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#hence the medallion on his neck

fr-wiwiw · 16 days

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well, to indulge myself i'm writing this post to ramble and share a bit of my Gahan barbarian!au. it's going to be a bit of a long post i think, we'll see.

i saw noel's post about their gladiator!yohan & prince!gaon (check it here!) and it makes me miss writing the arranged marriage barbarian!au i have, it only has what.. 3 or 4 chapters I think. you can read it here.

i've always been fascinated by the visuals of medieval, historical, period era. even post apocalyptic future settings like Horizon Zero games franchise.

i think i started au bcs i've played too much Assassin's Creed Valhalla— i haven't finished it yet, too preoccupied with Monster Hunter World— but i have sketched my female Eivor several times in my sketchbook. this was when i'm curious and interested enough to draw human but haven't fully grasped the gesture, anatomy, shapes and all. i usually draw what i take interest on and it helps me tremendously, to keep on learning and push through my frustrations.

and of course.. my Gahan brainrot picked it up. hence the barbarian!au for TDJ born

i have sketches of Gahan in this au, i think i've shared them here too but i'll re-share here. it doesn't catch many eyes, i admit it's a bit of a bummer but I like the idea anyway. I used to imagined them before I went to sleep, now it's idol/celeb!gaon x mysterious husband!yohan that's occupying my mind. but anyways! here are the sketches.

1st sketch is me trying to see his body proportion in viking/barbarian attire. the upper left sketch was me wanting to see modern Yohan stripping off his clothes ig haha.. anyways, between Gaon/Jinyoung and Yohan/Jisung, it's VERY difficult to nail down his face. less lines doesn't resembles him at all and add some more lines he looks too realistic to my simplified version of Gaon/Jinyoung. it was hard trying to find the balance for these characters to be in the same picture and look like they belong in the same style. i want to do Yohan/Jisung's pretty face justice but i still struggled in this sketches. i think this was 2021? 2022?

2nd sketch— his long protruding neck lmao i haven't fully grasped how a person can pose naturally but it came out as if he has turtle neck syndrome going on. well done Yohan! you are a turtle apparently according to my hand. all jokes aside, this was me attempting to paint his face bcs i never really attempted to paint gahan. i doodled and sketched more than i paint/rendering and i'm on my way to learn more of rendering daily if possible, alongside with my daily sketches. you can also see i've tried to give some color to his attire and some medallion or such. do you see a braid there? i will get there, the braid is something significant in this story ;)

3rd sketch is basically me planning out his character design as a barbarian/viking chief. you can see bits of references cuts here and there, took me quite some time bcs i just started to really try my hands on concept character design properly— i love cloaks and capes and vikings has exactly just that, and the winter times are especially my favorite type of attire on them so i thought why not give Yohan polar bear fur as his official formal attire while still flaunting his wonderful body to the world be it summer or winter lmao. here's where you know it's fantasy. i'm sure people back then drink ales and what not to keep their body warm so they can go bare-chested in winter even but i'm sure the day after that they will regret it. but i make Yohan and his clan to have special abilities for living in cold places. doesn't mean i don't make them wear winter attire but this is only bcs i want him to be bare-chested xD the one I post here was before i dabble on the sketch a bit more. hopefully one day i can share it again with more updates for this au.

now.. onto Gaon's sketches.

he's a Prince in this story. his parents, the King and the Queen, arranged a marriage for him for political reasons. but they have special reasons as to why they pick Yohan, aside from political purposes, to be their son's betrothed and gave him away to Yohan's barbarian clan.

1st sketch (ignore the upper left, that's Jinyoung from his other drama). i want to see him in medium and long hair length. there's a purpose to this. he has his canon Gaon hairstyle when he was the Prince in the palace. but with time and some adjustments living with Yohan and his barbarian clan rubs off on him. perhaps it's due to that, or he's grown tired to cut it off again and again (he has no one to groom him properly now unlike in the palace), practical reason is to maintain heat around his neck while in winter, or it's his idea of adapting and blending in with the enemy. you can't blame him for being wary. he's whisked away from his comfort place and home and married off to a fearsome and famous barbarian on the land at that time, almost willingly got raped by Yohan on 1st chapter (yes, you read that right). other reasons why he grows his hair, as i mentioned the culture rubs off on him, is something to do with the hair braiding too. and personal reason is that i want to see pretty Gaon in long hair lol

2nd sketch on the left was him on early days on Yohan's fur beddings. the right was him perhaps laughing out loud by some surprising and amusing thing Yohan said after living with him for some months, you can see the different hair length there. gosh he looks unalive in here lol idk why.. my sketches were still rigid here

3rd sketch is them after establishing a genuine intimate relationship and Yohan has to be away to fend off some unexpected visitors. unfortunately it cost Yohan some of his men's lives. but he made it back to his clan and his betrothed. i make it as if Gaon was anxious waiting for him and one of the barbarian shouted for Yohan's arrival and he ran immediately. lunged at Yohan perhaps, the barbarian Chief managed to catch him but didn't quite have the strength to carry them both upright as the weariness sinks into him post battle & adrenaline wearing off of him. he's home now, in Gaon's arms.

now.. the hair braiding.

barbarians/viking has long hair and braids on their hair. styled cascading down or up into a pony tail or a mohawk and such. idk if this is historically correct but i'm winging most of this anyway but the idea of braids in this story is that it's significant to lovers. it's a mark between special intimate relationship (like lovers, spouses, soulmates). one can have a braid or braid their lover's hair should they wish to, it's very intimate and special for them. jeweleries might have certain status symbol for them and their ranks but I also prefer these barbarians have something simple to symbolize their intimacy. something that can get overlooked but enough for their significant other to know (and some people) what it means.

I like the idea of Yohan having accessories for his attire but his hair is clean from braids. clearly it's saying something if you've read this far and seeing my sketches for their different stages of relationship. over the years of them finally developing feelings and genuinely established a relationship, despite already being married an Gaon almost got raped by Yohan, they are lovers.

yet Yohan never really initiates anything about him wanting to have braid(s) or braiding Gaon's hair. he might have explained about what braids are to Gaon when the bambi was curious or off-handedly commented something about it. Gaon really finds out the real meaning from Yohan's ppl and he wonders why Yohan never asks or wants braids from him. then he realizes Yohan has always been respectful to him, even years after that night he almost raped him. always keeping healthy distance, outside of their sex and other intimate physical affections, he usually waits until Gaon ask first regarding intimate things. not that he never initiates things, he figures something as serius and committed as this is something Gaon wants to have an option to bail out from. they were arranged to have marriage for political reasons after all, Gaon has the freedom to not have feelings for him as long as he stays within the wedding pact rules Yohan make with the King & the Queen ( for Gaon's sake too). He never expects to have feelings for the Prince and he always keeps the option of Gaon falling out of love of him one day. it is only fair, he thinks.

but then Gaon asks him if he wants Gaon to braid his hair. the Prince never ceases to make him falter. it still shocks and amuses him, to have someone have this much effect on him. even with nervousness and blushing state Gaon is in now after uttering those words.. Yohan wonders what he has done to have this kind of luxury to have someone this precious in his arms.

and if his people noticed a single braid just near the back of his neck when wind swept his hair or if he pulls his hair into a ponytail on hot summer days? they will all grin smugly.. Yohan likes to keep it a bit hidden from view mainly bcs it's practical and he doesn't want ppl to accidentally graze it off when he's having friendly wrestle matches or axe practices. or even having people cut it off when he's at war. he doesn't hide it per se, it's visible when it's visible. Gaon smiles sweetly and adoringly when he finds this out bcs to him, it feels as if Yohan is unconsciously protecting it. protecting their relationship, protecting Gaon.

and if Gaon walks out of Yohan's tent, that days when he asks if he can braid Yohan's hair, with a braid or several on his hair? visible to everyone? the people cheer and roar in celebration. they throw a huge feast and toast to their relationship, congratulating the power couple. wishing the gods to give these two their blessings and to protect them. they're finally able to see their Chief have a partner that is equal to him. it's a memorable day

but if you think this story doesn't come with heavy angst, tears, pain and betrayal.. well think again ;))

i will stop here. thankyou for reading! i hope i can pick up this au again in my drawings & writings

#artists on tumblr #the devil judge #digital art #fris #fr wiwiw #digital illustration #gahan #kim gaon #kang yohan #fanart #tdj #the fawn and the chief #arranged marriage #i miss this au #i want to indulge myself more in this au again #but i have to focus on my drawings & commissions for now #i will come back to this au

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pokelolmc · 6 months

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The Ultimate Enemy is a Disappointment (and How I'd Fix It) (Part 1)

A couple years back, I started analysing a list of DP episodes I thought had missed potential--and my analysis on TUE got SO big I made it its own thing. I rewrote it to death and could never settle on something concise enough, so I abandoned it. But I'm BACK baby. I can't remember where it is now, but I came across a poll on whether Reign Storm or TUE is the better special and the discourse reignited my passion for this analysis, and gave me motivation to trim off some of the fat.

Don't get me wrong, at the end of the day I do like this episode--or at least its ideas. I really liked the episode the less I thought about it, but now I see issue after issue in its execution. Hence, the "disappointment": it could've been great, but it missed the mark. This won't just be a one-sided roast of TUE, though. I have a ton of cool ideas for how to rewrite plot holes or fill in the gaps. The best roasts are constructive! (Though I would be rewriting it in a more mature fashion compared to canon's writing--keep that in mind).

Part 2 is now up: you can find it here.

So here we go: Part 1--the general plot contrivances/contradictions unrelated to Dan's character or the time travel system.

The episode introduced taking off the Time Medallions as a way to immediately return to one’s native time period, but then forgot this late into the second act.

Technically this plot hole involves time travel devices, but I'm counting it as a plot hole by character decisions.

The episode gives no explicit rules on lag time between removing the medallion and returning home, but it takes only one to two seconds to return Skulktech to the future after they dropped theirs, and it had to have been instant for Sam and Tucker to return to the past in time to escape rubble falling from FentonWorks (which was only roughly two to three stories high, not counting the Ops Centre).

Danny should’ve been sent back almost instantly when Dan took his medallion off—which would’ve completely defeated the purpose of Dan’s attempt to trap Danny there in the first place.

If they wanted to keep the plot point, they could’ve just had Dan grab the medallion and turn it intangible while it’s still around Danny’s neck…and that’s assuming that making it intangible while Danny’s still tangible doesn’t count as “removal”. That’s it. He never needed to remove it to begin with.

2. The Nasty Sauce explosion just…sucks. In my opinion, it’s too silly for the tone the episode’s trying to go for (and as a cause of major character death), and it wrecks the worldbuilding.

I tried to put it in way more verbose ways in my previous drafts, but I found another post somewhere on tumblr that did what I couldn’t—say it in three words:

“It’s just stupid.”

Assuming that semi-realistic laws exist in-place in the Danny Phantom universe (so it’s BASICALLY similar to ours) the Nasty Burger shouldn’t have been able to stay in business without a LOT of red tape, cover-ups and NDA’s. They had an explosive substance on premises, being taken care of by unqualified, minimum-wage part-timers instead of trained chemical safety specialists. Forget handling it, they shouldn’t have even had it in the first place! If they got it by going UNDER the law and covering everything up, then one of their employees shouldn’t have been able to just CONFESS to it at a public school assembly.

It also sounds ridiculous that a “certain combination of secret herbs and spices” could catastrophically combust in the first place. They could’ve made the explosion ghost-powered/altered; they could’ve made it not the sauce itself, but a pressure issue with its containment vats; they could’ve made it a gas leak or malfunction of cooking equipment starting a fire, or something. They could’ve made the explosion a Fenton invention at their home (where the whole family had reason to be at once, and Mr Lancer could hold the parent-teacher conference there like in Teacher of the Year). They've used more serious threats of explosion in previous episodes (like the Ecto-Filtrator in Million Dollar Ghost).

And instead they decided “Yep! This commonly sold and digested sauce is a dangerous explosive, and even a small handout serving is enough to blow clean through a wall when it’s heated up!” This is how we're going to kill all of the main characters' loved ones to send him on a villain arc!

Like what?

Nowhere else after TUE did the show acknowledge the Nasty Sauce in worldbuilding. There were no consequences of its risk being publicly revealed, nor did it ever pose a hazard again. It’s understandable, given the show’s episodic nature. Bu at least in The Ultimate Enemy itself, they should've thought about how it affected most of the previous episodes.

During his fight with Boxed Lunch, one of Danny's ectoblasts to a sauce packet demolishes an entire section of wall in the Nasty Burger. So how hadn’t any ghost fights ignited any Nasty Sauce before—or damaged the main vat, god forbid—and caused an explosion already?

If the sauce was always a part of the Nasty Burger’s recipe, then the entire restaurant was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off since season one, and nothing short of a miracle could explain why it hadn’t happened before.

3. This episode committed character assassination of Mr Lancer, for the sake of setting up stakes in the plot. And contradicted his personality changes in previous episodes (such as “Teacher of the Year”).

Mr Lancer, in my opinion, is the character done the single dirtiest in the episode. It warps his entire character around the plot, and turns him into a contrived mouthpiece for how important the CAT is. It leaves him even more malicious and mean-spirited than his behaviour in the first episode of the entire show—leaving him even worse than he started.

He didn’t have much character development, but there were some more positive changes happening in his personality as later episodes occurred. He started out as a selfish, corrupt authority figure (think Mystery Meat, Fright Night and other S1 episodes where he deliberately lets the jocks off the hook for their behaviour), but unwittingly acts in favour of the main characters in “Fanning the Flames”—although ineffective and easily taken down by Ember.

By the time of “Teacher of the Year”, we finally got a glimpse into his (albeit scant) ideology as a teacher around helping his students succeed, and his concern for Danny’s failing grades.

It even revealed his personal interest in Doomed, which gave him more in common with Danny and Tucker and humanised him in way a few other episodes hadn’t. Season two even demonstrated his (albeit brief) willingness to stand up and defend his students from a ghost attack in “Memory Blank”. Lancer, for a brief period of time, became more than just his job, book title swears and his frustration with rebellious students.

We're talking about the teacher who, in the early 2000s, kept a picture of himself crossdressing at school to convince his students to try their best with a "story about his sister".

The Ultimate Enemy, however, took Mr Lancer’s humanity towards the students—particularly Danny—and flipped it all on its head. It turned him into an elitist, mean-spirited asshole who verbally attacked his students (past and present) based on their performances on this single. Fucking. Test.

They made Mr. “there is no cheat code in school, or in life” Lancer into a cruel enforcer of the hamfisted and childish importance of the CAT. Actual “get rich vs dead-end, minimum-wage job” propaganda.

(Teacher of the Year)

And... one season later:

(that sure sounds like a cheat code in life to me)

To add insult to injury, TUE used Lancer’s death as the butt of a joke directly after spending the majority treating him like a total asshole—following up character assassination with literal assassination , and excluding him from the rest of the explosion victims in their memorial.

It feels to me, that it'd make more sense for Mr Lancer to be sceptical of the importance of the CAT based on TOTY. Replace him in the assembly with Principal Ishiyama or something. A stickler-for-the-rules school administrator looking to boost the school's image by pressuring kids on a standardised test? That ABSOLUTELY makes sense.

Mr Lancer could still be seen as a threat (or someone Danny can't reach out to for help), but in the department of simply being an authority figure Danny's used to dodging around with his ghost activities. Someone who'd still enforce consequences for Danny getting caught cheating. Someone who'd get his parents involved. He's the closest thing Danny could have to any level of support at Casper High, and Danny could think he's even lost THAT.

4. The way Danny got the CAT answers was contrived, and broke the previously established rules of ghost intangibility.

To cut a long story short, Boxed Lunch’s fight with Danny shouldn’t have gotten the test answers stuck to Danny’s back. Danny immediately turned intangible in anticipation of the explosion, and was thrown outside the Nasty Burger and through Mr. Lancer’s briefcase before turning tangible again.

That didn’t make sense; the series previously established that ghosts (in this case, halfas) were physically unaffected by explosions when intangible. “Million-Dollar Ghost” even demonstrated it when Vlad escaped his castle’s explosion in the same manner, and was left completely unmoved from his position at ground zero. The sauce packet explosion shouldn’t have even moved Danny out of place, let alone flung him out of the building (especially not compared to Vlad and an Ecto-filtrator explosion).

On top of that, the test answers couldn’t have gotten stuck to his back while he passed through the suitcase, as Danny was intangible and the answers sheet was solid. Even if it were possible for already intangible ghosts to grab onto tangible objects and bring them into intangibility, that’d certainly require conscious intention that Danny didn’t have in the episode. The test answers got stuck to his back by sheer accident on his part. Bringing other objects into tangibility always previously involved a tangible ghost grabbing hold of other tangible people/objects and consciously willing them intangible together. Ergo, he should’ve simply passed through the suitcase and its contents all at once—go to the other side, pass go, do not collect CAT cheat sheet.

The solution for this one is pretty simple—just remove the scene entirely. Not only does it break the lore, but it’s entirely pointless and redundant (more on that later when I talk about Clockwork—giving Danny the answers was his idea, and it was a terrible one). Instead, it would’ve been much more compelling if Danny stole the answers on purpose with his ghost powers—being put under so much pressure to succeed that he felt like he had to forgo his morals and use his powers to cheat.

#danny phantom #the ultimate enemy #danny fenton #dp rewrite #tue analysis #10 dp episodes with missed potential

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electromignion · 1 year

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Bridgewater fanart! (Who is surprised? /lh /j)

This fanart has been inspired by Lauren Shippen herself, from the # she put on the reblog she did of my Jeremy Bradshaw sleeping fanart “also: new headcanon I now have vipin started TAing for Jeremy when he was still in undergrad soJeremy also has one photo of the two of them at Vipin's graduation in his office”. So I had to draw it of course, I’m so thankful for Lauren’s support, feeling truly so honoured so this is the least I can do 🤧

This is to me, what Vipin asked to do to Jeremy, and so he did because he has always appreciated Vipin (a beginning of friendship there?? They both cherish that pic for sure and yes I plan on drawing Jeremy’s office, and yeah I only drew this to put it in a small frame in Jeremy’s office, that’s my dedication 😭🤌 I’m putting a read more for a further explanation of my headcanon and also the outfit (regalia, cords, medallions wise) because yeah there is a whole day of research behind this and also finger cramps because my Apple Pencil decided to slowly d word on me as I was trying to finish this fanart so I used my fingers jejdjd)

So: please know that I’m French, so it was very hard to find information about graduation ceremonies: we do not have that in France, so I’m sorry if something is off!

First of all, professors and whole faculty members must wear their regalia at graduation ceremonies hence Jeremy having his academic regalia. And it made me learn that the velvet colour on some parts of it + the hood colour differ depending on the field they had their phd in, Jeremy’s is white because to me he has his phd in history (at least from what I understood, as even in S1 EP01 he talks in his lecture room about getting credits in history) which counts in the “art, social and humanities” section because history counts as humanities which is white. (Which also explains why Vipin’s tassel on his cap is white because to me he also went in that field) Jeremy’s hat is a velvet tam with a gold tassel which is the formal hat for the doctorate level.

Then… come Vipin’s cords and medallions. I headcanon Vipin as a really high achieving student, I might be wrong though, but he is too great of a TA to not be. So as a disclaimer: all the information I gathered there come from things linked to the Bridgewater State University because I really wanted to be accurate as much as I possibly could (Yes I truly spent a day for that and I might have drunk one or two Monsters).

For the medallions: the one with the black neck ribbon is “the Diversity Champion medallion recognizes and honors those students who have worked tirelessly for the advancement of diversity and inclusion during their time at Bridgewater College.” I really see Vipin trying to really be actively trying to make it go for the best in clubs and such at BSU and the second one with the blue/green neck ribbon is “The Alpha Chi medallion symbolizes the honor and distinction of being a member of the national academic honor society.

The supporting neck ribbon is in the colors of Alpha Chi.”

Which brings us to the cords he has on his regalia: the green and blue cords represent Alpha Chi as well.

The gold cord represent his level of achievement it’s for “summa cum laude” (“meaning "with highest praise", typically awarded to graduates in the top 1%, 2%, or 5% of their class, depending on the institution.” Which is the highest distinction one can have when you get a diploma at uni in the US).

Then the red and blue cords “Graduates wearing blue and red cords with mixed tassels are members of the national history honor society, Phi Alpha Theta.” (Which for me also was a good idea as Vipin is truly going through so many documents linked to history for Jeremy, our guy is that interested into academic stuff)

Then for the purple rainbow scarf… it’s a real thing I’ve seen on graduating pictures from BSU!! And I gotta admit… I’m quite fond of the idea of Vipin being pan 🫣 (just my own hc always)

I’m sorry for the extra lengthy explanation but I feel like it was needed (maybe it is to flex my research /j) as I think it was really interesting in the development of the hcs around Vipin and even Jeremy!

And to me needless to say but Jeremy has been greatly moved that Vipin asked him to do a picture together where they throw the cap in the air because to Jeremy, Vipin could’ve done it with his fellow classmates. And Jeremy is fully aware of how much it was important for Vipin. (And maybe own little headcanon: I’m sure Jeremy doesn’t even have much pics from his own graduations)

I truly imagine that during the whole graduation ceremony Jeremy was feeling uncomfy in his academic faculty regalia because it’s way too formal (although it’s quite mandatory to wear it) so he is just 🧍🏻 standing being no thoughts head full of folklore only (he is of course very proud of his students nonetheless) therefore, Vipin asking him to do that picture must have been THE highlight he had during the ceremony (even counting all the ceremonies he ever had to attend to)

And to finish in case you missed it, here’s the fanart Lauren reblogged and where she talked about her new headcanon (saying this like that sounds surreal to me, I’m so honoured once again 🥹): https://www.tumblr.com/electromignion/716771521320878080/i-finally-finished-my-bridgewater-fanart-this

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pennylanefics · 2 years

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Candle in the Night - Pirate!Jake Kiszka

a/n: so…this happened 😅 again, based on the ask i sent in to @tripthelightfandomtastic for wild wednesday and thanks to the wax play anon that sparked this idea 🤍 super happy with how it came out 😏

summary: captain jake kiszka finally breaks his hard exterior and shows you a good time

warnings: smut (18+ - MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!!!!) wax play/temperature play, bondage, captain kink

word count: ~ 4.5k

It was a still night on the Abandoned Rose, the anchor dropped, keeping the ship tethered down for the time. It was a rather chilly summer night, your shawl around your shoulders as you walk along the deck.

Standing along the rail, you look out at the vast ocean, partly beautiful and partly terrifying. Though you found more beauty in it, not knowing what lies ahead, making every day more exciting.

And there was one thing that always made your days better.

Captain Jake “No Smile” Kiszka.

He is known to be the nicest and calmest captain that’s sailing the seas right now, yet he was a true captain. You haven’t interacted much with him, only once, ever since he agreed to allow you on board to travel with them to your next destination. But his presence was always comforting.

There was something about you that intrigued Jake. He was very much an observer, and he enjoyed watching you work around the deck, interact with the few other women on the ship, and just doing your own things.

But he made it his rule to never get involved with anyone that traveled or worked on his ship. As much as he was kind, he was still very serious about his position, hence his nickname.

But you. The way your body filled out the dresses you wore, how beautiful they looked on you and how he always thought about ripping them off. He tried hard to push those thoughts out of his mind, but it was difficult.

“What’s a pretty lady like you doing out here at night, huh?” His familiar voice rings out into the chilly night air.

Whipping around, you find Jake slowly stalking towards you, his hands in the pockets of his thin linen pants. That same stone cold expression graces his face, almost no emotion whatsoever.

Your eyes travel up and down his body, from his tan chest on show beneath his unbuttoned linen top, where the silver medallion necklace rests perfectly against his skin. Immediately, you notice the outline of his cock through his thin pants, and you have to look away before you get caught staring.

“Just needed to clear my head,” you tell him. He hums and comes to stand next to you, joining you in staring out at the expanse of the water.

“It’s a beautiful sight,” he comments, leaning on his elbows on the railing. His hat perfectly rests on his head, hiding the long hair that you’ve taken a strong liking to. But from what you could see, he had it pulled back in a bun at the back of his head.

“I never got to ask what your destination is?” He wonders, his eyes glancing over to land on you. You meet his gaze, and you feel a sudden chill run up your spine.

“I just wanted to get away from my old town. I didn’t really have a destination in mind. Whatever city is going to feel right when we dock, I’ll stay.”

Jake gulps and raises back up, facing you. You also stand forward and watch him take a couple steps closer to you.

“Can I ask you another thing?” His voice is low and soft. You nod, keeping your eyes on his. Your heart jumps to your throat when he raises his hand to gently tuck a piece of hair that had gotten free in the wind behind your ear. “Will you spend one night with me?”

You freeze in your spot, his hand not leaving your face. It had fallen to curl around the side of your neck, his thumb on your cheek.

“Like…sleeping? Or…” The look in his eyes tells you exactly what he’s talking about. It’s not innocent whatsoever.

“I think you know what I mean, darling,” his voice drops even lower, and you can’t help but shiver at the tone. It was so lust-filled, you wanted to jump him right in this spot.

“Why me?” You ask, gulping nervously. Jake chortles in response.

“Why not? I think you are very beautiful and what man wouldn’t want to bed a goddess such as yourself?”

“I wouldn’t expect a captain as poised and composed as yourself would talk in such a filthy way?”

“Oh sweetheart, then you are in for a real treat.”

He leans forward and crashes his lips into yours, the kiss immediately heated and needy. A few moments pass before Jake trails his kisses away from your lips, along your jawline, and down your neck.

He pauses to bite at a specific area, a soft, choked moan escaping your lips.

“Mm, but you have to keep quiet tonight, darling. We can’t have anyone else hearing your whimpers and moans.”

“Who says you’re good enough to make me moan louder than that?” Jake suddenly pulls away, his tongue not even having a chance to soothe the area he bit. His already dark eyes grow even darker, if possible, and he moves his hand to grab your neck, lightly squeezing it.

“You’re going to regret that when you see what I’m going to do to you.” Fear runs through your body, the words acting as a threat. “But I’m going to give you a safe word, okay? If anything gets too much, say ‘flag’. Got it?”

You nod in response, but that’s not enough for Jake.

“Say it.”

“Yes Captain.”

“Good girl. Now, let’s go back to my quarters. And be quiet. Can’t have anyone getting curious.” Nodding once more, you take his hand and follow him down to the halls of the ship, through the corridors and down to the end of the hall, where the largest room is.

You’ve never seen his quarters, and it’s nothing like you expected. It’s much bigger than your room, obviously, he has a desk on one side, filled with paperwork and things like ropes, compasses, and quills. The bed appeared to be quite cozy, and there were candles lit around the room. There was also a fire going on the opposite side of the room.

As soon as you step in the room, however, Jake attacks you in a kiss once again, his hands grabbing ahold of the sides of your neck to keep you in place. His hands grasp at your body, trying to tug your clothing off as quickly as he can.

“Get undressed for me, darling,” he breathes out against your lips. “And lay on the bed.”

You follow his instructions and quickly rid of your white everyday dress and flop onto the mess of blankets on his bed. He stands over his desk, messing with a couple things out of your line of sight. Until he turns around.

Holding two pieces of rope.

“What do you say we make this a little more fun?” He teases, stalking over to you. Raising yourself up on your elbows, your eyebrows furrowed together at him in confusion. “What? Never been tied up before?”

Anxiety runs through you as you shake your head.

“It’ll be alright, I promise. I won’t tie it too tight, okay?” Taking a deep breath, you sit up and wait for further instruction. But upon fully seeing your naked figure, he pauses.

“Before we get to that, I want to take a minute to admire you.” He drops the rope on the bed and crawls to hover over you.

His lips attach to the swell of your breast, nipping at it gently. You remember his rule on keeping quiet, so you swallow the moan that you were close to letting out; also, you didn’t want to stroke his ego too early in the night.

He leaves a few more bites in the area, soothing them right after with his warm tongue, before his lips close around your nipple, rolling it between his teeth. A whimper gets stuck in your throat once again, wanting to so badly release it.

“Come on, sweet girl. I know you can make at least some pretty sounds for me,” he practically begs.

“You-you told me to be quiet,” you groan.

“Yeah, quiet, not silent. I still wanna hear you.”

Nodding to yourself, he tries and teases you once more, switching over to the other nipple and biting it right off the bat. You finally let out a shaky gasp and you can feel Jake chuckling against your skin.

“So beautiful,” he whispers, trailing his kisses even further down your torso. He stops at your stomach and litters kisses all over, humming contently while doing so, like he was enjoying this just as much as you are.

Your hands maneuver to carefully remove his hat, and he doesn’t budge one bit, letting you know it was okay for you to do. Knowing how much he loves his hat, you set it on the bed rather than throwing it to the floor or somewhere in the room.

“These gorgeous, gorgeous thighs,” he whispers, finally reaching them. His hands softly caress the outside of them before trailing inside to spread them apart a little. “Pretty girl.”

His lips find their way to the insides of your thigh, leaving marks in their wake. The only sounds in the room were the creaking of the ship slowly swaying on the wavy sea, his kisses, and soft sounds from the both of you.

“Oh, you’re already so wet for me, huh?” He teases, running his knuckle through your slit, collecting some of the wetness that had pooled between your thighs.

“Just for you, Captain.” He hums in contentment and licks his finger, moaning at the taste, his eyes locking with yours.

“Just as I imagined, sweet as a peach,” he purrs. Your entire face flushes with heat and Jake finally sits back on his heels to get one final glance at you. “I wanna try something.”

“You already said you were going to tie me up,” you murmur. Jake nods, grabbing the pieces of ropes.

“I know. But there’s another thing, that’s the reason I’m going to be tying you up.”

He gets off the bed and grabs the rope again, moving to stand near your head. He ties each hand individually to each bedpost, confirming with you that they weren’t too tight or hurting. When you gave him the go-ahead, he walks away yet again.

You aren’t sure what he has in store, until he returns with two candles, one lit, one unlit. Curiosity fills your mind, but Jake says nothing as he quickly slips out of his clothing, his hard cock directly in your line of sight, making your mouth water.

“What’s the safe word?”

“Flag.” Jake nods and he kneels on the bed next to you.

In one hand, he holds the unlit candle. He lights it with the lit one, setting that one on the bedside table. He holds the candle above you, a straight face as he watches with concentration, the wax collect in a puddle around the flame.

“Jake, I-”

“You don’t address me as that tonight,” he almost barks at you. Feeling small, you nod and gulp.

“Captain, what are you doing?” You were scared to ask, and when he doesn’t respond, it worries you even more. But he knew you knew the safe word, and because he doesn’t hear it from you, he continues.

What you don’t expect is a single drop of wax to hit your stomach. You jolt in response to the warmth of it compared to your cool skin, but it’s a nice feeling overall. Jake takes a look at your face to gauge your reaction, and when he sees your mouth dropped open in surprise and arousal, he feels satisfied.

“Is this alright?” He asks.

“Yes, Captain.”

“Good. Try to stay still, okay?”

You do as he says, trying your hardest to keep in the same position. But it’s very hard when you have Jake’s cock within reach, but your hands are bound, plus the burning liquid dropping onto your skin.

He doesn’t really create a pattern, instead trying to find as much blank space as he could. However, around your nipple, he let it cover it as much as he could.

“Oh my god,” you quietly moan, throwing your head back against the pillows. Jake watches with lust in his eyes. He pauses, holding the candle upright, and moves to sit on the other side of you.

Just as he did the other, he carefully drips wax onto your bare nipple, watching it perk up at the temperature. But this time he does something different. He leans down and blows cool air onto the spot, adding to the sensation of it.

A whimper sounds through the room, and your eyes catch Jake’s as he watches you, continuing to cool the wax off.

“That feel good, sweetheart?” He asks.

“Yes, Captain,” you moan. But the absolute unthinkable happens.

Jake smiles.

You gasp in surprise, partly due to the continuing of wax covering your nipple and his reaction; his eyes focus on the way the red wax covers the area.

“Captain Jake “No Smile” Kiszka finally broke?” You tease, though you are cut off by a small, but still forceful slap from Jake. You let out another gasp, this time in pleasure.

“Kinda hard not to when I have such a whore laid out for me, letting me use her and inflict pain on her,” he says, groaning as his hand grazes his cock, needing a release, but wanting to continue this.

“You have a beautiful smile,” you tell him. But this time, he returns the gesture of a grin, meeting your eyes for a quick second. That’s quickly ruined when he moves to a different area on your body, not yet used to the temperature of the wax, making you jump a bit, tugging at your restraints.

The rough material of the rope wasn’t doing your skin any good, but right now, you didn’t really care.

Jake moves again and this time, he focuses on your thighs.

“God, the image of your thighs covered in this pretty red wax, it’s a fucking sight,” he moans to himself. “You are so, so beautiful.”

Jake keeps his system up, tipping the candle upright so enough wax would collect before tipping it to the side so it would fall onto your body. Though he was much more caring with your thighs, leaning down and blowing on each drop, just as he did with your nipple.

The contrast of the hot wax mixed with his cool breath was enough to send you over the edge. By now, you were most likely soaking the sheets, and you haven’t even been touched by him yet.

You take a moment to admire him, watching the way his eyebrows furrow together in concentration, how the candlelight on the bedside table and the flames from the fireplace illuminate his face, making him appear so angelic and soft.

This was a side of Jake you never thought you’d see. Sure, he was still very much dominant, but there was a soft side to him. He was treating you like the most beautiful woman in the world, and part of you wondered how many women he has said this to in order for them to sleep with him.

But that was a thought for another time, you were fully focused on your pleasure right now.

A small grin has remained on Jake’s face ever since he first smiled, and it was a sight you were going to keep forever. Not once had you seen him smile, even when the other women on the ship were flirting with him. But you…you broke him.

By just laying here, succumbing to the pleasure he was providing you, and the noises you were making to confirm what he was doing was making you feel good, he couldn’t help but smile. This beautiful woman was laid beside him, allowing him to do as he pleased. Of course he was going to be happy.

When the candle was as used as it could be, Jake blew the flame out and moved carefully around you to set the burnt end on the table next to the still lit flame.

Jake returns to his spot beside you, examining the artwork he’s created. Leaning down to your ear, he nibbles on your lobe lightly.

“Did you like that, darling?” He whispers.

“Yes, Captain. So much.”

“You can call me Jake now,” he tells you, pulling away. You gaze up at him in disbelief, but he just nods in confirmation.

“Jake, I need you,” you whisper, the restraints scraping your wrists again as you attempt to reach out for him.

“Of course, my beautiful. C’mere.” He hovers over you and kisses you so sweetly, nothing like the way he’s been treating you.

“What about the wax?” You wonder, breaking the kiss for a moment. Jake laughs, once again breaking the tough exterior.

“We’re gonna leave it. I love how you look all covered, decorated, almost. Like a masterpiece. Beautiful. Unique. Exquisite.” Your face feels like it’s on fire from his compliments.

He crawls down your body, being mindful not to rip any of the dried wax off, and comes between your legs, spreading them so he can fit.

“Wanna taste you even more,” he whispers, “god, you really are so fucking turned on by this, huh?”

“Please, Jake,” you whimper, desperate for his lips on yours already.

“Tell me what you want, dove?” Your heart bursts in your chest from adoration, the new nickname sending a shiver through your body.

“I want your lips on my pussy.” He chuckles and places a single kiss right below your belly button.

“So fucking naughty,” he tsks at you. “You tell me I’m being filthy for what I said earlier, but you can say that?”

“Please,” you beg once again. He lays down comfortably and gives into your plea. He wraps his lips around your clit, swollen with arousal, and hums softly, enough to send pleasure all throughout your body.

You let out a rather loud moan, arching your back to grind against his face. But he wasn’t entirely happy with how loud that was.

“Mhm, we can’t have that, darling,” he breaks away from you, staring up at you. His eyes were blown with lust at this point, desperate for both your release and his release. “Although I guess I am good enough to make you moan louder.”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” you immediately apologize. He smirks and returns to your center, licking at your folds, groaning against you as he laps up at your arousal.

“Taste so sweet,” he moans, closing his eyes.

“Can I touch you, Jake?” You plead.

“What do you wanna do, hm?”

“I wanna run my hands through your hair.”

“Mm, but I have my hair pulled back so you can see the way I eat you out, dove. I’ll untie you after I make you cum, okay?”

“Okay,” you whimper, your skin feeling very raw at this point, but not to the point where you needed to use the safe word.

Jake slows his actions before continuing, seeing that you’re still comfortable enough for him to do so. He goes on to add a single finger into your hole, curling it up inside of you. This elicits a whine from you.

“You sound so pretty for me, darling. Does that feel good?”

“Yes, so fucking good,” you moan as he swirls his tongue around your clit. Your thighs clench lightly around his head, yet he doesn’t seem to mind. He adds a second finger, scissoring them inside of you, moaning and groaning, his hips grinding into his mattress to relieve some tension.

“Cum for me, dove. I wanna feel you come around my fingers and on my tongue. I can feel you fluttering around me, I know you’re close.”

“Fuck yes, I’m so close, Jake,” you moan. His hand works inside of you as his tongue attacks your clit. Seconds later, your orgasm washes over you, your back arching off the bed, whines and whimpers leaving your lips as you try to stay as quiet as you can.

Jake pulls his fingers out of you and laps up at your wetness around your hole, moaning against you, his eyes closed as he enjoys the moment. When he finally releases you, he sits up and gazes at you, the entirety of his lips and chin are covered in your arousal.

The sight is definitely going to be burned in your mind, along with his sly smile, one that reads he loved that as much as you did. He adds to it by licking his fingers clean, keeping his eyes on yours.

“I’ll give you a moment before we keep going,” he lets you know. You nod and take a few deep breaths to calm yourself, your heart racing in your chest at this point.

Jake falls beside you on the bed, lazily stroking himself as he gazes over at you.

“Can I, Jake?” You wonder, nodding to his aching cock. He nods and sits back up to untie your wrists, throwing the rope to the floor.

“Oh, dove,” he coos, noticing your wrists were bright red and raw due to the rope scraping them.

“Not now, wanna make you feel good.” He lays back and watches you spit in your hand before grabbing onto him, stroking him just the way he was doing so a minute ago.

“Fuck,” he breathes out, is head lulling back against the headboard of his bed.

Through the dim lighting, you could see the way his eyebrows furrow together and his mouth drop open, groans escaping.

“Wanna ride you,” you whisper, carefully crawling on top of him. Some of the wax on your legs did happen to flake off due to your skin flexing, but Jake didn’t seem to care much. The wax covering your nipples was still in tact, and that’s all he entirely cared about.

“Holy fuck. You are…incredible,” he says as you grab his cock, lining it up with your center.

Slowly, you lower yourself onto him, sighs of pleasure releasing both of you. You stay put, clenching around him just to tease him a bit. Giggling at his reaction, you trail your fingertips along your body, feeling the waxy substance all over, Jake watching very intensely.

“(Y/N), shit, please move.” His hands grasp at your hips, begging you to give him some ounce of friction.

“Look at Captain Jake Kiszka, begging for a woman to please him,” you tease. However, you don’t last long, and begin bouncing up and down, his cock sliding easily in and out of you at a rapid pace.

Leaning forward, you kiss him and feel his hips snap up into yours, taking back control within a second.

“I’m not gonna last long, darling,” he groans after a few moments, his teeth tugging on his bottom lip. Nodding, he flips both of you over and he begins to pound into you, his necklace dragging across your body in the most delicious way.

“Cum on me, Jake. Want your cum on my tits.” He stays inside of you for as long as he can before he pulls out and awkwardly crawls beside you, pumping himself relentlessly.

Seconds later, ropes of his hot, white cum cover your tits and torso, contrasting with the red wax. When Jake finishes, he groans at the site, and you take his facial expression in.

He examines the way his cum drips from your nipple and down your breast, the wax making it harder for it to stick. But he didn’t care, and neither did you, because the sight was hot enough for Jake to cum again.

Leading him to remember that he wanted to give you one more orgasm. His hand cups your pussy, rubbing your clit at a head-spinning speed.

“Cum again for me, dove. I know you can, sweet angel.” With your eyes locked on Jake’s, a smile clearly plastered on his face, you could feel you were close again.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you whimper, your legs squeezing his hand, your second orgasm crashing over you, much more intense than the previous, leaving you completely spent and lightheaded.

Jake finally removes his hand from your pussy after overstimulating you just a bit, and he falls beside you as you attempt to catch your breath.

Your eyes were closed so you couldn’t see Jake’s expression, but he was overjoyed with how tonight has gone. When he gets some energy, he stands from the bed and grabs a rag in his dresser across the room. He returns and goes to clean his cum up from you, but you stop him.

Your finger passes through the stream and you collect it on your finger, proceeding to stick that finger in your mouth, humming quietly around it, eyes focused on Jake’s. You continue this until all of it is gone, and the only thing that remains is the wax.

“So, how do you remove wax?” You wonder. Jake chuckles and wets the rag with the glass of water sitting on the table, being ever so gentle to scrape the dried wax away.

Doing just as he did when it was being dripped on, he blows onto your skin, making sure that no serious burn marks or scars were left behind. You were left with light red marks in some areas, but nothing too harsh.

Jake finishes removing all the wax, making sure to soothe some areas with his tongue, especially doing so with your nipples. Finally, he falls beside you, bringing you under the covers and into his arms. But the aftercare isn’t done for him just yet.

Taking ahold of your hands, he brings your wrists up to his lips, placing tender kisses along the red marks that were left from the ropes. He notices every time you flinch from his touch, a dissatisfied ‘hmph’ sounding from him every time.

“How come you didn’t tell me it was this bad?” Jake asks you, running his finger as lightly as ever along a particularly roughed up area on your right wrist. You shrug, not having a real answer.

“It felt good,” you respond. “I knew the safe word, there’s a reason I didn’t use it.” Jake smiles softly and gazes into your eyes.

“You’re really something, (Y/N),” he whispers, moving his hand to cradle your face. Bringing your face to his, he captures your lips for a sweet, tender kiss. One that wasn’t the start of anything new, one that wasn’t too shy, but poured just enough of his emotions into it.

“Can I ask you something, Jake?” You break from the kiss, your hand falling to his bare chest to mess with the medallion necklace.

“Does this have to be just a one night thing?” You were terrified to ask, not knowing exactly how he has seen this compared to you.

“No. I want it to be more,” he reassures you. “Ever since you arrived on the Rose, you’ve captured my attention. And tonight has proved that I do not want any other woman. You are a true goddess, and the sights displayed tonight are some I will never forget when you decide to leave the ship.”

Your hand trails down to his stomach, trailing along his hips, just feeling his soft skin.

“After tonight, I kind of don’t want to leave,” you admit. Jake presses a kiss to your temple, and you can feel the grin against it.

“I don’t want you to either, dove.”

—

gvf taglist: @maud-gone @streamingcolors-gvf @sunfl0wer-power @rhythm-of-space @fan-girl-97 @writingcold

#jake kiszka #pirate!jake #jake kiszka imagines #jake kiszka x reader #jake kiszka imagine #greta van fleet #gvf #greta van fleet imagines #gvf imagines #greta van fleet fanfic #gvf fanfic #jake kiszka smut #josh kiszka #sam kiszka #danny wagner #imagines #fanfiction #fanfic

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bookwormlover10 · 2 years

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The undead war

So I'm going to (try) quickly explain the undead war in my suneye au

So the undead war was a war with the Titan trappers. A hooded figure with a eye medallion ,( hint it the person that starts the suneye cuit ) convinced the leader of the Titan trappers at the time to go to war with the boiling isles for more resources and cause they really don't have a concrete form of government at the time. ( Thought they did have knights like Jay and Jacob)

It is called the undead war because thanks to the suneye medallion ( maybe this will be easier if I explain the dam cuit) they got the mends to making soulwalkers. soulWalkers are similar to grimwalkers but ugly ( think of an love child of an abomination and a Frankenstein looking monster) . They similar to grimWalkers cause there both made with bones ( and what ever that lung thing is called) but except being power by a soul gem( I think that what it is called. It the middle thing) there power by actual souls that are connected to the bones. They come in 3 class; humanoid, animal and both. They can be ready big and they bleed black. ( Hunter in this au is a grimWalker but don't have a soul gem and bleeds black). They regenerate when soul is not put to rest. Also if you get stabbed or impaled by one the wound stinks ( almost berning)

To Combat this the there was 3 facons knights , grave guardians, and the healing cop.

The knights were on the front lines Dering the war. They could kill soulwalkers but they couldn't put them to rest like grave guardians can. They also dealt with the trappers.

Grave guardians were in charge of protecting the dead ( hence the name) so they can't make more soulwalkers. They can take down soulwalkers and put them to rest. They were station in local graveyards in the boling isles. They also do regular graveyard duties to. They get a cool tattoo same thing with the healing cop.

The healing cop was incharged of healing the civilians, knights, grave guardians, basically anyone who was injured Dering an attack. They were also fight ene Titan trappers that are aound Dering as attack. So they can text protect civilians(basically the personification of" I'm a doctor but..." Meme)

Your probably wodering what ever lovely wittebane brothers have to do with this.......... Well gust what they were fighting in this war to. Well there son were on the front lines, making a name for them themselves. They were protecting boneborough. ( Thought not willingly)

Philip was part of the grave guardians. He really didn't have a choice, he work at the graveyard before the war. So if he wanted to keep his job he had to become a grave guardian. He had to figure out a whole new glyph combo and chant to just to take down soulwalkers. He also had a sword name blue union ( cause it glow blue) it could tern into a staff at well. He got stabbed by a soulwalker once in the stomach ( the man gotta taste of his own medicine) it left a huge scar.

Caleb was part of the healing cop. He became one completely by attendant. He was getting More carving tools one day, when an attack happen. he can't just not help so he help the injured. ( Sence he used to help Philip when he got injured when he was younger) he also stabbed a trapper in the neck with carving tools. After that he was whisk away by other healing cop and got enlisted. In the end he came home with a tattoo and new job.

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

Evelyn: what happened?!!!

Caleb: ( confused) ....I think a got a job unwelling

Evelyn: o well.

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

Here is a picture of the their uniforms and their units logo. I tryed to draw them shirtless so you can see their tattoos and Philip scar..... It not great but not bad but you know practice makes perfect

I'll probably add more latter but that it. ( I hate myself sometimes, this was not quick!!!)

#philip wittebane #toh au #caleb wittebane #hunter wittebane #suneye au #owl house au #wittebros #the owl house #toh #belos #emperor belos #wittebane brothers

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fireflieshq · 9 months

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agent SHIN DOHYUN has volunteered as a MEDIC in division four. they are 26 years old and resemble CHA EUNWOO of the good ol’ days. think they used to be a MEDICAL STUDENT back then, too. pity those days are over now. they’re a little SENTIMENTAL, but with their TENACITY, they’re sure to make a fine addition to the unit. good luck and godspeed, soldier.

( pre-outbreak )

they were an average family, a happy family. it was picture perfect until doyeon was diagnosed with leukaemia and none of them were a match. hence doseok was born as a solution, a last resort. except when that fell through too, all that was left was resentment and guilt and unprocessed grief that took the family apart.

for his parents : it was erasing doyeon’s existence completely. new neighbourhood, new schools, new family portraits. denial, denial, denial. except they were drowning under the weight of losing a child, so much so that they let grief consume them entirely.

for doseok : it was living a lie — never understanding why his parents were so distant, why it didn’t seem like he mattered. it started as tiny acts of rebellion that eventually snowballed into an endless chase for that adrenaline rush and the sprinkle of attention that he’d receive with every injury.

for dohyun : it was years of nursing doseok’s wounds and involuntarily feeding him the same lie under the guise of protecting him. a small part of him was afraid that the truth would tear them apart; or perhaps he wanted the blissful ignorance that doseok had.

( post-outbreak )

a blessing in disguise : he was in the midst of an awkward family lunch when chaos hit. there was no official announcement, just someone screaming to run. flock mentality had everyone scrambling towards the few exits and the bottle-neck situation only brewed anxiety and fear.

the crowds were ushered towards the nearest quarantine zone. in this state of nation-wide crisis, societal constructs were promptly demolished, leaving room for new systems to take form and control. dohyun’s priority : to stay where his parents would be safest.

except safety was an illusion at best, a crowd herding ploy. new priorities were drawn by the ones in power, responsibilities shed. it felt like they were being circled in, and all they could do was wait in darkness and uncertainty.

leaving was a difficult decision. except the last thing he wanted to do was to wait and watch his parents ( or anyone else ) die because antibiotics were rationed amongst the rich. he had one chance to sneak out of the camp with a small group and he took it. that was the last time he’d seen his parents.

as it turned out, survival instincts were learnt. as his company changed over and over, he remembered every goodbye, every name. and it didn’t get easier.

by some miraculous stroke of luck, fireflies found him : almost entirely buried under debris, slipping in and out of consciousness when his throat started to close up. the last thing he remembered was the feel of metal against fingers — the medallion clutched tightly in his hand. please.

hope is a double-edged sword, but there’s a quiet strength to it that keeps him going and alive as he eases into the newfound sanctuary.

#frf:accepted #skeleton:weeping willow

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ephemerlskies · 4 years

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of honey and cinnamon | jjk

⇢ pairing: jungkook x reader

⇢ genre: fluff, one shot, slice of life au, enemies to lovers, musician!jungkook

⇢ word count: 14k

⇢ warnings: explicit language, mentions of terminal illness, mentions of death, themes of grief, slight plot twist, a surprising consumption of sugar, enough cheesiness to last you a lifetime

⇢ summary: what makes a three-day train ride back to your hometown anything but dull and dreadfully long? the answer, and your salvation from a boring trip home, was being stuck in the same cart as jeon jungkook for the entire ride there. unknown to you, he would turn this mundane trip into an unexpected adventure.

♪ playlist: dream a little dream of me - ella fitzgerald, departure - joe hisaishi, a journey (a dream of flight) - joe hisaishi, longing for mother's return - satoshi takebe, the sixth station - joe hisaishi, a town with an ocean view - joe hisaishi, you're in love - joe hisaishi, one summer's day - joe hisaishi ♪

a/n: this was honestly one of my favorite fics to write! ever! it was heavily inspired by studio ghibli movies hence the playlist because i recently binged a bunch of ghibli films (and i do not regret it) so, i tried to replicate the vibes from the movies i watched as best as i could!! :)) i hope you lovely readers enjoy!

They tell you love takes time. If you are patient and attentive enough, it courses through your body easier than your own blood and sinks itself in each vessel and bone and cell. Love will melt into your heart until that is all it knows. And in tales where lovers make grand gestures, like slaying the dragon and giving the moon and the stars and the sky along with the world underneath it and bestowing true love's kiss, it takes an entire story to get to the part where they are in love.

Love takes time, and in that time, there is a series of sometimes likely, and sometimes unlikely, events woven delicately within each minute that leads to the moment you know, you are in love. Traditionally, love makes itself known. It is loud and beautiful and anything but hidden within the ordinary moments used to fill in the gaps between the bigger moments.

This story, your story, existed during the moments in between.

This train station had always emulated such an archaic ambiance. So much so that you believed you'd traveled back in time to when it was first built. Everything felt surreal, when you stepped on the train making a beeline to Cart 102, the floors felt like water; the surface tension clinging just strong enough to keep you afloat not without the occasional toss and turn. You swore it was just the rusted tracks that jostled you, but a part of you knew it was the water.

"Single rider?" The attendant stood at your cart's checkpoint, hand extended and waiting for your ticket.

"Yes, here." You handed him the paper, along with your baggage but kept the book for future entertainment and the pillow because you could tell the seats were no softer than wood.

"The train is fully occupied, so someone will be sharing your cart."

Perfect. If the world wants to do you a favor, just this once, then you hope that it sends you a quiet passenger. One that exchanges the customary 'hello' and 'goodbye' which is the extent of your interaction with them because you were tired in a way that sunk you into your zone of unsociability and on your way back home for the worst possible reason.

And the world did, in fact, do you a favor. It delivered Jungkook to Cart 102. But it just was not the favor you expected.

At first, you believed him to tick all your requirements for the ideal travel companion. Perfectly manicured company with a clear sense of boundaries. For one, he entered with a wall of silence that not only kept a greeting gated in but even the slightest acknowledgment that you were seated right across from him. It was so natural for him to ignore you that you had to glance down at your hand to check if you really were invisible.

He took his seat, stared out of the frost dusted window that reflected the sliding door that separated you and this man from the rest of the train and the world, and sighed. For a moment, he just stared and you thought it would get easier from here. But then he turned to you, and smiled.

"Hi, I'm Jungkook." It was a full smile, one that showed nearly every tooth, which reminded you of a rabbit. That paid enough respect for the previous shouldered entrance, and at first it was cute. Then, it made you feel guilty.

It was a smile you couldn't afford to return at the moment, so instead, you offered back a slightly upturned lip and a cordial nod.

"___." His hands looked strong like they had handled an array of heavy things and had the calluses to prove it. The way he sat made you feel a spark of something.

It was only a few seconds later when you realized that something was an unbridled annoyance. His legs were spread out, having you picturing the times he'd monopolize the space on a crowded bus. Jungkook was probably the type of man who was born with an entitlement that carried through to every part of his life, including the way he sat down on trains and pissed the living hell off of you.

"Like what you see?" Now you were pissed off for two reasons. The way he sat and the fact that you just got caught staring at him; his lap to be specific.

Soon, the two reasons doubled when your eyes returned to the smile on his face that didn't seem to have gone away. He was proud to catch you in the act, and most likely assumed your staring was due to an attraction so gripping that you couldn't help yourself but to stare at his crotch of all things.

"No, I was just..." Your words caught in your throat, because you weren't about to explain why his spread position on the seat had drawn an irritation from you thicker than the blood pulsing loudly through your body. You didn't want him to know you cared enough to be irritated in the first place, even if that meant letting him believe your staring was a form of unspoken flattery. "No."

"Okay, whatever you say, ___." It was the sarcasm this time, and the way he said your name that pissed you off. There was a seed inside you, ready to bury in your gut and grow just enough for you to rip his tongue from his mouth so he'd never have to say your name again.

"You'd think you didn't want to make the person you're about to spend three days on a train with angry, but maybe you're just that dumb." Insulting him gave you instant relief from the headache you knew was about to assume your forehead.

"Damn. Guess you're not the type to take a joke." Jungkook revealed his teeth one by one again, but you didn't describe it as a smile. A smile is something you thought to be beautiful, a physical expression of joy. No, what his face possessed was something sadistic. You were sure of it.

The way he carried himself and voiced his thoughts were more concentrated than arrogance. There was not a word in any language that could properly describe Jungkook. Nor was there a feeling that could render yours into something palpable. And the world had sealed you inside this cell marked Cart 102 with the person who was grainy and slick like quicksand, and just as deadly because you were sinking into him and every feeling he had provoked within the ten minutes you'd known him.

Jungkook was the first person you hated. Beyond every rude customer, every demanding boss, every high school bully, every cut tie, there was Jungkook who wore that heavy medallion of hatred around his neck like he was proud of it.

In all honesty, you thought he should wear it. He earned it. Everyone should know that you hated Jungkook and that it only took him a record-breaking ten minutes to attain the once unattained title.

You began to read your book, however 'read' didn't accurately describe what you were doing, which was staring blankly through the same words while collecting more reasons why you hated this man. It became an obsession of yours in a few short moments, because now you didn't just hate the way he sat and spoke and smiled. You hated how his breathing was somehow louder than the wheels grinding against the metal tracks or how whenever another train would pass by, he'd bring his face so close to the window you could see the warmth of his breath cling onto the glass and form a small, foggy patch.

You especially hated that you could quite literally feel his eyes on you, blistering your skin like the way a magnifying glass would redirect the sun's rays onto a target, which just so happened to be your face. Jungkook was unrelenting; as if he were trying to sear your skin with a permanent brand of his eyes.

Between the rhythmic flipping of the pages that you weren't reading, you were compelled to reprimand him for the staring. Maybe throwing his own words back into his face about 'liking what you see' would do your own vengeance justice. But that might indicate you were thinking of what he said to you this whole time.

"The weather looks so cold. It's practically raining." You moved only your eyes up from your book to study him.

He was looking out the window again, eyes chasing each speck of mist preluding the raindrops that were surely going to fall. It always rained at night.

"Looks like another thunderstorm." You packaged up the gasp that was about to burst from your chest.

For reasons you'd rather not share with a complete stranger you were hellbent on hating, you were terrified of thunder. Not lightning, but the loud crash that followed it. It was the last thing you wanted to experience while bottled up in a train with Jungkook.

"Excuse me." Your abrupt stance interrupted Jungkook's rain watching.

"Hey, where are you going?"

"None of your business." The slam of the sliding door echoed the anger you didn't express before as it snapped shut, fractionating the air you once shared with Jungkook.

You took a deep breath, the air outside felt cooler. The attendant was loyal to his assigned post, which was convenient for you.

"Sir, is there any way I can switch carts?"

"No, full train. And your ticket says Cart 102, so that's where you were meant to be." His eyes were sheltered by his hat, so there was no chance of pleading with your eyes if you couldn't even see his.

"Fine." It was a long shot, one that you didn't have the aim or trajectory for. You suppose he was right. Cart 102 was where you belonged for now. You just couldn't accept that Jungkook also belonged there with you.

Inside, the warm yellow light was beckoning you back in. Through the door, the brightness glimmered out until it was consumed by the dark hall where you stood. Jungkook was looking out of the window again with a rising and falling chest; you could hear his breathing even from behind the door or at least, you could imagine how it would sound.

"If we're going to share a cart, we could at least be friends." Jungkook's suggestion made him too human, too real for you to hate. You wanted to cling on to the idea that he was a horrible person, harboring more vices than the devil himself. But his voice was friendly sometimes, and his smile looked loving, occasionally, when he presented it to you.

"I don't see why we can't just be silent for the rest of the ride."

"Why are you going back home?" For a second, you were shocked enough to forget you were supposed to hate him. His gaze was calm and carried none of the worries yours had. You wondered, just for a second, about all the others who were on the receiving end of his gaze, and if they felt the way you felt when he looked at you. That look that distinguished him from anyone you had ever met.

You didn't want him to be right, because you didn't want the 'why' to be real. The tragedy, the only thing demanding enough to peel you away from your life away from home, should not have been the 'why' that put you on this train. But it was, and it made you angrier than he did.

"How do you know I'm going home?" You injected each word with a sharpness that you hoped would sting Jungkook.

"Well, are you going home?"

"Yes... are you?"

"No, just visiting." His eyes returned to the window, like a refrain in a poem. Always returning to look somewhere out into the beyond.

"Well, you should count yourself lucky." And you returned back to your refrain, pretending to read just so you wouldn't get caught staring at him and listing more reasons you hated Jungkook because that was easier than thinking of what was really bothering you.

"Lucky. Huh." You wanted to know what was so captivating on the other side of the window. What could have possibly supplied his eyes with something that was more interesting than the inside of this train? "Why are you going back home?"

"You already asked that."

"And you didn't answer me." Perhaps it was the stars, and he was tracking them in his mental inventory, examining until they were replicated along his memory the same way they were plotted across the sky. "Why are you going back home?"

"My mom. She's dying." Stars seemed to be a beautiful thing to keep your eyes occupied in a way your mind couldn't be, but you couldn't see past the thick fog and lack of light. "She's sick."

"I'm sorry to hear." His sincerity worked against all the animosity you'd cultivated for him.

How could he see the stars? You were going to ask, but you didn't want him to know what lied beyond the small beacon of light surrounding the train was lost to you, or rather you lost them. You wanted to hate him, so you didn't ask.

"I knew something bad must have happened to get someone like you to come home." That comment certainly suffocated any benefit of the doubt you were going to bestow upon him. Jungkook was arrogant and entitled, and in your most recent discovery, presumptuous and judgmental. Everything wrong with this world. No amount of dashing smiles and considerate questions could change that. You had to remember, you hated this man

"How dare you! How- How dare you assume something so rude!" The cloth of your pillowcase had almost worn through from how tight your fists were gripping them. You felt the fire burning through your nerves, soon about to combust and set Cart 102 ablaze. "I hate you."

It was two in the morning, or at least those were the numbers shining from your watch. The window offered the same pitch blackness that frustrated you, so you decided to give your legs some employment from sitting.

The hall of the train was nearly as dark as the outside; the overhead lights once drizzling down a soft glow were turned off. You wandered down the stretch of the medium but the further you walked, the thinner the walkway felt. Soon, the walls on either side of you were pressed against your shoulders so snugly, you had to turn your body to squeeze through.

"Having trouble?" You knew that voice; you hated that familiar inflections and conceit planted in each word he spoke.

"Can't you see I'm trying to walk?" Squinting proved to be obsolete while trying to see whatever destination was in the distance. "Why is everything so dark?"

"Because, you're not trying." If you could turn around, if these walls weren't beginning to smother your body to immobilization, then you would have run over to him and slapped the smile right off of his face. Because you were trying, you were trying to see this whole time but the dark had infested everywhere.

Unfortunately for you, the walls were connecting closer and closer, as if trying to move through you so they could reach each other and close altogether. But where would that leave you? When the gap was stitched shut, where would you be?

The walls were softer than you thought, but still forceful enough to steal all the air from your lungs leaving you a panicked mess lodged between these unkind walls. And the pressure wasn't enough to kill you, but it was just enough to leave you stuck and miserable.

"Jungkook, help me, I can't..."

Day One

Your dream was vivid enough to mislead you into thinking it was real. It wasn't until your eyes fluttered open, and consciousness spilled into your mind like a gentle breeze that you realized the nightmare was over. The window allowed a soft light into Cart 102, making you more thankful for the day than you had ever been in your entire life. You lifted your head from your pillow placed on the seat that you didn't recall placing there, and now that you think of it, you didn't remember falling asleep either.

You especially didn't remember covering yourself with this wool coat that smelled like the air after a bonfire had just finished browning marshmallows and dissolving wood.

"Someone's finally awake." Then it all came back to you. You wondered why everything felt so tranquil. It was a shame you couldn't enjoy the peace before the omen of annoyance, your special nickname for Jungkook, had returned.

"What time is it?" Your eyes were blinking away the sleep, and when that failed, your hands began to rub them until they were able to prop open fully.

"Eight-thirty. Here." He set down a Styrofoam cup of something hot enough for steam to escape through the open space of the lid. It smelled sweeter than coffee.

"What is it?" Your question came after you had already picked it up to furnish your hands with warmth and your nose with the delectable aroma leaking from this cup.

Jungkook’s smile was hidden behind his cup, already half empty, withholding an answer from you because he wanted to see if you would try it before you knew what it was.

"Don't worry, it's not poison." You figured it could be counted as retribution in the form of a nice pick-me-up for all the irritation he'd caused you, not to mention the fact that even in your dreams, he couldn't seem to leave you alone. No, Jungkook's presence was something that would slip through the realm of your sleep, the only place you thought you could escape him.

You sipped slowly, and the drink inside the cup made a quick and favorable acquaintance with your tongue. The contents were something you'd be able to identify separately, but when combined, they were delicious and elusive all at once.

"Wow, this is great!" The smile escaped faster than a spilled cup of water, and before you could clean the messy evidence of your gratitude, Jungkook returned the same smile, but his wasn't a spill; his smiles were never an accident, and you could almost resent him for it.

Almost.

"You like it, huh? Didn't take you to be a fan of sweet things." Both pairs of eyes were taken by the scenery just on the other side of the window decorated with streaks of the fallen dew drops.

His pride was untamed, and you assumed it was because Jungkook never took any action to dilute his own conceit. You liked to imagine how often Jungkook could arm himself with that smile, that laugh, which you were not too blind in your own despise to admit were both conventionally attractive assets of his, and everyone in a ten foot radius would fall into his hands. The world seemed to rest in his hands, and all he had to do was smile.

Not you, though. You were certain you had polished yourself with enough perspective so you wouldn’t be foolish enough to let something as shallow as a charming smile fracture your walls. Though, it was increasingly frustrating, verging on the point of catastrophe, how difficult it was to convince yourself of this and to ignore the image of his smile, sneaking its way to the forefront of your thoughts after brushing it off seconds before.

It was overcast, and the grey from the sky had permeated along the air below, yet it didn't puncture the vibrancy of the ever-extending grassy plains. They seemed to continue on forever, as if you walked out to the horizon it would take an eternity to find the end of the green landscape. The wind acted as music to which each blade of grass had been dancing an instinctive choreography.

And every so often, a patch of flowers would appear, perform its part, then disappear just as quickly.

For a moment, you wondered what Jungkook thought of the small bits of the world this window was displaying. Did he think it was just as beautiful as you did?

"It's honey, cinnamon, and milk. My mom used to make it for me when I was a kid." Though the view was timeless, you finally broke your gaze to look at Jungkook.

It was hard to imagine this man, the harbinger of almost every ounce of anger you have ever felt in your life, as a child who would drink milk with honey and cinnamon made by his mother. But then again Jungkook's face began to change, or at least the way you saw it morphed into something entirely different.

His bright eyes didn't look like they could be from this world. Not when they seemed to hold everything in his line of vision within them so warmly that it could spread magic over everything around him; like a fairy tale, but this magic rested in the two sockets of his eyes. Something so enigmatic made you want to snap at him just so he would look at you instead, and hold you in his eyes. As though to be held by his eyes would fix all your problems.

"Hm." You looked down at the cup, trying to savor each sip however ultimately failing since the honey melted in with the milk and perfectly heightened each flavor.

Without thinking, you wrapped the coffee-colored coat tighter around your body. It was blissful, sipping a cup of delight inside Cart 102, protected from the prickly wind of the winter while still being vended a view of its beauty. This train ride was almost perfect, if not for the (slightly less) bothersome burden that sat across from you.

"Looks good on you." He didn't have to specify he was referring to his jacket that was giving you comfort.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't-"

"Nah, keep it. You looked cold when you were asleep. You were shivering so much it basically sounded like you were begging for my jacket." Jungkook laughed softly.

Maybe two hours ago you would have been brimming with enough rage to rip his jacket off of you and throw it in his face because it sure sounded like he was pitying you or guilting you into a 'thank you' that you were too petty to relinquish. But now, in the morning that tamed you, stomach digesting a tasty drink given by none other than Jungkook, you let it slide.

Just this once, you thought.

"Well, that was very kind of you. And thank you for the drink, but I don't need some stranger doing me any favors."

"Wow, you sure are stubborn!" He laughed again, even though you had been nothing but uninviting of his advances, he just laughed.

"Am not." You muttered.

"Whatever you say." Just this once, you let him have the last word. Just this once.

One emptied cup of Jungkook's special later and you were energized enough to read, and hopefully retain the story rather than flipping mindlessly through the pages while you fueled your attention with rage.

Jungkook was busying himself, putting thought to paper. The quick ticks of his pencil against the wooden table was enough to earn him a passive-aggressive sigh from you, and you hoped he was perceptive enough to get the hint.

The ticks continued, even spaced out to a consistent pace as if he was beating a drum just to anger you. Your annoyance was once again brimming over, ready to spill into another display of it that consisted of a furrowed brow, a scowl, and a slew of incoherent retorts that had been brewing in your mind.

"Can't you write any quieter?" It hadn't measured up to all the clever insults you had loaded into your verbal weaponry, but it did the job to convey your frustration which obviously hadn't been communicated through your previous sigh.

"I'm not writing, actually! I'm trying to figure out the time signature for this piece. Three-six just isn't right." The pencil once tapping out a rhythm was now tucked between his teeth, and you could tell this was a habit of his from the various other tooth-shaped indents along the end of the pencil.

"Whatever, just... do it quietly."

"Quietly? This process is anything but quiet."

"Then try your very hardest."

"I'll try. Emphasis on try."

Though your eyes had reunited with your book, your curiosity pledged allegiance to what Jungkook was writing on his paper. It took an effortful battle between your urges and your restraint to finally ask him.

"What's a time signature?"

"Kind of like a rhythmic guide. For music. I'm a composer, and I'm hoping I can get this fellowship to work with professionals all around the world!" Jungkook's response came almost immediately after your question and his answer consisted of more information than you asked for, which meant this was something he was passionate about. Either that or he just loved talking about himself. It could have easily been both.

However, from the way his eyes held the world, they seemed to hold the music etched onto his paper the tightest. Like, if he were to let go then he would lose any and all purpose to hold on to anything else.

"You make music? Like songs on the radio and stuff?"

"No, not really. Songs for movies. I want to be a film composer."

"Oh. Is that why you're traveling? To study with a professional?" You surprised yourself more than him with that question.

"No... I, um. I wish that was the reason." Before asking him what his reason was, you stopped yourself from letting yet another question slip from your mouth.

Because you were supposed to hate him. Jungkook made everything difficult, even the notion of hating him was made to be a challenge. Asking him questions, learning about him, making the person in front of you turn into something with more dimensions than two was pointless when in a couple days, you'd leave this train and never see him again. Better to go back to hating him.

It wasn't as satisfying as before. Now that you've acquired some knowledge of who he was beyond an obnoxious seat hog and arrogance asshole, the reasons to hate him were beginning to be outweighed by all the other reasons to not hate him.

So far, you learned he was a musician. A passionate up and comer who gives strangers his jacket when they look cold, and shares a drink of milk and honey and cinnamon because it reminds him of his childhood. Someone who has made biting his pencil into a habit when he was working through a thought, who would often stare out windows and saw all the stars you couldn’t; someone who was quick to try to make friends with even the most emotionally withdrawn people.

Shortly after taking more time than planned on recounting all the things you learned about Jungkook, you felt indebted to him since he only knew two things about you.

You were stubborn and you had a sick mom. Or at least, you believed these were the only parts of yourself he picked up on. The rest were things he’d observed with an attentive eye of which you had not noticed had been studying your mannerisms in the same way you studied his.

When you left the cart abruptly after he mentioned the thunderstorm that was somehow delayed for tonight, he was correct to assume it was because you were afraid of the storm. Now, whether it was the thunder or lightning that rattled you so viciously you had to walk off your fear was yet to be discovered. Jungkook was confident he’d figure it out.

Or, how he watched you when you were sleeping in a way he wouldn’t describe as creepy since it was endearing to see you sleep. In fact, he was doing his best to ignore you, but your muffled groans had revealed to him you were the type to have the occasional nightmare. Again, the dream itself was something he was more than interested in discovering.

And your adorably executed performance of passive aggression didn’t evade him in the way you presumed it did. He heard the sigh and understood exactly what you were attempting to accomplish with that, but decided to act like your effort to shut him up wasn’t completely transparent. Mostly because he wanted you to ask him what he was doing.

Jungkook wasn’t ready to admit it yet, but he enjoyed the way you spoke, even if it was drenched in a thick layer of annoyance. For now, he decidedly stuck with finding innocuous ways to fall back into a conversation with you, to slowly but surely learn all that he could in this three-day train ride.

At half-past three, lunch had been served, consumed, and digested. Jungkook’s plate, however, was just short of being completely gone. Everything had been notably ravaged by him except for the pile of walnuts he picked out of his salad at the beginning of the meal.

“Not a fan of walnuts?” You convinced yourself this question came from a place that was starting to feel queasy from the silence that was more intoxicating than the small glass of complimentary wine you downed a little too quickly.

“Allergic. Nothing too serious, though. My throat gets itchy and sometimes I get a rash on my skin.” You made a mental note that Jungkook was allergic to walnuts, which you stored in the part of your brain that harbored knowledge that was completely useless to you yet you still reserved space for it to be memorized.

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, but it did come in handy when I was in class and didn’t want to be. I’d tell the teacher the cafeteria food had walnuts in it and I needed to go home and get my EpiPen before I died.” The list of things you knew about Jungkook continued to lengthen, and you couldn’t specify when it happened, but you began to enjoy every detail that made the list grow.

You wouldn’t have guessed it would take a single day for you to wish it would never stop growing. But then again, you didn’t realize this at the time.

“And that worked? Sounds like you had your luck laid out for you from the beginning.” Jungkook smiled at this, the same bunny-toothed smile from yesterday, but it felt much different to you now, as if you were one smile away from forgetting your once insistent hatred of Jungkook.

“Yeah, I guess so. What about you? What are your allergies?”

“Other than overly friendly weirdos on trains? Nothing.” It was the strangest reaction to feel proud, of all things, when you were rewarded by his laugh. It was softer than the wind rushing against the side of the train, however his laugh outperformed every other sound in the surrounding area until it was all your ears could focus on.

“Then it seems you’re the lucky one. No allergies. Free to eat whatever you want.” His eyes parceled between the sheet music in his hands and you. Though, it was difficult to pull them back down to his work since this was the first time he had your undivided attention that was not born from annoyance or repulsion to whatever he was doing.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m free to eat whatever. I have standards.”

“Really?” It was his not-so-discreet way of trying to capture all the pieces of you that he could, but from your slow intake of air, it seems as though you weren’t entirely finished with talking to him either.

“Cilantro. It’s absolutely disgusting. And mushrooms. I can’t stand mushrooms.”

“I love mushrooms.” Of course, you do, you thought. He didn’t have to say it, but he most likely loved cilantro as well. And you were most definitely right.

“I suppose you love everything I hate?” Eye contact with Jungkook was more than you could handle ever since his mannerisms stopped annoying you and started intimidating you, so you found refuge in the scenery beyond the window. It never failed you during the day, but at night you would have to scavenge for something to stare at when Jungkook’s eyes were close to stealing your breath away.

“I suppose you hate everything I love.”

It took a careful eye to catch the subtle hints of emotion that even you were too distracted to notice. Jungkook’s eye was trained pretty well in observation of the hidden traces of even the most thoroughly subdued emotions. His eyes were so well versed in gathering the scarce evidence of emotions that it prompted him to ask his next question:

“What are you looking for?”

Now, your eyes were still averted by his, so you held on to the slowly fading daylight while you still could. But, sadly, the window was a distraction of sight, not sound, so you heard his question loud and clear and felt obligated to give him an answer. Even if your answer was pathetic.

“Just looking at the grass. It’s pretty.”

“I didn’t ask what you were looking at, I asked what you were looking for.”

Determining what emotion you let slip through the quiver in your lip was a task Jungkook wasn’t well equipped for just yet. In all fairness, he had only known you for a short while and he still felt disappointed in himself for not being able to know what he made you feel with that question.

“I don’t know.” You couldn’t help the stunned tone of your voice, but that was all that could fuel your words at the moment. “I guess… A distraction. It’s so beautiful out there.”

“Everything looks beautiful when you only have a small amount of time to admire it.” Whatever distraction you were looking for had certainly met your eyes and did its job since you had absolutely no clue he was staring right at you when he said that. That he was savoring the small amount of time he had to admire you.

Jungkook was right, which was a habit of his that he took unrestrained pride in; life was beautiful when you moved through it with such little time to spare. Though slamming your hand in a doorway was something you would sooner do than admitting he was right.

The fabric of time moved in a peculiar fashion when inside a train. You move so fast and yet, not at all, and it is as if there is a tear where the train moves through, and evades the grips of each minute that transports the future into the present and the present into the past. It felt this way the moment you stepped onto the train, so when you checked the time, it didn’t surprise you that it was already an hour before midnight.

The daytime had slowly melted away, carefully, the way ice shrunk inside a glass of water until it combined with its surroundings, and the plains of grass could only exist in your memory right now. The blackness of night consumed everything beyond your window once again, though there was the occasional streetlamp that provided a glimpse of everything you couldn’t see as of now.

What you couldn’t see was nowhere near as frightening as what you were about to hear.

The first flash of lightning felt like a warning. It took a few seconds for the wretched boom of thunder to follow, which was the interval of time you foolishly hoped it would, just this once, fail to accompany that streak of light. That perhaps this train moved quick enough to outrun the storm.

“___? Are you okay?”

You didn’t notice your hands had immediately cupped your ears until Jungkook’s voice was filtered through as a jumble of indiscernible noises.

“Sorry, I just…” Steadying your breath was a toll that required an upfront payment of all your attention, so your previously muted voice and steady tone had gone out of the metaphorical window, along with the rest of your response.

“So it’s the thunder.” Jungkook said softly to himself. It didn’t matter since your hands were being utilized as makeshift earplugs. They seemed to deflect every sound except for the thunder that punctured through your barrier effortlessly.

Before, Jungkook had this preconception of you. From the minute he stepped into Cart 102, he could tell you were the type to carry yourself steadily, the type that supplied their own assurance and isolated their emotions in the same way you isolated yourself. But here you were, hands clamped against your ears, eyes pressed shut and body shaking; this was a surplus of emotions you let seep through your walls. It was expressive enough for any dimwitted onlooker to know exactly what you were feeling: pure fear.

And Jungkook had always been adept to telltale signs of what was buried beneath the obvious emotions. He could tell you wanted to be distracted. You needed help.

It was easier to stifle one sense if you stifled them all at once. If you didn’t want to see, you had to plug your ears and hold your breath. And in this case, to block out the sound, you had to shut your eyes and numb the rest of your body in the slim chance that the thunder wouldn’t penetrate through your poorly constructed firewall.

Suddenly, you felt the space beside you sink lower which meant Jungkook had taken the liberty of invading your space at the worst possible time. It was difficult to focus on blocking out the sound when you could feel the side of his shoulder bump lightly against yours.

“___.” You shifted towards him slowly, waiting for his explanation of why he was on your side of the cart. “Can I touch you?”

You were past your wit's end, spending the last bits of your sanity trying to calm yourself from the second crash of thunder that made your body lift from the seat for a solid two seconds. All you could do was nod, and hope he wasn’t a serial killer that was about to strangle you to death in a moment of vulnerability.

He was working in your favor, just like when he wrapped you up in his coat and set that cup of milk in front of you, he moved in determination to comfort you. And if it weren’t for the dire circumstances, your pride would have refused the security of his arms that were carefully enveloping your body and eliminating the frigid space around you. You hadn’t realized how cold this train was until you were invited into Jungkook’s warmth. He had somehow silenced the storm, and all you had to do was let him.

The third blast of thunder pushed you deeper in his embrace, and you wrapped your arms around him tightly like the lifejacket he was that kept you from slipping below the surface of the angry ocean currents.

“If you couldn’t tell I-” Boom, “I hate thunder.” Your voice came out strained through the fear-induced filter lodged in your throat.

“No, actually, I couldn’t tell at all.” Nine out of ten of your thoughts were concentrated on the thunder, and that one exception was applied towards how annoyingly sarcastic Jungkook managed to be through thick and thin. It was impressive enough that he could subtract the fear even by a small fraction for you to laugh.

“You’re so-” Boom, “You’re insufferable.”

His laugh was noticed through the gentle bounce of his chest that rocked your head more than the actual sound of it. Soon, a hand came to run through your hair and with each stroke, he somehow removed your terror layer by layer until you were afforded with indifference to the storm simply because you were lulled into a half-sleep and were now too exhausted to care about the thunder.

“You’re okay. Everything is okay. You’re doing great. Breathe deep.” His chest smelled the same as his coat. A fire burning so brightly, sending the aromas of everything it consumed into the air.

Now your attention belonged to the warmth of his arms, and how he moved his hand through your hair with something deeper than kindness. It was selflessness because he too was scared and tired and in need of rest. Despite this, he used the last of his energy to ward off the threat of a second panic attack.

“Thank you.” You whispered into his chest, and it seemed as though it permeated through his flesh and ribs and absorbed straight into his heart from the way he held you even tighter.

The storm had settled, and the horrors of loud thunder were abandoned for quite some time now, but it felt too comfortable, too perfect for you to be anywhere else but here in his arms. So, what went unsaid was more than enough for him to retract any intention to return to his seat and instead hold you against his chest, where his heart would retain strength from being close to you.

You couldn’t tell if you had already slipped into a dream when you heard him singing softly, or if the melody of Dream a Little Dream of Me was actually being crafted by his voice so beautifully and fell into perfect synchronization with the rhythmic beat of his heart. Either way, you were thankful to bear witness to a sound that reduced the idea of thunder down to something that could never hurt you again, and instead made seeing all the stars the heavens could offer possible even through the darkest nights. You felt a well of tears moisten your cheeks.

In his arms, with his voice, you could see the stars.

Back in the dimmed hallway of the train, you could make out the outline of a figure standing in the distance, waiting for you. Waiting, but about to run out of time. You saw her slowly disappear the way wind would rustle the dying leaves off a tree in autumn. Slowly her body was wilting, disappearing, and the wind only picked up speed.

All you could think to do was run to her, your mother, the shell of a woman you had known and loved your whole life. Her frail body being stripped of flesh as easily as wind undresses a tree of its leaves until there is nothing but branch and bone.

The walls began to close again, and you knew you had to act faster. You had to push past the pressure of closing walls even if they were squeezing so tightly movement became impossible. All at once, the impossible became your burden to redesign into something possible, which was the only thing crushing your spirit more than these damn walls.

You were so close; you held your hand out and—

Day Two

Winter mornings always start the same. Your eyes began rediscovering sight before the rest of your senses flooded into function, then your stomach would get angry for digesting nothing but its own acid until you filled it. And just like yesterday, your pillow cushioned beneath your head on the seat and your body shielded from the rogue winter winds that snuck inside of your cart by the same bonfire scented coat.

“Rise and shine.” Jungkook said from behind the sheet music he was examining. He must have been stealing glances of you every five minutes or so to catch the moment you’d finally wake up.

“Time?” Part of you didn’t want to get up. Part of you, the more persuasive part, wanted to remain tucked under Jungkook’s coat and slip back into a light sleep. If it weren’t for the hot drink waiting for you on the table then you would have done just that.

“Nine. A little later than yesterday.” You sat up eventually, wrapping the coat around you, and for a moment life was comfortable on the train. So much so that you didn’t mind how your hair was in complete disarray.

Jungkook enjoyed seeing you this way. When you had first woken up and didn’t wear the usual veil of detachment from the rest of the world. Your guard had surrendered to your sleep ridden body. He guessed very few people saw you like this, natural and raw and untouched by the pressure to be presentable, and counted himself lucky, just like you would say, to be one of those few.

“Thanks, again.” You said softly into the warm cup between sips. “How much?”

“No. It's okay.”

“But-”

“Seriously! Don’t mention it.” He was firm, but that didn’t stop the gentle smile that crept its way back onto his face. You didn’t know what to say other than the thanks you had already said, so you just kept drinking. It was still just as delicious, but today familiarity was peppered into the milk among the honey and cinnamon which gave it that much more reason to love it.

“You get up this early every day?” You asked, because you were at a loss for words but felt less comfortable without hearing his voice to accompany the brisk, quiet morning.

“Usually I do. I like the morning. It feels like I have the world to myself before everyone else wakes up.” Charming. It was the last thing that came to mind when you would picture Jungkook. Now, however, it seemed to be the only characteristic that came to mind when you thought of him.

Sitting in front of you, half mindedly scribbling notes onto the staff and half his attention expended on sharing the small ways he saw the world, he was just charming. As easily as he once drove a blunt edge of annoyance into your chest, he erased every bit of evidence that he could ever be anything but charming.

“Sorry to steal the morning from you. I gotta wake up sometime.” You felt entirely unpracticed in the realm of light, friendly conversations, and that was evident from the way you wanted to gag at your own response to his. What you thought was a tasteless, almost pathetic attempt at banter was, to Jungkook, another reason to enjoy the morning.

“I’m glad it’s you that I have to share it with.” Jungkook certainly sat higher on the hierarchical scale of wit compared to you, but even that didn’t agitate you in the way it would have before. What was more shocking than that was the fact that you felt the muscles in your cheeks changing your flat lipped expression into a smile.

“Flattery gets you nowhere, Jungkook.” You responded that way only to save face. It was a habit of yours you didn’t realize you were doing until the words had already been deployed by your tongue.

“It seems to have gotten me a smile from you. Those are hard to come by.” You jerked your head quickly over to him, the same grin stained with smugness there to meet your surprised ‘o’ shaped mouth.

He was right again. Your smiles have always been punctuated lately, but you were too busy paddling through every distraction available to even notice.

“Very funny.” Your voice was low enough for Jungkook to nearly miss it. Once the soft tone of your voice delivered to his ears, he looked away from his sheet music to mine through your face like a cavern, searching for the hidden bits of the treasure-like emotions strewn in along the subtle details.

“What’s wrong?” It was a leap of faith, his question, a leap that sent him plummeting blindly into the depths of everything he craved to know about you.

“That thing you said the other day.” Your expression was unreadable to the whole world. But inside the train, the whole world rested just on the other side of the window. There was no reason to come off as impassive, cold, or unconcerned, to care so much about trying not to care. “About going home.”

“Mhm?” You waited to see if he had anything to say, anything to stall what was about to escape from your lips. You knew it wouldn’t take long for your thoughts to go rogue, especially when he made you smile like that.

“I’m angry.” He gave you a look that said ‘no shit’ without having to actually say it. It made you nervous, but still willing to go on. “You're right. I didn’t visit home ever until now. I thought I grew out of it. I thought I became someone too big to fit in a town so small and stuck in its way. But I was never too big, I don’t think I ever actually grew. Because when I got the call, after stupidly ignoring it a hundred times before, I felt like the same child. So scared of the idea of a world without their mother. So, yeah, I’m angry. I’m angry I could be arrogant and stupid enough to think I could live the rest of my life never looking back.”

Jungkook just watched you, with those eyes that held the world. His eyes were holding so much right now when they were looking at you. So much weight from a source he couldn’t define with his own intuition. So much weight, he couldn’t understand how you had been shouldering it on your own this whole time, if he couldn’t stand a few minutes holding it now.

“Going back home.” You scoffed. “It's not about looking back. It was never about that. I think returning to something familiar is almost just as scary as fleeing somewhere new. All your past mistakes and demons that you have to face…”

“Demons. Is that any way to talk about your mother?” It was his way, unique to Jungkook alone, to litter in a bit of lighthearted teasing even when he was supposed to be serious. As if he couldn’t stand to let the air in Cart 102 become too damp with sadness, as if his heart wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

“I made a mistake. I spent too much time away, and now the last way I’ll see her is weak and sick. That’s my demon. My mom was just unfortunate enough to be the arbiter of it.”

Jungkook wanted to tell you that if he could, he would take all your pain away and send it back into the universe to find someone else to harbor it. Someone who deserved to feel a loss so heavy, because he knew just by looking at you that you deserved none of it. But he held his overly romantic tongue for now in regards to easing you into him smoothly. Since he had come such a long way with you, making gentle strides to win your affection, it would be greedy of him to tarnish that by saying something as outrageous as that, even if that was truly how he felt.

“Come with me. I have an idea.” It would have been easy to refuse him, to swat his hand away and never speak to him again for the rest of the train ride. But what prevails after the wear and tear of expecting the worst and knowing the painful and permanent scars it will leave you is the trust of someone who turned scowls into smiles, who held his hand out to you and waited for you to take it kindly.

Those tales they tell about feeling sparks when you make contact with your soulmate were decidedly wrong. Wrong to you, because when you touched Jungkook’s hand, you felt those sparks nestling under your skin and learning its way through the rest of your body. Wrong, because Jungkook was no soulmate of yours, just an unlikely stranger you met on a train once.

And yet, you couldn’t help but wonder, you couldn’t help but hope he too felt these sparks that supposedly meant nothing.

Jungkook pulled you into the hallway, which was brighter than the way it looked in your dreams. At the end of the walkway, there was no ghost resembling your mother, and the walls weren’t closing in, and instead of pushing through alone, you had Jungkook holding your hand tightly, and graciously guiding you down.

“This way.” He whispered, and you mimicked the stealth in his voice through the way you muffled the sound of your feet hitting the train floor, which felt less like water and more like sand with him; soft yet solid sand.

You arrived at an unattended area of the train. The only hint of what Jungkook was up to was that grin. That grin was too playful to be a grimace, and too mischievous to be a smile. That grin that you hadn’t noticed you were looking forward to seeing, the same one you could sense you would miss when the train arrived at its destination. That when he grinned, you finally found the courage to return it. Needing no conditions or second guesses, you were just you, somehow smiling on the train that was taking you to your sick mother. And it was all because of him and his stupid, lovely grin.

“What are you doing? Are we supposed to even be here?”

“Shh, we’ll get caught.” He began to wriggle with the door handle until it opened.

“So we’re not supposed to be here! Jungkook, let’s go before we get kicked off!” To silence you, he simply held his hand up. You pouted your lip but did as he commanded.

Inside the door, there was a collection of all the food meant for purchasing. Your assumption was confirmed that Jungkook had no intention of paying for the bags of pretzels and packets of cookies he was stuffing into his pockets. Hands full with quite the assortment of foods, he looked to you and raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“Come on, put these in your pockets! Hurry.” He held the food out towards you. There was no convincing him to put all the stolen goods back, and there was no convincing yourself to not go along with his sinfully sweet plan.

The fast-paced walk back to Cart 102 was the most exhilarating thirty-five seconds of your life. Jungkook looked all too calm, like spontaneity fell into his hands naturally or like it was a birthright, belonging to his life from the beginning. Life with Jungkook, even if the short span of time he’d claimed part of yours was fleeting, was the most excited and fearless you had ever felt.

Jungkook and you emptied the haul of food onto the table. For a second, they went untouched only for the two of you to admire your successfully pirated goods. Then, for the first time on the train you met eyes with Jungkook and laughed.

It was the sort of laugh that exercised muscles in your abdomen you weren’t aware that you had in the first place. The kind that began at the top of a hill, and with one push it was tumbling faster and faster, growing louder and wilder.

Jungkook was laughing too, a sound which could qualify as the only competitor to surpass the beauty of his singing. And whatever music he was scribing onto the paper would have to be beyond masterful to sound anything close to as immaculate as his laugh.

“I can’t believe we just committed grand larceny.” The words came out of your throat between fits of laughter, eyes now with an abundance of happy tears.

“Woah there, “‘grand”’ is a stretch. I like to think of it as unlawful borrowing.” The rest of the afternoon was spent with celebratory feasting of your unlawfully borrowed goods. Your favorite was the packs of chocolate mints, and Jungkook had cleverly avoided eating them when he noticed how much you liked them.

When dawn arrived, Cart 102 settled into a comfortable silence, now consisting of you reading your book tempered by a glance out of the window every few pages and Jungkook tapping his pencil against the wooden desk while marking up every blank space on his page. To anyone else, including the likes of you, the page was nothing but a jumble of incoherent scribbles. To Jungkook, it was his next masterpiece; the best idea he made tangible on paper and hopefully soon, audible when someone agreed to commission it.

“Done!”

His remark startled you, being that there had been no warrant for him to exclaim his progress with the music he was working on. You chuckled softly, closing your book and looking back to Jungkook.

“Done with what?”

“This song. I know this one will sell. I just know it! It’s perfect.” Jungkook’s passion was bursting past the seams of his body. “I just wish… I wish I had more time.”

“What does that mean?” Again, all he offered was the same grin, and that was all you needed in order to know he wouldn’t be dropping any more hints on the account of your curiosity.

“It means this train ride is ending tomorrow, and I’ll have too much on my plate to work on anything else. So this right here,” He held up the paper with the same tact one would for a pile of pure gold, “Is my last chance to get my work out there for a while.”

For reasons born from an unidentifiable place, you felt like crying. Last chance. It sounded serious. Something you weren’t ready to know and something he wasn't ready to tell. So, instead of pestering the answer out of him, you let him have his secrets. You let him have all the secrets he had somehow gotten out of you.

And somehow, you were okay with it. Just this once.

Jungkook said he was taking a quick nap. Quick must mean something entirely different where he was from since it lasted about three hours and counting. For someone who had nothing to do but sit on a train all day, he sure was tired. It would have concerned you had it not been for witnessing how much energy he exerted into writing his music, as if each tap of his pencil required the same amount of energy as running an entire mile.

You were looking out of the window, which looked like it had been coated with tar. The departing sun left no remnants of its light and the moon must have been situated on the opposite side of the train, so it was up to the stars to illuminate your view of the world. But, outside the train was dark. Dark, and almost pitch black.

The first few specks were thought to be a hallucination that bloomed from your own wishful thinking. But soon, there were more and more twinkling lights dusting the sky and that outshined any doubt you had before. The stars were so bright and glimmering clearer than you had ever seen. Only something so beautiful, something that ingrained itself into the grooves of your brain to keep forever, could elicit the gasp that came louder than expected.

“Woah.” It jolted Jungkook awake and you would have felt bad if he weren’t already supplied with three and a half hours of extra sleep.

“What?” His voice was hoarse from being unused for such a long interval.

“The stars! I can see them! They’re so bright, Jungkook. So bright.” The tears began to form in part from the lack of blinking and in part from how happy you were to see the stars. The same stars your mother was probably looking at and the same ceiling of glitter that loomed protectively over you and Jungkook. They were more than just constellations tonight; they were a celestial map navigating you back home and an astronomical assurance that everything would be okay. Even if the worst happened, everything would be okay.

“They are. They’ve been bright for a while. It took you long enough to notice.” Your smile was not yours to control anymore. It was a small price to pay considering you had a world full of stars to last you a lifetime.

“I guess I haven’t been trying as hard to see them as I thought I was.”

And you turned to him, which was the only thing besides the starlit arena above you and Jungkook and the train you’d rather be looking at right now.

“I can’t wait to go home. I miss it so much.” It was the first time you said it out loud, as well as the first time you were able to admit that to yourself.

“I’m glad you feel that way. You should feel that way.”

“Thank you.”

There were a plethora of reasons that prompted that thank you. Far too many reasons that were decidedly unfit for just a single thank you. So, you concluded that the thank you was for Jungkook; for becoming a part of your life. For every decision he made on this train that rearranged your feelings towards him into something pleasant. Something that felt warm and safe.

Tonight, the last thing you saw before slipping away into sleep was all the stars that weren't at your disposal before. Every silvery diamond brandished along the expanding sky was so mesmerizing, you wished you could imprint them into the backs of your eyelids when they eventually lulled you into a calm slumber. That and the memory of Jungkook’s rendition of Dream a Little Dream of Me set on repeat in your head.

This time, you weren't trapped in the confines of a dark train hallway. You were standing in the middle of a grassy field, laden with a diverse collection of wildflowers. The mellow green hues seemed to lift from the blades of grass, stretching into the air around you.

And your mother was there. She wasn’t being blown away by the wind. Just like the sturdy trunk of a tree, she stood with dignity and conviction at the top of the highest hill that provided a view of your hometown; it was the most beautiful you had ever seen her.

“Mom!” The way you were running felt more like gliding, or flying even, because you moved through the wind without a bit of resistance. Your body was frictionless and unstoppable. And when you finally fell into your mother’s arms, it was the most freeing feeling in the world.

“I’ve missed you so much. I thought you were going to leave me.” The blue sky that sealed you and your mom into the earth made a stunning partner for the fields of green underneath you.

“I’m always with you, darling.”

It was difficult to decide whether the sound of her voice or the sentiment behind it made you cry, so you decided not to decide at all, and instead, you simply let yourself cry. Everything was so beautiful, but still not complete.

“Mom, I feel like something’s missing.”

“There is.” She responded, but it wasn’t a question. Your mom was not your mom, just a figment herself cultivated by your own mind. She was one with you, and she knew exactly what was missing.

“Where do I find it?” Her hands cupped your cheeks, just like she would when you were young and crying over a scraped knee.

“You know, love. You know.”

The wind pulled a gentle melody from the spaces between the leaves. A melody you were quite familiar with and grew to love. It slowed, then everything was silent.

Day Three

Waking up came to you in a hurry, as if you shouldn’t spend another second living life through dreams because today was the last day on the train. The last day you’d spend with Jungkook, and possibly the last time you would ever see him.

It was uncharacteristic of you to feel this way. Disappointed at both yourself and your situation. You knew from the beginning that this was a temporary arrangement, and Jungkook was not a permanent fixture in your life. In fact, you used to be thankful for those circumstances because you hated Jungkook.

But, of course, you went ahead and let him in. You let him buy you tasty drinks, hold you during thunderstorms, and offer you a coat, a smile, a laugh when everything felt cold. You let him ripple currents of fun into your life, but that would be giving yourself too much credit, you suppose.

Because it was never a matter of allowing him to do any of this. He did all of those things, and more, all by himself.

What was even more uncharacteristic of you was greeting the early morning before Jungkook. He was sound asleep, with skin being lightly freckled by the glints of sunlight shimmering through the gaps in the clouds. The morning sun was always docile, kindly shedding light in a way that wouldn’t pull sweat from your skin like it did in the afternoon.

You liked the sight of him sleeping, mostly because it was one of the few moments of the day when he was completely silent, and those were rare.

“Better take this opportunity.” You whispered to yourself before getting up, covering Jungkook with the coat, and heading to the concession stand you had raided with Jungkook yesterday.

Wondering if the workers noticed the missing inventory, you idled by the counter before ordering but they all looked too tired to care to serve you let alone realize a quarter of the chocolate mint packs were taken.

“Hi, two warm milks with honey and cinnamon please.” The attendant seemed to appreciate how closely your voice was to a whisper. He sluggishly poured two steaming cups of milk and sleeved them before exchanging them for the money already placed onto the counter.

“Honey and cinnamon are over at the self-serving station.” You followed to where his finger was aimed towards and nodded politely with the two cups in each hand.

You didn’t know why, but imagining Jungkook making this drink himself, instead of ordering it premade, ranked this act as something more motivated than customary kindness. Because getting these drinks wasn’t simply walking to a stand, purchasing, and walking back to Cart 102. There was now an erroneous step you hadn’t accounted for. The act of making milk with honey and cinnamon.

As you scooped a spoonful of honey to mix into the creamy liquid, one of your mother’s many proverbs rang in your ears, as if she was standing right beside you saying it.

“When you make food for someone, it’s just another way to express that you love them!”

It froze you for a second. Recalling what she would say when you would throw together a meal for the pair of you when she was too tired to. She worked so hard as a single mother, so every shortcoming felt like a colossal failure, no matter how little it mattered to you. And she would always say that to you because ‘thank you’ just didn’t cut it.

This was the first thing you made for someone other than your mother and yourself. But, there’s no way it was because you loved him.

Just this once, you thought. Just this once I’ll make food for someone that I don’t love.

You were relieved to greet a still sleeping Jungkook when you returned to your cart. The cart you studied closer, because you were about to leave it and wanted to retain all the details that you could before it became a memory you would only visit when you were feeling reminiscent.

The beige walls, the small table where you would read and Jungkook would compose, the stiff leather seats that you had surprisingly gotten used to, and the large window that gave you a glimpse of the blurry world waiting for you.

Jungkook’s groan snapped you out of your trance. Before he regained full cognizance, you placed the cup in front of him so you’d be able to boast that you had woken up before him and had the morning all to yourself for a moment. That now you were the one sharing the world with him.

“What’s this?” He said groggily.

“You know.” You tried your best to mirror his smugness, the way he would sip his drink after sending a witty one-liner through the air like it was no big deal to him.

Before you became lost in the person you changed into with Jungkook, a person that felt more like a fun costume to wear when you didn’t feel like being yourself anymore, the more neurotic and controlling part of you fell back through when you remembered that the measurements of the ingredients might have been off.

Maybe you had gotten the drink entirely wrong, so your deed would shrivel down to a failed act of kindness. Nothing at all your mother would consider a gesture of love. And that was more frightening than any blast of thunder.

“It's delicious.” Jungkook said out of nowhere, almost as though he knew he was interrupting your thoughts. Breaking them down into a powder thinner than flour, so he could blow all your worries away with one puff of air. He wasn’t lying either, it was delicious.

You spent a gracious amount of time and energy avoiding the book you were meant to finish during this train ride. Instead, your efforts were fully consumed by the last person you thought would ever be the center of your attention. At least, you thought if he were going to be the focus of it, then it would have been because you were mentally berating him for reasons that didn’t bother you much at all anymore; in fact, they started becoming admirable.

“If you could run faster than a train, where would you go?” He asked.

“Paris. Or Italy. I'd just have to figure out how to run on water.” You earned a good laugh from Jungkook with that comment. And finally, you felt like you were beginning to find your niche in conversations, and it relied heavily on sarcasm.

“I’d love to see the day when ___ walks on water.”

“What about you? Where would you go?”

“I would make my legs take me straight to Carnegie Hall and force the organization to play one of my pieces.” Each word was formed by his tongue as if he had that response rehearsed a hundred times over. Jungkook knew exactly what he wanted, and given the chance, he would use any and every asset to get him there.

That alone was why you fell into something deeper than attraction. Why you began to take notice of things about him that weren’t of importance before. And why your intentions to observe how the world designed this man to be so stunningly unique was less cryptic than you’d hoped.

Maybe if you noticed how his white button-up was undone down to his sternum and tucked into the waistband of his slacks tastefully, then your heart would have taken a quicker pace long before now. If you noticed how his jet black hair was gentle and fluffy when it draped over his eyes, then you would have been frustrated with yourself sooner for not seizing the chance to introduce your fingers to its texture. And if you noticed how the ridges along his palm looked perfect to be held in, then you would have savored every second he held you the night of the storm. There was an astonishing number of details about Jungkook, about as many as the stars in the sky, that would have made you mountains more intimidated to even speak with him.

One of the attendants left all your observations of Jungkook scattered when she peaked her head through to give the two of you an update on your arrival.

“Looks like we’ll be getting in earlier than expected!” In theory, that was a blessing. You’d get to finally deboard the train and be with your mother. Though, you’d be lying if some piece of you wanted this train to continue west until there was no more land to travel on; and if you could, you would redistribute each part of this train to assemble a boat, so you could sail Jungkook across the seven seas. “Our arrival will be in twenty minutes! I hope you both enjoyed your trip.”

And if Jungkook felt the same way, he didn’t show it through his polite smile and nod at the attendant.

“We’ll be getting off soon.” He said to you, though you could tell it was his way of interrogating your thoughts on the matter.

“Time moved by so oddly on the train. I didn’t even notice it was already day three.” You paused and took one last glance out of the window. “Funny.”

"It's funny,” He began, and you settled into what you knew was about to be another piece of Jungkook's mind served in the form of his delicate words, “when you're inside a train you don't feel like you're moving. Even though you are, of course. You're moving faster than you would outside of a train. But we feel like we are still because we are moving with the train. When you're in a train, you are moving with time too, so it feels rushed and stagnant all at once. When you're not inside, time moves past you. It feels better to move with time, don’t you think? It feels like you could outrun it if you wanted to, or it feels like you will never run out of time at all. That you and time are equals. But soon, we'll have to get back onto the platform, and time will move past us again, and it’ll feel like we’re running out already."

“You’re right.” You finally admitted. “We’re running out of time.”

We’re running out of time— together, you wanted to say. However, courage and boldness was a currency you weren’t rich in. Unspoken desires and lost hopes were all you had left to tender.

“Yeah, I guess so. Hey, I-” He hesitated as well, because when you looked at him with such wishful eyes, it made what he had to say entirely too real and all too scary. “I really liked being your travel buddy.”

You could tell he was holding back too. That everything you wanted to say to him and everything he wanted to say to you wasn’t meant to be translated into words, that exchanging sentimental smiles was all you and he could afford. Instead, it was better to exist through the language of emotions, floating around the train, moving with time, and eventually, when you and Jungkook returned to the world, those emotions would remain with the train and travel beyond your destination.

That’s why you let them go. Sometimes, a train is only meant to be a train.

“Me too. Though, I have to admit I hated you at first.”

“I know.” He grinned as you etched the most accurate memory of it in your brain as you could.

His stance came unprecedented. The small radio tucked in his bag now sitting on the table, serenading an unfamiliar melody and overtaking the silent air inside Cart 102. Then, came his hand, extended to you just like he had yesterday. Only this time, you didn’t need to wonder what he wanted from you because you would give whatever he asked.

You took his hand, or rather you gave him yours, and followed his gentle tug until it led you to his body, pressing away all the space once separating the two of you. Jungkook’s hand followed the curve of your waist until it landed at the small of your back while you instinctively rested yours on his shoulder.

You and Jungkook swayed to the music until all those words about moving with time became real. The way he held you close had you immune to the passage of time. The soft brush of his breath against your cheek felt welcoming, and you would try your very best to remember the way existing felt when your skin was touching his. It was odd, dancing on a train with someone you didn’t know well enough to call a friend but weren’t estranged enough to call an acquaintance. Again, it felt like you were in between two walls, stuck, trying to out-think your way through a collapsing maze of judgement.

Though, no matter how odd it was, it stopped neither you nor Jungkook from holding onto each other for the last few moments available.

The train must have hit a rock, one you would like to thank because it knocked the two of you over until you had fallen into his lap, laughing so hard your bodies shook. You would have been uncomfortable in this compromising position if not for the sense of belonging fostered in the empty space in your chest while being in his arms.

Jungkook didn’t notice you were detangling your limbs from his until you were already gone, seated across from him in the same spot.

Once, he learned in science class of this phenomenon called ‘afterimage’, which is when your eyes get so accustomed to staring at one particular thing that when you look away, the thing stained your vision in the form of a silhouette, like an echo of something your eyes grew so comfortable seeing that it stayed with you, even when you looked away.

And he knew, even when the view of you sitting across from him in this train wasn’t there anymore, he would carry that afterimage of you, always echoing in his vision like a beautiful melody he couldn’t get out of his head. Not that he wanted to let go anyway

It was sour, the cruelty of letting go. When the train began to brake, it felt like a lifetime of agony. A bitter, unforgiving slap in the face courtesy of the confines of reality, stealing you away from the shelter of a train; a place that made it so easy to be swept up in something as dazzling and impossible as magic. You were onto important things, you knew this, but it was nice to live, even if it were just for a bit, inside something as magical as Cart 102, where you could count on a generous supply of warm coats, milk with honey and cinnamon, and Jungkook.

“Well, our stop is here. Hey, how about we share a cab? Why not save some money, right?” You could only nod, because speaking would have led to tears, which would have led to a failed explanation of why you were crying.

Jungkook hailed the yellow vehicle over, the opening of his shirt widened just an inch too much to let your mind wander.

“You’re going to the hospital, right?” He asked.

“Yeah, the only one in town.” You said, knowing the driver wouldn’t need any more specifics than that. This town was so small there were a lot of singular facilities that made the layout equally difficult to be crammed into and easy to memorize. One library, one park, one church, and one hospital.

As Jungkook went to give the driver your destinations, you packed up the luggage into the trunk. Not too long after, you were side by side in the back of a cab. All you could bring yourself to do was gaze out of the window and watch all the familiar scenes of your hometown pass by, each landmark dousing you with a strong presence of nostalgia.

No matter how sad parting ways with Jungkook was, it was good to be home.

The cab finally arrived at the hospital, and you got out not expecting the other person in the car to get out with you. Perhaps he was being polite and saying goodbye. You knew you would have done the same if his stop preceded yours.

The two of you stood in front of the entrance, gawking up at the tall building that was in desperate need of reconstruction. You turned your gaze over to Jungkook.

“Where to now, Mr. Jeon?” You asked, since this town was small enough, and you were fluent in every secret hiding spot it had to offer, you might be able to visit him if that wouldn’t come off as too invasive.

“I'm here.” He responded just as ambiguously and ever so matter-of-factly as always. This time, you demanded to know more.

“What? What do you mean?”

“It took a long time to find a doctor that specializes in my condition.” Jungkook finally turned to you, his eyes crowded by tears. “My heart is weak, ___. I came here to get better, and hopefully, I do. I'm going to be a famous composer one day, and I’ll need a strong heart to get me to that point.”

You felt angry at him again. For not telling you, because it felt less like keeping something from you and more like lying to you. For telling you, and making it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, that it wouldn’t break your heart into pieces weaker than his own.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” It was the harsh snap he expected from you, but he was committed to keeping this a secret until he couldn’t because it was easier that way.

“I didn’t want to admit it. I’m scared, ___. Really scared. If I don't get better…”

“Well, you have to! Carnegie Hall is waiting for you and I didn’t waste my time getting to know you for nothing. So, you just go ahead and get better okay?” Your words were coated in anger but layered on top of something compassionate, sweet even. Sweeter than milk, honey, and cinnamon.

“I’ll try.” He grinned again, knowing it would satisfy you for the time being. Grinning, like a goodbye gift.

“You’re an idiot, Jungkook.”

Before you could lose the last word, you gripped your luggage in one hand, the pillow in the other, and made your way into the hospital, leading to what you knew would be countless nights spent at the side of a hospital bed, eating foods you’d rather not eat, and watching daytime cable while taking care of your mother.

What you didn’t know was that a good portion of those nights would be spent with someone else. Someone who resided in the west wing of the hospital.

Someone who would bring your hand to his heart, and ask you if it felt stronger, and you would always reply with ‘yes’, or ‘yes, you idiot’, even when you were terrified that one day your hand wouldn’t feel the tap of his heart against his chest. Someone who would sing to you in exchange for the times you would read to him. Someone who you would leave notes and small gifts for, his personal favorite being the packet of walnuts accompanied with a folded paper inscribed ‘for when you need to get out of class’. Someone who, when he would be having a particularly difficult night, you’d fall asleep holding hands with, and you’d wake him up with a warm cup of his signature beverage.

Someone you would inevitably begin to fall in love with.

A month later, one of two people you loved dearly would walk out with you through those hospital doors. That person was Jungkook. And the melancholy of losing your mother to the battle between her and her cancer would also follow you, and stay with you almost as long as Jungkook had.

A year later, you would return, hand in hand with Jungkook. Every two months. It was the promise you sealed onto your mother's gravestone that you would always return every two months. Even if the weather dispatched the most terrifying thunderstorms, or your work piled a stack of paperwork high enough to reach the sky, you’d still return home.

You and Jungkook placed a bundle of wildflowers you picked on the way to her grave, sitting at the top of a grassy highland, at the base of the granite stone. She was overlooking the world, with a perfect view of you; it made you feel safe that she was watching over you, and she was watching over Jungkook and his slowly recovering heart.

The weather was perfect. The sun blanketed everything beneath it with a generous warmth but didn't restrict the gentle breeze from tempering it. The leaves and grass moved with the wind, but your mother’s tombstone was strong and unmoving, losing no part of herself to the fluid motions of the spring air.

“I kind of like it here.” He said softly, adorning the view of the hilltop with you. It was the morning, and it didn’t feel like he was sharing the world with you anymore. It felt like it was yours to begin with, and he was just lucky enough to be allowed a part of it.

“Me too.” One hand was with Jungkook, and the other was with your mother.

“I think it would be a nice place to get married and raise our children. You know, after I become a world-renowned composer and all.” This would have shocked you if you had not been wishing to hear him confirm these dreams of yours for a while now. “Did that scare you? I didn’t mean to be too forward.”

“No, I think this would be the perfect place to live. Only if it's with you.” Because you knew, something was missing here without him. He made this hometown of yours finally complete in the wake of your mother’s passing.

When you kissed him, he tasted like honey. And he would have told you that you tasted like cinnamon.

It could never scare you, because you were in love.

You were in a debt of gratitude that was deeper than the ocean. There was so much you wanted to say to him.

The town is milk. It is up to you and me, Jungkook, to provide the ingredients that will liven this town of milk into something sweeter, something survivable, something that will continue to sustain a force as powerful as love. Without the honey and cinnamon, all you have is milk. It seems we are the perfect blend of the two to make this bitter place palatable when it hits our tongues. This town needs us together in the same way milk needs honey and cinnamon.

You didn’t say any of those words out loud. You didn’t need to. All you needed to say was:

“I love you.”

And all he needed to say was:

“I love you too.”

#bangtanarmynet #ficswithluv #btsgoldnet #bts fanfic #bts one shot #bts writing #bts fluff #bts x reader #jungkook fanfic #jungkook x reader #jungkook one shot #jungkook fluff #bts enemies to lovers #musician!jungkook #of honey and cinnamon #rubycoast

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a-kind-of-merry-war · 4 years

Text

They find Jaskier in a tavern a few miles outside of Oxenfurt. It’s Yen who spots him first – who sees him across the room, whose eyes go wide with recognition.

It takes Geralt a little longer. He smells him before he sees him – all sweet honey and wildflowers and salt. But he can’t believe his eyes when he looks up.

Jaskier's aged. He’s not old – not even close to being old – but his hair is more white and grey than it is brown, his crows’ feet now undeniable. Geralt was never really sure how old Jaskier was, and Jaskier never told him, but he looks now to be in his late fifties.

He’s still staring at him when the bard, seated at a long table with a gaggle of students, peers up.

There’s a long, drawn-out moment where they stare at each other across the tavern. Geralt feels like his heart has dropped into his stomach and his stomach has dropped into his feet. He feels guilty, suddenly – guilty that so much time has passed of Jaskier’s life without him in it. Part of him wants to rush over there and -

And what?

He doesn't know.

And then Yen is suddenly waving him over, and Geralt hasn’t time to say anything before Jaskier’s sat at their table, a full glass of wine in his hand, his eyes just as blue and bright as they ever were.

Somehow, it’s just like the old days. The little anxious knot in Geralt’s stomach quickly vanishes and he falls back into easy chat. Jaskier’s been travelling, he says, and teaching a little – hence why he’s so close to Oxenfurt. He asks after Ciri, and even asks how Yennefer’s doing – although his voice is still somewhat colder towards her. He’s as much of a chatterbox as he ever was, weaving them the stories of his years away from the witcher.

There's a sparkle to him, now - something Geralt can't place. He's confident and, even after all this time, still a shameless flirt. But behind all that is something else - something almost like fear. Sometimes he laughs at one of his own jokes but the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.

Geralt realises, halfway through a story about a brawl at a wedding, that he's missed Jaskier. He's missed his easy going nature, His ceaseless chatter. Jaskier is - he’s forced to admit - just as distracting as he ever was. Perhaps even more so: he's always been attractive, but the years have been kind to him, and the salt-and-pepper of his hair suits him.

Very little else has changed - save for a pendant dangling on a silver chain from his neck. It's a flower, intricately designed, resting gently against his fine satin shirt. He plays with it absent-mindedly as he talks.

Geralt suddenly regrets not spending more time with him. It's easy to forget how short the lives of regular humans can be. Jaskier isn't ancient, by any means, but he's sped through more than half of his life in the blink of an eye. Soon, the songs and stories and wild, boisterous character will just be…gone.

It won't do. Deep in his cups, Geralt is about to propose that Jaskier join him on his next contract, when the bard seems to have a sudden thought.

"I must go," he says, standing, "I've a room here this evening but I'm off again in the morning, bright and early!" He laughs, but it sounds forced. "I'll… well. See you, Geralt."

As soon as Jaskier's gone, Yen turns to him, eyes steely.

"Something's going on."

"What?"

"Jaskier. Something isn't right. He's up to something."

"Yen, you're being paranoid."

"Don't tell me you couldn't sense it, Geralt. He was reeking with magic."

Truthfully, Geralt hadn't noticed. Yen spots his blank expression.

"God's save me," she rolls her eyes, "Some things never change. If you'd taken a moment to stop staring at him you'd have noticed your bloody medallion was twitching. He's gone and gotten himself involved in… well, in something."

"Yen, really-"

"Don't you 'really' me! Think about it, for once, please. You must have sensed something was off about him."

Geralt concedes. "I… I suppose. Yes."

"Well, then." She says it like the matter is closed. He looks at her, raising eyebrows. "God's, Geralt, go and find out what he's up to!"

"Now?"

"I - yes, now! Or do I have to go up there and twist it out of him myself?"

Geralt sighs. "Fine. I'll go. Wait here."

He downs his drink then heads in the direction of the staircase. He doesn't need to ask which room Jaskier is in - he just blindly follows his smell, almost as familiar as his own, even after all this time.

It's strongest outside the last door on the landing, and he can hear movement inside the room. He braces himself, trying to work out what he's going to say, then grabs the handle and pushes open the door. It's unlocked - years ago, he would have chastised the bard for such carelessness - and Jaskier gives a startled yelp as it swings open.

"Jaskier, we need to-"

He freezes. Jaskier stands in the centre of the room, half undressed. His shirt and doublet are strewn haphazardly on the bed, the new silver pendant thrown on top of them.

He's young again. His wrinkles are gone, his hair no longer streaked with white. He looks just like he did the day they met, like he did the day he was cursed by the Djinn, like he did the day Geralt abandoned him on that fucking mountain. He looks like he did the day they'd parted ways more years ago now than Geralt can remember.

"Geralt!" he says, arms outstretched, surrendering, "Okay, look, you see: the thing is-"

"What the fuck, Jaskier?"

"There… may be something I need to tell you."

#geraskier #geralt x jaskier #geralt of rivia #jaskier #dandelion #old jaskier #salt and pepper jaskier #being reunited #fic #my fic

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five-rivers · 4 years

Text

Adoption

Based on a prompt by @fabnamessuggestedbytumbler for the Phic Phight! An excuse for Lost Time fluff? Don't mind if I do...

The Ghost Zone had a legal system. A court system. A prison system. A police system. A set of established rules. There were even lawyers.

In theory.

In reality the courts (Observants) refused to look at anything that wasn't world ending. Every group had their own, private prison. The police made up their own rules and, even then, broke them regularly. The actual rules had gone several hundred years without an update and referred to places, organizations, and customs that no longer existed. The lawyers were all clinically depressed. That's what happens when there's no active, unifying head of state for hundreds of years.

Still. Every so often a sufficiently foolish ghost, possessed of a brave purpose, would attempt to navigate the ruins of the legal system. Few made it out alive.

(True, being ghosts, they didn't necessarily go into it alive, but it's the thought that counts.)

But those who did make it out (metaphorically) alive, did so with prizes... well, not great enough, but something enough to convince others to make the attempt. Hence Clockwork's current location and headache.

"Sign the paper, Walker," snapped Clockwork.

"That would be against the rules," said Walker, leaning back in his stupid chair. Clockwork's nonexistent spine hurt just from looking at it.

Maybe he should give himself a spine, just so he'd have a reason to feel this way.

"How," he began, "would it be against the rules? This form needs to be signed by a law enforcement official that has seen or witnessed conclusive evidence the child in question being abused by their natural parents. That is you."

"Yes, but the law enforcement officer must first get a warrant approved by an appropriate court in order to collect such evidence," countered Walker.

"Not if the official came across the evidence or act of abuse while pursuing a different case or simply following standard operating procedure. You saw them shoot at him. His mother put a gun to his head. Have mercy, Walker. I know you don't like him, but he is a child who needs guidance. Not a criminal."

"He's a criminal in my books," said Walker.

"What he did was hardly a crime."

"Jailbreak is a crime!"

"Not if one is unjustly imprisoned," said Clockwork. "He was attempting to remove the foreign object." No matter that possessing material-plane items wasn't an actual crime.

"He let others escape!"

"And what were they imprisoned for?"

Walker grumbled. "Some of them are dangerous, and even he knew that," said Walker, nodding at the file spread over his desk.

"Consider it a cry for help. While you were watching him," stalking him, Clockwork did not say, "on the material plane, did he really strike you as criminally inclined? Or perhaps he was simply confused and scared? One thousand years is a very long time in human terms. The targets of his Obsession would have died. Even if he did commit a misdemeanor, he would have rightly been granted clemency, or at least had his sentence deferred."

Walker frowned.

"That's not what this is about, is it? You covering up a mistake?"

"No," said Walker.

Clockwork blinked, quickly running through potential futures. "No one will care that you crossed the veil without authorization. No one who can do anything about it, in any case."

"There'll be an investigation if I sign that there piece of paper. What's the big deal, anyway? Like you said, humans don't live that long. Just wait fifty years."

"They almost ended him," said Clockwork. "He's a child. Do you really want that on your conscience? With the knowledge that you could have stopped it?"

Sighing, Walker picked up his pen.

Danny went to school. Mainly, he went because he didn't know what else to do. He needed the routine, even if the routine was a lie and he felt like trash.

"You could have stayed," whispered Sam, as his hand inched towards the bandages on his chest for the fifth time that morning. "They wouldn't have noticed you."

Danny shook his head. His hand shook more. He put it back in his lap. "It wouldn't have been right. Besides, I need a passing grade in this class, right?" He couldn't get another F, or his parents would kill him, except- except- except-

They had already tried to kill him.

Everything had gone so much worse than he had ever imagined- No. That wasn't quite right. It had gone- It had...

At least he hadn't been cut open.

(Much.)

"Mr. Fenton?"

Danny jumped, banging his knees painfully on the underside of his desk. He looked up, wildly, tensing himself to flee, only the fact that he was currently human keeping his powers from activating.

(Well, that and... what had been done to him.)

When had Mr. Lancer gotten there?

"What?" he asked, breathlessly.

"Are- Are you alright, Mr. Fenton?"

"I'm fine," Danny said. He wasn't. His ghost half was urging him to go find a nice, dark, quiet, safe corner to hide in, preferably one in the Ghost Zone, his heart was hammering out of his chest, he'd spent the night not-sleeping in one of the guestrooms in Sam's house, and that was before even touching on his injuries.

He forced a smile. Mr. Lancer was one of the few teachers who hadn't given up on him, which was alternately touching and frustrating.

"You look sick," said Mr. Lancer. "Are you sure you don't want to call home?"

Danny's heart stuttered, his core painfully cold. "I'm sure," he said.

"Today is a project day," said Mr. Lancer. "You wouldn't be missing anything in this class, and I can talk to your other teachers."

"No, I'm fine."

The legal clerk for the family court was the kind of ghost who seemed to have fused with her role. The sleeves and collar of her shirt melded seamlessly with her skin. Her nails were brass pen nibs. The lenses of her glasses were part of her face.

She lived in either the basement or the attic of this particular building, depending on how one oriented themselves, among barely-organized stacks of books and papers. There were parchment scrolls and stone tablets, too, the later often re-purposed as elements of the room's furniture. Green-marbled filing cabinets grew out of the walls, and electronic somethings glittered out of the shadows.

The clerk had been reviewing Clockwork's paperwork for literal days. Rather, she would have been, if Clockwork hadn't surreptitiously dropped a time medallion around her neck and stopped time.

She hummed, thoughtfully. "In this document, you are using the pronoun tsai to refer to the adoptee. Are you certain you don't mean tusui? Or perhaps chahe?"

"Absolutely," said Clockwork. The intimation that he wasn't fluent in nchabhatsi was insulting. On the other hand, the requirement for that particular piece of paperwork to be in the language was also, in his opinion, rather ridiculous. Many ghosts, especially the recently dead, did not know nchabhatsi.

"The adoptee is liminal?"

"Yes," said Clockwork.

"Hmm." She stood up and flew from her desk to an inverted bookshelf anchored to the ceiling. From a box she took a huge sheaf of papers, and blew an amount of dust from them that was unhealthy even to a ghost. "It has been a while since we used these," she said, giving Clockwork a faded-ivory smile. "You'll need to fill these out and have them notarized by the proper officials before you can proceed. Liminal spirits are so rare, after all! They require special care. Oh!" Her hands fluttered. "And I'll have to get in contact with our liminality expert. That may take some time."

"If you can give me their name," said Clockwork, "I will take care of it." He gingerly took the stack of slightly-decayed paper. Had it really been so long since a partly-human child had been adopted? Probably.

"Oh, you're such a dear," said the clerk, not noticing the sudden absence of the medallion around her neck. "But that paperwork won't do itself, and-"

"It's done," said Clockwork. Fulfilling some of the new requirements had been more challenging than others and avoiding a paradox had taken considerable self-control, but what good were his temporal abilities if he couldn't use them for personal gain now and again? None at all.

"Ah," said the clerk.

Familiar, and very loud, voices spilled from the hallway near the office. Danny, one hand on his locker, trying to remember his combination, froze like a deer in headlights. His heartbeat picked up, his core buzzed frantically. He couldn't move. Grey crept in along the edges of his vision.

"... not him. It was never him! He's dead-"

"Mrs. Fenton, Mr. Fenton, I'm not sure what you're getting at, here, but your son has been at school all day, and we-"

"A ghost killed him and took his place! It's been playing a sick game with us this whole time!"

"Danny would never have gotten grades like this. We should have noticed the lower intellect right away, if nothing else."

"That's-" spluttered Mr. Lancer. "You- Daniel's work is exemplary, what little of it he turns in. I'm going to have to ask you to go back to the office-"

"No! Not until that piece of ectoplasmic scum is wiped from the face of the Earth!"

"Danny," said Tucker, much closer. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Right. Ghostly super hearing. Tucker and Sam, staring at him with concern, couldn't know.

"They're here," he managed, the words like sandpaper in his throat.

Sam uttered a word that would have sent her mother into a screeching fit. "We need to get you out of here," she said putting a hand on his back and pushing him down the hall.

"I'll run interference," said Tucker. "Make sure they can't follow you in the GAV."

"Good thinking," said Sam.

"Call me when you're safe," said Tucker, peeling off, presumably to hack the GAV.

"Danny, breathe," ordered Sam, as she propelled him through the double doors at the back of the school. "We're going to get you through this."

Clockwork had resorted to trapping the legal complex in a massive temporal bubble. Not the neatest solution, true, and it seemed to encourage the various functionaries, regulators, and bureaucrats to take even more time to process even the simplest request, but at least it would keep Daniel's suffering in the meantime to a minimum.

However, that didn't change the fact that he had been bouncing back and forth between the various floors of the building like a ping-pong ball, never getting closer to the solitary family court judge, for well over a subjective year. He was exhausted, frustrated, and he missed Daniel.

"You will be able to provide steady, stable access to the adoptee's preferred haunt?" asked his present interviewer.

"Yes," said Clockwork, dully. The room was ringed with runes that prevented deception of any kind.

"You will be able to provide shelter adequate for both his ghostly and human form?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. He had answered these questions so many times before.

"You have taken the mandated class on liminality?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. He was beginning to understand why other ghosts just gave up and sought extralegal solutions.

"You are aware of a liminal spirit's developmental and emotional needs?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. This was just so boring.

"And are you able to satisfy those needs?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. If only it would end.

The interviewer nodded. "Then we're done here," he said.

"Ye- What? Does that mean I can see the judge?" asked Clockwork, hopefully.

"No. That means that your adoption motion can move on to the next stage," said the interviewer. "Our liminality expert will examine your arrangements and determine whether or not they are sufficient, and we will contact law enforcement to follow up on your claim that the adoptee is being abused."

Clockwork bit back a groan. At least he was making progress.

They cut through the empty field behind the school, angling back toward the surrounding neighborhood. The grass came up to their chests, except where there were holes, mounds, and gouges from ghost fights. When there was one in the school, Danny tried to bring it out here, so people wouldn't get hurt.

He wasn't often successful.

Sam led the way. Danny felt- He felt ashamed. If his powers were working, he would be able to fly them away, or at least turn them invisible. This would all be so much easier. He could have taken care of himself, and Sam and Tucker wouldn't get in trouble, because they would definitely get in trouble for this. But he couldn't.

He couldn't even convince his parents that he was himself. He had to screw that up, too.

Before, he had thought, worse case scenario would be that they'd try to 'fix' him, to remove his ghost half, or maybe they'd think he was overshadowed. At least, he'd convinced himself of that, convinced himself that dissection would be off the table if he ever told them, that they would still love him. Maybe they might still want to do tests, but they'd love him. They wouldn't want to hurt him.

But he had been so, so wrong. They didn't believe him. They thought he had killed himself, replaced himself.

They had tried to cut him open.

(They succeeded.)

His core shuddered at the memory.

At least, though, there hadn't been any ghost attacks today. He wouldn't have been able to fight anything stronger than the Box Ghost. Heck, he might have lost to the Box Ghost. Like this, he would have to leave the ghosts to his parents, Valerie, or the GIW, none of which were particularly good options for the hunters, the ghosts, or the innocent bystanders of Amity Park.

His core pulsed uncomfortably at the thought of any of them getting hurt, including his parents.

He flinched. His core had been very jumpy, very active ever since... it... happened. Usually it only did this while he was in ghost form, and was otherwise almost dormant.

"Are you okay?" asked Sam. "Is it hurting?" She was the one who had bandaged him up last night.

"We can't stop now," said Danny.

Sam flattened her lips. "That isn't an answer. As soon as we get somewhere quiet, I'm checking you out, okay?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

When they reached the short fence, Sam gave him a boost to get over and they made their way into the suburb. There was a small library branch down the road a ways. It had a small family bathroom that Sam and Tucker had patched Danny up in before. It would be a good place to regroup before trying to put as much distance between them and Danny's parents as possible.

"We could take the city bus, I think," said Sam. "There's a stop outside the library. Maybe we could go to Elmerton?"

"Maybe," said Danny.

"Any ETA on Jazz since last night?"

Danny shook his head. "She couldn't get a flight. She's taking a Greyhound. Won't be here 'til-"

There was a beep. Danny stopped breathing. That could have been anything, a phone, a watch, a car, something from a building, but something about it tickled at Danny's brain as wrong.

"There is a ghost twenty feet in front of you."

The whine of a charging ectogun-

Sam slammed into his side, and they both fell. Danny felt the cut on his chest begin to bleed again, and he curled around it protectively. It hurt so much more than it should, and Danny wondered if that was because ghosts were ultimately shaped by their minds and his was in so much pain right now.

His parents had just shot at him. From behind. Not ghost him, Phantom him, either. Human him.

They hated him. All of him. Not just half of him.

His ghost sense went off. Because things could always get worse for Danny and the universe apparently hated him.

He struggled into a sitting position and blinked, confused. There were people surrounding him, protecting him, standing between him and his parents. Sam was shouting. Danny couldn't make out what she was saying, what anyone was saying, not with his heart pounding in his ears.

"Kid," said one man, shaking his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Danny considered that. "No," he said, finally.

The man pulled a phone from his pocket and began saying something about calling the hospital. Normally, Danny would be worried about that, but he was looking for the ghosts. It was possible one of the more benevolent spirits that haunted Amity Park had happened across the scene, but, somehow, Danny doubted it.

His ghost sense went off again. He whimpered.

His people were in danger.

Ghosts usually came for him (he was leading them here, an evil ghost, causing all this trouble, murderer), or at least attacked him first, to get rid of him as a threat. He staggered to his feet. He had to get away. Still clutching his chest, he turned and bolted.

Almost at once, he was surrounded by ghosts in police gear. Walker's goons. Definitely stronger than the Box Ghost. Still, he was going to at least try to fight. He put his fists up. Maybe some of them would be dumb enough not to phase out of the way of his stupid human punches.

Then Walker himself descended from the sky.

"Daniel," he said, stiffly.

"Walker," returned Danny. A small part of him was grateful that Walker hadn't called him Phantom and spilled his secret. It was strange, but no ghost had ever seemed particularly inclined to do that, despite how easy it would have been.

"We have a court order to take you into custody," said Walker. "Someone wants to ask you a few questions."

Danny decided today's mood was 'pointless bravado and defiance.' "And why would I want to come with- whoa."

As Danny talked, Walker had taken a piece of paper with strange symbols written on it in green ink out from the inside pocket of his jacket. The symbols made his head spin... Or maybe that was just his injuries catching up with him. His left leg was trembling, and he wasn't sure how much longer it would hold out.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and focused on Walker. "I have no idea what that says."

Walker sighed. "Just come quietly, son. Make it easier on yourself."

Danny swallowed his discomfort at being called 'son.' "You won't hurt anyone else?" he asked.

"I'm just here for you."

There really wasn't much of a choice. Whether he went quietly or got himself beaten up even more, Walker would win and carry him off. Anyone could see that. Besides, ghost prison might be a better alternative than getting dissected by his parents.

He raised his hands in front of him, wrists together. "Go ahead, then," said Danny, flatly.

Walker nodded, and the goons converged on him. The cuffs they put around his wrists glowed green, but they had weight in a way most purely ghostly things didn't. Danny doubted that he'd be able to phase his way out of them, human or ghost. Then they picked him up and the whole swarm started to fly away.

"Yes, this is my lair," said Clockwork. "I can, however, duplicate and be both here and at the secondary residence I acquired expressly for the purpose of ensuring continuity of Daniel's human life."

The 'liminality expert' grunted. "He's still been here, though, hasn't he?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. "He has."

"And he might be here again in the future."

"Yes. I do plan to have him here, for short periods of time."

"And later, when he sheds his human life?"

"Perhaps."

"Then I need to know, are these up to OSHA standards? Your entire lair needs to be up to OSHA standards."

"They're time viewers and tools for unraveling paradoxes. OSHA, even the OSHA of the far future, does not regulate these items," said Clockwork. "Why, in the name of time, do you even need to know? Surely, OSHA didn't even exist the last time a liminal child was adopted."

"Well," said the expert, slightly sheepish. "No. But regulations state that all residences must be safe for children by both human and ghost standards."

"Then OSHA is not what you should be using," said Clockwork. "OSHA is the set of rules for occupational health and safety."

"Ah," said the expert. "Then we can move right along to the next check mark, shall we?"

"Hi," said a cheerful voice.

Danny looked up from his contemplation of the examination room table and glared balefully at the ghost who had just entered the door. They didn't seem to be affected. But then, why would they be? Danny was handcuffed to the table and clearly not a threat.

"I'm the interviewer," said the featureless ghost. "Do you know why you're here?"

"No," said Danny.

"Well," said the interviewer, "I work for the eighth authorized family court of the Infinite Realms, we're actually the only one right now, but there used to be more, and a little while ago, an adoption request was filed on your behalf."

Danny blinked and made a face. "You mean, someone stole my identity in ghost court?"

"No, no," said the interviewer, waving one amorphous hand. "Not at all. I mean to say, I ghost filed a request to legally adopt you."

"Who?" asked Danny. "Not Vlad?" Vlad was the only ghost he could think of who had demonstrated any interest in adopting him.

"No, that's not the name listed here."

"Plasmius?" asked Danny, still cringing internally.

"No."

"Then who?"

"Clockwork."

"What, seriously?" Danny liked Clockwork, and he liked to think that Clockwork liked him back, that they were friends, but the older ghost always seemed somewhat aloof.

"Yes, he was very serious. Now. I have a number of questions I need to ask you." They took out a small, glowing crystal, and set it on the table. "Do you know what this is?"

"No?" said Danny.

"It's a record crystal," said the ghost. "But one of its other functions is that it can sense deception, and record when in an interview it is being used. Go ahead, say something you know is false."

"I... like toast?"

The crystal's glow dimmed slightly before returning to its previous level.

"There, see? Very useful, don't you think?"

"I guess," said Danny. He didn't know how to feel about this. Any of this. What would ghost adoption even mean? He trusted Clockwork, but this felt like too much, too fast. He hadn't even properly processed what had happened with his parents a few hours ago.

"Right. So. We'll start with an easy one, then. Is your name Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom, also known as Danny Phantom, or simply Danny or Phantom?"

"Yes," said Danny, eyeing the crystal warily.

"And what would you prefer to go by, for the purposes of this interview?"

"Phantom," said Danny.

"Alright then, Phantom," said the interviewer, "could you please tell me where you primarily reside?"

"Fentonworks," said Danny, "in Amity Park." So far, he hadn't really had a reason to lie. All of this was common knowledge for both his human and ghostly acquaintances.

"And what would you consider to be your haunt?"

"My what?"

"Your haunt. The territory that you have metaphysically claimed."

"I- I don't really understand."

"Is there an area that you feel compelled to defend against hostile persons? An area in which non-hostile ghosts defer to you?"

"I- Yeah. I guess. Amity Park. And some of the bits around it, too."

"The entire city?"

"I guess? I don't know," said Danny. "Is that weird?"

"It would be unusual," said the interviewer.

Danny really wished the interviewer had an expression he could read. Or even just something approximating a face.

"Now, do you feel safe in your home? In 'Fentonworks?'"

The correct answer to that question would be no, but he wasn't sure he should answer. What if this was some kind of elaborate trick?

"We can come back to that," said the interviewer. "Are there any other places where you do feel safe?"

"I mean, sure?" said Danny. He fidgeted.

"Would you please share some of those places?"

"School, I guess?" Except that he got beaten up there all the time and his parents had hunted him down there and he had to escape and... Yeah.

The crystal dimmed. Danny grimaced.

"Ah," said the interviewer. "Anywhere else?"

"My friends houses," said Danny. "And the Far Frozen." To his relief, this time, the crystal stayed bright.

"Have you ever been to Clockwork's lair?"

"Yeah," said Danny. He slouched in the chair as much as possible. He wasn't sure he should be answering these questions, but he was. Maybe he should stop.

"Do you feel safe there?"

"Not at first, but now I do."

"I see. Why not at first?"

"Clockwork and I didn't meet on great terms and we sort of got into a fight." Maybe that would get the interviewer to stop. They'd decide Clockwork couldn't adopt him and leave. Did Danny want that? He wasn't sure.

"That's more common than one might expect. But you feel safe with him now?"

"Yes."

"Alright, moving on. How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

There was a long, drawn out silence that managed to be skeptical despite the interviewer's lack of a face.

"I know I'm small," said Danny, insulted, "but I am sixteen."

"Excuse my indelicacy, but... how old were you when you died?"

Danny flushed. "Fourteen," he bit out.

"Then you're fourteen."

"It was two years ago. I'm sixteen."

"Fourteen is your natural age," said the ghost. "A ghost's natural age is the age they died at."

"Yeah, but I'm still half human. I'm still aging. So I'm sixteen."

The interviewer shook their head. "As a liminal spirit, your apparant age range is likely larger than a normal child's would be, but your natural age, your true age, is still fourteen. Based on records of liminals, the highest extent of your age range is most likely to be either twenty-one or twenty-eight. That's part of the reason we investigate official adoption request so thoroughly. The relationship may very well last for thousands of years, if not forever."

"Wait, are you saying I could live forever?" asked Danny, incredulous. This was not how he wanted to find out he was immortal. Heck, he didn't want to be immortal.

"I'll admit, my understanding of liminality isn't perfect, but I believe that is the case. Why? Is that problematic?"

"The results of the law enforcement investigation have come back," said the bureaucrat to whom Clockwork was currently assigned. "As well as an inquiry as to the opinion of the mortal law enforcement arm."

"And?" asked Clockwork. "Their findings?"

The bureaucrat, who had up until that point not displayed evidence that xe possessed any emotions whatsoever, made a face of extreme disgust. "When the officers found the child, the human parents were openly shooting at him. Other humans intervened for long enough for law enforcement to pick him up. Of course, they then felt the need to arrest him and carry him away in handcuffs... I have no idea why I keep at this job, really I don't."

Clockwork's core shifted in worry. His first impulse was to leap up and go comfort Daniel, but he suppressed it. If he left now, he would lose his place in line and have to start over.

"The public nature of the event means that the human police are now investigating the child's circumstances and may recommend that the child be removed from his human parents' custody. If you have a human identity and you are able to gain custody of him there, it will aid your case here."

"I am aware," said Clockwork.

"Well, then," xe said. "I believe this is all in order. Here is your ticket to see the judge. Just show it to the door. You know where it is?"

"I do," said Clockwork, rising.

He had walked by the door several times in his dealings with the various clerks and notaries. The room behind it lay directly in the heart of the family court building, all the other rooms and residents armor for this one.

The door itself was made of dark wood full of eye-shaped knots. As Clockwork approached the door, the eyes opened, watching him. He held up the ticket and the doors swung inward.

Inside was a courtroom, complete with benches, tables, a witness stand, a courtroom recorder, a judge's box, and a judge.

The judge was a one-eyed ghost in pale purple robes. She examined Clockwork.

"We had not foreseen this," she said. "Not until you filed the first motion."

"You were never able to see me clearly," said Clockwork, hoping this would not turn into a power play between himself and the Observants. "Did you receive the relevant paper work, your honor?"

"Yes," she said. "Take a seat, Lord Clockwork."

Clockwork flew to the front of the courtroom and settled himself in the applicant's chair.

The judge leaned forward. "Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I love Daniel, and I believe he deserves more care and protection than he is currently receiving from his biological parents."

The judge waved a clawed hand. "Yes, yes. But you didn't have to go through all of this and get to me in order to do that. You could have just taken him. That's what most people do, nowadays. Ever since the King was sealed and our systems of governance began to decay."

"I believe it is the only way Daniel will truly be safe," said Clockwork, meeting her one eye calmly.

"You want to prevent us from 'interfering.'"

"That would be nice, yes," agreed Clockwork.

"You want this to be binding," accused the judge.

"You say that like it is a bad thing," said Clockwork. "But what else could induce him to fully remove himself from that situation? You see how they treat him. Have you looked at the medical report, yet?"

"I have," said the judge, looking at her desk. "Very well. All the paperwork is in order. I am approving you for a one-month trial period. At the end of the trial period, the status of the child will be assessed. If his state is found to be acceptable, the adoption will be approved and bound. If it is not, this court will take custody of him until such a time as an appropriate guardian can be found." She scribbled something on a piece of paper and then hit it with a stamp. "The probationary bond should be active. You may go."

"Thank you, your honor."

After the end of the interview, which had become much more distressing than Danny wanted to admit, one of Walker's goons showed up and took him away, to another room.

This room was different than any of the other rooms he had seen in Walker's prison. For one, the walls were a soft, pastel green with purple accents, not the harsh, neon pink of elsewhere in the facility. The chairs looked soft, and were arranged almost randomly, clustered in little groups, or around tables. There were colored pencils and crayons on and occasionally floating over the tables. A large basket sat in one corner, overflowing with toys of various sizes.

Alright. Danny was confused.

He let the goon- the... officer?- guide him into one of the chairs and put a stuffed rabbit on his lap.

"I- I don't understand," said Danny. "What's going on?"

"Didn't that interviewer guy tell you?"

"He said I was being adopted," said Danny, who still hadn't wrapped his head around that particular tidbit of information. "But I thought- I was under arrest?" He raised his cuffed hands. "You arrested me?"

"Those're just so you don't run away," said the ghost. He ruffled Danny's hair. "You're not under arrest. We're just waiting for the court to decide what to do with you."

"And what if they don't do anything with me?"

"Then it's up to the boss."

"Oh," said Danny, not liking the sound of that at all.

"But, if it helps, I think that the court probably will decide to do something with you."

It didn't really help, no.

"Do you want a lollipop?"

"Sure," said Danny. It wasn't like this day could get much weirder.

The ghost handed him a lime dumdum. Yeah. That was about what he expected there, honestly.

The sensation of a thick, weighted blanket being draped over his mind hit him with such intensity that he looked around, trying to see if someone had just wrapped him up in a blanket without him noticing. Tension bled out of his muscles, and his core finally stopped the angry/depressed/frightened/pained dance it was doing in his chest.

He felt... protected. Which was wrong, because he was in Walker's prison, and Walker would use any excuse he had to keep Danny imprisoned for a thousand years. Danny was not safe here. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet, that feeling remained.

He brushed his fingers over the bandages over his chest. What was wrong with him? His parents hadn't even cut all the way through, but he was so messed up. He didn't understand.

This feeling... This 'safety'... It felt like a cruel joke more than anything else, only it was one he couldn't escape from because it was coming from inside him and he was calm but he was also crying.

"Oh, heck, do you not like lime? I think I have some green apples-?"

The door to the room opened, and Danny looked up. Before he could register who had come in, he was swept up into a hug.

He blinked into silky purple cloth. "Clockwork?" he croaked.

"I'm here," said Clockwork. "It's fine. You're safe now, Daniel."

Danny pushed away. Clockwork let him. "You're adopting me?" asked Danny.

"Yes," said Clockwork. "Unless you don't want me to."

"Why?" asked Danny. "I don't understand. I didn't think you liked me that much."

"I like you very much," reassured Clockwork. "I want you to be my family."

Danny sniffed. "Okay," he said. It wasn't as if he really had anywhere else to go. "Okay. But what about," he made an awkward gesture with his cuffed hands, "Amity Park?" The idea of leaving hurt, even worse than the cut on his chest.

"You won't have to leave," said Clockwork, soothingly. "You can still have your life there."

"I'll have to go back?" asked Danny, in alarm. Back to Fentonworks, where even the walls had it out for him with how much anti-ghost weaponry they had packed into them? He couldn't. Not after what his parents had done.

(A small part of him knew that wasn't what Clockwork had said, and that he was being irrational. That part of him was ignored.)

"No, no," said Clockwork. "I have a new place, just for you. If you'll let me show you?"

Very hesitantly, Danny nodded.

"Alright, good," said Clockwork. He turned to the police ghost. "Do you have the key for these? We really must be going."

"Yeah," said the ghost, producing the item. "The boss says that he expects you to teach the kid how to respect the law."

"Appropriately," said Clockwork, neutrally, unlocking the cuffs.

Danny felt an urge to hug Clockwork. So he did. Clockwork hugged him back, and rocked him back and forth, gently.

"Are you ready to go?" asked Clockwork.

"Yeah," said Danny.

With a gesture of his staff, Clockwork opened a portal.

Clockwork wanted custody of Danny. He wanted full custody of Danny. Legally. In both worlds.

This posed a bit of a challenge, as he did not legally exist on one of those two worlds. Thus, Clockwork had to establish a legal presence in the human world.

On the surface of it, this did not seem too difficult. Between his temporal powers, his minor shapeshifting abilities, and overshadowing, simply creating an identity was easy. The hard part was creating an identity that Daniel would not have encountered before, in order to avoid a paradox, while making it plausible that Daniel had encountered the identity before, for the purposes of dealing with mortal law.

In one timeline, the hill to the west of town stood empty of habitation, owned by the county but rendered unusable due to a dangerous failed mine on the site. In this timeline, however, the mine had never been built, and the property was instead owned by a reclusive hermit who went by the name of Charles Worth. The property had passed through many hands in the years before Mr. Worth had purchased it in his youth, and a stately, if somewhat faded, mansion sat at the hill's crest, overlooking Amity Park.

Charles Worth went to Amity Park only rarely, and for good reason. He was an albino, with red eyes, white hair, and even whiter skin, and superstitious people often thought the worst of him. In recent days, he had even been mistaken for a ghost.

'Mistaken.'

He rubbed Daniel's shoulders, and the child startled, pulling away from him again. Daniel had missed Clockwork's, admittedly minor, transformation, and now blinked up at his newly pale face, confused.

"Do you like my disguise?" asked Clockwork.

Daniel's eyes flicked up and down Clockwork, assessing, processing. He gave a tiny nod, and reattached himself. "Where are we?" he asked.

"Hickory Hill," said Clockwork.

Danny frowned, mouthing the words. "Isn't that owned by... Charles Worth. Charles- Oh. I get it."

Clockwork gave Danny a little squeeze. "Would you like to see inside?"

"Okay," said Danny.

The house, Danny had to acknowledge, as they approached the front door, looked haunted. As if some pale, frail, spirit might look out one of the lace-draped windows on the upper floor at any moment. As if there was a Gothic mystery just waiting to unfold. A murder mystery, maybe, full of forbid love and jealous lovers. Or the tale of a sickly heir to a great fortune.

Or that of an ancient ghost and his adopted half-living son.

Even before they stepped inside, Danny's ghost half had decided it loved the building.

The door, as Clockwork opened it, creaked in a loving sort of way, the tone low enough to be comforting instead of annoying. The entrance hall's floorboards did not creak under the weight of the ghosts, but Danny could tell that if a human tried to cross them, they would. He hoped the rest of the floors were like that.

He padded forward, daringly leaving the protection of Clockwork's cloak, examining all the dark nooks and crannies, the odd architectural choices arising from generations of additions, smiling at cold spots. Clockwork shut the door. Even then, there was a draft, curling around his ankles, cool and refreshing.

Danny smiled. It was small and strained, but it was a smile. "It's perfect," he said.

"Don't you want to see your room before you say that?" teased Clockwork.

"Yes," said Danny.

Clockwork led Danny to a staircase with an elaborately carved banister and began to climb. Danny followed eagerly. He had never thought his core would be so happy simply to have somewhere safe to exist.

It almost was enough to let him forget what his parents had done to him. He stopped, hand on his chest.

"Daniel?" said Clockwork. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," said Danny, automatically.

Clockwork frowned, the expression both familiar and foreign on Clockwork's falsely-human face. "Why don't we take a look at that, once we get to your room, alright?"

Danny nodded, swallowing back his irrational fear.

They went up, and Clockwork opened the door to a large room, much larger than the one he had back at Fentonworks. The bed was similarly large and equipped with curtains and enough blankets and pillows to turn it into a nest at a moment's notice. The walls and ceiling were painted a deep blue, with tiny green-white dots picking out a star map. The room also contained a number of carefully curated hiding places, areas where the dressers wardrobe or desk created blind spots and deep shadows. The floor was carpeted, but still icy.

It was an excellent room for a ghost (or half-ghost) like Danny.

He was too nervous to enjoy it.

Clockwork pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. It was a little strange to see Clockwork actually sitting and not floating or coiling. Actually-

"Can you have legs in ghost form?" asked Danny.

"I can," said Clockwork. "But typically I don't bother." He patted the bed. "Let's take a look at you."

Danny hesitated, holding his hands clasped in front of his chest. Clockwork's face went soft.

"I just want to make sure you are healing. I know this is difficult, but neither you nor I want things to get worse."

"I'm fine," said Danny. "I heal fast. It was just- It should be gone now. I've gotten worse."

"Is it?" asked Clockwork.

Danny could still feel it. "I don't know," said Danny.

Clockwork patted the bed again. Danny sat down and started fumbling with the hem of his shirt.

"Would you like help?" asked Clockwork.

"No," said Danny. He pulled his sweater off. Taking off his t-shirt was harder. Then there were just Sam's bandages. He bit his lip a the red and brown blotches staining them.

"Would you like to talk about it?" asked Clockwork, taking one end of the bandage and starting to unwind it.

"I don't know," said Danny. "I just- It's so stupid. I shouldn't have- They saw me walk through a door and- They don't even know I'm Phantom. They just-" Danny hiccuped. "They tried to cut me open. They pretended."

Clockwork pulled free the last layer of bandages. The long, shallow cut was still there, straight along his breast bone until the end, where it curved sharply right and tapered off. That was when Danny had jerked free of the restraints and ran.

"Why isn't it healing?" asked Danny.

"It isn't just a physical wound, Daniel. Ghosts are spiritual creatures."

"Oh," said Danny. It made a sick kind of sense. "So my core is really hurt? I thought I was just... That it was in my head."

Clockwork raised a hand to touch the bottom of the cut. "Your parents are important to you, and to your Obsession, your existence as a ghost. Of course their rejection would affect you." The cut began to knit itself together underneath Clockwork's fingers. Danny's core thrummed strangely at the touch. "I can heal your physical injuries."

"But not the mental ones, huh?" said Danny.

"You need time for that," said Clockwork, reaching the top of the cut.

"Good thing I have you, then."

"It is," said Clockwork. He leaned forward and kissed Danny on top of his head.

Danny ran his fingers up and down the newly healed cut. "So my powers aren't going to work until, what, I get over this?"

"That is one possibility," said Clockwork. "But everyone heals differently."

"Can't you tell?" asked Danny, reaching for his shirt.

"The more involved I am in an event, the more difficult it becomes for me to see its future," said Clockwork. "The timeline branches and splinters as I look at it. Also, it may surprise you, but you are fairly difficult to predict on your own."

"Oh," said Danny. He pulled his shirt on, ignoring how it caught on the dried blood on his skin. "So, what now? Should I just, I don't know, hide out here? I mean," he shifted, uncomfortably, "It's fine if I can't let anyone know I'm here, I get that, but I'd like to, um..."

"Live your life?"

Danny flinched. "As much as I can, yeah." He licked his lips. "Sam and Tucker didn't get in trouble, did they? They're fine?" He'd been so wrapped up in how miserable he was, he'd barely spared his friends a second thought, and now that guilt from that rained down on his head.

"They're fine. Due to the circumstances, they haven't gotten in any trouble at all, so stop that."

"What?"

"Feeling guilty. I know for a fact that the safety of others was your first consideration." Clockwork patted his shoulder. "As for your continued presence here on the mortal plane," Clockwork smiled, "would it surprise you to learn that I am in fact registered as a foster parent? I have even had a few children here, although not many stay for long."

"Really?" said Danny. "But... Wait, um. What about- What about Mom and Dad?"

"They were seen shooting at you in public after insisting that you were a ghost. They've been arrested."

Danny swallowed. "Are they going to be alright?"

Clockwork sighed and shifted so that he was sitting on the bed next to Danny. He put an arm around Danny's shoulders. "They'll be fine," he said. "But we should come up with a story about how you wound up here, hm? For the social workers."

During Daniel's periodic visits to Clockwork's lair, Clockwork had noted how tactile he was, how much he enjoyed hugs and other physical expressions of affection. After Daniel got past his initial hesitation concerning his new situation, that particular personality trait multiplied.

Clockwork suspected the Fentons were ultimately to blame. Their hostility towards Daniel's ghostly identity and their tendency to carry objects that could hurt Daniel precluded him from seeking comfort from them, and his friends and sister, while very remarkable, were children themselves. Their relationship with Daniel was different.

This meant that Daniel could and would spend long periods of time laying against Clockwork. Usually, he would be doing homework during those moments or talking to Clockwork about various ghostly things that he had never had a chance to learn about before.

Today, however, he was just sitting there, quietly, almost dozing.

"I'm not keeping you from doing things?" asked Daniel, abruptly. "Am I?"

"No," said Clockwork.

"You don't have to do time stuff?"

"I can make duplicates and also time travel. I can be wherever I need to be. But if you want space-"

"No," said Daniel. "This is good." He snuggled closer and startled as a ring of light flashed around his waist. He was, for the first time since before his parents had attacked him, a ghost. Clockwork, in turn, shed his human guise.

Daniel was blinking down at his gloved hands.

"What?" he asked.

"I think you finally relaxed," said Clockwork, ruffling Daniel's hair. The smaller ghost leaned into the touch, purring. "Your transformations might be a bit unpredictable for the next few days."

"Good thing it's a weekend, then, huh?"

Danny jittered nervously as he and Clockwork passed through the large, eye-covered doors. This time last week, strange ghosts had been in and out of Clockwork's house, asking questions, poking things, and staring. Clockwork said they were checking to see if everything was in order, if the adoption could become official.

Danny didn't really see why it being official mattered. The Ghost Zone didn't really have a government to speak of. Families that Danny had seen just sort of decided that they were families, and that was that. It seemed important to Clockwork, though, and Clockwork claimed that there were certain benefits, like strengthening connections... Danny didn't get it. Wouldn't their connections be strengthened anyway?

Clockwork guided Danny with small nudges, directing him to a seat in front of the judge, who stared down at them with her one enormous eye.

"I have decided to approve the adoption request regarding Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom," she said.

Danny felt Clockwork relax incrementally beside him. He smiled. The judge's pronouncement felt a little anticlimactic to him, but, well, whatever.

But the judge wasn't done speaking. "The child's familial bond with his biological parents will be severed. The familial bond will be established with his current guardian, known as Clockwork. On all levels legal, physical, metaphysical, metaphorical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, Clockwork will be the sole parent of Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom. Due to the child's status as a liminal spirit, the memories and associations stored in his human brain will not be altered, and he may still experience feelings, especially those of nostalgia, towards his former parents, however, this is expected to fade with time. Questions?"

Danny had rather a lot, actually. Clockwork hadn't quite explained it like this. "Wait, are you saying I'll forget my parents?"

"No," said the judge, in a rather condescending tone.

"You won't forget them," said Clockwork. "But your core won't recognize them as your parents anymore. It's so you'll be able to defend yourself." His tone was almost pleading. "Your relationship with your sister will, of course, be unaffected."

"Okay," said Danny. They clearly didn't see him as their son anymore, so... It wouldn't really change anything. He didn't like the idea of ghosts he didn't know messing around with his core, but he trusted Clockwork. Even if he was apparently really bad at explaining ghost adoption. "What about the other stuff? The physical, metaphysical part?"

"The severed bonds in your core are replaced with ones to your new parent. Similarly, new bonds will be established in your parent's core," explained the judge. "Are you satisfied?"

Clockwork gave Danny an encouraging smile.

"I- Yes. I'm satisfied," said Danny.

"Very well." The judge waved forward a seven armed bailiff who had been waiting in the corner of the room.

The bailiff carried two tall glasses and a large, covered pitcher. He set one glass each in front of Clockwork and Danny and poured a thick, white, faintly glowing liquid into each of them.

"What is it?" asked Danny.

"It is a potion designed to stop our cores from fighting the changes that are about to happen," said Clockwork.

Danny looked at the potion dubiously. "Like an anesthetic?"

"Like an anesthetic," agreed Clockwork. He had already picked up his cup. "Together?"

"Okay," said Danny, still doubtful.

He picked up the cup and brought it to his lips, watching Clockwork carefully over the rim. Clockwork tipped his cup back, and so did Danny.

The potion reminded him a lot of eggnog, except that it was thicker, heavier, sweeter, like it had been mixed with honey. Almost at once, that heaviness settled into Danny's bones, weighing him down, a sensation just to the left of sleep settled over him. He lowered the cup from his face, his grip on it going gentle. The bailiff caught it as it tipped over.

Clockwork reached over and gently, slowly, pulled him close. Then he went as limp as Danny.

Inside, Danny's core became open. Not open, as in vulnerable, but as in receptive. Listening. He felt soft. Malleable. Like someone could press their thumb into him, and it would leave an impression when he hardened again. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation.

The judge sighed with something like disapproval. "So mote it be." She raised a stamp up off her desk, brought it down, and things changed.

Or, at least, Danny did.

Clockwork, being the elder ghost, recovered faster from the potion than Daniel. There was no reason to stay at the court, so, after bidding a goodbye to the judge, he picked Daniel up and left, flying a polite distance before opening a portal back to their home outside Amity Park.

He settled Daniel down in his bed, phasing him beneath his covers and tucking him in. Daniel would need to sleep off the potion, as well as take time to adjust to the changes to his psyche, however minor they might be.

"I love you so much," said Clockwork, brushing Daniel's hair out of his face. Getting here had taken subjective years of work and planning but it was worth it, because now Daniel was his child, in every way that mattered.

Forever.

Yes, that ending line was a little bit ominous, but they're ghosts. They wouldn't be happy if it wasn't ominous!

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2020

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ryusxnka · 4 years

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hi, any and all headcanons or thoughts + feels about toshiro's grandmother pls ?? <3

Hello Anony. I’ll start off by saying that since Kubo never gave this woman an actual name, I decided to personally give her the name Hitsugaya Yukina ( Hitsugaya meaning day turn valley and Yukina meaning snow or greens / vegetables. ) She’s a widow: had a Husband named Hitsugaya Toshiro who had unfortunately died in battle centuries ago as a proud and strong Shinigami seated Officer. A few days after she found and adopted Toshiro, she found semblance between the too thus had she named him as he is ( In addition of his albinism features being that of winter and locating him on a field of snow. It was meant to be. ) After losing her insignificant other, she shortly started to grow and sell Beans, Candied beans, e.t.c to the other civilians in result of earning some sort of finance. We’ve seen her give Toshiro some coins so they’re not entirely poor in spite of Rukongai’s terrible poverty.

She’s very kind and supportive. Especially Towards her Grandson and the other children like Hinamori Momo who she allows to visit anytime she wants and any duration she pleases. She is the one who gave Toshiro the medallion, after his graduation from the Academy, he wears so close to his heart. It used to belong to his Grandfather hence why he takes good care of it and has been wearing it ‘pon his person since his Third seat days. She’s also the one who got the boy hooked on Candied beans. They used to grow and tends to the beans together in their own little homemade bean farm situated behind their cabin. -- aaaaaand she’s also the one who hand-knitted, matching its color with that of the tenth’s colors, the scarf Toshiro has ‘round his neck after the winter war arc finalizes. ( he never loses it, bye. )

Despite Yukina knowing she was ailing, losing weight, and furthermore, had a hunch it was from the child she adores, she shifted it aside - never putting any blame on him for he was young and not knowledgeable so she endured. and endured. making sure he had food on the table and warmth on his body.Which is why on the day he told her he had to leave for the academy, to learn more of his powers and how to control it, she reacted as naught but a caring, understanding, parent.- She wants him to learn. to be strong and confident. Make friends.- to live outside the shell he’s grown too used to. - and there’s not one day where she doesn’t worry for his safety. wonders if he’ll return to her and share a box of his favorite delicacy. But she loves him so deeply and believes in him as the winter lion he was meant to be. She’s very important to Toshiro.

#;Ooc #Idk if this will suffice #but #hands it over #anyway #Anonymous

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kleml · 4 years

Text

Geralt’s Curse

Title: Geralt’s curse

Ship: implied OMP/Geralt

Prompt day: 3 Curse, 1 Ostracism

Medium: Netflix, Books

Warnings: verbal abuse

Summary: My take on book Geralt's lifestory, as if he'd look like Henry Cavill his own life. Blaviken is based on the books too (where I'd say Renfri was kinda just as evil as Stregobor).

Timeline is all wrong, witchers are not hated per se, Kaer Morhen still stands.

Geralt is around 30 during Blaviken.

Word count: 2698

Author’s notes: Planned as crack, turned out more serious. Please criticize :)

@geraltwhumpweek

...

They loved to call him pretty.

Other wolves.

People in the villages.

Partners he took to bed, smiling and tracing his face features.

And as much as it should have been great to be considered beautiful, it was a big obstacle in his life.

All the kids brought to Kaer Morhen underwent the Trials. Trials of Grasses took place as soon as they got strong enough.

From the "before" Geralt remembered lots of food. That it was nice and cozy to sleep among the other kids, even though many kicked under the blankets or snored, catching runny nose in the cold castle corridors. He remembered there were many of them, so many they had huge kid tables, and that they were washed in groups by adults who promised to cut their hair if they continue to complain about the process.

He remembered thinking his mom will return and take him back. Same did the others, telling stories about their parents. How they loved them and read stories to put them to bed.

It was a blur.

Geralt didn't remember much.

The white hair, the heightened senses, quickened reaction and constant hunger - all of it came after the Trials. But he was sure his face stayed the same. His hands looked just as they looked before too, and the scars on his knees were still there, even though he wasn't sure how he got them. He also didn't feel like he himself changed in any way.

When he lost all memories so terrible his mind couldn't stand to keep them.

When common big beds became smaller, and suddenly there was only a handful of them sitting at the table.

When they made them eat sickening mushrooms and drink strange juice before they were allowed to eat normal food.

When he started his life as a witcher.

And it wasn't all bad. There was a lot of training. They learned how to fight, how to survive, how to recover. They studied all the creatures big and small, writing, reading and some manners.

He was ten, when he woke up with hair gone all white at the roots, paler skin and sense of smell so sharp his head got dizzy.

Some teachers treated them harshly. Others knew how to make studying exciting.

Autumns were the best time of the year. Traveling wolves returned home, bringing sweets and stories, laughter and tons of food, more than Kaer Morhen's fields and gardens could ever provide.

It wasn't until he turned fourteen that he got called pretty for the first time.

Extra Trials meant he had to be better. Meant he was better at many things, mastering challenges faster than others. It was all fun and games until the other

boys started to hate him for it.

"Ksemir! Hold your stance! You're doing it again!"

They were sparring with training blades, circling each other in the yard. Geralt huffed his hair that started falling out of the tail onto his face, and waited while the teacher explained things again.

"You cannot do that. You just cant, you don't have enough speed nor strength to pull it off. You should be staring less at the adults' training. Concentrate on what I'm telling you. Hey! Are you even listening?"

Ksemir was, indeed, staring at older wolves, dancing with proper swords further from them. Varin, the second fencing instructor who prepared to the Trial of Medallion, screamed at them every single time they made a mistake, and Geralt silently wished to stay fourteen for a little longer. Vesemir was on the Path this year, taking his time off teaching, and they had a replacement, Lestek. He was trying to kick some sense into Ksemir, but failed because of young age and compassion.

"Geralt did it but a minute ago!" another boy screamed. It was Ivur. Geralt didn't like Ivur and Ivur didn't like him back.

"You're not listening again. Geralt is faster, he can do that without getting hit. For the rest of you, it's too risky, hence, don't fucking do it!" Lestek was getting angry.

Geralt raised an eyebrow to Ivur and shrugged.

"Why is he always so fucking special?!"

"I'm not special, you just suck at fencing," Geralt got offended.

"Oh excuse me, and you suck at making potions. Do you think you'll stay this pretty long if you don't know how to treat your wounds?" Ksemir pointed back.

"What?" Geralt knew he looked fine, but what it had to do with anything? Why call him that as an insult?

"He's not gonna be a witcher, he's gonna be a whore like his mother. Look, he even grew his hair like a girl," Ivur jumped over and tried to jerk the tail Geralt's been growing for several years to be more like Vesemir. Vesemir was swell and ladies liked him a lot.

"Kids, shut up! What are you even talking about? Ivur, sit back!"

Geralt didn't pay any attention to that, stretching out to hit Ivur in the face.

It was ugly and quick. Ivur managed to rip off some of Geralt’s hair and received a slap across his cheek and nose.

"Look, he even fights like a girl!" Ivur cried out with a nosebleed.

Geralt got even angrier. And his head hurt. He threw his blade without looking in the direction of Ksemir and rushed away, heading to the tower.

"Geralt, come back at once. You're grounded!"

"Fuck off!"

Maybe he was pretty. Maybe he was special. He didn’t ask for that, nor he asked to be grouped with Ivur and Ksemir today.

Eskel said Ivur was jealous because he himself was ugly as shit, and his mother actually was a whore. Eskel also told Geralt he did sometimes act like he was better than all of them.

It took him time to think it over - during the punishment was as good as ever. He decided he wanted to be not only better, but the best. Learn potions. Learn to braid his hair so no one would be able to touch it. Learn to fight so good no one will ever get in his reach.

Felix got back the next autumn. They had sex on the very night he returned, and it was so much better than jerking off alone. Felix kissed him and fucked him and called him pretty. And Geralt didn't mind, because Felix was beautiful too. He maybe fell in love with him, lighting up with a smile every time he spotted familiar red hair in the halls, and that love lived in him for several years. They stilled called him pretty and special. Felix rubbed his nose over Geralt’s neck and asked “so what?”

"You'll make it. They trained you well, didn't they?" Felix said, and Geralt believed him.

Trial of Medallion only left four of them alive. Ivur died. Geralt didn't feel sorry.

They started to study signs after that, their medallions humming on their chests warm and pleasant. Eskel suddenly turned out genius at it.

Geralt forgot about potions and started to spend more time in the library, reading Monster books and History. He copied the stories about knights on their writing classes. Kaer Morhen only had so many books in the library because witchers wrote them themselves, page after page. Geralt did it well enough they even let him copy a small bestiary with drawings.

He trained more. Got good enough they let him enter their annual fighting contest, with witchers of all ages competing in front of others. He had learned enough potion recipes to survive. How to help wounded people and wounded witchers. Funnily, he also got excellent at scything, making sure Kaer Morhen's horses always had enough grass for the winter.

The first time he's been to a contract with a mentor, it went well. The first time he went to clean a wyvern in the mountains, he came back with not a drop of blood.

When he turned seventeen, Geralt met Felix. He had no idea why they never spoke before. Felix was five years older and has already spent his first year on the Path. They spent evenings on the castle walls, talking about everything, starting with the stars and ending with the upcoming Trial.

He could not make a Quen just as steady as Eskel's, but his Heliotrope worked well, and it's not like there were many bruxas out there.

With a newly chosen name (sadly not the one he wished for), he was ready. Or so he thought. Because aldermen had different opinion.

"Alderman Mislaw? You've written you have harpies nesting nearby. I can..."

"Do they have girl witchers too, now? Get out of my sight! Thank god a normal witcher already took care of them."

Maybe he had to break his nose of something.

"Sorry, what?"

"I'm here about your contract. It says you have a wraith. I can help."

"Sorry, boy, I guess I wasn't clear enough. Get the hell out of here."

"But it's a wraith. You need a witcher for that, I know how to deal with them. You are the contract issuer, right?"

"And a witcher we'll wait for. You are no witcher."

"I am! You see my medallion?"

"I don't care who they give those to these days, but you look younger than my son, and he's fifteen. Get out and stop wasting my fucking time."

The son was taller than Geralt and had a small beard. At fifteen. Kids these days...

"I've killed a cockatrice just a mile away from here. Is there a reward for it?"

"A cockatrice?"

"Skoffin? Kurolishek? I don't know how you call it, but it's there, too big to carry here. I have its feathers and claws with me, if we could just walk..."

"You say you killed our skoffin? Sorry lad, don't believe you. He's a tough one, our skoffin. And you should better go ask for a place in a brothel. All better than to try and portray a witcher. Feathers, huh. I can take those from my chicken and say I killed a skoffin too!"

He had to buy a horse. Absolutely had to. Or get better knives, suitable for ripping off cockatrices' heads.

It took time, but he got there. Started to be recognised around Kaedwin. Used connections other witchers had, spreading their tale about people the same way people talked about them. Geralt had a good reputation and almost felt he became a bit of a knight from those tales he loved once.

And Blaviken stayed that way. Even with the massacre that happened on the market, people were safe. Stregobor left, Renfri was dead as well as her henchmen. People will bury them, clean the blood off the streets, forget it ever happened and live their life in peace, as earlier.

But it all changed so much after Blaviken. So much he never thought it could.

Blaviken used to be a nice place. A place with friends, with good folk who were friendly on the streets and treated wounded witchers well. Caldemeyn, the alderman, knew him thanks to several contracts and always made sure he had a place to stay. It was a peaceful town. No serious monsters around.

There were no real monsters in the world. Only the ones created by humans and humans themselves.

Geralt trailed away, deeply affected by the turn of events. He didn't care about Stregobor's fate. He didn't care that Caldemeyn despised what he had done. But Renfri, the Shrike, and her choices... He only had himself to blame, really. Blame the hope, the belief he had in people. He trusted her to leave town, trusted her to step back and be reasonable. And now he had blood all over his hands, hers and of those murderers, she brought with her.

It wasn't his fault. She had her chance to leave. She was the once making the wrong decision.

Roach got left in a nearby village. He walked there, buried in his thoughts, happy that all the potions and possessions were there, and that he had a paper about that donkey will be returned with him. Getting problems in the village as well would have been a nightmare.

It felt like a dream. The cozy evening they had a night before with alderman and his wife, Marilka asking stupid questions five-year-olds asked. The sex. The morning, the realization.

Snow was late this year, so he made it in time. The castle met him with familiar noise, hugs, warm bathhouse, cellars full of grain and wine, and children, jumping around in excitement. His story about what happened only got one reaction: advice to stay the fuck away from humans, Geralt, when will you learn. It was home, warm evenings, the silence of the land covered in snow and nights not so silent. When the spring came, he almost forgot about it, pushed far enough away not to think.

Eskel, Emir and Geralt left together. They took a contract together too, taking care of a huge and mad troll near Ard Carraigh, and split up, deciding to meet in several months in Tridam, to make a run for Kovir with its never-ending gold.

It was a good year. Until Geralt got to Tridam, as planned.

Roach, his good old Roach, smelled familiar and grounding. Geralt explained the donkey cart situation, thought about everything for a moment, collected his stuff and rode away, now to Holopole instead of Yspaden. After Blaviken, he wanted to spend the winter home.

The nickname followed him from a town to town. Ironically, he was now known as a Butcher in the northern part of Nothern kingdoms, the areas surrounding Kaer Morhen. In Temeria, Lyria and Cintra people didn't care much. Maybe Vesemir was right all those years ago, and saying he was from Rivia was indeed a good choice. He now spent most of his time further and further from home, avoiding the villages who's managed to learn the word of mouth. Only fifteen years later he passed by Blaviken, heading up to Kovir. Rode his horse cautiously and listened carefully to people murmuring around.

"Geralt! You're here too. Come over, join. Lech, this is Geralt, Geralt, Lech is a genius in gwent. You need to play with him. I lost twice already, and his cards aren't even good! Come."

It was good to see Emir again. The Path was lonely, but with other witchers around, it was easy to feel included. Normal.

Lech was already drunk and sent Geralt a wink.

"How bout strip gwent?"

Geralt smiled, unsure of what to answer. He set his saddlebags down, planning to sit down next to Emir on the bench, when someone pushed him forward. The push was strong enough that the table shattered, making Emir's ale fall on the floor.

"What the fuck," Geralt muttered and turned around.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing? I payed for that!" Emir raised to stand.

"We don’t want him here."

"What do you mean?" Geralt held Emir's shoulder.

"I mean, we don't want your kind here!" the man, who appeared sober and pissed, spit on the ground between them. It attracted attention and the tavern turned almost silent, deafening after the noise it usually produced.

"What do you mean, our kind?" Emir has met some witcher-haters, but he wasn't in the mood.

"I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to him," the man pointed to Geralt. "He killed half a village in Blaviken. Everybody knows that. A witcher with white hair. He's a monster! A butcher!" the man screamed.

The murmur around got louder.

"Hey, it's my brother you're talking about! Geralt is a decent man!"

"But I haven't... I killed the Shrike. Blaviken was safe," Geralt muttered.

"I've heard that too!" a woman from the crowd screamed suddenly. "My son was there, he helped to bury the bodies. It was a massacre!"

One by one, food started to hit them. The man pushed Geralt again, and suddenly the whole tavern became a pitfall. Geralt grabbed his bags and squished through to the exit door, followed by Emir screaming out blusters back. They had to run to their horses, axiing them and as many people around as they could, and abandoned the Tridam on full gallop, hearing the screams thrown their way.

"This is the Butcher of Blaviken," the village boy whispered to a girl who looked like his sister.

"Are you sure?" the girl whispered back.

"Yes. It's him. White hair, you see, pale as a witcher, and the two swords."

The girl's eyes went round as she blushed.

"Oh. I just didn't expect him to be so pretty."

Geralt hid his smile by lowering his head. Well, maybe it wasn't a curse after all.

There was a man standing behind him with a determined look on his face.

#geraltwhumpweek #he's not really suffering here #but i tried #pretty geralt #kaer morhen #or at least some descriptions of it #hard witcher fate #lol #did i really write this

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deanofwhumpuniversity · 4 years

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Writer’s Month 2: Quarantine

Alright, I was gonna fix this, and then conjugating hadst and wend and cometh was becoming painful so I went back to the original and gave up.

Hey look at me, writing twice as many words as I meant to then giving myself a headache trying to fix it.

Content Warning: animal attack, illness, disorientation, vomiting mention, manhandling, captivity, restraint, chains, muzzle, collar, medical experimentation, poisoning of a sort, choking, religion, self-harm, scratching, head banging, and death. Tell me if I missed anything.

From the diary of FTL Collings I

It has come to light that Elyot had been bitten by the beast we subdued two nights hence. He hid the bite from us, but as it refused to heal, we came upon him cleaning blood from the ragged bite by the riverside this evening. The flesh was rent, and had we not all been present for the slaying of that monster, we might not have been able to tell that the wound was made by its gnashing teeth.

Elyot begs and cries even now, swearing upon his damned soul, that the injury was caused when he was dashed upon the ground, dragged by the ankle in that foul beast’s grip. But the mark is deep, moving inward upon his body, and not drawn across it; though I would not need such examination to expect the lie.

The others of our company wish to exterminate the man before he become something other or, at this rate, pass of exsanguination. I have implored them that this be a perfect opportunity to find a treatment or, failing in that, to study a captive beast.

***

I was woken in the night by much shouting and noise from above. I rushed to the matter in only my nightclothes, to see Grandhem and Metzger corralling Elyot up the attic stair, goading him at the point of long pikes to keep their distance. The dying man had been shackled hand and foot, and wore the same unwashed clothes he has since we had found him out last night.

He struggled to make progress up the stairwell in his restraints, finally losing his footing and tumbling sidelong back down the wooden steps. He groaned and curled in upon himself there in the dust; the others holding their weapons found themselves retreating, seemingly unwilling to let the falling man simply impale himself, their lances now effectively keeping them at bay. I shouted for them to let me through, but there was no clearance to jostle round them and make my way to Elyot’s crumpled form.

They jeered at him to rise and continue on, but he only managed to drag himself to a seated position and sat dazedly upon the filthy floor. Impatient, Metzger lunged forward and jabbed his spear into Elyot’s ribs, forcing a ragged, breathless cry from the man’s throat. Metzger retreated back when Elyot turned onto his side, away from the weapon, then turned over onto his stomach. He got his knees under him, face still to the floor and panting with fear and exhaustion, then put his hands down to steady himself while he rose to his feet.

They shouted “Up!” and waved their pikes toward the steps again, and Elyot cast a pleading look at me behind them before turning and trudging toward his fate. I imagine the upper floor of this place was once a master room and nursery, as it consists of a loft and tiny anteroom, with a dutch door between. It was through this door, into that tiny chamber that they ushered him, locking both halves of the door behind.

I wanted to tend to Elyot’s new injuries, but the boors made clear their intent to guard the door that evening, and said they would allow me entry once the moon had set and they felt he would be less dangerous. But when I returned in the morning with bread and water, I found the whole company waiting for me outside the door to his prison.

They did not run me off, instead waving me closer, while flattening themselves against the wall to either side of the door. I thought they meant to draw him out and kill him, and wanted no part in it. I shook my head at them; Metzger leapt forward and wrenched the cup from my hand. He opened the top of the door and swung it open, stepping away and holding the water at arms length toward the square of darkness.

I heard Elyot before I saw him; bare feet on dusty floorboards and clank of chain on cuff. He stepped into the light, looking more bedraggled and unrested than before, to no surprise. As soon as his hands took the bottom of the cup, Metzger released it, and stepped away. Elyot raised the water the bare few inches his restrained arms could manage, then lowered his head to meet it.

As soon as his face turned down to the cup, the men either side of the door struck, bringing crooks down against his head and neck, slamming the top of his chest into the bottom half of the door. Another man stepped in and began to assault Elyot with some metal device that I soon saw was a muzzle. It was fitted for an animal, not a man, and it did nothing to prevent his cries; though the metal frame would keep his teeth from biting distance, which was surely the men’s intent. Not that Elyot seemed to have energy enough to cry out, lowing whimpers and drawn out moans the only sounds he made as he pushed feebly against the edge of the door.

Once they had him securely muzzled, they unlatched the bottom door and swept into the room, grasping and restraining him from all sides. To my shame, I was rendered frozen by the sudden barbarism of these men I had known, and made no move to help him, useless as I know this would have been.

I retrieved the cup of water where it had clattered to the floor in the attack, and looked up when I heard a metal hammering from the tiny room. The men had secured a length of chain to a spot above the door, and now Metzger was advancing on Elyot with a wide band of metal in his hands. The prisoner was held all-around, and his teeth well-contained, but as he tossed his head side to side, Metzger’s approach was trepidatious. He sidled forward step by cautious step, finally worming the iron collar under Elyot’s neck and securing it with a heavy padlock.

With the click of the lock, much tension seemed to go out of the men, and they retreated from the room. The last closed the bottom of the door; when all had gone from the attic I approached Elyot with the bread, holding it as far as I could reach toward his kneeling, exhausted form. He made no movement toward it; no movement at all save breathing, and after long minutes my arm grew tired. I spoke quietly to him, imploring him to eat, but received no response. I would have felt callous simply tossing the food upon him, or the dusty floor before him, so I withdrew and set it upon a table to offer it later, when he might be in renewed spirits.

I spent the rest of the day carting my medical equipment up into the larger upstairs room, finding little help from my compatriots. I wonder what the purpose of their cruelty be, if it not make them feel safer entering the attic.

Once I was content with the setup of my new workspace, I approached the half-open dutch door with the bread and fresh water. Elyot was standing now, turned toward the small window opposite, but he responded to my voice, and shuffled into the light when I called to him. Upon seeing my offerings, he reached up, toward the back of his head, but the chain between his wrists clanged against the muzzle, and his reach came up short. Taking the cup from me, he turned his head sideways and began messily pouring the water down his face, leaving tracks on his dirty skin as it trickled toward his mouth.

I cringed inwardly at the thought of him crumbling chunks of bread into the squares of the muzzle, and decided that shackled and collared would be enough to keep our compatriots satisfied. I urged him toward the opening and reached round his head, opening the buckle at the back and letting it fall away. There was no aggression on his face, only a profound sadness that I felt mirrored in my own soul.

I spent the nights in that room on a small mat of furs, feeling the villain for that small comfort. I did go about asking for his bed and things, but the others had laid claim to everything the man had owned, as if they already considered him dead. Even had I found some cure for him, I wonder if he might ever have returned to a good standing among them.

My first attempts at his salvation were with mistletoe and aconitum, called wolfsbane by many and thought of as a keepsafe. I laced his food with pure herbs, which only caused him to violently purge it from his system. I ground them into a powder which I bade him inhale; this drove him into a waxy catatonia, unresponsive and unblinking. He spent a day in this state before he began to stir, as from a troubled sleep, and another day passed before he was more or less himself again.

I made an elixir of aconitum, tempered with every sort of soothing herb I had at my disposal; even this his body rejected in every way. As the month wore on, his state deteriorated; he became wracked by causeless pains, falling to the floor and screaming, gnashing his teeth. Sometimes he would refuse to eat, and spit curses at me from his dark cell. Never did he lash out at me or cause me injury, despite my assurance to this, the others would daily check me for bites and scratches.

Knowing that could I not cure Elyot before the full moon, he would likely be lost completely, I began to consider administering him Last Rites, while he was still somewhat of sane mind. I kept my portion of meat from dinner, and took it into his cell as a sort of last meal. I took his hands and prayed with him, and having nothing extra to spare, I took the silver cross from around my neck and clasped it upon his. Immediately a light came into his eyes, a clarity, and he smiled for the first time since before the night we had met that fateful beast. He took the medallion in his hands and gasped that he could no longer feel the draw of strange forces on his limbs, or the fog in his mind, that he had called “the pull of the moon.”

I went out among the others and asked to borrow any crosses they might have among them. Metzger told me that if I meant to perform a Papist exorcism he would lock me in that room with Elyot and be done with us both. I assured him that was not the case, and was able to gather a few necklaces from the men, including one of twine and wood with which to test my hypothesis.

Returning to the attic, I draped the wooden cross upon Elyot and took back my silver one. At once his eyes darkened, and he began to shake and strike his head. A low growl began deep in his throat and I quickly pushed my cross back over his head. He returned to a docile, human countenance and I had my answer. It was not the cross that kept the sickness at bay, but silver.

With one of the other crosses I made an ionique argent, an elixir of ground silver in oil, and returned to him with this last hope of a cure. Still wearing both my cross and the wooden one around his neck, he accepted the offered cup and raised it to me with a hopeful smile on his face, before taking it to his lips. With his short chain he had to curl into himself to tilt the cup back and swallow every drop.

Elyot righted himself and relinquished the cup to me, then turned his gaze to the night outside the small window, smiling all the while. A small cough escaped him, then another, as his brow furrowed. In moments he was coughing in earnest, mouth hanging open as he gasped to draw breath between each wrack of his lungs. His eyes were wide and I could see the whites all around his irises as he searched my face for answers. He began to scrabble toward me on hands and knees, choking all the while. I managed to back out of the doorway and close the bottom door before he clambered into it, and I watched over its edge as he huddled on the floor, alternating between clawing at the door and at his own throat, leaving gouges in both the wood and his flesh.

The tendons stood out in his neck, and I swear I could see all his veins turning darker in the dim light. At the last he gripped his neck with both hands and began to thump his forehead into the door weakly as his coughs turned to whistling rasps. This could have taken hours, for all I know it seemed to, but the night outside was still fully dark when he collapsed onto his side and moved no more. I sat awake with my back to the door all that night, and did not enter until the sun had fully risen the following day.

He never moved again, though Metzger insisted on keeping watch until the full moon came and passed. Four days, he lay in that room, before we buried him still wearing both crosses. The others speak of him no more.

#whump #writersmonth2020 #captivity tw #medical whump #religious whump #self harm tw #death tw #choking tw #monster whump #werewolf #chains #muzzle #collar #missives from the dean

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spongeguyandlelouchvibridankia · 4 years

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SpongeGuy Reviews Every Disney Sitcom Ever!: Pair of Kings (1.1): “Return of the Kings”

I have a new least favorite Disney show!

Strap yourselves in folks, this is one heck of a ride!

Pair of Kings is a Disney XD sitcom from like 2010 I think? I don’t respect it enough to give it a year. This hellspawn of Satan’s BRO son who thinks that putting Chad on his resume is a surefire way to get a job is about two BRO’S: Brady (played by Jeremy from Phineas and Ferb, who has seen better shows clearly) and Boomer (I don’t know who plays him, but i sure as hell don’t care!). Brady Bunch and Ok Boomer are twins (They’re bi-racial, which is neat, but this kind of representation can only hurt) who learn that they are actually the sons of the king and queen of “Random Island so we can make Island Natives are weird jokes without offending anyone in particular” Island, and they are next in line for the throne, hence the title “Pair of fucking idiots” I MEAN “Pair of Kings”.

The rest of the show is as stupid as it sounds. Basically, there’s an island native named Mason who is Mr. Moseby from Suite Life, but if he was forced to be blinded to their idiocy, his daughter Mikayla who is every boring female lead in a show like this, you know, the one who is actually serious and doesn’t want to be with these bozo’s but the show will force her to like them because she TOTALLY doesn’t deserve anything better, and of course an evil CGI fish and the 12 year old boy who owns him and is trying to kill our leads, which according to the laugh track, means that Attempted Murder is fnuny. Huh.

Ok, i can only describe this show for so long before i die. Let’s get to the 45 MINUTE Pilot. Yes, I saw 45 minutes of this. And this is apparently the best we get of this show, since they put all their money into hooking us with this pilot.

Dear lord.

Summery:

Brady (Mitchel Musso) and Boomer (Doc Shaw) are twin teenagers living in Chicago with their aunt Nancy and uncle Bill, as their parents are deceased. Brady and Boomer are unaware that they are destined to become the next kings of an island nation known as Kinkow. After they are bullied by the toughest guys in their high school, Mason (Geno Segers) and a group of warriors from Kinkow come to bring them home. Brady and Boomer break the island's sacred ruby, causing Kinkow's volcano to erupt. Their cousin Lanny (Ryan Ochoa) tricks them into going to get another sacred ruby so they would die on the dark side of Kinkow, allowing him to become king. While they are on the dark side, Brady and Boomer are caught by a tribe called the Tarantula People, but they are protected by the bat medallion that the Tarantula People obey. Brady and Boomer obtain the sister ruby and save the kingdom. However, the chain that controlled the Tarantula People falls off Brady's neck.

COMEDY: 0 Out of 5

I doubt this shocks anyone. The comedy of Pair of Kings makes one miss the intelligent musings of a conservative Albatross with a hernia in the middle of Sunday Church. The jokes are like The Incredible’s Hulk’s Jock Strap after a s mile jog towards the savannah: They stink so bad I almost gave up all hope for humanity and started planning an escape route from the planet. All manner of wit and charm is sucked out like a single strand of spaghetti through a straw as thin as my patience for the leads, and every character quirk is so basic and cliche that the old people’s home rejected their application. If I were to write blindfolded and and upside down, with half my keyboard letters missing and a sadistic autocorrect feature installed onto my PC, I would still write something better than the humor of Pair of Kings, because then I would have written nothing at all, and nothing is at least nothing. Pair of Kings exists; may God have mercy on our souls.

...

So in short, it’s not funny. I smiled in pain maybe once at an Overprotective dad joke, and that’s about it.

CHARACTERS: 0 Out of 5

Imagine your typical Disney Channel sitcom. Now think of the worst version of that. Now think of the Dorkly video based on that version.

Pair of Kings is 10 times worse.

The characters are bare bones at best. In fact, they are invertebrates, and not the funny absorbent ones like Spongebob. Their personalities are so 1 dimensional and obvious that if I were to show you pics of them you could tell me their entire biographies. The leads replicate an early 2010′s trend of being two BROS who keep doing stupid things, and that’s their personality. They also replicate a 2020 trend of making me wish the apocalypse was over. They are just BROS. Whenever they have even a moment of quote un quote “DRAMA” they undercut it with humor like a wet fart at a funeral reception. The supporting cast is like my life: Barely functional and clearly inept to deal with this shit right now. Mason is “The Native Overprotective Dad”; Mikayala is “DA GIRL”; Lanny is “Scar but boring”; The CGI Fish exists.

Can my pain end now?

STORY AND HEART: 1 Out of 5

I’ll make this quick: They have the GALL of pretending that OK BOOMER and Brady Bunch have felt sorrow when they almost destroy the island. They have the GALL to have them say that they will stop being kings if that’s what they want. I’m not saying they’re incapable of such feelings, but I guess this puts it best: At one point in this ACTION-COMEDY-DRAMA of sorts, Brady Bunch says he feels bad about the kids who could die on the island. He hears the volcano burst again, and says “Good Luck Kids” to run off. Sure, this is a typical sitcom joke, but if this show wants me to take it seriously that they mean well, they just shot themsleves in the foot.

The point is for set design and tbf not too bad CGI for a teen sitcom. But I can’t stand a show that lies to my face and pretends that these two are any good. Pair of Kings? More like Pair of END ME END ME END ME.

FINAL SCORE: 1 Out of 15

Bunk’d is next. May god have mercy on my soul.

EVERY SHOW RANKED:

1. Good Luck Charlie

2. Pair of Kings

EVERY EPISODE RANKED (PAIR OF KINGS):

“Return of the Kings” (S1 E1)

EVERY EPISODE RANKED (IN GENERAL):

1. “Study Date” (Good Luck Charlie)

2. “Return of the Kings (Pair of Kings)

EVERY CHARACTER RANKED (PAIR OF KINGS):

1. Mason

2. Mikayla

3. Evil Fish

4. Lonny

5.Boomer

6. Brady

EVERY CHARACTER RANKED (IN GENERAL FOR SITCOMS):

1. PJ Duncan

2. Teddy Duncan

3. Gabe Duncan

4. Bon Duncan

5. Amy Duncan

6. Charlie Duncan

7. Spencer Walsh

8. Mrs. Dabney

9. Emmett

10. Mason

11. Mikayla

12. Evil Fish

13. Lonny

14. Boomer

15. Brady

#spongeguy #review every disney show #pair of kings #disney sitcom

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choicesgifts · 3 years

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AA Medallions- The Perfect Gift To Celebrate New Birth

Do you have anyone in your society or family who has recovered from alcohol addiction? If yes, do you know how the recovery happens? Here is your answer, the 12 steps program of alcoholics anonymous is required to be completed in order to get free from alcohol addiction. The day when the person finishes the recovery program is celebrated as the sobriety day of that person.

Sobriety day marks the new birthday of that person. He is free from all sorts of alcohol addiction in the new birth. Hence, the sobriety anniversary is celebrated every year on sobriety day. Since it is your loved one's birthday, therefore you should present them with a gift. If it is the first year of their sobriety, present them with a 1 year AA medallion; if it is the fifth year of their sobriety, present them with a 5 year medallion.

These 1 year medallions or 5 year medallion inspire them to stay committed to their decision of never consuming alcohol again. Not only do they follow their commitment, but they also motivate other people suffering from alcohol addiction to join the path of sobriety.

Specialty of 1year/5year AA medallions.

The AA medallion you buy for a 1 year or 5 year anniversary is circular in shape. The anniversary year is imbibed at the center of the AA medallion, surrounded by 21 beautiful and real Swarovski Crystals. You will be amazed to know that the medal glows in the dark. Place it near a bulb for 10 seconds, and the medal starts glowing.

The AA medallions are not an ordinary medallion. They are made featuring multiple thoughts and prayers. The front of the medal has crystals enclosed inside the phrase “Unity Service Recovery." The other message printed on the front part of 1 year or 5 year AA medallion reads “To Thine Own Self Be True.”

Don’t take back of the AA medallion lightly; it also features beautiful serenity prayers. One such prayer is “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

But don't make it problematic for the person to carry the AA medallion. Hence you should also gift a key chain. This allows him to hook the 1 year or 5 year AA medallion inside the chain and wear it around his neck. It will let the society know about their decision to leave alcohol addiction.

You should also gift them a God Box to place their AA medallion as the person cannot wear their 1 year or 5 year AA medallion 24x7 around their neck. God box is made of high rubbed mirror finish; they carry a slot to place AA medallion in it. The inside of god box also features a message "One Day At A Time."

Recovery Gifts other than 1 year and 5 year AA medallion.

Don’t limit yourself to buying AA medallions only when you can buy multiple recovery gifts. You can buy the following types of recovery gifts other than 1 year or 5 year AA medallion –

· Recovery Literature –

These are nothing but the collection of Hazelden books. Literature books are known to provide spiritual support while recovering from alcohol addiction. These books are a collection of serenity prayers and inspirational prayers.

Examples of recovery book includes The 12 step prayers book, Twenty-four hours a day, A state of grace etc. Read these books in your free time and refresh your mind with spiritual thoughts.

· Gift Card –

Want to make your 1 year or 5 year AA medallion look more expressive? You can do so by adding your thoughts, well wishes, and prayers to the gift. But how? For that purpose, you need a gift card, which will give you the space to mention the message for your loved one. Hence, while providing any type of recovery gift, always add a gift card with a message to it.

There are more recovery gifts that you can buy. You just need to visit the best online store and buy what you like most.

From where to buy 1year and 5year AA medallion?

Multiple recovery gift stores are available online. But not every store selling AA medallion is best for you. Hence before initiating your purchase, follow the given steps.

Finding the reviews about the store should be your top priority. It will ensure you about the reliability of your store. Just go through the reviews section of the website, and if reviews are right, then move ahead.

You should also seek free shipping from your website. Just check the minimum cost to be eligible for free shipping. The return policy should also be there; in case you receive a wrong item, you can exchange it easily.

#1year aa medallion #5year aa medallion

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coolcustomchallengecoinswor-blog · 5 years

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What You Should Know About Military Challenge Coins

One might wonder what a military challenge coin is. Well, these are coins carried or given to members of law enforcement, armed forces and firefighters as a way of symbolizing brotherhood or unity. They usually bear unit symbols depending on the group one is based in. To many people it is a symbol of pride or motivation once acquired. As much as this was the traditional motive behind the military coin, it is now traded customary passed down even to retired military or civilian personnel. Special guests and dignitaries are presented with the coin mainly as a sign of respect and welcome. The following are a few facts you should know about the military challenge coin.

There are different stories and theories behind the origin of this special challenge coin. The Roman Empire presented these coins to their soldiers in order to signify achievements they gained. Well, the most told origin is that of America first entry into World War 1. Some American volunteers who joined the flying squadrons were presented with solid bronze medals by their lieutenant which one volunteer placed in a neck porch. Unfortunately their aircraft was damaged by ground fire forcing them to fall behind enemy lines ending up being captured by the German patrols. The young man with the porch was then striped of all his identification to ensure he did not run. Learn the military challenge coin history here!

However, with intelligence he managed to escape from the Germans and made it to the French lines. The French however, did not recognize his American assent and planned to execute him. Before he was executed he presented his medallion and one French captor eye caught the squadron insignia and immediately recognized it. The execution was thereby delayed until he was able to prove his identity and offered wine as a form of apology for the trouble. Thus, this became a tradition for the members of the squadron to always carry a medallion. Know the history of challenge coins here!

When it comes to the cost of creating challenge coins, they are generally inexpensive. The two top processes involve zinc-alloy casting or die struck bronze during manufacturing. However, the zinc-alloy casting is far much cheaper as compared to the die struck bronze. The zinc casting is considered very flexible hence convenient for designing and cutouts. You might realize that most challenge coins are fabricated in south Korea as the costs incurred are way affordable and cheaper there than that accrued in the US. See this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZzS1sm4EeE for more insights about challenge coin.

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