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highfunctioningflailgirl · 3 months

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Damage Control - 2x02 Everybody Loves A Clown

When Bobby’s phone rings - his private cell, not one of the bogus agency phones lined up in his kitchen - and he recognizes Sam Winchester’s caller ID, he instinctively knows the shit must’ve hit the fan. He saw it coming: the totaled Impala and Dean in a coma; the ingredients from John’s list that Sam picked up last night; the spell Bobby knows they’re used for - this can’t be good.

And it isn’t. Sam’s voice sounds strange on the phone - small, brittle - when he tells him that John’s dead. Not only dead, but burned already, the circumstances of his demise not clear to Bobby since Sam stops talking mid-sentence and all he hears is the choked-up breathing of someone trying not to cry. Then, after a pause, a broken question: “Can we stay at your place for a couple of days?”

Of course they can.

When they arrive, the boys look as wrecked as the Impala that Bobby had towed into his salvage yard only two days ago. Although the injuries on Sam’s face are healing, he looks worse than before, puffy and red-eyed. He’s got one steadying hand around Dean’s bicep and, Christ, the kid looks like a ghost - pale and stony, purple bruises under his eyes, a row of stitches zig-zagging down his forehead.

Bobby’s seen them hurt or sick before. John had dropped them off now and then when they were little, with stomach bugs or strep throats that interfered too long with his hunting, and later, when their own hunting injuries needed more than a motel room and an ace bandage.

But he’s never seen them like this.

“Come in, you two boneheads.”

He waves them inside, taking a heavy duffel bag and backpack from Sam so he can steer his brother into the study and sit him down on the worn-out couch. Bobby’s itching to learn what happened, but if he knows one thing about the Winchesters it’s that prying will only make them clam up - Dean in particular. What they need, what these boys always needed to open up was a safe space, time and patience.

“I made up your old room for you,” Bobby says, pointing upstairs with his thumb. “Beds may be a little small for you now, but more comfortable than the couch and the floor. And you-” he looks at Dean “-need to lie down and heal.”

“Nah. I just need a beer.”

Bobby almost flinches at the sound of Dean’s voice. Hollow steel. He sounds like something died inside of him. Probably did. He was close with his dad. The kid’s heart must be in pieces.

“Dean!” Sam raises exasperated, too-big hands. “You just came out of a coma. You can’t drink—“

“You’re not my mom, Sammy. Or my dad.” He scoffs darkly. “Fact, both of them are dead now. I can do what I want.”

Sam’s mouth stays open like gobsmacked.

Bobby sighs. Cynicism. Dean’s always had a knack for that, even as a kid, and now it’s spilling out of him like tar. From experience, Bobby knows it won’t cover the hurt.

“You wanna be an idjit and drink yourself back into the ICU, be my guest.” He waves at the kitchen. “Enough booze in the fridge to kill whatever brain cells you got left in that cracked noggin’ of yours. But I’m not sure your brother’s in the mood for another Winchester funeral right now.”

Dean scowls at him, bruised eyes blazing green, but when he turns his head to look at Sam, his sharp edges soften a bit, seeing the hurt on his little brother’s face.

“Fine.” Dean slaps his thighs. “I’m gonna go upstairs and rest.” He spits that last word out like it’s poison. “You two can hug it out or whatever.” He heaves himself up off the couch, slapping away Sam’s helpful arm, and stiffly limps toward the stairs.

As Bobby sees Dean drag himself up the steps, he suppresses the urge to help. Sam had told him about the severity of Dean’s injuries, and Bobby has no idea how he’s even on his feet (although he has an inkling that John meddled with things he shouldn’t have meddled with, the goddamned fool.) The kid should be in a hospital. He certainly shouldn’t be walking up a flight of stairs by himself.

But Bobby knows that, when Dean’s like this, he can’t be touched. He can’t have anyone in his personal space. Dean deals with weakness and pain the way an injured cat does: He hides away, on his own, until it’s either passed or killed him. Of course, Bobby won’t allow the latter to happen. But he’ll give the kid his space for now and check on him later.

When he hears the door to the boys’ room fall shut upstairs, he turns around to Sam.

The younger Winchester is a mess. He’s pacing, fidgety, face scrunched up, looking like he’s about to burst. Now that Dean’s out of sight, the dam seems about to break.

“Sam?” Carefully, Bobby steps closer. “What’s going on, son? What happened?”

Sam stops in his tracks, all 6’5 of him just standing there, a tremor rippling through his lanky body. Then, unexpected, he takes two long strides and his arms sling themselves around Bobby. His stubbly, sweaty face burrows into his shoulder with a wet sob. Bobby sways a little under the assault.

But this is Sam. Little Sammy who always loved climbing into Bobby’s lap with a book; whose clammy, plump hand had fit so naturally into Bobby’s calloused one; who’d followed him around like a puppy as soon as John had pushed him inside the door and turned around on his heel.

“He’s dead, Bobby”, Sam sobs. “He’s gone and I can’t—“ The rest dissolves into tears.

Bobby wraps his arms around Sam. It must be looking awkward - he’s half a foot shorter and his old, thinning arms can’t even reach around the boy’s broad back. But he puts all the warmth and comfort into the embrace that he has in his bones, and Sam clings to him like someone who’s drowning.

“I know, son,” Bobby mumbles, fighting back tears of his own now. “I know.”

It’s true. Bobby knows about grief and the shock of sudden loss. He’s been there. It’s molded him into who he is today. But he was older than Sam and Dean when the death of a loved one cut into him, and these two boys have been through it twice now. For Sam, it may even feel like the first time. He was only a baby when his mother was killed and has no active memory of that time - or of his mom. He cannot remember his life getting turned upside down back then. Dean can, and Bobby shudders at what this is doing to the boy, hardened as he is already, his armor so heavy he can barely carry it anymore.

For Sam, their father’s death must feel like a stab wound - sudden, sharp and breathtaking. After the initial, surreal shock, the pain finally comes, and it’s found him now, in Bobby’s study, overwhelming and all-encompassing. At least he’s letting it out. At least he’s crying. At least he’s letting himself be held, and that’s what Bobby does, silently and patiently, until Sam is done. Until he unlocks his arms and steps back, wiping his nose on his sleeve, red-eyed and embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, Bobby,” he mumbles, voice still thick. “I- I didn’t mean to- … I’m alright.”

“Balls.”

Bobby reaches into the pocket of his worker vest and pulls out an old-fashioned, folded cotton handkerchief that he gives to Sam.

“Leave the ‘I’m fine’ BS to your brother. No one’d be alright after what you boys went through. Now sit down before you fall over.”

He herds Sam to his sagging old couch and sits him down. While the kid wipes his eyes and blows his nose, Bobby fetches a bottle of Scotch and fills two glasses. He hands one of them to Sam.

“Drink.”

Obediently, Sam does. Technically, Bobby knows booze isn’t the best for someone recovering from a concussion, but it’s been two days since the accident, and Sam isn’t nearly as injured as his brother. He figures that, by now, it’s medicine.

Sam sips, then nervously starts turning the glass in his hands. Even cried out, he’s still twitchy and unable to sit still. One knee is bobbing in high frequency. His mouth is in constant motion, biting and twisting his lips.

“Okay,” Bobby says, calmly and invitingly. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

And then it all spills out of Sam like water from a burst pipe.

xxx

Half an hour later, Sam is shoveling a plate of Bobby’s famous kitchen sink chili into his mouth. No idea when the kid’s eaten the last time. Must’ve been awhile. Hopefully not the PB&J Bobby forced on Sam when they’d towed the Impala to his salvage yard.

Bobby trudges up the stairs to check on Dean and stops in front of the boys’ room, listening. No sounds drift out the door, no snoring, no running tv. No sobs either. There’s no answer when he knocks softly, so he quietly steps inside.

Dean’s on his side, turned to the wall, comically big in the single bed, his still figure softly illuminated by the old nightlight Sam had always needed and that Bobby never bothered to remove from the room. It’s hard to believe that Dean’s asleep. If he is, it’s only due to the exhaustion his injured soul and body are forcing on him. Usually, with his hunter’s instincts, he would have woken up as soon as somebody entered the room, unannounced. In truth, Bobby had half expected to have a weapon pointed at him.

Asleep or not, Bobby steps closer and leans over the older Winchester brother. He’s in a t-shirt, sheets slipped down to his waist, and as far as Bobby can tell in the semi-darkness there’s no fresh blood staining the grey cotton fabric. Good. At least his stitches are holding.

Sam had told him that, while Dean’s internal injuries had miraculously vanished, the slashes on his torso and the surgery incisions were still healing, like the stitches Bobby had seen on Dean’s forehead. Knowing Dean, Bobby was pretty sure those wounds were overdue a bandage change, and there was probably an unopened pill bottle somewhere in his bag. Of course, he’d left the hospital against medical advice, and Sam, off his head in the wake of their father’s sudden death, hadn’t been able to keep him from walking out. Somehow, the two idjits had managed to steal John Winchester’s body from the morgue and found a remote spot to burn it.

“Why didn’t you call me then?” Bobby had asked Sam downstairs.

Sam, face still wet, wringing his large hands, had shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”

But Bobby knew. They were Winchesters, taught by John to keep family matters close to their chest, just like pain.

Now, seeing Dean’s young, marred profile in the semi-darkness, his chest twists with sorrow. They’ve been through so much in their twenty-something years, and Bobby, in fits and spurts, had to witness them losing their innocence and their trust in a world that seemed to mean them nothing but harm. John had exposed them to the darkness. And Bobby hadn’t been able to shield them from it.

Sighing, he reaches out and - carefully, stealthily - touches his hand to Dean’s forehead to check for a fever. He’s a little warm, but not alarmingly so. The boy stirs a little, brow furrowing, a small sound escaping his parted lips. To Bobby’s surprise, Dean leans into his touch, eyes closed, before he stills again, dropping back into deep sleep.

His stupid old heart overflowing, Bobby remains like this for a prolonged moment - his hand cupping Dean’s forehead, the boy’s spiky hair soft against his calloused palm - until his back starts to twinge and he has to straighten back up. Tenderly, he pulls the sheet back up to Dean’s shoulder.

“I gotcha,” he grumbles softly before leaving the room and quietly closing the door.

The damage Control Series - Masterlist

Read the whole series on AO3 here:

#spn #supernatural #fanfic #fan fiction #2x02 #everybody loves a clown #the damage control series #sam winchester #dean winchester #bobby singer #hurt/comfort #grief #hurt dean winchester #emotionally hurt sam winchester

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whatdoesshedotothem · 2 years

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Saturday 17 November 1832

6 40

12 ¼

fine frosty morning F46° at 7am. breakfast with my father at 8 - George Naylor came at 8 ¾ to speak about the stone in his and in Joseph Hall’s land to ask if I would see it - yes! if I could get my price - but without a very good bid his friends (a Naylor and 2 others who have plenty of money) would have no chance - I should promise the 1st refusal long since and George himself had the 2nd - asked what he thought the stone was worth - he did not know - but when I said my own mind was nearly made up, he said well! perhaps I should be wanting 5/. or 6/. a yard - yes! said I that I shall - he is to let me know the answer on Tuesday morning early - off at 9 ¼ the old bank to Mrs Parker’s office (at 9 ½) - to ask him if I had not a right to reopen the old line of bridle road by upper brea house which I intended to do if Joseph Wilkinson would not engage to get me the one in Lower brea wood stopt at the Sessions - told him too of the dram I wanted driving under the Lower brea branch road - Mr P- to come over and view the ground on Monday at 12 - then to the bank and got £50 - that makes me sixty four pounds in arrear - then to Throp’s - ordered 1000 hollies and a few other things - sometime there - then to Stony royde - sat 3/4 hour with Mrs Rawson and left het at 11 ½ - at 12 ¼ to Lidgate Miss W- out - then to the Priestley’s - Mrs P- at her school - sat an hour with her - paid her for the Ootram shawl sent off on Thursday and walked with her about ½ hour (down the Crownest road and along the fields and backwards and forwards) she told me her surprise at Miss W-‘ s going to doctor Belcombe I said it was my doing I was now put up on my metal to make it answer and would move heaven and earth if I could for this purpose would introduce Miss W- to some nice people Mrs P- thought I could not get her there again - at Lidgate at 1 55 sat down to dinner with them but did not eat much - had Miss W- for an hour afterwards tête-à-tête in the dining room gave the

SH:7/ML/E/15/0150

heads of Mr A-‘s letter that came yesterday and kissed her gently and made love she afraid of the journey abroad and of my ever leaving her and thinks she shall not live to return afraid I shall be disappointed in her her feelings cannot keep pace with mine assured her not I know not how it will be I fear I shall have no good take of it she has neither head nor heart for me Miss P- rather grave after our long tête-à-tête my manners shew too much influence she wonders I dare say and does not like it as I have never called on her and am evidently taken up with Miss W- - home at 5 40 - dinner at 6 ¼ - afterwards wrote the above of today - had Pickels and paid him £7.5.9 for draining at Lower Place - on returning, found note from Miss W- that she had sent this morning begged me not to send her Throps’ brother - Throp himself at Lidgate for me when I got there - set him to value the laurel and the one and the box at the Stags head and passed it off well as Sykes was there in (Miss W- had determined to turn off Sykes and have Throps’ brother) - They told me at the bank this morning that Mr Rawson had been rather sharp with Carr who had said he would pay him as he was going to sell Godley and had already 2 applicants for it - then had a nap till nine - Then looking over Cordingley’s accounts (since 24 September last) till 10 ¼ - my aunt then came to me in the drawing room and by the large fire in the hall sat talking till 11 - when came to my room - wrote note dated tomorrow morning to ‘Samuel Freeman Esquire Southowram Lodge’ compliments and to say ‘I shall be glad to see him at Shibden Hall as soon as he can make it convenient to come - either this afternoon or evening (meaning Sunday) or the earliest time he will be so good as fix, except twelve o’clock tomorrow’ i.e. Monday – very fine frosty November day – F47° now at 11 25pm.

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lost-between-letters · 2 years

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Ever Heard Of Knocking?

Pairing: Jack Kline X Winchester!Reader (she/her)

Requested by: anon

Warnings: spoiler 13x07 and onward

Word Count: 1,284

Summary: Dean wants a movie night, Sam wants to read and Jack and Y/N want some quality time together. Or: a normal day with the Winchester family and their nosiness

For the first time in ages, Sam was really back in the mood for a good old book. Two hours of straight up silence and a warm bed did that to a person - returning to their deepest desires (well, not deepest, but certainly the most relaxing ones).

It was a damn interesting book too, full of plot twists and deep layered characters. Sam had caught the first major betrayal and was just getting to the juicy part when someone knocked on his door.

Typical. He put his finger between the pages. "Come in."

"There you are!" Dean pushed the door open with his elbow, two beers in each hand and a rare smile on his face. "What do you think of a nice ol' movie night?"

"Uhm," his first reaction was to decline. He was quite comfortable right here.

But then, Sam made the mistake of really looking at his brother. The circles under his eyes hadn't evened out completely yet, not even Cas' presence had erased all of his worries.

The movie night was clearly an attempt at normalcy. And Sam would be damned if he didn't give him that. "Sounds great. Let's get the rest."

"Awesome." Dean put down two of the beer bottles. He waved him over so Sam obeyed and got up from his bed. Ugh, the mattress was practically calling for him.

In the corridor, Dean pointed towards Jack's door. It was not closed entirely which Sam found odd. Jack always kept it shut. "You'll get the kids and I Cas, oka- what was that?'

A lifetime of danger had Sam on alert immediately.

The noise again.

"Are those bedsprings?" Dean looked slightly murderous, "from Y/N's room?"

There was exactly one person in the bunker who frequented Y/N's room aside from her brothers.

Jack.

Dean was already halfway across the floor when Sam caught up with him and just barely stopped him from kicking down the door.

Which in hindsight was maybe not the best idea. Now that they were closer, they could hear the conversation from inside.

Wet noises, then Jack's voice. "That feels... Weird."

"Good weird, or bad weird?" Y/N this time, teasing tone that Sam recognised from more than one overheard flirt.

"Good weird," Jack said and sighed.

Oh God.

This couldn't be happening.

While Sam was still feeling faintly sick of what he was listening to, Dean had already taken action into his own hands. With a stony expression on his face, he barrelled into the room.

"What the hell is going on here?" The threat was pretty clear in his voice, a stark contrast to the relaxed conversation that had come from the room moments ago.

Jack and Y/N looked up at once and stared at them like little kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

For a long minute, no one said anything. Y/N and Jack were recovering from the shock of being barged into on and Sam and Dean were taking in the scene in front of them.

They hadn't been making out. At least that was a win for today, Sam decided there and then.

"Uh, facemasks?" Y/N waved her brush in explanation. "I was just applying it to his face when you barged in. That was pretty rude by the way."

And frankly speaking, that was exactly what was going on. Jack was sitting cross legged on her bed with his face full of a strange foam, the only free space being his left cheek. It appeared that he was smiling underneath it - nervously if Sam was judging that right. Y/N was sitting across from him, a bunch of bottles of all kinds of lotions and face masks - presumably to give a bigger choice - laying spread around her while she was sitting on her heels, facing Jack.

Dean, of course, had a pretty reasonable reaction. "What the hell?"

"Y/N said it would be fun! Like a sleepover," Jack explained helpfully.

While Dean was gaping at his little sister, words quite literally stripped away momentarily, Y/N grinned brightly. "See? Nothing to be worried about, you big mama bear."

"That's-"

"-true," Sam jumped in. He had a fleeting suspicion that there was something more going on here but he was not in the mood for family therapy right now. With a subtle step in front of Dean, Sam raised the beer bottles, "Actually, we came to get you guys for a few movies?"

"Didn't you say that movies are also watched at a sleepover?" Jack turned towards Y/N, excitement lacing his voice at the idea.

And there it was. Her face softened immediately when Jack reached for her hand. Yeah, his sister definitely got a crush.

"We're in," Y/N said while getting up from the bed. She let his hand drop casually, her eyes jumping to Dean, "but first let's get the masks off, alright?"

Once again, Dean started to say something and once again, Sam interrupted him. "Cool! Dean, didn't you want to get Cas? We'll meet you with food in the Dean cave."

The fact that Sam actually used the name was enough to have Dean momentarily distracted and follow through with the instructions.

As soon as he was out of the door and out of ear shot, Sam turned towards Jack and Y/N. Jack was looking at him, head tilted slightly in a very familiar way and his sister was staring at Jack. Sam cleared his throat. "Jack why don't you go clean your face?"

"You can use my bathroom," Y/N added.

Her eyes followed him as he left the room, an absent minded smile on her face.

"You do know that you've got some of that foam on your lips as well, don't you?"

It wasn't true but Y/N blushed and rubbed at them furiously. So they had been making out after all. They had a pretty quick reaction time, Sam had to admit.

"Is it off now?" She asked while simultaneously reaching for her phone to use as a mirror and check.

When she saw that there actually was nothing, she scoffed and shook her hair out. Someone was embarrassed at getting caught. So far, Sam was enjoying this maybe a little too much.

"Please don't tell Dean." And there it was.

He sighed and swung his right arm around her shoulder. "He'll find out eventually."

"But not from you," Y/N begged again and gave him a taste of his own medicine. Her best puppy eyes.

Sam acted like he was thinking about it. "What do I get out of this?"

Then, Y/N shoved him. But she was smiling. Yeah, he could never deny her anything for too long. "Dick."

"No, seriously," he insisted.

Just then, Jack came back into the room. He hesitated when he saw the both of them standing there, Y/N tugged into her brother's side.

"You get to see your sister happy?" Y/N offered sweetly and wiggled free from his grip to take Jack's hand.

Again, the nephilim hesitated for barely a moment, eyes darting over to Sam before closing his fingers around her smaller hand. A slow smile spread on his face as he looked down at their interlocked fingers.

Damn, she was good. And the both of them were stupidly in love.

As if Sam would say anything against it now. He hadn't seen his sister so happy in a long time and that alone was reason enough to like Jack. Not that Sam hadn't done that before, that kid had a pure heart and would never hurt Y/N willingly. Yeah, this could have gone far worse. "Deal."

"Cool!" Y/N grinned at him and then leaned over to press a kiss to Jack's cheek. "Let's go watch some movies."

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bokettochild · 3 years

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Day 5: I've Got Red In My Ledger

Whumptober Day 5: Betrayal/Misunderstanding/Broken Nose

So, I ended up using all three options, and 'm honestly not sure if this counts as Warriors Whump, Four Whump or both.

I will excuse Legend's presence as being because I just wrote a Four and Legend one-shot and was still in Split Heroes mode.

Hope you read, enjoy, and don't hate me for what I've done, because I don't regret it :)

Warriors keeps staring at them.

The captain’s piercing royal blue eyes have been boring a hole into their back for ages and the ridiculous part of them worries that if they don’t keep moving that stare will bore a hole right through them. Thanks Red.

What? It’s a valid concern!

Red, when has having someone stare a hole through you ever been a valid concern?

Wild’s guardians.

Alright, but Wars isn’t a guardian, he’s-

He helped to build them. Red murmurs softly. Plus, he’s the Captain, I wouldn’t put it past him to be able to do something crazy after spending so much time jumping across worlds and learning stuff from the people there.

Red, we all jump through portals and learn things from across time. I think we’ll be okay.

“Four?” Legend’s voice is the one that breaks through to him as the vet stops in front of him, two bowls in hand and one offered to them as the vet cocks a brow. “Y’all okay?”

They smile at the vet, despite the itch of someone’s eyes fixed on them, and take the offered food. “I’m good, just thinking is all.”

“About what?” Legend presses, sitting next to them with curious cock of his brows as he begins to eat, violet eyes staring them down, piercing, but not as pointedly so as Warriors’ gaze. Legend’s eyes are gentle for once, and the vet seems to relax slightly as he eats, seated at their side and calmer than he’s been in days.

Four wishes they could feel the same.

They don’t regret sharing their secret with the vet (even if it wasn’t on purpose) and it’s nice to have someone to feel safe with, but no matter how warmly Legend might smile at them, a secretive wink or knowing smirk being shot their way, they’re still on edge.

“Nothing much, just...thoughts, you know?”

“No.” Legend deadpans.

They chuckle nervously. “Thinking about our different worlds and how we learn so much by hopping across them, you know? Like, Wild learning the recipes from your time or Wind getting to learn to ride horseback in Twilight’s world.” Th vet nods wordlessly, sucking on his spoon as they turn their attention to the meal Wild has so lovingly prepared.

Warriors still hasn’t looked away.

He’s been doing this for days, and usually, Four wouldn’t be worried, but it hadn’t started until after Shadow had helped them trip up an enemy in battle, and though the action probably saved the captain’s life, Wars hasn’t stopped watching them and it’s beginning to remind them of that time that Ezlo and them had been cornered by a cat in Pita’s Bakery. They still have the scar from that incident, and it’s something they guard the secret behind fiercely, if only out of shame of their own weakness and foolishness in that particular situation. Ezlo had warned them not to try darting away, to stay hidden in the sacks until the cat had been gone, but they’d rushed forwards and barely survived being made mincemeat.

Ezlo had needed stitches.

They had needed a minish healer and a bath in red potion. And even if they cover the worst of the scars beneath their tunic, the ragged tip of their left ear is a reminder. It’s why they chose to wear their earring, to remember to listen when the minish or the little voice in their head -or voices now- tell them to be careful. That voice, all four of them, is screaming at them to shield themselves.

And really, they should have listened.

Legend is on his feet in a moment, sword out to catch the second blow that falls their way as their ambusher grunts out an irritated oink.

“Ambush!” Wind shouts as the others pull themselves to their feet and grab hold of their weapons. They’d left their sword beside their seat, and from their place lying on the ground they can’t reach, but Shadow, Hylia bless him, sneakily pushes it close enough that they can wrap their fingers around the hilt and jump in to join the battle with their brothers.

It’s not a large group of monsters, and it doesn’t take much work between nine heroes and a sneaky shadow to fell them all, and they’re just turning to offer Wind a high five as the kid kicks the final lizalfoes off his sword when the cold of a blade presses against their throat.

“Warriors, what the bloody heck!” Legend shouts, jumping back up from where he’d been knelt to help Sky begin relighting their ruined campfire.

“Drop your sword.” The captain’s voice grates out behind them, cold and commanding in a way that sends shivers down their spine.

What’s going on?

The captain’s gone bonkers is what! Green, what’s the plan?

There’s only silence from their leader as the other deviants wait impatiently for an answer.

Green, we need a plan, War is-

Their sword clatters to the earth as the other colors begin to swear and panic, but Green has forced their hand, literally, and the stare they send their weapon is both resigned and horrified, one eye flickering various colors as the other remains solidly green.

Across camp, Legend’s own eyes are bugging out of his head, panic clear in his gaze as the vet’s hand closes on his sword hilt.

“Stay your hand, Legend.” Warriors rumbles, firm but not cruel. “No need for weapons-”

“Says the one holding a sword to Four’s throat!”

The captain doesn’t even shift, and their mind spins as they try and decipher what it is that the other man is doing or thinking, Red and Blue still screaming inside their mind as Vio murmurs various schemes about what they can do while Green sits in stony silence.

What were you thinking!

Green! We- what if- Red is nearly sobbing. Green, please! What are you doing?

Calm down. Of Green had his own body he’d be shooting them a rueful but reassuring look, and they can all feel it. This is a mistake or misunderstanding. If we listen and don’t make it worse, it can be cleared up faster.

Brilliant, might want to fill the vet and Old Man in on your plan though, and maybe Sky too, guys about to blow up.

They shoot a wary glance towards the Chosen Hero, careful not to move their head lest they press against the blade at their throat. Sky’s eyes are wide, but he’s still as a board and already falling into his ‘king stance’ as Legend calls it, shoulders back and jaw set with a grace and power behind his gaze that makes them shiver even more than the cool steel at their neck.

Or wait, that metal isn’t all cold, there's a bit of warm sticky stuff brushing their jaw and they nearly shiver again as they realize that Wars hadn’t even cleaned the monster blood off of his blade before trapping them.

“The smithy’s been lying to us.” Warriors grates out, cold and harsh and angry as the blade presses closer to their throat. They have to inch back a bit to avoid being cut, only to find themselves stumbling against the captain’s chest. “He may be a hero chosen by the goddesses, but he’s chosen his own path.”

“What do you mean?” Time’s voice is emotionless, stance unreadable and face carefully blank and it’s unsettling in the extreme, making the other young heroes draw back with wary looks as they glance from one to another of the adults, only Legend standing firm and furious as he glares across at the captain.

“Four’s working with the shadow.” The captain spits out, blade again pressing close to their neck. “I’ve been watching him, he’s either learned it's powers or the beast is here itself, but I know what I saw, he’s got a shadow helping him.”

The vet twitches. “Duh. Have you never read the Legend of the Four Sword?”

There are a few confused sounds from the others, but Four can’t bother to figure out what the others are all saying and doing as the steel presses sharp against his throat, leaving him pressed against Warriors’ armor-clad chest with no way to escape as something warm bubbles against the blade and crimson leaks down from the line the blade presses against him.

“Let him go!” Legend shrieks, hands already on his own blade as he darts across the camp, but Warriors, only draws Four closer, voice unbearable gentle and pained as he addresses Legend. “Vet, you’re not yourself. He’s messed with your mind, can’t you see? It’s why you two have been so close all of a sudden, he’s put a dark spell n you, don’t give into it.”

“I’ll do what I bloody well want!” Legend screams in return, chest heaving as the tempered sword comes unsheathed, tip inches from Warriors’ face as Legend’s body begins to tremble. “Let him go, Captain.” The title is spat out like a curse, and Four can nearly feel Warriors’ shoulders sag as the man winces, but Legend doesn’t lower his blade even as Wars gently urges him to calm.

The others have started moving closer too, doubt on a few faces that makes their heart sink in their chest. Sky’s gaze is firm though as the Chosen Hero settles a hand on Legend’s shoulder. “Let him go, wars. If there’s a problem that needs addressing, we’ll address it like civil adults.” The words make hope flutter in their chest, but Warriors is only pressing closer, his blade digging in and making them whimper as blood dribbles into the collar of their tunic.

“Not a chance, Sky, he’ll get away, shadows are sneaky like that! They-” The captain is cut off suddenly, breath catching as the man wheezes behind them, his hand on the sword at their throat loosening its grip and giving them room enough to breathe again.

Legend takes the opening, whatever it is that caused it, to dart forwards, dropping his own sword and pulling at the captain’s sword arm hard enough that Sky can scoop them up into his strong arms and duck away, holding them close to his chest and giving them a full view of the shadowy hands that have wrapped around Warriors’ throat.

“I’d watch who you messed with if I were you, Captain.” Shadow hisses in the man’s ear before releasing him, zipping over to where they lay in Sky’s arms, startling both the Skyloftain and the vet, who’s already reaching for his weapon again as the shade stops to float over them. “Four, oh gosh Rainbow, are you okay?”

Good old Shadow.

Vi, we almost died, now’s not the time.

“All good.” They wheeze with a shaky smile, eyes darting up to Sky’s wary ones and then down to Legend’s steely indigo ones. Neither hero has made a move though, and for that Four is grateful.

A few paces away, Warriors is rubbing at his throat and staring in shock and horror at the shade that hovers over the trio of heroes who crossed him. They wince, this is not going to be easy.

“You’re bleeding.” Shadow hisses, nearly growls as his fangs glint in the glow of faded embers. “He- Oh Lolia no, this ain’t going down like this, not on my watch!”

Well Shadow’s managed to accidentally calm Legend at least, as the vet loosens slightly at the name of the Lolian Goddesses name, even if Sky still hold them tight like he thinks he’s going to have to run.

The shade looks up, away from them for a moment and salutes Sky with a knowing nod, all cockiness gone as from his demeanor as he addresses the Chosen Hero. “Thanks for sticking up for my idiot, feathers, watch him for a second while I handle this freak, yeah?” And Sky doesn’t even have time to speak or agree or even blink before Shadow has whizzed across the cam and sent one clawed fist slamming into Warriors’ face, a sickening crunch breaking the silence as Warriors stumbles, hand reaching for his face as Shadow wrings out his hand. “Thats for hurting my friend, you asshole!”

“Shadow.” Red’s wrested control as they flop against Sky’s chest. “That is not helping! You hurt Warriors!”

“He hurt you first!” The protective shade shouts back, crossing his arms and giving Wars his scary eyes before darting back to hover at Sky’s shoulder, much to the poor man’s surprise. “Racist jerk, what am I evil just because I’m a shadow? Never heard of shadow puppets as a kid? Or shadow dancing? Hey, guess what, you don’t need to think every freaking dark thing that moves is evil!”

Sky frowns, eyes straining as he stares at the being leaning on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Four’s shadow, resident dragon master, smithy wrangler and protector of one stupid hero who thinks surrendering and keeping the peace is more important than keeping their hide in one piece.” Shadow pokes their shoulder pointedly at that, making them wince as Blue grumbles something about sharp claws.

“So, you are real.” Legend cocks his head, chest still heaving and cheeks still flushed as the vet visibly tries to force himself back under control. “Huh.”

Shadow turns, hovering mid-air and giving Legend a once over. The shade offers a strained grin, forced and brittle as he tries to distract them. “Rabbit huh? Nice. Rainbow’s always liked rodents. You the younger or older brother here?”

And even though all eyes are fixed on them, Warriors glaring and the others staring in disbelief, Four find themselves bursting into laughter because, of all things, of course Legend would apparently also have a shadow form, and the fact that it’s a rabbit is only making it worse. To their surprise, Sky’s laughter joins their own, and across camp, Twilight huffs a strained chuckle as Legend glares up at the floating shade.

“I told you!” Warriors wheezes, blood spilling down his face as he pulls himself up. “It's a shadow! Four’s working with Dark Link!”

Shadow hisses. “That nutcase? Are you kidding? I’d rather die again, thank you!”

And really, now is as good a time as any for them to explain. “He’s just a normal shadow, Wars. Yeah, Ganon and Vaati brought him to life, but he’s been helping me protect Hyrule since we freed him form their control. He’s on our side, he was just nervous about showing himself around all of you guys because we heard you all talking about your own shadows.” Their eyes are flickering violet as they stare at the captain, and they know it. “He’s not a monster, and he’s only a threat if you make him one, same as any of us.”

The captain moves to protest, only to have Hyrule clear his throat from the edge of camp, all eyes swiveling to the traveler as Hyrule nods slowly. “He’s telling the truth, the Legends of the Four Sword all say that the hero befriended and helped his shadow, and the shadow reformed and sacrificed himself to save Hyrule.”

“Exactly.” Legend squeak growls. “The only threat in this camp is someone who’s more willing to draw a blade on their comrade than to approach them with their concerns.” The words make Wars flinch, maybe more than the blow Shadow had landed to his face, and though the captain makes to speak, he's cut off once again by Legend’s harsh voice. “Don’t want to hear it, Captain. I’ve got my brother to help heal up after what you did to him.”

It’s like the mirror shattering all over again, the silence in the air as two parties are separated by a line none can see as Legend and Sky settle on the opposite side of the camp from the others, Shadow hovering over the vet’s shoulder as Legend turns his back on Warriors, dabbing gently at the cut on Four's throat with a cloth damp with red potions.

The captain stiffens, standing and turning on his heel to march towards the other end of camp.

Blue eyes never leave them as their three protectors hover and fuss over them.

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djarinsbeskar · 3 years

Text

STITCHES VERSE EXTRAS: DRABBLE #2 (KYR AND KAI)

A/N: Consider this a little intro to the Arc we're about to be entering into! I was doing some writing practice to get into the various voices and characters that would be present, but figured since this man seems quite popular already-- I would share it.

TIMELINE: Immediately during and after New Republic Arc 3.

Word Count: 1.7k

Pairing: None

Rating: 18+ (NO Minors)

Warings: Some vague mentions of sexual encounters.

Stitches Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Rhys was trying to hide a hangover with peanut butter again.

Kyr Carria shifted in his seat, lifting his head up from where he had it rested on his knuckles as the sentinel scholar droned on at him about the Hunt in two months’ time.

Yep, there it was. The strong smell was a commonly used temporary fix to mask the smell of alcohol but any Pamrthen man worth his ball sack knew the scent of peanuts was almost as condemning as the aroma of liquor itself.

The man in question was some cousin or other, Kyr couldn’t keep track of the widely dispersed family tree of Carria. He was in this meeting – daily, that dragged on – as a favor to his father who had known the rhaer since infancy.

Llyrian knew why he wanted to be here… something about settling into some kind of steady job.

The bastard could be sure of that. These meetings – without fail – occurred come rain or shine, thunder or flooding. Whether he was queasy with his own hangover or with limbs still tanged among the various beauties that made up his harem.

These meetings never ceased.

The rhaer rolled his golden eyes closed, the smell of peanut butter and the burgeoning scent of alcohol it was futilely trying to mask making his stomach roil uncomfortably. At the end of the long table where dusty old men with dustier voices talked business, politics, inventories—a clock dawdled. From where he sat at the head of that long table, his ass hurting him from the seat of the stag—he dropped his chin back into his palm and threatened the antagonistic analog to move faster.

It didn’t.

Awhan’s saggy left testicle.

His lips twitched with a suppressed snarl—a feral growl of frustration that it wasn’t doing what he wanted and he was – once again – stuck in this Maker-damned stuffy room.

But that wasn’t everything.

Fingers rapping slowly against his cheek as he lounged with casual, indulgent command—the room at his disposal as he huffed an exhale that – a little too loud – caused the scholar to pause mid-sentence before Kyr jerked his chin for the man to continue.

His mind cast adrift once more, it returned to the ever approaching meeting with his brother, with Kai. By the gods, it had been what—four years since he saw his younger brother? At their fathers funeral pyre, when he had taken on the mantle of rhaer and the stony reproach of his little brother had ended with a clash of antlers and the splintering of words said in the heat of anger.

“You left..”

“Our home was under attack.”

“The entire galaxy was under attack!”

“The galaxy is not my concern, Kai. Pamarthe is.”

“The galaxy is everyone’s concern, Kyr. You—you deserted.”

“Are you angry because I left the Rebellion or because I didn’t take you with me, little brother?”

A flash of the little boy who followed Kyr around to be like him swept across his features, the trauma of the war staining his face the way freckles might. Or blood splatter.

Kai had left after that—back to the source of that trauma, as though there, he might be able to ignore it—fix it, heal from it. Kyr hadn’t the slightest clue what his little brother was still doing with the New Republic or indeed, what he had been doing these last four years apart from being made commander which was no easy feat.

All that was on Kyr’s mind, was that Kai was coming home.

And not for good reasons.

Things were getting worse, getting more serious since Attycus’ daughter had disappeared. The chieftain of Clan Leyghin had been devastated when the realization hit that his little girl was another child that had been snatched, taken from their beds by the embodiment of the very stories used to make naughty children behave.

The perpetual frown marring Kyr’s face deepened, dark brows falling over golden eyes that shadowed with thought. Could he really put stock in a folktale? Could he seriously announce as rhaer of so many people that he believed the danu were the reason for the missing children?

It sounded insane even in his head, let alone when he uttered it out loud in his holotransmission to Kai.

Kyr was a proud man, but he wasn’t so arrogant that he thought he could shoulder the protection of Clan Carria alone. He needed everyone. But more than that, he needed his brother. His closest confidant, the one ally he knew would tell it to him straight and back him up without question. With the – he grimaced – danu stealing children across all the clans, it was a council issue.

That meant joint decisions, plans across the entire planet on how to protect the children, to retrieve those who had been taken, to stop whatever was doing this.

And that meant clashing personalities of chieftains who were all used to being the leader, all used to having their opinion ultimately heard and heeded. It was a headache waiting to happen and Kyr wanted to go back in time to a teenage version of himself and tell him in no uncertain terms, that he most certainly wouldn’t enjoy most of the responsibilities of being the rhaer. Quite the opposite, being rhaer meant less time in the forests, less time in his ship—less… less. Because meetings and politics and civility filled his days to the brim.

The smell of peanut butter wafted through his nostrils again.

“Tch.”

Everyone in the room stopped speaking.

A reticent man with a loud, intimidating presence, Kyr Carria never had trouble getting a room to fall silent and listen to him. The current speaker – representative for the merchants guild – had a shiny forehead and frightened eyes as he swallowed thickly, likely assuming he had said something to displease the chieftain of one of the most powerful clans on Pamarthe.

Kyr probably should have reassured him it wasn’t him but instead, he enjoyed the peace for the moment he had been given it.

“I’ve had enough,” he growled, a low rumble of noise some might say was more befitting Macteer or Leyghin, but Carria ultimately proving to have some of the more… dominant males.

He pushed himself up from the Seat, muscles bunching and shifting like the sinewed gait of the great stag he was, and made to move around the table in the direction of the dark wood doors into the great hall of the big house. Leather vest stretching across his chest, his tanned arms remained bare for ease of movement – like always – and the only concession he made, were the leather vambraces on either forearm, gilded with the antlers of his reign and a mark of his position as rhaer. A mark made permanent with the ring of script that framed the antlers looped around his bicep.

He wore them with honor, heavy as they were.

“Kyr, we’re not—”

“We’re done for the day,” he repeated without looking over his shoulder, blaster strapped to his thigh comfortably for walk towards the Carria spaceport.

He should probably take a speeder…

He mused on the option, nodding with distracted automation to the people who stood out of his way, or sent greetings in his direction. He wasn’t an absent leader, as some might think—he cared, cared too much probably. It led to many sleepless nights emptying his mind and his cock inside one, two, three partners until he was too exhausted to think anymore.

He took every failure personally, every concession a lash of the whip against his back.

His father had always said negotiation and compromises were part of being the rhaer, but Kyr was still learning that concession wasn’t failure. It still made his teeth grind with barely suppressed anger, a protective aggression he felt was necessary when defending his people and their needs.

Ultimately, he ended up walking.

Having left the meeting early, he had plenty of time to walk worn paths from the big house down into the farmlands. He had time to converse with some of the farmers, inquire after crops and the nerfs that roamed—grazing freely on the green, abundant grasslands that stretched down the entire main island. Fielding questions about the truth of the rumors spreading that the daughter of a chieftain had been taken, Kyr merely grunted that the council were handling the situation as seriously as they always had.

With a promise to visit for a drink, and a comfortable grip of the rhaer to the farmers shoulder, he set of again—lost in thought, and surprised when he found himself near the Stag Head Harbor, having arrived at the spaceport already.

It was probably a good thing – being distracted – because at least he wasn’t fretting over the eventual meeting with his brother and the perpetual headache he had since he took up his father’s mantle that was only going to get worse with tensions between them.

But he did miss Kai. Of course he did. And his happiness at seeing his brother jump out of that same X-wing he had since they both joined the Rebellion all those years ago, made a familiar smile spread across his lips—an action Kyr hadn’t had much reason to do recently.

Kai approached him – polished and virile – with the exuberant confidence both brothers possessed and gripped his big brothers outstretched hand to pull him into a hug. Grunting a greeting, Kyr slapped his brothers back affectionately, releasing a breath he had no idea he had been holding since Kai was gone—every correspondence followed by a fleeting moment of dread that he would be told his brother had been killed.

He was home.

That was all that mattered for now.

Pulling back, identical eyes met and Kai grinned lopsidedly—a wicked amusement entering his gaze.

“You will never guess who I ran into,” his brother muttered conspiratorially.

Some things never change…

Notes:

1. Kyr [K-EE-R] Carria: The older brother of Kai Carria, Kyr is the chieftain (rhaer) of Clan Carria of which the reader in Stitches is a member of. At 35, he was one of the youngest rhaer's to take on the leadership of such a huge territory. Now nearly 40, he is still adjusting to the responsibilities of a leader that extend into politics and commerce but has a deep loyalty and desire to do right by his people.

2. Kyr's vambraces: Two dark brown leather vambraces mark the authority he has as rhaer. They are a symbol of his power and are only decorated with a golden antler stretching up the length of each piece.

3. Kyr's tattoos: These differ from the tattoos of normal Carria members, in that the script of his oath as leader is also included in it.

4. Attycus Leyghin: The chieftain of Clan Leyghin, he is the second cousin of the reader's mother in Stitches. His daughter is the first of the Core Clans [those bloodlines/families of Carria, Leyghin and Macteer that represent the original three clans on Pamarthe] to be abducted and it marks a shift in the pursuit of a solution.

5. Clan Macteer: Residing in the northern archipealgo of Pamarthe, the Macteers are one of the three sister clans of Macteer, Shunak and Blayd. They are deeply insulated and tend to be on the more aggressive in their decisions compared to the more tempered responses of their sister clans. A confrontation between a fifteen year old Kyr Carria and a barrow wolf that crossed into Carria territory to hunt the fawns there and resulted in the wolfs death has worsened relations between the clans when the boy wasn't punished, his injuries from the fight punishment enough in his fathers eyes. This mutual exclusivity of lands has resulted in large areas of The Snags being treated as no-mans-land.

6. Carria Spaceport: Some clans have a spaceport and a seaport which makes trade across the planet much easier.

7. The Council of Pamarthe: Each clan's chieftain convene in a council once a month to discuss matters of planetary and intergalactic issues and decisions. This involves trade with the New Republic, immigration and indeed, the crimes of kidnapping that spreads throughout various clans.

#stitches!extras #stitches #djarinsbeskar writes #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian smut #the mandalorian x you #din djarin #the mandalorian #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fic #the mandalorian fanfic #din djarin fanfic #din djarin fic #star wars #star wars fic

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refurbishedgray · 3 years

Text

Point of Contact

Reader x Tech. Maybe we get feisty and it’s reader x Crosshair, too. In this house, we like both.

Multi-part fic; probably NSFW; f!reader (she/her pronouns)

**Updates: I’ll tag you if you holler

Summary:

“No good ever comes to the Republic from Banking Clan business,” Hunter tells them, “Let’s get this done and get home, boys.”

Arriving on Scipio with the unhelpful directive of, “be discreet, but do whatever it takes,” the Bad Batch find themselves at the mercy of a stony representative whose allegiances lie with the best deal.

Or, the one where Tech and Crosshair think the reader is as intense as she is pretty.

**************************************

Part One

The office is too empty, too bright. The merciless glare of Scipio’s sun cuts across the room, gleaming unpleasantly from the gilded corners of all the fine furniture and glass. A corner office, inherited from an out-maneuvered relic of the past.

All light and no warmth, you think, not for the first time. Never any warmth. In your early years with the Banking Clan, being stationed here had felt suspiciously like a punishment you hadn’t deserved, a proving ground when you had already proven so much. These days, however, you’ve come to understand that the frigid peaks standing vigil beyond your window are a reminder of how far you have climbed.

Now, as you shift in your chair, the expensive Corellian leather barely squeaking beneath you, you squint past the harsh light filtering in from the floor to ceiling window at your back. It’s all pristine snow on those peaks. Icy. Easy to slip if the cold didn’t kill you first.

Yes, you had climbed and clawed your way up these proverbial mountains. And like the man who last haunted this office, it has left you with so very far to fall.

The early days had been simpler. Smile. Look pretty. Never forget what can be saved for later. You hadn’t forgotten. Beyond the pale blue sky, twinkling out of sight, are worlds fraught with battles, littered with unsuccessful or unlucky tacticians from two sides of a conflict that won’t ever be ended, not truly. You have always preferred to keep your strategizing corporate. Clean.

A frown drags at the corners of your mouth at the uncharacteristic foray into reminiscence of the…

The…

A phrase comes to mind and you allow yourself a small, private smile against the sunlight. The bad old days.

Since then, things have always been kept tidy.

Until now.

An unwanted spur of concern digs in behind your chest as your gaze turns from the window to sweep over the room. To your dismay, you realize why, and realize too clearly that the concern is not solely for yourself.

He should be here.

Things were less empty when he was around, a relic in his own right and your pride and joy and confidant. How proud you had been when you had been informed that you would require a bodyguard. “A mark of success if there ever was one,” you had told the few family members you kept in contact with, of which there were very few, upon being informed of the recommendation after your previous promotion. “Aren’t you proud?” you had wanted to ask. But you had not asked. Better not to make the query when the answer was always so heavy and obvious.

He had become your one and only friend. But he, too, is absent now, and upon permitting the observation, your office seems at once less empty and instead, guttingly, horribly hollow. Two rotations it’s been. Two rotations to give into the inconvenience of noticing.

No, no, you think. You had noticed. Admitting it, that is the phrase that would be more accurate, but if it makes you feel less or more weak, you find you cannot decipher the bitterness creeping up your tongue.

Rising from your seat, you at once miss the meager warmth provided by the leather as the cool office air licks at you. Once upon a time, you had comforted yourself with the promise that one day, you would get used to the cold here. It was one of the few lies you allotted yourself over the years. Crossing the office, the marble floors as white and frosted as the mountain peaks outside resounding crisply beneath your heels, you make your way to the small bar trolley tucked away in one corner. Your last guest, a senator with strong -- unsubtly strong -- ties to the Clan, had complimented your selection of fine whiskeys and other alcohols. You had not admitted then that you did not keep the bar stocked for the guests who were few and far between, but rather for yourself, to chase away the damnable chill in this place.

Your hand stills between decanters, your mind hesitating at the threatening burn that awaits your selection.

A bad habit.

You can imagine that peculiar modulated voice now. “Madam, the faces you make.”

Instead, you shun the alcohol and the ice that never thaws, yet still gets replaced each morning, now resting in a round chest, as gilded as everything else in this room, and reach for the Felucian pear juice. Duller, perhaps, but you don’t need anymore guilt on your conscience.

A sip, then two, settles a gnawing in your stomach you only notice once it passes.

Intolerable, you muse, downing what remains in the glass. The beverage is sweet, almost as sweet as the air outside is cold. Too quiet. Where are -

A rush of air and sliding metal breaks the silence. Glass in hand, your eyes narrow over the rim at the assistant who scuttles in. This one has been particularly insipid since her arrival. The daughter of someone marginally important, she is small and hunched shouldered -- she hasn’t learned, not like you did, and a part of you suspects she never will.

She stops just short of where the tile begins and as she does, your eyes track down her uniform to a pair of shoes that have never been polished. Stars help her.

In a quavering voice, she asks, “Madam?”

You raise a brow.

“We’ve received word. The transport with the troopers has requested permission to land. They’re on their way.”

You set the glass aside, gingerly, its bottom barely clacking against the tray atop the cart. Republic troopers. A battering ram when a scalpel is needed.

“Ah, the Senate’s grand favor,” you murmur.

“Yes, ma’am.”

So many years spent with watchful eyes on you has made you good at hiding your frustrations. You swallow a sigh before it ever rises and allow yourself a brief moment to thumb the crystalline edge of the glass. The senator had warned you.

Your voice is quiet as you instruct the girl, “Get out.”

She scurries gracelessly back through the door. It is an improvement; the last time she had squeaked pitifully before leaving. Perhaps you should have enjoyed the alcohol while you could. If this goes badly, all these nice things, all this luxury will be reassigned, a new name on the door. Such is the way of things -- you know the warnings well.

Until forty-eight hours ago, they had been going so smoothly. An unfamiliar voice at the back of your mind whispers at you. Had you gotten complacent? You never get complacent. You had been warned for star’s sake. Senator Clovis had been all too clear that vaults here on Scipio were being targeted. You had taken that to mean the transports would be targeted as well. Credits were valuable, gold was valuable, as were artifacts and treasures. The Clan stored it all.

But most valuable of all were and would always be secrets.

And secrets...you were very good at secrets. Finding them. Keeping them. Exposing them.

The hand on the glass tightens and through touch or through sound, you sense that just a little more pressure will splinter it. Gently, you lift your fingers.

You’ve got enough messes to clean up already.

…………….

Two of his brothers look unhappy. Hunter suspects he, too, looks unhappy. Only Crosshair remains unaffected, toothpick lolling from one corner of the man’s thin mouth to the other as he watches the sky shift from icy atmo to the very tips of craggy mountains.

“Looks cold,” rumbles Wrecker from his seat, thick legs kicking out miserably. “Nobody said it was gonna be cold.”

From the pilot’s chair, Tech glances at Hunter, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. Now that Hunter can see him full-on, rather than that goggle-obscured side-profile of his, he realizes that he’d been right. Even Tech is unhappy with the assigned locale. Still, the man sniffs and turns back to navigating the gunship.

“It is Scipio,” says Tech.

“What’s that got to do with anything? Just sayin’, a little warning might’ve been nice.”

Crosshair shifts, the movement almost imperceptible, just enough that Hunter knows the sniper is asking for his attention. “I believe Hunter was preoccupied with warning us about the...what was it you called them, Hunter? Denizens?”

“The word does have an apt connotation for the Banking Clan,” Tech mutters. He gives Hunter another look, this one says that he’s no more excited about the prospect than Hunter has been.

Their mission brief had been a strange one. It wasn’t their usual brand of run-and-gun from the sound of things, but it was important to all the right people, and they needed guaranteed success. “Go to Scipio, meet the point of contact, establish the responsible party, recover the stolen data.” It was more or less all they had been told.

Hunter knows his frown is getting deeper, sinking into the lines on his face -- he can feel it pulling at his bandana, and he raises a hand to scrub it away.

“Who is this contact anyway?” asks Crosshair. “You never said.”

“Because I wasn’t told a name. We’re to meet with the, and I quote, ‘Principal Trades Specialist for the InterGalactic Banking Clan.’”

“Trades specialist?” Crosshair plucks his toothpick from between his teeth and for a moment, it takes Hunter longer than he would like to decipher the look on the man’s face. He doesn’t look unhappy...he looks intrigued. Crosshair replaces the toothpick, then says, “Sounds like a fancy way of saying ‘corporate spy.’”

“Head corporate spy,” Tech says, “If he’s - “

“She, from what I’m told,” corrects Hunter. His frown has yet to go anywhere, so he lets it stay, his hand falling to his lap.

Tech nods. “If she is based here on Scipio, we’re dealing with someone who needs to be watched closely. Some important players are based on this planet.”

Crosshair folds his arms. “Did the spy part give it away, Tech?”

“The Banking Clan part, actually,” Tech replies dryly, “We’ve dealt with spies before. The IGBC is something different. It is...new territory.”

“We’ve also dealt with new territory before.” At this, Hunter hears them all shift, their quick heartbeats settling into a familiar, all’s-well rhythm. His, too, follows. Just in time, it would seem, for the comms to squawk at them as the Marauder banks left and begins its final descent to the landing pad. He stands from the co-pilots seat, the faint tilt of the floor beneath him a familiar calm before the inevitable storm. He looks to Wrecker, who shakes his head, and then offers a grin.

“Might be fun. Never clobbered bad guys with snowballs before.”

There’s a snort from Tech and despite himself, Hunter smiles.

**************************************

Ten minutes later, they are suited up and disembarking into a cloud of snow flurries and ice crystals. The Banking Clan’s guards are as heavily armored as some of the Separatist patrols Hunter’s encountered. He scowls beneath his helmet. This should be a job for Jedi -- if the Jedi weren’t all dispatched to the war front.

Soldiers...they don’t deal with these sorts of people. Not well and not effectively. Too much bad blood between the Republic and profiteers like these.

He motions at his brothers to close ranks, their familiar presences a comforting reminder that this isn’t anything new, not really. It’s a mission like any other.

As the frosted cloud clears ahead of them, the guards, in their gilt armor and insulated cloaks, make way, too much way, Hunter thinks, for the clearance to be for a group of Republic troopers.

Then he sees her.

Half camouflaged by the swirling winds and clad in half a dozen shades of gray and silver, her shoulders draped in white fur, she stands waiting for them, her hands clasped serenely in front of her. She could be a diplomat, a Jedi even, if not for the gleam in her eye. It’s a cold thing, sharper and as frostbitten as this frozen world itself.

He’s not the only one to have noticed. Beside him, Hunter hears Crosshair draw in an appreciative breath so quiet no one without incredible senses would notice it. In his periphery, he catches an almost imperceptible twitch of Tech’s helmet as his brother spares him a questioning glance.

When the woman speaks, her voice is crisp, professional. “Clone Force 99, welcome.” She does not smile, but her eyes track to each of them, lingering too long, as though somehow looking past the armor to the men beneath. She introduces herself with a name that sounds too soft for the title she wears. Then, she gives them a crystalline smile. “But you may call me Trader, if you please.”

“Trader?” It is Wrecker who asks the question, finally distracted from the snow and ice. “Sounds like…”

Another smile, this one not quite as cool as the first. Amused, Hunter thinks, though how benign that amusement is, he can’t tell, and it makes his skin itch beneath his blacks. “Like traitor?” she hums. “I suppose it does, doesn’t it?”

She steps aside and gestures at them to follow. “With me, gentlemen. First, we’ve a meeting. Afterwards, we will take a tram to the vaults, then from there, speeders to the site of the incident.”

“‘Incident’ is an awful clean way to say ‘bloody heist,’” says Hunter as he moves to follow. Her gaze slides to him, her stride never slowing. Shoulder to shoulder with the woman, he has the uncomfortable instinct to slow his steps, to lag behind, as though if he isn’t careful, a blade might slide between his ribs on a blink. He pushes aside the urge, then asks, “How many people were lost?”

“Enough,” she replies. “One could even say too many.”

“But not you?”

“Must someone say something for you to believe they think it?”

Behind him, Crosshair snorts, but does not comment. Hunter lets the statement slide, though the itch he’d felt earlier is heating to a burn now. Together, she leads them through a set of gleaming durasteel doors into a foyer as stark as it is grand.

“Proceed through those doors.” She crooks a finger to their left. “Senator Amidala has requested a meeting in...eighteen minutes. I will join you shortly.”

Wrecker whistles, the sound too sharp to come from beneath his helmet, and Hunter glances back to see that the man has removed it, his one good eye roving the pristine interior. With a sigh, Hunter follows suit. It’s not exactly warm here, but out from the planet’s whipping winds, it’s close enough that even he can fool his sensitive skin into enjoying it. Soon, they are all unmasked. The woman - Trader - lingers long enough to observe them.

Her expression is...unreadable. There is no twinkle of bemusement in her eyes, not the first twitch of surprise. Normally, when the helmets come off, it gets at least some sort of reaction, gives him some kind of measure.

Now, the only read Hunter gets is the fact that he can’t get a read on her -- and that, he doesn’t like. There’s no trusting people who have become so numb.

Her gaze slips between Crosshair and Tech, where it lingers on the latter for seconds longer than it had the rest of them. Something in her frigid eyes warms, the ice of her expression cracking just enough that she might be pleased by what she sees. And Tech...for all his usual detachment, has no datapad to bury his nose in now, and he notices.

Hunter thinks the woman lets him notice.

His brother stands a little straighter, eyes flicking nervously to Hunter behind his goggles. Stumped, for lack of a better word. For once, flat out puzzled.

Then, without a word, Trader looks back to Hunter and inclines her head. “Stay warm, gentlemen. I will see you soon.”

She is gone behind a pair of adjacent doors without another word.

No sooner do they watch the durasteel whisper shut, than does Wrecker drive his arm into Tech’s side with a chuckle. Tech winces with a hiss and waves the man away.

“Heh, she likes you.”

“I hoped it was my imagination.” Crosshair’s lip curls, his eyes narrowing until he looks away, and Hunter wonders if they’ve been reflected back at him through the shine of Tech’s goggles.

Tech runs a hand over the back of his head. “What do you think, Hunter?”

“I think she’s Banking Clan, through and through. We’re not among friends here.”

“If we let her alone with Tech, things might get friendlier -”

“Wrecker.”

Hunter scowls. Another voice has echoed his own and he looks to see Crosshair, arms folded, rocking back on a foot to glare at the wampa-sized man.

Tech clears his throat. “Perhaps we should wait in the briefing room?”

His heart rate, harder to hear away from the tight confines of the Marauder, sounds schoolboy quick and Hunter wishes, not for the first time, that his brother was more inclined to find company in their off-duty hours than he was. Pretty faces were fine - Hunter himself was inclined to enjoy them - but something about the mask this one wore was dangerous.

Wrecker’s voice pulls him from his thoughts. “Did she say Senator Amidala was waiting?”

“She did. The commander warned us the Senate was at play here.”

“That’s not our usual playground though, is it?” Crosshair is still scowling, his arms folded more tightly now than they had been. All that characteristic suspicion exacerbated by annoyance that has set in and won’t leave him. It makes his eyes hard, his narrow features sharpened and cold beneath the glare of sunlight on durasteel.

Hunter shakes his head. “It’s not, but I feel better knowing Amidala’s behind us on this.”

“That makes one of us,” says Crosshair.

“Two,” Tech interrupts, his voice crisp; back to himself, Hunter realizes, his relief warm down to his fingertips, until he isn’t sure why he’d been worried in the first place.

“Three! I like Amidala.”

“We know, Wrecker.” Tech’s smile is gentle, even as he rolls his eyes. “The poster by your bed speaks for itself.”

Hunter’s gaze slides to his remaining brother, the smile that had spread turning crooked, then fading. “Crosshair?”

It’s always been an unsettling characteristic of Crosshair’s that his eyes, as brown as all of theirs, manage to be so very cold when the mood hits him. The look in them is not unlike what he had witnessed in the woman.

The observation tightens Hunter’s throat and he swallows it, turning away, and hopes not to notice it again.

#bad batch #star wars #tech x reader #crosshair x reader #multichapter #part one #the bad batch #bad batch tech #bad batch crosshair #decidedly not proofread #shitty art by me #blame no one else

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tokoyamisstuff · 3 years

Text

Dark Side Of The Moon Ch. 2 - Dark! Loki x Reader

Chapter 2: “On The Run”

Chapter Summary: Even though you can’t help feeling drawn to the lunatic that looks like your deceased lover, you try to surpress your feelings and flee to find your friends.

Warnings: Loki is fucking crazy, Violence, Torture, Jotun! Loki, Mentions of Death, Abuse, Unhealthy Relationship, Mentions of Rape

Words: 3360

[Story Masterlist]

Masterlist to my other works right ->Here<-

“And the shark, it has tears,

And they run down its face.

But the shark lives in the water -

So the teardrops one can’t see.”

- Rammstein - Haifisch

Taglist: @winterglcw @commonintrest @emmojoy @satansbra @just-someone-who-likes-to-write

“She died through my hands.”

That sentence replayed over and over in your head, forming a continuous loop as you silently formed those words with your own lips.

“It’s not him!” you called out to yourself, since your reason had seemingly disappeared ever since you first saw the person that was a perfect copy of the man you once loved.

You were rolling around on the bare floor, shivering as you softly punched your head to not get lost in thought again. The emperor didn’t even have the basic decency to give you any clothes back, only having the Citauri throw you into an old dungeon to keep you prisoner - or whatever he’d plan to do with you.

That man was so different of your Loki.

And the timeline both of you were currently in had exceeded your worst expectations, making you wonder if fate just wanted to torment you.

In this universe, Thanos never even got so far as to collect all of the Infinity Stones. Loki Laufeyson had won the battle of New York and took over this world, then somehow double-crossed and killed the Titan. So right now, he possessed the power of the Tesseract, as well as the Cascet of Ancient Winters. For what reason he kept that Jotun relic was unknown, probably out of nostalgic sentiment you assumed.

Afterwards, the God of Mischief had killed his brother Thor in bad blood, as well as torturing Natasha - the exact way he threatened her back in your world, when he was in his cell. Clint was still his servant, as it seemed. You had seen him when they took you to his cell.

He couldn’t get rid of all the Avengers, however - even though their current location was unknown. They were in hiding for many years now, probably trying to get their hands on the other Infinity Stones.

Also noticeable was the fact that this universe had neither Hela, nor Captain Marvel - so one good and one bad thing to compensate for each other. Not that they’d be a match for Loki in his current form anyway...

And there was no Dr. Strange on this version of Earth, your last bit hope to escape disappearing as you learned about this fact.

That much was all you had learned by now, mainly through tricking and manipulating some of your guards into giving you information.

All in all, you only knew for sure was that this world’s Loki was a terribly trong, murderous sociopath, intoxicated by power and loneliness.

And you had become the focus of the little emotion left in him.

It was hard trying to surpress all the voices and memory submerging in your mind. So there was nothing left for you except for rolling up into a ball, lying on the cold floor as you prepared to be washed over with sadness and guilt once again.

_____

“Would you help me recieve the greatest honor by becoming mine and mine only, Lady Y/N?”

How could you ever forget this moment?

Back on the Asgardian refugee ship, your Loki had asked you that very question, now popping up in your mind once again.

Every detail was still as bright as daylight, preserved deep into your heart.

You clearly remembered the small, green box he had summoned out of thin air, presenting you a plain but still incredibly beautiful ring. The golden piece of jewlery formed a snake eating itself - a symbol of infinity and wholeness.

It was just his way of being thoughtful.

“I-I prepared this a while go, to be precize...but I never thought of being worthy” he had stammered and you found yourself speechless, admiring that very scene playing in front of your eyes. “A-Anyway, after all that happened, I realized that all moments I spent happy, were when I was with you. I don’t want to lose you again, Y/N! And I feared, well...that it might be too late to ask someday.”

It was most unjust that this most blissful moment would be interrupted by a great rumbling shaking through the whole spaceship - and even before Thor would crash Loki’s proposal, both of you were aware just what kind of danger you would have to face soon:

Thanos.

Your numbers had already been decimated by Ragnarok, all that’s left being some civilian refugees, injured and traumatized. The only ones capable of fighting left were Loki, Thor, Heimdall, you and the Hulk.

Yet all of your struggles were to no avail, only able to watch and scream and bag at the Titan, so he’d at least spare those innocent lives as he mercilessly slaughtered woman and children alike.

“Fucking monster!” Pulling out a gun, your mind went completely blank as you gave it some last, desperate attempt to save or avenge just anyone.

No bullet would even come close enough to pierce his skin, as Ebony Maw would deflect them to hit yourself and people close to you. “I’m not the only one you should see responsible for this outcome” Thanos scoffed.

“What do you mea-” Your voice got swallowed by a pained groan as you saw Loki, kneeling in front of Thanos and revealing the one thing he was after:

The Tesseract.

“You......took it?!?” The only thing managing to escape your throat was a high-pitched yell as Loki’s face contorted in disappointment and regret - just now realizing that he had put you all in danger.

They would’ve never went after you if it wasn’t for him. He had doomed his race, failed you and what was left of his family.

“How could you put us all in danger?! I thought you had changed! You swore it with your life, Loki! That you loved me more than you desired power!”

No answer.

Instead, the god would prepare one of his speeches, directing words of undying fidelity at Thanos and his arms. And even though it was meant to be lies, a play to make the threat feel save, every single word hit your heart like knives.

“How could I ever marry someone like you?!” feeling as if Loki most recent, selfish act was suffocating you, you could only whisper - yet he understood very clearly, the facade dropping in an instant. “I-I hate you...traitor...”

If only you knew that those would be the last words you’d ever direct at him...

Loki materializes a dagger, desperately trying to make up for his biggest mistake yet, and at least save you, the light of his cursed existence, and the only thing he had ever done in his life full of wrongs.

But Thanos looked right through the charade from the very beginning, using the stones to trap Loki in their hold - and then, grabbing the god’s throat.

“You have what you want, Thanos!” Thor tried to bargain, “There’s even less than half of my race left. Please, just let us go!”

“Oh, I will” he spoke stony, then shifting his attention to the god in his hands. “But first, I’ll do you a favor and erase that disgraceful pest all of you were too weak to take care of.”

As he was struggling for air, gasping uncontrollably as he tried to free his neck from the Giant, Loki’s glare wandered to you - and when your eyes met, both of your hearts skipped a beat.

He smiled. In the face of death, the last thing he wanted you to remember was the good things after all.

And seeing the ring on your finger, how couldn’t he? Loki knew you were about to say yes - and knowing this was more than enough for someone like him.

After all, the God of Mischief was used to happiness being taken away from him as soon as he thought it to be okay to open up to someone.

But you were safe. That’s all that counted for him!

It was like his eyes were telling you “It’s gonna be alright. I’m sorry, Y/N...I love you.”

You don’t remember much after that, having a mental breakdown as you had to watch the love of your life perish - and forever thinking about how you had turned him down just seconds before.

A part of you had died with him back then.

_____

The creaking sound of the cell’s door made you jump from your dream - but the person which entered was one you had never seen before.

A monster.

It’s silhouette very much resembled Loki, yet his skin was painted in a dark shade of blue, with thin linings carved across his whole body. He had fangs and even horns coming out of his temple to add at that.

The beast’s eyes were shining in a threatening red, glistering contrastful in the dark hallway. But the worst were those black irises, absent of any form of compassion - there seemed to be only rage, confusion and hate.

“Fuck!” you screamed, terrified and fearing for your life. Shuffling until your back hit the wall of a corner of the room, you defendingly put your arms in front of yourself. “Go away! Don’t to-ouch me!”

Loki cleared his voice as he put the Casket away, not making any efforts to revert his outer appearance back to ‘normal’. He had admired it on his way to your cell, like he’d do many times a day when he was reminiscing about the day he learned about his heritage...

...and how he had killed Odin, his adoptive father, with that very relic, afterwards clearing the universe of that despiseful race of the Jotunn - making him the last of his kind.

“Oh my” a dark voice finally declared, “Seems like ‘your’ Loki never dared to show you his true form. Pathetic.”

No, that wasn’t completely true. Your lover had at least told you back then. But when did you ever have the time to talk things over and heal, being dragged from one fight to another?!

The Jotunn felt great joy as he towered over you, gleefully watching your naked body cowering to his knees, covered in goosebumps and shaking heavily. Your breath was clearly visible while you tried to cover your shame as best as you could, wary glare never leaving the abomination that was just lurking right in front of you.

“Wha- OUCH!” you hissed as the Frost Giant took ahold of your wrist, monitoring the pain spreading across your face as his touch would frostburn any skin he was touching with ease.

Loki grinned menacingly as he let go off of you, admiring his handywork as the first layer of your skin had already died, crumbling away to reveal your pink flesh.

“Oh, how I missed that” he explained, much to your surprise ripping a piece of his own clothing apart to cover the wound with it. “Your kind is so easily broken. It’s always fascinating to watch.”

“Just kill me already, you freak!”

Well, Loki had in fact spent hours after hours thinking about how to handle you, and yet he couldn’t decide. Obviously he would’ve killed you right away if it was otherwise, but he still had a soft spot for you somewhere deep in his heart, after all.

And it upset him more than he’d ever admit. So he tried to assert his dominance, to ease the feeling of weakness and loss of control.

“I’m only doing you a favor, woman.” The god would touch your cheek, making you flinch away - but this time, it wouldn’t hurt. Never would he dare to scar this most beautiful face!

“The man you loved was just the same as me, yet it seemed he wasn’t completely honest with you. What you are seeing right now is the form of a Frost Giant...the monstrosity you chose to love.”

“L-Loki…”

It was no surprise that he saw tears filling the rim of your eyes - yet out of a whim, you pulled your arms around his neck, tears wetting his robe. He gasped, unable to act in any way as he stiffened in the pose.

That was by far not the reaction he had been expecting - and he surprised you as well. You had thought him to instantly shove you away, beat you agaib or even bite - but he just kneeled there, not daring to make a move.

"Why?” Now his voice was much softer, pained even. “I’m a monster. I hurt you. So why?”

“I’m so sorry” you whimpered, words being interrupted by heavy sobbing. “I try to fight it, I really do. But I just can’t, I-I”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“How could I be? It’s you, Loki...no matter what you look like.” Eventually, you’d face him again, wiping the tears out of your face when for another moment, you made yourself forget that this was a completely different person. “I was just surprised, that’s all. Letting me see this form out of nowhere...”

“Y/N, I’m not the same as him” he retorted, knowing very well what it’s like to lose oneself in daydreams and illusions to ease the pain of loss. His sight wandered around the room instead of your face, stating “I did horrendous things, dear. Tormented and killed countless. It’s unforgiveable.”

“So did he” you stated, even though you knew those two Loki’s couldn’t be compared. “And you should already know: I feel dead inside, ever since he died.”

“You really loved him, didn’t you?” When you nodded confidently, Loki sighed ashamed, reluctantly touching your wrist again. A warm magic would flow through you, healing the wound in no time. “I wish she had felt the same for me...”

For a while, both of you were plainly sitting in uncomfortable silence, with Loki even lending you his cloak to warm yourself up.

“It’s not him” you told yourself once again. “It’s not him. It’s not him. IT’S NOT HIM!!! That man is dangerous and instable. He can’t be trusted!”

And then, finally, you dared asking, cutting through the thick air:

“What exactly happened to me, in this world?”

Loki’s face contorted in agony, rubbing his face as if in deep pain. “Is this really necessary? I already told you. She died because of me.”

“More details would be nice” you retorted bluntly, not really caring if he was to have a violent outburst again. Curiosity got the better of you at that moment.

The emperor’s voice was low and husky, and just now you realized how damn tired he looked - with dark rings under his eyes, and more pale than you had ever remembered him.

The weight of his sins sure had taken a stroll on that sensitive man.

"I saw the ring” he uttered deeply affected, “That’s something I could only dream of. Thinking about it, I think she never really loved me in the first place. Or maybe she just grew tired of my lies. Understandable, I have to admit...”

“Yes, it was quite the opposite, even” he continued after a long, strained breath of his. “She hated me. Joined the Avengers and tried to kill me, several times. Only years later I learned about the truth: Already far in the past, back on Asgard, she betrayed me. After I fell off the Bifrost, she thought myself dead - and consoled herself by bedding my brother. I had to kill him, I-I-I just had to!”

Loki’s hands were shaking so frantically you could feel it from over there, mad eyes darting over your physique to take in your reaction. “After they finally lost, I took her prisoner. Seven months of trying to make her mine, no matter the methods. Mind-controlling her would not be satisfying. So I tortured her, played games with her sanity, and- I’d rather not speak about how else I violated her.”

“You, wha-” Now you were the one shivering in horrid anticipation, “You raped me...?”

No answer. Instead he just finished this disastrous story.

“One day, I went to her cell like I always did. I hoped once her mind was broken she’d stop struggling to be mine. But she never did. You Y/N’s are quite the fighters, as it seems.”

“Wha- wwhat happened to me...I mean, ‘her’?”

A loud whine escaped his vocal cords as he hit the wall right next to your face, making you suck in a pained breath.

“She used her chains to hang herself. There was nothing I could do. Ever since then I knew I’m cursed to inflict pain on anything I hold dear.”

"D-Don’t give me that self-pitying bullshit” you wanted to shout at his face - but the cramping in your heart as well as the hyperventillation made talking impossible.

How could one do something like that to a person they claimed to love?!

“Go” you whimpered, already shuffling away from him and he could hear anguish and fear drop out of every vocal, and he realized you were having a panic attack. “Please!”

Loki closed his eyes, letting out one last, deep sigh. He knew he owed you that much.

“Very well.”

That whole night, you spent crying and screaming to your hearts avail, unable to process your current situation and newfound knowledge.

So that would be your life from now on? Being hurt mentally and physically, frostburnt and hurt and violated against your will - all while looking at a face that remembered you of happier days?

Never!

Things were just like that evil Loki said: You are a fighter!

And if you couldn’t help that crazy man, you would at least help yourself! The Avengers are still out there, somewhere. You needed to escape and help them!

How could you have been so blind all those years?

Loki - your Loki - would have never wanted to you give up. He’d want you to survive and live your life to it’s fullest, trying to make the best out of everything you’ve got.

Just like he always did. That much you had learned from him.

“I’m sorry, Loki. If I die, I can’t even remember you...I love you…”

Breaking out succeeded faster than you could ever think it would take - because when you’d finally get out of your fetal courl and wandered across the cell, you realized Loki didn’t properly close the heavy steel door back when he rushed away from you.

“It’s not him. There’s no helping that man. I have to find my friends, I-”

Still shocked and scared and traumatized, you didn’t even realize that someone was watching you, not even questioning that the hallways were oddly empty.

You sneaked out of an open window, bare feet feeling the morning dew as you shook away Lokis cloak and ran as fast as your feet could carry you.

There was it - the fence.

No one could tell you what kind of world would await you outside of that property as you swiftly avoided some guards, rushing through the all so beautiful garden.

But as soon as you reached out to climb the railing, you felt someone balling a fist in your hair, harshly holding you back and causing you to stumble and fall.

“I thought you to be different…” an all too familiar voice grumbled. Loki didn’t even want to hear any apology or excuse, kicking your guts so heavily that you had to throw up, cramping on the ground.

“Don’t you dare to run away ever again!” he now yelled furiously, "She tried it too...so damn.many.times…!”

But before you could even respond, he suddenly began to cry uncontrollably. “I thought you would stay. Do you think I like to do this?!”

His voice was laced with grief and regret, yet he kept on forming countless bruises on your body. “Why can’t you fucking love me, hel?!”

You didn’t know how long his violent crying fit lasted, with him weeping as he let off some steam on your helpless self.

There was no trace of the hurt, regretful man left you talked to in your cell earlier. After being finished, having reclaimed a fraction of composure, Loki pressed your face in between his hands, ripping on your mangled body to face him.

“Fate gifted me another chance to possess you, Y/N. And I will form you into a magnificent pet, I promise.”

_______

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stiltonbasket · 3 years

Note

Please write a follow up for the laughing soulmates au! WWX growing up thinking his true chance at love was gone before he knew what he lost, oh man oh man.

Wei Wuxian was ten years old when he first began wearing mourning.

“Jiang Fengmian,” Madam Yu hissed, when she returned to Lotus Pier after a brief vacation in Meishan to find her adopted ward practicing his sword forms wearing robe of the palest, most dirt-resistant white linen that money could buy. “What is Wei Ying doing in white? Where are his red robes? Or his purple ones?”

“It has been more than four years since he felt his soulmate laugh,” Jiang-shushu replied--calmly, but with a low, challenging hum to his voice that meant his mind was firmly made up. “He has decided to wear mourning for them.”

“He is a child,” Yu-furen retorted. “He never met his soulmate, and if you are encouraging melancholy in the boy before he even comes of age, then--”

“His manner has not changed, San-niang. He laughs as much as he always does, and attends to his studies with diligence. Surely allowing him to honor his mingding zhiren’s passing would be no trouble to you?”

“Me? What trouble is it to me? As long as he does his duties and doesn’t disgrace our family, what should I have to say about it?”

And with that, she swung her long purple train behind her and stalked off to her private pavilion, leaving Wei Wuxian to finish his drills on the training field and pretend he had not heard.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about how quickly his adoptive parents settled the argument about his mourning clothes, even if such a thing would never have happened during his first few years in Yunmeng. The whole world changed when he realized his soulmate was dead, and Madam Yu’s refusal to punish him or scold him in any way (she only ever took out her frustrations with him on Jiang-shushu, and even that never lasted longer than a few minutes) was hardly the strangest alteration Wei Wuxian had to come to terms with. His tutors tried to go more easily on him, Jiang Cheng was always gentle with him, and Yu-furen never protested when he got the same treats and privileges that her own children did--and of course, Shijie doted on him more than ever, though that was more out of love than pity. Even the vendors on the streets of Lufeng plied him down with sweets and snacks before he had a chance to steal them, to the point where he had to stay home when his shidis went to raid the market because all their ill-gotten spoils would be free of charge if he went along with them.

“You’d better stay back and help Jiang-shijie with the kites,” one of his junior brothers told him once, while Jiang Cheng promised to bring back his favorite strawberry tanghulu from the candy-seller near the blacksmith’s workshop. “It takes all the fun out of it if you go, Wei-shixiong! We don’t even get to steal anything!”

And now, even Lan Zhan treats him like something made of glass, something that could break if spoken to harshly, and Wei Wuxian is sick of it. It’s different when Jiang-shushu does it, because Jiang-shushu’s soulmate is dead too, and it’s different when Madam Yu does it because she thought she would never have one until Yanli-shijie was born--but Lan Zhan has a soulmate who makes him happy, and he treats Wei Wuxian with the deference due a widow whose husband was barely cooling in the grave.

Lan Qiren just treats him like a loud, unpleasant slug, though, so at least that’s some comfort.

“You know, you could stop wearing mourning,” his brother says, when Wei Wuxian pours out his woes in their shared guest quarters that evening. “You’ve been wearing it for the past eight years, Wei Wuxian. Even widows don’t do that. Of course Lan Wangji treats you like a trembling flower, he thinks your heart is broken.”

“It’s not broken,” Wei Wuxian protests, more than a little offended. “I miss my soulmate, but I’m not pining into the grave like some bereaved maiden!”

“How’s Lan Wangji supposed to know that?” Jiang Cheng returns. “You look all tragic every time we pass those girls in the Caiyi river market to make them give you free food! Lan Wangji saw you do it, twice! He didn’t even scold you for flirting because you looked so sad!”

Wei Wuxian scratches at his nose and pouts; because Jiang Cheng is right about that last one, but Wei Wuxian isn’t going to give him the satisfaction of admitting it.“But what am I supposed to do to make him treat me normally?” he wails, screaming into his pillow. “He’s already seen me wearing white before the rules made me do it, and he’s already seen me tear up at one of the loquat vendors because it was evening and the evening was my fated one’s favorite time of day--”

“Was it?”

“Huh?”

“Was evening their favorite time of day?”

“They used to laugh a lot in the evenings, so I guess it must have been,” Wei Wuxian shrugs. “Or maybe they just got really excited about dinner. But forget about that--how am I going to convince Lan Zhan that I’m fine, and show him that he doesn’t have to walk on eggshells around me?”

“Break more rules,” his brother suggests. “Then he’ll punish you, and he’ll have such a good time doing it that he’ll forget why he ever tried to ignore your nonsense.”

“Tried that already,” Wei Wuxian says dismally. “All he did was ask Shijie to make me soup, because I had to be in distress if I couldn’t see the merit of obeying the sect edicts for the sake of my own betterment.”

Jiang Cheng winces. “Barge in on him in the cold springs?”

“I did that too! All he did was turn his back and tell me that I shouldn’t expose myself in public, even if I was so honorable in my grief for my fated one that I would never do anything untoward, or entertain the forwardness of others.”

“Entertain the forwardness of others?” His brother frowns. “What does that even mean?”

“Beats me. Hey, do you think I should ask Nie-xiong for help?”

Jiang Cheng yawns. “Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I don’t see why this is supposed to work,” Jiang Cheng mutters, about a week later. He and Nie Huaisang are hiding in the bushes near the library pavilion, keeping an eye on the open door--and Wei Wuxian is sitting inside, writing out all the lines Lan-xiansheng assigned him under Lan Wangji’s supervision. “Lan Wangji didn’t even react to Wei Wuxian stripping in public.”

“The cold springs are hardly public, Jiang-xiong,” Huaisang says vaguely. “And I swore it would work! You should trust me!”

And indeed, scarcely five minutes later, they hear the loud, splintering crash of a table being overturned, and Wei Wuxian comes pelting out of the library with ink splashed all over his robes and torn paper stuck in his hair--and Lan Wangji is hot on his heels with his hand on Bichen’s hilt, roaring Wei Wuxian’s name like a younger version of his uncle as they speed towards the lanshi.

“Wei Ying!” Lan Wangji screeches. “How can you--I trusted--shameless!”

“I warned you, Lan Zhan! Should I lend you another one?”

“What have we done?” Jiang Cheng moans, when the two boys finally move out of earshot and vanish down the stony path. “This is all your fault, Nie Huaisang.”

“I know,” Nie Huaisang laughs, sweeping his fan across his lips. “Don’t worry, Jiang Cheng. I’ll take full responsibility.”

#wangxian #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #my fic #soulmate au

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starlingflight · 3 years

Link

@thisismegz as requested, the missing scenes from Everything I Wanted of Ginny dealing with her guilt over how things went between her and Dean.

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The sun felt especially bright contrasted as it was by nearly a full day in the dungeons with no one but Snape for company. Harry savoured the way the light summer breeze tickled his uncovered arms and the way Ginny’s hand felt in his as they made their way out into the grounds.

It seemed the majority of Hogwarts’ population had decided to take advantage of the good weather, for the lawn beside the lake was crowded with huddles of students. Their usual tree was already taken by a noisy group of fourth-year girls and so Ginny led him to a free patch of grass not far from the lake's stony shore. She sat cross-legged on the ground, pulling Harry with her.

He went to position himself beside her but Ginny clearly had other ideas, she shuffled slightly, placing her hands on his shoulders and smoothly guided Harry’s head into her lap so that he was lying on the soft grass with Ginny above him, her fingers tracing lightly across his forehead.

“If your brother sees this he’s going to lose his mind,” Harry warned, though in truth he was finding it difficult to care. The headache that had been building behind his eyes, caused by a long day in the dark, stuffy dungeon was receding with every stroke of Ginny’s fingers over his skin.

Unsurprisingly, Ginny seemed to care even less about Ron’s reaction than Harry did. Her only response to his warning was to gently slide his glasses off and place them carefully on the grass beside them, making it easier for her fingers to trace the features of his face without obstruction.

Neither of them said anything for a while, Ginny was now little more than a blur of creamy skin and striking red hair above him. Eventually, Harry let his eyes slowly drift closed, revelling in the feel of her fingers on his face and the sweet, floral smell of her shampoo drifting to him on the summer breeze.

Snape became nought but a distant memory under Ginny’s careful attention and Harry was vaguely considering that there was a strong chance he was going to fall asleep, warm and content as he was, when Ginny broke the silence between them.

“I think I'm going to apologise to Dean," She declared.

It took Harry a moment to register what she’d said, his brain felt fuzzy from the heat. When his wits finally caught up with him, Harry almost asked her why but he immediately realised he didn’t need to.

He’d seen the guilt on Ginny’s face last night and he’d felt the same thing himself. They’d both admitted they’d been in denial about their feelings for each other for a while and maybe that was no one’s fault but it didn’t change the fact that Dean had been caught up in it.

“If I tell you I think it’s a bad idea are you going to think it’s because I’m jealous or threatened or something?”

Ginny's fingers were still stroking lightly across his cheeks, over the bridge of his nose, across his forehead and Harry found that it was almost impossible to feel jealous given his current situation.

“No,” She said mildly. “I’m going to ask you why you think that, though.”

He’d rather she didn’t but if Harry was being honest with himself, he knew her better than to expect Ginny to blindly accept what he was saying. “I’ve been in his position. I watched you with him for months, and I didn’t expect you to break up or begrudge either of you your happiness or anything but…”

Harry trailed off, still not used to telling anyone his deepest feelings and still not entirely comfortable with it.

"But?" Ginny prompted, one of her hands working its way up into Harry's hair, massaging his scalp. He felt himself relax immediately.

"But there isn't anything you could have said to me to make me feel better about the situation, to make me not want you."

Ginny's hands didn't stop their slow exploration of his hair for even a second. "It's not the same thing," She said without missing a beat.

"How isn't it?"

"It was never like this with Dean," Ginny unwound one of her hands from his hair in order to gesture between the two of them before quickly returning it, much to Harry's delight. "I was never this happy, not even at the start. The thing that you were waiting for is so much better than what Dean lost."

Secretly, Harry wholeheartedly disagreed with this. The thing that he'd been waiting for, the thing that Dean lost, was Ginny and there were no words on the planet that could ease the devastating blow that Harry already knew would come from ever losing her.

"You really want to talk to him?" Harry asked, knowing it was pointless to argue with her when she'd already made her mind up.

“I really do,” Ginny responded and Harry knew the matter was settled.

“Okay,” He agreed. “Did you want to go now?” He added reluctantly, he could quite happily stay in this spot for the rest of his life.

“No,” Ginny said quickly, leaning forward and placing a soft kiss to Harry’s lips. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to get out of detention, you’re staying right where you are.”

Ginny and Dean did not cross paths for the rest of the weekend. Nor was he anywhere to be seen at breakfast or lunch on Monday. Ginny was beginning to strongly suspect that he was avoiding her when she quite literally walked into him on her way out of Ancient Runes on Monday afternoon.

“Sorry - oh!” Dean’s apologetic smile faltered as he took Ginny in.

“I’ve been looking for you!” Ginny said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, though Dean still didn’t look cheered at her pronouncement.

“Er, have you?”

“Yeah, do you mind if we go somewhere and talk?”

Dean’s eyes narrowed suspiciously in a way that made Ginny’s heart sink. They’d been friends for years, they’d been close since the first D.A. meeting and now the two of them had reached a point where the prospect of holding a conversation was enough to set Dean on edge.

“It’ll be really quick, I promise.” Ginny tried again, hoping her face held as much sincerity as she currently felt.

“Alright,” Dean said reluctantly, gesturing for Ginny to lead the way.

There was a low wooden bench halfway down the corridor, under a row of mullioned windows which revealed the sweeping vistas of the Hogwarts grounds and the lake. If nothing else, at least the view would be pleasant.

Ginny took a seat on the bench and Dean followed her lead; she couldn’t help but note he was sitting as far away from her as physically possible. One good shove and he’d topple over onto the castle’s stone floor.

“How have you been?” She began cautiously.

“Fine,” Dean responded. Ginny raised a sceptical eyebrow. Dean had always been forthcoming with his feelings, one-word answers weren’t his style at all. “I’ve been good, Ginny. I’ve been working on my art - I’ve had a lot of emotion to channel into my drawings, I think I’ve got some really good ones for my portfolio.”

Ginny nodded, trying not to think too hard about what emotions Dean may have been using to fuel his creative pursuits. “You were always very talented.”

It was Dean’s turn to raise a dubious eyebrow at Ginny now. “Is that what you wanted to say to me? You like my drawings?”

“No, I wanted to apologise,” She said slowly, half-expecting Dean to shut her down before she’d explained herself. When he said nothing, but continued to look at her expectantly Ginny took a deep breath before continuing. “I should have ended things between us long before I did. I knew your feelings were stronger than mine and I shouldn’t have kept stringing you along.”

Dean listened patiently as Ginny spoke, but he began to shake his head in disagreement as she finished. “That wasn’t what bothered me. It was that I could clearly see where things were going between the two of you, but you were so adamant that I was seeing things that weren’t there. It was frustrating.”

Ginny began to fiddle nervously with the ends of her hair, slipping the long strands between the ends of her fingers. “You’re right,” She said quietly, looking not at Dean but out of the window where she could just make out the Giant Squid’s tentacles rising out of the water in the distance. “I know it probably doesn’t help, but I hope you know I wasn’t lying to you on purpose - I really believed our banter and joking was innocent, it was unbelievable to me that Harry might actually have liked me.”

Dean made a noise halfway between a snort and a chuckle; Ginny looked back from the window to find that he was smiling at her. “Of course he liked you, have you seen you?”

“Stop it!” Ginny exclaimed, reaching out and shoving Dean lightly enough that he didn’t fall off the bench as she’d been worried he might earlier. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you!”

“You stop it!” Dean argued through a laugh. “Serious conversations don’t suit you at all!”

Ginny grinned, it had been so long since they’d joked with one another. Even in the weeks before they’d broken up all they’d done was argue. “Does that mean we can be friends?”

“Honestly, I think friends will suit us better than a relationship ever did,” Dean said sincerely. “No offence, but I didn’t find the constant fighting particularly enjoyable and I don’t think you did either.”

Ginny chose not to answer, there was no point in going over their old fights now. When she looked back on her time with Dean it was as though she was remembering something from a different lifetime. Instead, she pushed herself up from the bench and waited for Dean to join her. “Come on, let’s go and set the Hogwarts rumour mill alight by walking into dinner together.”

Dean fell into step beside Ginny without protest, the cautious, guarded look that had been upon his face at the beginning of the conversation was no longer in sight.

#hinny #harry x ginny #dean thomas #hp fanfic #hbp missing moment

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grumpyhedgehogs · 3 years

Text

Liftoff

Summary: An alternate Infinite Darkness in which Shen Mei chooses a different person to partner with, Claire takes a more active role, and Leon turns to the dark side (only for a little while).Or: What if Jason had gotten to Leon with his 'fear into terror' speech, and Shen Mei had teamed up with Claire to put a stop to them both?

Notes: Canon typical violence, guns, explosions, threats. Spoilers for Infinite Darkness. (Help I’ve only loved Cleon for a day and I’m already writing angst fic for them!)

AO3

T-minus 30 Seconds

The first time Leon pointed a gun at her, fear flooded Claire. She’d barely heard his command until it was too late; her nervous system was going haywire, lighting up like a Christmas tree. He had shouted for her to duck and Claire had and Leon had pulled the trigger and saved her life. It’s been the same way the whole time they’ve known each other since; she gets into trouble and Leon tells her to get to safety and she listens or sometimes she doesn’t and sometimes it’s the other way around and she saves Leon instead, but in the end they both survive. That’s how they work. That’s how Claire thought they would always work.

This time, staring down the barrel of a gun with Leon S. Kennedy at the other end of it, Claire isn’t so sure they’ll both get out of this.

T-Minus 72 Hours

Witnessing a dead body is something Claire hates she’s gotten used to. Chris always gets that pinched, wan look on his face when she talks about what sights Raccoon City had to offer her, but she can’t help what happened any more than he can. The dead walked and Claire witnessed and then the whole thing went to hell in a handbasket all thanks to the U.S. government. If they had it their way, Penamstan is going to go the same way.

Claire resists the urge to tear down the papers swimming before her eyes. Instead she groans and rips her glasses off her nose, pinching her forehead. Her eyes throb but she knows she won’t find any sleep soon. The answers are here, have been staring her in the face for days or weeks, and she still can’t see them. “There has to be something I’m missing…”

A thump on the stairway outside has her spine snapping straight, ice flowing in her veins. Hurriedly, she snatches a lamp from the bedside table and yanks the cord out of the wall. She just has enough time to slip behind the door and ready herself before it opens with a quiet creak. The person on the other side is light-footed and sure, moves with the grace of years of training. They’re smaller than Claire thought they would be, just a slip of a shadow in the dark of her motel room. They are alone.

Claire lets out a grunt as she knocks the door closed with her elbow and brings the lamp down as hard as she can. The ceramic cracks and splinters from the force of her blow, but even though the body goes down with Claire on top of it, whoever it is still struggles. A fist catches against her shoulder and even though Claire manages to catch the other fist in her own hand before it connects, she wishes she had any of her firepower from Raccoon City with her now. The person beneath her bucks and twists, wiry muscle instead of the bulk Claire is used to fighting against. They slip their wrist from her hold before she can let out more than a cry of frustration, and a punch to the solar plexus doesn’t seem to slow them down for but a moment.

The darkness whirls in front of her eyes as Claire is flipped onto her back. Her head knocks harshly against the bureau in the room, stars erupting in her vision. Claire gasps, gags on the sudden nausea, and kicks out. Her foot connects with something boney, but it’s a glancing blow at best. Claire has survived too much to die in some shitty Washington motel room.

Long hair brushes Claire’s cheek as the person leans down; dark eyes glitter in the low light above her. “I don't want to hurt you,” the stranger says, and Claire laughs in her face.

“If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that before,” she spits.

“You are Claire Redfield.”

“Yeah, no shit!”

“You are investigating the Mad Dogs and their involvement in Penamstan. You know there was an outbreak there.”

That brings Claire up short. Her lungs burn and her breath is coming too fast, but the knock to her head doesn’t smart enough to make her believe she’s got a concussion. Hell, her ears aren’t even ringing. “So what? You gonna kill me for what I know? What I’m getting close to?”

“Claire Redfield, you know nothing.” The stranger raises her head and suddenly her weight lifts off of Claire. Claire struggles not to gasp in a huge breath of air, feeling like a beetle stuck on it’s back. The woman holds her hand out in offering. “Not yet. But I would like to tell you what really happened in Penamstan. I would like to tell the whole world.”

This could easily be a trick--but then, she could easily have killed Claire here in the lonely darkness without leading her on a wild goose chase first. Claire accepts her help and hauls herself to her feet. She straightens her jacket, brushes her fingers over her forehead, and is pleased when she finds no blood there. “I can help you with that, then.”

The other woman is not much smaller than she is, long black hair pulled into a sensible ponytail and leather jacket zipped all the way to the base of her throat. “My name is Shen Mei. My brother was in Penamstan when the outbreak happened; he was--”

“Turned,” Claire supplies, ash in her mouth.

Shen Mei nods, solemn and stony. “I thought one of the Mad Dogs--Jason--was helping me, but he is not. He wants to expose the use of bioweapons but he will get people killed to do it. And he has recruited an agent onto his side that I am afraid of. If we do not move quickly they will harm others so the truth can get out.”

“And cause mass hysteria as a result,” Clare finishes. “Then you can tell me the rest of what’s happened as we move. Let’s go.”

T-minus 68 Hours

Shen Mei is quiet, practical, and deadly with a knife. Just as she predicts, agents come after them. Shen Mei needs no help in fighting them off.

“You can’t--!”

The blood spills from the soldier’s throat as he twists, gasping, in Shen Mei’s hands. Claire lunges, trying to get her hands on his neck, trying to staunch the blood, but Shen Mei uses her shoulder to shove Claire back, shielding the dying man from her sight. “They will kill us before we can get to the chip in my grandfather’s safe.” Shen Mei hisses. “They will kill us for even suspecting what was done to those people, to my brother. They know now that I am a rogue agent, and they will come after me. You need to keep your hair and prints away from the crime scene so they do not come after you, too.”

Claire stares at the man’s eyes, glassy and empty, and breathes shallowly. She thanks whatever is out there that it isn’t Leon’s body cooling on the pavement at Shen Mei’s feet. Could she have stopped her if Leon were the one under the knife?

But Leon wouldn’t have tried to kill her in the first place. Claire breathes in, breathes out. Shen Mei sheathes her knife and beckons. “Our plane is on the tarmac. We don’t have much time.”

Claire leaves three dead agents behind her. She tries not to look back.

T-Minus 41 Hours

Shen Mei pockets the chip her grandfather passes her. Behind the sheer curtains, a heart monitor beeps steadily. Shen Mei’s grandfather motions Claire forward. The curtain pulls back and Claire tries not to gasp as she recognizes the grey flesh, the growths, the slow blood leaking through the sheets.

“My grandson.” he tells her quietly. “I used up my savings to help him. I failed--”

Even as Claire raises a hand to place on the old man’s shoulder, Shen Mei and the other man in the room stiffen. The doors slam open, rattling on their hinges as Claire whips around, eyes wide and hand going to the gun Shen Mei lent her. But she’d know those blue eyes anywhere, and they have always been safe for her. Claire doesn’t draw on Leon.

She doesn’t, but Shen Mei does. Leon’s gun is trained on her, dead center between her eyes, and Claire’s brain stalls. Why would Leon shoot Shen Mei? She’s good, she’s one of them. She needs protection just like Leon and Claire did during Raccoon City.

The other man tries to rush forward, but Leon growls at him and he subsides, eyes flicking between Shen Mei and her grandfather, looking for instructions that won’t come. Claire almost wants to shoo him out. This is no place for young blood.

“Leon!” She doesn’t wait until his eyes light on her, but pushes forward, placing herself squarely in front of Shen Mei. She might not be the one with army training, but she knows this man. She’s the one who can get him to see sense, not Shen Mei. She sees his face go a little slack in surprise as she raises her hand and curls it around the gun barrel, not bothering to push it away since he’d do it himself in a second. “Don’t shoot!”

“Claire.” Leon sounds like he’s grinding his teeth. “What are you doing here?”

“Helping, like always.” She rolls her eyes, tries to lighten her tone. It doesn’t work. His feet shift a little, but he plants himself again. He hasn’t lowered the gun. Something quivers in alarm at the back of Claire’s mind, but she ignores it. “Shen Mei is going to expose the outbreak in Penamstan I told you about, but we’ve got to move fast, because this Mad Dog agent, Jason, he’s--”

“Coming after Shen Mei for the chip. He’s going to expose the bioweapons for good,” Leon finishes. “I know.”

Her mouth feels cottony, her head stuffed with too much input to make sense of it. Leon is still and steady as a stone in the middle of a rushing river. His gun presses against her collarbone, the metal cool and frightening against her skin. His hair is lank and damp with sweat like he hasn’t had time to stop and rest for days and his eyes look wild in his face. Claire doesn’t--can’t--understand. Faintly, she tries, “Leon?”

Leon lets a gust of air out of his mouth, an explosive sigh, and he jerks his gun out of Claire’s face. Before she can even breathe out her relief (how could she have thought he’d do it? She chastised herself. It’s Leon.), he moves. His fingers curl, unforgiving, into the lapel of her jacket and jerk her forward. Surprised and off-kilter, Claire stumbles to Leon’s side. Anger and no small amount of worry at his aggression and strangeness course through her; Claire slaps at his hand but Leon refuses to let her go. It doesn’t take a genius to tell he’s moving her out of the way, moving her behind him, putting himself between her and Shen Mei--

“I told you she’s not the issue--”

“Yes,” Leon snaps, near snarling, his face so animalistic Claire doesn’t recognize him, “she is. I told you not to do anything stupid.”

Claire opens her mouth, about to retort hotly, and shuts it when the ground rolls beneath their feet. Shen Mei lets out a cry and her grandfather throws himself bodily onto what used to be his grandson. Beside her, close enough that Claire can feel his breath (when had he dragged her so close?), Leon curses.

“Damn it Jason, I said I needed more time.”

The house collapses down around their heads.

T-Minus 37 Hours

Shen Mei finds her in the wreckage. “You are lucky,” she says as she pulls Claire to her feet.

Claire knows she isn’t. She knows that because Leon had thrown them both behind one of the tables in the bedroom as the fires started. She knows that Leon had hauled her as far as he could from the blast, even as Claire ripped her throat to shreds screaming for Shen Mei and her family. His grip had been bruising. He hadn’t responded to her at all. He’d covered her as much as he could with his own body when the tremors took their legs out from under them. She thinks perhaps she remembers the feeling of weightlessness that comes with being carried in someone’s arms.

“Where’s Leon?”

“Gone,” Shen Mei tells her, grim. “We have to act quickly; he’s got the chip. He’ll bring it to Jason and set the world on fire if we don’t stop them.”

Every cell in Claire’s body screams at the wrongness of her statement; she wants to spit and rage and cry that Leon wouldn’t do this, that he’d never hurt people just to expose bioweapons, that he wouldn’t do this to her--but she just woke up alone after her world caved in. Leon left her here.

Leon left. If Claire wants answers from him, she’s going to have to follow after him--it’s almost just like old times.

T-Minus 5 Minutes

“The control room,” Shen Mei shouts as they run. Jason stands on one of the catwalks, Wilson struggling fruitlessly in his hold. A dark corner of Claire thinks about waiting until he’s dead before stopping Jason.

“I’m on it!” She answers instead, hopping one of the railings and hauling ass to the small booth Shen Mei had pointed out.

But when she bursts through the doors, Claire realizes she’s too late. Leon stands in front of the control panel, his back to her; Claire knows his eyes are on the dying man above him, on the bioweapon threatening to end the lives of innocent people for the sake of the greater good just like in Raccoon City. In his left hand, there’s a glint of light as the chip catches on the low fluorescents in the room. He flips the chip almost carelessly between his fingers.

“Leon.”

“Claire.”

Even now, with her heart in her mouth, Claire can’t stand to believe it. She moves forward, until she’s standing across from him, so close she can smell the dust and smoke on his jacket. He smells like the rubble of Shen Mei’s home.

“Listen, I don’t know what your game plan is, but we don’t have much time.” She says quickly, trying to outrun the alarm bells ringing in her ears. “I couldn’t tell Shen Mei what you were doing because you didn’t tell me, but she’ll understand once we stop Jason together. We can talk to her and she’ll forgive you--”

“I don’t want to be forgiven,” Leon says, calm as the moment before the storm hits, “and I don’t want to stop Jason.”

He turns then, and the gun’s metal is warm now when it presses into her skin. “And you won’t either,” Leon finishes. His eyes are still too wide, the white showing all around the iris and his pupils tight and small. He looks like a cornered animal, like a dog about to snap its jaws at her. Claire forgets how to breathe.

“What are you doing?”

“We have to finish this, Claire. We have to put a stop to it all.”

“By killing innocent people?” She spots it the moment he balks; it’s so small no one else would see it. A tremble in his fingers, a stiffening of his mouth where it settles in his face. Claire’s world is spinning, the fundamentals are changing, the foundations are rending, but some things stay the same. Even as Leon rips apart all she knew of him, he’s still the same. “Leon, this isn’t you. I don’t know what happened, but I know you wouldn’t want to hurt people even if it meant stopping bioweapon productions for good. We fought for more than this.”

“When will it end?" He snaps. Claire tries not to flinch. He’s never been sharper with her, never been so manic and wild. “When do we stop fighting, Claire?”

“When we finish it,” She answers. Behind him, acid begins to flood the production floor. How long do they have until it reaches the level she can see Shen Mei scaling up? How long until Wilson’s skull gives under the pressure? How long until Jason grows tired of toying with them?

Leon shakes his head and the barrel of his gun shakes with him. He wavers, and Claire's confidence in Leon wavers with him. “Don’t you see? This will finish it.”

“If you think that, you really have gone insane.” Claire shakes her head, and, slow as she can, reaches up, a mirror of just yesterday. This time, she cups his hand in hers, fingers overlapping on the butt of the pistol. “Leon, if you let Jason do this, it will only be the beginning.”

“Everyone will know, just like you wanted.”

“Everyone will be dead,” Claire replies, letting her tone get as harsh and abrasive as it wants to be. “God, Leon, what the fuck happened to you? This isn't the person I know. This isn’t my friend.”

His lip curls and the barrel grows steady again. Claire doesn’t recognize the man threatening her anymore. “Maybe this is who I’ve always been and you’ve just been too blind to see it.”

“If that’s the case, you might as well shoot me now,” Claire argues, feeling her own lips pull back from her teeth. “Because I’d rather be dead than know I love someone who could do this.”

The world stops spinning on its axis. Claire fights the urge to run, to hide, to bite her lip and drop Leon’s gaze because she hadn’t exactly known what would come out of her mouth when she opened it. Too late now, though. Go big or go home, that’s what Chris always told her.

Leon moves before she can register it.

T-Minus 30 Seconds

The gun clatters against the metal as it lands on the floor, bouncing once, twice, three times. It slides away from their feet and rests by the door, harmless.

Kissing Leon is not at all like Claire would have imagined it. She’d learned to shut that idea out of her mind quickly; she’s not blind and she’s not stupid and she has better things to do than pine after a man who will never give her the time of day. Still, in the glimpses of fantasy she’d allowed herself, she’d seen candlelight and romantic music. She’d seen herself brushing his hair out of his eyes and him smiling that goofy, wide grin of his. She’d seen softness.

Kissing Leon is like pressing on a bruise to test its tenderness. It makes something sweet and painful twist in her chest when he presses close as he can. Her hand does slide into his hair but she twits it into knots around her fingers instead of smoothing it out like she wants to. His hand does dip into the small of her back like they’re about to dance together, but he’s balled it into a fist in the leather of her jacket. His mouth is hot and devouring, but he takes and takes and takes and gives nothing in return, leaving Claire gasping for air and feeling something closer to despair than she’d like.

His breath is warm and wet when he pants against her mouth. “Everyone could know without you releasing the chip,” Leon says, quiet in the middle of destroying her world. She’s in the eye of the storm and it is so very lonely. “You’d be safe.”

“I don’t want to be safe,” Claire tells him, achingly slow, feeling as if her heart is being ripped out of her piece by piece.

He doesn't fight when she laces their fingers together, just pulls her closer. His heart beats a tattoo against her ribs. “I can’t protect you if you’re the one who breaks the story.” Leon's voice strains, cracks, breaks. Perhaps she’s not the only one feeling desperate.

Claire shakes her head. “I only ever wanted to help. If you won’t let me, then I’ll do it myself.” Slipping from his grasp, she palms the chip she took from the nerveless fingers of his left hand. With her other hand, she brings Shen Mei’s gun up and clocks Leon across the jaw as hard as she can with the butt of it. Surprised, he stumbles, slumping across the control panel. She hurries to shove him away and, praying her glances at the platform names over Leon’s shoulder during their conversation were enough, begins pressing buttons rapidly.

Shen Mei screams as the platform under her feet falls away. Jason’s center of gravity is lower than hers, and he’s heavier; even his claws and strength and agility and determination cannot save him. As Claire swings another platform around to catch Shen Mei, a faint groan rips through the air behind her.

It’s time to go. (If she stays for when he wakes, Claire isn’t sure she’ll survive. Her heart’s too weak for that.)

Shen Mei slumps on the platform Claire slid under her to stop her fall. She has to collect the agent and flee before anyone finds them down here. Claire hits one last sequence which will give her a path to Shen Mei and the exit, holsters her gun, and doesn't look down as she steps over Leon.

“Claire…”

It feels like her bones are all broken, or have been replaced with shards of glass. It feels like her muscles are being rent from her flesh one at a time. It feels like she’s being dragged beneath the waves of the ocean and the light of her only salvation is retreating, retreating, retreating, so far away. Claire turns her head, just enough to catch the glint of his eye in the corner of hers. She can’t look at him, not now. She might stay if she does.

“When you’re ready to make it right,” Claire says, ignoring how her voice quivers and her mouth twists. “Then we’ll talk.”

After Launch

Leon brings one last drink to his lips. He ignores the looming and the badgering. He ignores the yelling and insults. He ignores the way his companion slams his fists into the wooden tabletop and rattles the bottles in front of him. Instead, he thinks about the pounding of Claire’s heart against his own. He thinks about pointing a gun at her. He thinks about her sharp eyes and the way her mouth had twisted in disgust. He thinks about how there wasn’t fear in her face but anger, hot and terrible and poisonous. He drinks until the drink is gone.

“Are you ready to make it right?” Chris demands.

Leon thinks of Claire--of the way she turned from him there at the very end of it all. At the end of the world she left. But that isn't fair: he’d left her first. Leon stands.

“Let’s get started.”

33 notes · View notes

eleanorfenyxwrites · 3 years

Text

Where We've Been (Ao3)

My friend @megachewbecca requested something set post-canon between Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng in which they talk about "why they have decided to channel all their disappointments with themselves into each other". I don't think it came out exactly like that but they do still have a conversation about Stuff!

[Masterpost]

“Oh great,” Jiang Cheng snaps with as much venom as he can muster - the type that typically sends his intended target scrambling for cover, and/or has his disciples watching on in undisguised glee for whatever verbal flaying is about to begin.

However, said venom is only occasionally directed at his current target (though it’s happening increasingly often simply through an increase in exposure to each other due to certain Wei Wuxian-shaped influences). In all the times that it has been, however, he’s only ever received the same style of response.

“.....Mn.”

Jiang Cheng’s eye twitches and he refuses to acknowledge the headache already starting in his left temple.

“Don’t fucking start with that. I know you talk.”

Of all the people to be magically trapped in a cave with, Lan Wangji is absolutely without a doubt at the very bottom of his list. Below a fierce corpse, even, because then at least he’d have something to take his frustration out on. But no, he’s stuck with Lan fucking Wangji, because the universe is cruel like that. And this mere days after he had promised Wei Wuxian he would do his best to be more civil to Lan Wangji even though it was the so-great, so-wonderful, so-righteous Hanguang-jun who had a problem with him.

At the risk of sounding childish - he started it!

He walks a quick perimeter around the cave, trailing his hand along the wall to feel for any openings he could possibly miss in the uncertain light of the fire talisman in Lan Wangji’s hand. He’s nearly back to where he began when he feels a breath of moving air and he quickly moves towards it only for his entire arm to sink into what looks like solid rock. He yelps and jerks his arm back from whatever emptiness is on the other side of the illusion and then starts again when Lan Wangji is suddenly at his side between one breath and the next, utterly silent.

Jiang Cheng shifts away from both him and the wall as Lan Wangji steps closer to raise his free hand, pressing it forward until his hand sinks into the ‘rock’ just as Jiang Cheng’s had. He glances at Lan Wangji only to find his expression as impassive as ever from what he can tell, and he’s just opening his mouth to ask what he’s thinking when he suddenly just. Steps forward. Straight into the wall.

“Hey!”

Before he can think better of it, Jiang Cheng stumbles after him, disoriented in the sudden dark and then again by the sensation of pressure and cold closing in on him on all sides. The claustrophobia hits hard and fast as he takes another stumbling step forward - to be caught by a shockingly sturdy grip at his elbow.

“Careful,” Lan Wangji intones, holding the talisman a little higher as he looks around and Jiang Cheng shoves his hand away to straighten himself out, cheeks burning.

“Is it really such a good idea to go wandering around strange magic caves?” he grouses to the unmoving pillar of Lan Wangji’s back. His stupidly tall guan is poking up above his head and Jiang Cheng is seized suddenly with the childish urge to throw something at it - nothing big, just a pebble or something. Just to see if he can hit the point of it from behind. Just to see if he can make the perfect Lan Wangji do something besides walk around looking all...stately.

He absolutely refuses to acknowledge that it was similar desires that had motivated Wei Wuxian to tease and taunt his future husband in their teenage years - this is extremely different.

“We have wandered dangerous places before,” Lan Wangji replies smoothly and the full sentence is genuinely shocking. Jiang Cheng tries to remember the last time Lan Wangji had said a full sentence to him and he comes up blank. For years it’s been nothing but monosyllabic words, one of his plethora of hums, or one of his little duckling-esque juniors covering his ass and talking for him (as if Jiang Cheng can’t understand when he’s being snubbed with or without their ‘translating’).

In the surprise of being spoken to at all, it takes Jiang Cheng an extra beat or two to realize what he’d actually said, and when he does it brings him up short. He knows precisely what he’s referring to, of course, but his mouth quicker than his brain and all he can manage to do is croak a hoarse,

“What?”

Lan Wangji turns back to look at him, face inscrutable in the flicker of the fire talisman, though his eyes are, as always, sharp and keen.

“It was once our common goal to find Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji replies smoothly. “We faced dangers during our search, including Wei Ying himself when we found him.”

“He wasn’t -”

“Dangerous? Hm.” Jiang Cheng can’t help but scowl at the obvious skepticism in that fucking hum. He’ll never understand how Wei Wuxian finds Lan Wangji’s hums endearing (which he has said on far too many occasions) rather than absolutely infuriating.

“He wouldn’t have hurt us!”

“Debatable. He was barely himself, and he did not know we were present at first. It was possible we would be harmed.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t have a good reply to that so he doesn’t bother trying to find one, he simply starts walking and tries not to hate that Lan Wangji doesn’t even miss a beat as he falls into step beside him, still obnoxiously perfect.

“Alright fine,” he says when the silence becomes unbearable, roughly ten steps later. “So we worked together for a little while two decades ago. So what?”

“Your skills were admirable then, I know they have only improved over the years. I doubt we are in much danger in a cave in a well-populated region. It will not hurt to learn what is here.”

Fuck Lan Wangji, Jiang Cheng thinks with as much vitriol as possible. He can’t say why it irritates him down to his core to be complimented by him, even obliquely, but honestly he’s pretty sure he’d prefer the stony, angry silences he’s been subjected to for so many years instead.

They walk in silence for a little while then, both on alert for something out of the ordinary. It’s Jiang Cheng who feels it first again and he stops in his tracks, holding one hand out and following a thready, barely-there stream of cooler air to a wall, utterly indistinguishable from the rest of the space around them.

“We should mark where we’ve been, just in case,” he says as his hand sinks into the rock like it’s made of pudding. The mental image adds an odd layer of unpleasantness to the cool pressure of it, the idea of it...congealing around his hand making him wrinkle his nose a bit in distaste.

“Mn.”

Jiang Cheng loses the battle against rolling his eyes but he says nothing only because Lan Wangji follows it up with a gesture that leaves a signature on the solid part of the wall next to the illusion, the characters glowing a gentle blue.

“Any way you could do one of those back at the beginning in case someone needs to come hunting for our bodies?” he asks as dryly as he can manage to try to get a rise out of his companion, but all it earns him is a flat look that Lan Wangji doesn’t break as he repeats the gesture only to send the talisman darting back up the path the way they had come.

He’s pretty sure it would be physically impossible for him to scowl any deeper than he does when Lan Wangji waves him ahead towards the false wall, the silent ‘after you’ somehow full of so much sarcasm it’s very much toeing the line of insulting, at least in Jiang Cheng’s book.

This time he’s prepared for the discomfort of the illusion and he walks smoothly through it. He turns to watch Lan Wangji join him and he’s startled to realize he doesn’t even seem to walk through the wall. One moment Jiang Cheng is alone on the path in the pitch black and the next Lan Wangji is beside him looking as unruffled as ever, fire talisman still glowing between his extended fingers held at shoulder-height.

“Do you have more of those?” Jiang Cheng asks begrudgingly with a nod at the light. He knows it’s Wei Wuxian’s invention, and that he of all people has no business asking to use it when he’s spent so long hunting down any trace of his brother’s work to destroy it utterly. He also knows that Lan Wangji is equally aware of this, and yet he simply reaches into the front of his robes to withdraw another talisman between his fingertips and hold it out for him to take. He studies it for a long few moments once it’s in his hands, but he can find nothing suspicious in it at all. It should be a good thing. It is. But it also only serves to make him feel foolish, as he has many times since Wei Wuxian’s return.

“It will not harm you,” Lan Wangji just has to break his silence to supply, because of course he fucking does, the asshole.

“I know that!” Jiang Cheng snaps. He leaves off investigating the talisman any further to stuff it in the front of his own robes, just in case they should get separated. “You think I don’t understand Wei Wuxian’s inventions? I know them better than anyone.”

“Debatable.”

“Fucking debate it then!” he challenges as he storms off, Lan Wangji somehow seeming to walk sedately even as he keeps pace with him.

“Wei Ying is a prolific inventor. He uses our home as a workspace. He describes each of his new inventions to me in detail, and I offer assistance when necessary to refine his processes.”

“Fine, you know his inventions better now, but I’m the one who spent 13 years chasing down all his notes and the morons trying to use them for themselves!”

“Recognition of the work for the purpose of destruction does not in itself lead to understanding that which you are destroying.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“I assist him with all of his techniques, old and new, demonic and orthodox. I do not, nor have I ever, attempted to ruin his work - unlike you.”

Jiang Cheng stops in his tracks and whirls around to face Lan Wangji who finally has a different expression on his face, though how he managed to make himself look even colder than before Jiang Cheng has no idea.

“ ‘Unlike me’,” he repeats, his voice utterly flat in another way that usually has people scrambling for cover, though of course Lan Wangji seems completely unmoved.

“We are fundamentally different, Jiang Wanyin.”

“Yeah no shit,” he mutters as he turns around again to continue forward at an angry, too-quick clip that Lan Wangji effortlessly keeps stride with, the fucker. “Those people who tried to follow in his footsteps were murderers.”

“Mn. They were irresponsible. Wei Ying has expressed regrets that his notes found unworthy hands to wield them.”

“And yet not one other person ever tried to stop them! It was just me this whole fucking time! What else was I supposed to do, just let them run rampant?!”

“No.”

Jiang Cheng grinds his teeth and tightens his grip on Sandu as he’s forced to acknowledge that he understands what Lan Wangji was really conveying even through a single syllable - that he recognizes that he had done what he felt he had needed to do to protect the innocents that were his responsibility, and yet there’s still a note of judgement in his voice that puts Jiang Cheng’s hackles up.

“But?” he prompts through his teeth.

“Disposing of Wei Ying’s notes out of anger that they were being misused by others was unnecessary and self-serving.”

“Well they’re gone anyway and all your disapproval of my methods isn’t going to bring them back.”

Lan Wangji stops all at once and Jiang Cheng walks on a few steps ahead before he realizes and stops as well, turning back to face him with a scowl.

“What?”

“Illusion.” Lan Wangji turns to run his fingertips along the wall to his left, moving slowly until the wall swallows them up. He withdraws to sketch another marking talisman and leaves it on the wall before stepping forward into the illusion, leaving Jiang Cheng to scramble after him in the dark, guided only by the blue talisman.

“Stop doing that!” he blusters as soon as he gets through. “It’s fucking dark in here and you have the light!”

“Mn.”

“And stop doing that!!” he outright shouts at Lan Wangji and his stupid fucking nothingness. He’s as blank and icy as ever and Jiang Cheng suddenly realizes that he has officially had it. “What is your fucking problem?! You said it yourself that we’ve worked together before, we fought together during the Sunshot Campaign, what’s so different now?!”

Jiang Cheng finally goes quiet as Lan Wangji’s expression..shifts. Outwardly, he doesn’t really seem to change that much, especially not in the uncertain light of the talisman. But there’s something about his bearing, his presence that changes and it’s only then that Jiang Cheng realizes that what he’s been faced with so far is Lan Wangji’s distant disapproval. What he’s looking at now is..anger. The sort of anger that has given Lan Wangji as fearsome of a reputation in some circles as Jiang Cheng has earned for himself.

He refuses to back down as Lan Wangji practically stalks closer, each step precise and deliberate until he’s right in front of him, glaring from under furrowed brows and looking down his nose at him in a way Jiang Cheng viscerally hates.

“You killed Wei Ying.”

It’s delivered utterly flat, cutting and sharp at the edges. Through his teeth, through the proper Lan version of a snarl. It leaves Jiang Cheng speechless, floundering for a moment through the slice of it in his heart. It hurts as much as it has any time someone has dared to point it out to him - he thinks back to that day of Wei Wuxian’s reappearance in the mountains and the Lan kid who had reminded him he’d killed Wei Wuxian himself and he wonders suddenly just who it was who had taught the Lan juniors that part of the story. It had been common knowledge in the aftermath of the battle, but he realizes now that Lan Wangji, extremely influential and vital to the education of the next generation, has been holding that grudge close to his heart for twenty years. Who knows what else he’s taught them about that awful day.

“What?”

Now Lan Wangji really does snarl, lips pulled back over his teeth and nose wrinkled in disgust as he steps forward and Jiang Cheng takes an automatic step back only to be crowded back against the wall.

Lan Wangji was right - they’re more dangerous than anything in this cave could be, and Jiang Cheng very much doesn’t like getting that reminder when he’s apparently the prey.

“You killed my Wei Ying. You failed him.”

“ ‘Your Wei Ying’?!” he retorts as he finds his metaphorical footing again. “That was news to me when he suddenly popped back up, you know! You sure as fuck didn’t bother making that clear back when it could have helped him.”

It’s instantly clear that he struck a nerve and he presses the advantage as something shutters in Lan Wangji’s furious glare.

“You want to talk about who failed him? You didn’t manage to protect him either! You hid in your mountain and you Lan thought you were above the whole world, and by the time you realized what was happening it was too late to protect him!”

“I know.”

The admission draws Jiang Cheng up short and at least some of his anger bleeds out of him as Lan Wangji’s glare fades a little further and he drops his eyes down somewhere around his shoulder, though he’s still got him crowded up against the wall and a glance down shows that Bichen is half out of her sheath.

“You know?”

“I have discussed it with Wei Ying in detail. He has forgiven me.”

“He’s forgiven me too!”

Lan Wangji’s gaze darts up to meet his again, ice cold but no longer distant - this cold judgement is now very personal. Jiang Cheng is chagrined to realize he already misses the detached, uncaring attitude of mere minutes ago.

“He has forgiven you. I will never.”

Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath in when Lan Wangji steps back to give him his space again, and if it shakes a little then that’s his business alone.

He heard the rumors back then. That Lan Wangji had killed to protect the Burial Mounds. Their paths had crossed many times over the years in their dual pursuit of hints and rumors of demonic cultivation, of whispers of the Yiling Laozu returned as a vengeful spirit, or reincarnated, or miraculously alive and gathering disciples. He had assumed then that their goal had been the same, but now he wonders if when he had been seeking to squash any evidence of his brother’s work, Lan Wangji had been chasing it in the hopes of finding more. Finding truth in the rumors. Finding Wei Wuxian.

He can admit to himself, deep down in the private spaces left inside of him that no one is allowed to see, that he had been disappointed each time the rumors had proven to be fake, or each time a new demonic cultivator was nothing but a cheap knockoff of Wei Wuxian using scraps of his notes to try to chase the full scope of the power he had developed. He had been angry with himself - furious, even - for that disappointment, but that didn’t make it any less real. All those years of searching, hunting, and in the end it had gotten him..nothing.

It was Lan Wangji who had won in the end. Wei Wuxian lives with him in Cloud Recesses. He visits Lotus Pier now that they’ve repaired at least the bulk of the damage to their relationship over the years since Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s wedding following the revelation of Jin Guangyao’s plotting. Sometimes he stays for months on end, treating Lotus Pier as his home and returning to Cloud Recesses for short visits. But in the end he always returns to Gusu. To his husband.

He always leaves Lotus Pier - and her master - behind.

“Well, you won in the end anyway,” he says now into the loaded silence around them. He refuses to look at Lan Wangji as he steps away from the wall and continues along the path, lost in thought. “He chose you and Cloud Recesses over coming home when everything was over. Congratulations.”

Lan Wangji is silent at his side for quite some time as they walk, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t bother trying to break the quiet this time. They continue this way for a while, communicating with gestures when they find another illusion, and then yet another. It’s as they’re walking through the tunnel behind this fifth false wall of the night that Lan Wangji finally speaks.

“He longs for Lotus Pier.”

Jiang Cheng scoffs and tightens his grip around Sandu. “Well no one’s stopping him from coming home.”

“You misunderstand.”

“Speak plainly then, who can know what you mean when you hardly say anything?”

The judgemental silence that follows makes him grind his teeth even though he doesn’t know quite what he’s being judged for.

“He longs for the Lotus Pier that no longer exists but for in his heart and his memory.”

Jiang Cheng has to stop in his tracks at that and take a deep breath in, hold it, let it out slowly. His grip on Sandu doesn’t loosen, but some of the tension in his shoulders does as they slump ever so slightly under the weight of his heavy silk robes - robes befitting his status. He hardly notices that weight anymore, he’s had far too many years of carrying it, but sometimes it feels like he’ll be crushed under the burden of them.

“We rebuilt it using the old builders’ plans. It’s nearly identical to what it was before.”

“You are aware that is not the point.”

“Enlighten me then, oh great Hanguang-jun.”

The next silence feels..considering, and Jiang Cheng spares a thought to be dismayed that he’s learning how to read Lan Wangji’s many silences, whether he wants to or not (he doesn’t). He hates it when Wei Wuxian is right, and in this moment he’s forcefully reminded of how many times his brother has asserted that it’s possible to read Lan Wangji as easily as anyone else if one only knows what to look for. Jiang Cheng has never been interested in learning what to look for himself, but it seems he’s going to anyway.

“Wei Ying lives life in each moment. It is unusual for him to dwell in the past unless forced to. He is my opposite. I understand well the pain in his eyes when he returns from Lotus Pier. He is unsettled by the lack of familiar faces, the easy happiness of the past, and by the reminders that time has been cruel in its passing.”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth drops open but he hastily shuts it again when Lan Wangji looks at him, eyes once again unreadable.

“I believe if he could somehow find a way to travel through time and return to when the Lotus Pier of your childhood was the only home he knew, he would. If he could return to when you and Jiang Yanli were his world, he would. The knowledge that this version of Lotus Pier is lost to him for good is not an easy burden to bear, and each visit is a reminder of his aches.”

“Stop.” Jiang Cheng turns his head in an attempt to hide that his eyes are suddenly stinging and his throat tight. It’s useless to hide, he knows, but his pride won’t allow him to cry in front of Lan Wangji, not like this. “You think he’s the only one who feels that way? I live there. I live it every single fucking day.”

“Then you understand.” Jiang Cheng says nothing in reply. It’s not really a question - they both know that he does. He wouldn’t have been so determined to remake Lotus Pier so exactly if he didn’t. “Do you begrudge him his attempt to live without this pain?”

“Yes!”

“Then you are hurting him further.”

Jiang Cheng musters up a glare through the sting of his sorrow, but he’s not sure how effective it is considering his eyes are still fighting desperately to shed their tears. Either way, Lan Wangji meets his glare with something that looks frustratingly like understanding. He doesn’t want Lan Wangji to understand him. He wants to argue with him, fight with him, force him to admit that for all their opposites they’re also fundamentally similar in one way that matters more than anything else -

They love Wei Wuxian.

It takes on different flavors, different appearances, but the fact remains that they love him down to their bones.

“Do you know why Wen Zhuliu was able to destroy my core?” he suddenly asks. If Lan Wangji is surprised by the change in subject he doesn’t show it. He simply shakes his head after a moment of consideration. “We were running, we were hiding, but Wei Wuxian left to get medicine for jie, she had gotten a fever after our parents...after everything. He told me to stay put in our room at the inn, but I didn’t. I saw Wen soldiers out in the street, they were looking for us and they spotted him, they were going to drag him away as soon as they realized who he was. I couldn’t...I let them catch me instead. They took me instead.”

His deepest secret. Something he hasn’t even told Wei Wuxian in all their talks over the last few years, and he, for some reason, has decided to tell fucking Lan Wangji, of all people. It is, he supposes, the last defense he feels he has. He loves his brother. He sacrificed his life for him. It’s not his fault that it didn’t stick, that Wei Wuxian would rip his very soul apart with his own two hands if he thought it would protect the people he cares about.

“He was never supposed to lose his. None of this was ever supposed to happen,” he finishes, unable to raise his voice above a crackling whisper. “I never meant to hurt him.”

Silence falls again, but for the first time tonight it feels...almost comfortable. Not quite companionable, but it’s not anything else really either. It simply is, the weight of the moment and his admission too heavy to cheapen with words.

He starts walking again when he feels capable of putting one foot in front of the other and Lan Wangji walks beside him. They go on through another tunnel of the cave that looks much the same as the others, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t even care if they’re lost, if they’re going in circles, if they’re not doing much of anything at all. It’s nice to just walk, to move, to not be alone with his thoughts in the dark as he has been far too many times over the years.

“You know Sizhui,” Lan Wangji says after a while of this, and Jiang Cheng snorts without much amusement.

“The polite kid who always talks for you like I don’t know you well enough to know you’re telling me to go fuck myself in your head? Yeah.”

“Mn. He is my son.”

That brings Jiang Cheng up short again and though he doesn’t stop walking he does stumble a bit and turn a shocked glare on Lan Wangji, still walking blithely along.

“Your son?!”

“Mn. His existence was kept quiet outside of Cloud Recesses. It is my understanding that outside of the Sect he is now known as an inner family disciple, but it is suspected he is a cousin.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“That is intentional, for his safety.”

“Why for his safety? Is being your kid that dangerous? When did you even...have a kid? With who?”

The glare Lan Wangji gives him out of the corner of his eye can only be described as ‘scathing’ and Jiang Cheng will admit that he kind of admires it. Envies it, really. It’s a pretty good glare.

“I adopted him. He was Wei Ying’s before he was mine.”

Jiang Cheng stares blankly ahead again as he tries to reconcile that, come to terms with it. All at once, he thinks back to the single time he had been to the Burial Mounds when it had still been a safe haven for the Wens. When a bright-eyed child had clung to his leg, and Wei Wuxian had swooped in to pick him up, to hold him and talk to him like a parent, to scold him with a smile on his lips and offer him gentle affection before sending him on his way.

He thinks about Lan Wangji defending the Burial Mounds from the cultivators who had wanted to sack the place after Wei Wuxian’s death, and he thinks about the Wens who had sacrificed themselves at Jinlintai.

He thinks about Jin Guangshan bragging about wiping out the remaining Wens in one fell swoop, and how if he was drunk enough, if the right person asked him to tell the story, he would boast that he had made sure that every last person had accounted for the crimes of their family. In his accounts, though, there had never been mention of a child - and his retellings had been painfully detailed.

“He’s that kid from the Burial Mounds. A-Yuan,” he whispers with dawning horror. “He’s Wen Yuan?!”

“Mn. Should you reveal his identity, no one will find your body to put it to rest.”

That makes Jiang Cheng snort again and this time he actually is a little amused. “Threats, Hanguang-jun? Not terribly righteous of you.”

“Without Wei Ying, A-Yuan was the only reason I could find to continue living. I would kill without hesitation for him, for Wei Ying.”

“You already have,” Jiang Cheng points out - everyone knows what had happened when Lan Wangji had defended the Burial Mounds, and Jiang Cheng at least is aware that Lan Wangji had also killed at Nightless City. He had seen him protecting Wei Wuxian, killing any cultivators who tried to get near enough to stop Wei Wuxian from playing that damned flute of his, to stop him from killing more and more of their own. He wonders how many people now, if any, know that some of the deaths from that night that have been laid at Wei Wuxian’s feet rightfully belong at Lan Wangji’s.

“Mn. I have.”

“And you know if Wei Wuxian could hear us talking about...all of this, he’d tell us both that he didn’t ask us to, that he doesn’t deserve all of this.”

“Yes.”

Jiang Cheng sighs and shakes his head, irritated with his brother and his self-sacrificing tendencies even now, all these years later because he just never fucking learns.

“Does it really hurt him to come to Lotus Pier?”

“It saddens him, but there is happiness as well. He was afraid of losing you as well even though you both live. He is relieved he has not. It is..complicated.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jiang Cheng mutters under his breath, but he knows Lan Wangji hears him anyway. They continue in another silence, and a few minutes later Jiang Cheng finds another illusion. “What the hell is going on in this cave?” he finally asks, exasperated once they’re on the other side of it in yet another identical tunnel.

Lan Wangji doesn’t answer, he merely keeps walking forward and Jiang Cheng is forced to follow him with a scowl firmly fixed on his face.

“I will never forgive you for killing Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says into the quiet. “However, it saddens him to feel that he must consistently choose between us. I will not make him choose any longer.”

“You were complicit in it too, you can’t keep pinning this just on me you know!”

“I will do what I will. However, you are my brother-in-law, and you have given Wei Ying happiness in this life.”

“Yeah well I hate you too, but I guess there’s not much I can do about it either since the idiot married you.”

“Indeed. A truce, then.”

“Fine. Truce.”

Jiang Cheng glances sideways at Lan Wangji to find him looking at him similarly out of the corner of his eye, and after a moment the corner of his mouth twitches into the barest hint of a smirk.

“What?”

“You should hunt with Wei Ying more often,” he replies and before Jiang Cheng asks him what he means, he stops to sketch another talisman in the air, this one a bright blood-red, and when he releases it there’s the sensation of a pressure he hadn’t even noticed in the air releasing and he works his jaw to pop his ears as he looks around only to realize that they’re back in the room they had started in. And on the wall where he had spotted the first illusion there are a series of marks glowing blue, all in a line one right after the other - the markers for each false wall they had passed through.

“What the fuck?”

“Awwww Lan Zhan! No fun, he would’ve kept going for hours,” Wei Wuxian suddenly pouts and Jiang Cheng whirls around to find his brother leaning insolently against the wall where the entrance to the cave had been sealed - and is sealed no longer. He looks past his brother’s shoulder to find that the entrance is once again open to the air beyond it, the smell of their campfire at the entrance filtering into the space along with the sound of the juniors from their sects laughing and chatting, relaxing after their hunt earlier in the evening.

“Mn.”

“Wei Wuxian!”

The man in question dances away from his lunge with a laugh that rings off the stone around them.

“A-Cheng!!!” he sing-songs, drawing the sound out as he darts over to hide behind his husband standing still in the center of the room. “Did you like my illusion? I’ve been practicing. Lan Zhan didn’t you tell him it was an experiment?”

“He did not ask.”

“Yes I fucking did!!!” Jiang Cheng shouts and he makes another grab for Wei Wuxian, fully intending to yank him into a headlock at least, but he’s stopped by Bichen held across his path and Lan Wangji raising an admonishing eyebrow at him.

“You asked what was happening. The answer was ‘illusions’, too obvious to bother with. You did not ask whose, or for what purpose.”

“I hate you both,” Jiang Cheng snaps because that’s a Wei Wuxian-style answer if he’s ever heard one, just..Lan-ified. He refuses to think about the possibility that those two are more suited to each other than anyone might suspect and instead he turns to stomp over to the entrance with the intention to go pilfer alcohol from Wei Wuxian’s stash. He deserves it after being forced to have an emotional conversation with Lan Wangji, of all people.

The acoustics of the cave mean that the voices behind him reach his ears even as he walks up the tunnel that leads to the forest outside.

“Did you have a good talk with him, Lan Zhan?”

“Mn.”

“Thank you.”

“No need.”

“Aiyah I know, but thank you anyway. The two people I love most in the world should get along.”

“A-Yuan and I get along very well.”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian laughs and thankfully Jiang Cheng steps free of the tunnel into the clearing just beyond it before he has to hear any more, his ears and heart burning with the knowledge that Wei Wuxian loves him. That he finally has his brother back, even if it’s in a way he would have never chosen for them.

“Jiang-zhongzhu?” a mild voice asks, too gentle to startle, and he turns his head to find Lan Sizhui waiting nearby, a nervous expression on his sweet features, still just a little round with boyhood though it will likely only be another year or two before he loses all trace of baby fat whatsoever and matures into the man he’s quickly becoming along with the rest of his generation.

He meets the boy’s wide, earnest eyes and finds his defenses crumbling as he sees in him the boy who had hugged his leg and looked up at him with a curious little smile right in the middle of the misery of the Burial Mounds. He sighs heavily and turns his whole body to face him properly, his hands on his hips as he stares him down. To his credit, Lan Sizhui doesn’t cower or fall back at all, he simply waits patiently for Jiang Cheng to speak his mind.

“You might as well call me Jiujiu,” he harrumphs and Lan Sizhui’s expression falls open in surprise (and seriously, this kid was raised by Lan Wangji? He doesn’t see it.) “What? My stupid brother is your diedie isn’t he? You don’t have to, but..You can. If you’d like to.”

“Alright. Jiujiu,” Lan Sizhui replies, smiling and clearly pleased. The quiet moment is broken almost immediately by - who else - Wei Wuxian.

“DIDI!!!” he shouts, startling a nearby flock of birds, and it’s all the warning he gets before Wei Wuxian practically throws himself at him to cling to his side. “I knew you cared! Now you have to buy him presents for all his important occasions and we’ll bring him to Lotus Pier for New Year’s and -”

“Get off me!” Jiang Cheng growls as he shoves at Wei Wuxian without much success.

In the midst of their tousle, neither of them notice Lan Wangji drifting to Lan Sizhui’s side to press a comforting hand to his shoulder and gently guide him back in the direction of the camp, a rare, pleased little smile on his lips.

#The untamed fanfic #Lan Wangji & Jiang Cheng #Wangxian #Lan Wangji #Jiang Cheng #Wei Wuxian #Lan Sizhui #<- very briefly #post-canon #reconciliation

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joyful-soul-collector · 3 years

Photo

❄️Week 1: December 9-15❄️

stars in the city ch. 10 by @parkrstark (Pt. 3 of constant as the stars above)

Summary: Peter and Steve are finally settling into their new life with Tony. Recovery isn't always a straight line, especially with a four-year-old, but they're trying their best. Their newfound fame has Steve juggling between his private life and the one plastered on the front page of every tabloid. He shouldn't have been surprised that the public didn't believe in his rags to riches love story. Tony usually makes it easier for him to handle it all. Until he starts to distance himself from Steve, as if now he's the one hiding something. And Steve is left wondering if he's about to lose Tony for good this time.

Relationships/Tropes: Stony, Irondad, Papa Steve, Homeless Peter Parker, Homeless Steve Rogers, No Powers AU, (Coffee Shop AU??? Sorta)

Review: This fic just always makes my heart ache in the best way. So much fluff, so much angst, it's a perfect balance that I'm just absolutely in love with!

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Devils Roll The Dice ch. 9 by @ephemeralstark

Summary: “I miss you Mr. Stark,” Peter admitted as he stared up through the leaves overhead at the stars that twinkled promisingly at him, “I wish you were back here. I would give anything to fix things, I would give anything for you to be alive today.” What Peter didn't know, as he made that wish and closed his eyes, letting the tears fall shamefully, was that the Universe was always listening, and it was dangerous to make a wish and offer up anything. - Tony Stark wakes up in his bed one morning, not realising that months have passed since his death - that's going to be awkward to explain to the world. Peter Parker has been living on the streets, trying to hide his identity as the entire world wants Spider-Man dead, and dealing with the trauma that Beck left him. To make things worse - it's now his fault that yet another bad guy thinks they're entitled to owning Earth.

Relationships/Tropes: Irondad, Spideychelle, Pepperony, Happy Hogan/May Parker, Homeless Peter Parker, Post-FFH, Post-Identity Reveal, Tony Stark Comes Back To Life

Review: Oh man this fic is so sad and so sweet, I love it so much! I love how it combines Peter's trauma after Mysterio with his reaction to finding out that Tony is alive again, it's just so creative!

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His Heart Bloomed Sunflowers (and he wore them on his skin) by @littlemissagrafina (Pt. 24 of Comfortember 2020)

Summary: Peter honestly didn't know how no one had discovered his tattoos yet. He wasn't broadcasting them but he wasn't exactly being the most subtle either. Although he was partly grateful for it since he was dreading what would happen when May on Tony saw them. But he was pleasantly surprised at the reactions that he got when he was found out. Peter had expected anger, disappointment, maybe annoyance at the very least. What he got was far from that. (A sequel to Comfortember Day 4. Anxiety) Comfortember Day 29. Make/Build/Create Something Beautiful

Relationships/Tropes: Minor Spideychelle, Tattoos, Comfortember

Review: I love this fic so much! I loved the description of how the flowers wilted when the ones he'd drawn had faded, and how the ones he got tattooed never wilted again :']

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I’ll drive all night (to keep them warm) by @littlemissagrafina (Pt. 23 of Comfortember 2020)

Summary: For the next hour they tried to calm Morgan again but, just like the rest of the day with Tony and Pepper, nothing was working. No teething rings, gel, nothing. The little girl was just well and truly grumpy, tired, and sore.

Suddenly an idea came to Peter and he turned to Tony and Pepper.

"Can I try something?"

They both nodded at him, prompting him to continue with his idea.

"Can I take her for a drive?" He asked. "I'm not sure if it'll work but Ben used to do it for me when I was younger and it always calmed me down."

Comfortember day 28. Car Ride

Relationships/Tropes: Irondad, Peter & Morgan, Pepperony, Baby Morgan, Car Rides, Comfortember

Review: This one was so cute! I love Peter being a good big brother to baby Morgan, and I relate to finding trips in the car relaxing and nice :D

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It’s What Brothers Do by @littlemissagrafina (Pt. 22 of Comfortember 2020)

Summary: Morgan was somehow full of even more energy than usual that day and wanted to see if she could do the monkey bars that were attached to the jungle gym herself. Before Peter could stop her, she had already grabbed hold of the first one and let herself swing towards the next one.

But the little girl had misjudged just how heavy swinging your own body weight was and almost immediately started falling. Peter shot forward from his place on the ground, jumping and diving, just managing to catch her before they both hit the grass of the park grounds. Comfortember Day 27. Park

Relationships/Tropes: Minor Pepperony, Peter & Morgan, Irondad, Peter Protects Morgan, Comfortember

Review: Another cute Big Brother Peter fic! I love that Peter was really protecting Morgan in this one, he loves her enough to put himself in harm's way to protect her

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The Burger Debate by @littlemissagrafina (Pt. 21 of Comfortember 2020)

Summary: Tony and Peter shared a lot of similarities, there was no doubt about it. A lot of their mannerisms were the same, personality quirks (especially in the lab), occasional recklessness, selfless hero personas, etc etc. However, one thing they didn't share was their taste in burgers. Whenever the topic came up there was a friendly, yet heated, 'disagreement' as Tony called it. No matter what anyone ever told him, Tony thought that a cheeseburger was the holy grail of burgers. And Peter, well… he happened to think the same only for chicken burgers.

Comfortember Day 26. Junk Food

Relationships/Tropes: Irondad, Peter & Morgan, Pepperony, Infinity War Compliant, Not Endgame Compliant

Review: This was so sweet and so sad, especially the part where Tony couldn't eat burgers while Peter was snapped because it hurt him too much. It showed his grief really well

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Career Day Drabble by @jen27ny

Summary: uncle happy and uncle rhodey come to peter’s career day

Relationships/Tropes: Happy & Peter, Rhodey & Peter, Happy & Rhodey, Minor Irondad, Career Day

Review: I loved this story so much! I really appreciate seeing some nice Uncle Rhodey and Uncle Happy content!!

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Gifts by @wayward-fairchild (Pt. 5 of Holiday Collection 2020)

Summary: Rhodey and Tony have been together to the point Rhodey sees the kids as his own. Maybe that is why the kids agree to help with Rhodey's biggest gift to Tony yet.

Relationships/Tropes: Rhodey & Tony, Irondad, Rhodey & Peter, Christmas, Kid Peter

Review: This was just absolutely adorable! I love some Irondads content and this was very sweet

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evermore by @lyssismagical

Summary: Just a Solid Vent Fic. I wanna do 30 days of Taylor Swift-inspired fics (folklore and evermore) lmao but idk yet we’ll see lemme know tho

Relationships/Tropes: Spideychelle, Irondad, Peter Overworks Himself

Review: I loved this one a lot! I definitely relate to Peter with tending to overwork myself during school and letting other things fall away, and then feeling quite exhausted after it's all over haha. I'm glad MJ and Tony were able to help him <3

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Two Hours Spent Cuddling by @skeeter-110 (Pt. 2 of Twelve Days of Christmas)

Summary: A giant snowstorm takes out the power in the tower. While waiting for the backup generator to come up, the Stark-Rhodes family finds a way to stay warm.

Relationships/Tropes: Ironhusbands, Irondad, Papa Rhodey, Kid Peter, Christmas

Review: I. Love this story. So much. I haven't seen very many stories that center around Rhodey being a father-figure to Peter, and this one definitely filled all my desires for such a story! It's so fluffy and sweet, and I loved every word :D

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Three Stark-Rhodes’ Decorating by @skeeter-110 (Pt. 3 of Twelve Days of Christmas)

Summary: Tony, Rhodey, and Peter Stark-Rhodes begin decorating for the holiday season.

Relationships/Tropes: Ironhusbands, Irondad, Papa Rhodey, Kid Peter, Christmas

Review: This story was absolutely adorable! It was another featuring Papa Rhodey and Dad Tony with Little Peter, and it was so well done! I love that Tony's robots and JARVIS each get a stocking hung over the fire too, and the way Peter pronounce ornaments as "orminents" was so cute!!!

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Four Poorly Wrapped Presents by @skeeter-110 (Pt. 3 of Twelve Days of Christmas)

Summary: Peter has two presents each for his Daddy and his Papa. The only problem was, he had no idea how to wrap them. He figures the Avengers could help.

Relationships/Tropes: Ironhusbands, Irondad, Papa Rhodey, Avengers Family, Kid Peter, Christmas

Review: This was so sweet! Clint, Nat, and Steve treat Peter with such sweetness, and it made my heart all fuzzy and warm <3

❄️

If you look at any these stories, be sure to show the author your appreciation with a comment/kudos/reblog where applicable!

Click here for more fanfic rec lists!

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demonprincezeldris · 2 years

Note

✨Angst~✨

They were too late.

The two of them skidded around the corner, having felt the terror and rage and distress from Arthur, getting to him as fast as they could. But It wasn't fast enough, as Excalibur itself was buried into his stomach. He stared down at where he was impaled, hands half raised and shaking. And as they called out his name, looked up at them, looked terrified.

Cusack stood there, face stony as the young king collapsed.

"Arthur! Arthur, it's gonna be fine!" Gelda said, cupping his pale face as he gasped for breath. Zeldris was trying in vain to pulling Excalibur from his stomach, but it wasn't HIS sword, that was that damn blades enchantment, only ARTHUR could wield it.

"Sor...ry..." He ground out, lifting a shaking hand to his wife. Him and Gelda had gotten married shortly after the three had bonded, to appease the courts. She shook her head. "No apologies, not yet, my sunshine." He just smiled at her, ignoring his own tears as he wiped hers. "Zel..." Zeldris sobbed, having given up on removing the sword and trying to stanch the bleeding with his darkness. He wasn't good at this like his little brother, who'd spent DECADES honing the ability to share his regeneration. "Zel." He repeating, tugging on the braid he always wore. Zeldris finally looked at his face and recieved a week smile. "Love you." He whimpered. "I love you too, so that's why you've gotta stay alive, ok?"

"Sorry. Love you. Sorry." He was clasping both of their hands in his one, trying to comfort them best he could. He knew he wouldn't be making it out of this one. They cried, begging him to hold on, but then his eyes dulled, his breathes stopped, his frantically fluttering heart failed, and his hand went limp in theirs.

They wailed and screamed at him to wake back up, even as the bond went cold.

Zeldris finally, finally looked up at Cusack, the man he THOUGHT cared about him, had practically RAISED him.

"Why??" He demanded, his voice hoarse and enraged. "Why would you do this???"

"I'm sorry for the grief, Master Zeldris, but it is temporary. I allowed you to mate yourself with a vampire because even if it is beneath you, at least she's a denizen of the underworld, and at least you picked a royal one. But I'm afraid I could not overlook you mating yourself to a HUMAN. It was, frankly, disgusting, and far below your station. This was for your own good, I'm sure you'll see that in time and thank me for it eventually."

"Thank you??" He screeched. "You expect me to THANK YOU for KILLING my MATE???"

"Like I said, it's for your own good. Look, I let you keep the vampire and everything. Though, I'd far rather you took one of the Demon nobles I had arranged to be your suitors."

He screamed, lunging at his old tutor as darkness began to overtake him.

By the time Meliodas arrived with Merlin in tow, Zeldris has already ripped Cusack to shreds, blood sprayed around the room, splattered across him. Even the whites of his eyes were completely sealed by darkness, and his demon mark had shattered. Instead of the usual neat swirl that Arthur loved to trace his fingers across, jagged black lines, like running makeup after tears, streaked down his cheeks. His arms were completely concealed in massive claws of darkness, each nearly the size of him, and his clothes were tattered.

Gelda was apathetic, kneeled next to her husband's cooling body, staring in horror and yet unseeing, feeling as her mate went feral, but unable to do a thing. Merlin rushed over to try and help but there was nothing that could be done, the boy who'd basically been her son was DEAD, and even she couldn't interfere with life and death itself, only the gods could do that.

Zeldris snarled, not quite recognizing her, only seeing her as a potential threat to his remaining mate. He started to lunge for her, but Meliodas got in his his way. "Zel- Gah!!" He swatted the blonde to the side and that-

That's what started to break him out of it. As soon as he registered what he'd done, he froze, turning slowly to look at his brother. Meliodas was slumped against the wall, bleeding from where he'd hit his head against the stone, and he wasn't moving. He let out a low, mournful noise and stumbled over to him. Meliodas woke up by the time he got there, having only been knocked out for a moment, and when he saw giant claws reaching for him, the warped face of his brother, he let out a quiet whimper, eyes squeezing shut as he braced himself on instinct. He hadn't meant to, really! But it had just slipped out, and now Zeldris looked wounded as he backed up. Meliodas tried to reach after him, but he shook his head, the claws fading away and his eyes slowly turned back to normal. Well, activated magic normal. He put a hand over his mouth. "I-I didn't mean to, I- I'm so sorry!" Then he whirled around and ran back to his mates. He slid to his knees and carefully, very carefully, drew Gelda against his chest, as they both stated at Arthur's unmoving body. He was never still, Arthur was always moving, even when he slept, he'd twitch, or snuffle or burrow closer to them, no matter how pressed together they already were.

And now he didn't move at all.

A low keening filled the air, and it was coming from both of them, the sound echoing across the kingdom as they held his body, cradled him to try and give him some of their warmth but he just kept getting colder.

Oh noooo! 😭

Damn! You sure know how to write angst! This was so sad, and yet I loved it because you write so wonderfully.

#Zelthur #Zelthurda #angst #nnt #Big Bro Zel AU #ask box response

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blueroan-equestrian · 3 years

Text

Once upon an Arrangement

Smut.... way towards the end

Gaara x reader

part 2

Gaara Side

Gaara and his council haven’t been seeing eye to eye as they wanted him to marry a woman he never met from a new powerful country he never met. It wasn’t that he was waiting to find the love of his life or anything, he didn’t have time for a relationship and he doubted he’d marry on his own. But to marry someone... someone he never met.... felt wrong even for peace. Sure he had long given up on the idea of having someone to come home to but surely whoever they brought over, she must have dreamed to marry the one she loved not some random leader of some country she never heard of.

He sat in the meeting on whether or not he should consider a marriage to form an alliance with this country, and he had long tuned out the bickering of the old men who sat in front of him. It became clear that they expected him to marry to prevent a war and not look for any other way to settle this. This was the only way. Gaara knew he wasn’t going to have the time to learn the language so he assigned a few ninjas all female to learn the language so his new wife could speak in her native language and have some friends... or at least someone to communicate her needs to.

...

You’re POV

My country called upon me to marry some country leader I had never heard of to unite our countries. I was of course allowed to turn it down, but if my marrying someone, could save our country’s from going to war, it was my duty to go join our country’s together through marriage.

As we flew to a country I never heard of they put me in a large, flowing white gown and a long white veil over my head so I couldn’t see anything. Someone led me off the plane into a car where we drove for what felt like forever and when I got out we were greeted with voices in a language I didn’t understand. Many hands led me somewhere else with more voices that spoke in a language I didn’t understand as a pair of hands held mine. Then after some time my vail was lifted by the hands that had been holding mine, just enough for a pair of lips to come in and lay a soft kiss on my lips, and then laid the veil back down, took one of my hands in his and raised our hands up above our heads and was met with a loud roar and clapping. I then am led somewhere else where I finally have the veil taken off from over my face. I am in a large fancy bedroom with a blonde woman and a tall red headed man with the most beautiful sea foam eyes. He stood tall and with a stiff expression as he said something to me and then to the woman.

“Hello my name is Temari, and this is my little brother Gaara... and your husband. This will be your room. I and a few other woman have learned English for you. I will show you them later...” she paused for Gaara to say something to her. “Gaara is the Kazekage so he won’t be around much but he will provide for you just let me know or one of the staff that he has had prepared for you. Um ... You will meet them tomorrow. Good night.” The two then left me alone.

The room was spacious and and well furnished, and had a balcony with a view of the city that I would now call home. A place where I knew no one and no one loved me. I was alone and tears began to flow down my eyes. I was married to a man who never show me any more affection than the one time he did today, if you can count a small kiss. I was going to be trapped here to be alone utterly alone.

My crying must have been loud because the stern looking blonde woman walked in and her face softened. “Gaara sent me back... his room is right next to yours, he was worried... are you alright?” She asked as she reached out to place a hand on my back.

I nod, and choke, “I’m just homesick already.”

She nodded and patted my back, “I understand, you are going to be alright. Tomorrow me, Hana, and Aika will go out and see the city. You can tell us about your home and maybe we can find something to make you feel less homesick.”

....

Two years in

I sat in my husband’s waiting room reading a book sent to me from home waiting for the opportunity to force my husband to spend time with me. A new thing I learned I could do to get attention. I waited for his meeting to end before slipping in and walking the perimeter to touch everything on my way to him. Then I would sit down on one of the cushy chairs in front of his desk again touching his things. In broken language I learned over the two years I say to him, “What’s this and what was that about?”

He looks at me with the same stony face he always has on when we interact. “(Y/n) that is a gift from the hidden leaf village Hokage, please put it down... thank you. And that was just an update on his latest mission.”

I nodded pretending to care, “Have you seen Temari’s new baby boy?”

He nodded, “Yes very cute...You aren’t here to ask me to... you know.”

“No, you would have to be able to touch me first and a ton of other steps before that could happen.” I joked but he didn’t get it but his brother who just walked in, did.

“She’s right and honestly she’s hot and it’s a pity you don’t put any effort in her. Give the girl some attention, stop making her work for it.”

Gaara thought for a second and then stands up, moves around and takes my hand “He’s right, no matter how busy I am, I should have made time for you instead of having others do it for me. Have you eaten?” I sat there with my hand in his completely shocked but quickly realized what happened and shake my head. He smiled the first time in our relationship, “May I take you to lunch?”

“That um that would be nice.” I smiled.

He held my hand through our walk through the town to the restaurant. People stared at us as we walked and as we ate. We sat at the table eating quietly, when a waiter asked, “Don’t you two ever talk?”

Without flinching I tell them, “Actually this is the most he has ever interacted with me on his own free will and not me just interrupting his work day.”

I was only teasing but he honestly looked hurt and guilty. When we were walking back his fingers were a wiggly mess as they tried to hold onto mine. I squeezed his hand and bumped into him playfully, “You know I was only kidding around right?”

He nodded, “but I should be a better husband, learned your language, spent time with you, and made sure you were alright myself... but I... I was scared...”

I stopped walking, “Scared of what?”

“Of making you afraid of me... like they all were.”

I hugged him burying my face into his chest, “Why would anyone be afraid of you? I have never heard you once raise your voice!”

He patted my back awkwardly, “Oh.... um ok”

I began walking again, “I’m going to teach you English. We’ll use it to bond. What do you say? An hour a day?”

“Alright, we can have lunch together in my office every day.”

“No we need to be moving and experiencing.”

He looks at me with considerate eyes and nods and agreed.

“We start today!” I begin with basic greetings as we walked into his office and then some office things.

Soon he could have moderate conversation with me in my native tongue. “I want you to read this book, okay? It was my favorite as a kid.” I laughed as I handed Gaara a thin chapter book. “And don’t worry I will read it with you. It’ll be a good activity to do together and it’ll give you more vocabulary and practice.”

Gaara held the book in his hands with a look of confusion. He looks at me and says, “Um honey, I don’t know about this, I have to read a lot for work, I just want to relax during our time. Can’t we do something else?”

I deadpan him, “We could make a baby.”

He opens the book and began to try to read the words. I moved to sit on his lap and I could tell he wasn’t sure if I was serious earlier but he leaned back and wrapped an arm around me so I could get comfortable. While he and I began our reading journey a knock on his door saved him from the book we were reading, “come in!” He practically sang.

I raised my eyebrows but said nothing as Kankuro stepped in. When his eyes landed on us he stepped back, “uh should I come back?”

“No! I mean no come in.” The two spoke in their native language so quickly I couldn’t understand. They talked for a little over an hour with me on Gaara’s lap as if I weren’t there then Kankuro left and Gaara turned to me, “Um... honey... Kankuro .... um he thinks that I should have... that we should have a um... talk? Yes talk about um ... if we want um babies because you brought it up and um... do you want a baby?”

I laughed and leaned in to kiss him, “Honestly.... I wouldn’t mind. I think we would make adorable babies.”

“Adorable?”

“Yes you know... cute.” I giggled.

He nodded with a serious look, “Alright, I’ll do some...”

“Research.” I teased knowing him all to well.

“Yes research. And then we can uh...”

“Did you never get the talk?” I giggled.

The look on his face gave nothing away, “the talk?”

“Yeah, like sex and how babies are made.”

“I know how babies are made, I have a one and a half year old nephew.” He grumbled.

I chuckled kissed him and hopped off his lap, “Alright sweetheart, I know you have work to do... will I see you at dinner?”

He nods, “Yes, I’ll see you at dinner... could you send the gaurd at the door in?”

...

Gaara sat at the head of the table, I to his right and Kankuro to his left as we did every night since Gaara decided to be a better husband. The two brothers are normally quiet, only chatting a little. But today there was an air of awkwardness. “What is up with you two?”

The two exchanged looks, “Nothing, sweetheart...nothing how was your day?”

“Oh your going to tell me what is going on... maybe not now but you will... my day was good, I got a new dress.”

Gaara nodded, “Nice, is it nice?”

“Want me to show you tonight?” I asked cheekily. His face turned tomato red at the innocent comment. I smiled, “oh I know what happened!!! You went to big brother for sex advice didn’t you?” I giggled and what made it better was when Kankuro smirked and nodded confirmation. Poor Gaara was so embarrassed but it was too fun not to tease him.

Dinner finished and usually Gaara would go back to work. “Gaara, I was hoping that you could take a break tonight as our hour got interrupted.”

He was still quite flushed but agreed and quietly followed me. He only hesitated when I entered my bedroom. “Gaara I know I like to tease but seriously we should talk... tell me what questions do you have...? Do you want to start having sex? Forget about the baby thing.” I say sitting him on the couch in my room and sit down with him.

He sighed, “I do... I like being able to kiss you when ever I want and I like how it makes me feel...”

“It makes me feel good too.” I hummed reassuringly.

“I... asked Kankuro... how I... how to please a woman.”

I smiled and slipped out of my panties, “Give me your hand and I will show you around.... that’s my clitoris.”

“Should I um suck on it?”

I moaned “If you like, go ahead and get to know her.”

He slipped off the couch and hesitantly prodding at my vagina before leaning into use his tongue causing my hips to snap forward “That’s right....ohhhhhh!” He hummed into my pussy causing me to moan even loader. “Ahhhh just like that!!!!! Again!” He worked me until I arched my back, screaming, and cumming into his mouth. He came back up after I had gone limp.

“Did I do good?” I nodded too heady to voice yet. “Kankuro called that eating pussy.

“Yeah you ate pussy and you did good... do you want me to return the favor?”

“I don’t have a pussy.”

I laughed, “No do you want me to suck your dick?”

“Oh uh .... um okay but only if you want to.”

I chuckled, “You’re always so serious, go lay down on my bed.”

He does and I climbed up on top of him and gently pulled down his pants to reveal his thick leaking precum cock standing up desperately seeking attention. I leaned down kissed the tip before taking him into my mouth earning a sharp inhale. I bobbed head sucking as I twirled my tongue around his shaft as he squirmed until his hot seed shot down my throat and I swallowed every single drop of it. I fixed his pants before crawling up him and snuggled into his side. He looks at me with such satisfaction, “Wow.... that... that was just wow!”

“Gaara?”

“Hmm?”

“Stay with me tonight.”

...

Gaara started to spend his nights in my bed, I in a pair of panties and an oversized T-shirt, and he in a pair of tight black boxer briefs. He slips an arm under me and the other in my hair as I snuggle into him using him as a pillow. When I wake up he is always staring happily down at me. “Good morning honey.” He would hum.

“Good morning... love... Do you have to go?”

He kissed my head, “Yes... but um I have something special for us tonight.”

I smiled up at him, “well I have something for you right now.” I hummed going underneath the covers to go down on him before sending him off to work.

Today I knew I wouldn’t see him for the majority of the day, not even during our normal hour. I am the wife of the Kazekage so I can go absolutely anywhere and I have plenty of people around me but not always in the positive way. I am almost never alone once I leave home. But I struggle to understand the mill of people and today was a little bit more than I could handle. Luckily, Kankuro was around and came to help disperse the crowd. He sat down with me at the little cafe I was at, “You know Gaara would be more than happy to send a gaurd with you when you go out... actually I am pretty sure that is what is the point of your gaurds... where are they? Gaara is going to lose his shit.”

I bit my lip, “I gave them the slip and before I went out into public with Gaara it was alright but now people know who I am and I just can’t be alone ... I just want to be a little normal.”

Kankuro nodded, “Then let me come with you as a friend. What ever you want to do I will go with you.”

I smiled at him, “that’s kind of you...”

After I was ready to go back home Kankuro walked me back, “I will see you at dinner.”

I nod and walk to my room. Gaara would be in a meeting with the elders so I decided to go draw myself a nice hot bath. Eventually I just sank down under the water and listened to the white noise though I had gotten so relaxed I hadn’t even noticed that Gaara had come in and was standing over the tub till he reached in and pulled me up, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I gasped, “just being alone. What do you want?”

He relaxed and released me and began to remove his now wet white robe. “I was just wondering if you were ... Um..... if you were alright before I started my next meeting, Hana reported you were in here for quite some time.”

“I slipped out and your brother joined me for lunch actually, I’m surprised she didn’t notice me walking back in.” I pouted.

He chuckled and sat on the edge of the tub, “she probably did but she wasn’t going to admit that to me that she lost you.”

“Kankuro did say that you would loose your shit.”

“Well he’s right but I will deal with that later ... are you alright?”

“Yeah... I’m just a little bit lonely.” I say shrinking back into the water.

Gaara stood up and undressed, “Scoot forward sweetheart, I’m getting in.”

I do move forward but I questioned, “What about your meeting?”

He slipped into the water behind me pulling me into him, “It’ll have to wait, my wife needs me more. After our bath we can jump right into my surprise for you.” I relaxed against his fully naked body as we soaked in the large tub. But once the water got cold I moved to get out he pulled me back. “(Y/n) ... I .... you know... I love you... you know right?”

I turned to look at him, “Really? You do?”

He kissed me delicately, “Yes, I love you. I love you so much.”

I smiled, “yeah? I love you too.” I smashed my lips into his again.

We got dressed in clean clothes (he now keeps his clothes in my closet) and he turned to me and says “Baby... honey, I am taking you back home and your going to introduce me to your world. I already have our bags packed and they have a car... they are called cars right?” I nod “a car here to take us to your parents house. Are you ready?”

“Oh my goodness!!!!! Gaara! This is so sweet!”

I fling myself into his arms and he hummed, “Happy anniversary baby.”

I was so excited. We got into the car, a car for the first time in four years, years I tried my best to focus on the new reality and not on what I would no longer have. Positivity is the best way to look at things my mom would always say. When we got to the plane Gaara looked at it with a look I never seen on his face before ... fear? I take his hand, “Are you alright, My love?”

He smiled just a little bit at my last comment, “I’m fine... but um... what is that?”

I couldn’t help but laugh just a little bit, “It’s a plane, it’ll fly us back home. Don’t worry it’s safe. Just hold my hand and you’ll feel better.” I give him my hand and I lead him up the stairs and into the plane. “It’s a long trip home so just relax okay? Don’t tense up just hold my hand until we take off and then I will show you the bed and we can take a nap, alright?” He nodded and I buckled us up before we got ready for lift off. As soon as the plane began to move, Gaara began to hold his breath. “Babe, breath, just breathe, every thing will be alright. It’ll be alright, it might feel funny at first but that’s just the momentum and cabin pressure. It’s perfectly normal just relax, that’s right good job.”

Once in the air I unbuckled us and led him to the bed room. I undressed him and then myself before climbing in bed and pulled the covers over us. He curled into me, “This does feel a little weird.”

“Gaara?”

“Hmm?”

“This was a really sweet anniversary gift, I didn’t get you anything.”

“You gave me you, that’s all I need and all I want.” He whispered kissing my forehead.

...

We get to my childhood house and before I let him open the car door I take both of my hands and turn his face to look at me before trying to fix his hair in some way. He of course sat patiently as I swept his hair side to side nervously. “Okay, um use your English, shake my father’s hand and hug my mother don’t bow ok? Ok uh, you shake my siblings hands but only if they offer alright? And um.... stick by me alright? They already hate you because they blame you for the arranged marriage thing but know that I love you, I do ok?”

“Ok I love you too, it’ll be ok.” We get out and before we reached the door, the door swung open and out my little sister and threw herself into my arms

When I set her down she looked up at Gaara and said, “Who the Fuck is this?”

“My husband, Gaara.”

“Oh can he go away?”

“No, he’s my husband now let’s go inside.” And we do and when it came time to introduce Gaara it became very tense.

“Alright, guys Gaara is my husband and I love him. He makes me happy so be nice.” I scolded.

...

Bedtime rolls around and I lead him to my bed room and we go to the family bathroom together to brush our teeth and use the bathroom. Coming out we got glares from my two older brothers as they stood in the door way of their room opposite of the bathroom. I take Gaaras hand and take him back to my room shutting the door. “I’m sorry baby. They are being such Assholes! You called them and got them all to come home so that you could bring me here and see them. But they treat you like some dictator!”

Gaara smiled gently as he began to strip getting ready for bed, “They just want to protect you, that’s all.” I nod and join him in getting ready for bed the rest of the way. We climbed into bed and he added, “Besides, I’ve been treated much worse.”

I propped myself up, “what? What happened, tell me?”

He gave me a weak smile, and gestured for me to come snuggle with him, “Babe, come on, that’s not important, you don’t need to know that horror of my life.”

I sat up more, “No, I want to know! Tell me.”

He inhaled deeply, “Alright, alright but first I want you to lay down and put your head on my chest and cuddle into me.”

I nod and he tells me about how his dad sealed a demon in him when he was inside his mother’s belly. He was ostracized and demonized, he was made to feel alone and he did some horrible things. Things he was ashamed of and he begged me to let him keep his shame to himself, so I stopped pushing, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pried but I am glad that you told me. I love you.”

He kissed the top of my head and began to slip down my body when my mother walked in freezing Gaara at my breasts. “I just wanted to say good night and I am so glad that you’re back... how long will you be staying?”

I groaned, “I don’t know mom, but Gaara is very busy so I am sure it’s not as long as you would like. Can we talk about this in the morning?”

“Oh uh... ok see you in the morning.”

She shuts the door and I immediately shove Gaara’s head down between my legs. Gaara has become quite talented at eating pussy. He makes hard not to scream. I had to smother myself with my pillow. He crawled back up and whispered “beautiful, that was beautiful.”

“Yeah? Want to take it one step further?” I nipped at his bottom lip playfully.

“Are you sure? I mean you’re family is here.”

I smile and pulled on some shorts and threw him his white coat, “Follow me.” I open the window and climbed out onto the garage roof.

He began to follow me, “Sweetheart please, be careful.”

I look at him and simply jump off the roof. He of course follows and keeps close to me. I led him to me and my brother’s childhood treehouse. I stripped off his white coat and laid it out I stripped off my big shirt revealing my bare breasts to him. He looks at me and smiled, “You get more and more beautiful every time I see you. Lay down.”

He disgaurds his briefs and I my shorts. I spread my legs and reached for him, “Careful with me my love.”

He climbed between my legs. He kissed my lips and began to rub his cock between my folds, both of us moaning. “You ready?” I nodded and he slowly began to push into me. He let out a low moan and nipped at my collarbone as he tried to control his hips and his movements.

He was so very gentle and I peppered the side of his head with kisses, “give me it, baby.” He growled and began to thrust into me, admittedly a little awkwardly as it was our first time and we both were experimenting with pace and angles. Gaara began to rut into me moaning into my ear as he begins to lose himself and I just lose control and cum triggering his orgasm and he cummed inside of me. I smiled at him feeling like a teenager sneaking around. After a moment of relaxing against him I got dressed and said, “Come on honey, we can snuggle inside.”

He looks at me happily dressed himself too and follows me back to the roof helping me up and back into my room. Gaara seemed to have relaxed and so we both fall asleep. In the morning we are woken up by my little sister, Halley. “Wake up! Wake up!” She sang as she jumped on our bed. “Mom’s making pancakes!”

She then jumped off the bed and ran out of the room. I get up and shut the door and begin to get dressed, “Honey? Are you alright?” I asked as Gaara, who is a early riser, curled up in bed.

“Yeah... I’m fine .... my head just hurts.” He mumbled.

“Aww got a headache? Do you want some water? I’m going to fetch you some water wait here.”

I trotted down my stairs and into the kitchen to grab a glass of water and my mom asked, “Where’s um Ga-Gaara? It’s Gaara?”

“Yes it’s Gaara, he’s upstairs, I think the jet lag is getting to him, he gots a headache.” I moved to fill the glass and grab the thermometer.

“Why don’t you get him some aspirin? It’s in the cabinet.”

I shake my head, “He’s never had that kind of medication before. I don’t want him having a reaction.” I take the glass of water back to the room, and sit on the bed and rub his back, “Honey, come sit up and drink this water.” He groaned but did as I asked. “That’s it, all of it. Now how’s your tummy feeling? Can you eat?”

“Not hungry.” He moaned sickly.

“Oh? Please lift your arm.” I set the thermometer under his armpit and then held his arm to his side. He rested his head on my shoulder. I have never seen him sick before and as soon as I look at the thermometer I frowned. “You got a low fever... you need to rest. Is there anything else I can get you to make you feel better?”

He lays back down and curled back up, “No I’m fine... go see your family... have fun.”

“I will come check on you in an hour alright? I love you, get some sleep.” I hummed kissing his head.

I go back down stairs to join my family for breakfast. “Where’s the dictator?” My brother laughed.

I glared at him, “He’s not a dictator! He is my husband and you know I really don’t appreciate how you have treated him.”

“Dear...” my mother began but I wouldn’t allow her to continue.

“No! None of you have met him before, you know nothing about him he is kind and polite!”

“But the letters.”

“What letters?”

“You know the ones saying he was hurting you.”

“There was never a way for me to contact you until recently.”

“Oh? Uh... oh dear.” Mom flustered.

“What did you do?” I growled.

“I just put some Hydrangea leaves in his tea yesterday....” she says twisting her fingers together.

Standing from my place I growled, practically screaming, “I can’t believe this!!!! You tried to kill my husband!”

“No... just make make him sick... he’ll be fine in a day or two.” She squeaked.

I grabbed my plate and made one for Gaara before storming back to my room. “Baby? How do feel now? Are you ready for something to eat?” I cooed.

“Mmm...” he groaned “I feel like the room is spinning.”

I set the plates on the side table and then sat on the side of the bed to rub his back, “Aw baby... I’m so sorry. Do you want some more water?”

“No.... I just want to sleep.”

I nod and kiss his head, “okay.... how about a nice hot bath, it always makes me feel better.”

He nodded so I go and draw him a nice hot bath. I then help him to get to the tub. He sit on the toilet as I started to undress him. Once in the tub he seemed to relax. I dropped in a lavender bath bomb into the water and sat on the edge of the tub with him. “Careful, don’t get to close I don’t want you to catch this.”

I look down ashamed of my mother, “Don’t worry... I won’t catch it... my... my mother thought that you were abusing me... so she um... she poisoned your tea.”

“Why would she think I was abusing you?” He asked confused.

“Someone... someone has been writing her. But I swear Gaara it wasn’t me, I would never say such things.” I pleaded that he believed me.

“I know, I know honey... don’t you worry. Just get in and comfort your husband.” I smiled and stripped down and slipped into the water sitting between his legs and my back against his chest.

“Does the water help?” I asked.

He cupped my breasts in his hands and squeezes, “Yes, still a bit queasy and a bit dizzy but this.” He squeezes my breasts for emphasis, “helps.”

I chuckle, “You like my breasts, huh?”

He rested his head against the tile and continued to grope my breasts. After another day Gaara was feeling better and I decided to go ahead and show him the sights, just the two of us and my little sister. He was actually really good with her.

...

Time to go home and I was now sick but not like I have ever been before and my mother is suddenly excited? She ran to the store and returned with a... pregnancy test? “Mom really?”

“Yes go check... come on before you leave hurry up?”

I take it and pregnant... “PREGNANT? But... We only had sex once! Just my luck.” I grumbled

Gaara who had been packing and loading the car came in, “What’s wrong honey?”

“Pregnant!” I answered still in shock.

“Yeah? That’s amazing! I’m going to be a Daddy!” Gaara sang swinging me around.

“Gaara? You want this?” I asked confused. He always seemed to freeze up when I mentioned babies before.

“Of course, we made this baby with love.” He coos with a hand on my belly. “This baby is our manafestation of our love. I can’t wait to tell Kankuro and Temari, they’ll be so excited!”

I smiled softly, “I am glad that you are happy my love.”

....

The attention I got when we got back was a bit much and shaking my guards was lot harder as Gaara would come to check on me and if I wasn’t with them, he would become increasingly more angry with them. “Gaara!” I hollered, “I need my space, these guards are suffocating me! You! You are suffocating me! I realize that I am carrying your baby and you want to make sure it’s safe but for god’s sake it’s in the safest place it can possibly be! In my belly!”

He stood from his desk and walked over to me, embracing me in his arms, “I know you’re frustrated with the gaurd detail but it is as much for your safety as it is for OUR baby. Now Kankuro and I can’t be there all the time, so you’re going to have to have a detail with you.” He leans back to look at me and sighs, “I need you to tell me that you understand....”

“But I don’t!” I grumbled. I wasn’t going to say anything just to put him at ease, that’s what recks marriages but so does stubbornness. “Ok how about this, as long as I am on the compound I don’t need a gaurd just when I leave to go into town.”

He thinks about it and caves, “Alright, that sounds reasonable but if you leave without them we’re going back to full time alright?”

“Alright”

...,,

#naruto gaara #gaara icons #gaara x reader #gaara of the sand #gaara imagines #gaara smut

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