narrowed their eyes at him, pushing every ounce of anger into their gaze hoping they would turn into actual daggers and stab him.
“No,” Flynn breathed softly, thumb wiping away the tear streaks from Hero’s face. “I wouldn’t trust you if the roles were reversed, but I would hear you out of you tried to explain it to me.”
“And if I took you to Supervillain?!” Hero asked, their voice low and furious as they stepped out of Flynn’s touch. “The enemy we’ve been trying to stop for months?”
“You.”
“What?!” Hero demanded hotly.
Flynn’s gaze hardened, his face devoid of all emotion now except for his usual mask of easy confidence, smirk on his lips as if he didn’t just wipe Hero’s tears away.
“The enemy you’ve been trying to stop for months,” Flynn said again taking a step forward, a dangerous glint in his eyes. Hero matched his step with one back, cautious, hackles raised. “I mean the man you borderline obsessed over, Hero. Don’t you want to meet the genius who eluded you, the great detective, for all that time?”
“Not particularly,” Hero said through gritted teeth, with another step back that Flynn matched, getting closer and closer each time.
“That’s what you called him though, right? A genius,” Flynn teased, his grin showing his teeth. “I mean, fuck, Hero some of the moves he made you were damn right impressed with. You even said you’d have done exactly the same thing if—”
“I was in his position,” Hero cut Flynn off. Flynn’s smirk grew wider as he took another step closer, dipping his head conspiratorially.
“Now you can be,” said Flynn with a wide gesture of his hands. Hero followed his hand to the cell door that they happened to be right beside. Hero was keenly aware that Flynn was backing them towards the door the whole time. “Even just for the intellectual stimulation if nothing else.”
“Go fuck yourself, Flynn. I’m not willingly walking into the Lion’s den.”
Flynn’s eyelids fell half over his eyes. “It is less dignified to be dragged, Hero, but if you insist.”
Flynn made a grab for Hero’s arm but they dodged at the last minute, turning to shoulder Flynn out of the way. Flynn didn’t so much as budge from his spot. Instead he caught Hero by the strap of their scabbard and yanked them into Flynn’s chest.
“The hard way, wonderful. I wouldn’t expect any less of you Hero,” Flynn said, wrapping an arm over Hero's chest and keeping them close as they stepped out of the cell, pushing Hero forward with their own body weight. “Let's go introduce you to Supervillain.”
*~*~*~*~*
Continued here
The orphanage roll call (tag-list): @shywhumpauthor (lmk if you want to be added/removed)
#writblr#hero villain writing#hero villain snippet#hero villain story#heroic betrayal#HB#hero#villain#writing#orphan writing#whump writing#orphan#betrayed hero#hero betrayed#Flynn#Flynn the Villain#Hero turned villain#Traitor hero#hero and villain#heroes and villains#hero x villain#villain x hero#villains and heroes#hero x other hero#implied relationship#Past relationship implied#past relationship#past friends#supervillain#hero x hero
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hey sil!!! for your drabble weekend 💕
i’m in the mood to be hurt perhaps in an au where elektra survived & matt is in a relationship with reader, and he breaks it off to go and run away with elektra 🥲
if you don’t vibe with this don’t worry AT all but this does play on my mind way too often 😵💫
gosh this is just such a sad thought, yet it was so nice to write 😭
– no romeo.
pairing: matt murdock x fem!reader
genre: angst with no happy ending
word count: 622
summary: matt leaves you for electra.
☕️ drabble weekend (open)☕️
“I’m sorry, I have to go,”
You stare at him, unblinking, as he stands idly by the door, his fingers clenched around his duffel bag filled with the stuff he had left at your apartment during the months you’ve been together. His body’s facing you and his head is tilted to the side as if he’s watching but you know that can’t be true. Surely he wouldn’t act so casual about it if he could see the tears glistening in your eyes.
“Matt,” your voice trembles, oh how you hate the way that it trembles. “You…you just can’t leave me without even saying a word…Did– Did I do something wrong?”
“No,”
“Then why?”
“Things just got complicated,” he lets out a sharp breath. “There’s someone else,”
“What?”
You can’t hide the shock in your voice, you take a step forward, eyes wide and a sole tear escaping when you blink. You weren’t even aware Matt knew anyone else besides Foggy and Karen, pain settles in your heart and it’s painful, it feels like someone is actively squeezing it. It hurts. It hurts so bad and you don’t know what to do to make it go away.
“You should sit down,” his voice echoes, a hint of worry laced in his tone. “You’re going to faint,”
“And how could you possibly know that?” you hiss. “You were cheating on me?”
“No, it’s just,” he sighs, scratching the back of his head. “I don’t know how to explain it but I need to go. I can’t leave her,”
“What about me?!” you finally reach your breaking point, tears streaming down your face and your fists clenched. “You were my everything Matt, I’ve shared so much of myself with you– How…how can you just leave me behind for someone else? Am I that worthless to you?”
You look down, warm tears sliding down your face as you begin to tremble. You hear Matt walking towards you, his steps hurried and silent. He cups both of your cheeks, it hurts even more now, how can he be leaving you when his embrace still feels like home.
“You were never worthless to me,” he says, thumbs drawing slow circles. “Is just that my priorities lay with someone else,”
Even if he can’t see it you glare at him, you roughly push his hands away and take a step back. You hug yourself, becoming smaller as you try to forget the warmth of his fingers against your skin.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” you whisper, shaking your head. “Just go Matt, I’ve never thought you could hurt me like this,”
You don’t look at him, your gaze glued to the floor until you hear the door close. The beating of your heart rings in your ears, your breathing uneven and fast as you stumble towards the couch. You collapse immediately, tears now freely flowing down your cheeks. Your vision becomes blurry and you cover your eyes with your hands, you couldn’t believe he had left. You couldn’t believe he tried to console you by saying the absolute worst thing. So in the end you were never his priority, whoever that other woman was, she was more important than you, she was worth the trouble.
You only feel the unbearable pain. A heavy weight sitting on your chest as you sniffled into your palms, the tears seemingly never ending.
You hate him. Hate the way you love him. Hate the way you still feel the ghost of his touch across your cheeks. It was like a twisted parting gift. You would feel his last lingering touch for months, years maybe.
You hate him so much, yet, your heart still flutters when you think of him.
#matt murdock x reader#matt murdock#matt murdock x female reader#matt murdock x you#matt murdock x y/n#daredevil fanfiction#daredevil x reader#matt murdock angst#daredevil angst#drabble weekend !
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Alone, Together
Ron Speirs x reader
A/N: I heard that @brassknucklespeirs needed a pick-me-up, and I am here to deliver. I hope that things get easier soon, babe 💕
Warnings: slight angst
For fall, it’s warm and the sky is clear. Ahead of you lies the sprawl of trees and fields that finally bump up against the distant, smoky looking mountains and their blue haze on the horizon. They are becoming harder to focus on as darkness creeps in and a few twinkling stars appear overhead as evening fades into night. It’s a peaceful place to sit, and it feels at odds with your inner turmoil. But up here by yourself, you can see why Currahee translates to stand alone – because alone is exactly how you feel right now.
Or maybe not.
You’ve sensed the presence a few feet behind you for a few minutes now. It’s not that you’re ignoring him; he just hasn’t decided what to do yet, and you haven’t decided what you want him to do.
“You don’t have to stand over there,” you tell him after another moment passes. “You can come sit, if you would like.”
Slowly, Ron makes his way over to where you sit, looking out at the Georgia landscape from the top of Currahee. He sucks in a small breath as he takes in the view; it’s one of those small things that so few are privy to seeing – one of the things that proves that Ron Speirs is a human just like everybody else.
“I wasn’t sure if you would want company.” He holds his hand open, palm up – an invitation, if you’ll accept it. You do. Once your hands are neatly fitted together, he offers a reassuring squeeze.
You shrug. Some of the bitterness has dissipated from your chest, but a few jagged slivers still shine through. “I felt pretty alone back there. I thought that I would come be alone up here.” It comes out sounding harsh, and it stands in stark contrast with the gentle landscape ahead of you and the gentle man beside you. Bitterness gives way to sadness and disappointment, softening your next words. “I don’t like being alone, though. I like having you as company.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
Oh, do you ever. You climbed up Currahee wanting to scream about it, hoping that nobody would hear you but that everybody would finally listen. Now that you’ve been alone for a while, though, you find that you want something that you can’t quite name.
“I went through the officer candidacy school just like everyone else. I passed with flying colors. I’m just as qualified as the male officers. So why doesn’t anyone want to listen to my input?”
“Because they’re intimidated by you.” When Ron’s words draw out a dry laugh from you, he furrows his eyebrows. “No, I’m serious, (Y/N). A lot of the men are scared that the female officers are doing better than them. You’re doing well in training and in gaining the respect of your company, which is something that a lot of these men are having trouble with. They’re scared of you because you’re doing something that they can’t.”
Between you, your hands are still interlocked. They fit together nicely, which is something that you’ve often thought about when holding hands with Ron. Usually, you get to think about it under better circumstances. Either way, seeing how they appear to belong together like that brings a sense of comfort –
That’s it: comfort. That’s what you want now that you’re done being angry. And here it is, in the form of your boyfriend. Your boyfriend, who would be the last person that a lot of people back in the camp would expect to inspire that emotion in someone.
“You’re not intimidated, though,” you point out.
Ron only smiles. “Oh, I’m always intimidated by you. I just accept the fact that you’re a strong leader who I look up to, instead of trying to convince myself that there’s been a mistake and that I should be in your position, like some of the other men.”
“Not questioning a ranking officer.” You nod. “A childhood in military school taught you well.”
The soft symphony of crickets slowly fills the air around you as the sunlight grows dimmer and the stars grow brighter. You should head back down to the camp. The disaster of a meeting is over, any dinner left in the mess hall will probably be getting cold, and everyone will be expected to be in their barracks soon.
As if he can read your thoughts, Ron says, “We should probably be heading back.” He reluctantly lets go of your hand and stands, offering it back to you to help you up. “Or would you like another minute alone?”
You accept his hand and pull yourself up, casting one last gaze out at the horizon before you head back down the mountain. “I think I’m ready to head back.”
Just as softly as the night around you, Ron presses a kiss to your cheek. The two of you usually race up and down the mountain, but tonight you take it slow, enjoying being alone, together.
#I'm not gonna lie#this ended up being kind of self-indulgent#because I did not have a funky fresh time at work this afternoon and it put me in a Mood™️#But babe I hope you enjoy this and that it maybe helped in some small way#ron speirs x reader#ron speirs#band of brothers#band of brothers x reader#band of brothers fanfic#band of brothers imagine#my writing#how many times am I gonna use this gif of Speirs#many many many!#because he looks so good in it!
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WIP Wednesday
Subconscious (Steve’s Story)
Summary: Steddie Canon compliant/fix-it fic paired with a corresponding story in Eddie’s POV, each chapter happens in tandem with the other.
No matter what he does, no matter who he is with or what is happening in the aftermath of their failed battle with Vecna – Steve Harrington can’t stop thinking about Eddie Munson. He’s even begun to see him in his dreams…
(unbeta'd snippet from Chapter 01; follows almost immediately after the snippet from part 1. Joyce has started having mandatory "family dinners" for the kids and young adults that are in their inner circle. They serve as ways to share information on what's happening in town, keep an eye on each member as they deal with their own repercussions of the past few months, and gives everyone a place where they don't have to hide. Steve makes sure all the kids can make it there and back home again, no matter what, but often forgets that he is also on the health check radar. Not just for Robin, either. Oh no. He's not that lucky.
Robin and Steve just finished checking in with each other, while watching the kids gather under the trees of the Byer's backyard to talk about how much Dustin has been missing Eddie. Because sometimes that stubborn kid actually takes his advice...)
--
“Harrington!” Hopper interrupts, when Robin starts to head inside without him – Nancy and Jonathon are visible through the kitchen windows, and every time Steve sees Nancy these days it makes him stop in his tracks. Their time together during those few days in Spring Break seem like a lifetime ago, now. And all the tense ‘what-if’ moments are eclipsed by what happened, what was lost – and for some reason when he looks at her now, Steve only thinks of another person that should be there, also with wide eyes and a head full of curls. But it’s still just Nancy, with Jonathon by her side. The last ones to arrive.
The gang is all here.
((Almost.))
“Come over here. Help me with this damn grill.” Steve sees the ploy for what it is, he doesn’t know anything about grills in the slightest. But he stands beside Hopper and accepts the beer offered to him. The irony enough to draw half a smirk from his lips that might be genuine.
“I think the last time you and I were in this situation you were taking the beer away from me,” he points out as he tips back the bottle neck.
“Yeah, I don’t need you to remind me of how fast I’m aging, Harrington.” The man shuffles the burgers and chicken breasts along the searing hot grill, and then – with no preamble whatsoever, and only a slightly softer edge to his tone – he says, “Tell me about Munson.”
In four words, Hopper had requested the information Steve wished everyone else had the guts to ask. It meant so many things, between the lines, that Steve grew silent as he parsed them out. ‘Tell me how Eddie Munson got caught up in all this mess. Tell me how he handled it. Tell me who he was, when it counted the most. Who he tried to be for the kids. Tell me why he stayed involved when any sane person would have lit out of town and never looked back.’
Tell me about Eddie Munson.
Steve didn’t even know where to start.
“Did you know him?” he asks, instead, because the familiarity was hard to miss in Hopper’s question.
“Yeah, I knew that punk,” he says, a growl of a thing that almost sounds fond in a sad way, poking at the burning coals of the grill with a little more aggression. Channeling frustration, the unfairness of it all. “I’d picked him up far too many times over the years. Only had to process him once. All the rest I just dumped him in Wayne’s lap.”
He spoke of Wayne Munson like they were friends. Steve wouldn’t be surprised if they were.
“... Mr. Munson still puts up missing posters,” Steve tells him, a confidence that aches even as he speaks. Hopper looks even more angry at that. Not at them. At everything.
“He loved that kid.”
Steve looks up at the group, still huddled together. Having a moment that was giving way to memories, laughter and tears that coincide somehow in the messiness of it all.
“We all did,” Steve mutters, and Hopper is looking right at him, again. Steve has noticed this more and more with every passing ‘family’ dinner. Hop treats Steve like a man, now. An equal. He’s out of school, sure, but it probably has more to do with the fact that he’s somehow adopted six rowdy high school kids and has been taking care of them when their parents couldn’t. And as much as Steve appreciates that, it’s still difficult to level with him and have a serious conversation. To explain everything going on in the group, or in his head, when he couldn’t always make sense of it himself. No matter which way you looked at it, the whole situation was terrible. It sucked. Steve hated being the adult more than he hated being the babysitter.
Really, when it all boils down, he didn’t mind being the babysitter at all. Not after knowing what it’s like to face the consequences and have to deal with the aftermath. Dustin sobbing over Eddie on the ground, the kid not even able to walk with his messed up ankles. Steve doing CPR, time slipping through their fingers. And then… Steve having to drag Dustin away because the gate was closing.
“We didn’t even get to bring his body back,” Steve reveals, swallowing thickly. “We had to get out, I couldn’t –” he couldn’t carry both Dustin and Eddie, so he had to choose. Dustin was alive. Eddie’s body was cold.
“You did what you could, kid,” Hopper says. The far-away look in Steve’s eyes more telling than anything else the past few weeks. “No one blames you for that, not even Wayne would. Eddie was dead before you left, right?”
It’s the first time anyone has asked that question. And Steve had never questioned it before. Eddie wasn't breathing, Steve hadn't found a pulse, Dustin's words on the radio echoing in his head to this day. ((Eddie's dead.)) He’d died in Dustin’s arms, and Steve knew Dustin would have done everything possible to shake him back to life if he could. Steve had tried, battered and bruised as he was, to no avail. There was no other answer.
So why did the guilt feel like it was going to eat him alive?
“Yes, he was dead,” Steve murmurs, downing the rest of his beer and wishing it was something stronger.
–
tbc
–
Series Snippets:
- Dreamwalker (Eddie’s Story) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)
- Subconscious (Steve’s Story) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)
#as much as i enjoy writing Eddie's story - Steve's just hits me so much harder in places like this one#im having so much fun with this project#this is just a snippet#wip wednesday#Steddie#dreamwalker subconscious series#cw character death mentioned#cw grief#st spoilers for season 04#katyswriting#i have almost 60k written between the two i am so stoked for this yall#cw alcohol#ptsd steve in the house
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Hello! It's been a while since I saw this account and I read the Little Space stories from here and i love it!, You could make a Little space scenario of Little Zenitsu and Caregiver Uzui? They two are cute together and I really wanted to see that (no pressure btw :3)
“No! I don’t wanna go to bed. I’m not tired, I’m not, I’m not, I’m NOT!” Zenitsu howls like he’s dying. In reality Uzui stands a few feet away from him and simply softly suggested that he look tired.
In his fit he’s tossed accessories all over the room, subsequently ending their game off dress up. The fine robe hangs off of Zenitsu’s shoulder, partially exposing him. His face is an awful splotchy red. It looks like he’s had an allergic reaction.
Uzui wishes one of his wives were here. Not Makio actually, who’d get fed up with the screaming too quickly, but one of the others would know how to softly reassure the boy. Hinatsuru especially would know how yo approach him.
Instead Zenitsu is stuck with Tengen. He seemed happy with the man’s company mostly, which came as a surprise. Half the time Agatsuma still insisted that he hated the hashira, taunts eagerly swapped between them.
Regressed however he was much quieter and willing to follow instructions. Rarely did Zenitsu ever talk back or disobey, too happy to soak up any scrap of positive praise. Uzui tried to dole it out often. He felt bad to see how disappointed the boy got at the smallest amount of scolding. His tears weren’t of the crocodile variety, actually genuine in their sadness.
Now he felt like he had a completely different person in front of him. Zenitsu hadn’t kept on howling for too long, but still had a twisted look on his face.
“I didn’t say you had to take a nap. I just asked if you were ready to start winding down.”
“Well I’m NOT! I’m keeping playing.” To prove his point Agatsuma grabbed a handful of costume jewelry and began donning it.
“Great, but you’ll have to play on your own. I don’t like playing with boys who shout.” It was a childish move.
Zenitsu’s little face scrunched up. He let out a large wail before falling into Tengen’s lap. Clutching onto the man’s robe he proceeded to use the fabric as a sort of tissue. “Nooo! Please play wif me!” He let out another strangled noise and feel back into a fit of sobs.
It wasn’t exactly uncommon for the boy to cry, regardless of what age he felt. Tengen wasn’t swayed by the tears.
“We can play if you stop yelling.” He wasn’t too cruel, putting a reassuring hand on Zenitsu’s head. “I not making you go to bed yet so we’re not gonna cry over that.”
“O-oh, okay.” He can’t stop his crying immediately, but the noises taper off into little sobs. “and I dun’ wanna go to bed. ever.”
“Sure thing.” The kid will be asleep within an hour at most. “Can we go clean up the mess?” Beads have scattered over the floor. A necklace or two have broken.
He tries to widen his eyes. All his emotions are so plain in his features. “Will you help me?” Sticking his bottom lip out he wiggles it.
Tengen prepares himself for another possible fit. “Did I make the mess? I’m sure you’ll do fine on your own.” He waits for another scream to shatter his eardrums.
Zenitsu lets out another whimper, but surprisingly does not throw another fit. His displeasure is still clear however as he drags his feet back toward the clothes scattered on the ground. Lying down he picks up each fallen bead one at a time. Every few minutes he’ll let out an angry little noise.
“C’mon, let’s clean up properly.” Tengen moves closer, crouching beside the sullen boy. While he continues to just watch instead of helping, he does affectionately ruffle Zenitsu’s hair.
When Agatsuma just turns away the man is forced to pull out his secret weapon. “I’ll time you.”
That draws up curious eyes.
“I think the ladies will be home soon.” A lie. “I’m sure they’ll be very impressed to hear how fast you are.”
It puts an actual smile on his face. “And I get a treat?”
“Well, maybe if you’re good for the rest of the day.” Another lie, all the women adore the boy to much. They’d probably give him a treat even if he murdered Uzui.
“Ok! Start now.” Quickly Zenitsu grabs handfuls of beads and shoves them into the jewelry box. In between movements he removes some of the play necklaces. Tengen has to remind him to be careful.
“If you break another I’ll add 30 seconds to your total.” A scandalized squeal pops from the child. He moves with more caution than is necessary, though it’s better than reckless abandon. Some of them are tangled together, still dumped into the box all the sane. It’ll be a nightmare to sort through them later. Uzui might just buy new ones instead.
“How long has it been?”
“Almost a minute! You better hurry.” It was another… another lie but a useful one. The first time Zenitsu heard a number bigger than five he had cried and refused to do anything more.
“All done!” He pointed to the box which was not organized, necklaces spilling out over the sides, but all the items were technically there. “Was I fastest?”
Uzui stops his imaginary timer. “Oh wow, 48 seconds! I think that’s a new record.” He’s not as good at putting on a cheerful tone as his wives are, but it satisfies Zenitsu.
“Yay! I win I win.” He clapped his hands together. “And now we play more?”
“Oh buddy I’m kinda tired. Maybe we can do something quiet.”
“Can we color?”
Uzui was surprised at the suggestion. Though maybe he was more surprised that Zenitsu hadn’t reacted with immediate tears. “Sure. You wanna help me find the paper?”
The boy leaped up and reached for Uzui’s hand. “I already know where it is,” he declared proudly.
Tengen grunted as he brought himself off the floor. “Alright, you lead the way.” He grabbed the boy’s hand and followed him down the hall.
★彡☆彡★彡
#srry im sleepy#so no little notes#but ty for the request#age regression#age regressor#fandom agere#sfw agere#demon slayer#kny#agere requests#cglre#cg!uzui#little!zenitsu#zenitsu agatsuma#uzui tengen
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sunken lupine
cw: scars, old wounds, mention of violence/gore/blood, angst, pining (?) , “i love you’s” ouchie feelings, he’s so sad it makes me wanna squish him, gn reader
a/n: childe angst? childe angst.
wc: 1.4k
Outside winds howl in Liyue harbor, raging storms tide against the docks rogue waves crashing against the ships in a dark tide. The scent of humidity and thick spice fills the air, perfuming your room. It’s that scent of a breeze before the storm, the freshness that lingers before it pours. Thick candlelight flickers inside painted lanterns, waxy waning shadows dance across your bedroom.
You stand in front of Tartaglia, his body partially bare. He’s revealing himself to you, in the pallid glow moonlit window. His warmed tanned skin so nice under your fingertips, the dotted freckled spattering making him look more boyish than he’s ever cared to admit.
He’s so heavily scarred.
“You can touch them.” He mumbles, eyes raking over your body in a trust that you don’t often see. His conviction is his downfall, you’ve come to realize. The years of faith built up and put into the Tsaritsa, they’ve cost him.
His body marred from years of hard labor and brutal violence. A beautifully large burn rests on his shoulder, his old commanding officer never did go easy on him. The tissue is thick and leathery now and you run the pads of your fingers over the bumpy reddish skin. Tartaglia never once flinches away.
His pain doesn’t stop there. There are rigid scars that cascade his body, the faded flesh strikes up and down his skin like lightning. He tells you small stories for each when you point to them. The startling massive one on his abdomen is from his early days in the abyss, learning to fight tooth and nail. Clawing his way up until he returned, only to be sent away once more. You inhale shakily at the sight, blinking away the heavy tears that burn your eyes. He’s been gutted, stabbed, and sliced over and over.
You place your palm over it, feeling him breathe under your hand. The subtle inhale-exhale that he does, the toned abdomen still feeling like moldable clay in your palms, human. He places his own hand over yours, smoothing a thumb over the back, pressing it into the healed scar tissue, there you feel it better. The rigid bumpy lines healed yet were not forgotten.
“It’s okay, I’m alive.” He whispers softly and you nod with a tremble of your chin, moving on to the other marks. Tiny flickers of shadows painted across the bedroom walls, the candlelight burns an orange glow between your bodies.
His lashes flutter against his cheeks at your soft touch, it’s the only relief he’s gotten in a while. Since he’s been sent to this foreign land and made to deceive, been told to kill and lie, all for the sake of his homeland.
The way you draw your hands across his body, not like he’s one of Dottore’s experiments or as a weapon the abyss claims him to be, but like he’s fragile, a waterlily in a pond - he wants to shatter beneath the crushing weight of it all. So he stands as still as a milillith soldier, rigid and unmoving, pretending this is not making him want to crumple into your arms and release the sob wrenched in his throat, he holds it in.
Auburn streaks fall across his temple, tumbling down the back of his neck, his hair has grown longer since he’s left home. He’ll ask you to cut it soon enough. He wonders idly how long Teucer’s hair has gotten, have mother and father cut it yet? He misses him. He misses all his siblings.
You move on to the glossy thick scar on his deltoid. He says it’s from being stabbed by a treasure hoarder, some mangled old man who swung at him and got him in his shoulder.
“He got me good too.” He recounts with a snort, saying that it was below freezing in Snezhnaya as he dragged himself into a frosted cave to stitch it up. He doesn’t tell you how he killed the man, how he pulled out his blade and twisted it into the thief’s throat with blown pupils and a snarled lip. He only recounts shakily pressing a carved pointed bone with a thread of his coat through the marred bloodied flesh.
He chuckles as he relives these stories, fingers flirting with the seam of your garments. Tartaglia looks away for most of it, eyes drifting off in this haze, looking into the opaque corners of the room as the memories spill into his mind and he tells you his stories; of his homeland, his people, his family. You take it all in with solemn nods and hums, listening to his words. Each one dripping from his mouth like honey, so saccharine it’s almost bittersweet and too much for you to handle.
You draw your hands up and down his torso, coming up to the sinewy tight muscle of his shoulders, he’s so wound up. He won’t tell you this, but he deeply appreciates that you don’t look at him differently. The marks of a warrior can be hard, visceral, and bitter. Yet, you still look at him like he’s the most beautiful boy you know.
Tartaglia doesn’t know why but at that very moment, it hits him. The culmination of it all has him gagging down his own tears and clenching his fists so tight he white-knuckles it. He looks down at you through watery lashes,
"Do you love me?" He shifts his weight, leaning down to press his forehead against the crown of your skull. Whispering it softly into your ear, the words curl over your spine and you shudder at his reserved tone.
Your brows furrow and your mouth parts, the soft skin of your cheeks pulling together as you gape at him. He tucks a lip between his teeth, a burn settles behind his corneas, his vision watering as inhales deeply. You cup your hands, those soft delicate hands that have never once committed the same atrocious acts he has, and you smooth your thumbs over his cheeks, white faded lines mark his face in peppered kisses.
“I love you,” you whisper, voice wispy and true. “I love you so much, you deserve all of Celestia and more.”
There’s a tightness in his throat and an ache in his stomach he can’t place, he feels it deep in his bones. Much like the wounds, their fleshed out and left raw on his heart. His chin wobbles, teeth clenching stacked against the molars in his mouth. This pain is inside, flaring along the walls of his chest and up to his spine.
“I-“ He chokes on his saliva, watery ocean pupils swimming in so much pain that you frown in sympathy, cupping the back of his neck and pulling him forward, letting his face tucked into the crook of your neck. Oh, how he inhales your scent, the fresh fruit of Liyue, spiced tea, and wildflower. It’s so warm, so warm. He clings to you like you’re an anchor, brawny arms wrapping around your waist and falling into you.
He cries, the bubbling in his chest spilling over as he sobs into your arms. You cocoon him within your embrace, shushing his cries and rocking him back and forth as though he were a child. You don’t mind the wet tears that coat your collarbone. You smooth a hand into his nape, playing with the russet strands on his neck, and hum. You hum the only lullaby you know, a small sweet little thing from when you were growing up.
It works, the sobs reducing to sniffles and the harbinger bringing his face up from your neck. Eyes bloodshot with a flushed face, you kiss his temple as he stands. He leans into it, holding you close for just a few minutes longer. You know he’ll leave soon, whether it be to discuss with Fatui or to collect information for his Tsarita, you know your time is limited.
The two of you don’t need to talk about it, words don’t need to be shared about this experience. It simply happened and simply is. You understand him well enough to know that he’ll go on holding the weight of the world on his shoulders until it gets too heavy, and you have to remind him you’re there to share that weight. Never telling him to put it down or to give it up, but that you’ll bear that burden with him.
Maybe this is enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom...is realizing how small you are, and unwise, and how far you have yet to go.
So you take him as he is, and he does the same.
#genshin x reader#genshin impact x reader#tartaglia x reader#childe x reader#tartaglia angst#childe angst#genshin angst#genshin impact angst#tartaglia x you#childe x you
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My thoughts on the Owl House finale
So you guys got the silent treatment from me for a while, sorry about that lol. I’m finally back (sorta) to briefly talk about the Owl House Finale, and I might dive deeper into analyses and shit as a future video on my YouTube channel. I’ll talk both about what I didn’t like, and what I did like in that order so we can end this post on a good note. Here we go!
If you click keep reading, you’re okay with seeing spoilers for watching and dreaming.
I didn’t like:
Not getting to know more about the whole Caleb - Belos - Evelyn - Hunter situation. Hunter still doesn’t know that Flapjack used to be Caleb’s/Evelyn’s palisman, that he is technically related to the Clawthornes, or that Caleb stopped being a witch hunter since he legit dated one. I would have given an organ to live in a universe where in the five seasons this show deserved, there would have been an episode where idk, Hunter would have communed with the dead and got moral support from great great great great great [...] Grandpa Caleb and Grandma Evelyn.
The close to no explanation as to why the Titan was trapped in that in-between space, why was Luz here and not actually dead, and why couldn’t he use the last of his magic to go back himself. We don’t know a lot about papa titan and it’s sad because I really like him. The past of the boiling isles as a whole is still a very abstract concept, even the characters don’t know a lot about it, or the truth anyway.
Willow’s body in the time skip. Now I believe this is the point where people are rolling their eyes at me, but that’s okay I stand by what I’m about to say. If you write in representation in any piece of media you are creating, you can’t just write it out afterwards. Allow me, a mid-sized girl with a body shape similar to pre-time skip Willow, to deconstruct the arguments used against the people who spoke out about it. “Isn’t losing weight a good thing?” --> It depends on why someone lost weight, but in Willow’s case, no since she isn’t a real person. She’s fat rep. She was written to be fat to represent fat people, especially potential fat kids who watch the owl house and want to see people like them on screen. “She works out everyday, and she’s a flyer derby player, of course she lost weight” Skinny ≠ healthy + Fat ≠ unhealthy. You can be fat and an amazing athlete. Wrestlers are often fat and it gives them an advantage. You can be fat and also have visible muscles in other parts of your body like your legs or arms. If she was a real person, that wouldn’t be a problem obviously, but she’s not. The only reason she is fat is for us to have representation and see ourselves on screen. We would have went crazy if a tv show announced that the main character is a lesbian, only that in the final season she starts dating a man because she found out she was just confused or some shit. That’s basically what happened with Willow. Anyway, much love to the animators who tried to fix the damage and draw her with an accurate body type in some scenes here and there of the time skip.
What I did like:
Belos’ death. A pathetic death for a pathetic man. The panic settling in him as he slowly realises that there is no way out for him, the last futile attempt at fooling someone in hopes of getting his power back, the growing frustration the more he understands he has truly lost all control over everything, even his own body, while still refusing to admit he inflicted this fate upon himself for absolutely no logical reason. He isn’t given a death where he breaks down and sees the error of his ways with terror as the end closes in on him, no. He is crushed, much like his dreams of being the brave martyr witch hunter general who saved humanity through any way possible.
Luz’s death. A slow, quiet, painful yet still beautiful moment that she somehow accepted. Much like Luz, no one knew what to say, and the small moment where we didn’t know what would happen to her were genuine torture. I’m a sucker for MC’s who die but not really (Hi Anne, Adora, Magnus, Hazel and now Luz.)
Papa Titan. Follow up, Papa titan being genderqueer/nonbinary idk, a Quing.
The fact that there is a way for Luz to go back to the boiling isles and the human realm. Really happy they didn’t pull a second amphibia parallel lol.
LILIT’S HARPY LOOK AAAAAAH-
Alador x Darius, I see you (Darius’ blush, him shaking Alador like a ragdoll). I have a thing for ships that barely get talked about in canon and are about old gays.
WAFFLES ToT
Amity’s new hair. Some of my friends don’t like it but oh well. The little Grom Queen crown crystals fit her.
THE COUPLES EXCHANGING JEWELRY
The ending scene. We got to see Luz’s quince (kinda, I still would have loved a full episode but oh well). The fourth wall break where everyone says bye to the collector but also to us, seeing all the characters we’ve loved for years grouped together to celebrate this. It’s bittersweet, mostly sweet.
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A Search for Balance
CHAPTER 19: SPARK A FIRE
Find the masterlist with all chapters of this story here, the previous chapter here, and the next one here.
Tagging: @flareshogwarts
Warning: language, alcohol, discussion of manipulative behaviour, explicit NSFW content
Orion had stayed at the training grounds longer than the rest of the team. He had hoped that tiring himself to the point of exhaustion would be enough to quiet his thoughts, but - like so often lately - he had eventually dragged himself home with a heavy body and a restless head.
He knew the root of his unrest, of course, but when his restiveness wouldn’t stop even after taking a long shower and a cup of tea, Orion forced himself to sit, push away his daydreams, and turn his focus on the inside.
He sat between the opened double doors to the garden with his legs crossed underneath him and the cold November wind prickling on his skin. The moon was still hanging low in the sky, but soon it would rise to eventually give way to the golden light of the sun. It was a dance that was repeated every day, two lovers destined to be near and yet apart forever.
The thought made Orion sad. Neither he nor Lizzie had spoken about what had happened on his birthday, but something seemed to have changed since then. Lizzie still made sure to keep her distance from him, but she had become more relaxed, livelier, more like she had been before…
He forced himself to stop right there. Thinking about Lizzie in that way was leading nowhere, but the way her smile had been making his heart beat faster lately was worryingly familiar, just like it had been when he had first fallen in love with her. Despite everything, he hadn’t been able to stay away from her back then, and it seemed that he still wasn’t able to now.
Realising that his thoughts were straying, Orion exhaled, his breath forming as a cloud in front of his mouth. He watched it ascend, imagining his troubles rising up into the starry sky along with it.
He was about to settle deeper into the stillness of his mind when a sudden knock on the door distracted him yet again. With a sigh, Orion went to see who was disturbing him now, but when he saw who it was standing on his doorstep, his wonder turned into confusion.
“Lizzie?” he asked in astonishment. “What can I do for you?”
Lizzie jumped, as if her thoughts had been somewhere else entirely. She had a haunted look about her, her body constantly shifting from one side to the other. Her eyes were red and puffy, and dark streaks of make-up were staining her cheeks. Slowly, as if not to startle her, Orion stepped to the side.
“Do you want to come in?”
Snapping from whatever was going through her head, Lizzie nodded slowly. As she passed him, Orion could feel how agitated she was, like the string of a guitar so taut that it was close to snapping.
He led her into the living room, where she just stood, seemingly unsure of what to do. When Orion offered to take her coat, she flinched from his touch, then slowly shrugged it off herself and handed it to him. Underneath, she was wearing the same jumper she had after practice, but now there was an angry bruise on her skin right above her collarbone. Orion drew a sharp breath.
“What happened?” he asked her with a pressed voice. “Lizzie, who did this?”
Lizzie didn’t answer him for a long moment. Then, all the tension seemed to leave her body at once. She clapped her hand in front of her mouth and burst into tears.
“It’s Matthew,” she cried, her words barely intelligible between her sobs. “He found my keepsake box with your old shirt and all the letters, and he read them all, and then he snapped at me and said he’d burn everything, so I threatened him with my wand, and now he’s mad at me, and I don’t know how everything just went so wrong!”
Her words had tumbled from her mouth in a hectic rush. Not sure how to comfort her, Orion put his arm around her shoulders, ready to draw back at a moment’s notice should he overstep his mark.
“Matthew did this?” he asked quietly, struggling to keep his voice level.
“He was so angry with me,” Lizzie replied miserably, wiping at her eyes with the ball of her hand. “I told him to leave, and then he gripped my shoulder so hard it hurt. He’s never been this furious with me before. Oh, I’m going to be in so much trouble for this.”
Her crying intensified at her last words, each of her sobs cutting into Orion’s heart. He had never liked Matthew - for more than the obvious reasons - but knowing that he had raised a hand against Lizzie was too much, even for him.
“You won’t be in trouble,” he told her, softly but firmly. “I will not let him hurt you, I promise. Where is he now?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know either,” Lizzie shuddered. “Wait, where are you going?”
Orion had let go and stepped away from her. “I’m going to find him.”
“Orion, no, wait! Please!”
He was almost past her when Lizzie’s hand on his shoulder made him stop.
“Don’t go,” she whispered so quietly that he could scarcely hear her. “Don’t leave me alone. Not again.”
His fury fanned out at the pain in her voice. Acutely aware of how close she was to him, Orion closed his eyes.
“What do you want from me, Lizzie?”
Her laugh was shaky. “A hug would be really nice right now.”
No sooner had she finished speaking that he turned and wrapped his arms around her. He held her close as she began to cry again, doing his best to push aside the fluttery feeling in his chest. This was not the time; Lizzie had come looking for a friend, and he would make sure not to let her down again.
After a while, Lizzie’s shoulders stopped shaking but even after she had ceased crying altogether, she didn’t move away from him. The two of them just stood there without speaking, the moment was too fragile for words.
Eventually, Lizzie raised her head away from his chest. Tears were still glistening in her eyes, but there was a spark in them as she looked at him. Her eyes dropped to his lips, and Orion held his breath as…
“Orion, are you home?”
The sound of a voice in the hallway had them hastily break apart. They stepped away from each other just as Morgaine walked into the living room. Orion took a subtle step to the side, blocking her view of Lizzie hurriedly wiping the tear stains from her face.
“Sorry, the door was open,” Morgaine said, looking between Orion and Lizzie with her eyebrows raised. “I thought it was alright if I came in.”
“My door is always open for friends,” Orion said cheerfully, despite his heart beating in his ears. “What can I do for you, Morgaine?”
“I really could use some more help with this balancing thing.” She craned her head, trying to catch a glimpse of Lizzie behind Orion’s back. “Looks like I wasn’t the only one with this idea. Or what else would she be doing here?”
“I could ask you the same,” Lizzie said stiffly as she stepped out from behind Orion’s back. Her eyes were still puffy, but she had regained most of her composure.
“Clean out your ears. I need Orion’s help.”
“And I’m sure the prospect of him holding your hand had nothing to do with why you couldn't wait until tomorrow.”
“What do you even care?” Morgaine snapped. “At least I’m here because I want to improve my actual gameplay. Not sure what kind of game it is you’re playing at, though.”
“I needed someone to talk to,” Lizzie replied hotly. “Stop making assumptions when you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The only one making assumptions here is you. I just know what I saw.”
“Flared tempers are not the ground to solve differences,” Orion cut in before Lizzie could reply. “As members of the same team, unity should be our most precious good to uphold. Of course I will help you with your training, Morgaine. Tomorrow,” he added, wiping the triumphant look from Morgaine’s face. “For now, I suggest you go and find the calm that lies within your centre. There can’t be balance when your heart is ruled by passion.”
Morgaine looked at him in disbelief. “Are you telling me to get lost?”
“That’s not what I said.”
”No, you didn’t,” she snorted in response. “I do hope you know what you’re getting yourself into here, though.”
She turned on her heel and stalked from the room. Once the door had slammed shut behind her, Orion exhaled slowly. Next to him, Lizzie awkwardly cleared her throat.
“I had better go, too,” she mumbled with her eyes fixed to the ground. “I need to find Matthew and sort this mess. Thank you for… you know. And sorry about your shirt,” she added with a feeble smile, nodding at the dark stain on Orion’s chest.
“You don’t have to leave if you don’t want to,” Orion shook his head. “That’s what friends are for, aren’t they?”
“They are,” Lizzie echoed. “That’s what friends do, being there for each other.”
She looked between Orion and the door as if she were unsure of whether or not she should stay. He knew it would probably be better if she left, but - selfish as it was - Orion found that he didn’t want her to.
“You really don’t mind me staying for a bit longer?” Lizzie eventually said with a small voice. “I don’t know where Skye has gone, and I don’t want to be by myself right now.”
“Stay for as long as you like,” Orion smiled at her. “Can I offer you something to drink?”
Lizzie sighed heavily. “That’s probably the best thing I’ve been asked today.”
Despite himself, Orion had to laugh. “I was thinking more about a cup of tea.”
The colour rose to Lizzie’s cheeks, but there was a guilty smile playing around her lips as she mumbled, “Of course you did.”
When Orion returned from the kitchen with two cups of green tea, Lizzie had already settled on the sofa. They didn’t talk about what had happened as they drank, and gradually, Lizzie’s smile became less hesitant and her gestures more lively again. With the terrace doors still open, the room had grown cold, so after they had moved from the sofa to the ground in front of the fireplace, Orion went to exchange their tea cups for two glasses of Firewhiskey.
“That’s not the awful brew from your birthday, is it?” Lizzie wanted to know as Orion handed her a glass.
“No,” he shook his head and took a sip from his drink. The rich taste unfurled in his mouth and warmed him from the inside. “I keep this one for special occasions.”
“More special than your birthday?”
“What could be more special than cheering up a friend?”
Lizzie hummed in response, her lips resting on the rim of her glass without drinking. She watched the fire with a sad look around her eyes. After another moment of silence, she put her glass down altogether.
“The way Matthew reacted today… I never knew he could be like that. How he switched from sad to angry just like that, it was almost scary.” She shook her head, not taking her eyes off the dancing flames. “He’s changed so much lately. He’s been obsessed with the wedding for a while, but it’s been getting worse. I asked him to slow down and relax, but he just won’t listen.”
Orion nodded, guarding his face carefully. “His love for you is burning strongly.”
A flicker of defiance crossed Lizzie’s face. “Matthew loves me, and I love him. I really do. I didn’t want to get into another relationship so soon after… well. I went out with the odd guy, nothing serious, but when I met Matthew, it was like being swept off my feet. He was so accommodating, cultured, and charming, like he’d stepped right out of a fairytale.”
“He sure sounds like it.”
“We hit it off straight away. For the first time since you had left, I was happy - really happy. I had never thought I would want to get married so early, but…”
Her voice tailed off, and Orion chose his next words carefully. “You got engaged very quickly, indeed.”
“Maybe too quickly. I don’t know.”
Orion’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “So you didn’t want to marry him?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Lizzie replied hurriedly. “I was just taken by surprise, that’s all. I would have thought he’d wait a bit longer to propose.”
“Why did you accept if you weren’t ready?”
Lizzie shrugged. “I didn’t have much of a choice. Matthew asked me at one of his parents’ parties, in front of all the guests.” Her face softened. “He looked so happy when he got to his knees, so hopeful. How could I say no to him without breaking his heart?”
Her fingers, which had been fiddling the ends of her ponytail, stopped and her face took on a stubborn look. “And I did want to marry him - I still do - so what was the point in waiting either? It’s what I wanted, too.”
Orion didn’t answer. Matthew’s proposal didn’t sound like the big, romantic gesture Lizzie was making it out to be. To him, it looked like Matthew had used Lizzie’s good-heartedness to build the first bars of her golden cage without anybody noticing.
Knowing she was waiting for his reply, Orion pulled himself together. He had his own opinion of Lizzie’s fiancé, but it wasn’t his place to tell her that.
“If your heart told you accepting his hand was the right thing to do, you are following the path the universe has intended for you. There is no need for doubt.”
“I’m not sure if it was my heart I listened to that day,” Lizzie said thoughtfully. “See, Matthew has this gift of making people think that what they want is the same thing he wants. He would never do this to me, of course,” she added quickly when she saw the look on Orion’s face. “Or, so I thought. I’m not so sure anymore now. Maybe there’s a side to him I didn’t know. That seems to be a pattern with me.”
She sounded so defeated that Orion had to fight the urge to reach out to her, but he knew that she was talking about him as much as about Matthew now. They had rebuilt their friendship on a base of unanswered questions - a fragile foundation if Orion had ever seen one. It had only been a matter of time until Lizzie would demand her answers from him; he had only hoped that it wouldn’t be today.
“Relationships are much like snowflakes,” he said in the hopes of gaining some time. “They may appear similar at first, but if you look at them a little more closely, you’ll see that none are ever quite the same.”
Lizzie firmly sat her glass down and turned to him. “Orion, no, we’re not doing this. This is not a conversation you can talk yourself out of. I want you to tell me why you left me, so I can finally move on from all of this and fix my life!”
Orion held her eyes before looking thoughtfully into the fire. Lizzie had a point, he decided. If anything, she deserved his honesty. He owed her that much.
“I didn’t only run from you,” he said quietly towards the flickering flames, “I ran from you as much as from myself.”
“But why?”
The little crack in Lizzie’s voice was worse than if she had shouted at him. Orion turned his glass in his hands, watching the firelight dance over the smooth surface.
“The year I spent in Montrose was hard, harder than I had imagined. I missed you… Merlin, I missed you so much. A bitter irony, don’t you think? There I was, living my dream, yet every time I flew onto the Quidditch pitch, it was like only half my heart was there. I had lost all my balance, and it soon began to show.
“The universe was kind when it led you to Wigtown instead of Montrose,” he continued, after having taken a sip of his whiskey. The alcohol burned down his throat and made the words come easier. “The Magpies’ flock flies fast and without looking back. I was a fledgling overestimating his own strength, too inexperienced to see that I was falling behind until it was too late. I was scared of how much I depended on you to be who I was. If everything that makes you is at the mercy of another, who are you once they’re gone?
“The only way to find my way back to myself was to strip my life to the core. I didn’t know where my path would lead me when I left, only that it had to be away from Montrose, and from you.”
Orion let his head fall back against the foot of the sofa, his eyes lingering on the picture of him, Skye and Lizzie on the mantelpiece.
“I travelled the world without aim until I thought I had found my fate in India,” Orion continued. “I stayed there for over a year, looking for answers to questions I didn’t know I had. I built a life on the other side of the world, but believe me, I never stopped missing you, not even once.”
It was quiet when he was done. Lizzie had let him speak without interruption, her knees drawn into her chest and the look on her face more hurt than anything Orion had ever seen.
“And did you?” she eventually asked with a breathy voice. “Did you find your answers?”
“I found what I needed to find. You have to understand that I never meant to hurt you. It pains me that I did, but it doesn’t change that I had to go.”
Lizzie swallowed heavily. “I wish you had stayed away. I hate that you came back.”
She suddenly turned to him, her eyes burning with something that took Orion a moment to recognise: desperation.
“I made something good from what you left behind,” she said fiercely. “I have a career and a name, and I worked my butt off for it. What made you think you could jump back into my life and make me want to throw everything away?”
Orion was taken aback by her sudden fury. “I never asked you to throw away anything for me.”
Lizzie exhaled sharply, a sound somewhere between a sob and a bitter laugh.
“That’s the worst thing about it - you didn’t even need to. You came and messed with me like it’s nothing to you. I had everything under control and now I don’t know Snitch from Quaffle anymore, and you make me want to do things I shouldn’t want to be doing, and what even gave you the bloody right?”
She had leaned forward while she spoke, with every word a little further. She was close to him now, so close that Orion could smell her perfume and the scent of Firewhiskey on her breath. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.
“And what kind of things would that be?”
“Who cares?” Lizzie said, her breath brushing over Orion’s skin. “There’s nothing left between us anymore.”
“Nothing,” Orion echoed, his voice reduced to a whisper. She locked eyes with him, the blue of them deep and dark as the stormy sea.
“Nothing at all.”
He could feel her words more than he heard them as Lizzie closed the distance between them and brushed her lips against his. A shiver went through him as the butterflies in his stomach took flight, spreading into his chest, his arms, legs, every inch of his body.
They broke apart, Orion’s heart racing as their eyes met. For a moment, neither of them moved before their lips connected a second time in an almost desperate way. Lizzie slung her arms around his neck, her hands wandering from Orion’s neck up the back of his head, where she buried her fingers in his hair, stirring memories he had kept well hidden away.
When they paused for air, he searched her face for any sign of hesitancy or regret, but Lizzie moved in again with a fire that took his breath away. Her tongue brushed his lower lip and he let her in, the taste of her burning away every remaining bit of doubt.
As Lizzie shifted her weight to move onto his lap, Orion’s hands came to rest on her waist, where they fit as perfectly as he remembered. He ran his fingers through her hair, and she impatiently reached up and pulled her hair tie from it. Her curls tumbled over her shoulders and his hands, their scent of jasmine and mint deliciously intoxicating. She moved her hands from his shoulders and down his chest, where they slipped underneath his shirt and travelled upwards again.
Feeling reach for the buckle of his belt, Orion was brought back to his senses. He caught hold of her wrists and gently pushed her away.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said, his words a raspy whisper. “You don’t really want this.”
Lizzie’s eyes hardened. “I know what I want.” Her lips brushed from Orion’s mouth to his ear, making him hold his breath. “And something tells me that you want it, too.”
“You’re upset,” he said, hating himself for wishing that she’d go on. “I don’t want you to regret this.”
“Go ahead then,” Lizzie whispered, leaning in just far enough for her lips to barely touch his. “Tell me to stop.”
Orion opened his mouth to do exactly that, but instead, he pulled her in again, capturing her lips in a searing kiss. The stubble of his beard grazed her skin as he pulled her jumper over her head, making her draw a shuddering breath as he kissed the spot on her neck where her pulse was racing.
His shirt went next, their kiss only broken for the time it took Lizzie to rid him of it. There was a spark in her eyes as she took in the pictures covering his arms and chest. The way she bit her lower lip as her fingers danced along the inked lines made Orion want to claim them all over again.
As his mouth followed the curve of her neck dowards, he noticed that there was a tattoo on the side of her rib cage as well, one he had never seen before. It was two words written in a cursive font, the letters artfully intertwined with each other. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but his curiosity faded at the small gasp Lizzie made as he traced the lines with the tip of his tongue.
He laid her down on the soft carpet as he explored her body with his lips. Savouring how she held her breath as he kissed her collarbone, he lingered there for a sweet moment before continuing towards her breasts, over her stomach, and further down from there. He brushed along the insides of her thighs with fingers and mouth, tracing the outline of her pants before she directed him to where she wanted to feel him most.
Orion paused, casting a last, questioning look at her. Lizzie had propped herself up on her elbows, her cheeks flushed and lips parted as she waited for him to continue. Her eyes were wild, impatient and told him everything he needed to hear - go on.
Lizzie arched her back to meet him as he drove her towards the edge and over it, the sounds she made sweeter than music to Orion’s ears. As he raised his face away from her trembling body, it didn’t need her half-pleading, half-demanding look to tell him what it was that she wanted from him.
Orion let her kiss him again, hungrily and with fire in her touch as she pulled him in. He waited until she had adjusted to him, leaving it to her to set the pace. She began to move, almost salaciously slow, but their rhythm quickly sped up until everything but the feeling of her skin against his was driven from Orion’s mind.
Their passion grew from a flame into a wildfire, like a desperate fever threatening to consume them both. They moved together in unison, their bodies remembering each other as if neither time nor heartbreak had ever gone down between them. The fire coursing through Orion’s veins spread from his hands to her skin, from her lips to his body, until he felt like they were burning, each set ablaze by the other’s touch.
Lizzie cried out as reached her high a second time, her nails digging into Orion’s skin. The feeling of her tightening around him was enough to send him over the edge as well, his body shaking as he buried his face against her neck.
As their heartbeats slowed, the tension gradually left his shoulders. Lizzie’s lips pulled into a soft, exhausted smile as she raised her face to kiss him once more. Orion broke away from her to say something, but she shook her head.
“Let’s not talk now,” she whispered, her thumb running over his cheek as lightly as a feather.
Following her wish, Orion extended his arm to pull some cushions and a blanket from the sofa behind them. Holding her in his arms next to the glowing embers, he soon began to feel drowsy. Pressing a one last kiss to Lizzie’s forehead, Orion sank back into her embrace, allowing sleep to finally take him.
#hphm#hogwarts mystery#harry potter hogwarts mystery#quidditch#orion amari#orion amari x mc#lizzie jameson#skye parkin#balance series#search for balance#sfb
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(Random Ask) I see one of Gia’s hobbies is drawing. Has he always been good at it or was it very much a learned skill? What kind of art style does he have?
Gia has always done something with his hands, but drawing itself wasn't among those kinds of activities before he was taken from Golmore and got a fancy new life. At that point he started picking up hobbies to kill the time with, and drawing was one of the ones that were considered harmless enough to be allowed to him.
He actually showed his sketchbook to Ilya, so in an effort to not contradict myself, here is what's been established of what he draws:
His sketchbook, though… That was another matter entirely. Whatever Gia thought of allowing Ilya to look at it, if anything, he didn’t show, but his drawings… Some were done in ink, others in black chalk, but they all told something.
Landscapes. Many, many lands were represented, from the seasons of Garlemald to the varying scenery of the Far East, and yet to arid Ala Mhigo and others.
What wasn’t included? Golmore.
Scenes. Garlean soldiers standing in orderly rows, Garlean soldiers during downtime, training, eating, making merry, suffering in a camp after a defeat in a battle. Garleans, Garleans, Garleans—and a few of a scenic farm with its fields and barn, farmhouse and fields and animals. A family, again marked Garlean by their third eyes, sitting and smiling around a table.
What was missing? Anything that would have tied to Golmore.
Portraits. A woman with a scythe, Imperial soldiers of various ranks in their armors that robbed them of all identity, and one face drawn over and over and over again—not handsome, not ugly, merely average in looks. Sometimes smiling, sometimes neutral, other times haughty or twisted in anger.
Not a single Viera among them.
And whether he’d liked it or not, his emotions had spilled onto the pages in the strokes of whichever tool he had been using at the time. Sometimes they were light, intentional, careful, but often they were too thick, too dark, too heavily pressed into to pages, angrily scribbled onto them. Or perhaps it wasn’t always anger.
Perhaps, but emotion it was all the same.
Memories and indirect feelings—indirect too in what was missing entirely.
In what hurt too badly to create onto the pages.
So he uses ink and chalk, but he also said the following: “And I never learned to work with color. I’m only any good in monotone. Oh, and don’t ask me to paint.”
And then for how long he's been drawing for and what his skill at the start was:
“Thank you,” he smiled to the compliment, a bit of a playful note in his voice. “I have a vivid memory and a few years of practice behind me.” Almost twenty-six years’ worth of it, to be exact. Imagine if he hadn’t improved any in that time! “You should have seen my first attempts. They were so sad.”
Basically, Gia has a solid grasp of stuff like shapes, light, and shadow, but no understanding of color, and not enough ambition or interest to learn to work with color. He has a slight preference for drawing scenes, but enjoys portraits and landscapes too.
Generally, though, he strictly draws what he's seen. He doesn't start scribbling fantasy animals or anything like that, and while he does rely on memory to augment what he's using as a reference, he doesn't use imagination a hell of a lot. What he draws tends to be strictly tied to reality and realism, and not overtly stylized. You're still likely to recognize his work as his, it does have enough of a personal touch, but as a whole, he doesn't get wild and experimental.
Which rather reflects his struggles as a whole. He doesn't know how to allow himself freedom, and that might be a big force behind how and what he draws as well.
#asks#shadesofblades#headcanons#thank you for the ask!!!#took me a few days to get to 'cause i needed to hunt down the relevant passages from past writing lmao
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tumblr year in review—but only the interesting parts!
I posted 4,072 times in 2022. That's 3,137 more posts than 2021! (yeah, because I joined tumblr in August 2021. Looks like my posting actually slowed down this year!
595 posts created (15%)
3,477 posts reblogged (85%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@swinging-stars-from-satellites
@lovesodeepandwideandwell
@thatfriendlyanon
@bluesidedown
@called-kept
many other very beloved friends!
I tagged 3,787 of my posts in 2022
Only 7% of my posts had no tags
#art - 193 posts (I've mostly stopped using that tag now. It was too broad... as you can tell :P)
#aesthetic - 147 posts (sounds about right)
#batfam - 144 posts (y u p)
#strange redemption intertextuality - 140 posts (NICE. finding these quotes is one of the most fun parts of tumblr to me.)
#yes - 110 posts (listen, I just REALLY AGREE with a lot of things!)
#on living softly - 101 posts (huh! neat!)
#mob-blogging - 99 posts (I didn't think I posted THAT much mob, but okay!)
#ahahahaha - 91 posts (yeah I like laughing in tag form)
#tim drake - 90 posts (blorbo <3<3<3)
#god's beasts - 87 posts (YEAH BABY. CREATURES)
My Top Posts in 2022:
Humans are essentially homesick for heaven. (I still stand by that, even though having a post I wrote in a feverish sort of haze going everywhere was kind of anxiety-inducing.)
Throgmorten drawing (hims grumpy :3)
HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH explanation (very sweet! I love that it got reblogged a lot)
Jason Todd and Tim Drake comparison (cool! I liked that!)
"Every writer should have readers who never point out flaws about their work". (Hnnn. Some sad things happened with that post. Oh well, I still stand by that idea!)
#5
I say this with the sincerest belief: every writer should have someone who never points out flaws about their work, ever, and that they trust to never do that, ever.
Writers should also have people who do point out flaws about their work, of course, because that’s how their work can get better.
But!! For the emotional ability of writers to keep writing, to believe that their writing is worth doing, it is essential to have safe-haven readers. People we can take writing to and know they’ll remind us why we write.
Readers and commenters can fill different needs: improving writing, and ensuring writing.
189 notes - Posted April 28, 2022
#4
Jason is too OPEN. Tim is too GUARDED. They have the same emotions (YOU ARE FAMILY I LOVE YOU I AM HURT AND LONELY) but they deal with them in two ways:
Jason: he’s an open book, a bleeding heart, a scream of defiance & pain & rage. He takes all his giant emotions and pours them out in a river in front of his loved ones’ feet and DEMANDS answers. He burns his bridges before others can burn them because he is saying LOOK AT THIS, IT’S RUINED, RIGHT? IT’S RUINED, RIGHT? —not realizing that, if he hadn’t set the bridges on fire, they would have still been there—broken, maybe, damaged, but still there, still fixable.
Tim: he’s a closed book, a chained-up heart, a locked jaw, a stifled scream. He takes his emotions and tells them river, run in your proper course and do not leave that course; don’t you dare flood. He lets his bridges rot because if he says “this bridge is getting worn down” too often, he will be acknowledging that something is wrong with him. What if his loved ones tell him that he’s at fault for letting their bridges fall into disrepair again? What if, even worse, they decide that the bridge is an eyesore and decide to remove it altogether? No, no, no, better to isolate himself on his island and just keep the structure of the bridges intact enough for him to survive. No need to call attention to their state of decay.
213 notes - Posted September 22, 2022
#3
If I tell you “HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY” this is what I mean, btw. I’m not drunk, I promise. (image description under the cut)
[begin image description. A page from Winnie the Pooh. It has an illustration of Owl biting a pencil. It says:
“Can you read, Pooh?” he asked, a little anxiously. “There’s a notice about knocking and ringing outside my door, which Christopher Robin wrote. Could you read it?”
“Christopher Robin told me what it said, and then I could.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what this says, and then you’ll be able to.”
So Owl wrote... and this is what he wrote:
HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA
BTHUTHDY.
end image description.]
222 notes - Posted June 6, 2022
#2
Throgmorten, the Asheth Temple Cat and thoroughly cranky beast. Look out, or he’ll tear strips off you!
295 notes - Posted January 23, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
Humans are essentially homesick for heaven and lonely for God. Or vice versa. We want a person so big that we can sink into them like a bedroom and a bedroom so lovely it embraces us like a friend.
477 notes - Posted June 2, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
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Silent Princess
⳾*⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*❀⑅*⳾
No. The taste of acid burns in his throat, bitter. His stomach sits so upset, he almost throws up, forced to keep a calm, royal demeanor. No. No. It’s not fair. It’s… tears sting burning his eyes as he blinks them away.
He just wants to help…
XxX
“Killua. Enough!”
His father never used that tone on him. He was often cold and harsh, but…
He can’t help but flinch in retaliation. Digging his nails into the royal blue sleeves of his gown.
“This can help!”
This technology! He knows it can! It’s so much better than dumb magical powers. A bitter thought.
“You cannot keep shirking your responsibilities! You are the only one who can seal Meruem!“
Shirking? Him? He knows more than anyone…! What he has to do…! The frustration builds in his chest, the tears that well up in his eyes. The uselessness he feels everyday! So he wants to do something to help! He enjoys studying. He’s trying! No one sees it! He tries! He prays and prays! He does anything he can, reading up, attempting, and attempting!
It all fails! Every attempt is like a dagger in his heart.
“I forbid you from studying those machines any longer until you awaken your power, understand?”
Those words draw the air right from his lungs as he looks up into his father’s cold eyes, his frame trembling.
Why…?
Why!
XxX
That sword… plunges into his heart more than anything. His frame is taut, breathing panicked, and caught in his throat.
“Killua.”
That calm voice is the only thing that can ever anchor him. Press down his anxieties and make him feel better for just a moment.
Killua looks up into those crimson eyes and feels a sense of relief. Kurapika is like a big brother to him. He’s strong, cool-headed, and amazing. Everything he wants to be.
What’s the point of this useless power if he can’t use it?!
“Pika… it’s… it’s not working! I keep trying! Why am I so useless…? Why won’t it awaken for me?!”
Is he that terrible? Why? Why? Why?
When he stands there. His destiny accepting him with open arms so easily…
And here he is… useless!
“Give it time, little bird; everyone learns at their own pace.”
Kurapika doesn’t smile often, but when he does, it eases the trembling in his shoulders a little, as the Kurta places a hand on his shoulder.
Right. Time.
Prickle. Prickle. The feeling runs against his skin. Bitter. Bitter.
He hates him.
XxX
Killua hates him. He hates him. Why…? Why is it the gods will ignore him… when he’s tried! And tried… there are still black circles under his eyes, as his skin burns in fury, and sadness and despair threatens to drown him. His personal knight? No! No, he doesn’t want this idiot to be his personal knight!
What? He can just pick up the legendary sword like it’s no problem! Like it’s easy?! And everyone praises him and looks at him with smiles…
And he…
His father…
The whole world…
XxX
Bitter. Bitter. Prickle. Prickle.
He has to keep calm when knighting the knight.
Gon.
When the knight takes his hand kneeling, he stiffens and flinches unwittingly, sucking in a breath.
The knight looks up with these bright amber eyes filled with so much life, and a pure shock of anger and pain runs down his spine as he swallows.
“It’s an honor, your highness. To protect you.”
Smiling at him like that… Killua catches a glimpse of the hilt of that sword, and it makes his head spin.
“Yes. It is a pleasure.”
He speaks as coldly as his father speaks to him.
XxX
“Stop following me!”
Brat. Selfish. He knows what they all think. Useless. Failure. Heir to a throne of nothing. Failure. Failure.
So what if he’s a brat?!
They don’t know…!
He’s prayed everyday his whole life!
“But, your highness!”
He doesn’t get this idiot; how can he still follow him! When Killua has been nothing but cold to him everyday.
Maybe he’s hoping… if he’s cold enough, the knight will leave him alone, and he won’t have to see that sword on his back that reminds him of all his failures!
Gon. He’s so full of light, and love, and energy, and-
Killua can’t stand it!
He huffs, stomping off, past Gon.
“I do not care what my father orders! Leave me alone!”
He just wants to study in peace!
“But, your highness!”
He can’t take this anymore! Another failure! Another look of disappointment from everyone he knows!
“Enough!”
He whirls around, anger flashing in his deep blue eyes, the edge of his boot catching on a rock. The pain that runs through his legs and behind are nothing compared to the shame that pools in his chest and spreads across his cheeks.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Gon stares at him dumbfounded before jolting out of it, rushing over, and leaning next to him.
“Your highness? Are you alright?”
He sounds so genuinely concerned that Killua doesn’t know what to feel. A few tears land on his cheeks, and he doesn’t even try to brush them away, letting light wisps of his hair fall into his eyes.
A broken-hearted sob leaves his lips.
He can hear Gon audibly gasp, but he doesn’t care anymore. There is no more shame he can hold. He’s a useless heir with no foreseeable future because he can’t awaken it…
“Your highness-!”
He feels the rough warmth of Gon’s hand grab his own, and Killua tears it away, sniffling and looking toward the ground.
“Leave me alone.”
XxX
He was always envious of Gon. He thought he didn’t face any hardships at all.
He was wrong.
He wants to do something for Gon to apologize. More than just the words.
Killua doesn’t know why… when he thinks about him now… his heart won’t stop pounding…
Maybe he’ll make him something.
Gon was always hungry, always scarfing something down with Ikalgo…
XxX
His legs burn. Sweat clings everywhere, making the fibers of his blouse stick to his skin as he runs. His feet ache, and his lungs hurt too much. He can’t get another gasp of air in.
The fear is palpating.
He’s an idiot! He knew this was the territory of the Chimera, still he!
He just wants to be of use!
But now…
“Leave me alone!”
He had already told Gon…
What point would Gon have now…
He’s just been cold and harsh to him…
There’s an opening, and he keeps running even when his legs feel like collapsing. Killua skids to a stop, a harsh gasp leaving his lips as more of the Chimera circle around.
N-no!
He falls backward, the world around him spinning, his heartbeat roaring in his ears.
No. He’s- he’s going to die.
Before he can even-
One of them steps forward, snickering, and he scoots back, his breathing irregular and panicked.
It swings.
Killua closes his eyes, waiting for the inevitable, bringing his arms up to shield his face.
“Ah-!”
It doesn’t come. No agonizing pain to end his failure of an existence.
“Your highness!”
Killua opens his eyes slowly, lowering his arms just slightly so they rest at his chest, curled up there, trying to protect himself.
“G-Gon…?”
Why- why is Gon here… when…?
W-why…
Why…
He looks up toward Gon, a gasp caught in his throat.
Killua doesn’t think he’s ever seen Gon look so serious, determined…
He doesn’t know why, the usual feeling in his stomach that makes him feel sick, annoyed, and agitated. It still feels weird; his chest feels all funny too. But differently. That blade should just make him…
Make him feel such envy…
But he’s just dumbfounded, staring at Gon, watching him slice up the remainder of the Chimera with ease.
“Your highness!”
Gon sheathes his sword, running toward him, worry spilling over in those warm eyes of his as he leans over.
“Are you alright…?”
He pants and Killua looks away, his ears and cheeks burning.
Gon takes his hand so gently that it makes his heart race.
“I-I…”
Gon grabs his shoulder, and Killua can’t help but lean in close.
“I am fine.”
He tries to be polite and use the correct etiquette, but it all seems to fall apart when he looks into Gon’s eyes.
Prickle. Prickle.
Guilt.
“I-I…”
“Are you hurt?”
“I-I’m sorry.”
For everything.
XxX
“Gon, stop! You’re going to die!”
Please!
Please!
Killua already lost everyone else! Please don’t!
Don’t die, Gon!
He needs you!
“I’m okay, Ki. I’m gonna save you.”
There’s blood and grime all over Gon’s face, but even now, he’s smiling and stands in front of Killua to protect him.
“GON!”
Killua grabs Gon’s arm in desperation.
Please…
Please…
No!
No!
He doesn’t want-
He doesn’t want Gon to die!
It’s aiming for Gon. It’s aiming for Gon!
No! No! No!
“Gon!”
Why, you idiot?! Why, even now, are you so ready to fight? Leave him! He’ll be fine!
It’s- it’s gonna kill Gon…
He steps in front, arm out, praying.
Please- please!
“NO!”
Bright blinding light…
XxX
“It’s called a Silent Princess; it’s an endangered species.”
Killua liked flowers, but he liked this one particularly. With the white and blue petals it was like a light and had a gentleness yet strength to it.
It was free, and-
His fingers brush against the petals, and Gon hums, leaning over his shoulder, staring.
Killua raises an eyebrow.
“Don’t you think it’s pretty?”
“Yeah! It’s pretty like you, your highness!”
The air gets caught right in his lungs, the tips of his ears going bright red as he stutters, coughing.
He didn’t speak formally around Gon anymore, but-but what gave this idiot the right to-!
“Wh-what?! Y-you can’t say that stuff, idiot! It’s-it’s ‘mbarrassing…”
He pouts, playing with a strand of his light hair, tucking it behind his ear.
“Oh, you’re right; I’m sorry, your highness!”
That just makes Killua puff out his cheeks more, crossing his arms over his chest and pointing his chin in the air, using his royal presence.
“Don’t call me that; just call me, Killua.”
“Okay, then I will, Ki!”
“Wha?!”
He looks toward Gon, who is grinning, offering a hand for Killua to take.
Killua grumbles, searching around in the grass for something, grabbing it despite how slimy it is.
“S-stop it, you moron! Eat this! Eat it!”
“W-wait!”
“You look like a dumb frog with your dumb face, so eat it!”
XxX
Why?
Why?
He tries! He keeps trying! He’s soaked and cold, the bottom of his dress is sopping wet, and a shiver runs down his spine, but he doesn’t stop trying, stop concentrating.
Nothing is happening!
He feels nothing!
Why? Why?
Is he so useless still…
Why! Why! Won’t this cursed power work for him!
“I can’t…”
Why…?
“What’s wrong with me…?”
Why… why won’t they…
The shame always pours into him, but more so knowing Gon is watching, oddly quiet.
He wraps his arms around himself, letting his tears fall and blend with the water.
“Your highness…”
Gon is calling him that now.
Why?! He just feels so empty…!
He throws his hands down in the water, biting back a scream, choking down a sob.
“Ki. Ki. Ki. Hey, it’s okay.”
He turns around, tears still in his crystalline blue eyes filled with pure pain and sorrow, his lips parted.
Gon’s ever an idiot, his pants now soaked, as he walks closer, placing his hands on Killua’s shoulders. Killua sinks into his touch, grabbing at his tunic and burying his face in his chest.
“I believe in you, Ki. And even if you don’t do it, that’s okay. I promise I’ll protect you.”
“G-Gon…”
He sobs into the chest of the man he’s grown to fall in love with.
XxX
It feels so familiar, running away.
The same fear, the same anxiety.
Killua doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand how it could have gone so wrong all at once. Meruem has awakened, the machines have gone rampant, and still! Still, his powers refuse to awaken.
He feels like he’s being crushed.
Gon’s still so brave, running on like- like
Like there’s hope.
Killua can’t-
He can’t keep up.
His hand slips from Gon’s, and he collapses to the floor, dirt in his hands, muddied up in the perfect fabric of his dress, rain pouring down and hitting his bare shoulders.
“Killua!”
Gon.
“Hey.”
He looks up at Gon, tears building up in his eyes, mixing with the onslaught of rain pouring down his cheeks.
“I-I! Everyone… everyone is dead… I… I…”
Why? Why? Why!?
“I let everyone down… my kingdom… my friends… my father…”
You.
So this is it… the boulder that’s pressing down on his heart is going to cave.
“This cursed power! I’ve tried! And-and… now…”
He can’t help the quaking of his frame, the trembling of his fingers, as mud gets beneath his nails.
He feels like he’s going to die.
It hurts too much.
It hurts.
It’s tearing him apart. His throat feels like it’s closing in, and he just sobs, his head aching and pounding.
“So I really am just a failure!”
Everyone is dead… because- because of him…
He collapses in Gon’s arms, every ounce of pain leaving his lips as he screams and cries.
“G-Gon, please, I- can’t do it… I can’t. It hurts.”
He feels so safe and warm in Gon’s arms, even with the rain that’s soaked him to the bone, as Gon wraps his arms around him tightly, holding him close.
For a moment, Killua feels alright.
Gon presses the top of his lips to the crown of Killua’s head.
“It’s okay, Ki. I promise. I’ll make everything right.”
XxX
“Are you sure?”
He can’t help but be anxious as Gon offers him a hand to ride atop his horse. It’s true, Killua did want to learn to ride his own horse, but now he’s starting to have second thoughts, his stomach churning.
“You’ll be okay, highness; I’m here.”
Gon always called him that when he was trying to reassure him, but Killua didn’t like it. He doesn’t like being reminded.
He takes Gon’s hand hesitantly, and Gon pulls him up gingerly, and Killua bites back a scream that slips out partially.
This doesn’t seem very stable…
He wraps his arms around Gon’s neck, sitting on his lap and screwing his eyes shut.
Gon laughs and Killua feels his face flush.
“You’re really cute, your highness.”
“S-stop making fun of me!”
“I would never, Ki!”
XxX
“Please, no! Gon! Please!”
“I’m okay, Ki.”
Don’t die, he shakes the man harder as Gon coughs and uses his last strength to smile.
No! No!
Why! Why! Why when he finally has it!
They’re going to take away the last person left he has!
“No… please…”
“Don’t go!”
He can’t! Lose Gon!
He rests his head on Gon’s chest, begging over and over.
A light sound.
He lifts his head slowly, gasping.
The sword. The sword he once resented…
Was…
“H-he can be saved…?”
Gon… Gon can be saved…?
XxX
Then it’s his job. His duty. He keeps his head held high even when his legs tremble, even though he feels so weak.
He’s going to do it.
He’s going to seal Meruem and save his kingdom.
So… when you wake up Gon… can you come save him…? Can you come hold him and smile at him once more?
If you do that, he can… Killua can wait decades.
Because a legend is about to begin.
#hxh#Hunter X Hunter#killua#gonkillu#gonkillu supremacy#gon#Gon hxh#Gon Freecss#windy’s stuff#Does this look familiar? Yes and no! Look this is one of my fave works 🥺🙏 so I’m posting it full instead of reblogging the link ahaha eh#get it?#if the twelve reblogs from myself didn’t give that off lol I HAVE NO SHAME ok I I like it🙏🥺#KI IS SO PRETTY 😤😤😤😤🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🤧#GON SAVING KI GON SAVING KI CHANTS#SLAMS HANDS DOWN ON TABLE GK GK GK GKKKK AND ZELDA MY TWO FAVE THINGS#AHHHHHHH I LOVE THEM! I LOVE KI! I LOVE GON TREATING KI LIKE A PRINCESS AND JUST AHHH SO DELICATELY TAKING HIS HAND#AND COMFORTING HIM AND SAVING HIM 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭🤧🤧🤧 KI DESERVES THE WORLD 🥺🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭😤🤧#AHHHHH AND JUST AHHHHHH THEM GK MY FAVE AND WITH ZELDA ONE OF MY FAVES IM SO HAPPY#BLESS MYSELF FOR MAKING THIS#My heart goes ahhhh doki doki so much when Ki falls in love with Gon 🥺🥺🥺 it’s like doki when it’s Zelda and Link but I love GK so much it#is like doki doki doki doki and I ahhh! Love it so much must use this trope in future! 🥺😤🙏#THERYE SO CUTE#KI IS SO CUTE MY HEARTTTTTTT I think I’ve done the trope of my Ki playing with his hair and sticking it behind his ear when Gon compliments#him imagine it! 😤😤😤 AHHHHH SO CUT#E I WANTED TO SQEEE AT THE CUTE GK STUFF#AND CRY FOR KI 🥺#I’m#U THOUGHT U ESCAPED IT BUT NO I LOVE IT OK maybe I’m biased cuz I wrote this after a painful writers block but also my first based on smth#au so!
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In Another World
So for funsies my brain decided it would be hilarious if Robo!Kaito characters met Neighbors!Saguru/Kaito and then this sort of ... happened. It’s probably not going to make a ton of sense without the context of Not Left To Stand Alone or Be a Better Me, but eh. It literally was just playing, posting because someone else might find it funny too.
*
“I told you that wouldn’t work,” Ayato said to the idiots who’d been doing dubious experiments in the basement. He grimaced and rubbed soot off his face. “Ugh. It had to be something exploding, didn’t it?”
“Apologies,” Hakuba said in the stiff, formal tone that Ayato hated. “But according to the calculations, it should have worked.”
“Back to the drawing board,” Kaito-bot said, pinching singed hair between his fingers.
Ugh. They’d been trying to work out a better lasting core for the robot since they had learned that it started to wear at about the five-year mark, and glitch in the half year it took to re-work the original design. That said, neither Kaito, nor Hakuba were actually an engineer. Even with Agasa and Haibara helping, it was still only in prototyping.
Ayato sighed and glanced around. A mess. A mess that looked a lot worse than the mess that had already been down here, plus new scorch marks! What great re-decorating! Not.
“I’m going up to check on the doves,” he said, “while you two make sure nothing is on fire. If you broke any of dad’s things, I’m kicking you in the shin, Hakuba.”
“Oh no, whatever shall I do,” Hakuba said, deadpan like the bastard he often was.
Ayato still didn’t get what Kaito saw in him sometimes.
“Not kicking me?” the robot asked.
“Hell no, I’d break my toes.” Ayato flashed Hakuba a middle finger for his resulting eye roll, and hurried up the secret passage.
Ayato stepped out into a room that was both abnormally dusty, and way less cluttered than the one he left earlier. He’d say his mother dropped in to clean, except the dust was a clear sign no one had been cleaning here in who knew how long. Unless… “Did the explosion knock dust from the whole house?” he muttered. Weird.
Doves. He needed to make sure that hadn’t scared them half to death. They were used to small explosions, but that hadn’t exactly been small, and if Ayato hadn’t been wearing noise canceling headphones to listen to podcasts while commentating on the sad attempts to improve the core, he probably would still have his ears ringing.
He rounded the familiar turns of his house toward the stairs to the patio he kept the dovecote on… and ran into himself.
Not his robot-clone, and not another teen. This one looked like a cheap knock off of his dad, and for a half second, he actually thought Kuroba Toichi came back for the dead with less style and a bad haircut. If Ayato could come back from death, why not his dad at this point?
“What the fuck,” Ayato said.
“Language,” the not-Toichi old-Kaito said. Then, “What the hell.”
“How is that any better?”
“Please tell me I don’t have another illegitimate child running around. I can’t have another child running around. It’s statistically improbable at best.”
“But not impossible?” Ayato asked, with horrified fascination. Then the rest of that sentence hit. “Another illegitimate child?”
“How old are you? Not old enough to be from the same time as the twins—”
“TWINS?”
Old-maybe-Kaito made a face. “Don’t shout. I have a headache already. Now who are you and why are you in my house?”
Ayato let out an indignant sound. “Your house? This is my house!”
“It really isn’t.”
“And who are you? Why are you here?”
“Kuroba Kaito,” the old-Kaito said, apparently actually another Kaito. (How was this Ayato’s life? How many times was he going to run into people with his face??) “And I’m here because I own the place and need to feed my birds.”
“Doves. They’re doves.”
They stared each other down. “And you are…?” old-Kaito asked after a moment.
“Kuroba Kaito,” Ayato said, “now Kuroba Ayato. And I’m going to check on the doves.”
There was another awkward silence as neither of them backed down. The older Kaito sighed. “Well. Either one of us is lying—” He said it in a way that clearly meant you are lying. “—Or something very strange is going on. Akako-level strange.”
Ayato shuddered. “Please don’t bring her up. She’s awful.”
Other-Kaito shrugged. “Not the worst person to deal with once you reach an agreement. And I’m almost convinced you really are a version of me.”
“Why not you another version of me?”
“How old are you?”
“…Twenty-three.”
“I’m older, so I have seniority. …Does Kudo Shinichi mean anything to you?”
“If you mean is he annoying but fun to mess with, yeah. If you mean is he a child too, also yeah. Or he was.”
“Couldn’t cure you?”
That confirmed that Shinichi existed here and had been turned into Conan at some point. And that this Kaito was also in the know with all of that.
“Can’t. It’d probably kill me to try.” Since his previous state had been dead it really wasn’t worth experimenting.
Other-Kaito’s face scrunched like he wanted to know more and at the same time had never wanted anything less. “Right. So, I’m guessing some sort of world-hopping accident occurred.”
“You don’t look surprised.”
“Oh, I definitely am, but plenty of weird things have happened in my life.”
“Same,” Ayato said with a sigh. It seemed no matter the world, Kaito would attract some kind of chaos. Honestly, Ayato should be more shocked at all of this. But maybe he just wasn’t processing yet.
“Kaito,” a familiar voice said as someone entered the room behind the older Kaito, “I thought I heard—oh.”
Ayato stared at what appeared to be an older Hakuba. Hakuba stared back.
Ayato had spent over half a decade spending time with Kudo Shinichi and (more reluctantly) Hakuba Saguru at this point. He’d never call himself a detective, but observation skills had become even more a survival tool than when he’d been moonlighting as a thief. So Ayato couldn’t help but catch on details immediately. Like the cane. The gray in Hakuba’s hair and the crow’s feet around his eyes. Casual clothing that the Hakuba Ayato knew would never be caught dead in. And then there was a ring on his finger. Ayato zeroed in on it, somehow surprised even though his own Hakuba had been in a relationship with the robot and Aoko for over a year now. On impulse, he glanced at Kaito’s hand.
The rings matched.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Excuse me?” old-Hakuba said, somewhere between confused and insulted. Then, “That isn’t Takumi-kun.”
“Nope,” old-Kaito said, hands sliding into his pockets. He moved stiffly, not like a magician should, like he just couldn’t move the way he should, and ah, there was a real possibility he couldn’t… How many injuries did Ayato accumulate even before he died?
“Takumi?”
“My son,” Kaito said easily.
He said ‘illegitimate child’ earlier, so yes, he probably had children, but it was still like taking a smack in the face. “Is this the illegitimate one?”
“Oh, no, he’s the only legitimate one.”
“Of course,” Ayato said faintly. He kind of wanted to know how many children this other Kaito had. On the other hand, he really didn’t want to know, because that meant thinking about an alternate him having had sex. Ugh. “What is with other versions of me wanting to marry Hakuba?”
“This has happened before then?” Kaito said as Hakuba’s narrowed gaze flicked between them.
“Oh, no. Just… Look, did you ever get kidnapped by a crazy scientist who made a robot with your face?”
Both Hakuba and Kaito’s eyes narrowed warily. “Yes,” Kaito said. “But I got free and killed it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m pretty sure I’d remember tricking a robot into blowing its own brains out,” Kaito said, cold and finite like that ended the whole story. Ayato had already kind of figured there was a difference somewhere around there; robots couldn’t father a child, let alone multiple illegitimate ones.
Hakuba’s eyebrows shot up. “When was this?”
“Mm, back before we met,” Kaito said dismissively. “It’s not important.”
The most defining moment of Ayato’s life, and in another world it was unimportant. That stung.
“In another world,” Ayato said, holding the bitterness in, “you never got away. In another world, there were two robots with Kuroba Kaito’s face, and only one of them knew he wasn’t human.”
“Ah.” The single syllable and carefully neutral expression said old-Kaito understood exactly where this was going. Good, he wouldn’t get senile by age thirty-something. “And what happened to you?”
“It turns out cryogenic stasis is possible under very precise circumstances,” Ayato said. “Also death sucks, stay alive if you can.”
“Kaito?” Hakuba said, two and two making four and a whole new equation.
Kaito sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, ring a flash of gold on his finger. “So, best guess is that this is an alternate version of myself from a different universe. One that sounds like it diverged with the robot mishap.”
Mishap. Ayato felt a weird curl of resentment.
“An alternate universe,” Hakuba said flatly. “Truly.”
“Isn’t that, such and such Holmes quote applicable here?” Kaito said with a wave of his hand.
“There are far more logical explanations than other universes.”
“And yet here we are.” Old-Kaito shrugged. “I believe him. Is this really any stranger than Akako?”
“Yes. With Koizumi-san, there wasn’t a child-shaped version of you.”
“I’d love to know how that happened,” Kaito said in an aside to Ayato. “I thought only Kudo had to deal with that.”
“Reversing stasis has side effects,” Ayato said, not wanting to go into detail. “Lovely as this all is, I think I should go get my companions.”
“Oh, there’s more of you?”
“Yeah… Let’s just…” Ayato turned back to the hidden passage, acutely aware of Kaito and Hakuba at his back. It felt like Hakuba was trying to dissect him with his eyes alone.
“Fair warning,” Ayato called ahead of him, “something has gone really weird and really wrong.”
“We were kind of figuring that out!” the robot called back.
Hakuba and old-Kaito both twitched even though they had to have some idea who he’d been with.
“How are the doves?” his Kaito asked as Ayato returned to the workroom. There was a space cleared on the table now, streaks of dust left on the corner like no one had been using down here for a while.
“Never got that far,” Ayato admitted. “You should know that there’s—” He watched both Kaito and Hakuba’s eyes go huge as they saw behind him, Kaito’s hand instinctively reaching for a card gun. “…Other versions of us,” Ayato finished.
“A bit of warning would have been nice,” the robot said, eying his older double warily. No surprise since the other times he saw someone with the same face, it had been Ayato dead, and a second robot trying to kill him. A glance showed that other-Kaito looked equally wary. Ugh. Only Ayato was allowed to have the trauma of seeing his own face reflected back at him in a stranger.
“I thought you said you were twenty-three,” other-Kaito said, staring down the robot. His Hakuba looked at his double with something between interest and jealousy. Ah, the cane; whatever it had been caused by, clearly it would have happened by Ayato’s (ugh) Hakuba’s age.
“I am.”
“Then this is…?”
“The non-murderous robot.”
The wariness all but doubled, and both parties tensed. For goodness’s sake.
“Oi,” Ayato said. “As the only one who actually died from robot and scientist encounters, I think I claim the robot trauma card, yeah? Kaito’s a life-stealing metal wreck, but he’s not going to kill anyone any more than I assume you or I would.”
“Does he have arm rockets?”
“…No?” Wait, had the other murder bot had arm rockets?? Why was he only learning this now? “He’s practically human. Even bleeds and needs haircuts. Just with metal bones and a bad habit of breaking.”
“I can’t control the breaking,” Kaito said at the same time the younger Hakuba said, “That’s what we’re attempting to fix.”
“…Right.” Other-Kaito eyed his double. Neither looked happy with this situation. No shit. “So how exactly did two Kaitos and a Saguru end up in my basement room?”
“An unfortunate accident,” Young-Hakuba (Ayato needed a better shorthand. Robot, Mechanic, Kaito, Hakuba. Sure.) said. “An experimental core for Kaito exploded.”
“Injuries?” Hakuba—the old one—asked.
“None besides superficial scratches and some abused eardrums.”
“I see.”
The silence was painfully awkward. They didn’t seem to know how to handle facing other versions of themselves. Ayato glanced at robo-Kaito and raised an eyebrow. If any of them knew how to handle other selves, it was the two of them, even if they both never quite got comfortable with it.
“So,” Ayato said. “This older Kaito has several children and married Hakuba.”
“We’re engaged,” old-Hakuba said at the same time old-Kaito rolled his eyes and said, “I don’t have that many children.”
Robo-Kaito’s face twitched. Was it the ‘married to Hakuba’ bit or the ‘has children’? Both things the robot probably wanted in life eventually.
“Where does Aoko fit into this?” the robot asked.
Raised eyebrows on the other side of things now.
“Aoko… currently isn’t in picture much. We’re working on mending our friendship.”
Friendship. Not romance. “You didn’t marry Aoko?” Ayato asked, because weird taste in men aside, he can’t imagine any version of himself not loving Aoko. He was stuck as a child and still in love with her and even the robot would marry her in a heartbeat.
“Er. Well.” Kaito looked to the side, a tic that was very familiar. Like looking for an escape route. “We’re kind of divorced?”
“You divorced Aoko?” Oh god, it was so much worse in this universe. What was wrong with this Kaito?
“The other way round actually.”
“Aoko divorced you? What the hell did you do to piss her off bad enough for that?” Aoko was, in Ayato’s opinion, one of the most forgiving people he knew. She’d forgiven Kaito for being Kid, forgiven the robot for being a robot, forgiven Ayato for dying and then for being a child and loved him through all of it, all forms of him. She was working on becoming a nurse in part because of how the knowledge intersected with Kaito, Ayato, and the technology Hakuba was investing his life in. Ayato couldn’t imagine a world where she wouldn’t forgive them.
Older Kaito grimaced. “Look. I didn’t mean for things to go the way they did, but things happened so fast and then I was married and had a child and was trying to go to school, raise a baby, work, and be Kid at the same time. The moment to bring it up just… never got there.”
“Oh my god, you had a kid and you never told her about the thief thing.”
“To be fair, we wouldn’t have told her if circumstances hadn’t gone the way they did,” the robot said, all reasonable about it, like it was perfectly believable that it’d happen that way.
“I’d like to think I’d have told her before we’d get married, let alone HAD A CHILD.”
“Look—”
“Excuse me,” the robot’s Hakuba cut in. “Rather than argue over life choices, perhaps we can put our minds toward reversing this?”
“Can’t we just re-do what we just did?” Ayato asked.
“We could try that,” Hakuba said like he was actually talking to a child—it was one of those things Ayato hated, when he got all ‘I know more than you’ at him. “But that, if we can successfully replicate world shifting at all, is more likely to land us in yet another iteration of ourselves rather than return us to our proper world. Another universe might be less kind in its residents.”
“I can’t picture a reality I’d be actually violent with intent to kill,” Ayato said.
“Yes, but sadly, I can picture myself in such a world, and I would rather not meet a murderous version of me,” Hakuba said calmly, like that wasn’t a horrifying thought. Hakuba’s brain harnessed for evil. Noooope. Just as bad if there was an evil Kaito out there. The world would implode or something.
“…Fair enough. I’d pay to see you as a thief though.”
Hakuba, rudely, ignored him to turn to their older counterparts. “I don’t suppose either of you would have any ideas on world-hopping?”
“Koizumi Akako,” both of them said with varying amounts of discomfort on their faces. Weirdly, it was Hakuba who looked the most like he’d bitten into something sour.
“In all honesty, there may be someone else,” old-Hakuba said, “but we don’t have connection to them, nor any knowledge. If Koizumi-san can’t help you, she is also the most likely to know someone who could.”
“At what price though,” old-Kaito said, eyes far away.
Well. That was ominous. But fair enough. Ayato had only met Koizumi the once, and he definitely never wanted to meet her again.
Still, he didn’t want to be in this world too long. “Can we go? I finally have an advanced placement test coming up to let me out of kiddie hell.”
Robo-Kaito and his Hakuba were doing that thing where they communicated with their eyes and micro-expressions. Actually, so were the other pair. Eew. That was one romantic couple thing Ayato was glad he didn’t do. Just use words like everyone else.
“We can go,” Robo-Kaito said finally, “but if the price is too high or she tries anything on us, we’re risking another explosion.”
“That’s fine then,” older Kaito said with a half-shrug. “Maybe show me the schematics and I can see what I can get ahold of just in case.” He grimaced. “I really don’t like having to get in touch with Akako, but she keeps the line open for me, so I guess I can.”
“She does?” Ayato said.
“You’ll see,” Kaito said with another uncomfortable shrug.
Ayato really wasn’t liking this world.
*
It was strange to see a version of himself still so young, Saguru reflected, watching the three men in the back of the car through the rear mirror as Kaito drove them toward Koizumi’s home. The two versions of Kaito squabbled like siblings, arguing over something in the design that they theorized as the part to fail. His younger self watched, amused and loving. He’d recognize himself in love anywhere.
His other self had fallen for Kuroba Kaito’s consciousness in a robot body. The robot—but no, he was more human than not, android—was calmer than he imagined Kaito had been at this age. Twenty-three, or close to seven if Saguru was counting the time he’d existed correctly. At twenty-three, Kaito had to have been contemplating graduate school, if not already in it, raising Takumi, and soon to end up divorced from Aoko… Kaito must have been constantly on the move, always a bit too tired, a bit too ragged as he spent himself up. The android looked healthier.
Perhaps it was because he was not human, or perhaps it was because unlike the Kaito Saguru knew, this younger Kaito had a strong network of support.
Saguru’s younger self looked happy. Saguru had been happy at twenty-three. Mel had been in his life by then and, bad leg aside, he’d been rediscovering things he’d loved in the world that didn’t involve his previous dreams of active detective work.
It sounded like his younger self had all but taken one look at the android Kaito after his true nature was revealed, and made the split-second decision to dedicate his life to him. Saguru was painfully obvious when he found someone he cared for.
His younger self met his eyes in the mirror, a faint smile on his lips that faded as they watched each other. It must be unnerving to strangers to be looked at this way. To be looked at as if eyes could see down to the soul. It was unnerving for Saguru even though he knew there wasn’t a deeper meaning to it beyond shared curiosity.
“Hey,” the youngest version of Kaito, Ayato said, also meeting Saguru’s eyes in the mirror. “If this Hakuba’s an engineer and robotics expert—”
“And chemist, and surgeon and—” Saguru saw the other Hakuba mutter under his breath.
“—What are you?” Ayato finished.
“A teacher.”
Blank looks all around.
Saguru smirked because it truly was funny to be the shocking one. “A chemistry teacher to be precise. I’ve also taught English and supervised a book club.”
“Who are you?” Ayato said. He was a bit like Kaito without a filter and a less positive outlook. Definitely a lot more childish than his double.
“A man that had to give up most of my detective work due to circumstance,” Saguru said wryly with a pointed lift of his cane.
“Oh… Uh. Is it rude to ask what happened? Just in case?”
“I had my knee shot out shortly before university. After, I had to heal for months, and had physical therapy for long after that; by the time I entered university, I’d given up on ever being as mobile as I was. I consulted sometimes, but ended up in teaching after enjoying tutoring. That said, it sounds as if you’ve moved on toward a field well apart from the policework we intended to grow into. You would have run into the trouble I did by now if you were going to.”
“I see,” the younger Saguru said. “I also consult at times, but learning everything needed to keep Kaito functional and in good repair took over quite a bit of my life…”
“It would do that.” Saguru couldn’t really picture himself in the same position. Perhaps learning a bit of medical information, but not diving head first into engineering something he had no previous knowledge of. “And now you’re dating him.”
“Yes, although it’s a bit more complicated than that…”
“It’s a polyamorous relationship with Aoko as the common point with all of us,” the android-Kaito said.
Kaito twitched, just barely failing to jerk the steering wheel as he looked back at them in the mirror. “You’re in a poly relationship with Aoko?”
“Yes?” The android raised an eyebrow in a way that was channeling Saguru through and through.
“Look, he’s an asexual android, Hakuba’s in love with him and fond of Aoko, Aoko loves all of us, and I still love Aoko even if this body,” Ayato said, and ah, Saguru hadn’t realized he was included in this arrangement. “I don’t want the guy with illegitimate kids running around judging us.”
“…How does that even work?” Kaito asked, the edge of fascinated horror in his voice.
“It’s complicated,” the android said drily. “Very complicated. Like blindfolded juggling.”
“That’s not that hard.”
“But everything is potentially on fire.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. We’re making it work as we go.”
“I believe that is our turn,” Saguru said, cutting into Kaito’s thoughts before they missed their destination.
“Oh. Yeah, thanks.”
Koizumi’s home was unnerving. It looked a bit like something from the Addams Family in all honesty, all Gothic architecture and dark colors. The garden out front clashed with that, a riot of colors and blossoms, though Saguru was certain at least some of those flowers were distinctly poisonous. It was Koizumi, after all.
“You know, I’m glad I never visited my Koizumi’s place,” Ayato said in a tight voice. “You sure she doesn’t have vampires hiding in her draperies or what?”
“No vampires so far as I know, but supposedly she had Lucifer on supernatural speed dial, so take that as you will,” Kaito said with forced cheer. “C’mon. Let’s see if she can get you all home.”
“I wish I could believe you were joking, but I know my own tells too well,” Ayato said, unnerved. His android companion looked less unnerved, but Saguru could chalk that up to him being mortal in a different way than fleshy, easily-broken humans. Or perhaps he had fewer negative associations? But no, the android would have been the one interacting with their Koizumi.
The car slid to a stop beside a walkway framed with weeping cherry trees, trimmed into perfect shape. Everything was a bit too neat and precise, but after knowing Koizumi more in the last few years, it wasn’t surprising that it felt a bit unnatural; it likely wasn’t natural at all.
Kaito led the way up the walk, not looking back to see them follow. He looked a bit like he was steeling himself for an unpleasant walk in a downpour or to clean a terrible mess.
The front door—tall, intimidatingly sharp in its carvings—creaked open, seemingly on its own. Ayato took a step behind his counterpart.
“Kuroba,” Koizumi said, materializing out of the shadows of her foyer. “Hakuba.” Her eyes slid to the rest of the group. “Hakuba, Kuroba, Kuroba. What an interesting group.”
“Akako-hime,” Kaito said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “As you can see we have a bit of a dilemma here. I don’t suppose you would know much about pinpointing exact alternate universes or creating paths to them?”
“That isn’t exactly my specialty,” Koizumi said, a bit of humor in the curve of her lips, “but I can give it a try. Congratulations on the engagement.”
“Do I want to know how you know about that?”
“I keep track of your life even when you’re failing to keep up with mine,” she said waving them inside.
The interior was just as gothic and intimidating as the outside. Saguru eyed the various crystals, portraits, and candelabras with a healthy dose of wariness. Knowing magic was real didn’t mean he knew how it worked, and that was more than enough reason to be careful.
“I wouldn’t touch anything,” he said softly as Ayato reached a hand toward a dangling crystal that caught light in a particularly eye-attracting manner.
Ayato snatched his hand back, something between guilt and irritation flashing across his face before it was covered up with Kuroba’s polite-blank mask. “It’s neat,” Ayato said. “I’ve never seen something like it.”
“Spell arrays,” Koizumi said airily. “Mostly harmless, but not all of them are. My daughters made them.”
Ayato tucked his hands surreptitiously into his pockets.
“Are they here today?” Kaito asked. Saguru had yet to properly meet the twins, though he knew a bit about them through proximity to Kaito. From what he did know, they were far more like Koizumi than Kaito, though they had a similar streak of mischief. If a bit more toward the sadistic side than Kaito had.
Saguru distinctly remembered a story about them driving away one of Koizumi’s suitors that they disliked.
“They are both busy with homework at the moment, but perhaps they will have a moment to spare toward the end of your visit. They’re due seeing you.”
“Do they even want to?” Kaito asked, not troubled by the thought that they wouldn’t want to since he was only ever distantly involved with them at best.
“They find you amusing,” Koizumi said, which wasn’t quite an answer, but coming from her was probably a yes.
The younger Saguru’s eyes flicked back and forth between Koizumi and Kaito. Saguru could see the conclusions being drawn on Kuroba and Ayato’s faces. Horror in differing proportions.
“With Akako?!” Ayato screeched, voice reaching octaves only a young Kuroba, voice not yet settled into its post-puberty range could produce.
Kaito winced and rubbed his ear, even as Koizumi smirked like she’d won something valuable—which Saguru supposed she had, technically. “It really isn’t what you think.”
“Then you aren’t the father?”
“I am but—”
“He’s the sperm donor,” Koizumi said, still with her cat-with-cream smile.
“See, not what you think! No sex involved!” Kaito said, hands palm-out in front of his chest.
“I am with Ayato here,” Kuroba said, side-eying his older self. “Why would you even want to?”
“It was a deal,” Koizumi said lightly, “and I believe we have both done quite well from that. And speaking of deals, you three are going to need to make one for me to even hope of getting you back to your proper dimension. It isn’t the sort of thing that can happen without some sort of sacrifice.”
“We got here in one piece,” Ayato complained.
“Yes, but we gave up energy and a prototype,” the younger Saguru said, thoughtful. “There has to be some sort of energy balance to this sort of thing.”
“It’s magic, not physics.”
“Science and magic aren’t nearly so different as you’d like to think,” Koizumi said. She led them into an elaborate sitting room and perched herself in a wing-backed chair. “Take a seat,” she said with a wave at the velvet sofas that made up a loose circle around an intricate rug. It was all very Victorian feeling. Koizumi seemed to be more interested in aesthetics of a room than continuity of a specific era in her decorating.
Saguru sat beside his Kaito, both of them feeling their age and old injuries on the less than comfortable couches; they looked nice, but they weren’t nearly so soft as they looked. The others grouped together on one couch as well, despite how close it made them sit. Saguru was interested to note that Ayato was physically comfortable enough with the android who had replaced his life to practically sit in his lap. He would have thought there would be more discomfort, but he supposed they must have had a few years to get used to each other.
“Well,” Kuroba asked, leaning comfortably against his Saguru, “I’ll ask. What exactly is this going to cost us, and how likely are we going to be to be able to afford what it will cost to get us home? If you can get us home. We’re not paying with our lives.”
“Learning how you got here can pay for my search for a solution. The actual solution…” Koizumi’s eyes narrowed. “Is unlikely to be cheap. I don’t suppose you’d trade away some of your luck?”
“Considering the fact that luck seems to be the only thing keeping us alive,” Kuroba said with a polite smile, “I won’t be paying that, and neither will Ayato.”
“I can speak for myself.”
“Do you disagree?”
“No,” Ayato said with a huff. “But it’s the principle of things.”
“What else could we trade?” the younger Saguru asked. “I assume they must be things of value to us, or something unique.” He seemed to have accepted the possibility of metaphysical trade immediately, though perhaps after ending up in another world entirely, it was easy enough to believe that that sort of thing was possible.
“There are many things you could trade,” Koizumi said. “One of you could trade the chance to return for the sake of the others, or years of your lives. You could trade away special skills or knowledge. I could take your sight or hearing or voice.”
Ayato shifted uncomfortably. “We’re getting a bit ‘Little Mermaid’ here. None of us is staying behind, or sacrificing years of life. What do we specifically have to give?”
Koizumi narrowed her eyes at him. “…Your futures.” She held up a hand as everyone leaned forward to protest. “Not like that. I meant sacrificing the potential for a future. Your Kaito is a thief and magician, Hakuba is a detective and an engineer. You, who were once Kaito, are also a magician, and could one day reclaim the name you once held.”
At Saguru’s side, he felt Kaito tense. Kaito had given up the chance to be a magician once. He knew that it would be painful to watch another version of himself have to grapple with that kind of choice. Saguru set a hand on Kaito’s knee and Kaito snatched it up in a bruising grip.
There was silence for a long moment before Ayato spoke. “I give up my name,” he said. “Specifically, the name ‘Kaito’. We all know by now that I’m not getting a cure for the little problem I have. So.” He shrugged, looking both uncomfortable and determined. Saguru couldn’t imagine giving up his name. Wasn’t entirely sure what the whole ramifications of that would be. Would Ayato be unable to refer to himself as Kaito? Would he be unable to think it, anyone else to think it? The most alarming thing about Koizumi’s magic was that no one would know the full extent, not even Koizumi, until after the deal was made.
“You’re sure?” the android asked.
“You’re not the worst replacement a guy could have,” Ayato said, rolling his eyes. “And I just said I can’t go back anyway. Why hold onto that name?”
Something passed between them, expressed in eyebrows and slight tilts of lips. It must be odd to look yourself in the face and know this was a different person. Well, no, Saguru knew it was weird. His younger self was right there, and very much not him.
“Then the exchange will be made,” Koizumi said before turning her eyes toward the others.
The younger Saguru’s hands tightened on his lap in a nervous tic Saguru could recognize in his own habits before he’d ended up with other outlets to fiddle with. His own hand tightened a bit on the handle of his cane. “I would be willing to give up,” he started only for Kuroba to put a hand over his mouth.
“No.”
“Kait—” Saguru tried to say around the hand.
“No. You were going to give up being a detective.” Kuroba scowled. “You’ve given up enough of yourself for a lifetime. Don’t give up your passion.”
“I already barely consult these days,” younger Saguru said, prying Kuroba’s hand away. “It isn’t as big of a sacrifice as it could be.”
“You enjoy it though,” Kuroba said. “You gave it up as a career because of me already. Don’t give up on what’s left.”
Saguru met eyes with his younger self and could see the thought that if Saguru could handle being a teacher instead of a detective, he could clearly learn to be content in another field. Being an engineer was certainly more intellectually driving on a day-to-day basis.
Still, his younger self took a moment to reflect, lips pursed. “Would I be able to give a skill?” he asked after a moment.
Koizumi hummed. “If it is worth enough, yes.”
“I have been playing violin since I was eight,” Saguru said, “and it is a hobby that I enjoy and am proficient in, but not one that I couldn’t live without. Is fifteen years of developing a skill enough?”
“Saguru,” Kuroba started to protest.
His Saguru gave him a lifted brow in response. Kuroba trailed off, upset. “It needs to hold value,” Saguru said, patient. “This holds value, but is something I will willingly part with.”
Koizumi tilted her head to the side, eyes slightly unfocused like she was feeling something out none of them could observe. “…Fifteen years should be enough, provided the last exchange is of equal worth. A name weighs a bit more than a hobby. A dream would be higher still. Hopefully combined, all three of your sacrifices will balance enough.”
“That leaves me then,” Kuroba said with a wry twist of his mouth. “I’m not quite sure what to offer here. The base of who I am is stolen from someone else, my body is already in constant decline and repair, and there’s always a chance my mind will fail.” It was chilling how calmly he said it, like these were mere facts of life instead of that he was always a step away from death, or at least death as a machine could manage. “I could offer a skill, but much of my skills are linked to what I am. My memory, my speed and control—they’re a bit above human range. If I traded the excess of those abilities, would I break, then, as its cost?”
Koizumi didn’t answer, waiting him out.
Kuroba sighed. “Something of value. Hm. The greatest things I value are my memories because they’re what makes me Kaito. If I gave some of them up, would that be enough?”
“Wait wait wait,” Ayato cut in. “If you give the wrong memories you could change your personality.”
“One specific memory then,” Kuroba said. There was cold determination in his eyes that Saguru had seen in Kaito before. Resolve to see a thing through. “The first trick our father taught us. The memory of him teaching us it.”
“That’s the moment we first loved magic,” Ayato said, somewhere between pained and horrified.
“Yes,” Kuroba said before giving his younger double a brief smile. “It’s one of our most cherished memories, but it isn’t the only one we have of our dad, and it’s not the only moment we loved magic.”
“But it’s the start.”
“It is.”
“What if,” Ayato said, voice trembling the slightest bit. “What if that’s enough to forget?”
“Then it’s a good thing you have the memory,” Kuroba said. “But I don’t think giving it up will fundamentally change me. Maybe it will change my relationship to magic some, and maybe something with Oyaji will shift. But one memory isn’t going to destroy a foundation of hundreds of other memories, no matter how much it’s treasured.”
Ayato frowned, but he didn’t protest again. Saguru glanced at his Kaito and saw the same hesitant, unhappy expression on his face. It truly must be a cherished memory.
“Would we be able to help pay their fee?” Saguru asked.
Unhappy noises came from Ayato and Kuroba, but the other Saguru looked back at him with clear understanding.
Koizumi closed her eyes, silent for a moment before shaking her head slowly. “I think there needs to be a clear distinction between you, and adding anything of this world into the mix would risk drawing you to theirs.
Damn. Well, better to have tried than not.
“I believe,” Koizumi said, looking to Kuroba, “that your memory will cover the cost. It holds a deeper weight than a single memory should. You tie a lot of your identity to your father, don’t you?”
Kuroba’s lips quirked up. “For good or bad, he’s defined most of our goals and values.”
“Hm. It seems like that should be enough to trade with. It will take me a bit to figure out the exact method of getting you back, though. It isn’t as if I’m going to create another explosion to blast you back.”
“What a relief, we won’t be blown up today,” Ayato said sarcastically. “It’s not like that doesn’t almost happen literally all the time.”
“It happens significantly less if you avoid Kudo,” Kaito said, probably thinking of his own experiences with explosions.
“I see him all the time. That’s not changing anytime soon,” Ayato sighed. “Could really do with less corpses. Like, why? Why are there so many murderers in Tokyo? In Beika in particular? Is he a magnet? Does he have some aura that incites people to murderous frenzies? We can’t go to the beach without a body washing up.”
“They’re friends,” the younger Saguru said blandly.
“Who is his friend? We’re rivals, get it right!”
Kaito snorted and bit his lip when Ayato glared at him. “I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that he’s hot.”
Ayato went bright red. “I’m not—He’s—Kudo is straight! And annoying as hell! He’s a death magnet that thinks he can actually act like a child when he sticks out as much as his cowlick does! He’s a know-it-all with no social skills that thinks he’s being subtle when everyone with eyes knows he’s suspicious as hell as a child! He has terrible taste—”
“They’re definitely friends,” Kuroba said.
“Fuck you.”
“Sorry, not into sex.” Kuroba shot back, perfectly deadpan. “Kudo might be though.”
“Augh!”
“Is this what having a sibling is like?” Kaito said to Saguru under his breath.
“How would I know? I’m also an only child,” Saguru replied.
“What now?” the younger Saguru cut in, talking over Kuroba and Ayato. “Is there a…spell… you need to do or perhaps you merely yank the metaphysical prices from us and we end up home?”
“Oh it is certainly more complicated than that,” Koizumi said with an amused smile on the edge of her lips. “What you’re asking for me to do is to punch a hole in our reality to another specific reality that all three of you can pass through without harm. It’s the second part that is actually difficult. Realities dip in and out of each other’s borders constantly, but it is far harder to hit the correct world in a kaleidoscope of endless possibilities.”
“But you can do it though,” Ayato said.
“I can. I will need a bit of each of your blood though. Or,” she said eying Kuroba, “whatever passes for blood.”
“Does it have to be blood?” Ayato asked, going a bit pale. “Maybe take some of my hair or something?”
“Blood is preferable,” Koizumi said. “It’s tradition for a reason, and blood holds life and ties to its body that will be necessary.”
“Oh. Okay. Great.” Ayato sunk in his seat.
“Apologies,” younger Saguru said. “There’s some blood and medical phobias between the two of them.”
“An understandable thing,” Koizumi said, rising to her feet like some kind of graceful, deadly predator. “Thankfully we’ll only be needing a few drops each. A small cut or a pin prick will do.”
“Oh thank goodness,” Ayato said.
Kuroba huffed a laugh. “A needle is actually less damaging you know.”
“Yeah, but it’s the associations. I’ve had less people come at me with a knife and intent than a needle. And shush, you get freaked out by scalpels.”
Kuroba shrugged, and Saguru both did and didn’t want to know the context. All the more so when his double gave a little flinch.
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Koizumi said, “I have a bit of research to do and then I will get everything we should need set up.”
*
It was interesting, Kaito thought, to see this older Koizumi. The Koizumi Akako he was familiar with was brash, self-absorbed, and had a vicious streak, though she’d occasionally helped him over the years. This Koizumi probably had those negative traits too, but she’d clearly grown up to be a bit less carelessly cruel. He didn’t know from looking at her if she still played with people’s hearts or threatened people, but she was a mother now and maybe that had changed something in her. There was something softer in her than the Koizumi Kaito knew. Either motherhood had settled her in some way, or she was actually fond of his other self in a non-possessive way. As impossible as that felt.
Whatever Koizumi had to do to prepare was taking a while though. They’d been led to a different lounge space by an unsettling butler and had been given refreshments. Kaito didn’t bother trying any of them. His older double might be okay risking it, but Kaito had had one too many love potions slipped into his food over the years to trust anything Koizumi gave him.
He’d have been perfectly comfortable waiting until Koizumi returned. However, a while after they got to the room, they were interrupted by two girls.
Twins, not quite identical though from the way they styled themselves they were trying to appear so. They had Koizumi’s unsettling smile and Kaito’s eyes and cheekbones, though one had more of Koizumi’s bowed lips and the other got Kaito’s thinner ones and a slight dimple on one side of her face. They were objectively pretty, but it was in the way that a cursed china doll looked pretty; a little unnatural and artificial and unsettlingly off.
“Girls,” the older Kaito said, giving them a nod.
The twins looked around the room like they were some fascinating sideshow exhibit. Which kind of fit considering they were iterations of the same people.
“There’s so many of you,” one girl said.
“Someone messed up, huh?” said the other. Then, “That one isn’t another brother, is he?”
“Excuse me?” Ayato yelped. “Heck no!”
“Another alternate,” the older Kaito said. “Has your mother mentioned multiverse theories?”
“No,” the first twin said. “But we’ve seen it in fiction. How did they get here?”
“I hear it involved an explosion.”
“Does that mean there will be another explosion to send them back?” the second twin asked, looking a bit too excited by the thought.
“Akako-hime didn’t mention any explosions, just a bit of blood and a trade.”
“Boring,” the second twin said with a sigh.
“Traditional,” the first said, commiserating.
“Explosions would be more fun.”
“I think we’d rather live to see our own universe again,” Kaito said, drawing two sharp sets of eyes. “But yes, explosions can be fun.”
The twins cocked their heads to the side in eerie synchronization, looking Kaito over in what he thought was true curiosity and not their strange, mirroring act of Koizumi’s unsettling presence. “Something’s different about you,” the first twin said.
“But what?” the other echoed. She darted forward to poke Kaito in the cheek.
Kaito blinked at her. Rude, and surprisingly impulsive. Well, he shouldn’t expect much else from a child with Kaito’s blood and Koizumi’s upbringing.
“It’s not nice to stick your fingers in people’s faces,” the other Kaito said with a sigh.
The one who’d poked him shrugged. “Now I know what someone from another universe feels like.”
Her sister looked like she was considering stepping forward to give poking Kaito a go as well. Thankfully, the older Kaito distracted her.
“Akako-hime said you’re moving on to practical magic?”
The twins turned back to him, though not without another considering look at Kaito’s group like touching all of them would give them some kind of world-explaining knowledge or something. Kaito was half tempted to hold Ayato out like a sacrifice and sneak away with his Saguru while they toyed with their prey. Ayato would probably try to kill him if he did that though.
“We’re past emotional manipulation,” one said, “and have moved on to impacting impulses and thoughts.”
“I’m learning scrying because I’m better at it,” the second said.
There was the first hint of discord between the two as the first sister frowned at her twin. “We’re both learning scrying.”
“And I’m learning it faster. And you’re learning talismans faster.” She shrugged, a practical mirror image of Kaito’s own habitual motion, which was somehow even more unsettling than all the other little ways the girls were trying to be creepy. “There’s no harm in admitting our strengths and weaknesses and covering each other.”
“We don’t have to tell people about them.”
“It’s Kaito-jii.”
Her sister gestures at the group.
A lifted eyebrow and an unimpressed look in response. “Leaving the universe,” she said waving at Kaito, Ayato, and his Saguru. “And soon to be married to Kaito-jii.” A finger pointed rudely at Hakuba who looked resigned rather than offended.
“It’s still the principle of things.” She gave a sniff before turning back to the older Kaito. “Don’t repeat any of that.”
“I won’t breathe a word of it,” he promised.
“Good.” The girls glanced at each other and were back in synch like they hadn’t had a moment of disagreement at all. How unsettling. “Next time you come, bring one of your birds?”
“Why?” older Kaito asked, rightfully uneasy. Kaito had heard his own Koizumi mention sacrifices once or twice.
“Oh, we won’t hurt it,” the other twin said. “We’re looking into familiars and wanted to see if doves qualified. This sort of thing is passed down.”
Against his will, Kaito felt a curl of interest. “What is Koizumi-san’s familiar?”
“Cobras,” the twins said in unison.
Ah. Snakes. How…fitting?
“I’ll bring a dove,” older Kaito said.
They were interrupted by Koizumi at the door. “Girls, I thought I said to wait until later to talk to Kaito.”
The twins turned to her, big, innocent stares on their faces in an instant. Kaito used that face a lot as a child to get candy from unwitting adults. “But when else would we get a chance to see interdimensional travelers?” one said.
“It’s a rare phenomenon,” the other said.
Koizumi rolled her eyes. “You’re both menaces,” she said fondly. “You can observe the spell sending them home so long as you do it from a distance.”
The girls grinned. “Thank you!”
“Shoo,” Koizumi said, waving them out of the room. She huffed exasperatedly as they skipped off. “They get that from you,” she said to older Kaito.
“I don’t know, I think I remember someone literally stalking me at one point, and definitely recall you trying to manipulate situations where we ended up alone.” Older Kaito had a tiny smile on his face, amusement and fondness mingling with remembered stresses.
“Details,” Koizumi said with a dismissive wave.
“Do they really need to see some of my doves or are they trying to get me to lend them a living creature for something sketchy?” he asked.
“It’s sincere. I personally doubt they’ll end up with doves as familiars, but they will probably end up with birds.”
“I’ll bring one next time I visit.”
“You visit so rarely these days,” Koizumi said with a surprisingly sincere pout. “You should have more time in retirement, not less.”
“It’s amazing how much sleep I can catch up on after almost two decades of sleep deprivation.”
“I’ll send you my schedule,” Koizumi said like it was a done deal that Kaito would visit the next time their schedules lined up from Kaito’s eye roll, she was right in that assumption. “Now. The spell. I have it set up, I’ll just need some blood.”
Wow, that sure was a sentence Kaito never wanted to hear again. He shared a grimace with Ayato.
Koizumi pulled out a few small, wickedly-sharp silver knives. “Just a small cut. It doesn’t have to be bigger than a papercut, just enough to bleed a few drops.”
He should be relieved that it wasn’t a scalpel or needle, but Kaito didn’t really want to cut himself on a knife either. At least, he thought as he examined the edge of the one he was handed, it should be fairly painless; something as sharp as this could cut almost before he could feel the pressure.
Just a small cut. That was nothing compared to having his arm vivisected to fix it. It wouldn’t even take as long as Ayato or Saguru’s cuts to heal.
Before he could overthink it anymore, Kaito stuck the tip of the knife into synthetic skin. The feedback was instant pain-pressure awareness. When he pulled the blade back, dark red synthetic blood rose to the surface. Kaito watched it bead, something uncomfortable twisting in his gut.
Koizumi appeared next to him in a flash, a tiny glass vial in her hand. “Just a few drops. Enough to coat the bottom.”
Kaito felt the cut sting and he squeezed around it, forcing the blood to spill over and drip. Four drops to coat the bottom. One more to be sure. He pulled his hand away and the vial was stoppered. Koizumi moved toward Ayato next.
Ayato had made an incision on the heel of his palm. He let blood drip into his vial with a grimace of distaste. Saguru didn’t even hesitate as he nicked the side of his pinkie finger.
“Look at you, avoiding anywhere you’re going to immediately use,” Kaito said.
“One of us has to be sensible, and I would think you both would have been more conscious about preserving your hands.”
“I was saving my fingers,” Ayato said.
“And I have more scars than nerves,” Kaito added. “At least in my hands.”
Saguru winced, poorly hidden guilt on his face even though it wasn’t his fault that Kaito needed repairs so often. Kaito nudged him with his shoulder; he hadn’t meant to make him feel bad. It was a fact that he had less sensation on parts of his hands at this point.
Koizumi held up the vials to the light once they were all stoppered. She examined them like she was looking for impurities or something before giving a satisfied hum. “Wonderful. Now follow me.”
He would think, Kaito mused as Koizumi took them on a meandering route through her mansion, that with how brisk she was being, Koizumi dealt with interdimensional travelers on the regular. Maybe this had happened before for her. Maybe she’d met another version of them, or another of herself, or maybe after summoning Lucifer, the whole alternate reality thing didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Either way, it was surprisingly calming. One of them was at least in control. Yes, it was Koizumi Akako, but Koizumi Akako was knee deep in strange magical bullshit that Kaito did his best to avoid. She really was the only one they could have turned to in this situation.
Kaito couldn’t help thinking that this Koizumi was a lot more cooperative than his own Koizumi would have been. If he’d approached his Koizumi, she’d have tried to place half a dozen spells on him for entering her house let alone asking for favors. Somehow this world’s Kaito had screwed up so badly that he’d alienated Aoko, his closest friend, and become friendly with Koizumi who was about as nice as a viper.
Go figure.
Kaito was so glad for his own reality with Aoko and Saguru at his side and Ayato and Conan running around. Even if he was a robot and not human, he’d lucked out in having so much support and love. From the sound of it, this Kaito had missed out on a lot of that for a long time.
Koizumi led them to a small room with a concrete floor that had been painted with blackboard paint. In the center was a complicated chalk circle full of symbols Kaito only tangentially recognized from alchemic texts while looking for information about stones that granted immortality. Kaito was quite sure this did nothing related to immortality though.
“It’s like a cheap rip off from Fullmetal Alchemist,” he said, knowing it would make her annoyed.
Koizumi frowned. “It’s a far better diagram than anything you’ll find in a manga,” she snapped. “You should feel grateful that I know how to draw this sort of thing. Without my skills you’d probably have to try and blow yourselves up again.”
“We weren’t trying to blow ourselves up,” Ayato muttered.
“Now get in the center,” Koizumi said with an imperious hand wave. “For all we know, the longer you’re here, the greater the chance of destabilizing our universes.”
“Is that likely?” both Sagurus asked at the same time. They looked at each other uncomfortably.
“It’s not exactly a common study,” Koizumi said, “but at least things didn’t implode when you came face to face with other versions of yourself, so that’s one possible catastrophe averted.”
“Yay?” Kaito said.
“Circle,” Koizumi demanded.
They stepped into the circle. Older Kaito and Hakuba watched from the edge of the room. Their bodies were relaxed, but Kaito could see their tells in the edges of their eyes and the way Kaito’s smile was just the slightest bit too stiff to be true. Worry. As touching as it was to be worried about, it didn’t exactly fill him with confidence that this would work.
“Now what?” Ayato asked, crossing his arms and staying carefully away from the lines surrounding them.
“Now,” Koizumi said, bending to place a vial on blood into a little loop in the drawn design, “you say any last words to your alternates before I activate this and send you back.”
“And something will just, what, scoop memories and knowledge from our brains?” Ayato said skeptically.
“It will be like you never had what is missing,” Koizumi said.
“That’s not as reassuring as you meant it to be,” Kaito muttered.
“It will happen the moment the deal is complete,” Kaito’s double said unexpectedly. “It won’t hurt, but you will feel a little like something is missing. That fades. Going forward, you’ll notice changes where the absence of your skill or memory effect little things, but it won’t be jarring for long.”
“Ayato will not be able to use Kaito as his name, nor think of it as his own,” older Hakuba said. “Saguru will have to relearn violin from scratch. Kaito will never access the memory he is giving up again. It doesn’t erase the past. Ayato will remember being Kaito. Saguru will remember learning to play but all the details will likely be gone. Kaito will remember he gave up a memory. At least,” he added, fingers tight around his cane, “that is essentially how things worked for Kaito and myself.”
Good to know that all of them had the poor judgement to make deals with witches. It was a universal constant or something.
“Right,” Kaito said because someone had to. “It was nice meeting you both, but I think there’s a universe missing us.”
“You as well,” Hakuba said with a deep nod. “Best of luck on reaching your goal.”
“Oh. Yeah, did you ever find…?”
“Yes,” his older self said. Both Kaito and Ayato looked at him expectantly. They got an eye roll in return. “You don’t even know if it’s the same stone.”
“It can’t hurt to check.”
Another eye roll before older Kaito pulled out a note pad and started scribbling on it. Dates, numbers, names. “I have no idea what year it is for you, or where this thing is right now, but here’s what I know and which gem it was in my universe. Maybe you’ll get lucky.” He folded it in quick motions before tossing it into the circle.
Kaito caught it and tucked it away into his pocket. “Thank you.”
“Whatever, just don’t die, okay? I came way too close too many times.”
“Anything else?” Koizumi asked, fingernails tapping impatiently on her arm.
“One thing,” older Hakuba said, glancing at his Kaito before looking at them in the circle. “I hope you can have a happy life. It likely doesn’t seem like it now, but you have a future ahead of you, and if you put in the effort to seek it out, you can find joy in the smallest of things.”
“We intend to try for that,” Kaito’s Saguru said with the hint of a smile. He met Kaito’s eyes and Kaito couldn’t wait to be home and drag him and Aoko into a cuddle pile. He was so lucky to have them both.
“I have nothing to say,” Ayato piped up, “except that I want to go home. This universe is weird.”
“Oi, having a brain clone and being turned into a kid is way weirder than growing older.”
“You’re a divorcee with who knows how many children running around,” Ayato snarked. “It’s weird.”
“Anything else?” Koizumi asked again, pointed. “No? Lovely.” Her hands reached out into the air and there was a spark, something red and glowing, and then Kaito didn’t have time for more than a moment of alarm as the array lit up in crimson before his vision went red, then black.
*
When Ayato opened his eyes, they were still in a creepy mansion room. The only difference was that the lights were off, a thick carpet covered the floor, and everything in the room had storage covers over them. Ayato sat up and groaned, feeling a little like something hit him between the eyes. Ow? Ow. Most disconcertingly, it wasn’t purely a physical sensation.
Beside him, Hakuba was starting to stir and his robo-double was completely still.
Hakuba was clearly still alive, so Ayato crawled over to Kaito. The faint stir of breath came from his lips as his lungs kept working, and when Ayato reached for a pulse, he found it, though it was just the slightest tic off. Hmm. Hopefully that was temporary and not a consequence of dimension travel. Ayato didn’t know if Hakuba would be up for heart surgery.
“Oi.” Ayato poked Kaito’s cheek. “Wakey-wakey Sleeping Beauty.”
Kaito’s nose wrinkled slightly. Okay, he was probably going to be fine too.
Ayato got to his feet, swaying the slightest bit as it felt like the blood rushed from his head. Noted, magic had side effects. They were probably still in Koizumi’s home, just in a part she didn’t use. …Or this place currently belonged to someone else and they’d have to sneak out. Ayato turned and kicked Hakuba lightly in the hip. “Hey. Get up.”
Hakuba groaned. A hand shot up to cover his eyes as his teeth bared in a grimace. “My head is killing me,” Hakuba mumbled.
“Same, Hakuba, same.” Ayato glanced around again. He didn’t like how still everything was. How…deep… the shadows were. “Not to rush you or anything, but I have the feeling we shouldn’t stick around here.”
“Of course.” Hakuba rolled to his knees, hissing in pain. “Well. Now I can say I know how it feels to have a decade’s worth of skill-memory ripped from my head while hopping dimensions. It’s a terrible experience; let’s never do it again.”
“Maybe use a bit more care when working with prototypes?”
“Bugger off.” His blindly-groping hands found Kaito’s ankle and quickly followed it up to his chest and neck. “…His heart is off.”
“Damn, I hoped that was just me.”
“We’re alive. If we’re alive, we can find a way to fix it,” Hakuba said with the heaviness of someone who had had to figure out how to fix a great deal of glitches in the last few years. Hakuba opened his eyes into slits and shook Kaito carefully. “Kaito. We need to leave.”
Kaito’s face twitched, brows drawing together. It looked like he could be having a bad dream. More likely, whatever had happened was affecting his synthetic nerves the same as their nervous systems were in haywire.
Ayato could swear the darkness in the corners of the room was expanding. “Oh for frick’s sake.” He shook Kaito hard by the shoulders, ignoring Hakuba’s reprimand. “Up!” he commanded.
Kaito’s eyes opened and his head lolled to one side before he got control of his body. “Did. Did we get struck by lightning or is that just in my head?”
“I didn’t see any lightning,” Ayato said. “But you need to get up. We’re in the same place as before in our universe—hopefully our universe,” he corrected, because they didn’t really have a way of knowing for sure yet, did they? “We need to leave before something tries to curse us or something and make sure we still have a house standing after an explosion that literally sent us to another universe.”
It was clear that something was still glitching in Kaito because it took a moment for him to process the words when usually he was faster than everyone. “Right.” He tried to stand and failed.
Ayato tried to hold him up, but Kaito was made of fricking metal—not too much heavier than human, but he was heavier than Hakuba and Ayato did not have the body to hold up that kind of weight. “Hakuba. A little help?”
Between the two of them, they managed to get Kaito on his feet and moving. Well, more like a drunkenly shuffle than anything else, but Ayato would take it. Nothing ate them on the way out of the mansion. In fact, the whole place had an unnerving abandoned feeling that reminded Ayato of the setting of a horror movie.
Thankfully, they got out in one piece and no one showed up to murder them from the shadows. From there, Hakuba at least had his phone to call for a ride.
Ayato let himself doze as the car took them back toward their homes in Ekoda. In the back of his mind his brain kept skipping over the bit that was missing. I am [Ayato]. I am [Ayato]. I am not Kaito. I am- I am- I am-
He fell asleep to the sound of old J-rock over the radio and Hakuba’s hushed conversation with Kaito, Kaito’s words less slurred already.
*
“Do you think they’re okay?” Saguru asked as they stood before the empty circle. The blinding light of it was still seared into his retinas, leaving him blinking spots from his vision.
“They’ll be fine,” Koizumi said. She collapsed on a nearby box with a groan. “That was taxing. I’m never doing a favor for either of you again.”
“Oh, so the next time we have interdimensional travelers show up we just leave it to them to figure their own way back?” Kaito asked. He didn’t seem to be having the same vision problem Saguru was. Perhaps because he’d had the sense to close his eyes moments before the spell triggered.
“There’d better be no next time,” Koizumi grumbled. “I know your threads of fate are fascinating, Kuroba, but this was strange even for you.”
“Maybe it was my alternate reality self’s luck and not mine, this time?” Kaito shrugged. “Seems like he—they—had a lot stranger time than I did.”
“Truly?” Saguru asked, doubtful.
“One is a robot, one died, came back to life, de-aged, and then they both traveled to this dimension. I’m really thinking they were the weird ones here.”
“Meanwhile you have made repeated deals with a witch, changed how probability and healing affects you, survived more than a decade against people trying to kill you, and found a stone of immortality.” Saguru raised an eyebrow. “Honestly, both of you have strange, improbable lives.”
“I still say a robot and defying-death-via-chibification is weirder,” Kaito said, “but fair enough. All versions of me are fated to have strange lives. And apparently we drag you into it whether you want to be there or not.”
“Oh, we wanted to be there.”
“Can you flirt somewhere else?” Koizumi said tiredly. “Perhaps not in my home? I have a migraine starting and you need to leave.”
Kaito gave her a theatrical bow. “Of course, Akako-hime. We’re eternally grateful for the assistance in getting them home.”
Koizumi rolled her eyes. “Stop. Just go.” One hand came up over her eyes. The other waved imperiously toward the door.
Kaito caught Saguru’s hand and tugged. “We’re going then. I’ll make sure to visit sometime in the future with a dove, yeah?”
Koizumi gave them another tired wave and then they were heading back through the dizzying sprawl of hallways that made up Koizumi’s home.
Saguru half expected to find the twins waiting to ambush them again, but they reached the front door without even spying Koizumi’s unsettling servant.
“So,” Kaito said as they headed back toward the car. “Now what?”
“So now we head back to your family home and tend to the doves properly,” Saguru said, “because we rushed things earlier. And then we can relax like we had intended.”
“We’re going to need to pick up groceries for later, you know.”
Saguru sighed. The last thing he wanted was to deal with crowds and the irritating process of getting groceries. “Can that be put off until tomorrow?”
“You tell me. I thought you were the one that wanted ingredients to make that cake for your mother.”
Saguru pursed his lips. “…a quick stop at the store, doves, then home.”
“Doves, store, home? You’re getting perishables, right?”
“Fine, fine.” Maybe feeding the doves would give him a bit more energy back. It was a peaceful enough activity.
“Hey, Saguru?” Kaito said as they got into the car.
“Hm?”
“What do you think they’re doing now?”
Saguru didn’t have to ask who he meant. If Saguru’s alternate self was anything like him—and he was, that was clear—then he’d be exhausted as well. “Going home,” Saguru said after a moment. “We’re all going home and craving a nap.”
Kaito laughed. “Yeah, that sounds fair. For the record, I’m completely happy to take a nap with you when we get home.”
“And actually sleep?” Saguru joked, though at their age if they ended up in a bed together outside of regular sleeping hours—and honestly most times in those regular hours—it was just to catch up on sleep. They both had a lifetime of letting their heads and goals get the better of their sleep schedule and Kaito especially took advantage of having the opportunity to finally rest.
“Hm, maybe,” Kaito said with a grin. “Maybe not.” He caught Saguru’s hand. “You know I think in every world we must meet and affect each other. Maybe sometimes we’re lovers, and maybe sometimes we’re friends or enemies or something in between. I can’t imagine a world where you didn’t affect my life in some way.”
Saguru fought a blush. Kaito could still make him flustered like he was falling for the first time all over again. “The other versions of me are very lucky to have you then,” Saguru managed after a moment. He had the pleasure of seeing Kaito flush slightly as well. “Ready to go?”
Kaito nodded. “Yeah, let’s hurry so we can get home.”
*
Kaito felt off. That was definitely from the world hopping—technology and magic, it seemed, didn’t coexist perfectly. But the longer they were in this world—hopefully their world, nothing had been off so far—the closer to normal he felt. Ayato drowsed nearby and Saguru had his concentration-face on. Probably already going through things to fix Kaito again. Kaito sighed a little. He always worked too hard and Kaito always had too many glitches.
Kaito leaned his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder. Saguru’s driver pulled onto Kaito’s road. There was his home, and Aoko’s, and the front looked just how they’d left it, complete with one of Agasa’s prototype toys stuck in a bush out front where Ayato had crashed it.
Something in him settled. Home.
When the car rolled to a stop, the front door opened to a concerned Aoko. Kaito felt his heart skip a beat, like it kept doing since they were back, then, remarkably, stabilize. It was like seeing her clicked everything into place, the slight unreality in him fixed by her mere presence. Kaito felt his lips curving to a smile.
“Saguru,” he said, catching Saguru’s hand in his own, the crisscross of careful scars on his fingers contrasting against Saguru’s whole ones. “We’re home.”
Saguru looked up and saw Aoko as well and he smiled. “Aoko.”
“She’s probably worried,” Kaito said under his breath. He clicked off his seatbelt. Undid Ayato’s as Ayato stirred sleepily.
“We did have an explosion,” Saguru reasoned, undoing his own seatbelt.
“Let’s reassure her we’re okay?”
“Are you?”
“Okay?” Kaito tilted his head. He should feel different with a memory missing, but Kaito felt like Kaito. He loved Saguru and Aoko, cared for Ayato like he was the brother neither of them ever had. He loved his birds, his mother, Agasa and Haibara’s contrasting lab presences and even Kudo’s nipping at his heels. He loved making a crowd smile with a trick or making his loved ones smile with the flick of a wrist to reveal a rose. Kaito nodded with a hum. “I’m okay.”
Aoko tugged the car door open before they could reach for the handle and threw herself on them. “Where have you been?! I’ve been worried sick!”
Kaito wrapped arms around her and felt Saguru and Ayato right there with him. Everything condensed into a feeling of correctness he couldn’t explain if he wanted to, hadn’t realized was missing in the other world.
“Sorry we worried you,” he said, “but we’re back now.”
#magic kaito#robo!kaito#nltsa#fanfiction#my writing#the crossover from out of nowhere#au of an au/ crossover of the aus#sometimes your brain fixates on something it finds funny and then weird stuff happens
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Sudan Archives - Natural Brown Prom Queen
Second full length album from the Cincinati-born violinist and singer Brittney Parks
7/13
“Only bad bitches in my trellis.” That’s Brittney Parks, the singer-songwriter-violinist-producer extraordinaire known best as Sudan Archives, at the very beginning of her newest album, Natural Brown Prom Queen. This line is funny, charming and silly, but it’s also deceptive — within it lies one of the seeds from which the album springs forth. “Home Maker” is a song about the art of spatial curation, but it goes deeper than that — it’s a forceful statement about choosing who to include in the world you’ve curated for yourself. But, even further than that, it’s a statement about where Sudan is as an artist today. Her debut album, Athena, allowed her to stand alone, with her playing every instrument in the mix. Now, on NBPQ, she allows her world to expand, with an indomitable cohort of different musicians, giving her music enough depth that it entirely reframes Athena. That album felt like a complete world, but NBPQ shows that it was only a small chunk of it.
If you’ve heard NBPQ, this might feel like an understatement, but this record is dense. These compositions are rich enough that it can be a little overwhelming at first. So assured is Sudan’s creative vision that each and every moment of NBPQ feels well-intentioned and highly deliberate, but the fact remains that these aren’t always straightforward songs. Look at how a song like “NBPQ (Topless)” flows, with its constantly shifting gears and tempos that leave you checking to see if you’re even still listening to the same song. A less-adept artist might leave you feeling overwhelmed with a song like “NBPQ (Topless),” but Sudan is a masterful arranger, able to balance everything within a song like it. That skill is maybe the key to why NBPQ is such an excellent record — sometimes, you’ll be blown away by how much she packs into a song, and other times, you’ll be blown away by how smooth the shifting can be. Don’t believe that? Just listen to how much “Selfish Soul” and “ChevyS10” changes from beginning to end.
Of course, all of this is meant to help elevate Sudan, who manages to remain the star of the show even in an album that could have easily deprioritized her by virtue of being so irresistibly dynamic. Her personality doesn’t allow for such things, though, meaning she rises to the top of each and every song, like a surfer capable of knowing how to tame the otherwise unpredictable waves that surround them. It helps that she’s got about 10 megatons of swagger and charisma, meaning a song like “Homesick” can contain something like “Turned on One Piece/ And this often goes, Hand in Hand/ Then Initial D/ That’s his favorite show currently/ But when you gon’ give me some D?” and you don’t even stop to blink at her going from anime references to unquenchable thirst in a millisecond. Elsewhere, on “TDLY (Homegrown Land),” she swaps from confidence to self-aware romantic introspection with ease: “We was feelin’ rocky so I told him, ‘Darling, get to hiking’/ And to all my friends, I’m not trippin’/ Have you ever been in love with your fucking best friend?/ Sleepin’ in the car, we don’t wanna be separate/ Runnin’ from the cops ’cause we runnin’ all red flags.” It’s jaw-dropping, and even though we’re left in the dark about the people who appear in her songs.
If you’ve been sleeping on Sudan Archives, please let this be your cue to knock that shit off. When Athena came out, it felt like watching a star — not “star” as in “famous” but as in “a celestial body” — being born. Natural Brown Prom Queen should be the point where Sudan becomes a household name, working with the best and the brightest in the industry who want to taste just a little of the magic she captures here. As another summer draws to a close, it’s hard to not feel sad that we won’t get to spend that many more beautiful evenings in the company of albums that feel this exciting. Luckily, though, it means we’ll have a few months to digest just how fucking good this record is, and work out how to avoid gushing so much when we talk about why it’s one of the best albums of 2022.
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https://spectrumculture.com/2022/09/14/sudan-archives-natural-brown-prom-queen-review/
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Looking Like U Got Me
Request: "Prompt no. 56 and 55 for Gojo ＼(^o^)／"
55. "You look like my husband/wife"
56. "Keep doing that and I'll marry you faster"
↠ Pairing: Gojou Satoru x Reader
↠ Warning: none! Simply fluff
↬ Word Count: 1.7k
↠ a/n: i accidentally mixed up prompts 55 and 57 ;-; but still hoping this turns out good!!
↳ from Go! Go! Gogatsu Event!
All he wanted was to wake up in bed, next to you— who would cuddle deeper in his arms even in slumber so he'd smother you with his kisses and tighten his hold around you and drift back to sleep longer, finally free of responsibilities for once and enjoy quality time with his only favorite person. But instead he wakes up with a groan passing through his lips, supporting his back side with his hand while shuffling to his side in a different position as the light sun rays shun through the window blinds, softly fanning his eye and forehead.
Gojo chuckles a bit before wincing. His lower back so tensed that he feels himself get older by the day. Pouting at the empty space next to him, he palms the cold sheet in wonder of where you are. Up so early in the morning when you could've just stayed in for him. How annoying. His eyes shut for moment when the scent coming from outside the room intruded his senses. Ah, you must be cooking breakfast. How sweet of you.
Thank goodness it wasn't another batch of dried crackers or cup of noodles that'll enter his mouth. He was never one to cook meals when he was on solo or when you weren't around. The very thought of not only the meal was awaiting for him outside, but also you excites him that it made him feel tingly inside. Call it dramatic, yeah, but it's not every day someone gets to wake up and immediately feel this full of love in the morning. You were the only and last love he's ever wanted to have in this world. It was so surreal even to him.
Sighing before pushing himself up, Gojo yawns out the remains of drowsiness in his system and stands. He didn't bother wearing a shirt since last night, claiming that he misses how his body rubs off yours in both comforting and suggestive ways. Plus it was just you and him home, he'd rather walk naked than wear the usual long sleeved uniform on a warm day.
The scent of coffee got stronger as he closes in his journey towards the kitchen. There was faint sizzling coming from the pan as you stood there in attendance. Stuck in your own little world, swaying to the sound of the radio playing, U got Me by Yung Heazy. It was one of the few songs that reminded you of Gojo back when you were both high schoolers. The exact song you remembered playing when you both hung out on a small cafe in Tokyo. Where he was so flustered, attempted to hide his blushes with his round glasses. The little things that reminded you of that memory never fails to make your heart race.
Of course Gojo knows this one as well. Because it was on that date as well he had call you, "his" after masking his embarrassment and from obviously checking you out every minute. How could he contain himself? He was a young man who was having trouble in the arts of love. Nevertheless he was glad to have grown up from those years. If his younger self could see him now, he'd be gagging at the sight of a softer version of his older self.
Snaking his arms around your torso carefully to avoid surprising you, he places his chin above your shoulder. Salivating at the sight of thick bacon in deep frying, shamelessly letting you know he was hungry from the sound of his stomach growling. "This is a nice way to greet me." you smile at the man behind you, who had his eyes closed in delight while rubbing his cheek against yours like a cat in need of attention. "Good morning to you as well, sweet cheeks." he says after pressing a kiss on your skin.
"You got up early." whining softly, his hair and nose tickling the side of your neck and shoulder, "I was hoping to stay longer y'know?" trailing his hands underneath the his shirt you were wearing, mapping out on all the skin he could squish and hold with his large palms. Noticeably pressing himself closer to your body, the much needed space gone but you weren't complaining. After all, this was Gojo, a man who knows no boundaries.
"I wanted to make breakfast for you. We haven't had one together since we're both busy." you say as you grabbed the nearby plate, turning off the stove as the now cooked meal sizzles softly from the pan before sliding down to the porcelain surface. In attempt to lick his lips at the now prepared food, his tongue grazes upon your skin, sending you to jolt a bit, hearing the joyous laughter from him as he places a kiss on the spot as an apology.
"W-why don't you go sit down, there's rice bowls and cooked eggs prepared already." stammering, you quickly excused yourself away from his embrace to clean out the mess from the counter. Gojo sighs out the adoration but obliges to your command. Not long after you had finally settled down in front of him. Seeing him in all smiles as he scarfs down on his food made you smile as well. Thank goodness his blindfold was off, they looked adorable twinkling in happiness.
This felt nice. To have an opportunity to be a normal couple once again. So many times you could only daydream of scenarios like this. He could say the same as now that you were present on the usual spot he'd come home to empty. Often dozing off during meetings thinking of where you were or how you were, the multiple times Megumi has fed up with his whining about how he never gets to see or have more time with you. Nobara even pointed out a fact saying, "You act as if you're both married." and Yuuji, being the happy child of the three had said something that always ponder in his mind, "Why don't you marry each other yet, sensei?"
It was a statement he's been considering for a long time. Marriage. Of course Gojo wanted to marry you after years of torment love. To have his precious students say that you both already looked as if you were married got him all heart racing, and very very happy. He's had vivid images of a life with you. Not far from what it is today, but imagine. Unlimited happiness after so long of fearing it. Perhaps maybe even tiny legs running around, giving him such big love as his grows for the family he's craved, watching you smile beside the doorway and calling them in for a meal.
If marrying you means he can have that every day, then the hell with it.
"You look like my wife."
The spoon drop echoes. Slowly his face erupted into a faint blush while staring back at your widened eyes and opened mouth. "What?" gulping down the stuck food in your throat, Gojo bites his lips watching you maintain your composure. So cute. "Y-you know you say funny stuff when you're out of it. Maybe some daifuku would help? Yeah! Wait a sec." quickly getting up from your seat and rummaging in your fridge, you breathed out the heavy puff of air from your lungs.
He did not just say that so directly towards you. Maybe you were dreaming? You wouldn't be if your heart wasn't practically being forced out. Gojo is always fun and games, right? He doesn't mean that.
Sad to think of it that way.
"Ow!" thumping your head above the fridge as you grabbed some of the take outs of Daifuku you got yesterday, closing the fridge back before returning shortly to Gojo, who seemed as out of it as you were. "You did say your brain functions best when you eat sweets. Luckily for you I bought these yesterday. That's why I cooked earlier now because I wanted to try it out with you!"
Gojo can't tell if he wants to be offended at the fact that you think he was joking or just now, cover his half of his face to hide his laughter and igniting squeals. God he wished he had his phone right now, the moment was just so priceless and precious as you were.
"...ter"
Muffles from behind his hand was heard. Tilting your head to the side, trying to process what he said but no avail. "What was that?" you moved a little closer next to him, tapping his hand away almost eagerly. When he does, you spot that knowing smile present on his lips and the uncharacteristic blush still painted on his cheeks.
"Keep doing that and I'll marry you faster, honey."
You've gotten more shy when his hand held yours in the most loving way while drawing patterns. Searching through his eyes if he was playing around, but you were met with ones you know of when they were full of sincerity. "I-i. You know, they were so cheap anyways and I figured you'd want them." he snorts before leaning his head on your arm and laughs hysterically. It was painfully obvious that you were in state of shock that you couldn't even process his words.
Up until now the effect he has on you was still there like before.
"Sweetie." he turns his body away from the table to face you, pulling you so that you were standing in between his legs looking down shyly on the floor. "I'm serious." his fingers reached for your chin to pull your head up to meet his features. His other hand still holding your smaller one; index finger tracing your ring finger in circular motions as if he was creating a make believe ring.
He should thank himself for falling in love and be trusting once again.
Because now, staring back at your eyes filled with the same amount of emotions as his. Reciprocating the exact thing he was feeling. Waking up just to start the day already wanting him to be there. Knowing all the littlest things he's shared. Hearing the erratic sound of both of your heart beats.
He knew he's made the right choice.
"You really do look like my wife. My future."
© all content belongs to mochikeiji. Please do not repost or copy, ありがとうございました!! (=^･^=)
#gojo satoru#jjk gojo#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu kaisen gojo#gojo satoru x reader#gojo scenarios#gojo x reader#gojo fluff#gojo imagine#gojou satoru#gojou satoru x reader#gojou x reader#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen fluff#raines: gogatsu event
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WHY HINATA IS NOT A GOOD CHARACTER
INTRODUCTION
I wanted to take a deeper look at Hinata’s character, considering there are a lot of claims about her out there, that she’s strong, that she’s kind, that she’s complex and relatable, that she’s the perfect woman and that she’s at least better than Sakura. I don’t really think so, and I’ll explain why. I’ll be focusing on canon, so no fillers or novels will be included in this post. I’ll say this as a warning, if you’re a fan of her character this probably won’t be something you’ll like. This will be tagged with the anti tags and put under read more so please do not complain if tumblr somehow puts this in the normal tags, it is not intentional. Also Sakura stans please don’t write lengthy comments about Sakura under this, I’m not a fan of her either and I’ll write about her later. Make your own post instead.
”HINATA IS STRONG AND THE BEST KUNOICHI”
Hinata is generally really bad as a shinobi and I’m not sure where the claims that she is strong come from. Hinata's entire character revolves around her being weak. This could have been fine if she actually developed, or if she found some other area for herself, yet she's mediocre at best and a waste of panels at worst, because she never becomes good or strong at anything. She’s not only physically weak from start to finish, but she’s also the equivalent of a damsel in distress. Everytime Hinata attempts to do something, she ends up failing, getting beaten up and having to be saved. She lost to her sister who is five years younger than her, which is what marked her as a failure in her clan. She tried to fight Neji in the chunin exams and ended up coughing up blood and losing her consciousness, and Naruto had to beat Neji for her. After Kabuto heals her fully, she spends the rest of part 1 either sleeping or missing in action. Very underwhelming.
If this had been only the beginning, it would have maybe been fine, but it’s a reoccuring pattern with her character. She throws herself in front of Pain, managing to do nothing but get one-paneled and almost killed. Even at the start of the war she had to be saved by Naruto. She tried to run to Naruto and tripped over a rock. Actually, she’s so weak she got Neji killed, when he had to jump in front of her so she wouldn’t get impaled. Why is she even in the front lines when she can’t fight? Even in Naruto the Last movie she had to be saved multiple times. In Boruto the movie she is still useless and reckless, leaving her daughter’s side to help Naruto, ending up defeated and having to be healed by Sakura once again.
I can’t say she’s mentally strong either. She has the personality of someone who hates conflict and tries to avoid it as best as they can, to the point of agreeing with others on everything, as Neji pointed out. Even without him saying it out loud, most of Hinata’s moments that aren’t her thinking about Naruto are her doing exactly this. This is not the personality of someone who is strong mentally. It’s the personality of someone who is too weak to have their own mind, someone who will go with the flow and is easily led and convinced. It can be dangerous the more you think about it. Hinata is also the bystander who never stands up for Naruto despite liking and admiring him. If she’s a compassionate girl, why isn’t she showing this by reaching out to Naruto and befriending him? Why doesn’t she show he’s not alone? Why is she only drawing inspiration from him? I don’t normally watch fillers, but there was one filler scene unrelated to Hinata where this girl says if you only look at the loser and do nothing, you aren’t much better than the oppressors, which probably wasn’t meant to be a call out for Hinata, but ended up being so anyway. Another thing that’s annoying is how she is berating herself often, yet doing nothing, it comes off as self-pity. Even in the Last movie, she is talking about how she must be a bad sister for knitting a scarf when her sister is in danger. Then why are you doing it and not stopping? Of course everytime this happens Naruto must cheer her up because she just can’t stop moping around and doing something herself.
Aside from all this, from the very beginning Hinata’s honor needed to be defended by Naruto because she couldn’t stand up for herself. Of course, after Naruto’s words she did stood up for a moment, and that was good, but it should have been a wake up call which altered her course. Instead, she kept doing the same she always did. If we take the Last movie into consideration, she’s still not strong enough to do anything even about her crush on Naruto. She needs genjutsu and Sakura to do the work for her. So even when it comes to the only thing she cares about 90 % of the time, which is Naruto-kun, she can’t do anything about it. That’s really sad.
”HINATA IS KIND AND SELFLESS”
There’s one mistake I see people make often, and that’s assuming characters that are quiet and shy are automatically kind. I wouldn’t say Hinata is as kind as the fandom makes her out to be. She simply comes off that way because you don’t really see her have her own opinions or disagree with the other characters. Hinata’s shyness on the other hand is most of the time a fetishized quirk to appeal to certain subset of fans. Her shyness doesn’t stop her from taking exams or hanging around Shino and Kiba, or talking to characters other than Naruto. She also has enough attitude to rub Neji’s status as a house slave in his face during their match, but because she stutters Naruto-kun every five minutes she’s supposedly kind. Kindness is shown through actions, not through standing around and stuttering. For comparison, we see Ino befriend an unpopular kid like Sakura, and give her confidence. That’s an act of kindness. Did Hinata ever cared about helping the branch members in any way? No.
She's supposedly "kind" but like I mentioned before she never shows this kindness by standing up for Naruto, or reaching out to him. She simply stares at him behind a tree and draws inspiration from his suffering. The only time she can actually stand up is to selfishly confess her love and die. She even said she felt like being selfish, and like I said she knew there was nothing she could do, she was told she’d only be in the way. She came there only to confess and commit suicide. This actually reminds me of another anime where this female character, after being unable to receive a male character’s love killed herself in front of him and said ”now you’ll never forget me”.
In the end, she cares about nothing but her own hormonal urges. Hinata tried to help Naruto cheat to pass an exam at the risk of disqualifying her whole team. This is the first individual action we see her character take. Did she consider Shino and Kiba during that moment? No, she didn’t even have an inner conflict on whether she should do this, whether it’s right towards her teammates. Even Naruto considers he might get Hinata, Sasuke and Sakura all in trouble if he accepts Hinata’s offer, which is why he doesn’t do it. Then when Hinata wonders if she can cheer for Naruto during his and Kiba’s match, she thinks Kiba might get mad. It’s more about how Kiba views her rather than whether she should cheer for Kiba because they are in the same team and should support each other. During the Pain attack, she left an injured shinobi, who couldn’t move, to go to Naruto, even when said shinobi told her she would only be in Naruto’s way. She didn’t try to save people, she simply wanted to confess and act in front of Naruto. This is about a threat to the entire village, which includes her comrades and her sister and she’s thinking only about her romantic feelings towards a guy she had maybe two conversations with and who barely remembers she exists. How is she better than Sakura? War arc really was the icing on the cake that Hinata’s character is only about Naruto. We should not forget the infamous ”Naruto-kun’s hand is so big… so manly...” is that really the right time to be thirsty? When Neji just died? Shikamaru mentions that he could help out Naruto as a right-hand man and then Hinata thinks “I-I want to be by Naruto-kun’s side too.” Then there’s of course the scene where she starts running to Naruto, leaving her post and teammates, even when Naruto is a mile away and already in the hands of medical ninjas, and even that ends up her pathetically tripping over a rock. Kiba has to remind her to use her byakugan because she is too busy gushing about Naruto. Eventually her only last line is “Naruto-kun”, when everyone is put into IT. It’s like a parody by this point. She doesn’t have any concern for her sister, her father, her teammates, Kurenai or her baby. It’s just “Naruto-kun” like it always is. Even in the Last movie, she is knitting a scarf for Naruto during the mission where they’re supposed to save her sister. Who brings a scarf on a mission? Why is she thinking about her romantic gift to Naruto so much she has to take it with her on a mission which focus is saving her sister? She even looks more devastated when Toneri tores the scarf apart than she ever does for Hanabi’s sake. It’s just silly and selfish.
”HINATA IS A COMPLEX CHARACTER”
Is she complex though? Her development goes from standing behind a tree looking at her crush she never talks to, to committing suicide for feelings that could never be reciprocated, to… waiting that a genjutsu and Sakura guilt trip Naruto enough for him to be with her? Like I already mentioned her character revolves entirely around Naruto, she has no hobbies or interests we know of aside from him. She has no motivations aside from being by Naruto’s side. She once had an interesting goal and backstory, but that was never fully explored, and it turned into her wanting Naruto’s attention and thinking about him. Her clan plot was irrelevant, she showed no interest in wanting to be a leader or even wanting to make things better for the branch members. It’s funny because immediately after the ending, no one cared about the Hyuuga branch and how the storyline was dropped and had no resolution. It was only when Hinata was being attacked for not showing to care did her fans start to over-analyze all the panels looking for the tiniest little clue that might hint at some changes.
It’s possible to be both shy, anxious and quiet and also to be strong, motivated and have interests and dreams. Hinata is never strong for herself, she’s only strong to be with Naruto, to die for Naruto, to motivate Naruto, to have Naruto look at her even for a moment. All the while Naruto doesn’t pay much attention to her unless she’s literally dying in front of him or she slapped him. Even when a big climax is happening, what’s on her mind is always her romantic feelings and her crush. I saw someone say if she were a male character, and she pulled this pointless sacrifice and theatrical confession in the final fight of an arc, she would’ve been universally mocked. Actually, I think even if it was Sakura who did this instead of Hinata the former would have been mocked, because their stans are unable to see the same flaws in their own fave as they see in the other girl. Naruto is a battle manga, characters are supposed to contribute to the defeat of the villain in some material way. The only reason people praise Hinata for what she did in the Pain arc is because they either pity her or because they’re men who think women killing themselves for a man is great because it boosts their ego.
I also notice many Hinata fans don’t notice the vanity in their own fandom. They call Hinata “princess”, ”heiress”, ”Konoha’s first lady” and draw fanart glorifying these concepts and how it makes Hinata good, because they like the superficial status, what they don’t care is the titles are unearned. I thought Hinata’s appeal was that she’s the underdog and a loser? Or maybe her real appeal is the idea of getting everything you want without doing much in order to get it? Another claim is that Hinata is the perfect woman, which you might see from men. This is what I might dislike the most. Men judge Hinata’s worth and whether she’s a good character based on what kind of woman they want and think is the right kind of woman. Hinata has big breasts, she’s submissive, she has no other interests than the man she likes, and she’s the only girl in her class who didn’t go for the popular guy. Many men hate Sakura, Ino and Karin for being fangirls but praise Hinata for being a fangirl. Basically to them if a character is a fangirl of the wrong guy, she’s a stupid slut. If she fangirls their self insert, she’s wife material and the ideal woman. If Sakura has to be saved, she’s useless. If Hinata tries to kill herself for Naruto, she’s ”so kind”. Rin is a one-dimensional character, but Hinata saying Naruto-kun for the 50th time is depth. Hinata is also claimed to be better than the other girls because she had more kids and thus is more ”fertile”. It’s like feminism never happened and we are back to the 16th century. Why are we judging women’s worth on how many kids they have and how much they can please a man?
I could also talk about how Studio Pierrot turned Hinata into a hentai bait for otakus, which also plays a part in her popularity, but I don’t think it’s necessary, so I will just offer this picture which speaks for itself.
END NOTE
Hinata is simply just a sexist stereotype, a shadow of a real woman, with not much depth, and who is certainly not better than Sakura either. Both of them are fangirls whose characters revolve around men. It’s wild to me how there are women who genuinely act like one must be a misogynist if they reject Hinata’s superficial, one-dimensional and boy crazy character. Her character itself is misogynist for crying out loud. And honestly, what does it say when even the creator himself assumes that Hinata is someone’s favorite character because he must like big boobs?
#anti hinata#anti hinata hyuga#mp#I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with this#but there's just not much to talk about when it comes to her character#it would just become repetitive
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