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britishboystm · 3 years

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The Goodbye Prank | The Day We Met: A Fred Weasley Mini Series

Inspired by:

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Fem!Reader

Warnings: NSFW 18+ (minors dni), oral f receiving, fingering, unprotected vaginal penetration, swearing, lots and lots of crying, deep hand cuts, angst!!

WC: 7k+

Chapter Summary: The boys are ready to move on to bigger and better things. What happens when Y/N finds out?

Series Masterlist

***

March 13th, 1996

“Hold still.” Y/N spoke sternly as Fred jerked his hand away from her, wincing in pain.

George was pacing back and forth in the background, glancing over at the couple every so often, anger filling his entire being.

She had really gone and done it this time. That poor excuse for a professor.

“Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.” Y/N seethed through gritted teeth as she concentrated on the task at hand.

“It really isn’t that big of a deal Y/N. It’ll heal on its own.” Fred cried out, not wanting his brother and girlfriend to worry about him.

“No, Fred you don’t understand! That bitch has gone too far this time. Detention is one thing... but this,” She placed a drop of alcohol on the plethora of cuts, making Fred cry in pain. Tears welled his eyes and he kept his lower lip beneath his teeth to quiet himself.

He didn’t want to be a bother.

“This is abuse, she can’t keep getting away with this!” She continued to rant.

“Y/N darling,” He spoke assuringly, slipping his hand away from her tending grasp and placing it on her cheek to calm her down. His eyes were soft and pleading for her to settle.

“She will never hurt me. This is temporary, but she will never truly hurt me.” A tear slipped out of her eye. She couldn’t help but feel that this was all her fault, that she was the reason he had gotten detention in the first place.

The day before, Y/N and Fred had been snogging in a dark corner near the restricted section in the library, and while she was doing her daily lurking, Umbridge came across the couple, threatening punishment immediately.

Before she could get a hold of both of them, Fred pushed Y/N away, demanding for her to run back to her dorm.

He himself hadn’t had the time to escape which led to him getting captured by Umbridge’s evil clutches, even if she only stood at a whopping four foot eleven.

So here he was, bleeding from the hand, all thanks to that pink toad's “special” quill.

In Fred’s chicken scratch writing, his hand read;

I will not coerce with mudbloods.

It had been speculated since she began “teaching” at Hogwarts that she was secretly a death eater. This was strong evidence to support said claim.

“This is all my fault.” Y/N murmured, making both twins shoot their heads up in surprise.

“Godric no! Y/N never say that again! I don’t care what it takes to keep you safe. And I also don’t care about your blood status. You are kind and smart and beautiful and a brilliant witch.” His words were full of hurt, hurt that she would think that of herself.

Fred knew Y/N was self conscious of the fact that she wasn’t raised in a wizarding household. That she had to work twice as hard to be where she was in terms of her studies, all because she had to play catch up with her classmates. It took a toll on her and Fred knew this. George knew this. Everyone knew this.

“I’m sorry Freddie I ju-,” He quickly grabbed her cheeks and kissed her to shut her up.

“Just heal my hand love.” He muttered against her lips.

George looked away, feeling like an intruder during a very personal moment.

“Alright.” She sighed out with a soft giggle and sniffle, resting her forehead against his. He soothed her further with a tender caress of her hands. Something she had grown to appreciate deeply.

“Vulnera Sanentur.” She finally spoke, slightly moving her wand and watching as the venomous words began to vanish from his skin.

“Thank you.” He sighed in relief, feeling the pain dissipate with every passing second.

“You’re welcome Freddie.”

April 2nd, 1996

It was the day of the OWL examinations and Fred and George had only one thing on their mind.

Revenge.

After a quidditch incident in which they knocked Malfoy off of his broom for speaking badly about their mother, Umbridge had made the biased decision to ban the twins from ever playing again. And then on top of that, she confiscated their brooms.

Then it was detention for Dumbledore’s Army along with two of his brothers, his sister, his girlfriend and a bunch of his friends and classmates.

Then he and George got in trouble with Umbridge once again for consoling a crying first year who had been a victim to her cruel and unethical detention practices.

Expulsion was a given for what they were about to do. But they didn’t care.

The boys had decided that after Umbridge ruined everything that was good about Hogwarts (e.g, Dumbledore's Army and Quidditch), education was no longer a beneficial part of their lives. Instead, using the money Harry had so graciously given them from his Triwizard earnings, they decided to finally jump ship and start a joke shop in Diagon Alley. Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes they would call it.

Now all that was left was what they considered to be their most brilliant prank yet.

And this was where Y/N came into the picture.

The three of them strolled down a corridor towards the great hall where Professor Umbridge was administering the OWL examination for the fifth year students.

Y/N was more than happy to help the boys with their prank, often being used as a siren for their sneaky schemes. She didn't, however, know the exact reason for this prank.

She didn’t know this was goodbye.

Fred and George drew a blank when trying to figure out how to tell Y/N about their plans for the future. It killed Fred to think that this could possibly mean leaving his girlfriend behind, even if it had been a dream of his and George’s for so long to start the biggest pranking empire the wizarding world had ever seen.

So while the twins spent weeks and weeks planning their departure, Fred also tried to think of ways to ask Y/N to go with them and leave Hogwarts for good.

Finally at the entrance of the great hall, they quickly went over the plan in secret whispers. Y/N then waited for her cue to enter the large space to create the much needed distraction.

With a tap on the shoulder, Fred and George gave Y/N the go ahead to start her one woman show. She let out a shake of nerves and ran in, coming to a complete stop at Umbridge's feet at the front of the hall.

“There are OWL examinations happening in this room. What is the meaning of this?” Umbridge spoke in a rather agitated but sickly sweet tone.

“There’s a few students playing around with banned Weasley products outside in the halls Professor. Causing a real disruption.” Umbridge clenched her fists. She couldn’t stand the twins.

All eyes were on Y/N. Most students knew she was Fred’s girlfriend so it was quite amusing to see the confusion on their faces.

Umbridge would have also seen through the act if she hadn’t been currently seething to the core.

“Right well, lead me to them Ms L/N.” She said tugging at the bottom of her pink tweed blazer. Y/N nodded, beginning to walk ahead of Umbridge towards the entrance, all the while, giving the boys the countdown for their surprise.

At one, Y/N noticed a gleam in the twins' eyes as Fred tossed a Whiz-bang right in front of Umbridge’s nose. Y/N quickly got out of the way as the Whiz-bang began to wreak its havoc. Umbridge yelped and screeched as she tried to outrun the now fully formed dragon that had emerged from the sparks. The professor was no match for Fred and George Wealsey, that was for certain.

As everything began to escalate, Fred and George mounted their confiscated brooms with conviction.

Fred took a moment to look over at his beaming girlfriend before placing a quick reassuring peck on her lips. The boys then pushed off the ground and zipped through the large room, their hoots and hollers of adrenaline trailing behind them.

Students cheered as examination papers floated about, all caused by the gusts of wind from the speed of the boys brooms. Then once enough students had gathered on to the balcony, the letter W appeared in the sky in the form of fireworks. It stood proudly amongst the clouds that it almost brought a tear to Y/N’s eye. These boys were legends.

It was quite spectacular to say the least.

———

Later that night, Y/N laid awake, feeling slightly concerned about the twins. Neither one of them had contacted her to say where they were or when they would be back.

Feeling uneasy, Y/N pushed her dark maroon sheets off of her body and headed towards the window hoping to see any sign of the twins returning.

Nothing.

She let out a shaky sigh but became startled when she heard a quiet thump behind her.

Once she quickly spinned around she noticed the outline of her boyfriend standing in the darkness, with just a splash of moonlight cascading over his face. Even in the shadow she knew which twin she was dealing with.

“Fred!” She whispered through a smile before jumping from the window seal and running over to him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He held her with a tightness that she had never felt from anyone else. It was almost as though if he were to let go she would simply slip away into nothing. She frowned over his shoulder and pushed back from the hug to look into his eyes, hoping to find all of the answers to the questions she had in them.

“Fred?” She asked, beginning to notice that sick stomach feeling again within her.

“Y/N, I need to talk to you.” His tone was stern and pointed.

She felt an inkling as to what this was all about.

“Fred don’t worry, If Umbridge tries to expel you I’m sure Dumbledore can override it, right?” His expression didn’t shift.

“Right?” She repeated with an unsure tone, starting to think that the worry of expulsion wasn’t why he was here. The flips and turns in her gut became more and more alive. She could hear her heart beating in her ears. Why wasn’t he saying anything god dammit?

“Did something happen Freddie?” Her voice was shaky, almost as if she couldn’t trust it.

“I need to talk to you about something. Something important that could change the rest of our lives.” Y/N could sense his nervousness from a mile away.

“Bloody hell Fred this doesn’t make me feel good.” He quickly placed a hand on her cheek to calm her nerves. She instinctively leaned into his calloused palm.

“Before you say anything, let me explain and then you can tell me what you think.”

“I’m thinking that the other girls will wake up if we don’t have this conversation somewhere else.” He finally looked at their surroundings noticing the other bodies sleeping soundly within the room.

“Come with me.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the dark dorm and down to the undisturbed common room.

“You’re scaring me Fred. Tell me what’s going on.” She watched him closely as he paced back and forth, clearly thinking about what to say next.

“George and I are leaving.”

“Not if Dumbledore has anything to say about it.” She responded, still very much left in the dark. Fred released a sigh and sat her down on one of the couches. The crackling fire filled the tense void between the two lovers.

“No, Y/N, we are leaving tonight. Getting away from Umbridge, from Hogwarts. We have a storefront in Diagon Alley that we are going to turn into the most wicked joke shop any witch or wizard has ever seen.” Y/N’s face was unreadable.

“Freddie the prank is over now. You don’t need t-” She said with a nervous laugh which he cut off.

“Y/N I’m serious. I know it’s hard to believe, but this time I need you to trust me. We are leaving Hogwarts, for good. George and I are going to be creating one of the biggest wizarding enterprises ever…. and, I want you to come with us…. with me.”

Y/N pulled her hands away from Fred’s. The skin on her neck crawled.

“Fred I- I don’t know what to say.” Her breathing began to quicken. She was panicking. She couldn’t just leave. She had friends, an education, a life here at Hogwarts.

“You don’t have to say anything right now. I just need you to know that I love you and this doesn’t mean that I want us to end.” She shook her head repeatedly, wiping away the tears streaming down her face.

Fred grabbed her cheeks and pushed his lips against hers. He could feel the salty wetness from her eyes transfer from her skin to his, and it broke his heart into a million pieces knowing that he was the cause of it.

Y/N wanted to push him away so badly. He had made the choice to walk away from everything that they had built together. How could she ever forgive him? Instead of conveying this to him, she moved to straddle his lap. He leaned against the back of the couch and placed his hands on her hips, holding on for dear life.

“Please.” He whispered.

She didn’t respond but rather pushed herself deeper against him, slightly grinding her hips.

“I’m sorry.” Was all she said, in a soft shaky tone. They both knew what she was apologizing for.

They took a moment to just look at one another.

Y/N then spoke before she had time to think her words through,

“Show me you really mean what you say. Show me that you truly love me. Show me before you go and forget all about me.” Tears flowed between the two of them.

“I could never forget you.” He said in a hurt whisper. Her eyes trailed down to their connected laps in shame, embarrassed that she was making a huge selfish fuss over his plans of a brighter future. Fred took her face in his hands and made sure to really get a good look at her before swiftly laying her flat on her back against the couch.

“Is this alright?” He asked while softly stroking her thigh. She let out a trapped sigh and nodded as she shimmied herself further into the cushions. Fred gave her a melancholy smile before leaning in and enveloping her mouth with his.

Immediately they began to collectively moan as Fred grazed his hand up and down Y/N’s goose fleshed skin and her clothed pubic bone pushed up against his sensitive groin. Just the feeling of his light feather touch had her trembling to his every will. Once he felt that her legs had gotten enough attention, he removed his lips from hers and moved his hands from her thighs as he looked down at her with a face filled with care and worry.

“Is this okay?” He asked.

His fingers were creeping up her inner thigh and past the fabric of her cotton pyjama shorts. She nodded with a soft hum of approval. She bit down on her swollen bottom lip as he began to circle her clit with his middle and index fingers. Then her hand shot up to grab his forearm at the same time as her legs tensed up with pleasure.

“Please Freddie, m-more.” She whined while using her hand to dictate his speed and movements against her sensitive centre.

Fred watched in amazement as his girlfriend laid submissively beneath him, her hair sprawled out as she shimmed and jerked about, all because of his large strong hand that was currently between her legs.

They had never had sex before. The two of them had talked about it a great deal throughout their relationship, but because they spent so much of their time surrounded by friends during school and family during the holidays, it was difficult to ever get a moment to do so.

Fred never really cared about getting caught or the idea of a quicky. He was Fred Weasley after all. Any way he could feel her skin against his was ideal. Y/N on the other hand, had always wanted her first time to be something meaningful. She wanted it to be thought out, where they wouldn’t be distrubed and could have all the time in the world to express their love for one another.

So never once did Fred imagine that this was how the night would end. In the middle of the warmly lit common room where any insomnia stricken student could walk in unannounced.

Fred wanted her to drop everything. He wanted her to follow in his footsteps. But she was her own person, and she had to make her own choices, no matter how much it pained him. At the very least they were able to say their goodbyes by finally giving themselves to each other, whole heartedly.

“I’m going to put a finger in. Is that alright?” He asked softly in her ear, intentionally making it so his mouth hovered close to her neck. She shivered at the feeling of his breath rolling off of her skin.

“Yes Freddie, more than alright.” She was his to take, anyway he wanted.

“Tell me to stop if you don’t like it, okay love?” She nodded lightly, completely under his spell.

Fred detached his fingers from her hypersensitive bundle and slowly dragged them down to swirl around the wetness that had formed at her entrance. Once she was fully prepped by his digit, he slipped his index finger inside of her. Even with one digit, he could tell just how tight she was.

“Merlin, you’re so fucking tight.” He groaned out his inner thoughts before attacking her neck again with a plethora of horny kisses.

Her jaw slacked open in pleasure and her back arched off of the sticky fabric beneath her. His methodical breathing gave her a pace in which she could thrust herself against his finger.

Fred noticed her clench and speed up her hips movements. Not wanting her to finish so quickly, he slowly pulled his finger out of her warmth, resulting in a whine escaping her lips.

“Freddie, come back. Please!” She cried out, reaching out for him. Instead of giving in to her (no matter how badly he wanted to), he slipped off of the couch and got onto his knees in front of her. Y/N sat up and faced him, looking like the goddess Venus herself.

“Off, darling.” He finally said before tugging at the waistband of her shorts. Y/N happily obliged by lifting her hips up and letting him pull the shorts past the curvature of her bum and down her legs to the floor.

“Can you open up for me darling?’ He asked gently, caressing her knees in a circular motion. Y/N adjusted herself in her seated position, the sound of the leather couch filling their ears as she shifted her hips. She then took a deep inhale before slowly opening her legs more and planting her feet far apart from each other. The draft of the room hit her, making her clench her toes for a moment.

Fred’s face heated up as he took in her glistening inner thighs and centre.

“Absolutely stunning love, really.” He bashfully admitted while stroking her spread apart thighs.

This was not the Fred Wealsey that everyone else knew. The crazy, careless prankster who had everyone wrapped around his finger. The Fred Weasley who constantly told innapropriate jokes and boasted about his pranking achievements along with his party animal ways. As he sat there on his knees, between his girlfriends legs, he came to the conclusion that he was the one wrapped around her finger. He was nothing more than a desperate boy who was hopelessly in love with the girl above him.

“All yours Freddie.” Her voice was like sweet red velvet cake getting sliced into on a warm late spring afternoon. Fred let out a soft groan in response to her inviting words before pushing himself forward slightly, preparing himself to attach his lips to her core. He slowly tilted his head to the side, allowing himself full access. His stomach contracted and he squeezed his thighs together, trying to keep the ache in his trousers at bay.

Once he was able to somewhat pull himself together, he placed a gentle kiss to her clit, resulting in her hole clenching and her hips abruptly bucking forward. She grabbed his short red locks in the process and looked down at him through half lidded eyes.

“Look at me baby.” She whispered seductively. His soft brown irises slowly shifted up along her gorgeous welcoming figure to meet her eyes, a clouded look of lust filling them. Now giving her his full attention, Fred moved on from the light kisses he was administering to fully lapping up her arousal with a new found confidence.

“Fuck.” She groaned out while jutting her hips forward and threading her fingers through his hair harshly. He sighed in contentment as he continued to watch his girlfriend unravel above him. All because of his tongue.

And once more, right before she could finish, Fred removed his mouth from her core, wetness covering most of his lower face, chin and all. Before he could make any witty comments about how spent she looked, Y/N grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him up onto the couch to lay on top of her.

His shoulders rose and fell as he panted, still catching his breath from devouring her seconds ago. His covered torso pressed against hers and they could both feel each other's hearts racing, keeping in time with one another.

“Stay with me. Just for a bit.” She pleaded quietly, sadness evident in her voice and tears sitting in the lower waterline of her eyes. Fred immediately sat up and watched her lay deeper along the couch before straddling her waist. He then unzipped his striped sweater, throwing it behind him absentmindedly. Y/N looked up at the red headed boy on top of her with so much love and admiration, moving her hands up and down his clothed chest and stomach. Fred then pulled off his t-shirt, exposing his bare upper body.

Feeling absolutely feral from seeing his lightly freckled porcelain chest, Y/N yanked Fred down by the neck to press their lips together. Most of the time when they kissed, it would be fairly contained and sweet. Now was not one of those times. Teeth clashed and tongues swirled freely making the kiss messy, sloppy and feverish.

Wanting even more contact, Fred pulled one of his hands out from behind Y/N’s head and tucked it under the button up lounge top she had on. She let out a small gasp as he began messaging one of her breasts. He couldn’t go another second without having them exposed and ready for his tender touch.

Quickly sitting up again, Fred started to unbutton the fabric with shaky hands, prominent pants of lust coming from his throat. Noticing him struggling, Y/N anxiously placed her hands over his and started helping him with the buttons.

Once the final button was undone, Y/N’s supple breasts were finally exposed. The cool air caused her nipples to harden and once Fred had fully taken them in, he brought himself down to her chest, sucking on the flesh happily.

Needy for more of him, Y/N dragged her hand down his stomach, stopping at the buckle of his belt. With a few aggressive tugs of the hand me down leather, Fred brought his hand down to help her unbuckle it, gently grazing her hand in the process.

Once the belt was removed, Y/N feverishly pulled at the zipper of his trousers. She was able to achieve the action on her own fairly quickly and began to feel around his lower section, putting her hand past the elastic band of his striped boxers. When she felt his hardened dick, a multitude of somersaults awoken within her. She was hoping somersaults wouldn’t be the only thing she would feel her gut that night.

She took him in her hand, making sure not to grip his aching member too harshly. He bucked forward and closed his eyes, letting out the most beautiful sound that had ever graced Y/N’s ears. Seeing her effect on the older boy had her stroking him faster and faster. Precome from his red tip began to seep between her fingers.

“Yes, yes!” He let slip out with a gasp, digging his face into her neck. She then slipped her hand out from his boxers and trousers, not letting him finish. It was a small act of defiance for doing the same to her earlier.

He whined quietly, nuzzling his nose further into her skin, begging for any kind of release.

“Lift up love.’ She said sweetly, which he did with very little objection. Her arms came around his waist and she pushed his trouser and boxers down more, giving her a full view of his arse as she looked over his shoulder from where she laid. She couldn’t help but stare.

Getting frustrated with the inconvenience of the material, Fred kicked off his shoes and used his feet to push the constrictive material off his lower half completely, including his socks.

Y/N and Fred were now fully naked and exposed.

“Fred, I need you in me.” Y/N begged, desperate for the feeling of being filled up by the boy above her. Fred brought himself up further on to his elbows and tucked a piece of loose hair behind her ear.

“Yeah?” He asked, needing her to be one hundred percent sure that this was what she wanted.

“Yeah.” She responded, eyes full of wonder. He couldn’t deny her what she wanted, especially when she gave him that look.

He moved his gaze down to his swollen member that was just barely hovering over her pubic bone. With a steady grip, he jerked himself a couple times to bring up a bead of precome before shifting slightly, laying the tip of his length against her lower lips.

Looking up one more time for confirmation, he was met with a soft expression on her face and her hand stroking his hair gently, giving him a sense of reassurance.

That was all he needed to continue.

He moved forward, looking down to watch his aching length disappear past the folds of her pulsing centre.

The feeling made him release a shaky breath and he laid himself flush against her naked chest, knowing deep down that he wouldn’t be able to hold himself up for much longer even if he tried. Y/N hissed when he slowly pushed himself further and further inside of her, his member dragging against her contracting walls. To ease the pain she gripped onto his toned freckles biceps. All those years of swinging his beater bat could be felt underneath her fingertips.

“Freddie,” She cooed, indicating that the pain had started to subside. Her soft words sent sharp bolts of energy through his scalp and all the way down to the soles of his feet. The sensation made him want to move instead of this agonizing stillness they were currently in.

“Ca-can I-I m-move? Fuckin’ ‘ell, can I please move?” He begged, shakiness laced within his words.

“Yeah.” She whispered, tightening her grip on the roots of his hair. He groaned at the tugging sensation and began retracting his hips, watching Y/N tense and hiss as he did so. He waited a moment and then pushed forward again, watching as she let out a prominent sigh, releasing all of the stiffness she was holding. His thrusts were small, only moving slightly back and forth so she could get used to the feeling. Every once and a while she would let out these little mewls that made him want to snap his hips. But he had to have restraint.

For her sake.

It was as if she had read his mind because as he continued his methodically shallow pace, Y/N finally spoke up through her moans.

“More Freddie. I need more.” He lifted his head from the cozy spot he had created upon her chest to look her in the eye.

“Are you sure?’ The last thing he wanted was to hurt her.

“Christ Freddie, you’re being too gentle! Please just fuck me like you mean it!”

He was dumbfounded by her words. Her begging and pleading awoke something within him and he went to grab her thigh, placing it against his hip. He then set his forehead against hers making sure their eyes stayed connected.

“Like this?” He asked confidently with a tinge of a smirk as he began to roll his hips hard against hers. She let out a loud whine and nodded before looking down to their connected bodies, biting her lip as he continued to slowly and deeply fuck into her the best way he could.

“Yeah just like that.” She responded softly, rubbing her hand along his toned and flexed upper back.

Moans and pants filled the room. Y/N was fully laid back, pulling Fred down with her. With their bodies so intimately entangled, Y/N wrapped her legs around his waist, pushing her heels against his tailbone, allowing for a new angle to emerge. He was now hitting her g-spot in this position, though she didn’t know that. To her it just felt euphoric.

It just felt right.

After a while she made it so she was fully wrapped around him when she flung her arms around his neck, clinging to him almost as though she were a koala.

“Oh my merlin, you f-f-feel so fu-fucking amazing Fred!” All he could respond with were low grunts of pleasure.

Fred began to quicken his pace when he started to feel his orgasm creep up like a distant sneeze. This had Y/N holding on to him for dear life, also feeling her own climax slowly approaching.

“I-I think I’m go-going to cum.” He spoke in broken words.

“Me too.” She replied through a gasp, gripping onto his shoulder blades that tensed up every time he pushed forward into her now overly sensitive core.

After a few more deep and needy thrusts, Fred began to pull his hips back so he could finish on Y/N’s stomach.

“No.” She breathed out, tightening the grip she had on him, digging her heels deeper into his sweaty lower back. He looked down at her with a confused but blissed out expression, still thrusting sporadically.

“Finish inside me, so I still have a part of you with me when you leave.” He stopped, completely caught off guard by her words. She wanted him to stay with her that badly. It killed him inside, especially as he watched a single tear run down her flushed cheek.

“If that’s okay.” She continued, beginning to retract into herself. She started to think that she had made him uncomfortable and had ruined the moment with her loose words. She covered her face in embarrassment, wishing she could disappear. It would be difficult though with Fred still very much buried inside of her.

Y/N was about to apologize for stepping out of line when she felt him begin to thrust into her with more vigour than before. She took her hands off of her eyes to see Fred concentrating heavily, his face turning into a light shade of red.

“ ‘m close. Gonna fill you up so well love.” Her heart swelled at his words. He was going to do it.

“Fuck, me too Freddie.” With a few more passionate and hard thrusts and a plethora of I love you’s, Fred let out a guttural groan while sloppily painting her jaw with wet, salvia ridden kisses. Then he finally spilled his seed deep inside of her. She gripped on to him roughly, jutting up against his now partly soft member as her legs shook along with her orgasm.

Fred could watch her do that all day.

They had both mostly come down at this point as Fred collapsed on top of Y/N, their sweaty bodies finding a perfect rhythm through their erratic breaths and heartbeats. No words were spoken. Instead they stared off into space, finding a sense of peacefulness in their collective blissed out state. Only the crackling fire made itself known.

Amongst all this, Y/N drew hearts over Fred’s naked back absentmindedly with her fingers. He had almost fallen asleep at her soothing touch. It was what he would miss the most. The silent recognition of love that the two of them shared.

“Freddie?”

He hummed in response, far too gone at that point to give her a coherent sentence.

“I hate that I’m asking you this but, when are you leaving?” Fred’s eyes widened and he quickly shot up to check the time.

It was one-thirty in the morning. He was supposed to meet George at the front entrance half an hour earlier.

“Shit!” He yelled as he jumped up and ran around the common room, resembling a chicken with its head cut off. He frantically collected his clothes that were scattered on the floor.

“Get dressed and grab some shoes.” He said while hopping around, attempting to get his long lower limbs through the leg holes of his trousers. Y/N didn’t ask any questions as she quickly slipped her pyjamas back on and rushed upstairs to grab an old Gryfindor sweater her aunt passed down to her, along with a pair of worn in white converse.

Once she made it back down to the common room, Fred was lacing up his shoes. He must have heard her come down because once she got to the bottom of the stairs he looked up at her from his crouched position, watching her intently as she sat on the bottom step and concentrated on getting her own shoes on.

This moment reminded him of the night of the Yule Ball and how beautiful she looked when she came down those very same steps.

She took his breath away.

Now sporting a ratty old sweater and wearing no makeup whatsoever, his breath still caught in his throat.

She had always been so beautiful.

After a moment of soaking her in for what may be the last time for a while, Fred walked over and grabbed her hand, leading her out of the common room.

“Where are we going?” Y/N whisper yelled as they stealthily ran through the dark ghostly halls of Hogwarts. The only light source they were gifted came from the full moon that could easily be seen through the plethora of archways adorning the castle’s outer walls. The only sounds being the echo of their shoes slapping against the cobblestone beneath them.

Every once in a while when they came to a turn, Fred would abruptly stop and peak around the corner to make sure Filch wasn’t creeping around in the shadows. A habit he picked up when he first became a student at Hogwarts.

“Almost there.” He stated while swiftly moving around a corner, making a non verbal announcement that the area was clear of any caretaker activity.

Y/N helplessly wanted to tug Fred backwards and have them retreat back into the common room for a second round of passionate love making. Possibly even use the Room of Requirements to spice things up. But unfortunately, things don’t always go the way you want them to. Instead she tried her best to keep up with Fred’s lanky legs as he maneuvered them through the halls of Hogwarts.

After what felt like an eternity, they finally made it to the large grand entrance of the school, surprisingly not having gotten caught in the process. Y/N could feel her legs almost give out as they stopped to look out to the vast land of grass, forest and bodies of water, partially due to the large stretch of running she had just done and partially due to the activities that took place in the common room not that long ago.

Her lungs felt cold and sore as she gasped for breath.

“What are we doing here?” She choked out, not paying much attention to her surroundings. She then stood up fully and noticed a few meters away, the other half of her lover. He turned around, travel bag in hand and Angila behind him in all her bright blue glory. The fact that the car still ran was an absolute miracle. Especially after what Harry and Ron had put her through in Ninety-Two.

Fred took her out of her thoughts as he grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him. George had a beaming smile on his face. He initially thought that the plan had worked and Y/N chose to go with them to help bring their dream to fruition. Then he noticed his older twin shake his head sadly. George’s smile disappeared and his shoulders dropped once he realised what his brother was trying to tell him.

This was goodbye.

“I hear you boys are dropping out?” Y/N called out to George as they got closer and closer to him, an attempt to lighten the mood. He let out a sad laugh as he stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets.

“Yeah, was thinking about it.” He responded leaning against the passenger door. Y/N snickered softly as they finally came face to face. She dropped Fred’s hand and pulled George in for a hug, rubbing his back to console him, feeling bad that she had gotten in the way of their perfect plan.

“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” He asked, words filled with hope.

“I can’t. I need to finish the year and graduate. But this isn’t goodbye Georgie Poorgie.” She said before pulling away from the embrace. He smiled at this and playfully rolled his eyes. He always hated that nickname.

“Will you write?” He didn’t want the last seven years to just go to waste. Neither did she.

“Of course I will.” She moved in closer and whispered,

“Keep an eye on him will you? You were always the more reasonable one of the two.” He chuckled lightly and nodded before leaning in for one more bone crushing hug.

“Bye Y/N.”

“Bye George.” And with that he retreated back into the dodgy Ford to make sure everything was in order for their journey to Diagon Alley.

“So.” Fred said breaking the awkward silence, kicking the stone beneath him, his hands shoved in his sweater pockets.

“So.” Y/N repeated in a light mocking tone. So much had happened in the last few hours that neither one of them really knew what to say.

“I’m never not going to love you, you know that right?” He finally said stepping closer so they were only a couple inches apart from each other.

“Yeah I know. Still wish you weren’t just going and deserting your education but it’s not my place to stomp on your dreams you know.” Y/N let out a sniffle, collecting a couple tears with her fingers.

“I’ll wait for you.” He blurted out. She looked up and gave him a sad smile, taking his hand into hers.

“No you won’t. You will work and work and one day some beautiful girl will walk in and sweep you off of your feet. She will be the perfect girlfriend and one day the perfect wife who will help you and George run the shop and raise your kids while you live out your dream. I know you love me and I love you, more than anything in the world, but Freddie, I cannot and will not hold you back from what I know you can achieve. Be great, focus on that. I’ll always be here for you. But I can’t be who you want me to be. I can’t be a shop owner's wife.” Tears began to trickle down both their faces by the time Y/N had finished her little speech.

“Is this you breaking up with me?” His voice was cracked and hoarse. He had thought about this being a possible outcome but chose to push it to the back of his mind, not wanting to face it.

“Yeah...I think it is.” She replied weakly, feeling absolutely guilty and awful. No, this was what was right. He needed to move on.

“You are the only woman I’ve ever loved! No one else!” He said, his voice raising.

Y/N flinched slightly, not used to seeing him this genuinely angry, not even on the quidditch pitch. How could she? The only other time he got this mad was when she was passed out cold.

“Freddie, please. Not here.” Her voice was quiet and shaky as tears streamed down her face. She then noticed George watching from inside the car with a face full of remorse. Under normal circumstances he would have intervened to protect her but he knew she was safe and this conversation needed to happen sooner or later.

Seeing her scared demeanor, Fred pulled back immediately. He hated to see her frightened and vulnerable.

Slowly, he walked towards her and gently brought her into his chest as she sobbed, placing a plethora of gentle kisses on the top of her head.

“I’m sorry Fred, I just can’t I-” She rambled as her small frame shook with tears.

“Shhh. It’s okay, no need to apologize. I shouldn’t have yelled”. His eyes closed with frustration as he let out a sigh. He was angry at himself for getting so cross with her.

“Fred?” She asked once her tears had finally subsided and she could gather her thoughts.

“Yes love?’ He kept his hands around her waist as he leaned back a touch to look down at her.

“One last kiss? Before you leave?” Both of their hearts broke for what felt like the millionth time that day.

“Y/N please don’t.” He felt as though he could cry now.

“Fred, I don’t want to argue. Just do it” She was tired, emotionally drained and not in the mood to negotiate. He let out a shaky exhale and gently took a hold of the back of her neck, leaning down to capture her lips with his.

It didn’t take long for the kiss to deepen with desperation. It felt nice and warm, but also painful. Fred moaned into Y/N’s mouth and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. In response she placed a hand on his cheek and rubbed her thumb gently back and forth against his soft freckled skin. His hand then came up to lay gently over hers. The size difference of their hands always made his heart swell.

“I love you.” He said against her lips.

“I know. I love you too.” She muttered. And with that, they separated and embraced for a couple more seconds. Neither one of them wanted to let go, but they had to.

“Bye.” She said with a weak wave once he had finally pried himself from her grasp, backing away further and further before getting into the driver seat.

He couldn't even look her in the eye as he started up the bunged up car, it would just be too painful. Merlin knew if he did, there was a good chance he would run back out to her and forget about everything he had worked so hard for.

The headlights shawn brightly, creating a stream of yellow light against the gravel in front of it. The sound of low rumbles, occasional putters and clanks drowned out Y/N’s re-emerging sobs as she watched the boys begin to drive down the path and up into the night sky. The old beat up Ford swiftly flew further and further away. Then it rippled into oblivion.

Gone.

Y/N held her sweater tightly to her shaking body as her teeth chattered, the only sound being the chilly April wind passing by. The wetness of her fresh tears brought an extra sense of coldness to her face. She stood in place far longer than necessary, secretly hoping that piece of junk car would reappear.

It never did.

#Spotify #fanfiction #fanfic #smut #fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley x y/n #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley imagines #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley #fred weasley smut #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter fandom #harry potter #fw

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

Link

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 14, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

This morning, the team of Democratic senators working on a voting rights measure that could meet the demands of conservative Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin released their bill. The 592-page document is described as a bill “to expand Americans’ access to the ballot box and reduce the influence of big money in politics, and for other purposes.” Led by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the senators have called their effort the “Freedom to Vote Act.”

This new measure is a pared-down version of the For the People Act passed by the House earlier this year before being blocked by Republicans in the Senate. It makes it easier to vote, allowing for automatic voter registration and mail-in voting. It protects the voting rights of minorities and establishes what forms of identification can be required for voter IDs. It makes Election Day a federal holiday and protects election workers from partisan pressure. The bill also tries to slow the flood of “dark money” from undisclosed sources into campaigns and bans partisan gerrymandering.

Senate Democrats could not pass the measure without significant changes to make it acceptable to Manchin, and he has worked to craft this new measure that he has argued—without public evidence—will attract Republican votes. His hope is to pass the bill with the ten Republican votes necessary to override a filibuster. If those votes are not forthcoming, he and the rest of the Democrats will have to confront the reality that they must preserve either the right of Americans to vote—the centerpiece of our democracy—or the filibuster.

After the bill was released, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) promptly announced that Republicans would not support It. He says there’s no reason for the federal government to be “taking over how we conduct elections in this country.” This prompted Princeton historian Kevin Kruse to note that the Senate renewed the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2006 by a vote of 98–0, and to suggest that Republicans have significantly revised their definition of federal overreach in the last 15 years.

The protection of voting rights seems more vital than ever today, as excerpts from a new book by veteran journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa revealed just how precarious the last days of the Trump presidency were. The portrait they reveal is of a man so desperate to retain his hold on the presidency that those around him thought he was mentally unhinged, while they also tried to do what he wanted so they wouldn’t upset him.

Trump tried hard to convince then–Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the electoral college votes from the states. Pence tried to oblige him, eventually turning to former Vice President Dan Quayle, who had served in the George H. W. Bush administration, to see if there was any way he could do what Trump asked. According to Woodward and Costa, Pence repeatedly asked Quayle if there was anything he could do. Quayle answered: “Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away.”

But Trump didn’t want to take no for an answer. When Pence refused, Trump allegedly told him: “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.” He later told the vice president: “You’ve betrayed us. I made you. You were nothing.”

The account casts Pence’s role in the January 6 insurrection in a new light.

The book also says that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, was so worried that Trump’s mental state around the time of the election would lead him to attack China that twice Milley called his Chinese counterpart Li Zuocheng secretly to assure him that the U.S. would not launch a surprise attack. Milley was not the only one worried about the president: when Trump refused to concede the election, CIA Director Gina Haspel allegedly told Milley, “We are on the way to a right-wing coup. The whole thing is insanity. He is acting out like a six-year-old with a tantrum.” Haspel worried Trump might attack Iran.

Milley also allegedly told top military commanders that they should involve him if then-president Trump ordered a nuclear strike. That conversation was in part a reaction to a phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), two days after the assault on the Capitol, in which the Speaker demanded to know: “What precautions are available to prevent an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or from accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike?”

When Milley tried to reassure her, she continued: "What I'm saying to you is that if they couldn't even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do? And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this?"

“He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy,” Pelosi said, according to a transcript of the call Woodward and Costa saw. “He’s crazy and what he did yesterday is further evidence of his craziness.” Milley replied to the House Speaker: “I agree with you on everything.”

The picture the book excerpts paint of Trump is of an unhinged man screaming obscenities at his advisers, unwilling to accept limits to his power. The book also highlights the role of Steve Bannon, who urged Trump to fight the January 6 counting of the ballots.

We also learned today that Trump’s own senior advisers were warning as early as February 2020 that the nation was dangerously unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, even as Trump was publicly saying the administration’s response to the crisis had been “pretty amazing.” A House committee is discovering information about that response from messages retrieved from the personal email accounts the advisers used.

The revelations about the former president, along with the efforts of administration and military leaders to either support or thwart him, highlight just how close the nation came to a disaster, and that the danger continues. But preventing that danger was never Milley’s responsibility alone. The Constitution provides two safeguards against an unstable leader who might, for example, launch a war simply to keep himself in power. One is the 25th Amendment, which provides an emergency mechanism for removing a dangerous president, but while there was talk of using that amendment to remove Trump after January 6, the amendment’s reliance on presidential appointees to trigger it meant that this particular president would not be threatened with removal in that way.

The other safeguard is the power of impeachment and removal from office upon conviction. Democrats did try to impeach and remove Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in early 2020 over the Ukraine scandal, only to have Senate Republicans stand firmly behind their president and vote to acquit.

The party’s association with Trump and his ilk did not help it in today’s recall election in California. As of 11:00 pm California time, voters rejected the recall of Democratic governor Gavin Newsom by more than 66%. In thanking his supporters, Newsom claimed his victory showed that voters said yes to science, vaccines, “ending this pandemic,” “people’s right to vote without fear,” a woman’s “fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body”; yes to diversity, inclusion, pluralism, economic justice, social justice, racial justice, and environmental justice. Californians—and Americans, Newsom said—are making choices.

Newsom’s Republican challenger has already claimed his loss was due to voter fraud.

That claim highlights the crucial difference between voter fraud and election fraud. Republicans are using the claim of voter fraud—the idea of individual corrupt voters—to launch election fraud, the overturning of a free and fair election. While voter fraud is vanishingly rare, the voter suppression measures passed by Republican-dominated states mean that election fraud is looming and likely... unless Congress passes the Freedom to Vote Act.

Notes:

Kevin M. Kruse @KevinMKruseWhen the Voting Rights Act came up for renewal in 2006, the Senate passed it 98-0. Someone should ask McConnell: if that *massive* voting measure with significant federal oversight wasn’t an unconscionable “takeover” of the election process, why is this one? McConnell throws a bucket of cold water on the revised voting rights bill that Senate Democrats (including Manchin) released today, says there’s no reason for the federal government to be “taking over how we conduct elections in this country.” “We will not be supporting it.”

Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur

1,116 Retweets4,161 Likes

September 15th 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/revised-democratic-voting-bill-drops-controversial-provisions-tweaks-others-as-pressure-for-action-mounts/2021/09/14/6c59def8-150a-11ec-9589-31ac3173c2e5_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/14/woodward-costa-pence-jan-6-committee/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/did-milley-think-trump-would-go-berserk

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/14/peril-woodward-costa-trump-milley-china/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/14/politics/woodward-book-trump-nuclear/index.html\

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/14/trump-advisers-pandemic-warning/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/14/all-this-keep-trump-getting-upset/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/us/newsom-governor-california-recall.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/14/how-much-damage-will-joe-manchin-do-new-voting-rights-push-offers-clue/

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/pass-freedom-vote-act

https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/e/4/e448657f-914b-43a3-9153-05cabfb31c76/68440D88BF5EF1F90133FCB5AD2865D9.freedom-to-vote-act-text.pdf

Charlotte Clymer 🏳️‍🌈 @cmclymerThis is an absolutely perfect response from Gov. Gavin Newson to the results in CA tonight. It could not have been written better.

540 Retweets2,626 Likes

September 15th 2021

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political #January 6 2021 #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #history #voting rights #voter suppression #California Recall Election

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whittakerjodie · 4 years

Text

From Another Universe ( 13th Doctor X Reader )

Prompt: Could you do an imagine with the 13th doctor where the reader is transported into their universe and the reader meets the gang but they see like a necklace or earrings of something (that symbolizes doctor who like a pendent of the TARDIS) and the doctor pulls them away from the group and asks then what the reader knows (basically everything from the 9th doctor till now) and promises to keep it private from the others and so on. (Sorry it's kinda long and possibly confusing 😅 KISSES!) requested by @dannighost

A/N Hope you enjoy!

Words: 1.5k

You didn’t know how long it’d been since you’d found yourself in this dimension/parallel world. You also had no idea how to get back to your world. The first days were spent mainly running around, freaking out as you tried to find out where you were. It appeared to be Earth as you knew it, but all attempts to contact your family and friends wouldn't go through, even when you tried other phones. That's when you knew something was seriously wrong.

You tried to think of a plan and chose to acquire a library card so you could have easy access to wifi and search tools. You scoured through the Wikipedia pages of every major event i history you could think of to see if anything was different. Researching in the library was a beacon of hope, but it sadly fell flat. You had no way of actually going about an attempt to get back to your universe beyond knowing that you needed to.

Today was another ‘research’ day, but truthfully you weren’t trying anymore. It was all you could do, though. You had no identity in this universe. You couldn’t get a job, a house, anything; the library was all that you had. You scrolled mindlessly on the computer, reading up on yet another small difference in world history. Suddenly, you heard a large crash from outside. It was the result of some unseen but extreme force and it caused everything in the library to shake. The lights flickered as you tried to stabilize yourself, heart leaping out of your chest. What. the. Hell. was. That?

You shakily rose from your computer seat, cautiously making your way towards the window to see what had caused the crash.

Your heart, which was racing all to fast for you to handle, suddenly came to a brief stop. Outside, in the gardens in front of the library, there was a large group of Cybermen. You blinked several times, trying to convince yourself that you weren’t actually seeing what you were. There’s no way, you thought. No way at all. Doctor who was fake. A TV show- nothing more. So what was one of the main villains doing landing in front of the library? You reached up and wrapped your fingers around the TARDIS necklace that you’d been wearing every since you arrived in this strange new world.

Was this what had happened? Had you somehow been transported into your favorite TV show? Your head was racing, and the fact that you could see Jodie whittak- the Doctor off in the distance didn’t exactly help calm you down. You heard shouting in the library hallway.

The door to the computer lab burst open and Yaz and Ryan, two of the current companions, entered. You stared blankly at them, frozen in place as your brain tried to process even more information being thrown at you after days and days of boring research.

“Hi! Sorry, we have to use one of these really quick, do you mind?” Yaz asked. The normalcy of the question barely helped to ground you. Ryan didn’t wait for an answer, closing out all your tabs and starting a new one. When you nodded stiffly, Yaz raised a brow. “You alright, miss?”

You instinctively shook your head, panic and confusion overriding any control you had over function or thought. She stepped closer, concern evident. Her eyes scanned your shaking form, stopping when they reached the TARDIS necklace.

“What is that?” She exclaimed. She took another step forward and grasped it, turning it over in her hand. Her exclamation had caught the attention of Ryan, who stopped whatever he was doing on the computer to look at your necklace.

“But that's the TARDIS” He said blankly. You snatched the necklace back. Him and Yaz both looked equally confused as you- even matching your panic. “How do you know about that? Who are you?”

“Back off!” You yelled. Both him and Yaz looked taken aback and you felt a slight bit of shame. I can’t believe I yelled at some of my favorite fictional characters, you thought. I can’t believe I CAN yell at some of my favorite fictional characters.

“Listen… I have absolutely no idea what's going on. All I know is that You’re Yaz and Ryan, the Doctor is somewhere out there, and there's goddamn cybermen and I already knew I’m not where I’m meant to be and all your doing is making me way more panicked.“

They both shared a look, but Ryan shrugged as if this wasn’t the weirdest thing they’d encountered.

“Yeah, Sorry about that. We should probably get the Doctor” Yaz said.

___________

You sneaked past the cybermen with the two of them, answering the multitude of questions they had for you. You explained to them that you’d woken up in this new place, and you were trying to get back home when they showed up.

“So if you’re from a different world, how do you know us then?” Ryan asked. “Are we all friends or something?”

“Not exactly” you chuckled nervously. You still weren’t sure how to go about explaining that they were TV show characters. Might have to come up with a way fast, you thought. You were approaching the iconic blue box, anticipation building inside of you. Yaz moved to open the door but you stopped her. When she gave you a look you shrunk a little.

“Sorry it's just- I’ve always wanted to go in the TARDIS. Do you mind if I go first?”

Yaz shook her head, and you practically felt the anticipation spilling out of your pores. Years and years of being a Doctor Who fan, and here you were about to enter THE TARDIS. Not a fake one erected at a comic con or a thrift store- the real deal, and you were opening the door.

Nothing could compare to the feeling of stepping inside. You didn’t even notice the Doctor at the console at first. You were too busy taking in the walls, the floors and the lights. The whole atmosphere was hitting you like a semi truck. It almost brought you to tears. It did bring you to tears, and they were now flowing down your cheeks.

“Who’s this, then?” You perked up at the accent and your eyes shot to the timelord. You were mostly passed the shock of being in her universe, and it was replaced with relief. She was a hero, if anyone could get you home (or at the very least help you out in some way) it was her. You wiped your tears away.

Yaz showed off your necklace and explained to the Doctor how they’d run into you and your predicament. The Doctor took her turn of staring at the necklace. She outlined your form with her sonic screwdriver to confirm the story. After a few moments, she asked you to step aside.

“Alright” She said softly. “It certainly seems like you’re not from here… if you don’t mind me asking, how much exactly do you know?”

You felt a spark of joy at the ability to overshare; something familiar to any fan of anything ever. You laughed. “Well, where do I start?”

___________

It had been nearly half an hour. The Doctor was silent as you rambled on and on (and on, and on, and on) staring at you in an almost horrified awe as you perfectly described every event of the past 11 seasons of Doctor Who. “And THEN they totally killed River Song off which was just cruel after Clara's exit and- Oh! I forgot to talk about the silence in the library episodes didn’t I. How did I forget-”

“Okay, I think now's a good time to stop.” You clamped your mouth shut as the Doctor cleared her throat awkwardly. “Clearly, you know quite a bit”

You nodded sheepishly. “I promise I’m not a spy or a villain or anything. There's no good way to say this I suppose- you guys are all characters in a show I watch, so that's how I know.”

“So your earth has a TV show about me? That’s nice” She smiled, lost in thought for a fraction of moment. “You can’t tell anyone, though. Certainly not Yaz or Ryan. As far as they know, you’re just a person stuck here from another universe. We can say you travel with me there.”

“I won’t tell them anything” You promised. “Being here with you guys is crazy enough”

Even though it was nice to be surrounded by your favorite characters, you did feel a bit of sadness creep up behind you. You still needed to leave them and go home. The Doctor seemed to know exactly what you were thinking and jumped towards the TARDIS console.

“Right then, awkwardness aside, I will get you home, Y/N”

“But Doctor,” Yaz perked up from far across the room. Her and Ryan had been busy playing cards during your rambling. “What about the cybermen?”

The Doctor, who had seemed hellbent on making good on her promise right then and there, froze in disappointment. You almost laughed at how much she looked like a sad puppy. She met your amused gaze and smiled, brightening up again.

“Care to help us with a quick adventure before we take you home, Y/N?”

You didn’t even know why she bothered asking.

#I hope this was good ahhh #13th doctor x reader #13th doctor #13th doctor imagine

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haberdashing · 4 years

Text

What A Tangled Web We Weave (9/?)

TMA AU diverging from canon at the end of episode 92. Jon is forced into an arranged marriage by Elias; Martin does what he can to help.

on AO3

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9

Martin managed to be a bit more productive work-wise after his tea break than he had been beforehand, though that wasn’t saying much. Every once in a while he’d look up from where he was staring at his computer monitor and glance around to see if Tim had returned while he wasn’t looking, and every time Tim remained nowhere to be seen.

That was... a problem, and one he would probably have to deal with sooner rather than later, but he couldn’t very well do much about it when Tim wouldn’t even be in the same room as him.

By the time Martin went home at the end of the day, he still had yet to see Tim, and part of him worried about it. What if something had happened to Tim, if he’d ran from Martin only to fall victim to some greater terror? What if the last time he’d ever see Tim would be when he was frozen in fear as Martin begged him not to tell anybody else what he’d become?

Or what if Tim was just freaked out by having a spider monster as a coworker, as most people naturally would be, and everybody else he knew would likely act the same once the truth came out? Everyone he knew, everyone he cared about, avoiding him at all costs, any personal connection they might have had irreversibly severed after they found out what he was now?

And they would find out eventually. Even if Tim stayed true to his word and kept schtum, even if Martin managed to not let the truth slip out to anybody else... assuming his deal wasn’t made in vain, his wedding to Jon would be in a month’s time (or a few days less than, now), and there’d be no hiding that he was connected to the Web after that.

Was it better to break the news slowly and cautiously over time, or to enjoy what peace he could before everything inevitably came crashing down around him?

...this was going to be a long month.

At least his sleep was peaceful enough once again, even if Martin almost wished for a night of tossing and turning just so he could put off the inevitable that much longer.

Tim was in his normal spot when Martin arrived in the Archives the next morning, which did reassure him that the worst hadn’t happened to him yet, but he could practically feel Tim’s glare burning into him, and when Martin got up to look for a file he needed for his research he wasn’t terribly surprised to find that Tim was gone by the time he returned.

Martin tried not to let Tim’s absence bother him too much, tried to get on with business as usual; after all, he knew well enough that hunting Tim down for a conversation would likely be counterproductive and might well lead to Tim lashing out at him. He didn’t search the far corners of the Archives for Tim’s presence, didn’t make any trips through the building that weren’t strictly necessary for work purposes. If Tim needed time to himself, so be it.

...alright, Martin supposed that technically, his trip to the loo wasn’t strictly necessary for work purposes, but it was necessary for... biological purposes. That much hadn’t changed, at least. Admittedly he probably could have waited longer, and maybe he just jumped at the excuse to stretch his legs a bit after staring at his computer monitor for what felt like hours on end, but.

To be fair, Martin hadn’t expected Tim to be in there when he entered.

He assumed it was Tim, anyway. He couldn’t see the majority of Tim’s body, given that he was in one of the stalls, but Martin vaguely remembered seeing those shoes on Tim earlier in the day, and there were only so many potential users of the men’s room in the Archives, anyway. His trousers were still on, from what Martin could see, not bunched up around his lower legs, and that didn’t change as Martin took a minute to process what he was seeing and think of an appropriate reaction, so...

“Are you seriously sitting on the toilet in here just so you don’t have to be in the same room as me?”

Martin regretted phrasing his question so bluntly when he saw Tim’s legs stiffen in response, though how much of Tim’s evident tenseness was due to the wording of Martin’s question and how much was just Martin’s presence being made clear was still up in the air.

For a moment, Martin thought Tim wasn’t going to dignify his question with a response, thought Tim was going to be silent and hope that he just went away, and while that wasn’t ideal Martin was willing to follow through, but after Martin stepped closer to the facilities, Tim finally spoke up.

“Did you come here to kill me?”

“...what?”

“I said, did you come here to kill me?”

A year ago, that might have been a joke that Tim bandied around in the work room, accusing Martin of plotting murder via too much tea or some such nonsense, a throw-away remark punctuated with a laugh. Now, Tim’s voice was deadly serious.

“Wha- no! No, of course not! Jesus, Tim, I’m not going to kill you, I’m not going to kill anyone-”

“Then piss off. I’ve made nice with a monster pretending to be a coworker for long enough, thanks. Not playing that game again.”

“I’m not-” Martin hesitated, considering his words carefully. He didn’t think he was a monster now, exactly--not the way Tim meant it, anyway, not like Prentiss had been--but, well, Tim had seen him with eight eyes, and arguing that point seemed like a losing battle.

“I’m not pretending to be your coworker.” Martin said instead. “I am your coworker. It’s still me, Tim.”

A brief pause before Tim responded. “But with freaky spider eyes.”

Martin leaned against the wall, grimy though it was--whatever they were paying their janitors, it wasn’t enough.

“...but with freaky spider eyes, yeah.” Martin admitted.

“And with freaky spider powers.”

That threw Martin for a loop. Had Tim found out about the spider space bar thing, then? Had- had Jon figured it out already, and told Tim about it? Or did Tim manage to piece it together all on his own?

“...what d’you mean, freaky spider powers?”

“I think that’s what that was, anyway... I hope that’s what that was. Hope I wasn’t just too much of a coward to run. Hope it’s not my own damn fault my throat closes up every time I try to tell someone what you really are.”

Martin bit his lip hard enough that he could taste blood as the meaning of Tim’s words washed over him.

“God, Tim, I...”

Martin tried to remember exactly what words he’d used when he’d spoken to Tim before, if anything had felt out of the ordinary when he’d spoken them. He’d told Tim to stop, and he’d stopped. He’d told Tim not to tell anybody about what he was, and apparently Tim had followed through there, too. He’d assumed it was a coincidence that Tim had actually listened and done what he’d asked, that or, or some strange stroke of luck... but he never was that lucky, was he?

“Please don’t give me some half-assed excuse for an apology.”

Martin gulped. “...I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

“I just want you to know I, I didn’t mean to? I just, I spoke without thinking, I just wanted to talk you out of telling the others-”

Tim snorted, though there was no true levity to the sound. “Sure, just like Jon asks questions purely out of idle curiosity.”

Martin bit his lip again, trying his best to ignore the tang of copper as he did so. He still thought Jon meant well, too, but... but Tim obviously had stopped believing that some time ago.

“Do you want me to... tell you you can say whatever you want to the others? Maybe I can do that, I can, can override what I did before by telling you something different-”

“And give you permission to do even more mind control in the process?” Tim let out a loud huff. “Hard pass, thanks.”

“...fair enough.” Martin thought silently for a moment. “What if I can- can prove it’s me? Something only I’d know, that sort of thing?”

“You can try.” Tim’s voice didn’t sound especially enthusiastic about the idea, and Martin couldn’t blame him--after all, Sasha had apparently been a monster for months now, and they hadn’t noticed anything was off--but he had to try, he had to do something.

“Remember when I was living in the Archives, and you came in--without warning, mind you, normal people knock, Tim--and started speculating about how I clearly liked someone, and maybe I wouldn’t tell you who because it was someone in the Archives? You guessed Sasha, you guessed yourself... but you never even mentioned Jon.”

Tim snorted. “Guess I assumed you had better taste than to go for our asshole boss.”

Martin could feel his face heat up. “Well, then I guess you assumed wrong.”

After a moment, Martin added, “Is that enough proof for you?”

A long silence hung in the air before Tim responded.

“What if it’s not?” Tim’s voice was darkly serious. “What would you do then? Would you kill me?”

“Wha- Tim, no, we went over this, I’m not killing you-”

“Trap me in the loo for all eternity?”

“The only one trapping you in here is yourself, Tim, you can leave whenever you want. This isn’t my doing.”

“Why’d you enter in the first place, then?”

Martin’s face heated up again, though for a very different reason this time. “I had to use the toilet! I still have to, okay? If that makes you uncomfortable, if you really don’t want to be in the same room as me, just leave so I can go already, and, and then you can come back after I’m done, if you want.”

“And if I leave the stall now, you won’t wipe my mind or, or do some spooky spider magic on me-”

“No, Tim. Absolutely not. I swear.”

A brief pause, and then the door unlocked and Tim emerged, his face pale, his eyes narrow and suspicious.

“For what it’s worth, I'm sorry.”

“Sure.” The sarcasm in Tim’s voice was bitter and biting.

Tim stayed as far from Martin as he could while approaching the bathroom door before bursting outside, his footsteps ringing out fast and heavy as the door slowly closed behind him.

Martin sighed and rubbed his (two) eyes for a long moment before heading over to use the facilities himself.

#tma #tma au #tma fic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #the magnus archives au #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #martin blackwood #web martin blackwood #web martin #personal #my writing

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bestillmyslashyheart · 5 years

Note

omg please do a part 2 of the last fic you posted! Its soooooo good!!!!

part one

In the two years since Alex left Roswell in his rearview mirror, Michael had somehow scrambled together a decent life for himself. His heart had cracked open one final time when Alex begged Michael to let him go but Michael stitched it back together, stronger than before.

Alex had kept his word. Since getting his new post, he’d worked tirelessly to take down Project Shepherd. At first, he sent updates to Kyle and Kyle would fill in Michael and Isobel and Max. But then, sometime around the first year, Alex started texting Michael directly.

The texts lasted about a month before Michael gave up one night and just called Alex. He didn’t know where Alex was in the world, certainly not what time zone he was in, but it didn’t matter. Alex picked up. And he picked up every time after that.

For a year, they patched together a relationship that had never quite existed with the comfort of thousands of miles between them. It was easier, somehow, to scream their hurts and whisper their fears when it was just a phone call.

They didn’t talk about Alex’s work much, not unless Alex had a specific update, but everything else was fair game. Their past, the pain they’d caused each other. The present, keeping up with each other’s lives better than they had since they were in high school. And the future. Not as much, no, but it did come up.

It was family dinner night at Max and Liz’s when Michael’s phone rang. The first time, he almost didn’t hear it, only pulling it out as it went to voicemail.

“Who was it?” Isobel asked as he stared at the screen, Alex’s name brightly displayed across it. “Michael?”

Michael shook his head and looked up. “What?”

She laughed. “Who was calling? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Not a ghost, per se, but Alex never called this early. Their phone calls were reserved for the middle of the night. “Uh, no one.” He muttered in reply as the phone started ringing again. “I’m just gonna-”

He pushed to his feet and hurried out the door, oblivious to the sudden silence in his wake. He left his family staring worriedly after him as he crashed outside and the door slammed shut behind him. “What’s wrong?” He answered the phone.

Alex chucked. “Nothing’s wrong. Why would you think something’s wrong?”

“You never call this early.” Michael furrowed his brow. “Something happened.”

“Ah, yeah,” Alex replied. “Something did happen but it’s nothing bad. In fact, it’s pretty good, I think.”

“Oh yeah?”

Alex hummed. “As of twenty minutes ago, Project Shepherd is officially and unofficially shut down. It’s over. All the research has been either destroyed or classified at the highest level, every facility has been located and shut down, and my father and brothers are being court-martialed for carrying out unsanctioned missions on the government’s dime.”

“It’s over,” Michael breathed.

“It’s over,” Alex agreed. “You’re safe. You and Max and Isobel, you’re safe.”

“Holy shi-” Michael laughed. “You did it.”

“Yeah.” Michael could hear the smile in Alex’s voice. “I did it.”

The line was silent for a moment, neither one feeling the need to fill it.

“Are you done yet?”

“What?” Alex’s confusion was evident. “I just told you-”

“Done trying to make up for your family’s sins,” Michael clarified. “Are you ready to come back?”

The silence this time was far less comfortable than the last.

“Michael,” Alex started softly and Michael hung his head. Alex only ever called him by his first name when he was preparing to hurt him. “I-”

“No. Don’t,” Michael cut him off. “It was stupid of me to ask. You made yourself perfectly clear when you left.”

“I’ve got 3 more years.”

“I thought it was 10?”

“Good behavior,” Alex replied lightly. “With everything that happened, I renegotiated my term of service. I’ll be eligible for an honorable discharge in three years.”

“That’s good,” Michael replied, trying to keep his tone equally light. “Three more years and you get your life back.”

“Yeah.”

Michael cleared his throat. “But you won’t be coming back to Roswell.” He didn’t bother phrasing it as a question. At this point, it wasn’t.

“Michael,” Alex breathed.

“I’ve gotta go,” Michael cut him off, turning back to the house. Max was standing on the patio, waiting. “Thank you. For shutting it all down.”

“Of course,” Alex told him.

Michael hung up before either one of them could say anything else.

“Everything ok?” Max asked as he trudged back towards the house.

Michael nodded. “Project Shepherd is officially dead. We’re safe.”

Max raised an eyebrow. “That was Alex?” Michael just met his gaze but didn’t say anything. “I hope you told him thank you. You sure we’re safe now?”

“Alex says we are, so...”

“Well then let’s go celebrate,” Max nodded back towards the house. “No more looking over our shoulders.”

“Yeah,” Michael tried to smile. Max didn’t say anything, just wrapped an arm around Michael’s shoulders and led him inside.

Michael woke up to the smell of fresh coffee and bacon. He was out of the bed and halfway down the hall before it occurred to him to be quiet but the overriding knowledge that nobody should be in his house spurred him on.

“What the fuck?”

Alex didn’t even bother to look at him. He was stood at the stove, carefully plating the bacon and eggs.

“Alex?” Michael asked. “Am I dreaming?”

“You dream about me making breakfast often?”

“Yes,” Michael answered before he could stop himself. Alex paused briefly in his movements before setting the pans back down on the stove. Only after making sure the burners were off did he turn around.

He looked good.

Michael wasn’t sure where he’d been these last few years but it clearly wasn’t stuck behind a desk in a dark room.

“What are you doing here?”

“You should go grocery shopping,” Alex replied as he reached for the plates and carried them to the table. “Your food selection is appalling.”

“I usually eat in town,” Michael replied numbly. He didn’t move. “What are you doing here?”

It had been almost six months since Project Shepherd was shut down. Six months since they’d spoken. Alex sighed. “Could we eat first?”

“No,” Michael denied immediately. “You said you were never coming back to Roswell. What are you doing in my kitchen? Why are you making me breakfast?”

“Technically, it’s my kitchen,” Alex protested lightly. And sure, Michael had set up camp in the cabin after Alex left but that was not the point right now. “I miss you,” he admitted as he sipped at his coffee.

Michael sagged against the wall. “You miss me?” Alex nodded. “Well fuck Alex I miss you too. But that doesn’t answer my question. You said-”

“I know what I said.” Alex let out a breath and stood up. It was only about two steps across the kitchen but Alex stayed where he was by the table. “I miss you, Michael. And I know I said I wasn’t coming back but goddammit, Michael. I really fucking miss you.”

“So, what? You came for a visit?”

Alex closed his eyes briefly. “I still owe the Air Force two and a half more years.”

“So you’re leaving again.”

“Yes,” Alex admitted slowly. “For two and a half years. But then I get my life back and I can go wherever I want.”

“Even Roswell?”

“Even Roswell.”

“And is that what you want?” Michael asked quietly.

“What I want is you,” Alex confessed. Michael stamped down a sob. “I really don’t care where that is as long as I’m with you.”

“Alex,” Michael started. “You can’t just say things like that. Not after-”

Alex rubbed at the back of his head. “I won’t say it was a mistake, re-upping and leaving Roswell, because I don’t think it was. I needed to take down Project Shepherd. I needed to undo my family’s legacy and I needed to make sure you were safe.” He paused. “And I needed space. We needed space. We kept hurting each other.”

“And you think, what? We’ll magically stop hurting each other?”

“Not necessarily,” Alex countered. “I think we are uniquely capable of hurting each other like no one else and I can’t promise we won’t do it in the future. But I can promise you that I won’t leave. That I’ll be here to fix whatever I fuck up.”

“And how are you going to do that if you’re in the Air Force?”

“Come with me,” Alex asked.

Michael stared at him, his jaw dropped. “It is way too fucking early for this shit.”

“I said we should eat breakfast first,” Alex muttered and Michael shot him a glare.

“A head’s up that you were coming would’ve been nice.”

Alex shrugged. “I was planning to come see you today. Didn’t expect to find you living in my cabin.”

Michael looked away as his cheeks flushed. He wasn’t about to admit that he’d moved in because it was the only left of Alex in the entire town. Somehow, he thought Alex might have figured that out on his own anyway. “You don’t honestly expect me to pick up and follow you wherever, do you?” Now Alex looked away. “I’ve got a life here. My family’s here.”

“It’s two and a half years,” Alex said again. “And then we could come back.”

“Alex-”

“Or not,” Alex continued over him and Michael’s heart stopped. “Or we could wait until I get out and then come back and we can try again then, if we want to, but I don’t want to wait. We’ve lost enough time, I don’t want to lose any more.”

“Why?” Michael forced out. At some point while they spoke, Alex had taken the two steps across the kitchen and was now merely inches away.

“Do you remember what you said to me when I left?” Alex asked softly.

“If you love something, set it free,” Michael replied immediately.

“If it comes back, it’s yours,” Alex finished. He reached out and drew a finger along Michael’s jaw. “I’ve always been yours, Michael.”

Michael couldn’t take it anymore. He closed the gap between them and dug his hands into Alex’s hair as he pulled him into a kiss. Suddenly, the world made sense again. It was like everything had been a little off ever since Alex left but he was back and he was back in Michael’s arms and things just snapped back into place.

“You’re insane,” Michael told him when they separated. “Absolutely batshit insane to come in here after two and half years and just expect me to pick up and follow you wherever.”

“So that’s a no?” Alex asked. “Because you’re sending some mixed signals here.”

“Fucking crazy,” Michael muttered as he kissed him again. “We’ll figure it out. I don’t know how yet, but we’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah?” Alex asked.

“Yeah,” Michael breathed into his mouth as they crashed together again.

#malex fic #rnm #my fic #i was informed that military services are 5 years not 10 as i said in part 1 so handwavy fic logic to make it 5 #Anonymous

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anghraine · 4 years

Text

“the jedi and the sith lord” - chapter ten

I may have been writing this at four in the morning. When inspiration strikes, it strikes hard!

last chapter:

Leia. At least she was all right. Maybe Lucy would be able to talk to her the way Obi-Wan did, and the monk in her dreams. She could haunt her father, anyway, if she died right under his nose. When she died. Dimly, she wondered what he would think. Would he feel any guilt at all? Would he even care, except for the ruination of his plans?

this chapter:

Izahay contemplated the tank with a cool professionalism that grated on his nerves.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Probably, I’d say. The exposure was limited, as these things go, and the bacta should be sufficient to repair bronchial and pulmonary damage.”

“Let us hope so,” said Vader. “You will live if she does.”

chapters: The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker– prologue, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter five, chapter six, chapter seven, chapter eight, chapter nine, chapter ten; The Imperial Menace–chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter five, chapter six, chapter seven; The Jedi and the Sith Lord—chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter five, chapter six, chapter seven, chapter eight, chapter nine

Aiya.

Vader didn’t know if he’d said it aloud. Nor did he care; he looked around himself, then positioned Lucy in the narrow space behind his seat, grabbing at one of his emergency filters and pressing it over her face. Alarmingly, Lucy didn’t resist, but just blinked up at him. Her gaze seemed to have focused, at least.

“Hold this here,” he ordered, unsure if she could obey, or if the filter would even help after prolonged exposure.

His own breath came more harshly than usual, if only a little. He should have activated his own force field before fetching her, but between his urgency and the filters built into his helmet and mask, hadn’t thought of it. His head stayed clear, however, and he settled himself behind the controls without further hesitation, launching the ship off Lucy’s ledge and darting towards Bast Castle.

When he landed the ship inside the castle’s protective field and turned to recover Lucy, he found her still holding the filter over her face with one limp hand, but only barely. She looked dazed again.

He didn’t need the Dark Side—and certainly not the Light—to tell him that her time was running out. Then, everything he’d done would be in vain. And … never mind. It wouldn’t happen. Again, he lifted his daughter in his arms.

“Mmph,” said Lucy.

“Don’t waste your breath,” he advised her, and strode to the castle doors. When they swung open, he found his people in a disorder he would have harshly punished at any other time. In particular, F-2VA was holding a knife to the throat of Commander Zowan, a man who had never previously disappointed Vader.

“Where is she, you incompetent bag of flesh? What have you—”

Zowan choked and pointed at Vader.

His first instinct was to order them out of his way and cart Lucy to the medical bay himself. But his second thought was that speed mattered more. He saw LX-3 standing guard exactly where he’d left her and quickly deposited Lucy into her arms.

“Take her to the medical bay as quickly as you can. Tell Doctor Izahay that she takes priority over all other patients.”

“Yes, sir,” Ellex said, and rising up to her full height and securing her grip on Lucy, she hurtled in the direction of the bay.

Vader, ignoring the assorted disappointments around him and their evident fear, stalked after her. He made his way to the medical bay as quickly as his prosthetics would take him; by that time, Lucy floated in a bacta tank, Izahay standing nearby and jotting down notes on the screen in her hand. Ellex had taken up position by the door, glancing around suspiciously.

Vader swept past her and marched over to Izahay.

“Will she live?” he asked abruptly.

Izahay contemplated the tank with a cool professionalism that grated on his nerves.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Probably, I’d say. The exposure was limited, as these things go, and the bacta should be sufficient to repair bronchial and pulmonary damage.”

“Let us hope so,” said Vader. “You will live if she does.”

She swallowed.

After several minutes, he saw no point in continuing to watch Lucy, who would remain in bacta for a full half-hour before further examination. He turned on his heel and headed back to Ellex.

“Do you have an explanation?” he said.

“I have failed you, sir,” said Ellex, still scanning the hall. “I did not observe Skywalker’s escape with the organics. She seems to have used clothing near in colouration to their uniforms and a personal force field to obscure her presence among them.”

Clever. Not as clever as should have been required to escape, of course. But she had taken advantage of the chaos following the attack and seized her opportunity, as he supposed he should have expected of his daughter. Banishing all memory of his own history, he said,

“She is five feet tall. No one noticed her?”

“I believe her size allowed her to use the bodies of the other organics to conceal herself,” said Ellex. “We should have attended more closely to the details of the situation, however. If you decide to destroy me, I will not resist.”

Vader considered it. Ellex had served him well up to this point—better than any other subordinate. On the one hand, her failure had resulted in potentially fatal consequences, to Lucy and to his plans for her. On the other, total destruction seemed a waste of Ellex’s abilities and the resources he had dedicated to her over the years. She had not swerved from his instructions, at least.

“I have not yet decided,” said Vader. “Speaking of failures, where was F-2VA in all this?”

“You will have to inquire of F-2VA,” Ellex replied. “She did not choose to inform me of her location or the rationale for her actions. She did seem extremely troubled by their consequences, as you no doubt observed.”

It had been a long time since he’d seen Tuvié draw a knife on anyone, much less a high-ranking Imperial officer. She must have been troubled, indeed.

Nevertheless, he could only consider her failure as exponentially greater than Ellex’s. He had told her to guard Lucy at all times, except when given an overriding command. Yet somehow, she had not been present when Lucy slipped out of the castle. It was a disastrous dereliction of her duties and orders.

“If anyone is going to be destroyed,” he said grimly, “it will be Tuvié.”

All that day, Lucy passed in and out of consciousness. By the time her thoughts approached something like coherence, she guessed that it must be well into the night.

Well, she hadn’t died, which was something. Her chest and throat hurt too much for that. She lay in a bed, less comfortable than the one she’d grown accustomed to, in a stark grey room. Peering around, she recognized the room as the medical bay where Tuvié had taken her to have Tisix inspect her eyes. But she didn’t hear Tuvié’s prattling voice.

She thought about going back to sleep, but something began to beep loudly.

“Ah,” said a voice—an organic woman’s voice. “I see you’re back with us.”

The voice was unfamiliar, but sounded decidedly pleased. Lucy squinted at the person attached to it. She was human or humanoid, with dark eyes and silver hair, though she didn’t seem that old: perhaps forty.

“Looks like it,” said Lucy. “Who are you?”

“Doctor Izahay,” the woman replied. “Tisix here and I have been caring for you. It was a very foolish thing you did, young lady.”

“I guess so,” Lucy said.

The Force felt much as it had in the other, mysterious chamber with the sphere: a nasty tangle of Dark and Light. Lucy did her best to pinpoint it, and only then made out a tall, bulky figure in the shadows.

Vader.

“You could have died,” said Izahay. Though only a few inches taller than Lucy, she then turned to shake her finger in Vader’s direction. “And Lord Vader could have, too!”

What?

Dimly, she recalled someone carrying her, and a mask pressed against her face. Had it been—

“I’m sorry,” said Lucy. She didn’t mean it, but nothing else came to mind.

Vader stirred at last. “I sincerely doubt that.”

She could only shrug. If he was going to hold her captive, he had to expect her to try and escape. Maybe he had expected it; he didn’t sound surprised or troubled at all. She wasn’t going to depend on that, though.

“All right,” said Izahay briskly, holding up a small, round device with a tube at one end. “Miss Skywalker, breathe into this as hard as you can.”

Puzzled, but not quite daring further trouble-making (at the moment), Lucy obeyed. A string of numbers passed through the screen at the top of the device.

“Hmm,” Izahay said. “Well, that’s a good sign. Was the breath painful?”

“A little,” said Lucy.

“On a scale of one to ten—”

“Uh, four?”

Izahay gave a faint smile. “That’s to be expected. Now, I’m going to give you some medication to inhale that should complete the healing process and prevent you from any further effects. Make sure you take it morning and night, and avoid speaking unless absolutely necessary.”

Lucy nodded.

“Your work has been satisfactory, doctor,” said Vader. “You may leave us.”

Visibly relaxing, Izahay nodded and strode out, pausing to talk in a quiet voice to someone—Lucy thought they sounded like a droid, though she couldn’t quite make them out from here—at the door. After a brief conversation, the door shut behind her.

Lucy glanced from the indistinct, but very large, droid at the door, to Tisix, to Vader. He often sent Tuvié away when he spoke to Lucy, so it wasn’t all that strange to see Vader without her around, but a hazy alarm nevertheless crept on her.

“Where’s Tuvié?” she asked.

Vader stepped forward, into the low light of the medical bay, and looked down at her. Nothing about him betrayed any emotion, not even the Force; it was too tumultuous right now to be much of a guide.

“She has been relieved of her duties,” said Vader.

Panic settled in Lucy’s chest and stomach, her breath jolting. “What do you mean, ‘relieved’?”

“I mean exactly what I said.”

“Did you hurt her?” Lucy demanded. “Is she all right?”

He made a more-than-usually ominous figure in the blurred dimness and shadow, looming over her bed. She had to crane her head back to meet his lenses.

After a long pause, Vader said,

“F-2VA nearly got you killed.”

“I nearly got me killed!” Lucy snapped back, then coughed.

“Lower your voice,” said Vader, “or I will lower it for you.”

Lucy wasn’t sure how he could manage that, but didn’t feel inclined to find out. She nodded.

“That is true enough,” he went on, “but you never could have made your escape without Tuvié’s abandonment of her duties.”

“But I’m the one who—”

Vader locked his hands behind his back. “Yes?”

She hesitated, knowing that his appearance of calm might be deceptive, and some terrible punishment could await her, daughter or not. Certainly, she didn’t imagine that she could expect the tolerant treatment she’d … not enjoyed, but experienced so far. She hardly wanted to make it worse. But if Tuvié still functioned, she couldn’t let her get sliced up or blasted to pieces because of Lucy.

She hadn’t even thought of it at the time.

“I told her to get force fields to the other humanoids,” Lucy said quickly. “She wasn’t sure, she said she was supposed to stay with me—I’m the one who convinced her to go.” She dropped her gaze to her hands. “I told her that it was what you would want.”

Vader said absolutely nothing for a good thirty seconds. Then he said,

“You told me once that life was a series of choices and consequences.”

Lucy was already shaking her head. “I didn’t mean—”

“Perhaps you should think of that the next time you involve other sentients in your plots!”

“Tuvié is a very unique droid,” she protested. “Or was. You would sacrifice her just to make me suffer?”

It’s not fair! she almost exclaimed, but knew better than to think he cared about fairness.

Vader said, “I am still deciding that point.”

Her breaths came more easily.

“So she’s still alive?” Lucy asked eagerly. “Operational, I mean?”

“For the moment,” said Vader.

In the event, Vader gave F-2VA the very small credit of facing the consequences without protest, though not silence.

“You left her,” he said. “Why?”

“I—well, I—I considered it—the thought occurred to me, sir, that many of the organics would require assistance.”

“The thought occurred to you,” he repeated. “And how did this thought occur to you?”

The light in Tuvié’s optical sensors flickered. “I … I … I cannot say, sir. It simply did.”

She was trying to protect Lucy, he realized. Interesting.

“It was Lucy,” he said. “She convinced you to go assist others.”

Tuvié did fall silent at that.

“Did she not?”

She hesitated, then replied, “I cannot comprehend why she did such a thing. And in the middle of an attack, too! If she wished to experience those dreadful rocks so badly, she might have asked, on a safer occasion.” She shook her head. “I do not understand.”

Perhaps he should have given her a more advanced processor.

“That is not your concern,” said Vader. “You will no longer oversee her care. You will make no attempt to contact her in any way, nor receive any communications from her.”

Some part of her frame clanked. “Of course, but—I am to remain operational, sir?”

“It is possible,” he said, a new thought occurring to him, “that you may still be of service.”

When Lucy woke again, she opened her eyes to the sight of her bedroom. Everything seemed exactly as she’d left it, down to the purple gown pooled on the floor. But she’d only just yawned when the door opened and something cast a long, broad shadow across the room.

Lucy looked up, and then further up. An enormous black droid—easily seven feet tall—stood there, regarding her with dull red eyes set in a narrow head. The droid was covered in smooth plates and had several blasters attached to their arms. It didn’t seem a standard model, so Lucy was pretty sure she’d seen this particular one before; the droid had been one of the guards at the door when she snuck out.

“Uh,” said Lucy. “Hi?”

“Lord Vader will see you now,” said the droid.

Despite herself, Lucy brightened. “Ellex!”

Ellex had none of Tuvié’s integrated prosthetics, at least none visible beyond her plating, but she managed to glower nevertheless.

“Hurry up. He doesn’t have all day.”

Lucy, deciding against deliberately aggravating Vader or the killer droid in front of her, made her way to the wardrobe. As soon as she opened it, she felt overwhelmed; Padmé had left a governor’s ransom in clothes, and Tuvié almost always selected them for her. Repressing a flare of guilt, Lucy grabbed a dress that seemed manageable without Tuvié’s help.

“Are you planning on waiting until our star cools?” said Ellex.

Lucy rolled her eyes and hurried over to the fresher; she felt a lot weirder about undressing in front of Ellex than Tuvié. After a struggle with some unforeseen buttons, her hair, and sleeves meant for someone with thinner arms, she triumphantly emerged.

“Is Vader leaving again?” she asked.

“Lord Vader will inform you of his plans if he wishes to,” Ellex said, wheeling around to march down the hall.

Lucy had to lift her skirts and run to keep up. Tuvié had usually slowed down to match Lucy’s natural stride.

“Well, I’d be investigating that attack if it were me,” said Lucy.

“Happily,” Ellex returned, “you are not Lord Vader.”

Lucy remembered her vision and promptly shoved it away.

“They were Imperials, not Rebels,” she went on. “Something strange is going on. Why aren’t I locked up, by the way?”

“Lord Vader did not command it,” said Ellex. “Do you always talk so much?”

Lucy thought about it. “I don’t know. I always talked less than Tuvié.”

“That is an extremely low standard to meet.”

It might be, but Lucy wasn’t about to say so. She glared at Ellex’s back and hurried after her in resentful silence. By the time they reached Vader’s receiving room, she felt annoyed at the entire galaxy and just about everyone in it except Leia and Han.

They found Vader gazing out the window, his back to them. Typically fearless—but then, he had armour.

Without turning, he said, “Leave us, Ellex.”

Ellex betrayed none of Tuvié’s anxious hesitations, but simply swivelled on her heavy feet and marched away. Lucy waited until the door closed, then folded her arms.

“I’m not sorry.”

“A shocking development,” said Vader.

She wanted to say something else, throw further defiance into his face, but nothing came to mind. Then an echo of a thought came to her.

Valì.

Lucy shivered. Even now, she longed to believe it impossible. Her feelings—oh, people’s feelings misled them all the time! Maybe it only seemed so overpowering because of the shock, or because she’d been away from other people for so long, or it was a trick of Vader’s to sway her to the Dark Side. Anything but the truth she felt down to her bones.

If only she could talk to Ben or Yoda, find out whether they’d lied, and how much. They could tell her the real story, whatever it was.

They could have told me all along.

“I will be departing shortly,” said Vader, his attention not wavering from the poisonous view out the window.

“All right,” Lucy said. “How am I going to be imprisoned now? Is there a cell with my name on it?”

Our name, she thought, and then quickly added, maybe.

Vader said, “No.”

“Great,” said Lucy. “And when will you be back?”

Not that she cared.

“When my business is concluded,” he said.

“I hope that business involves investigating those Imperials who just attacked us,” said Lucy.

He shifted position slightly, which she decided to count as a small victory.

“What makes you think the attack didn’t come from your Rebel friends?”

“The Force showed me,” she said flatly. “They were Imperials.”

She felt a trace of satisfaction. An odd trace—it felt peculiarly dull and remote, as if it came from somewhere very far away.

Lucy’s brows drew together.

“You knew that already, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, but finally turned around to look at her, his lenses flickering red. “I assure you, they will pay for their little … maneuver.”

In her dryest tone, she said, “I never doubted you.”

“As for yours,” said Vader, “you will be supervised by LX-3 at all times, and your movements restricted. Ellex’s blasters are set to stun. I have given her freedom to use them at her own discretion.”

She considered this. Really, she’d expected worse. From all she’d heard, people around Vader died for a fraction of her misdeeds, and suffered for them when they didn’t die. People like Tuvié—

“That’s another shocking development for today,” she said.

Quietly, Vader told her, “You are on very dangerous ground, Lucy.”

At that, she could only laugh.

“Compared to what? The first time I saw you, you sliced your lightsaber through my friend and teacher. Should I expect something worse than that?”

“Obi-Wan and I had unfinished business,” said Vader. “This is a different situation.”

Lucy was almost there again, watching as her friend, her teacher, the last of the little Tatooine world she’d known, died before her eyes. She could feel her body shaking all over again.

“Unfinished business? Is that what you call it every time you kill an innocent person?” she demanded.

“I do not kill innocent people,” he said. “I kill guilty ones—like Obi-Wan.”

“Guilty? Ben?” Lucy shook her head. “What could he have ever done to deserve that?”

Vader’s hands clenched into fists, his rage almost a palpable thing.

“He left me to burn alive!”

“To—” She couldn’t even repeat it. “That’s not true. It can’t—he wouldn’t—”

“Do not tell me what he would or would not have done!” said Vader. “I knew him better than you ever will. In the end, he showed himself for what he was—a monster and a coward.”

Maybe he was lying about … about Anakin. Maybe he wasn’t. But he had to be lying about this. She’d known Ben. As a peculiar neighbour for most of her life, sure, but she’d still known him, and he’d been her guide and mentor in his last days and after them. She just couldn’t believe it.

“I’m not listening to this,” she said, backing away.

“Hide from the truth all you like,” said Vader. “That won’t change it.”

“It’s not true,” she insisted. “You’re trying to—you’re just trying to turn me to the Dark Side, aren’t you? I’m not fooled.”

“Yes, you are,” he said. “By Obi-Wan. But that is enough of this. Treat LX-3 with more respect than you did F-2VA and I should find you in good health when I return.” He pressed his hand against a panel on the wall.

“What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

He said, “Ellex, take her away.”

#anghraine's fic #the jedi and the sith lord #rule 63 #genderbending #tuvié #ellex #izahay #/#//#///#////#/////#lucy skywalker #luke skywalker #anakin skywalker #star wars #long post

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redstarwriting · 5 years

Text

Two Of Us [Part 2]

Tony Stark x Daughter! Reader

Request: “I loved your story Two Of Us. Could you please, please write more? Please?! I wanna read about her training with the team, her first mission with the team, about how people see her fly by and wonder who that is or how when people see her fly by they smile, remembering Tony and immediately feel that everything will be ok. I just need more!! 😭”

Word Count: 2,129

Genre: Platonic, Angst-ish

Warnings: Swearing, fight scene, Endgame Tony feels

A/N: I just had the absolute worst writer’s block I’ve ever experienced. No matter what request I tried to work on, I just couldn’t. However, the requester of part two of this actually yanked my ass out of the rut I was in and helped me finally get back on track! @katsen13 is an ANGEL and I’m very grateful she helped me out. Now that I feel like I can actually form sentences again, I’m going to try to write as many requests as I can. I’m very sorry if you requested and I haven’t written it yet, but I’m going to try to go off and write EVERYTHING now! Also, if anyone would ever just want to talk or get to know more about me I’m so willing to talk! Anyways, I hope you enjoy this!

[Pt. 1]

───────────────────────────────────

After you showed the Avengers that you would be taking over the persona your dad had for so many years, you started training immediately. When you weren’t at school, you would be training. Lucky for you though, after three days of this train, school, train schedule, the seniors got out earlier than the rest of the student body. That includes you, so now it’s just training, training, training. After a week, it was evident that you were very skilled with the iron suit, but you weren’t Tony level just yet. Because of that, it became apparent to the rest of the team that you wouldn’t rest until you were. “(Y/N/N), isn’t it time for a break?” Rhodey asks as you fire repulsor beams from both of your hands, hitting targets as fast as you could. “Not a chance, Rhode Island.”

“Rhode Island? Come on, that’s not even clever.”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of me being better than you.”

“Wow, you really are Tony’s daughter.”

“Damn, which one of us is the genius here? I never would have guessed I was Tony Stark’s daughter, good observation, Watson.”

Rhodey narrows his eyes in annoyance but can’t help the smile breaking out across his face. He missed this kind of scarcastic wit. Although the other Avengers can give him sass, no one compared to what Tony could do. Now he had a carbon copy of his late best friend. “Whatever you say, Stark.”

“How long has she been training?” Pepper’s voice rings out, but you’re too focused to hear. Rhodey looks at her and shrugs. “Well it’s one in the afternoon so… around seven hours. She never stops.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” she says with a sigh, sitting down to observe you. Rhodey sits next to her, turning his attention to you as well. “She really acts like him, y’know?” Rhodey thinks out loud, and Pepper laughs. “Oh, you have no idea. I know you saw her grow up, but there are some parts you still didn’t see. She and Tony are basically the same person.” Rhodey shakes his head, a small laugh leaving his lips. “She started training at six in the morning.”

“Only six? she must have decided to actually sleep last night. That’s a rare occurrence,” Pepper informs him, and he snorts. “Yeah, that is a lot like Tony… doesn’t that worry you, though?”

“Of course it does… but I’ve come to realize she’s very set in her ways. She cares more about what she’s working on than she does her own health. I mean, she already has trouble sleeping, and ever since her dad has been gone it’s gotten even worse. But in this case, she won’t stop until she’s what she deems ready. Once she gets her mind set on something, nothing will stop her until she reaches her goal. A little like someone else we used to know.”

“Yeah, more like exactly like him. Is that one of the suits he made before? I’ve never seen it.” “Oh, no, (Y/N) made it. It even has some little perks that Tony’s suits didn’t even have. You might want to ask her to make you a new War Machine suit, she’d happily do it.”

“She made it? She can already make things like that?”

“Rhodey, she’s her father’s daughter. He got her hooked onto engineering in fifth grade. She made her first iron suit in seventh.”

Pepper smiles to herself, thinking back to the times she would wake up anywhere from midnight to 5 in the morning without Tony next to her. Even though he almost always did this, and she knew exactly where he was, she’d always get up to go find him. It was always just him until you were around ten years old. Then she would see you with Tony, staring at whatever he was doing, him explaining it to you. That was the beginning of your engineering knowledge, and, like she told Rhodey, by the time you were twelve, you were designing your own Iron Man suits. Spending time with Tony was your favorite thing, and you made sure it happened at any chance you could get. Tony loved it and although he never admitted it to you, but he bragged to everyone about how you were the smartest Stark. “She caught onto what I have a PhD in and went to college to study for when she was learning how to long divide. If you still think I’m the smartest after that information, I feel sorry for how delusional you are,” he’d always say. No one really believed him though. No one believed there was any way you could actually get the hang of these things at that age, Rhodey included. That is, until right now.

“She was getting that into this stuff at that age?” Rhodey was in disbelief, finally believing Tony’s claims at you being the smartest Stark. “Mhm. I always knew in the back of my mind that she would fill his shoes one day. I just expected it to happen later on in her life, after he retired from being Iron Man and we decided to finally just sit back and relax. Not now.”

Rhodey just sits in silence, unsure on what to say. He himself was missing Tony, so hearing Pepper say that just made him go silent. Rhodey and Pepper sit and watch as you start to finish up this rep on training before Pepper speaks up again. “I’m proud of her, though. She got his drive to constantly help other people. I’d hear them talking about it when they were working at night sometimes. She’ll do whatever it takes to protect the people she loves… just like him.”

“You two raised her well.”

“Yeah… yeah we did.”

This is the point when you finish, and finally realize your mom is there. “Oh, hi mom! What are you doing here?” you ask, walking over to her. “Making sure you ate.”

“Oh… uh…”

“I think it’s time you take a break and actually eat something, don’t you think?” she says, standing up and you sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I guess. But I’m coming right back here when we’re done.”

“I figured you would. But for now, let’s go get some lunch.” You begin taking off the suit, which happens in about 30 seconds, and grab the water bottle you had with you. “Where we going?”

“I was thinking we could go to your favorite restaurant.”

“Oh, I am so down.” You and your mom make your way through the compound, going to her car. You hop in the passenger’s seat, putting your seatbelt on while she gets in the driver’s seat. “Morgan at school?” you ask, and she nods. “Tomorrow is her last day. Then a week from tomorrow is your graduation. Is your valedictorian speech written yet?”

“It’s been written since the beginning of the year, mom,” you say matter-of-factly. She laughs a bit. “I should have figured it was already written.”

“Yeah, you should have. I mean, it’s gonna be a pretty small class. Over half of us were snapped out of existence. Now I’m awkwardly five years older than so many people I know, it’s so weird. I’m not a fan of this being old feeling. Not a fan at all.”

“You are so dramatic.”

“My dad was my dad of course I’m dramatic, have you talked to him?” you say, a small smile on your face. “You sound just like your father, you know?”

“Oh, I know. I’ve been told I’m Tony Stark but tiny, female, and many years in younger.”

Pepper opens her mouth to confirm that you are indeed tiny Tony Stark, but before she can answer a huge explosion causes her to immediately break and take a sharp turn. The car skidded to a stop, but you and your mom look at each other with wide eyes. “What was that?” you ask and Pepper shakes her head. “I don’t know-“

Another explosion cuts her off, and the glass in the car shatters due to the close proximity. You quickly get out of the car and see the same exact technology your dad faced before, but on a woman this time. Electrical whips were what were causing the explosions, as they were connecting with cars in front of you and overriding the electricity, ending in an explosion. She looked very similar to Ivan Vanko, the man your dad went up against and won against way back when. However, she looked a little younger. You’re pulled out of your thoughts by hearing your mom’s voice.

“(Y/N).” You glance at your mom, who is staring at this new female whiplash with a frightening glare. “Yeah, mom?”

“Kick her ass.”

You smirk, holding out your arm and feeling the familiar feeling of your very own iron suit encasing itself around you. Luckily, her back was to you, not noticing what was happening. “Friday, who is she?” you ask, and Friday answers immediately. “Her name is Tatyana Antonovna Vanko. Her father is Anton Vanko and her brother was-“

“Ivan, killed by my father.”

“Correct, (Y/N). She’s using what seems like an updated version of weapon of what her brother used. More electricity seems to be coursing through the whips.”

“Good to know, let’s stop her.”

“Yes, (Y/N). Let’s.”

You fly over to her, keeping some distance between you two so she doesn’t notice you yet. She’s about to raise her whip again, but freezes when she hears your voice. “Ma’am, I’m gonna need you to hand the electric whip thingies over, and just surrender since that would make this easier for both of us,” you yell at her, and she turns her head towards you with a scowl. “Stark? I thought you were dead.”

“You’re talking to the wrong Stark there, sis.”

“Then I will kill you myself,” she says, raising her whip and aiming it towards you. You quickly fly out of the way, dodging her attack, and fire a repulsor beam at her, but she dodges it. She shoots another whip out, and wraps around your one arm, pulling you to the ground. The volt of electricity makes your suit start to wig out, and you mentally curse. The other whip she has wraps around your other arm, and she laughs. “I’ve got you now!”

You look at the technology in your vision to observe the damage being done to your suit, but it actually looks like she’s charging it up. You smile to yourself, and grab the whip, much to Tatyana’s surprise. “What…?” you hear her mumble, and you just yank her closer to you, catching her off guard. You grab the other whip in the same hand the first whip you got a grip on, and pull her from the one side of your body to the next, causing her to sprawl out on the pavement. She groans, and you locate the power source on her suit. It’s exactly where the power source was on her brother’s suit, so you walk over to her, yanking it out. The electricity immediately disappears, and she’s left writhing in pain. Luckily, the police show up just as you finish, and you turn your head towards them. That’s when you notice the crowd of people who gathered on the road to observe you.

“Iron Man?”

“Is he back?”

“Is that really him?”

You smile at the mumbles throughout the crowd. The excited and hopeful looks on their faces make something warm spread throughout your whole body. “They think you’re him,” you hear your mom’s voice directly next to you and you turn to look at her. You shrug. “They can keep believing it for now. I’ll tell them I’m actually the better version when they’re ready to hear that news.” Pepper laughs, shaking her head and you clap your hands together. “So, this was fun and all, but I’m starving. I feel like it’s only reasonable for me to eat a cheeseburger after all this, so I’ll meet you at the restaurant, yeah? I’ll get your favorite because,” you motion to the destroyed cars in the path to where you two were going. “It seems like it may take a little while to get through that. I’ll just fly it back to the compound? Kay, cool. See ya, mom.” You look at the crowd of people, wave, and then take off. The crowd erupts into cheers after seeing you fly away and talking to Pepper, thoroughly believing Tony is back. Pepper smiles at the crowd and gets back in her car, ready to go back to the compound. She’s ridiculously proud of you in this moment, and she knows Tony would feel the same. Earth’s Best Defender is back.

#iron man x reader #avengers x reader #tony stark x reader #iron man imagine #avengers imagine #tony stark imagine #iron man #avengers #tony stark

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thatfanficstuff · 5 years

Text

Bound - 14

Pairing: Niklaus x Cassidy

Warnings: nope.

A/N: This story is nearing it’s end. I am going to be honest. Every time I post a chapter for this story I get at least one shitty comment. I get lots of good ones too, but that shit one just....yeah. Anyway, that’s why these chapters don’t come as regularly though I do hope to wrap this story up over the next three weeks or so.

***

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I saw Finn signaling from the top of the stairs. I nodded to let him know that I had seen. Pasting a smile on my face, I turned to Nik. “These shoes are pinching my feet. I’m just going to run upstairs and change. I’ll be back shortly.”

His eyes ran over my face and it was evident he didn’t believe a word of what I was saying. “Of course,” he said before leaning forward to press a kiss to my cheek. “I don’t know what you’re up to, love, but do be careful. Might I offer my assistance?” his voice in my ear was only loud enough for me to hear.

“I’m afraid you have to stay a bit longer, yet,” I responded a bit louder. “It wouldn’t do for us to disappear so quickly.”

Elijah’s dark eyes moved between the two of us and I gave a slight shake of my head. Soon, I mouthed before turning and hurrying up the stairs. I’d barely stepped out of sight at the top when a hand grasped my arm and tugged me into a doorway. Finn.

He shut and locked the door behind us while my eyes darted around the room, taking everything in. Esther was there as expected, but so was Elena. Her and Damon had returned for the ball because they are idiots. Or, Caroline had convinced them it would be fine or something. I didn’t really care. Elena gave me a small smile. “Hi, Cass.”

I nodded then turned my attention to Esther and the sage she was lighting. Whatever she was about to say, she didn’t want to be overheard. “Finn said you wished to speak with me?”

She gestured to two chairs near her desk. Elena took one but I remained standing. “My dress is a bit snug. It’s more comfortable for me to stay standing.”

“Of course,” Esther agreed. “I have asked you both here because I wish to apologize to you for the hurt and pain that you have suffered due to my family.”

“Um, thanks, I guess,” Elena said.

I was trying to figure exactly which hurt and suffering she might be referring to as she was the cause of a good portion of it. “If you’re referring to the time your husband tried to kill me, yeah that sucked.”

The witch’s features grew pinched. “Must you always be so flippant?” she snapped.

“Apparently.”

She motioned to Finn and he stepped forward, blade in hand. My spine immediately straightened as my eyes locked on the knife. “Elena, if you don’t mind. I need just a bit of your blood for a spell I must perform.”

My cousin’s eyes darted up to meet mine and I gave a small nod. If she didn’t give it willingly, they’d just take it.

“Okay.” Finn pricked her finger with the blade and they collected the blood in a bowl. Once they had several drops, Esther murmured some words over Elena’s hand and the wound healed.

“You may leave, child.”

Elena looked horribly confused, but she was at least smart enough to agree and flee the room. Once she was gone, Esther stood and closed the distance between us. “As for you. Tell me, Cassidy, what is it that draws you to Niklaus so? He is not particularly noble or kind. I am uncertain he even has the capacity for love though he does play at it.”

I bit back the words that settled on the tip of my tongue, the ones that would surely earn me no favor with the witch in front of me. I needed to discover what she was up to and get my magic back. Honesty wasn’t going to get me either of those things. I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just love him. I have always loved him.”

Her brows drew together as she studied me with her dark eyes. “Always?”

“Yes, it seems that way. I do not remember when or how I fell in love with him. One day I just realized that I was.”

Esther’s gaze darted from me to Finn and back again. “Was this before the ritual?”

“Oh, long before. I wouldn’t willingly give up my life for someone I didn’t love. That’s absurd.”

“That treacherous, evil boy,” Esther spat out. She made a sweeping gesture in my direction. “Finn.”

I looked between the two of them, not having to feign my confusion. Finn took my hand in his. “I just need a bit of your blood, Cassidy. Just a taste.”

I nodded and he pricked the end of my finger much as he had Elena’s. Instead of depositing my blood into the bowl, however, he licked it from the knife. I frowned at him as he looked at his mother. “No vervain.”

The witch stepped forward and took my hands in her own. “Cassidy, I believe that Niklaus has compelled your feelings for him. Would you allow Finn to try to remove it?”

I pulled away from her. “Nik wouldn’t do that,” I protested, doing my best to sound frightened and offended. I didn’t play damsel in distress well.

Finn placed his hand on my shoulder and turned me to face him. “If that’s true then what I do won’t matter, will it?” He bent forward to look directly into my eyes. “I am not strong enough to override my brother’s compulsion, but there is something I can do to get us the truth. Regardless of how you think you feel, you will only speak the truth about your feelings toward Niklaus.”

Tricky, tricky. Finn was smarter than everyone gave him credit for.

“How do you feel about my son Niklaus, Cassidy?” Esther asked.

I turned to face her. “I wish I had never met him. He’s horrible and he won’t let me go.” I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand. “Why would I say such a thing? Nik and I are getting married and it’s absolutely the most horrible thing that could ever happen to me.”

I buried my face in my hands. After a moment, I sucked in a large breath. “What is wrong with me?”

Esther’s hand rubbed my back and I barely resisted the urge to twist away from her touch. “As I feared, Niklaus has compelled you to love him. Undoubtedly, he also ordered your compliance. He is more wicked than I feared.”

I said nothing but did my best to look terrified at the prospect. I must have been convincing because she went on with her evil villain speech.

“In casting the spell to save my children’s lives, I doomed the world to be cursed by a great evil. The world is out of balance and I must see it returned. Save Finn, they are evil and corrupt. He saw what they were and he hated it. When he tried to make his siblings see, they left him in a box for 900 years. Help me rid the world of their vileness once and for all.”

My tongue darted out to moisten my lips. “What do I need to do?”

“Just give me your blood, child. I will need slightly more from you than I took from Elena as yours was the blood that broke Niklaus’s curse, but you will be fine.”

At my nod, she motioned to Finn again and he sliced open my palm. I hissed at the sudden pain and watched the red liquid drip into the vessel below. Once satisfied with the amount, Esther said the same spell over me that she’d used on Elena and the wound closed. “That’s all?”

“Yes. I will bind them together and Finn will be the sacrifice that saves the world. As much as I hate to do this, Finn will need to erase any memory of this meeting. We can’t have the rest of my children discovering their fate before it is time.”

Finn stepped forward and ‘compelled’ me once more. “Mother met with you only in a desire to know you better as you will soon be part of the family. You remember nothing you saw here or that was said here. You love Niklaus and nothing is amiss.”

I smiled at him and Esther. “Thank you for speaking with me, Esther. I hope we can do it again soon.”

“Of course.” She sat behind her desk and Finn escorted me from the room. The door shut behind me and the lock clicked into place. Well, the Original witch bitch had achieved a new level of evilness.

She intended to slaughter her children and would undoubtedly do it with a smile on her face. I needed to find my hybrid.

Tags will be in comments.

#Klaus Mikaelson x oc #the originals #vampire diaries #Klaus Mikaelson fanfiction #vampire diaries fanfiction #the originals fanfiction #series #bound #the hybrid's witch

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akitokihojo · 5 years

Text

In Between: Chapter 4

Wow, I have nothing to say for myself. I lost inspiration for this for a little while there and actually completely forgot about this fic until I was scrolling through my wips folder. But hey! Look! It’s back and I sincerely hope you enjoy this chapter!

The previous chapters can be found in my fic masterlist, as well as on AO3 and ff.net

----------------

"I hope you aren't taking any of this personally."

She hadn't looked at the caller ID before answering the phone.

"Who is this?"

She'd blindly pressed the green answer button on her screen as soon as the call rolled in.

"It's not you I'm after, really."

She thought it was her mom. She'd been expecting her call, so of course she answered.

"But I sincerely hope you enjoy the gifts I sent as an apology. I know how much you love daisies."

She looked at the small table where a large box of chocolates and nicely wrapped bouquet of yellow daisies sat. She found them outside her door just before she'd gone to yoga this morning. Just before she'd changed her mind and stayed in. Suddenly, daisies were the most repugnant flower she'd ever set eyes on.

"That was... who are you?"

"Just know that none of this is your fault, Kagome."

"I don't understand."

"You're only involved for one specific reason."

"To hurt Inuyasha?"

"Precisely."

A clammy, uncomfortably thick sensation washed over her face, running down her throat and into her chest, a cold sweat dotting her forehead.

"Why?"

There was a breathy chuckle.

"You really should be more concerned about yourself."

"Answer me! Why are you using me to get to Inuyasha?"

"It's much more interesting this way. I like watching people break."

"You're sick."

"I'll see you soon, Kagome."

Three dull beeps in her ear let her know the call had ended.

Kagome stared at her phone in shock, the screen going black as she processed every riddling word just said to her. His voice sounded deeper than she'd initially imagined.

Even though it was just a phone call, she could feel her body wavering, her abdomen leadened and tingly, not a single part of her body holding the right amount of stability. She was scared, unnerved, flummoxed, and overriding all of that was the sudden surge of audacious fury. Kagome dropped her cell on the couch, stomping over to the table to scoop up the unwarranted gifts and toss them in the trashcan as aggressively as possible, the plastic bag losing its grip on the bin and dropping inward.

Who the hell did this guy think he was; calling her, pretending it was nothing but a courtesy, acting as if he was being kind by sending her chocolates and daisies, and giving a cheap explanation? He was scum. Horrible, terrifying, disgusting, worthless scum. What was Kagome supposed to do now? Tell the police? She had no valuable information to give them, and this time he took the liberty of blocking his number. He hadn't given any sort of idea to what "see you soon" meant, and she knew it would only be a waste of everyone's time.

She'd just have to swallow this one on her own.

Kagome paced back and forth in her living room, still donned in the yoga outfit she hadn't bothered to change out of. She'd figured that since she wasn't comfortable going outside today, thanks to the ugly flowers and distasteful candies, she'd just flow with her home practice, but then she'd received the call. Her nerves were flared, her muscles where trembling, an intolerable rush was coursing through her bloodstream causing her to be annoyingly antsy, and there was absolutely no hope of her staying still for more than twelve seconds at a time. Her apartment was suddenly too small and she wanted to go outside for a breath of fresh air, but then the world was too big. She was suffocating inside, and she was blind outside. Everything was a lose-lose, and Kagome wanted to yell, wanted to break something.

But what good would that do?

Why should she have to buy a new lamp just because some conniving creep thought he was cunning? She tried stilling for a moment, taking deep breaths to release at least a little stress, and very slowly she could feel herself coming together again. The cramps in her lungs were beginning to lessen, and her limbs began to feel closer to normal, a little gelatinous like they would after a workout, but better than they did moments ago. She wasn't there yet. She wasn't one-hundred percent okay. Maybe sixty-two percent, but it quickly snapped back down to ten the instant her phone's ringtone blared once more, her head whipping to view the illuminated screen laying on the cushions of her hand-me-down couch.

As if a signal was shot into her brain, Kagome began trembling all over again, an insurmountable amount of thoughts racing through her mind and holding her captive. He's calling again. Jesus Christ, he's calling again! He just called! Why is this happening? Stop calling me! Mom? It's mom. It's just mom. What if he has mom's phone? No, it's mom. It's okay. You're okay. Answer the phone. It's just mom.

She reached for the chiming device, constricting her chest muscles to control her heavy breathing and calm down. Who would have thought that a single attempt at contact, hearing his voice one time, would cause her to be such an inconsolable basket case? Her face was freezing from the dewy sweat glistening her face, some of it drying and tightening against her skin only to be dampened again with a new layer. Kagome lightly pressed her fingers over her sticky flesh, wiping the beads away, wiping away any physical evidence that she was not okay.

"Hi, mama." She'd barely managed to answer the phone before it went to voicemail, putting it on speaker so she wouldn't take the chance of dirtying the screen by pressing it to her ear.

"Hey." It was always easy to hear the smile in her mother's voice, a sense of smooth serenity flowing through. "How are you?"

"I'm okay. How are you? How's work?"

"You don't sound okay, Kagome. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, mom, I'm fine."

"Kagome..."

"I've just had a busier morning than I'd planned. How are you? How's Sota?" She tried again.

"I'm alright. Tired from the nightshifts, but it's nothing your mother can't handle. Sota's keeping his grades up and even seems to have a girlfriend, though he's in the too-cool-to-tell-your-mom stage. You know how that goes. When are you coming home to visit?"

"Soon. I can't wait to tease him for finally getting a girl to look in his direction."

"Kagome." She expected the tone to be more stern for her knock at her little brother, not one of concern. Was she that easy to read?

"Soon, mom. I promise. I just... I have a few things I need to take care of that've had me tied up on the weekends."

"Are you sure you're okay? I haven't heard much from you lately. I can't help but worry."

"I'm perfectly fine, mom. Just... busy."

"Alright. Well, we miss you."

"I miss you too. Tell Sota to use protection."

"Kagome!"

"Love you! Get some rest!"

"I love you too."

"Bye."

There was no way in hell Kagome would tell her mom what was going on. She couldn't take a chance of involving anyone else. If her mother knew, she'd insist she come stay at home until the police caught her stalker, but the creep already knew where her family lived. There was a photo taken of her and her brother the last time she'd gone to visit. This guy had invited himself into her home more than once, so who's to say he wouldn't do the same if she switched locations? There was absolutely no way she'd put her family in danger like that. They didn't need to know. She can't take those chances.

Still, Kagome was fidgeting in place. She needed to get out of her house. The windows had been closed up for too long and the stuffiness was getting to her. Although the conversation was brief, talking to her mom had calmed her down considerably. It was a super power of hers, and thanks to it, she felt stable enough to go outdoors. A quick walk would do her some good.

She didn't bother changing. She didn't want to give herself any time to talk herself out of it. The moment Kagome urged herself to go out for some fresh air, she grabbed her small backpack, something she opted for on the weekends that was easier to lug around than a purse, shoved her phone into the side pocket of it, squeezed her feet into an abused pair of sneakers she wore too often, and marched out the door, triple checking that it was locked like she'd done everyday since the break in.

The weather was substantially nicer than what they'd been enduring lately. The sun was out for the first time in at least two weeks, and she hoped the trace amount of vitamin D on her skin would be enough to lift her spirits. Even just a little. Still, it wasn't particularly warm, and Kagome was glad she never removed her thin, cotton sweatshirt or else she'd look like a shivering mess walking along her path. She didn't know where she was going. She let her feet lead the way. She had no place she needed to be, and no place she necessarily wanted to go. She just wanted everything to stop. For a small gap of time, she wanted absolutely nothing to happen.

Kagome tried keeping her mind busy to prevent it from floating back to the phone call she'd received this morning, and the ever-ominous, second, "see you soon," she'd gotten that held the potential of breaking her down again. She thought about future projects and lesson plans for her students, and thought about her brother going through his hilariously embarrassing, too relatable, teenage angst years, and thought about seeing her mom again, and thought about this funny-by-five-year-old-standards joke Shippo had told yesterday, and thought about some grading she needed to do, and then stopped altogether. She'd walked at least a mile, surprised at how successful she was in distracting herself, never once minding her whereabouts. Which could have also led her to trouble. From where she stood, she was probably asking for just that.

Feudal Knockout Gym

The air was dense, smelling of musty salt. For someone who had left the smothering state of her apartment so that she could breathe, she'd definitely come to the wrong place. In fact, Kagome didn't know why she'd come here at all. She had no business waltzing into the gym Inuyasha frequented, a gym she'd only been to a handful of times before only because he'd brought her along.

Inuyasha ducked, dodging the wrapped fist flying his way, guarding his face before throwing a punch of his own. There was sweat gliding down his forehead and over his brow, about to drip into his eye, and he could only hope the velocity of his kick would track the dangerous bead of salt away, even by a centimeter, just to delay the sting. He nailed his opponent, pushing him back just enough so he could use the wrapping around his knuckles to soak up the sweat, barely blocking his opponents quick moves as he came in swinging. The half demon took the punches as they came, blocking left and right, waiting for the assailant to show a sign of fatigue before making his move. At the first opportunity, Inuyasha punched at his opponent, knowing he'd easily block it, but also knowing the force of his throw would nudge him back, taking advantage of the space to nail him with a spinning heel kick.

As the guy stumbled to the side, Inuyasha caught a familiar scent, the sweet, warm aroma clashing with the stench of the gym that filled his nose, stealing his undivided attention as he turned to face the direction it wafted over from. Before he could say anything, or notice anything significant about her, the crack of knuckles to his face knocked him over, bringing him crashing to the ground.

"Here's a tip: you wouldn't have gotten decked if you kept your eyes on me."

"I didn't ask." Inuyasha grunted, taking the offered hand held out to him and rising to a stand, rubbing out the new ache in his jaw.

"I hope it bruises." He laughed, clapping the half demon on the shoulder before walking away. Inuyasha brushed it off, more concerned with the girl standing in the entrance. Kagome held herself awkwardly, undeniably uncomfortable, her shoulders slouching forward as she loosely wrapped her fingers around the straps of her bag. She was dressed in a grey sweatshirt, a loose t-shirt that used to be two sizes too large for her before she cut it, the new hemline of the thin cotton rolling up to meet her midriff, tight, rosy-colored leggings, and rundown, black sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that gently wagged from side to side as she looked back and forth over the gym, every now and then meeting his gaze, but then glancing back over to a banister-draped wall.

On instinct, but with a cool control he forced himself to bring forth, he made his way over to her, stopping with a comfortable gap to mind the distance between them.

"What's up?"

Kagome took a deep breath, almost like she wasn't prepared for the question in the first place, her chest rising from the deep inhalation, lips twitching upward as she tried to force them into a prepared smile. "I-I... uh... I... wow, I'm sorry..." She said, chagrined, a pink hue tinting her cheeks as she looked away from him, chewing her bottom lip before trying to speak again. "I don't know what I'm... I-I...I think I just need to punch something."

Inuyasha could feel the twisted expression he wore, obviously worried. A dominant part of him wanted to press her into telling him what was wrong, because clearly something was, but shaking the truth out of her wouldn't get him what he wanted. There was no use in trying to talk about it right now. With the way she was fumbling over her words, her train of thought appearing scattered, if he even tried asking what was wrong there was a high chance that she'd snap. Instead, he stepped back, keeping up that control he couldn't help but be proud of himself for maintaining, holding his hand out to point her in the direction of the nearest punching bag. She gave a feeble smile, toeing her shoes off before stepping on the large blue mat and walking over to the thick, black punching bag weighted with water.

He glanced over at his gym buddy who was watching curiously as he packed his bag. It was quiet, mostly because classes didn't start until the evening on Saturdays. Surprisingly, mid-morning was the best time to fit in some peaceful and efficient practice with maybe a couple other people doing their own thing on the side. Until Kagome showed up, it was only the two of them. He gave a nod toward the door, hoping his friend would catch the hint, and thankfully he wasn't the prying type. He quickly finished shoving his shit into his duffle bag, zipped it up, and walked out.

Inuyasha looked back over to Kagome. She'd propped her small backpack against the wall nearby, standing idly in front of the bag, staring at it with weakly-formed fists laying at her sides. The air about her was heavy and tightly-wound. Something was wringing her dry, thieving away her positive and alluring energy, and she was doing a balancing act just trying to keep herself together. But what the hell was he supposed to do about it? She'd told him she wants nothing to do with him. She doesn't want his help, yet here she was stumbling into his gym looking thirty seconds away from a mental breakdown. He was jammed between a rock and a hard place. If he helped, or tried helping, there was a good chance she'd probably tell him to fuck off and mind his business. If he left her alone when she really needed him, she would probably tell him to fuck off for being an asshole.

He could handle mysteries. He could handle puzzles and riddles, algorithms and horribly long, tedious criminal cases that involved their psychologist having to come in and break everything down bit-by-bit, but by god, he struggled with the full spectrum of human emotions. More particularly, female emotions. Even more specifically, Kagome's emotions. So what was the right move here?

He was staring, she could feel it. No matter how hard she tried to ignore him, she was hyperaware of the sensation of those ember irises boring into her. The more he waited for her to do something, the more anxious she became. The last thing she needed was him witnessing her flimsy strikes against a bag that would probably end up inflicting more damage on her than she could ever do. With the pressure already resting on her shoulders, and the additional weight she'd just piled on top thanks to her dumb instincts and horrible speaking performance, she was feeling considerably more self conscious than normal.

"Can you not watch me do this, please?" Kagome asked sheepishly, glancing over her shoulder at him.

Inuyasha crossed his arms over his chest, giving her an ambivalent look before walking away to find his own duffel bag. He meagerly distracted himself by toweling off the drying sweat on his forehead, neck, and bare chest, listening to her fists smacking the material of the punching bag as he pulled a black tee over his head, drawing his ponytail through before the hemline could snag it and loosen the messy knot. She kept going, small grunts escaping her throat as she started punching harder and harder, the rough sounds of knuckles against the bag coming quicker as she finally felt comfortable incorporating her left hand. He could tell she wasn't hitting right. He knew her. He always had to remind her how to do it, and the harder she went, the more likely she was to get hurt.

"Hey, I'm not watching or anything, but keep your wrists tight. Like I taught you." He said before taking a swig of water from his bottle.

Kagome looked over, making sure Inuyasha was telling the truth, reassured that he was only figuratively looking out for her. She adjusted her fists, rolling them out real quick and then flexing the muscles to hold them straight like he'd shown her several times over, her punches coming much more solid.

It didn't take long for her to start imagining the bag was her stalker, punching him hard right in the gut. It wasn't good enough, though. Without a face, a body, a build, anything other than his deep, raspy voice to go off of, the fires in her stomach remained raging. So, she imagined the guy that paid a visit while she got coffee, and threw her fist right at his arrogant smile. Still not sufficient. He was the go-between, the delivery boy, but he wasn't the one that taunted her on the phone this morning. He obviously wasn't the mastermind to all of this; he just so happened to carry out the mastermind's orders. Even so, imagining him didn't feel half as good as she thought it would. What the hell was it gonna take? Kagome punched harder and harder, her throat burning from the ragged cries her body gave to provide more force. Her knuckles were stinging, but she kept pushing. Her biceps and shoulders were fatigued, but she continued to hit as violently as she could muster. She was exhausted and scared and hunted and alone. It was her fault. It was entirely her fault. She refused to bring any of her friends and family into the mix, and she pushed away the one person that could, and even wanted to help. She isolated herself, let her pride call the shots, threw a temper tantrum, and still had the impertinence to imagine the punching bag was now Inuyasha. Kagome swung one more time, gasping as her middle knuckle slid against the leather, clutching her fist to her chest just as she noticed the half demon standing next to her.

"I'm fine!" She snapped, throwing her hands up and turning away before he could say anything. There was a click in his breath as he stopped himself from speaking and it was enough to topple her barely-held restraint over the edge, so she turned back to him, lost in her reverie, her dark ponytail whipping her cheek from her spin. "No, you know what? Screw you, Inuyasha! I can't believe you'd just leave like that!"

"What the hell are you going on about?" He asked incredulously, trying to bite down the shock of her huffing and puffing before him.

"You always want to play the hero, so why would you throw this golden opportunity in the gutter, huh? Tell me the truth! I can handle it! I'm handling everything else just fine, so lay it on me!"

"Yeah, clearly."

"What ever happened to, "I won't let anyone hurt you, Kagome?”" She deepened her voice, giving her best attempt at mocking the half demon.

“Did something happen!?”

“Stop! You don't get to pretend like you care right now! You left my case!”

“How the hell did-"

"Was it because of what I said!?"

"Kagome!"

"I don't know what to do, Inuyasha!"

"Calming down is the first step!"

"I'm sorry! Is that what you wanted to hear? Because I am!"

He didn't rebuttal that time. Inuyasha dropped his hands to his sides, fists clenched, chest swelled, waiting for her to explain what the fuck was going on since he could sense her self-defeat. Kagome's breathing was labored and her cheeks were a furious red, lips almost the same color from the way she kept pressing them together and biting down on the bottom.

“I know I was out of line. It was wrong of me to treat you the way I did. The way I have been.” The tension radiating from her was finally easing, her anger waning, changing, shifting into sadness. No, guilt. Tears lined the brim of her tired eyes, spilling over as she blinked, her fingers gliding through her mess of bangs. “I was a jerk and I said things I shouldn't have. You were right, okay? I was still upset. I didn't expect any of this to happen, though! One minute, everything was fine, the next I've got both you and a stalker in my apartment! My ability to process things was, I don't know, shaken I guess. I know I probably deserve this, but a part of me never considered you’d hand over my case to anyone else.”

“Who the fuck told you I did?” Inuyasha asked, a fierce expression on his face, setting his jaw to silence his growl.

“I went to the station the other day and Hojo said you weren't on my case anymore.”

“So you just assumed I left it?”

“Well y-“

“You idiot.” He grunted, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t willingly leave it! I was kicked off! I’m involved in more ways than one, so our defense attorney said in order to make sure there’s a chance of a prosecution at the end of this, we had to do it by the book.”

Kagome stared at him, mouth sealing shut as she realized she never wanted to talk ever again, her belly gurgling with the unsettling humility she'd sheathed herself in. He hadn't abandoned her. Using the sleeve of her sweater, she hastily swiped away the tear stains on her cheeks, hoping that if she rubbed hard enough, she'd be able to erase her blowout from ever happening.

"You could have called me if you were that upset. I would have told you." Inuyasha said, crossing his arms over his chest, a subtle roll in his eyes.

"I was... I was mad at you."

"Face it, you still are." He said, holding his palm out so she'd give him her hand, wanting to see the knuckle she kept rubbing.

"No, that's not... I don't want to talk about that." Kagome looked away, unable to fight off her embarrassment, not wanting to meet his gaze.

"Me neither." He scoffed, grabbing her wrist when she didn't give it over, inspecting her reddened skin. Luckily, she didn't hit hard enough to split the delicate flesh, but she'd burned it pretty well. It'd be sensitive, but she'd be fine. "So, are you gonna tell me what happened, or are we gonna stand around in this awkward silence for a little while longer?"

Kagome took back her hand, gently massaging the tender area once more. She was right to assume the punching bag would do more harm than she ever could.

"I don't know... everything just became too much." She replied, giving a minute shrug. "Y'know, it took me two days to get my apartment back in working order, and I had to call out of work for one of those because I had to wash all of my bedding and clothes. Now, this morning, I wake up to gifts outside my door and a phone call from this guy saying he's sorry. Sorry." She chuckled cynically at the last word, too caught up in the audacity of her stalker to notice Inuyasha's stiffened reaction.

"What!?"

"No, it's-" Kagome caught herself, knowing that if she said it wasn't a big deal, Inuyasha would fight her into the cold ground. "There were chocolates and flowers, and I threw them in the garbage."

"He called you? Give me your phone!" Inuyasha ordered.

"It was with a blocked number this time." She turned to kneel in front of her backpack, doing as he said and fishing her phone out.

The hanyou snatched it up, glaring at her recent calls list in an attempt to scare the phone number into appearing. Even if it did, even if the perp hadn't bothered using star-sixty-seven like a little bitch, chances were it was just one of his burn phones. This guy just liked to appear all over the place to throw everyone off. The more you switch it up, the less there is to expect. "What did he say to you?"

"He gave me this cheap apology."

There was more. He could see it in the way she fluttered her lashes and continued to avoid eye contact. She was an awful liar.

"What else?"

She shook her head.

"Kagome, what else did he say?"

She looked up at him, her big, brown eyes riddled with perturbation, loosely wrapping her arms around her front. The discomfort spilling from her spiked, making it hard for Inuyasha to stand there idly until she was ready to speak. What had this fucker said to her? Something grotesque? A threat? He needed to know and he needed to know now before he lost his shit like she had. What the fuck did he say to make her mentally topple over this way? He opened his mouth to push her once more, his breath halting in his throat as she gave in.

"He said he's only using me to get to you." She said, her voice timid and small.

"Is that it?"

She nodded.

"Okay." He breathed, slightly relieved, allowing his shoulders to relax and his chest to deflate. He didn't like that the piece of shit was trying to play mind games with Kagome, but he couldn't help but be thankful that it didn't turn out to be anything worse. And in his line of work, he's heard so much worse. Inuyasha didn't blame her for her outrage. He didn't blame her for how exhausted she seemed, or how tiny she tried to make herself appear. The amount of stress she was under was incredible. It was only a matter of time before she broke down.

"Okay?"

"I kind of already figured that out."

"What? How?"

"Intuition. Look, don't worry about the nitty gritty right now." He tried to soften his tone, stepping forward an inch and hovering a hand beside her arm to see if she'd flinch away. She didn't. Instead, she seemed to ease her hold on herself, her fingers unfurling from the cotton of her sleeves. Slowly, gently, he gripped her shoulder, giving a small squeeze of reassurance. "That's my job, not yours. The only thing I need you to do is trust me. Once we have more substantial information, I'll let you know. Otherwise, premature details will only freak you out further."

"But you're off the case. How can you do anything if-"

"I'm helping, I just can't be in the immediate investigation. Everyone's still communicating with me. They let me know you stopped by and what happened. I was going to drop in and check on you, but I wasn't really in the mood to get yelled at." He retracted awkwardly, handing over her cellphone.

"Okay, yeah I kind of blew my top, but in all fairness, you egged me on." She stated, grabbing the phone and dropping it on top of her bag to be forgotten.

"I did not!"

"Can you get your head out of your ass for like twelve seconds and talk to me?" She mocked again, crossing her arms and cocking a brow to mimic his usual stature.

"First of all, you dick, I sound nothing like that."

She scoffed, rolling her eyes.

"Second, I said to talk to me. Not call me names and chew me out!"

"You just called me a dick."

"You called me an inconsiderate ass!"

"Maybe so." Kagome shrugged, not bothering to argue that one away. "You were pushing me to do it, though! You told me, and I quote, to get the pent-up aggravation off my chest!"

"You can't say "and I quote" if you're going to change my words around." He huffed.

"Oh my god, Inuyasha! You wanted reciprocation for your efforts, and that's all I had for you! You wanted to talk about a sensitive subject at the worst possible time! What did you expect, pleasantries!?"

"A civil conversation, maybe!" He barked.

"Oh, because you're captain of civility." Kagome responded sarcastically, almost laughing.

"I can be civil!"

"Mhm, like right now?" She smirked, shrugging her brows in a challenging expression. This was the most fun she'd had in weeks. Mostly because she knew she had him backed in a corner.

"What's your point?" Inuyasha asked, stiffening as he bit back his irritability in support of his argument.

"Only that you get all frustrated and pushy when things aren't going your way, and lose all traces of basic manners. Look, I take full responsibility for what I said, but you instigated my temper. There's a time and a place, Inuyasha, and that was not it."

"Maybe so." He echoed, the hint of sarcasm tainting the remark. "Would it have actually made a difference if I brought up the topic at a later opportunity? Because, I don't think it would have."

"You don't know that."

"Shut up!" Inuyasha groaned, shaking his head. "I know you. I fucking fear your temper. No matter what, you were bound to lose it."

"Not necessarily! There probably would have been less pillow throwing!"

Inuyasha inadvertently chuckled, nodding in agreement. She had him there. Kagome was never one for physically offending a person.

"In my meager defense, I wasn't prepared. For any of it; for my apartment to be turned upside down, for a screaming match in the middle of the night, or even to discuss what happened in the first place. It was kind of overwhelming." Kagome shrugged, partially conflicted with the whole matter. On the one hand, she knew she had the right to be upset with Inuyasha. He broke her trust. He'd crossed a line four months ago. On the other, she didn't deserve any sort of defense for what she'd said to him. She'd intended to hurt his ego. In turn, she'd crossed a line four days ago.

"Yeah, yeah. I get it." Inuyasha brushed off. "Neither was I. Hope you got it all off your chest, because what you need to learn to grasp now is that I'm here. I'm not fucking going anywhere, especially after this, so get used to it. Either we forget about what happened, or we hash it out. Those are our options." He knew he sounded brash, but he also knew he was getting his point across. He wasn't going to leave her.

Not now.

Not ever.

It was never supposed to happen at all. It was one giant clusterfuck of a situation, but at this point in time, he didn't give a damn. As frustrating as she was, as horrible of a fall out as they'd had, he loved Kagome too goddamn much to let her slip away again; to let her deal with this bullshit alone. Even if they never reestablished whatever they used to have, he was fine with that. That wasn't what mattered. Being her friend wasn't even what mattered right now. Everything came second to her well-being.

Eventually, Kagome gave an acknowledging nod, releasing a large sigh as she gave a feeble smile. He knew she wouldn't opt for talking about things right now, and a part of him couldn't help but be grateful. It wasn't necessary. Not at the moment. Her head wasn't on straight, which was more than understandable. While he knew the ins and outs of victimization, she didn't. This was new to her, and obviously she wasn't handling things very well anymore. Hell, she'd hung on longer than he'd expected, though, and credit was definitely due there.

While her skin may be delicate, her mindset and her heart were not. Kagome was tough, and in many ways, much stronger than Inuyasha. She didn't know this, and if he had his way she never would, but not too long ago one affectionate graze from her had him mentally, and almost physically, debilitated for hours. Pigs would fly the day he ever saw Kagome literally swoon the way he pathetically had.

"Look, um..." Inuyasha cleared his throat, clenching his fists to resist the thirst he had to run his fingers through her bangs. "Like I said, don't worry about anything else right now, okay? It's not important. You still need to hit something?" He asked, walking towards a large equipment closet at the other side of the gym.

"That's probably not a good idea with the show I just put on."

"It'll be fine. Catch."

She flinched, barely snagging a small punching pad before it slipped through the crack in her arms, looking up to see him on his way back over with another, similarly sized pad in his grasp. He gave a small chuckle at her clumsiness, taking the object from her as soon as he closed the distance, dropping them both to the floor. Inuyasha began undoing the wraps protecting his knuckles, the long, black material unfurling and reaching the mat.

"Come on." He gestured for her to put her hand out before him, and Kagome mindlessly followed suit, watching as he began to wrap her palm with the black lining in a design that covered both her knuckles and wrist.

"Gross, it's sweaty."

"Deal with it. I didn't bring any extra." Inuyasha murmured, securing the fit before undoing his next hand and wrapping her other one over. "Tight enough, or too tight?"

"No, it's good." She replied, curling and uncurling her fingers to test the padding he'd created.

"Make a fist." He said, waiting for her to show him so he could adjust her thumb and wrists. "Jeez. Every time, Kagome."

"It's been months!" She defended. Inuyasha retrieved the punching pads from the floor, sliding his palm into the gloved portion at the back and securing the strap around his wrist. He handed the other one over to Kagome as she aided him in getting it secured, watching him smack the two circular cushions together before holding them out in front of him.

"Okay, now remember to pivot into your- get in the stance. Come on."

She did as she was told, angling her form with her left hip and shoulder facing Inuyasha, knees slightly bent, bringing her fists up to protect her face. "Pivot my back foot for more force. I remember that much."

"You can remember that, but you can't remember to keep your wrists straight?"

"It's not-"

"Wrists straight, Kagome!"

She quickly adjusted her wrists, guarding her face from his flying, padded hand as he gently swatted her head. "Okay! I'm sorry!"

"Remember the combo?" Inuyasha asked.

"I think so."

"Good. I want you to go until you can't anymore. Aim for the pads, not my face."

"I wouldn't do any damage."

"You've damn near given me a concussion before."

"Hush. You're just a sissy."

"Yeah, yeah. Show me what you got, baby." Inuyasha slapped the pads together once more as he steeled his position, a loud smack bouncing off the walls of the gym.

#inuyasha #kagome #Kagome Higurashi #inukag #Inuyasha fanfiction #Inuyasha fanfic #Inuyasha fic #inukag fanfic #inukag fic #in between #my writing #akitokihojo

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probably-writing-x · 5 years

Text

Just thought you should know (Prequel)

Request from my fave @bringmethehorizonandpizza : alright, but a super angsty prequel of just thought you should know, where they break up!! would you do it? pretty please? 💖💖💖💖

~~~

There had been an odd atmosphere around this place for the past few days - everyone seemed to be treading on eggshells around you and it constantly put you on edge. These boys were hiding something.

"Hey boys!" You smile as you waltz into your apartment where Harry and Sam had currently set up camp on the couch for the day, "What are you still doing here?"

"We thought we could have a movie day!" Sam calls back to you but you can see straight through his nonchalant nature.

"We had movie day yesterday," You roll your eyes, "And, anyway, Haz isn't even home yet s-"

You see both of them simultaneously wince at your words as soon as Harrison - your boyfriend of two years - was mentioned.

"What? What was that weird thing you just did?" You question, walking cautiously over to the twins.

"No... Nothing," Harry furiously shakes his head, curls spilling over his forehead wildly.

"Guys, come on. You've barely left this place all week and you're constantly checking up on me. What aren't you telling me?" You sigh, sitting down on the coffee table to face opposite them.

The boys exchange an uncomfortable look before Sam takes a big sigh.

"There's something we need to tell you, about Harrison," He admits, running a hand through his hair.

You sit in silence and let him proceed - a million possibilities running through your head.

"He's not exactly on a filming thing right now," Sam continues, "We told him to get away for a week or so,"

"What?" You laugh, "Why would you do that?"

Harry starts up again now, "Last week, all of us boys went out, right? Well... Harrison had a few too many to drink and ended up saying some things he definitely shouldn't have said,"

Your jaw clenches, "What did he say?"

The twins look between each other, mouths opening and closing but no words being expressed.

"What could he have said that was that bad?"

"He..." Sam takes a deep breath, "He said all of this stuff about how you two had been together for so much longer than he expected and that you made him wait so long for you two to... And that sometimes he wonders whether its worth the effort..."

The clench in your jaw changes to an overwhelming lump in your throat, one that has the power to make your bottom lip tremble a little.

"We're so sorry (Y/n/n)," Harry frowns, hand squeezing your knee in comfort, "We just thought you should know,"

"Yeah, yeah, no," You shake your head, forcing yourself to fake such confidence, "Hey, I'm glad you told me. And, you know, maybe he's right. Maybe I'm not worth the effort,"

"No, no, no," Both boys shake their head and come to sit either side of you, wrapping an arm around each shoulder and pulling you into a strong embrace.

"(Y/n) you're worth a thousand times the effort he gave you," Sam encourages, "Harrison, he just... He had too much to drink and he-"

"And he said what he felt," You mumble, finally letting the tears spill free down your cheeks - the kind of tears that wrack your body and make your shoulders shake like the whole world around you was clattering down.

~~~

The next day, Harry and Sam still hadn't left as they refused to leave you like this. You'd cried... A lot. You'd tried to eat but it all came back up pretty quickly and you hadn't got much sleep. But Harrison came home today, and it was your chance to face what you dreaded so much.

He knew something had happened. He knew the boys had told you and he was preparing for consequences... But not nearly this big.

With the twins opting to leave you two alone, it is just you and the boy you once promised you'd never stop loving.

"(Y/n) I-" Harrison begins, dropping his bag at the front door as he sees your state - cold, harsh, emotionless to him.

"Don't," You seethe, jaw clenching as you stand up from the couch to face him, "Don't start with an apology, start with a fucking explanation,"

"Baby I was drunk out of my mind!" He exclaims, "I don't even remember half of what I said and I sure as hell don't mean any of it, honestly,"

"Honestly?" You scoff, "You think I fucking trust you to be honest right now? And you don't remember what you said, then let me give you a little reminder.

"Babe please I-"

"How about telling the boys you wished you hadn't committed so much?" You step closer to him, "How about telling them you almost gave up just because I wouldn't give you the one thing you wanted? Or maybe the fact that you decided I'm not worth it?" Your words crack on that final part and you internally hit yourself for letting your emotions override this pure anger.

"Come on honey, you know that was all absolute bullshit!" He shakes his head, eyes following your every move as though he could decide your next response, "I was out of my mind and I was over thinking and I said some shit I didn't mean,"

You're close enough to him now that he can see the fury seeping from your moves, mixed with the worst feeling; disappointment.

"I thought," You begin, your voice calm and cautious, "I thought you could never, ever hurt me,"

Harrison clenches his jaw and fights back his building tears, "Don't say that," He's whispering now because the tears are threatening to spill and words will break the dam.

"I want you to leave. Just go and I'll pack up the things you've left here and get them to you soon," You sound so methodical that all emotion feels futile, "But I dont want to see you or hear from you, not for a while,"

"Darling, please," Harrison chokes and you watch as a tear falls down his cheek, still having to fight the desperate urge to wipe it away.

You look away and that's when he truly givea in to his feelings.

"No, no," He sounds angrier now, furious at himself for risking this, "I can't lose you. We can't give up on this,"

You feel cold, dried of all sympathy.

"I can't lose you," He repeats, "I can't lose you waking up and drawing silly imaginations in my chest," Harrison moves his hands to take yours, pressing a delicate kiss on each.

You watch his movements and stand rigid as he does.

"I can't lose you on Sundays when we've lost all our energy and we just want to cuddle until someone tells us we have to get up," His arms wrap around you and his face buries in the crook of your neck.

And for a moment, you really consider it. You think about being the forgiving one - telling him it's going to be okay and letting him kiss you, hold you, make love to you like everything is as it was. But every second takes you back to what he said. And you lose the possibility.

"It's time to go, Harrison," You pull his arms away from you and step back, arms retracting to cross over your chest as you realise you're now crying as well.

"Baby, please," He pleads once more, stepping forward to take your hands in his again, "I'll do anything, I'll make this better, I'll do whatever it takes to fix this mistake,"

You lift one hand away from his and cup the side of his face, thumb smoothing over his dampened cheek, "Maybe you're right," You pause and calculate your next words, "But actions don't take back what you said. And, Harrison, I can't afford to just be another one of your mistakes,"

And, with that, you drop your hands from his touch and walk away, retracting to your bedroom and crying endlessly against the closed door behind you. You don't know Harrison did the same outside of your apartment, slumped against the door like it was his last feeling of you.

What he didn't know was that, for the next six months, that really would be his last feeling of you...

~~~Four Months Later~~~

"Come on Tom you're playing like a rookie!" You exclaim, nudging him in the side to encourage him a bit more as the two of you competed in a Mario Kart team race.

His eyes are fixed on the screen but he doesn't seem aware as he drives straight off the edge.

"Dude!" You laugh, pausing the game, "Are you awake or?"

Tom shakes himself from his daze and looks at you, his eyes absent of their typical boyish joy.

"I-" He stops himself, "There's something I need to tell you, about Harrison,"

Oh damn. Those same words as his brother had spoken only months before. But what could possibly be worse than what you were told four months prior?

"What is it Tom?" You frown when he doesn't continue, "Wh- is he okay? Is he hurt?"

"Yeah, no, he's okay," Tom wipes his hands across his joggers, "He... Um, he got a girlfriend," He scratches at the back of his neck.

"Oh," You manage to respond, mentally kicking yourself for instantly worrying about Harrison instead of assuming something like this.

"It's only been for a couple of days but she's been at the apartment quite a bit. I thought I should tell you," He nods, hand reaching over to squeeze yours, "I'm sorry, (y/n/n),"

"What?" You scoff, with a gentle exasperated laugh, "You have nothing to apologise about. And, hey, I'm happy for him. He's moving on and that's a good thing. No need to keep thinking about something that's over, right?"

Your friend was evidently surprised by your strong response, "You don't need to-"

"No. No," You shake your head, "I'm good. I'm good, really. Let's carry on,"

He lets his eyes linger on you for a moment longer before turning back to the screen.

You were fine. Apart from the ache in your chest and the empty feeling remaining from feeling your repairing heart shatter once again. The temporary plasters you'd placed on it couldn't withstand something like this. You were fine. Apart from that feeling like you were falling, through this couch with the hopes that Harrison would be there to catch you. You were fine. Apart from the spilling tears.

"Oh, love!" Tom sighs when he sees you crying beside him, "Please don't cry," He throws his controller to the side and engulfs you in his arms, pulling you to his chest and letting you soak him in emotion.

"I've lost him, T," You sob, "I've really lost him,"

~~~

Tags: @imarypayne @sunshine112 @bringmethehorizonandpizza @supernatural-girl97 @vibhati123 @butithasntkilledyouyet @faefictions @carisi-sonny @trap-house-homiecide @shamelessbookaddict @tommydaspidey @oneblckcoffee @darlingtholland @fanficparker

#Harrison #Harrison osterfield #Harrison imagine #Harrison blurb #Harrison one shot #Harrison drabble #Harrison request #Harrison osterfield imagine #Harrison osterfield blurb #Harrison osterfield one shot #Harrison osterfield drabble #Harrison osterfield request #Harrison x reader #harrison x y/n #Harrison x you #Harrison osterfield x reader #Harrison osterfield x you #Harrison osterfield x y/n

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

Text

the trash saga of flynn and lucy: xvi

GUESS WHAT PEOPLE. Yep, a year to the day since I posted this far-out-of-control-monstrosity on AO3, it has risen from the dead to (finally) be completed. So yes. Have 12k words of the Garbage Conclusion of the Trash Saga. For @extasiswings, @prairiepirate, @gwennieliz, @frankfreakincastle, @dragon-princess, and @rhymeswithtessa.

Since it’s been 84 years, if you need to catch up on the plot and developments and Garbage until now, AO3.

If Wyatt had more time to think this over, he is fairly sure that he would not have stolen a Royal Navy lieutenant’s uniform, especially one that is several sizes too small for him (he’s not the world’s biggest guy, but who was wearing this, Mighty Mouse?) They needed to get into the Gibraltar docks and try to find the abandoned Mary Celeste without raising suspicion, but the downside of Wyatt’s brilliant disguise is that people keep stopping him and either asking for information or expecting him to know what’s going on. Wyatt’s British accent may be a step up from Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, but it’s still not great – not to mention he does not have a blessed clue which Navy ships are currently stationed here, and thus no idea which one to pretend to be from. Great. He was trying to be clandestine, but he might as well have hired a plane with a banner to announce that there are impostors among them. Also, it would really help if Rufus would quit snickering.

“Shut up,” Wyatt growls, after their fourth questionable encounter has left the longshoreman squinting over his shoulder suspiciously as they try to walk at a brisk, ordinary pace away. “This is not as easy as it looks. You wanna trade?”

“Yeah,” Rufus says. “Because the British Empire, at the height of colonialism and Darkest Africa and whatever else, is really going to buy that I’m a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Guess you’re just going to have to keep it up, Officer Wedgie.”

Wyatt glares at him, while resisting the urge to pick the white canvas trousers out of where they have gotten uncomfortably bunched up, yet again. He is relieved, to say the least, that he wasn’t permanently stuck in 1829 and that he’s managed to recover Rufus, that they have some idea of where Rittenhouse ended up, and that they might even manage to see Lucy and Flynn again one of these centuries. Their outlook, however, is not terribly promising. Rufus has reported that the altered history and the CSA still exist in 2017, there’s not any record of Lucy ever being born, and that all their efforts to date still have not succeeded in restoring her. He could, he suggested doubtfully, try some massively theoretical override, go to 1983, the year of Lucy’s birth, and patch in the evidence of her existence to see if it takes, like a software programmer trying a complicated hack on a bit of malfunctioning code. But as Lucy’s life depends on whatever they figure out, Wyatt doesn’t want to go for that kind of Hail Mary unless it’s absolutely necessary. He can’t lose Lucy, or Rufus. Hell, he doesn’t even want to lose Flynn. God knows when that happened.

At last, they manage to talk their way into the salvage yard, after having Wyatt remove the jacket and pretend to be Canadian since he sounds far more Canadian than he does British, and because the Canadian ship, the Dei Gratia, was the one to bring the Mary Celeste in. The Mary Celeste herself, not looking like one of the most famous nautical mysteries of all time, is anchored at the end of the quay. She is a mid-sized, two-masted brig, and going from what little Wyatt scraped off Wikipedia before leaving the present, nobody ever figures out what happened to her crew. The Gibraltar salvage board thought the captain of the Dei Gratia had killed them, or deliberately wrecked them, or was trying to defraud them somehow, but none of that stood up with evidence. The passengers remain gone for good, their abandonment of a perfectly seaworthy ship never explained. And while all kinds of theories have been proposed over the years, from the mundane to the ridiculous, Wyatt has a feeling that the answer to this begins and ends with one word. Rittenhouse.

Looking as casual as possible, he and Rufus make their way down the docks. The ship is being guarded by a pair of bored soldiers, who nonetheless give the boys the fish eye as they approach. Word of the mystery is getting around, and these must not be their first looky-loos. “Step along, you two.”

“Actually,” Wyatt says. “I’m with the Canadian Navy. Dei Gratia is under our flag, I need to ask a few questions, take a brief inspection.”

The man stares at him suspiciously. “There’s no Canadian Navy.”

Wyatt curses under his breath – this is why Lucy is the historian, not him. He knows there definitely is a Canadian Navy now, because he had a friend who served in it, but apparently it hasn’t been founded yet. Still, whenever caught in a lie, the wise thing to do is always to lie harder. He cocks his head and stares angrily at the man. “Excuse me? I’m off the HMCS Nova Scotia, we’re anchored up the coast in Malaga. A messenger was sent up to me once the Dei Gratia brought her in. You want me to go back to my captain and tell him you’re impeding me from carrying out my job?”

Despite himself, the soldier is caught on the hop. “Who’s your captain?”

“Timothy Horton.” Wyatt folds his arms. “You really want me to bring him down here? I’m sure he’s going to be very entertained that you’ve been wasting my time and obstructing the inquiry, so…”

The soldiers exchange a glance, look at Wyatt’s uniform, and as ever, take no account of Rufus at all. Finally, grudgingly, they stand aside. “Ten minutes.”

“Thank you, sir.” Wyatt snaps a sarcastic salute and strides past them, Rufus hurrying after, as they make their way up to the gangplank and over the side to the Mary Celeste’s deck. The soldiers are still watching them, so Wyatt has to make a show of taking notes and jotting down quick sketches. Finally, they manage to get below, into the empty cabin, sunlight slanting on the floor. As they stare around, Wyatt says, “You have any idea?”

“Nope.” Rufus shakes his head, lips grim. “But I’ve been thinking. This happened in history, right? Our history. Before Rittenhouse had their hands on a time machine. They could be involved somehow, but… I’m guessing that for whatever reason, they wanted to stop the Mary Celeste from being abandoned and for it to complete its journey. Which means there was something, or someone, they wanted to survive the trip. Some secret Rittenhouse member on the crew?”

“No idea.” Wyatt pauses, then reaches for the captain’s logs. “Far as I know, everything seemed fine. That was why it was such a big deal when they vanished. But you may be on to something, and I don’t have any other place to start. So…”

With that, he pulls down the nearest book, flips it open, and starts going through it, while Rufus cocks a nervous eye at the door, listening for thumps or interruptions from outside. It gives Wyatt a headache to read so much elaborate nineteenth-century cursive, but at least he had practice during his extended layover in 1829. Finally he says, “Okay. The captain is – was – Benjamin Briggs, he seems clean. Total straight arrow. But the majority owner of the ship is a James H. Winchester, and I swear that name sounds familiar. The first mate is married to his niece, and he recommended the steward. Dammit, why isn’t Lucy here?”

“Winchester?” Rufus looks at him oddly. “Any connection to that crazy mystery house in California? The one built by the widow of the rifle guy?”

“I don’t think so. Unless they’re cousins or something.” Wyatt blows out a frustrated breath. “If we had Google, we could look this up in five minutes, but we’re stuck, what, card cataloguing it? Actually, even that is probably too generous. Hold on. Let me see when Winchester bought her. Uh… 1869, I think. So three years ago.”

“Look, with a name like Winchester, that’s got to be important,” Rufus says. “Anything you can think of? You’re the one who’s the gun expert around here.”

Wyatt wracks his brains. “There was – I think – a James Winchester who was in the Revolutionary War, and a general in the war of 1812. He knew Andrew Jackson, they founded Memphis, Tennessee together. He died a while ago, though, this can’t be him.”

“Well, that’s a bunch of hot spots together,” Rufus says slowly. “Served in the Revolution. Was also in the war of 1812, which is where – in 1814 – things got messed up for us in the present. Knew Andrew Jackson, in whose administration you spent a bunch of time recently, and Jackson was major Rittenhouse. All of that means this Winchester dude was absolutely Rittenhouse too. Probably fairly high up. If this James Winchester is his son or his grandson, I’m guessing he was using the Mary Celeste to run his evil little secret society errands. The crew probably didn’t know. But what if Captain Briggs – you said he was a straight arrow, right? What if Briggs found out? What if Winchester gave him some kind of secret money or letter or whatever else that had to get to his Rittenhouse contacts in Europe, Briggs read it, and flipped a shit. Realized what he’d been doing all this time. And knew that the only way to save himself, his family – his wife and baby daughter were with him, right? – and his crew from Rittenhouse, and make sure they never got the secret, was to…”

“Disappear,” Wyatt finishes with him, heart suddenly pounding. “Rufus, you’re a god damn genius.”

Rufus shrugs, looking somewhat abashed. “We don’t know that it’s true.”

“No, but that makes a hell of a lot of sense.” Wyatt blows out another breath. “That’s got to be what Rittenhouse wants. Benjamin Briggs and the crew disappeared with whatever important secret or artifact he was supposed to deliver, and they want it back. They don’t know exactly when Briggs and company abandoned ship, or where they’d be, so they have to come to the salvage hearings and try to work it out in reverse. If there’s a chance he’s still out there floating on the ocean somewhere, they can head off and pick him up.”

“What is it?” Rufus asks. “Whatever Briggs has that they want?”

“Could be anything,” Wyatt says grimly. “Money, or the secret to how to succeed in business without really trying, or something else that would make it easier for them to do what they do. But whatever it is, they want it. So yeah. We have to make sure they don’t get it.”

“Any chance we’re going to run into Lucy and Flynn?” Rufus glances away sharply as there’s a loud creak from outside. It could just be the ship rocking at anchor, or it could be someone coming on board. “I sent a message for them to join us here, but given how fiddly the connection between the Mothership and the Lifeboat is, I don’t even know when they are, or if they got it. There wasn’t any record of a Lucy Preston being killed at Salem, so I think they got out of there, but I have no idea if they then – ”

There’s another creak. Louder.

“Wyatt,” Rufus says tensely. “I think we have company.”

“Yeah, just…” Wyatt flips even more frenetically through the pages, as if he’s going to wring one more drop of information out of this blasted book. “Hold on, just – ”

“WYATT!”

“Okay!” Wyatt drops the log and grabs the sidearm concealed (with difficulty) beneath his waistcoat, hoping he doesn’t rip all the seams at once. He beckons for Rufus to get behind him, and Rufus dives into a pile of burlap sacks. The cabin door opens, Wyatt’s finger tightens on the trigger, and –

“Don’t!” a voice yells frantically. A very familiar voice. “Don’t shoot!”

Wyatt and Rufus’ hearts stop at the same time.

“Lucy?”

It has not been (it should be normal by now, and yet) the most outstanding few days of Lucy Preston’s life.

“How did you – ” That was her first question when she opened the door and came face to face with Emma Whitmore. Logically, there is no way Rittenhouse should be here. If Wyatt and Rufus have the Lifeboat, and Lucy, Flynn, and Iris have the Mothership, that leaves no extra time machines for Emma and her gang to use. They should have (they should have, and yet by now, Lucy has learned over and over the danger of underestimating these people) been stranded in Salem, maybe burned as witches themselves for that final, signature touch of irony. The only thing she can think of – that lurches horribly to mind and has to be forced away – is that this was some kind of long con on Iris’ part after all, that after she took Lucy and Flynn here, she went out, hopped back in the Mothership, returned to Salem, picked up the Rittencrew, and ferried them back. No, though. That’s not what happened. There are other, far easier ways to do that, and Iris wasn’t feigning. Not after everything that happened with her father and grandfather and Lucy. She didn’t.

“How did you get here?” Lucy repeats, somewhat more in control of herself after the initial shock. She feels Flynn’s hand close on her arm like a vise, trying to put her behind him, but she doesn’t move. “What do you want?”

Emma’s eyes flick between them, both still in a certain state of dishabille. She appears amused. “It wasn’t to ask for a three-way, believe me. As for how I got here, that’s action item number one. We had to build a mostly functional prototype to train Iris in, and while I had the Mothership, we copied out a basic software clone. It was good for about… two jumps, maybe. Last resort backup plan. After you pulled that fun trick in Salem, we sent the emergency signal, and headed out here. So. We will want the Mothership back.”

“Good luck with that,” Flynn says harshly. “Is Rittenhouse dead?”

Emma flinches, ever so slightly. “John? Yes. He’s dead. Your charming daughter killed him.”

“Because you taught her how to be a killer!” Flynn’s shout makes the fragile floorboards quake. If Lucy relaxed her grip the merest fraction, he would probably tear Emma’s throat out with his bare hands. “Because you – ”

“Please,” Emma says dismissively. “Like you would have taught her any different? It’s all you know how to do.”

Flynn goes quite still, even as Lucy, thinking of him back with Asher in Russia, holds tighter. “Is there a point to this?” she says harshly. “Did you just come to gloat and think we’d somehow be persuaded to hand the Mothership back as a result?”

“Not really.” Emma shrugs. “You see, Lucy, now that John’s dead, I’m the de facto leader of Rittenhouse’s operational arm. And I’m not going to fall for your – charms? You aren’t going to convince me that you want to join us, because I know you don’t. But you are going to work with us, one way or another. So let’s make it simple. You do what we want, or Iris dies.”

Lucy jerks. So does Flynn. “What?”

“Simple, really.” Emma is clearly enjoying this, revealing information bit by bit, baiting the hook, stringing them along. The woman is pathological. “We’re going to run a quick errand in the Mothership, and retrieve something that Benjamin Briggs tried to steal from us. Then you’re going to uninstall whatever program Carlin put into it, the remote override, and anything else that could mess it up. Then you’re going to give it back to us. I assume your boy band backups will be here soon, so three of you can take a ride back to the present in the Lifeboat, if you really want to go. The other two will stay behind with us, hostages for your good behavior. Do all that, and we’ll let Iris go. Otherwise, she dies, and so do all of you.”

“You – ” Flynn takes a step, pulling Lucy with him. “You have my daughter?”

“Of course we do.” Emma sounds bored. “I wouldn’t come here to threaten you if we didn’t. She’s only Rittenhouse’s most wanted fugitive after what she did to John in Salem, so the circumstances of her confinement aren’t exactly pleasant. Here.” She takes some Polaroid photographs out of her pocket and shoves them at Flynn. “Have a look.”

Flynn’s fingers suddenly don’t seem to work, and Lucy grabs his hand to steady them. She doesn’t want to look at the pictures either, even as the images burn themselves unavoidably into her eyes. Iris bound and gagged, hair down and eyes furious, surrounded by a bunch of Rittengoons smiling and giving the thumbs up to the camera like big-game hunters who have just brought down an endangered rhino in Africa. It looks as if she’s had at least one beating. Clearly, they wasted no time at all in snatching her when she, Lucy, and Flynn got here to Gibraltar. Iris is tough and terrifying, and if nothing else, probably knows all the tricks and tortures that Rittenhouse will try to use against her, but this –

“You’re despicable,” Lucy says quietly. “Truly despicable.”

“This wasn’t my call.” Emma looks affronted, despite herself. “It was your mother’s. I think she still feels that if she can get the Flynns out of the way, you’ll listen to her, see the light and return to the fold. What is it about you, Lucy, that gets everyone to act so irrationally? Why does everyone bend over backwards hoping you’ll join them and/or fuck them? Your mother, John, him – ” She jerks a thumb at Flynn. “You’re not really that special. Anyway, I told Carol that this wasn’t the way to go about it, that torturing Iris would just make all of you more angry, but you know how she gets. So. Are you coming or not?”

For a moment, Lucy can’t speak. She can’t just leave Iris to Rittenhouse’s tender mercies, she can’t let her mother get away with this, she can’t see a way out of this, and she can’t under any circumstances agree to be separated from Flynn. After a fraught pause, she says, “You’ll take us to wherever you’re holding Iris. I’ll see for myself. Then we can talk… terms.”

Emma smirks, as if to say it’s cute that they think this is a bargain, but fine, she’ll play ball. She shouts down the stairs – clearly she wasn’t dumb enough to come alone – and a whole passel of goons appear to take firm hold of Lucy and Flynn, march them out into the street, and bundle them into a hansom cab that they have apparently rented just for the occasion. Have to do your period-appropriate kidnapping in style, after all. Lucy is sorely tired of being abducted and manipulated and pushed around by Rittenhouse, and she is just about ready to do something drastic to ensure that this is the last time it happens. A muscle is going in Flynn’s cheek, and his hands open and close on his knees. Lucy reaches over to put her hand over his, and their eyes meet, communicating a silent promise. They are in this together.

It isn’t that long of a ride to the handsome brick townhouse on the waterfront that Rittenhouse has acquired for their 1872 headquarters, and in that time, Lucy has some – not much, but some – chance to think. She’s tired of being frightened of her mother, tired of fighting with her, and she still remembers what Flynn did for his father back in Russia. Obviously, that is not going to work as an exact blueprint, but as Emma says, this keeps coming down to Lucy. Lucy is the one on who everything turns. Going ten rounds in the ring with Rittenhouse, trying to out-bleed them, trading punches, one mission after another, rattling around like marbles through all of time and space, isn’t working. And since they’re on the verge of getting everything they ever wanted, this is it. Zero hour. Lucy figures out to outsmart them for good, right now, and end this, or everyone loses everything.

No pressure.

The hansom rolls to a halt before the house, and Emma comes around to get the door like an evil footwoman, offering her hand to Lucy with a faint smirk. Lucy ignores it, though she manages to trip on the step, and Flynn catches her from behind. He sets her upright on the muddy cobbles, managing an impressive amount of restraint given the fact that his daughter is presumably being held prisoner in that very house. The old Flynn would have drawn his gun and barged in, spraying bullets everywhere, but this new Flynn is – well, still inclined to cause calamity, but in a different way. He’s tense, furious, on edge, and frightened, but he’s keeping it in check. Following Lucy’s lead on this. Trusting her.

Lucy hopes it’s justified. Straightens her back, lifts her chin, and looks Emma dead in the eye. “I’d like to see my mother.”

Emma pauses, shrugs, and with an escort of armed goons falling in to either side, they enter the house, making their way to the elegantly wallpapered parlor at the back. Carol Preston is sitting in an armchair sipping tea, looking like a Pride and Prejudice extra, but gets to her feet at the sight of them. “Lucy.”

“Mom.” Lucy smiles sweetly at her, and even strides over to kiss her cheek. “You know that dress is very old-fashioned for 1872, don’t you? And you were the historian too.”

“I haven’t had much occasion to change.” Carol smiles airily back, trying to brush it off, but Lucy sees something almost like hurt in her eyes. “Things have been… complicated.”

“Yes, they have. Where’s Iris?”

Carol’s eyes flicker again, between Lucy and Flynn, as if trying to judge the likelihood of driving a wedge between them one more time. Whatever she sees, it doesn’t please her. Finally she says, “Downstairs. Did Emma tell you what we want?”

“Yes. Thoroughly.” Lucy takes the liberty of helping herself to a seat on the davenport, and after less than an instant, Flynn sits next to her, their hands once more reaching for the other’s. “What did the crew of the Mary Celeste have that Rittenhouse wants?”

“I don’t think that’s – ”

“Mom.” Again, that smile sharpened to draw blood. Lucy feels almost giddy, driven on something that isn’t even rage, isn’t hatred, but is forged stronger than both. Maybe she’s channeling her inner Flynn. “Haven’t you kept enough from me by now?”

Carol flinches, ever so slightly. She appears set to start into her usual spiel about this is what is best for Lucy, that she will come around to it, that she’s done everything to make her see it, but at last, it seems to taste as dry and withered on her tongue as it falls on Lucy’s ears. She keeps staring at her daughter and her – well, whatever Flynn is. There’s still no easy word for it. At last she says, “It’s a device made by Charles Babbage. It was taken to America a few years ago – 1869 – for tests, and for the Rittenhouse leadership to approve it. Now it’s going back to be installed. Or. It was.”

Lucy takes a moment to absorb that. The great Victorian inventor, engineer, and eccentric Charles Babbage is the man who, along with Lord Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace, will be credited as the father of the computer in a century or so. He drew up prototypes for a Difference Engine and an Analytical Engine that never actually ran, along with just about everything else, and as far as Lucy recalls, he did in fact just die last year, 1871. Rittenhouse has stolen his stuff and is going to put it into practical application – or was going to, until someone on the Mary Celeste did a bunk with it. “So,” she says at last. “Rittenhouse was supposed to have a fully functioning computer, or computer-like machine, a full century before anyone else. You could graduate to the time machine about – when? The Manhattan Project?” That’s not a scary thought at all. “No need to wait until Mason Industries gets around to inventing it in 2016. You’d have it up and running long before any of us were born. We’d be out of the way at long last. No more missions, no more trying to change things piecemeal before we get there. You could have it set.”

“Yes.” Carol looks at her with that glimmer of pride she sometimes used to show, all too rarely, when Lucy tried and tried to impress her. “So you see it.”

“Yes,” Lucy says in turn, quite calmly. “Mom, you know we can’t let you do that.”

Carol seems to want to say something else, but it doesn’t make it to her lips. “Lucy,” she starts again. “Lucy, I – ”

“Emma said that three of us can go back on the Lifeboat, once we’ve given you the Mothership and retrieved this,” Lucy continues remorselessly. “But I can’t go back, because I’ve been erased. Which you know. And since I get the feeling that not a whole lot happens in Rittenhouse without you knowing, did you honestly stand by and tell whoever’s running this organization now that it was fine to delete both your daughters – I don’t know if you remember Amy, but I think somehow you do – in the name of world domination? Pull the switch, I’m gone? Did that really not bother you at all?”

“Of course it…” Carol rubs her thin fingers under her eyes, a gesture Lucy also remembers well, the one her mother always made when extemporizing about how she just wishes Lucy would try harder. “Of course I didn’t want to erase you, Lucy! I never did! I was – I was quite young when you were born, you know. The first time they laid you in my arms and I looked down at you, I… I swore I’d never let anything happen to you. It’s… it’s just… been hard.”

Lucy regards her mother in silence. For the first time in a very long while, she feels a prickle of sympathy. Carol Preston, born and raised Rittenhouse, meets an older college professor when she’s nineteen years old, gets wined and dined and seduced – what did Benjamin Cahill do, whisper dazzling Rittenhouse secrets in her ear? Carol’s probably made plenty of sense of it as an adult, rationalized it, justified it, but she was still a young woman taken advantage of by a major leader in the cult in which she has been indoctrinated from birth. She’s chosen to embrace it, rather than escape it, but she is a victim too. Knew it was her job to breed up good Rittenhouse stock, just like John intended to do with Lucy. She’s still doing this because she genuinely has managed to convince herself it’s best. Otherwise, she might realize what she has done, what she’s given up, and crumble.

The silence continues. Emma has positioned herself behind Carol’s chair like a bodyguard, but when Carol doesn’t speak, she gives her boss a pointed look. “Well? Should I get Iris?”

“I – yes.” Carol’s fingers twist the fabric of her out-of-date dress. “Go get her.”

Flynn tenses, and Lucy puts a hand on his arm, holding him back, as Emma vanishes out the door. After a few minutes, she returns, hauling Iris. The junior Flynn is battered and bruised, but Emma is still having to work hard, and Iris is struggling to escape her cuffs as Emma pushes her into the room. At the sight of them, her jaw drops, but she manages to avoid saying anything out loud. It’s Emma who has to prompt, “Well?”

“I see.” Iris works her jaw, as if checking for loosened teeth. “Congratulations.”

“They’re here,” Emma says. “So remember that if you don’t do as I say – ”

“Yes,” Iris says, sounding bored. “You’re going to kill me, kill us. You still think that’s the worst thing you can do, don’t you? You already killed me and my mother once. You brainwashed me and stole my second life, you’ve erased Lucy, you’ve done God knows what to Daddy, and yet – here we still are. All that effort for really nothing, I’d say.”

Emma looks unimpressed, but Carol flinches again. Finally she says ingratiatingly, “Lucy, honey. I’ll make you a deal. You can go free with Iris and… him.” She can’t bring herself to acknowledge Flynn by any sort of name. “When Rufus and Wyatt get here, they can join you. We will make you any sort of happy home you want, in whatever… configuration. Just get the Babbage device, and give it to us, and you can have anything, any life you please.”

Lucy opens her mouth, then shuts it. Rittenhouse has been leaning so hard on vinegar as a negotiation tactic that they were possibly overdue to bust out the honey, but it still takes her off guard. It’s plain that Carol is starting to buckle a bit, that the guilt is getting to her, that she has once more convinced herself that she’s making up for everything she’s done to Lucy, everything she’s used and deceived and lied and broken apart, if she gives her a golden parachute now. Happy life for you and your boy toy(s), Rittenhouse takes over the world, squaresies. Of course there would be a catch. They’d probably wipe their memories, they wouldn’t even know the terrible price they’d paid for it. And even if they did remember, they couldn’t interfere. Just sit back, and let the bastards win.

“That’s an interesting offer,” Lucy says at last, levelly. “But you know. I kind of already had a life I wanted. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. I worked hard and I was good at my job and people respected me. I don’t know if I just want to go back to being a Stanford history professor after everything I’ve done and seen and experienced, but I’d like to have the choice. But neither the existence or the world that I left are still there. It’s altered beyond recognition. So what? You’d make me some fairytale castle somewhere, far away from the world? I’m not a princess in a tower, Mom. I can’t be kept there. I want my sister back. I want my life.”

“We could…” Carol starts, and then stops. Knowing as much as Lucy does that in the timeline Amy exists, Carol is dying of cancer. Can’t figure out how to have one without the other, can’t finesse their way around it without more changes, and ones they have no idea where to find or make. Finally she says, “We could put you back. Into history.”

“Could you?” Lucy looks at her wearily. “Rittenhouse is really good at erasing people, tearing things down. Critics. Problems. Innocents who get in the way, or are even tangentially connected to them.” She nods at Iris. “I’ve never seen anything to suggest it can build again, at least in any image that is not completely horrifying.”

Flynn has been uncharacteristically quiet through this entire thing, letting Lucy and Carol play out their wounds the way Lucy let him face his demons with Asher, but at that, he clears his throat. “You don’t know your daughter very well,” he says to Carol, but his eyes also flick to Iris in a way that means he in no way exonerates himself from it, that he knows the same sin applies to him. “You don’t know that she’d still rather give up everything that matters to her, take on unbearable suffering, if it means she’d save the world. I don’t know how she became so damn heroic with you and the corporate avatar of Satan for parents, but she did. You keep offering her what you would take, or what I would. But she’s not us. She’s better than us. And you’ve had your daughter your whole life, you’ve never known what it was like to lose her as a child, and what have you done with it, with who she is? You’ve missed it. You’ve missed it. And even someone like you, one day you’ll give anything to change it.”

Carol’s face is the color of an old sheet. She can’t look Flynn in the eye. “But I’m giving you what you want, Lucy,” she manages at last. “Your friends, your – ”

“I need to find Wyatt and Rufus,” Lucy says levelly. “Are they here?”

“We – imagine they are, yes.”

“Good.” Lucy starts to get to her feet. “I think I know where I’m going to find them. In the meantime, you’re going to set Iris free, and you two – ” she glances at the Flynns, who aren’t exactly the most stable houseguests – “are going to stay here for now. Emma, Mom, you won’t do anything to them while I’m gone. Is that clear?”

“Lucy – ” Emma, Carol, and Flynn all start at once.

“I said, is that clear?”

They stare at her. Her voice cracks like a whip. She has never felt more powerful, and terrible, and strange, and strong. There’s no time for anything else.

After a pause, everyone nods.

“Good.”

As Lucy is heading down the hallway to the front door, scattering Rittengoons like the Red Sea as she goes, she hears footsteps running behind her, and the next instant, Flynn catches her arm, his entire face carved in a mask of distress. “Lucy. Lucy!”

Lucy wants to go, wants to get this over with, but she can’t shake him off. Or she could, perhaps, but she won’t, and she comes to a halt. If he keeps holding onto her, she might lose her nerve, and like her mother perhaps, she might crumble. In a different way, but still. As ever, she has to tilt her chin back to look at him. “Yes, Garcia?”

“What are you – ” Flynn glares the last goon into retreat, until it’s just them in the corridor, casting faint shadows on the Turkey runner carpet. He lowers his voice to a whisper. “What are you going to do?”

Lucy looks up at him, this contradictory, dangerous, stubborn, impossible, tender man. Words momentarily fail her as she brushes her fingers along his scruffy jaw. “What I have to.”

Flynn’s lips go grim, as if he knew that was the answer, he would give anything to stop her, and yet, by rights, he knows he can’t. She starts to move away, but he grabs her back, almost roughly, and crushes her to him, kissing her ferociously, both hands cupping her face and something almost desperate in his entire body, to hold her, to remember her. Lucy kisses him back just as hard, and then, in the breath between touching and parting, between presence and absence, between now and forever, as their noses and foreheads are brushing, as they are wrecked and shaking, she whispers, “I love you.”

She leaves before he gets himself together enough to answer.

She doesn’t – she can’t bear – to look back.

“So let me get this straight,” Rufus says. “Rittenhouse followed us here with the garage-cinderblock time machine. They want the thing Captain Briggs stole – the Babbage device that means they invent the actual time machine decades ahead of schedule, before we’re even born. And if we do that, your evil mom lets me, you, Wyatt, Flynn, and Iris go off into happy retirement and drink mojitos on the beach. While they’re Emperor Palpatining the shit out of everything and everywhere else, like they could convince Luke not to blow up the Death Star if they just gave him a fat payout and a new identity.”

“Something like that, yes.” Lucy’s eyes still aren’t quite meeting his or Wyatt’s. There were relieved hugs and disbelieving greetings, the way there always are when the Time Team is reunited after a long separation, but they haven’t seen Lucy in a long time (literally), there’s a lot of water under the bridge, and it’s clear to Rufus that she’s holding something back. All three of them have been through a hell of a lot, in their various ways, and this meeting feels different. They’re still on the same side, of course, but there’s more space than there used to be. Some of it is unavoidable. Some of it feels deliberate.

“We can’t do that,” Wyatt says. “We can’t just give Rittenhouse carte blanche to do whatever they want, even if we were somehow taking their word that we’d get a nice life out of it. That’s what we’ve been fighting to avoid this entire damn time!”

“Obviously.” Lucy’s voice is brittle. “I didn’t intend to agree.”

Wyatt looks at her worriedly. They’re sitting under a piling by the docks, the Mary Celeste still just a few dozen yards away, and he reaches out to take her hand. “Lucy, you’re scaring me.”

Lucy takes a deep breath, as Rufus reaches out to grab her other hand. “I have a hunch,” she says evasively. “I need Rufus to explain the science and tell me if it’s even possible. Then we can decide what to do.”

“Oh?” Rufus likes this even less. “What’s that?”

“I’m just thinking.” Lucy stares straight ahead. “All of this trouble, all this disruption to the timeline started with me. Things started going off the rails when Rittenhouse erased me in 1814, and all of our interventions with the war of 1812 messed up America for the Civil War, which led to – well, the present situation back in 2017. So it’s possible to argue that I’m the one factor in common, and that all our efforts to restore me have just succeeded in twisting and deforming this new timeline even more. We’re never going to put me back, and we’re just going to cause more damage trying.”

“Yes, but – ”

“Just let me finish.” Lucy looks like she’ll lose her nerve unless she can plunge through to the end. “I’m the wrench in the gears, don’t you see? We’ve gone off on some alternate reality, some diversion from the mean, because of me. Theoretically, if you cut me out before I did that, if you set the slate clean, everything would snap back into place. History would go back to normal, all the changes would unravel. And if that was the case – ”

Rufus gets it first. “No,” he says. “No. No, no, no.”

“What?” Wyatt demands. “What?”

“You have to,” Lucy says. Her face is dead white, but utterly, stonily resolute. “Then you, Wyatt, Iris, and Flynn go back to the present. The Lifeboat’s been modified, it can take four adults. Once you get there, you blow it up. It’s done. No more loose ends.”

“What about – ” Wyatt’s face freezes as he starts to grapple with a pair of very important omissions. “What about you and the Mothership?”

“Yes,” Lucy says. “That.”

“You’re – ” Wyatt gets it. “You’re going to sacrifice yourself?”

“Yes,” Lucy says again, simply. “We slingshot me back before the first time I’ve visited – the furthest back I’ve gone is Salem, 1692 – so you have to send me earlier than that. Then I just… keep going. If I’m destroyed before I’ve done anything, all my changes vanish. As I said, space-time snaps back into place like a stretched rubber band. Rufus, am I wrong?”

“I – ” Rufus has no idea how he is supposed to sit here and treat this like a cool theoretical science problem, when his friend’s life – her very existence – is the collateral of solving it. “I – yes, technically, I suppose. It could work. But Lucy – Lucy, you can’t – ”

“We’ve always known this turned on me somehow,” Lucy points out, with devastating pragmatism. “John Rittenhouse, Emma, my own mother, you, Benjamin Cahill, everyone. If I can fix it, if I can end this, I have a responsibility to do it.”

“No,” Wyatt says frantically. “No, Lucy. I’ll do it. If it’s just a matter of taking the Mothership back to, whatever, the Jurassic, and crashing it – ”

“You can’t.” Lucy’s voice is soft and very sad. “You’re not the one who broke the timeline. You could destroy the Mothership, but you couldn’t fix all the other stuff. Once I’m gone, everything resets. Benjamin Briggs went out to sea and never came back, to keep the Babbage device away from Rittenhouse. Made a sacrifice and saw it through. Now I have to do the same. It has to be me.”

“We’ll all go,” Rufus says. “If it’s a final suicide mission, blowing up in a blaze of glory together – we’ll go with you to the end, Lucy, you don’t have to – ”

“No.” Lucy looks at both of them with unspeakable tenderness, squeezing their hands. “No. We don’t have to all die. You two can live. Flynn and Iris can live. Iris was back before I got erased and started all this disruption, she’ll still be alive after I’m gone. No more time machines. No more Rittenhouse. Well, they’ll exist in some way, but they won’t have any more power than any other major evil corporation, and I can’t get rid of all the bad things in the world. But I can do this. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to never exist. I don’t want to forget you, I don’t want you to forget me. And yet.”

Wyatt tries to answer, and can’t. His eyes swim with silent, unshed tears, until he finally lifts Lucy’s hand to his mouth and kisses it. “I could never forget you.”

“You will,” Lucy says, very gently. “You will never have known me.”

“I don’t accept that. We’re here, we’re living this, we’re remembering each other right now How can that just… go away?”

Lucy touches his face. “Maybe it won’t. Maybe you’ll dream of me.”

Wyatt closes his eyes as if he’s been shot, and can’t come up with any other words at all. There is a long, impossible silence, and then Lucy rouses herself, looking at Rufus. “Could you do it?” she asks. “Could you program the Mothership to fly into the sun, so to speak? I get into it, and… go? Rittenhouse doesn’t get the Babbage device, or it, or me. Could you?”

“Could I program it for a self-destruct course into what, the beginning of time?” Rufus’s voice scratches in his chest. “The override is still in it, so… I suppose, but – ”

“Please,” Lucy says. “Garcia, Iris, and I came here in the Mothership, I know where it is. We have to go before Rittenhouse knows what’s up.”

“Just go?” Rufus isn’t sure he believes that. “Without – saying goodbye? To him? Flynn?”

It’s Lucy’s turn to close her eyes. “I said goodbye to him already,” she says, after a very long pause. “I think he knew it.”

Rufus opens his mouth, then shuts it. There is an almost physical ache in his chest, the refusal to face what is in front of him, to wrap his head around it, and yet it must be nothing to what Wyatt – much less Lucy – is feeling. He can’t do that, he can’t do this. His big nerd brain, crammed full of science and engineering and the most esoteric bits of bullshit known to man, scrambles for another solution. Anything. No matter what.

He can’t find one.

“Okay,” he says at last. “Let’s go.”

It’s not far from the docks to where Lucy and the Flynns have left the Mothership, and Rufus’s stomach turns over at the sight, the fact that he can’t put this off anymore. His hands are shaking as they cycle the overrides and climb in to look at the control panel as if this is a mildly interesting science fair project. But the unavoidable context is that Lucy is going to get into this, seal herself up, and fly up the ass of time and space, a trip from which she will not return. They have done everything together, it is unfathomable that it should end with one of them alone. But Lucy is Lucy. She’s always been the best of them.

Rufus forces himself to do this dispassionately, to avoid the desperate urge to cheat. He can’t half-ass this, and yet he so badly wants to, as he plugs into the main console and starts tinkering with the parameters for a final jump. This feels like something that a white dude named Steve should be doing, taking a plane out to sea to save everyone and dying in the process. Rufus can’t be sure how early is too early to send Lucy. Can he just, say, plonk her down in the medieval era somewhere, or should it be ancient Rome? Cavemen? Is she actually the meteor that kills the dinosaurs? This is ridiculous. He was never trained for this.

Finally, Rufus settles on the only thing he can think of. He has to send Lucy as far back as the Mothership can go, however far this pocket of altered space-time exists, and out the other side. But there’s a scientific principle known as quantum suicide, which operates along the same lines as Schrödinger’s cat. Basically, if the many-worlds interpretation of reality is true – which Rufus now knows for a fact it is, given the number of timeline changes they’ve made – death isn’t really death. Under certain circumstances, if you die in one world, you have to spawn a competing one where you survive. Maybe that explains the afterlife; you die in physical reality, but you’re reborn somewhere else. If Lucy dies in this alternate history, there’s a chance – the tiniest, most ridiculous, mathematical technicality of a chance – that the reality where she survives is their own. That one day, who knows when because time doesn’t really apply in its normal dimensions, she can come back. Maybe that’s years before or after. Maybe she comes back here, in 1872, and lives a life never knowing them. Maybe it’s centuries in the future (if Trump and the North Korean guy don’t blow it up first). But she could still live. Maybe. Maybe.

Science has always been Rufus’s comfort and solace. He has to take what he can get.

Finally, Rufus’s work is complete. The Mothership is programmed on a straight dead run, as far back as can be gone, and then when it hits the edges of reality, it’ll explode, because there will be no more time left to traverse. He’s almost jealous of Lucy, in a sick way. No other human will do this, will so thoroughly transcend all mortal limitations. It’s almost apotheosis, fittingly. She is going out by sticking two middle fingers up Albert Einstein’s ass. So to speak. Might see all of history flash before her, know it as if she was there, a final gift for someone who has loved it so much and studied it so long. He hopes.

Rufus raises a hand, far too steady for the situation, and punches the button to lock in the coordinates. The trajectory can’t be changed now.

“Well?” Lucy says. “What do I need to do?”

“You hit that lever there.” Rufus points. “The autopilot is engaged to do the rest. You don’t need to steer, after all. You just need to…”

He can’t finish the sentence. Lucy does.

“Go.”

Wyatt has been standing with his back to them, unable to watch, but at this, he turns around. He has lost his battle with the tears, and they’re dripping down his face as he swipes it roughly with his arm. “Lucy – ”

“It’s all right.” Lucy looks a little teary herself, but her chin is firm. “I’m not scared.”

Rufus and Wyatt look at her with helpless, impossible love and admiration. They reach out and take each of her hands, walking her slowly to the Mothership for the last time, unable to countenance the prospect of getting there. They drag out each step, but they know that as ever, the clock is ticking. This needs to be a fait accompli before Rittenhouse gets any wind of it. Lucy’s told them where to find Flynn and Iris. Grab them, get to the Lifeboat, and back to what should be a no-more-terrible-than-usual present, back to normal. Except there’s no Lucy. There won’t be again, according to every decent set of odds in the universe.

It’s too much. They can’t do it.

But Lucy isn’t going to let them avoid it.

They reach the Mothership, and communally freeze. They close their eyes, draw in a breath and then out. Lucy squeezes their hands tight enough to hurt, as if this, among others, is the last sensation she will take into the supernova. That this, she will remember.

She turns to them. Leans down and kisses Wyatt, then Rufus, and they reach out to crush her in their arms in a tangled three-way hug. They’re shaking, but she’s not, and she’s the one who has to push back and start up the steps to her own tomb. Then she stops.

“Flynn,” she says. For the first time, her voice shakes. “Tell him.”

Wyatt and Rufus can’t fathom doing that. Tell Garcia Flynn that he’s lost another loved one, even like this? He could grab the Lifeboat and try to crash after her, leave them stranded here, or – well, just about anything else terrible. But they both nod. As if they’d do anything else.

Wyatt says, “Okay.”

Rufus says, “Okay.”

Lucy looks back at them, filling herself with the sight of them, the sound, the memory. Then she turns back, climbs the steps, and seals the door.

For a moment, even if the alternative is worse, Rufus hopes he’s made a mistake. That he programmed something wrong. That it won’t go where it’s going, and it won’t do what it’s doing. But he knows himself too well. He didn’t make a mistake.

The blue lights flash. The gyration starts to build. He can’t see Lucy, but he can imagine her, sitting calmly in the pilot seat, facing the lever she has to pull. If there’s a moment of fear, of weakness, if she sobs, if she puts her hand over her face and gives into the sheer grief of losing, of ceasing, of the sheer, simple mortal fact of finiteness, nobody will ever know.

The Mothership flashes white as a burning star, as Rufus and Wyatt shield their eyes but don’t look away. Whirls faster and faster.

Then it’s gone.

Garcia Flynn doesn’t know what’s going on, but he doesn’t like it.

To be fair, it would be surprising if he knew anything, could remotely focus on it, could have attention to spare for anything at all, when Lucy’s last words are still rattling around in his head. She said – she said – she said – and it’s succeeded admirably in freezing all motor or higher cognitive functions. Good thing she didn’t wait around for an answer, as Flynn’s brain was still making a noise like a fork in a garbage disposal, but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s missed his chance to say it back. If he could get himself to the point, after all. But she said it, and now she’s gone, and he doesn’t know how long it should take to track down Wyatt and Rufus and ask them – whatever she was going to ask them, but it feels as if it should have been long enough. There’s an unease in his stomach, a prickling on the back of his neck, that doesn’t merely derive from waiting in a parlor across from – now that John Rittenhouse is dead, just as Flynn tried to do so long ago back in 1780 – the organization’s two highest-ranking CEOs. However Rittenhouse hierarchy works, Carol and Emma have to be near the top, and they’re just sitting there. Flynn should be throttling them.

But he – but they – promised. Promised Lucy. They can’t.

To distract himself, and because his head won’t shut up about failing her again, Flynn looks at Iris. She looks more or less fine, if you can discount the refreshing spot of kidnapping and beating that she just went through – painful, but not life-threatening. She doesn’t look broken, in other words. The Flynn family is too used to violence for it to be anything new, or that they can’t recover from, and after a glance at Emma and Carol, Iris gets up and moves to sit next to her father. “I’m all right,” she says quietly. “They can’t hurt me anymore.”

Flynn lets out an unsteady breath, and takes her offered hand. There are plenty of things he could say and think about the fact that they have hurt her this much already, but for once, he doesn’t. The four of them continue to sit there in the world’s most awkward détente, until something on Emma’s wrist beeps, and she looks down, then frowns. “Something’s going haywire with the Mothership.”

“What?” Flynn jumps to his feet. “You send some pit crew to steal it while our backs were turned?”

“This isn’t us,” Emma says sharply. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t – ”

“What is it?” Carol gets to her feet, looking alarmed. “What’s going on?”

“I still have a link to the Mothership’s CPU.” Emma waves her wrist at them. “It’s – I’ve never seen readings like this, it’s – ”

She stops.

“It’s what?” Flynn half-shouts. “WHAT?”

“It’s running backwards,” Emma says, almost uncertainly. “It keeps going faster and faster by exponential magnitudes, it’s like it’s malfunctioning. Or like it’s – ”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but Flynn has acquired a fairly close competence with the Mothership’s inner workings, and he doesn’t think that it could be plunging by itself through time, if someone wasn’t driving it. He doesn’t know what happened or how, but he is convinced at that moment that he knows who is. And that he was right about the kiss earlier. It was more than just their last one for now. It was their last one ever. That’s why she said it.

“Lucy,” he says. “Lucy!”

“Carol!” Emma whirls to her boss. “Carol, we can still stop this. Give the order, I’ll get the team, get to the Lifeboat and intercept her before she goes totally off the map. We still have something like five minutes to cut her off. Now, otherwise we’re going to lose – Carol? Carol! Listen to me!”

Carol Preston has remained rooted to the spot, a look of awful realization coming across her face. Her lips move around something that might be her daughter’s name.

“Lucy?” Large chunks of information are falling into place in Flynn’s head, like crashing boulders. “LUCY!” As if she can hear him. As if she can hear anything. He snatches for his gun and is set to tear out after Emma, not even knowing what he’s going to do after that, just that he can’t stand by and let this happen. The bleeping from Emma’s wrist is getting more and more frantic, frenzied and scrambling, a long, piercing electronic whine. The Mothership is doing something it was never designed to do, and it’s doing it fucking fast. If Lucy’s aboard, if she’s doing it, if it was a choice to take this to the end –

“Carol!” Emma shouts, snapping her fingers, looking as if she’s on the brink of shaking the older woman. “Carol, orders? ORDERS!”

Carol still doesn’t move. It’s not clear if she remembers how. But as Emma clearly realizes that she’s on her own in this, and lunges for the door, Carol suddenly comes back to life. Moves at the same time, jerks open a desk drawer, and pulls out a modern Glock handgun with wildly shaking hands. Aims it – not at Flynn or Iris, but Emma – and pulls the trigger.

The sound of the shot is deafening in the small parlor. Emma’s lunge turns into a stumble, and she goes down hard, the back of her left thigh swiftly turning red. “Are you out of your mind?” she yells, face twisted in pain and rage. The electronic whine from her wrist is now almost at full volume, a shrieking fire alarm. “What the – what the fuck did you – ”

Carol raises the gun, hands shaking harder, clearly about to shoot again and finish this, but it’s Iris – Iris, who Carol had tortured, Iris, who Emma helped brainwash in the first place – who steps between them. “Carol,” she orders. “Carol, give me the gun.”

Flynn’s heart shrivels in his throat to see Iris once more on the wrong end of a gun held by a Rittenhouse member. The whining continues to shrill at full volume, but it’s starting to turn sporadic, turn patchy, going for brief bursts and then cutting out. Then it raises one more time, and cuts off in a puff of white smoke and breaking glass from Emma’s wristwatch. When Flynn snatches it up, the readout is cracked and black and empty. There’s no more Mothership CPU. There’s no more Mothership.

There’s no more Lucy.

He isn’t sure who the howl comes from, him or Carol, maybe both. He grabs the broken monitor, shaking it as if to restore a lost wifi signal, but there’s no use, he already knows it. He can feel it in his bones, his heart, his soul, the absence of everywhere Lucy used to live, everything she owned, even if he didn’t know it, from the moment he saw her. Garcia Flynn is a big man, but he crumples to his knees like a scrap of silk or rice paper, feels as if his spine has snapped, he can’t stand up. The world is once again intolerable, unbearable, slamming him into the ground. He struggles to endure this, when there is not enough space inside him for himself and the grief, and doesn’t, as ever, have a single notion how.

“Lucy.” Carol’s voice sounds like a ghost. “Lucy.”

“She’s gone,” Emma gasps, angry and hurt and furious. “She’s gone, and you shot me.”

Carol raises the gun again, but Iris reaches out and grabs the muzzle, jerking it out of her hand. “You’ve killed enough people,” she says, cold as stone. “Even if you never pointed the gun at them directly and pulled the trigger, you have. That’s plenty.”

Emma stares at her, knowing that this is the most unexpected deliverance of all time, that she doesn’t deserve it in the least. That Iris would be justified in standing aside and letting Carol finish her, or taking the gun and doing it herself. Emma opens her mouth, then shuts it, and rolls onto her back with a grimace, clutching her wounded leg. She can’t get to her feet. The silence thunders.

Iris switches the safety on, tucks the gun into her waistband, and walks over to Flynn. Reaches out, and takes him by the arm. Tentatively, she says, “Daddy?”

Flynn can’t answer her, can’t get his tongue around words. He isn’t sure he will be able to again. He lets her help him to his feet, because he can’t think what else to do. Puts his arm around Iris’ shoulders, as she stares down Carol without a flinch. She says, “You let us go.”

Carol is ashen-faced. It’s not clear that she would resist even if she could. As if now, just as Flynn warned, it’s hit. The realization of all the offerings she has burned on Rittenhouse’s altar, and what they have left her with as a result. Now. This.

Nothing.

Iris says, “Did I stutter?”

Carol shakes her head.

Garcia and Iris Flynn turn their backs, and start to walk. Move past Emma, still on the floor, and down the hall, and out the door, out into a world that somehow still exists, is turning onward. It’s barely a dozen yards down the street until they run into Wyatt Logan and Rufus Carlin, coming the other way. One look at everyone’s faces confirms that nobody needs to ask what happened. Nobody can bear it.

They go to find the Lifeboat, and one last time, jump home.

It’s difficult to grieve for someone who, technically, never lived, and so has never died.

When Wyatt, Rufus, Flynn, and Iris get back, it – for one thing – isn’t 2017 anymore, as they’ve spent enough time mucking around in the past that it’s the new year, 2018. For another, everything is back to normal. History has unbent. Trump is president of the USA, not the CSA (equally depressing though that is) and everything has happened the way it was supposed to. Rittenhouse doesn’t exist, so far as they can tell, because Emma and Carol were stranded in 1872. They search and search until they find the small notice of an obituary in 1895, in San Francisco, for a C. Preston. As for Emma, nothing. Maybe she died there in Gibraltar; medical care still wasn’t that great. Maybe not. Who knows. As for Carol, she went home. Tried to live out the rest of her life before she herself was born. Knowing what she’d lost the whole time. Nobody has warm feelings for her, but that still hurts.

Lucy Preston does not exist, obviously. Has never existed.

And yet, Flynn, Wyatt, Rufus, and Iris remember her.

Jiya doesn’t. Denise doesn’t. Connor Mason doesn’t. They bemusedly take everyone’s word for it that they had a partner named Lucy (they’re more confused as to how Flynn is now part of the gang), but it’s the sort of all-right-whatever-you-say acceptance of their zany adventures rather than any real understanding. Jiya doesn’t remember having forgotten Rufus, at least, and their reunion is happy. At least someone gets that. Rufus deserves it.

With no more Rittenhouse and no more time machines (since they destroyed the Lifeboat when they got back, before Connor Mason could sleaze in there and have anything to say about it one way or another) there is no more Time Team, no more insane, hair-raising missions through time and space. Everyone struggles to go back to anything resembling an ordinary life, but it doesn’t work. Wyatt can’t go back to being a grunt with a gun, even a special ops one, and he leaves Pendleton a few months later. Ends up, of all the things nobody would expect, moving in with Flynn and Iris.

It is oddly easier like that. They can grieve together, in whatever strange, truncated way they can. Flynn has bought a small house on a leafy street, with the payout that Mason Industries gave him once they also saw about expunging his criminal record. He and Iris have no idea what they’re doing with the rest of their lives just yet, though Iris has been making noises about going back to school. After he bought the house, Flynn donated the rest of the money to the Stanford history department, to establish the Lucy Preston Scholarship. He feels it’s as if what she would have wanted.

(He thought about calling it the Memorial Scholarship, but he can’t do that. Not least when there’s nobody actually there to remember. Stanford is confused enough about why he’s giving money for someone who doesn’t exist, but it’s a lot, so they don’t ask.)

Wyatt has also given part of his payout to the scholarship, but he’s invested the rest, so he and Flynn don’t need to work for a while yet – or ever, if they don’t want to. They will, because they’re not the type of men who can sit idle, but they’re still reeling, and they’re in no shape to embark on some new career. Private security would seem to fit their existing skill set, but they’re both tired of the weight and sound and sight of guns, the killing they have done, and the choices they can’t take back. They still bicker a lot, because of course they do, but in a different way. It’s easier to just miss Lucy with every waking moment if they know the other is doing the same. A strange kind of solace. Misery loves company.

It’s been about eight months since they returned – it’s August, in fact – and it’s a warm, perfect summer night in the Bay Area. Flynn is home alone. Wyatt is out taking one of his long night drives along the Pacific Coast Highway, and Iris is downtown at an event. Flynn is wondering if he has the ambition to get up and make himself some dinner, but he isn’t sure he does. At least when he lost Lorena (and Iris) the first time, he had the whirl of preparation to occupy him, the insane belief that there was going to be a time machine that he would steal and make it better, but this time, he doesn’t have anything. An older Lucy has not returned to console him for the loss of herself, or hand him another journal. He’s just had to grieve in the way ordinary people do, and it is straight up arse. There is no way to make it easier. It can’t be avoided or gotten rid of. Just gotten through.

After a moment, Flynn lets out a long, unsteady breath, gets to his feet, and unenthusiastically opens the fridge, reminding himself that they need to do the shopping at some point. He’s just trying to work out what he can concoct from the remnants, when there’s a knock on the door.

He frowns. He wasn’t expecting anyone, it’s late even for some dedicated Jehovah’s Witness, and if it was Wyatt or Iris, they wouldn’t knock. In fact, his mind flashes immediately to the fact that Rittenhouse isn’t quite defunct after all. They’ve resuscitated somehow, they’ve tracked them down, and now it’s about to happen one more time. Flynn thinks of his gun, locked upstairs in a safe. Can he run up and get it if they break down the door?

After a long pause, the knock comes again. Tentative. It doesn’t sound like the prelude to an onrush of secret-society thugs with automatic weapons.

Flynn blows out a jagged breath, picks up the rolling pin just in case – maybe he can hit them on the head if he needs time to grab his gun – and advances warily down the front hall. The porch light has switched on, as it does with motion, and he hesitates. This could be anyone. He’s never going to get over his fear of unexpected visitors. They could –

He unhooks the bolt chain and opens the door an inch. “Can I help you?”

“Garcia?” The voice sounds faint. “Garcia, is that you?”

A lightning bolt carves Flynn down on the spot. He jerks the door open so fast he almost tears it off its hinges, and –

She does look older. There are a few silver streaks in her dark hair, though her skin is still smooth and flawless, except for a light spiderweb of lines around her eyes. She is dressed well, clutching a purse like a shield, waiting for this to be a total failure. At the sight of him, she opens her mouth, clears her throat, and says, “I’m sorry, this is awkward – I know you don’t know me, but if I can expl – ”

Flynn doesn’t let her finish. Takes half a step, half a lunge, seizes her around the waist, and doesn’t care what is remotely the case, what is truth or lie. He kisses Lucy Preston until neither of them can breathe, as her hands entwine around him and don’t let go and they pull each other’s heads from side to side, until they break apart and Lucy’s tears are falling thick and fast, even as her smile is blinding. “How…” she gasps. “How do you remember me?”

“How are you here?” In the competition of impossible questions, Flynn feels as if his is still the more pertinent. “How did you – how – ”

“I don’t know.” Lucy laughs shakily, even as she wipes her eyes. “But I think it’s called quantum suicide.”

That makes bugger-all sense to Flynn, one of Rufus’ mumbo-jumbo scientific concepts, perhaps, but he’ll ask him to explain later, later, later. He stares at Lucy one more time, then grabs her again, the purse falling with a thump to the porch as she shoves him back against the door, and they stumble through. It is wet and raw and savage, too desperate and rough and disbelieving to be tender, as they teeter through the dark front hall, banging into everything on the way. They are gasping and swearing into each other’s mouths, kissing and then pressing their foreheads together and then biting at each other, growling and sobbing. Lucy’s back hits the wall as Flynn lifts her, her legs linking around his waist, as they gulp half a breath from bare necessity, then turn and go after each other again.

Somehow, they make it down the hall to Flynn’s bedroom, shedding clothing as they go. Lucy’s in her bra and underpants by the time the door shuts, Flynn is undoing his belt and kicking off his trousers, and Wyatt, Iris, and the entire San Francisco 49ers football team could walk in right now and he would not give a single damn. He pulls Lucy into his arms, springing the bra loose, as she shucks the panties. Then it’s just them, in their skins, and it’s a dream, and it’s not, and it’s impossible, and it is not.

Lucy utters a small moan when Flynn enters her, their bodies jerking, her hands running up his thighs, trying to pull him closer, closer. Her arms go up around his neck, holding him close as he buries his face in her loosened hair, breathing the scent of her, trying to hold back his thrusts but completely unable to pace himself, needing nothing but the feeling of her. He kisses her blindly, tasting salt from her tears or his own, racking and rasping, half on the bed and half nowhere at all, her knee hiked up alongside his hip. She makes a little whining noise every time he hits that old sweet spot deep inside her, and it drives him harder.

They lose everything but each other. Lucy’s fingers claw and comb at the back of Flynn’s neck, in the dark hair that has a few silver threads of its own, then pulls his head back to hers as their mouths devour each other. At some point they roll over, Lucy ends up on top, and she rides Flynn mercilessly, head thrown back, mouth open, pulling herself against him with an intensity too frenetic to be distracted by anything else. Flynn would gladly die like this (and isn’t entirely sure he hasn’t), as if his heart will explode. It might have. He can’t tell.

It isn’t much longer until Lucy gasps, shudders from head to toe, and loses herself, dragging him after her within the space of a few moments, as she sways atop him, then leans forward, her head landing on his shoulder as she lies atop him, heaving. Flynn’s arms are somewhere far away in the whiteness, but he regains enough control to wrap them over her. “Are you…” He can’t understand why Lucy looks blank until it registers that he’s speaking in Croatian, and he coughs and struggles to switch back to English. “Are you really here?”

“I think so.” Lucy’s eyes shine with tears as she pushes herself up on one elbow to look down at him, her hair tumbling around her face, her lips bruised with kissing and her voice unbearably tender. “Are you?”

All things considered, Flynn isn’t entirely sure. He reaches up to touch her again, running a hand down her side, moving up to cup her breast, circling the nipple, tracing the collarbone. If this isn’t his Lucy, it’s a perfect imitation, and he has to fight one last stab of fear that this is all just a clever trick. He will wake up in morning light, and she will be gone.

There is something he still needs to say to her, for that matter. But last time, it was a goodbye, and he is too frightened that if he utters it now, it will be the same. That she will thank him, slide off, gather her clothes, and go. Or just dissolve into stardust. So he can’t. But God, how badly he wants the chance to try. The time. The mercy.

Instead, Garcia Flynn whispers, “Stay.”

Lucy leans down again, rests her head against his, and kisses the corner of his mouth. She seems to sense the words he can’t bring himself to, and settles back against his shoulder. That, perhaps, is what makes him finally believe it. That there will in fact be time, that she can wait, that she knows, that she knows. It does not have to be said tonight, because there will be more nights. More days. More mornings, and evenings, and weeks, and years.

Lucy shakes a bit. Starts, at long last, to cry. He holds her tighter.

She says, “Always.”

THE END

#garcy #garcy ff #lucy x flynn #the trash saga of flynn and lucy #timeless ff #it liiiiives

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