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crimson-dxwn · 3 years

Text

AT ODDS 6 (Kal Skirata x F!OC)

Summary: Tea gets spilled at Kyrimorut. Ordo gets involved. Ori makes a choice and a new enemy.

Warnings: Mando profanity, pregnancy, SPOILERS for Republic Commando books (all but the last one), medical shit, surgery, fucking SADS

As always, so many thanks to @detroitbydark who lets me screech about my weird fic and Kal and Ori! Also this is barely edited be kind, I’m on my psych rotation and barely scraping by.

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Kal realizes he’s slipped the figurine into the pocket of his bodysuit semi-consciously in his hasty retreat from the apartment. Knotted Jonah wood whittled smooth forms two stylized figures, one large and one small, their hands joined between them.

He barely registers the ride back home and comming Mij. They need a plan, and they need one fast if they are going to find her. He knows little about how the Empire treats their prisoners compared to the late Republic, but he isn’t about to have any illusions of honor or fair play. After all, he doesn’t play fair himself. But there’s a hydrospanner thrown into the mix. What he doesn’t know is how the Imps treat prisoners with … unique health conditions. Or if they even give half a bantha’s shebs. Odds are they send men and women alike to those osik’la camps he’s gotten word of. Yeah, the Empire was equal opportunity like that.

If Mereel can’t slice into the system remotely, they were going to have to do an old-fashioned infiltration. He’d ask his ad’ike if they were up to task, there’s no way he could ask to put them in danger, not after the entirety of their lives being war. It hurts him to even think about asking. But he has to do this, even if it’s just his sorry shebs.

He tries to put on a good Sabaac face when he’s back in the karyai, discreetly gathering up all the surplus weapons they have that he finds might be useful for an infiltration into a heavily armed and fortified position.

Mereel of course, catches on within minutes.

“You’re going to find her,” Mereel interrupts. Kal yanks his head up out of the gun locker to look at his son. “And you didn’t even think to ask for backup?”

His son’s tone is accusing, edging on hurt. That he did not expect.

“It’s my fuckup, son,” he replies, “I’m the one who needs to fix it. I can’t ask you to do this.”

“What’s so special about this doctor?” Mereel slams the door of the locker shut. It’s obvious his ad’ika is protective. They all are.

“She delivered your ba’vodu’ad, Mereel. I’m pretty sure she saved Parja’s life.” Kal says, keeping his eyes on his work, cleaning the weapons, arranging the ammo he needs. Sharpening his father’s three-sided knife.

“And that’s enough to go up against the Empire? ”

He’s going to have to spit it out. Mereel is looking at him expectantly, sure that he’s going to change his mind, see reason.

“She’s pregnant, son.” Mereel, who has been away for the events of the last few months, just stares back at him in a puzzled fashion, brows slightly furrowed. Looking at him like he’s lost his damn mind. Maybe he has.

“It’s yours, isn’t it?”

In comes a second voice, and the accusatory tone startles him enough that, when added to his baseline urgency and anxiety, causes his hand to slip and nick itself as he sharpens his knife.

“Osik,” he hisses, holding pressure to the cut as blood wells, looking up to the figure in the doorway. Ordo. Mereel stares at his brother, unsure whether he is joking. Kal sighs. He should know better, trying to keep things from them. The last time he was successful at that was when they were four.

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe,” Ordo replies, just this edge of indignant, “is she carrying my vod?”

A strange and protective piece of him flares at Ordo’s tone and Kal stands, still holding the cloth to his cut hand.

“Most likely.”

“Then we need to get her back.” Ordo meets his eye finally and Kal nods, satisfied, and starts gathering ammo from the safes. This time Mereel moves to help, still in a rare state of stunned silence.

By the time they’ve gathered what they need and loaded it into aayhan, Mereel has a willing team assembled and what they know of the building schematics up on a datapad in the karyai. Fortunately for them, the team won’t be breaking into any prison blocks, which are bound to be heavily guarded.

“All we have to do is get into the information security room that houses the main terminal,” Mereel starts confidently. “We can stay far away from the security blocks and the bucketheads.”

“Though it would be fun to bust some vode out of there,” Scorch adds.

“Not our mission,” says Mereel, regret plain in his voice, “we’ll have to get them another time.” The realization that they were leaving prisoners at the mercy of the empire sobers the group even more. It was becoming more and more apparent that more planning was needed before they could root out the Empire on Mandalore. Meanwhile, Kal had set Uthan to the task of trying desperately to make their own homebrew vaccine.

---

It’s been many many years since he’s fastroped. Lately, he has been finding that it’s been years since he’s done many things. Fastroping, underwater diving...fathering kriffing kids. He swallows, hard and regroups himself. Every single one of them needs to be focused if they’re gonna pull this job off.

Yes, he’s fast roped before. But he’s never liked it. Where his sons get twitchy when confined to tight spaces, he finds himself sweating more than usual under his beskar the more stories they climb. Right now, they’re about ten stories up, far above the sensors of the garrison and way above his tolerance for heights. They have about a minute to pull this off before the Imps realize this transport is lingering too long in their airspace.

Mereel, Sev, Scorch, and Kal are in Aayhan, hovering silently above the Keldabe imperial garrison in the inky black late summer night. The humidity sticks his tactical garments to his skin, making it itch and crawl in addition to his surging adrenaline. That was one thing that never changed, no matter how old he got, no matter how many missions he’s finished - that nauseating spike of pure fear and bliss.

He gives the signal to move move move and soon he’s roping down, strong north Mandalorian wind whipping around him, soaking through his underlayer. The four of them land silently on the roof of the compound, and Scorch starts laying a strip charge along the floor to create a hole leading below, straight into the admin offices. Four sets of Mando armor gleam lowly in the moonlight. It’s a perfect night for an op like this, whipping wind obscuring any slight noise they did make and the faint whine of aayhan’s engines. The charges detonate with a controlled bang and flash of bright light that briefly blinds his HUD. Kal switches to night vision.

*His child*. It’s barely a concrete concept in his mind yet, but an instinctual piece of him knows the truth. The timing is too perfect for him to be wrong. The way Orla had looked at him in the med center…

The stakes are too high to fail, and distracting thoughts get men killed. Mereel leads the way through the door, rifle at the ready, and Kal banishes his musings to the back of his mind, pushed away by a fresh rush of adrenaline. It’s a stealth mission, and they navigate by night vision, as silently as their boots will allow.

They stalk through dark quiet hallways lined with innocuous office doors until they reach the end, what is presumably the CO’s office, with its durasteel double doors and obviously larger size.

Mereel starts in on slicing the door panel while Sev shoots out the camera in the hallway corner while the rest of them listen for any approaching patrols. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed they were there, whether it was the hole in the roof or the blacked out camera. The double doors open quietly and they head inside. Vau’s boys guard the door while he and Mereel crowd the desk in the middle of the room.

“I need a few minutes to get into this,” Mereel says, eyes locked onto the screen before him. One of his slicing tools is between his teeth.

“You’ll get it, son. We’ll take care of anything that tries to get in our way.”

So far it looks like no one has noticed them. The imps must really be confident in the plan to neutralize Mandalore with so few guards and patrols. Sweat drops trickle down the back of his neck and into his bodysuit.

Mereel studies the datapad stripping the system for a few more moments and turns it towards Kal. There’s a concerned look stretched across his handsome face. Together the watch the recorded scene on the screen before them.

There’s Orla, still in her work clothes, talking with an Imp who’s behind this very desk, flanked by two stormtroopers. He knows those gestures - she’s spitting mad, barely containing the fury that was directed toward the man behind the desk. Without audio he can only guess as to the contents of their conversation. The Imp behind the desk gives a short reply and nods curtly to the right-hand trooper who, without hesitation, raises his blaster rifle and cracks her across the face with the butt end. She doesn’t even see it coming. Even in the shades of blue from the holoprojector the blood is obvious, trickling down the side of her face.

Kal is livid, trembling so finely it’s barely visible, and he almost forgets where they are for a moment. Deep in enemy territory, with hostiles incoming any minute.

Mereel makes a disgusted noise from deep in his chest as they watch her be pushed to the ground. They follow the video feed where she’s led to a cell. His breath catches. There’s a chance she’s still here. His hope is tempered, however, when an alarm starts to sound from within the garrison. A patrol must have finally found their breach point.

“Sarge?” warns a voice from outside the door. It’s Sev, by the gravelly tone.

“Almost finished,” he shouts, over the screeching din. Mereel continues to work furiously, his bulk hunched over the console. He’s able to parse through incredible amounts of data with immense precision; Kal can practically feel the concentration rolling off him.

“Wait,” Mereel says. Kal looks over at the screen. They’re centered on a video feed again, this time outside. The sheer amount of prisoners in line for the transport is shocking enough, but the fact that none of them are in armor is even more appalling. The Imps are slowly stripping their culture away, plate by plate.

“She’s not on the manifest for this transport, even though the records say she leaves.”

It doesn’t make sense. Unless… Kal knows Mereel must be thinking the same as him. Judging by the brutality of the footage they’ve watched, the stories from around the planet, he wouldn’t put it past the Empire to take care of a pesky problem in the easiest way they knew how. It wasn’t something that supposedly peaceful, orderly governments liked to keep records of. His dread and guilt intensifies, leadening his limbs already weighed down by heavy beskar.

He chokes the words out. He has to know. “Is there any footage of…” Kal can’t bring himself to say them. It doesn’t need to be said, Mereel knows what he’s looking for. He’s been in a war zone long enough to know that armies aren’t sentimental.

“No, no footage. Just them leading her away.” The alarm continues to blare. It could be minutes, seconds before they have to blast their way out.

“Here.”

Kal steels himself to watch. It’s his fault, he reminds himself again. Two more fresh marks in his ledger. His arm reaches automatically to his son’s to steady himself. He feels Mereel’s slump ever so slightly, whether it’s in relief or defeat, he can’t tell.

“I have what I need,” he says, “time to go. Debrief can wait for later.” Distant footsteps start to echo towards them, modulated shouts following close behind. They were about to be grossly outnumbered, by the sound of it. Kal shoves his helmet back on, heading through the doorway and signaling Sev and Scorch to follow.

They wind through the garrison, avoiding both patrols and squads of stormtroopers sweeping the building. It’s laughably easy compared some of the other heists they’ve pulled - except he speaks too soon. As they make their way out of the back door of the garrison onto the Keldabe streets, one squad catches up to them. Ordo has aayhan back at Kyrimorut - earlier they had decided it was too risky for the four of them to fly home and possibly expose the homestead. So instead their plan was to run the winding streets and strategically borrow a transport. The problem is that Kal is pushing sixty and the other men are - physiologically at least - still in their early twenties. They’re a lot kriffing faster than him, even with his ankle fixed.

The streets and alleys twist and turn, switching from ancient cobbles to smooth duracrete without warning. Easy enough to get lost if you’re a local, they are impossible to navigate as aruettiise. Soon the four are panting, ducked into an alcove off a cobbled alley. Finally, it seems they’ve dodged the patrol. Only time will tell if they were recognized. Kal finds he doesn’t much mind if they know his face. In fact, he hopes they do. He wants to meet that garrison officer.

-------

Imperial Rehabilitation Center

Weeks later

19 BBY

Life isn’t all doom and gloom. They are kept...occupied. Like rats in a maze. Ori shares a bunk with another Mandalorian, the only other there. Taren is a kid really, small and slight except for her distended belly. It’s obvious she’s used to wearing armor by the way she walks, how upright she holds herself, arms swaying slightly away from her body. And how she closes in on herself when she realizes it’s not there, when it’s nighttime in their room and thinks Ori can’t hear her sob breathlessly into her pillow every night.

It’s almost childish, the way they’re herded from room to room. Chaperoned and on a schedule, like one would handle a naughty child needing extra discipline. It was how she imagines Coruscanti boarding schools some of her medical school classmates attended - polished stone floors and crisp uniforms, all strict routines and synchronized repetition. It’s meant to numb the mind, making days run into weeks. She suspects they’re kept intentionally disoriented. After all, most of them are still political prisoners, and many she’s found have important connections on their respective homeworlds.

They’re at lunch, scattered around their assigned tables. Generously, they are allowed to converse during meals, though their seats remain assigned. The ‘rehab center’ has proven to be much more expansive than she expected - some rooms are swallowingly large, like the one she is in now, and some are as small as a broom closet, connected by narrow winding hallways. The building itself could have been any number of things in a past life - a school, factory, or prison. She supposes it doesn’t matter much now. Today there’s a newcomer, sitting quiet and sullen at a back table with the Corellians. Time would tell if she was one of them or if she hailed from a different world.

An arm jostles her, hitting her square in the ribs. It successfully knocks her out of her analysis of the newcomer.

“-did you hear what I just said?” Taren says, mouth full of tasteless nutritional paste. It’s far from delicious, but you ate what they give out and she is hungry *all the time* nowadays. A fleck lands on Ori’s face and she wipes it away with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry, al’verde.” Commander. Her eyes roll automatically. She knows she doesn’t deserve the title. Discreetly, Ori shushes the younger woman - they’re lucky the stormtroopers here don’t understand Mando’a.

They put together kit for new stormtroopers, morning and night. It’s another endurable humiliation. She stabs at the cubes bitterly with her spoon, scattering crumbs across the table. They’re not allowed forks or knives, not after Taren’s first week. A tiny smile flits across her face as she thinks on the memory.

Ori feels like a geriatric compared to the spry warrior, though they’re less than ten years apart in age. She’s seen things in that time, lost people, buried dreams. Though Taren is looking older and older by the day, cooped up in this place.

“Theera is gone,” Taren says, “she wasn’t at breakfast either.”

Looking around and finding no sign of the woman, Ori hums an agreement. She’ll be gone for good soon, and her baby as well. Every time someone delivers it sends a sense of unshakeable dread down her spine and into the pit of her stomach. All of them are marching slowly towards that finish line.

The artificial hierarchy into which they are forced has made the two Mandalorians de facto leaders, despite Ori being one of the newer inmates and to cement her as *alverde*; her medical expertise makes her invaluable.

The room hushes as Dr. Loesch sweeps down to the cafeteria, all business in crisp grey scrubs, so confident in his admiration. He insists they call him ‘Doctor L’ like he’s a popular lecturer at a university. He’s the worst kind of hut’uun, just as bad as the rest of the Imps she’s met here. Loesch is in charge of their medical care, all 100-some of them, including herself. Loesch towers over most of them, even herself.

As a physician, Ori is personally insulted at his complacency, the fact that he is perfectly content in his post and cemented in his belief that what he was doing is just, his complicity. She stabs at her cubes some more to try and make herself feel better.

As a woman, she’s decidedly less surprised. Men like him are everywhere, tall and handsome, handed success on a silver platter, born into families of privilege and power. Taking and taking with no thought of the carnage they leave behind.

He saunters his way over to their table and sits with a charming smile.

“Beviin,” he starts, “I heard through the gossip chain that you were an obstetrician before you came here?”

It’s physically painful to keep her retort in hand. She’s been here long enough to see women sent to solitary. And to see them come back, changed indefinitely.

“Mmm,” she mumbles affirmatively through a mouthful of cubes. She swallows. “Yes.” Keep it simple, that’s easy enough.

He smiles sardonically. “How ironic,” he adds, obviously pleased with the revelation. Expectantly, he looks around the table to gauge his joke, and they catch on, laughing softly, nervously, afraid of what might happen if they don’t. Even Ori joins in, the butt of the low blow, though her simmering rage ratchets up another level.

They finish the rest of their lunch largely in silence and Loesch pulls her away when she files out with the others.

“Ms. Beviin,” he says conspiratorially, “I know it must be difficult for you to be here.”

The man over her, face too close for comfort, his voice deep and low. Alarm fills her as the other people in the room dwindle until it’s just the two of them and the scattered troopers on the upper level. All Ori can think about is where the nearest exit is located when she realizes he’s still speaking to her.

“...what do you think?” He waits patiently, a benevolent expression in his face. He blinks too little, she thinks, and his eyes are devoid of expression, shining with an amused sort of malevolence. They’re a strange shade of brown...no, green? The little noise he makes in the back of his throat brings her back to their conversation.

“Ah...sure?” she replies weakly, stunned and frozen.

“That’ll be nice for the other inmates,” he says. Incredibly white, straight teeth flash as he smiles down at her. “I think it will give them comfort to have you there. I’ll have the guards collect you when it’s time.”

——

Three nurses eye her from across the suite. They wear sweet matching hospital uniforms, in the same soft fabric as hers except in a delicate petal pink. With a pang, she misses her fellow nurses and doctors on Mandalore. Who knows how many had fallen ill? Been arrested? The way they clustered in a little group reminded her of her schoolmates, when they found out she didn’t like fighting, whispering rumors from across the room. That she thought she was better than them, that weird girl who was more concerned with grades than winning fights and impressing boys. Now they stand across the room from her like a little bunch of flowers in their coordinated outfits, identical and perfect. She’s an other in their world, someone to be feared and hated, pitied at best.

Orla stands awkwardly, waiting for the show to start when her stomach flips. The scrub top she has on stretches across her middle awkwardly, pulling at the seams and the soft shoes that cover her feet are obscured by her bump. The strange sensation returns, a little differently this time, just the barest flutter, deeper down than that nervous feeling. Her baby. She lays a gentle palm over the swell, as discreetly as she can, still feeling the scrutinizing looks of the women across the room.

Another nurse wheels a bed into the room, complete with Theera shivering atop it, her hair and gown drenched in sweat. Orla rushes to the head of the bed as she’s prepped for the operation. Theera is dazed, too exhausted to make much sense of anything right now, glassy eyes focused on the ceiling. She smoothes back the sweaty hair from Theera’s forehead.

“Hey cyar’ika. It’s Ori,” she says softly. The woman’s eyes focus a little, just enough to meet hers. She bumps their foreheads together. It was as much to comfort herself as much as the other woman. Non-mandos typically didn’t understand the meaning behind the gesture. She can’t squeeze her hand like she wants to - it’s being hooked up to IV tubing.

“I’m cold,” she mumbles. Some of it is adrenaline, some from fear, and the rest from the icy operating room temperature to keep the surgeons comfortable. Drenched as she is, it’s no wonder Theera is shivering.

Ori asks the wary tech for a warm blanket, terrified of overstepping and getting her shebs kicked out of the operating room. She’s promptly ignored in favor of his work. Dr. Loesch enters the room and the nurses titter around him while he ensures everything is prepped to his liking. Ori settles for as much skin to skin contact as she can get with Theera, trying to warm her, mumbling comforting nonsense into her ear as Loesch starts to work. A warming bassinet waits ominously against the wall for its prize.

A thin cry interrupts their mumbling and Theera’s eyes sharpen at the noise. Loesch holds the little thing over the curtain separating them indulgently, just for a moment. A boy, he says, and she and Theera find themselves mesmerized by the bloody little thing and his tiny squished face and flailing arms, already so angry at the world. He’s held up for a second, allowing Theera a cursory glance and then whisked away by the nurses to the bassinet. His mother is still paralyzed on the table and it makes it all the more unjust that she isn’t even allowed to touch her son, see him up close. The nurses at the bassinet laugh and coo, oblivious to Theera, who starts weeping pitifully. Fat tears slide down the side of her face, wetting the starched white sheet beneath her head.

Ori is in the middle of the absolute emotional chaos around her. Theera crying, Dr. Loesch talking with his assistant about weekend plans, and the nurses with the baby, who have turned back at the sound of crying to glare at them judgementally. She can practically hear them now. Serves her right, their looks say. She deserves it. The rage congeals around Ori, settling itself in her throat. This feeling is exactly what had put her in this place to begin with and she knows she has to control it, use it somehow. She watches them place a little bracelet around the infant’s ankle and scan it into a datapad. They don’t bother with Theera. It dawns on her then that if she’s lucky - incredibly lucky - she can use the Empire’s obsession with order against them.

She makes her way over to the bassinet under the ruse of joining the indulgent cooing that is going on, trying not to throw elbows before she’s kicked out of the room. The little boy’s leg is caught for a heel stick an she gets her chance. The number on the leg band is just visible, only for a second. She sends a prayer up to the Manda that she gets it right.

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@clonewarslover55 @simping-for-fives @808tsuika @jedi-mando @cherry-cokes-world @nelba @fractiouskat @passionofthesith

#PHEW THIS SUCKED TO WRITE UGH #how do people write long chaps like goddamn I'm drained and this took MONTHS #i suck basically lol #At Odds #Republic Commando #Kal Skirata

46 notes · View notes

felassan · 4 years

Note

the stuff we learned in trespasser and in tevinter nights really makes the elven cave found in the dalish elf origin make a lot more sense. especially the strange statue that reads "A strange statue commemorating the emergence of--and short-lived trading with--dwarves who dug too high and too frugal and struck elves".

Hi Nonnie! This answer is cut for length.

Ahh, the first Brecilian Forest ruins.. in a way it’s kind of where it all began. Who knew that the Dalish Origin, which arguably of the 6 seemed the most unrelated/disconnected from the main narrative of DAO, would not only come to have the ‘default’ BioWare Warden and its clan prominently featured in DA2, but turn out in the end to be so plot relevant? It’s the staging ground for everything to do with eluvians and the Taint that would come later in the series and play a key role, and it’s there that we get the first esoteric hints about these aspects of the Thedosian past and of the major overarching plot that they’ve been building towards since before DAO was launched.

[What Tamlen Saw]

Tamlen perceives the ruins to be human architecture, and notes the presence of a statue of the People (the one he and Mahariel look at in a cutscene is of Falon’Din, and Marethari later wonders if the ruins were a temple to an old god), and a stone with carvings on it which he suspects are written elvish. “Can these ruins date back to the time of Arlathan? We must have lived in other places, too. Even if elves didn’t live here, its architects knew of our gods.” “This looks like a very old human place. Why would they build this? And why would elven artifacts be here? Maybe some of our ancestors lived here, in caves, like the dwarves. Maybe whoever lived here still wrote and spoke elven.” “I'd never have guessed ancient elves might have lived here - with humans!” When Merrill arrives she also feels that the ruins are of human origin, yet with elven artifacts scattered throughout. The in-game map for the area labels it “Elven Ruins”, and game item category-wise the ruins contain Tevinter-type treasure. Duncan later says the eluvian is Tevinter in origin and used for communication, and of course we know he’s mistaken in his knowledge here, both in terms of origin and use. Were Tamlen and Merrill also incorrect in their assessment of the architecture as human?

Then as you say, if you explore a little, the Strange Statue reads “A strange statue commemorating the emergence of--and short-lived trading with--dwarves who dug too high and too frugal and struck elves". The statue visually looks dwarven to me, short and broad and blocky and with the suggestion of helmet-like lines looking like a stylized and simplified version of the head and shoulders of one of the iconic repeating dwarf statue assets. The statue’s legend itself is a meta allusion to the Dug Too Deep trope. It’s a humorous reference to and reversal of one of the archetypal instances of this trope, which is the dwarves of Lord of the Rings: “Moria. You fear to go into those mines. The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm... shadow and flame.” (The Balrog)

[The Balrog Theory: old post from before I named it, more recent posts one and two]

So we have “Elven Ruins”, containing elven artifacts and writing and statues, but which are read by two characters as having human architecture, and which have Tevinter items and assets, and which also contain a dwarven statue commemorating a trading relationship with the elves who lived there. Apparent evidence of three different races.. what are we to make of all that? The mystery continues in the main game with the Brecilian Ruins. Given the location in the same forest and the visual resemblance to the Origin ruins, I think it’s safe to assume they’re of a kind. These other ruins contain Elven Tombs and the imprisoned soul of an Arcane Warrior who remembers them as a place “where the Eldest [elves] come to slumber and [were] visited by those who offer tribute to the gods on their behalf”. Yet our companions notice both elven and Tevinter elements: "The ruins certainly look Tevinter, but are filled with elven trappings. How very odd,” “Is this an elven place? Did the elves live underground just like the dwarves?", “It seems that elves once lived with the Tevinter humans? Or the Tevinter built this place for them? I never heard of such thing”, "I wonder what this ruin used to be. Is it Tevinter, or elven?". The trapped soul recalls that it was humans who built this place, and that both humans and elves were there.

The ruins stuff, despite the dwarf reference or perhaps except for it, leans away from elves and dwarves and towards elves and humans. (Saying that, we don’t have all the pieces yet, especially considering what the trapped soul remembers, which isn’t clear but is some kind of ancient war: “Something else, something that killed both the humans and elves that were here. You see images of a great battle, elves and humans both screaming and attempting to flee from some terrible presence. What that presence was is blurry and lost to time.” What was that? Other humans? The First Blight? But at the time of the First Blight elves were slaves in Tevinter, not people who they cohabited with and apparently built elaborate Burial Chambers for, for their elders? Unless it’s one of those Tevinter-built-on-Arlathan-bones situations, and the trapped soul is remembering humans who lived there who had elven slaves among them. But if they were slaves, would they even permit one of them to become an Arcane Warrior? Do you guys’ heads hurt or is it just me?)

The elves and dwarves stuff is another, different strand. I conceptualize this stuff like:

interactions between ancient elves and humans/Tevinter long ago

interactions between Mythal/the Evanuris/ancient elves and dwarves/the Titans long ago

In TN we find a Ghilan’nain lab-pool beneath a dwarven thaig. The Wardens in that story descend into areas of dwarven make then come across the ancient elven bas-reliefs and iconography and everything in deeper areas that are exclusively elven. The narrative mentions that Grey Wardens have previously found a mix of elven architecture deep down in the Roads. In Trespasser and Descent are the flags for what Mythal/Evanuris/ancient elves might have once done to the dwarves/Titans.

The Torn Notebooks in the Deep Roads are telling -

These statues are old. Better shape than anything I've seen on the surface. Many of them are for Mythal, though. And Fen'Harel. Not in a spot of honor, but guarding, attending.

Protector and All-Mother, why are you honored here, so far from the light of the sun? And why was the Dread Wolf at your side?

These statues are older than anything I saw in my days with the clan. The area's dwarven, though. What were the ancient elves doing down here? Mining? Where were the dwarves? Easier to have them mine it. Not a trading post. You don't go into a friend's home, knock over their gods, and put up your own.

War? I don't remember any legends about our people fighting the dwarves. Though I remember my Keeper telling a story about how the dwarves fear the sun because of Elgar'nan's fire. A metaphor for the elves of Arlathan driving the dwarves underground?

Written beside each elven line is a corresponding phrase, likely a translation:

I am empty, filled with nothing(?), Mythal gives you dreams. It fills you, within you(?), Making our leaders proud. My little stones, Never yours the sun. Forever, forever.

Hahren said we had lost some of the old words. What if they have changed? Durgen'lin from durgen'len? Little dwarves, never yours the sun? What did Mythal do here?

What did Mythal do here indeed.. Well, something caused the Titans to fall, and the fate of the dwarves with them. The Evanuris/ancient elves hunted the Titans, and saw the dwarves as “witless” and “soulless”. Their mining of the Titans’ bodies for their blood and hearts (powerful resources) is covered in the prior Balrog links. Eventually Mythal was hailed as an adjudicator and savior for striking down the Titans and giving their ‘land’ to the People. Suspect this is what sundered the dwarves’ original connection to their Titan parents. Generations later the dwarves of Kal-Repartha still feared the urtok (dragon) and had folktales of a dragon scourge that they were still worried about even then.

Skipping back to the dwarven trading relationship with that group of elves, it wouldn’t be the first time dwarves and elves struck up an amicable relationship in times past. After the destruction of Arlathan, some elves who fled formed an alliance with dwarves of the ancient settlement Cad'halash, and they took refuge and hid there to escape the Imperium, ostensibly. “The Lights of Arlathan will illuminate the scryer’s path. The Archons possessed them, but they were misused, befouled and lost, like so much the Imperium touched. Some were saved, carried by fugitives from the elven city. Their sorrow awoke the Stone and her children sheltered them. They found a sanctuary in the deep halls of Cad’halash, now known as Cadash.” It’s revealed that Kal-Sharok destroyed Cad’halash after discovering they were hiding elves there, in order to cover that up so it wouldn’t risk their alliance with the Imperium.

Not sure how to tl;dr this ramble. Maybe, I don’t know if the Elven Ruins and the Brecilian Ruins themselves are connected to the ancient elf-dwarf conflict, they seem primarily elf-human in makeup. There’s definitely a Lord of the Rings Easter egg. But definitely oh man, yeah, what we can infer about those Mythal/Evanuris/ancient elf interactions with the dwarves from Descent, Trespasser, and Tevinter Nights is.. arresting, to say the least (Titans/dwarf stuff on this front for DA4 pls 🙏). Maybe, assuming it’s even temporally relevant, the trading dwarves’ relationship with the elves they met there was short-lived and the statue legend is phrased in such a way (as to imply that them meeting the elves was a bad thing that they would have been better without) because of what would eventually happen between elves and dwarves? That legend (and potentially the Evanuris statues in the Elven Ruins) remind me a lot of “Not a trading post. You don't go into a friend's home, knock over their gods, and put up your own.”

Was the “terrible presence” killing humans and elves in that place that the Arcane Warrior’s soul remembered, an angry Titan?

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realityhelixcreates · 3 years

Text

Lasabrjotr Chapter 73: Teal

Chapters: 73/?

Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: R

Relationships: Loki x Reader

Characters: Loki (Marvel),

Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), Mentions of Sexual Activity, NSFW, Starting to Bring Some Threads Together

Summary: Asgard honors the giant as best it can. You continue to dream

The weather turned worse on the way back, until even the well maintained Ring Road was scarcely visible. Eventually, Loki pulled you up into his saddle on Leynarodd's back, seating you flush with his body, and wrapping his back-up cloak around you.

“I will keep you as warm as I may.” He breathed into your ear. “Would it help if I were to whisper lewd and wicked things to you?”

You giggled, but shook your head. “Just cuddle. I want to go to sleep.”

And so, he wrapped his arms around you as well, and let you doze.

Your arrival was heralded with a celebration that woke you with instruments and shouting. You moved back to Acorn as the procession moved through the city, and, still drowsy, participated in a great feast thrown in the giant's honor.

This was a part of Asgardian funerary customs, as taught to you by Saga. The burial honored the dead's body, and the feast honored the dead's spirit. Normally, the revelers told stories of the dead's deeds during life, but no one knew the giant, so instead extolled the accomplishments of all Jotun, across the ages.

You didn't have any such stories, so you listened and ate, as Bogljot described being defeated in a contest of speed by the Forest Giant, Hyrrokkin, as the normally quiet Heimdall sang praises to his many 'mothers', as an older Asgardian you didn't know described the great mountain kingdom of Utgardaloki, for whom Loki was named.

It was dark yet again by the time the feast ended, and Loki led you, stumbling and tipsy on cider, back to his bedroom. He carefully divested you of your armor, stripped every last garment from you, and sat you down on your chair beneath the sunlamp. As the light warmed your skin, Loki also shucked his own clothing, and sat down at your feet. The two of you spent an hour under the warm lamp, Loki reading you various examples of Earth poetry he thought you would like, or resting his head in your lap and letting you toy with his hair.

Finally, when fatigue had clearly caught all the way up with you, Loki turned out the light, and carried you off to bed, where he made love to you until you could no longer keep your eyes open. When you drifted away, it was on a cloud of warm bliss.

******

You found yourself in the glory of open space once more buoyed by sparkling blue light. It came from a gem that you could see now, flying before you like a comet, with yourself gliding along in its glowing tail. You started to reach out for the glittering object once more, but pulled your hand back, vaguely remembering something that put you off of grabbing it. Thoughts echoed within your blood, concepts resolving themselves into impressions in your mind.

You are learning me. Learn me. Learn more.

How? You thought. What are you?

A swirl of something. A blur of light, a different 'texture' than the blue.

Green.

Your right hand itched.

Learn me! Learn me! There is so much of me! Look! See!

Your world jittered, like a heartbeat slightly out of rhythm. With the suddenness of a drop of water in a still pool, the space around you rippled unexpectedly, folded in around you, and instead of nowhere, you were Somewhere.

A world full of green-skinned, red-haired people, thriving, but confused. A woman walked the streets crying out what you assumed to be a girl's name.

Titan, with its orange skies, empty, ruined. A ghost town of a planet.

Earth, running through frigid winds. Other humans ran beside you, dressed for a time long since passed. Frost Giants pursued, driving terror, like dogs, at your heels.

A woman, bald and elegantly androgynous, in flowing robes and surrounded by nothingness. She looked at you with pity, with eyes that pierced right through you.

“You are not ready for what is happening.” She said. “And I am not in a position to help.”

A severed head, the size of a small moon, floating through space. There were lights, cities built upon it, within it. You recoiled in horror, but as you watched, the cities shrank; went dark. The head floated backward, back and back. You blinked, and it was reattached to an impossibly gargantuan body. Another blink and the colossal being orbited a young sun, along with a haphazard belt of asteroids. You watched as they grasped one of the largest of them, and sundered it over their knee.

Wiping the newly exposed surface clean, the being stared out into a space that was dark and sparsely decorated with stars. Then, with fingertips each stained a different color, they grasped the asteroid and began to draw.

******

You awoke, brimming with the feeling that something important had happened while you slept, but couldn't quite pinpoint where that energy was coming from. There was something you felt the need to do, something you couldn't put a name to.

You could barely sit still under your sunlamp, wolfing down your oatmeal and dried fruit. Loki couldn't help but to comment on your increased energy. A wink and a suggestive comment, and you had him back in bed, hands on his chest, riding him for all he was worth.

You sure didn't hear him arguing.

When the two of you were finally presentable, scrubbed and dressed and fed, you took to the halls with your sunlamp in tow. Loki had some meetings to attend today; some job disputes that had come up recently. You had your classes with Saga. A light squeeze of the hand, and you parted ways.

The snow had continued through the night, piling up high against the windows. Reconstruction of your room had been forced to a halt, and all of your things had been moved, either to storage or to Loki's room. The caterpillar in a jar had become a chrysalis in a jar, but the butterfly had not emerged yet. It was possible that the cooler temperatures and lack of light had put it into some kind of stasis: unusual, but not unheard of.

It was still frightening to think that you had caused all that destruction, just because of a dream you couldn't even remember. What if you did that while Loki slept beside you?

There were far more people indoors now that winter had come, doing what Loki had described as their 'real' jobs, weavers and seamstresses, scribes, engineers, jewelers, and so many painters. In every hallway and alcove there was someone with a palette, someone with a pencil, someone carving the plaster into delicate ribbons and knots. Some of them told you they were trying to recreate murals from old Asgard. Others seemed to be trying a new take on their history. Others were focusing on more recent events.

As you walked through the halls, you saw heavily formulaic paintings of what must have been Odin and Frigga, Bor and the terrifying Hela, Heimdall, Thor, and Loki, and many others you didn't recognize. There were battles, and peace treaties, Vanir, Alfar, and Jotnar, There was Njord, Freya, and Freyr, whom you stopped and stared at for a few moments before shaking yourself free.

There were also events and vistas in a different style, some of which must have been pulled directly from the painters own memories. Soaring golden buildings and busy streets, folk dances and blacksmiths forging swords. A riot of berserkers clashing their metal staves, the view of a waterfall ocean.

There were Svartalfari in the great halls, Heimdall destroying a strange vehicle, portals to all of the realms circling each other. There was Frigga, standing tall, holding a sword over her head. There was Frigga, lying in a boat, surrounded by golden light. There was a sparkling red jewel, hanging over the head of a woman you realized must be a stylized Dr. Jane Foster. There were the Avengers again, painted in the heroic style of Asgard, haloed like holy beings. Did the Asgardians see them as the pantheon of Earth?

There was the destruction of Asgard. The great Jotun Surtr, the tiny form of Hela brandishing her thorn-like weapons against him in an almost heroic way. There was the enormous wolf Fenris, grappling with the Hulk. The star-filled expanse of space, with their island spaceship carrying them safely to Earth, a beautiful orb, painted as though seen through a window.

There were the mountains and river outside, rendered in such marvelous detail that you recognized the exact place. There were nightscapes of the Northern Lights.

And there was you.

Your little figure, next to Loki, with your flower crown helm. Among the longhouses of Trolerkaerhalla, wearing the cloak of a Seidkona. It was a very strange feeling, to see yourself immortalized like this. The impostor syndrome flared up, heavy and loud. Logically speaking, you had made history. But why should it have been you? Why should any of this be you?

You hurried through the increasingly colorful halls, seeking out the library. There would always be this battle inside you, between acknowledgment that you were deserving of good things, and belief that there were others so much more deserving.

You rushed into the library, with it's nice new door, and set up your sunlamp. Saga handed you your drum. The Valkyries were here, as well as an ancient, wizened woman who had probably been a Seidkona since the Parthenon had been built. She instructed you strictly, but patiently in the primeval rhythm of Seidkona ritual. There was a chant she was teaching you, a mystical affirmation ritual in a bygone dialect of the Asgardian language, so archaic that the meaning of the words were lost even on your venerable teacher. Saga understood them, but since she was not a Seidkona, she was in essence, forbidden from speaking them.

You got the feeling that it annoyed her a bit.

You were walked through the chant, and the drum beat over and over, committing the sounds to memory, like you had for the past few weeks. The only thing you were missing was the very last syllable of the chant, the knowledge of which would only be imparted on you at the eve of the Buridag festival. Before then, you would not be allowed to speak, or even know it, for fear of completing the spell prematurely.

After your lessons, you spent a little bit of time in one of the library's side rooms, where Asgard's salvaged art treasures were kept. Lofn and her twin Sjofn, who were in charge of preservation, display, and upkeep, were both all too happy to educate you on what they were. Sjofn had just finished cleaning and labeling a collection of Nornheim knives, very similar to your own. You could see the shift in shape and handle style that had occurred over the years of war with Asgard.

They were all made of nornbein, with stone handles, though many of them had been engraved with the names of the Asgardians who had claimed them. Yours had not. In comparison, your knife, with its lance-like blade and cylindrical handle, was clearly from the latter period of Nornheim occupation, while the earlier knives were more leaf shaped, with flattened handles. You wondered how many hundreds of years those changes represented, with rock trolls carefully shaping the blades to their preference, and picking their favorite stones; blue and green, gray, violet, white, banded, and your own pink ruby, to carve into handles. Did the color and type mean anything to them, or had it just been personal preference?

These knives all represented Asgardian lineages which had died out, with no one left to inherit the blades. It was a sad collection to look at, as sad as where the knives had come from in the first place.

Lofn had templates from past Asgardian fashion designers, arranged on an enormous poster board, and carefully glued down flat. As you watched, she affixed strange little clip-like devices at all four corners, and at regular intervals along each side.

“They are useful storage and protective devices.” She explained. “We can make them from Midgardian materials too. You see, when activated, they form a protective field.” She tapped each of them in turn, and they lit up, covering the huge poster board in a very slight, almost imperceptible glow.

“It is protected now.” She announced. In a swift and startling movement, she grabbed one of the newly cataloged knives and stabbed the board with a ferocious growl. You jumped back, even as the blade bounced harmlessly off. She laughed as a glaring Sjofn snatched the knife back. “You see? It cannot be harmed. We protect our precious things in this way.”

“It has another use too.” She grasped the edges of the poster board and squeezed them together. To your amazement, the entire thing-easily as wide as you were tall-shrank to the size of a sheet of paper. “Look, do you see?”

She touched the field and it reacted like an electronic tablet, magnifying and moving across parts of the board, so you could see the details up close.

“You see, don't you? You see?” She asked.

Your gaze shifted, away from the fashion poster, away from the knife collection, to a work of art that had caught your attention earlier in the year. An artwork that wore the same preservation devices.

Ymir's Dreamscape.

“You see.” Lofn said.

#lasabrjotr #loki (marvel)#loki x reader

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britishassistant · 3 years

Text

When I Took You In (1)

(Snake Summoner Mayu AU, because I have no control over my brain.)

It is bitterly cold in the mountains.

Ikuchi should not be here. She should be nesting down in a warm cave, belly fat and full, sleeping til the spring.

But the summoner has commanded she undertake this mission. It is a task beneath the summoner’s dignity, but the client is willing to pay good coin for its completion.

Enter the samurai nest. Find the hatchling of the client’s kin. Kill it.

She had been selected for her pale scales, her small size, her venom.

The summoner had remarked these made her perfect for infiltrating the snowy mountains the nest was hidden in with a cruel smile.

Manda is all too willing to swallow even small snakes like her who refuse or question the summoner’s commands.

She does not wish to be eaten yet.

So she slithers through another snowdrift, desperately praying to the Sage that she won’t freeze before she even arrives.

She stopped being able to see a while ago.

Her tongue feels like it will snap clean off if she tastes the icy air too frequently.

Only the faintest sensation of vibrations keeps her from curling in on herself to preserve whatever smidgeon of warmth she has left.

Only that makes her push her frozen muscles to keep going, heading towards rather than away as her instincts feebly hiss.

Where there are vibrations, there are humans.

Where there are humans, there is heat.

She will not freeze if there is heat.

She will not die on this Sage-forsaken mountain. She will not.

She forces herself to crawl forwards.

Ikuchi is so so cold.

She stiffly twines herself up and around something not-alive, slithering cautiously over new terrain with tiny bumps in it.

There is no snow anymore, thank the Sage, but it is still so so cold.

She cannot even taste anything anymore.

Her head bumps into something else. She noses it carefully.

Not-alive. Safe to climb.

She sluggishly heaves herself up the not-alive thing.

There are faint vibrations coming from above her. She needs to get to the vibrations. She’ll die if she can’t get to them.

If she could just heave herself over the edge of this not-alive thing—

Heat.

Lovely, warm, delicious heat.

She twines eagerly around the source, burrowing her head under where it is hottest, letting out a hiss of contentment as the cold burns out of her blood.

Aaaah.

The heat source rises and falls rhythmically, a gentle thud-thud-thud vibration filling her senses.

She shuts her eyes and lets herself drift in the warmth.

She is jostled awake when the heat source lets out a snuffly noise and wriggles slightly before settling.

As the heat source has saved her from dying an ignoble death via cold, she graciously decides not to bite it to stop it from moving.

Instead she retracts her head from the warmest spot to get a good feel for what exactly her new warmth generator is.

Her tongue flickers out over soft, faintly downy skin, over small features that scrunch up at the inspection before smoothing back out in sleep.

It’s a human hatchling. A very young one at that, barely a few days out of the egg at her best guess. Or was it weeks for humans? Or maybe months?

Humans are strange, Ikuchi reflects.

They’re so vulnerable for so long early in life, it’s a miracle that any of them even survive to adulthood.

That’s probably why the adult humans that are running around are so hardy. The summoner is proof enough of that.

Though other adult humans calling for the deaths of hatchlings, like the client, probably don’t help survival rates much.

Wait.

The client.

The mission.

Ikuchi pokes her head over the edge of the hatchling’s resting place and tastes the air.

A bigger human, also asleep.

Stuffy cloth.

Tatami mats.

Sharp metal. Lots and lots of sharp metal.

She retreats back down and noses over the hatchling, searching its cloth coverings until she finds what she was hoping she wouldn’t.

A stylized bird with wings raised, its beak piercing its own breast to draw blood.

The symbol of the client and his kin. The kin whose hatchling she’s supposed to kill.

Well.

Hm.

She settles her head back down in the warmest spot, burrowing under where the hatchling’s head meets its body and tries to think.

It’s...regrettable that the hatchling is what saved her from an icy death. But she has a job to do. A mission to complete.

It’s not like she particularly wants to do it. No, no, if she had it her way, she’d gladly bite the summoner and the client for good measure. Teach them for sending her to die in the cold for worthless bits of round metal.

But she has to complete the mission. Manda will eat her for failing the summoner otherwise.

All it will take is one tiny little bite. The hatchling will only suffer for a few moments.

...Okay, more like several minutes. It’s not like it’s her fault the venom will take longer because the hatchling is so big. She’s not a constrictor!

She flicks her tongue out irritably.

One bite.

Just one bite is all it would take.

Then she could be back in the caves with her brothers and sisters and never have to think about warm hatchlings and their weak, pathetic, pitiful death throes ever again.

The hatchling above her makes a little cooing noise and shifts above her, covering more of her coils in warmth as it squirms.

It even considerately takes some of its weight off of where she was beginning to feel a bit squashed.

She finds it distinctly annoying that this tiny human she’s supposed to kill has done more for her than her own summoner.

At this rate, she’d rather throw her lot in with it instead of continuing to—

Wait.

She pokes her head up again, considering the hatchling.

...Below average chakra reserves. But those should increase as it grows, right?

And she could help guide its growth.

Make it a much better summoner than her current one, or even his student.

Perhaps most importantly, she knows the Great Snake Sage will not let Manda eat her if she is contracted to another summoner.

He had thrown a tantrum when the summoner’s student had turned on him, but the Sage had not let him eat those snakes contracted to the student. She will be safe from his wrath.

In the caves at least. If they meet on the field of battle, she’ll be fair game.

But even one safe haven from Manda is better than none.

The scroll is heavy and difficult to unravel for a snake her size.

Still, she gets it open and props it up against the wall of the hatchling’s resting place.

After ensuring that the right segment is where she needs it to be, she twists around to look at the tiny human,

The hatchling looks back at her.

Its dark grey eyes do not focus on her, moving with the restless blindness of the very young.

“I am Ikuchi of Ryuichi Cave.” She hisses softly. “By your blood on this contract, we will become bonded. Do you accept?”

The hatchling gurgles.

Close enough.

She carefully pricks the hatchling’s finger with her lower fangs.

It wouldn’t do to poison her summoner.

Not yet anyway.

The hatchling whines, wiggling weakly as if that would make the pain stop. Blood beads on the appendage, bright red and hot.

She coils her tail around the tiny, soft wrist, and guides it to drag against the blank space on the parchment.

A rush of chakra.

A sensation not unlike a successful shed, useless dead scales sloughing away for gleaming new ones to take their place.

Ikuchi hisses in pleasure.

Ah. Her summoner is crying.

Squalling really, red-faced and snotty-nosed, thoroughly miserable.

The bleeding on its hand hasn’t stopped. It looks like it might have gotten worse, actually.

Ikuchi racks her brain for what little she knows about human physiology and healing.

Did the bastard summoner say it was saliva or excrement that slowed bleeding?

A shadow falls over the resting place.

She coils back on the chest of her summoner, ready to strike at the intruder. Did the client already send another assassin, despite paying the bastard summoner? Was betrayal planned from the beginning?

The adult human above them has its teeth bared in threat, eyes furious yet frightened.

“Get the hell away from my daughter.” It snarls, drawing a short blade from its midsection.

What?

Oh.

It’s trying to defend its hatchling.

Ikuchi reluctantly slithers off of her summoner’s chest and does her best to look small and unassuming.

The human scoops up her summoner in a flash, one hand cradling its head while the other bares the blade, ready to strike at any moment. It’s an instinct she approves of, even if it is completely pointless in this particular instance.

She curls up in the warm spot her summoner left behind, and announces, “I intend no permanent harm to the hatchling. It is contracted to me, and in my best interests to protect it.”

The human’s face creases in confusion, before its eyes land on the contract scroll.

Color drains from its face.

Huh. Ikuchi hadn’t known humans other than the bastard summoner could look like that. Maybe it was indicative of an emotion the bastard summoner felt all the time.

“Jirou!” The adult human’s shout is nearing a scream, eyes never leaving Ikuchi for a moment. “Jirou, get in here right now!”

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millennial-star-gazer · 4 years

Text

The Draconic Demon Within: Chapter 4: A Demon’s All-Consuming Rage

The Draconic Demon Within

Genres: Romance, Friendship/Family, Drama/Angst, Hurt/ Comfort, & New Adult Fanfiction

Vera's April 2018 Prompts: Soul, Empyrean, Savage, Memory, Trust, Fear, Unstoppable , Resilient, Supernatural (Implied) Lost (Implied) and Loathing.

Nalu Lovefest 2017 Prompts: Dreams

Nalu Week 2019 Prompts (Implied:) Lost, Curse, Trial, Treasure, Chance and possibly Bare.

Pairing: Nalu/EndLu,( Natsu x Lucy/ E.N.D. x Lucy)

Rating: M for language, steamy and mature adult sexual content (all consensual) in these and future chapters. Reader Direction is advised.(You have been warned!)

Summary: Now faced with the reality of who he is truly is, the son of Igneel must contend with the new darker instincts of his new demonic identity- all while navigating through his ever-growing, intense feelings for a particular celestial wizard. Originally a Submission (semi -au) for Nalu lovefest 2017 (on my previous celestialgeekmage account and now an entry for nalu week 2019 with chapter 3. (Also was on my earliest previous accounts of teamedwardjace/Twishadowhunter in the past. Also part of Vera's April 2018 prompt challenge from fic-writers appreciation on cosmicdragonwizard).

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Chapter 4: A Demon's All- Consuming Rage

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A/N: Hey guys, it's your girl back again with another installment of TTDW! Fun fact: Being temporarily off work for a few weeks due to pandemic has provided some extra free time to edit and posta new chapter for this fic ( which is on account of the temporary closures of public institutions, and public spaces along with non-essential businesses/services in Ontario-the Canadian province I'm from). This isn't to suggest I'm not without fear or concern about the pandemic or potential effects on global infrastructure but at least I'm mostly coping as best as anyone can at this time. Hope you guys are all too. ( A bit more on this in the A/N at the end of this chapter .) Anyway, hope that this chapter and my other fanfics along with those from amazing writers can help you all while stuck at home. All right, that's pretty much my whole spiel for now. Without further ado, here's Chapter 4 of TTDW-Enjoy!

(Note: Scroll down past the read more button/cut for the designated legend menu and actual story content).

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Disclaimer: Fairytail does not belong to me, but to the most honourable Hiro-sensei instead, for whom without this work of love wouldn't be possible.

Read Previous Chapters of TDDW and on platforms here:

(Copy and paste the links into another window if need be)

A. Tumblr

Previous (Click Here:) (or here: https://millennial-star-gazer.tumblr.com/post/185917542578/the-draconic-demon-within-chapter-3)

Next (Coming Soon:)

B. Fanfiction (Click Here:) (or here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13113898/1/The-Draconic-Demon-Within-Reupload-from-cosmicdragonwizardaccounts)

C. A03 (Click Here:) (or here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17365061/chapters/40861307)

2. Ongoing Master Post Of All My Writing (Click Here:) (or here: https://millennial-star-gazer.tumblr.com/post/179665258923/master-fic-rec-post)

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Legend:

Italic: Song Lyrics/Quotes (or flashback dialogue)

Bold: First Person Thoughts

Bolded Italics: Empathized, stylized Word(s) or bloodthirsty fantasies

Bolded Italics (Within and Outside Bracket) including for author's side notes also known as (A/N:) within brackets (though none for side-notes in this chapter ).

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"Your body is full of rage.

Every sinew. It is easy to read.

You speak volumes with a clenched fist."

( Paolo Bacigalupi: The Drowned Cities)

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"Seriously? Luce's alive?

That…. I can't...

A wave of overjoyed relief was washing over Natsu from the spectacular news about his best friend still breathing.

"Hear that Luce?!" He sobbed, not bothering to wipe the moisture from his eyes." You're alive and gonna be okay— Thank God! Really... don't ... know what I'd do without ya…," Scarlet-red eyes remained focused/trained on the face on the motionless angel in his arms.

"Pretty sure the guild and the rest of the people we know would be just as devastated if they lost such an incredible person and wizard . Glad you're okay either way though." Natsu's hands were stroking sweat-plastered strands of Lucy's hair back from her eyes with delicate care .

Really glad she's still in fact alive and kicking…

In that very moment , it was as if the world had fallen away; leaving just the two of them. Nothing else seemed to matter then . Not cold-blooded enemies in the room, or the recent battle just moments before; Not even E.n.d's unnerving metamorphosis. Just a dragon-demon and his most precious star with those subtle breaths, the visible rise and fall of her chest that somehow escaped any kind of major notice before.

Words can't even describe how relieved I am . Digits combed through Lucy's blonde tresses from crown to tip in a physical display of tender affection.

Hmm... Lucy's hair feels really nice. Natsu couldn't help but marvel at texture of her beneath his fingertips .Don't think I've ever stopped to fully appreciate it before .

"Gotta say that your hair feels really nice, Luce." Natsu voiced this innermost thoughts aloud; though his words were coming in soft. ."Smells real amazin' too."

Damn was the appealing fragrance of jasmine with a hint of cyclamen flooding his senses beyond intoxicating."like jasmine and that other flower we saw once— cyclamen, I think. . You've been using a new scented shampoo again, I see. Not that I'm complainin'."

"Psh—Listen to me" Natsu tacked on with a rueful chuckle that was still a bit thick from all that weeping before. " Gettin' all sentimental and crap. Hell... stripper would never even let me live it down if he heard . Still be damn proud of you though just like I am for how well you handled yourself in battle. Why don't we tell him all about it once you're awake and we're out of here?. Bet he'd like that . Till then, the two of us just need to sit tight and figure out our next move, okay?"

Wait ...

The fire demon's hands continued their fond movements- only for blood to freeze in his veins when noticing an unsightly contusion on Lucy's forehead; accented by a small gash just above her brow.

When did this happen? I swear those injuries hadn't there been seconds before .. .

Crimson eyes scanned his best friend's battered frame for further damage in alarm . My God... Natsu's breath caught in his throat at the sight of that line of discolorations on her legs . Not to mention all those scratches along with the small gash peeking out through the tattered remains of Lucy's Star dress .

"Oh Luce..." He sighed, remorseful voice breaking on her name. "Can see that you're in pretty rough shape right now. I'm so sorry. Honestly don't know how or why you had a delayed reaction to all the damage. But this wouldn't have happened if I only had grabbed you and run or got your spirits to transport you to their world, Hell— Maybe we could've both escaped and I could've helped kept you safe while figuring out this new demon form means for us together. Anyways, time to put pressure on your wound."

A hand tore a loose piece of fabric to apply pressure on the hemorrhaging wound. "See? You'll be okay . Gonnal get ya' all fixed up and good as new in no time ."

Damn Luce stills looks like an angel to me, Natsu mused in reverent admiration . Even with those injuries...

"Ooh- how cute!" Jackal's dervisie voice cut through the other demon’s reverie; whose arms automatically protectively tightened around Lucy's frame out of fierce instinct-automatic without a second though. Not to mention those two pair of eyes he could sense that set him on edge."

"Aw Damn." Jackal broke in again with a gleeful taunt that bordered on sadistic."That poor,pretty girl of you is covered in ugly bruises and scratches, Dragneel."

That little ...

Natsu's head automatically snapped around to meet Jackal with a baleful snarl. Damn was that all that black rage roaring in his veins all too consuming.

"There's that growling again" Jackal cackled, clearly unfazed at by the alpha demon's bared canines ." Bared fangs and what not. Such a shame what happened to Blondie here , or is it? You really did a number on her, huh Tempester?"

"Huh," Tempester mused, bland disinterest colouring his tone."it seems I did . Kind of forgot that my curses can sometimes have o delayed side effects on people . Who knows? That pathetic wrench might even have internal bleeding.

"You goddamned bastard!" The flame- eater raged, fury boiling over. "Lucy ain't pathetic or some kind of toy to play with ... God.. All those injuries… are you fault and . I swear that You're both gonna pay for what you did to her!"

"Oh-You think so?" Jackal scoffed with let out another infantilizing laugh —beyond infuriating .

"Someone's rattled." Tempster pointed out, listless eyes trained on the stone-brick wall ahead. "Unfortunate."

"You don't say," Jackal deadpanned, with a disdainful roll of the eyes ."But Seriously Though , E.N.D, do you even hear yourself? .I mean getting all riled up over a human girl in that way —talk about pathetic. Sure said girl is extremely beautiful with a killer bod and feisty personality to boot—I'll give you that. But is she worth losing your cool over or fraternizing with? I don't think so and neither should you . God knows all that pent up rage and aggression would be far more suited for another cause. Not to mention, you'd better off without her life tainting your judgement and hindering your full potential as the most powerful of all etherious. So let's resolve this, shall we? Hand over the celestial wizard and I'll gladly dispose of her for you . Sound good?"

" 'Sound good?'Sound Good?!’ Are you kidding me?"!

Good God did those last words only serve to incense the snarling dragon further.

" There's no way in hell I'm gonna give Lucy up or let either of you touch her!"

"Come on Dragneel-be reasonable."

"No-rot in hell!"

"Oh honestly E.N.D.-"

"My name is Natsu!"

"Well okay then, Natsu— Just calm down ." Jackal's couldn't seem to resist reprimanding the fire demon; as if he were some errant child pitching a fit ."You're being ridiculous. Anyways, tell you what. I promise to make her death as qui-"

"Shut up!"

" Quick and mostly painless..."

"I said shut up!" En.d's voice rose to an ear-splitting roar that could've struck terror into the hearts of the gods themselves. "Try anything on her and I swear I'll kill you!"

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To Be Continued

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A/N: Well that's Chapter 4 folks- hope you enjoyed! Now a bit more about the pandemic situation in Ontario . Like many other provinces and countries around the world,, the government of Ontario has opted to shut down/ temporarily close non-essential services, businesses, public spaces and institutions to help curb the spread of the virus for a few weeks (or more) before spring break. Such institutions include all schools and childcare centres/ services in those settings which applies to the childcare company I'm currently employed with. You know on account of most of their centres and programs being based in public schools. (Independently-run Daycares also remain closed. And yes i'm a ECE by trade for any who were wondering or didn't already). Schools and child cares were tentatively scheduled to reopen after April 5th; though the closures have been extended for another month (according to Doug Ford (the premier/leader of Ontario). Not ideal but at least it gives me some extra time for me to work on things alongside my writing(i.e editing upcoming chapters for fics and WIPS). All right folks, that's all I have to say on that subject.

As usual, please feel free to let me know what you think by leaving a comment/review , through a reblog or by any other means. Be sure to check out the rest of my writing while staying tuned for future updates of my fics and new projects along the way! (Links above, in the navigation and in bio If on tumblr . Also on fanfiction.) Anyway, take care and stay safe! Ta ta for now!

#fairytail #ft fanfics #nalu #endlu #natsu x lucy #natsu dragneel #etherious natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #future lucy dragneel #the draconic demon within #my writing #millennial stargazer writes #millennial star gazer #please reblog

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thewhumperinwhite · 4 years

Text

Cafe Soulmates: Eye Trauma Edition

SO it occurred to me that with the timeline I set for Soulmate AU, Pax’s mark is a reference to the fact that they only have one eye, but the events that result in the loss of their eye (as detailed in A Vivid Memory) don’t actually have any reason to occur if they meet the boys before the Bad End of their relationship with Vic. So their mark is a reference to a thing that Doesn’t Actually Occur.

So I, you know, Fixed That.

This takes place a few months after Soulmate AU parts one and two, with references to events that happen immediately after part 2, which i’m keeping intentionally vague for now.

(also just cause there’s a very brief reference to it here and in the last one: part of the Lore is that soulmate marks fade to gray if the person they represent dies.)

TW for: EYE TRAUMA, referenced unhealthy relationship dynamics/abusive relationship/gaslighting, gore, betrayal; mild unhealthy thought patterns; vague references to a past suicide attempt.

@whumpitywhumpwhump @burtlederp @gottalovethemwriters

----

The objective of Pax’s trip back upstate to Vic’s lab is to get their stuff and say goodbye. And their soulmates’ guarded sympathy (Kent) and open horror (Sol) at Pax’s description of their relationship (with their boss, who is more than twice as old and three times as rich as they are) is still very fresh in their mind.

But... but it’s harder to remember in Vic’s actual presence. When they tell him they’re leaving, he takes it so well, gathers up the few things he ever let them actually leave at his house (they’ve always been his dirty little secret, that was the initial appeal of the whole thing), cups their face in his soft cold hand and tells them he’ll miss them, and it’s—suddenly it seems dumb that Sol and Kent were so worried about this, that Sol practically begged them not to come. Sol and Kent are—well, Pax loves them, obviously, and knows they want the best for them. But they’re also naïve babies who are probably—projecting their own trauma onto a perfectly safe illicit affair that Pax has under complete control.

So—because it’s in person, and Vic smiles and squeezes their hand, and they owe him after all the patience he had with them when they were young and embarrassing—when Vic says he wishes Pax could help him with one more thing, as a real goodbye, Pax doesn’t say no.

----

Sol is pacing, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been pacing but it must be for a long time because Kent is one of the most patient people he knows and even Kent is starting to get impatient with him.

“It’s just—It’s just a bad fucking idea,” he says, as his best attempt at a defense.

“I know,” Kent says.

“I mean, Jesus, they wouldn’t even tell us this guy’s name, how fucking shady is that? And they fucking worked for him.”

“I know,” Kent says.

“And they’re—they want us to think they’re so tough, they want us to think there’s nothing that can hurt them, but they’re not that much older than we are,” he says, taking a long drag that kills his third cigarette in ten minutes.

“I know,” Kent says, appearing suddenly in front of Sol and distracting him with a warm hand on his shoulder and then snatching the cigarette out of his mouth. “Sol,” Kent says, and searches Sol’s face with his big blue eyes, and then sighs. “Will you sit down, please? You’re making me dizzy.” And Kent steps back out of his space, taking Sol’s cigarette with him, which isn’t fair at all. Sol plops down on his shitty couch, running a hand roughly through his hair.

Kent stubs the cigarette carefully out on an ashtray Karine made in tenth grade art class—one of the few things Sol took with him when he left home, and probably the dumbest of them—and Sol literally isn’t even trying to be an asshole when he immediately pulls another one out of his pocket and lights it. He just needs something to do with his hands and his mouth.

Kent turns back, sees the lit cigarette in Sol’s mouth, draws back like an angry mother (Sol imagines, anyway; he doesn’t actually remember having one of those). Sol blinks at him. “What?” he says blankly around the cigarette.

“Jesus Christ, Sol,” Kent snaps, stomping forward, and this time he doesn’t bother with the cigarette dangling from Sol’s surprised parted lips, he dives straight for the pocket of Sol’s hoodie instead. “Give me your fucking lighter,” he snaps.

“What? No!” Sol shoves Kent’s hand away and Kent obligingly plants his knee next to Sol’s hip and climbs halfway in Sol’s lap, which is more than enough incentive for Sol not to give in easily. He leans back, more to keep from burning Kent with the end of his cigarette than anything else, and grabs the hand Kent is using to reach for his pocket to twine their fingers together and trap Kent’s hand against his chest. Kent uses his other hand to grab the lit cigarette and toss it behind him—it lands on the glass-top coffee table, so that should be fine—and his fingertips brush Sol’s lips, and then he twists that arm between them to reach for Sol’s pocket, grabbing hold of Sol’s lighter and darting his hand behind his back. Sol leans into him to reach for it, and Kent twists until Sol’s momentum tips him over backwards onto the couch, trapping his hand and Sol’s lighter underneath him, and Sol laughs, grateful for the transparent effort at a distraction, and swings his leg across Kent’s hips, happy enough to wrestle if that’s what Kent—

They both feel it at the same time.

The explosion of phantom pain in the whole right hemisphere of Sol’s face punches all the air out of him, his head dropping onto Kent’s chest, and he feels Kent gasp under him, hit with the same force—the pain is sharp, and burning, and not theirs.

Sol can’t move because horror has pulled all his muscles tight and he can’t relax them enough even to lift his head. Kent is equally still underneath him.

“Oh no,” Kent says, his voice all breath.

“Where are they,” Sol whispers, and he feels Kent force in a breath underneath him, hopes to god he’s getting something—Kent can feel shit Sol can’t even tell is there, and—and Pax is the best with directions, goddammit, but Sol will make it work, between the two of them they can—they can—

Kent sits up, pushing Sol off with one hand, gentle because he’s too distracted to use his full strength. His other hand is pressed hard over his right eye.

“They’re—they—fuck,” Kent croaks, holding a fistful of Sol’s hoodie like he needs it to stay upright. “I can’t—I can’t think, Sol, they’re hurt,” Kent says, his voice rising in growing panic.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” Sol asks him urgently, reaching for Kent’s shoulder to better see his face, and because he knows Kent panics less when you hold him tightly—and Kent’s got the best sense of the three of them, his feelings are more specific. Sol’s is already fading to nothing but a dull ache in his head, he knows it’s physical pain but beyond that it could be anything.

Kent lets Sol turn him, though the eye he isn’t covering is unfocused and he isn’t seeing Sol at all. “It’s bad,” Kent whispers, his voice soft and horrified. “Is this what it was like when you—?”

“Yes,” Sol says immediately, but Kent is staring at him now instead of through him, his eye widening in alarm, and while Sol watches Kent drops the hand he’s had pressed against his face and reaches out toward Sol and—pushes the collar of Sol’s hoodie open, his fingers brushing lightly where their shared mark sits above the collar of his undershirt—the mark they’ve both had since birth, Pax’s mark.

It’s a stylized image of an eye, with a sharp slash down the middle of it.

“Phone,” Kent says, and his eyes dart back up to Sol’s face, all trace of panic gone, replaced with a firm mouth and blazing eyes; Sol’s heart seizes painfully in his chest because it’s a very Pax expression. “Ping their phone. Even if they don’t have it with them it’s a start.” And then he’s on his feet, shrugging into the coat he’s been borrowing from Sol. “I’m gonna start asking the neighbors if one of them will let us use their car.”

“You what?” Sol says, scrambling to his feet. He’s lived in this apartment for three years, during which time he’s cultivated what he considers a very healthy don’t-tell-the-landlord-about-the-extra-people-living-in-my-apartment-and-I-won’t-tell-him-about-the-impenetrable-weed-fog-from-yours-Dave-from-317 relationship. He certainly doesn’t know any of them well enough to say “hey, yeah, sorry, another soulmate bleeding to death, can I borrow your car.”

“They like me. I watch General Hospital with Miriam in 309 when you’re at work. Ping their phone.”

And Kent whirls out of Sol’s apartment like he isn’t hiding from the cops. “What the fuck,” Sol mutters to himself.

Then he sees where the icon for Pax’s phone is. His second “what the fuck” is a lot louder.

----

Pax’s arm is shaking badly from the effort of pressing it against their eye, trying to stop the blood, and it still isn’t working, is still gushing between their fingers and running down their face. They barely feel the second hit, when the knife slides between their ribs, and then they dive for the gun, falling over and sliding in their own blood, and spin around, not trying to get up, and pull the trigger three times.

The dry click of the empty chamber is the loudest sound they’ve ever heard.

The security guard pulled to a stop when they pointed the gun, and now he grins and takes a step closer, so Pax whips the gun end over end at his head as hard as they can, and then they follow it, throwing themself at the arm holding the knife. They gun hits the guard’s forehead, hard, rocking him back, and Pax gets a good (blood-slick) grip on his arm, but they have to take their hand off their eye in the interest of getting ahold of the knife, and now the blood is fairly pouring down their face and hot and sticky down their neck and soaking into the collar of their shirt. The guard’s arm swings behind him with the force of their momentum and when he doesn’t immediately drop the knife they think fuck it and turn their head, open their mouth, and sink their teeth into his bicep, hard. The guard howls and his hand loosens around the knife enough that Pax can wrap their bloody fingers around the handle, they’re pulling it from his hand with a surge of desperate triumph and then the guard makes a fist with his other arm and slams it full force against Pax’s ruined right eye.

Pax screams. (A hundred miles away, Sol almost swerves off the road.)

They don’t lose their hold of the knife, but suddenly they’re on their back and the guard is standing above them, panting, clutching his arm below the shoulder where Pax bit him. His knuckles are dripping with Pax’s blood.

The door of the lab they’ve been fighting over slides open and Vic Michaelis is standing in the doorway. Pax feels the eye they still have well up immediately even though Vic isn’t a fighter, because Vic is a grown up and he’ll know what to do.

Vic looks at them on the floor, looks at the gun--the gun Vic gave them, which was empty, why would--that’s a big mistake to make if he knew there was security here, how could he even have--

“You idiot,” Vic says. “What the fuck is this?” He stomps into the room, headed straight for the guard, who—isn’t attacking. “What part of ‘no serioius damage’ was unclear to you?”

Pax stares up at Vic. Blood is pouring down their face but they can’t move, they are frozen completely solid.

“Oh, fuck you, man,” the guard says, annoyed. “Asshole fucking bit me. You didn’t pay me to catch a fucking weasel.”

This—isn’t happening. It isn’t—they—no. Pax scoots back, away from Vic and the guard, who are now standing next to each other, and not fighting, and both looking down at where they are sprawled on the floor. Vic’s face is—irritated, harried, and nothing deeper than that.

“Ugh,” Vic says, wrinkling his nose down at Pax. “Christ. What a mess.”

Pax stares at Vic. Thinks of his stillness while he listened to them tell him they were leaving and not coming back. Thinks of the way his face went blank before he smiled and told them he was happy. Thinks of the things in his lab, and how Pax decided years ago to pretend they didn’t know, and how they told themselves it was because they loved him, and how really it was because they were afraid.

Vic turns to the guard, maybe to give him instructions. The guard glares at him. Neither of them are looking at Pax, and the blood-covered knife is still in their hand.

There’s a part of them—the part made of wounded pride and hurt feelings, that thinks being known as a gullible child is worse than being dead—that would like to throw themselves at Vic Michaelis, bowl him over, stay until one of them is dead and either way they aren’t stuck as some dumbass easy-to-fuck-over sugar baby, and six months ago when there was nothing to lose except their pride they would have listened.

But they’ve got more to lose, now, and they can’t hurt themselves without also hurting other, better, more important people.

They throw the knife instead.

It spins end over end and buries itself in Vic’s sternum. It’s not a great wound, not lethal or even that inconvenient, probably, but it does buy them enough time to shoot to their feet and sprint for the door of the lab.

With their back turned they don’t know who fires the shot that clips their shoulder on the way out. But they’re pretty sure the guard didn’t have a gun.

In a different world, when Pax Field makes it out of the lab and into the surrounding woods and collapses against a tree to pant and press their hand over their eye and sob, as quietly as they can, sinking to the forest floor and shaking with the force of it, they are utterly, entirely alone. They cry for twenty minutes at the most and then they drag themselves up and stumble four miles to a payphone and call 911. It is the most alone they ever feel in a life characterized, at least at the start, entirely by loneliness.

In this world love is written across their chest and around their wrists in bold colors, and they curl up at the base of the tree and press their forehead into their knees and their hand over their ruined eye and think, as hard and as loud as they can, come find me. Come find me. Come find me.

---

The last thirty miles of the drive upstate hurtle by in tense silence. Sol grips the wheel at perfect ten-and-two with white knuckles; Kent doesn’t have a wheel to grip so he leans forward with his hands against the dashboard instead. The car belongs to Dave from 317, whose soulmark is on the back of his knee, gray as smoke, and who didn’t even wait for Kent to finish his plea before he handed the keys over.

There will be time for Sol to rethink his impressions of his neighbors later, maybe. Like there will be time to wonder what the fuck Pax’s phone is doing at his father’s house. Sometime after they get there and he stops his soulmate from dying, again.

When they’re still more than ten miles away from the house where Sol grew up, where Pax’s fucking sugar daddy apparently lives, which is math Sol is desperately keeping his brain from doing because there will be plenty of time to throw up after Pax isn’t dying, Kent suddenly lurches forward, hand shooting out to grip Sol’s shoulder almost painfully, and yells “Wait!”

Sol slams on the brakes without even consciously deciding to, and stares at Kent, almost panting.

“Turn here,” Kent says, indicating a tiny little turnoff half hidden in overgrown bushes and weeds.

“What?” Sol says, squinting into the darkness. “There’s nothing here, their phone—”

“It’s this way,” Kent says, leaning forward in his seat, eyes fixed on the darkness of that little trail like he can see into it. His hand is still on Sol’s shoulder, though he isn’t squeezing anymore; it seems more like he’s forgotten it’s there.

“Fuck,” Sol says, “fine, okay,” and he turns off the road, and then feels a hot line of pain rip through the top of Pax’s shoulder; the car fishtails badly and he only just manages to hit the brake again before it goes plows into a line of trees.

Sol hunches over the wheel, gasping. Kent’s hand is in a fist on Sol’s shoulder again, holding a handful of Sol’s hoodie like it’s a lifeline.

“Fucking drive,” Kent wails, and Sol wrestles the car back onto the little half-overgrown road and hits the gas hard.

Halfway down the road Kent flaps his hand, hitting Sol’s shoulder repeatedly like a little kid trying to get their parents’ attention. “Stop the car stop the car stop the car—”

And when Sol does Kent throws his door open almost before they’ve come to a stop and throws himself out into the dark woods.

“Fuck!” Sol yells, and stumbles out after him.

The moon is out, and this far from the city the stars are bright on Kent’s hair, and Sol thinks if Kent weren’t blonde he’d have lost him a dozen times over by now. The trees fly by; Kent’s hurtles through them at a dead sprint and Sol has to push himself hard to keep up, with no idea where there going, just trusting that Kent knows, and trusting Pax to hold together till they get there, and trusting himself to be any help at all when they do. Branches scratch at his face and grab at his jeans and his hoodie and he barely feels them at all, all his focus on the uneven ground under his feet and the blonde head bobbing along in front of him.

Kent stops so abruptly that Sol has to grab a passing tree to keep from tumbling right into him, and then he makes a horrible sound—a sharp cry that sounds like it’s been torn out of him—and stumbles forward again, falling to his knees in front of a dark shape that Sol can’t really see in the darkness.

Then the sky clears even more or Sol’s eyes adjust or soul magic intervenes because he can see that the shape is a person with a mess of pink hair, curled up at the base of a tree with their knees drawn up to their chest and their head bowed.

Then they look up and Sol draws back so fast he slips on the muddy ground and lands hard on his ass.

“Shit,” Kent says, his hands hovering over Pax’s blood-matted hair, the gory ruin of the right half of their face, their torn-open shoulder, like he wants to pull them close but is afraid to touch them. Sol scrambles towards them on his hands and knees to see better—their face is the hardest to look away from, the hand pressed over their eye is more red than brown, the blood running in half-dried rivulets down their arm; their black turtleneck is stiff and shiny with it.

Pax looks at them, sees them, incredibly; raises the hand not pressed to their face to grab a fistful of Kent’s shirt, and gurgles, “You came,” in a terrible wet voice.

Kent turns back to Sol, his face set and determined again. “We’ve got to get them to the car.”

Sol stares at him, feeling like a kid, feeling scared stupid. Then he muscles the fear down, swallows it and doesn’t let himself gag, squares his shoulders. “You can’t lift for shit,” he says, scooting closer. “I’ve got them.”

Pax hears him say it, and seems to sigh out all the tension that’s been keeping them upright, and immediately sags sideways; Sol catches them, exchanges a frightened look with Kent, and gathers them in, more carefully than he’s ever done anything. Pax is taller than he is, there’s no non-awkward way to do it, and he ends up lifting them onto his hip like a huge blood-covered baby, their long muscly legs wrapped around his waist, and Pax clings to him tightly, crossing their feet together behind his back and using the hand that isn’t holding their eye in their head to grab onto the back of Sol’s shirt and hold on, two-hundred pounds of dense muscle; and their shoulder-wound is easy to forget about in comparison to their face but Sol can immediately feel blood from it soaking into his hoodie and the adrenaline keeps him going, while Kent clears the way in front of him at a tense jog, warning him of roots he can’t see and sweeping branches out of his way.

They’ll have to pay Dave to get his car cleaned, Sol thinks, when he lowers Pax into the backseat. Kent climbs in with them and Pax leans against him, and then huffs out a shaky breath and climbs over into his lap, burying their face in his shoulder. Kent goes tense as a wire—presumably at the terrifying volume of tacky half-dry blood involved—and then visibly makes himself relax, digs in his pocket and tosses his phone towards where Sol is hovering just outside the car.

“Search for the nearest hospital,” he says tersely, and Sol is halfway through typing it in when Pax’s voice drifts outs, muffled by Kent’s shirt.

“…can’t go… hospital,” they mutter.

Sol stares at them. “You what?” he snaps.

Pax lifts their head to frown at Kent. Their hand is still pressed over their eye; their nose and Kent’s are almost touching. “We fucking. Kidnapped you. They’ll catch you. We can’t go to a hospital.”

Kent stares at Pax, somewhere between horrified and furious. “You—who cares? Pax, you’re fucking bleeding to death!”

Pax frowns. It’s a small car and there really isn’t room for them to sit up while they’re on Kent’s lap; they lean back against the front seatback, their knees braced on either side of Kent’s thighs. “So were you,” they say nonsensically, sounding almost defensive.

Sol can just barely see Kent’s embarrassed flush in the moonlight, and he turns his head away, so he’s not looking at Sol or Pax. “Yeah, and you made me go to the hospital,” he snaps.

Pax plucks at Kent’s shirt, the visible less-bloody half of their face softening, until Kent looks back at them.

“They’ll catch you,” Pax says softly, their visible eye big and sad while the other side of their face is utterly covered in blood.

Kent stares at them, still with that defensive-furious-alarmed look on his face.

“Clinic,” Sol says, almost to himself, and then grabs Kent’s sleeve in one hand and Pax’s in the other so they both turn to look at him, Pax rather unsteadily. “We passed a clinic on the way here.”

Kent’s frown deepens. “A local clinic won’t have the resources for—”

“And in the middle of the night a local clinic’ll have a much smaller staff for us to threaten or bribe if that’s what we have to do,” Sol says, trying to sound absolutely certain. He looks at Pax, who’s breathing hard but now almost smiling at him, and then at Kent, who very much isn’t.

“There’s still three of us,” Sol says to him, and Kent blinks, hard, like he wants to drop his gaze but can’t. “They’re not taking you away from me any more than they’re taking Pax.”

Pax sags sideways, halfway out of the car, until Sol catches them, which was apparently their intention; they bonk their head lightly against his shoulder. “Good. Good boy, Sol. Thanks.”

Sol shakes his head, loving them so much his stomach hurts, and pushes them back upright. “Okay, idiot. Then when we get you sewn back together you can explain why you didn’t tell me you were fucking my dad.”

“What,” says Kent. Pax sighs, and leans forward to hide their face in Kent’s shoulder again.

“Your dad’s an asshole,” they say, which is the opposite of the denial Sol was hoping for.

But there will be time to unpack that horrible mess later. Plenty of time, because none of them are going to die.

Sol climbs into the front seat of the borrowed car and guns the engine. He’s pretty sure he can remember the way back to the clinic whose sign they passed on the way here. And after that he’s pretty sure he can make them save Pax whether they want to or not. That’s about as far into the future as Sol can even try to see. But there’s still three of them, and really he doesn’t need anything more than that.

#soulmate au #cafe extras #whump #original whump #eye horror #betrayal #rescue #polyamorous soulmates #oc: pax #oc: kent #oc: sol #eye trauma tw #gore tw

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nomolosk · 4 years

Text

Nino gets his Miraculous- Royalty AU

Nino was understandably worried when he was unexpectedly called up before the King- after all, King Hawkmoth was not known for being particularly kind or cheerful. Usually people were only called before him when they had not lived up to expectation in some way. And his standards were high. Nino had honestly thought he was safe from notice by keeping a solidly average performance in a pack of other young men all training to be squires and eventually knights… but perhaps the King had noticed that he was capable of more and was trying to hide? After all, this pack of squires had the prince in it. He should have known the King would be paying more attention.

But as much as he wanted to berate himself, he took care not to show it as he bowed before the throne.

“You may rise, squire Lahiffe,” King Hawkmoth almost drawled, his voice smooth and expressionless. Despite his pounding heart, Nino noticed that it didn’t echo in the empty chamber. Unlike other courts they had studied, King Hawkmoth did not allow tapestries, hangings, banners or other decorations in the throne room which might muffle sound. Instead, the walls and floor were polished to a mirror finish, and Nino had expected every little sound to bounce endlessly around the chamber.

“It has come to my attention, squire, that you are the only one of your year that truly appreciates the Prince’s many responsibilities.”

Nino’s eyes widened despite himself, his mind going blank. He couldn’t tell if the King was mocking him or praising him. And how had he…? But the king was waiting for a response…

Nino decided to simply acknowledge the statement with a simple, “Sire.” He dared, just for a moment, to meet the king’s eye and blinked to see the barest hint of amusement there.

“Your family has long stood on the outer edges of the court, have they not? Seeing and being seen, but not participating in the intrigues, or seeking to court favor. One might question whether that was out of disinterest, a desire to escape politics, or… perhaps even a precursor to treason.”

Nino’s blood ran cold. Surely not. Surely the King knew his family was loyal!

“But I see I have distressed you. How unfortunate, that was not my intent.” The King’s voice warmed slightly and Nino could breathe again. “Yet there are whispers. There are always whispers, you know. Young though you are, you have been here long enough to hear some of them for yourself, no doubt. There is, of course, always a way to counter whispers if one has the resources… and the wit to use them.” The King paused and Nino felt his dread growing again.

“A month ago, soldiers intercepted a party of assassins attempting to cross the border. Two weeks ago, one of my champions chased down a wily fellow attempting to impersonate a royal guard. Three nights ago, in this very palace, one of the maids was found dead in a midden, and the killer wearing her clothes was caught on her way to ‘tidy the Prince’s rooms.’”

Nino couldn’t quite suppress a shudder. It was horrible to think of killers and kidnappers, though he knew he was training to confront those very kinds of people sometime in the future. Yet, he was still at the beginning of his training, and why the King was telling him this when he was fairly sure not even the Prince knew of it…

“I’m sure you can understand why I am concerned for the Prince’s life. I have made enemies and I- and by extension, my son - are their natural targets. It is a pity my enemies cannot see the logic behind my actions, but no matter. I can take care of myself, my miraculous grants me impenetrable armor with but a few spoken words. The same cannot be said of the Prince, despite his growing competence with weapons. He requires a bodyguard... but not just any bodyguard will do.”

The King drew out a small box from somewhere inside his royal robes. Nino stared as the King handed the box to one of the guards flanking the throne, and the guard brought the box over to Nino. Hesitantly, Nino reached out and took it.

It was square, made of carved silver that bore the butterfly crest of the kingdom. He didn’t open it, though his pulse once again pounded in his ears. He was nearly sure there was a miraculous of some kind in there, and… he wasn’t sure if he wanted the responsibility. Yet from the King’s earlier words refusing it might hold grave consequences for his family.

“This is the miraculous of the turtle, which grants the power of protection. It’s weapon is a shield and it’s special power is to summon a magical barrier capable of withstanding all ordinary and many magical attacks.” Nino looked up at the King, sure his dark skin had gone grey. “This is your chance to solidify your family’s standing in my kingdom, squire. Protect my son, and all shall go well with you, and by extension, them.” King Hawkmoth didn’t need to add what would happen if he failed.

Nino gulped. He slowly opened the box, relieved that his hand shook only a little. There was a bright flash of oddly greenish light, and then a small being floated in front of him. Nino didn’t flinch away. They had all studied the miraculous enough to know that their power came from a link to a magical creature known as a kwami, although no details were ever given on what those beings actually looked like. This thing was small and green, with a large bulbous head, and eyes that seemed to take up it’s entire face. There was a mouth but no sign of a nose, and though it had limbs, these were attenuated and had no digits. The body resembled that of some young creature, not yet matured, and on it’s back was a green turtle shell no larger than that of a walnut. From the top of it’s bald head there protruded some kind of flexible nub with a round tip. Nino gulped again, then looked back down at the box. Inside rested a bracelet with a single large charm- a stylized turtle shape carved of a greenish stone, perhaps jade- and the band was a simple strand of black cord bound in such a way it could be tightened or loosened easily.

Taking a deep breath, Nino took the bracelet out of the box, and placed it on his right wrist. Right, for loyalty. They had all been taught the etiquette for accepting a miraculous, and the name Nino would use from this day forward blossomed in his mind. Bowing deeply once more, he said, in a voice he strained to keep from shaking, “It is my honor to serve the King, the Prince, and the kingdom. I accept the charge laid upon me. Therefore, by your leave, Nino Lahiffe is no more, and in his place stands Carapace, wielder of the turtle miraculous.”

“The King and Court recognize you, Carapace. It is an honor, indeed, and your family shall be informed of it,” King Hawkmoth intoned, and Nino shivered at the hidden message. An honor can be taken away. Fail, and you will not be the only one to suffer. Nino was so focused on trying to control his own turbulent emotions that he almost missed it when the King gestured for his flanking guards to leave, waiting until the door had closed behind them before he continued.

“Your duties as bodyguard at this time will mainly involve being by the Prince’s side whenever he is out of his rooms. You should thus be able to complete your knights training alongside him. However, there is an added duty I must lay on your shoulders. My son is undergoing rigorous training aside from that of squire, or Heir. It requires that he isolate himself from others much of the time.”

King Hawkmoth shifted a little in his throne, and Nino- no, Carapace - refocused on him.

“I trust my son, as he is my flesh and blood and has given me no reason to suspect that he might stray from the path we have started him on together. However, young men are prone to certain weaknesses, and it is imperative that he not allow himself to be distracted from his goal. Therefore, your duty is to guard him not simply from the ill intent of others, but also from himself and his own desires. He should not allow himself to be ruled by pleasure, whether that pleasure is in the company of others, or other more physical pursuits. If you find that he is beginning to stray in these areas, you are to report directly to me.”

Ni- Carapace barely kept his mouth from dropping open. It… it sounded like the King was implying that the Prince shouldn’t have real friends, or even much of a life beyond this mysterious ‘training.’ He kept his opinion on that to himself and simply nodded, knowing both that it was not his place to comment, and that doing so would be a very bad idea.

“As for your kwami,” King Hawkmoth said, his voice chilling again, “I have already instructed it to give you the necessary information for it’s care. I would take what advice it may give you with a generous pinch of salt, however. Kwamis, as I have reason to know, are not the infallible creatures tales and superstition would have us believe them to be. They can and do make mistakes. Keep that in mind, young Carapace, and do not let your mind be swayed from what you know to be the best course.”

King Hawkmoth looked away from him then, giving his next order as if he had already lost interest in the kingdom’s newest miraculous bearer. It was a startling change from the cold intensity of his previous statement.

“Go now and meet with Captain Raincomprix of the royal guard. He will give you a temporary mask until one can be fitted to your face, and arrange for special instruction in guarding royalty. I have already ordered your things moved to new quarters connected to the Prince’s suite, for everyone’s convenience.”

Fortunately, Ni- Carapace’s- training came to his rescue as he bowed correctly and escaped from the King’s presence without disgracing himself, for his thoughts and feelings were only just beginning to settle. He didn’t even register his new kwami hiding itself in his doublet as he left.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #Royalty AU #A Kingdom Lost

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billyhargay · 5 years

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billy survives. he doesn’t want to just return home to neil- especially not after all that had happened. since the government wants everyone to be very hush-hush about starcourt, he's going to use their need for his silence to his advantage.

he starts to barter with the officials who are breathing down his neck for answers, saying he'll tell them all that he knows and what happened with him if in turn, he gets a new identity and a place to live. he wants the public, wants his father, to believe billy hargrove is dead, so he can take on a new name and a new identity to be as far away from neil as he can be.

the officials begrudgingly agree. once billy is released from the hospital to his new apartment, he's instructed to stay in for at least a few months to a year until everything completely calms down, and frankly he's bored as shit by the third week that rolls around. he's stuck on his own without much to do, but he thoroughly enjoys having the chance to sit in the living room for once and watch some shows on TV that pique his interest, even if he ends up flipping through the channels after a few minutes. plus, having his groceries and other necessities delivered to him every two weeks or so was a neat little addition- he just wished they'd give him some cigarettes.

once a month rolls by, he gets a call. he's allowed to have visitors now, and he wants to laugh at that because who the hell would want to visit him? the person on the line says they'll be informing at least one member of his immediate family, and his bitter amusement is cut short as he blanches at their words. would they be notifying his father of his whereabouts?

the call is over before he can ask, and billy sits the next few days in tense silence, ever awaiting for neil hargrove to barge into his new home, shattering what was supposed to be his long-sought safe place. he feels scared for the first time in a while.

then, one quiet, early morning, the doorbell buzzes. billy is awoken by it, and he drags himself out of bed to throw on a shirt, barely conscious until he takes the first step out of his room, a jolt of fear waking up him.

was neil at the door?

his blood runs cold, and he almost reverts back to the same terrified child he once was when his mother left. he feels the prickly sensation crawl up his stomach to his throat, can already feel the grip on his neck from the enraged man he once resided with.

billy continues to walk, footsteps silent even on wood, and he slowly, slowly unlocks his front door.

as it turns out, max stands in front of him instead, a tall woman in a pressed pantsuit hovering right behind her. she's holding a plastic bag in her hands and seems very tense, barely looking at billy when he opens the door enough to see them better.

billy can breathe again.

"max," he says, glancing at his younger sister before looking away just as she did. "didn't expect you to come."

max doesn't respond, she looks on the verge of tears. before billy could say anything more, the girl threw her arms around him, holding back her cries as her smaller frame trembles from the effort. billy's chest tightens and he places a hand on her back, unsure of how to react to her onslaught of feelings- feelings for him of all things.

they eventually make their way into the living room, and billy is...awkward. he and max barely talked to one another even before the byers house, and while the woman standing off to the side and keeping a close watch on them both didn't help, max being an open emotional mess was the weirdest thing for him. he's seen her cry a few times, sure, usually because of something he did, but this was different. her tears weren't due to fear or anger, they were happy. he could tell it was rather new to her too. she seems to have a hard time keeping a hold of herself even as she tries to talk to him normally.

"me and my friends all chipped in," max gestures to the bag she placed on the coffee table with shaking hands. "i mean, steve did most of it because he has- well, had a job. we thought you'd be bored since you have to be in hiding for a while."

reaching into the bag, she pulls out a box, stark white, stylized letters that read "VIDEO COMPUTER SYSTEM BY ATARI". billy can't decide whether to laugh or cry.

"these things cost a fuckton," he says instead, in utter awe that his sister and her brat friends and king steve all bought him a whole gaming system. "why not just keep it for yourself?"

max played with the tape on the box, it was obviously already opened, they apparently couldn't resist playing it themselves before having to give it away. "i prefer the arcade, it's easier to focus." she says, a sudden but very familiar distant look in her eyes that sends an icy stab through billy's veins. she was alone with his bastard old man.

moving forward, he lowers his voice down so only max could hear. "has he done anything?" he asks, worry clear in his features. max shakes her head, then shrugs.

"he's a lot quieter, but..." she tries to laugh, the sound coming out painfully forced. "you know how he is when he's pissed."

"max," billy speaks slower. "if he's hurt you..."

"no, no," max shakes her head again, more firmly, earnest. "he hasn't done anything like that to me or my mom."

billy leans back, watching max closely for any tell that she wasn't giving the whole truth. she seems to be relaxed, as relaxed as she could be at least. "if anything goes down, stay with the sinclairs."

max looks up at him and stares, shocked. "what-?"

"listen, i still don't like that kid." he cuts her off. "but out of all of your weirdo friends...his family seems the most normal."

max slowly nods, a pensive expression passing over before she returns to the original topic at hand, not wanting to further expand on anything else. "there's a few games already inside the box, you'll probably think they're lame, but it's something to do."

she offers the box and billy takes it to look it over himself. he's unable to stop the smile that creeps its way onto his face, even though it feels weird and ill-fitting. "didn't know my stepsister was such a dweeb, but i should've guessed it by who you hang out with."

max scoffs. "being a dweeb is more fun than being a loser like you." she jabs back, tone too playful for it to be a serious attack, and it makes billy laugh. the air clears up just a bit, but they still fall silent, unable to look at each other directly. they both knew they had the same thing in mind, to try out the game together- but the woman standing guard cleared her throat, bringing their attention to her before they could work up the courage to ask one another.

"maxine, it's time to go." she says, tapping her watch for emphasis as she attempts a warm smile that just came out too wide and too fake. max visibly slumps as she stands and shuffles her way over to the woman, billy hastily placing the game console to the side to make his way over to the door along with them. he stiffly opens it for the both of them, watching them both trek down the hallway away from his apartment, his chest feeling loose yet empty all at once as he realizes he has no idea when or if max will be able to visit again.

then, his sister stops in her tracks, her hands tightening into fists for a moment before she forces them back into a relaxed state, whirling around to finally face billy directly.

"thanks," she blurted out. "for...not being dead."

billy was caught off guard to say the least, and he felt a heavy pang hit his heart. "uh, yeah. thanks for the atari."

max gives a pressed smile, turning away for the final time and wiping at her face before rushing to join with the impatient woman who stopped just by the corner. billy waits until they disappear to close the door, taking a beat to redo all the locks, his vision blurring on the last latch.

thanks for not being dead. billy didn't know just how much he needed to hear that until that very moment.

#stranger things #billy hargrove #max mayfield #fic #mine #blease tumblr....post this correctly kdnsfknsdf #btw everything is lowercase bc its not a Serious fic thing #just like...ramble fic ?#yeah sdkfnksd #otherwise i would be more Proper

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 4 years

Text

so a smuggler walks into an orphan’s bar... - ONE-SHOT

When eight-year-old Rey's parents drink themselves to death, they leave her with nothing but a broken heart. Well, that and the only decent bar on the planet.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, Han Solo gets a bad feeling about dropping his son off for Jedi training and decides to take Ben under his wing instead.

Ten years later, a smuggler walks into an orphan's bar...

So um, I might’ve gone a little overboard for my last canon-divergence fic of the year/decade/pre-TRoS era. Here’s twelve thousand words of smuggler!Ben and bar owner!Rey slowly but surely working toward their happily ever after.

Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter or Ko-fi?

The first time Ben Solo stumbles upon Jakku, he is a man on the run.

With his mother furious about his first solo smuggling run and his father too scared to defend his life choices, he’s left with no choice but to stay away until the whole mess dies down. It’s a tried and true tactic for dealing with Leia Organa, passed down from one Solo man to another, and Ben knows in a week or two some galactic emergency or another will successfully divert his mother’s attention from his not-so-legal activities.

Until then, he just needs to lay low – maybe spend a few days visiting his uncle until he gets sick of Luke lamenting the lost opportunity to pass on all he knows to his own flesh and blood, then pop by Takodana to pay old Maz a visit until she traumatizes him with her musings on Chewie’s… attributes, and finally cap it all off with a nice few days in Canto Bight to scout out some new opportunities before returning home just in time for his mother’s birthday.

First things first, though: he needs fuel, and urgently. It’s not an ideal situation to be in when one happens to be in the middle of kriffing nowhere, drifting dangerously close to the Unknown Regions, but the Appenza’s navigation system offers him a ray of hope just before Ben starts cursing his luck: a tiny, desolate system with only one planet to its name, the infamous Jakku.

There are two things Ben knows about Jakku: one, that this is where the dying Empire made its last stand; and two, that that was the only thing of any importance that ever happened on and to the planet.

Well, make that three things: three, it’s about to refuel his ship and save his ass.

With no other viable options, he charts a course for the desert planet and soon finds himself landing near Niima Outpost, his best bet to refuel according to the HoloNet. His ship draws a few looks, new as it is, but Ben would take this scrutiny over all the trouble and danger he’d gotten himself into while flying the Falcon any day, every day.

It doesn’t take long to find the right people and strike the right deal; just ten minutes after making planetfall, Ben finds himself with a refueling ship and an hour to kill. There doesn’t seem to be much going on in this tiny ramshackle outpost, but a familiar flag catches his eye before he resigns himself to spending the next hour in his ship.

“It can’t be,” Ben mutters even as he chuckles under his breath and shakes his head in disbelief at the image of Maz Kanata so far from home. The flag bears an exact replica of the statue that welcomes all wayward travelers to her castle in Takodana, along with the name Maz’s Castle in stylized Basic. Why she would choose to set up a location here of all places is a mystery, but then again no one’s ever claimed to understand any of Maz’s choices.

He follows the flag to one of the very few solid-looking structures in the outpost, and a sign hanging above the double doors assures him that this is, indeed, a location of the popular galaxy-wide chain. Inside, the bar is smaller than most of the locations he’s been to, but the set-up is comfortingly familiar. He spots less than a handful of locals, easily identifiable by their worn-out and climate-appropriate clothing, along with a dozen or so traders and smugglers and passers-by scattered around the place. But none of them manage to capture – and hold – his attention the way the girl behind the bar does.

“Welcome to Maz’s!” she calls out with a grin, waving at him with the rag she’d been using to polish the bar. Hers is the first friendly face he’s seen since his arrival, and Ben can’t help but gravitate toward her, planting himself in the seat closest to where she stands. “Not often we get new faces around here,” the girl tells him as she sets down her rag, and something about the way she speaks doesn’t quite sit right with him until he realizes–

“Your accent,” Ben hears himself blurt out to his horror, and immediately shuts his mouth. “Shit, I’m sorry, I– I was just surprised to hear a Core World accent so far from home, that’s all.”

She laughs, and the sound is even more of a revelation than placing her accent, a little giggle all light and airy and brighter than the scorching Jakku sun. “It’s a long story,” she says as her laugh fades into a smile, and leaves it at that. “So, what can I get you?”

He’d reconsider his order if this were any other bar so far from the Core, but Ben can’t imagine any establishment of Maz’s without some top-shelf stuff, even one so far out in the Western Reaches. “Corellian whiskey please, if you’ve got it.”

The girl raises an eyebrow at him, but turns around to pluck a bottle off the shelf anyway. “Fancy,” she quips as she pours him a glass and Ben roots around his pockets. “You really are from the Core, aren’t you?”

“Chandrila,” he tells her as he slides a few credits across the bar, and accepts his drink with a murmured thanks as he takes a sip. “I’m Ben, by the way.”

“Rey,” she offers in return, and Ben can’t quite hide the way he smiles at how perfect her name is for her. It only grows wider when she says his name in that proper accent and cheery voice of hers. “So, Ben – like I said, it’s not often we get new faces around here. What brings you to Jakku?”

“Huh,” Ben says to buy himself some time, weighing exactly how much to reveal. Rey’s given him no reason to distrust her, but he’s spent far too long bearing the names Organa and Solo to just throw caution to the wind whenever he sees a pretty face. Never mind that her smile makes him want to do exactly that, that her laugh puts him at ease in a way nothing else can. “Really? Place like this, I figured just about everyone passes through.”

She scoffs, though her smile remains. “No one passes through Jakku, not unless you’re on a one-way trip to the Unknown Regions.”

Ben tilts his head. “Can’t imagine why,” he deadpans, looking at her with a completely straight face. “Seems like a charming place, if you ask me.”

Rey bursts into laughter – a proper, full laugh this time – and he takes in every single detail even as he joins her. She laughs with abandon, lips parted and head thrown back and eyes bright, and he can’t imagine a more beautiful sight. Her eyes are not quite brown and not quite green, a kaleidoscope of gold and olive shimmering in the sunlight pouring in from the windows on either end of the bar.

And in the Force… he closes his eyes for a brief moment, and feels nothing but warmth in the Force, set ablaze by her presence. She’s not quite Force-sensitive, not as far as he can tell, but her energy is so vibrant he’d easily believe otherwise.

That, above all else, convinces Ben to finally let his guard down. He’s no Jedi, but he knows the Force, has known it since the day he was born and will walk with it until the day he dies – and the Force has never led him astray.

“I’m on the run from my mother,” Ben says, and relishes the way Rey instantly rests her elbows on the bar and leans in closer, giving him her full attention. “She’s… let’s just say she doesn’t fully approve of my life choices.”

“So you are a smuggler,” Rey grins, sounding pleased with herself.

Ben, ever the victim of terrible timing, nearly chokes on his drink. “What– wait– how did you…?”

She reaches out as if to take his hand, only to stop herself at the last second and rest her hand next to his instead, almost but not quite touching. “Calm down,” she murmurs gently, though the proximity of their hands has the opposite effect. “You won’t get into any trouble for that here. It’s just– news spreads fast, here in Niima. News about a brand new ship and a well-dressed man who refuses to give out his name? That spreads even faster. But, like I said,” Rey shrugs, “there’s no trouble here, not unless you’re looking for it. We’ve got smugglers coming and going all the time – you leave us in peace, and so will we.”

His instincts, honed from nearly a decade with his father and Chewie, are at war with the Force. No smuggler is ever really safe anywhere, especially not a Solo, but… but if Rey says so…

“I thought you said you don’t get many new faces passing by,” Ben reminds her, relaxing despite himself as he downs the rest of his whiskey.

“Jakku’s not a particularly exciting place, not even for smugglers,” she tells him as she slowly inches her hand away. “We just get regulars, and even those are dwindling in numbers now that most everything from the big battle has been picked cleaned.”

It’s almost jarring, hearing her refer to the Battle of Jakku so casually; flying past the hollowed-out carcasses of downed Star Destroyers and AT-ATs on his way to the outpost had been equally surreal, after a childhood filled with history classes on the Empire’s doomed final stand.

“So you see why a new face around these parts has us all curious,” Rey continues, resting her chin in one hand as she looks at him. “Why Jakku, anyway? Core World smuggler like you, you could probably go anywhere else in the galaxy to wait out your mother’s wrath.”

Ben winces at the reminder, even though Rey had meant it teasingly. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there are surprisingly few places you can hide from your mother when she’s a senator like mine is. And anyway,” he hurriedly adds, hoping to gloss past that little bit of information, “I’m not actually here to stay. Just needed to refuel so that I can make the jump to my next destination.”

The smile on Rey’s face is gone now, as she shifts away from him just the slightest bit. It’s the senator thing, it has to be. Realistically, Ben knows not everyone is a huge fan of the New Republic, not even those who’d suffered the most under the Empire’s rule. Here on Jakku, one of the struggling planets the new government has been accused of forgetting and turning its back on… well, he really should’ve thought twice before mentioning his mother’s affiliation with the government.

In his haste to change the topic, Ben completely forgets his earlier blunder and takes it even further. “What about you? How’d a young lady from the Core end up bartending here in Jakku, anyway?”

He’s got to be the luckiest bastard in the galaxy, because thankfully Rey doesn’t react to his rude prying by throwing his drink in his face the way he’d been expecting. “I’m no lady,” she says instead, with a little laugh, “and I’m not just the bartender, for the record. You’re looking at the sole proprietor of the finest – all right, only – bar in the whole Jakku system.”

It’s adorable, the little note of pride that enters her voice and the way she straightens up a bit, the way she gestures at their surroundings with a little flourish. “Probably the youngest one too,” Ben adds, playing along. “You can’t be… what, more than twenty?”

Rey gives him a knowing look, but subtlety has never been a Solo trait anyway.

“Less than, actually,” she tells him anyway. “I’ll be nineteen soon.”

Ten years. She’s a whole ten years younger than him, and Ben can’t really bear to focus on that right now. “Wow, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” And then, after a moment’s consideration of that life and all the possibilities it holds and the vast nothingness that surrounds her in this desert, he adds, “Are you… are you planning to stay here? It’s just– like you said, things are dying down around this part of the galaxy, and if people stop visiting then… well…” he trails off with a shrug, coming to the belated realization that he’s being rude and invasive yet again.

It’s like something inside of him is clamoring for every single bit about her, of her, that he can get his hands on, for the opportunity to get to know her even though he’s set to leave in… less than an hour.

The reminder feels like ice running through his veins.

Rey seems oblivious to his internal panicking. “This is all I’ve ever known,” she says, as if that’s all there is to it.

“But–” A desperate idea occurs to him then. “But is it all you want? Because if you want more– if you want to leave…” Ben takes a deep breath, tries to play it cool. “I mean,” he says with a shrug, “I do happen to have a brand new ship waiting for me just outside.”

She smiles at him, but Ben’s heart drops because he’s seen that smile, he knows that smile, his mother might not have been around for much of his childhood but she’d been around just long enough to drill that smile and what it means when a woman flashes it at him into his head.

It’s a polite smile, it’s a thanks but no thanks smile, it’s a no means no, Ben, even if she can’t find the voice to say so to someone with your size and your name and your power smile.

“And you probably shouldn’t keep it waiting much longer,” Rey says softly, and after a moment’s hesitation she does reach for him this time, rests her small palm on top of his hand and gives it an almost apologetic pat. As far as consolation prizes go… well, he’ll take it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he turns his hand around to lace their fingers together, keeping his grip loose enough for Rey to pull her hand away at any time.

She gives him a little squeeze instead. “It was nice meeting you, Ben. Stay safe, yeah?”

“You’re acting as if we’ll never see each other again,” he says with a forced little laugh, trying to keep his voice light and teasing even as his heart grows heavy at the thought.

Rey shrugs, and takes her hand away, wraps it around herself instead. “You were never here to stay,” she reminds him, sounding almost… almost disappointed by the thought. “And no one comes back to Jakku. Can’t blame them, really,” Rey adds, throwing in a hollow laugh of her own.

And he knows she gave him the smile, knows and understands and respects what it means, but… but surely all of this – the hand-holding and the dim eyes and the hollow laugh – means something too.

The Force tells him it does, reminds him once again how warm and vibrant and familiar she feels to him. And because it’s never led him astray, because he desperately wants to believe in it, because Rey should be a stranger but stars, that couldn’t be further from the truth–

“Well, I guess I’ll be the first,” Ben says as he reluctantly gets up, and knows in that moment that nothing will keep him from fulfilling this promise. “I’ll see you soon, Rey.”

“See you soon, Ben,” she echoes weakly, with the mere ghost of a smile. She’s clearly not convinced, but there’s something in her eyes as she watches him walk away, something that he recognizes in himself.

Hope, Ben thinks as he walks back out into the desert, and prays it’ll be enough for the both of them until they meet again.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The second time Ben Solo lands on Jakku, he is a man on a mission.

News spreads fast, he remembers Rey telling him two weeks ago, remembers every single word and look and smile she shared with him. Still, he hurries over to the bar anyway, hoping to beat Jakku’s gossips to the punch and surprise her.

Judging by the look on her face when she glances up from the bar and sees him in her doorway, by the audible gasp that escapes her parted lips and the barely visible sheen of emotion in her eyes and the slight tremor in her hands as she sets down a glass, he’s somehow pulled it off.

“You came back,” Rey whispers as he comes to a stop just two feet away, separated by the bar between them.

“I came back,” Ben says with a nod as he slides into the seat he already thinks of as his, and rests his hands palms-up on the bar in a silent offering. Rey takes them in her own with a shaky smile, her touch warm and comforting and familiar even though it shouldn’t be.

In the past two weeks, he’s realized there are a lot of things about him and her and them that shouldn’t be – but over his dead body is he going to question any of them. Instead, he holds her hands until she pulls away, and watches her reach for the bottle of Corellian whiskey without prompting.

The bar is slightly busier today, with patrons calling Rey away from him more often than not. “They brought in a good haul this morning,” Rey tells him as she assembles another round for a band of scavengers in the far corner, “so it’s time to celebrate.”

“Good for them,” Ben says, though he wonders what exactly is left to qualify as a good haul in picked-apart wreckages older than him.

Rey smiles as she begins to load the drinks onto a tray. “And good for me,” she points out. “Between their endless celebrations and my favorite customer coming back for the good stuff, business is booming.”

It’s a good thing she heads off to deliver the drinks then, because Ben’s pretty sure she wouldn’t have believed him if he’d tried to dismiss the pink in his cheeks as sunburn.

Eventually, the scavengers grudgingly agree with Rey when she cuts them off after four rounds and suggests they keep their precious credits for more responsible uses. The place is left half empty after they leave, and a relieved Rey chooses to slump into the seat next to his rather than return to her spot behind the bar.

“Hello, stranger,” she grins as she moves her chair closer to his, playfully bumping his shoulder before she spins around in her chair so that she can keep an eye on the remaining patrons.

Ben takes a moment to adjust to the fact that she’s right next to him, closer than she’s ever been, and then turns around as well. This way, facing the door and the windows on either side of it, he can see the blinding Jakku sky slowly fade into a beautiful swirl of pinks and oranges as the sun begins its gradual descent.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Rey asks after a moment, and he turns to find her observing him with a little smile on her lips. “I know it isn’t much, this desert wasteland of ours, but even in a place like this… there’s beauty to be found, if you care to look.”

I wasn’t even looking when I found you, Ben thinks to himself, and nearly says so out loud.

Instead, he shrugs and smiles and says, “I guess it’s not so bad, after all.”

Rey laughs out loud, attracting curious looks from the handful of others surrounding them. “Oh no, it’s a hellhole, trust me. The view’s nice and all, but everything else?” She pauses for a moment, seems to weigh her words before she speaks again. “I wonder sometimes, what my life would’ve been like if I didn’t have the bar. I’ve seen how it is out there, how everyone else struggles day in and day out only to get the bare minimum, just enough to carry them through the next day of scavenging. I… I honestly don’t know if I could’ve made it through that,” she admits quietly.

Ben reaches for her hand without thought. “Rey… I probably don’t know enough about you for this to mean anything, but… I think you’re stronger than you know. I think there’s nothing out there you can’t do, if you put your mind to it.”

He doesn’t explain himself, can’t quite put into words how vivid and brilliant she is in the Force, but he doesn’t need to. Rey curls her hand around his, and her lips curve into a soft smile.

“And I think you’re probably the nicest person I’ve ever met,” she says, only to ruin the moment by adding, “Oh, except maybe Maz. Probably wouldn’t be alive without her, so I can’t forget good old Maz.”

Rey lets go of his hand and spins around, gestures for him to do the same before she points out a little statue of Maz sitting on the highest shelf of the bar. “Have you ever met her? They say all smugglers have, at some point or another.”

Ben can’t help but laugh. “Maz? I’ve known her my whole life,” he tells a stunned Rey. “No, really – she’s an old friend of my dad’s. And funny story, she’s actually why I decided to come check out this place the first time I was here. I saw the flag and I just had to drop by.”

“Small galaxy, I suppose,” Rey shrugs, her eyes dancing with mirth. “I’ll have to tell her about this the next time she drops by; you know she loves these little coincidences.”

“Coincidence, or fate?” Ben says before his brain can catch up to his heart, and instantly regrets it. He could play it off as a joke, could even spin it into something Maz would say, but… but it’s not a joke, not to him. Sure, Ben believes in coincidences – even with the Force flowing around and through every living being, sometimes things just… happen, and that’s that. But for him to have ended up in this system of all the stars in the galaxy, to have chosen Niima Outpost of all the settlements, to have caught a glimpse of Maz’s flag and then made the uncharacteristic decision to leave his ship unguarded in a strange place just to check it out…

He knows, with a certainty that his father would laugh at and his uncle would approve of, that nothing about him and Rey is coincidental. But maybe their second meeting isn’t the right time to tell her that, and so Ben settles for a change of topic instead. “How do you know Maz, anyway? I mean, apart from the obvious, of course.” He waves his hand around, gesturing vaguely at the establishment they’re in. “How’d you come to run and own the place?”

Somehow, Rey had seemed less unsettled by his suggestion of them being brought together by fate than she is by his seemingly innocuous question. He’s about to backtrack and tell her she doesn’t need to tell him anything she doesn’t want to when Rey lets out a little sigh and then squares her shoulders as if bracing herself for battle, fixing her eyes on the window beyond his shoulder as she begins to speak.

“When I was four, my parents heard that Maz was hiring, looking for people interested in exciting business opportunities. I guess there’s no business opportunity more exciting than running a bar for a couple of alcoholics,” she says casually, too casually, and throws in a bitter little laugh. “They got their shit together just long enough to pass the interview, and then uprooted our family from Coruscant and moved all the way here. And then… well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how that equation would work out, does it? Alcoholics surrounded by a free flow of alcohol every single minute of their lives.”

For some reason, it doesn’t quite surprise him that Rey’s an orphan. Maybe it’s just based on his perception of Jakku in general, and its reputation in the galaxy as the place where the lost and the lonely go when there is nowhere and no one left for them to call home. But her next words… her next words shake him to his core.

“I was eight, when it finally happened. And I… I didn’t even cry, Ben,” she whispers, her eyes finally meeting his with a glassy, faraway look. “I found my parents dead in a puddle of their own sick, and I didn’t even cry. I just… I knew it’d been coming, I suppose, so I just did what I had to do. I figured Maz would come eventually, if she realized something was wrong, so I boarded up the place and waited. And sure enough, she arrived a week later to find my parents barely hidden away in the shallow graves I’d dug out back and me surviving off bar snacks and water.”

Ben can’t help the way he flinches then, at the thought of little Rey trying her best to dig graves for her parents in the shifting sands of Jakku. He wants to hold her close and promise her nothing bad will ever happen to her again, he wants to rip apart the fabric of time and space to make sure nothing bad ever happened to her in the first place, he wants so badly to be able to do something, anything–

But Rey doesn’t seem to be in search of comfort. “I thought of leaving – I mean, I was just a child, I couldn’t fathom going on like this completely on my own, especially here of all places – but Maz stayed around long enough to set things up for me, arranged for people to come help and train and take care of me until I could take care of myself. And I’ve been running this place ever since,” she concludes with a shrug. “So um, to answer your question without the tragic backstory,” Rey adds with a touch of self-consciousness, dropping her gaze down to the bar top as she bites into her lower lip, “I inherited the place, plain and simple.”

That finally spurs him into action, the sight of her retreating from him. Ben reaches out for her hand, and waits until she turns to look at him to say, “You really are stronger than you know, Rey. Strongest person I’ve ever met, and I think my mother would kill me for saying that,” he adds in an attempt to lighten the mood.

It works, because Rey laughs and fully turns her body to him as she rests her elbow on the bar and uses her free hand to prop her head up. “You know, that’s only the second time you’ve mentioned your mother and I’m already terrified of her. Which senator are we talking about, here?”

And it’s stupid, it’s so, so stupid what he’s about to do, but how could he possibly lie to Rey after all she’s shared with him, after all she’s trusted him with? Ben takes a deep breath, and makes a choice.

“Have you heard about the senator from Chandrila?”

Rey lets go of his hand and nearly falls out of her chair as the arm holding her up fails her. “Shut up. Your mother is Leia Organa?”

In light of the obvious awe in her voice and her eyes, Ben is forced to reconsider his assessment of her political opinions from the last time he’d broached the subject. But if her reaction that day hadn’t been about the senate, then what…?

Before he can ponder it much further though, Rey’s punching his arm. “You’re Leia Organa and Han Solo’s son! You’re Luke Skywalker’s nephew!” she whisper-hisses, careful not to broadcast his identity to the rest of the bar. “Ben, you– you’re unbelievable! You let me think you were just some random guy!”

“I am just some random guy,” he insists, rubbing at his arm. Unsurprisingly for someone who’s had to fend for herself in the desert, Rey packs quite a punch. “My family are who they are, but that doesn’t mean or say anything about me. I’m not some war hero or Jedi knight or royalty–”

Rey, however, seems to think otherwise. “Oh my kriff, you’re a prince,” she gasps, though he appreciates the fact that she looks more irritated than starry-eyed by the realization.

“Only in name,” Ben tells her – and then, a thought occurs to him. A thought that is, as much as it pains him to say it, probably exactly the kind of thing his father would’ve come up with. “Though I do have a palace I can whisk you away to, if you want.”

To his eternal mortification, Rey does not laugh. She smiles, but just barely as she quietly notes, “That’s the second time you’ve offered to take me away.”

Ben gulps, and can only hope it was not audible. “No pressure,” he quickly assures her, not quite sure what to make of her reaction and the little smile that’s still playing on her lips. “Just, um… just letting you know that the offer still stands, if you ever change your mind.”

She’s quiet for the longest time, but the wait is worth it when Rey says, “Someday. Someday I’ll leave this place and go explore the galaxy, see for myself what oceans and forests and mountains look like.”

His heart aches for her, for the obvious longing in her voice and all the things she’s been deprived of and everything she deserves but isn’t ready for. “When you do…” Ben says softly, carefully. “I’ll be right by your side – if you want me to, that is, I’m not saying you’ll be stuck with me or that a ride off the planet comes with terms and conditions or–”

It’s worth the humiliation, the slight laugh Rey gives him as she reaches out and slowly, hesitantly curves her hand around his cheek. If he leans into her touch with a sigh… well, that’s between the two of them, and Rey has the good grace not to comment on it. “I’d like that,” she says instead, with a smile it physically hurts him not to kiss. “I’d like that very much.”

“Okay,” he whispers, his lips perhaps a touch too close to her hand, and they lapse into a warm, comfortable silence as the sun dips beneath the horizon. When it’s finally time for him to leave, to get back to his ship while he still has one, Rey stares at him with a look of intense concentration on her face until she suddenly throws herself into his arms and burrows into his chest.

“I’ll see you soon, Ben,” she murmurs against his racing heart, which skips a beat when he senses the hidden question in her tone.

“See you soon, Rey,” he promises, and leaves with the knowledge that this time, she believes him.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The third time Ben Solo visits Jakku, he is a man following his heart.

It’s barely been two weeks this time, but he can’t help himself. None of the jobs his father contacts him about seem worth his time, none of the sights he normally marvels at measure up to Rey, none of his family’s many properties across the galaxy feel like home anymore.

Jakku calls to him like a beacon, with Rey at the very heart of it all.

When he finally has her in his arms again, a part of Ben wishes he didn’t have to leave. It’s wishful thinking though, and he shoves the thought aside to focus on the present, on Rey and the way her eyes light up when she sees him again and the way her touches have grown bolder and more comfortable. The longer he stays, the harder it is to even consider leaving – and then, nature makes the decision for him.

Rey’s laughing as he regales her with the tale of a childhood dance lesson gone wrong, her setting aside clean glasses for the night and him stacking chairs up onto the tables, when they first hear it. Ben’s heard the wind wail before, but this is a shriek, a painful sound accompanied by the harsh grating of sand relentlessly battering the walls and windows of the bar.

“Oh no,” Rey says as she looks out the window into the darkened desert. “Ben, I think you’re stuck here for the night.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he teases even as he comes to stand next to her, their concerned faces reflected in the window. “Is the bar going to be okay?”

“It’s survived far worse,” she tells him with a shrug. “Your ship should be fine too; the storm doesn’t look too bad, just bad enough to keep everyone indoors.”

Ben casts a look around the empty bar. “I’ll be fine,” he assures Rey. “A blanket would be nice if you could spare one, but I’ve slept in worse.”

When he turns back to her, she’s looking at him with a barely suppressed smile. “Did you really think I was going to make you sleep here? On the floor?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure the bar’s not wide enough for me–”

“Ben,” Rey laughs with a shake of her head, and then reaches for his hand. “Come on, there’s plenty of room downstairs.”

He supposes it makes sense, building underground rather than upward in a place so susceptible to volatile winds, but Ben’s still a little too puzzled by the developments of the last five minutes to really pay attention or react as Rey leads him behind the bar and turns off the lights in the main area before she guides him down a staircase ordinarily kept out of view by the shelves.

“I turned my old room into a storeroom,” Rey tells him as the basement comes into view, a closed door ahead and another to their left. “And the cot was built for a child, so it’s not like you’d fit anyway.” He doesn’t quite realize what she’s getting at until she reaches for the door in front of them, and opens it to reveal a decently-sized room that has to be hers, clothes stacked in semi-neat piles on a threadbare couch and hardy little desert plants lining the walls and…

And one bed, just about big enough for two.

Rey shuts the door behind them. “’Fresher’s through there,” she says, letting go of his hand to point out a door next to her couch. “I’ve got an actual shower, so hopefully my humble abode will live up to your smuggler standards at least, if not your princely ones,” she adds teasingly.

Ben gives her a slight laugh as he curiously heads toward the ‘fresher and opens the door to find that she was serious about the shower. “How?” he asks in bewilderment as he twists a creaky knob that prompts water, actual water, to flow out of the showerhead. It’s nothing to brag about, not even by smuggler standards, but he imagines this has to be the height of luxury for a desert dweller.

“Not bad, is it?” Rey asks, coming to lean against the ‘fresher door with a smile. “What a lot of people don’t know is that this bar stands on the exact spot of Niima the Hutt’s original temple, and she spared no expense when she had that constructed. This is probably the only structure on all of Jakku with running water, courtesy of a pipe that runs deep into the planet, all the way down to whatever source of water’s left from before the Calamity.”

“I’m guessing Maz knew that when she decided to set up shop here?” Ben asks as they make their way out of the cramped ‘fresher and back into the daunting sight of her bedroom and its single bed. It’s not that he doesn’t welcome the opportunity to lie next to her, of course he does, but he doesn’t want Rey to feel like she has to invite him into her space.

But then again, he’d made it clear that he was perfectly content to stay upstairs and she’d been the one to bring him down here…

Rey turns her back to him and starts digging through her piles of clothing and sheets and towels. “Probably,” she says, carefully retrieving a small bundle of clothing from the precarious stacks. “I wish I had something for you to change into, but…”

Right. Clothes to change into, so that they can get to sleep. Together. In the same bed. “I, um,” Ben clears his throat. “I’ll be fine.”

“Right. Good,” Rey nods, suddenly bashful. “Do you mind if I shower first?”

“Go ahead,” he says, and waits until the ‘fresher door closes behind Rey before he closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and takes several deep breaths.

“She wouldn’t have volunteered if she wasn’t comfortable with this,” Ben reminds himself, and a cursory sweep of the Force reveals that Rey is comfortable, her presence warm and soothing and electrified by the slightest bit of excitement.

Sufficiently comforted, he makes it through the rest of the evening with little trouble. In fact, it’s all a little… domestic, Ben decides as he comes out of the ‘fresher to find the lights off and Rey already in bed, arranging two pillows next to each other and folding back the blanket on what he assumes is his side of the bed in invitation. She blinks at the sight of him stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, but invites him into bed with a pat on his pillow anyway. He switches off the light in the ‘fresher, plunging them into complete darkness, and waits until his eyesight has adjusted before crossing the room.

“It gets cold at night,” Rey explains as he holds up the blanket in a silent question, and promptly shuffles into his arms when he finally lies down next to her. “You’re much better than a blanket,” is all she offers up as explanation, along with a contented little sigh.

He takes that as permission to properly wrap his arms around her, and closes his eyes when Rey happily swings an arm around his waist in return. She’s so small and warm and soft in his arms, so comfortable and at home this way that he can’t help but relax into their shared embrace as well. Sleep is already beckoning when Rey suddenly whispers into the night.

“Ben?”

“Hmm?” he hums, lips brushing her forehead.

“The first time we met… why did you offer to take me off this planet, even back when we were complete strangers?” Rey asks, and suddenly every single part of him is wide awake and tense with nerves. He won’t, can’t lie to her, but there’s very little he can say to a woman he’s only met three times while holding her in his arms in her bed without scaring her off.

But first– “You’ve never felt like a stranger to me, not even that first day,” he admits, figuring that’s safe enough for now. “There’s just… there’s something about you, Rey.”

He can feel her smile against his chest. “I feel it too,” she murmurs, and presses a kiss to his neck.

And that’s when Ben begins to stammer. “I’m not… it’s just… I’m not saying you can’t look after yourself, I know you can, but… I was just worried, I guess. Is it safe for you here? And okay, I guess it is since you’ve been on your own since you were eight–” He cuts himself off with a wince then, wondering how his attempt to evade the true depth of his feelings for her had ended up with him reminding her of her painful loss.

For the first time in his life, Ben finds himself empathizing with the way his father always, always finds a way to make things worse when he tries to talk himself out of some mess with Ben’s mom.

Thankfully, Rey doesn’t pull away from him, doesn’t even tense up in his arms. “I wasn’t alone, not really,” she mumbles, lips warm against his skin. “I had Maz’s people, remember? They stayed with me for a bit, and then they’d come check up on me every once in a while. Besides, I wasn’t in any real danger. None of the locals would have hurt me, not back then.”

Ben shifts to get a proper look at Rey, careful not to jostle her in the process. “Why’s that?”

She lifts her head from his chest to return his gaze. “This is your third time here. Have you ever seen any kids around?”

He considers the question for a moment, runs through his brief time here on Jakku… and realizes that he has never seen anyone younger than Rey. “I… I never noticed.”

“Children are precious here,” she says. “Jakku is no place to raise a child, so barely anyone tries to. The kids we do have, we all take care of. So in a way, everyone you see here kind of played a part in raising me.”

It’s an odd concept, but one he’s certainly familiar with on a certain level. “They do say it takes a village,” Ben finally says.

“Especially when you don’t have parents,” Rey adds quietly, and it’s perhaps the first and only time he’s heard her actually sound forlorn by the fact.

His first instinct is to comfort her, and he rolls with it before he can overthink the execution. “Sometimes even when you do,” Ben says, and waits for Rey’s reaction to determine what comes next.

She turns on her stomach and props herself up with one hand, staring expectantly at him in the dark. Ben sighs and rolls onto his back, closing his eyes as he slowly gathers his thoughts and weaves them into words. “Turns out, growing up with a princess and a smuggler for parents isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be.”

He can’t believe he’s telling her his pitiful sob story about his parents when she grew up with none, but Rey reaches out and runs a hand through his hair and… and for the very first time, Ben feels like this story he’s kept close to his chest all his life might actually be worth sharing, and sharing with her.

“I’m not… I’m not saying they’re bad people. They’re amazing people, who’ve done amazing things, but… doing amazing things takes up a lot of time – time that normal people might have spent on comforting their kid after a nightmare or explaining the Force to him when he started lashing out or sticking around for a bit after dropping a bombshell revelation about his grandfather instead of running off to the senate to protect your reputation–”

Rey’s hand is still carding through his hair, soothing and grounding him before he can get lost in his own memories.

“They… they tried their best,” Ben says, more for his own benefit than Rey’s. “Eventually, my mother decided to send me to my uncle for training. She’s strong with the Force, always has been, but she’s spent her whole life trying to suppress it. So when my abilities started growing out of control, she thought maybe I needed Luke more than I needed her.”

She’d thought wrong, but Ben tries not to focus on that, on what could have been. “My dad… he agreed, at first. He still thinks all this Force stuff is mumbo-jumbo, but he just wanted the best for me. So I packed my things, said goodbye to my mom, and got on his ship. I don’t know if it was something in my eyes, or my voice, or maybe just paternal intuition kicking in eighteen years too late, but my dad, he just… he kept looking at me, and then just as we were about to arrive he turned the ship around. And then he said…” He turns to Rey, finds her hand in the darkness and allows himself a smile at the memory. “I’ll never forget it. He said Force mumbo-jumbo or not, you’re still my son. And I’m still your father, dammit, and it’s about time I start acting that way.”

Rey squeezes his hand, and smiles back at him as the hand in his hair slides down to cup his cheek. “And that’s how you became a smuggler instead of a Jedi?”

“And that’s how I became a smuggler instead of a Jedi,” Ben echoes with a nod, curling his free arm around her to pull her closer.

“Are you… are you happy?” she asks, still looking up at him. “With how life turned out?”

He shrugs. “If you’re asking if I’d rather be a smuggler or a Jedi, the answer is definitely, one hundred percent smuggler. I admire my uncle and all, but the life he lives, the life he’s chosen… it’s not for me,” Ben says, a realization he’s long since made his peace with. “Besides, growing up I always wanted to be a pilot just like my dad, and I guess this is about as close as it gets.”

Rey hums in acknowledgement, burrows closer to him to rest her head on his chest. “How about you?” he asks, resting their joined hands on her hip. “Are you happy with how your life turned out?”

She’s quiet for so long Ben begins to think that maybe she’s fallen asleep, or maybe she doesn’t want to answer the question. Just as he’s about to give up and close his eyes though, Rey speaks.

“I mean… most days, I’m okay with it,” she says, and he looks down to find her eyes open but fixed someplace else. “These days, I’m especially okay with it, now that… now that I’m not alone anymore.”

Ben holds her tighter, presses a kiss to her forehead. Rey sighs and looks up at him, gives him a smile. “I’ve got a better life than most people here, so at least there’s that. And… and really, this is all I’ve ever known, Ben. If I leave… when I leave… I won’t even know where to start.”

He pulls them both into a sitting position, looks her in the eyes when he promises, “I’ll be right there with you, every step of the way.”

Rey shuffles closer and reaches up, wraps her arms around his neck and slides her fingers into his hair. She looks at him, just… looks at him, for a short eternity. And then–

“I know,” Rey whispers, and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him like she can’t stop herself, like her life depends on it, like the floodgates have finally been opened and there will be no closing them ever again.

The storm rages for three days, but by the end of it Ben is sure they’ve barely gotten three hours of sleep combined. When they finally step out into the sun on the third day, they sport matching swollen lips and dark circles as Rey walks him to his ship, unashamedly strolling hand-in-hand with him in full view of the entire outpost.

When the Appenza finally comes into view, Ben can’t resist the urge to ask. Deep in his heart he already knows her answer, but everything else has changed, everything, so why not this?

“Sure you still don’t want to come with me?”

It comes as no surprise when Rey shakes her head with a small smile. “Not yet,” she whispers, but at least this time she softens the blow with a goodbye kiss.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The fourth, fifth, sixth, tenth, twentieth, thirtieth time Ben Solo comes back to Jakku, he is a man in love.

He starts taking jobs almost exclusively in the Western Reaches, so that he can visit more frequently and stay longer. After a while, her regulars don’t even blink at the sight of him behind the bar with her anymore, the two of them huddled close in near-constant conversation, almost always holding hands or brushing shoulders or trading playful kisses.

Rey’s bed becomes as familiar to him as his own, a little sanctuary where all their worries disappear. They share secrets under the cover of darkness, paint futures in the golden light of dawn, grasp at each other with all the desperation and want and joy of young lovers every spare moment in between.

Over bar snacks one afternoon, they laugh and bond over the fact that Maz had been the one to give both of them The Talk. In Rey’s case she’d simply had no one else to do it, and one day Maz just sat her down and told her everything there was to know before offering her a contraceptive implant. In Ben’s case, his mother had tasked his father with the responsibility, and his father had predictably pushed it to Chewie, and Chewie had promptly recruited the help of Maz.

Two months after their first kiss, a case of Jogan fruit on his ship opens up a whole new world of possibilities for Ben, and a whole new world period for Rey. He brings her fruit and flowers and all sorts of things she’s never had the chance to see or touch or taste, and tells her each time that her happiness is all the payment he needs. Well, a few kisses wouldn’t hurt either.

One morning, when Ben awakes with the sudden and terrifying realization that he’s overdue for a check-in with his mother as part of her very strict terms for allowing him to continue smuggling, Rey hands him an ancient, patched-together datapad and tells him the story of how she’d hacked into Unkar Plutt’s network one day just for fun, and continues to make use of the highly-encrypted channel for her own purposes.

Another day, when a sandstorm much like the one that had brought them together rolls in, Rey plops herself on top of him to keep him in bed, and asks him to tell her about everything that’s out there, every single world he’s ever visited. He tells her about the lakes of Naboo, the forests of Takodana, the beaches of Chandrila, even the lost mountains of Alderaan, and she promises him that someday, someday he’ll have the chance to show her all of it.

Eventually, her cajoling and pleading finally pay off and Ben acquiesces to a little after-hours display of his skills, using the Force to move bottles around on her shelf and even call some over to the bar, Rey asks him if he ever regrets it, not being a Jedi. And Ben… Ben tells her everything: about how brightly he’d burned even before he’d come into this world, about the tendrils of darkness that had started reaching for him then and hadn’t stopped until years later, about how ultimately love had been just what he’d needed to banish the voices once and for all, the love of his family and for his family. But love, he tells her, is not for the Jedi, not even in this new age – and what he holds in his heart, what he feels for her… he wouldn’t give it up for all the secrets of the Force, for all the power in the galaxy.

A few months later, nearly a standard year since they first met, he arrives to find Rey laughing her head off before she shoos a band of older women away. The people of Jakku, she tells him later, have a tendency to exaggerate; how else does one keep oneself entertained in the desert, after all? The latest story to take Niima Outpost by storm is the sordid tale of one Rey of Jakku and her revolving door of handsome, rich lovers, all of whom keep her business alive with their drink preferences and court her with priceless artifacts sourced from all over the galaxy and fall to their knees begging for her hand. It’s almost impressive, how much they got right aside from the lovers, plural bit.

“You are all there has ever been for me,” Rey assures him when he pretends to be put out by the thought, “and all there will ever be.”

And so life goes on around them while they settle into a new normal, parting every so often only to always, always come back together, finding love and acceptance and belonging with each other for the very first time in their lives.

Everything is perfect… until it almost isn’t.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The last time Ben Solo arrives on Jakku, he is a man trembling in concern and anger and fear.

He’s four days early for his next scheduled visit, but somehow still too late. By the time he makes planetfall, a full day has passed since the message first interrupted his monthly check-in call with Luke. His uncle had been blathering on as usual, something about an awakening in the Force, when the feed of Luke probably bragging about a new student had been briefly interrupted by a single word: HELP.

And somehow Ben had known, even before he’d traced the anonymous message back to Jakku and Plutt’s network, exactly who it had come from.

He’d made preparations to rush to Rey’s side immediately, but an unexpected run-in with the Kanjiklub had delayed him by entire hours until he’d finally given in to the swell of fear and anger inside him and knocked them all out with a pulse of dark energy.

That’s probably going to get him an earful from Luke but frankly, Ben doesn’t really give a single flying kriff right now. Right now, he’s trying not to let his fear cripple him as he lands in an eerily empty Niima Outpost. The streets are deserted and so is the marketplace, even though by now it should be filled with scavengers cleaning up their finds of the day and getting in line to present them to the revolting Crolute. Even more worrying is the absence of said Crolute and his thugs, and the sight of Plutt’s beloved concession stand torn apart and thoroughly emptied of his precious rations.

A rising wave of panic threatens to swallow him whole, until Ben forces himself to close his eyes and reach out.

What he finds nearly knocks him to the ground.

If Rey had been brilliant before, now she is blinding. Even with fear and anxiety and anger clouding her energy, her presence in the Force burns brighter than a star, blotting out everything and everyone else. And with this transformation comes an undeniable truth, one Ben cannot believe it’s taken him this long to realize.

“Rey,” he murmurs, and breaks into a run.

Ben, she whispers back, in some secret corner of his mind that less than a handful of people have ever been able to find, let alone reach.

Ben Ben Ben, she chants – cries – pleads in the space between them until he comes upon the bar, doors and windows completely boarded up. But Rey’s already moving, already prying blocks of wood and sheets of metal off the door with a raw strength that cannot possibly be just her own, until finally there’s nothing standing in between them, until finally she’s in his arms again.

“Are you okay?” Ben asks, hands roaming up and down to check for injury even as Rey clutches him tight and sobs into his chest. “Rey, sweetheart, I’m so sorry it took me so long, are you hurt, what happened, I’m here now, I’m here,” he babbles in relief, his and hers and theirs, inseparable in the Force.

She’s quiet in his arms except for the wet sound of sobs and harsh, ragged inhales, and he holds her until her tears run dry and her breathing returns to normal. “Help me,” Rey croaks, her first words in Force knows how long, and pulls away from him to begin the arduous process of boarding the door up again. It’s a flimsy layer of protection, one that won’t actually do anything, but if this is what she needs to feel safe then this is what he’ll do for her. Together they replace all the layers of wood and metal, and then create an additional barricade using every single chair and table in the bar.

When it’s done, Rey wordlessly takes his hand and leads him downstairs, and she doesn’t bother turning the lights on before she pulls him into bed and curls up in his arms, her exaggerated breaths the only sound in the darkness that curls around them.

In, out, in, out, in, out – and with every repetition, the beacon that is her energy in the Force pulses like a gentle heartbeat, dimming and then flaring back to life in the most extraordinary, beautiful light show Ben has ever seen. He’s content to just stay that way, to hold her and mimic her breathing and marvel at her presence, until Rey finally speaks.

“I killed him,” she whispers, her voice painfully raspy; it’s only then that he wonders when she last drank, when she last ate. “I killed all of them,” Rey adds, her voice thick with regret and pain and fear as hot tears drip down his chest.

“Shh,” Ben whispers soothingly, pulls her closer and starts to rock her the way he vaguely remembers his mother doing once, a long time ago. “Shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re safe now, I’m here, Rey, I’m here–”

“He– he–” It’s painful, the way she gasps for breath with each word, the way guilt threatens to snuff out her light. He can only hold her close and pray she’s as attuned to him in the Force as he is to her, pray she can feel all the comfort and love and protection he has to offer. Maybe, just maybe, it works, because soon enough Rey calms down enough to fill him in without sounding on the brink of a panic attack.

“It was Plutt,” she whispers, a loose fist curling into the front of his shirt for comfort. “He’d heard about all the gossip the others were spreading, all the lies about my new smuggler regulars and all the business I was getting and the expensive gifts I was hiding in my place. That kriffing blobfish got it into his head that he deserved a cut of my profits, so he rounded up his goons and stormed the place two days ago.”

She’s shaken by the memory, just as Ben is shaken by the timestamp. Two days ago, two whole days ago and she’s been alone ever since, while he was in Naboo with his mother and rolling his eyes at his uncle and wasting time with the karking Kanjiklub.

Rey pauses, burrows impossibly closer to him. “When the fight broke out… it was me against twelve of them. Even with my blaster, I could only take down so many of them before they outnumbered me. They… they knocked it out of my hands, and then Plutt reached out, for my neck, and…”

Just hearing about it makes his blood boil, makes his heart bleed. But Rey is here, he reminds himself, here and safe and alive in his arms, and she needs him to focus on the present, not the past.

“And then… he was choking on thin air. They all were.” Her voice sounds so small, so scared.

“The Force,” Ben finally murmurs, willing her to feel the way his presence curls around hers, the way his soul instinctively reaches out for hers.

Judging by her quiet acceptance, Rey had come to the realization on her own at some point in the last two days. “I never knew, never even thought…” she whispers, sounding half-awed and half-terrified. “But Ben, I… I killed them all. I’m… Maker, Ben, I’m a monster.”

“No.” His response is immediate and forceful as he pulls away and wills Rey to look at him. “No, never. Listen to me, Rey, listen–” he all but begs when she begins to shake her head in denial. “You were scared, and in danger, and the Force chose to come to you in that exact moment, sweetheart, chose to save you no matter the cost. That wasn’t you, no, it wasn’t–”

“I could feel them,” she chokes out, eyes clouding over with tears once more. “Ben, I could feel them slipping away and I didn’t– I didn’t stop, didn’t know how, didn’t want to–”

He leans down and presses their foreheads together, wills her to breathe with him until she stops shaking. "Listen to me,” Ben says sharply, leaving no room for argument. “You were in danger, you had no other choice, and you did nothing wrong. Those men deserved it, and you know that, Rey.”

She’s quiet for so long, and even with their newfound closeness he can’t tell what she’s feeling, refuses to barge into her mind to see what she’s thinking. He can only hold her until finally, she continues her story.

“I buried them,” Rey tells him, her voice eerily flat and detached and steady. “I buried them out back, right next to my parents, in even shallower graves. I locked up the bar and hid down here, but it wasn’t enough. That night I heard the ripper-raptors tear their bodies apart for meat and I thought… I thought to myself finally. Finally they were of some use to this kriffing desert.”

And for a moment, for the most fleeting of seconds, Ben can see how the blinding warmth of her light could easily turn into something else, something that sends a chill down his spine.

But he of all people knows better than to let those possibilities cloud his perception. “When was the last time you ate something?” Ben asks quietly, brushing those thoughts aside before Rey can sense them and focusing only on her warmth, her light.

“I’m fine,” she claims unconvincingly.

“Rey, please, let me–”

She curls her arms around him tighter, trapping him like a vise. “I’m fine. I just…” She softens, voice and grip both, and relaxes into him with a sigh. “I’m just so tired, Ben, I haven’t slept in days.”

He thinks of the boarded-up windows, of the barricade, of the tendrils of fear that continue to stain her Force signature.

“Hold me?” Rey asks, with a voice like the scared child she never got to be.

Ben kisses her forehead. “All night,” he promises, and stands guard over her while she drifts in and out of uneasy sleep and dark nightmares and the prison of her own mind. They spend the rest of the night in silence, save for a few soothing whispers on his part when he slowly draws her out of her nightmares, Rey feigning sleep even when she’s clearly awake and Ben letting her as he draws soothing circles into her back.

Eventually, the chrono mounted above the ‘fresher door displays a dimly-lit 0500, the only source of light in the room. The sun has risen in Jakku, and with it so has Rey, finally giving up her act to roll onto her back and stare at the ceiling instead.

“The second time Maz visited after… after my parents,” she says slowly, quietly, her voice scratchy in that intimate, first-thing-in-the-morning way he’s come to cherish, “I begged her to take me back to Takodana with her. I was so lonely, and sad, and scared, and I just… I wanted to not be all of those things, any of those things, anymore.”

It doesn’t matter how many times Rey talks about her childhood – his heart breaks for her every single time.

“And she said… she said she’d like nothing more in the entire universe, but it wasn’t my time to leave yet,” Rey tells him with a little scoff. “Worst thing to tell a child who’s desperate to get off a planet, but you know how Maz is. She wouldn’t change her mind, no matter how much I cried and begged. All she told me was that I’d know when it was time… and I’ve been waiting ever since.”

And finally, finally all of the pieces fall into place. “So that’s why every time I asked…”

Rey rolls onto her side to look at him. “It wasn’t time. I thought it was at first, I hoped it was. I mean, stars,” she breathes, the faintest hint of a laugh in her voice, and relief crashes into him like a tidal wave. “A handsome smuggler shows up out of the blue and offers to show me the galaxy? That’s the stuff holodramas are made of. But even then, even with you… it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like it was time yet.”

The words are out of his mouth before he’s even consciously aware of forming them, a desperate man’s attempt to hold onto the first sign of light at the end of the tunnel that has been this endless night. “Handsome, huh?”

Ben regrets them instantly, chides himself for making light of her confession and teasing her when she’s clearly not ready for it yet, when this isn’t the time for jokes–

But then, in the darkness his eyes adjusted to hours ago, he sees Rey roll her eyes at him and feels her little hand shove at his shoulder in retaliation. He smiles in relief, and slowly, ever so slowly, so does Rey, a soft little curve of her lips that shines brighter than the desert sunlight breaking through the horizon.

They stare at each other like that, two smiling people appreciating a rare moment of calm, until Ben gathers his thoughts and his nerve. “You said it wasn’t time then,” he says carefully. “What about now?”

Rey’s smile fades, but she slips one hand into his as she slowly considers her words. “Now something… now there’s this thing inside of me–”

“The Force,” Ben reminds her and him both, still marveling at the truth, still berating himself for not realizing it that very first day. No one, no one, burns that brightly in the Force without having the kind of connection to it that he has, that she has.

“Yeah, that,” Rey murmurs, sounding worlds away as she considers her new reality. “I feel… I feel like it’s telling me to leave, to get the hell away from Jakku and never look back.” She pauses, squeezes his hand before she looks up at him with a dozen questions in her eyes. “Can the Force do that?”

“The Force works in mysterious ways,” he tells her, echoing the same bantha fodder he’s been told his whole life and finally knows to be true. How else would he explain ending up on Jakku of all the planets in the galaxy, finding Rey of all the Force-sensitives in existence? He’s always suspected that the Force must have played some part in leading him to Rey all those months ago, but now there’s no denying it.

She laughs, and it’s not quite the sound he’s come to love but it’s close enough, Ben supposes, given the circumstances. “Maz used to say that all the time. Maker, I’d get so irritated at her.”

“Everyone says it,” Ben shrugs. “Trust me, it never gets any less irritating. But… but it’s true,” he reluctantly admits.

Rey hums in acknowledgement, and busies herself by smoothing out his crumpled shirt for a while until she’s ready to speak again. “Ben… Ben, what do I do?” she whispers, and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard her sound so helpless, doesn’t want her to ever feel this way again.

And for that to happen… there’s really only one way, isn’t there? For the very first time in his life, Ben regrets not taking his heritage seriously, not knowing enough to help Rey now. There’s only one person out there who can help her… and he’s probably already waiting, Ben realizes, finally connecting the dots between Rey’s incident and the awakening Luke had spoken of.

Slowly, reluctantly, he resigns himself to the idea. “Luke… Luke felt it, your awakening,” he tells Rey, the words heavy on his tongue and his heart. “He can help you. I can… I can take you to him.”

Her reaction is instantaneous, Rey tensing in his arms and then pulling herself away to stare down at him. “No,” she says firmly. “No, I don’t want to be a Jedi.”

He can’t deny the relief that brings him, can’t deny that he wants nothing more than to go along with her wishes. But Rey deserves a proper teacher, deserves someone who’ll know what to do with her brilliance rather than just blindly worship it the way he has since the day they met. “Sweetheart, just because it wasn’t for me–”

“No,” Rey insists, and kisses him all hard and desperate and bruising before he can go on. “After everything you’ve told me,” she pants harshly against his lips, “do you really think I could ever live that life? To give up everything, to give up you–” Her voice cracks, and a strangled sob follows.

Ben quickly pulls her back in, his heart overflowing with love and awe for this woman. “Okay,” he murmurs between soft kisses, “okay, we won’t go to Luke.”

That leaves him with approximately zero other ideas, but Rey seems to have one. “Take me with you,” she says suddenly, lips barely parted from his.

“What?” Ben asks a little too sharply as he rears back in shock, in surprise, in hope.

“Take me with you,” Rey repeats with a shrug. “You could teach me, right?”

He wants, more than anything in the galaxy, for that to be true. But… “Rey, I barely have any training myself, I wouldn’t even know where to start–”

She silences his doubts by reaching out to curve her hands around his face, her thumbs gently caressing his cheeks. “Ben. I don’t need training. I don’t want to be a Jedi, I just want to be in control. You know that much, right?”

And… he does. Ben might not know much, not as much as he would’ve had his father decided to drop him off at Luke’s that fateful day, but he does know enough to stay in control, to stay away from the darkness, to let love and light and life balance everything out.

Most of the time, anyway.

“Ben, take me with you,” Rey says for the third time, and whatever objections he’d had before disappear into thin air. “Unless…” she adds before he can say yes, pulling her hands away from him, “unless the offer is off the table?”

“No, never,” he rushes to assure her, reaching out to wrap his arms around her waist and keep her close. “I want you with me, Rey, always. But are you sure about this? About leaving, for good, with me?”

Rey has a whole collection of smiles for him, but one of his favorites might be the one she flashes him when she thinks he’s acting like the stupidest creature in all the galaxy. “Ben, my heart breaks every single time I have to watch you leave without me. Do you really think I’m going to put myself through that again now that I can finally get off this godforsaken rock?”

This is happening. This is really, finally, actually happening. “I’ll never leave you again,” he swears, and pulls her closer to scatter kisses everywhere his lips can reach as Rey laughs and squirms away from him. “Never again, Rey. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She reaches for his head and holds him still, pulls him in for a long, lingering kiss. “I love you too. So get me the hell off this planet and show me the galaxy, Ben Solo.”

And so he does.

It takes them a while to actually get out of bed and pack up Rey’s things and make all the necessary arrangements, but later that day, as the sun sets upon Jakku, a smuggler and an orphan walk out of a bar hand-in-hand… and they never come back.

. . .

Some years later, Luke Skywalker receives an invitation to the grand opening of a new Force academy, one that exists in between – or maybe outside of – the Jedi and Sith ways.

The invitation is signed by none other than Ben and Rey Solo, retired smugglers and galactic adventurers looking to finally settle down and build a home.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

Hello, friends! First things first: if you made it through all 12000+ words of this, I wish I could give you an actual cookie or some other prize because that's amazing, thank you for sticking around! This ended up being twice the projected word count and took double the amount of time allotted to write, but it's the first time in a long time that I got completely sucked into a story and wrote for hours on end in some sort of feverish need to delve deeper and get to know these characters better, so I hope that translated into the final product.

Next up, I'll be working on a much fluffier (and hopefully shorter!) one-shot to lighten things up before we head into TRoS. I'll see you soon! Until then: thanks as always for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and please don't hesitate to like/reblog/leave a comment!

#reylo #reyben #rey/kylo ren #rey/ben solo #kylo ren/rey #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #my fics #fic: smuggler bar #fic archive

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quietbtsing · 5 years

Text

Stained - P1 (M)

Pairing: vampire!OT7 x idol!Reader

Genre: Supernatural Romance (fluff, angst, dark themes, idol!au, vampire!au, poly!bts)

Warnings: Blood, soft gore (barely), wounds, blood drinking

Word count: 8k+

Summary: Today is your debut as Big Hit Entertainment's first (completely solo) female idol, and the day has more in store for you than just dealing with the stress of the beginning of your career. With BTS's 'Love Yourself: Speak Yourself' World Tour ending, your manager couldn't have set up your debut at a better time. With a party held at Big Hit Headquarters that night in your honor, you're expected to play the part of a perfect idol despite your anxieties.What will happen when a few members of BTS unexpectedly run into you on the day of your debut? You never expected to meet any of your seniors, not like this. Not covered in blood.A Vampire!BTS and Idol!Reader AU mashup where you, the reader, are throw into the stress of being a brand new idol just months after TXT's debut as well as the stress of slowly finding out your Bangtan seniors are vampires!

AO3 Link: here

Authors note: This is my first fanfiction I’ve ever posted to the internet as well as my first BTS fanfiction. Its a bit self indulgent but I’m hoping others like it!

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You stare at the 75 inch screen television in front of you, spine straight and breath caught in your throat. Sweat pooled between your palms, your hands clutched tightly together in your lap. Every fiber of your being was wired, anxious. Today was the biggest and most important day of your career so far: your debut.

Even though you had seen plenty of your own choreography practices and recordings of you in the studio, nothing surmounted to the feeling of watching your first ever fully edited and stylized music video. All of your hard work through idol training, all of the hours spent recording main and backup vocals, all of the days you locked yourself away in a dance studio practicing for the music video until you were spent -- it was all finally paying off.

Although you weren’t the first solo artist to debut with Big Hit Entertainment, you were the first solo female in a company completely domineered by male idols (that was signing on solely with Big Hit). It was intimidating to you to say the least, especially since Big Hit’s biggest success and golden boys were finishing their Love Yourself: Speak Yourself world tour. Just like with TXT, your managers at Big Hit expected your debut to take off immeasurably well due the army of a fan-base that your seniors had. You hoped that factor of your exposure would only be a precursor to your own fans who could connect with your passion in music, and not just with your association to the one and only Bangtan Sonyeondan.

“A sure-fire hit,” your manager says with a smile as she reaches across the table to give you a hearty pat on the back. A chorus of agreement flutters around you from your seat at the head of the table as the rest of your production team watches the live feed with you. Despite the unanimous agreement that your debut song is as perfect as it can be, you find yourself critiquing the little things: the runs that accompany your chorus, the dance moves that may have been playing it a little safe, even your final hair and makeup choice for some of the scenes of the music video.

Your manager seems to catch on to your analyzing, her smile quickly fading. She scoots her rolling chair around the edge of the table to lean in close, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder. “Quit furrowing your brow, Y/N. It is wonderful, you look and sound wonderful. I promise you.”

“I appreciate you saying that,” you mumble, doing your best to relax your eyebrows and unknot your hands. You wipe the sweat of your palms off on your leggings, turning your attention from the screen to your manager’s worried face. “I just know I’m in such a large shadow.”

She seems to agree with you on that, nodding her head softly and giving your shoulder a squeeze. “It’s true,” her voice is still soft, nurturing like always. “But I’ve seen what you are capable of. I wouldn’t worry about that shadow for too long, you’re bright enough to cast away any darkness.”

You give her an earnest smile, probably your first one all week. She always knew the right thing to say to brush away your self doubt, even if only for a moment.

Turning your attention back to the television screen, you watched your music video come to an end. The Korean television station you were tuned to faded out and into a commercial and the room erupted in applause, not only for your debut but in turn for all of the team’s hard work in producing the video. You kept your earnest smile and clapped along too. Even if your own self doubt was constantly in the back of your mind, you knew how hard the production team at Big Hit worked for and with you. At the very least they deserved the applause.

With a final pat on your shoulder, your manager stood and hurried to the television to mute it. She stood in front of the wide screen and waved her hands up and down, shushing the crowded meeting room. “Thank you so much everyone for joining me and Y/N this afternoon to watch her live television debut. I’ll save my big, sappy speech for this evening’s festivities but I wanted to thank you all truly, from the bottom of my heart, for all of your hard work.”

After her short monologue, your manager gave a small bow and the room erupted once more with congratulations. At this you stood yourself and beamed at everyone, giving your own small bow of thanks. Your manager had promised you she would do most of the talking throughout the day, and you were eternally grateful. You were incredibly anxious in front others when it came to your work, and because of your manager’s warm personality, most people did not seem to mind that you mostly stayed quiet.

Tonight would be different though. You were expected to give a speech, as well as preform your debut single.

Pushing aside such nauseating thoughts, you spent the rest of the time in the meeting room delivering personal thanks at the door with your manager as everyone left to finish their work or prepare for the festivities that were planned for that night. Thankfully, it went fairly quickly and you were allowed to disappear to your personal studio until it was time for hair and makeup for your Big Hit debut party.

Your studio was on the same floor as the other idols’ studios, though you rarely ever saw anyone. With the TXT boys spending so much of their free time finishing up their schooling and the members of Bangtan gone abroad for their tour, you have had the floor almost to yourself for many months. Today was no different as you found yourself exiting the elevator and rounding the empty halls to your studio. It was on the opposite end of the floor as the Bangtan boys and just past the members of TXT, with Huening Kai being your neighbor. You eased past his door to yours, reminiscing briefly on the English lessons he crafted for you that now sat untouched at the bottom of your desk drawer. Without Kai here to encourage you (or rather, help you through the grammar and vocabulary), you had let your studying slack in place of your long hours in the dance studios.

You would pick up learning English again. At some point.

Punching in your access code and clicking open the frosted glass door to your small studio, you kicked off your shoes immediately on entering. You’d be stuck in heels the rest of the night so you might as well experience the bliss that is being flat-footed while you could. Your shoes slid under your sofa-turned-bed and you readily threw yourself at it, collapsing amongst the multitude of pillows and fuzzy blankets that coated your black leather couch.

Your studio was an absolute mess. With the couch being a makeshift bed and the floor being your makeshift closet, it was incredibly cramped and cluttered. You were given the option to stay in a hotel while your dormitory was renovated and set up for you, but you couldn’t bring yourself to accept such an offer. The thought of your living space being essentially invaded by cleaning staff daily was too much for your private heart to handle, not to mention being surrounded by strangers in the rooms around you. You’d much rather stay as you are: cramped, alone, and at peace in your small studio.

Digging around in the blankets and pillows that encompassed you on your sofa-bed, you quickly found and followed the charging cord that lead to your cellphone. Tapping it to life you sighed as you read the time. It was half past three, which meant that you only had about two hours before you were expected downstairs in the salon to get your hair styled and makeup applied. Scrolling through your social media feeds, careful to avoid any commentary on your debuted music video, you debated whether or not to nap until it was time to get ready.

But without much more thought and only a bit more scrolling a small wave of exhaustion caught you, tugging you quickly into a snooze with your phone still in hand.

6:09.

That was the time that read on your phone when the vibrations against your face finally woke you up. It was your manager’s seventh missed call that finally stirred you from an apparently well-needed nap, and her eighth call that caused you to tear out of your studio so fast that you didn’t bother with shoes or locking the door.

“Y/N? Where are you? Hair and makeup was scheduled for almost forty minutes ago!”

Your manager’s warm and cheerful voice was obviously strained, and your heart ached at the sound.

“Iamsosorryohmygod,” you slurred out as you skidded around a corner of the studio floor, sprinting your way towards the elevators with phone glued to your ear. “I fell asleep without setting an alarm, I am on my way I promise!”

The phone call ended with her tutting you for your mistake as you reached the elevator doors, nearly sliding past them on the marble floors in your socks. Letting out a loud and exasperated groan, you shoved your phone into the band of your leggings and pushed the down button on the keypad. Almost instantly the doors slid open, much to your delight. The elevator must have remained on the floor. Swallowing the next stressed groan that tempted to rear its head, you quickly jumped into the elevator.

And face-first into someone’s chest.

You recoiled almost instantly, hands flying up to clutch your nose as the other person flung themselves backwards against the wall of the elevator clearly startled. Both of you let out a string of words akin to ‘what the fuck’ and you backed out of the elevator, raising your now watering eyes to whomever you’ve just assaulted with your face.

“Iamsosor-” you start to spit out again from behind your hands but the face that stares back at you with similar sympathy catches you off guard, and your words lose themselves.

“Y-Yoongi sunbaenim?”

You stared up in awe at the grey-haired Bangtan member, your tear-filled eyes meeting his surprised ones briefly before you ducked your head into an apologetic bow.

“I am so sorry,” you repeated slower, head still angled down and hands still clasped over your nose and mouth. “I did not expect anyone to be on the floor and I just kind of sprinted into the elevator without thinking.”

After a few beats without hearing a reply, you lifted your head curiously, your eyes still watering from the pain of having your nose bashed into someone’s collarbone. It was in fact Min Yoongi, member of BTS’s rap line and one of your seniors at Big Hit, and his eyes were fixated on your hands.

“Your nose..” he mumbles, back still pressed to the elevator wall, his hands curled into small fists at his side.

You cocked your head to the side instinctively, a trademark of your confusion, and are instantly met with a terrible throb from your skull. You pull your hands away from your face and grimace, the smell and taste finally hitting you -- you had busted open your nose. And you were bleeding profusely.

“Oh shit,” you gasp, moving your hands back to your face in an attempt to slow the flow now trickling down your chin and to your shirt. You quickly discover that isn’t going to do any good and wipe your hands down your shirt, thankful that it is black, before flipping it up to press the fabric of the hem to your nose. That should work a little better.

Ready to try and laugh off what had just transpired as well as the pain, you turn your attention back to the elevator only to see the doors sliding closed. You can barely see him as the doors slide to a close, but Yoongi looks absolutely disgusted. Your stomach flips a little, suddenly riddled with guilt.

That wasn’t how you expected your first meeting would go. At all.

It takes you another twenty minutes to get down several flights of stairs and make a quick stop into a bathroom before you find yourself in the salon, nose still running slightly and your face an absolute bloody wreck. You’re an hour past when your hair and makeup appointment was and the air in the room absolutely bleeds annoyance.

Once you push through the doors you are met with multiple cold stares from the hair and makeup team, as well as a frustrated look from your manager who was sitting at one of the styling chairs. You assume she was about to call you again, but once you are fully in the room and just a slight bit closer, the atmosphere in the room changes drastically.

Your manager drops her phone on the makeup counter in front of her and rushes to your side, quickly assessing the damage to your face while running her hands all over the air in front of you, as if she’s afraid by touching you she’ll make it worse.

“Oh my god, Y/N. How in the hell did you break your nose? I thought you said you were napping!” She barraged, her previously annoyed tone replaced with an incredibly worried and motherly demeanor. You’re quick to jump back a little at her waving hands, your face throbbing enough that even a gust of air sends immense pain through your skull.

“I know, I know,” you sigh, doing your best to step around her and towards the styling chair that you assume is where you’ll be prepared. Your usual makeup artist is there and instead of holding any form of brush or sponge, she’s now holding a wet washcloth and a very worried look. Your manager doesn’t stop you from taking your seat, but she’s absolutely glued to your side with her face scrunched in distress.

“Don’t just sigh at me,” she scolds, furrowing her brows at the same time she crosses her arms beside you. “Tell me what happened while your MUA here attempts to clean you up.”

You gift your artist your most apologetic look you can muster, which you imagine looks terribly pitiful with your current state. You can’t bring yourself to look in the mirror to check yourself, so your eyes find a pretty pink bottle of hairspray on the makeup counter in front of you to focus on.

“I sprinted out of my studio right after I picked up the phone,” the explanation begins, your lips forming a soft pout. Your makeup artist does her best to begin to wipe your face and neck clean of any blood, being careful of the slight gash across the bridge of your nose. You do your best not to wince with every touch. “When I got to the elevator, the doors slid right open and I bolted straight into.. someone.”

You bit your lip slightly on ‘someone’, Yoongi’s contorted face flashing through your mind again. He truly looked like he had never seen something more hideous, and you suppose that you couldn’t blame him. The new idol, makeupless and covered in her own blood? Atrocious at best.

“Oh, Y/N..”

You look over at your manager who has now taken her place in the styling chair beside you, her chin in her hands. For a second, you think she’s going to start crying. She looks just about as miserable as you feel.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you on the phone,” she mumbles, shaking her head softly. You know that she didn’t, at least not really, but she has always been the type to take blame on herself for just about every infraction that goes on around her. Your manager’s heart was almost too big and empathetic. “You didn’t have to sprint down here, you couldn’t help that you fell asleep..!”

Before she can continue scolding herself, you reach a hand out and place it on her knee. You give it a gentle squeeze and do your best to shake your head back while your makeup artist wipes the final smears of blood from your cheek.

“Stop that.”

She blinks up at you and as if it doesn’t cause you any pain, you gift her your award winning smile.

“I’m fine, okay? Things happen. And it is most definitely my fault for slamming into sunbaenim.”

Your manager seems consoled enough and manages to bat back her tears behind her eyelashes, nodding at you curtly. You are relieved she’s let it go so quickly.

“Wait, sunbaenim?”

Oh, or not.

As if sent from above to rescue from embarrassing yourself further, your makeup artist returns with a primer and a lotion in hand -- as well as a small bottle of liquid skin. “Excuse me ladies but if we’re going to have Y/N-nim ready on time for her debut party, I’m going to have to get working on fixing up her cute little face.”

And with that, your manager bids you a slightly skeptical farewell and you keep yourself occupied by counting the gemstones in the makeup counter as your MUA does her job.

“It’s like I never busted it.”

You stare at your reflection in the mirror, completely dolled up and ready for the party that was only minutes away from beginning. Your makeup was light and airy, a compliment of light creams and rosy pinks. The buffed out pink shadow that framed your eyes matched the deeper and shinier gloss that coated your lips. Your cheeks were a soft peachy color as well, sculpted out just slightly to accentuate your cheekbones. Even the highlight that framed your face and the bridge of your now seemingly healed nose shone out a beautiful shade of pink.

You looked absolutely adorable, beautiful even, and you were amazed that your makeup artist in tandem with your hair stylist was able to completely turn around your appearance in just over thirty minutes.

“Of course not, I’m just that good.” You smile at your artist in the mirror, her head popping up from behind you as she zips up your dress for you. You gift her a grateful bow before turning around on your newly donned heels, taking a few steps back from the mirror to take a look at your full ensemble.

The dress that was chosen for you is a pale cream color without any sleeves or shoulders. A lace floral bodice clings to your torso and once the material squeezes down to meet your hips, it billows down to your mid-thigh with opalescent pink floral designs in another layer of lace. You have stockings that leave just a few inches of bare skin between the edge of your dress and the top of the design, which stripes down in a very intricate pattern that upon closer inspection are rows of white roses. Even your shoes, a pair of white pumps, have small roses nestled over the buckle. Your hair is pinned half back and over one shoulder, a cream hairband holding back any fringe you have in a subtle flower crown.

You feel like a princess, and for someone who got their nose busted just under an hour ago, you really needed that feeling.

After a few more moments admiring the party look (and a few selfies) you quickly find yourself ushered by your manager out of the salon and down towards the main lobby of Big Hit Entertainment. You’re not surprised to find that the lobby has been slightly made over in order to accommodate many big screens, presumably for a music video viewing, as well as the inevitable cameras that plan to capture all of the speeches and speakers of the night.

Which includes you. Your stomach churned a bit, but you continued your quick look around as you and your manager descend from the main glass elevator into the main lobby. There are plenty of catering tables set up along the far walls of the gymnasium sized lobby, a dance floor seems to be prepared, as well as not one but two full bars. People are already in vast abundance, gathering into groups to socialize and seemingly pouring in from the front doors with no end.

The glass elevator stops at the lobby in just a few seconds but your stomach continues down into the lower levels of Big Hit Entertainment Headquarters, doing a few flips on its way down for good measure. You absolutely hated crowds but you would be damned if anyone found out. Your manager was the only one who knew about your aversion, and she gives you a reassuring hand squeeze before guiding you out of the elevator.

The world seems to stop around you as everyone turns to stare, waves of heads turning to witness your arrival. Everything is in slow motion, from the lights that dazzle overhead to the steps that you and your manager take forward. Your entire being feels wired, like electricity is running through you, and almost for a moment it feels good.

But then it doesn’t, and your anxiety catches up with you. Your breath catches in your throat and you feel as if you’ll fall over.

Right before you feel your knees give out, a strong arm wraps around your middle and time seems to speed back into place. Startled that someone has caught you, your head whips to find a familiar face just inches from yours. Your pulse skyrockets and your skin comes alive with another wave of electricity as your eyes connect with yet another of your seniors’.

“Careful there, pretty girl.” Jung Hosoek’s lips are close to your ear as he muses this to you, the world famous cheekbone-y smile shining down at you. Eyes wide and perfectly glossed mouth slightly open, you find yourself gawking at the older idol.

Your manager is quick to turn to you but you can’t see her expression, you’re simply lost in your senior’s eyes. There is a soft voice that you only vaguely recognize as your manager’s speaking to the two of you, but even Hosoek seems completely entranced with you. Where his hand supports you on your upper back feels aflame and you’re close enough to be brushing chests with him which sends even further heat through your body. He smells of fresh herbs and cedar that completely overtake your senses, and the lights overhead give him this warm, gilded glow. You’re almost certain that he’s going to lean in closer to kiss you when the speakers that line the lobby begin to boom with the familiar voice of Bang Sihyuk, Big Hit Entertainment’s founder and co-CEO and the two of you abruptly rip apart.

“And here she is, everyone! Our new lovely rose, Y/N!” Your founder’s voice booms all around you, and it takes you a minute to find him among the crowd. He’s walking towards you and a spotlight shines down on him, illuminating his determined yet cheery march in your direction. At this announcement, a spotlight shines down on you as well, just as Hosoek removes his arms from you. Thankfully you’ve caught yourself as he releases you and your manager steadies you by the shoulder.

You’re almost blinded by the light pouring down on you, but you’re quick to notice that Hosoek is no longer beside you. Although difficult, you squint off into the crowd in search of him as the co-CEO known as “Hitman” Bang finds his way across the stretch of lobby to you with microphone in-hand. Just as both of your spotlights connect as he reaches you and your manager, you think you see Hosoek’s dazzling smile disappear into the crowd with a wave, but you’re not sure.

Head still fairly fuzzy for a multitude of reasons, you’re quick to slap your preprogrammed idol smile on your face just as Hitman places a hand on your free shoulder. Your attention bounces from him to the large screens that litter the walls of the lobby, all illuminated with you, your manager’s, and Hitman’s smiling faces. You’re hoping that only you can tell the smile doesn’t quite reach your eyes.

Doing your best to not come across as robotic or stiff, you let yourself be guided across the lobby floor with Hitman and your manager, each of them with a hand on your shoulder. You clasp your hands together in front of you, secretly fidgeting with the floral designs embossed on the front of your bodice, keeping your pink lips set into a well practiced smile. Hitman takes the lead in guiding you over to a small stage that has been set up towards one end of the room where the majority of the crowd has been mingling. People are still filtering in, and although the crowd is respectfully silent as Hitman speaks, the feeling of so many eyes on you is almost deafening.

You know that he is giving a short introductory speech that will lead to your own before the party truly commences, but your mind is utterly distracted. All of the people, lights, and the overall atmosphere buzzing around you causes your anxiety to skyrocket. Your mind quickly races to catch up with itself, replaying the events of your day so far as if that will quell any sort of jitters you have.

Your body still feels electric where Hosoek touched you. Your nose and eyes still burn from where you cracked your face on Yoongi’s collarbone. Although you’re no longer groggy from your impromptu nap, your stomach still flips with guilt from being late to your hair and makeup appointment. Even the self doubt from watching your music video’s premiere is still lingering at the back of your mind. And to top it all off, your body won’t stop vibrating. It is like your skin is filled with electricity, and you’re not sure if its the anxiety or something else lighting you aflame from the inside.

You are barely register that Hitman’s speech has concluded before your manager gives you a gentle nudge towards the podium center stage where a microphone and camera await you. And because of your already dissociated headspace, you’re able to approach the podium with little resistance.

And you deliver a cheery, almost entirely improvised, thank-you speech.

“It really wasn’t that bad, noona,” Heuning Kai, the diamond maknae of TXT and one of your best friend’s since the beginning idol training at Big Hit, tells you. Sitting beside him is another of your close friends and the only member of TXT that is able to toast champagne with you, Choi Yeonjun. Although you’re on your third glass and he’s only on his first flute, you both look about the same shade of sun-kissed red.

“He’s right,” Yeonjun’s deeper voice confirms from behind the champagne flute. You give both boys a distrusting look from your place at the hightop table across from them, and they both pout in unison.

“I’m pretty sure half of what I said didn’t make any sense,” you lament, setting down your champagne flute and scooting it to the center of the table. You lower your head to rest on your arms, which are now crossed against the cool marble surface. You stare up at the two of them from behind the bubbling glass. “I just kept repeating how grateful I was and babbling about the future.”

The two boys share a look and Kai isn’t able to contain a giggle that rises to his lips. “That’s kind of the point, noona.”

You blow a defeated raspberry at them from the table, letting your eyes slide from their faces to the party raging around you. It has been about an hour since your speech and you only recently were able to escape from center stage. You answered a few pre-planned questions for the invited press, shook many hands of people you either did not know or had only vaguely heard of, and spent a solid fifteen minutes being coached by your manager on what the rest of the night should be like for you.

She suggested you mingle, ask for opinions and advice from the staff members and experienced idol invitees that may be roaming the lobby. You had decided on drinking and hiding in a corner on your phone. Your face often plastered the television screens around you with your music video and debut single playing on repeat with a mix of other Big Hit Entertainment group and solo artists’ music videos in between. The dance-floor was absolutely packed with drinking party-goers, and every corner of the lobby (and some other areas of the building) was absolutely bustling. It was sheer chance that Yeonjun and Kai had found you, a small gift of familiarity and peace amongst the chaos that was a debut party.

“It does get easier,” Kai tries to reassure you, reaching out across the table to place a hand on top of your head. He gives your flower crown a small pat and shoots you a lopsided grin. “I think we’re more awkward on stage than you, anyway.”

The small but cute gesture makes you laugh and you bat his hand away, a bit flustered. You sit up straight and shrug, shaking your head a little with a soft smile. Even though you are older than them, getting a slightly late start at being an idol for most people’s standards, they’re still your sunbaes and they’re always there for you. Yeonjun and you bonded fairly quickly over your love of soju and snacks, and even though he’s often busy he somehow makes time to help you with your choreography at least once a week. Kai of course had been teaching you English, and as your studio neighbor he was never too far away if you ever needed an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on when things became too stressful. The other boys from TXT also had your back, with Choi Soobin always ready to escape the studio with you to find some de-stress ice cream, Choi Beomgyu on call anytime if you need help with lyrics or just want to jam out on guitar together, and Kang Taehyun who’s told you their dorm is always open for American movie nights.

Even though you were being trained separately, the boys were being prepared for being idols at the same time as you were with your debut only a few months after theirs. You felt such strong connections with each of the TXT members because of this, as if you were apart of TXT yourself. Looking at the two of them across the table from you, glammed up just like you were, you couldn’t help but feel part of your stress and anxiety melt away.

You truly were lucky to have such good friends who understood what you felt so personally.

“Hey speaking of awkward,” the older of the two boys begins after finishing off his first flute of champagne. “Was that Hosoek sunbaenim that met you at the elevator earlier?”

You let out an exasperated sigh, folding your face in your hands, feeling a wave of embarrassment take you briefly. “Yes, yes it was.”

Although your first meeting was incredibly intimate and brief, you still weren’t sure how to wrap your head around what you had felt when he touched you. Or how he had gotten to you so fast when your knees buckled.

The two boys shared another look between themselves, both cocking an interested eyebrow, before turning their attention back to you. Moving in unison once again they both propped their elbows on the marble tabletop and nestled their chins in their hands, smug looks playing both their faces as if to say ‘go on’.

You feel your face flush more. “I don’t know why you’re both giving me that look,” you begin, playing with the koala bear phone charm that hangs from the bottom of your phone on the table. “I was feeling incredibly anxious, like my legs were going to go out from under me, and all of a sudden Hosoek sunbaenim was there. I didn’t have time to even react before he was gone again.”

Kai sticks his tongue out at you, one eyebrow still arched in suspicion. “Oh really? Is that why he held you like a long-lost lover?”

“Or why your eyes were the size of saucers, lips only inches apart?” Yeonjun adds, snickering into his hands.

You briefly consider reaching across the table and giving the two of them a well deserved slap on the wrists for speaking to you in such a manner, but you know they’re only teasing. You’re more upset that they’re right, your brief embrace with the BTS rapper was incredibly intimate. Your face flushes further.

“Have the two of you met before?” Kai inquires, managing to keep a fairly straight face as he digs for more information.

The elder boy stops his snickering and elbows the other. “They’ve been gone on their world tour, Kai. She hadn’t the chance to meet them before they left, so of course she’s not met them before. They just got back last night.”

Kai doesn’t seem convinced, turning towards his senior with pursed lips. “We don’t know that for sure! What if they were meeting..”

The both turn back towards you comically with wide eyes, grins returning. “..in private?”

They’re both playing with you at this point, and you fall for it. Your face goes beat red, both embarrassed and slightly frustrated by their teasing. You have to bite your lip from scolding them and this doesn’t go unnoticed, both boys immediately erupting with laughter. You snatch your phone from the table and slide it in the side of your bodice, abruptly standing in a huff.

“I need another drink!” you quickly proclaim, a piss poor but handy reason for excusing yourself from the table. You quickly turn away on your heel from the two cackling boys and march off into the crowd towards one of the two bars. It didn’t matter which one, just that you put some distance between you.

The dance floor is too populated and fast-paced for you to be able to sneakily dance your way across the lobby so you’re stuck attempting to navigate between all of the tables that have been set up for the guests that litter the edges of the dance floor. Even though you’re certain you stick out like a sore thumb in your bright white ensemble, you don’t notice any eyes following you for too long. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, which is a relief to you both because it means your debut party is a success but more-so that they’re too busy having a good time to notice its you, brand new idol for Big Hit, sneaking across the floor.

You find one of the full bars in just a few short minutes of dodging elbows and twisting through groups of busy party-goers. Every stool that has been set up with the traveling bar has been taken but you’re determined to at least have one last drink before disappearing to your studio so you saddle up at the edge of the bar beside someone in hopes to flag down the bartender. You wanted something a bit stronger and more flavorful than the 3 flutes of champagne you had taken from the waitstaff walking around with trays.

The bartender, a tall man with bleached hair, is expertly tossing tumblers and pouring out different drinks simultaneously at the opposite end of the bar. You do your best to try and catch his eye but he’s too absorbed with his work to notice and it’s too loud to shout over the music and chatter of the others sitting at the bar around you. Although in the past you have been praised for having an angel’s patience, you find yourself absolutely antsy at the edge of the bar.

Pressing onto your tiptoes, which is quite difficult in your heels, you do your best to become as big as possible on the clear space at the edge of the bar. There’s a reasonable distance between you and the person you’ve saddled up to at the bar since you’ve taken to the edge of the counter top, so there is no reason for you to accidentally bump them. And you don’t.

Instead you raise your hand to try and actively flag down the bartender, knocking your knuckles into the person’s drink and sending it flying straight into their lap.

“OhmygodIamsosorry!” you blurt out for what feels like the billionth time that day, almost shrieking it in surprise. You quickly dive for the glass you’ve flung but to no avail, ending up twisting your ankle because of your flailing and you tumble directly into them.

He’s quick to react to the glass falling towards him, sliding off the back of the stool to spare his white slacks the stain, but because of this he’s unprepared for your body to collide with him. In a messy array of limbs, you feel your face collide with yet another chest this day and your face throbs with a familiar pain, your attempt to catch yourself failed and his attempt to dodge you only making the impact more forceful.

Howling in pain, unable to contain your agony as your nose’s wound is undeniably reopened, you push yourself off of the person you’ve collided with and spin on your heel. A plethora of almost unintelligible apologies spill from your mouth as you turn and bolt along the wall. You bump into quite a few other party guests as you run in search of the nearest bathroom, your hands pressed painfully tight against your nose as to keep any blood that dare spill out from landing on your beautiful white dress.

This could not be happening a second time. Not again.

You burst through the swinging door to the ladies room, thankful that the polished marble that makes up the sink is a black and grey speckled color, and immediately throw yourself over one of the basins. Flipping on the running water, you hang your head over the sink to let your face drain into the steady stream. Adrenaline courses through your veins, any calming affect your (albeit mean) best friends and the alcohol had granted you completely dissipating. You fumble aggressively for any sort of tissue, paper towel, or wash cloth to press to your steadily dripping nose in hopes to still the bleeding, cursing at yourself the entire time.

You usually weren’t so clumsy. You didn’t have a habit of slamming your face into the chests of strangers. You usually were never late. Of course it had to be the day of your debut as an idol that goes so terribly wrong. But even worse, no-one but you (and for previous infractions, your manager) knew of how terrible your day had been progressing. It was a secretly terrible day, one that you should have been able to at least somewhat enjoy since it was the day that was starting your career, where all your hard work would begin to pay off and you would begin to be recognized for it. You were having a party in your honor, for heaven’s sake!

Grumbling obscenities to yourself, you let out a sigh of relief when your bloodied fingers finally catch hold of one of the hand towels on the counter. Quickly dunk the material into the stream of lukewarm water and press the damp cloth to your nose. It stings and your whole face throbs, but you know that this will help stop the bleeding. Or if not, at least keep it at bay long enough for you to find your way to a first-aid kit. Standing up straight sends your whole head into dizziness but you manage to keep yourself upright, leaning back against one of the stalls.

Or rather, what you thought was one of the stalls.

Glancing up in the large oval mirror that lined up with the basin you stood before, you notice that the hard surface you were using for support is in fact a man. A man wearing a white suit jacket and white slacks. You let out a small squeak that is muffled by the wash cloth pressed to your nose and jump away, turning to look over the man. Your suspicion was correct: he’s the same man you’ve just smashed your face into at the bar.

You know because his suit jacket, once white as snow, has been splattered with your blood.

You are prepared to begin spitting out another set of long winded apologies to him but the look on his face strikes you silent. His eyes are fixated on you in such a fashion that sends an immediate chill down your spine, his pupils absolutely blown to the point that you can’t see any semblance of iris. His dark hair is disheveled and thrown over his forehead and into his eyes, his lips parted in a quiet pant which gives him a wild and dangerous look. You almost don’t recognize him because of this.

“T-Taehyung sunbaenim?”

He cocks his head at you abruptly, like a dog who’s just heard his name be called or a dog who’s just been whistled for. Its unnatural, and sends a shiver down your spine. He takes a step towards you and you immediately retreat one step back. This continues until your lower back is pressed into the counter and he looms above you. You squeak as he leans close to you, nostrils flaring. With one fluid motion, his hands are at either side of your hips pinning you as he inhales your scent. You are absolutely shaking like a leaf, completely intimidated by the animalistic display of one of your seniors. His face is so close to your own that his lips brush over the damp cloth you have anchored to your face.

In fact, he licks it.

“Sunbaenim!” you cry, voice wavering, trying to wince away from him but with the counter already pressing against you and his body enveloping you more and more as each moment passes. Its useless. “Sunbaenim, please..”

He leans away from you only slightly at your scared pleading, tilting his head to the side again as if studying you. His face is unreadable, the emotions flickering across it completely masked by your surprise at what is occurring between the two of you. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but instead sucks in a large gulp of air.

He’s tasting your blood, you realize. One of the members of Big Hit’s golden boys is tasting your blood.

“Taehyung, get off of her!”

A raspy, almost pained voice booms from the swinging door to the bathroom Taehyung has pinned you in. Both of your heads snap in the direction of the yell and you see Hosoek standing in the doorway, completely out of breath. He snaps the door behind him and repeats himself, this time the words almost completely overtaken by a snarl of anger.

Taehyung simply smirks and shakes his head at his hyung, leaning close to your face again. Not breaking eye contact with the other man, he expertly pushes through your shaking hands to the cloth you’ve pressed to your face and removes it from your fragile grasp with his teeth. He tosses the bloodied cloth to the floor, a demonic grin replacing it.

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Hosoek warns, and its at this time you notice how wild he also appears. His eyes are also wide, pupils blown, and his mouth hangs open just as Taehyung’s did. But he’s completely focused on his junior, and his face is contorted in pure rage.

You know Hosoek’s line wasn’t bait, but the beast of a man pinning you to the counter takes it. You attempt to squirm away as his face grows closer to your own again but one of his strong hands flies to your chin and locks your head in place with a surprising amount of strength. Its painful and even the slightest bit of resisting sends terrible pain through your skull. You are completely helpless as Taehyung leans in and swipes his tongue over the gash that lines over the bridge of your nose, never breaking his eye contact with his band-mate.

And Hosoek absolutely loses it.

In a flash your face is free from Taehyung’s grip and you scramble away from the counter, barely able to keep up with what is happening before you. At lightning speed, a speed that you literally never could have thought a human to possess, Hosoek is on top of Taehyung with flying fists.

You instantly run to the door, your hands clutching the pull handle, letting it support your weight. You know you should run, you know you should get the hell out of dodge, but you can’t bring yourself to pull open the door. Its as if your arms are made of lead, immovable. You watch in horror as Hosoek absolutely lets into his junior, his bestial rage completely erasing the intimate scene you had with him from earlier in the night from your mind. Taehyung laughs the entire time, even as fists collide with his face, only able to block so many hits from his position on the marbled bathroom floor.

This continues until you hear Taehyung stop laughing.

Body shaking and sweat loosening your grip on the door handle, you dry swallow as Hosoek turns around from his position over Taehyung’s now limp body. His face is splattered with blood from his punches, and he uses his untucked dress shirt to poorly wipe away some of the blood. He doesn’t get up, nor does he make any moves towards you, but the look on his face is wildly changing between the rage he had shown before and the doped out look that Taehyung had been giving you before.

“Run,” he croaks.

Your arms finally cooperate. You’ve never run so fast in your entire life.

You clutch your knees against your chest on your makeshift bed in your studio, forcing away the remaining jitters from your panic attack. You had immediately raced to your studio the moment you fled from the bathroom. No one tried to stop you, you’re not even sure anyone noticed as you ran for your life. You weren’t sure if you were thankful no one else witnessed the horrors you had just experienced, or if you were angry that no one else had come to save you.

You aren’t even sure if you should be thankful to Hosoek. Whatever transpired in that bathroom didn’t feel like a rescue mission, despite him saving you from whatever Taehyung had planned. You weren’t even sure if Taehyung was capable of proper thought in those moments. The look he gave you, the gaze of a predator staring at a defenseless slab of meat, kept flashing through your mind. The heat of his gaze, of Hosoek’s despite his protecting you, seemed to burn through your veins. The feeling of Taehyung’s tongue over your wound.

You cursed to yourself, sliding off of your bed and easing to the full body mirror that hung on the wall beside your desk. You had completely forgotten about your nose. You quickly took inventory of your appearance in the mirror. Your shoes had drops of blood on them, something you could hopefully scrub off. Your dress was miraculously clean though, and you let out a small sigh of relief. Your hair was an absolute mess and your flower crown was no where to be seen. Small bruises formed on either side of your jaw in the shape of Taehyung’s finger prints. You scowled, reaching up to tap them with your own fingers.

Ow.

Finally, you glanced over your nose to see how terrible it looks. Raising an eyebrow, you leaned closer into the mirror, flicking on the desk lamp beside you for an extra dose of light. Surely your eyes weren’t tricking you. Yes, what had just happened was traumatic, but surely you weren’t seeing things. You traced your finger over the skin of your nose, right where Taehyung had swiped his tongue. You gasped, and nearly fell to the floor.

It was completely healed.

217 notes · View notes

violetsmoak · 4 years

Text

Pieces of April [12/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099044/chapters/50202530

Summary: On the anniversary of his death, Jason’s second life takes an abrupt new turn and he’s faced with a challenge that neither Batman nor the All-Caste prepared him for.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Warning(s): Past Jason/Isabel, kidfic, minor canon character death (pretty sure you can guess who), I’ll add more warnings/tags as I think of them.

Canon-Compliance: Takes place in between the two RHATO series, so after Roy and Kori and before Artemis and Bizarro. Jason and Isabel Ardila were in a brief relationship.

First Chapter

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Isabel’s place has a lived-in feel that Jason is not very familiar with.

Willis and Catherine’s tiny apartment is a distant memory for him, and the handful of foster homes that followed don’t even rate. Wayne Manor, while once home, was never exactly what one might call “homey”; and the less said about his time in the League, the better.

As for his network of safe-houses, these are meant more for function and convenience than to encourage long-term comfortable living.

Very different from the room illuminated when Jason flicks on the lights.

Warm, inviting colors grace the walls, somehow blending well with living room furniture meant more for comfort than to match. In the kitchen, dishes dry on the rack because there’s no dishwasher, while a vacuum cleaner lies forgotten in the hallway. There’s no evidence of a maid or English butler the way Tim’s place has; like Jason, Isabel was uncomfortable with being waited on.

Half of her kitchen table is buried beneath a sea of papers, piles of junk mail, receipts and a newspaper or two.

It’s second nature for Jason to go through the detritus, though he’s not entirely sure what he’s looking for. When he doesn’t find it, he slips into the kitchen, rifling through cupboards and drawers. Lots of people will stash small, important property in their kitchen, banking on would-be-intruders focusing on the obvious takes like televisions and computers. Since Jason isn’t in a hurry, he has the luxury of searching through everything himself.

Apparently Isabel wasn’t worried about theft since he finds nothing; frowning, he glances over to the fridge for potential clues. Magnets from what appears to be every country she’s ever visited hold up notes against the chrome façade, along with pictures and business cards and—

Jason reaches out before he’s aware of it, tracing his finger across the edge of the black and white printout that holds the prominent place of center. The sonogram picture is different from the one’s he saw on cases before he died, or even the kind he sees on television. It’s not simply a grainy outline of a vaguely baby shape, but a 3D image that details the features of the infant he held in his arms just last night.

He reaches out to take it off the fridge, then thinks better of it and backs away.

Not like I need to keep anything like that, I’ve seen the actual baby already.

He wanders over to the kitchen counter, sifts through more paper. There’s an actual physical day planner there that’s seen better days, pages ripped and bent and some stuck together. He pockets that, intending to go through it later; it might hold information about her friends and contacts.

Speaking of…

He studies the walls and surfaces of the unit, noting the sea of personal trinkets and photos of Isabel. Most of them are of her and a bunch of other, usually against the backdrop of a beach or bar lounge. Some of them include herself and Safiya—he recognizes one of the photos as having been taken on the edge of Robinson Park, in the area that’s still safe and Poison Ivy free.

In all of them, she looks happy, which calms that lingering part of him that’s worried his presence in her life had any kind of lasting trauma. Either she is—was—the most well-adjusted person ever, or she had a Wayne level of ability to pretend.

Studying the rest of her belongings along the bookshelves and coffee tables, something strikes him; in addition to the usual paperback bestsellers and gossip rags he would expect from someone of Isabel’s age and interests, there are baby books tucked everywhere.

From parenting How-To guides, to early readers that are still in pristine, sometimes packaged condition. There are fairy tales and Spanish alphabet books and board books with various textures cut in the pages.

Like someone was gearing up to become Supermom.

Which she was, wasn’t she?

Numbly, he wanders down the hall, glancing briefly into the master bedroom before his eyes are drawn to the second room. It feels like the bottom of his stomach has dropped out as he looks at the door, and the pretty, swirling pink script stenciled across it. Letters set between colorful flowers and balloons.

Luisa.

Tentative, he nudges the door fully open and wanders into what is clearly a nursery. There’s a crib set up, with a mobile of stars and planets, a changing table, rocking chair—quite a few of the mysterious objects he spied sitting in a pile on Tim’s living room floor.

All of which speaks of a woman who very much wanted the baby currently residing in the Gotham General neonatal wing.

Jason sits down heavily on the rocking chair, barely hearing it creak beneath him as his thoughts play on repeat.

She wanted this.

But she didn’t tell him.

Obviously she didn’t want him involved.

But then why list him as the father?

Why make him her emergency contact, instead of her friend? It seems like an awfully calculated, purposeful move for someone that didn’t want him in her child’s life.

He gazes blearily around the nursery, eyes flitting past the typical soft and fuzzy and mostly pink stuffed animals and blankets. Everything in here was chosen with care as if picked directly from a catalog, and with intent.

Except for one thing.

Jason stands, reaches for something on top of a chest of drawers just beside a baby monitor.

The Red Hood plush toy is a ridiculous caricature, with a bulbous head and stubby arms. Toy companies have been making merchandise off the world’s heroes since time immemorial, but he didn’t realize that plushies were a thing.

Let alone that there’d be a version of me included in the line.

His thumbs slide across the tiny stylized red bat on its chest; there are fabric holsters but no guns, of course.

It’s the only item that seems out of place in the entire room.

Obviously placed here on purpose.

But wouldn’t that mean…?

Mind reeling, Jason returns to the living room, more determined now to figure out Isabel’s frame of mind. To know the thoughts behind her decisions. There’s a folder among the medical stuff, with information relevant to her pregnancy—medical history, prescriptions—but nothing written in her hand.

Which isn’t surprising. Who keeps a journal these days when everything’s online?

That has him searching out her computer, which is set up in the corner of the living room on a tiny desk. He boots it up and studies the keyboard to see which keys are more faded than others.

Before he can make much headway guessing her lock-password, there’s a bang that has Jason whirling around. His instinct is to reach for his gun, but being mindful of his location thinks better of it.

Just as well, considering who the intruder is.

“What do you think you’re doing here?!” Safiya demands from the doorway of the apartment. She’s holding an aluminum baseball bat and wearing a fierce expression. “This is not your apartment! I will call the police if you don’t—” She cuts off when she recognizes Jason. “You.”

“Hi,” he says, somewhat bemused.

She doesn’t relax, narrowing her eyes at him; they are puffy and bloodshot, and he suspects she’s been crying since leaving him and Tim at the hospital.

“How did you get in here?” she demands at last, suspicious but somehow bypassing the usual questions he'd expect. “I have only set of keys.”

She brandishes the keychain in hand as though to make a point.

The utter lack of surprise or fear catches him off-guard; Jason falters for a minute thinking of a plausible lie to tell. And then he decides he doesn’t have the energy.

“I picked the lock on the window,” he tells her.

Safiya’s eyes narrow. “They teach you that sort of thing in bodyguard school?”

Nice lie, Drake. Obviously she didn’t buy it.

“Can’t all be taking bullets for the president.”

“Right…” Safiya lowers the bat, but only incrementally. “What are you doing here?”

“I needed to…see for myself,” he finishes lamely, still not entirely sure how to answer the question.

“I understand.” This time the fight goes completely out of her. She steps into the apartment, glancing around furtively, and then closes the door behind her as she comes inside. “You might have mentioned earlier you wanted to come. I could have given you the keys.”

“Wasn’t really thinking about it back then,” he tells her, watching her set down the bat. “You’re pretty intimidating for someone so small.”

“This is Gotham,” she retorts. “It would be stupid to be anything less than vigilant whether you have cause to fear or not.”

“And you don’t have cause to fear?”

“When one has a guaranteed death hanging over one’s head, there is very little to fear.”

Jason thinks of his time as Robin, of the danger and the close calls, and of his life now; the certainty of it ending in blood and fire and another goddamn plaque in the Cave.

He gets it. More than she knows.

“Fair,” he acknowledges. He pauses, a bit awkward, and asks, “How are you holding up?”

“As well as can be expected,” she sighs, looking around the room. “It does not seem real.”

“You’re telling me,” Jason says, though it comes out as more of a sigh. He feels the tension in his shoulders, which have been pulled tight since Safiya first made her appearance, ease. “Have you had a chance to reach out to anyone?”

“Not yet. I’ve been…processing.”

“If you need help…” he begins, uncertain about what exactly he’s offering to do here.

“You have other things to worry about,” she replies with a shake of her head.

No kidding.

He recalls his conversation with Tim about the fate of the baby, and before he can think better of it, blurts out, “Do you know anything about her last boyfriend?”

Safiya gives him a sharp look. “Why? Are you going to try to convince him the baby is his?”

There’s judgment there, not entirely unwarranted maybe.

“No. But maybe he and Isabel have—had mutual friends. People who might…”

Take the baby.

He doesn’t need to say it out loud, she clearly follows his thought process. This time there’s no judgment, surprisingly.

“His name was Jonathan,” she recalls. “Sutter, I think.” Jason makes a note of that. “He’s an accountant for one of the big firms downtown.”

“Accountant, huh?”

Guess she wanted someone the exact opposite of me the next time around…

“Yes. They met at the hospital the last time the Joker escaped,” Safiya explains. “He was being treated for that horrible gas, and Isabel was…”

She trails off, considering him carefully.

“Recovering from the bastard shooting her up with heroin,” Jason says darkly. “Yeah, I was caught up in that myself. Not a night I want to revisit.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Safiya says dryly. “Anyhow, they went on a few casual lunch dates and she said it might be getting serious, and then I didn’t hear from her for a week. I’m guessing that’s when she was with you. And then two weeks after that, they were together.”

“How serious was it?”

“Serious enough, I think. She was happy.” She pauses here, lower lip trembling and inhales deeply through her nose. Jason recognizes the look of someone trying to stave off tears. “Then it was over and she was alone. Shortly after she told me about the baby, and…well, you. Sort of.”

Jason swallows, not even able to imagine what Isabel might have said about him. There’s a long silence between them, both of their thoughts clearly on the woman whose presence is so pervasive in this room.

Safiya sniffs.

“Listen,” she says at last. “I can see you want to do right by Luisa. I don’t know what Isabel’s reasons were for not telling you. But I don’t think it’s because you would harm a child. As long as you’re acting as guardian to Luisa, I will make you the same offer I made her mother: I will help you as much as I am able. Just call me and I’ll do my best to be there.” She offers Jason a wan smile. “You are not alone in this.”

“So I’ve been hearing,” he replies heavily. “Still working on the believing.”

There’s a trilling noise and Safiya reaches for her pocket for her phone, sliding her thumb across the screen to silence it.

“Speaking of believing,” she says. “I have to leave for prayers now. If you were anyone else, I’d worry you intended to steal and sell her belongings but given who your partner is…I doubt you’re hurting for money.”

Jason snorts. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“I’m also assuming you can let yourself out of here the same way you got in,” she continues. “So I won’t offer you my keys. Unless you intend to take over plant-watering duties?”

“Uh, no. I’m the opposite of a green thumb.”

He doesn’t mention that he’s never taken care of a plant on his own, let alone a child. Probably she won’t appreciate that kind of gallows humor.

“Alright then. I will see you around, I guess.” She pauses in the doorway. “Although, the next time you come by, at least send a text message or something so I don’t accidentally knock you out.”

And with that, she’s gone.

Jason shakes his head, mouth quirked upward in grim amusement. Knowing his luck, and his frame of mind, she’d actually manage it.

He doesn’t move immediately upon finding himself alone again, feeling rather like the interlude with Safiya has broken through some of the mounting, breathless panic he had been feeling before.

His eyes catch upon the fridge again, and the sonogram picture there, and he physically shakes himself.

Get back to work.

The computer in the corner is open on the login screen, and he goes to sit down, setting to work decrypting her password.

It doesn’t take very long—she’s not the kind of person to use something obvious like ‘password’, but a lot of civilians don’t bother with the randomly generated string of numbers, letters and symbols. It takes about fifteen minutes for him to happen upon the word based on faded keys—a mashup of her parent’s names and some numbers he supposes holds significance to her—and he’s into her system.

It’s a job he’s had to do uncountable times in his life, scanning through private files and documents of murder victims or suspects. It’s always had a kind of morbid quality to it before, but he’s feeling that even more now.

He knew this person.

He knows if she was here—if she was still alive—she would not be happy with such an invasion of her privacy.

But she’s not here, is she. That’s the whole problem.

He swallows, flipping through the digital folders; when nothing jumps out at him immediately, he decides to come back to it and instead opens her email program.

It’s mostly a list of weekly work schedules and the requisite spam from subscriber lists, but then he notices there’s a single file in the Drafts folder that curiosity has him clicking a moment later.

[Draft] [email protected] (no subject)

The last date it was modified is the day she died. He clicks on it, eyes immediately flying to the first word—Jason—before stopping, breath catching. Because while this is exactly what he’s been trying to find since he got here, it’s also exactly what he didn’t want to find.

Dreading what he’s about to discover, he takes a breath and braces himself to read the whole thing.

Jason—

I don’t know if you even use email or not, but I saw this on that ridiculous Rent-a-Bat sign the last time I was in California and figured I’d try. I’d call your cell, but I might screw up saying what I need to over the phone. Assuming you even pick up for me.

At least this way, I might work up the nerve to press send.

I’m pregnant. About seven months now—

He pauses, glancing again at the time of the email, because Isabel had been nine months pregnant when she died, which means she started this email months ago but never got around to sending it.

Never got around to, or never worked up the courage.

Just like Safiya said.

He goes back to reading.

—About seven months now.

It’s a girl, and she’s yours based on the dates the doctors gave me. I wasn’t with anyone but you, unless Kori’s people can get a person pregnant by just touching them.

(The baby’s perfectly human by the way, according to the tests.)

I didn’t find out until weeks after we ended things, or I would have told you when we last spoke on the phone. After that, I didn’t know how to tell you. About the baby or the fact, I’ve decided to keep her.

I was scared. For a lot of reasons that I’m sure you understand. I was worried you’d try to talk me out of this, and then I worried if anyone were to find out, they might try to use us against you. It’s already happened once; it can happen again.

There are rumors all over Gotham that the Joker’s dead, but they’ve said that before. It’s dangerous here, so much so that I’ve thought about leaving the city with her and starting over. Except, it’s hard enough to do this Mom thing by yourself in the only place that’s ever been home, let alone up and move somewhere you’ve got absolutely nothing.

And to be honest, I’ve never been the type to run away from something.

Which is why I’m embarrassed it’s taken me so long to get in touch with you.

I’m not sure if I’ve been more worried that you’d want nothing to do with me or her, or the opposite. That you’ll do the decent thing and give up everything you do—all the important stuff, saving innocent people and fighting aliens and taking out the worst criminals—just to be here. Because that’s the type of person you are. You’re hard because you have to be but inside, you’re a good man and you’ve got a code. On that front, I can’t think of a better man to have a child with.

But I also get that you might not want to or be able to be that person. And I understand all of that. I would never ask you to change your entire life because of this. You have a purpose and resources and plans I can barely imagine, but I think in some ways I’m a lot freer than you are.

I’m lucky here, I have a friend to help me out in the first weeks, and my job has an excellent daycare program for when I’m off maternity leave. I have a support system and we will be alright on our own if you decide you can’t or don’t want to be a part of this.

But I hope you’ll want to.

I want her to meet you, whether it’s now or years from now. A kid has a right to know her family. I lost mine too young, and you said you did too. I don’t want that for our daughter.

I’ve decided to call her Luisa, after my mother. I haven’t chosen a middle name yet, in case you want some input on that, but otherwise I’ll

The email cuts off abruptly there, and he finds himself wondering what interrupted her, even though he can guess the reason. His brain is still struggling to compute her final words to him.

There’s a lot to unpack, but the most startling thing is that Isabel wanted him to know.

She not only wanted this baby, but she wanted Jason to be in her life.

In their lives, more to the point.

Stunned, he leans back in the chair and stares unseeing at the computer screen as he tries to sort out how he feels about all this.

He doesn’t notice that hours have passed until the hospital contacts him hours later.

⁂⁂⁂

Your feedback matters! I want to know what you think of my story, so feel free to leave kudos, a comment or as many of these emojis as you want and let me know how you feel!

❤️️ = I love this story! 😳 = this was hot! 💐 = thank you for sharing this 🍵 = tea spilled 🍬 = so sweet and fluffy! 🚔 = you’re under arrest! the writing’s too good! 😲 = I NEED THE NEXT CHAPTER 😢 = you got me right in the feels 🤯mind blown 🤬god damn cliffhanger 😫 whyyyyyyy?!?!?

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#jaytim #fanfiction #jaytim fanfiction #babyfic #jason todd #original character #original character: safiya amin #accidental baby acquisition #slow build #slow burn #coping with big news #having to adult

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sleepyfan-blog · 5 years

Text

Family Secrets

Discord request fill! Continuation of this.

ES!IBVS is by @onebizarrekai

characters and pairing: Nevin Jovel, Isaac Beamer, Edward Quinton, Drew Jovel, Grandma Jovel, Nevaacward

warnings: none

word count: 2,035

summary: After everyone is in the right body, Grandma Jovel explains some things to Drew and Nevin.

tagslist: @anxiety-is-married-to-depression @angelofthehalfmoon @trainwreck-of-skeletons @hisame-amadashi @therandomskelekey @capisnotonfire

“You… You have magic, grandma?” Nevin asks, his eyes huge. Drew looks just as confused as he feels. He’d thought that he had to hide his new nature from both his grandma and Drew in order to protect them - he didn’t want any of this supernatural crap causing them problems as it had for him… But apparently grandma had magic… And a lot of it, if the silent, amazed and/or slightly terrified staring that his boyfriends were doing was any indication.

“Yes, moonlight.” She said with a fond smile, chuckling a little bit as she walked over and gently ruffled his hair “I had originally planned on telling the two of you about the magic that you two possess and what it all means on your sixteenth birthday - as your powers would have fully awakened then, but… You were bitten by a vampire, and I have been trying to figure out how to speak to you both about that for months without you fleeing. This whole body-swap thing was quite helpful in that, although I do not know who cursed you.”

“Uhm… Nev’s been what?!” Drew spluttered, his eyes widening in worry as he runs over to his twin brother, hugging the other tightly “Does that mean that you need to drink blood? I’m guessing that’s why you suddenly only drink lunch from that mysterious stainless steel thermos of yours.”

“I… Yeah. I just… I didn’t want you to worry, and we’re not supposed to talk about this stuff to normal humans and I… I wanted to protect you.” Nevin admitted quietly.

Drew scowled a little and huffed at that - he hated that answer. But he also understood that Secrets were important “Fine… You know I would have helped you, if I’d have known about this earlier, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Nevin sighed, a small smile appearing on his face. He felt better, now that the secret that he’d been keeping from his family was out in the open. He felt… Lighter and calmer. “So what’s this about magic? I’m completely comfortable about talking about these things in front of Ed and Isaac - unless it’s some sort of family secret that must not be revealed to others sort of thing, even to other magical beings?”

“If you truly do trust them, you may tell them later. But, I would rather tell the two of you of your birthright and what that means privately. It will make more sense once I have explained all that I can.” His grandma responded with a gentle, but firm smile “Besides, those two should probably head home and reassure their families that they are themselves again. The fighting between werewolf packs and vampire clans haven’t been bloody in decade, but still…. Old hurts and suspicions still linger, though it does warm my heart to see young ones like the three of you loving and caring for one another without reservation or fear.”

Edward and Isaac both blushed at that and nodded. Isaac is the first to speak up “Alright, Mrs. Jovel. We’ll go. See you later, Nev!” The two of them got up and left the Jovels’ place, heading to their respective homes, very curious about what they’d just discovered about their boyfriend’s family,

“Please sit down both of you, this is going to be a long conversation - but a good one, or so I hope.” Their grandma encourages the two teens. Drew settles down on the couch next to his brother, and the two of them lean into one another a little. She smiled a bit at that, clearing her throat, before saying “First thing’s first - if asked by other magical beings, I and other members of our clan generally either pretend to be unknown humans, or if we were seen using magic, claim to be either mages or witches. That is a lie, but one that has been very helpful in keeping us safe, and not being bothered or hunted by those who would terrorize us into submission, or kill us as our powers offend them.”

Nevin and Drew both tensed at that, pressing a little bit closer to one another, and Nevin’s eyes narrowed a little, as a low growl rumbled in his chest. Like hell was he going to let anyone hurt his brother.

“I am glad that the two of you understand the seriousness of this. Now, we are not mages nor are we witches. We are emotion elementals.” Their grandmother explains, confusing both of them “We have human-like forms, as it is easiest to blend in with such forms, and our spirits are far less prone to being captured and either sealed into various objects or gemstones to power certain kinds of weapons or defensive structures, when we inhabit a physical form. Twins are extremely rare and… I am sorry for the pressure that your mother put on the both of you when you were younger. As soon as I found out that the two of you were twins and what was going on, I took the two of you away from most of our clan.” She paused for a couple of moments, a sorrowful look on her face.

Drew shifted a little and asked quietly “Why… Why did they seem to expect so much out of the two of us? I mean, we weren’t the oldest nor the youngest of us and our cousins… So why did we… Were we watched so closely?” and why was Nevin in particular focused so intensely on, scrutinized and scolded for every perceived thing that he did wrong - whether he did it or not. Among other things.

“Because… You two may be the reincarnations of the leaders of our clan. They were a pair of twins as well. The two of you share have the potential to share quite a few of their powers. Their names were Nightmare and Dream Nightmare fell into the darker side of his powers and caused a great deal of chaos and suffering, though he was doing what he thought was best to protect everyone... Eventually Dream and he ended up in a climactic battle that ended up killing the both of them.” Their grandmother explained with a quiet sigh.

“... Don’t your friends and sometimes your boyfriends call you Nightmare, Nev?” Drew asked quietly, his eyes widening a little bit. There was something… Awfully familiar about what she was telling them, btough he’d never heard of any of it before now. At least… Not in this life. But it explained the nightmares that he occasionally had.

“Yeah, they do…And our friends also call you Dream from time to time. But that doesn’t mean that we’re the reincarnations of those people.” Nevin huffed, hugging his brother closer “No matter how we argue, I’d never hurt you seriously, much less kill you.”

“Neither would I hurt or… K-Kill you…” Drew responded back, hugging Nevin back tighter, tears in his eyes at the thought. Both of the twins shuddered and hugged each other tightly.

“Even if you are their reincarnations, the actions of what your spirit did in a past life does not affect what you will do in this one.” Grandma responded firmly, a determined expression appearing on her face. She sighed for a moment “However, there is a way to check to see if you are their reincarnations. The clan will want to have the two of you trained in how to use your powers and for the leadership of our clan - and perhaps to see if the two of you can lead our clan to greater political promince and other such nonsense, but that is not something I feel that either of you should be forced to do. The two of you show great promise and could be quite powerful, but no matter who you might have been… I love you both. And I will love, care for and protect you both to the best of my abilities, while encouraging each of you to be the best version of who you want to be, not who others may wish or expect for you to be.” She stopped talking for a little while, for which both of the twins were grateful, as they processed the information that she’d given them.

Drew fidged a little with his hands, before asking quietly “You said that there was a test to see if we’re the reincarnations of these past leaders? What… What is it?”

Nevin was curious as well and murmured “Would anyone else in our… Clan? As you called it? Be able to perform this test, or is it something specific?”

Their grandma sighed, and answered “You would need to be able to open and wear… Something. I will bring the boxes out.” She responded. She got up and walked out of the room, before returning with two applewood boxes with brass latches and hinges. On the lids of the boxes was the symbol of a massive apple tree. On the face of one of the boxes was the symbol of a stylized star, the other a crescent moon.

Drew and Nevin froze for a moment as she set the boxes on the coffee table in front of the both of them. Drew reached for the box with the sun symbol, while Nevin reached for the box with the crescent moon. The latches opened without any effort and without meaning too, the twins grabbed the golden circlets inside of them, putting them on. They then grabbed the robes - violet and gold for Nevin, bright blue and gold for Drew. The two of them got up and left the room in a daze, blinking as they changed in two different bathrooms.

Nevin stared at himself through the mirror - the cloth felt so familiar to him. Light, yet impossibly heavy. For a brief moment, his eyes glowed a bright cyan and he swore that he could see a pitch-black, shadowy figure looming behind him, reaching out for him…. Nevin ran out of the bathroom without a second glance, and nearly collided into Drew, who tackled him as Nevin fled all the way back to their grandmother, carrying his twin brother in his arms.

Drew meanwhile… He had stared in shock at the surprisingly elegant robes that he was in - as well as the yellow cape that he was wearing. A sudden wave of worry for Nevin had hit him and he’d sprinted straight for where he knew Nevin was changing, utterly certain that the other was in danger. Once the two of them reached their grandma however, the feeling of danger and fear passed, and both of the twins were calm again.

Their grandma looked at the both of them, a soft sigh leaving her before she walked towards the both of them, wrapping her sweet grandbabies up in a tight hug “I had hoped to avoid this for a little while longer. But this is your birthright. Do you wish to know more, or would you rather wait and process what I’ve told you?”

Nevin and Drew glance at one another before answering at the same time “Could you please hold off on further explanation for a little while? It’s a lot to take in.”

She smiles kindly at both of them and nods, hugging them closer to her “Of course.” They hug their grandma and one another until Nevin’’s cellphone goes off.

It’s his boyfriends, who are reminding him of the date that they’d agreed to in a couple of hours, asking if he was still going to come. Nevin hesitated for a moment, but both Drew and their grandma encouraged him to answer with what he wanted to do, so he texted back [can we reschedule? Grandma gave me a lot of info and I’m trying to process it all. Not sure how much more stuff I can process today.]

Isaac answered first [no prob - my mom is threatening to keep me in the house for the rest of the day anyways.]

Edward answered a couple of seconds later [that’s fine - I can’t imagine how all of this must feel. Love you, Nev. Love you, Ink.]

Nevin smiled a little and texted [thanks. I love you both.]. He’s not sure what all of this might mean, but the texts from his boyfriends had helped him feel a bit more grounded.

#ES!IBVS #esibvs errinkmare #nevaacward #nevin jovel #Isaac beamer #Edward quinton #drew jovel #grandma jovel #my writing

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quinnofcastleport · 4 years

Text

fallout | thanksgiving, 2k19.

who: quinn fabray, an underpaid secretary, randall fabray, carole hudson, mention of others.

what: sometimes, you think you’ve prepared for the worst, and then what you’ve prepared for is actually the best, and there’s a whole world of hurt headed your way.

where: quinn’s house, the gazette, a church, the hudson home

when: thanksgiving week (Monday - Thursday), 2k19

warnings: brief description of stylized blood/injury, really unfortunate parental interaction, spiraling thoughts, religion

wc: 4.8kish

It had been a very long, and mostly very bad week.

Her one accomplishment - James Evans, safely tucked away to dry out for the first time in a decade - had been drowned out by the ripples that came from it.

Sam had been bad enough. She’d been trying to comfort herself about it, that at least she knew where they stood, at least he’d been honest about how he felt and what he thought of her, finally, a response and reaction she’d never known she needed to question.

So she’d been wrong.

It didn’t happen often, but it did happen.

(Would it ever stop being so devastating?)

So she’d been wrong about her relationship with Sam. So she’d been playing his words over, and over, and over in her head for nearly twenty-four hours now, reconciling him with the old, old memories that had become shaken loose after her trip with James. Lunchtime snacks and after-hours holiday visits…

(She never had gotten that recipe from Mrs. Evans, and no one else’s chocolate cake quite came close. She’d spent a long time trying to find one that did, before concluding that it didn’t matter how expensive the restaurant or how well-trained the chef, better than Maggie’s just didn’t exist.)

She tried to make herself feel better about it. About Sam, believing the worst of what she thought of herself on the worst of her days; the worst of what was whispered about her, the worst of what nipped at her heels and caught her up in a whirlpool that only dragged down, down, down.

To some people, she’d always be the one who dumped trash on Rachel Berry.

Apparently ‘some people’ included Sam Evans, the kid that used to practice his funny voices and impressions on her and not be satisfied until she laughed. Sam Evans, the guy who’d just - let her work at his dead mother’s bar because Quinn badly needed somewhere to work. Sam Evans, who--

Whose relationship she’d ruined and whose father she manipulated into the right choice. Sam Evans who, apparently, genuinely believed she didn’t and hadn’t ever cared about him. Sam Evans who hadn’t even been wrong when he’d accused her of only reappearing in their life because her life was a mess. Everything he’d said was etched permanently into her brain, irrefutable and damning. Sam, Sam, Sam, and the safest she’d felt in a long time, down the damn drain.

She tried to make herself feel better about it. This was, of course, a lost cause, so when that didn’t work, she banned herself from devoting any more time or energy to thinking about it. There were bigger fish to fry, or at least more threatening men to defend herself against.

She had been ready for Sam’s righteous fury, for his dropping of her like so many hot rocks. She thought she’d been ready for the rest of it, too.

She was, again, wrong.

She really didn’t care for it, being wrong.

Quinn ignored the calls. Four calls, two voicemails, and a handwritten note tucked into the crevice of her front door. The message was clear on all of them: there was no avoiding the train that was bearing down to her, and there was nowhere to go that it wouldn’t hit her, at full speed.

Still. She managed to postpone it for one full day; one full day of grace. Tuesday. She didn’t speak to anyone except patrons at the bar; Sam didn’t come into work. She got to retreat into herself, be nothing more than a girl with pink hair who served strangers drink. She got a full day to recover from the battle the day before. One day to lick her wounds and try to find a new stable ground to plant her feet on.

On Wednesday morning, when Quinn opened the door to take Shelley out, she was met with--

“Margaret?” Quinn said, eyebrows raising briefly in surprise. She recovered herself quickly and straightened, acting like she wasn’t in her pajamas, like her dog wasn’t currently begging for love from her father’s secretary.

“Good morning Miss Fabray,” Margaret said, attempting in vain to dissuade Shelley from her determined pursuit of pets. “Mr. Fabray would like a word.”

Quinn made a quiet noise of understanding, then let Shelley pull her around Margaret. “I’m engaged today. I’m unable to meet with him.”

“He, uh, ah, well, he said that if you said that…”

Quinn waited, then rolled her eyes. “Margaret, just say it.”

“He said you would meet with him, whether you liked it or not, and it would be very unpleasant if you make him wait.”

Quinn shook her head. “You’re the one he sent?”

“Miss?”

“If he wanted to threaten me or drag me in by my hair he could have sent Thomas, or Uri, or Edward. Why did he send you?”

“He--he said…”

“Yes?”

“He said that I would be best suited, since you wouldn’t be able to…”

Quinn arched an eyebrow. “Yes? What am I unable to do?”

“Fight me?”

Quinn blinked. It became immediately apparent that Margaret thought Quinn was going to challenge her to fisticuffs.

Which, okay, she had pink hair, a big dog, and a face that said ‘don’t fuck with me’, sure, but--she wasn’t violent. Why was her father telling people she was violent?

Quinn chose to be amused.

“I see,” Quinn said, letting Shelley drag her back toward the door. “Well. You’ll just have to tell my father you were unable to collect me.”

“Miss Fabray,” Margaret said, her voice coming out considerably weaker than she wanted it to, “he told me that I wasn’t allowed to return unless it was with you.”

Quinn stared at her, deadpanned. “Are you going to stage a sit-in on my porch, Margaret?”

Margaret gave a shaky nod. “I was told to do whatever was necessary, as your presence is required in Mr. Fabray’s office.”

“I see,” Quinn repeated, looking for amusement and only finding deep, overwhelming irritation. “Well, I hope you stay warm out here.”

Quinn went back inside.

Pathetic.

She fed her dog.

She ate breakfast.

She had to go to the gym.

She had to go to work.

She had to get out of her damn house, and there was a captor waiting for her just outside the door.

Why didn’t this house have a goddamn back door?

Quinn growled to herself and stalked back into her bedroom. She could climb out a window…

Instead, she found clothes.

She didn’t try very hard. When she ‘found clothes’, she truly found them - a pair of jeans she didn’t remember buying, or ruining, with holes in the knees and what looked like paint stains on them. Were they even hers? Quinn had no idea, but she put them on and they fit, so she decided it was acceptable. She grabbed a t-shirt from her ‘probably needs washed’ pile, one of her new ones that she’d cut the neck off jaggedly to emphasize the artwork, which was for some metal band Quinn had barely heard of, but she’d enjoyed the aesthetic enough at the time.

(Several things had been hilarious in New York that didn’t seem to translate to Castleport.)

She put it on, grabbed her leather jacket, slid her rings onto her fingers, affixed her black choker, and opened her front door. Margaret still stood there, like an obedient, anxious lapdog, all eyes and ears and hope/fear. Her eyes got wider as she took in Quinn’s look, which made Quinn almost want to smile.

“Let’s get it over with.”

Margaret had driven, and the only reason Quinn didn’t insist on taking her own vehicle was because she was running out of gas, and it wasn’t as though her father’s office was so removed from everything that she needed a car to be safe on her escape route. The ride was silent - Margaret didn’t even turn the radio on, which made Quinn want to find the loudest and most obnoxious station she could find.

Before she could, though, they arrived, and Quinn glared up at the building.

Once upon a time, it had been her favorite place in the world.

And now?

Quinn got out of the car and slammed the door behind her, stalked up the steps. Margaret hurried after her, trying to explain something or stop her or something, Quinn didn’t care what she was saying. Quinn ignored her all the way to her father’s office and let herself in, shutting the door behind her.

Her father sat behind his desk, and was having a conversation with a man standing next to him. The man wore a deep blue suit, had thick glasses, and had attended each and every one of Quinn’s birthday parties.

“Pat?” Quinn said, momentarily drawn up short.

What on earth was the family lawyer doing here?

To his credit, he seemed as surprised to see her as she was to see him. Her father, if he had a reaction to her look, it only presented itself in a beat-too-long’s worth of silence.

“Sit down,” Russell said. It was not an invitation so much as it was an order.

“No thank you,” Quinn said, pursing her lips. “I won’t be staying long enough to sit. Well done on the acquisition, by the way. Really top notch sending that poor girl to stalk your daughter.”

Russell ignored her, continuing like she hadn’t even spoken. “I assume you know why you’re here.”

Yes. “I don’t have a clue why I’m here.” (He’d taught her to be obstinate and to lie when necessary when he let her curl up in his office chair and eavesdrop on his business deals and arrangement. The amount that could be gained from withholding information was mindboggling, he’d told her once, and he’d proven to be right about that, a thousand times over.)

“Pat?” Russell said, lifting two fingers as an instruction. “Show her, please.”

Pat spared Russell a glance - Quinn couldn’t read it, but something like doubt crossed his face. “Miss Fabray,” Pat said, holding out a file for her. He could have walked around the desk and handed it to her, like a normal person, but it wouldn’t have surprised Quinn to learn that her father had chained him to the desk.

Quinn stepped forward and took the file, though she didn’t open it. “What is this?”

“A notice of legal action being brought against you, on behalf of Mr. Russell Fabray.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Legal action,” Quinn repeated. “Is it a crime to--”

“Make unauthorized purchases on someone else’s credit card? Yes, it is. I have few friends from the Sheriff’s department standing by, just to make sure.” Russell said. “Pat,” he continued, leaning back in his seat. He looked like a lion that had just dragged back the biggest wildebeest and was looking forward to getting the king’s share of the meat.

What an asshole.

Pat nodded to the folder and Quinn opened it, reluctantly. “Do you recognize this purchase?” Pat asked, and Quinn scanned the document at the top of the pile.

A list of transactions from her father’s credit card.

One was highlighted in yellow.

It read the name of the facility she’d enrolled James Fabray into, along with the amount charged to the card.

Fuck.

Quinn, though, had been raised by two newspeople with strong opinions on other people’s idiocy, and so she knew not to admit anything without her own lawyer in the room.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Quinn said, flipping the file shut, “and I don’t know why I’m here.”

Russell sighed. “Thank you, Pat.”

This was Pat’s cue, apparently, because he nodded and hurried out of the office, closing the door behind him.

“You’re suing me?” Quinn finally asked. “You’re taking me to court? That’s a very classy move, Daddy.”

“Do not,” Russell said, his voice having lost every ounce of the bored professionalism it had contained when Pat was in the room, replaced with the worst sort of blackness, the kind that made Quinn’s worst sound like a kitten who’d gotten hold of a helium tank, “dare to lecture me on classy, Lucy, when you show up dressed like--like--”

“Like?” Quinn prompted, pretending that the use of her old name, her first name, wasn’t the fastest way to get under her skin. She wasn’t that girl, hadn’t been for a very long time. “Please, Daddy, tell me.” Quinn crossed her arms, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Like that.” He spat the word and Quinn tried to find it in her to be disappointed that ‘that’ was all he could come up with, instead of hurt, like ‘that’ was the worst thing he could have come up with.

“I fail to see how what I wear is any of your bus--”

“I don’t think you understand the situation,” Russell said, leaning forward. He folded his hands together and Quinn knew that look in his eye - victorious and cruel. “If I wanted to, I could destroy you with two phone calls.”

“...And?” Quinn finally said, though it didn’t come out as blase as she wanted. “What--”

“Here is what is going to happen,” Russell continued. “You are going to work to pay off that debt.” Russell nodded toward the folder. “Or I will take you to court and win, handily, and I don’t think all the god-awful makeovers in the world would prepare you for prison.”

“Pris--”

“You are going to work off the debt. You will be reporting to the Gazette’s Editor-in-Chief, Michael, first thing Monday morning. You will spend the intervening time…” Russell looked her over, “making yourself presentable.”

Quinn’s head was spinning. “I have a job. I’m not working for the Gaz--”

“You do not have a job,” Russell said, “not anymore. Your ‘job’ is not one that is acceptable for someone who, for the moment, carries my last name. It is time, well past time that you remember that you are a Fabray, and that you must comport yourself appropriately. Monday, 8 AM. Your paycheck will be garnished up until the point that I see fit, or until this debt is paid.”

So she wasn’t going to be drawing a paycheck, Quinn realized numbly.

Wait. Wait a minute. No. No.

“I am an adult,” Quinn began quietly, “and that means that I am free to dress how I want, work where I want, and do what I want.”

“An adult,” Russell echoed, followed by a derisive snort. “An adult takes responsibility for her actions, and you...have never done that, not once in your life. No. You are clearly a child. A disappointing child at that - when you actually were the age you’re acting, you had so much…” Russell sighed. “Promise.”

“I’m an adult,” Quinn repeated, her volume rising, “and you can’t make me--”

“That can,” Russell said, nodding to the folder in her hand. “Tell me. Who was this for? One of your streetrat friends from school? An ex-boyfriend? Or that profe--”

“It’s none of your business,” Quinn snapped, straightening her spine.

“It was my money you used, Lucy. That makes it my business. It would become my business would I named that...that...facility in my suit, on the grounds of accepting an unauthorized payment. I would make it my business when I bury the corporation that runs that disgusting program. It would be my business when I own them just so I can have the distinct pleasure of shutting them down.”

“...You can’t do that,” Quinn said, voice coming out very soft. No, no, no, no, it wasn’t just James in that building, there were other people, other people who needed that place--

“I could,” Russell corrected, something like a laugh escaping him that sent chills all the way down Quinn’s back. “I may choose to be gracious and allow this theft, as you will be paying it back. With interest. Beginning Monday morning, 8 A.M. You will be dressed appropriately, you will have that thing out of your nose, and you will not violate the dresscode by sporting any…” Russell dragged it out, “unnatural hair color. You will come prepared with three pitches for Michael, and if you are lucky, one may be considered.”

Every word he spoke was a nail in her coffin. She could feel it, feel the walls of her old life thudding shut around her. Prison, she thought, couldn’t have been far off from how she felt.

Goodbye freedom, goodbye life, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

“...If my paycheck is going to…” Quinn wagged the folder, “how, exactly, am I supposed to pay my rent.” Quinn swallowed, crossed her arms. “Feed myself.”

“You should have thought of that before you made this decision,” Russell said. He’d already picked up his glasses and was looking through paperwork on his desk. Quinn waited. When he flicked his gaze back up to her, he let out a noise that somehow said I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-answer-this-question without saying a single word. “I have contacted your landlord. You will be moving out this weekend.”

“What?”

“And, as you will be moving into my home--”

“What?”

“--you will not need to concern yourself with…” Russell waved a hand, “groceries and the like. Your meals will be tended to by the household. You will go to work with me every day and return home with me for dinner every evening, and you will not be permitted to socialize with anyone who has been…” Russell sniffed, “influencing you like this. Your mother and I agree--”

“Mother? You agreed on something?”

“--that this childish fit you’ve been throwing has gone on long enough. It is well past time for you to return to your life.”

Her life.

“...I want to stay with Mother.”

(It was an echo from a decade and a half ago, when they first told her they were separating. It had been as true then as it was now.)

“Your mother does not wish either of us to be in her home at this time,” Russell said, sounding bored. “Your mother and I have agreed that it will be better for you to stay with me until further notice.”

Her life, in his house, eating his food, working at his paper, writing what he wanted her to write and seeing the people he wanted her to see.

“...I...I’m an adult,” Quinn repeated, because it was all she had. She was gobsmacked. “I’m not a teenager anymore, Daddy, and I make my own decisions--”

“Then you deal with the fallout.” Russell nodded to the folder once more. “It’s your choice, Lucy. Either be here, Monday at 8 AM, or see me at the courthouse Monday, 8:30 AM. I’m sure there’s a public defender that would be awake at that hour, assuming they aren’t exhausted from defending the town drunks against public indecency charges. Which, speaking of indecency, how is your friend’s father? The one who owns that moneysink of an establishment? Mr. Evans?”

Quinn bristled and she bit down against the whip-sharp retort. He was trying to needle her, and he was succeeding.

“Is there anything else.”

“I’ll see you Monday.”

Quinn stalked out of the office, and the building, and the property, and kept walking.

And that had been Wednesday.

By the time Thursday rolled around, her unbridled fury and fear had given way into numb acceptance. All the time she’d spent carving herself out of the expectations placed on her shoulders. All the time she’d spent looking for what she actually wanted. All the time she’d spent trying to convince the people in her life that she wasn’t like that, that she was getting better, that she was a good person. All the time she’d spent to overcome the tragedy of her birth, and for what?

For nothing. For less than nothing. It not only hadn’t mattered, but it had insured that her future, for the rest of her life, was even worse than what it would have been if she’d shut up and fallen in line when she’d had the chance. She was going to be her father’s prisoner, and for what?

Quinn was doing laundry when she remembered why. A little piece of paper fell out of the back pocket of her jeans, and when she bent down to pick it up, tears welled in her eyes.

For what? For this.

Quinn crumpled the paper and finished throwing her clothes in the washer. Her clothes for her new look needed to be clean before she put them into vacuum-sealed bags and stored them in big storage totes for the rest of forever. Because she was apparently moving this weekend.

Thursday, though, was Thanksgiving. She’d been planning to do what she could to prepare for her own personal hell, then drinking a lot and watching the dog show before she fell asleep on her own dog and had to stumble to her room hours later to sleep it off.

That wasn’t in the cards.

(Why did she think she’d get anything she wanted, at this point? Really?)

Her phone rang.

For a moment, she thought it would be fucking Margaret, calling to yank yet another rug out from under her, some other thing Quinn loved that she’d have to give up in just over 72 hours.

She nearly ignored the call.

But her mind drifted to Santana, and she wondered what trouble she was getting into today, so she turned her phone over and--

“Shit,” Quinn hissed, hurrying to answer the call before it went to voicemail. “Carole! Hi!”

“Quinn!” Craole’s voice was as chipper and sunny as a day in June on the other end of the line, and Quinn literally felt some tension ease out of her shoulders with just that one word. “Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Quinn replied rotely, because that was what you say to people who wish you Happy Thanksgiving, especially people who had no idea that your list of things to be thankful for was getting shorter by the minute. “I hope you’ve been resting?”

“Please,” Carole tsked, “it’s not like Finn would prepare dinner. He’d go out for Kentucky Fried Chicken and call it set.” She laughed, and so did Quinn, because - well, Finn hadn’t ever really exactly excelled in the cookery department.

“Is everything alright?” Quinn asked, as their laughter died down. “Is Finn okay?”

“Oh, yes, he’s fine, or he will be, if he’s let off in time for dinner. Otherwise he may stage a riot right there in the office, which will be nothing compared to the fit I will throw if they try to keep my son from coming home at a reasonable hour on a holiday--”

Quinn refrained from reminding Carole gently that crime and criminals didn’t take the day off, because at this point she was well-familiar with Carole’s feelings regarding her son’s occupation and how frequently it cut into their family time.

It still caught her off guard, hearing a mother genuinely care about her child.

“Anyway,” Carole said, cutting herself off with a huff, “what time will you be here?”

Quinn blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“What time will you be here?” Carole asked, which didn’t make any more sense the second time around. “I’m planning for everything to be done by five. Do you think you could make it by then?”

Quinn opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Thanksgiving was a day for family, but her family had conspired to shackle her to their plans and she had a Fabray-shaped knife dangling over her head, and she had never been less happy to be a Fabray, and Carole--

Tears welled in Quinn’s eyes and she quickly cleared her throat. “Yes,” Quinn answered as quickly as she could, “yes. I’d love to come. Thank you.” Thank you, thank you, thank you. “Should I bring anything?”

“Nothing but your smiling face! Oop, I need to stir. See you later! Happy Thanksgiving!”

The line went dead and Quinn set her phone down dumbly.

There went her plan. She wasn’t going to be getting very drunk and falling asleep anywhere while the Macy’s parade ran on repeat in the background.

She was going to Thanksgiving. To a family Thanksgiving. Hosted by the woman who had become more of a mother to her than her biological mother could even try to be.

She was going to Thanksgiving.

(Maybe she had a little bit to be thankful for after all.)

Quinn hadn’t been planning on making any stops on her way to Carole’s. She’d been planning on a bee-line, so she could be there for as long as possible and soak up every bit of comfort she could from the cozy Hudson house, but she found herself at a standstill - literally.

She stood in front of the church - her church.

She’d found her old silver cross necklace when she was digging through her room. She’d gotten it as a Confirmation gift from her great-grandmother, and she hadn’t worn it regularly since high school. She hadn’t worn it at all since college.

But now it hung around her neck, tucked beneath the hem of her shirt, resting against the hammering of her heart.

She needed it, now, more than ever.

Quinn walked up the steps and went inside.

It was more or less deserted, which Quinn was relieved about - she didn’t have the strength to explain herself to anyone with questions about her presence there, or her hair, or anything at all, so she hurried down the aisle before someone could appear to irritate her, and--

And what?

Quinn stopped, staring up at the figure of Jesus Christ on the cross. He was sickly thin, with blood painted as oozing from His hands, His side. The crown of thorns sat sharply on His head.

It must have been so awful, being up there like that, Quinn thought, not for the first time. It was grotesque, the image in front of her, one repeated in different styles and designs all over the country, the world - but there was a reason it persevered as one of the most recognizable symbols of the religion.

There was something compelling about sacrifice.

Quinn knelt in front of the statue, her pink hair falling forward as she bowed her head. Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned…

She didn’t know how long she knelt there, just that her knees were sore and achy by the time she stood back up. She was about to leave, really, she was, but she saw--

Quinn made her way over, rummaging her purse as she walked. By the time she arrived, she’d come up with a dollar, which she slid into the donation box in exchange for a long matchstick. She lit it off one of the many candles burning on the altar, and carefully caught another candle’s wick, watching as the fire jumped from match to candle. She blew the matchstick out once she was sure the little flame had caught, then set the matchstick in the trash bucket beneath the altar.

Please, Quinn thought, as strongly as she could, as loudly as she could, please, God, or Mary, or Jesus, or someone, Quinn’s hand found the silver cross and wrapped around it, tightly, please, God, help us. Help me. Please.

She watched her little candle catch and dance in the air currents, then forced herself to look away. She tucked her necklace back beneath her shirt and hurried back out of the church, suddenly more anxious than ever to get where she’d been going.

(Was it too late to look into the local convent? Quinn bookmarked that thought for later.)

Arriving at the Hudson house was sort of - not strange, exactly, because she’d been there dozens of times, especially while Finn was enlisted. She’d visited every time she came home; sometimes she’d come home just to visit with her. She knew Carole was lonely, and consumed with worry for her baby boy, so Quinn would find excuses to bake something and bring it over, and let them both be distracted for hours with a bottle of wine and shared memories. They caught up more than two people who emailed all the time needed to, but Quinn was not complaining - she loved Carole.

And Carole loved her.

(It seemed the list of people who loved her was also getting shorter by the day.)

The only strange part was going to be having Finn there this time, but--Quinn wasn’t really nervous about that, not really. Finn was like a Great Dane, or a Mastiff; big, intimidating, and more comforting than the most expensive security system money could buy. The way Finn took up a room, the easy way he smiled, how he acted when he was around his mother…

Quinn smoothed her still-very-pink hair down and let out a breath, then knocked on the door.

Maybe, just maybe, there really was something to be thankful for this year.

#para: all #para: 009 #para: self #cporttask #cporttask11

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butlerofthecount · 4 years

Text

Tagged by (Kind of?): @ducktales-wco-oo and @gamblealife

Tagging: @tuesdayscanons, @ketchupblood, @airborne-disaster, @listofevilinventions, @darkwiing, @pick-and-shovel-laborer, and whoever else wants to!

Regular - Dextrius | Bold - Goosewing | Italics - Dexter

Dextrius

Goosewing

Dexter

layer one : the outside

Name - Count (Dextrious) Duckula, Ludwig Von Goosewing, Count (Dexter) Duckula Eye colour - Crimson, Puke Green-Yellow, Obsidian Hair style / colour - Black with purple streaks; fashioned with a fire motif in mind (Might as well have himself look hot, right?), Short and messy white, Medium-short raven hair that is nicely parted at the middle, yet some of the strands are uneven compared to other strands. Height - 4′7″, 4′8 1/2″, 4′7″ Clothing style - A stylized formal suit with some jewelry to complete the look. Flames are also visible on his cloak, though they aren’t real, just a part of the design. He prefers a classy bright violet and is proud of it. | Some undergarments like an undershirt and boxers with a heart pattern on them, pants, a vest, scarlet bow tie, spats on loafers, and a deerskin coat and hat to complete his attire. | A simple black suit jacket over a button up shirt with a red bow tie and a lavender cloak that reaches the floor. Best physical feature - Beak, arms, and chest. His small fangs can be seen as attractive, but also misleading for some of his more vampire traits, like how his arms may seem wimpy but have more to them than just their looks. What doesn’t disappoint is his chest however, as he does try to stay fit for his own satisfaction. | Chest and abdomen, as he is probably the most vulnerable there. Tries to stay clean and soft for the ladies. | Eyes, beak, and hands, for how gentle and smooth they feel, especially the last two.

layer two : the inside

Fears - Looking bad in front of a crowd, not being able to fulfill his dream of being a star, losing anything that he has gained at this point, Being alone, dying, and holy men and their items. | Not honoring his family lineage, going against his parent’s wishes, physically unpleasing people (to look at), old age, his insecurities, and being embarrassed. | Meat, Flesh, Blood, anything related to animals and their insides, terrible people, being used or abused by others, giant vegetable monsters, death in general, pain, confrontations with those much larger or heavier than him, and true vampries. Guilty pleasure - Playing video games, interacting with the villagers in casual chats, much to Igor’s dismay, going out partying and clubbing (He’s been through some things), and exercising. | Having conversations with his imaginary partner, Heinrich, using technology to date and mingle with others, Tries to attend the Vampire Hunter’s convention but usually gets denied, and his drinking problems. | Gambling and playing cards, trying to pretty up his hair and attire, keeping his feathers well plumed, and writing songs. Biggest pet peeve - Being given orders or bossed around | Being seen as a laughingstock or a lolcow. | Not being taken as seriously as he wants to be, despite his appearance. Ambitions for the future - Wants to be the most well recognized person in the world, no, in reality. He seeks the best, as he only deserves the best. | To avenge his parents’ death and rid the world of all vampires, while also continuing his bloodline. | To live his life the way he wants to, not how Igor desires.

layer three : thoughts

First thoughts upon waking up: - “So what’s the plan for today? Making a ruckus, plastering my luxurious face in several cities? Ah, I’ll think of something, I always do!” | “Eh heh, I hope dat my bed doesn’t need repairing again.” | “Ah! I better turn off the alarm clock before Nanny arrives!” What you think about most: - “What can I do to make myself the best, the most fantastic, the one that never winces from danger?” | “Duckula, you fiend, I will get you, and when I do, your end will be assured!!” | “Hm... I’m not sure what I think about most. Is it broccoli sandwiches? Or looking good? Hrm...” What you think about before bed: - “Ah, another plan foiled yet again. Oh well, better try again tomorrow!” | “I wonder what I might find in my dreams? Hopefully I’ll get an idea from dere...” | “Hopefully no one tries to make a rustle while I’m asleep. Don’t need to lose any more sleep than I already have.”

I wonder if: - “I wonder if anyone... really likes me for who I am?” | “I wonder if what I am doing is going to end the terror?” | “I wonder if there will be a day when Igor gives up his griping?”

What your best quality is: - Charismatic! | Honor! | Kindness!

layer four : what’s better ?

Single or group dates - Group | Group | Single To be loved or respected - Loved | Respected | Respected Beauty or brains - Beauty (But he’s no slouch on brains) | Brains (But he wants beautiful partners) | Both (As he respects someone for who they are.) Dogs or cats - Dogs (Doesn’t mind Towser at all.) | Dogs (Cats just don’t like him and his way of life.) | Cats (He loves to pet them and they love to rest on his lap.)

layer five : do you…

Lie - For certain | Only when forced to or to further his plans | Tries not to but has Believe in yourself - Without a doubt! Well, maybe one | Confidence drives his soul | Sometimes. Believe in love - Craves it! | Surely! | Yes. Want someone - They all do, just for their own reasons. Dexter’s the least yearning of one.

layer six : ever been …

Been on stage: - So many times | Once or twice | A couple of times Done drugs: - It’s safe to say yes, he’s done some, but it’s not like they’ve really affected him (Thanks to his supernatural tolerance) | No, besides alcohol and tobacco | He hasn’t really yet, but if he did, he’d have less tolerance compared to Dextrius Changed who you were to fit in: - He’s tried to adapt but for all of his attempts, he just can’t change who he really is. | He’s not willing to really change for others as he likes who he is and doesn’t feel like changing until his goals are complete. | Whether it’s to his life as a marshall or as a space bounty hunter, Dexter changes to try and make something different of himself from the rest of his bloodline. To be better than them.

layer seven : favorites

layer eight : age

Day your next birthday will be - October 23rd | April 8th | October 23rd How old will you be -, 35 or 879 | 67 | 45 or 889 Age you lost your virginity - For all of the silly stuff he’s done while at parties, he hasn’t lost it yet. He doesn’t know why, but it might have something to do with his fangs and him being a vampire... Or just unsatisfying to have “fun” with. | Oh, for sure nope. He’s been trying to for a good while. | Not yet, but isn’t pushing to get that changed either. Does age matter - Not really for Dextrius (He’s no pedo though) | Somewhat for Ludwig | And most definitely for Dexter

layer nine : in a person

Best personality - Supportive | Tolerant | Funny and Quirky Best eye colour - Really doesn’t matter | Sapphire Blue | Not really on that Best hair colour - Radical or Unusual Hair Color | Natural Hair | Not really adamant on a specific color or type Best thing to do with a partner - Have them adore and fawn over him, tend to his desires, snuggle with as he plants some kisses... not the deadly kind | To converse and put up with his shenanigans, perhaps even go out on romantic occasions if he can | Actually uncertain of what he wants

layer ten : finish the sentence

“I love - me and everything about my self... except for the insecurities. Those I can do without.” | “I love dat I know have de chance to bring honor to my family name and dis time, I will do it right!!” | “I love who I am, and the good people that I protect. And Nanny and Igor too. I can never forget them!!” “I feel - ...like I’m doing something wrong sometimes. Like I have to be different, and adapt to make people like me.” | “I feel as if dis device is not doing what I want it to do. Hrm... Stupid contraption!! Heh, why do dese dings always go haywire?” | “I feel like there may be something in my clothes... Is that you, Spurs? Ah, nope. Just a rat.” “I hide - my issues that I don’t want peeps to see. If they did see it, then they wouldn’t like me for sure. I know it.” | “I hide my wampire weapons for any visitors. Wouldn’t want to get another accident on my conscious, heh heh.” | “I hide whenever I get scared. It just seems like the best course of action sometimes, but when no one else will rise up, I’ll just have to. For everyone else.” “I miss - earlier times. Back then I could have done so much different to get what I want.” | “I miss my parents. They were very loving and caring, and seemed like great people.” | “I miss my time for the daily lunch broccoli sandwich. Hmph, looks like I have to make it myself...” “I wish - that I could be famous. Whether it’s by the country, the world, or even the universe. I just wish people would see me, and all that I have to offer.” | “I wish I could find a way to stop all of de wampires. Dat way, I can carry on with finding someone for me.” | “I wish my ammo wouldn’t keep getting clogged or misfiring. I need to shoot when I want to shoot!”

#(I think this is the last time I do this for three muses.)#(I have one more on another blog but that will be only for two characters. Two drastically different characters.)#(But this was fun to see more into all three of these boys.)#(It should help separate Dextrius from Dexter and give some more insight on Goosewing.)#Out of Ghoulish and Evil Schemes (ooc)#A Red Hot Return (Reboot Count Duckula)#Upholding the Wampire Hunter Legacy! (Doctor Ludwig Von Goosewing)#He's More Than a Mister; He's a Count! (Count Dexter Duckula)#Wondering out loud (Headcannons and Continuity thoughts)#Things that keep us calm. (memes!)

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tabletoptrinketsbyjj · 5 years

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Trinkets, Necklaces, 2: Whether they’re pendants, amulets, periapts, chokers, beaded strings, chains, charms, lockets or torques, “Neck Slot” type jewelry is a very common item in fiction and roleplaying. These ornaments give an immediate glance into the bearer’s personality, wealth, rank or social class and often serves as an iconic part of that character’s look. Ranging in obviousness from a soldiers dog tags, cleric’s holy symbol or police detectives badges worn front and center over clothing, immediately visible on their chest as a clear indication of who they are, to the cliché locket containing pictures of family or lost lovers that’s worn against the skin, just over the heart. Outgoing character’s such as Phoebe Bouffette compliment their natural charisma with loud colorful costume jewelry while more reserved examples often go without, though what little ornamentation they do have is meaningful or of good quality like Katara’s heirloom choker or Annie’s half-a-locket. A locked metal torque can instantly mark the bearer a penniless slave, while a string of lustrous pearls mark their owner a flauntingly wealthy noble. Magical necklaces in fiction are powerful and mysterious from Inuyasha’s Beads of Subjugation, Dr Strange’s Eye of Agamotto or Yugi’s Millennium Puzzle. None of these necklaces are intensely magical in their own right but can serve as basis for a magical or plot relevant amulet. When a DM rolls a d100, the bog standard amulet of protection +1 they were going to give out now has a unique look and personality rather than just a mechanical benefit.

A pewter medallion displaying a circular symbol of a stylized killer whale. Etched on the back are the initials “M.G.C”.

A broken half of a medallion that emanates a sense of security and warmth. It’s power and true function is inaccessible without its other half.

A unicorn tooth that has been drilled and threaded onto a bright braided string.

A thick multilayered garland of cherry blossoms meant to be worn around the neck. The blossoms have been magically preserved and will never wilt, fade or lose their scent.

A necklace of brass links on which is strung two dozen flies, each encased in a small glass sphere.

An amulet carved from a small piece of oak. It has a pyrographed image of a river wrapped around the roots of a large stylized tree.

A necklace made out of dried rat tails that have been artfully entwined.

A dented silver locket. There is an image of a large smiling family on the inside of the opening with the words “Please come home to us safe and sound.” etched on the other side.

A palm sized necklace, bearing a bone holy symbol of a local god of a Random Evil Domain.

A lustrously amulet of polished stone of midnight hue carved from the heartstone of a mountain drenched in dark magic. It is engraved with a single glowing rune, and into its ebony facets have been poured all the captured malice and spite that emanates from the chill lands of the dark elves. To behold its darksome shape is to see despair made physical, it is to abandon even the merest memory of hope.

—Keep reading for 90 more necklaces.

—Note: The previous 10 items are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.