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celestialvoid-fanfiction · 4 years

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As the Rain Washes Away the Past

Stiles shaves his head and the pack teases him for it.

Commission for @icu-81-mi

“How much do you want me to shave off?” Erica asked, running her fingers through Stiles’ thick brown hair and smoothing out the soft locks to judge their length.

“All of it,” Stiles said quietly.

He sat on the counter of Derek’s newly-renovated laundry, dressed in an oversized t-shirt—one of Derek’s.

His dark eyes were distant, staring down at the grey slate tiles.

He swung his legs, heels gently thumping against the cupboard.

Erica paused, almost saddened by Stiles’ decision. “Are you sure?”

Stiles nodded slightly.

She let out a heavy sigh and gently ruffled Stiles’ hair affectionately, the way she had for years.

A small smile turned up the corner of Stiles lips as he let out a quiet chuckle, but the smile quickly faded.

“Okay,” Erica said, switching on the hair clippers—the loud buzz of the blades and the whirring motor filling Stiles’ ears. “Let’s do this.”

She brought the buzzing blades to the back of Stiles’ head, letting them glide through Stiles’ soft hair.

Stiles felt the blades glide through his hair, tufts of brown hair falling into his lap.

He felt his heart sink into his gut as he stared down at the strands of hair in his hands.

“What are you going to tell the others when they ask why you shaved your head?” Erica asked, her voice drawing him back to reality.

“I don’t know,” Stiles replied. “I’ll say I lost a bet or something.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Erica nod thoughtfully.

“And the real reason?” she prompted.

Stiles shrugged half-heartedly.

“I just… felt like a change.”

“Right,” Erica said, finishing off the haircut and dusting Stiles down with a soft brush. “Okay, you finish cleaning yourself up and get changed.”

Stiles slid off the counter, running his hands over his shaved head, his heart sinking slightly at the feeling of his buzz cut.

He let out a measured sigh.

He shook out the large t-shirt and stripped it off over his head, tossing it into a wicker wash basket in the corner of the room.

He grabbed his black t-shirt from where he’d set it down earlier. It fit him a lot better, sitting properly on his broad shoulders and accentuating his strong biceps.

He had filled out over the years, growing confident enough to wear clothes that fit him a lot better.

He helped Erica clean up before heading towards the door to go join the others.

“Hey, Stiles,” Erica called after him.

He stopped in the doorway, turning to look back at her.

“No matter what the others say, you’re still very handsome,” she told him, offering him a kind smile.

Stiles smiled in return.

He turned, making his way down the hallway.

Derek had done a good job at restoring the house. The walls were covered in crisp white paint. A few of the support beams that framed the room had been replaced—the large beams weathered, scarred and stained in an effort to match the surviving beans that were burnt, black and distorted like the disfigured body of Atlas bowing beneath an unimaginable weight.

The house smelt of sweet dew and crisp pine trees, tainted by the smell of ash that never seemed to fade.

There were scattered signs of history and new life mingling among the ruins. There were pieces of furniture that had been restores or salvaged, wooden tables with charred legs and warped paint like scars. The walls of the hallways were lined with photos of the Hale family, pictures that Stiles and the pack had helped Derek track down—and new photos; photos of the pack.

Two large windows framed the front door, morning light streaming through them and illuminating the angelic swirl of the sparking particles of dust.

He followed the sound of voices down the hallway to where the rest of the pack was gathered in the living room.

There were two large sofas and two arm chairs, arranged in a circle that faced the fireplace in the centre of the room. Jackson occupied one of the armchairs; Isaac sat in the other, his lanky legs folded under him as he talked quietly with Boyd, discussing his thesis and how his classes were going. Boyd was sitting on one of the sofa, nodding along to the conversation. Derek sat on the other sofa, dressed in a grey-blue Henley and jeans.

Jackson was the first to notice Stiles was standing there. He turned to look at Stiles in the doorway and burst into laughter.

The others turned to look.

“You look like you did in high school,” Isaac remarked rather bluntly.

Something about that comment made Jackson laugh even harder.

Stiles felt his chest tighten, his stomach twisting in knots as hot tears pricked at his eyes.

He felt like he did back in high school; shamed, judged and humiliated.

Their gazes bore into him, tearing him to pieces.

“Jackson,” Derek said, his voice firm and authoritative.

Jackson’s laughter died away. He straightened in his chair, drawing in a deep breath as he tried to compose himself.

“Isaac’s right,” he said. “You look like you did back in high school.” There was a beat of silence. A grin turned up the corners of Jackson’s lips as he added, “You also look like Mr Clean.”

He burst into a fit of laughter again.

Stiles rolled his eyes, turning away from Jackson.

He met Derek’s gaze for a second, his heart skipping a beat as he noticed the look of worry and thought that darkened his hazel eyes.

“Can we call you cue ball now?” Jackson asked.

“Jackson,” Derek growled warningly, his eyes flashing red for a second.

“It’s fine,” Stiles said. “Let him get it out of his system.”

“I think he looks handsome,” Erica said, stepping over to Stiles’ side and pressing a kiss to his cheek before clambering over the back of the sofa and curling up against Boyd’s side.

“I agree,” Boyd said.

He narrowed a threatening glare on Jackson.

“And if you have a problem with buzz cuts—” His eyes lighting up gold. “—you can say it to my face.”

Jackson swallowed hard, sitting back in his arm chair and falling silent.

“That’s what I thought,” Boyd muttered, the glow of his eyes fading as he sat back, his harsh eyes still fixed on Jackson.

“It’s alright, guys,” Stiles said, his soft voice calming as it broke the tension in the room. “Jackson’s just mad he can’t look this good.”

The pack burst into laughter as Jackson looked at Stiles with an exaggerated look of shock and offence.

Stiles sat down at the other end of the couch that Derek was sitting on, crossing his legs under himself.

The pack settled, returning to whatever they were talking about before Stiles came into the room.

Stiles didn’t join in. He let his mind wander as he listened to the conversation, simply enjoying their company.

They had all split up and went their separate ways when they went to college, but they had made a tradition of spending the holidays at Derek’s house.

With every term that passed, they had watched the alpha rebuild his house—repairing the damage the fire had left.

The last time they were here, the outside of the house looked like a patchwork quilt; pale strips of fresh pine stood out against the withered ash-grey wooden panels and the charred black siding. Now, the siding had been painted white, accentuating the dark wood of the window frames and shutters.

It seemed that the more he repaired the house, the more Derek came to terms with what happened. He wasn’t living in ruins anymore; he had his home back.

After a while, Stiles stood up, heading through the open doorway across the hallway and into the kitchen to get a drink.

He pulled open the fridge and grabbed a can of soda, a quiet shuffle of footsteps following him into the kitchen. He shut the fridge door and looked up at Derek.

The man leant against the counter across from the fridge, his arms folded over his chest as he looked at Stiles inquisitively.

“Why did you shave your hair?” he asked, a hint of curiosity in his voice.

“I just felt like a change,” Stiles answered.

“Please don’t lie to me,” Derek said softly.

Stiles let out measured breath.

He should have known better than to try and lie to Derek.

“I couldn’t stand to look in the mirror,” Stiles admitted. “Every time I did, I could swear I was looking at him.”

“Who?” Derek asked.

Stiles bowed his head. He didn’t say anything.

“Stiles,” Derek said softly, trying to prompt an answer.

“The Nogitsune,” he said, still not looking up at Derek.

Derek stiffened, his hazel eyes darkening as he looked at Stiles—heartbroken by his words.

“I know he’s gone,” Stiles said. “I know it’s all over, but there’s part of me that wonders if he’s really gone or if—”

He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat.

“Every time I looked in the mirror, it was like I was looking at him…”

His voice trailed off, tears welling in his eyes. His vision blurred into streaks of colour and light. He sniffed as he blinked back his tears.

“Stiles,” Derek started, his voice soft.

“I know I look bad,” Stiles said. “I just needed to look different. I needed to break the illusion.”

“I don’t think you look bad,” Derek told him.

Stiles looked up at him, his brow furrowed in confusion. His heart skipped a beat as he met the man’s gaze.

Derek looked at him lovingly, his pale aventurine eyes clear and bright.

“I think you look great,” Derek said, the corner of his lips turning up in a soft smile.

“I look like I did when I was sixteen,” Stiles scoffed.

“You look like you did when we first met.”

The thought hadn’t struck Stiles until that moment.

Derek was right; he looked like he did the day they met in the woods—only older.

“And I still feel the same way about you as I did back then,” Derek said.

“Like you want to kill me for trespassing?” Stiles asked.

Derek let out a breathless chuckle.

“No,” he said. He bowed his head as a soft pink blush coloured his cheeks. “More like… I want to kiss you.”

Stiles stared at Derek, stunned.

He waited, half expecting Derek to burst into laughter and say he was joking. But he didn’t.

“Oh,” was all he managed to say, his mind reeling with thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” Derek said. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Just pretend I never said anything.”

He turned to walk back out of the kitchen.

“I want to kiss you too,” Stiles blurted out.

Derek turned back to look at him.

“Sorry, that sounded weird,” Stiles said, bowing his head.

He drew in a deep breath, trying to compose his thoughts.

“I like you too,” he admitted.

Derek seemed shocked to hear that.

“I never said anything because I was scared I was going to mess up everything like I always do.”

“That’s not true,” Derek said quietly.

Stiles scoffed at that. “Yeah, it is.” He let out another sigh. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to end up hurting you.”

Derek’s eyes softened as he stepped over to Stiles’ side. He gently cupped Stiles’ face in the palms of his hands and brought their lips together.

The kiss was gentle and tender, making Stiles melt in Derek’s arms.

His eyes fluttered shut and his hand slid up the front of Derek’s Henley, balling the soft, worn cotton into his hand

Derek slowly pulled back, resting his forehead against Stiles’.

“You could never hurt me,” Derek whispered.

Stiles opened his eyes, looking up into the pale aventurine depths of Derek’s loving gaze.

Derek brushed the ball of his thumb across Stiles’ cheek, wiping away the tear that escaped his lashes.

A soft smile turned up the corners of Derek’s lips.

He brought his lips to Stiles’ again.

Stiles let out a weak sigh as he melted into the tender kiss. He ran his hand up the front of Derek’s shirt and looped his arm around his neck, weaving his fingers through Derek’s soft hair.

Derek’s hands settled on Stiles’ waist, pulling him closer and enveloping him in his warmth.

He drew back slowly.

Stiles tilted his chin, chasing his Derek’s lips.

Derek chuckled against his mouth as he brought their lips back together again.

“It’s raining!” Erica shouted with delight from the other room, interrupting them.

Seconds later, they heard the front door open as the rest of the pack ran out onto the front porch.

Stiles chuckled, untangling himself from Derek’s arms and heading towards the door.

“What is it with Erica and rain?” Derek asked, perplexed.

Stiles shrugged. “I have no idea. Come on.”

He and Derek followed them out onto the porch, the heavy rainfall drumming on the roof over their heads. The wooden steps were soaked, the wood darkened by the water and the front yard

They watched as Erica and Isaac ran out into the falling rain, turning their faces towards the sky and smiling as the droplets fell against their skin.

They were soaked in seconds; Erica brushing aside the strands of long blonde hair that clung to her skin and Isaac raking his fingers through his limp curls to push them back from his face. Both of them were in thralls of laughter.

Boyd stood under the cover of the porch, chuckling quietly at the sight of his girlfriend dancing in the rain.

Jackson stood beside him, watching on with a look of confusion.

“What’s wrong, Jackson? Afraid to get your hair wet?” Stiles teased.

Jackson shot him a look. He opened his moth to make a snarky remark but he stopped himself, his eyes flicked from Stiles’ face to the top of his head as his retort died in his throat.

Stiles cocked an eyebrow, flashing a coy smirk.

Derek and Boyd bowed their heads, trying to hide their smirks and smother their laughter.

Stiles stepped past him, casually walking down the front steps and into the rain.

He drew in a deep breath, the smell of ash and charred wood fading away as the sweet scent of petrichor rolled in; the rain washing away the past.

He turned back, his dark eyes finding Derek’s as a smile found its way onto his lips.

[AO3]

#sterek #sterek fanfiction #sterek fanfic #sterek fic #additional tags on ao3

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changingourdestiny · 4 years

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Firestorm Part 1: A Shocking Encounter

Summary:

Rae and Cayde wake up to a commotion in the Bazaar. Turns out a new Guardian, Jade Hydrani, is causing trouble for other Guardians. Everyone soon learns something very interesting about the Kinderguardian and Adam gets an idea on how to deal with the troublemaker.

Previous Part: Here

Next Part: Here

Rae slowly opened her eyes as sunlight filtered in through the curtains of her room. Cayde had fallen asleep beside her, the two still in their armour, and Rae could see the lights of his mouth glow faintly as the odd soft snore escaped him. Rae chuckled softly and was about to doze off again when-

*C R A S H ! ! !*

*Z-Z-ZAP!*

The two jolted awake at the commotion outside. “What the Hellmouth was that?!” Cayde exclaimed as Ghost popped up beside Rae, “Uh, Rae? Incoming call from Ikora.”

“Patch it through.” Rae replied, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she heard her mentor’s voice come through Ghost, “Rae. I take it the noise woke you up?”

“Yep. What’s the issue?”

“I’ll explain when you get down here. Can you meet us in the Bazaar?”

“On our way.” A small chime came from Ghost as the call was ended.

“What’s going on?” Cayde asked as the two quickly left Rae’s apartment. “No clue. Ikora said she’ll bring us up to speed when we get to the Bazaar.” Rae replied as they headed out to the Bazaar, “Oh wow…”

Rae watched with eyes wide in disbelief at the scene before her and Cayde. Ikora and Blaze were standing near Ikora’s post as Adam and Zavala were in a dog pile on top of a figure with flashes of arc energy flickering across them. Floating in front of Ikora and Blaze, also watching the two Titans in a dog pile, was a Ghost with a dark, steel blue shell that was adorned with gold and dark teal markings and a bright teal eye. “I…do we wanna know?” Cayde asked as the duo approached Blaze and Ikora. Blaze glanced at the duo and the apartment building they came from before a look of realisation crossed her face and she began to snicker. “Mind out of the gutter, Blaze.” Rae rolled her eyes. The Ghost floated up to Rae, “You are Vanguard Rae?” The Ghost asked, earning a nod from Rae, “I must apologise for my Guardian’s behaviour. I swear she’s usually quite friendly and not as…rowdy, for lack of a better term. I am Justim, Ghost to Jade Hydrani.”

Rae glanced past Justim and was able to get a better look at the figure underneath Adam and Zavala. The figure seemed to be a female Awoken and had medium length, messy, dark aegean blue hair with a dark teal stripe and some of the bangs partially covering her left eye, bright indigo eyes, ice blue skin, and a dark teal markings on her cheek. The Guardian, who Rae assumed was Jade Hyrdrani, was growling in frustration as she discharged arc energy in an attempt to get the two Titans off her. “What’s with the restraints?” Cayde asked. “Well, Adam wanted me to help him with an early morning patrol on Io – even though I wanted to sleep in today…” Blaze began, shooting Adam a quick glare before continuing, “When we spotted this Warlock Kinderguardian causing trouble for other Fireteams. Adam called Zavala asking what we should do with her and he said to bring her here. Let me tell ya, she did NOT want to come here. I haven’t been hit with so much arc energy since that Crucible match where the entire opposing team were arc subclasses. She may be a newbie, but she’s already pretty good at using her powers.”

“When she arrived here, she tried to escape. Adam and Zavala managed to corner her here in the Bazaar. The noise you heard was her attempting to use Stormtrance to fight back, but they managed to pin her down before she did any real damage. Thankfully, she’s caused no injuries to herself or others.” Ikora added.

“Let me talk to her. Maybe I can calm her down?” Rae suggested. “Good luck.” Blaze motioned for the Fireteam Vanguard to go ahead.

Rae approached the two Titans on top of the young Warlock, “How are you two holding up?”

“Eh, I’ve had worse.” Adam smiled. “I wish you luck in talking to Hydrani.” Zavala added, “She doesn’t seem too keen on listening to authority.”

“Wonder who that reminds me of?” Rae chuckled. “I know you’re talking about me!!” Blaze called from behind, “And I wasn’t THIS bad!!”

Rae just chuckled before kneeling down in front of Jade who had stopped struggling and was just glaring at Rae, “Jade Hydrani, right? I’m Raegalianis Drakyx, Fireteam Vanguard. But you can call me Rae.”

“Oh, great. Another Vanguard.” Jade rolled her eyes, “If you’re gonna try to convince me to stay in your hoity-toity tower here like your other Guardian buddies did, you’re wasting your time. I ain’t interested. And can you ask your buddies here to get off me?! This is excessive, I wasn’t even causing that much trouble.”

“You tried to use your super within the Tower.” Ikora countered.

“Well, I didn’t know it was against the rules. I just got here!”

“You kept launching storm grenades at fellow Guardians when they were dealing with Taken on Io.”

“It was just a prank!”

“You managed to lead a group of Taken, Cabal, and Vex to a single location, get them to fight, and got another Fireteam caught in the crossfire.”

“You can’t prove that was me!”

“You somehow managed to acquire a Cabal Interceptor and chased and antagonised Guardians across Io.”

“Ok, that was pretty funny though. You gotta admit it!”

“Anyway!” Rae cut in, interrupting her fellow Warlocks, “How about we have a civil discussion? Without attacking anyone?”

Jade sighed, “Fiiiiiine.”

Adam and Zavala got off Jade as Rae helped her to her feet. Jade groaned as she stretched, stiff from being trapped under two heavily armoured Titans. As she got up, Rae was able to get a better look at her robes. Jade wore steel blue robes with gold and dark teal markings on the chest piece and dark indigo rims. Iron pads donned her shoulders with the left pad serving as a bond projecting a teal dragon. The left sleeve of her robes was torn, revealing black gloves with a gold rim. The robes had a dark grey midriff. The lower part of her robes was steel blue with curved, dark teal markings and a gold rim on the top, and a dark steel blue loincloth with a dark indigo rim and a dark teal Warlock symbol. She had dark grey pants and dark indigo and steel blue boots with a gold and dark teal rims and iron soles.

“You okay?” Rae asked. “Lemme check.” Jade smirked as arc bolts launched from her fingertips towards Rae who cried out in pain as the bolts jumped from her to Blaze, Cayde and Ikora. Jade took this as a chance to escape and ran for it, ducking and weaving between Adam and Zavala to avoid being trapped again and ran down to the Annex. “Hey! Get back here!” Rae managed to shake off the effects of Jade’s Chain Lightning and gave chase to the Kinderguardian. Jade looked over her shoulder upon hearing the footsteps of the others as she glided through the halls at top speed, “Ha! You think you can catch me? You’ll never- WHOA!!”

A blur of gold and Jade felt the Light get knocked out of her as she tumbled to the ground. Before she could get up, she heard a voice say, “Nighty night, punk.” Before being knocked out by a blunt object hitting against her head. Rae, followed by the rest of her Fireteam, Justim, and the Vanguard, turned the corner and saw an unconscious Jade and Marcia coming out of her Starlight form. Marcia picked up the unconscious Guardian and turned to face everyone, “You guys lose somethin’?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this; nicely done, Marcia.” Ikora nodded. “Ah, was nothin’.” Marcia shrugged as she handed Jade to Adam, “The kid was bein’ too noisy, so I shut her up.”

“Well, regardless of the reason, thanks for the help.” Rae gave Marcia a thumbs up. “No prob.” Marcia grinned before her attention was caught by the mark on Jade’s face, “Hello, what’ve we here?”

“What’s up?”

“Looks like we ain’t the last two. We’re the last three.” Marcia motioned to the marking on Jade’s face; it was a triangle with a round point and a curved bottom, a single circle underneath and five circles within it, “This is the mark for Tribe Scale. Your new friend here is a Paragonialan.”

“For real?!” Blaze exclaimed. “If that’s the case, it’s even more important we keep an eye on her.” Rae muttered. “We can’t do that if she keeps trying to cause trouble wherever she goes.” Ikora added, “She needs to be taught discipline.”

“Discipline, eh…?” Adam seemed to think for a minute before smiling, “I think I know who could help with that.”

“Who?” Rae asked, a puzzled yet curious look on her face.

“Well that depends…who’s up for a trip to the Iron Temple?”

To Be Continued…

#Changing our Destiny #rae drakyx #cayde-6 #destiny cayde #ghost #destiny ghost #ikora rey #destiny ikora #adam bergfalk #blaze kiria #fireteam paralight #Zavala #destiny zavala #the vanguard #jade hydrani #marcia wyverk #destiny 2

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izanyas · 5 years

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and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow (21)

This one’s rather peaceful before we dive into the Real Big Angst

Rating: M Words: 10,700 Warnings: panic attack, mentions of pedophilia (no pedo happens), the usual trauma stuff

[Read from prologue]

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow Chapter 21

Lan Wangji stood in the green shadows, flecked with pieces of golden light, immaculate as always. His hold on Chenqing loosened immediately after parrying the blow it would have taken at his body.

"Wei Ying," he said quietly. He looked surprised.

Wei Wuxian had no mind to examine his tone, however. He drew back into the thick shadow of trees with his heart beating at his throat, and asked, "Was it you?"

Had Lan Wangji been the one to see? Would Wei Wuxian have to threaten him, too, the way he had threatened Jin Zixuan? Would Lan Wangji think he was—

"You're not breathing," said Lan Wangji, and Wei Wuxian saw then that he looked confused and worried, that the creasing at his forehead and around his lips was directed only at what was in front of him now: Wei Wuxian, still-breathed and shaken, standing and holding his flute as if it were a sword. Tendrils of resentful energy stroking the exposed skin of his hands and wrists and neck and suffocating him.

He tried to breathe in; but it was as though his lungs had to try and take in as much air as they could, suddenly, and there was no quieting them anymore. Wei Wuxian grew light-headed, and black-and-grey spots replaced all the color he could see—all the greens and browns of the forest around, all the immaculate white of Lan Wangji's uniform—and he heaved and gasped as if he had just spent minutes in apnea.

He grabbed onto the bark of a tree with his hand. His legs shook under his own weight and made his shoulder hit into the trunk with enough strength that he thought, in a burst of panicked hilarity, of what Wen Qing would say once she saw the bruise there. He felt that Lan Wangji was calling his name and coming to his side.

He should push him away. He ought to ride again the fear that Jin Zixuan's touch and words had dragged out of his guts, to kick him as he had kicked Lan Xichen months ago. But although Lan Wangji touched his shoulder and helped his back against the tree, although his fingers came to the hollow of Wei Wuxian's neck to measure his heartbeats, Wei Wuxian found no strength or desire too.

He remembered when he had been the one to touch Lan Wangji like this while the man had been wounded and choked by grief. Finding the areas of stress and congestion in his neck and his chest and trying to push away the bad blood.

Wei Wuxian coughed. Slick blood filled his mouth and dribbled down his chin, no doubt staining Lan Wangji's own hands. At last, when his lungs shuddered again, the air came to him without making him want to shake.

He closed his eyes when those fingers left his skin. Although summer was hot and dry upon them, he shivered. He listened to the sound of Lan Wangji's own breathing next to him, quiet and full, and found his own matching the pace of it unthinkingly.

Jin Zixuan's words rang through his head ceaselessly. His own hands and face itched where the man had touched him. He tasted bitter grass and dirt under the slick, nauseating blood.

When he was certain that his words would not falter, he asked, "Did you see?"

A breath again, one which Wei Wuxian could not help but breathe in too. Only when he was done expelling it in full—when Wei Wuxian was done doing the very same—did Lan Wangji reply, "Did I see what?"

Wei Wuxian opened his eyes. He blinked quickly under sunlight.

Lan Wangji did not look the picture of someone lying or deceiving him. If anything, he looked to be the one full of questions, and to be holding them back for Wei Wuxian's sake. His oddly sonorous breathing had not ceased.

Wei Wuxian realized that this was for his sake, too; that Lan Wangji must be breathing like this as a way of helping him find his own air.

If he had the heart to smile then, he would have. "Nothing," he said instead. "I must apologize to you again, Lan Zhan. It seems I can't stop embarrassing you every time we meet."

Lan Wangji looked away and replied, "Not embarrassing."

It was a lie, of course, for Lan Wangji was much like his brother: the kind of person to hold back instead of asking, and to offer apologies for a touch even in circumstances where touch was unavoidable.

He always was.

"Where is your brother?" Wei Wuxian asked weakly.

He watched Lan Wangji blink. Even this sort of subdued surprise was beautiful on him, even this much made light catch onto his eyelashes and spread shadows over his cheeks in fine little tendrils. "He has remained with our uncle," he replied. "He did not wish to enter the competition."

"I see."

This part of the forest was thick, much thicker than the small clearing where Jin Zixuan had cornered Wei Wuxian. Trees had grown so close next to one another that only the faintest of sunrays pierced through the canopy of leaves above, and then again, those rays were ephemerous. Wei Wuxian saw them flicker in and out of life over his legs and hands. He breathed in the cool shadows, listened to the buzzing of small insects, watched a bee circle around Lan Wangji's arm, attracted by the bright white of his hunting robes.

He wondered faintly if Jin Zixuan would run after him and try to find him again in spite of his threats. His chest grew cold at the idea; Wei Wuxian's eyes ran again over the space all around him, searching for a spot of gold and white over the green, grey, brown.

Lan Wangji's breathing had gone quiet again, now that Wei Wuxian's resembled something like evenness. He kneeled very properly upon the dirt and grass. His white sword Bichen swept dust when he turned to look back at Wei Wuxian.

He said, "Your body is ill."

"You said so before," Wei Wuxian replied.

He had no wish to be having this argument again.

"You told me that demonic cultivation would harm me. But I am not sick, and I will not renounce it. This… I'm only tired, Lan Zhan."

There was a child-like expression on Lan Wangji's face, something very near a pout. It washed away quickly. "I will not ask you to," he said. "But I have been—"

His words paused. The tips of his ears grew so endearingly red under the delicate line of his forehead ribbon that for a second, Wei Wuxian was speechless.

Lan Wangji made himself speak again painstakingly. "I have… researched the books in the Cloud Recesses. I have found sheets of music. To help."

"To help with what?"

Another moment of struggle, quiet and tense. Wei Wuxian spent it observing the man next to him and breathing in his warm scent of sandalwood, overlaid thinly over the woods, familiar and oddly soothing.

"Quiet the spirit," Lan Wangji murmured eventually. "Calm the heart."

Why? Wei Wuxian wanted to ask.

Why would Lan Wangji do such a thing for him?

For a second the nerves still set alight by Jin Zuxian's presence got the better of him, and fear left its tanguy taste on his tongue again. He tensed over the dry soil, one hand clenched around Chenqing and the other spread overground, ready to lift his weight if he should feel the need to leave. He could not ask what he wanted to know for fear of the answer, and he could not look away either from the sight of Lan Wangji sat on the dirt, staining his pristine clothes for no valuable reason that he could think of.

Lan Wangji was looking back, too. Pale-eyed and statuesque in spite of how ridiculous it was for him—for the both of them—to be in such a position. He had never shied away from looking Wei Wuxian in the eye; never shied, either, from speaking to him or calling him by name. Lan Wangji was not the one Wei Wuxian had struck, once, for insulting his status.

He was the one Wei Wuxian had sought in that moonlit cold spring when he had first been shaken by how the world viewed him.

Lan Wangji said, "I did not bring them with me. I did not know you would be here."

"I like to keep things surprising," Wei Wuxian replied. The words were slow to come to him, yet each of them was easier than the previous. Each intake of care a little fresher and fuller. "But, you're right," he sighed, "I should not have come here. Jiang Cheng asked me to, but I should have better, after what I have been doing."

Lan Wangji's lips thinned. He looked unhappy for a moment, perhaps because he was remembering just why Wei Wuxian's presence made his peers so angry. Light caught onto the tips of one red ear as the leaves above them shifted; and it showed as well the deep breath he took in, the way that his shoulders straightened under the strict line of his uniform, as he readied himself to speak.

As he lifted his head and opened his mouth, Wei Wuxian said bluntly, "Play them to me."

Lan Wangji fell silent, the very first syllable of Wei Wuxian's name vanishing upon his lips. The shadows of his eyelashes moved and shuddered when he blinked.

Wei Wuxian's heart was once again beating right below his throat. His chest felt tight, constricted. "Those songs," he forced out. "For the spirit. Play them to me."

He did not know what Lan Wangji meant to tell him just then—only that he did not want to hear it at all.

Perhaps Lan Wangji understood this. Or more likely, perhaps he at least sensed that Wei Wuxian had no desire to speak at all just then. He looked away, his serious face dipping in shadow, and replied, "I do not have Wangji with me."

Then he sucked in a breath of surprise, for Wei Wuxian had lifted Chenqing toward him.

"Just play," Wei Wuxian said, eyes closed, head resting heavily against the bark of the tree at his back. It was better than looking at every shadow around and fitting the shape of Jin Zixuan's body to it, or that of the mysterious spy who must now be telling tales to all of what they had seen in that clearing.

For just a moment, for just one single moment, he wanted not to think of anything at all. Not the spy now ruining his reputation further, not Jin Zixuan's face as he said Marry me, not the people in Yiling whose survival and freedom were his responsibility.

"Just play, Lan Zhan," he begged.

Lan Wangji said nothing, but Chenqing slid out of Wei Wuxian's grasp slowly, delicately. As if the very touch of black bamboo on skin should hurt if he took it too hastily.

Wei Wuxian did not move even to breathe until the first note of the flute caressed the air. It was an old song that Lan Wangji played first, something aged down to the structure of sentences, barely more than a few alignment of high notes infused with spirituality. He had not doubted that Lan Wangji could play the dizi well, and did not doubt either that should he still have a golden core to be appeased, the spell would have worked to perfection.

This, still was enough: the earthly smells of the forest and Lan Wangji's sandalwoodscent, and above them the sound of Chenqing playing songs from Gusu as if it were meant for them. Wei Wuxian's back loosened against the arch of the tree rather than lean tensely upon it. His hand over the dirt became lax, curving up and away so that his palm did not touch it anymore. His eyelids stopped twitching and allowing in specks of light.

He did not know how many songs Lan Wangji played to him, or for how long. His awareness of anything aside from the sound of the dizi became so thin that it felt like unconsciousness. Memories tugged at him slowly when Lan Wangji played one more, one he could recall hearing in the midst of heat, one he could remember singing to.

When he opened his eyes again, the sun had started setting behind the mountain. Shadows creeped from all over and made the air feel like night already. He blinked slowly, feeling well-rested for the first time in recent memory, and wondering why the sound of the flute had ceased.

Lan Wangji was looking at him. A faint red mark shone below his lips, where the bamboo had pressed for what must be hours.

"The Jin clan has just signaled the end of the competition," he said softly.

He must have heard the sound of the horn calling the cultivators back.

Wei Wuxian was slow to bring himself to his feet. He did not stumble, although his head felt misty and his body languid, but the pull of muscles alone had him shaking. He was hungry, he realized, and weak for it like he was in his youth after hours of running. He could not remember the last time he had experienced hunger not swallowed by sickness.

"We should go, then," he told Lan Wangji, who was still sat on the ground, watching him.

His face had not rid itself of this complicated and hesitant look, but the sight of it did not frighten Wei Wuxian now. He took Chenqing back when the man handed it to him and tied it back to his waist; then he paused.

What little daylight remained around them shone out of Lan Wangji's eyes when Wei Wuxian extended a hand to him.

A foolish gesture it may be, and no doubt one Lan Wangji would reject as he had rejected Wei Wuxian's touch so many times before. Yet he did not blush furiously at the sight of it, like he had on the day Wei Wuxian had jokingly offered to carry him on his back. Instead he grabbed Wei Wuxian's wrist over cloth and not skin and allowed him to help him up.

Chenqing had been skin-warm when Wei Wuxian took it back. He found that same warmth at the crook of Lan Wangji's wrist and in the seconds it took for him to be up and release him. Only long enough to feel a few heartbeats against his fingertips.

"Thank you," Wei Wuxian said. "For everything."

For not trying to attack him, whether with words or with something else. Wei Wuxian had always thought that a day would come when the tip of Bichen's blade would find its way to his neck or his belly, but he was suddenly glad that this was not that day.

The night was deep by the time they reached the edges of the wood. What awaited Wei Wuxian there was not a world of shame, as he expected, but rather Jin Guangshan's lofty accusations of cheating, and a series of rude demands.

That Wei Wuxian should apologize to all the sects present for his hoarding the targets. That he should have handed over the Stygian Tiger Seal, which he surely must have used in underhanded ways. He did not make any mention of anything more untoward, although several times the topic of his monologue threatened to veer in direction of the omega in Yiling.

Whoever the spy who saw Jin Zixuan grab Wei Wuxian's hand and profess his love to him was, they had not yet decided to tell anyone.

It should have been a relief, but Wei Wuxian felt only tenser for it. Jin Zixuan himself was standing by his father's side in a daze; his eyes met Wei Wuxian's only once before he turned away, his face twisted with dark feelings.

It was easy to slip into the absent-mindedness that Wen Qing oft had to shake him out of. The calm that Lan Wangji's flute-playing had procured was close enough to it, in a way.

"Why don't you tell me what you really want, sect leader Jin?" he asked boredly.

He could not even tell anymore which of these men and women was speaking, or in what way. None of them mattered. Jiang Yanli was not even here, having been taken away by Madam Jin before Wei Wuxian even made it out of the woods. Jiang Cheng had not addressed a word to him after seeing him walk out of the woods with Lan Wangji in his steps.

"I want you," Jin Guangshan said, incensed upon his thickly-cushioned seat, "to go back to your sect, Wei Wuxian. I should like to see you grovel to Jiang Cheng so that the boy will accept you, and you learn once and for all what your rightful place is."

"Sect leader Jin," Jiang Cheng spoke then. Fury had colored his face, and Wei Wuxian could see just how tense his jaw was under his skin. "Wei Wuxian will not accept orders from you, or anyone else. I dare appeal to my father's long friendship with you and ask you to let the Jiang clan handle this alone."

"Oh, your father," said Jin Guangshan. He laughed, or at least looked the part of it. "Yes, let's talk about Jiang Fengmian. How many times did I tell him that this folly of his would lead only to madness? It wasn't enough that he was infatuated with that Cangse Sanren, no, he just had to try and revive the thrice-damned memory of her with that boy. And now we see the result standing before us!"

He pointed to Wei Wuxian for all to see, going so far as to stand so that not a soul around could miss who he was talking about.

In the shocked silence that followed, he grew bolder. His weak chin shivered into a smile, his arrogance thickened into the nightly air. He walked around the dais where his precious behind had sat all afternoon, coming out of torchlight and into the same wavering shadow that all here were wrought in.

He stood before Wei Wuxian, taller than him by an inch, his thin body comfortably wound in rich and airy cloth to parry the summer heat. "It would not have surprised me," he said melodiously, "if Jiang Fengmian had ended up marrying the boy himself. In fact, I have long suspected that he was raising him this way for that purpose. If he could not have the mother, then why not have her son?"

"Father!" came Jin Zixuan's voice. It seemed he had been shocked into speaking out at last.

Jiang Cheng must have reacted the same outside of Wei Wuxian's narrowed eyesight, outside of the red sheen that the world had taken in-between him and Jin Guangshan, but he did not hear it. He could not hear anything but the slow, heavy beating of his own blood.

Jin Guangshan sneered. He smiled in self-satisfaction. "At least this time around Jiang Fengmian could not be blamed for lack of taste," he said. "Be grateful that you were born with some beauty, Wei Wuxian. Your mother was no better sight than the pigs in the barns of the Meishanyu sect."

The crowd around them stilled and shivered, far too many among them failing to hide their interest, and although this time Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan found incentive to move, Wei Wuxian had enough.

He crossed the last step separating him from Jin Guangshan and spat in the man's face.

He would have done it again, too, if only Jiang Cheng had not reached his side then and pulled him back. Meng Yao and Jin Zixun were samely busy with Jin Guangshan, tugging him away by both arms as if he were suffering a much graver wound than some spittle on his cheek and a bruised ego. Alpha and beta of the Jin sect and others slid their swords out of their sheaths in outrage, and Wei Wuxian only looked once at Jin Zixuan's panicked expression before letting the two halves of the Stygian Tiger Seal fall out of his sleeves.

He elbowed Jiang Cheng away from him. He took each half of the Seal in hand and pieced them together. Cold air slithered over every bit of his exposed skin, and the array in which the prey of the competition were kept broke open. Corpses surrounded the dozens of cultivators, once again under his command, and made them still with sword in hand.

"Wei Wuxian," Jin Guangshan raged, held in place by his rapist of a nephew and his bastard son; but Wei Wuxian had quite enough of listening to him.

"I think it's time some rules were put in place," he said.

The corpses around them were still fresh, lacking the gruesome decomposition that some of Wei Wuxian's worst summonings during the war exposed, but the effect remained the same. Those who had witnessed him then cowered, and the rest followed suit.

In the very far back, away from the direct line of the spell, Lan Wangji stood next to his brother and uncle. His eyes met Wei Wuxian's.

Wei Wuxian's blood stopped being quite so loud into his head. He heard instead an echo of the flute, a familiar melody pulled from bowstrings and bleeding fingers, as he fought for consciousness in the lair of a beast.

"The people I took from your houses are free now," he said, still staring in direction of Lan Wangji. It almost ached in him, how necessary this exchange of looks felt, when his stomach quivered at the thought of glimpsing just to the left and meeting Lan Xichen's eyes instead. Wei Wuxian turned his head back toward Jin Guangshan rather than risk it. "They are not yours to reclaim. They were never yours to have in the first place. I will not allow a single one of you to see them unless they indicate otherwise, and I will not suffer your demands in any way. Those are the terms."

"You're nothing but a mad thief," Jin Guangshan screamed at him. His finger shook, this time, when he pointed it Wei Wuxian's way. "Who do you think you're speaking to!? 'Terms'? You think I'll negotiate with you, after everything you—"

"Did you know not a single one of them wanted to stay?"

Jin Guangshan gagged visibly, whether for the surprise of being interrupted or because the sight of Wei Wuxian disgusted him enough to.

"You must have noticed that I left some of them behind," Wei Wuxian went on coldly. "Those were the few who wished to remain where they were. I did not take a single person with me who did not wish to be taken."

"Liar," spat Jin Zixun.

"You wouldn't know even if I was," Wei Wuxian replied, glancing fleetingly at him. "You're not in the habit of asking before taking."

Jin Zixun reddened and remained, thankfully, silent.

"My point is that perhaps all of you should be asking yourselves why these people fear the words of a mad thief less than they do the thought of remaining where they are. Although," he added, "perhaps that's asking too much out of any of you."

He looked over them all. He took in the anger and disbelief, the despair in Jin Zixuan and Jiang Cheng.

"Those are my terms," he repeated. "I will not give them back. They are free to do as they wish now, and if they wish to remain with me, then I will protect them from you."

"Wei Wuxian," Jiang Cheng called helplessly.

Wei Wuxian did not look at him, but at Jin Guangshan, who was wiping again with his sleeve the place where saliva had sullied him. "And I am no longer part of the Yunmengjiang sect," he said. "I came here today only as a courtesy to my former sect leader. From now on, he and I are not affiliated in any way."

"Wei Wuxian!"

But the ranks of the hundred corpses narrowed, and Jiang Cheng found himself stuck behind two of them, no longer close enough to reach for Wei Wuxian's arm. His sword Sandu gleamed into the nightly air, slashing at the corpse nearest to him, cutting off its head sharply. It did not stop blocking him or fall from under the influence of the Seal.

Still, Jiang Cheng clenched his teeth. Still he yelled, "Don't you go deciding this on your own! I—"

"Have some decorum," Wei Wuxian cut him off.

Jiang Cheng could not afford to show him attachment now, in front of so many eyes; and he seemed to realize it as well, for his face grew angry. Red blood flushed his cheeks and washed out of everywhere else.

"I'll be leaving now," Wei Wuxian said to the cultivators before him. Many had tried and failed like Jiang Cheng to cut down the Seal-controlled corpses before them. "The spell will lift when I am far enough, and you'll be free to go. But if you follow me—" and the air grew colder still, almost icy over all of them, "—then you will only have yourselves to blame for dying."

To Jiang Cheng, he did not say anything.

He felt the spell break before an hour of riding had gone.

No doubt, people would be riding swords after him now, and perhaps some were already above his head, looking for him in the dark. Wei Wuxian spared not the horse he had taken—one of those he had stolen from the encampment of Wen prisoners ages ago and kept for many of his trips—even when the animal whinnied under the kicks he gave its flanks. He was glad for the cover of darkness, and glad also for the incompetence of those people, who had him under their eyes for so long but dared not lay a finger on him.

This taboo, he often felt, was like a double-edged sword. Keep omega from harm and human proximity on one end, for rumors of hurting one was such a blow to one's reputation. On the other was the madness that took so many alpha and beta when they were given opportunity; the sense of ownership, of possessiveness, which had driven Wen Chao to pinning him to the ground and Jin Zixun to stab Wen Ning through the belly.

For two days he rode with no rest, stopping only when his horse was too weak to go on, keeping the Stygian Tiger Seal in one hand and Chenqing in the other. He would have raised corpses on his way for protection, if he did not fear that their presence would slow him down and give him away.

He did not know whether his being caught would go one way or the other, after all: whether he would be talked to death by some fool in rich clothing or find himself once more at the wrong end of their entitlement.

Wei Wuxian came back to the Burial Mounds under rain and thunder. He was greeted first by Luo Fanghua, who was sewing clothing under the spilling roof of her house even in the storm. She stopped at the sight of him and ushered him inside, kindling the fire there wordlessly, giving him dry robes to change into. Wei Wuxian did not even think of shame as he undressed before her. He felt her eyes upon his bare torso—felt, for a moment, as if each scar there was an anchor for her gaze to latch onto.

The Qishanwen insignia burned into his skin, the marks of Zidian at his back. The vertical line under his ribs which Wen Qing had once opened and sewn shut. The white patch below his right shoulder where Suibian had pierced him, and the rest, the worst of them perhaps, spread like cobwebs under his belly button. The evidence of skin laying misshapen over him.

But Luo Fanghua was not one for gossip. She was never amongst the group who sometimes liked to ask Wen Qing about Wei Wuxian. She stood there as he dressed into the warm clothing, looking severe as always.

"I will fetch maiden Wen," she said curtly.

She did just so while Wei Wuxian sat into a rough-made chair by a rough-made table. They must have been built like so many other items and walls here by the pair of masons from the Wen sect he had brought with him all this time ago.

Wen Qing was fussier than Luo Fanghua, her fingers finding the side of his neck almost as soon as she stepped into the shack, and Wei Wuxian had no mind at all to refuse her, even if he knew—she knew—whatever she found there would be nothing either of them could fix.

"How long has it been since you slept?" she asked him.

"I don't know," Wei Wuxian mumbled.

He could not remember.

Wen Qing sighed. She thanked Luo Fanghua for keeping him warm and dry, although she scolded her for sitting outside in such a heavy storm. She pulled Wei Wuxian upright and walked by his side until they reached the deepest part of the bloodpool cave.

There, he told her of Jin Guangshan's words and how they had been received and encouraged by all. She fed him pieces of some leftover meal in the meantime, heated overfire so that the aroma spread through the bleak space around them. Wei Wuxian grew nauseous at the smell, but he remembered how hunger had felt after Lan Wangji played for him. He ate.

At the end of his retelling, Wen Qing sat silently. She watched over the never-moving body of her brother without seeing him. "Well, you did show them not to mess with us," she said.

"I did," he replied. "And Jin Guangshan wants my head for it."

"I wish I'd been there to see you spit in his face."

A shadow of a smile tugged at his lips; she answered it in kind, her shoulders loosening.

Then she said: "You're not telling me everything."

Wei Wuxian put his half-empty bowl by his feet. He watched the flickering firelight over the walls, the disorganized scrolls and talismans he had written, the wide clay pots full of little white flowers. He thought of the barrels pushed to the deepest end of the cave, where the air was ever-cool, and how long it would be until the liquor there finished macerating.

"Wei Ying—"

"I received an offer," he interrupted. "But it doesn't matter."

He did not precise what kind of offer. Wen Qing was too smart not to guess the nature of it on her own.

"Lan Zhan showed me some music," he told her a while later, as they both once more cleaned and remade the array that Wen Ning was laid onto.

"What music?"

"To calm the heart. He said he'd been researching the Library Pavillion of the Cloud Recesses and wanted to give them to me."

When the darker hours of evening came, the bloodpool cave could only be lit by fire. Wen Qing stood by it with his blood on her hands—he always refused to let her cut herself for the sake of the array—and looked at him with a frown.

"I didn't know you were close to the Lan sect heir," she said slowly.

"I'm not," he replied.

He did not know why he turned away from her scrutiny then.

"He just dislikes my way of cultivation. He's trying to make me stop."

"So does everyone else. So do I, even if I know you don't have a choice. What makes him so special?"

Nothing, Wei Wuxian thought.

Nothing but for how the sight and presence of him was not nearly as aggravating to Wei Wuxian as others'; nothing but for how easy it had been for Wei Wuxian to disarm himself, and allow Lan Wangji to once again play him songs while he was vulnerable.

Wen Qing sometimes played on a short wooden flute. Hers was not meant for cultivation, only for music, but either way the songs which Lan Wangji had played him had not had the effect that they were meant to have, only those that relaxation gave. If he could just hear them again, perhaps he could once more feel hungry without feeling sick.

"I'll show them to you," he said. He felt strangely like he wanted to curve the back and turn away from her again, to hide his face as he spoke. "Will you…"

Wen Qing was silent for a moment. "I'm not as good a musician as you or the famous Lan Wangji are," she replied at last. "But, yes. I'll play them for you. If you want me to."

"Thank you."

So Wei Wuxian showed her the music that Lan Wangji had shown him. Some of the songs became mangled by his poor memory, and others, he could not manage to produce as beautifully on Chenqing as Lan Wangji had while holding it. But Wen Qing listened into the long hours of night, copying him with her short flute, until at last their two playing became a little less awkward. Until his body loosened with fatigue and slumber finally took over him.

He did not show her the song Lan Wangji had played for him in the Xuanwu's cave years ago, though the memory of it was fresh now, and more exact than he could have made it on his own. If he were to think about it, Wei Wuxian would have known this to be more deliberate than he liked to believe, but he did not.

When he succumbed to a handful of hours of sleep that night, he dreamed of hands holding his hands in the tepid shadow of woods. He felt the stroke of a finger at his forehead, collecting blood where his own nails had dragged it out. But he did not feel the crushing fear that he had when Jin Zixuan did it; and those hands were not his blunt ones, but rather the same ones that had broken his fall and cleared his neck and chest of blood.

He woke up gasping before dawn had come; he lay panting over his bedding, sweating heavily through his clothes, guilt laid like nausea at the inside of his lips.

By the time he stood up and went to check on Wen Ning's state, the dream was forgotten.

The villagers at the bottom of the hills did not know who they were.

They heard rumors, of course. They saw the cultivators who came on horseback or by flying on swords and spent the night in their inns, drinking and bellowing for Wei Wuxian's head, for the capture and punishment of the omega thief of Yiling.

The heard of the Yiling Patriarch who lived among tombstones.

But they did not know who he was. Whenever he took the time to walk down the path and in direction of the little houses, Wei Wuxian hardly cared to make his name or status known. He knew as well that the sentiment was shared, and that Wen Qing had to brew many drugs for the days that the omega wished to leave the Burial Mounds—either forever or simply for a stroll—so that they would not be recognized.

So the villagers did not know him when he made business with them, and oft took him for a traveling merchant of some kind. Some were intrigued by his lack of a scent; most were smart enough to put this past themselves and deal in money instead.

The old beta man that Wei Wuxian sold Luo Fanghua's clothing to was such a person. He had been the one to come to Wei Wuxian himself in the first place, years ago, and to comment upon the robes he was wearing.

"That sewing girl of yours could do much better," the beta man was saying now, unfolding and examining the clothes, looking satisfied. "Get her better fabrics. These have been selling very well, even the next town over."

"This is all you'll get," Wei Wuxian replied evenly.

"You do not have the mind for business, boy."

Maybe not. But Wei Wuxian did have the mind to know prudence.

"Young master," said the Wen man who had accompanied him down the sloping path. "Perhaps that man is right, and we should get miss Luo better fabrics."

He was carrying the fruit of their spending that day within a wide basket; seeds for the ever-expanding vegetable garden, stashes of cloth for sewing, tools for the claymakers of the Wen clan. Wei Wuxian looked over the basket rather than look at his face. "No," he replied. "Let's go back now."

The man bowed the head and muttered an apology. Wei Wuxian did not know how long it had been since he expected anger or threats from him or any of his kin.

They never were angry at him, or at any of the people he brought with him month after month.

"How is that liquor of yours going?" the man asked jovially as they started their ascension.

Shut up, Wei Wuxian thought, but by now the words were more habitual than true. "It should be ready in a few weeks," he replied instead. "Don't expect it to taste any good, I've never done this before."

"I'm sure it'll be lovely, young master Wei. It has been quite a while since any of us drank any, and the young ones will not know what to expect at all."

The young ones. This was how he and his clansmen always called the eighty-odd omega now living in the Burial Mounds, never mind that some of them were old enough to be their parents.

Wei Wuxian remained silent for the rest of the journey home.

Luo Fanghua did not thank him for the fabrics, and he did not expect her to, but she did frown. She shot a look at the man who had accompanied Wei Wuxian to the village, heedless of the people now gathered around them and picking their orders from the basket at the man's back.

"I tried," said the man—Uncle Four was what Wen Qing called him. "The young master won't hear of it, miss Luo."

"You should've just taken a young one with you, Uncle," laughed another Wen clan alpha. "The young master can't say no to them."

"What are you two talking about?" Wei Wuxian asked rather snappily.

Two years ago, this would have been enough to shave the smile off their faces entirely. They had been scared of him then, troubled by his scentlessness and the spirits and corpses he made do his bidding. Now neither of them stopped smiling. Their harsh scents laid over the gathering and did not startle any of the others.

Grandmother was here too, weighing the seeds he had brought back, putting a handful of them to her face to see them better in daylight. Wei Wuxian looked around her quickly to make sure she had not brought her burden with her.

He stared again at the two alpha who did not fear him anymore. They were teasing Luo Fanghua still, and the young and severe woman did not cringe from their words or show any other sign of being uncomfortable with their presence.

She met his eyes suddenly. She lifted the pile of fabric his way and said, "I'd like better ones."

"Oh." The tense line of his shoulders fell. "All right," he replied. "Make me a list next time."

For the first time since he had met her, her lips twisted into a smile.

Laughter echoed around them. It seemed the dozen people who had come for their share of the groceries were now shaking as one, looking slyly at one another, elbowing each other playfully.

"See?" the second Wen man said in humor as Wei Wuxian stared at them all wordlessly. He laughed again, once and brightly. "The little master won't say no to them."

"It's no good, no good," replied Uncle Four. "You'll be ruined soon with this lot, young master Wei."

He patted Luo Fanghua's shoulder gently.

He must have said another thing, for his mouth was moving, and she was nodding too, but Wei Wuxian did not hear it. The world around vanished into shadow as he stared at his hand—the muddy garden paths where radishes were grown, the first and oldest of the houses, much shabbier than those built later on by the Wen sect masons, the yellow leaves on trees which had regained the ability to live after he banished the spirits.

Wei Wuxian watched the man's fingers on Luo Fanghua's shoulder. He saw how they tightened and released and left nary a crease on her robes. He felt the world blur around him, sounds and smells and visions alike, as rage tightened in his belly and made blood-taste drown his tongue.

Then there was a hand around his wrist, and the smell of pepper; and Wen Qing's voice said in his ear, "Calm down."

Wei Wuxian gasped in a breath.

Her fingers did not leave him. He focused on that touch in stead of anything else as she spoke, ordering the laughing crowd to disperse, asking such and such person not to dally all day. They left until only Wen Qing and Grandmother remained, and then Wen Qing told her, "You should go rest now. I know you've been tired."

"I am not so young now," said the old woman gently. "But I like to see the young master come back and be with everyone."

Wei Wuxian knew he should say something in answer when her kind eyes rested on him, but he could not think of even one word.

Grandmother smiled at him. "I should find A-Yuan," she said, turning away from them, leaning heavily on the cane that one of the masons must have made her. "Ah, I wonder where he's gone to now…"

Wen Qing's hold loosened. Wei Wuxian took his hand back from her and started walking in direction of the cave. "I'll wait for you before I draw the talismans," he said.

"Wei Wuxian—"

"Later."

He had an idea how frustrated she must be with his silence—how unhappy she always was when he shut in on himself like this, no matter how many times he did so—but he had no wish to suffer her questions now. She had no need of his words to understand what had happened.

She called his name again. She called it twice, in fact, before someone else must have asked for her instead. Wen Qing was more in charge of the gathering of people here than Wei Wuxian ever would be, no matter how many chose to call him young master rather than his name; she left him alone ruefully and went to see what the issue was.

She was the one they went to for help. She handled their finances, said 'no' where it ought to be said, unlike Wei Wuxian. All he ever did was bring them here and then leave again, moved by a force that felt as necessary as it was exhausting.

Wen Qing knew their names.

The cave had an odd-shaped wall in one end, where the rock had dipped and then flattened like a table, leaving room under a wide plateau. Wei Wuxian had used that space as a surface for work for as long as he had been here. He sat there now into a chair, looking unseeingly at the papers left half-written.

There was an array there, drawn and annotated wildly, that he did not want Wen Qing to see. A spell whose idea came to him in that half-awake state where the hours passed like seconds and the seconds like hours. A way to bring Wen Ning back, if all else should fail.

The sound of steps came to him from the mouth of the cave. He shoved the array under another pile of papers—under bright ideas and bitter failures—and called, "I said later, Wen Qing."

Wen Qing did not answer.

Wei Wuxian looked at the firelit tunnel. No air came in at this time of day to make the light waver, to shake the hundreds of talismans stuck to Wen Ning's body, but he felt cold all the same.

"Wen Qing?" he asked, rising.

But there was no trace of her at the entrance or in the tunnel beyond. No hint of her scent or shadow in the opening where already daylight was darkening. Wei Wuxian went back on his steps, feeling tense and queasy without knowing the reason why; and when he reached the edge of the bloodpool, the sound of shattering clay echoed against the worn-smooth walls. It came from the shelves where he kept seeds and cultivating tools for the moonless flowers.

There was a child there with another pot of seeds in hands, looking dejectedly at the one that had broken around his feet.

Wei Wuxian's steps halted.

The child tried to put the pot back onto its shelf. His hands were small and his fingers chubby, and he could not reach the height of it while pushing up the clay as easily as he must have while tugging it down. The sound of his hurried breathing echoed through the deadly-silent cave; every time he moved, half of his body hid behind the bed on which Wen Ning lay.

He cried, eventually. Little whimpers escaped him as he tried again and again to put the pot back where it came from. His arms shook under the weight of it. His feet stepped onto the seeds already spilled overground, crushing them into dust, rendering them useless. His face grew red and damp by the tall firelight.

"I know you're sulking, Wei Wuxian, but we need to talk about how to control your…"

Wen Qing stopped at the mouth of the cave, her words faltering down, as before her the child trembled with his heavy burden; as Wei Wuxian stood still and silent as a statue between the both of them.

"A-Yuan!" she called harshly.

The child jumped in fright. He let go of the pot in his hands, which did not shatter like the previous but spilled its content everywhere anyway. His tearful face lifted in Wen Qing's direction, and he cried, "I'm sorry."

The very sound of it ran over Wei Wuxian's skin like the clawed little feet of a bird. Tearing it off piece by piece to expose his insides.

Wen Qing was approaching now. She was grabbing Wei Wuxian by the arm and pushing him out of the way gently, speaking to the child again, "You know you're not supposed to be here. Come on, come here."

"Auntie," the child cried, buried to the ankles in flower seeds. His grey eyes caught to light like moths caught to a flame. "Broke it."

"It's okay," said Wen Qing in a choked, panicked voice. "It's okay, A-Yuan, just—come here. Grandmother's looking for you. Come on, you can't stay here."

But the child did not heed her; he looked once more at the mess over the floor and started wailing loudly.

Wen Qing looked at Wei Wuxian, the weight of her worry like a burn against his face, but even this did not burn as much as her touch or as the sound of crying.

He tugged away her hand on his shoulder. He turned his back to her and to the sobbing child. The very fabric of him felt so thin and hollow, a wisp of wind could have carried him away; still he found enough strength for his voice to come out when he told her, "Just get him out of here."

Thinly, so thinly, like talisman paper tearing under the brush. Each cry and each hiccup pulling at him until his fibers came apart.

Wen Qing went about comforting the child in hushed murmurs, quieting him as best she could, carrying him in her arms into the start of the tunnel. But Grandmother had come too, attracted by the sound of the child's sobs, and she 'oh'-ed at the sight of them and took him in her own arms.

She rocked and swayed with him, trying to ease away his tears.

"You're not allowed to come here, A-Yuan," she said in her rough and gravelly voice. "You know you're not allowed. You can't bother the young master."

It was unclear whether the child understood a word of it, but he nodded anyway. His swollen face shuddered when he blink, exhausted after so much crying.

To Wei Wuxian's horror, she faced him next across the cave, holding the child his way. "Young master, I'm sorry," she said, smiling. The child opened his eyes to him again; Wei Wuxian felt his throat burn with the need to retch. "A-Yuan is a very curious boy, he's been going off on his own since he learned to walk—"

"Grandmother," Wen Qing interrupted urgently. "I think A-Yuan should go to sleep now, don't you?"

As if on cue, the boy yawned widely. Grandmother hushed him again as she lowered him to the ground, but she did not leave yet. Instead she ordered, "Say sorry to the young master."

Wei Wuxian wanted dearly to look away, to be buried in stone or laid upon a wooden bed as Wen Ning was, to be unconscious to the world. But he could not tear his eyes from the child's wax-like face; from those grey eyes he had last seen in a mirror's reflection.

"That's not necessary," Wen Qing tried again. "A-Yuan didn't mean to bother anyone, I'm certain."

"Miss Wen, how will he become a good man if he doesn't learn to apologize for what he did wrong?"

Get him away, Wei Wuxian thought. Get him away from me.

There was nothing on his lips, however, save for the urge to throw up.

The boy had to be told again what to do. His weary eyes washed over the dim-lit room, stopping once on Wen Ning's body, once on Wei Wuxian. He dropped the hand with which the old woman was holding his and bowed with all of his back, slurring out a quiet, "Sorry."

Every inch of the room reeked of petrichor after he and Grandmother left.

Wen Qing immediately went to the broken clay pot, picking up the pieces of it, sweeping seeds up with her bare hands to deposit into the one the child had simply overturned. She was pale even with the awkward light of the cave, and her voice was unsteady. "He didn't crush too many," she said. "Not more than we would have lost to frost this year anyway."

"Good, then," Wei Wuxian replied blankly.

She shuddered visibly. She picked up the pot and put it back on the lowest shelf. She spared another second of tidying, sweeping dust away with her sleeve, obviously steeling herself for something.

Wei Wuxian sat on the chair and cut in, "Forget it."

Her lips thinned and whitened. "Fine," she said unhappily. "Then tell me instead why you were a second away from murdering Uncle Four earlier."

"I was not."

"I could feel the resentful energy on you. I'm sure if I touched you now, your veins would be swollen with it."

"Then don't touch me," he spat at her. "This shouldn't be such a hard thing for you to do."

As if he could stand the touch of anyone right then, with his skin moving about him and being picked at by crows. He did not think he could even handle touching himself—if it were at all possible, he would choose not to have skin to touch at all.

But Wen Qing's face softened. Her brow eased out of anger. Wei Wuxian had only a moment to regret that she once again elected not to scream at him in rage.

"I know you don't like them," she said. "I understand. I do."

He turned his back to her, planting his elbow atop the stone table.

"But things have been changing here. One of my family members touching one of the others like this—it's not a rare thing. He didn't mean anything by it, and Luo Fanghua didn't mind. It's natural for them to want for closeness."

"I get it," he breathed.

He didn't need her to tell him how lonely life here was, cut from the rest of the world, watching them leave one by one for hope of a better future. There was no such future for him.

"Wei Ying," Wen Qing called quietly.

He did not tense only because she made sure to step loudly upon stone and straw, to make her clothes shuffle as she walked, to hit a nail to the white jade tassel she always wore at her waist.

She put a hand on his shoulder. "They just want to know you," she said. "The omega, but my family as well. None of them know more than your name and the fact that you saved their lives."

"There's nothing to know about me," he replied.

But he leaned back into her hand. He allowed it to tighten over cloth and skin, almost enough for him to feel its warmth.

"You don't let people know you," she retorted. He felt her look over the trinkets and spells he worked on during each sleepless night he spent here—as few of them as he could afford to, when so many more people waited, hidden, to be set free. "I know this wasn't always the case, that there was a time you would have loved to know them too. I remember when A-Ning first met you, and couldn't stop talking to me about the omega cultivator from Yunmeng who tried to defend him in public."

He shuddered. Her hold on him tightened. "But now you avoid all of them," she went on. "All of us. I know how important everything here is to you, but they don't. Some of them are scared that you're doing this on a whim, that you'll send them back to their houses as soon as you're done."

"Two years is a lot time spent on a whim."

"They don't know that. None of them had ever set a foot outside unsupervised before you broke open their door and asked them to come with you."

And so many refused, too. Even those who had heard rumor of him through their masters, even the few who had expected him to come, who clung to their housemates in fear of him. They looked at him as if were there to eat them, and they refused fearfully.

"Time is an odd thing to experience when you can't see the sun set and rise," Wen Qing said mournfully. "And now they can, but you will not show yourself to them. You will not accept anything, not even their gratitude."

"They shouldn't feel grateful to me."

She did not deny his words. But her hand left his shoulder, and she laughed briefly. He heard her turn around to look at her still-slumbering brother.

That part of the bloodpool cave was so full of his spirit, of his soul, hovering just shy of touching his body; he knew that Wen Qing felt as if she could reach out and grasp it bare-handed if she tried.

"I want this place to be somewhere A-Ning will be happy to live," she said.

So Wei Wuxian nodded. He told her, "I'll try."

Her smile was wordless and tired, but it was a smile nonetheless.

Wei Wuxian hesitated. The guts in him knotted and squeezed together, he felt. "As for…" He forced out, "As for him. A-Yuan."

He could not look at her now, though he felt her scrutiny deeply. "I'll make sure he knows not to bother you," she said. "It's like Grandmother said. He was just curious because we all told him not to come here."

Wei Wuxian suffered a second of agonizing muteness. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth like a last rampart against sickness. "What's his—"

He bit the side of his tongue when his teeth snapped closed; iron-taste spread through his dry mouth.

"Wen Yuan," Wen Qing replied after a moment. "That is his name."

Wei Wuxian's stomach turned. His hand lifted and lowered aimlessly, and he scratched the skin of his own wrist harshly. "Why?" he let out at last.

"It was more or less a common decision. They said that he should wear my name, since I'm the one who brought him back. Did you want—"

"No," he cut her off. "I don't want anything to do with him."

Wen Qing's eyes shone. "I understand."

Wei Wuxian breathed in. He tried to chase away the taste over his tongue and lips, the feel of dirt and grass imprinted upon him. "And I—I suppose it is fitting," he said. "Considering."

He massaged with his hand the clammy skin of his nape, where once a man had panted and groaned and left him damp with spit. Where a great weight hung over him to this day.

This is your place, Wei Wuxian.

Wen Qing's silence felt like a speech of its own. He did not move when she came closer to him, though he was glad that she did not try to reach for him this time.

"You never told me who it was," she said at last.

Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

"And I won't ask you either. I don't need to know, I don't even want to know. If you tell me that you never want to speak of it again, then I won't ever mention it."

It was the sincerity in her, the blunt and austere way that she always made promises, he thought. Those were the things that had made him trust her touch when his back was torn open by Zidian's lashings; when he had lost everything, and thought he was going to lose more, still, as Jiang Cheng slumbered endlessly.

Those were the things that made him tell her, "It was Wen Chao."

Only Wen Qing's face could look so kind and so severe at the same time; only she could reach for him like this and pull out not his entrails or heart, but his livid, breathing soul.

The fall season this year ended in frost and snow.

The trees and bushes of the Burial Mounds lost again the leaves and flowers they had regained after so long. White flakes spilled from the sky endlessly, forcing many of the people living here to spread cloth over the vegetable gardens for protection. Luo Fanghua kept sewing on her doorstep until the day Uncle Four scolded her, telling her that she was courting death; then, looking as ruffled as a bothered bird, she instead started sewing inside.

"She has the habits of an old woman, this one," Uncle Four said fondly. "You'd think she was fifty and not twenty."

Wei Wuxian knew then that his relationship to Luo Fanghua was a quiet and comfortable friendship. That if ever he put a hand on her young shoulder, it was only to convey warmth to her. He never looked at him again and wished to separate his head from his body.

It became more difficult for him to find new people to free. The freezing cold had made much of the land impossible to ride on without risking his horse's health. Many of the houses he did find were empty as well, as if word had gone around at last that the clans' and villages' property should not be left alone for him to steal. He heard no word and no whisper of the great sects in those months, although a fool or three sometimes fancied themselves saviors and tried to walk up the hillpath.

Before that time—when fall was still warm and easy on them—Wei Wuxian opened the first of the barrels of wine he kept in the cool and dark of the bloodpool cave.

He had not expected this to be made into a celebration, though he should have. Wen Qing at least seemed to delight in his stupor when he was made to carry one more of the barrels outside, to the wide tables they had dressed under setting sunlight. He was ordered to sit by several of the omega; he was told not to move at all and simply wait to be served food and wine.

"We cooked all afternoon for this," said a man Wei Wuxian remembered skinny and underfed in his house near Qinghe. His face had filled and become pink with the sun.

"Here, try this," said another, whom Wei Wuxian had freed among the very first, whom he expected to see leave any day now, but who never did.

They drank in his honor. They talked and laughed around him into the deep hours of night, with only torchlight beside them to light up their frail hands. A few grew tipsy with the sweet liquor and started yelling, and Grandmother spoke once to shush them for the sleeping child's sake, spreading cold over Wei Wuxian's skin.

But it was the only time that day that he felt less than fine. And the liquor was good and mellow, and burned pleasantly as it went down his parched throat.

There were no stars above them. They could have believed themselves lost to the endless dark.

In those months, life came to an uneasy balance. The omega he could find were rare, but the people who bothered him were rarer. The reserves of food they had grown the year over were enough to sate every stomach and more, and whatever they lacked in the manner of necessities, they could buy with Luo Fanghua's skills as a seamstress. People from the village started ordering for their clothes to be made by her. Her name became that of a renown craftswoman there, although she never set foot down the hill herself. She seemed proud of it too, as much as she could show it anyway, with how severe her young face always was.

Then Wei Wuxian woke up one chilly morning, in the deepest of winter, with cold sweat stuck to his skin. He shoved away the blanket laid over his body. He blinked against the haze of unrest that felt always like steel bar behind his eyes.

He looked to the dying fire by his side and met a pair of white eyes.

Shadows shifted over the walls. Whispers of wind crawled in through the opening of the cave, where some weeks ago Wen Qing and he had put up a curtain of thick furs to parry off the cold. The white eyes stared at him unblinkingly as he recalled how to breathe.

"Wen Ning," he said weakly.

There was no response from the man himself, but it felt as though a barrage had broken.

"Wen Ning!"

He crawled into the space of the array, staining his knees with crusted blood, grabbing the pale and black-veined hand hanging out from the side of the wooden bed.

It was cold, it had no pulse, but it moved. It clenched around his own fingers. The heavy spirit that had hovered there for months was gone, absorbed at last by the body it belonged to.

"Wen Ning," Wei Wuxian said over and over again, pushing brown hair out of Wen Ning's lax face with one shaking hand, holding him with the other. Each call of his name seemed to bring a little more life to Wen Ning's now-pale eyes."Can you speak? Do you recognize me?"

He knew not how long he spent kneeling there, asking the same questions, calling the same name. But light had filtered under the furs suspended by the entrance; the fire had died and left only smoking embers; and Wen Ning's mouth opened, and his voice came out like the rasping of wind into deep mountain gorges.

"Young master Wei," he said. Surprised and child-like as he had been in Qishan years ago.

Tears came to Wei Wuxian's eyes for the first time in years, but they were not sorrowful. They fell down his cheeks and nose and landed saltily on his lips, where the stretch of a smile pulled widely at him.

"Yes," Wei Wuxian said roughly. His voice shook over the next few words, shook as the sound of footsteps reached him, as Wen Qing's voice called for his name in the tunnel leading here. He held Wen Ning's hands tightly enough to hurt; he promised him, "I'm here."

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#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #lan wangji #wei wuxian #fic: and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow #featured

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urlocalkpoptrash · 5 years

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Bad Time For A Good Time| Chapter 19.

Chapter 19: Flames.

Jungkook x Reader, Namjoon x Reader

Warnings: lots of cursing.

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Jeon Jungkook is the ultimate bachelor; guarded, angry, rich, body count that puts the numeric system to shame, and aimless - what else could a girl want? You’ve been working in the same dead end job, hoping it would get you somewhere. You finally have your foot in the door, and the person you need to win over is slamming your foot out. What can you do?

- - - - - - - - -

The thing with fire is that it goes out, it gets cold. Fire is temporary, it burns so bright and if you’re one of the unlucky ones stuck in its path, you will be nothing but ashes and smoke when it’s done. Loving someone who’s soul is made of fire will only end in one way, there is no other possible outcome. You will end up burnt or even worse, you’ll be destroyed far too bad to be fixed. Unfortunately, we all love playing with a little fire.

Jungkook lived life so full and head on, he was always ablaze, lighting up the world around him. Maybe that’s what kept you drawn in, like a moth to a flame. He felt everything so intensely, which to some could be a good thing, but those people have never felt the pain of falling for someone who only used you to keep them warm. Jungkook was about to feel that pain, and there was nothing you could do to make him see otherwise.

“Tae,” his name was a cry that hung in the air, suspended by tension that was circulating around everyone.

“Y/N,” he responded, coldly.

“You don’t have to do this,” you were pleading with him, your eyes swallowing the menacing grin that jerked across his face.

“But I do, y/n. It’s only fair that I even the playing ground, cause this is all just a game to you, right?” He stepped out of the spotlight, and closer to the door.

Namjoon tumbled away from the doorstep and into the house. He looked over his shoulder at you, and Jungkook had moved away from you. You could feel his gaze locked on you, but you couldn’t bare to meet his eyes.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Taehyung,” you hissed, your fear being masked with anger.

He laughed, but there was no joy. It was bitter and it felt like it froze your heart. This wasn’t the tae you knew, this wasn’t the person who had been your best friend for years. You didn’t know this man standing before you.

“Oh? I don’t know what I’m talking about? Alright, then let’s explain everything in your own words, shall we?” His face lit up from your phone as he entered the passcode. Of course he knew the passcode, he knew everything about you.

“I’m going to be introduced as his new PR assistant. So, I’ll be around him all the time. I have to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, while simultaneously trying to be irresistible,” he read the text out like it was a script from a movie.

“What is he talking about, Y/N?” Jungkooks voice had lowered at least two octaves.

You turned your head to finally meet his gaze, and you weren’t expecting him to look absolutely devastated. You wanted him to look anything but hurt, you’d rather see rage, or apathy. You would have rather him scream in your face, you couldn’t fathom hurting him the way you were about to.

“Gguk, just let me explain, please. Don’t listen to him,” you reached up, pressing your hands to his chest, but he gripped your wrists and threw them off his body.

“How about I explain, because at this point everyone is going to find out just how much you can’t be trusted,” tae snapped, taking another step towards you.

Namjoon immediately took a step in front you, his arm stretching out so tae couldn’t get any closer to you. You knew he wasn’t doing this cause he cared, he was doing this because he was just a protective man. You knew that he was pissed, his jaw was clench, his dimples sinking into his cheeks, making him look terrifying.

“Oh, Joonie,” tae teased heartlessly, “you think you’re going to get off without any repercussion?” He wagged his eyebrows, asking with some enthusiasm.

Taehyung looked back down, his thumb tapping on the screen as he scrolled through all your texts, the green lights flickering across his face. You wanted to reach out and snatch the phone from his hand, you wanted to know why he was doing this.

“Ah! Here they are, and might I say, that Namjoon has quite a wonderful eye for dick pictures. Good choice on the grey sweatpants,” he turned the screen to face all of you.

You glanced out of the corner of your eye, catching Namjoons eyes closing for a moment. He knew he was going to lose his best friend, and that his world was about to change drastically, and it was all your fault. You did this to them.

That’s when it hit you, the realization that this was all your fault. How could it not be? It was your fault tae went down this path, it was your fault that joon was about to lose one of his brothers, it was your fault that Jungkook was going to be broken hearted. You were fully to blame, and it was all because you couldn’t say no, all because you wanted to further your career.

“Taehyung, please stop,” you tried to plead with him again, but if you were being honest with yourself, you wouldn’t stop if you were in his shoes.

“Why?! Why the fuck should I stop?! Huh?! Should I spare your fucking feeling, y/n? Should I pretend that you’re the victim in this!? Cause that’s exactly what you want. You want everyone to feel sorry for you, because every fucking thing is about you. You can’t take responsibility for one god damn thing in your life. Who are you going to blame this time? Who’s fault is all this? What poor fucker is going to be sucked into the black hole that his your heart! WHO?! Please, fucking tell me!” You swore his eyes had taken up half his face, they were so wide and so angry.

“Me..” you admitted, your eyes stinging from the tears that were threatening to escape, but you wouldn’t let them.

The room fell completely silent, not even tae had a witty and rude comeback. No one, including yourself, imagined you’d be admitting your wrongs in a room full of people you had some sort of love for - each of them now being torn apart by your recklessness.

“I’m to blame, Taehyung. This is all because I’m selfish,” you hard swallowed, your throat dry as can be.

“What are you saying, y/n? Was all this fake? Was all this to benefit you?” Jungkook’s tone was now sharp, it was his turn to be angry.

“Yes... it was, originally... but everything changed, I started to have real feelings for you. I tried so hard not to let them get the best of me, I just couldn’t though,” your chin began to quiver, your strength was fading away too quickly for you to regain it.

“And what did you get out of this? What did you get out of playing with my feelings? What’s your reward for making me fall in love with you? Is it a good one? Is it worth the manipulation and lies you brought into my life? Is it worth me? Hmm? What is it?” He crossed his arms across his chest, his fingers balling to a tight fist, making his knuckles go white.

“Head of marketing,” the tears had now made a clear path down your cheeks, falling off at your jaw.

“My dad set you up to this?” He sounded as if he couldn’t even believe his own words.

You nodded silently, dragging the back of your hand over your cheeks to clear off the tears.

“And what about Namjoon?” He asked, looking up to his hyung, who was feeling far too guilty to even glance at him.

No one answered him, again the silence filling the dead air. No one wanted to answer this question, mostly because everyone knew that you had manipulated joon into this whole mess, it wasn’t his fault that you used him to get to his best friend.

“FUCKING TELL ME!” He screamed, his voice cracking at the end, he wasn’t keeping it together any better than you.

“I used him.. to get to you,” your heart was rattling against your ribs.

“Did you fuck him?” He was ice cold now, you weren’t the girl he was in love with, you were a homewrecker, you were a gold digger, you were everything he was afraid of.

You merely moved your head in an up and down motion, not even a full nod. You felt like a disgrace, and you knew that he probably felt the same about you.

“Namjoon...” he squeezed his name out from between clenched teeth.

Joon finally brought his head up, matching the gaze with his younger friend. They stared at each other for a moment, and as if Jungkook was having an epiphany, his mouth fell open.

“The girl you were talking about.. the girl you were trying to make yours... that was y/n, wasn’t it?” And there it was, the icing on the cake. He realized that not only was he in love with you, but his mentor, his best friend, his brother, was in the same boat as him.

“Do you love her?” He didn’t even bother to let him answer the first set of questions, because he already knew the answer.

You didn’t want to hear the answer, you didn’t want to know how much you had fucked up. You couldn’t bare to hear him say the one word that could actually break you down.

“Yes. I love her too,” he said it, and you could no longer hold on to what little restrain you had left.

An audible cry raked through your chest, clawing it’s way from the depths of your pain. You buried your face in your hands. You couldn’t bare to see them, you were so ashamed of your actions. You weren’t crying for yourself, you didn’t deserve sympathy. You were crying for them, and what you did to them.

“My work here is done,” Taehyung turned to leave, but stopped mid circle, “Oh, I almost forgot. Here’s your phone,” he threw it at your feet, the phone landing face down, pieces of glass from the screen splattering over the floor.

“Gguk...” you dragged your hands down, showing your face.

You almost fell to the floor when you saw that he had tears in his eyes, they swam dangerously close to the shoreline of his eyes, begging to fall down his cheeks, but he shook his head. When he looked back at you, they were gone and the cold, brooding Jungkook you first met was back. You had lost him, you weren’t behind his wall anymore, you were the main enemy he was trying to keep out.

“I want you out of my house, y/n. I don’t ever want to see you around here again. By the way, you consider your deal with my father off the table, and your job terminated,” his nostrils flared as he tried to stay distance and aloof with you.

“Jungkook, please, just listen to me,” you were ready grovel for his forgiveness, but he didn’t give you the chance.

“I said get the fuck out of my house! I can’t stand to look at you, or let alone hear your voice!” He grabbed your shattered phone and threw it out of his house, and he did the same with your keys.

Your breathing stuttered from crying so hard, you couldn’t stop sniffling or cleaning your nose with the back of your hand again. You knew he wasn’t going to listen, you couldn’t blame him though. You hurried out of his house in only his shirt, and nothing else. You grabbed your obliterated phone, and your keys which had slide across the drive way. You were glad that he lived in a pretty secluded area, no neighbors to watch your walk of shame.

You fumbled with your keys as you opened the driver side door, your tear filled eyes making it hard to see, and definitely making you incapable of driving, so you did the only thing you could. You screamed in your car, slamming your hands against your steering wheel. Your body was shaking, and it felt like the world was slipping away from you. You could only feel the pain, it rang in your ears, and sang through your veins. You cried so hard that not even a sound came from your mouth. It ripped through your body like a fire, burning you up to leave with nothing but ashes.

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elizahgodswood · 6 years

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Teaser Time

I've got a few fics in the works right now that I am hoping to have posted soon. For now, here is a couple teasers of them!

1. The Storm: (Ethira Lavellan x Solas)

The rain came down in a blanketing drone. The whole mountain valley was grey with fog, slowly creeping towards the hill where Ethira stood. In the distance, a quiet roll of thunder drummed. Flashes of lightning illuminated the dark wave of storm clouds.

With a slow inhale, Ethira took up a wide stance. As she exhaled, she grabbed her staff from its clip and held it before her in both hands. The worn wooden shaft brought back memories of golden fields, summers spent playing by the creek, running through valleys and hills, wild, free. Its rough grooves and grain were far different from the smooth steel and leather staff she wielded now, a reminder of how far she had come, and how far she still had to go.

Another rumbling roll of thunder roared, closer to her now. It was only a matter of time before the eye passed on and the battering wind and rains engulfed her camp once more.

Taking another slow, deep breath, she rose the staff high, bringing it to her lips as she counted through the seconds until the thunder stopped. She reached out, calling to the magic that tingled at the tips of her fingers, forever burned in the back of her mind, watching, waiting, ready. As the connection solidified, she exhaled, feeling the staff grip warm under her touch.

Another inhale, this one anxious, anticipating, waiting to strike, poised. The rain droned on for a few moments longer. The thunder sounded again, louder still this time.

One

She lashed out with the blade of her staff, exhaling with a low growl, feeling the power chanel down into the staff’s crystal. As she spun around, she dropped to her knee and jabbed out. A jet of fire spewed from the tip of the staff, hissing and steaming as the rain attempted to extinguish it.

Two

She rose back to her feet, spinning her staff in front of her. With a snarl, she swung the blade around in an arc before her. Spinning with the momentum, she released another jet of fire, watching the amber flames spin out in a spiral, steaming and hissing. The magic continued to flow, in tempo with her breathing.

Three

The thunder rolled on still. Wind began to tease her cloak, playful and gentle for now. The rain came down harder, colder, sharper, hissing as it hit the staff. It bit through her hood, and nibbled at the tips of her fingers. But the magic kept the worst of it at bay, for now.

Four

She focused on the target she had placed on the opposite side of the clearing. A chill sent a shiver down her spine and out to her fingertips. Charging forward, she stuck out with the staff, sending a shard of ice hurling towards the target.

Five

Ethira leapt up into the air, raising her staff above her. The wind blew back her hood, showering her face in cold rain. The magic thrummed through her now, coursing through every vein, pumping with every heartbeat. The thunder had reached a crescendo with a tremendous crashing up above.

Six

As she landed, the blade sliced through the target, spilling the fine sand within. Rolling to the side, she stood still, holding her head back as the rain soaked her. She waited on baited breath, knowing what would come next

Seven

A crackle of energy spliced the air, hot, wild, untamed. Ethira tightened her grip on her staff and stamped it on the ground. Lightning struck in the distance, illuminating the storm’s grey overcast. A single bolt struck the crystal, dancing about its surface as it illuminated her, breathless and alive.

Eight

With a final arching swing, she redirected the lightning skyward, piercing the dark gloom one last time with a dazzling shower of sparks. The thunder faded into silence once more as the last of the light faded.

Chest heaving, Ethira cut herself off from the flow of magic, sinking to her knees as the energy faded. Again the rain drowned out all else with its monotone drone. She breathed slowly for a moment, letting her own strength return to her.

2. Draped in Gold (Assan Lavellan x Dorian Pavus)

There were many things Assan seemed to have a knack for: archery and bad jokes seemed to be his specialty; suave comments and heart-stopping glances were another set of skills in his arsenal. One thing that Dorian didn't think would make the list was a taste in fashion.

And yet, there he was, resplendent in his attire for the ball: he wore a deep scarlet velveteen tunic with a black leather vest. A golden sash with the inquisition's seal embroidered into it draped from one shoulder down his side. A cape lined with fine white fox fur at the shoulders billowed down his back. He wore black and gold leggings with knee high black boots. Upon his face he wore a golden dragon mask. The Vallaslin that was showing under the mask had golden paint mixed into it. The whole effect was stunning to say the least.

"Dorian," He said with a slight purr.

"Amatus," Dorian responded, hoping that his face was nowhere near as red as it felt. He just looked so... stunning.

"Shocked, are we?" Assan teased as he held out an arm for him.

"Hardly," Dorian scoffed. "I'm merely impressed that you matched your colors properly."

"Oh please, Josephine picked the colors. I merely picked the mask."

"A dragon mask, for the proud dragon hunter? Someone's going for brownie points with the court."

"Anything to get them talking in our favor. Shall we go?"

Dorian took his arm and followed him outside to the carriage waiting for them. Bull and Blackwall sat inside already. They looked up as they took their seats.

"Going all out, eh, Boss?" Bull grunted. He itched at the collar of his red shirt. Josephine had commissioned identical outfits for the rest of the inquisition attending the ball at the Winter Palace. Crimson button-up shirts trimmed with gold, blue sashes, and ungodly knee high brown boots. Dorian had never felt so shabby. The only thing that made it better was that everyone else looked just as ridiculous.

"As if I could do any less," Assan said as he leaned back in his seat. The carriage rocked as it moved forward. Soon, they would be amidst a throng of nobles vying for more power and favor. Undoubtedly, the night would be incredibly eventful. Nothing normal ever happened to them.

"The evening will not be all fun and games, though," Blackwall said. "There is the peace talks we have to worry about. And the would-be assassin in a room full of fools wearing masks."

"That'll make this night all the more exciting," Dorian said. "Fine wine, fine dining, and the fate of an entire empire in our hands. Choose wrong and we destroy the world. No pressure."

3. The Blood Cure: Chapter 1 (Pavellan AU)

“He’s moving.”

“Keep steady. We don’t know what will happen once he’s fully conscious.”

Assan groaned as he heard the words. They came at him slowly, echoing as though coming at him through a tunnel. All he could feel was cold floor pressed against his cheek. Something was digging into his wrists and ankles.

Slowly, he pushed himself to his knees. He dared open his eyes and squinted in the bright light. Surrounding him were several soldiers, all pointing their guns at him. Painfully tight handcuffs dug into his wrists. His ankles were chained together.

“Finally awake?” A harsh voice asked.

A woman walked a circle around him, glaring in disgust. Ordinarily, he would have been scared, trying to find a way to talk a way out. But, he seemed to be beyond the help of a few cunning words and fake smiles.

"What’s going on?” Assan demanded.

“You damn well know what’s going on!” The woman snapped, kicking him to the floor. “Tell me how you did this!”

“Did what?” Assan snarled.

Another kick to his back was his answer. He hissed as a sharp pain shot up his side. He could hear a faint hitch in her breath; she was failing to keep composure. Something had deeply upset her, and he was apparently tied in with it.

“You will explain this to me now, or so help me, I will kill you,” She snarled, pressing the barrel of a gun against his cheek.

“You tell me what’s going on, and I’ll answer your damn questions.”

There was a silent pause. Another woman’s voice, this one a bit more gentle, answered. “You really don’t know?”

"I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Or how I got here.”

A red haired woman helped him up to a sitting position. She looked him dead in the eyes, “The Divine was trying to settle things between the mages and templars. Then, the whole building was blown to pieces. A foul disease is spreading everywhere. In the midst of the chaos, we found you, healthy, but unconscious. Everyone else was either dead or sick.”

“What does any of this have to do with me?”

The other woman stepped forward, her tone somewhat softer, but her face was still a stone mask, “There is a strange machine in the midst of the chaos; we believe that it is the cause of the sudden outbreak. Hoards of people are now roaming the streets, hysterical and deranged. The dead hunt the living. You are the only one in a state fit to interrogate. We want to know what happened.”

Assan stared down at his hands. He couldn’t remember anything. No machine, no explosion, and certainly no sick people. He looked between the two women, seeing how desperate they were for answers. Answers that he just didn’t have.

“I don’t understand….” He said finally.

“I think… we better show you, if you truly don’t know,” The dark haired woman stood and addressed her companion. “Go to front line, Leliana. We will meet you there.”

The red haired woman drew the hood of her purple sweatshirt, “Be careful, Cassandra.”

She turned and left the room, followed by several soldiers. Cassandra unlocked the shackles around his ankles and gave him a look that clearly said 'if you try anything, you’re a dead man' before unlocking the handcuffs. Assan rubbed his wrists. He doubted he would get very far with four armed men and an even more heavily armed woman escorting him if he tried to run. They had him cornered.

They pushed him from the room, guiding him down the hall. Soldiers ran to and fro; not a single one’s face wasn’t grim as they escorted civilians or carried supplies from one room to another.

They were in a hospital, but there wasn’t that usual feel to it. It was depressed, despaired. The main power supply was off, so only the emergency lights run by the generators were on, which definitely didn’t help with the atmosphere. The whole place gave off a serious ‘please kill me now’ feeling. Great, he thought, that’s a hopeful sight.

“Things seem pretty bleak,” Assan said, finally noticing that all the windows were boarded up. There were wooden planks and metal plates nailed to every window. “Is it really that bad?”

“You will see soon enough. Come; to the roof, first,” The guards left them as they neared the stairs. She motioned for him to go first. He started up the stairs, noticing how uneasy the air felt once the door shut behind them. The muffled sounds of screams and wails made the hairs on his neck stand on end. He slowed his pace, dreading reaching the roof. Did he really want to see what had happened?

#pavellan writes fan fiction #solavellan #pavellan #ethira lavellan #assan lavellan #dragon age #inquisition #dorian pavus #solas

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promisedyouforever · 7 years

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dementophobia, chapter five

I had a time and a half wrestling with this! But finally, here it is!

PAIRING: Ten x Rose RATING: Teen FIND IT: Ao3 | Teaspoon ON TUMBLR: Part One * Part Two * Part Three * Part Four * Part Five

@lvslie ...!

Chapter Five

(See Part One for full comments)

Twenty one days, seventeen hours, and fifty-three minutes before:

The Doctor stopped them where they stood. He’d not made much of the crowd at first, but looking at it now he saw it had more than doubled in only moments, a pace that was only increasing.

Dammit! Pete’s unexpected presence had distracted him and yanked his hearts and thoughts in too many directions at once.

The mob was some distance away yet, but the gap was closing. The unease Rose had momentarily chased away came swooping back through him to settle in the pit of his stomach.

Reflexively he tugged, pulling her closer. She came easily, fingers tightening against his with one hand while the other wrapped around his arm.

“Doctor?”

“It’s… ” He trailed off, searching the crowd with his superior vision. His attention swam from person to person as he tried to pick out details, to piece together some idea of what was happening. They were a diverse lot with no obvious commonalities beyond their humanity; yet here they were, united by something important enough to cut through such distinctions. And they were tense, the low white noise of agitation rippling through the sea of bodies.

Many were dressed in street clothes, but a few wore what looked like uniforms, all the same shade of grey and all bearing some variety of the letters “MMH”. They were far more nervous, and almost all hid their faces with handkerchiefs or scarves so that all he could see were eyes – jittery but fierce, anonymous eyes.

A few clutched what looked like photographs. He knew by the way they clung to them that they could only be pictures of loved ones.

He wasn’t sure which detail disturbed him most.

“Doctor?” Rose murmured again, snapping him out of his thoughts. He glanced down at her. “I think… This is some kind of protest, yeah?”

She’d seen enough social unrest in their travels together to know it when she saw it, a thought that gave him the peculiar sensation of simultaneous pride and guilt. Slowly, still scanning the scene, he nodded. “It is.”

But what was driving it? He needed to know more; he had no idea why they were even in this universe, but he had a gut feeling this was connected. He watched and weighed their options.

The mood in the plaza gradually escalated, and he circled the idea of fleeing the scene. What had begun as nervous bravery was rising and changing, becoming the kind of restless edginess that whispers riot police and broken glass. And the throng grew still, relentlessly, closing in fast.

He muttered, “This is very, very not good.”

Claustrophobic anxiety began to wrap itself around him, squeezing. They weren’t safe here. Telepathy dampened and time senses stressed by this universe’s unfamiliarity, there was still something, something scratching at the recesses of his mind.

Rose. Rose isn’t safe. The urge to pull her away grew until there and then she was the single overriding categorical imperative, a visceral need more important than breathing.

The warmth of her palm, skin against skin, conjured a flash of his empty reaching hand and electric air and her fingers losing their grip, white white walls and the blinding hungry pull of the Void.

Not safe.

That was all.

“We can’t be here,” he declared. He took a backward step and moved her along with him.

She hesitated. “Can’t we do something to help?”

He shook his head, apologetic but urgent. “No.”

Whatever this was, it was beyond their control. A deeply aggrieved populace was amassing, and they seemed on the brink of exploding into bright, violent flames.

A man holding a megaphone, features cloaked beneath a balaclava, shimmied up a lamppost near the government building.

Ah. The match that lights the gasoline.

Something jostled the Doctor’s shoulder and he whirled to see people now moving in from behind them, rushing forward en masse now that events were underway. Soon he and Rose would be surrounded, absorbed in the mob and cut off from exit.

He began to say so when someone darted between them, severing the lifeline of their joined hands. They fought to re-establish it as more people crushed in around them until finally, he caught her reaching fingers and pulled, forcibly dragging her free.

Breathless, she leaned into him and squeaked, “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

“Just stay with me.” He tightened his hold on her. “And don’t let go.”

She pressed closer. “Not a chance.”

~~0~~

PRESENT:

Rose flailed, eyes screwed shut, all knees and elbows and fists pummelling empty air to fend off some invisible attacker.

Without thinking, the Doctor scrabbled to get a grip on her. Her response was a sweeping roundhouse punch aimed at his head.

He yelped and caught her wrist just before the blow hit home. Snatching the other one up for good measure, he trapped her hands tight against his chest.

She kicked and yanked, struggling with all the panicked fury of a wild animal. Amazed at her strength and fearful she’d hurt herself, he still knew better than to let go. All he could do was yell, “Rose, stop! Stop! Rose!

“Stop!”

At his last and loudest she slumped back, surrendering to lie trapped, red-faced and snarling. Her breath came fast and shallow, her brows pulled wire tight over sealed eyelids.

Something feral growled across the surface of his brain. It was chuffing, sniffing – looking for a way in.

Then it was gone, vanishing before he could be certain it was ever really there, and Rose left him no time to consider it. Her head snapped back suddenly against the pillow.

She howled.

The sound of it sent razor blade shivers across his skin. It was utterly alien, even to him, a strange multiplicity somehow deafening and haunting, enraged and frightened and mournful all at once.

And so very, very wrong.

His throat constricted; this… creature wasn’t her.

It wasn’t Rose.

He’d found her – had it really been only moments ago?

He’d found her, and yet she was still missing.

But he’d seen her, caught that glimpse just before she lost consciousness. She’d recognised him. She was there.

She had to be. Whatever had set this off, she had to be alive still, inside somewhere and just – just misplaced. He could not believe anything else. If he could just calm her enough…

He rallied, determined to do whatever it took to be heard over the ear-splitting keen. “Stop, love, stop! I’ve got you; it’s alright.. you can do this… I’ve got you… you’re safe…”

He kept on for what seemed so long but could only have been seconds, a persistent litany of urging and reassuring, demanding and pleading. None of it did any good, and the only option he had left would be too dangerous to try if he couldn’t soothe her at all. He had to find a way.

After an inhumanly long time her lungs were spent. He rushed into the brief quiet with a voice now hoarse from shouting, and words never said spilled out in a ragged tumble. “Please, Rose, open your eyes. I know you’re there. You’ve got to come back. I need you. You’re scaring me now. Please. Please.”

She drew a long breath, prelude to another wild cry, and he couldn’t keep the muddy, thick tangle of emotion and frustration from flooding him. Without thought he burst out, “For fuck’s sake, Rose, it’s me!”

The second scream died on her lips. Her eyes flew open wide.

He’d shocked himself with his own profanity, but maybe that had done it. He could not stop a glimmer of hope from rising. A heartsbeat passed, then two, and he waited, but she seemed frozen. Tentatively, softly, he called her name again.

She startled at the sound, and her vision skittered blindly across empty space, searching for the source. Her pupils were huge.

Huge and ringed with swirls of luminous gold. He swallowed past the sudden stone in his throat.

“Rose?”

The unnerving glow flared into fiery clarity, bright and sure and no longer sightless. Preternaturally swift, her eyes shot up and nothing short of infinity was staring straight and unblinking into the darkest corners of him.

A voice that was still not quite hers whispered, “They know.”

What?

“They know,” she repeated.

“They’re coming.”

Whatever he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it. Confusion hammered home once more how little he still knew, how efficiently he’d been stonewalled from the very beginning as he stammered, “What? Who? Who’s coming? The Ministry? Who?”

The light in her eyes flashed white hot.

“Everyone.”

~~0~~

Twenty one days, seventeen hours, and forty-one minutes before:

The Doctor moved against the current as nimbly as he could, darting between people, pushing and squeezing past the ever tightening crush of protesters moving in. Rose slowed him down but he kept an iron grip on her hand and pulled her along with him.

Forty minutes:

He stopped for an instant, and she stumbled into him gracelessly.

He glanced up, gauging their position, and saw they’d made some progress. Just another few metres and –

Behind them, a megaphone crackled to life and the crowd hushed, stilled with anticipation. He took advantage of the distraction and quickened his already frantic pace.

Thirty-nine minutes:

The voice of unrest boomed through the speaker, shouting, “What do you want?”

A split second of silence followed, then a lone voice, elderly and fragile, found the courage and cried out in a thick Welsh accent, “I want me son back!”

That was the spark that lit the fire, and the crowd roared to life.

Thirty-eight minutes:

Chaos poured in around them. A wall of people surged forward, taking the Doctor stumbling with them.

Rose lost her footing completely and plummeted in the opposite direction.

Thirty-seven minutes and 47.6744 seconds:

Her hand was wrenched violently away from him.

Adrenaline flooded him and he dove toward her, crashing into people, heaving them aside and using his own weight to clear a path. He barely noticed – all he saw was glimpses of blonde moving too fast away from him; all he heard was the roar of his own ears and her voice calling him.

A flash of prescient induction insisted he wasn’t going to reach her. He ignored it.

Then without warning a heavy gloved hand grabbed his shoulder and sent him spinning. Before he could react the same hand caught him off balance and shoved.

He hit the ground. His head cracked hard against the pavement. It lolled sideways against his will, his cheek pressed into something wet and dark and mixed with the scrape of gravel.

Blood. His.

Oh gods. Rose.

Everything went blurry at the edges and impending darkness poured over him like thick honey, cloying and heavy and dragging him under.

He fought, willing himself to stay awake, to get up, to get back to Rose.

His body wouldn’t respond.

Disjointed, distorted flashes swam across his vision. Black boots. Military uniforms. The swing of a rifle.

Memory and waking nightmares bled hazy redwhite into the now, and it was the boots of Cybermen he saw, and it was Torchwood and Daleks and the crackling smell of voidstuff and the end, the end of it all.

don’t no hang on hang on

Her fingers weren’t strong enough and he couldn’t reach her, could do nothing but watch as she fell into the impossibly white absence-of and how could nothing be so bright? She crossed into it and in 0.005 nanoseconds the static devoured her without so much as a flicker.

She was gone.

Gone, and forever ended. Gone and he followed her, pulled into the light as the healing coma overtook him.

~~0~~

PRESENT:

Pete snatched his overcoat from its hook and shook it at Maddie. “How did you let this happen?”

Anger flashed in Maddie’s eyes before he saw it harnessed, pressed into defiance. “I did not ‘let it happen’! You’ve been running it all, Pete! We’ve done everything, everything you asked, and more!”

“Well, obviously your surveillance of him leaves something to be desired,” he snapped.

She opened her mouth and he knew it was to tell him what he already knew – how hard the alien had been to find, how something about this “Doctor” had eluded their best (admittedly alien provided) equipment.

He cut her off before she could start. “And her protocol damned well better hold!”

“It ought to!” she shot back. He raised his eyebrows at the less than complete confidence in her voice and she threw an annoyed glance at the ceiling. “We’ve never done this before, rewriting the memory centers so extensively.” She sighed. “I told you there were risks, Pete. I told you from the beginning this could open her up to brain injury.”

With more difficulty than he would have liked, he managed to keep his voice level, though it was weighted with sarcasm. “Well, what is your best prediction, Madame Scientist?”

She narrowed her eyes at him then took a beat to consider it. Her growing frown told him that he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.

“Well, Pete, let’s think through it,” she said, no small measure of edginess in her own voice. “We had to reprogram everything specifically for her from the ground up. But you know you’re the only one who has the termination sequence. It’s permanently dormant unless you activate it, and it should stay that way.”

He sensed she wasn’t telling him everything. “But?”

“But,” she said on a huge exhale, “that might be a problem itself. I honestly can’t predict the outcome of going offline without the termination protocol intact. It’s never happened. Her brain could retain its current state, revert, or wind up so much mash she can’t tie her own shoelaces. There are too many variables.”

It was hardly reassuring, not close to enough; a feeling he couldn’t quite identify was getting louder, more difficult to keep at bay, and it was egging him on. “Maddie, goddamit! If Rose is hurt – ”

She barked a short, humorless laugh, and he was thoroughly taken aback by the venom in her voice. “Bit rich to worry about that now.”

At that, a wave swept over him the likes of which he hadn’t felt in a long time. He drew himself up to his full height and pinned her in place with hard and dangerous eyes. For the first time in their history, to him they were no longer bickering spouses – she was the Minister, but he was the Autocrat, the only person alive more powerful than she was.

“If this ends badly,” he ground out, each word delivered with military precision, “I will hold you responsible.”

Shocked but unflinching, her chin angled up and she glared back at him with a menacing expression that promised devastation should he go too far. “Try it, Peter,” she hissed.

For an instant everything slammed to a halt as each of them stared the other down. Then something broke through in Pete, piercing the steel sheen of his authority. It was that feeling again, the sharp graveyard nails of something ancient and rusty. Something that had died forty-three years ago.

It bloomed in his awareness like the blood of a wounded soldier, a vivid crimson-stained flower on crisp white.

It was fear. Fear of losing his daughter.

It was making him rash.

Suddenly exasperated, he shook himself from whatever had overtaken him and barked, “Oh, God, we’re just wasting time!”

Maddie’s expression was inscrutable as he yanked on his overcoat. He ignored her, hoping she’d forgive him later. At least insofar as she ever forgave him anything.

He headed toward the doorway as he spoke. “Tell the agent to wait for reinforcements unless they try to leave, and get a team down there, now. I want all of your best people.”

She gave him a curt nod and moved two fingers toward the skin behind her ear when he interrupted.

“You go with them, understand?”

Again, she nodded. “What about you?”

Pete set his jaw. “Oh, I’m coming with you.”

Again she began to speak, and again he ploughed over her. The need to settle this and settle it permanently clawed at him relentlessly now. “No argument. I’m personally retrieving my daughter and doing what I should have done before. No more protocols. I don’t care what state she’s in. Your doctors and technicians will come to her. I’m bringing her directly under my care.”

She seemed to know better than to question him. “Alright, then.”

He turned away then back, almost as an afterthought, to give her one last order. “And tell them to get rid of that damn alien the first time anyone gets a clear shot.”

~~0~~

PRESENT:

Everyone.

The Doctor stared at this not-quite-Rose, into those unending eyes, and a bone deep chill rippled through him and he had no words at all to ask exactly what she meant.

Suddenly she broke away from his gaze and wrenched her hands from him with incredible strength only to pound her fists into the mattress beneath her – once, then again, and again. He was frozen, gaping and unable to process what was happening.

With the fourth impact, her back arched.

She began to spark, veins beneath her skin lighting up with streaks of gold, what looked for all the world like –

energy. Vortex energy.

Impossible!

She looked like she was about to regenerate.

For all its might, his so-impressive, massive brain fell poverty-stricken and he stared at her with owlish shock and unabashed awe.

With one last, mighty slam of her fists, her face morphed somehow and even her body shifted, and the glow abruptly vanished.

She blinked and he knew in an instant she was finally finally there, just Rose, his Rose. He forgot everything else and saw only her, and a muffled sob of relief escaped him.

She pushed herself up slowly with trembling arms, eyes darting everywhere as she took in her surroundings. Gingerly, he lowered himself to sit beside her, and as the bed dipped and she sat up fully under her own power, those eyes landed on him.

They were amber and hazel and only Rose, all Rose, full of bewilderment.

“Doctor?” Her voice was small and hoarse. “Where are we? What hap – ”

He didn’t try to rein himself in, didn’t even let her finish her sentence before he shot forward, wrapping her in his arms, enveloping her completely. Disoriented, still she returned the embrace without question, and it undid him completely. He held on, stroking her hair without letting go, rocking them both back and forth and murmuring her name until tears closed his throat and stung his eyes.

There was a rustle from somewhere behind them and a dumbfounded voice stammered, “What – What the hell was, was – that?!?”

George. He’d forgotten the man was even there.

He ignored him and only tightened his hold on Rose.

Held on. He held on and held on and couldn’t seem to stop until he realised the tables had turned. She was practically rocking him now, shushing and smoothing her hands along his back as she whispered gentling, comforting words. “Shhh, s’alright, we’re alright, I’m okay, Doctor, I’ve got you, it’s alright…”

He should be the one saying those things.

He pulled back and she took a deep breath, composed herself and met his gaze.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

He should be asking her that.

He cleared his throat and nodded slowly, looking back at her through red, raw eyes. “I am now.”

The meaning of that wasn’t lost on her, its honesty surprising. “Something bad happened to me, didn’t it?”

He didn’t know how to begin, what to tell her, what she recalled. His hand leapt to the back of his neck, mussing his disheveled hair even more. “Erm, well – let’s start off this way. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“We were in the Tardis and… and we had a rough landing, yeah? Did I hit my head or something?”

Another wave of relief washed over him – could it be she remembered nothing of the past three weeks?

But... no, he’d lied to her before, and he vowed never to do it again. “No. Absolutely no head injuries allowed in the Tardis,” he said, trying to lighten the weight of it.

She half-smiled. “Okay. But that’s the last thing – ”

Abruptly she switched direction.

“No, wait! That’s not right. I… you weren’t…” She cocked her head, concentrating. “I was in a really posh room, and I – did I live there once? I was playing chess with… I dunno.”

Chess?

She shook her head, frowning, and he watched as her thoughts doubled back on themselves. “No. No.”

Her frown grew puzzled, then dread began to steal away her confidence. “I don’t play chess!” she insisted. She gave him a pleading look. “Do I?”

Her confusion was what he’d expected, but this made him wonder just how much the Ministry had mucked about with her brain. There had only been the one time, in the library, when he’d tried to teach her to play chess. She loathed it.

He took her hand and replied softly, “No, you don’t play chess. It’s alright, though. I expected you’d be a bit confused.”

Though his touch was welcome comfort, she was still on the verge of tears. She shook her head again. “Yeah, but that’s not – I – Doctor, it’s all mixed up! Are you sure I didn’t hit my head?”

“I’m sure.” He opened his arms and said, “Come here.” She leaned over gratefully and curled into him until she was sitting in his lap like a lost child. He’d never seen her so vulnerable; she was always so strong. He wanted to wrap his hands around the neck of whoever was responsible for taking that away from her.

“It’s alright,” he murmured into her hair. “I promise. We’ll get back home and I’ll get you fixed right up, you’ll see.”

She quieted then, and it helped him ease himself down from everything they’d just been through as well. Gradually, other thoughts began trickling through, events to file away for examination later. Then he caught a glimpse of poor George, sitting in the desk chair now and staring at them with a look bordering on shell-shocked.

How, exactly, was he going to get her back home?

With a jolt, he remembered the warning.

They’re coming.

He had to get her out of there.

At that instant Rose stirred and he glanced down at her. It seemed she’d had a thought of her own.

She looked up at him and asked, “Doctor? Where’s Dad?”

As if a trap door had opened, his stomach plunged past the floorboards.

~~0~~

INDETERMINATE:

A leviathan Consciousness stirred. Something had disrupted a connection, severing a link in the collective web that sustained and nourished all things in its realm. Untroubled, the Consciousness moved without motion through space that was not space, seeking the source of the disturbance in the simultaneous everywheres that were not and yet were.

So many tiny creatures, so distracted, so fraught with the mundanity of their fleeting and finite three dimensional lives. The Mind was so often (what a strange concept, often) replacing them.

Easily the disturbance was located.

Oh. The gap in the web was bigger than expected.

The Mind stopped and looked again.

Peter Tyler. The small one who thought himself an emperor. It had been nothing to discern that his offspring was the one of true importance.

And she’d been cut off, disconnected somehow.

The Consciousness peered more closely.

Outrage rippled along Its not-body.

The Doctor.

to be continued...

#lvslie #ficandchips #myfic #dementophobia #part five #tenxrose #drwho #otp #i'm so happy to be posting this!!!#dwsecretsanta

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wileycarlin426-blog · 7 years

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A number of small to medium trees fill the very deep front yard. She spins and climbs out. The house is two stories. Certainly not a mansion but fairly large. Nick gets out and walk around to her door. The car slows and then goes up a long driveway. Nods to Nick web cam live free and then climbs on his Harley. There are no other houses visible.

Black leather and touches of silver. She sees cameras and little sensors in various spots. Roaring down the drive. Disarming a complex looking security system. A circle of wide couch around a central umm table. Angel feel fear touch her again.

Come back out naked and not wrapped in a towel. It is very quiet as he leads her inside. " "Sir will do for now. He takes her panties too. He goes another direction. " He orders in a mild voice. " he says as he waves towards the door. He opens it and takes the chain in his hands. She finds a small black and gold marble shower in a bathroom. Filled with everything she needs.

Wait for me on the couch. Somehow she knows none of them are still around. So she selects the best of the lot and gets to work. She looks carefully and does not find anything specifically for a man in here. The place feels unused. This room was for girls even if it was not decorated that way.

Wearing a light long black robe loosely tied. Which gets a lot better when he stops to take off the cuffs. Hot shower and a lot of scrubbing later she goes and lays down naked on the couch. Get up on the platform for me. And judging by the mix of shampoos alone more than a couple of them.

A little chilly but happy. " he asks as he nears the couch. " She looks at him and it and moves to climb up. You probably wish you had bigger breasts but I think they are lovely and fit you. You do have a little more bottom than matches the rest of your frame but that is very much a plus.

" She has been blushing a bit. Moving to the center and sitting down. Still a little damp despite all her efforts. What he said although somewhat clinical was still very nice to hear. "Still happy to be here? "It would be easy to guess lower.

Pushing out her chest without even realizing it. " she is feeling uncertain. He takes a seat on the couch. I am happy to play with you tonight. "Through that door is a shower. " He shakes his head. He was dead right about that one. His voice changes just a little.

Are you going to give me your, or his, number? Someone who does not wish to have a life outside of me. " He stands and moves to the edge of the platform. Nick looks at her for a while. The robe tie has come loose and he has nothing on under it. " Nick rolls his eyes. Makes me less to tolerate something I loathe.

" "Because I don't want a girlfriend and I doubt you want to be what I do want. " She looks a touch confused, "Then how do I get back here? She is still sitting with her hands on her knees. I don't wish to be tolerant, or understanding, or even nice. I hate things in my way. She finds a certain spark of defiance, "And what do I get out of this?

Tomorrow John will pick you up and take you home. Hand curled into a claw he first touches her shoulder and then draws his nails down her back. " He is behind her turning to angle closer. " Up onto the platform. More creative and sadistic than you can imagine. It is a very strong sweep.

He goes on all fours and craws around the outer edge slowly. Someone who does not care about friends or hobbies. Just out of arm's reach. Humiliate you so badly you may pass out from the blush. His hair swirling across his face at times. But you will have some freedom.

Take away a whole lot of your free cams will. I do not wish to lose your personality only mold it to suit me. And yes a big part of her wants to say no. This has reached the point of crazy. " He comes around the front again at the outer edge. She is not a foolish girl. Sitting up on his knees he looks her in the eyes. Now he is offering far more to her.

Moving a little closer. Quite the contrary most who know her would call her very strong willed. Romances that flare and fail. " Angel realizes that he started out just saying fuck for the night and then go. Relationships that are more deal than love just so she would not be alone for a while.

A few will tell of emotional scars she inflicted in past quarrels and urge caution. She is not stupid or overly gullible. There is just something about him. The memory of him being cuddly back at the bar makes her sigh ever so softly. " it comes out in bits and pieces. What does her life have to offer but more of the same?

But it is like a weight on me. I really did not want to do this with you. " He shuffles much closer. is that what I am supposed to say? Ok I got carried away in the bar but I like to show off. Either call the number by the phone and go home.

Late morning when you wake up you will have two choices. Then she thinks of the empty nights. " His hand is running down her arm. Only a couple of feet between their eyes. Angel has been sitting here feeling horny the whole time. Damn she cannot believe how good that feels. This is dangerous but it is not crazy.

She likes the look in his eyes when he looks at her. Just that simple touch and she is starting to melt again. There is a long deep kiss. Maybe time stops along the way maybe not. You cannot even begin to make a decision of this magnitude in a slightly buzzed moment.

You were wonderful at that. "You are delicate and lovely. Even when he finally pulls back her lips keep pulsing. Likes that a whole damn lot. His arms go around her. Her face is slowly pushed down against the cool leather. Being basically on display should probably bother her but she likes it. I will tell you the words then if you still want to say them. Her long body extending out in front of him.

When she feels his cock nuzzling against her pussy she wiggles her ass a little to entice him. Nick moves and she finds herself being turned around. This from his darker side. Her ass against his crotch as soon as she has turned. More than he would expect. Enough to worry him a little to be honest.

"ooooooooohohhhhhhhh yeeeeeeessssssssssssss" from her in a long breathy sigh. "Put your arms straight out above your head. Not super slow but a very easy pace. His hands roaming over her pert ass. Good advice and he takes it. Nick sighs a little as he presses fully against her. It was very soft but had just a perfect shape. Driving deeply into her. Not being fancy in the least.

Letting everything go to see what happens. Enjoying the feel of her. When his hands slide up under her body to pinch her hard nipples she shudders and cums. Not thinking just feeling. His desire for her is powerful. Hands on her hips he just slowly starts to fuck her. "Cummmmmminnnnnnngggggggg. So much pent up passion it is already starting to drip out of her.

He gives her a little more cock as she peaks but he does not let it get him. Right now they are filled with raw almost violent lust. Almost grey and so light. Nick is enjoying this. She gets some good solid thrusts into her in response and the wicked little smile is very nice. They seem to grab at him demanding. Dripping onto the leather. With a little shift he discovers she does have a gspot.

Angel just lets herself fall into it. He does pick up the pace though so even as she comes back down and throws her head from side to side to be able to look back he does not stop. She is nicely responsive. Suddenly it is like fucking the ocean. At just the right angle. His response is hard grip on her hips and really hard slamming into her.

Her whole body shudders. " she moans long and low. It builds fre cams and then she is smacking back hard against him and panting hard. Angel feels like she is going to melt. Difficult because the spasms are still rippling through her pussy and body. " He drives against her hard. or explode completely. But she tries hard to clamp down on him.

Trying not to be distracted by the pools forming around her knees. So he fucks her a little more. Clenching her ass and thighs. Nobody has ever done anything like this to her. Putting those rude exercises to use to grab his dick as hard as she can.

It takes a little while for the words to makes sense. "ooooohhhhhh fuuuukkk. nothing has ever felt like this. Her head comes up and there is a very sincere whimper at the loss of that hardness from inside of her.

Spreading and playing with the cum leaking out of her. Cock making very obscene wet sounds. He loves the wet mess she has become. When he touches the head of his cock to her little pink tongue she can taste herself. Nick pushes forward and his wet hard length slides a little into her mouth.

He comes around and gathers up her long light brown hair. Fingers running along her thighs and crotch. When he tightens his grip on her hair she winces but that is lost in the movement of his hips. Nick settles down in front of her. She keeps the friction going working the underside just below the head as hard as she can. But when he pulls back with a long wet slurp.

The girl tranny cam free cams may be young but she knows more than most. Angel locks her lips around it and licks at it. Only the first couple of inches but it is a thick cock and feels like it fills her mouth completely. He takes a very deep breath. Letting out in a groan she can feel the ripple along his skin. Slippery cock going across her lips.

She has sucked off almost all of her own juices now she works to drink his. The first spray is long. Knows it is about to happen. " he says as he watches his shaft and her mouth. Without a word she opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue.

Nick moves back off the platform and onto the couch. She holds onto his cock for as long as she can. Extending forward as he goes back. He does not pull back or stop. He puts her on her back with her head on his thigh. Hand idly moving across her body. "Will you tell me what you are going to do with me? Even coming up a little off the platform. A little slowly since she has been in this position for a while.

He smiles and brings his hand up to one rounded breast. The grip on her hair making it hurt but she does not care. The nipple is nicely long. His fingers wrap around it caressing gently. But she gets up onto all fours and moves across the platform and down onto the couch.

" she completes the question. " She starts and stops. It confirms the power I have over you. "I will rearrange your life so it can match mine as much as possible. They are small but firm enough to stand out even when she is on her back. "You are a sweet little girl. Stuff you really hate we won't do much if at all. But I want you to want the things I do.

There is a whole range of things I like to do. As my mood shifts we will move to something new. I will make you do things you do not wish to. Or a pet free cams gay cam rooms with a cage to sleep in. The ones you respond to we will make a normal part of our time. I have a fondness for dirty daughters I think you will be exceptional at that.

"Beyond that I like games. One night you might be a sexbot with no emotions at all just a need to serve. There are a lot of situations, circumstances, or relationships we can explore. "We don't just play at these things. A little scared when he mentions the cage.

You will be a number of different people. " She purrs softly as his hand moves to her other breast. Perhaps you will be a chained slave for a while. Talk like I am a teen and tell you how naughty I have been? " She is nodding a little. " "I have done a little acting. " "I like that a lot sir. Morning, noon and night. I am sadistic and a completely self-centered son of a bitch but I do have a heart.

" Angel is ready to just melt into the couch right now. " she asks sounding very eager. But it also means living that way. So you mean you like want me to come home in a little catholic schoolgirl outfit? Like me scooping you off a city street into a van. Twirling a lock of it between his fingers.

"We will take some risks. "Yes I will and that is exactly right. " The girl is just eating this all up. It is so personal and so sweet. Play out a little kidnapping and some other rough scenarios. The idea of being kidnapped made her shiver pleasantly. His playing with her had moved south.

I feel like I have been looking for you my whole life without knowing it. The gentle stroke along her damp lips filled her with his insanely cuddly warmth. You are the most terrifying man I have ever met. He is playing with her hair. I have never felt so safe. The contrasts of this man are so striking.

But if you don't do more I know I will die. Spreading her legs more. " she says with passion. "You have only begun to be be scared. There can be public fun and I am remarkably careful about such things. I don't like my play interrupted by others so I don't let them notice. " "They say that too.

" she says more groan than words. His hand grab at her and she gets pulled across his lap ass up. " he asks as his fingers sink into her. " he says somewhat regretfully. She has always had a lot of fantasies. She is crying out now. Good sharp solid stings. For a time that seems endless he really smacks her hard. What I did so willingly for you frightens me.

When he stops she is crying softly. If you are a toy then you are a toy. Spanking her as if in anger. When he hands turn her there is no resistance at all. There is a lot of whimpering though. She breaths deep but keeps still. Trying not to but her feet kick the couch a little. And I won't hold back. Nipples so hard they ache.

She is stunned to realize it but even at this moment she wants him more than ever. When his fingers hit the tight ring of her backdoor her eyes slam open. More than one sliding deep inside her quivering bottom. When he shifts and his hands touch her ass she groans. Fingers go from her now drippy crotch and up.

She tries to stay still. His touch sends ripples of pain up her back and down her legs. His hand comes down on her ass. Yes it hurts but still she is glad to have him inside of her again. Her skin is on fire too. It hurts more than it should.

Hands holding her tight and controlling every move. Such a simple thing but it fills a need that seems to be growing. When the wide head of his cock slides past his fingers she does sigh. She is far more sensitive at this moment. Working her ass first all the way down onto his crotch and then working it higher. For a while he just slowly fucks her.

Enjoying the control over her. Angel ends up straddling his lap facing away from him. Body involuntary pushing against his fingers. Nick does not fuck her to get himself off. In the end yes but that is not it at all. She has stopped crying. When he starts her moving in a short slow rhythm and brings one hand down to her crotch.

When he strokes across her wetness the sigh is no less than epic from her. He chuckles softly and lets a couple of fingers slide in and out of her for a while. He had made the taking of her into a long sexual dance. A life spills out in her mind. Gripping tight but not clawing into him.

But she loves the shivers those produce every bit as much as she loves the passionate pangs. To make the doing of it as long as he can. To be in the moment of it. Half of it all in scary shadows. Angel realizes something about him. She is moaning hard and the climax rips through her. His hand comes up a bit.

He fucks her to fuck her. To show him she could maybe. But what is really driving her is the desire to make him cum. And fucking hell that sends spikes of pleasure through her too. To take that power for just a second perhaps. To chat sex live in the world defined by the most primal of rules as much as possible.

Grabbing her ass and making her scream a little from the fire. Not only does she start to cum but she starts to fuck back against him. He starts rubbing her clit and she just loses it. He cums hard and thrusting. They breathe for a while. She collapses down between his legs. She goes to find a nicely stocked and clean room.

Smacking into her butt and grinding deep. He points her towards the kitchen with a list of food and drinks to grab. " he says with appreciation in his voice. Learning a little about her life. Life gets a little normal for a bit. Doing a little prep on the cheese to show off before bringing it all back on a tray.

When she comes into the big room he is still in his bathroom. He slumps back keeping one hand on her as so she won't move. Then back to a little different than normal. Angel is uncertain what to do. Mostly it is him asking her questions. Any particular reason?

When he walks out he is still naked. If you cannot respect something as simple as that then more seems unlikely. She crawls onto it to wait. He moves to the bed and they end up in it. The contractions of her ring grabbing his cock and milking it. If it is acceptable for me to ask.

They eat and talk a little. There is a bathtub attached to the bedroom at the end of the hall. "It has been a good night. "The number is by the phone. " "Isn't that my choice? "It has been a fucking wonderful night. " He shifts his head to look at her. Her head on his shoulder.

If you should disappoint me. And if you become disloyal. that fear that makes you shiver will become something else. Unless you don't want me. The kind that will haunt you. And yes he does scare her. I see it in your eyes. " "You should use it. I will walk away before that happens.

" she says with conviction. " She does maybe pale just a touch. One finger goes under her chin to tip it so she looks at him. If your attention should wander. The next morning 10:14 am. The kind of fear that freezes your heart. He points her to the showers and tells her where the bedroom is.

But it was never in doubt. She had walked the house a little. She had woken up from a dream. She would not walk away. " His hand slowly caresses her head as they drift off. She had always known how submissive she could be. Although exactly what 'sort' of guy Nick was she could not really put a label on. As Angel makes his tea she is humming softly.

I will never let you down. Just never met a man that seemed strong enough to take it. Turns out she was looking for the wrong kind of guy entirely. Moving up next to him. "If you do you will be the first. This was too good to let go of.

" the words have a power she can feel. Walking upstairs carefully with the tea she feels a little nervous. She sits it down on the table and sits down on the bed. His arm curls around her. You may call me Master. "I accept you as my submissive. Little ripples run through her body.

With a big beaming smile she says.

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