#and she was too impatient to get back to work to let them reconstruct Everything | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

togamicrying · 1 year

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Homecoming

hi i wrote this instead of working on my final paper like a grown up. silly little fluff piece about the thh survivors meeting up to celebrate the completion of the hope’s peak reconstruction. naegi-centric bc he makes for the easiest pov haha.

this is soooo self indulgent LMFAO

roughly 2k words of schmaltz, possible part two featuring drunk shenanigans to follow but i make no promises. i’m going to have to write my paper sometime, lol

Almost seven years to the day the six survivors of the Hope’s Peak Academy mutual killing game escaped, they found themselves once again standing before the school’s massive entrance gate. Seven long years of painstakingly rebuilding the ruined world, of surviving against staggering odds, of keeping their hope in the future alive. Now, surrounded by the future they had strived for, everyone seemed to be at a profound loss for words.

Kirigiri was the first one to break the silence.

“Well, we can’t just stand around out here forever,” she chided, a sly smile ghosting across her lips as she spoke.

At her words, Naegi was suddenly struck with a profound sense of deja-vu. She had said something like that then, too, hadn’t she? He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding, immensely grateful -- as always -- for her ability to keep them moving.

“She’s right,” came a cool voice from his other side. “Let’s get a move on, headmaster.” Togami punctuated the remark with the slightest nudge to Naegi’s side, and he suddenly felt bashful.

Headmaster. Though they had all helped out in the reconstruction effort, it was no secret that the project had been his baby, and none of them -- save himself and Kirigiri -- had yet to see the final culmination of their efforts. He felt a new current of nervous energy run through him at the thought of playing host. He allowed himself one deep breath in and out before --

“Alright, alright. Let’s go, then,” he laughed, unlocking the gate and stepping aside to let the others through.

Asahina pumped her fist as she jogged through the gate, seven years of hard work having only dampened her spirits slightly. She whooped loudly from several feet ahead of them before calling out, “Come on, slowpokes! I’m so ready to see what finishing touches Naegi-kun and Kirigiri-chan added since we were last here!”

Fukawa trailed behind her, a confidence to her gait that had been entirely absent during their escape. Her poor attitude, however, had remained largely intact -- “Not all of us are more muscle than brain, you know! It wouldn’t kill you to walk like the rest of us!” Nevertheless, her step hastened as she stalked after Asahina.

Hagakure loped through the gate next, entirely unconcerned with even attempting to keep pace with them, a brown paper bag held precariously under one arm.

Togami and Kirigiri lagged behind, opting to remain at the entrance with Naegi.

“Makoto, are you ready?” Kirigiri’s voice was gentle, but her eyes held a certain impatience. It occurred to Naegi that she was likely feeling a bit strange about everything as well, and a twinge of guilt ran through him at the thought.

“Yeah, I’m ready, sorry,” he said sheepishly, making no move to step through the gate despite himself. “It just... feels a bit strange, you know? I can’t believe we’re all back here again.”

Togami rolled his eyes, though Naegi failed to detect any venom in the act. If he didn’t know better, he’d almost say he looked fond.

“We’ve invested quite a bit of energy into this project. It’s foolish for you to be hesitating now that we’re at the finish line.”

There was no real bite to his voice, though Naegi pouted for the sake of ceremony anyways, before allowing a soft laugh to bubble through.

One last deep breath in and out, and he stepped through the gate, Kirigiri and Togami falling into step beside him.

As they approached the sturdy wooden doors of the school’s entrance, Hagakure waved his one free arm, flagging them down.

“Yo, Naegi-chi! You’ve gotta unlock the door too, dude!”

Naegi flushed, sprinting ahead to meet them while shouting a hurried apology. He registered a faint chuckle from behind him, though whether it came from Togami or Kirigiri, he wasn’t sure.

As he fit the key in the lock, Asahina spoke up from beside him.

“Hey, you know what? Last time we were all here -- like, that last time -- Naegi-kun called it a graduation. Does that make this, like, a homecoming?”

Togami snorted. “I can think of about a thousand places I’d sooner call home.”

“Whatever! I thought I sounded pretty cool -- it’s like, we’ve come full-circle, y’know?”

Though he remained unshaken at Asahina’s bristling tone, Togami’s disposition seemed to soften imperceptibly. “I suppose it’s apt, in a strictly metaphorical sense.”

Naegi laughed as he heard the click of the lock catch, pushing the door open.

“Homecoming.” His voice was almost a whisper as he spoke. “Yeah, I think that feels right, Asahina-san.”

He felt the gentle pressure of Kirigiri’s hand on his shoulder and smiled, before leading the group through the threshold.

»»———-　　———-««

Once they had settled around the largest table available in the dining hall, Hagakure eagerly rummaged through the paper bag before retrieving a deep blue bottle, the glass frosted over beneath an expensive-looking label. Placing it on the table with a sort of manic pride, he turned to Naegi.

“Alright! Togami-chi shelled out for the good stuff, so it’d be a waste not to drink it properly! Naegi-chi, you wanna help me grab some glasses?”

Naegi laughed, rising to accompany him. “Sure, but it’s not like we stock any o-choko for it -- we are a school, you know.”

Hagakure shrugged, “that’s fine -- we’ll make do with some good old fashioned shot glasses!”

The four remaining at the table exchanged a series of looks ranging from bemused to exhausted as Naegi followed Hagakure to the kitchen. Asahina sighed.

“Seasons change, but you can always count on that guy to be thick-headed, huh?”

Fukawa snickered, before breaking out into a wide grin.

“Wait, did that oaf say that you paid for that sake?”

Togami faltered under her accusatory tone for just a moment before gathering himself. “Among other things. He seemed to be under the impression that one bottle would be insufficient for his purposes.” He punctuated the remark with a kick to the bag, allowing them all to hear the sound of clinking glass at the motion.

Realization dawned on Asahina’s face, and she burst into peals of laughter, drowning out Fukawa’s snide giggling.

"You guys went shopping together?"

A barely-there snort from Kirigiri, sat beside him, was enough to refracture his composure. Togami grimaced.

“It’s not as if it was my idea. When I heard him telling Naegi about how he was planning on picking up some ‘brewskies’ --” the word was spat out, dripping with disdain “-- I had to intervene.”

Unfazed, Asahina snorted. “So it totally was your idea to go shopping together!” Nearly in tears, she leaned against Fukawa for support.

“It was my idea to save us all from having to choke down whatever swill he picked out,” Togami huffed, crossing his arms and looking uncharacteristically childish. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Another snort from beside him. “How noble,” Kirigiri drawled.

Whatever response Togami had planned for her was cut off by the sudden -- very noisy -- reentrance of Naegi and Hagakure from the kitchen. Hagakure, precariously balancing four juice glasses between the fingers of one hand, a pack of soda gripped in the other, called out to them.

“Naegi-chi stocked up on chaser too! Dunno how well sake and soda will go down, but it’s better than nothing, yeah?”

Naegi, for his part, trailed behind him with the remaining two glasses in hand. “Those were for the students,” he sighed with all the exhaustion of a man who had clearly spent the better part of the past two minutes arguing that point.

“I’ll make a note to restock before the semester starts.” Kirigiri’s voice was even as ever, though Naegi noticed the mirth behind her eyes. “If I’m being honest, I expected something like this would happen when you suggested we all meet here. Frankly, if we only wind up being down one pack of soda, I’d say we’re in a good position.”

“See dude? Kirigiri-chi says it’s no big deal too!” Hagakure set the glasses down at his place on the table before sliding one out to each of them in turn. Naegi issued a silent prayer of thanks for Kirigiri’s reflexes as she just barely stopped hers from falling off the edge.

He handed one of the glasses in his hand off to Hagakure before sliding down between Kirigiri and Togami, nervously fiddling with the rim of his own cup.

“I know,” he sighed. “I guess it’s just kind of nerve-wracking being this close to reopening. I keep waiting for something to go horribly wrong,” he laughed, though any humor that might have been in it was strained.

“I don’t know if I’d call a missing pack of soda ‘horribly wrong,’ Naegi-kun,” Asahina chimed in gently. “Everything’s gonna be totally fine, okay? You’ve got this!” She threw a thumbs-up his way as she spoke, earning a scoff from Fukawa.

“All of you are so dense,” she grumbled, looking around the table in exasperation. “It’s not about the soda, it’s about what the soda r-represents! It’s a symbol -- t-the first domino in a chain reaction,” her voice began catching as she ramped up.

Naegi’s fidgeting worsened subtly, and Togami glowered. “You’re not helping,” he snapped.

“And y-you are?” Fukawa tugged on the end of the one long braid she had slung over her shoulder. “All of you are so insensitive!”

Kirigiri cleared her throat sharply. “None of you are helping right now,” she said plainly, before turning to Naegi who, indeed, didn’t look any better for all of their comments.

“It’s... normal to feel apprehensive right now,” she started, an edge of discomfort in her voice as she struggled to sound soothing rather than curt. “We’ve all been through more than enough to warrant that.”

“Yeah, man. The tragedy was like... a total bummer. Hard to move past something like that,” Hagakure’s voice carried an uncharacteristic heaviness to it as he spoke. “But Asahina-chi’s right, you’ve totally got this! Ultimate Hope it up, dude!”

Naegi stilled, finger frozen in place on the rim of his glass. The others gaped at him, aghast.

All of them jumped in surprise when Naegi suddenly tipped his head back and let out a full body-shaking stream of laughter before slamming forward to lean on the table.

“The tragedy --” he gasped out between laughs “-- was --” another gasp of air “-- a total bummer?” He looked over at Hagakure’s unnerved expression, clearly having not received the reaction he anticipated from his words of comfort.

Asahina was the first to recover from the outburst. “Geez, you broke Naegi-kun,” she snickered, elbowing an increasingly distressed Hagakure, “way to go!”

Naegi’s gaze flicked over to her, shooting her a shaky grin as he struggled to compose himself.

“What! I totally didn’t mean to do that -- I was trying to be like, comforting and stuff!”

Naegi laughed again, tension slowly draining from his posture. “Don’t worry,” he snickered, “weirdly, I think that actually worked -- thank you, really.”

Hagakure sagged with relief. Togami rolled his eyes for what must have been the thousandth time that day, though he, likewise, seemed noticeably less tense than a few moments before.

“’Total bummer,’” he scoffed. “Honestly, read one book.”

Fukawa smirked, “I’d recommend S-see Spot Run as a good starting point.”

“Hey!” Hagakure cried out, indignant, “I read! And not just the easy stuff either -- I could totally school you all on panpsychic theory!”

Sensing a squabble, Naegi intervened before anyone could speak further on Hagakure’s literacy skills.

“We came here to celebrate, didn’t we?” He reached across the table for the bottle, forgotten up to this point. “Togami-kun, you paid, so I think you should do the honors.”

He extended the bottle towards him, smiling, but Togami simply shook his head.

“Be that as it may, I think it would be more appropriate for you to take on that role -- we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, after all.”

He paused for a moment, flushing slightly at the sincerity of his own words. “It’s servant’s work anyways,” he continued, pushing the bottle towards Naegi with increased force, “you’re much more suited to the task than I am, certainly.”

Asahina booed from across the table, but Naegi just rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

“If you insist,” he teased, uncapping the bottle and pouring a small amount in each glass. When he was finished, he tipped his own glass in the air ever so slightly.

“I’ve never been great at speeches -- you guys all know that by now,” he began, a sheepish grin curling across his face. “But I just want you all to know how much I appreciate having you here with me,” his eyes began to cloud with tears, and he blinked harshly to clear them.

“Told you he was going to cry,” Fukawa whispered to Asahina who, misty-eyed herself, simply smacked her on the arm.

Naegi just smiled wider. “I really, really have no idea how I would have made it through any of this without you guys. I just want all of you to know that.” He shifted nervously on his feet, “so, uh, thanks.” He sat back down with a slightly nervous laugh.

“Oh! Right!” he said, suddenly snapping-to and re-lifting his cup.

“To our homecoming!”

To his absolute joy, despite their varying levels of enthusiasm, every one of them said it back.

#danganronpa thh #makoto naegi #byakuya togami #kyoko kirigiri #aoi asahina #toko fukawa #yasuhiro hagakure #sorry if keeping honorifics is embarrassing of me i like how they show varying degrees of closeness #also it keeps me from having hagakure say dude more than he already does #this is. so so self indulgent don't look at me im shyyy #publishing this quick before i get scared #op #also fuck a part two writing for six characters is so HARD

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teddy06writes · 3 years

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nonono I need more ANGST part 3 for out of his grasp/out of their grasp were reader comes back as a ghost like Ghostbur but remembers bad memories so she doesn’t remember Dream or George

Out of Their Grasp

{THIS IS THE NEW UPDATED VERSION BECAUSE APARENTLY THE FIRST VERSION WASN”T ANGSTY ENOUGH}

{real talk though I thought maybe I could change this to be more angsty cause I didn’t think the ghost thing would work}

requested by this anon: “hey hey I was wondering if you could do dream x George x reader fantasy/royal au (bc I just read "for his hand" and I love it so much!!) where reader and dream go to battle but only dream returns from it. and he has to tell George that reader died. the more angst the better😝💅”

and also this one: “will there be a part 2 of For His Hand? It’s so good, i loved it!”

{Technically you don’t have to read part one but I would recommend it because this one takes place in the same universe}

Dream x George x reader

trigger warnings: swearing, yelling, major character death, aGnSt

premise: war breaks out near the borders of the SMP, you and Dream are sent ahead of the royal party to the front lines in an attempt to stop any further battles until a peace can be reached when disaster strikes, leaving your partners to deal with the repercussions.

{dude I’m like manically laughing right now}

(y/n/n)- your nickname

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“It was just skirmishes, here and there for the last few weeks,” Sam gestured to a few spots near the northern boarder on the map spread out across the table, before pointing to another in the center of the rest, “But then, yesterday there was a huge attack on the villages, and our military bases in this valley.”

You glanced around the room, from person to person, gauging there reactions.

George had visibly stiffened in his seat, and behind him Dream seemed equal tense.

“Have we taken any measures to fight back?” Sapnap asked impatiently.

“How bad are the damages?” George asked, ignoring him.

Eret looked down at the report they’d been given, “There seems to have been more pillaging than raiding, they were breaking into peoples house, causing general destruction and looting, when our forces attempted to stop them they began to fight. All in all 30 of ours were killed and there was an estimated 10,000 in damages.”

George frowned, as Niki spoke up, “We should pay the people reparation's and help them with any reconstruction that needs to be done.”

Many people nodded, but next to you Sapnap was still unhappy, “Are we doing anything about the invaders? We cannot just sit here and allow them to attack the people!”

“Pushing, pushing.” You muttered.

The king looked at him for a long moment, before turning to Callahan, the scribe, “Attempt to negotiate a peace. I don’t want anymore bloodshed to curse this land.”

The man beside you groaned, and you were quick to elbow him in the side and Sam ended the meeting and everyone began to file out of the room, hissing, “I don’t know how they do things where you’re from but that is no way to behave in an advisory meeting. Next time you pull that shit you won’t be allowed back to one.”

-You had taken the new coming warrior on as a sort of apprentice after he’d first arrived at the palace, and it was clear the change of pace wasn’t something he was ready for-

“They can’t just stand by! The King is a fool if he thinks a peace can be reached like this!”

You glared at him. “The King is no fool.”

“You only say that out of obligation.” Sapnap fired back.

You recoiled, burned, before crossing your arms and starting out of the room, “You may be a trained mercenary but you haven’t the faintest idea as to how to hold yourself among this crowd. It will be the death of you.”

He followed you back toward your office, listening as you continued, “King George is a good and just man, to say that he is a fool is to say the sun is square. He has wiped this kingdom clean of many years of bloodshed.

“The Kings advisors, and cabinet are kind, respectable people, you must remember to hold your tongue unless spoken too, and never say anything brash as you have done now, lest you make a greater fool of yourself.”

He huffed, “If I must stay silent in those meetings than how can I get my point across? Sending a messege to the enemy through force may be the only way!”

“Now you sound like Tommy, just as foolhardy and headstrong as the child,” You pushed the door to your office open, “I’m sure that Technoblade agrees with you, though he knows better than to speak freely.”

“If he agrees with me than perhaps it’s the right move.”

You turned to look at him quizzically, finally saying, “A wise king does not seek out war, no matter what his knights advise.”

Sapnap turned, “Then the lot of them are fools.”

“I have told you once to never disrespect the king, I suggest you don’t do it again. This land has seen it’s share of unjust rulers, be thankful you have not come here under worse authority.”

~~ That night, when the palace grew quiet, and the sky dark, you found yourself back in Dream’s quarters, an overtired, overstressed George having wedged himself between you two and refusing to move.

You sighed as Dream ran a hand through your sleeping partners hair, “He’s anxious.”

“I mean, can you blame him? War may be on the horizon.” Dream murmured.

“I meant even now- in the time of sleep. I think Sapnap is just adding fuel to the fire.”

Dream sighed, “If he has another outburst like that-”

“He’ll be cast out,” You nodded, “I know. He just needs to be willing to learn the way things go around here. In time he will learn.”

Your boyfriend chuckled to himself, “Fucking hotshot.”

“I think you’d like him, if you were able to spend more time with him.” You smiled.

“Well someone had to go snatch him up as an apprentice!”

“Well it was him or Ranboo, and Ranboo is far too- forgetful, for this sort of thing. I’d’ve had Tubbo but he and Tommy are a package set an you took ‘em.”

“What about Purpled?”

You rolled your eyes, “He started an apprenticeship with Punz ages ago.”

“SHHhhhhhhh, ‘m tryin’ to sleep.” George muttered, burying his face in your shoulder.

In the darkness of the chamber you could barley make out Dream’s eyes sparkling as he took your hand, “Course love, course.”

As the weeks continued the damages on the northern boarder only seemed to grow, the new invaders claiming three of the villages there own.

There was yet another large attack on the town that had been damaged the first time, this time a direct threat left etched on the walls, ‘You have made my people suffer, and now yours shall feel the same’

“Militia, both local and our own soldiers have taken it upon themselves to fight back, almost a hundred lived lost to each side.” The silence in the room grew deafening as Sam finished reading his report, not even Sapnap daring to speak.

“Your Majesty?” Bad hazarded, “What is our next course of action?”

George frowned, glancing around the room, “Peace is still the priority. Maybe- maybe we call a ceasefire, I could meet with there ruler-”

“No,” Dream interrupted, drawing all eyes to him, “It would be too dangerous. How do we know they can be trusted to lay down there arms?”

George shot him a look, “How do we know that we haven’t done anything to provoke them? Whatever we have done wrong we need to fix it. If we can work something out then people will be spared on both sides.”

“Shall we arrange for a ceasefire?” Eret asked.

The King nodded as Wilbur spoke up, “We could set up a meeting place, on neutral ground, possibly similar to the holy lands, so there would be no worry of a security breech.”

Dream seemed to relax at this, and then eyes were turned to you and Sapnap, representing the royal guard, “We can, but even so we should stay vigilant, perhaps send a group ahead with the runners to see too it.” You said, noting the gratitude on Dream’s face, as well as the slight annoyance on George’s.

“Well I see no one better to attend to the King’s safety than you,” Bad said, “You shall go with the party, and Technoblade with you, Sapnap can remain here to take over your day to day duties.”

The man in question quietly shot you a pleading look, at which you sighed, “With all do respect I think Sapnap could be better severing to the crown if he joined the running party.”

Bad glanced around to the others, looking for any objections before shrugging, “We can find someone else to do the work. So that’ll be you, Technoblade, Sapnap, and we can send the usual scouting party, and Sam shall go with again.”

You sighed, tracing an absent pattern on George’s side, listening to Dream’s ramble about how dangerous the idea that had been decided on at the meeting was.

“Finding peace is the priority, you can’t can’t change that.” George mumbled.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous!” Dream protested.

“It’ll be fine, We’ll have a perimeter set up with guards and everything. I’ll make sure none of them can even get near him with such intent.” You yawned.

The blonde huffed, “That just makes me more worried.”

“Don’t you trust me?” Your hand blindly sought his, “I’m going to do everything in my power to keep the ceasefire from being broken.”

“I know.” Was the only quiet response you received.

The next morning found you suiting up and heading out to the stables to tack up your horse. Techno was already down there, idly chatting with Phil as he readied Carl for the journey, and out in the courtyard you could see Sapnap talking to two men.

“Good morning, (y/n)!” Phil chirped, waving your direction.

“Morning Phil.” You moved down the row, reaching out and letting Beckerson nuzzle into your palm.

After getting your horse cared for and saddled, the rest of the party had headed out of the stables as your partners entered.

George took your hand, “Don’t start any more trouble.”

“Sounds like your talking to Dream not me.” You chuckled.

“Hey!” Dream protested.

“I’m not wrong!” You teased.

George rolled his eyes, quickly pulling you in for a kiss, “Make things good for me to be out there.”

“Stay out of trouble.” Dream advised, pulling you away from George to kiss you himself.

“You underestimate me.” You smirked, grabbing Bekerson’s reigns.

Dream rolled his eyes as you started to lead the horse out of the stable, calling, “And stay safe!”

“I’ll see you in five days!” You chuckled, heading out of the stables and quickly mounting your horse, kicking at his sides to catch up with the others.

~~ The last few days had been spent anxiously waiting, and now the journey to the norther board was coming to a close.

Dream rode alongside the carriage, eyes following the strange trail of smoke on the horizon; something was wrong, he could feel it.

The quiet, almost calm of the morning was slowly being cut through by a growing noise, and then finally shattered as one of the runners sent ahead to signal their arrival came crashing through the trees looking panicked.

“What’s going on?” Punz asked.

“They attacked! They broke the ceasefire!”

Dream’s brain surged with panic as he turned to where George and his advisors were starting to climb out of the carriage asking why they had stopped, “Turn around! It isn’t safe here! Go! Punz! Tommy! Ponk! Get them out of here!”

Before he could even stop to see if they were following his orders he was rushing forward down the road, urging Spirit to go faster as the road widened into the village.

Dream was met with nothing but chaos, the royal insignia’s on the tents set up in the field were aflame, and the clashing of swords filled his ears as the royal army and the few commoners who could fought back against the pillaging people.

“About time you showed up!” Sapnap yelled from halfway across the field, “We could use some fucking help!”

“No shit!” Dream yelled back, dismounting and unsheathing his sword.

Almost immediately another person came barley towards him, throwing him into combat.

He cut his way across the field, taking down people here and there, still searching the carnage for you.

Eventually he made it to where Sapnap had just disarmed and knocked out another opponent, “Where are they?”

His eyes danced around the wreckage, “Could be anywhere, saw ‘em trying to get the townspeople out of the way.”

Dream cursed, running off the direction of the village, calling you name.

The fighting continued, the addition of the extra royal guardsmen helping turn the tide of the battle, though Dream still couldn’t locate you on the battle field.

The invaders, or what was left of there battalion began to retreat, but still Dream could find no sign of you, the now all too quiet valley erupted into noise as another skirmish broke out.

Taking off at a sprint he made it up the hill to find you locked in combat with another warrior.

You panted, throwing up you shield to block another strike from his axe before shoving forward and swing your sword at his spear wielding hand.

He wasn’t excepting this, and the spear clatter out of his hand, the shock on his face giving you enough momentum to keep pushing forward, throwing attack after attack at the man as he edged backward.

You had just managed to shove him to the ground when a cry broke your attention.

“(Y/N)!!”

You turned to see Dream, smiling, words starting to form on your lips as a spear suddenly drove through your chest.

“NO!!!!!” Dream shrieked, charging forward and quickly slashing at the mans throat before turning to where you had fallen in the grass.

“T-that one was your fault.” You mumbled as he did his best to pull your shaking body into his arms, “You-ou had t-to go distract-ing me.”

“I know,” tears flooded his eyes, “It’s gonna be okay, I’m gonna get help.”

You did your best to smile through your fear, “What would G-George say if he saw you here cuddling m- m- me without him? Huh?”

“(Y/n)....”

“Bad time for a joke I guess,” you shaky voice was disrupted by a painful cough wracking your body, “Never real-really planned on being r-r-ran through with a spear this morning.”

“It’s gonna be okay! It’s- it’s gonna be okay!” Dream desperately pushed your hair out of your face, head whipping around to where the royal soldiers were beginning to regroup, “WE- I need a medic! Please! We need a medic!”

It was the first time you’d ever heard him sound so distraught, gently you reached up to his face, “Dream- Clay, leave it alone, they won’t be able to- to do anythi-ng.”

You coughed again as he turned back to you, “Don’t say that! Don’t say that!”

“It’s just my time d-d-darling,” You gasped at the pain brought by him trying to pull you closer, “You- you gotta let go.”

“NO! You’re not gonna die! You’re not gonna leave! I won’t let you!”

“I d- don’t have your permission to d-die?” The spots floating in your vision began to grow larger, blocking out spot of his face, and the sky.

“No! You don’t! You’re not leaving! I’m not letting you!” He said desperately.

“You’ve- g-got too...”

He glared down through the valley, barking out, “I said I need a medic! Someone! Please! They need help!”

There were people hurrying up the hill now, not that you could see, as Dream continued to yell.

The spots began to grow even bigger, merging together until darkness fully overtook you and you slipped from there grasp, “I’m sorry...”

Dream tore his gaze from the approaching medical team, looking down at your now limp body, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no-”

“You can’t leave! You- your not allowed to leave us! You- you can’t- I- I didn’t give you permission to die!”

He blubbered, still trying to pull you closer to him, as if he held you tighter you wouldn’t have slipped away.

“You can’t go! I didn’t say you could go! You can’t leave! You can’t.....”

Then people were pulling you away from him, and Sapnap was pulling him up, and leading him away.

“Your highness, news of the attack on the boarder has returned.”

George stopped his anxious pacing a Wilbur led in a scarily calm Technoblade and a visibly shaking Dream into the room, Sapnap still with a firm grip on his shoulder.

“What happened? Where’s (y/n)?”

Dream started to shake more at the mention of your name, and Techno stepped forward, “(y/n)- died in combat two days ago.”

George stayed silent, so he continued, “They died a hero’s death defending our kingdom.”

The king waved them away, “Out, please.”

Wilbur nodded, and quickly Sapnap and Technoblade followed him out of the room, leaving Dream to slowly move toward George, pulling him into his arms, tears coming from both men.

“It was my fault. They were fighting- an- and I distracted them.”

“You- you what?” George croaked.

“I wasn’t thinking,” He said quietly, ducking his head as George pulled away, “Th- they died in my arms George!”

“Wh- what have you done?”

Dream looked at him in shock, “What do you mean?”

“Tell me what happened.” It was a command, said in a way Dream had never heard directed at him.

“I got there- there was fighting, when the fighting died down I still couldn’t find them- then I heard another fight- on the ridge, I got up there, and It seemed like they had won, I yelled there name- and-” He broke off, barley muffling a sob.

“You all but killed them yourself.” George muttered.

“I didn’t- th- I- George.” Dream grappled for words.

“You killed them.”

“I didn’t! George I know it’s my fault, but-”

The King just shook his head, turning and silently stalking out of the room.

The castle seemed to stay in mourning for weeks, the kings council having to take over as the king stayed shut up in his chambers, refusing to talk to anyone.

The King’s Knight became more and more vocal during meetings, providing insight on how to get back at the enemy, amplifying Sapnap’s voice.

Then, as plans were being finalized, Dream was met by another figure as he sat in front of your grave.

“You think this will make up for what you’ve done?” Georges voice was horse, rough, as if he hadn’t spoken in days, though still laced with the same venom as when he’d found out.

Dream nodded, remaining quiet as he traced the hilt of his blade.

“Tomorrow then?”

Again Dream nodded, looking down at the copy of the note that had been sent to the enemy:

‘Holy water cannot stop me now, a thousand armies couldn’t keep me out. I don’t want your money, I don’t want your crown, see I’ve come to burn your kingdom down’

#mcyt x reader #mcyt imagines #dreamwastaken x reader #georgenotfound x reader #dream x george x reader #teddy06 writes

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what-the--curtains · 3 years

Text

Not a Piece of Art

Part 1/4 - A Grudge Like No Other

(Javier Peña x f!reader)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Summary: You’re tasked with an impossible mission and an even more impossible partner to complete it with.

Authors note: I have never not once seen narcos all I know if based on other fics I’ve read so pls be kind but let me know if anything’s wildly out of character! Also I’m aware forensics wasn’t a solid discipline (especially DNA fingerprinting) but we’re gonna pretend it is. Lemme know if you’d like to be tagged (or untagged) 😊

Tw: Mentions of fake parental death, swearing, mentions of sex

Word count: 4.1k

Tagged list: @agingerindenial @diogodxlot

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The morning sun radiates down on your shoulders as you lock the door to your apartment complex behind you. Despite the early hour it was already far too hot, but at least the humidity wouldn’t kick in until the afternoon. You’d been working in Colombia for a few months now, but the heat wasn’t something you’d ever get used to. You weren’t complaining, most days you preferred it to the frigid temperatures that painted your childhood. The frost bitten noses, wool socks and thick snow falls coating tree branches seemed all but a distant memory now. You’d settled on Columbia after your long time best friend Connie convinced you to take the universities offer. She had recently made the move down south and was eager to have you there with her.

She’d told you about the job and honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if she had marched down to the university herself and dropped off your resume. She’d flown up to Brown and helped you pack up your life and then unpack it after your arrival to the terraced apartment Connie had picked out for you both to live in. It was a decent size and the balcony was south facing which gave you all day access to the sun. When you weren't working you spent your time out there soaking up the sun and watering the small garden you had been tending to since your arrival. Your days were primarily spent at the university working out the finer details of the forensics lab you were hired to set up. Your PhD in forensic anthropology has left you with various laboratory based skills, including DNA analysis, making you a coveted asset to the campus. Whilst in school you had also completed an art certificate which came in handy when facial reconstructions were needed.

After everything was in place you began running samples, processing unidentified remains by working on dental ID’s and facial reconstructions, as well as testing for drug residue. Despite being run by the University your job wasn’t as research based as you would have hoped with your work often falling under the DEA’s jurisdiction. You weren't involved in their day to day protocols. You mainly just ran the tests, or identified bodies recovered from the crime scene only conversing with them when it was absolutely necessary. Police work wasn’t in your wheelhouse, and it wasn’t a profession you supported or believed in.

Many faces passed through your workspace all demanding your utmost attention claiming their projects to be the most important. One frequent flyer through the lab was Steve Murphy, who Connie had met down in Miami a few years back. His relationship to your friend was the only reason you had bothered to make an effort with him. A friendship was established between the two of you faster than you had expected, due in part to his easy southern charm, but mainly because he and Connie evidently had feelings for eachother. You always found it easier to get along with men who weren't trying to get into your pants which was, unfortunately, a frequent occurrence in the male dominated discipline you worked in. There was only one flaw you could attribute to Steve, his work wife, the other half of the DEAs “dynamic duo”, agent Javier Peña. You’d never been formally introduced to the man, but his reputation preceded him. His was a face that also made frequent appearances in your lab but you'd never spoken more than three words to each other which was, probably for the best. You had what some might deem a confrontational personality and from what you understood Peña was, to put it nicely, an asshole.

He always came in sporting a more casual look and sunglasses which he kept on despite being indoors, a habit that drove you up the wall. He’d tap the file on the glass to get your attention always making you walk the five extra steps to get to him. You didn’t bother to look up when he passed the beige folders to you just grabbed the file from his hands and added it to the pile on your desk. He’d started attaching yellow sticky notes with “put a rush on” scrawled across them in impatient handwriting, as if his case was more important than the remains you were currently working on identifying. Not talking was a strategic move on your part, you’d heard he was quite the charmer when he needed something done, and you weren't going to let him get away with that. You ran this lab, not Javier Peña. Was your dismissal of him warranted? Maybe not, but your gut instinct was usually right and the rumour mill had painted Peña in a very specific manner. You weren't about to let yet another hot headed alpha male who took “too much male energy” to an entirely new level into your life.

Unfortunately, your knack for avoiding him became nearly impossible when you were called out to work on a crime scene. Despite your refusal to work in the field, the remains couldn’t be moved so you had to go to them. The site was just far enough away that a daily commute would have been tedious so you, along with the dynamic duo and your forensic team were booked into a nearby hotel. You weren't sure what you'd done in your past life to piss off the gods but somehow you’d ended up sandwiched between Steve and Peña. Steve wasn’t the issue, apart from the TV which you’d hear blare spanish dubbed reruns of Miami Vice between 4 and 8 PM, he was a quiet, considerate neighbour. Peña, on the other hand, was neither considerate or quiet particularly during the late hours of the night while you were trying to sleep. Sharing a wall with the agent proved to be an issue, so much so that by the third day just looking at him filled you with such intense rage that you'd given yourself lockjaw.

Every night without fail you laid awake as the exaggerated, bordering on ridiculous, moans coming from whoever he'd enticed into bed that night reverberated through your shared wall. You'd tried it all, earplugs, pillows so forcefully wrapped around your head you were essentially smothering yourself, but the sounds still permeated through the plaster and into your head. On the fourth night when you heard the talking start you knew what you had to do. You furiously wriggle free from your sheets and make your way out into the hallway. You walk one door over and inhale deeply before aggressively pounding your fist on the door.

“Hey” you say, through gritted teeth.

“Hey?” a slightly disheveled Steve murmurs eyes squirting into the hallway’s bright lights as his arms cross clumsily over his bare chest.

“Look I hate to ask but can I sleep on your couch, the walls are thin and...”

“And Peña has a thing for loud women '' he finishes for you, shoulders relaxing as he opens the door up for you “surprised you lasted this long, come in i'll grab you some pillows”

“Thanks for letting me sleep here, I think I may have killed him in the field tomorrow if I didn't get at least an hour of sleep. Also this isn’t some tactic to get you to bed so you can stop trying to cover your modesty” You say wiping your eyes, as Steve drops his arms to his side laughing.

“I know, believe me, besides i'm sure you're aware I’m only interested in one person.” So he did have a thing for Connie.

“You should go for it, I think she'd say yes” you offer, even in your sleep deprived state you were still a pretty solid wingwoman.

“You think?” His eyes light up, further cementing your belief that Steve, despite being friends with Peña, was a good guy.

“Thanks” you murmur as he hands you some pillows and a light sheet. It's not long before the AC’s quiet hum draws you into a deep sleep.

The alarm blaring out from Steve’s room pulls you from your dreaming state, groaning as you squeeze a pillow over your head. Why was it that you always felt worse after getting a good night's sleep? You briefly doze off again only waking as the smell of burnt toast convinces your brain that either a fire has started, or you were having a stroke.

“Tryna burn this place down?” you mumble, relaxing back into the couch cushions as you watch Steve scrape the burnt bits off into the garbage before buttering it and taking a bite.

“You think you got enough sleep to not kill my partner this morning?” he asks between mouthfuls.

“No, but I did get enough to realize if I killed him in the field there'd be witnesses” you remark pouring coffee into a cracked mug. “Thank you for letting me sleep here “

“Anytime, though Javi should be the one thanking me considering I basically saved his life. Lucky were leaving today or I’d have to put him into protective custody.”

“And I'll never have to hear him ever again” you say suddenly feeling a bit better. You were glad for Steve being so accommodating to your needs, especially considering he didn't really know you that well. “Well I should go get ready for the day ahead what it's supposed to be out?”

“A balmy 40” Steve offers, as he washes your cup up in the sink.

“Wow I should have packed my snow pants when I moved down here.” you dead pan, the delivery causing Steve to snort as you exit the room. As you exit, Javier opens his door kissing the woman he’d spent the night with one last time watching as she strides off down the hallway. You don’t see him, but he sees you. Specifically, he sees you leaving his partner's room, and in nothing more than an oversized t-shirt, he raised his eyebrows. Good for Steve from what he’d heard half the department had been trying to get your attention to no avail. Your head was always buried in paperwork and your ears were always donning headphones blocking out small talk, maybe he should take a page from your book. He didn’t say anything to Steve in the field, but he did watch you interact with one another. Paying specific attention to how you'd made Steve laugh while photographing the murder weapon. Javi watched as you meticulously gathered up a few finger bones that he'd overheard you saying would be used for DNA fingerprinting. He'd tried to talk to you a few times this trip, but the second he'd stepped in your direction he noticed your jaw clench and your body tense up, not wanting to upset you he decided it was best to back off. After getting what you need you packed up your things and headed back home, with no intentions of ever having to interact with Peña for more than 5 minutes ever again.

Several months later

Your lab was now contracted out full time by the DEA which meant you still got to do research but you didn’t have to teach any teenagers which was quite frankly a dream. Unfortunately, the contract meant you'd now be spending time in two male-dominated fields. The boys club offered little that would qualify as genuine friendship. Turns out the ones brave enough to approach you were only nice to you because they wanted to sleep with you. Something you’d found out after overhearing a less than true story about you from one of the guy’s you’d hooked up with. After that you’d stopped sleeping where you work and started looking elsewhere. Your few short lived romances were mainly found in dive bars only going home with people that had been thoroughly vetted (and vaguely threatened) by yourself, Connie and Steve. Who was now a relatively permanent fixture in your life after finally asking Connie out, and you really didn’t mind it. He was good to Connie and he never minded being excluded when you needed a girls' night without him. You also assumed the decrease in misogynistic talk amongst the agents was Steves doing, you made a mental note to thank him later, as you took another swig of the beer you’d been nursing for the past hour.

Steve was still inseparable from Peña and where he went Javi was sure to follow. Your inability to not become enraged by him meant you often found yourself leaving the room as soon as he showed up, subsequently cutting your Connie time in half. Devastating both you and her.

“You know he’s not really as insufferable as he acts” Connie states, Javi was due to show up any minute which meant it was just about time for you to leave.

“ You're not gonna sell me on this” you say, chewing on a stale nacho chip from food you’d ordered hours ago.

“Seriously, he's almost nice sometimes” your pointed look tells her to drop it. Connie was nothing if not resilient and you were constantly amazed by her. You don’t know how she worked as a nurse. You had a hard enough time with the dead, how she also dealt with the living as well was beyond you. She was a quantifiable saint which was probably why she saw the good in Peña.

“Remind me to never make you mad” Steve says.

“No one holds a grudge quite like her” Connie exclaims

“Awe you say the sweetest things about me” you retort after finishing the last of your beer.

“Alright well I’ve got an early morning shift so we should be heading out, tell Javi I say hi” Connie says kissing Steve before the two of you exit the bar.

“Are you really going to keep up this affront against Javi?” Connie asks, interlinking your arms together as you exit the bar.

“Yes, now please and can we stop talking about Peña even thinking about him gets me riled up”

“I thought you said you hated him” she teases causing you to roll your eyes.

“Please don't make me gag” you say pulling a face that causes you both to break into a giggle fit.

“What up her ass? Seriously, am I infectious or something?” Javi asks, slumping down across from Steve who's filling out paperwork at his desk.

“Well considering your history, probability is pretty high” Steve quips back earning him a thwack to the head with a folder you’d dropped on Peña’s desk earlier that morning.

“You know her, what's her deal, why does she hate me?”

“Everyone hates you Javi, it’s a fundamental part of your personality” Steve laughs.

Javier usually wasn��t one to concern himself with how others perceived him, but his work frequently overligned with yours and he figured his life would be made infinitely easier if he could get into your good books. Sure, at first his intrigue in getting to know you was purely physical. He knew looks aren't everything, but for what he wanted, they played a fundamental part. He wasn’t the only person to have noticed you the day you showed up, all eyes were on you as you walked through the DEA embassy for the first time. Your arrival had sparked a competitive energy amongst the men with the agents often vying over who got the honour of dropping off case files to you. A few were apparently even so lucky to have actually spent the night, at least that's what he’d overheard some agents proclaiming loudly, making him doubt their validity.

He’d cracked down on what some would call “locker room talk” when he thought you and Steve were sleeping together, after seeing you leave his room early that one morning. Though if Steve had been spending nights with you he’d never brought it up to Javi, and after he started dating Connie there never seemed a right time to ask about you, so he let it go. He’d gotten more proactive with stopping it once you’d been hired on full time. He’d upped his guard when he’d caught one trying to cop a feel of your ass the day you had been called in on your day off. You’d come in wearing a skirt shorter than what would be considered workplace appropriate gaining you more attention than usual. He noticed the guys hand drop down low, but any contact was stopped when Javi smashed the guys arm back into the wall behind him. In most cases a move like that would have earned him a swift punch to the face but a simple raise of his eyebrows was enough to get the pervert to sit back down.

Despite the scene playing out a few feet from you, you never noticed carrying on about your day as if nothing had happened, headphones on, paperwork in your arms and various scrawlings across your hand, reminders of meetings he knew you'd be late to anyways. He assumes your chronic lateness was a tactic to spend as little time around him as possible. Your hatred for him was palpable, he wondered if it was as obvious to everyone else as it was to him. He'd noticed how you would stand in meetings when the only seat available was next to him. It was starting to get to his ego. He wanted to know what he possibly could have done to be treated like the scum of the earth by you. He’d heard from Connie that you didn’t like cops, but you got on fine with Steve. Your lives continued on with minimal interaction until the day you were called into the head of the DEA’s office.

“Office now!” your boss shouts from the door. Fuck. What have you done now?

“Hey you need something?” you ask, lips parted and forehead wrinkled, feeling like a child who’d just been called to the principal's office. Your head snaps to the left when you feel eyes boring into you, eyes belonging to Peña. He shifts around in the chair to escape your violent gaze. You turn to Steve who's gazing up at the ceiling.

“I have the dental results here for the missing persons from the case last week, it’s a match, I know it's late but...”

“It's not that,” he gestures his hand to the chair beside Peña and you sit, placing the documents down on the table. Javi cranes his neck slightly, eyes darting over the various statistics strewn across the page surprised you were able to piece it all together.

“You have an art degree right?”

“I have an art certificate” you correct

“and you paint”

“A bit”

“She was featured in local galleries back in the States” Steve pipes up.

“ Good, we need you to go undercover” you snort before laughing aloud. Your amusement quickly fades when you realize no one else was laughing with you.

“Wait you're serious? You want me... to go undercover? I'm not an agent, I can’t use a gun, I don’t think I've even held one before” you say, tearing through all the excuses you could think of.

“You can shoot a bow and arrow,” Steve pipes up.

“Ya very different instrument Steve, also does Connie tell you everything about me” he shrugs his shoulders.

“You won’t need a gun anyways, you'll have a trained agent with you at all times.” Your boss reassures.

“No. No way! Im sorry but this… this is beyond the scope of my work and my skill set” you assert, not budging.

“You’ve been to crime scenes before, you’ve been in dangerous scenarios, excavated mass graves, we need you you’re the only one who can help with this”

“Why? You have multiple agents out there who would kill to go undercover, why me?” you push

“ Your background, and relative anonymity. There's been an increase in art dealing amongst the sicarios.”

“So what? Maybe they just really like art.” you offer

“Does anyone really like art” Peña pipes up

“ Yes, the whole world actually” you shoot back, successfully shutting him up.

“We think they're using convincing fakes to smuggle drugs without suspicion” Steve offered, helping to clear up the situation.

“Okay... then hire an art expert to go in and see if the paintings are real”

“We need you to test for residue on the paintings, and to recreate one in time for the next move”

“Okay im good, but I am not good enough to recreate a painting worth thousands of dollars.”

“From what I’ve seen you are,” Steve says further cementing your fate.

“What if I say no?” you ask, exhaling deeply.

“Then you're fired” Javier pipes up, once again causing your head to turn to him.

“And who, pray tell, made you judge, jury and executioner” you spit “last time I check Javier Peña wasn’t the one signing my paychecks”

“No, but I am, and you will do this” Your boss's backing of Peñas statement makes the smirk on his face even more aggravating.

“Fine, but just know I will be personally mentioning you all in my will so everyone knows exactly who got me killed, and I'm gonna want a raise, more vacation time and a new piece of lab equipment if I make it out alive. ”

“Fine” you smile feeling slightly vindicated.

“So what's my story? Who am I to have a million dollar painting in my possession?” you ask, as your boss pulls up a document on his computer.

“You’ll go by Melanie Alverez nee Smith, you were born in London England to parents Maria and Calvin who passed in a car accident four weeks after your nineteenth birthday”

“Shit” you mutter, thinking about your own parents who were very much alive.

“You dropped out of Oxford where you were undertaking a degree in chemistry and moved to New York where you began painting. You were a struggling artist for the first two years but received funding to attend Julliard. After graduation your first major piece was accepted by a local gallery and put up for auction. It sold for 10,000$. The buyer wanted to meet you after seeing your photo. He’d sent thousands of flowers to your gallery before showing up and asking you on a date.

“Must be nice” you murmur

“After a whirlwind romance you eloped and moved down to Columbia where you continue to work as an artist.”

“Alright easy enough, short live romance is a good call that can be used to explain why we don’t know certain information about each other.”

“You'll be staying here” A huge spanish style house appears on the screen. Its prestige was only overshadowed by the mansion looming over it from across the private beach. Must be the target's house, you think.

“It was built by the target, he lives there with his fourth wife. He’s rich, sources claims from drug smuggling, they think he may even have direct links to Escobar

“Like, as in Pablo?” you ask, eyes widening.

“Apparently he’s his art dealer. We need you to go in and see what he knows, if it's not enough then test the paintings in their homes”

“And if they trace?”

“You'll give them the fake implemented with a tracking device so we can target its route.”

“Okay well I'd say easy enough but the threat of being murdered isn’t lost on me. Who's my husband anyways? Obviously he’s rich but did he tragically fall down the stairs and die, did I kill him?” you ask, smiling as Steve laughs.

“What?” you say looking up

“What...” you say as Steve refuses to meet your eyes as he chokes on his laugh.

“Well you haven’t killed him yet but I give it a week.” He responds.

“Who's my husband” you ask, again suddenly afraid and very aware that there were two men in this room, and one was currently laughing at you.

“Your lucky day sweetheart.” Your head turns comically slow to face Javi, the effect only causes Steve to snicker more.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” you whisper.

“This mission is anything, but a joke.” your boss interjects “If we can trace the arts movement it brings us one step closer to catching Escobar. I don’t know why there's animosity between you two and frankly I do not care. You two must work together. If you are to succeed you have to be believable. Study up on each others aliases the target hasn’t made it this far without being killed by being stupid. We’ve tried to get to him before with no success, he will be on high alert. You two will have to convince him, and his wife, that you’re sincere.”

#javi x reader #javi x you #javi x y/n #Peña x reader #Peña x you #javier pena x reader #Javier Peña x you #narcos fanfic #agent peña x reader #agent Peña x you #not a piece of art #part 1

80 notes · View notes

vespertineflora · 4 years

Text

3zun Combo Fics

XiYao

we're alone in the dark E, During Canon, Classroom Sex, 4.6k It's the first time Jin Guangyao has had the chance to use the jade token Lan Xichen had given him for free passage in and out of the Cloud Recesses, and it's during this first late evening visit that Jin Guangyao discovers that Lan Xichen has been having fantasies about him for far longer than he ever could have guessed--and that Lan Xichen is very eager to act on one such fantasy.

your love is all i can think about E, During Canon/AU, Love Letters/Sneaking Around, 10.4k After Lan Xichen finally goes all the way with Jin Guangyao in the aftermath of the Sunshot Campaign, responsibility forces the two apart for far longer than either of them care for. When they finally get to see each other again after three long months, having to sit through hours of a discussion conference when the love of his life is just across the room is more than the poor, sexually pent up Lan Xichen can bear, especially as Jin Guangyao seems to realize he likes the effect he's having on him.

in your warmth i forget how cold it can be E, During Canon, Cold Weather Coziness, 3.3k After a long day of traveling in unexpectedly heavy snowfall, Jin Guangyao arrives in the Cloud Recesses and needs Lan Xichen to warm him up.

rest with me a while E, During Canon, Fluff/Smut, 3.8k The day of the Phoenix Mountain Hunt is a stressful one for Jin Guangyao; Lan Xichen can see how tense he is from just a glance. His offer to help Jin Guangyao with his preparations has been turned down more than once, so Lan Xichen isn't sure what he can possibly do to help him... until he realizes there might be one way he might be able to add a bright spot to Jin Guangyao's day. no angels could beckon me back M, During Canon, Post-Coital Cuddling/Confessions, 1.6k What he had with Lan Xichen should have been enough; Jin Guangyao hadn't intended to confess his feelings, and he certainly hadn't meant for them to be confessed like this.

bare your heart to me E, During Canon, Smut and Hurt/Comfort, 9.5k It's impossible for Lan Xichen to say when he first takes notice of it, but a strange exchange one night makes him realize something rather concerning: he hasn't seen Jin Guangyao's naked body in nearly a year. The realization leads to Lan Xichen chasing after the answer to this mystery, ultimately uncovering a painful truth about the daily horrors of Jin Guangyao's life in Carp Tower.

Daylight Can Be So Violent (series) (in progress, but all pieces are functional one shots) if i told you what i’ve become E, During Canon, Confessions/First Times, 13.7k (pt 1) It's Lan Xichen's first visit to Lanling since Jin Guangyao's ascent to the position of Chief Cultivator the previous month, and with everything he's been through recently, he's perhaps tenser than he otherwise would be, spending a peaceful evening with his dearest friend. Luckily, Jin Guangyao has some ideas about the best ways to relieve stress.

heaven help me (i need to make this right) E, During Canon, Light Bondage, 8k (pt 2) The last few months have been... more than Lan Xichen could have ever hoped for. The reconstruction of the Cloud Recesses is complete, which means his uncle is in a good mood. His brother is healed, moving around and spending time with A-Yuan. And his relationship with Jin Guangyao... well, to put it simply, Lan Xichen couldn't be much happier--though Jin Guangyao has no shortage of ideas for them. It's during one of his regular visits to Lanling that Jin Guangyao suggests they... try doing things a different way.

and i'd do anything E, During Canon, Candle Wax/Praise Kink, 4.7k (pt 3) "Do you trust me?" It was that question, and Lan Xichen's resounding yes, that had landed him here, his wrists tied to the bed posts above his head, silk scarf wrapped lovingly around his eyes, his chest heaving with every hard breath, his cock dripping precum in a sticky pool against his stomach, and drips of wax in various stages of hardness scattered all across his skin.

if there was nowhere to land (i wouldn’t be scared at all) T, During Canon, 5+1fic/angst, 10.7k Meng Yao hasn't lead an easy life. He's been pushed around, beaten, and taken advantage of for nearly as long as he can remember... Falling down stairs is one of the worst things he's been through, and he's fallen more times than anyone should have to. OR Five times someone makes Meng Yao fall down a staircase, and one time someone saves him from falling.

they call me underneath M, Post-Canon, Grief/Mourning, 4.2k Lan Xichen never intended to visit the cemetery where his sworn brothers were interred together, but now that he's here, he can't make himself leave without at least trying.

a fine time to regret T, During Canon, Grief/Comfort, 2.3k As it turned out, even knowing Jin Rusong was going to die didn't give Jin Guangyao the chance to prepare himself for it.

NieYao

hold on to what we are T, During Canon, Fluff, 1.9k Meng Yao is dedicated to working harder than ever as the Sunshot Campaign is ramping up, but Nie Mingjue wants him to come to bed.

if you need it, then i need it (and only we'll know) E, During Canon, Sex Pollen, 13.1k Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue are on what they assume to be a normal scouting mission into Wen territory--but the day is turned on its head when they get a bit too close to some strange looking plants that release a thick cloud of pollen as they approach. By the time they make it back to camp, they're both already feeling the effects, and the camp's doctor has some mixed news to share. The bad news? The pollen will lead to a deadly qi deviation if left untreated. The good news? They know how to treat it! Now it's just up to Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue to act on it (and on the feelings they've been secretly harboring for one another for months).

when it comes time to rest my head E, Canon Divergent, Hurt/Comfort, 20.8k When Nie Mingjue spots the freshly bloodied handkerchief Jin Guangyao accidentally drops, his first sickening conclusion is that he's just caught him in the middle of some nefarious deed--but Nie Mingjue investigates further, and instead uncovers a series of injuries across Jin Guangyao's body that tell a much more heart-wrenching tale than the one Nie Mingjue first suspected. Can Nie Mingjue earn back enough of Jin Guangyao's trust to get him to accept the help he so clearly needs? Can he convince Jin Guangyao... to come back to Qinghe with him? i need your broken promises E, Canon Divergent, Werecat!JGY, 11.7k The night Meng Yao is promoted to be Nie Mingjue's deputy, he makes two requests: to be left alone on the night of the full moon, and to not be asked why he needs to be left alone. Nie Mingjue is extremely curious about this odd appeal, but he honors it regardless. Years later, when Nie Mingjue proposes, Meng Yao repeats his requests as the only stipulations for their marriage, and Nie Mingjue once again promises to let Meng Yao keep his secret... until he realizes that perhaps the secret isn't as well kept as he once thought, and he confronts Meng Yao to learn the truth.

the day bleeds into nightfall T, During Canon, Angst and Romance, 2.5k When Wen Chao attacks the Unclean Realm, Meng Yao rushes to release Xue Yang, and Nie Mingjue catches him stabbing his general. Nie Mingjue might have thought he was doing Meng Yao a mercy when he banished him... but Meng Yao isn't sure he agrees.

love me hard oh, love me right E, Modern AU, Rule 63 PWP, 2k Sometimes Meng Yao just needs to be gently dommed by her girlfriend until she cries, and you know what? That's valid.

the love held in her hands E, Modern Fantasy AU, Rule 63/Fairy!MY, 3k When Nie Mingjue's tiny fairy girlfriend asks to be fingered, Nie Mingjue immediately considers it to be a bad idea... but when her search for something more appropriately-sized drags on too long, she decides to give in to Meng Yao's impatient demands.

NieLan

the common tongue of your loving me E, Modern AU, 69ing, 3.7k Lan Huan and Nie Mingjue have been dating for almost two years now, but Nie Mingjue is always coming up with ways for him and his beau to have some new sort of fun in the bedroom. (Submission for NieLan Month 2020, Day 22 Desperation/Beauty/Awe. This is also the 69th fic I've uploaded to my AO3 account haha)

3zun

home is where my love waits E, Modern AU, Sexted Pics & DP, 5.1k Meng Yao is out of town on business for the weekend and Lan Huan and Nie Mingjue have the brilliant idea to send their absent boyfriend some spicy material to keep him warm while he's away (and definitely not because teasing him is very fun). When Meng Yao gets back to his hotel room at night to discover the proverbial feast, he's both very turned on and very frustrated to be so far away--but luckily for Meng Yao, they have more than adequate plans to make up for their teasing once he gets home.

i’ve had no love like your love E, Modern AU, happy birthday jgy!3some, 9.2k It's Meng Yao's birthday, and after working all day, he travels to Nie Mingjue's place in a swiftly escalating winter storm, where a night of warm wine and even warmer company awaits... Nie Mingjue and a tipsy Lan Huan have a delightful plan in place on just how they can warm him up.

how could i ask for more E, Modern Genderbend AU, CNC Roleplay, 14.3k When Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue ask Lan Huan what she wants for her birthday, they strongly imply it can be a sexual favor. Lan Huan asks for so little in the bedroom; she always seems content to just join in whatever activities her girlfriends partake in and never makes specific requests for herself. Of course, when Lan Huan actually indulges their suggestion, the last thing they expect from her is a detailed, written fantasy that she hands to them with an entirely red face... But if such a thing is what Lan Huan wants, Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue will make sure to give her exactly what she's asking for. Written for Whumptober 2020, Theme No 6. PLEASE… (“Get it Out” | No More | “Stop, please”).

there’s a hole in my soul (can you fill it?) E, Modern AU, Hurt/Comfort & Panic Attacks, 6.2k Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue were exes... until Lan Xichen fell in love with both of them and they decided to set aside their differences for his sake. When they're all together, life is bliss--but Meng Yao's relationship with Nie Mingjue is strained at best, and he notices early on in this reconciliation that the only time Nie Mingjue seems willing to hold him or be affectionate with him is after they have sex. Meng Yao has learned that, on the rare nights and weekends when Lan Xichen is away and he needs affection, that having sex with Nie Mingjue is the quickest and easiest way to get it. Lan Xichen just so happens to be out of town after Meng Yao has a particularly bad day at work. He needs the comfort more than ever, but when he tries to get it from Nie Mingjue the only way he knows how, it doesn't go the way he plans.

in my arms you’re safe and sound T, Vampire AU, Hurt/Comfort & Feeding, 2.9k Jin Guangyao is a dhampir who is fully turned when his father accepts him into the family--but Jin Guangshan treats him terribly, and when Nie Mingjue begins to realize how far this mistreatment goes, he drags Jin Guangyao off for a conversation which quickly escalates into an emotional shouting match that results in Nie Mingjue deciding that Jin Guangyao needs to be removed from Carp Tower immediately. Lan Xichen finds them just in time for the three sworn brothers to head together back to Qinghe, where Lan Xichen personally discovers one of the many awful things Jin Guangshan has done to hurt Jin Guangyao.

how were we to know E, Canon Divergent, MAJOR HURT/comfort, 12.9k (check AO3 for warnings on this one!) After the Sunshot Campaign, Meng Yao took Lan Xichen's offer to come live with him in the Cloud Recesses, sparking the beginning of their romantic relationship--which in turn uncovered their individual romantic histories with Nie Mingjue, and led to a shared romantic present with him. In the years since, the three have been in love and quite happy with their shared arrangement. However, eventual grief lingered at the back of their thoughts; they all knew the effect the saber spirit was gradually having on Nie Mingjue's mind and on his temperament, causing more frequent and more violent outbursts... Though none of them could have guessed the particular sort of violence it would lead Nie Mingjue to commit one night alone with Meng Yao.

when you are lost and i am gone M, Canon Divergent, Character Death, 2k When Lan Xichen had received the letter from Meng Yao, he'd left the camp at once to meet him in the forest outside of Nightless City, but even still, he arrives a second too late to do anything but watch as one of his friends cuts down the other. a light on the other side M, Modern AU, JGY-centric, 2.6k As a child, Meng Yao had only ever met his father in passing, as he had a family of his own and wanted little to do with the child that resulted from his affair with Meng Yao's mother. But when Meng Shi passed away tragically, 13 year old Meng Yao was sent to live with his father, spending the rest of his teen years in a living hell until he was able to escape... A few years later, another affair and another tragedy brought infant Mo Xuanyu into the Jin household and Meng Yao returned to keep him safe from the fate he'd suffered himself. Life there is awful, though not nearly as bad as it was before, as Meng Yao spends most of his time alone caring for Mo Xuanyu. However, a few months into his return, Meng Yao is presented with a unique opportunity when, late one night, he finds Jin Guangshan collapsed on the floor of his office.

#3zun #xiyao #nieyao #nielan #mdzs #cql #wrote a thing #vesper posts

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night-time-writing · 3 years

Text

The Blind Date

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28687965

Summary: Natsuo and Hari are done with Toya and Kai being little shits, and set them up on a blind date. (Hero AU)

Word Count: 2729

Toya was not having a good day, and it just kept getting worse. It all started with a villain attack. The villain had a quirk that created grenades, which he was throwing around. The bigger the bomb, the longer it took to create. The villain had gotten a pretty good hit on Toya when he showed up at the scene, which hurt like hell. He then overused his own quirk while talking down the villain, which led to some nasty burns on top of his earlier injuries. Now he had to go to his doctor. The best in the business? Yes. The most annoying man to walk the earth? Double yes.

When Dr. Chisaki walked into the room, Toya glared at him. Some nurses had already come in and given Toya some medication for the pain, what he could still feel was manageable enough. Toya had a pretty high pain tolerance thanks to his quirk, which burnt him when he used it too much. Because he was constantly burning himself, he got Dr. Chisaki as his doctor, who he had to see much more than he would like.

Dr. Chisaki had a quirk that allowed him to deconstruct and reconstruct things. He used it to deconstruct Toyas damaged skin and then reconstruct it back to healthy skin. It was important because without Dr. Chisaki, he would have permanent burn scars and probably a good deal of near each damage.

“Of course you are back here so soon. You never learn do you?” Dr. Chisaki said, setting his clipboard down and pulling off his gloves.

“It’s not like I can control it. You really think I wanna see your ugly ass face this early in the morning? Or ever?” Dr. Chisaki paused and gave Toya an unimpressed look.

“I saw your fight on TV. You were reckless, got hit, then panicked and used too much of your fire at once.”

“I didn’t panic.” Toya argued. “I did what I had to in order to keep the civilians safe.”

Dr. Chisaki scoffed as he washed his hands. “Like you actually care about civilians. You're just a spoiled rich boy who likes the attention that heroism gives you.”

This comment made Toya’s blood boil. Who did he think he was? Chisaki didn’t know the first thing about him. He was just another asshole who judged him based on who his family was.

“And you're a germophobic asshole who likes to tear people down in order to feel better about your sad pathetic existence.”

They glared at each other for a moment. Then Dr. Chisaki reached out and touched Toya’s arm. Toya felt a flash of pain and then he was fine. He looked down and all the burns were gone, Toya wasn’t sure he would ever get used to that.

Dr. Chisaki walked back to the sink to wash his hands once again. “We are all done here. You can leave.”

Toya didn’t need to be told twice and he quickly matched out of the room. He signed all the necessary papers before heading to the pediatric floor in search of his brother.

Toya found his brother by the nurses station, seemingly waiting. It was Natsuo’s lunch break and he should have been eating. Toya suspected that he was waiting for him. Whenever Toya had to see Dr. Chisaki, he always went to find Natsuo afterwards. Natsuo would take a small break and Toya would rant and rave about the encounter. Chisaki never failed to piss Toya off.

“If you want to rant, you're gonna have to buy me lunch first.” Natsuo said as he walked off towards the elevators. Toya laughed at his brother lightly. Toya knew the only reason he would be this grumpy and demanding is because he didn’t get enough coffee today.

…

Once they got to the closest restaurant to the hospital, Natsuo went to sit at the table, waiting to be able to order some coffee. Natsuo knew the coffee here wasn’t great. Yet it was loads better than the coffee at the hospital. Though, honestly, at this point he didn’t really care how it tasted, he just needed the caffeine.

Natsuo had a full shift yesterday, then he was on call all night. He also had to go to a family dinner, which was always a nightmare. Toya, Enji, and Shoto got into a huge fight over nothing. Then Natsuo was called in at two in the morning because one of his kids got worse in the middle of the night. Then by the time they were stable again, it was time for his morning shift.

Natsuo was starting to get impatient for his coffee when Toya approached the table. He was followed closely by a waiter, carrying coffee.

“You know me so well.” Natsuo joked as the coffee was placed in front of him.

“It’s the least I could do, considering you always listen to my shit.”

Toya then began the same rant he always gave. His doctor was a jerk ... blah blah blah. He assumes he knows everything … blah blah blah. It was always the same rant, just a few slight details changed. The two always bickered and it always pissed Toya off. A small part of Natsuo felt like Toya liked his doctor and that’s why he acted the way he did. But truthfully, Natsuo just wanted Toya to date someone. Then Toya wouldn’t constantly complain to him about his problems.

By the time Natsuo made it back to work, he felt a bit better thanks to the coffee. However, he was still tired , and he wanted a permanent solution to his little brother problem.

“Your brother again?” Kurono asked. Kurono was a nurse who often worked with Natsuo. They had become friends over the time they worked together. They bonded over the fact that they both had people who went to the to complain all the time. For Kurono it was his childhood friend Kai,

“It’s always my brother. It’s the same thing every time. I just wish he had someone else to monopolize his time.”

“I know what you mean. I swear Kai hasn’t done anything but work since we met.” Kurono shook his head. Then all of a sudden his face lit up. “Here’s an idea, let’s kill two birds with one stone. What if we set up Kai with your brother? If they hit it off, we would both be free.”

“Oh my god, that would be amazing. Do you think Kai will go for it? I know I can get Toya to at least sit through a whole first date.”

“I can get him to agree to stay through the dinner. I have a lot to hold over him.”

…

Toya was not excited for dinner. Natsuo was able to convince him to go on another blind date. Well actually he threatened to volunteer him for all family functions if he didn’t at least go through the whole date. Natsuo often set Toya up on dates. However, they were usually so horrible that Toya no longer sat through the whole thing. Toya doubted that Natsuo’s taste had gotten any better, but he didn’t want to deal with his family any more than he already had to.

On his way to the restaurant, Toya saw a guy trying to rob a poor couple. He was able to take the guy down pretty easily so he didn’t burn up his skin or his clothes. However, he was now running late. He hoped that Natsuo wouldn’t consider being late as him trying to get out of the date.

Toya pushed open the restaurant doors, walking up to the hostess. “Reservation for Todoroki.”

She looked down for a second before smiling back up at him. “Right this way. The rest of your party is already here.”

As they walked through the restaurant Toya saw a man sitting at a table alone. The man was looking away from him, out the window. He had a glass of wine and no food, like he was waiting for someone. It then occurred to Toya that this was probably his date. Toya then really looked at him. The man's hair was brown and actually brushed, which was already a step up from the last date he had. He also appeared to be dressed nicely from what he could see. He had a nice white button up on, and it didn’t look like it was even wrinkled.

However, as they approached the table that the man sat at, Toya noticed something. The man was wearing white gloves, very familiar white gloves, worn by none other than Dr. Chisaki. For a moment he considered turning around and walking out of the restaurant. Then he remembered how much time he would have to spend with his father if he left. Begrudgingly he continued to walk towards the table.

Once they were by the table, the girl motioned towards the table before walking off. Chisaki then looked over at Toya as he sat down. As Toya looked at Chisaki, whose face was filled with shock and a bit of disgust, it occurred to Toya that he might not be able to leave, but Chisaki could. Considering how nether like that the other, it shouldn’t take long, though it was surprising that Chisaki hadn’t already gotten up and left.

“Well at least you're an improvement from the last guy my brother set me up with. He was unemployed, and he definitely hadn’t showered for at least a week. Whereas you're a doctor, and you clean up quite nicely.”

Chisaki rolled his eyes, “I don’t want to deal with you antics tonight Todoroki. So, let’s just be quiet, get some food, and then leave.”

Toya watched Chisaki lift his glass of wine and take a sip. Toya furrowed his brow, who does this guy think he is? “What antics? I was being nice.”

“You were being condescending.” Chisaki set his glass down and glared at Toya. “You're a rich spoiled brat who looks down on everyone around you, just like the rest of your family.”

“You know what? You are just another douchebag who compares me to my father. I am not my father.” Toya could feel his anger rising. He knew this could come back to bite him in the ass, but, at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Chisaki struck the wrong cord.

“I’m not comparing you to your father, you are your own person. I was just saying that you're a spoiled rich asshole. These things aren’t necessarily synonymous. As a matter of fact, your father worked for the money, you just inherited it.” Chisaki looked honestly confused by Toya’s outburst.

Toya paused, his anger waging just a bit. “Then what are your thoughts on Endeavor?” Here was the true test of the night.

Chisaki rolled his eyes. “He is an entitled asshole who believes the world revolves around him. He is also okay with walking all over people and pushing them down to get to where he wants to go.”

Toya’s anger was gone as he smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps Natsuo really didn’t choose horribly.” Toya chuckled.

Chisaki looked even more confused now. Honestly Toya liked him a lot more now. He highly doubted that they were going to date like Natsuo wanted. Or even become friends for that matter, afterall, Chisaki still hated him. However, he now found Chisaki’s company more enjoyable now that he knew that Chisaki didn’t like his father, or compare Toya to his father like everyone else seemed to.

That’s when the waiter made his way over to the table and took their order. Toya didn’t even need to look at the menu. This was the same place Natsuo always set up Toya’s bind dates. Chisaki on the other hand, carefully perused the menu before picking what he wanted to eat.

Once the waiter was gone Toya smiled at Chisaki. “Tell me again, what are all the reasons you hate Endeavor? Please don't leave anything out.” Toya leaned forward, resting his head in his hand.

“First of all, I don't just hate Endeavor. I hate most hero’s, they tend to think they are better than the general populace. They also tend to only care about their ranking, above the people they are supposed to be saving. And I definitely don't like spoiled rich boys who only got to where they are because of their parents.”

The last point was definitely supposed to be a jab at Toya, especially with the pointed look Chisaki sent his way. However, it just caused him to laugh at Chisaki.

“What’s so funny?” Chisaki demanded more than asked. He was clearly reaching the end of his patience.

“For someone who thinks they are so smart, you really don't know anything. It's funny to me that you think my father has anything to do with where I am now.”

Chisaki gave Toya an unimpressed look.

“Sure, when I was younger he trained me, wanted me to become the number one hero pro hero. But, once Shoto was born, he didn't care anymore. The only person in my family that my father cares about other than himself is Shoto. I got to where I am by working my ass off. If you look into my history, you'll see that I have never once worked with or for Endeavor.”

Chisaki pulled out his phone and begane typing. There were plenty of databases and websites that looked at who every pro hero has worked with and studied under. Toya knew the moment that Chisaki finished looking at the information on Toya. Chisaki looked at Toya, decently shocked and impressed.

“Do you still use your fathers money?”

“Nope. The minute I could, I distanced myself from my father. Though I do still have to go to family outings. But, it is fun to try and piss him off during them.”

Chisaki smiled and shook his head at Toya. Chisaki relaxed and looked like he too was beginning to actually enjoy himself.

The waiter then came to their table and dropped off their food. Their conversation then moved from work to their interests and stopped being as antagonistic.

After they finished eating, they paid and went to leave, only to find out that they both walked to the restaurant. As it turned out that both lived near the restaurant and decently near each other, to the point where they walked the same direction. So, they decided to walk together.

Once they reached the spit off point Toya stopped Chisaki. “You know, if you don't still hate me, you could come and be my date to a family dinner next Sunday. Then we could piss Endeavor off. It would be great.”

“Don't you think we should go on more dates before I meet your family?”

“Is this you telling me you want to go out again?” Toya smirked.

Chisiki shrugged before holding out his hand. “Give me your phone.” Toya complied. “This is my number. Give me a call and we can discuss a second date.” Chisaki then turned and walked down the street.

Toya found himself smiling the rest of the way home. For once, he had really enjoyed his blind date.

Bonus:

Toya collapsed on the ground. He had spent all day hauling boxes into his new shared apartment. Now Kai expected him to unpack? He was exhausted.

“You’re so lazy.” Kai complained kicking Toya’s foot.

“You know, that first date we had. I had almost walked out the minute I saw you. The only reason I didn’t was because Natsuo said that if I left another date early he would volunteer me for all the family get togethers.” He said, cranking his head to look at his boyfriend, who was just laughing at him.

“I almost left when you showed up at the table, but Hari said that if I left early or didn’t show up then he would make sure I got the worst nurse for the next three months. I decided I hate her more than I hated you.”

They were both laughing now. To think, if it weren’t for the fact that they had both managed to piss off the two people who mattered the most to them. Who also just so happened to know each other. Then they would have never gotten together.

Request for Anonymous

#bnha #mha #bnha dabi #overhaul #kai chisaki #natsuo todoroki #chronostasis #dabihaul #dabi is a todoroki #touya todoroki #hero au #hero dabi #doctor overhaul

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

He Imagines Going Home: Dex

Dex, your angst is killing my ability to write coat-smut and I hope you’re happy

CW: References to serious trauma and violence, broken bones, stitches, blood, etc. But no real violence here. Just some references/implications.

I made myself cry again with this one. Dex’s POV destroys me, every time. Read Dismantled, Insecurity by @spiffythespook, and Reconstruction for context. Oh my god I have to make a Wrex Master List and new moodboard don’t I.

When she wants him to brew the coffee, three days after she nearly killed him, he cannot stand. She comes into his room, into the warm darkness he's been sinking in and out of, and orders him to stand.

He tries.

He fails.

Instead he crumbles to the ground and lands in a graceless heap, barely managing to catch himself - wait wrong hand no no no too late - and he doesn't scream when his weight lands on the splints and broken fingers of his right hand.

He exhales, slow and deliberate, as agony blossoms up his arm and settles into his mind. There might be a whine - not quite a whimper - that laces the edges of the air as it leaves his lungs, but other than that… he doesn’t scream.

He tries to be silent.

He succeeds.

"Disgraceful. Three days of stubble, three days without a shower. You are an absolute fucking wretch." Her voice is low. “You should be dead. You don’t deserve the mercy I have given you.” She has done this to him, but it was his fault. He let her see that he is not her perfect masterpiece, after all. This is all his fault.

"You have lazed in bed long enough. I told you to stand up."

He tries.

He fails, again.

At least this time he manages to slump onto his knees. She has always liked them kneeling. She likes it now, he can feel the tension in the air shift and dissipate, just a little. After twenty years, Dex knows Karen Renford inside and out. He has made only a few mistakes.

He should have known better than to fight her, defy her insistence he not see Wright again. From the moment he signed why, he had been walking into her trap. She knew, she knew that he loved someone when he was not meant to have that feeling. He couldn’t keep that knowledge from her any longer.

All he can keep a secret, now, is that he wants to believe he isn’t the only one who feels it.

She stares down at him, and he can't bear to look up. Broken man, beaten and battered, my own fault. He keeps his eyes on the floor. She doesn’t command him to look, so he doesn’t. He is afraid if he looks, he won’t be able to hide how much he hates her any longer.

His face throbs, a pulse of pain along the stitches in time with his heartbeat. Disfigured. He had wondered if it would be enough to ruin him, in the eyes of the only person who called him beautiful when he was not bleeding.

Dex knows she sent him a photo of Dex's face to test the other man, to see how angry he would get.

Lovely work, darling.

Tears threaten again - hot and insistent, and he has cried so much in three days that his eyes feel worn and painful - and he fights them back. His message to Karen was a lie, Dex is sure of it. He is certain, and he breathes the message, in and out, like a heartbeat. Paradise Lost by the history section on a Tuesday.

Peter's voice but Wright's words - the words meant only for him. Dex clings to that message with what battered, cracked hope he has left. Sorry for what she did. He wants you to know that he called for you.

For you.

Not her.

Wright likes him as he is, has spent so long pushing apart the empty spaces to find what Dex had so carefully hidden inside, and he can’t keep going if it has been a lie all along.

Wright often compared him to Kintsukuroi, broken pottery where the cracks have been filled with gold. At first, Wright had suggested the gold came from Karen. Later, he had said - in Dex's ear, a breath and want against his skin - that Dex himself was the gold. Filling in her edges with the parts of his own true personality that Wright helped him to rediscover and bring to the light.

Outside, the sun has not yet risen - but Karen Renford has always been up before dawn, making use of the grayish half-light to take some time for herself.

My house is so full, She says with a smile to guests at parties, and her four Box Boys - three from the Facility and poor Henry, who never stood a chance once she got her claws in him - don’t speak a word of disagreement. Obedient, and any of them could walk right out the gate - except Henry - but they don’t.

They can’t.

In the present, Karen’s foot - bare, and it is so rare that he sees her without her red-soled heels, only in these soft gray hours of the morning - taps on the floor impatiently. He swallows, and manages, with a groan he bites back behind his teeth, to push back until he is sitting on his heels.

Everything hurts, and there is no part of him, inside or out, that isn’t begging for it to stop.

"If you can't stand," Karen says, her voice cold, "Then you will crawl. I trusted you, Dex, and you betrayed that trust. Go downstairs and make my coffee. I will be down when I am dressed. Don't dawdle. You will not appreciate my response if the coffee is not at least brewing when I am ready.”

He tries to be silent.

He succeeds.

He cradles his broken hand on his lap, and waits for her to leave. Watches her feet turn on a dime to walk lightly, nearly soundlessly, out of his room. Hears the sound of the hallway bathroom door opening and closing. The shower turns on.

He tries to stand.

He fails.

He crawls.

Bruised skin aches, cuts and welts are pulled back open - and Seb won’t like cleaning them again, Dex thinks dimly, as he crawls out into the hallway on the second floor. They will soak the loose, light-colored shirt and pants he was given with more drops of blood. The red will spread and spread and dry brown, and it’s been so long since Dex had to wash blood out of his own clothing, and he cannot even stand to scrub at the stains now.

His bones are screaming, as he navigates the stairs awkwardly, having to slide down like a child. Sit on the step, place your feet, balance with your good hand, pull yourself down.

Each thump to the next step, and the next, is an agony.

He grinds his teeth together as hard as he can, breathing harsh and fast through his nose, and keeps going.

He tries to stay silent.

He succeeds.

When he makes it to the bottom, to the landing, he can see the front door. There was never a time, in his life in this house, where Dex could have walked away. He is too broken, too bent to her will. He can’t walk out now.

But for the first time in more than fifteen years, Dex stares at the door and he dreams about it. He pictures himself, standing tall and unbeaten, with his hair sort of ruffled the way Wright likes it.

He thinks of himself, in the green sweater Wright gave him and a simple pair of black pants, turning the doorknob with an unbroken hand. He thinks about stepping outside to look at the grayish-pink sky, about walking with even steps to the front gate.

He fights the instant, conditioned fear (you’re only safe with a collar, the collar is how you know someone wants you) and imagines himself without a the band of leather and the tag, with his neck bare to the rising sun.

He imagines a car, waiting for him at the end of the street.

Someone to take him somewhere other than hell.

Someone to bring him home.

The tears are back, and this time he lets them fall, because there will never be a car, there will never be a rescue, and he taught himself so long ago not to dream like this.

Back up the stairs, there is a shuffle, Karen moving from the main hall bathroom to her bedroom, and he swallows. He can’t be sitting here when she’s dressed. He can’t be hurt any worse than this, he can’t. He has to heal, so he can get to the library.

Dex looks at the wall, just beside him, and then at the kitchen. If he steps with one heel to the other foot’s toes, it’s maybe thirty-five steps from here to the coffeemaker. Maybe twenty-five - he can’t remember right now.

If he can stand.

Upstairs, Karen is getting dressed and his time is running out. Sebastian is still asleep - Madam doesn’t need him to cook her breakfast on a workday, she gets moving too early for that. Peter will be asleep on Henry’s floor. Seb told Dex yesterday that Peter’s been sneaking in there after Karen goes to bed, bedding down on the floor, and then getting up before Henry does and sneaking back out again.

Henry had nightmares, the night after Karen hurt Dex. Since Peter has been sleeping on his floor, he hasn’t had any more.

Peter and Henry have secrets, too.

Dex puts his hand on the wall, bracing himself, and he tries to stand.

At first he fails.

He drops with a thump back to the floor, but he has to be able to stand because he will have to walk to the library on a Tuesday afternoon, to read Paradise Lost in the history section. It was the second half of the message Peter gave him, and if he can’t walk, he can’t go to the library without Karen’s knowledge.

Wright did not have to tell him to keep a secret.

No, Dex was a wealth of secrets when it came to Wright Farling. She had found out one of them - but she would not be given any more. He would die first.

He nearly had.

For Wright, he would speak - or stay silent - no matter the cost.

He slams the palm of his broken hand against the wall with a frustrated, strangled groan, tear tracks drying on his face as something other than grief and fear and despair settles underneath his skin.

He is… he is suddenly so angry.

He had exactly one thing, in the world, that belonged to him. And she has taken that, too, the way she took everything else. The way she took his life from him, when he had signed up for something else.

There were blows to his head, with the cane - the spark of white light, the agony without physical pain. Ever since, in the three days he has spent in bed, there are things breaking through. He signed up because he wanted to try and be better with his fears, his phobias. He wanted to be part of a program to mentor at-risk kids, he knew that much.

He signed up to try and save his relationship with Ben, too.

He doesn’t know who Ben is.

It’s not important.

Ben doesn’t exist, in his life, any longer. But Wright does. And he has to stand, because he has to walk, because if he can’t walk he can’t get to the library and if he goes there, maybe…

He tries, one more time, to stand.

This time, he succeeds.

It’s a slog and it hurts and his legs are begging him to go back to his hands and knees, but he won’t do it. Not this time. He uses his brace against the wall to steady himself, pushes up onto his feet.

It hurts, it hurts so much, but the simmering anger underneath takes away a little of the pain.

Dex, breathing in pants, stares across the short entryway to the open doorway to the kitchen. Thirty-five - or twenty-five, please God if you’re real let there be less than thirty-five steps - to the coffeemaker. The bag of coffee is right next to it, sitting on the countertop, a special blend she has custom-made by a local roaster.

He can do this.

He has to do this.

He has to walk.

Dex looks down at his bare feet - even his feet are bruised, and he doesn’t remember her hitting them when he was curled up on her office floor but she must have - and then he looks back to the coffeemaker.

He moves his right foot first, testing its ability to hold his weight. His knee trembles, his thighs scream in pain, but it holds. So he takes one step, dragging his left foot behind him, trying not to force it to do any work it doesn’t have to do.

Once he has moved a single step, he picks up his left foot, and tests how well that one will hold. He manages, hissing through his teeth. He hurts so badly. There are so many pains that they run together into a constant refrain, water that will drag him under to drown. He fixes his eyes on the coffeemaker, lets them go distant, the awareness of his own body and the world around him sliding away.

In training, in the Facility, nearly everyone learns to do it sooner or later. When they won’t stop hurting you - when you can’t take another second - when there is nothing in your world but pain and cold and exhaustion and fear… you learn this.

His body hurts, but it is not his body. His heart is breaking, but it is not his heart. His fingers are broken, but they are not his fingers. He wants to collapse but he will not, not this time. All Dex is, and was, and will ever be, condenses to a singular goal of get through this.

All he is, now, is a determination not to fail again.

He tries to walk.

He succeeds.

His steps shuffle, and are impossibly slow. He keeps one hand on the wall for balance. Behind his distance and the careful soft fog he has wrapped himself in, he can feel the agony trying to break down the walls. It wants his attention, demands it.

You did this to yourself. This is your fault for asking why. This is your fault for what you’ve let yourself become. This is your fault for having a voice. This is your fault for letting her see the cracks he helped you remember how to fill in with gold. This is your fault for ever wanting them filled at all.

Each step punctuated with blame, responsibility, a twist of his heart. Another crack, breaking down the dam. He never takes his eyes off the coffeemaker, off his one single goal to survive the pain and the fear and keep moving, one foot in front of the other, until he is on the other side of this.

This is your fault for falling in love.

Dex chokes back a sob, forces it into the silent constriction of his voicebox, where all the words live until he is alone with the only person who ever truly listens to him. He keeps walking, step by slow step, until he is in the kitchen doorway, and the coffeemaker is so close, so close.

He has to stop.

He takes a break to breathe, panting through his mouth now, sweat broken out across his forehead and face. He can feel the blood sticking his clothing to his skin from reopened wounds. Opening his mouth even a little pulls slightly at the stitches Sebastian so carefully sewed into his face.

Disfigured. Disgraced. Imperfect. Broken. Brainless. Unwanted. Your own fault.

No.

He takes a deep breath through his teeth, feels the oxygen fill his lungs, and then he starts walking again. Step by slow step, feet dragging on the floor, feeling a trickle of sweat or blood down his back and he doesn’t know which and he doesn’t care, any longer.

He keeps his eyes on his goal, and lets his mind spiral outwards.

When Dex makes it to the countertop he has to hold himself up by his good hand with white-knuckled fingers, his broken hand hanging uselessly down at his side. Fingers splinted together with Peter’s imperfect, well-meaning movements, twisting constantly to check the tutorial video. He and Sebastian gave Dex the only medical care he would receive for this.

He loves them both, Dex realizes with a deep twist inside of him that is nearly a whole new pain. He has always held himself distant from the others, too afraid that if he got close he would give away his secret. He has always set himself apart, hidden in the office to work on Karen’s household management, played Chopin too long and too loud to give them the privacy to hide from him, too. He has been the informant, the one who would tell Karen anything and everything.

He had thought himself feared, distrusted, disliked.

He thought of Sebastian sitting by his bed, dabbing at the wounds as he laid there staring with dull eyes at the wall, saying softly, I’m so sorry, Dex. I’m so sorry she found out about this. I’m so sorry, we’ll figure something out, okay? I’m so sorry-

He thought of Peter holding him while he cried, whispering you’re a good boy, he called for you, not for her. It’s going to be okay, Dex, it has to be okay. Listen, he says go to the library when you can walk again. Go on a Tuesday and read Paradise Lost by the history section. Okay? He said that, he said, I’ll walk you myself if you can’t go alone yet, but we’ll get you there. I don’t care if she notices I’m gone, I’ll take the blame, it’s worth it. We’ll get you there. I’m so sorry-

He thought of Henry sneaking into his room when he thought Dex was asleep, setting up his mp3 player and speaker on the side table next to Dex’s bed, and the way a recording of Henry’s own first composition - he’d been sixteen years old and Dex had been so proud of him he had nearly broken his own rules to tell Henry so out loud - began to play. The way Henry had paused next to his bed, and whispered, I wish I knew how to help. I’m so sorry.

He loves his brothers, each and every one, and he wishes he could have been someone they could trust.

Tears drop onto Karen’s butcher-block countertops and Dex lets them fall, breathing in low soft moans of pain so he won’t open his mouth too much, leaning himself on the counter with his chest for balance so he can measure out the coffee with his good hand. The aches are back, but they are inside as well as out.

He’s wasted so much time, lost so much - more than half of his life under her thumb, and he doesn’t remember the first half at all.

He has so little left - but he has so much more than he thought he did.

Once he has shuffled along the counter to the sink, filled the carafe with water, and set the coffee to brewing, he waits. When Karen comes downstairs in a loose, figure-skimming sweater and tight black Ponte pants, she looks him over thoughtfully. He looks back.

He has more than she thinks he has.

He is more than she thinks he is.

He is not brainless. He is not disgraced. He is not disfigured he is not imperfect he is not broken - or if he is, he can fill the cracks in with gold. He can take what she made and remake himself, make something new.

He can be something new.

He is forty years old, but it’s not too late.

“Acceptable.” Karen gives him a slight smile - cold and unfeeling as every other expression. “Kneel.”

He tries to be silent.

He succeeds.

He doesn’t go to his knees gracefully. He simply drops with a crack to the floor, automatically, all at once. Puppet with strings cut, barely a man at all. He stays there while the coffee brews, while she pours herself a cup and adds a bit of cream. He stays there, right where he is on the floor by the counter, until she has gone to sit outside and watch the sun rise.

Only when she is gone does he raise his eyes, and stare out the sliding glass doors towards the garden. The sky is a brilliant blend of oranges, yellows, and pinks reflecting off a thin covering of clouds. The sun will burn the clouds away and the sky will be a brilliant blue soon enough.

Dex crawls on his knees to the glass door, to lean against it with one shoulder, to sit and watch the dawn.

He is not unwanted.

This is not his fault.

Paradise Lost, he mouths to himself, his eyes on the sky. By the history section on a Tuesday.

Dex imagines a car waiting, down the road. A door opening, a smile tipped up at him as he climbs inside the passenger seat and buckles himself in. Lips to press against the back of his hand, fingers wrapped around his, unbroken. A hand on his bared neck. Eyes that look into his, eyes that see him.

Eyes that always see him.

Are you ready to go? The man asks him, with a hint of a winsome smile.

I was ready five years ago, the Dex in his mind answers back, with the little teasing smile. You made me wait.

You have a point, Dex, darling. Aren’t I the lucky one that you are such a patient man? The tone is teasing, but the words are sincere. Dex feels a warmth, inside of himself, that begins to seep in and around and over the pain.

Gold, to shine through the cracks.

He imagines the car pulling away from the sidewalk, driving down the street, out of the neighborhood, the city, the state.

He imagines being driven away from hell.

He imagines that the man will one day take him home.

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mocacheezy · 4 years

Text

(forgot to actualy post this when I first wrote it, anyways, rechecked the info with the help of wiki, so have my thoughts on TFA Megatron (S1))

So I finished the first season of Transformers Animated, and let me just… Let me just EXPRESS my feelings for TFA S1 Megatron and the shit that happens to him:

So Megatron has the Allspark in his sight after so many many years of searching. It’s on a tiny Autobot repair ship, shouldn’t be a problem to get it right? Except while fighting the Autobots a bomb planted on him (by Starscream, he should see this coming) detonates. He survives that with damage to his right arm, gets inside the ship and is facing off against 5 autobots (clearly repair crew, and not in sync) in no gravity. One of them manages to cut his arm off, he is down by an arm, big deal, ‘tis but a scratch, he’s fine.

… No like seriously, this doesn’t stop him. He ALMOST GETS THE ALLSPARK!

Except that the leader of this troublesome repair crew kicks him off ship, causing him to crash on Earth. The only thing intact is his head (that Sumdac finds). Is he dead? Is he in a coma? Whatever it is, Sumdac tinkers with what he found.

50 years later, Megatron wakes up, can’t move, can’t do anything really because he is literaly a HEAD (ᵃˡˢᵒ ʷʰⁱˡᵉ ⁿᵒᵗ ʳᵉˡᵃᵗᵉᵈ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵃⁿᵗ ᶠᵘˡˡʸ,ⁱ ˡᵒᵛᵉᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᵉᵖⁱˢᵒᵈᵉ ʷⁱᵗʰ ᵇᵘˡᵏʰᵉᵃᵈ “ˡᵒˢⁱⁿᵍ” ʰⁱˢ ᵇᵒᵈʸ…ᵖᵘᵗˢ ᵗʰⁱⁿᵍˢ ⁱⁿᵗᵒ ᵖᵉʳˢᵖᵉᶜᵗⁱᵛᵉ), sees that Starscream was the one who tried to kill him and almost suceeded (or did he suceed? Again, not 100% clear on the function of that Key… It heals, it upgrades, it gives life and sentience… Did it REVIVE Megatron or did it just wake him up?)

And what does he do?

I MEAN LOOK AT THIS?!

He is LITERALY ONLY A HEAD, WITH SO MANY OF PARTS EXPOSED OR WIRES HOOKED UP TO SUMDACS MACHINES.

MACHINES THAT HE CAN’T USE, BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO PRIMITIVE.

AND DESPITE ALL THAT!

THIS GLORIOUS FUCKER!

STARTS PLANNING RIGHT AWAY! HE KNOWS THE SITUATION IS BAD AND HE BIDES HIS TIME!

He eventualy risks what little… Advantage? Is being locked away in the dark an advantage? When there’s autobots around being hailed as heroes, yea I think it might be though Megatron wouldn’t admit it… I think? Not outloud that’s for sure

Anyways, he risks it with exposing himself to Sumdac.

And then proceeds to deceive Sumdac! Like, Sumdac is smart. I actualy did need to take a step back and go “damn this poor man really is way over his head”, because on the first glance it seems really dumb to fall for a lie like that.

(I actualy would love to talk about the Professor in the future, especialy by just looking at him as a character on his own… BUT THIS IS MEGS SPOTLIGHT SO *yeets away for another time*)

AND MEGATRON IS NOT 100% GOOD AT THIS “I am an Autobot” THING. He lashes out! He is impatient, he is angry to the point of wrecking the lab with the energy surges and there are moments when Sumdac doubts that he himself can fix this mess he made, especialy with how angry this “Autobot” is.

But SOMEHOW, this glorious FUCK manages to turn most of the damage those outbursts cause into very convincing explanations for his reactions, WHILE also pretending to be useful and “helping”.

He can see almost everything from where he is, once he masters the connections with the cameras and etc. in the tower and things across the city. He deflects or “explains” why his plans included flamethrowers for amusement bots, and, let me say this again!

HE IS ONLY A HEAD AT THIS POINT IN THE SERIES!

A HEAD!

He is pretty limited with what he can do HIMSELF! Sumdac is not an ally, he is more of an enemy that isn’t aware of the power he holds over Megatron.

And he is doing everything FAR too slow.

That everything being mainly, getting Megs a body.

AND WHAT’S EVEN BETTER?!

There are so many robots around, all of them reverse enginered from Megatron himself, and none of them are of use to him. And when he DOES manage to get them to listen, something always interferes (Dinobots were a semi sucess, Soundwave rebelled, but did end up wearing a con badge (and boy was it eerie to hear Soundwave say ‘machines supperior to humans’ and how they will be all destroyed… Great episode that one) ).

So the robots of this planet are useless to him. He has to try and find a way to manipulate human criminals to do his bidding, getting him the materials Sumdac apparently can’t get without raising suspicion. Not that it’s hard, but they are useless as well, especialy with the Autobots meddling, so that also fails.

And there is always that Key. That he can’t just ask for, but can’t get no matter how he tries. And by god, does he try.

His only real, longe term-ish line of self defense at the moment is Sumdac and his guilt over using a friend of the Heroic Autobots…

AND THEN!

HIS DECEPTICONS ARRIVE!

And he isn’t even sure if he can trust them, given that his Second In Command blew him to pieces. So he has to gamble and hope for the best with Lugnut.

Which is clearly tiring because, as much of devout follower as Lugnut is (the fanfics are all spot on, writers of TFA Fandom amazing job portraying this mass of devotion), it gets annoying real fast when you are trying to get things done and really need to get a body asap, and the only one you can count on is determined to sing praises to you everytime you give an order.

Not even THAT seems to bring him any closer to his goal. And then Sumdac finds what remained of his body.

Pretty good for 50 years of weather exposure, eh?

BUT it seems he will have to keep waiting, because the blizzard that is raging outside causes a blackout, so the Tower is using the backup generator, so Sumdac declairs a delay in repairs.

Megatron alternates between bluster and sweet-talk to try to get his way, but it’s no use. Megatron attempts to call Lugnut again for assistance.

(Source: tfwiki)

From the looks of it, he came back online at the begining/end of fall, so he’s been,

pretending to be an Autobot (one who is a friend of bots he knows very little about, the ones who caused him to become like this in the first place)

pretending to be useful and helpful to Sumdac in exchange for attempted repairs (all of which have failed)

keeping his temper in check (good thing he can save the slip ups with quick thinking…)

for about… 3 or 4 months?

And no way to leave the lab?

With Sumdac as his only company?

Probably also in discomfort given THAT HE IS HOOKED UP LIKE THAT?!

With his ghoulish hand in sight that was/is CLEARLY being used as a chair for an organic?

… Yea. Imagine doing all that, being this close to finaly making progress, and instead being told “Weather bad, no can’t do, wait a while longer”.

So if Sumdac fears enough for the safety of his planet, he’ll surely work faster right? That seems to work somewhat…

Then comes Starscream.

The absolutely last Decepticon Megatron needs right now. So Megatron has to pretend he doesn’t know Starscream tried to kill him. With Starscream CLEARLY planning to kill him for good this time.

He is a head, what can he do?

We can soon see Megatron can take great joy in punishing that fragger, with limited resources he has, while Sumdac finaly works on his body.

The only fun perk of being a “friend of the Autobots” so far.

And then Blitzwing and Lugnut arrive. I swear, I was sure with all the talk Lugnut was doing, there was no way Megatron will actualy get that body.

Good thing they got the Key and that Sumdac didn’t think/wasn’t able to put in any override codes or sound the alarms.

What followed was a gorgeous villain reanimation/reconstruction scene and I loved every second of it. I mean, just look at this.

So, Megatron finaly has a fresh new body.

(gorgeous fucker)

He fights the Autobots, (if I start talking about the details, this post will never end), defeats them and does a magnificent job of offlining his SIC.

(Like, I love TFA Starscream. I really do. This purple bastard is a joy to watch, but given what he did, seeing him get offlined in such a dramatic, yet quick and efficient way(and knowing he comes back anyway)… Let’s just say, I was very pleased.)

The “Fuck you Starscream, Die 1.0” however, lets the Autobots escape and the chase begins.

Here I would like to thank the animators for giving both Bots and Cons gorgeous Magical girl-esque transformation scenes, because they are all beautiful BUT MEGATRON, HOLY HELL, I AM LOVING THAT HELICOPTER!

And they are back on the Ark, fighting in much the same way they were the first time,

But Megatron has no apparent weaknesses, except perhaps being cluttered with little shards of Optimus Prime after he finishes beating on the Autobot. Their one-sided fight carries them into the hold of the ship, where Megatron succeeds in acquiring the AllSpark…

Megatron manages to GET THE ALLSPARK!

SO MANY YEARS OF FIGHTING AND SEARCHING, AND HE HAS IT!

And he puts it in his spark chamber. Or in front of it.

…

Megatron. You just put an anchient artifact in your chest.

I… Listen, this is a step above Megan and his SpaceCocaineStraightToSpark Nonesense, BUT ALRIGHT!

I GUESS IT IS “SAFER” THAN HOLDING IT IN YOUR HANDS WHILE FIGHTING AND GLOATING.

Before he can celebrate, he is temporarily downed by Isaac, who knows enough about Megatron’s circuitry to disable his equilibrium sensors—

(”well fuck you too Sumdac”, I mutter to myself)

but although he drops the AllSpark Key in his stumble, the tyrant isn’t down for long. Megatron is about to finish Prime, when Sari hurls Prime the Key…

the kid Megatron could easily crush when she was standing infront of the Allspark (BUT HE DIDN’T!) throws the key to Optimus.

…

Who proceeds to jam it into the Allspark.

…

In your chest Megatron.

…

Where your own spark is, Megatron.

For the Lord of Decepticons and quite an old fellow, who I’ve just sung praise to, that was so dumb…

A destabilized Megatron flees the ship before the AllSpark explodes inside his chest, dispersing its energy throughout the atmosphere.

HE BLOWS UP! AGAIN!

This time his body is mostly in one piece, and he has Sumdac as a hostage but…

This Megatron does not have luck on his side.

He really does not.

The only reason he is still functioning is, that he is too stubborn to give up and die.

The whole “TooStubbornToDie” does seem to be a Megatron trademark, and makes me love his character even more.

TFA Megs. S1 and I already love him so much.

To finish up this rant of mine…

Someone get him a damn blanket and force him TO TAKE A DAMN BREAK! REST YOU STUBBORN FOOL!

#Moca screeches #Moca watches #transformers animated #tfa megatron #seriously dude please take 5 minutes off #Long post #For some reason the read more is not cooperating

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laurasinele · 4 years

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Aaaand it’s done. I missed some days and published some of the prompts out of deadline but I had them finished before the end of October, which makes me really really really happy given the creative draught that’s gotten over me since 2017.

Here’s prompt 31 for this year’s fictober: “Scared, me?”. It begged to be a Drarry, thus it made the final chapter of the little fic inspired by previous prompts. I’m not as happy with chapters 3 and 4 as I am with 1 and 2, but I hope you like it.

Tags: sort of a reunion, drarry, ewe, consent

Warnings: can’t think of any

Agnes Appleworm arrived early that morning. She had been granted special permission to visit the Manor once a month after leaving Draco’s case and the Ministry. She came bearing homemade food and cleaning spells for the reading room, in which things were going to happen that afternoon. The Thing, actually. The formal procedure of lifting the house arrest and making Draco Malfoy a free man once again.

After lunch, she wrapped Draco in a tight embrace. Despite Draco’s above average height, Agnes was still a good foot taller than him, this contributing to her tendency to mother every person she met, no matter their age or background. Draco had to admit he owed her his sanity because of that.

“You’ve done great, love. I am very proud of you”

“It was all thanks to you, Agnes”

She made a conspiratory face.

“Well, I wouldn’t take the merit off Harry now, would I?”

Draco rolled his eyes and Mrs Appleworm burst out laughing good-humoredly.

“Potter’s been around for the last two years, you were the one who did the heavy lifting”

Mrs Appleworm looked at Draco with a tender smile, hands on his shoulders. She gave him a noisy kiss on the cheek and arranged his hair.

“I have to go now. Do come to visit, you’re always welcome”

“Thank you, Agnes. For everything, I mean it”

She made a dismissive gesture with her hand and walked off, waving right before appareting away.

Draco was just turning his back to the open door of the reading room and vanishing the lunch dishes away when a series of whipping noises told him the Ministry officers had arrived. He turned around to greet them but he found himself freezed by the sight of several photographers, a wireless reporter, two writers, Minister Shacklebot, Hermione Granger with Martha O’Sea attached to her arm, four aurors, an unspeakable, a healer and a clerk from the Wizengamot. And no sign of Harry Potter.

Hermione and Martha approached him first, used to the Manor after months of working with Draco in their magical mental health proposal, and eager to greet him in such an eventful date. Then the Minister, not before having the aurors position the journalist and warn them against any wrong-footed move towards their host. Draco was mildly shocked, since nobody told him there would be press, and somebody did tell him he was going to be there and wasn’t. Hermione stood on her toes to whisper in Draco’s ear:

“I know you don’t like this, but we need to make a good impression if we want the bill to be approved. Relax, it’ll be over in a minute”.

Draco exhaled and nodded, eyes closed in resignation. There was a speech about the war, and memory and reconstruction. Then Hermione and Martha talked about their work, emphasizing Draco’s help. Draco answered a few expectedly uncomfortable questions, but nobody was a prick to him, following the Minister’s demands. Hermione was wrong: it took way longer than a minute, and it felt forever. Finally, the healer gave him a quick check, the clerk produced the paperwork and many pictures were taken of him and the Minister signing his release and probation, shaking hands, and taking a copy of the magical mind healing project’s first draft with great ceremony.

Draco felt all the wards and inhibition spells fall, and the Manor’s ancient magic stretch out and reach to the furthest corners of its grounds. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to contain all his magical energy pleading to shoot fireworks from his fingertips, to fly, to explode and set things on cold green fire, like a gigantic puppy after too much time locked in the kennel.

The Minister shook his hand and gave him an earnest smile before asking if using his floo was okay. The press left on his wake, and so did the aurors, and Hermione and Martha after setting a work meeting at the Ministry. Just like that he was alone again, in his reading room, door closed, not a living soul in the house. The magical thrumming inside him was now just a pleasant vibration all over his body, and now that he wasn’t overwhelmed by it, he was free to wonder where on earth was Harry.

He looked at his feet, sighed through his nose and told himself he should have seen it coming. There was nothing now that would make Harry come back. He wasn’t bound by his job anymore, and so he was able to avoid him. After all, they had never talked again about that Halloween night. Nothing else, not even a handshake, had happened between them. And yet Draco thought they at least were friends now.

This nine years had taught him nothing if not acceptance. You can’t make someone stay against their will, so be it. He shook the disappointment away and picked a book from his to read pile. A fantasy muggle novel, since Martha and Hermione had him overworking on the draft the weeks prior his release and he was done with medical and magical theory. He sat on his favourite armchair, by the window, trying to avoid the memory of all the Friday afternoons, and sometimes evenings, in which Harry sat opposite him.

Not many pages in the world of a mysterious and undoubtedly hot witch-hunter, the window beside him rattled, making him jump. Outside, perched on the windowsill, a magpie held his gaze with human-like annoyance. Amused, Draco opened the window and the bird flew in, cawing impatiently at Draco from the seat in front of him, jumping on one leg, with a rolled note tied in the other.

Wasn’t allowed to join the party. I’m at the front door. Wards won’t let me in. Guess they’re back to how they were before the war. Lift them for me? H. J. P.

Draco smiled softly and then he found he could not stop it. With his smile turned a wide grin, he flicked his wand to let Harry in and went to meet him at the entrance hall. When he got there, he was panting slightly, but the sight of a fidgeting Harry in civilian clothes, holding a bunch of books, a bouquet of white roses and a box of chocolates took his breath away. Still, he managed to play it aristocratically cool. He stopped on his tracks, straightened his pose and put his hands in his pockets.

“Afternoon, Potter. May I ask what are all those for?”, he greeted calmly, pointing at the presents with his chin.

“Well, I’ve been meaning to give the guy I like some sort of present, as in a first date, because we haven’t had one. One proper date, I mean. But I couldn’t decide between any of these books, because he loves to read, or the chocolates, because he does love chocolates, or the roses because I felt like an idiot passing by the florist every friday on my way to see him and thinking white roses remind me of him, but not getting the nerve to give him a bouquet just because. So here we are”.

“Here we are”, repeated Draco with the stupid, unstoppable smile back on his face.

Harry sighed and looked around, as if inspiration was going to appear there any minute. He was smiling too, albeit shyly, and kept changing his weight from one foot to the other.

“So”, he mumbled, “I believe we’ve got a conversation on pause”.

Draco looked at his feet. When he looked up, Harry was a couple of steps closer, offering him the bouquet as if he was offering a token of peace to a dragon. Draco took them carefully, smelled them, and summoned a jar with water and a small side table where he set them.

“Your hands are trembling”, pointed Draco taking the books and the chocolate and putting them next to the roses. “Scared, Potter?”

Harry laughed, fully aware this wasn’t the first time Draco had made that question. This time, though, the taunt in it wasn’t irritating. It felt like feathers up his breastbone. He closed the distance between them, his eyes set on Draco’s. He took Draco’s face between his hands and Draco, breathing heavily, put his arms around Harry, resting his hands in the middle of his back.

“Scared, me?”, said Harry, voice trembling. “Go ahead, you were asking something”.

“I’m impressed by your good memory”, said Draco coolly.

“I haven’t thought of anything else in the last two years”, he breathed.

With a smirk, noses already touching, eyes hooded and brisk heartbeats, Draco whispered:

“Would it be wrong if I kissed you right now?”

#fictober19 #drarry #drarry fanfic #drarry fanfiction #drarry fic #Draco Malfoy #Harry Potter #harry potter fandom #harry/draco #Draco/Harry

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no6secretsanta · 4 years

Text

Hi @sillydragpoes is your secret santa @taka-taco ~

I seriously thought hard about what you wanted and this came out, I tried to make it brief and easy to read to don’t fall too deep into it and bring something angsty that may displease you, I hope it fulfill your wishes. I want to apologize for any mistake this may have, eng is not my first language;; also I tried to make a playlist for this but anything stick to my head enough to make it but this song, it isn’t really something about them, or is it? *wink wink*

Jet Lag by NCT 127

And if you listen to it, I translate the lyrics to eng for you and for everyone who want to see it

[Translation HERE]

With nothing left from my part, happy holidays!

******

Until the day comes

Had passed 7 years since the last time he saw him, 7 years since that last kiss.

He come out of the restructural committee, a little bit late to his usual journey, it was a tired day. He crossed no.6, even though it had passed all those years, the work continued and Shion, having one of the principal roles of the committee, had even more things to do than the normal members.

He came home, the bakery of his mother was full like usual at that time. After beginning with the reconstruction works and reubicate lots of households, clear a lot of areas, he utilized the budget that was had for the top officials of the “moon drop”, and destined it to match the economic situation of all citizens, the privileges would be over, the same job and school opportunities would be given to every citizen, it had been years of hard work and it wasn’t even close to finishing, but Shion feel more than pleased to be able to rebuild the city and turn it into a not perfect city, but fair, a city with security to their citizens, a city with equality.

Shion entered the bakery full of people and managed to distinguish his mother at the counter going and coming of the ovens, he was happy that his mother’s bakery continued liking to people just as much as when they were in their old house. While relocating households and making the constructions needed in some areas, he got his mother a bigger house in a good zone, where she could reopen her bakery and get even better sales, he continued living with his mother, he didn’t wanted to face loneliness after he leave.

His mother acknowledged him from the door and greeted him.

-Shion! welcome back, it’s a little late, how was your day?

-Hi mom, it was a bit tiring, there’s so much work lately, but i see you’re busy, need help?

-Your mother have already a pair of hands helping her, you can take a rest now your highness.

A familiar voice interrupted what his mother was going to say, when he turned to meet the owner of the voice, all of his systems short circuited, his brain tried to ignore that his heart almost stopped for a moment when he heard him, he didn’t know how to react, or what to do, the only thing clear is that he can’t pass out now.

-Shion, are you okay? you are at the same colour of your hair. asked his mother a little worried.

-Did you saw a ghost? I think it’s better if you rest, your highness.

-Nez…Nezumi..i..ehh…am… i’m f-fine, mom, i’m going to m-my room, i need to rest. Shion say stuttering, what just happened?

He let himself fell heavily on his bed to try and calm the storm of thoughts and emotions that overwhelmed him, what was happening exactly? Nezumi was there, he come back to his life of the same way he entered and leave once, he was there, tangible, present, alive and there, in the same place than him, in the same space, and breathing (almost) the same air. He had waited a lot for this, he had mentally reviewed what would he do when this moment came, what would he say, how would he show Nezumi how much everything changed since he left, he had everything planned, but now that Nezumi appeared all his plans were gone. Now his memory was focusing in all of the moments he passed with the man that was helping his mother in that moment, in his voice that Shion missed so much, his sarcastic commentaries, just him.

He fell asleep in the middle of the revolution of feelings. He woke up a while later to a movement of his bed, he turned and looked up, Nezumi was sitting by his side reading a book.

-Hi, your highness, would you like a late night snack or something else at this hours of the early morning?

-Nezumi… what hour is it? asked Shion with low, sleepy voice.

He settled in the bed to see Nezumi better, how much he missed to see his beauty. Nezumi accommodated Shion a blanket and a pillow, and Shion feel himself blushing analyzing that.

-It’s gonna be 3 am, we end up a while ago and your mother insisted me to come here with you, and i’m nobody to deny her a thing.

Shion keep quiet, he was still more asleep than awake, didn’t know what to say.

-Would you stay…? was the only thing Shion could think to ask, he hit himself mentally for doing it

-Do you want me to go? I just came here and you are already asking me to go.

-I didn’t mean that, I jus-

-Let’s don’t talk about that now, come back sleep, you’re still half asle-

-But I want to talk, I want to talk with you, I have too much to tell you. Complained Shion

-Your mother already told me enough, I came here pretty early with plans of waking you up, surprise I got when she told me you were already working, so I helped and talked with your mother all the day, she’s an awesome woman.

-Thanks for helping her, of what did you talked about?

-Of the old and new no.6, who reborns like a phoenix from the ashes, and of her one and only son that now is a hard working man and makes her proudful. Say Nezumi with a soft look, Shion felt himself blush at that again.

-That was all? asked Shion impatient

-Pretty much, yeah, after all it seems like indeed no.6 it’s an almighty city, the years pass and it’s still there, like nothing, but of course, nothing it’s the same now.

Shion listened his melodic voice sleepily, certainly he didn’t wanted to talk, he felt exhausted, for all of the work of the day, and for Nezumi being there.

-Talk me about you trip… asked Shion softly, eyes closing

-Nothing interesting about it honestly, at least not for you

-But I want to hear you…

-Shion, you’re falling asleep right now

-No, that’s no…well, yes, let’s sleep now Nezumi…

Shion closed his eyes and accommodated himself, then felt Nezumi get up, probably getting himself comfortable, then felt him by his side, Shion was more than ready to sleep when felt something warm over his lips

-Good night Shion, rest well. Say Nezumi, closing his eyes and pretending nothing happened

-Was that a goodnight kiss?

-It was anything, now sleep

-Yes it was

-No, it wasn’t, rest

Shion was thoughtful, Nezumi kissed him and now he was pretending that he didn’t? he would be lying to himself if he say he didn’t thought about kissing him as a welcome, should he…?

Shion got closer slowly to Nezumi’s pacific and perfect face, and without thinking it too much, kissed his lips briefly.

-And that was? asked Nezumi, now awake

-A welcome kiss. Say Shion slightly

-How honest… was the only thing Nezumi say before kissing him again, was a soft, slow kiss, but full of passion, accumulated emotions that both kept over the years, unspoken words, was full of all those things time keeps.

They broke apart breathless, holding each others hands intertwined, staring deeply in the other’s eyes

-You have no idea how much I missed you. Shion say with his eyes sparkling because of tears

-I would lie if I told you that I didn’t do it, in all of those years, you never left my mind. I never forgot you Shion

-Neither did I.

Was the last thing Shion said before throwing himself into Nezumi’s arms, and let his river of tears flow

-let’s sleep, Shion. There was nothing more to say.

And just like that, like the first time they meet, they fell asleep in each other arms.

#taka-taco #sillydragpoes #no6 #no.6 #no. 6 #no 6 #submission

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peacenik0 · 6 years

Note

Yay ok this is it but obviously you can fix it how you want. on April Fools Day TLG got play a prank on Mulder getting him back from the year before. They give him a generous dose of Viagra smuggled in Mulder’s morning coffee pot and he enjoys more than one cup before he shows up in the office with Scully.

This is NSFW, but mildly so.

Tagging @fictober

A/N: Oh, thanks for this awesome prompt. It really forced me to think outside of the box. I had basically typed up the whole thing on here, but I accidentally hit the back button and lost everything! FML. But luckily the story was still fresh in my mind, so I was able to reconstruct it fairly well.

Tagging @today-in-fic, @defnotmeyo, @fbismostunwanted1158, @msraddicted, @scully-eats-sushi, @doctorscullbag, @danaedaniels cause I thought you guys might enjoy this.

——–

Mulder knows that something is wrong before Scully even gets into the office. He hears the click-clack of her heels on the tile floor. And BOING! His dick immediately stands at attention. Fuck. Mulder quickly sits down at his desk, and folds his hands over his crotch. Scully breezes into the office, her eyes thankfully glued to a lab report.

“Morning Mulder,” she says absently, and she sits down in the chair. Scully licks her lips, and he feels himself harden further in his pants. And Mulder has found Scully attractive for quite a while now. And truth be told, this is not the first time he has gotten an erection around her. But usually she needs to actually DO something to get him hard.

This is going to be a problem.

“Morning, Scully. Did you sleep well?” He asks awkwardly. Scully looks up from her file, and raises an eyebrow.

“I did, how about you?” she asks politely.

“Oh, about as good as any insomniac can,” he jokes lamely. And Scully smirks a bit before going back to her file. His eyes automatically go to her cleavage. It’s like he can’t help himself. He counts the undone buttons on her white oxford shirt. One. Two. Three. Four. Does she usually wear her shirts this low cut?

Time to take care of things.

“I’m uh, I’m going to go get some more coffee. Do you want anything? She looks at him incredulously. Okay, so he doesn’t usually offer to get her coffee. But it’s not so strange, right?

“I’m fine, thank you,” she looks back down at her file.

Mulder grabs his jacket from the back of his chair, and attempts to shield his raging erection from view. As he passes Scully’s chair, he curses as his sport coat falls to the floor. Without even thinking, Scully reaches down to pick it up for him. He almost yells out NO! But the words get stuck in his throat.

Mulder watches as Scully’s head bobs back up. Her face meets his rock hard erection, eye to eye. And he can feel himself harden even further in his pants. There is no way that she didn’t notice. Fuck. Scully clears her throat and looks away, as she hands him his jacket. Mulder quickly stumbles out the door, and heads to the safety of the bathroom.

Once inside the stall, he whips out his aching dick, and his hand closes around it. His mind goes to Scully, and the close proximity of her mouth to his cock, just now. He strokes himself as he imagines her unzipping him right there in the office. Fantasy Scully’s lips wrap around his cock, leaving a smear of red lipstick. She keeps her eyes on him, swallowing him deeply. And that’s what does it.

“Ugh, ugh,” he jerks, shooting his load directly into the toilet. Good. Now that that is taken care of, he can go back to work.He loves work.

When he returns to the office, Scully is bending down to pick up a pencil. His eyes rake over her lush ass. And much to his surprise his boner returns in full force. He is never going to get through today alive. It would be one thing if he and Scully were in a sexual relationship. Because then he could take her back to his place, and fuck this stupid erection right out of him. But, that part of the relationship has not yet developed, so he is totally screwed. And not in the way he wants to be.

“Oh, I forgot something upstairs,” he says. Scully raises an eyebrow yet again, then clears her throat. He hardens further in his pants. She has got to stop doing that. But Scully is whip smart, and it’s only a matter of time before she catches on, if she hasn’t already. He quickly turns on heel, and heads back out to the bathroom.

The next few hours continue like this. Scully would cross and then uncross her legs, and Mulder would make some excuse about needing to get more coffee, or use the photocopy machine. Scully is nothing if not polite, and so she largely ignores his unfortunate episodes of raging tumescence. And Mulder recognizes that something is off, but he can’t focus long enough on the problem to figure it out. Every time his mind starts to puzzle it out, Scully would bend down and pick up a pencil. Then the whole thing would start over again.

It is around ten o’clock that things come to a head. Literally and figuratively. Mulder is just getting back from one of his trips to photocopy room. When he opens the door, he sees Scully standing on tiptoe, attempting to get her microscope off of a high shelf. This does things to him. His eyes travel down her tight form, and land on her three inch heels. Instant raging boner. And before he can stop himself, he is behind her.

“Here, let me help you with that,” he says softly in her ear. But he accidentally knees her in the back of the leg. And because Scully is already teetering on her heels, she loses her balance. His hands automatically wrap around her waist attempting to steady her. But much to Mulder’s delight and chagrin, her ass makes contact with his rock hard cock. She shifts against him, attempting to right herself, and a audible moan escapes his lips.

Fuck.

Scully’s head whips around, and she pins him with her intense gaze. But this makes things even worse for Mulder, because Scully’s angry face is already one of his turn-ons.

“Mulder!” she shouts in surprise, pushing him away. “ What are you doing?” And he shifts uncomfortably, willing himself to look away.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, looking at his feet. But he can barely see them past his huge erection. He can’t say anything else, because he has no excuse. He feels ashamed, but that just leads him to feeling more aroused. It’s a fucking loop of hard-on insanity.

“Mulder, I don’t know what’s going on with you today. But this is getting out of hand!” She scolds him.

“I don’t know either, Scully. I just haven’t been able to…” he pauses to think of the right word. “Keep myself under control today,” he looks down sheepishly. And Scully taps her foot impatiently.

“Well, I suggest you go home, and… ” Her eyes sweep down to his erection. He wills himself to look away from her piercing gaze. “Get yourself together,” she says firmly. He nods silently at her, and walks towards the desk. He bends to pick up a file to take home. He glances down at the blotter.

April First. April Fool’s Day. Fuck. His fists clench at his sides, as the puzzle pieces fall into place. The Gunmen.

But first he needs to smooth things over with Scully before he heads out the door to murder them in cold blood.

“Umm, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he says softly, walking out the door with his tail, and rock hard dick between his legs. Scully clears her throat once again.

“I’ll see you Monday, Mulder.”

Mulder has to stop at the bathroom once again on his way to the parking garage. His dick is getting sore after one too many wanking sessions. But he needs to clear his pipes before he goes to see the gunmen.

When he rings the doorbell, he hears some snickering coming from inside. Mother fuckers. Mulder looks up at the security camera, and waves his fist. When Langely opens the door, he pushes his way in.

“I am going to kill you!” He shouts. Langley stifles a laugh, and calls back to Frohike.

“I think someone enjoyed their coffee this morning,” he smiles at Frohike.

“Hey man, serves you right after the cellophane incident from last year,” Frohike points at Mulder. But Mulder is still livid.

“What exactly did you do to me, Frohike?” Mulder yells. Byers appears from a back room, curious about the commotion.

“Oh, we just synthesized some Sildenafil in the lab..” Frohike begins. But Mulder interrupts him.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s essentially Viagra,” Langley says brightly. Mulder has to stop himself from punching that smile right off of his face.

“And you put some in my coffee?” Mulder asks angrily. And both men nod. “You have no idea what you put me through, this is one sick joke, even for the likes of you Frohike!”

“Oh, guys, I told you not to do that. I’m sorry Mulder, I tried to stop them.” Good old Byers, always trying to do the right thing.

“ Well, you took it too far this time, guys. You made my morning a living hell. And you got me into a lot of trouble with Scully. So mark my words, this is not over. And payback is a bitch.”

—-

The End.

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la-moonlight-lily · 6 years

Text

May I? Chapter 3

Summary: She’d been waiting for the one that would make her feel this way. That tenacious, profound, lingering emotion that no words can encompass. And now that she had, it had to be the one person she could not let into her heart. ItaSaku Soulmate A/U (or is it?). Non-Mass.

Rating: T. Subject to change.

1. Misconceptions | 2. Contemplations | 3. Decisions | 4. Resolutions

A/N: Hai yas I’m alive! Pls don’t hate me. This chapter needed a lot of thinking to get through, but I made sure to make it extra long to compensate for the wait! There’s a lot going on here and it’s pretty much an extra emotional rollercoaster (at least it was for me), but I hope that you like it!

Sakura yawned as she stretched tiredly, bending backwards over the back of her chair. The sun was just beginning to set, but Sakura found herself giddy with triumph. She’d been working with Shizune for the past month on developing a jutsu to accelerate bone healing, seeing as how most of their village’s occupants flooded their village daily to treat injuries ranging from fractured toes to a full-on pelvic reconstruction.

It didn’t help that the majority of Konoha’s shinobi -or any shinobi really- were always too impatient and headstrong to cooperate and let their injuries heal properly. The fact that the missions needed to sustain the village were also too many to complete with the rate of injuries occurring made their dear old Hokage quite cranky too. And a cranky Hokage meant exhausted, overworked apprentices who had almost incessant headaches from dealing with a tipsy, irritated superior who constantly shouted out her frustrations at the two of them. When poor Shizune almost burst into tears once from all the stress, Sakura suggested that they try to find a solution to their predicament. It managed to placate Tsunade slightly, and gave the two women something to focus on other than fiery blondes and paperwork. And silky-haired Uchiha prodigies.

“I think this is it, Sakura-chan!” Shizune’s smile was so infectious and Sakura herself found it hard not to beam brightly at the older woman.

“Now we just need to test it,” Shizune continued, looking over some of their notes from the day, “It’s been effective enough on the test material, now we just need an actual human with actual broken bones.”

Sakura grinned at her. “Give me an hour and I’ll get you two of those.”

Shizune looked exasperated. “It is generally not advised to crack your own teammates’ skeletons, Sakura.”

“Not when they’re as annoying as mine!” Sakura said with a laugh. “Besides, the two idiots are probably slamming each other’s faces into the ground as we speak. It’s an opportunity that we shouldn’t pass up, really.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Shizune countered, “we’ve been very productive today, I think we deserve to clock out early. And if you’re as tired as I am, you’ll need at least a long bath and a good night’s sleep before you even have the mind to deal with a patient.”

“You’re just going to talk Genma-san into giving you a massage tonight, aren’t you?” Sakura smirked at her. The older woman smiled slightly in return.

“Can you blame me?”

She really couldn’t. Genma was infamous for giving the best massages in Konoha -among other things that Sakura could not mention without resembling a red beet- and if she wasn’t such good friends with his wife, she’d be constantly bullying him into helping her relax her tightly wound muscles. She’d been aching for a massage that good ever since she received one from him after a particularly rough mission that left her neck pretty tense the whole way back. Her neck had never felt so good since.

“Go home to your husband, Shizune-san,” Sakura had started organising their notes in stacks, “and I’ll make sure I show up with two already shattered morons tomorrow.”

Before Shizune could respond, a knock sounded at the door, which opened at Shizune’s permission to whoever it was to enter. When a shock of blond hair greeted them, the two women couldn’t help but burst into giggles.

“Couldn’t you have mentioned a million ryo instead, Sakura-chan?” Shizune joked and Sakura sighed in mock-disappointment.

“Shishou’s luck is rubbing off on me.” She was pouting and Naruto looked confused for a second before his brain caught on.

“Saying good things, I hope?” He was grinning and making his way around the desk towards her. She smirked back at him.

“Of course not, you dummy,” Sakura said very matter-of-factly and laughed as her friend just rolled his eyes and wrapped his arms around her smaller frame in a giant bear hug. One which Sakura welcomed greatly.

“What brings you here? Are you hiding from Hinata? Did you upset her again?” she couldn’t help but tease when Naruto set her down, and he almost pouted at her.

“Sakura-chaaan!” he whined in protest and Sakura giggled and ruffled his messy hair in apology.

“Sasuke-teme wanted me to tell you that he wants us over at his place tomorrow for dinner,” he explained, “Hanabi’s coming over and he doesn’t want her to feel awkward, so we’re going. Hinata too.”

Sakura frowned.

“Won’t that make her feel more awkward?” she pondered aloud. “I mean, we could get pretty carried away sometimes, and she hasn’t known us for as long as we’ve known each other. I don’t want her to feel left out.”

Naruto shrugged. “Better than having her alone with an emotionless bastard and his terrifying father.”

“Good point,” Sakura quickly agreed, nodding to as though to emphasise it more to herself. “So we should be there, say around 7?”

“Yep! Hinata and I could pass by and we could all walk there together, if you want.”

“No that’s okay.” Sakura shook her head slightly. “I’ll probably come straight from here and it’s closer to the compound anyway, so you guys don’t need to make a detour.”

“Okay then!” Naruto gave her one of those always-sunny smiles and she couldn’t help but smile at his excitement. He bent to give her another hug, telling here that he couldn’t wait to see her tomorrow before he excused himself to Shizune and left the two women back to their interrupted discussion. Sakura couldn’t blame him, really. It had been a while since he’s gotten to properly spend time with her. And even when he did, she was usually all gloomy and depressive. She could always see how hurt he was that he couldn’t cheer her up, no matter what he did. But Sakura wasn’t going to think about that now.

“I’ll clean up, Shizune-san,” she said instead, returning to the scattered papers all over their desks. “We could check the orthopaedic ward tomorrow morning, see if there are any patients willing to be our test subjects.”

The brunette looked grateful to be finally leaving their shared office. She murmured her thanks and slipped quickly out the door, leaving a suddenly more tired Sakura to sigh and gather everything into a chronological order so that they wouldn’t be lost when they need to review their findings.

Opening the top drawer to her desk, Sakura was about to deposit the now neatly organised notes and articles inside, when something caught her eye.

There was something there that hadn’t been inside this morning.

Frowning, she picked up the offending object, practically throwing the contents of her hands into the drawer and slamming it shut. She examined the item in her hand, a thin white envelope, plain but for her name scribbled upon it in an oddly familiar script.

The furrow between her eyebrows growing deeper, Sakura sat in her desk chair and proceeded to carefully split the paper open.

The next morning, Sakura ran into Ino at the hospital, who informed her that she had run into Sasuke the night before and had gotten herself invited to their dinner.

“He sounded so nervous,” Ino had told her. “Said he wanted me there because we hadn’t all had a nice get together in ages and he wanted you to have fun.”

Sakura had frowned a little at her words. Wasn’t he doing this for Hanabi and not her? It was getting a little confusing.

“I think he’s trying to distract himself from Hanabi’s presence?” Ino had considered. “He sounded weirdly intimidated that she was going to be there, it’s not like him at all.”

It’s true. It wasn’t like Sasuke. She’d have to punch some answers out of him later.

All in all, what was supposed to be a Team 7 plus the Hyuuga sisters gathering became a slightly-out-of-control gathering with the addition of Ino, who brought Shikamaru along, and Neji who claimed that he couldn’t possibly let his two precious cousins be present on their own. And suddenly, what had begun as a bonding dinner became a dining room full of everyone and their soulmate, with the exception of her and Neji, and Sakura was more than a little overwhelmed by the time they’d all finished their food.

It wasn’t too bad, since the calm that Neji and Shikamaru offered balanced out the boisterousness at the table. And Ino, bless her, forward, charismatic Ino didn’t waste any time playfully baiting and joking with Hanabi, and the younger girl was comfortably being her lively, confident self with the rest of the group in no time.

It was fun and she laughed more than she usually did for the past few months, and she was glad that Sasuke’s stiff form was beginning to loosen up bit by bit, but there were too may Shikamaru-wrapping-his-arm-around-Ino or Naruto-and-Hinata-being-super cute moments for Sakura to loosen up entirely.

Quietly excusing herself, she slipped out of the dining room and made her way up to Sasuke’s room. It had been something they’d done since they were kids, climb from Sasuke’s window up to the roof and spend the rest of their time there until they had to go home. Sometimes they would plan missions, sometimes they’d just sit there with their mugs of hot chocolate, away from the loud bustle of Konoha.

Her pink strands danced softly to the wind, just a light breeze that barely made her skin erupt in gooseflesh. Just what she liked. She’d barely gotten to cross her legs underneath her when she heard a light thump behind her.

“Almost thirteen years, and this is the first time I’ve known that you were a fan of house parties,” Sakura teased, her eyes closed.

She could almost hear Sasuke roll his eyes, if that made any sense. He plopped himself beside her and they sat in silence for minutes.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sasuke whispered suddenly. Sakura opened her eyes a fraction, glancing at him from the corner of her eye.

He was sitting cross-legged as well, almost seeming like he was meditating. But Sakura knew him better than that. She knew that close-to-invisible rigidity to his shoulders, the almost negligible lock of his jaw.

She couldn’t find anything to say. She didn’t know what she was doing herself, after all. That, and the fact that two more thumps resounded behind them not long after.

“It hasn’t been two hours, and you two are already sulking up here?” Ino’s tone was playful, carefully concealing her concern for the two of them. Sakura opened her eyes to see her blonde friend shove Sasuke aside with her foot, him scowling at her before scooting over to Sakura and letting Ino sit on his other side. Naruto had already sat himself across from them, the four of them forming a crooked semicircle.

“How did you know we were up here?” Sakura raised a thin eyebrow at Ino. The blonde snorted.

“Only had to follow this idiot up here. He seemed to know where to go.” Naruto looked ready to protest at being called an idiot, but only sighed with a resigned, but fond look on his face. Sakura uncrossed her legs and spread them in front of her, settling them in Naruto’s lap.

“So?” She didn’t need to specify who her question was directed towards. The four of them were already on the same page.

When Sasuke didn’t respond right away, Ino poked him in the ribs with her elbow.

“Speak up, Uchiha,” she poked him again, “we’ve got three stuck up Hyuuga and one ruffled pineapple head down in your dining room. We probably have only five minutes before they walk in on your parents trying to find us and get us all thrown out.”

“Hinata is not stuck up, you bimbo,” Naruto did protest this time, throwing a weird nut lying on the roof at her. Ino stuck her tongue out at him. He just huffed and rolled his eyes.

“Neither is Hanabi, for the matter,” Sasuke stated quietly, regaining the attention of his three companions. “She’s just…”

“What?” Sakura’s tone was much quieter this time. Sasuke looked so strange to her at that moment. Almost as if he was the one needing comfort for a change. She scooted closer to him and wrapped her arms around his torso, pulling his head down to rest on her shoulder.

“I don’t know if I can make her happy,” he mumbled into her shoulder. “I don’t know if I can be happy.”

“Did something happen?” Naruto sounded alarmed, and Sasuke groaned in response and stuffed his face deeper into Sakura’s sleeve.

“That’s the thing,” he sighed, “nothing happened. Nothing at all. I can’t feel anything beyond what I do for any other person I have no personal feud with. There’s no connection, no spark like I thought we might have had in the beginning.

“And we just sit there, not knowing what to talk about other than the best way to sharpen kunai,” Sasuke continued. Sakura and Ino’s eyes connected over his head, a look of understanding passing between them.

“I can feel that she’s starting to get attached somehow, and she’s been trying so hard, I know she has, and she’s been trying to catch my interest in anything but I can’t seem to be capable of anything but sitting there in front of her like a dead fish.”

The three of them could barely stifle their chuckles. It wasn’t a regular affair to see Sasuke so flustered.

“Have you tried relaxing a bit around her and just being yourself, Sasuke?” Sakura tried.

He made a face. “I am myself with her.”

“The you that we know and love,” Ino beat Sakura to her reply, “or the son of a bitch that rest of Konoha absolutely detests? Other than the ladies who desire your pretty face, of course.”

Sakura knew that Sasuke loved cheeky Ino. He appreciated her beyond words. Now though, he looked close to punching her in the face. Which did not deter the blonde at all, as she continued to tease him for a bit more while he tried to ignore her. Sakura personally thought he just didn’t want to grant Ino the satisfaction of seeing him smile.

“I just don’t want to make her miserable.” He ran his hand through his hair. “And maybe this sounds selfish, but I really don’t want to end up miserable because I’m stuck with someone I can’t love as well.”

“She is your soulmate, though,” Naruto interjected for this first time in the conversation. “Whatever happens, it should end up working out in the end.”

Ino snorted. “Naruto, you and Hinata probably belong to the satisfied five percent of the world’s population. It’s not the same for everyone else.”

Naruto looked almost upset by the notion. “That’s not true! There are plenty of people who are happy!”

“And I agree,” Ino returned calmly, “but that doesn’t mean that they’re the majority. You’re the only one out of the four of us currently in a functioning relationship, and that makes you the exception, not the rule.”

Naruto looked confused, and Sakura and Sasuke just stared at Ino with a bewildered, but scrutinising expression.

“Ino might not be completely in the wrong,” Sakura began carefully, “but that doesn’t mean that you have to be miserable either. You said she was trying, and I don’t believe that you aren’t, but maybe you should try a little differently.”

“And possibly not by inviting another half a dozen people to what should have been your dinner date with her.” Ino interrupted. Sasuke almost deflated.

Sakura looked thoughtful for a moment. “You could try being as open with her as you are with me. I think she’ll appreciate a bit of attitude, she can go back and forth for hours. And she might be a bit rough on the edges too, but a little softness always works with a girl.”

Ino was nodding and Sasuke sighed. “A little easier said than done, Pinky.”

“But not impossible.” She pinched his side. “And you’ll get there, just take it one baby step at a time. Now,” she directed her attention over to the girl sitting on his other side, “what on earth is your problem? You’ve been together practically since you started babbling, what could go wrong now?”

Ino’s cheeky smile froze on her face for a fraction of a second. Then it turned almost sour.

“Well,” she inhaled deeply, “Shika has another soulmate.”

“What?!” Naruto practically yelled, and Sasuke snapped up from his slouch on Sakura’s shoulder, looking at Ino wide-eyed. Sakura felt her chest tighten.

“He does,” Ino nodded. “Remember that blonde chick from Suna? The one with the huge fan? That’s her. She even has the same tattoo as I do and she said the same first words to him and everything.”

“Wait, wait,” Naruto held his hands up, “Shikamaru’s soulmate is the freaking Kazekage’s sister?”

“The one and only,” Ino let out a bitter laugh, “they found out during the Kage Summit.”

“Ino, the Kage Summit was two months ago…” Sasuke murmured softly, and Sakura’s eyes widened.

“You’ve known for that long?” she whispered. Ino nodded, her eyes starting to well up. “Why haven’t you said anything?”

“You’ve been so down for so long, I didn’t want to add to that. And then you were just beginning to finally get back to the old you and I just…”

“Don’t you dare.” Sakura was already crawling over Sasuke’s lap to her friend. As soon as Sakura wrapped her in a tight hug, Ino’s tears became uncontrollable.

“You do not hide your pain because I cannot deal properly with mine. I’m your best friend-“ Ino squeezed her tighter, “- and you will let me be a good friend to you just like you’ve been for me, no matter what I’m going through.”

“And you have the two of us as well,” Sasuke supplemented, very firmly. “If that’s you excuse, it doesn’t hold with either of us.”

“You know it, Ino-chan,” Naruto nodded.

“I know, I know, it’s just…” she trailed off, sniffling a little while Sakura dabbed at her cheeks with her sleeve.

“I felt too heartbroken to be able to be completely coherent. It’s not her fault that Shika already has a soulmate and it’s not his fault that it’s one of those instant connections and explosion of feelings that he can’t control. It would be so wrong to keep them apart just because I already exist but…” she started to hiccup, started to sob again.

“I just can’t live with him having feelings for another woman,” she cried and Sakura felt herself tearing up, “I can’t live with him smiling at her and teasing her and, and- touching her and being so- so intimate with her the way he’s supposed to only be w-with me.”

Sakura just held Ino as she cried till her eyes were dry, her heart breaking for her friend.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so selfish,” she whispered, running her hand over Ino’s hair over and over, “You’re my oldest friend. I should have known that you weren’t okay, I should have seen it the moment you found out.”

“That’s alright,” Ino whispered back, hugging her closely, “it’s not your fault, Sakura. And you’re still my best friend.” She nudged Sakura’s shoulder with hers, wiping her face dry. As soon as she could collect herself, she sat up straighter, though still leaning on Sakura a little.

“I’m meeting up with her tomorrow,” Ino announced.

“Do you want us to go with you?” Sasuke immediately asked, sounding every bit as helpless as Naruto looked, springing up at the opportunity to ease her situation.

“No.” She shook her hair firmly, sniffing. “No. This it between the two of us. We need to reach an agreement on this together. Shika doesn’t even know we’re meeting, we need to settle on a dynamic between the two of us before we can include him in the conversation, and we don’t have much time before she has to go back to Suna.”

Sakura nodded. The delegation from Suna on behalf of the Kazekage was only staying for three more days.

“We can meet up after?” she suggested instead, “you can sleep over at my place, and we can get that strawberry banana ice cream that you love so much and catch up on all the latest gossip.”

“Sounds like a plan, Forehead,” Ino giggled quietly, pressing her palms against her now sore eyes.

“I feel so stupid,” Sasuke muttered, rubbing his neck uncomfortably. The two women half turned to look at him.

“Look at me bitching about not being able to make good conversation while you two are practically in tears because of how fate has been a right asshole to you.”

“What does that make me, then?” Naruto snorted. “King of La La Land?”

“Suits you better than Hokage-sama,” Sasuke returned and the girls laughed, their friend mock-scowling at them.

“Then you shall be upgraded to Bitchy Teme.”

“And we’re Ms. Deformed Threesome and Ms. Can’t Locate My Soulmate?” Ino threw back.

“Don’t joke about that!” Naruto cried, looking almost upset with himself.

“It’s true, though,” Sakura said with a soft smile.

“Maybe he’s dead?” Ino asked.

“Nah, he can’t be. She’d know,” Sasuke answered her.

That was also true. Her Shishou had mentioned once how she felt a part of her was missing after Dan died. Sakura attributed it to her overflowing love for her dead fiancé. It wasn’t until Kakashi got more tipsy than he usually would when they went out to celebrate returning from one dreadful mission that she started to believe otherwise.

She’d drunkenly declared that she decided her soulmate was long dead and buried. And he just fixed her with a hard look and told her she’d know for sure if he was. That she wouldn’t be so carefree about it if she knew how it felt.

He told her about a girl named Rin. She was his soulmate, but he wasn’t hers. His words never matched her tattoo, and she ended up being matched with their third teammate instead. He wouldn’t tell her the details, but apparently a mission went bad because Rin wasn’t focused months after her soulmate died. And Kakashi just knew she was gone miles and miles before he got to her.

“Maybe you knew because you knew her too. But me, I don’t know what this guy even looks like,” she slurred, “he’ll probably kick the bucket without me feeling as little as a tiny pinch.”

Kakashi just stared at her for what felt like hours.

“Trust me Sakura-chan,” he finally spoke, sounding a lot more sober than he should have been.

“You’ll know.”

“Maybe I wish he was dead,” Sakura declared quietly, her mind back in the present. Itachi’s smiling face flashed into her head and she sighed.

“Maybe I wouldn’t feel so guilty then.”

She felt Ino sag against her. Saw Sasuke stiffen from the corner of her eye, and smiled as Naruto just decided to pretend he hadn’t heard her. The poor thing would probably start crying if he thought about it too much.

“Seriously though, who is happy with their soulmate?” Naruto’s thoughtful look turned horrified in the span of a second. “Or are we all just going to become hopelessly miserable at some point?”

Sasuke couldn’t help but chuckle at his friend’s distress. “My parents are actually very happy. Among many others, as you said.”

Naruto scrunched his eyebrows together. “How?”

“What do you mean how?”

“Teme, your father has the emotional capacity of a potato.” Naruto deadpanned.

“Hey!” Ino whined. “Don’t insult the potatoes.”

“And don’t insult my father.” Sasuke was grinning, but he kicked Naruto in the knee anyway.

“He’s a good husband, and a good father. A really good leader for the clan too. Itachi and I…” he trailed off for a few moments, “we have big shoes to fill.”

Nobody said anything to that. But they all silently agreed. Uchiha Fugaku was known as many things, and a formidable Clan Head was on top of the list.

“When did you know that Itachi wasn’t your soulmate?” Ino broke the silence suddenly.

Naruto looked panicked, but Sakura just smiled calmly at him. She’d been sulking so much for months that none of them dared to bring up Itachi’s name in front of her. It didn’t even occur to Sakura before that they really didn’t know the details, just that things between them ended before they even started.

“It’s okay Naruto,” she said when he still looked ready to pounce on Ino and carry her away.

“It was one of those hot days, you remember that strange heat wave last year.” Ino nodded silently.

“I managed to bully Pasty Face over here into a spar and we just went at it for a couple of hours.”

She inhaled.

“And then we were lying there like molten jelly, and Sasuke was helping me up from the ground so we could go shower and suddenly he was right behind me.”

She could remember it so clearly. She’d gasped as soon as she felt him, almost pressed against her back, her hand still in Sasuke’s.

“Your genjutsu is still in need of much improvement,” she could hear the teasing smile on his face, felt his breath tickle her ear.

“Perhaps I could interest you in some private training?” he’d continued in that cool, confident tenor. But she couldn’t smile at his teasing. Couldn’t turn around to face him for fear that she would burst into tears, being so close to him but unable to hold him in her grasp.

“I’m sorry,” she’d choked out instead, yanking her hand free of Sasuke’s hold. “I need to go.”

She’d bolted across the village to her apartment after, too shocked to react. The sobs came later that night.

“I didn’t hear what I expected to hear from him, and so I left,” Sakura finished for them, Ino patting her back soothingly.

Sasuke, however, had a strange look on his face.

“That was the first time that you spoke?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, giving him a puzzled look when his frown grew deeper.

“Is anything the matter?”

“No,” he answered quickly, causing her to raise an eyebrow at his direction. “Nothing at all.”

“Okay…” Sakura turned her head away from him and rested it on Ino’s shoulder. They slipped back into silence before Sakura decided to sit up, a small smile on her face.

“You know,” she started, “even if I don’t end up with who I want, even if I don’t find my soulmate at all, I’ll still be happy. Because I have you,” she looked at Sasuke then, “and Ino,” Ino squeezed her hand, “and Naruto.”

Her smile grew wider.

“And I love you. For all that you’ve done and all that I know you will do for me.”

“We love you too, Sakura-chan,” Ino whispered and hugged her again, and Sakura spread an arm behind her to grab at Sasuke’s shirt.

He crawled over to her, hugging her back, and Naruto needed no invitation to envelop all three of them in a giant hug.

They stayed like this until voices interrupted them, and they barely disentangled from their unusually long group hug to see the two Hyuuga sisters climb up to the roof, a triumphant look on Hanabi’s face.

“See! I told you!” she told her sister and skipped over to them.

“What are you all doing, hiding up here and leaving us with two weirdos downstairs for half an hour?” she was almost pouting adorably. Ino grinned and got up to steer her back down to the dining room, the rest of the group following.

“Sorry Hanabi-chan,” the blonde quipped, “we needed to give your man his daily dose of mockery away from Neji. We’ll initiate you into the Let’s All Make Fun of Sasuke club soon, don’t worry.”

The younger girl perked up at that. Sasuke almost looked scared.

“How did you know we were up there, by the way?” he asked instead.

“Your chakra signature, idiot!” she looked at him in mock-horror. Kept on ranting about how the oh-so-confident Uchiha Sasuke wouldn’t think of something so simple a pre-genin could know it. She’d only stopped in the middle of mockingly explaining how to conceal one’s chakra when he dipped his head down and kissed her on the cheek.

She went from cheeky jokester to stuttering mess in an instant, the only reaction she seemed to be capable of producing is a blush and incomplete words. He grabbed her hand in his, ushering her forward with a soft ‘come on’, followed by three grinning girls towards a bored Shikamaru and slightly horrified Neji, who quickly ducked back into the room, much to their amusement.

Shikamaru met them at the door, wrapping an arm around Ino’s shoulders. Looking back, Sakura could see his overly affectionate, almost apologetic gestures all night. Ino gave him a small smile and Sakura pushed the remaining couple behind them, telling them that she’ll prepare them some tea.

Turning on the light in the kitchen, Sakura set on boiling the leaves while preparing the tea set. As the kettle started screeching, she turned around to take it off the heat, only to find a masculine form passing by the door.

He froze when he saw her, backtracking a step to stand by the shoji screen. They looked at each other blankly for a few moments, then Itachi’s lips started to tug upwards.

Holding her hands over the pocket of her vest, where a small, folded piece of paper resided secretly, Sakura almost beamed at him.

And he gave her what might have been the largest grin she’d ever seen.

She almost skipped the entire way home, too overwhelmed by her giddiness to control herself. The day had been intense, but not even Ino’s revelation could damper her mood. Not today.

Slipping into her apartment, Sakura quietly closed the door behind her so as to not disturb her elderly neighbour, and flopped back onto her bed as soon as she entered her bedroom. Not even bothering to take anything off besides her shoes.

Running a hand through her bubble gum hair, Sakura finally let the smile she’d been fighting for the past hour break free. Her hand unconsciously slipped into her pocket, unfolding the short letter. It looked almost worn, even though she’d only opened it a little over twenty-four hours ago. And even though it was burned into her memory by now, Sakura couldn’t stop herself from reading it over and over again.

Sakura,

I have always prided myself on being a man of my word. Every promise I’ve made has gone fulfilled – all but one.

I’ve promised myself, promised Sasuke, to try my best to leave you be. To help you move on instead of tying you down to what could be nothing more than wishful thinking. And every day, I did all I could to keep my distance, waiting for the day when the smiles graced your lips and your eyes shone with laughter once again. I tried so hard to let you be happy, and then perhaps my misery could have been repressed as well.

I have discovered, however, that I am more selfish than I ever made myself out to be. I cannot stop myself from longing for you; I feel a constant need to be the reason for your smiles, an unending desire to feel your happiness directed towards me, to hold you in my arms for hours on end and showing you all that I feel towards you. With no limitations, no judgement, no barriers between us.

You were not fated to be mine. But Sakura, if you are not my destiny, you are most definitely my choice. And as selfish as I am, know that I will stop at nothing to ensure your happiness, to ensure that I will give you all that I can and more, that I will do all I can to be wholly yours as you are mine.

All I need is for you to tell me that you want the same. I will never attempt anything that is against your wishes, and if you want to wait for your other half, then you can pretend that this letter never existed. No matter how selfish I am, no matter how much pain it will cause, your happiness comes before mine. And if you wish for me to remain out of your life, I give you my word that I will. That is one promise I will never break. But if your heart desires the same as what I long for, then consider me already to be you lover, your companion, your partner through all the joys and hardships you will go through. Because I have been hopelessly and completely yours ever since I saw your smile.

I am eager for your response. But please take all the time you need to consider this thoroughly and carefully.

Itachi.

She read it over twice, her lips mouthing the words as she took them in, relishing the feel of her rapidly beating heart, of the fluttering inside her stomach.

Folding the paper again, Sakura slipped it underneath her pillow and hugged another one to her chest, stuffing her face in it in an effort to contain the girly squeals she was trying to keep at bay.

For the first time in months, Haruno Sakura could say that she’d gotten a night of tranquil, contented sleep.

Itachi couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

He had to postpone his evening spar with Shisui because his cousin would have caught on to him straight away. That, and he wanted to relish the memory of Sakura’s blinding grin.

He could only give her a quick nod before he scrambled away, fearing that he’d grab her and kiss her senseless in the middle of his kitchen for everyone in the house to see.

Instead, he locked himself in his room after sending a message to Shisui, planning his next steps. He had to make sure that Sakura did not face the brunt of the backlash they were going to get. He had to make her happy and safe at all costs, make sure he’ll deal with all the obstacles he could expect with the best damage control.

All the thinking had left him famished, especially since he’d skipped dinner, and he groaned as he rolled off of his futon and made his way to the kitchen.

Even when he wasn’t actively thinking about her, Itachi couldn’t keep Sakura off his mind. Absently rubbing his lower back where his mark was tattooed, he thanked whatever deity up there that chose to put it on him in such a concealed spot. Sometimes it felt like a blessing that it wasn’t always in his face, that it didn’t constantly remind him of what he couldn’t have or what he was about to do to anger his destiny’s maker.

And maybe her first words to him weren’t ‘stay with me Itachi’, and maybe they would never even come out of her mouth, but it didn’t matter anymore. Sakura was his now, and she would be staying with him for a long, long time if Itachi had any say in that matter.

Making his way down the stairs, Itachi almost sprinted towards the kitchen in his hunger, only managing to stop himself a split second before he collided with his brother.

The day had been more overwhelming that Sasuke had been ready for, but it had ended on a better note than he had expected. It was good having a more intimate interaction with Hanabi for a change. Even if her cousin had been red faced the entire time, looking torn between being relieved for his little cousin and grabbing Sasuke by the throat. Hanabi had almost latched onto him the entire night after, too. And he had to admit, having her hand in his for a prolonged period of time had felt… nice.

But even with his -very small- progress with Hanabi, and with their newfound distress for Ino, and with Sakura’s apparently improving mood, something was still nagging in the back of Sasuke’s mind.

He’d waited long enough, till after his guests had left and both of his parents had gone to sleep. But he knew Itachi was still awake, and he needed to confirm something with his brother.

But first, maybe they needed to fill that cavity that had been gradually widening between them for the past year.

He grabbed a plate of dango from the kitchen and made towards the stairs to get to his brother’s room. But then Itachi came darting down the stairs and almost slammed square into him, making Sasuke blink in surprise.

Itachi looked almost guilty for a moment, as if Sasuke had caught him doing something he shouldn’t have been doing, but he quickly composed himself, arranging his features to give him his usual blank expression.

Neither of them made a sound, then Itachi gave him a nod and made to duck around him as he’d been doing for a while, trying to avoid any further confrontation.

“Aa, nii-san!” Sasuke almost sputtered, stopping his older brother in his tracks. Itachi turned to face him, looking at him curiously.

Sasuke offered the plate of dango wordlessly, and it was Itachi’s turn to blink as he reached out to pluck it out of his brother’s hands.

“Thank you,” he said anyway, still looking confused but with something akin to gratefulness in his eyes.

“Would you, ahh…” Sasuke began awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck, “would you like to have a little spar tomorrow? It’s… it’s been a while.”

His brother cocked an eyebrow, staring at him for a little longer before his lips curved in a small smile.

“I’m leaving on a mission in the morning,” Itachi sighed, “but as soon as I get back? I’ll leave my day off entirely open for you.”

Sasuke grinned, nodding a few times like an excited child being offered candy. Itachi grinned in return.

“Thank you for the dango.” He raised the plate slightly in Sasuke’s direction and made his way back up to his room.

It felt almost as if a weight had been removed off of Sasuke’s chest.

Her good mood had lasted for about two weeks. Then she started getting antsy.

Itachi had left the day after they bumped into each other in his house. She couldn’t blame him for being away, but Sakura wasn’t known for being very patient. And it seemed her patience wore even thinner when it came to that man.

It had been three weeks since he’d left, and while it had been just impatient excitement at first, Sakura had been feeling strangely uneasy for the past couple of days. She’d wake up with her heart in her throat, like she would after having a disturbing nightmare. She’d be on her rounds at the hospital, or at the bathhouse with Ino, or even sparring with her team, when suddenly her stomach would feel like it’s in tightly coiled knots, make it effortful for her to breathe.

There was absolutely no reason she could find for her distress. Her friends were fine, the hospital was fine, they’d been doing well testing the bone-healing jutsu. Everything had been flowing in a good direction, and all that remained was for Itachi to return and claim her as he’d promised.

She was briefing a new nurse on her duties and who she was going to be shadowing for her training period, when she felt a disturbance towards the entrance of the hospital.

Curious, Sakura handed the girl the folder with her instructions and made her way towards the commotion. It was only when she was but ten steps away from it that she realised what was going on. And suddenly the knot in her stomach tightened so much that she felt her breath leave her entirely.

Standing in the middle of a makeshift circle of frantic medics was Shisui, barely able to support his body on what seemed to be an at least fractured leg.

Over his shoulder was a half-dead Itachi.

Feeling the bile rising in her throat, Sakura struggled to regain her breathing, to steady her shaking hands, and practically ran over to the two Uchiha.

Keeping his eyes open was a struggle. He’d been trying to remain conscious for the past half an hour, with absent encouragement from Shisui of ‘just a little more’ and ‘almost there’. But he’d been fighting for three days, and it was becoming a battle that he was very clearly losing. He felt the pulling sensation of being transported and almost fell off Shisui’s shoulders as the older man’s body could no longer hold him up.

Then suddenly, Itachi was being tipped backwards and his back was hitting a hard surface, several half-blurry faces looming over him.

“Ambushed… Rain shinobi-”

He could barely make out the voices. Didn’t have the energy to care. But a splash of pink assaulted his vision and for a moment, he was almost alert again.

“…poisoned three days ago-”

“…OR 4!”

He could see her barking orders that he couldn’t hear. Could see her eyes shift to his, desperately willing him to hold on for just a little longer. He tried to raise his hand, just to get his fingers to brush against her skin one more time. But his body had already given up on him hours ago, and he knew it.

“…lost too much blood-“

“…going into shock!”

“We’re losing him!”

His eyes were open only a fraction now. And Sakura was still frantically trying to stabilise him, her chakra-infused hands resting on his chest, in her frenzy looking as if she was practically pushing her life force into him.

‘I’m sorry… I tried to love you…’

He felt her slip away from him, saw her grab something somebody had offered her, then her hands were on him again.

The last thing her felt was her soothing chakra running through him and her voice ringing in his ears as his eyelids finally slipped close.

“Stay with me, Itachi!”

#Naruto #Uchiha Itachi #Haruno Sakura #ItaSaku #fanfiction #fanfic #writings #phew #that took me way too long to write #I'm almost scared to write the next one

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resilientreader · 7 years

Text

mission-taking and decision-making

Deep breaths. In and out.

Keith’s steps pattered against the ground as he sprinted down the hall, his shoulders narrowed, his body stiff yet versatile, his eyebrows furrowed in immense concentration. Do not forget the plan.

Do not forget the plan.

So much had happened since that fateful day when Keith nearly sacrificed himself in the name of Voltron, when Lotor saved him, when everyone met together and an unbelievable alliance formed. Lotor was cunning, unpredictable, somehow always a step ahead- Keith was simultaneously irritated and fascinated with him. There had been a competition since day one, and it didn’t take long for bonds to form. There were too many similarities, too many parallels, there was so much intensity and passion and raw emotion. Something was bound to happen.

Torn. That was what Keith was, when he found himself facing Lotor climbing into one of their pods, off to bring his team back together. Lotor had an ultimate, personal goal in mind and he would do anything to reach it. There had been no benefits for him when it came to his alliance with Team Voltron and the Blades of Marmora, not after Zarkon had been ultimately defeated and the war ended. Haggar was still out there, yes, but she was a shadow of what she once was, a mere wisp that would not get in the way of Lotor, or really Voltron, any longer.

Keith knew this, and yet, the team, Shiro were still there… but he and Lotor had grown close throughout Lotor’s stay. He had had a decision to make, whether to leave or stay, and it had to be quick at that. It was a good thing that Keith could make decisions and do his damned best to make things work, because if he wasn’t anything else, he at the very least went all in with every action, every word, absolutely everything he did.

And so he went. He left Team Voltron, for good, but that doesn’t mean that everything was lost. He had Lotor, and he knew the team would find him eventually. Especially if he left clues.

Which is why he was running now, making a hard right within this Galran base and slicing down any droids he met. He was supposed to meet Lotor at their ship in thirty doboshes, but he knew that if he hurried, he could slip a note in somewhere and make it back in time.

Do not forget the plan.

Up, down, around the droids, take a sharp left and go onwards until you- no. Keith wasn’t surprised, by all means, to see Lotor standing at the end of the hall, sword at the ready, blocking his way, but goddamn it. He had taken precautions, he had kept Lotor sidetracked, he had prepared. Preparation… patterns can be tracked with preparation. Fuck.

Keith slowed, his mouth settling into a deep frown despite his attempts to keep his expression level, neutral. He didn’t have time for this, and he was sure that Lotor could plainly see his agitation with him in that very moment. He opened his mouth, about to let the words on the tip of his tongue come loose, but Lotor beat him to it.

“Keith, I’m not going to try to stop you.”

“I- that’s because you can’t.” It was the truth, the blunt truth. Lotor couldn’t stop him, because Keith pushed and pushed and pushed and even if Lotor was his match, he could beat him and surprise him if he went on for long enough, if he tried hard enough. But, he realized a moment later, that could have been harsher than he intended it to be.

“I mean- Lotor, we’ve-”

“Yes, Keith, I know. I can’t stop you. So I won’t try. But-” Lotor’s expression became mildly amused, although his eyes told a completely different story. “We have fifteen doboshes until my ship leaves, with or without us. And, I hope you don’t mind, but we haven’t been outright competing as much lately, so perhaps I can give you a bit of a challenge?”

Something more was being suggested behind those words, something along the lines of… disappointment? Expectation? Irritation? Keith’s frown only deepened with every word, because for fuck’s sake, Lotor still took such a while to get to his point. Keith knew it was hard to get out of old habits, especially when it comes to speech, but still.

He also didn’t have time for bullshit. He had limited time, and he was starting to get exasperated with this whole thing.

But fine. If Lotor wanted to challenge him, he’d get a challenge, and Keith knew he would eventually get something out of it. He hadn’t learned nothing out of being with Lotor for so long.

Keith surged forwards, swinging his sword up and around and- clang! There it started. Back and forth, step up and step back, they danced around the hallway. Lotor swing to his left, but he was swiftly blocked and Keith retaliated with a direct jab, which lead to his sword being pushed up into the air. He nearly lost his grip on it, but he clung on, following the move with a sidestep and a whirl around Lotor. Two swipes, both blocked, but he unexpectedly ducked down and let his foot lash out at Lotor’s legs. Down Lotor went and Keith pointed his sword at Lotor’s throat, at the ready, but… Lotor wasn’t making any moves to fight back. He had gone down, and it didn’t take Keith long to realize that he had just confirmed something Lotor had figured out a while ago.

That just caused even more impatience to well up inside Keith.

“You need to spit out whatever you want to say before I run off, put in place another clue, and find a way back to the ship before it leaves.”

“That’s the thing, Keith. You don’t have enough time to do that. Ten doboshes, and it’d take you more than that to go all the way to one side of this base and then find a way back to the other, even if you run. I always thought the Galra were ridiculous with their sizes for, well, everything.”

Lotor took a moment to scooch back so he was leaning against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him, letting his gaze travel down the hall before continuing, “You do realize that what you’ve been doing could possibly sabotage all that I’m doing, right? Voltron would not agree with the things that we- I’ve done, and even if there was a possibility that they would be fine with it, you know how imperative it is that we- I remain lowkey. I doubt you even agree with some of the things I do, since you’ve voiced as much.”

Keith crossed his arms, though he couldn’t deny as much. He knew that it was a risk to leave a trail for Voltron, but he wasn’t going to let go of them that easily. He also knew that it would be so much more reasonable if he stopped, but he couldn’t. He had found a family in Voltron and the Blades of Marmora, and despite having problems with them, whether with a group or individual ones, he cared about them. Some had gotten past more walls than others, but he enjoyed them all the same.

He could also see what Lotor was doing, changing those “we”’s to “I”’s. And that? That honestly hurt.

But, fuck, when Lotor was first leaving the castle, so long ago… Lotor had gotten to Keith more than even Shiro, at least with emotions. Lotor imposed a challenge, and leaving with Lotor was a risk. But with Zarkon dead and the war at an end, Keith suddenly found himself without a goal. There was no one to fight, no one to find, nothing to aspire to be. Keith hadn’t planned for the future, of course, despite expecting certain things from it. Even if the others had gotten through his walls, he still had doubts about them, and, well, Lotor offered a goal as well as reassurance that he’d be wanted, and of course he would gravitate towards the one who he’d grown the closest to.

But he still didn’t want to leave the others. It was… complicated, really. And he was about to say all of this, but Lotor cut in again (that was starting to get vexing, the interruptions, really).

“You need to make a decision,” Lotor finished his spiel abruptly, with that single sentence. Keith had been expecting more, some sort of explanation as to why Lotor couldn’t see this as going any other way, but as Lotor glanced back at him, it only took one true look to fully comprehend all of the things being said between the lines of such a simple yet loaded sentence.

Lotor was just as willing to sacrifice for his ultimate goal as Keith would be. He would do anything to reach it. Keith could understand that, because Lotor was acting for a single individual, and Keith knew that he would do anything for Shiro, anything for Lotor. He would do exactly the same. The way Lotor was acting now, though… Keith could practically see Lotor rebuilding the walls that he had only recently let down. He wanted to shout at the unfairness of this entire sudden moment.

Only a few doboshes left now, and Keith felt like he was being cornered. The clues he had laid out were thought-out and complicated, and he’d had a reason for every location and mission he put them in. That would have to be reconstructed if he left with Lotor now, and he knew that Lotor would be paying much closer attention to him after all of this, along with making sure that they were constantly on the move. It really was one or the other.

That was why Keith’s tone was so harsh and teeming with poorly repressed hurt when he finally responded, “This is unnecessary. I know what the priorities are, and I know what has too much risk to it and what doesn’t. You learn that I’ve been attempting to get in contact with Voltron, and your immediate reaction is to shut me out?”

The corners of Lotor’s mouth twitched downwards momentarily, before he just took a moment to push Keith’s sword out of his way while standing up. After another tick of tense silence, he merely replied with, “You have about two doboshes, and then I have to go. With or without you.”

Keith felt like he was going to burst at the seams. Panic welled up inside of him as he realized this was probably going to be it, he was too indecisive, he’d never make a decision in time. It was unusual for him to be so hesitant about deciding on something, but he felt like he was being split in half with the choice he’d have to make. Lotor would leave and perhaps Voltron would come, but he’d have so much explaining to do. He wouldn’t be surprised if they even resented him a bit after disappearing with Lotor without any warning.

But they were his family. They were his team. How could he possibly make a decision between one of the most important people in his life, who he could be challenged by to be a better version of himself while simultaneously having the ability to relate with him and talk about their issues with each other, versus the team who stuck with him through thick and thin?

But… perhaps… Keith didn’t like that he had to do things this way, but if he wanted to at least try to keep some semblance of a relationship with all these people he’s known, it had to be done.

“...fine. OK. I’ll go. I’ll go back to Voltron. But this isn’t the last time you’ll see me. I’ll keep pushing to find you, no matter what. It might be weeks, or months, or years, but we will meet again. And when we do, I’m going to kick your ass.”

Relief pooled into every feature on Lotor’s face, and he didn’t bother to mask it as he replied, “I’ll be waiting for you. Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t.”

“Then, perhaps I’ll see you soon… or later. Depends on how fast you can catch me.”

With those last words, Lotor turned around and ran off, his hand raising for a moment in goodbye before he disappeared around a corner.

Keith stayed for only a tick longer before racing in the opposite direction of Loter. He slashed down a leftover droid, his feet pounding against metal as he rushed to the location where he originally was going to put a note- but now was going to be where he would wait for Voltron. They had been tracking the invasions of Galran bases, and he was sure they would be there in a few ticks.

This wasn’t going to be easy, he knew. Lotor was going to bring a fair fight, and he would have to give it his all. It might be one of the most challenging things he’s done; the decision itself was hard as fuck.

But it was a good thing that Keith could make decisions and do his damned best to make things work, because if he wasn’t anything else, he at the very least went all in with every action, every word, absolutely everything he did. And that included his… whatever it was with Lotor. Competition? Relationship? Perhaps they had become more than simply partners-in-crime in that single moment. He’d have to wait to find out.

#keith kogane #lotor #keitor #stories #resilientwriter #????hope this is good #it's kinda keitor as in #it's really suggestive as there's more than meets the eye but #there isnt any lovey dovey stuff or smooc #hing or anything #yknow?#but still #hope ppl enjoy it

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astraeaclearwater · 4 years

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〔 brittany o’grady, twenty-four, female, half-blood〕⟶ i believe astraea clearwater just walked into the leaky cauldron. that is the former hogwarts student now working as a potioneer. i heard they can be impatient & superstitious these days, lets hope they are still affectionate & persistent as well. i believe she is siding with the neutrals after the reconstruction of the ministry of magic. [ bailey, 26, cst, she/her]

q1. what are your thoughts on the charity, pur societatis, created to rebuild the wizarding world after the terror of he-who-must-not-be-named? “Anyone who claims to be pure, can never stand for the entire wixen world. We’ll just have to see how they start to rebuild, won’t we?” While the charity might do some good, Astraea wondered privately what harm they would bring. She didn’t face the same discriminations as muggle borns but she understood what it meant to be ‘tainted’.

q2. why did you choose to become a potioneer? “It’s just always been a dream of mine since I was a child.” The familiar answer rolls off of her tongue, coating it in ash and dust. She had learned a long time ago that, ‘trying to find a cure for werewolfism’ led to uncomfortable questions and judgemental stares. Once they found out what her mother had been, they would never talk to her again. The only person who hadn’t pried was her mentor - and he was also the only person she’d come close to telling in years. “Besides,” she shrugs, a wry look on her face. “Isn’t it a waste if you don’t use what gifts you were given?”

q3. do you feel safer now that he-who-must-not-be-named is dead? or do you believe he is still out there? A dark look crosses her face and her hand instinctively drops to her wand. She may not have fought on the front lines but her apprenticeship had seen its effects. Blood Replenishing potion and Bruise Balm and sleeping draughts and essence of dittany. The list went on and on and on. There was no time for research, only time to mince and chop and stir. More than once, they’d had to pack up shop and move somewhere else under heavy spellfire as death eaters attacked their lab, trying to weaken their side. Astraea could feel her heart begin to race and her breathing pick up. Forcing herself to relax her fists, she stared up at the interviewer, eyes hard. “I don’t think I will ever feel safe again.”

mun’s choice.

Spotify

Savage Daughter - Sarah Hester Ross

“I am my mother’s savage daughter/the one who runs barefoot cursing sharp stones/I am my mother’s savage daughter/I will not cut my hair I will not lower my voice

Nina Cried Power - Hozier

“It’s not the war but what’s behind it/Lord the fear of foul men is mere assignment/And everything that we’re denied by keeping the divide/it’s not the waking it’s the rising

Bottom of the River - Delta Rae

“The wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight/Drunk and driven by a devil’s hunger

Haven - We Banjo 3

“Walk with me ‘neath the rising sky/We will make a choice for love and joy

Capable - The Wild Reeds

“He says ‘you’re awful young for 21/You’ve got some work to do/Bit your pencil harder than/You were planning too’”

“You’re capable of so much more/Than these people give you credit for/And you just need to show it”

Crowded Table - The Highwomen

“I want a house with a crowded table/And a place by the fire for everyone/Let us take on the world while we’re young and able/And bring us back together when the day is done”

Oom Sha La La - Haley Hendreickx

“I’m throwing out the milk/The olives got old/I’m tired of my mind getting heavy with mold/I need to start a garden”

Biography

Grew up on the edge of a small wixen town

Father was a wizard but he was gone before Astraea was born

Her mother was a muggle witch - the magic she created was in her tonics and her intents

Astraea grew up surrounded by the mundane magic of her mother, learning different types of herbs and flowers and mushrooms, what qualities each stone had

Astraea like to “help” her mom with spells and often times the effects were more potent than expected

When her letter arrived, Astraea could hardly contain her excitement - her mother hid her sorrow behind a smile

Throughout her first couple years, Astraea did well in Herbology and Potions, with Transfiguration and History of Magic her worst

The summer of her third year, a pack of werewolves attacked Astraea’s small town while her mother was out delivering her wares. The local healer managed to keep her alive but it didn’t stop the affliction from taking hold.Fear took over the town and Astraea and her mother were cast out for fear of the next full moon. They hid deep in the forest, stumbling upon an old abandoned shack. That summer was the worst couple months of her young life. (1974)

From that moment on, Astraea became hyper focused on her schoolwork, determined to find some way to help her mom, sure that they would eventually learn a cure

Her friendships became secondary and she grew more and more secluded as she dove deeper and deeper into her studies

Her mother was killed at the end of her sixth year. (1977)

She graduated within the top 10% of her class and went straight into a potion apprenticeship, set up by Professor Slughorn.

Astraea drifted through lesson after lesson, mincing lacewing flies and carefully crushing nettles alongside 10 other aspiring potioneers.

When she was 21, a man visited their lab, eyes carefully scanning around as he walked towards the back office (1980)

Stopping at her station, he watched Astraea mix together a bruise balm and frowned. “If you didn’t have the enthusiasm of a limp noodle, you may actually be good.” And then he moved away, ignoring her indignant expression.

After that, Astraea left her apprenticeship. No job, no goals, no hope, she picked up a serving job in a muggle town and managed to save up enough to get her own apartment.

She started to grow plants, by accident at first, and then she began to seek out ones from her childhood until her apartment was overflowing with greenery

Astraea wrote to the potioneer who had insulted her and asked if she could continue her apprenticeship with him

After some convincing, he agreed. (1981)

Under his tutelage, she worked harder than ever before and began to find herself again, for the first time since her mother had been killed.

When she was 23, she officially finished her apprenticeship and earned the title of Potioneer (1982). She hadn’t found a cure yet but she was getting close to...something

Wanted Connections:

I’m working on writing these up right now. I’m definitely looking for some friends or ex-friends, maybe people she was close to in school and then began to pull away from. Or people who she met after Hogwarts and developed some sort of competitive friendship with them.

Definitely looking for an Ex - will write up more on that this week

Will also be looking for her mentor, the one who helped her finish her potions apprenticeship but that’s also going to need a bit of a write up.

I am definitely open to filling any connections or making new friends!! I’m very excited to be here

#dmhqintro

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chrismerle · 6 years

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You’re Lucky You Made It Ch. 5

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Characters: Prompto Argentum. Lunafreya Nox Fleuret. Ravus Nox Fleuret. Pryna. Umbra. A couple OCs. Chapter Rating: PG, for the moment. Warnings: Brief mentions of invasion Word count so far: 17,207 Notes: Eeeeegggggh, not really a huge fan of this chapter. Honestly, I finished writing it like two weeks ago and it took me an eternity to get it typed (yes, I write longhand). And it just...I dunno, this chapter feels weird? It feels very in-between-y. But! I know what's happening in, like, the next three chapters. Vaguely, at any rate. I always just kinda iron out the specifics as I go, and as ever people are welcome to ask about things they want to see in the future in comments.

Also, if you’re a fan of this or my other stuff, maybe consider buying me a coffee?

Obligatory Disclaimer: I don’t own FFXV, since I’m not Square-Enix and I don’t even know anyone from Square-Enix. I don’t own the characters. I’m just playing with them.

Previously: Prologue. Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four.

CHAPTER FIVE: The Wind Is On the Rise

During an average day, Prompto’s job brought him in contact with numerous other staff members. Whether it was for work, as was the case with guards and other aids and assistants, or simply saying hello to the cleaning and cooking staff in passing. None of that was out of the ordinary.

What was out of the ordinary was when other staff members actively sought him out.

Prompto had paused in the hall, turning scarlet up to his hairline as a guard wondered if he was old enough for any mischief before sighing lamentably when Prompto pointed out that he was only seventeen. As Prompto turned to go, though, he ground to a halt again when he nearly walked right into Amity. She was one of Luna’s ladies maids, and rarely seen on her own. She was fretful and fidgeting, and she already had a grip on Prompto’s wrist.

“Mr. Argentum—one of His Majesty’s couriers. A few of us noticed we didn’t recognize him, but we lost track of him and none of us are allowed in His Majesty’s office.”

Prompto hardly let her finish before he was moving, sparing only a glance over his shoulder to see the guard bolt down the hall, before he turned and broke into a sprint.

The run to Ravus’s office had never seemed longer. He didn’t bother knocking, instead simply throwing the door open and stumbling inside as he tripped to a halt. There was a courier inside, though Prompto didn’t recognize his face.

Ravus looked up sharply, impatience painting itself across his features at the abrupt intrusion. His lips parted around an admonishment, but his gaze was drawn to the courier instead.

“Who—?”

“Your Majesty—“

Prompto drew in a strangled breath as the man in the courier’s uniform withdrew a gun from within his jacket.

The office itself seemed to be holding its breath for just a split second, and then everything happened all at once.

Prompto lunged and crashed into the assassin’s side, as Ravus reached for the knife in his desk and the assassin’s finger squeezed the trigger.

The gun jerked sideways with Prompto’s impact and the bullet ripped through Ravus’s shoulder rather than his chest, spraying blood over the back of the chair and the wall behind it. Prompto and the assassin landed in a heap on the rug, and Ravus lifted his knife and hurled it. The assassin’s arm spasmed as the blade sank into it, and the gun landed on the floor with a muffled thump, sitting there just long enough for Prompto to snatch it up, his hands shaking as he turned it on the assassin.

Placidly, the assassin regarded him…and then the front of his skull exploded from the inside. Prompto yelped and flinched away, blood and brain matter painting itself across the side of his face, and the assassin’s body crumpled.

Slowly, Ravus sagged back in his chair, one arm hanging limply over the side of it. “You can put it down now, Prompto,” he stated faintly.

The gun tumbled nervelessly from Prompto’s hands and he jerked back to the present as it hit the floor, and he darted to Ravus’s side. It felt as if hours had passed by the time the guards spilled into the room with Luna rushing at their heels. A glance at the clock as Prompto was led from the room showed that it had only been a few minutes.

Prompto sank down to the floor of the shower, hands tucked behind his knees so he would stop scrubbing before he started ripping the skin from his face.

The water was cold by the time he managed to pick himself up off of the floor.

“Mama—Mama, I’m not automatically involved every time there’s a dust up,” Prompto soothed, holding the phone in a white-knuckled grip with both hands. “I promise, I was nowhere near it when it all went down.”

Luna’s eyebrows rose and her expression turned faintly incredulous. Prompto lifted a finger to his lips, silently shushing her, and she held both hands up in a pacifying gesture.

It was a very long conversation before his mother was ready to hang up the phone.

“—some sort of internal explosive, probably activated with a false tooth.”

Prompto listened silently from around the corner as the coroner filled Luna in.

“And while there were…limited remains to examine, Your Grace, we found evidence of reconstructive surgery. We suspect our would-be assassin was a remodeled magitek trooper.”

Luna nodded slowly. “You have my thanks,” she offered, slightly belatedly. “Keep me apprised of anything else.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

The coroner bowed at the waist and made his exit at the clear dismissal.

Prompto slowly made his way out of his lurking spot. Luna didn’t seem surprised when he came to a halt at her side.

“How’s His Majesty?” Prompto wondered, trying for mild and instead simply sounding sort of constipated.

“Well enough,” Luna sighed. “His physician is refusing to let him him leave the medical wing until she knows there won’t be any complications.” She smiled faintly. “So of course he’s driving the entire medical staff to distraction.”

Prompto snorted out a laugh, masking it as a cough behind one hand. “Sounds like he’ll be right as rain in no time, then.”

Prompto lurked in the hallway, hardly even daring to peer into the room Ravus was sitting in. The king’s shoulder and arm were swathed in bandages and Luna was fretting at him quietly from his bedside. Prompto couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, though from the look on Ravus’s face, he seemed to consider the entire to-do with the doctors and staying in the medical wing overnight to be a bit much. As if he had not been shot straight through the shoulder in a botched assassination attempt.

Or rather, Prompto couldn’t hear them until Ravus pitched his voice louder to say, “And do let Prompto know that all is well.”

With a noise that he would stridently deny was a squeak, Prompto fled.

The bullet had gone through and through. That much was true enough. But the gunshot wound had turned black by morning, and the king was nearly delirious with pain. Poison of some sort, slow acting and painful. A contingency plan.

Despite countless tests, no one knew what it was. “Our best guess is that it was custom tailored in a Niflheim lab,” Ravus’s doctor explained. “We’re doing all we can, but we’re keeping him asleep in the meantime. Considering the pain, it would be needlessly cruel otherwise, and you and I both know that pain or not, getting him to sit still would be a hopeless cause, and we don’t need him speeding its course.”

Luna listened quietly, her expression distant and drawn. She excused the doctor with a motion of her hand before looking over her shoulder at Prompto.

“…Orders, Your Highness?” he asked quietly.

For just a second, Luna looked so tired. But she sighed slowly, and her expression steeled.

“No one outside the palace can know.”

“This guy always rambles until the last two paragraphs,” Prompto groused, sorting through his usual allotment of the king’s paperwork. “Is there a word quota for this stuff or something?”

Slowly, the veins surrounding the wound began to turn black, spreading gradually down Ravus arm and towards his chest. Slowly, the skin around the wound paled before turning a mottled green-grey.

The king continued to sleep.

“Ignore him,” Luna sighed, shoving an envelope aside. “Let him stew in silence for a few weeks and he’ll panic and become much more cooperative. He always does.”

Steadily, Ravus’s work got done.

Prompto peered into Luna’s room and found her in the fort, staring out the window as she traced a finger over the flower on the notebook in her lap with slow, aimless motions.

Prompto rapped his knuckles against the doorframe and Luna looked up slowly, as if she were emerging from a trance, pulling the book closer to her chest.

She was quiet as Umbra hopped down from the bed and trotted over. Daintily, he took the notebook in his teeth and meandered out of the room.

Finally, Luna stated quietly, “Ravus is in surgery. I authorized it this afternoon.” Her eyes were damp, but her voice was steady. Resigned. “He’s going to be so angry with me.”

Prompto knelt on the floor and shuffled into the fort, until his shoulder was pressed to hers. Luna took his hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing.

When the king awoke, it was to find that his left arm was gone, removed at the shoulder before the infection could spread too far—before it could get to his heart.

Perhaps a cure might have been found eventually, but it wouldn’t have been much of a victory if it only arrived posthumously.

He sat alone for a time as Luna waffled outside the room, until Prompto all but bodily shoved her through the door. Even then, she managed to make her entrance look deliberate.

Prompto peered around the edge of the door as Luna paused within arm’s reach of the hospital bed. The silence seemed to stretch on for an eternity, until at last Luna offered, in a voice that wavered only slightly, “I’m sorry.”

Ravus’s response was possibly the most emphatic eye roll Prompto had ever witnessed, and he seized the nearest thing at hand—a pen on the side table—and whipped it at his sister’s head.

Luna ducked aside to let it pass and clatter to the floor, and in her distraction, Ravus reached out with his remaining hand, catching Luna’s in his own. Luna let herself be drawn closer to the bed as he squeezed her fingers, and Prompto quietly retreated.

Time passed, as it was always wont to do. Ravus left the hospital, albeit sooner than his doctor would have recommended. And Prompto did his job, just as he always did. But not everything returned to normal.

Ravus had always been left handed, and Prompto found himself adopting the role of scribe as the king learned how to write with his right hand in a way that could passably be called legible.

And he would stumble every so often, overcompensating when he found himself several pounds lighter on one side than he expected to be. Prompto never commented, and he didn’t protest on the spare few occasions when the king caught his balance on Prompto’s shoulder.

Ravus’s fuse…shortened over time. His temper had never been particularly loud before—his irritation or impatience were frequently sharp but quiet—but he grew snappish by larger turns each time someone stared at the way his coat sleeve hung empty at his side, each time his sword tumbled from his off hand no matter how his combat trainer-turned-physical therapist assured him he was improving at a remarkable pace.

Prompto didn’t want to say he was walking on eggshells, but the facts disagreed with him. He didn’t complain, though, even as anxiety ate at his sleep schedule. In light of everything else going on, it seemed like he had so little to complain about.

Prompto was roughly half awake, sitting on his couch and contemplating the window blearily when his door opened and Luna breezed in. She took a seat beside him, and then toppled over across his lap. Prompto petted her hair.

“Ravus?” he wondered sleepily.

Luna squealed between her teeth, partially muffled by the couch cushion.

Prompto nodded sagely regardless of the fact that she wasn’t looking at him. “‘Kay. Want some coffee?”

“…That would be lovely.”

Prompto dropped a mug one day, spilling tea across the rug in Ravus’s office.

“Do you need a break until you can handle the simplest aspects of your job again?” Ravus groused as Prompto crouched to clean uptake mess.

Prompto flinched and the mug dropped from his fingers once again. He swallowed and mumbled towards the rug, “It won’t happen again, Your Majesty.”

Slowly, Prompto peeked up as Ravus sighed slowly and sagged back in his chair, lifting his hand to rub his forehead as if to stave off a growing headache.

“That was uncalled for,” he acknowledged, and his tone had gentled slightly. Prompto glanced away again.

Ravus straightened up in his seat again as he mused slowly, “I presume, should I grant you permission to inform me of when I’m being a complete shit heel, you would not take the opportunity.”

“Not out loud, Your Majesty,” Prompto confirmed before he could wrestle the words back under control, and he could feel his face heating.

Ravus sighed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh, though it was as close as he had come in a rather long time. “As I suspected.”

Hesitantly, Prompto offered a crooked smile.

“Prompto.”

“What’s wrong?” The words left his mouth in a hurry. He could always tell when Lunafreya was speaking to him not as Luna, but as the princess of Tenebrae.

She glanced aside for a brief moment before she cleared her throat and her expression steeled slightly.

“My family has asked a great deal of you,” she acknowledged quietly, “but I’m afraid I need to ask for another favor.”

“Anything you need,” Prompto agreed immediately, and a ghost of a smile slid across Luna’s features for a split second.

“My brother’s personal staff needs to undergo some…temporary pruning,” she explained carefully. “Even considering past losses, many of them have still known him since he was a child or a teenager. They mean well, of course, but it colors how they react to him and this entire situation. He needs—“ She paused for a breath. “…I would appreciate it if someone was at his side throughout the day, but they would have to be someone who could see him struggle and still see their king, rather than the boy they helped raise.”

“Of course,” Prompto agreed, with open bemusement. If that was it, why did she seem so serious?

“It will mean an increase in your duties across the board,” she pointed out. “Including as protection detail.” She settled a meaningful look on him. “You would need to undergo combat training.”

The world seemed to slow down for a moment as Prompto processed those words, as if they were in some foreign language.

Luna’s words picked up speed as she hurried to explain, “It is your decision, of course. No one will order you into it. And you can have all the time you need to consider—“

“I’ll do it.” He didn’t mean to cut her off, but the words were out before he could help it.

But it only made sense, didn’t it? His princess. His king. His friends. One could argue that he had already repaid all that he owed them, but that didn’t seem important.

“I’ll do it,” he repeated, slower and steadier.

“You’re certain?” Luna asked, as if she was still trying so hard not to get her hopes up.

“Positive,” Prompto assured her, and it was like a weight dropped off of her shoulders all at once.

It seemed a bit backwards when she was the one throwing herself into his arms.

The trial and error of finding a weapon didn’t last long. The basics of hand-to-hand were easy enough to grasp, if a bit cumbersome at first. He flailed around with a few bladed weapons at first, without much luck. And then his trainer—Ravus’s trainer—put a pair of revolvers into his hands and something clicked.

His aim was impeccable. He told himself it was because of his photography. He got the knack of disassembling and cleaning them in an instant. He told himself it wasn’t so different from a vintage camera. He told himself it wasn’t intrinsic to who he was.

On the whole, it wasn’t too hard to put his worries out of his head. Between weapons training, new duties, and training for that expanded list of duties, he hardly even had time to think.

It wasn’t great for his sleep schedule.

“What? Sorry, Mama, I zoned out a little…Oh yeah, everything’s great. Wha—I’m fine, Mama. Yes, really. I promise.”

When the king healed enough to be fitted with a prosthetic, Prompto expected it to fix more issues than it really did. It mostly weighed as much as an arm. It was in the same place as an arm. It had the same general look of an arm. But it offered no feedback and its ability to grip things was inconsistent at best. The harness that held the arm to what was left of his shoulder wasn’t the most comfortable, and learning to use it required more visits with a physical therapist than learning how to not have an arm.

Yes, Prompto knew all of Ravus’s complaints by heart. With inflections included.

Even so, its presence seemed to be appreciated, and Prompto remained loyally at his side. ‘Good as new’ hadn’t quite happened yet.

Prompto had assumed he was good at reading the room. He had been decent enough at it in school, at least, until…certain events.

He learned otherwise swiftly.

There was an art to learning the difference between someone who was nervous or angry or jumpy because they were planning something, or for unrelated reasons. There was an art to learning when someone was a threat, even when all signs pointed in the other direction.

Prompto was a quick study, and his trainers were a dedicated bunch, using outings with Luna to train him when there was a safety net of her regular retinue at hand. But still, the fear of messing up loomed over his head.

He developed more of a taste for coffee.

“What’s that?”

As Prompto asked, Umbra trotted off with the notebook in his mouth and Luna smiled unconsciously.

“When I was young, I met a boy named Noctis,” she answered, her voice distant with fond reminiscence.

The name stirred some sort of recollection in Prompto’s thoughts, though he couldn’t recall what just then.

“He was here with his father,” Luna carried on, turning to face Prompto properly, “to be healed by my mother. They went home, of course, and since then life has pulled us in different directions, but we’ve kept in touch over the years.”

Finally, it clicked.

“Wait—Noctis—the Lucian prince?”

Luna nodded once, and Prompto blinked at her, bemused, before he said, “You’ve never brought him up.”

Luna’s gaze darted to the side and smiled quietly, small and impossibly fond. She picked her words carefully as she explained, “What exists between Noctis and I is…unique.”

“Oh.” Prompto tried not to feel the bubble of jealousy that welled up in his chest, and Luna carried onward.

“I asked for Lucian assistance in identifying a cure for the poison, and it seems one has been synthesized at last.”

“Just a day late and a gil short,” Prompto drawled in reply, and for a moment Luna looked baffled by the ire behind the observation, and Prompto felt his face heating.

Cautiously, Luna added, “I wanted you to hear the good news before half the palace was shouting about it. Ravus will pretend he doesn’t care, of course, but this is good news. No one else must suffer the way he did.”

Prompto nodded stiffly and pasted a smile into place. Luna looked concerned for a moment longer, eyes slightly narrowed and a crease furrowed into her brow, before she set a hand on his shoulder and excused him from the room.

“Do you know Noctis?” It was probably dumb to ask, but the words were already out of Prompto’s mouth.

“Prince Noctis,” Ravus corrected disinterestedly, not even bothering to look up from the missive. “I’ve not seen him since he was a young boy, and my correspondences with Lucis have all been with his father. You’ve read some of them.”

“Any idea what he’s like?” Prompto wondered, trying for casual as he cleaned a shelf. He succeeded well enough at the cleaning, but not so much at the ease. “Uh—Noc—Prince Noctis, I mean.”

Finally, Ravus gave up on reading, sighing out an impatient breath through his nose as he looked up. “Luna mentioned him,” he guessed. “And you’re prying.”

Prompto shuffled in place, tapping one foot against the ground and fiddling with one of the items on the shelf. “She never brought him up before,” he mumbled reluctantly.

“You don’t know him, and she would need to catch you up on years of correspondence,” Ravus stated simply. “Stop pouting over something that isn’t a snub.”

Prompto ducked his head back towards his tidying.

When it came to carrying on a conversation, Ravus was not ideal.

When it came to speaking to his people, it was another story entirely. Prompto wished he could have listened more closely as the king explained the attempt on his life and his subsequent absence from the public eye, but his attention was caught up in the crowd, eyes peeled and roaming for anything suspicious.

He spotted his parents, briefly. He recognized some of his old classmates. His parents’ neighbors. A few teachers.

And a man in a hood.

The hood itself was nothing unusual; it was raining. All Prompto could see was the bottom half of the man’s face, but something was familiar all the same.

There was security all over the place. Getting a guard’s attention was just a matter of catching the nearest guard’s eye and motioning in the general direction of the suspect. So his concern about things getting out of hand during the speech was minimal. Afterwards, however? That had Prompto concerned.

He couldn’t slow or stop time, though, so inevitably the speech did indeed come to an end. And things seemed to be going well enough at first, at least until Prompto heard an outcry from the crowd, and heavy steps rounding the corner after them.

When the MT came to a halt, he still looked like Prompto. That was probably what the hood was for, Prompto supposed.

Some sort of cogs were definitely turning in the MT’s head as he stared at Prompto’s face, though he came up short when Prompto remained stubbornly in his path as the rest of the guards steadily closed in.

Prompto’s revolver was comfortable in his hand. He focused on that, rather than the fact that he was pointing it at a face almost identical to his own.

Thoughtfully, the MT looked around. Took note of his lack of options. And then looked contemplatively back at Prompto. His jaw clenched as he chomped down on something.

Prompto skittered back several feet, getting well out of range when the front of the MT’s face exploded into pieces. The rest of the body crumpled to the ground with a wet, meaty smack, and Prompto cringed at the sound.

Everything was silent for a few moments, taut as a wire. And then Ravus observed blandly, “Quite an eventful day.”

Prompto scuffed one heel against the ground, as if to scrape something off of it, and his eyebrows rose as he gave His Majesty a rather pointed look.

Ravus held a hand up in surrender and let himself be shepherded away.

Prompto face-planted on the rug in the fort. A moment passed before Luna joined him, patting his head consolingly.

“Is there a problem?”

Prompto turned his head so his cheek was against the carpet. “That last attempt seemed too half-assed. And I? Am stressing about it.”

“I think it was largely a reminder that they’re still displeased with my brother’s continued existence. The magitek soldiers are—“

“Cannon fodder, I know. They can be wasted to make a point.”

“Not how I would have phrased it,” she returned wryly.

“Considered to be disposable,” Prompto corrected, pitching his voice to a falsetto. He snorted when Luna smacked his shoulder with the back of her hand.

Eventually he rolled over onto his back, hands linked together beneath his head. “Why the focus on Tenebrae, anyway?” he groused. “Don’t they have something better to do?”

“No,” Luna answered frankly. “Most everywhere else is theirs. Even Accordo is a Nifilian territory, despite playacting at borrowed autonomy, and Lucis is herded closer and closer to its capital city each day.”

“…Oh. Right.”

Prompto sighed slowly and stared up at the blanket that made the fort’s ceiling.

“Sooo,” Prompto began, voice too casual, “what happens when someone realizes I’m an MT and shoots me? Or stabs me, I guess.”

“You aren’t an MT,” Ravus pointed out distractedly, shuffling through a drawer in his desk. “At least keep writing.”

Prompto ducked his head back towards the page, pen scratching over it rapidly for a moment, until he looked up again. “I was made to be an MT, probably,” he reasoned. “So what’s the difference?”

“The presence of a personality and a marked lack of homicidal intent. Think of a polite way to say we aren’t interested.” Ravus paused, gaze drifting thoughtfully towards the ceiling as Prompto wrote. “And were I to offend you, I have my doubts that your skull would explode, though I suppose we could test it.”

“I’ll pass,” Prompto sighed, rolling his eyes. “I was being serious, though. Eventually someone will make the connection.” He set the pen and clipboard down.

“The palace staff know you,” Ravus reminded him as he closed the drawer, “and when you’re outside its walls, rarely are you not with myself or Lunafreya. The risk of a mistaken identity seems rather low.”

Prompto was quiet as he mulled that statement over. It hadn’t quite occurred to him, save for in a vague and distant sense, that his role as protector was also for his own protection.

Prompto remembered it was his birthday when he got a phone call from his parents. Other than assuring them he would try to be there for dinner, he hardly got a word in edgewise as they gushed about how their little boy was an adult, passing the phone back and forth so they both could say their fill.

It was nearly forty minutes before Prompto hung up, and he was grinning fit to split his face in half by the time he did, at least until he nearly had a heart attack when he spotted Luna sitting peacefully on his couch.

“How long have you been there?” he practically yowled, voice half an octave higher than usual.

She smiled pleasantly. “I’m certain Ravus will let you take the evening off. Would you come with me?”

“…Okay?”

She allowed him about three minutes to get dressed and ready before she grabbed his hand and began towing him along.

“You’ve given much to my family,” she began eventually, still towing him after her. “I thought it was time we give something back.”

“But you’ve already—“

She shushed him as the stables came into view, and she picked up the pace until they breezed through the doors, pulling all the while. Leading him past her own silver-white chocobo Nova and Ravus’s enormous mercury black Aquila, to a third bird that he didn’t recognize.

She was only a little larger than Nova, with feathers such a pale yellow they were nearly white. Prompto stared at her in open wonder until Luna gestured him forward with an expectant motion of her hand.

“She…?” Prompto trailed off in disbelief.

“She’s yours,” Luna confirmed quietly.

Prompto tripped forward the last few steps to the bird—his bird—until he was standing just outside her stall.

“What will you call her?” Luna wondered.

She didn’t get an answer immediately, as Prompto was too busy laughing while the bird preened a strand of his hair, until he took her face in both hands and held her back at a polite distance.

“Paisley,” he decided eventually, before turning his hopeful gaze on Luna. “Can we go for a ride?”

Prompto was an adult. Admittedly, he didn’t feel much different than before and he was still treated as the baby of the palace staff, so he supposed being an adult wasn’t actually that fascinating.

And he suddenly had a bizarre amount of things to sign, as he was abruptly old enough to have an official say in any aspect of his life. He had a strange urge to ask how much of the paperwork his parents had been confused by.

Amazing, the difference a day could make. He adjusted quickly enough, though. Paperwork wasn’t exactly something new.

And everything seemed…kind of normal. Or as close to normal as they were ever likely to be.

And then Pryna woke him up one morning, bouncing insistently against his hip until he groaned and rolled out of bed. He had only a moment to scowl at the window as he realized the sun was hardly even rising, before Pryna began to whine. She yapped out a shrill bark, and Prompto flapped a tired hand at her and set about getting dressed.

Pryna waited just long enough for him to make toast, but not to actually eat it, and Prompto had to eat it on the go as he followed her at a jog to Luna’s suite.

Luna was sitting on the couch when they arrived, the red notebook on her lap and Umbra at her feet. She was smiling quietly as she informed Prompto, “You need to pack. We’re heading to the Lucian capital.”

#ffxv fanfic #final fantasy xv fanfic #prompto argentum #lunafreya nox fleuret #ravus nox fleuret #pryna #umbra #You're Lucky You Made It

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cathcacen · 7 years

Text

Happy days and sad days. Four mini drabbles for the price of one.

The elevator doors open to a throng of residents and their respective interns outside her patient’s room. She frowns. None of them are supposed to be up here.

They glance towards her as she makes her way over. “Don’t you all have patients of your own to see to?”

“Keller and Lewis are in there with Lieutenant Sagen,” Hayes says. He’s tall. Blond. Perfect for the specialty he’s chosen. “And I’m on Plastics this month, so your boyfriend’s all mine today, Naveau. Pity daddy’s not here to pull strings, eh?”

She ignores him and peers into the room through the sliding doors. Inside, she can see both Ortho and Plastics attendings in conversation with the Lieutenant, no doubt explaining the procedure they’ve scheduled for the day.

Tissue expansion. They’d set the new skin-growing in motion some months back, when he had still been a patient abroad. Lewis, a seasoned Plastics specialist, is set to take over the procedure, and his delicate hands are expected to restore the Lieutenant’s god-given good looks.

She wonders if his fanclub will grow, after.

“You’ll be pleased to have your boyfriend back, eh, Naveau?” Dr. Fischer, a short, pretty Peds hopeful nudges her side. She looks almost envious. “His before picture, goodness. That’s a fine piece of-”

“Right, if you’ll all excuse me.” She pushes past the crowd and strides into the room. Sagen smirks at her. She ignores him. “Doctors. The OR is booked and ready. I’d like to scrub in, if that’s possible.”

She can hear Strahan’s voice in her head. You’re a Naveau. Use your damn connections. Your peers will hate you for it either way.

Keller frowns. He’s hogged the patient for much of the past month and a half, but she’s grown used to muscling her way in. It’s obnoxious, somewhat, but she’s learnt to enjoy his reactions. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Naveau. You’ve learnt a lot since joining my service, but this surgery falls mostly under the jurisdiction of Plastics.”

She glances up at Lewis. He’s everything one would expect of a Plastics specialist, with a headful of thick dark hair, perfect teeth, and dreamy eyes. She smiles sweetly before handing him Sagen’s chart. “Dr. Lewis, I’ve studied your work on reconstructive surgery extensively - your technique is impeccable. I know Lieutenant Sagen’s chart by heart, and I’ve been his physician since our days together out in the field. I scrubbed in on his ulnar nerve transposition, and took care of him post-up. And, I know how much it would mean to him to have me by his side, seeing as he’s specially requested me as his resident throughout his stay here.”

Lewis takes the chart, smiling broadly. “Of course, Naveau. You’re always welcome in my OR. Keller, you can take Hayes for the day. He’s due for some Ortho hours, anyway.”

Keller grunts in irritation. Outside the room, Hayes flips her the bird. She turns her head a little and meets his eyes, then channels her best Sagen smirk. It feels good.

“Starting to warm up to me, eh?” Sagen quirks his brow at her when the attendings have filed out. “I didn’t know you loved being on my case this much.”

“Well, after you decided to hobble around the hospital with the back of your gown untied, I realised that hot piece of ass was too great to pass on to anyone else.” She leans forward onto his overbed table, folding her arms on the surface and grinning down at him.

“How dare you sexually harass me in that impertinent manner,” He tells her, feigning indignation. “I could have you reported.“

She slants a knowing smile at him. It’s times like these that remind her of life back at their base. Easy banter. Playful teasing. The occasional burst of actual anger, almost immediately diffused by moments of genuine affection. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed those days. “I’m not the one spreading all sorts of rumours in this place. And anyway, you know you’re proud of your cute butt.”

He pauses, clearly remembering their first encounter. Emboldened, she winks, and he lets out a laugh. “I’m starting to think I’ve rubbed off on you.”

“Maybe,” She tells him. “My colleagues have been calling me asshole a lot recently.”

“At least we make pretty cute assholes, right?”

“I’d withhold judgment until your surgery’s done.” She leans closer then, her smile softening a bit. “And Sagen?”

He tilts his head at her. “Hm?”

“Try not to die on my watch.”

The streets are crowded with revellers, foghorns and helium balloons and flowers and champagne bottles at every corner. She’s standing on the curb of the main road, back pressed against the front wall of an office building, bundled up against the chilly midwinter breeze and munching on a stray cereal bar fished out from the bottom of her purse. It’s loud; people are singing, laughing, and waiting for the clock tower to begin its annual countdown to yet another year.

The new shoes bite at her feet, but she thinks it’s not so bad – the stockings are warm and help to cushion the sting. She’s hungry and impatient, and there’s a nervous ticking inside her that corresponds with the feeling of being blown off. The last time it had happened, she’d been fourteen, and it hadn’t ended well.

She hopes she doesn’t have to spend the night alone in this foreign city. Damn it, Sagen.

Two college jocks run past her, celebratory streamers clipped to the backs of their shoulders. They’re laughing, clearly drunk and on break from school. One of them stops and hands her a lit-up headband with heart-shaped antennae. Not wanting to spoil the mood, she puts it on, and even consents to let the other boy dress her wrists with disco-coloured neon bracelets.

Then they’re gone, swallowed up by the ever-burgeoning crowd. She hears them bellowing an opera number at the top of their lungs, and they’re so off-key and carefree in waving goodbye that that she has to laugh and wave back. It isn’t until she turns around that she realises Sagen is watching her, evidently amused.

“You’re late!” She’s still laughing as she crosses the distance to him, and he grins, flicking at the drooping glowing heart currently bouncing off her forehead. “The theatres are all closed. I’m pretty sure all the restaurants are, too, so unless you—” She steadies herself, pressing her hands to his chest. “What’re you grinning at?”

“You look ridiculous,” He nudges at her bracelets.

“Hey, you dressed me.” She twirls for him, even though she’s aware he can hardly see the dress beneath her coat. “And you don’t get to talk – I thought you weren’t going to come.”

He opens his mouth, clearly about to respond, but the crowd roars and he’s cut off. The clock tower lets off its first chime of the night, and suddenly, it doesn’t matter that he’s late, or that she’s starving, or that her feet are aching. He produces two single-serve champagne bottles from his coat pocket, uncaps them, and hands her one.

She clinks her bottle against his before taking a long drink. The clock strikes twelve. Amidst the deafening roar of the crowd, she drops her empty bottle, and when she straightens, she’s standing face to face with him. She looks into his eyes. The prosthetic is a soft, subtle grey today, like her dress. So close, she can smell him – spice and clean soap.

He kisses her, and it feels like forever before she comes up for air. She’s clinging off him, gripping the front of his shirt, breathless and shaking. He presses his forehead to hers, still grinning, and she lets out a half-embarrassed chuckle.

“Happy new year, Naveau.” He kisses her forehead this time.

It’s a tender sort of gesture. She shivers again, and he wraps his arms tighter about her shoulders.

“Happy new year, Sagen.” She looks up, beaming. “What’re we going to do for food?”

“Oh, don’t worry. I know a guy.”

Their room overlooks the ocean, tucked away in a secluded corner of the South of France. It’s bright white and beautiful, and from where she lays, her head nestled in the crook between his shoulder and chest, she can just see the glittering waves as they break upon the sand.

She’s drawing idle circles over his abdomen, fingertips feather light as they trace his skin. His hand smoothes and strokes her hair, lazily twirling the curls around his digits. They’ve been awake for a good hour now, watching the sun’s slow climb over the horizon.

It’s been a couple of years, but she remembers that new years’ night as if it were yesterday. Then, the sun had risen over a sleepy city still soaking in the final vestiges of celebration, but there’s no tolling bell to signal the start of a brand new something today, no thrill nor excitement. Instead, she feels perfectly at home, skin on skin, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest.

His scent is familiar to her, and yet, she thinks, she still knows next to nothing about this man. His tics and habits, perhaps, the way he likes his tea and his small eccentricities.

They don’t share the important details. And for what they have, there’s no need.

A small voice inside begs to remain, to lay here until their bones grow old and tired, but she knows he’ll rouse soon.

So she cuts to the chase, as always. “When do you leave?” Her voice comes out slightly hoarse. She wonders how many neighbours they’d kept awake the night before. Oops.

“Two hours,” He tells her.

She lets out a sigh, turning her face inwards to press tender kisses along his collarbone. Then she lifts her head, gazing into his eye. “Can’t you stay just a little bit longer?”

She’s never asked this of him before, and judging by the way the singular eye widens a bit, he’s as surprised as she is at her boldness. He recovers magnificently, however, and her chest tightens a little as the cocky little smile surfaces. “You know that’s not possible, Naveau. Besides, two hours is plenty.”

After, when they’ve exhausted themselves thoroughly, she retakes her position on his chest, breathing deeply. Her heart is pounding, and she struggles to catch her breath, planting tender kisses upon his jawline. When it steadies, she goes still, nuzzling against his neck.

“Tell me a secret,” He says. He’s doodling into the small of her back, squares and circles and alphabets she’s too tired to decipher.

She takes a moment to think. She’s certain he knows most things about her by now, so it takes a while. Eventually, she says the best thing that comes to mind. “Sometimes, I miss you.”

His hand goes still, and she thinks she’s pushed him to that place again, the place he doesn’t want to go. And for a terrifying moment, she wonders if this is the last time she’ll see him, if he’ll disappear because he’s realised she’s in love with him.

For your own good, don’t, he’d said that time. Don’t bother with me.

“Tell me a secret.” She whispers the words, half wondering if he’ll even hear them at all.

He doesn’t say a thing. Instead, he squeezes her gently. That’s classified information, dearie. In her head, the words don’t sound nearly as triumphant.

She’s right. He does disappear.

She hasn’t seen him in close to five months. Beyond their borders, the war rages on. More and more soldiers return wounded with each mission. Some don’t return at all.

Sometimes, when her mind isn’t occupied with patients and medical stocks and cutting-edge methods for keeping infection rates low, it wanders to him. Is he dead?

She doesn’t know. She's not sure she wants to find out.

Her direct superior has taken to joining missions on a regular basis. He leaves her in charge of the infirmary. She runs triage. She assesses. She tries to save lives. It’s when she throws herself into work that she forgets, and forgetting is exactly what she wants to do.

It’s messy work, but when the men survive, she’s happy to soldier on.

The day her superior comes back in a body bag is the day she stops questioning her place in the army. There’s no time for doubt. It’s war and you’ve got to get up and go, Naveau. His words keep her moving throughout the never-ending night, and by the time the sun rises, she’s too exhausted to even cry.

The same airstrike that had taken out her superior had also taken out twenty seven others. Among the nineteen survivors, eight had needed immediate surgery, and with only one other Captain and six first Lieutenants on base, they’d been severely shorthanded.

Three of the eight had died. One’s a new father.

She’s sitting outside the infirmary with a bottle of water when one of her Lieutenants come running out. “Captain, someone’s asking for you.”

“Who is it?” She crushes the empty plastic bottle and tosses it into the nearby bin.

The Lieutenant shrugs. “I’m just passing the message. Apparently, they have an appointment.”

Her breath hitches. Sagen.

It’s not him, and of course it isn’t. Instead, waiting for her on the bed at the edge of the hall is a woman officer. She’s young. Her face might be sweet, if it weren’t so hardened with obvious anxiety.

She recognises the face and name from a patient chart on her superior’s desk. “Private Kelly. Sorry, I got a bit caught up.”

Kelly manages a wry sort of smile. “It’s okay. It’s been a tough day.” She looks up with pale blue eyes. “I’m sorry about Major Wells. You holding up okay?”

“I’ll let you know when I’ve had time to process it.” She studies the young woman. “Now, how can I help you, Private?”

“I’m pregnant.” Kelly bites her lip, fidgeting a bit. “I made an appointment with the Major a week ago, and he was supposed to clear me for maternal leave.”

“Oh,” She says. “Of course.”

She has one of the Lieutenants fetch the ultrasound. While she sets up the machine, Kelly lays down and pulls up her shirt. The three-month bump is only just visible.

“I know it’s a little selfish, starting a family when we’re at war.” The Private’s smile is a soft, warm one. “But I want to believe it’s possible, y’know? And if we don’t do it now, we may never get the chance.”

“No, I understand entirely.” She tries for a smile as she straightens. There’s an ache deep inside of her that she recognises as loneliness. Something else sears itself into her psyche.

It’s envy. And with the envy comes the stark realisation that she does want it after all. A life of peace and simplicity with the man she loves. The consciousness scoffs. He doesn’t want that, Naveau.

She doesn’t trust herself to say any more, so she focuses on the task ahead. Gel. Machine. Find a heartbeat. Congratulate the mother. Then you can hide, cry, and sleep.

“We’re planning to retire to the country when this is all over and done with.” Kelly stretches her arms out over her head, letting out a sigh. “How’s the little one cooking in there?”

Her breath hitches again. She glances up, and dares to meet the pale blue eyes. The words don’t come, however. She doesn’t know how to say them..

There isn’t a heartbeat.

Kelly blinks, evidently confused by the extended silence. “Captain?”

“I’m sorry,” She whispers.

After, she’s summoned to the Lieutenant General’s office. He’s seated at his desk, and there are stacks of papers before him. The recent weeks have not been kind, and there are dark rings beneath his eyes, and bandages around his right forearm from an incident involving an assassination attempt and straying shrapnel.

She wonders if he’s as numb to it all as she is by now.

“I’m recommending to the higher ups that you be promoted, Naveau.” He tells her without looking up. “You’ll take over Major Wells’ role effective immediately while we wait on official confirmation. I expect you’ll be needed in the field soon, so make sure your guys know how to handle the infirmary on their own.”

The body bag flashes across her mind, and she has to shut her eyes to push back the imagery. You’ve got to get up and go, Naveau. Screw your hopes and dreams. There are more important things to worry over right now.

She lets out a breath. “Yes, sir.”

#emmbot writes #anarei ilvait-sagen #raindrop pendants au #lear ilvait-sagen

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