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ao3theskyisblue · 3 years

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In the light of twilight

Summary:

"How long are you planning on sitting miles away from me?"

"I'm only a few feet away from you. Miles may be overstating it, babe."

A 2x08 coda because I still haven’t recovered from last night

Read on ao3

“How long are you planning on sitting miles away from me?”

Carlos had stood up to hug Gwyn and Owen just before they reluctantly left to catch her flight back to New York, exchanging words of reassurance and a promise to get together again soon. He stood back to watch as Gwyn leaned down to kiss TK’s temple softly, Owen giving his son’s hand a squeeze.

“Take care of him.” Carlos couldn’t help straightening his back at those words, nodding at Owen in response.

“Of course, sir.”

He caught a fond eye-roll at that, and even Gwyn seemed to be holding back an amused grin, but the two had left the room soon after that. Which left him to head back to his spot on the uncomfortable hospital chairs, hands clasped before him as his mind raced again with the endless possibilities that could have happened tonight. He didn’t know how long he had sat there, thoughts a blurred haze, until TK had broken the silence.

Looking up, Carlos felt his breath catch at the tender warmth in TK’s gaze as he looked at him, quiet understanding lighting up his features.

“I’m only a few feet away from you. Miles may be overstating it, babe.” Carlos resorted to a tactic he thought he had under his belt, using humour to deflect. He could tell TK wasn’t fooled in the slightest, judging by the short huff of breath at that, before he was lifting a tired hand towards him.

“Still too far.” TK was definitely pouting now, but Carlos still caught the minuscule wince at the action, the movement definitely reminding the man of his injuries that would take a while to heal.

In all honestly, he didn’t know why he was hesitant to get any closer.

Back when they had finally found them, when he saw TK staggering against a table with a bloody bandage on his head, his feet had moved on autopilot, bringing him straight to his boyfriend’s side in a matter of seconds. There was an overwhelming urge, a need, to know that he was okay, that he wasn’t too late.

That trusting his gut had been right.

The overwhelming emotions that had his eyes clouding with unshed tears as he held TK in his arms then were unparalleled, and he knew that there was no place he would have rather been than right there. Everything after that had been a blur - his father arriving at the scene, their tentative conversation, a residual reminder of a family lunch date he had yet to inform TK about.

He had been so close to losing a part of himself today. Looking at TK who was still watching him patiently from the hospital bed, he felt as if the universe might tell him that this was all an illusion, that he had failed to protect the one thing he’s always vowed to protect, that everything he had worked for would disappear right before his very eyes.

“Carlos.”

Biting the inside of his cheek to stop the onslaught of emotions that hit him all at once at the sound of his own name, Carlos got up slowly and took a stumbling step towards the hand that had not stopped reaching for him.

“I’m here, and I’m okay.” TK whispered, and Carlos closed the distance between them, latching onto the offered hand like a lifeline, leaning down to pull TK into a tight hug, though still mindful of his injuries. Pressing a gentle kiss to TK’s hairline, right above the bulge of bandages, he closed his eyes and didn’t fight the tears that slowly slipped down his cheeks.

“How are you feeling?” TK murmured, and Carlos laughed wetly as he pulled back slightly to wipe away the wet stains on his face. Gentle hands replaced his own, and Carlos gingerly sat on the edge of the bed, lifting a hand to cover TK’s that were still delicately wiping his tears away.

“How am I feeling? You were the one that had a rough day.” Carlos shook his head, and TK immediately made a noise of protest.

“You haven’t had the greatest day either. How – are you still suspended?” TK asked tentatively, eyes searching his, and Carlos smiled.

“Still pending investigation. But I think that after these recent events, I’ll be back to work in a few days.” Carlos felt his heart stutter in his chest at TK’s brilliant smile at that, his eyes shining proudly.

“I’m so proud of you.” TK murmured, and Carlos leaned into the hand still cupping his face, turning to kiss the palm of it. Sighing lightly, Carlos reached for the hand TK had dropped down on the hospital bed, the warmth emanating through him soothingly as the latter immediately intertwined their fingers.

“I was so close to playing it by the book.” Carlos admitted quietly, dropping his gaze to the dull blue hospital linens, having a sudden urge to pick at them but TK only tightened his grip on his hand. “It hit a nerve, I guess, when my father told me my instincts may have been wrong. I kept on thinking if I didn’t let that man go today, if things would have gone differently.”

He didn’t look up, and he knew that TK would wait until he was ready. His boyfriend was surprisingly patient in times like these, and it was a source of comfort Carlos could always trust in.

“If you had arrested him, you would have – “ TK’s voice cracked at the end, but swallowed it down and continued, “you would have died. You, your partner, and whoever was nearby. You would have all died.”

Carlos hadn’t visited that part of what could have happened thoroughly yet. Certainly, he wouldn’t be here if he had played by the book earlier today, and who knows what would have happened after. The bank robbers would still be free, they would have just hired someone else to do the job, and the world would have moved forward.

Without him in it.

It was definitely something that he should probably talk about, and he will.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know that now. But then? All I knew was that I could have made a terrible mistake just from trusting my instincts, and I – I started to doubt myself.” Carlos admitted quietly and TK must hear the resignation in his tone.

“Carlos…”

“But I didn’t.” Carlos continued, looking up now, and he didn’t know what his eyes were portraying but it had TK’s widen slightly. “I didn’t play by the book. I chose to follow my gut and I’m – I don’t regret it. I would do it a thousand times over. Your father was right, our guts are what we take out there in the field, and I should trust it.” Carlos could see TK starting to smile, and it was impossible not to smile back.

“He also said we should have a heart behind our shield.”

TK’s smile widened, and his eyes were filling with emotion the longer they stared at each other. Carlos tilted his head slightly when TK pressed a hand to his heart, patting the spot gently.

“And you have a damn good one.” TK whispered fondly. Carlos let out a wet chuckle, taking the hand that was pressed to his heart to kiss his knuckles. He let his lips rest there, a physical reminder of what he could have lost today creeping in on him, before leaning his forehead against the warm hand, smiling helplessly.

“What?” TK tilted his head adoringly, and Carlos looked up to meet his gaze.

“I just really love you.”

He falls in love all over again at the elated smile that lights up TK’s face every time he says that, endeared by the shy edges to it as if he could never grow tired of hearing it.

“I love you too.”

Carlos took that moment to scoot just a little closer, lifting an arm to wrap around TK’s mid-section to lean in further. He was completely content in just staying like this until the doctors approved of TK’s discharge, but they hadn’t been staring at each other very long when TK’s brows furrowed slightly. Carlos was immediately on alert.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry I missed dinner.” TK lamented, looking like he was almost a little frustrated at himself and Carlos raised an eyebrow.

“You were kidnapped, pistol-whipped, and almost shot. I think that gives you a free pass, babe.” Carlos teased, chuckling quietly as TK groaned, shooting him an amused glare.

“You do know that your glares don’t work on me? I’ve since built an immunity to them, and all they do is make you look more adorable than you already are.” Carlos smirked, not even dodging the light hit TK landed on his shoulder.

“Don’t talk to me as if I don’t know what I look like. My head’s practically a bloated marshmallow.” TK said pointedly, but Carlos wasn’t deterred.

“So, soft and cute?”

TK shot him an unimpressed glare, looking like he wanted to roll his eyes but remembered how much his head wound had protested at that the last time he tried and held back.

“Only you can find me cute lying in a hospital bed like this.”

“You’re always cute, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.” Carlos reminded, eyebrows lifting as if challenging him to continue and TK merely shook his head slightly, an exasperated smile on his lips.

“You really need to stop being so sappy right in front of my concussion.”

“Never.”

Leaning in, Carlos pressed a light kiss to TK’s lips, grinning when he tried to chase him as he pulled back, the lips he had just been kissing already forming a light pout.

“I go missing for hours and you won’t even give me kisses?” Carlos snorted at that, narrowing his eyes at the playful glint in TK’s gaze.

“Playing the kidnapping card? Really Strand?”

“Gotta keep you entertained somehow in spite of everything.”

Carlos smiled, leaning down to gently kiss the corner of TK’s lips, much to his weak protest.

“Not in spite of.”

TK frowned, a questioning look in his eyes as Carlos reached up to delicately run his fingers through TK’s hair. Looking into the green eyes that caught him heart and soul ever since their first meeting in the rain, Carlos felt his body fill with warmth.

“I’m here, and I love you because.”

~.~

“You didn’t eat the pasta.”

Carlos locked the front door and turned to see that TK was staring at the dinner layout spread before him. He vaguely remembered being in such a frenzied rush to the Strand house that all he remembered was to blow out the candles, leaving everything else exactly where they were before he had sped out the door.

“You didn’t come home. I would never have started without you.” Carlos frowned. The very thought of eating without TK felt wrong in every aspect, and toed off his shoes, placing them neatly beside TK’s by the entranceway before padding over.

The pasta had gone cold, the sauce looking a little hardened against the spaghetti noodles. The salad was looking a little dry as the dressing no doubt seeped into the vegetable leaves and sinking to the bottom of the bowl.

“Well, let’s eat it now!”

At TK’s sudden exclamation, Carlos blinked rapidly, looking down at the slightly worse-for-wear food laid out before them to TK and back again.

“Now?” Carlos knew he sounded incredulous, which was only further emphasized by TK’s affirmative nod. “Ty, it’s – “ Briefly glancing at the clock, he continued, “four am in the morning.”

“And?”

Carlos couldn’t help a surprised laugh, his boyfriend’s eagerness to eat the food he had spent a better part of his day cooking slowly rubbing off on him. TK was already padding forward slowly towards the setup, no doubt wanting to heat it up, but Carlos laid a gentle hand on his arm, guiding him towards the couch instead.

“I’m pretty sure your mom already fed you a year’s worth of Matzo ball soup. How are you still hungry?” Carlos mused, his lips twitching in amusement when TK groaned when he realized he was not-so-subtly arranged on the couch comfortably.

“I know for a fact that you haven’t eaten much. If at all.” TK looked at him pointedly, and Carlos couldn’t exactly deny that. He had grabbed a coffee, maybe had a few bites himself of the soup that Gwyn had almost force-fed him too and that had been it.

Hunger had been the last thing on his mind, and in truth, he honestly hadn’t really felt it.

“Spaghetti at twilight. How romantic.” Carlos mused, pushing off the couch to head to the kitchen when a hand caught his wrist.

“I love your cooking.”

Carlos looked down at TK who was staring up at him, a sudden serious look on his face that had him falter in his steps.

“You know that, right?” TK asked, looking a little worried now, and Carlos immediately nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. You’ve never shied away from telling me, and the noises you make sometimes should be illegal.” Carlos loved how he could always make TK smile, and the soft smile that the man propped up on the couch was currently donning had his stomach flip pleasantly.

“Your cooking brings me comfort. You bring me comfort.” TK bit his lip, tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek in that tell-tale manner of when he was trying to find his words. Carlos, frankly, has forgotten every single word he has ever learned in life when he realized what TK was implying.

“I will always want to eat your cooking. It’s – it’s comfort, it’s home.”

The hug was sudden, and he hadn’t even realized he had moved until he realized one moment he was standing, the next he was crouching next to the couch with TK in his arms. He felt lips gently press a kiss to the crook of his neck, and Carlos absently wondered how his life had suddenly turned a meaningful 180 with just one fateful meeting.

“You’re my comfort too.” Carlos whispered, squeezing TK a little tighter, smiling shakily when the latter didn’t hesitate to reciprocate. “When I think of home, you’re the first and last person that appears in my mind.”

TK let out a shiver at that, and Carlos pulled back slowly to run his thumbs along TK’s cheeks, the softness of the skin making his heart ache. And when TK reached up to grasp his wrists carefully, he couldn’t help but lean forward for a gentle press of their lips.

“But your cooking still has my vote pending.” Carlos let out a smirk before stepping out of their hold on each other to actually head to the kitchen, grinning when he hears a sound of offended disbelief from the living room.

“Rude!”

As he heats up their intended dinner, Carlos glances back at the couch where TK was still glaring at the pillow in his lap, muttering something under his breath. Shaking his head in fond amusement, he was about to re-toss the salad when TK’s phone that he had forgotten on the kitchen counter lit up with a call from an unknown number.

“TK! Your phone’s ringing, do you mind if I pick up?” Carlos called, and TK made a sound of affirmation. Picking up the device, Carlos pressed on the green ‘accept call’ button before lifting it to his ear.

“Hello?”

The steady rhythm of raindrops falling suddenly sounded louder than anything in the world, the gray haze permeating through his thoughts as the onslaught of words slowly pieced together in his head.

His grip on the phone slipped, eyes widening when the voice on the phone relayed news that he had never prepared to imagine, a call he had never been prepared to receive.

He could hear TK calling his name in concern and looked up to see a pair of worried green eyes fixated on him.

Swallowing thickly, Carlos let out a shuddering breath.

“Something’s happened to Judd and Grace.”

#Tarlos #Tarlos fic #911 ls 2x08 coda #They just really love each other #So they're super soft in this

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consumeconstantly · 4 years

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Those Who Are Kind

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Summary: Siblings are the last thing on Marinette’s mind as she begins her frantic search for Tikki. Really, she can’t even consider them siblings, not yet. But they’re along for the ride, whether she wants them to be or not.

Duke doesn’t know what to make of the current situation.

He’s always known that the Waynes are crazy, insane, even, but he loves them all the same, in the begrudging, cautious way he cannot shake. (This approach has served him well over the years, allowing him to avoid multiple schemes that Tim or Jason typically start up to rile up Damian. From there, everything is guaranteed to snowball. The only time things get really bad is when Cass gets involved.) To him, it’s always been a bit uncanny how similar all the brothers looked, despite the fact that none of them shared blood. All of them had the same sharp jaw, piercing blue eyes, chiselled cheekbones and defined bodies. Only Tim and Damian differed slightly, with Tim having a dancer’s figure instead of that of a body builder or demolitions expert, and Damian having green eyes instead of blue. It’s also disconcerting that everybody the Waynes are more intimately involved with have some sort of alter ego. He often joked with other members of the Justice League that heroism ran in Bruce’s blood.

With the new addition of Marinette to their family, he has to say that he’s been proven right.

A girl who had absolutely nothing to do with the Waynes in any capacity other than the fact that she and Bruce share blood becoming a hero. The leader of a team. Fighting supervillains at the age of thirteen.

He’s very, very glad that he was not adopted by or shared blood with Bruce. He doesn’t think he could have handled being a superhero at age thirteen. He can barely handle being Signal now some days, and he’s an adult. The amount of responsibility on Marinette’s shoulders is difficult to understand. To be the sole wielder of magic that can revert an entire city back to its original state. To bring people back from the dead.

Dick is strangely quiet. A car is driving them from a pit stop near a zeta tube to Marinette’s hospital.

Hands down, Dick is the most sane male of the Wayne family, not including Alfred. But there are times when Duke sees the weight that he carries. All the times that he refuses to talk about the burdens that he bears. Moving forward with a smile when he’s in pain. When he gets in a mood like this, he’s hard to read. But given the circumstances, it’s fairly clear exactly what’s bothering him.

“He’s known about her this entire time,” Dick says, tinted windows allowing Duke a glance at his expression, carefully devoid of any telling emotions. “Nineteen years. He kept her a secret.”

“It’s Bruce.” The man is known for keeping secrets.

“Yeah, but Marinette is family. She should have been, at least. And now…”

Now she’s all alone when she should be surrounded by people that love her, praising her for her victory, for how she shouldered so much responsibility at such a young age. But by bringing her to a hospital in America, she’s been cut off from her team, and any support system she should have had is gone.

“You and her,” Duke says, looking for a way to comfort him. “You’ll get along. You’re similar, after all.” After they brought Gabriel and Lila to the a top security prison and sent Emilie to a hospital that couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, they got two files from Tim. One detailing Ladybug and all of her exploits. The second, detailing Marinette’s life.

Duke has watched the videos. Has watched how Ladybug leads by example, comes up with the plan and begins the execution. How she shoulders more battles than she should.

He’s seen Marinette pull people together with a smile on her face, even while she’s running on empty after a strenuous akuma attack.

Dick and Marinette are alike.

“We’re too much alike,” Dick says. “I suspected for a long time that Bruce had another kid that he wasn’t telling us about, but I thought that if he was keeping her away from us, then maybe she’d have a shot at leading a good life. A normal life. Not the one she got. Sabine’s— Bruce’s biological daughter shouldn’t be somebody like me. She deserves better.”

Duke is acutely aware that Dick’s parents were also murdered, but whatever relation he had with Sabine is something he’s never been willing to talk about. There are pictures in his apartment of a petite Asian woman with a soft smile standing next to him, but whenever asked about her, Dick never gives a straight answer.

“Nobody has the ability to change the past.” Duke claps a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He sags imperceptibly under the weight.

Well— actually, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities, given the fact that magic, aliens, and metahumans all coexisted, supplemented by the fact that multiple members of Marinette’s team do have the ability to travel back in time, but that’s another matter entirely. There’s not a lot of information on the Miraculous, and all of their knowledge is coming from Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Zatara, and even the three of them don’t know everything.

“But you have the chance to do good by her. Be a good older brother, like I know you are.”

A thin smile appears on Dick’s face. “She’s going to need more than just one good influence on her life. And Damian is better, but you saw how he looked at her when Bruce brought her through the Zeta tubes. Tim’s not going to react well either, and Jason is a wild card. She’s not going to get the support she needs if she stays with us.”

Duke crosses his arms, knees brushing up against the back of the car seat. “The only person whose actions you’re responsible for are your own. Don’t worry about them. If they don’t like her, they’ll just avoid her.”

That’s certainly not true— all of the members of the Wayne family are notorious for going hard after all of the things they don’t like. But... it’s comforting to hear. Sometimes temporary and known lies are much nicer than harsh realities.

She’s gone.

All of her belongings are missing, the IV needle is hanging from the stand, the window open, and Marinette is missing from her bed.

At least she left a note?

Be back soon — Marinette

“Great,” Duke mutters under his breath. “Another incredibly vague, cryptic Wayne.”

Dick’s face turns to ash. “Her legs. Her head. She can’t go out so soon. Hold on, maybe Barbara can pull up some footage.”

“On the bright side, there’s no blood,” Duke says.

“That’s not a bright side.”

“It is,” Duke argues. “She fell in the worst places possible, right on top of that broken glass casket. If she’s not bleeding that clearly means she didn’t pull her stitches on her mad escape out.”

When Ladybug fell, they’re not exactly sure what happened, because the screen showed Ladybug collapsing almost gracefully. When they arrived on the scene, she flickered between Ladybug and Marinette as her earrings beeped. Her legs were slashed from falling on the glass with a seemingly unnatural force— simply falling would not have garnered cuts that large— and her head was twisted at an odd angle, debris bloodied beneath her.

Somehow, the Miraculous Cure seemed to be working backwards. Not from the epicenter out, but rather from the edge of the damage, in. It worked slowly, every mile taking minutes instead of mere seconds. It hadn’t happened before in any of the battles.

It was useful in apprehending Hawkmoth and Pavona, who were still knocked out. But Marinette, even after the Miraculous Cure washed over her, didn’t get healed. Her injuries didn’t revert. There was still a gash on her stomach from Hawkmoth’s cane, still muscles exposed on the back of her legs and blood on her neck. When she was first brought in, the doctors feared that she may be permanently incapacitated.

Good at keeping to her word at least. She came swinging through the window with worry on her face and grief in her eyes.

“I need to go back to Paris,” she says.

Dick will undoubtedly say no. He’s a very protective person, and Marinette is the center of his current efforts.

But she doesn’t look injured. He eyes her stance. She’s standing with no effort, walks with no limp. No hospital dress, no blood on her neck, no bruises in all of the places he was expecting them to be. Marinette does not look like she just faced a world ending threat less than twenty four hours ago. She certainly doesn’t look like she’s permanently lost the use of her legs. There’s the familiar Wayne Brand Stubbornness in her eyes— no way she’s not Bruce’s kid— that tells him that she’s going to get to Paris one way or another, and that they’re either lucky they were even notified in the first place or that she wants to use a resource that they have that she does not have access to. It’s fairly obvious what that resource is, considering that Paris is nine hours away by any normal plane and it sounds like she wants to get there in minutes, and not hours. Duke also knows that if they don’t take what she’s offering now, she’ll use an alternative method that definitely won’t be as nice or clear cut.

He jumps in before Dick can say anything. “We’ll take you as long as we go with you every step of the way.”

Oh, he’s going to get in so much trouble for doing this. Dick is looking at him with his Disapproving Dad glare, and he can imagine Bruce going into brooding silence when he hears that Duke allowed this to happen.

Marinette’s lips pinch together, but she nods. “Where’s the nearest zeta tube?”

Barbara gets Dick’s text and sighs in frustration.

She’s already got her hands full with watching Tim, who’s spiralling trying to find information about the Miraculous, muttering under his breath in the way he does when he gets a particularly hard case to crack. He’s gone through six cups of coffee in the last hour, and he kicked off his research with a combination of 5 Hour Energy, Monster, three packets of sugar, and 10 caffeine shots. Soon, she’ll have to start limiting his caffeine intake, but right now it’s clear that any attempt to get him to stop his research now will fail spectacularly. At least she’s not in charge of Damian and Jason. Wherever they are, they’re definitely on the move and not happy.

She never thought she'd be able to say she’s happy about being paralyzed from the waist down, but she certainly doesn’t want to be chasing after one of the two hellions. Cass definitely has her hands full and whoever’s watching Jason— wait, is anybody even watching Jason? Typically Roy gets stuck with Jason-sitting duty, but he’s been out for a while.

Barbara groans. Jason is probably on his own, wreaking havoc.

Great.

She’ll deal with that later, even though she has no doubt she’ll regret that decision, but if Marinette is gone from her room, Dick needs the footage, and somebody needs to find where she is. The nurse put in her latest report that her legs were almost healed and that she didn’t show any signs of a concussion, but Marinette was in bad shape when she got admitted to the hospital. Even though Barbara doubts that there was any misdiagnosis, given that Bruce sprung for a VIP room in one of the pricier hospitals, in a world where magic and aliens are present, who knows what’s true or not.

“Tibet!” Tim jumps up from his hunched over position for the first time in hours. “I’m going to Tibet, the closest zeta tubes are three hours by car away, but I can get somebody to loan Wayne Industries a helicopter while I’m over there.”

“Sit down, Tim.” Barbara takes her glasses off and pinches the bridge of her nose. Why can’t Bruce rein in his children? Why is she the one stuck babysitting? “Marinette left her hospital room.”

That certainly gets Tim to put the brakes on his movements towards the zeta tube in the bat cave.

“What?”

“I said, she left her hospital room. Just sit down while I send the information over. It’s not going to do you any good to rush into things anyways.”

A quick review of the surrounding CCTV shows that Marinette didn’t travel far, just around the hospital. She’s looking for something, calling out for it, too. Barbara grabs that file and slows it down so she can read her lips. “Dickie? Do she and Dick know each other already?”

A quick text back to Dick reveals that Marinette has already returned to the room and—

Oh, hell.

“Well,” Barbara pushes her laptop away from her, letting Tim watch the files she’s pulled up. “It looks like we’re taking a family trip to Paris.”

Somehow, Marinette almost manages to lose all four of them within the first four minutes of roaming around Paris.

Luckily, their family has an almost absurd amount of luck between all of them (not all of it good) and the person Barbara was half sure she could only find in prison, beating up Hawkmoth and Pavona, runs into Marinette on the streets and herds her back to them.

“Lose something?” Jason asks, arm slung around Marinette’s shoulder, the smaller, younger girl looking rather upset at having her plans thrown off.

“I told them that they could follow me,” Marinette argues without much real bite. It’s not my fault if they can’t keep up, is the clear meaning of her statement.

Again, Barbara is very impressed that the barely nineteen year old somehow managed to shake off vigilantes with decades of experience with ease. But it is, at least, partially due to her disability. Every time she goes out in her wheelchair, her heart aches a little, especially as the civilians she passes eye her with pity. Barbara doesn’t want pity. Doesn’t need pity. She shouldn’t feel anything when people look at her like she can’t keep up, because she can keep up.

Most of the time, anyways.

It doesn’t matter how she uses her tech skills to modify her wheelchair and deck it out with all the equipment she could ever need, or that she can easily get up to speeds rivalling sports cars for short periods of time before the power runs out. When she’s stuck in her wheelchair, she loses the maneuverability she had when she wasn’t paralyzed.

She couldn’t follow Marinette through the alleyways because she was stuck. Barbara was the one who noticed her escape first. If only she were more capable, she could have—

But it’s okay now. Jason ran into her. Marinette is back with them.

“I need to search for something, and none of you can help.” She’s not intentionally being rude when she says it, and if anything, sounds apologetic. Barbara sees the similarities between Marinette and Bruce. It makes a lot of sense that the two of them are father and daughter, when the two of them are so insistent on keeping major issues to themselves. Marinette twists herself out from underneath Jason’s arm, clutching her purse. Her head doesn’t move, but her eyes are wild.

“We can help,” soothes Duke, ever the voice of reason. “You know who we are.”

“And I’m guessing you’ve all either deduced who I am or have been told my identity,” counters Marinette. “Which means you should know why I can’t have you helping me.”

Barbara and Duke exchange pointed glances.

“That’s not really clear to us, actually,” says Barbara. Marinette isn’t moving, but the way her shoulders tense makes her believe that the younger girl is ready to run at the drop of a hat.

A small group of people from the parade on the streets tumbles into the alleyway they’re resting in. They smell like cheap booze and sweat.

“What are all of you doing in this alley?” one says, after he finished vomiting up his last (very colorful) meal. “You should be out there partying with the rest of us! Celebrating Ladybug and her team.”

“Fuck Hawkmoth and Pavona,” says another solemnly, with neon face paint and pigtails with glitter string intertwined. “Their defeat should be celebrated by even the darkest souls.”

Jason, easily amused by their antics, looks very willing to join them. “Yeah Marinette, we should be celebrating Ladybug not—”

As one, everybody looks at the place where Marinette was, just moments ago. The alley is decidedly empty of a small asian girl with blue eyes and pigtails.

“Fuck,” Jason curses.

“Fuck is right,” Duke agrees, placing a hand over his temple.

Marinette manages to disappear for three hours.

Three full hours.

“She’s good,” Tim says, typing into the holographic computer embedded into his sleeve.

Paris’ CCTVs are painfully easy to hack into, though he suspects that the lack of attention to them may have to do with the fact that everybody in the city is celebrating. Policemen, politicians, artists, students, scientists— people from all walks of life are in the streets today, screaming and shouting and being free for the first time in years.

He spies more than just a few dozen people bawling their eyes out within a few minutes. But that’s not surprising, considering how long Parisians have had to suppress their emotions for.

Dick and Barbara are still in the midst of profiling Marinette, trying to determine the most likely places where she’d stop by, either as Ladybug or herself. All of Ladybug’s usual haunts are decidedly devoid of the young heroine, though Tim does manage to catch a good amount of footage of the other young heroes like Carapace and Rena Rouge, who are most definitely in a relationship based on their makeout session on top of the eiffel tower (one of the first places Tim checked), Viperion, who seems to be the only one from Ladybug’s team to be seeking out the crowd which seems rather atypical considering that the hero never frequented interviews or was spotted on news coverage all that frequently, and Chat Noir and Queen Bee who Jason insisted were in a relationship as well, though the rest of them believed they were only embracing each other out of comfort— Chat Noir looks like he’s been crying for hours, and Queen Bee looks like she’s barely holding it together.

Ryuko has not shown up on camera once today. Neither has Ladybug.

The second place Tim checks is the bakery. She is not there either, though another girl is. It doesn’t seem like the girl has any ill intent, but Duke is more than happy to pull up past files to see if she’s been there before, if she has any reason to be there, and who exactly she is.

Just as Barbara and Dick are debating the chances that Marinette would be at Le Grande Paris, she walks past one of the cameras focused on Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie. Tim has the system rigged up so that any facial matches for Marinette automatically alerts the room. He hadn’t been able to replicate that with Ladybug’s face for some bizarre reason which is why he, Barbara, Dick, and Jason are manually combing through the areas where Dick and Barbar think she may be (magic is why, but Tim has always believed that technology can be used against and with most forms of magic) so it’s lucky that she enters as Marinette.

“Kagami Tsurugi,” Duke says triumphantly. “She visited often when Tom and Sabine were still alive. Potential candidate to represent France or Japan for Sabre in the next Olympics. Definitely friends with Marinette.”

“Thank God,” sighs Dick. “Now let’s get over there.”

It’s truly, truly unfortunate that they set up shop quite a distance away from the bakery.

They take too long to arrive.

Perhaps it was a mistake, telling Kagami first.

No, not just perhaps. It was a mistake. A bad one.

But Kagami was pushing so hard, and Marinette was so tired and so alone without Tikki at her side, without the knowledge that her parents would be waiting for her. Kagami pushed and pushed and pushed about why the house felt so empty, why there was dust on the floor, why the bakery was closed for so long, and where were Tom and Sabine? Why weren’t they there for the team yesterday, when the battle was won, when they knew how important it was to be there for Adrien who had just lost all three of his parental figures?

The moment the words fall from Marinette's lips, she knows she shouldn’t have revealed it at that moment, because Kagami draws in on herself, lips turning downwards, hands curling into fists.

Kagami has come a long way from the girl she was in lycèe. The thrill of victory is still something she enjoys, but not something she needs to feel secure in her place in the world. She has trouble expressing her emotions, but when it comes down to it, she communicates everything necessary to understand why.

With the news of Tom and Sabine’s death, she withdraws into herself, shifts back into that thirteen year old Marinette first met. Logic and rationale thrown to the wind in favor of cold anger.

It’s no secret that Ryuko, Ladybug, and Viperion are the main strategists of their team. Viperion, out of his duty of using Second Chance and his ability to keep a level head in the face of constant death. Ladybug out of necessity as her position as team leader and the power of Lucky Charm. Theoretically, the two of them should have been enough. But over the years, Kagami became Marinette's favored confidante; though Ladybug trusts all of her team to keep a tight hold on any information she gives them, Kagami is one of the few who is able to pick apart a given situation and transform the monsters they face into manageable pieces.

Today, it is Kagami who has broken to pieces. Very angry, razor sharp shards that seek to hurt.

“You lie to the media, tell them a pretty tale of how they died due to a break in. Why do you avoid pinning their deaths on Lila as you should? To absolve a quality woman from guilt?”

Marinette can’t look Kagami in the eyes.

Her parents deserved a peaceful death. To pass on in old age, hand in hand. Not looking on as a family member died, in fear of what would happen next for their daughter.

“The police know. The judges know,” Marinette protests weakly, but without much eight behind her words.

Kagami just scoffs. “Tom and Sabine were kind people. To not tell the media what truly happened— that’s preventing Lila from getting the full force of what’s coming to her. What happens if she gets out of prison one day? Without any real deaths to her name, she could just flee to another country to escape it all. And when another person loses their life because of her…”

She doesn’t need to finish her sentence. If somebody else gets injured in any way, shape or form at the hands of Lila Rossi, it’s Marinette’s fault. Marinette gets what Kagami is trying to say. She thinks the same thing, after all.

“My parents would not want their death publicized in that manner.” It’s the truth, but it’s said so weakly that the words come off as little more than a weak defense, and Kagami takes the words and twists their truth.

“You know little of your parents, considering that you’re their daughter.” Kagami stands stock still, not a single extra muscle moving. “Perhaps if you spent more time with them as Marinette instead of unsuccessfully gallivanting around as Ladybug, you’d have realized that Tom and Sabine admire truth above all else, even if it is painful.”

Kagami does not ask a single question about where Marinette was last night, or how Marinette felt over the loss of her parents or when she saw all those she held dear lying still on the ground after Hawkmoth and Pavona’s final attacks. She just purses her lips and sweeps out the door.

And then she’s gone, and Marinette is alone once more.

The bakery is bone-achingly quiet.

Every step Marinette takes creates such a disturbance in the peace that moving hurts.

But she can’t stay here. She can’t stay here. She does not deserve to stay here. Kagami is right. Marinette was a bad daughter. She could have prevented their death, could have given them justice sooner, could have—

And Marinette can’t breathe. She tries to, she tries so hard to, but she chokes.

She kneels down on the floor— Kagami is right again, the place is dusty, because Marinette couldn’t bring herself to use the living room and kitchen without her parents, could barely bring herself to sleep in her bedroom because she knew that her parents were not sleeping soundly in the bed below hers— and scrabbles at her throat, vision coming in and out.

Her legs burn. She knows that during the final battle, her legs were cut towards the end of it, and they should be healed, she should be okay now, she’s better than this, she’s—

Somebody gathers her in their arms. They smell slightly of Lotus flowers, just like Maman, and cradle her ever so gently.

Marinette’s eyes open— black hair, greyish eyes filled with understanding and love and—

She can breathe again.

She falls asleep.

“Cass?” Dick’s eyes widen at her unexpected appearance at Marinette’s home.

“I thought you were on Damian guard duty,” Barbara says, fixating on the red around Marinette’s eyes and the barely dried tear tracks on her face.

“Where’s that Kagami girl?” Jason scuffs his shoes on the hardware floor, silently marking the footprints on the floor and getting a general idea of what occurred before they were able to get here based on Marinette’s current state and the other girl’s absence. “I want to have some words with her.”

Cass inclines her head sharply, eye sparking with anger. Jason’s fists rise unconsciously— Cass rarely gets angry, and whenever she gets angry at a specific person, that means they’ve done something very, very wrong— ready to hunt down Kagami. Marinette sniffles and shifts in Cass’ one armed embrace, to which Cass places a finger over her lip and shakes her head, a universal sign to be quiet.

Jason scowls but settles down.

They’re quiet as they wait for Marinette to wake.

@biodad-bruce-month

Maribat tag list(to be added onto this pls send me an ask/dm): @our-precipreciousss @my-dear-friend-anxiety

Who Are You (and what will you become) tag list (to be added here just comment): @anjuschiffer @theunquiet-dead @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @cresentmo0n @allulily @myazael @zalladane @rebecarojas07 @keepingupwiththemalfoys @frieddonutsweets @all-mights-asscheeks @thornalchemist23 @trippingovermyfeet @jiso-lee @redscarlet95 @ira-sairain @screechingflapbiscuitpeach @ramos123 @cutechip @theunquiet-dead @sleep-deprived-aroace @enternalempires @lilkymilky @woe-is-me0 @officiallydarkgeek @miyla-lokidottir @queencommonsense @demonicbusiness @iamablinkmarvelarmy

@emark7 (i will have the edited version of these on ao3 eventually but i think the link to ch 1 on this one works)

where i ended this doesn’t feel very good but ehhhhhhhhhh my writing process is summary then word vomit that barely correlates which means nothing makes sense unless i edit but looking back at my work makes me cringe so at a crossroads yayyy

also can you guys tell which prompts ive written these for because i’m curious

#bio!dad bruce wayne month 2020 #bio!dad bruce #maribat #marinette dupain cheng #bruce wayne #duke thomas #jason todd #dick grayson #damian wayne #barbara gordon #tim drake #cassandra cain #batfam

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shadow-commet · 3 years

Text

This game has far too little fan content. So here, have a fanfiction I wrote yesterday instead of sleeping. Edit: I figured out how to add read more, yay!

W͟a͟t͟c͟h͟i͟n͟g͟

Light footsteps sounded behind him, coming to a stop what must have been a foot or two away at most. He didn't turn around. "He's not woken up yet." the man mumbled; murky brown eyes fixed upon the unconscious figure in front of him.

Silence hung heavy in the air as they both watched the detective's chest rise and fall in a slow, almost hypnotic rhythm. Other than that, the sleeping man lay completely still. Not even his eyes were moving behind his lids to indicate dreaming. Pierce hadn't moved at all since he'd passed out in his arms. That had been 15 hours ago. If he weren't still breathing Bradley would be sure he was dead.

A sigh echoed through the empty room. "It's getting late Ethan, get some sleep." The officer didn't move.

That wasn't much of a surprise. He'd been sitting there staring at the detective for most of the day already. Marie knew he was worried about him. She was too, of course. Neither of them knew why Pierce hadn't woken up on his own yet, nor why nothing they tried could rouse him. She suspected he was simply incredibly exhausted. They didn't know how much time he had actually gotten to properly rest since he'd been found at the cave in. Or if he had gotten any rest at all.

But even if that was the case, 15 hours were still very concerning. Especially because she couldn't find anything physically wrong with him. A strange notion considering the cave in he'd survived. But without anything physically wrong with him, they were unable to do anything but wait for Pierce to wake on his own.

Bradley wasn't much of a fan of that fact and so he had refused to leave Pierce' side. Stubbornly watching over him, anticipating the other to rouse any second. It didn't seem like he would leave any time soon either, even if he should go to get some rest himself.

"Ethan..."

"I'm not leaving." he stated, interrupting his old childhood friend. The officer still hadn't even turned to look at her.

Another sigh left her lips. Bradley could be far too stubborn for his own good sometimes. But it didn't look like she could convince him to leave Pierce alone. A clock in the house chimed. 9pm. She'd try again in an hour. If he still wasn't leaving, then she'd drag him to the next couch to sleep herself. For now though she left, soft footsteps getting quieter and quieter as she walked back down into the main room.

The brunette officer once again found himself alone with the unconscious form of Edward Pierce. He had been watching over him for hours now. Why? Bradley wasn't entirely sure either. He just...felt like he should. Just like he had just felt as if he desperately needed to get the other man out of the psychiatric wing at the hospital. There was no proper logic to these feelings. It was as if he had that strange need to protect the detective as well as he possibly could, keep him safe, warm and happy.

It was weird really, he'd only known Pierce for a few days at this point, heck Bradley hadn't even told him his first name yet! Yet he felt a certain...connection to the other man. Ethan couldn't properly describe it, didn't even know what it was himself but...he knew it didn't feel bad. It felt sort of warm and fuzzy, reassuring in a way.

These feelings weren't exactly helping in his worry however, as that was what had gripped his heart. Worry. Worry about why the other wouldn't wake up, why he was so still.

Seeing the detective so completely motionless was somehow surreal. In the entire time he'd known the man from the mainland he'd never seen him completely still and relaxed. Pierce had always been moving in some way; be it his ever searching, curious, perceptive eyes wandering over his surroundings, his strong hands tensing and relaxing with a rhythm only they seemed to know, his feet carrying him swiftly and gracefully from place to place or his lips, curling and parting to ask, speak, silently convey his emotions and opinions. Now, lying there without these constant comforting movements he looked strangely vulnerable.

A look that was only added to by his current state of undress. Marie and him had taken Pierce's leather harness, his vest and his tie off, leaving him only in his white, hastily buttoned up shirt and undershirt. To Bradley, this looked weird on Pierce, wrong. Such as is usually the case if you only know a person dressed in specific clothes.

Pierce would probably think Bradley's own current attire weird, had he been awake to see it. The brunette had taken off his uniform jacket and hat, had taken his belt off and opted to open the first few buttons of his shirt, his sleeves rolled up over his elbows.

His eyes wandered with over his friend's body...friend's? Yes...yes, he supposed he could call Pierce that...maybe. No injuries were visible, albeit the detective looked rather pale, ruffled up and tired, even as he slept.

A deep sigh left his lips. The first sound he had made since telling Marie that he wouldn't leave the other man alone. Slowly he leaned forward to rest his head on the couch next to Edward's chest. He was getting tired. "Just what happened to you after we left the office?" he mumbled quietly, glancing up at the slack, expressionless, breaded face of his friend.

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

The clock struck 10pm. Light footsteps approached the couch on the balcony. They stopped, maybe a foot or two away. Grey-blue eyes roamed over the scenery in front of her.

There on the couch lay two figures. One fully on it, the other half on the piece of furniture, half on the floor. Oh, how she regretted not owning a camera in that moment.

The two men made for an adorable picture. Bradley had apparently fallen asleep after all and had unconsciously sought out the nearest source of warmth to cuddle up to, Pierce. How he'd ended up with his head on the other's chest encircled by Pierce's arms with one of his arms and legs lying on the cold wooden floor she wasn't entirely sure. But oh, was it sweet to look at.

Marie stayed to silently observe the cute display for a few minutes, debating whether or not to wake Ethan to get him to lay down properly. The longer she looked at the pair however, the less she wanted to do that. They were both sleeping and seemingly peacefully at that, a rare treat on this island. And well...they were just too cute together. So, she decided to just let them sleep there.

A small smile upon her lips the doctor sneaked back downstairs to lay down herself, already thinking about how she could tease Ethan with that in the morning.

#edward pierce #officer Bradley #pierce x bradley #they'd make such a cute couple #you can't tell me otherwise #marie coldon #call of cthulhu #call of cthulhu game #Shads wrote a thing #I regret nothing

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journalxxx · 3 years

Text

Repetita Iuvant

The room was almost perfectly quiet. The barely audible buzzing of the medical equipment and the occasional squawk of a bird outside were the only noises Izuku had heard in probably hours. The chair creaked when he moved, his shoes squeaked on the white floor. He had already grown used to the pungent smell of disinfectant. No one had come to check on either of them in a while. There was nothing whatsoever to distract him from his thoughts and from the enormity of the consequence that his recklessness could have had- could still have.

How very obvious All For One's plan had been, in hindsight. Driving Izuku to drive himself to the brink of exhaustion and to detach himself from any semblance of support. Sending few lone agents first to inflict some physical chip damage and a much more substantial amount of psychological warfare. Leading him to walk, alone and unprepared and worn-out, straight into the real trap.

Even without Endeavor's fire propulsion or the perceptive wings of the hero who was always just a little too fast, All Might had been the first one to reach the fight. Izuku knew that his words weren't going to dissuade him from trying to follow his student, but he'd thought he could manage to outspeed him, to keep the danger just a little ahead of him at every turn. How arrogant and simple-minded.

All Might hadn't wasted a second. With what little combat gear he had at hand, he had immediately provided cover fire and diversion, dodging and hiding and inching his way towards Izuku as the horde of strategically placed snipers and brawlers kept him too busy to track his mentor's approach. All Might, who, Todoroki had told him, even after losing every last ounce of his power, had once unhesitatingly thrown himself in harm's way to protect a wandering bystander from collateral damage. All Might, who had once again thrown himself in harm's way to protect his disgraceful successor from a potentially lethal blow. Izuku had recognized the villain who had charged forwards. There were two whole pages about him on one of his old notebooks, probably number 7 or 8. A convict with a sunlight-fuelled power-enhancing quirk who had regained his freedom during one of the many breakouts following Tartarus' fall, a villain that All Might himself had brought to justice a few years back. Izuku had seen the cruel grin on the criminal's face when he had realized who his attack had landed on. Izuku had seen the sadistic glint in his eyes as he instantly stopped caring about the target of the operation in order to exact his revenge on his captor, and started pummelling the frail, stumbling figure savagely. Caught in the crossfire of the battle, it had taken Izuku ninety seconds to separate the rampaging brute from his victim. Ninety seconds was a tremendously long time in the raging frenzy of a battlefield. The sight of All Might's bloodied, battered, unconscious form was the last clear memory Izuku retained of the whole accident. After that, it was a blurry sequence of hits, dodges, movement, explosions, noise, made even more chaotic by the arrival of other heroes. After that, a mad dash to the nearest hospital. After that... Time. Nothing but time, hours and hours, with the sole company of his regrets. Endeavor, of all people, had had a few words for Izuku when he had reached the hospital as well. Not very heartfelt or unexpected ones, but undeniably warranted. Endeavor, who was just about the most unsociable, standoffish and selfish hero in the industry, and an unspeakable parent and husband to boot. Endeavor, who nonetheless had opened up his own agency, had sidekicks, subordinates, support, a proper network of associates, and was demonstrably not above accepting help when he obviously needed it. Not even Endeavor could have messed up so badly. Hawks had just shaken his head and spared Izuku any tirades, for the time being. He had kept watch, and later said that Recovery Girl was on her way. Izuku had genuinely no idea how many hours (days?) had passed since All Might had been admitted to the hospital. He had let some doctors examine his own wounds, done whatever he was told to do and answered whatever question he was asked with the most appropriate monosyllable. He had slept, not by choice but probably because of some medicine someone gave him at some point. He had washed and put on some fresh clothes provided by Jeanist. He had eaten, barely. He had waited. Stared at walls. Paced. Let his brain dissect in every detail the harrowing series of unforgivable blunders that had led to the current situation. Despite the doctors' initial opposition, they had allowed Izuku to enter All Might's room after Hawks had interceded. The noticeble lack of reassurances about the man's conditions had worried him, but, unlike in Nighteye's case, no one had warned him of his impending demise either, which was as good a sign as he was going to get. Since then, no one had showed up to tell him to leave, so he hadn't. He had tried to be rational about it, at first. He had analyzed the fact that All For One's goons seemed hell bent on taking advantage of All Might's weak point. The first noumu had done it, Wolfram had done it, the latest assailant had done it as well, if the extensive dressing covering the entirety of All Might's left side was of any indication. It was wicked and cowardly, but it was also a bit of a blessing in disguise. Most of his vital organs in that area had long since been eradicated, and it stood to reason that any damage on the opposite side, for example to All Might's sole remaining lung, would be more likely to prove deadly. He hoped his foes would never get that memo. He noted how scattered All Might's injuries were and reflected that, if the villain had focussed all those hits and raw strength on the hero's head alone, he would have turned it into mincemeat in a matter of seconds. As it stood, most of All Might's head was unscathed, with some padded bandaging covering about a third of his face, but relatively little damage to the cranial lid itself. Another instance of cruelty turning to their advantage, Izuku guessed. Unfortunately, instead of getting used to the sight of his mentor's wrecked body, Izuku was only finding it more and more distressing as time went by. There were too many bandages, too many tubes and machines and cables laid out around and all over him. He was too pale, his features too sunken, his appearance too similar to a corpse, his chest rising too shallowly with each breath to give him any measure of comfort. Izuku crumpled forwards in his chair, hands in his hair, face resolutely pointed at the floor, unable to stand the sight any longer. He was gutless, unworthy and criminally short-sighted. One For All probably shared that sentiment, since he hadn't heard a peep from any of the vestiges since the fight. He resumed, for the millionth time, revisiting the events of the last months, letting guilt engulf him like a poisonous cloud. He was snapped out of his reverie by a fierce grip on his wrist, and the sudden blaring of one of the machines. His heart jumped in his throat and he looked up to see All Might reaching out to him with his good hand, awake and tense, rushed breaths fogging the oxygen mask he was wearing. Izuku's eyes flew back and forth between the man and the beeping monitor. Was he reading it correctly? A heart rate spike? Something worse? All Might was definitely awake, but not altogether... there. He had a haunted, distant expression that made Izuku's stomach constrict painfully. "All Might?" He called, utterly failing to suppress his increasing dread. He tried to pry his teacher's hand away from his arm so that he could run and alert someone, but those bony fingers clawed him with such strength that no man in his condition had any right to have. "What's wrong?" The question seemed to help him get his bearings, somehow. Tension became confusion as All Might's gaze roamed all over Izuku, then the room, then what little he could see of himself from his lying position. Eventually the confusion waned too and exhaustion took its place as he closed his eyes and ventured a few deeper breaths. Izuku tentatively stood up, but All Might, despite loosening his iron grip, didn't let go of him. "Are you in pain? Shall I call someone?" He asked, still frazzled. A negative nod. As if in agreement, the monitor spontaneously ceased beeping. Izuku felt as if any decision-making ability he had ever possessed had been crushed alongside his mentor's limbs. Should he call someone, just to be sure? Weren't they monitoring patients remotely anyway? Should he- All Might opened his eyes again, and met Izuku's. The light that normally brightened them, a flame that had nothing to do with quirks and that Izuku had thought inextinguishable, was subdued and meek. It made the boy's breath catch in his throat. "I-I'm..." He couldn't say it. Apologies couldn't cut it, not this time. There were no words that could even begin to atone for the catastrophe he had nearly caused, for the pain he knew he had inflicted to the one person that had always, unerringly trusted him. His traitorous eyes burned and his vision blurred. Izuku squeezed them and bit his lip, hard. He would not cry. He didn't have the right to, especially not after months spent playing the stoic vigilante, and it was a damnable weakness he should have weaned off long ago, and All Might barely tolerated it in the first place. All Might tugged at his arm. He was regarding him gently now, with that deep warmth that one never expected to match those haggard features of his. He pulled again, until Izuku returned to the chair and scooted a little closer to the bed, close enough for All Might to move his hand to the boy's hair. "It's okay." All Might finally spoke. His voice was disturbingly different from his usual stentorean timbre, like the rumbling thunder of a distant storm even when it was at its lowest. There was a breathless, wispy quality to his tone now, and long pauses stretching between each sentence he uttered. "It's okay to cry... I should have told you... a long time ago..." Izuku's throat clenched painfully. There was so much he had to say and explain and apologize for, so much he had to tell him, but he couldn't. He couldn't. A pitiful whimper escaped him as he brought his own hand to cover All Might's. To stop him and pull it away, or to grasp it and hold it closer, he didn't even know. "Repeat after me." All Might said in English with that odd accent of his that didn't quite sound as natural as an American's, but that nonetheless seemed to roll off his tongue so easily. Those words hit Izuku almost physically, summoning a memory of roaring waves under a starry sky, of a joyful run along an immaculate beach in a time when the future looked so much brighter, and so much more hopeful. "It's okay to cry." "...It's. Okay. To cry-" Izuku managed to force out haltingly, and suddenly it was as if a dam broke inside him. Gross sobs escaped him uncontrollably, making him gasp aloud and flinch beneath his mentor's calm gaze as some part of him took those words in stride with frightening promptness. "Don't push yourself too hard." All Might was smiling now, of all things. Where he found the strength, the will, the reason to smile so softly at him here, now, Izuku had no idea. It took the boy a few moments to realize that the hero was still expecting him to reply. "Don't push yourself too hard." He echoed shakily. He thought of Musutafu, of the USJ, of Kamino. He wondered to whom, exactly, these words were aimed at. He abandoned that line of thought immediately. "You deserve to rest." "You deserve-" He stopped. He could not say those words, not like this. It sounded way too much like a farewell, like a request for a parting blessing. Which was unthinkable, because All Might had vowed to keep on living and he would never go back on it. But Izuku's mind conjured notions of eternal rest, tragic visions that may or may not come to pass, irredeemable mistakes- All Might's hand slid away from under Izuku's. The same hand that had once shattered buildings, created whirlwinds, held an entire nation's hope in its raised fist, trailed down Izuku's temple with unimaginable tenderness. It cupped the boy's cheek in its palm, it wiped away stray tears with its thumb. All Might mouthed something, more of an exhale than actual words, that Izuku couldn't quite catch over the sound of his own gasps. "You deserve to rest." The boy finished. All Might was still smiling, more serene that Izuku had seen him in months. "Let's talk more later, hm?" He sighed as he closed his eyes, his hand slowly falling back on the bed. Izuku clasped it back between his own in an instant, panic flaring up in his gut all over again, fearing the unthinkable. But the equipment kept buzzing quietly and undisturbed, the birds kept squawking, his chair kept creaking and his shoes kept squeaking. He focussed on the firm pulse beating under his fingertips, for as long as it took for his own mind to still.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #deku #izuku midoriya #All Might #Toshinori Yagi

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an-obsessed-writer · 3 years

Text

The Boxer - Chapter Two

Summary: (Y/N) moves to New York City in search of a new life, only to find a handsome man working out at her local gym. He’s covered in cuts and bruises, oozing with bad decisions, but (Y/N) can’t help but being attracted immediately. Surely, this isn’t a good idea, but what’s the harm in being friends?

Word Count: 1.2k

Part One

The next time I saw Steve was a few nights later and, for lack of better words, he looked awful. A shoulder sling was off to the side and the punching bag was taking a harder beating than the last time you had seen him. Something had happened, and the increase of cuts on his face gave me a good idea of what went down.

When his eyes met my stare, Steve simply nodded before resuming his workout, much to my dismay. He wasn’t there earlier. I would’ve noticed him immediately with how bruised his face was, at least, that’s what I like to tell myself. Let’s be honest, he was a stunning man. His tight, dri-fit top hugged his muscles and left little to the imagination.

There was no doubt that Steve was a ridiculously fit man, anyone would be an idiot not to admit that. With every punch, the bag was pushed further and further away before swinging back to him. His mouth was slightly ajar to help him breathe, biting his lip whenever sweat dripped down. With his blonde hair sticking to his forehead, he couldn’t look more handsome, even under these damned lights.

I was so distracted by Steve, I hadn’t even noticed Bucky sitting in the corner, a look of concern etched on his face. My ears could hear the full conversation from afar, and tried to pick up some weights to look like I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was almost done for tonight, anyway.

‘Great,’ I thought. ‘I make two acquaintances and I’m already spying on their conversations.’

“Take it easy, alright? You won that last fight, but only by pure luck. With how beaten up you were, everyone was surprised you didn’t fall. I don’t know how you mustered up the strength to knock the guy out. Care for your shoulder before it turns from a sprain to a full on dislocation.” Bucky looked disapprovingly at Steve and grabbed the punching bag before he could hit it again.

“I’m fine, Buck. My next fight is in a week, I’ll be healed by then.” He huffed before grabbing a towel and his water bottle. “Learning how to push through the pain is how you win. That’s how I stayed up in the last few rounds. I haven’t lost yet, and I don’t plan on it for a while. I was already out of training for a couple days, I gotta get back into it now.”

Bucky scoffed, “Well you won’t be winning anymore if you have a bum shoulder.” Steve gave his friend a sharp look before packing up his stuff into his duffle bag.

I turned my back toward them, putting the weights down and making sure to wipe off my fake sweat from the equipment. The two men were gone when I turned back, and I let out a sigh of relief. It felt wrong listening in on their conversations, but I couldn’t help it. Steve looked like he’d been run over, and it was normal for me to be concerned, right?

‘Not for a guy you met a few nights back.’

I rolled my eyes myself, acting like some lovesick puppy for a guy I’ve had one conversation with. Making my way to the front doors of the gym, a familiar voice spoke up.

“You ever get that mace?” Steve gave me a crooked smile when I turned around, and I couldn’t help but laugh a little. The same man who was covered in healing injuries still somehow managed to look like a puppy.

“No, actually. Haven’t had the time.”

He sucks his teeth, and after a few moments that seemed like forever, he opens the door. “Let me walk you home.”

‘I’m fine, really,’ was what I wanted to say, but Steve was intriguing. Besides, I wanted to know more about the fight that went down. Instead of opposing, I walked through the door, exiting the gym with him.

Neither of us talked for a few minutes, only the sounds of the occasional car passing could be heard. Not wanting to be an intruder, but also curiosity got the better of me, and I looked over at him, “So what happened to you?”

Steve glanced at me before shoving his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. “Why do ya wanna know?”

I rolled my eyes at his attempt to deflect from the topic, “Call it concern for a friend.”

Steve huffed a laugh and looked over at me, “Had a fight. Lasted a little longer than I wanted it to, but I won. That’s all that matters.” He turned his head away from me, focusing instead on the sidewalk. The street lamps didn’t light up the area much, but I could still see the ghost of a pained look on his face as we walked side by side. “Bucky practically banned me from the gym for two nights. I swear it’s not that bad.”

“Yeah? Try looking at a mirror.” Steve rolled his eyes, and that was all either of us had to say on the topic. Getting closer to the apartment complex, I picked at my palms as we walked, itching to keep conversation going.

It was his turn to break the silence. “So what brings you to New York?”

“Why do ya wanna know?” He smiled at my attempt at mocking him, and I continued, trying to make most of the short time of the walk. “I got a decent nursing job at a hospital nearby. Pretty decent pay from what I used to have, although, that wasn’t pretty hard to top. My old city was small. Everyone knew everyone, and it was just time for me to get out. Everything was too familiar. I figured there was something bigger waiting out there for me, so why not look for it at the Big Apple?”

Steve nodded, taking a moment to think about my answer before responding, “I’ve been here practically my whole life. I live in the place my ma used to live, go to the same gym Buck and I went to as teenagers, now he owns the damn place. Nothing wrong with familiarity.”

The corners of my mouth tugged into a smile. Staring down at the ground at my feet, I shrugged my shoulders. “Yeah, I guess not.”

‘I wouldn’t mind becoming familiar with you.’ I discreetly shook my head, ridding the thought before it could get too far.

Luckily, the views of the brick building apartment building came into view before we could get too deep into our conversations. With everything already said by him, I could feel a pull into wanting to get more out, and that’s a dangerous thing to get sucked into.

“Well, this is me,” I say as our footsteps came to a stop, and Steve looked up at the building. “Thanks for walking me home, really. I didn’t need it, but it was nice having company. Been way too busy at work to make friends.”

He flashed another one of his famous, sickly sweet smiles, and shrugged nonchalantly. “See you around doll, maybe get some form of protection so I don’t have to walk you home every night.” With a wink, Steve set out on his way home. I couldn’t help but replay the entire interaction over and over in my head before heading up to my apartment.

#steve rogers #boxer!steve #steveau #steve rogers au #steve x oc #bucky #james barnes #james buchanan barnes #marvel #marvel au #steve au #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers oneshot #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x oc #captain america #captain america x reader

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mshermia · 3 years

Text

LYKHIW Timeline - WIP Page

Welcome! This post records the status and progress of my work expanding my Post-Endgame (MCU) series to “Like You’d Know How It Works”.

I left the cinema post-Endgame incredibly mad and disappointed. After I aired my immediate frustration with the movie in two One-Shots, I decided for my own peace of mind, I had to try and salvage the mess that was Endgame somehow, because I simply like the characters too much, not to. A week after I started writing, I published the first chapter on AO3. About a year later, I felt the need to expand on the original fix-it. I have and will continue to add to this timeline, writing different adventures that will mostly focus on Tony Stark and Peter Parker.

Genre: MCU fanfiction

The Fix-It

Like You’d Know How It Works (completed)

Setting: sets in right after the battle at the Compound is over, supersedes the concluding events of Endgame.

Premise: Straight after the battle is won - or lost, depending on your perspective - Peter tries to convince the Avengers to save Mr. Stark by going back into the Quantum Realm.

Tropes: time-travel, quantum realm, protective Peter

Mood: grief & loss, hope, family

Someone had organized this room at Metro General hospital for them to sit and talk. Sitting was not an option for Peter though. He couldn’t bear to sit. He couldn’t bear to have anyone look at his injuries either, not when there were more pressing matters to attend to.

“You said that whatever we do in the past will not change our present!” Peter’s fist hit the table with a crash. They simply weren’t listening. His face felt grimy and tight in places where the dirt from the battlefield stuck to the tears he had cried over Mr. Stark’s body. Maybe he should have thought of washing the traces off his face before confronting a few of the Avengers and Doctor Strange. It might have made him seem a little more collected. A little more rational. “That’s what you just said!”

Chapters 9/9 | 42 K | Teen and Up

Follow-up Shorts and Multi-chapters

Just Outside The Door (completed)

Setting: Days after Tony was brought back from the multiverse

Premise: Peter did it. He found his mentor and brought him back, but sometimes it all just seemed too good to be true. Sometimes, his mind played tricks on him and he just couldn’t sleep, wondering if he had really brought Mr. Stark back or if it had all just been a desperate dream.

Tropes: nightmares, PTSD, protective Tony, Whumptober 2020: No. 23

Mood: fear, working through trauma, comfort

There was only silence in his room now unless you were to count the frantic beat of his heart and the deep shaky breaths he sucked in and blew back out. It hadn’t even been a nightmare this time, not truly. He hadn’t really fallen asleep in the first place. Exhaustion was tugging at the edges of his consciousness and that’s where his thoughts had started to spiral.

Mr. Stark was okay. Peter was… he was pretty sure of that. He had succeeded, had brought him back home and now he was okay. But there was a little voice in the back of his head that kept nagging, that kept telling him that maybe… maybe he was wrong. Maybe it had all been a delusional dream, too good to be true, Peter wishing something into reality that was unobtainable. He had seen his mentor die after all. He had died right in front of him, the memory etched into his memory, right there whenever he closed his eyes. Dimensions, time travel… was that really real?

Chapters 1/1 | 4.2 K | Teen and Up

Nothing Left To Lose (in progress)

Setting: 2 weeks after Tony was brought back from the multiverse

Premise:

The reversal of the Snap added an additional 3.5 billion people back to Earth’s population. 3.5 billion more people to house somewhere, 3.5 billion mouths to be fed, 3.5 billion people who return to a world that was not expecting them to ever come back.

Tropes: food shortage, starvation, looting, blurred lines of good and evil; Whumptober 2020: No. 3

Mood: anger, desperation, conflicted who to help

Tony groaned, rolling his stiff neck from one side to the other as the gate clicked shut behind Pepper. “Remind me again… Why did we agree to this?”

Pepper didn’t bother to send him a scolding look as she wrapped the security seal around the gate’s locking mechanism. “Because we’re good neighbors?”

“We are?” He smelled like damp fur. When did wet fur and barn animals become his life? “Since when exactly? Was there a house meeting? Did I miss it?”

“Mh… do you need a reminder of the process of negotiation?” She took a step towards him, one hand twisted in his shirt pulling him close against her, their lips almost close enough to touch. “You smell like wet alpaca.”

He pulled in an affronted gasp. The hand that was still holding his shirt pushed him away from her, her lips stretched wide in amusement. “Come on, Cesar. Maybe I’ll remind you after a hot shower.”

Chapters 1/2 | 3.4 K | Teen and Up

Unnamed WIP (unpublished)

Setting: 4 months after Tony was brought back from the multiverse

Premise:

For months, Peter has been commuting between the city and the Stark’s remote cabin in the woods. But now that life in NYC has regained some normalcy, he really wants to show Morgan what the greatest city in the world has to offer.

Tropes: power outage, panic attack, PTSD; Whumptober 2020: No. 27

Nope. “Not going down that rabbit-hole, Parker,” he muttered to himself.

“What rabbit-hole?” Morgan was sitting opposite him, munching on the cookies Pepper had put out.

“Nevermind.” Peter scooped two tea spoons of sugar into his coffee, then added another one just to be safe.

“Mommy says coffee corrupts the soul.”

“Please, like you even know what ‘corrupt’ means….”

Morgan tilted her head to the side, just like her mom would do. “I know it’s not nice.”

Peter gave her a look. “Well, your dad says it’s the elixir of life.” And Mr. Stark would know. Peter gave his head one hard shake. Tony. Tony would know. One sip of the black brew and Peter’s teeth hurt. Definitely too much sugar. “Okay, remember what we talked about?”

Morgan sat up straight, her eyes wide. “Ask mommy first!”

“That’s right! Make sure you use those puppy eyes, too.” Morgan nodded along enthusiastically while he quickly nicked her glass of milk and poured a generous potion of it into his mug. “We wait till, you know, till Tony’s gone downstairs or something and then—”

“And then you’ll ask me what?”

Chapters -/2 | - K | Teen and Up

Christmas Eve - At Peace (completed)

Setting: 5 months after Tony was brought back from the multiverse

Premise:

Just a couple of months after they defeated Thanos, Tony and Pepper throw a Christmas party. Instead of a partying kid, Tony finds his Spiderling outside in the snow at the grave he has been trying to ignore ever exists.

Tropes: anger and grief, blame and fear, no prompt

Mood: wholesome, family, frustration

Tony narrowed his eyes at him. "I mean it!" For good measure, he took a healthy gulp from the cup, positively burning his throat in the process. But it wasn't until Harley threw his hands in the air and turned his back in defeat - for now - that Tony allowed his face to cringe at the sting. Those little trouble makers were not helping with his heart condition. Speaking of trouble... "Where is Peter?"

Harley crossed his arms in front of himself, his mind clearly brooding on a new strategy. "No clue."

Tony's next sip of the hot wine was a lot smoother than the first. "What do you mean, no clue?"

"It generally means that the person doesn't have any information about the subject that you are—"

"Alright, short stuff..." Tony's eyes were searching the room but the little spider was nowhere to be seen. "A bit less of the asshole routine please?"

"Listen, if you want me to babysit, same rules apply as they do for Morgan." Brazen in his brattiness, the little shit ladled a good helping of mulled wine into a new cup. "I'll need a heads-up and generous compensation that I'm happy to re-negoti— Hey!"

Harley tried to hold on to the cup that Tony once again just plucked from his hands. "You've had enough of this!"

"That one is for Rhodey," the boy scowled.

Chapters 1/1 | 3.8 K | Teen and Up

The Winter Air (completed)

Setting: 6 months after Tony was brought back from the multiverse

Premise:

Tony, Peter, and Morgan spent a winter day outside the Stark residence.

Tropes: accident, hurt Tony, hurt Peter, Whumptober 2020: No. 13

Mood: fun to fear, injury, accusations, blame

Well, it wasn’t that easy. Because things were apparently never just easy in the life of one Peter Parker. Turned out, there were still some assholes out there. Not the Thanos-kind. Not for now at least. The regular kind though and Peter for one saw absolutely no reason as to why anything should have changed in his responsibility to stop them from being assholes.

His aunt somehow disagreed more often than she didn’t. Annoyingly now though, she managed to drag Mr. Stark to her side a lot more than she used to, too.

Peter shook his head at himself. Tony. T-O-N-Y. It wasn’t that hard, was it? He still slipped up every so often. But as much as that bugged him, it was the others who bugged him even more. Colonel Rhodes and Hawkeye among them the most willing to tease Peter about it. Him, and Tony too, for his mentor never commented on it with more than a crooked smile. When it was just the two of them, that was often the only indication for Peter, that he had said it again.

It made the times when it really was just them so enjoyable. A new ease between them. They had never had this, this kind of bonding. Sure, they’d spent time together before everything had gone downhill on their little space adventure, in the lab or on a normal earth-bound mission. Not like this though, not like Peter staying over at the Stark residence for a few days at a time. Not like him sliding along-side Morgan on the ice on the lake, trying to catch Tony. Not like Morgan falling over and taking Tony right with her and the way Peter’s stomach hurt from laughing so hard when Mr. Stark’s sweet little Morguna drowsed him with two full hands of snow and he just hadn’t seen it coming.

Chapters 3/3 | 14 K | Teen and Up

Unnamed Multichapter WIP (unpublished)

Setting: picks up where The Winter Air ended, 6 months after Tony was brought back from the multiverse

Premise:

First time all of the Avengers come together after the Snap was reversed. With Tony retired, Peter has to find his place in the team and learn to work with the other Avengers without Tony. Tensions are running high with the events of Civil War still largely unresolved and lingering resentments stemming from Peter’s multidimensional rescue mission to save Tony.

Tropes: Avengers mission, mistrust, growing as a team; Whumptober 2020: No.7

Tony’s eyes went wide. Was it possible that…

“Hey, FRI?”

“Good morning, boss. It’s 10:16 am on February 5th, 2024. The temperature outside is—”

“Yeah, just… can you stop for a moment?” He waved her off. “Send Dory out to the lake, would you. There’s some stuff still lying out there on the ice.”

“Right away, Sir.”

Tony watched as the little blue drone circled the lake, getting closer and closer to what he was sure were the Spiderling’s clothes still lying out there, where he had taken them off to—

“Hey, what are you doing out of bed!”

Despite himself, he twitched as Pepper made her way into the room. She had pushed the door open with her hip, balancing his breakfast on a large wooden tablet.

“Here, let me—” Tony stepped towards her, arms at the ready to take the tablet but she held it out of his reach.

“What do you think you’re doing? Get back in that bed!”

Chapters -/- | - K | Teen and Up

There... And Back Again (in progress)

Setting: about a year after Tony was brought back to life

Premise: The Starks drive upstate to the old Mansion where Tony grew up. To Tony’s horror, the trip takes him and the kids a lot further down memory lane than anyone could have predicted.

Tropes: time travel, Howard Stark’s A++ parenting; Febuwhum2021 Day 12 - Who Are You

“Pete, seriously…” Tony looked up into the review mirror trying to catch his eye. “Can you not? I don’t want Morgan up all night, terrified of some dumb ghosts.”

“Come on, it’s just a story, Tony. Morgan knows I made it all up, right?” Peter winked at her, then wiggled his eyebrows in a way that seemed kind of familiar.

“Yeah, daddy.” But Morgan was full-on ignoring Tony, her eyes on Peter trying to imitate the wink and wiggly eyebrows he had just sent her way. “It’s just a story.”

He could do little more than groan as Peter continued to spin a tale of spirits and witches, ancient pacts and promises that had to be kept, ransoms that the spirits had vowed to retrieve.

“It was a night very much like tonight,” Peter continued, his voice low and full of dreadful foreboding, “that the witches broke that pact they had signed with the blood of the innocent…”

“Morgan’s gasp morphed into a giddy giggle while Tony could only rub a hand across his brow and mumbled, "Blood of the innocent, give me a fucking break…”

Chapters 1/3 | 4,4 K | Teen and Up

Are We Out Of The Woods Yet?, (completed)

Setting: 4 years after Tony was brought back from the multiverse

Premise:

Peter takes Morgan into the depths of a National Park so she can collect samples for a biology project.

Tropes: Peter & Morgan, protective Peter, hurt Morgan, hurt Peter, Whumptober 2020: No. 12

Mood: disappointment, mistakes, anger, angst, comfort

“There are so many reasons why online classes are better than going to school.”

Peter shook his head. “And there are plenty of reasons why learning in school with other students is preferable. How it helps retain the material better than—”

Morgan groaned without even looking at him, her nose in the air, eyes on the leafy trees above them. “You can learn the same things at home, only then you could have dinner at night with us instead of in your stinky room in Boston.”

“Hey,” he craned his neck to see where she went, then walked after her. “My room doesn’t stink.”

“It’s a boy’s room.” She said it like that alone was a valid argument, when it couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the girl’s dorms he had been in—

He stopped himself. Not the time and place.

Chapters 2/2 | 8 K | Teen and Up

#wip #wip page #irondad #spider son #prompt fill #peter parker fic #tony stark #iron dad and spider son #mcu fanfiction #fanfic #LYKHIW-timeline

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bonny-kookoo · 4 years

Text

Tough Girl (K.TH x Reader) 🎀☁️(💜🔞)

Pairing: Kim Taehyung x Reader

Genre: Good Girl!AU, angst, slightly suggestive, very little hints of romance

Warnings: Taehyung is kind of an asshole, Tough girl gets catcalled, Taehyung being kind of a creep lol, insecurities, Tae being a bit pushy, Reader being confident, car accident, injuries, blood, hospitals

Summary: you knew him already. You knew who he was and you didn’t believe him when he said those words to you. But a desperate moment leads you to leave him a small breadcrumb to feed on- just to see what could happen, if you would really give him a chance.

A/N: this is a Prequel to Lost Boy and functions as an explanation to why their relationship is what it is.

Taglist: @ggukkieland @taetaes-aegi

Being not really a fan of parties, you really didn't want to be here- but it gave you a reason to leave the house and dress up for an occasion, so it was only half as bad as you'd thought. With your friend at your side you entered the stuffy club, music actually pretty decent. The sounds made the ground vibrate with rhythm, and you didn't feel as uncomfortable as you thought you would.

That had been the start however. Now you were sitting at the bar, slightly swaying to the beat while staring at your apple juice- your choice of beverage since you hated alcohol, not to mention that your body didn't appreciate it either. As soon as someone sat down next to you, you knew he was bad news- because it was Kim Taehyung, the guy your supposed friend had been oggling up the entire night already. She'd almost set up an entire powerpoint presentation about him it felt like when she'd been gushing over his oh so good looks. And you couldn't deny that; he did have the looks. Technically, he was exactly your visual; with bright red hair, black attire, and well chosen accessoires- but you knew his repuptation as well, you had fallen for his charms as well once, and that made your bile rise up as he spoke over the music to you.

"Alone?" He asked, and you wanted to say no so badly- but you've lost the girl you came with already to the guys eyeing up her long legs, making you roll your eyes internally. So you nodded as you stared down your glass. "Hm, good for me then, maybe?" He asked with an amused tone, and you looked over, catching him looking at your choker as if something interesting was written on it. You sighed, searching for your wallet, waving the bartender that you wanted to pay. "Aw, already? Come on, you haven't even started drinking yet- or is the little girl gonna stick to her child friendly juice?" He commented with a chuckle, again eyeing you up as if you were something he had to inspect throughourly. The bartender finally walked over to you with your bill, and you payed with a smile into his direction before moving your attention towards the redhead.

"I know I look like an easy whore to you loverboy, but I'm really not interested in hooking up with a guy only looking for something to get his dick wet."

The way he looked at you said it all; the fact that his eyes widened, pupils moving a bit frantically, it all yelled into your face just how right your statement was. And you were tired. You were tired of being used, of being manipulated, of being seen as a simple trophy to show off. No, not today satan. Today you’d safe yourself and heal on your own.

And you started with simply jumping off of your bar chair, grabbing the rest of your oh so childish apple juice, and watched as it drenched and colored his shirt, his face a look of pure shock. And it never felt better to see.

What you did not know however was, that his shock wasn't just because of the liquid on his shirt- it was his intoxicated brain, slowly putting together who he had actually hit on.

Truth be told, this was supposed to make you feel better about your recent breakup, one that this guy knew about. Taehyung and you worked at the same place, or at least you did, before he had fucked over all your plans and snatched the seat for the main tattooist right from under your nose. You had been friends if you will- yet he'd betrayed you for his own personal benefit.

You'd gotten along great at first; he, the young guy with more experience than you, who always praised your work and tried to keep your head high, telling you to keep going and showing you what he knew about actual work experience. He knew how much you wanted this job, knew how much it meant to you, but when you overheard him talking to the owner of the shop about your work, you had almost walked inside that room and slapped him six ways down to hell and back.

"Ah well.. her work is good, but you know.. mediocre at best. It's something for a pinterest board, but it's nothing special."

Those were his words, and they'd hurt. They had hurt so much, not only because deep down you felt as if they were true, but also because it was him- because you had been foolish enough to trust him. Considering him a friend had been a mistake you decided, immediately leaving the shop after the owner had told you he'd chosen Taehyung as his main Artist; which meant that you had to go, since he couldn't pay you just for drawing. And you knew this had been Taehyungs doing, the way that he couldn't look into your eyes afterwards said it all. And the fact that he actually tried to hit on you tonight either meant that he was actually empty inside his head, or just the definition of an asshole, uncaring of who's vagina he'd stick his tiny dick inside.

Maybe he was both.

Because as soon as you heard the slightly out of rhythm and stumbling steps catching up to you, you rolled your eyes, turning around to face the you man, out of breath and slightly dishelved. "I-uh.. God this is awkward.." He said, scratching his head as he looked at his shoes. "I'm sorry, I didn't know it was yo-" He started, but you cut him off before he could finish.

"Save your apologies, really. I'm tired getting lied at." You said, before walking again, groaning a bit as you heard him following. "Stop following me, creep!" You said, and he simply started to walk beside you, hands in his pockets.

"I'm not following you." He said, pointing to the bus stop you're targeting. "I'm taking the bus. Can't drive intoxe- intox.. I don't wanna drive drunk okay?" He said, tongue almost tying a knot at the word he couldn't pronounce due to his happy drinking earlier. He actually didn't mean to leave the club, but somehow he couldn't leave you alone like that. He still felt incredibely guilty about what happened between you both prior to his mishap in the club, but he couldn't really apologize for that either. Yeah he was an asshole, but he needed the job too. Surely you'd understand in the future- right?

Wrong. Unbeknownst to him, this lost job managed to fuck up everything for you. You'd really needed that job desperately; sacrificing precious time for the internship while he had been given at least a bit of a payment during his time- and now you were left for dead it seemed, with no money to pay rent or anything else really. It was only a matter of time until your landlady had enough of you, finally able to kick you out. And it was all Taehyungs fault.

"So how's it going with her, Taehyung?" Jungkook mumbled between stuffing his mouth with his breakfast. Taehyung had noticed a shift in the boy's spirits lately- more active and happy, ever since he'd told him that he was finally in a relationship with someone he considered the perfect partner for him. Taehyung had been happy, he'd admit that, but also envious-

because he could've had that with you, too.

But he had to fuck it up somehow, willingly, because he wasn't as stupid as you may thought he was. He knew that you would hate him when you'd find out about what he'd told the parlor owner that day. You were never supposed to find out. But even if you didn't, and he'd eventually asked you out, if you'd accepted, what good was a relationship build on a lie? It would've fallen apart anyways, things like that never worked out.

He really didn't like you at first, if he was being honest. You weren't what he was going for, typically.

You were headstrong, always speaking your mind, and never backing down from anything in your way. You wore your chokers as a warning to stay away, painted your nails black regularly, and never associated with anything a girl his type would interact with. Yet he'd also seen you muse over Kakaofriends charms, your phone was protected in a cute case with several charms attached, and you hated spicy foods and alcohol.

You were absolutely adorable.

And he hated that this was what slowly pulled him towards you, the simple fact that you always played a game of cat and mouse with him, never letting him get close enough to truly say that he knew you, but always keeping him at a safe distance. He was hooked on you and your small and angry figure- sometimes daydreaming about what it would maybe feel like to hold your hand, or simply hug you.

A snapping of fingers brought him back to reality as he looked at his friend, a mildly concerned look on his face, slightly covered by his hair. It had gotten longer these days- Jungkook didn't feel the need to cut it anymore, since he'd only ever done it to appeal to older girls as the 'cute guy'. Now that he'd settled with you, he could finally decide himself what he wanted; and Taehyung himself had to admit, it made him look older, more mature. Taehyung sighed, before shrugging his shoulders, taking a sip of his coffee, having declined the offer of his younger friend to eat with him.

He wasn't hungry.

"Still hates me." He mumbled, and Jungkook sighed, putting down his cutlery as he leaned back, chewing before clearing his mouth of the last bites of food. Taehyung stared outside the window of the small cafe they'd both met up, watching the people outside enjoy the bright and warm sunshine after a bit of rain earlier that day. He somehow wished he could take you out on a day like that. Did you like the rain? He'd never thought about it.

"I mean-" Jungkook started, before interlacing his fingers behind his head. "Can't blame her. That was a dick move." He said, shrugging his own shoulders to underline his statement. "Have you tried to make it up to her?" He asked, and Taehyung simply shook his head. "Well, do you fucking think this will just solve itself or what?" He chuckled drily, knowing that sometimes things like these seemed impossible to unravel properly, but that was what love was about, really; finding a way to get over arguments and issues together.

"Well I don't know what to do!" He exclaimed with a whine to his voice, setting his cup down onto the table, defeated face staring at Jungkook. "I've apologized to her already, but I don't even know if she reads my messages at all. I tried to somehow help her get another job but she just felt offended-" he said, and Jungkook scoffed, slapping a hand over his face as a form of confirmation that he understood why you were upset about that. "-what?" He asked, genuinely not getting his reaction.

"From what I know, that was the worst you could do Tae." He said. "Listen, it's not about helping her in this situation. It's about showing her that you can actually be a decent human being that reflects on his actions, you can't just always think that replacing something is the answer!" He said, switching his cup with Taes, making the older one raise his brow. "See? I've given you my soda instead of your coffee. Are you cool with that?" Taehyung looked at it for a moment, before she sighed and shook his head. He really was an idiot. "Same thing here, really. You can't just fill holes on streets you already passed because that won't do shit for you in the future. Try and get to a better road instead." He said, smiling encouragingly at his friend. "Just stop being a dick. I mean, I managed to do that!" He exclaimed, and as if he'd summoned his girl in question, a message chimed up on his phone, making him unlock it with a swipe and a few taps, before getting up and patting his friends' shoulder. "I gotta go, can't make my good girl wait!" He said, and Taehyung scoffed playfully.

"You're so disgusting Jungkook, fuck you." He said, and the younger one smiled, waving on his way out. Maybe he was right.

Maybe he needed to take a different road this time.

"I still don't get why I'm here." You said, stoic face looking at him. He felt kind of intimidated by the entire situation, he had to admit that. He didn't plan this through.

He'd simply called you, surprised that you actually picked up, and told you to meet up with him at his favorite diner, just to talk. Yet he never really thought you would actually show up. This was way further than his plan had covered.

"I.. just want to talk." He said, watching you nervously as you looked at the menu. "I'm uh.. I'm paying, by the way-"

"You think I can't afford it?" You snapped without much volume, eyes staring daggers at him as he visibly almost shrunk down in his seat. Well, he deserved it if he was honest, so he tried to paddle back as best as possible. How the hell was he supposed to diffuse the situation? Jungkook had a way with words, but this just felt like it was digging him deeper into his mess.

"N-No, I just, wanted to be nice-" He said, before sighing, giving up as he leaned back.

"I know." You said, eyes softer this time, as you looked over the menu before putting it down, having made your decision. "What're you getting?" You said, leaning your chin on your hand, looking at him.

As if caught in a cheesy romantic drama, the clouds that had covered the skies broke apart, sun making your skin glow in front of him. He swallowed hard, trying to escape your gaze as his brain was completely empty. "I-uh.. my usual, I guess, I don't really have much appetite these days so I keep it small and simple, you know.." He rambled, and failed to catch your lips turn up a bit at seeing him scrambled up like that.

Maybe it was the fact that you'd recently landed a new position at a local newspaper to write articles online, or it was the fact that your hate for him simply slowly dissipated over time, but you've slowly warmed up to him again, seeing him like this. He seemed genuine this time; not just that high-horse riding flirt everyone seemed to know so well. He was just Taehyung in that moment.

"You ramble when you're nervous?" You asked, leaning your head a bit to the side as he laughed a bit, nodding his head at it. He started to attempt an apology before you smiled. "It's cute." You simply said, before looking at the waitress, telling her your order. Taehyung did the same, feeling a bit lighter already seeing you smile.

It was a start.

"ugh, my legs hurt." The young woman exclaimed as she got up tiredly, stretching her naked limbs as Taehyung groaned into his pillow, morning lights already seeping through the blinds, blinding him even behind his closed eyelids. He simply turned around, uncaring of whatever she had to say. She'd wanted it rough, after all.

He knew this was wrong to do, yet it almost seemed as if he couldn't stop it. He had been intoxicated again last night, taking anyone with him who was willing to let him use them. It was like a bad habit like picking your nails or chewing on your fingers- yet it was more destructive than these tiny things some people did. Because it destroyed dignity, it made him seem dishonest, it made him just as much of a whore as the woman he'd payed in the past. He wasn't any better.

He knew that.

"Make sure the door's closed when you leave, 'kay?" He mumbled, and he heard something that sounded like a confirmation before the door opened, someone speaking, and then;

He jumped up, startled.

That was your voice.

Hearing the clattering of things from inside the apartment you turned around, fast on your feet to escape whatever lies he'd serve you this time.

You'd been stupid enough to let yourself warm up to him again, thinking he could genuinely change. Hell, you've even beat yourself up over the fact that you'd maybe simply judged him by his past motives and actions, yet it seemed like you were right all along. He really couldn't change, you'd seen that as soon as your eyes met with the tall black haired woman walking out of his apartment, asking you if you were the next one.

Like you were in some sort of waiting line.

You immediately turned around, walking away from his door in shame, feeling nauseated by the fact that he didn't change. And you were stupid enough to let yourself get closer to him again, thinking he really did make an effort.

"Y/N, wa- fuck, Wait!" He exclaimed behind you, probably stumbling as he tried to run up to you, hair an utter mess and clothes trown onto his form haphazardly. You turned around, eyes just as cold as the day you'd told him you never wanted to see him again. He stopped in his tracks, eyes desperate- yet you didn't back down.

"You wanna fuck me too, is that it?" You exclaimed with voice of ice, making him groan, shaking his head, before you answered something that made his eyes widen. "Okay, then let's get it over with." You said, grabbing his wrist and pulling him back towards his apartment. He stopped you, looking at you as if you'd lost your mind.

Maybe you did.

"Stop, Y/N, no- let me explain-" He said, pulling his hand out of your grasp before he saw your shoulders shake, face hidden from him.

"You're so fucking superficial." You pressed out between gritted teeth, turning around as you shoved him, his back hitting his own door hard as he could only watch you fall apart in front of him in the most heartwrenching of ways. You swallowed, closing your eyes for a moment to regain composure as you looked up at him with eyes still glazed over with tears yet to fall.

Never in a million years he would've thought he'd ever be so intimidated by a girl like you.

"I really tried." You said, watching him intently as if to set him on fire with your gaze. It worked in a way, yet not in any pleasurable one. "I really tried to get over it, but you just-" You said, face contorting in something similar to disgust. "If you were how I assumed you were you would change." You said, before he tried to speak, cutting you off.

"Please, I can try, I can show you-" He exclaimed, before you laughed, with no humor in sight.

"You always say that, and right after you act like you don't care .!" You said, uncaring on how his neighbours opened the windows to listen in on you both. "Imagine our relationship, how fucked would that be, huh?! You probably really thought I'd put myself in harms way like that just for your amusement, but guess what Kim fucking Taehyung." You said, walking up to him, and your gaze hard.

"I'm done."

"Kim Taehyung I said I don't want to-" You said, ripping the door open to reveal a different person. "Jungkook?" You asked, eyebrows raising. "Is he sending you now to annoy me?" You said, already on the brink of closing the door in front of him, yet Jungkook simply shrugged his shoulders.

"He'd probably cut my dick off if he knew I'm here." He said, and you scoffed, opening the door for him to enter. You watching him out of the corner of your eye as he took his shoes off, before walking behind you, sitting down on the couch. "So." He started, and you looked at him.

"So." You replied, still wary of his presence. Ever since the incident with Taehyung a few weeks ago, said redhead had tried to contact you endlessly- you had yet to read his messages, however. It was a game of cat and mouse, of having him in front of your door just for you to close it immediately, not willing to listen to whatever he had in store for you. You knew he could swoon you over again.

So it was self-defense in a way.

"Tae looks like shit." He said, and you raised your brows, chuckling drily.

"Always has." You said, making him scratch the back of his head.

"I mean, yeah, maybe, but like, he looks shit in a way of, he really creeps me out these days." He said, and you felt yourself get nervous. You knew it didn't concern you, yet your eyes softened a bit at the prospect of Taehyungs health declining. "He called in sick at work on monday. I've seen him yesterday. He's.. punishing himself, in a way I guess." He said, leaning back into the cushions of your tiny couch.

"How so?" You said, genuinely wondering what he meant by that.

"I know this may be hard to understand for you but Tae.. He's someone who can't be alone." He said, sighing. "He basically feeds off of physical contact and social interactions. It's his fuel, if you will." He described, and you nodded. "That's why he does what he does. It doesn't make it any better, fuck no, but, I guess it does explain it a bit." He hummed, looking at you. "He's an asshole." He said, and you nodded.

"But he really loves you."

Your eyes widened, looking at Jungkook as if he'd grown a second head. "What the fuck are you talking about?" You said, genuinely confused by the sudden revelation. Yeah, you guessed that Tae had been interested in you, but love was a huge word with a lot of impact behind it. Just throwing that around was unlike him.

"I've seen it with me and my girl, I can spot that shit." He said. "He's isolating himself because he told me, and I quote, 'If I can't have her, I don't want anyone'. Disgusting, I know, but you get the point." He said, making you look at the floor, deep in thought.

You still had trust issues with Taehyung. The simple fact that he acted so impulsively sometimes, the simple trait of him to always do something unexpected was something that stood between you and him, between you two and a relationship. Pursuing one could be fatal for the both of you- it could easily grow toxic for everyone involved. You didn't want to take that risk, even if he was miserable right now.

Right?

His movements were slow as he tried to wash the dishes, again stopping after doing the bare minimum.

Yeontan barked up at him, ready to go for a walk. He felt like shit recently, knowing that his dog loved long late night walks with him, things he happily gave him in the past; yet he couldn't bring himself to, again, do the bare minimum. He'd thought about maybe bringing him over to Jungkook for a bit.

He felt useless.

Typically he wasn't like this, yet nowadays he'd finally started to reflect on his actions, and they seemed so disgusting to even himself that he'd simply shut himself off, uncaring on how it affected his own health.

He didn't care anymore.

It wasn't just because of you, to be fair. It was for a number of reasons, but all of them pointed towards him being at fault. And the worst thing was, he knew that he was an asshole.

How the hell was he supposed to fix this?

#bts #bts imagine #bts fic #bts fanfic #bts smut #kim taehyung x reader #taehyung x reader #taehyung x you #bts kim taehyung imagine

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chuckie101123 · 3 years

Text

The Cult of Carnage

“I figured they were all insane, like the cops did. The marks they left behind, the carvings, it all pointed to a satanistic murder cult. The bodies they left behind were all mutilated to the point that we needed dna testing to find out what kind of animal it was from. We couldn't use size because when they started a mutilation fest, everyone joined in. And from the bodily fluids they left behind, it seemed they enjoyed an orgy along with it. None of us even considered the possibility...

The cops couldn’t get close to them, ever. They were all too loyal to their cause. They couldn’t find a snitch, and they couldn’t plant one of their own. Eventually, one of them came up with the bright idea to call me up. I was a cop, once. Had retired six years before I got the call, saying they needed help with one last case. I was bored, figured why the hell not, and drove in the next morning. When I entered, I entered into a madhouse that was nothing like the station I had left. It seemed like everyone and their brother was there, everyone shouting and running around at once. Then they caught a glimpse of me, and all of a sudden, it was silent. The chief poked his head out of his office to see what caused the sudden change, and paled when he saw me.

I suppose I should explain. Before I left and retired, I had a reputation around the station. Put simply, I was violent and unorthodox. I didn’t care about social niceties much, always thought of them as too frustrating to deal with. As such, I came across more often than not as a dick. Pissed a lot of people off with my carefree attitude too, a lot of powerful people. Eventually some of them tried to get me fired on accounts of illegal activities. No one could get the charges to stick. See I was a well-known asshole, but I was good at my job. I was violent, but never more violent than was legal. I wasn’t racist, wasn’t greedy, and was always ready to help out someone in need. (Hey, I told you, I didn’t care about social niceties, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t help out a kid who’s car broke down on the side of the road.)

Anyway, when the brass up top couldn’t bring me down the legal way, a few of the more immoral ones tried to take me down the hard way. I sent every one of their men to the hospital with varying injuries, six of whom are still in a coma and twelve more who have to be fed with a straw. Again, the brass tried to get me fired for excessive violent behavior, but as it was in self-defense, the charges wouldn’t stick. Over the next three years, I personally put twenty six of those corrupt bastards behind bars. I doubt I got all of them, but no one has messed with me since.

Anyway, back to the station. So the chief sees me, pales like he just shit out all his blood, and rushes to greet me. Turns out, I recognize the dude. The guy was just a deputy when I left, must’ve done well for himself to have gotten his title. I already didn’t like him, but I did my best to keep myself in check, as he already looked terrified enough. After greetings, he took me to his office and explained the situation.

Forty-two occurrences in the last two months, all involving what looked like violent blood-baths and massive orgies between around thirty or so members. No member had been caught, no DNA matches, nothing. Nothing, except, a symbol, always placed in the very center of the presumably very exciting events. The symbol was that of a crescent moon lying point side down on top of a sun with a half circle taken out of the side closest to the moon, and there was a four-point star lying in the gap between the two, almost like it was being sheltered or protected somehow.

No evidence, no witnesses, and no leads would make for a difficult case, and I told him as such. In response, he placed a picture on the desk in front of me, and explained that the woman shown was believed to have something to do with it. I recognized her, Alicia Cortez. She was a nice girl, late twenties, who worked in a grocery store in the downtown area. I had caught her out late one night in the pouring rain and offered a ride. On the way to her home, I got to know her a little better.

She grew up in New Jersey with an abusive father and a junkie mother. She told me that at first, she seemed like she was on a path that would lead her to follow in her mother’s footsteps, using dangerous and powerful substances to fill the ache inside her. Thankfully, a kid helped her see just how far she had fallen, and she packed up and moved to our town that same week. I wanted to ask her more, but by the time I figured out how to phrase the question and opened my mouth, we had already arrived at her house. She thanked me quickly, and ran inside to escape the rain. It seemed strange, but I shrugged it off and drove home. That was eighteen months ago, two months before I got the call.

Once I saw the picture, I started to wonder if I shouldn’t have pressed further. Deputy O’Ryan, or now, Chief O’Ryan, told me that the incidents had started soon after she arrived in town. They said her neighbors had reported strange sounds coming from her apartment, but every time police arrived, the sounds had stopped and no evidence to anything resembling what the neighbors heard could be found. I told the chief I’d look into it, and went home.

Few weeks later, I “ran into” her at the grocery store where she worked at and asked her if she’d like to join me for lunch. As we talked, I noticed she was very pleasant. Not “uninterested in the conversation”, but more mischievous “What do you think you know” pleasant. Eventually, our conversation moved onto her past again. I tried to press gently on what made her change her life around. She smiled in triumph, and even though the damage was already done, I tried to back peddle. It didn’t work. Still though, she answered my questions.

She explained that the child that changed her life introduced her to his religion, an unorthodox and still recently established Carnagism. She went on further to vaguely explain how the god they worshiped, Carnage, was not quite how the name suggested. She was not evil, or violent, nor did she encourage such traits in her followers. Instead, she encouraged freedom in its truest form. No prejudice, no discrimination, no worries. “Does that include no laws?” I remember asking. Her only answer was a smirk. It was clear to me that I wouldn’t get an answer to that question, so I tried to change topic, asking instead what her religion had done to help her life? After all, if it was appealing enough to get her to pack up and move so quickly, surely the benefits must be amazing? Rather than answer, she instead invited me to her next worshiping session to find out for myself.

And so began my dilemma, do I agree and join her for what might be my own murder, mutilation, and possibly corpse-rape, or refuse and give up the case? For my stubborn, dumb ass self, their was only one option. I accepted.

Fast forward two days, and I find myself in the woods, hand in hand with over seventy other people as we skip around a massive bonfire in a clearing in the woods I swear wasn’t there the day before. All of us are buck-ass naked, covered in paint, mud, and blood from the desecrated corpses of hundreds of birds, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, and field rats. I realized why the bodies were so hard to identify: because these cultists used nearly every part of the corpse, beyond what a normal hunter would. The feathers, each indivual hair, each bone, brain, musclefiber, and organ, all used in their rituals. We fed on the meat and organs, and dressed ourselves in the rest, excluding the pelvic bones of all the females. Those were tossed into the fire we all skipped around, shrieking, laughing, and chanting as we summoned what I had assumed to be another made up god.

I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

As we shrieked and sang and chanted in a strange language I could never quite catch, the fire suddenly exploded outward, the flames rushing across our bodies, touching but never burning. A few of the more recent recruits like myself shrieked and tried to recoil in fear, but we were stopped by the tight grips of the members on either side of us. We tried fighting back until we realized we weren’t hurt by the flames, and we looked to the flames first in wonder and curiosity before our expressions turned to those of fear and wonder. For there, before our very eyes stood figures in the flames of every hue and color. Beings of pure fire, beautiful and proud, took their steps across the edge of the fire towards the cultists.

I stared in wonder at the sight before me, these beautiful and terrifying beings, as one by one they stood in front of a cultist. For simplicity's sake, let’s call them elementals. No two elementals were the same, some didn’t even look human, despite their flaming appearance. Some had what looked like animal heads, others had appendages added and subtracted in weird ways (one had feet for arms and arms for legs and a tail attached to the back of their neck), a few just seemed like floating flames with no features of any kind, and others still just were. They were like the air above hot tarmac, you could see the shimmer and could feel the heat but could see no definite features.

It took me a moment before I realized one of the elementals had stopped before me. Whereas the other elementals were larger, almost adult sized or even bigger, mine was tiny like a fairy might be. She floated in the air before my face, gazing intently at me until I looked at her, and then she smiled. Not the forced smile I was used to seeing, nor the pity smile a mother might show a child who brandishes a mud pie in his hands, nor even the full grin you’d see on that very child’s face. No, the elemental before me smiled a gentle smile, full of only kindness and love, as if she were a mother smiling at a child who returned home after losing their way. Her smile made me feel safe, and warm, like everything was going to be okay.

I couldn’t help it, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I cried. I wanted so badly to apologize to her and thank her and welcome her to this hellish world. So many emotions and needs arose within me at the sight of her gentle smile that I just collapsed in joy and grief and anger. Every suppressed memory, every lost moment I’ve ever had came rushing to my mind. I relived my horrible childhood life, suffering every beating my father gave me, breaking as my mother screamed that I was worthless and would never amount to anything. I relived all those painstaking study sessions, trying to do meet their expectations, but also trying to meet my own. I relived my old friendships, all my romantic relationships, every argument, every peaceful or proud moment. I relived my fistfight with my father and my last argument with my mother before they both died. I remembered every day I’ve ever had, and relived each as if they were occurring at that very moment all at once. And then I relived more recent days. Peaceful walks in the park after retiring, kind conversations I had with people around my neighborhood, excited grins from kids waving to me as I passed. I relived my conversations with Alicia about the goddess she worshipped, Carnage was not a god of violence and destruction, but of chaos and freedom.

And I understood. Carnage was not a goddess of lawlessness. She did not encourage the mutilations of animals for fun, but to teach the value of each individual piece. Carnage represented a peaceful freedom, without corruption to spoil it. Hatred, fear, joy, worry, her followers were free to experience all without judgement. They were not condemned for who they loved, nor were they discouraged from loving as much as they could as often as they could. With Carnage, the strange or different weren’t just permitted as they were everywhere else. They were accepted. There weren’t any personal definitions or social cliques, They just were, free to be as passionate and loving as they desired to be.

With that realization, the memories slowed to a trickle, the last few days before the ritual playing softly and slowly until I caught up with the present. When I did, I noticed three things. One, I was kneeling on the floor with my head in my hands, tears still flowing gently down my cheeks as my nose ran. Two, the small elemental was beside me, her tiny hand rest gently on my cheek, flames licking at the stubble from my beard. Three, she wasn’t alone.

In front of me kneeled another elemental, adult size this time, though still female. She faced me with her hands on my shoulders, holding me as I sobbed. When I had finally stopped crying enough to see her clearly, I saw her face. She was even more beautiful than all the rest, and while the others looked like they were made from the flames, she looked like the flames were made from her. Every feature was more defined, from her angled, kind eyes to her soft, supple lips to her delicate, nimble fingers and toes. She was just as nude as the rest of us, but it was not her body that held my attention, but her eyes. For in them I saw the history of mankind, all the fury and bloodlust but also the love and compassion. And those kind yet terrible eyes looked at me with an emotion I couldn’t quite place.

“You remember,” she said, not a question but as a statement. Even so, I nodded in answer. “Do you know who I am?” I shook my head. “I am the goddess you have worshiped this night. I am Carnage.”

“Hi...” I said in a small voice, making her smile.

“You have a way with words, child,” she teased.

“Sorry,” I apologized, looking down in shame.

“Do not apologize, young one,” she whispered, lifting my head. “It is a part of who you are, what makes you unique.”

She started to rise, lifting me up with her. She smiled at me once more before turning to see the other cultists. She held herself up tall as she made her way back to the bonfire, no longer roaring as it had been. Those she passed bowed, but did not kneel. When she reached the edge of the fire, she stopped and turned to once again face me.

“Tonight, my children, we celebrate! For we have helped your new brother remember!” she exclaimed to the crowd, as a roar of joy rose up from the other cultists. “Tomorrow, we celebrate once again, for I have returned to this beautiful and terrible world! Tomorrow, we will right was has been wronged, and rebirth the ugliness of the Allmother with her former beauty!”

“TILL THE DAWN!!!” a roar rose from the cultists, as if a battle cry had sung.

That night, I danced with my brothers and sisters, loved them as only I could, ate as I wished, and celebrated the return of Carnage.

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hearts-hunger · 3 years

Text

together wing to wing || chapter four

Read on AO3 | Masterlist

chapter one | chapter two | chapter three

Series Summary: He’s offered his protection before, on the Green. In the hospital, Cee wonders if he’ll offer it again, and Ezra wonders if she’ll even want him to.

Chapter Summary: Ezra makes a choice.

Pairings: Ezra & Cee (platonic!)

Genre: Fluff, hurt/comfort, angst | Word Count: 675 (she’s tiny)

Warnings: hospitals, injury, mentions of canon-typical violence

A/N: This one’s short, but I really like it. Let me know what you think! ♡

He was home again.

It was night, and a set of stars he hadn’t seen since he was a boy glinted back at him, brighter than he remembered them. The breeze swept through the hip-high grass, luring the pink wild onion and golden switchgrass into a shared melody; he could hear a longspur’s call of kityoo-trick-kityoo over the trilling of crickets. He took a deep breath, deeper than he’d managed in a long time; the clean air filled his lungs until he thought his chest would burst with it.

“Ezra!”

He knew that voice. The song of a little bird more flighty than the rest, calling out to him with more intention, like it needed something from him. It sounded out of place here, where everything was peaceful and nothing was required of him. He could have stayed in the tall grass and watched the stars forever, breathing deeply of that warm summer air. But his heart was tied to that little bird’s song, and the thread that kept them together was tugged, sharply, on the other end. He could no more keep from following it than he could stop the stars from shining.

“Cee,” he called out, wading through the tall grass. His voice sounded wrong, and he tried it again. “Cee!”

She didn’t answer, but he felt her, somehow; he gracelessly stomped through the grass and searched for her. He winced with pain. His whole body felt weary, an angry, grueling weariness he feared he would never truly be rid of. He followed the sharp tug of her call towards the treeline, and a darkness much heavier seemed to shroud the woods he walked towards.

He knew what those woods were. He’d spent too many cycles there for him not to know. He’d be damned before he went back there again.

He stopped walking, stood stock-still in the middle of the field. She called his name again, and it was weaker, lost in the rustling of the grass against his body.

“Come here, little bird,” he said. “Don’t make me come looking for you. I fear we cannot survive another pilgrimage to the Green, you and me.”

He knew she was tugging him towards it, towards that mangled, deathly forest where each breath was its own small struggle and victory. Where wounds ached and sorrows gnawed. Where the only consolation to be found was a small, trembling hand in his.

“Stay with me,” he said gently, hoping to ease her out of the forest she seemed so keen to draw him back into. “We’ll be happy here, birdie. We’ll get along just fine.”

He felt that sharp tug again, then the ghost of a touch over his left-hand knuckles.

“I didn’t leave you,” she said. Her voice was desperate, tear-stained. “I didn’t leave you, and you better not leave me. Don’t leave me here alone.”

Ah. He realized what the trouble was. She was lost in those woods, tangled up somewhere he’d have to fish her out of. Somewhere she needed help. Somewhere she shouldn’t be alone.

He bolstered his courage. He wanted to stay here, more than anything - the stars and the summer breeze called to him like a siren’s song. He needed rest, a whole lifetime’s worth. Would he get that in the Green?

No. Most certainly, he’d not get a chance to rest like this again in many years. There was work to be done, and a little bird caught in a thicket that needed his help mending her wings. A one-armed grifter with pretty words wasn’t what she was owed, that much he knew for sure, but she’d asked for him. Called for him by name, and he wasn’t going to leave her when she needed him.

“I’m coming, birdie,” he said, and his voice sounded a little stronger. He followed that now-familiar tug and felt her touch grow steadier on his hand, taking him back into the Green once more.

Read chapter five!

pedro pascal character taglist: @punkgeekchic, @tv-saved-the-teenage-girl, @stardust-galaxies, @theorganasolo, @qhbr2013 ♡

series taglist: @insomniamamma, @motherofallthesmallthings ♡

let me know if you’d like to be added to either taglist! ♡

#you loves on my taglist sure are happy i inflicted another post on you tonight aren't you ;)#this feels a little..... artsy? for me? idk but i kind of like it #ezra prospect fanfiction #ezra prospect #cee prospect #prospect 2018 fanfiction #prospect 2018 #maddie writes stuff!

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sinful-stories · 4 years

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Bloody Carpets

This is my entry for @nicole-lynne ‘s 350 followers challenge. I had Derek Hale and the line “You’re bleeding all over my carpet.” I didn’t really describe the reader so I hope it can be read as either a guy or a girl. Enjoy.

Characters: Derek Hale, Chris Argent, Malia Tate, Scott McCall, Isaac Lahey, Reader. (Lydia, Stiles and the rest of the pack are mentioned).

Derek leans back in his chair before setting his legs on the table in front of him. It had been quiet in Beacon Hills lately, minus a few new supernatural beings who moved in though they hadn’t caused any trouble to his knowledge. Scott hadn’t needed him yet for anything, so he’s gotten bored despite to increased numbers of hunters also living in BH with them. He put his arms behind his head, closing his eyes with a small sigh escaping his lips. Chris Argent had his hands full attempting to keep what Gerard had done before his death. Cora never returned, choosing to stay in South America where she wouldn’t be hunted or harmed at every turn. Isaac recently returned from France after training with the Argents there, becoming both a hunter and staying a werewolf in the mix. Scott and Stiles often worked with the sheriff’s office, though Stiles still worked for the FBI and was often gone on cases. Lydia began working at the school in order to keep an eye on the younger creatures, not because she didn’t trust them but rather she worried about them. Malia decided more recently to work with Deaton at the pet clinic without giving her reasons as to why. Jackson returned permanently to BH with Ethan so they could help Scott with the sudden influx of beings coming here. Cory, Hayden, Liam, and Mason were currently traveling outside of BH for a few reasons. They needed a break and to go to college but to also look for anyone who needed help. New creatures kept coming up and different breeds, though the one who bothered Derek the most had to be (Y/N). You showed up alone and seemingly running from a troubled past. You refused to open up about what happened or what led you to hide away in a town for the supernaturals when you seemed to be a human. With a snarky tongue and fierce attitude, you got under his skin in a way he didn’t like. Their arguments tended to end with one of them somehow injured. He liked you, and he wouldn’t deny that fact plus he couldn’t lie around any of the werecreatures throughout the town. Something about you drew him to you but he never had the best luck with romantic partners so he chose to ignore his growing affection for you.

His eyes open when he hears someone grab the door handle to his loft before it slide open. He quickly drops his legs from the table in order to greet who stands in the doorway before the scent of iron finally reaches him. (Y/N) stands there with blood dripping down multiple different wounds, you look like you could barely stand on your own with your skin looking several shades lighter than usual. Derek jumps up and runs over to you, barely managing to catch you when you attempted to step forward again like you wanted to meet him halfway somehow. He easily picks you up and rushes over to the table, easily clearing anything on it. You grip his sleeve as he lets go of you to pull out his phone, you didn’t know who he wants to call but you’re scared and he can smell it.

“No cops.” You manage to say finally, “Please.”

“I need to call someone. You’re bleeding all over my carpet.”

You huff but drop the hold you have on his sleeve, attempting to cover one of your wounds to avoid any more blood dripping on his carpet. He dials a number you’re not quick enough to see and walks away from the table, speaking in a low tone with the other person. You couldn’t believe you’d been stupid enough to be caught by a hunter in this town, you thought they didn’t attack unless they had reason to. Then again, that protection came strictly by being within the McCall Pack which you weren’t in. A loner through and through. You’d hoped that being here in BH would slow the hunters that have been on your trail since you turned, but you couldn’t have been more wrong. Derek ends his call with a small grumble before approaching you again, his eyes slide over the different injuries like he’s trying to figure out which one to treat first. He can’t see them very well though, most of them being hidden by the bloody fabric clinging to them.

“Do it,” You sigh, “I know you have to.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s not like I have anything you haven’t seen on one of your exes before.”

He studies your features for a few heartbeats before he rips open your shirt, exposing the different injuries covering your abdomen and back. His fingers lightly grazing scars he didn’t even notice at first, concern instantly coming into his darkly colored eyes. Pain rolls off of you in waves, it’s a sour scent that causes Derek’s nose to scrunch up. He reaches out and places his hand against the largest wound, you immediately know what he’s trying to do. Pain absorption. A skill most werecreatures have. It works on animals and humans, but it rarely works on other beings. It didn’t work though. Derek no longer had the Alpha status, he couldn’t take the pain from any other creatures. Scott told him to keep the wounds covered until he got there with Isaac and Malia, he wanted Isaac there in case you needed to be held down while the others worked on your injuries. They still weren’t sure of what you were so they wanted to a Beta there, other than Derek of course. He walks away again and ignoring the way you attempt to grab his sleeve to keep him from leaving. Faintly the sounds of his sink reach you, but it hurts for you to even move your head around right now so you trust your senses. You know what you need to heal, but telling him might cause him to turn you over to the hunters. Werewolves have never been very friendly with your type. You can’t help but to feel a pang of something at that thought, the thought of Derek betraying you. Closing your eyes, you try to recall your life before this. But for the first time, you can’t. You can’t remember your parents, friends, or anything else about yourself.

“Hey, keep your eyes open.” Derek’s harsh tone snap you out of your thoughts.

“Sorry.” You mumble.

“I understand, but you need to stay awake until Scott gets here.”

“Scott. As in Scott McCall. The true alpha who died twice before he was out of high school?”

“Is he that well known?”

“His whole pack is, even you.”

Derek snorts as he begins wiping the blood staining your skin with a warm, wet cloth. He hates that he can’t take away the pain rolling off of you in waves, he hates when he smells the stench grow stronger every time he wipes the wounds. You grip fistfuls of your jeans to keep yourself from lashing out at him, from drawing blood from him to heal the wounds. They weren’t sealing or scabbing over and you could feel how weak you’d become thanks to all the blood loss from dragging yourself to Derek’s loft. You did it because he’s in Scott’s pack, and you trusted him for some reason. No hunter could hurt you in Derek’s loft, hopefully.

Scott and Malia were still waiting for Isaac at Deaton’s vet clinic. Scott took the time to pack up what he assumed they would need to help an injured person, although he wished Derek would bring you to the hospital so his mom could look at you. But he understands why. Most beings here don’t trust the humans since the hunters were everywhere. The hospitals, the sheriff’s station, the school… everywhere. Malia keeps saying that she doesn’t trust you because she doesn’t like how you smell, something about your scent caused most werecreatures to give you weird looks. But Scott never finds it off, he also doesn’t see why someone would hurt you. Isaac finally pulls up outside though instead of staying in his car, he gets out and rushes over to Scott with a file in his hands.

“Scott. I know why they got hurt.” Isaac skips any greetings, handing his alpha the folder.

“Why?” Scott askes even as he takes the file.

His eyebrows raise almost instantly as he reads the information printed there, he didn’t think vampires were real. No one he ever saved could tell him, they were rare to come across. Someone put a price on your head, a big one at that, and they wanted you dead rather than alive.

“We need to get to Derek. Now. This says they don’t care how it’s done or what rules they break. Whoever put this price tag out there won’t care about hurting Derek too. We should also call Chris, in case we need back up.”

Malia grabs the backpack Scott had packed and the trio hurry to Isaac’s car. Scott just hopes they can get there before something worse happens.

Derek stands over you still, keeping an eye on how much you’re bleeding with an unreadable expression on his features the entire time. You couldn’t tell if he was mad from the blood soaking into the carpet or if he was concerned for your life. He moves to your other side, wiping away the sweat dripping from your forehead with a small frown. Scott didn’t normally take this long to get here, whether he had been busy or not. He’s trying not to pace around the loft, you weren’t moving a lot anymore and he hasn’t been able to get you to open your eyes since you closed them a few moments before. The sounds of multiple people slowly approaching his loft door causes him to look up from you finally, his eyes turning to an icy blue. His shoulders becoming tense as his nails turned into claws with a frown tugging on his lips. Though the tension leaves him when he sees Chris pull the door open with Isaac, Scott, and Malia.

“What took you guys so long?” Derek grunted.

“Chris needed to stop by the hospital to get what we need for your friend.” Isaac pulls the door shut, glancing at the amount of blood.

“The hell does that mean?”

“They’re a vampire, Derek.”

Derek looks down at your barely moving form, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion. From the stories he remembered being told by Peter, they were supposed to be the opposite of werewolves. They chose to have covens though they liked being loners. They killed without care about who they hurt or turned in the process. They took and took and took yet rarely gave to others. The hunters, however, had taken control of the ‘out of control’ vampire population. It made them harder to find which made the hunters angry, they didn’t like how easily they could blend in with humans. Their eyes didn’t glow in pictures, they didn’t have super strength or hearing. They couldn’t handle a lot of sunlight though they could handle some of it. Their eyes were sensitive to the light, very sensitive. But they could heal faster than most humans. Their hearts still beat enough to avoid concern from medical personal. They could eat normal food, but they needed blood daily to survive. Everyone assumed it had to be human blood yet something tugs in Derek’s mind. He doesn’t believe it’s true.

There hadn’t been any reports of late night attackers that ended with someone dead or heavily injured. He shakes his head and glares at his former Beta, not believing a word from him. Chris walks over to check your pulse before he swings his bag forward, setting it on the ground to pull out a blood bag from the hospital. He refuses to look at Derek while cutting it open and allowing some to drip onto your lips. Your eyes open instantly but they’re no longer (y/e/c), rather a bright red that somehow manages to glow even in the evening daylight outside. You snatch the bag from Chris, drinking it greedily and hungrily. Derek steps back from the table, his eyebrows raising almost immediately. From the way you drain the bag, he knows you must have been hungry yet you never made a move to drink from him. You had held yourself back the entire time and that went against everything he had ever been told about vampires. He watches as you swipe the blood dripping from the corner of your mouth, licking the blood from your thumb. The others in the loft watching you in a mix of surprise, horror, and concern as the wounds covering you begin healing at a rapid rate they hadn’t seen before. You take a second bag of blood from Chris and rip it open with your teeth, finally exposing your sharpened canines in the process. It didn’t seem like you cared as blood slides down your throat and chest, dripping onto the blood stains from your blood there. Licking your lips once the second bag is finished, you look at the people around you in silence unsure of what to say.

“You’re a vampire.” Scott says, “Stiles is going to have a field day with this, he always swore you guys existed.”

“We do, sadly. Most of us weren’t turned with our consent though.” You shrug, wiping the blood from your mouth.

“Is that why you have a bounty of your head for killing your family?” Isaac speaks up, his tone unusually harsh.

“I didn’t kill them. I’m just the only one who wasn’t killed, so my grandfather is convinced I did. I’ve been on the run for years now.”

Scott studies you in silence, the debate he’s having mentally clear on his features. His arms crossing as he begins to pace. Chris and Malia both watch you with sympathy in her eyes, though neither attempt to get closer to where you sit on the table close to where Derek is still standing. Isaac, however, is glaring at you like he doesn’t believe a word coming out of you. Not like you care though. You’re used to people not trusting you. Derek studies everyone, scrubbing his hand through his hair with a small sigh like he can’t understand what’s going on. Then everyone starts talking. Isaac wants to send you back to your grandfather. Chris thinks you should go with him and keep hiding. Scott wants you to join his pack of misfits. Malia thinks you need to go to the police or Stiles. You argue against everything. You didn’t kill your family, and you weren’t planning on getting killed for something you couldn’t have done. Derek stays silent the entire time, trying to ignore all the yelling. He just watches the blood dripping down into the blood stains and it begins to annoy him adding to the annoyance that had been building from everyone talking.

“Goddamn it! I told you before, you’re bleeding all over my carpet!!” Derek roars.

#teen wolf #stiles stilinski #derek hale #derek hale x y/n #derek hale x reader #some angst #nicolelynne350challenge #scott mccall #malia tate #chris argent #isaac lahey

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ayamari-no-goshi · 3 years

Text

Verboten 1 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary: AU. When Danny was five years old, he went missing for 2 weeks. In the years that follow, his family tried to make sense of what happened, only for the truth to be discovered years later.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, language. Be prepared for some very weird things

Parings: Danny/Sam

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr. This fic is very heavily inspired by folklore surrounding mysterious wilderness disappearances

Chapter 1 Verboten (adjective of German origin. Meaning: forbidden, especially by an authority)

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When he was five years old, Danny went missing for two weeks.

Most of the time when a child goes missing, either they get lost or they are taking by something or someone. In Danny's case, those involved tended to believe it was the former, but there were a few details which caused the veteran searchers to scratch their heads.

All parties involved, Danny, his family, and the men and women who searched for him, agreed on the most basic details. Danny and his family were visiting his mother's sister Alicia at her home in Arkansas. The house sat on the outskirts of a small town in the Ozarks. While her five acres had been cleared of most of the trees to allow for some farming, an old forest surrounded most of the property.

That particular day in early August, his aunt took him and his older sister, Jasmine, out to pick some blackberries. Although Alicia was best known for her rhubarb pies and jams, she also made incredible blackberry pies, and according to her, the best blackberries were found about a mile away from the house inside the woods.

She was a tough woman who knew the dangers of the woods and would always carry protection with her. Before she took her niece and nephew with her, she clearly warned both of them they needed to stay within eye sight of her and listen to her. Her instructions were stated in front of both of their parents, who were able to collaborate it for the police report. In this instance, she also took a walkie-talkie with her as a precaution. When asked about the communication device, she reported it wasn't normal for her to bring one, but something in her gut told her she might need it that day.

The three of them left around nine in the morning and reached the patch of blackberries in about forty minutes or so. The three of them picked berries until their baskets were full. As they were getting ready to leave, Alicia caught sight of Danny looking up at a squirrel in a nearby tree. She glanced towards Jasmine to make sure she was good to go, but as she turned to call to Danny, he was no longer there.

A few choice curses escaped her as she began to look around and call out for her nephew. Jasmine assisted her but couldn't offer any information regarding her brother. She hadn't seen anything strange.

After several minutes of frantic searching, Alicia contacted her sister, Maddie, and her husband, Jack, through the walkie-talkie. Although she could hear Jack yell in the background, Maddie, while obviously shaken, was able to get in touch with the local sheriff. If Alicia had to guess, either her sister wasn't initially frantic due to shock, or she was able to remind herself she needed to keep calm until she could talk to the police.

Within the hour, Alicia and Jasmine were back at the house. About thirty minutes later, the police and a team of search and rescue folk had arrived. By this time, it had been almost three hours since Danny had gone missing.

After the officers took the statements from Alicia, Jazz, Maddie, and Jack, the men asked Alicia to lead them to the area where Danny was last seen, and she gladly agreed. Although Maddie and Jack wanted to go as well, they were told to stay at the house with their daughter. She hid it well, but Alicia was glad they stayed behind. Jack was bumbling and too loud for his own good, and Maddie, as brilliant as she was, could easily get sidetracked if something interested her scientific curiosity.

When the group arrived at the berry patch, Alicia pointed out the place where she last saw her nephew as the search and rescue team began their process of systematically combing the area. One of the officers led her back to her house before he returned to the search. The waiting began after that.

Hours passed, and no word was received. Maddie's shock wore off, and she picked a fight with her sister. Alicia couldn't blame her, and she was also angry at herself. She knew those woods could be dangerous, but her overconfidence in her own abilities might have caused her nephew to vanish.

Sometime during the search, one of the police offers asked Alicia about her ex-husband. The two had a very nasty divorce the previous year, but to her knowledge, he had left the state and moved to a city somewhere. Since the split had been volatile, the police wanted to get in touch with him as a precaution as there had been previous cases where an ex had abducted a family member. Although she gave him the information, she knew it wouldn't amount to anything. Although she had several choice words regarding her ex, she knew he didn't have the backbone to harm her nephew.

Day turned into night, and night turned into day. There were no signs of the boy. The search and rescue dogs could only follow his scent so far before they just laid down in defeat. Unnerved by their responses, the rescuers continued to search for other means. The police and searchers did make periodic updates with the family and were at least able to assure them that there did not seem to be signs of a bear or coyote attack.

Days continued to pass, and even with the searchers using infrared radar and overhead searches, there were still no signs of the boy. The press had somehow gotten word of the case and had swarmed the house and demanded interviews with the police, searchers, and family. Instead of being helpful, they were more akin to pests who just got in the way.

After a week, the search started to die down. The professionals had been called away for another case, but offered their sincerest apologies before they departed. The police also were forced to turn their attention elsewhere. There were still volunteers out searching for the boy, but with the amount of wilderness, it was unlikely they would find anything.

Maddie and Jack were crushed. Alicia couldn't imagine how they felt. The child was their own flesh and blood. Jack, who was usually boisterous and cheerful was now sullen and quiet. She found him tinkering with some of the spare junk parts she had. He said he was trying to make a radar of some sorts, but she thought he was just keeping himself busy to keep from breaking down. During the mornings, she sometimes found him wandering the perimeter obviously looking for Danny. Maddie turned most of her attention to her daughter to try to keep her calm.

Jasmine, on the other hand, knew full well something was wrong. The girl was bright and always seemed smarter than what was expected for a child of seven. She wanted to help with the searches, but she was wisely told she couldn't, and accepted the explanation that her parents would not be able to handle it if she vanished too.

…..

Nine days after Danny's disappearance, the Fentons were supposed to return to their home in a different state. The family was hesitant to leave without any sort of closure. Luckily, Maddie and Jack had a flexible job, and it would still be a few weeks before Jasmine needed to return to school. Alicia didn't argue with their decision, and just made sure to make a list for more provisions for them.

…

On the dawn of the fifteenth day, Alicia and the Fentons were awoken by frantic banging on her front door. Agitated, she opened it to find an excited yet somewhat perplexed police officer in front of her. Sirens could be heard in the background.

"Ma'am, are the Fenton's available?" he asked as he removed his hat.

"Yes. Should I brew some coffee? Or pour a shot?" Her eyes narrowed as she appraised the man's demeanor. With how long Danny had been missing, she knew he would most likely be found dead, but there was something about him which told her he may actually have good information.

"Coffee would be nice, but I'm not sure they'll wait long enough for it to finish."

Uncertain at what that meant, she let him into her living room and went to get her sister. Both Maddie and Jack were awake and stood at the top of her stairs. She beckoned them down, and the three sat on the old leather couch across from the arm chair the officer had claimed.

"Maddie, Jack, I can't believe I'm saying this, but we found Danny. He's alive."

There was a moment of stunned disbelief before everyone yelled. Alicia couldn't make heads or tails of what her sister or Jack said, but the man had scooped his wife up in an excited embrace. Once she was released, Maddie demanded to know where Danny was.

"One of our volunteers found him early this morning. We don't know how he got there, but he was only a few yards away from where you said he was last seen," the officer explained.

"How the heck is that possible?" Alicia demanded. She and several others had checked that area repeatedly.

"Ma'am, we honestly have no idea," he replied honestly. "He's been taken to the local hospital to check for injuries, but I've been told he's in good health."

It only took a few moments after that for Jack and Maddie to wake up their daughter and get ready before the four of them piled in the Fenton's vehicle and headed to the hospital. When they arrived and the woman at the front desk told them where they needed to go, they found Danny happily sitting on an examination table with a juice box in hand speaking with an officer.

The boy waved to his parents once he noticed them. Seconds later, he was safely wrapped in his mother's arms. She was crying in happiness.

Allowing the family their much needed reunion, the officer stepped outside and spoke to Alicia. "We're honestly at a loss for what happened to him," he explained. "Danny says someone asked to play with him, but he couldn't really explain who or what it might have been. He says the thing had red eyes and gave him food when he was got tired. He said his playmate wanted him to stay, but he wasn't strong enough yet. He said his playmate let him go with the promise of them meeting again in the future."

"That's very strange."

The officer looked her dead in the eye. "Ma'am, I'm sure you're aware of this, but weird things happen in these woods. We're lucky he turned up alive. In most of the cases I've heard like this, the child is never found. No trace of them what so ever. Or, if they are found, they're dead for reasons we don't understand." With that, he left her to her thoughts and went back into the room to finish up his interview with Danny.

…

A couple days later, Maddie and Jack had packed up their kids and began their journey back to their home. While she was glad everything had turned out alright in the end, she had concerns about her nephew.

Danny seemed off somehow. There didn't seem to be a change in personality, but she'd catch him sometimes stare off into the woods with a blank expression. His eyes also seemed somewhat different, but she was never exactly able to pinpoint why.

In the years that followed, she received word her family was doing fine. Danny seemed unaffected by the event and was growing up as a young boy should. Jasmine had begun taking an interest in psychology, most likely due to what she had witnessed when Danny disappeared. Maddie and Jack, however, had taken a personal interest in what happened to their boy. While they were already investigating what many would consider fringe sciences, they began looking into the tales of disappearances like their son's.

She was still unsettled by the entire event. Her gut told her whatever happened to Danny was only the beginning of something larger and stranger. If he disappeared again, she wouldn't be surprised.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #danny phantom au #dp au #my writing #fanfiction #fanfic #fantasy #supernatural #sam manson #tucker foley #vlad plasmius #maddie fenton #jack fenton #folklore #sooooooooo much folklore #Verboten

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rwby-grimm-guardians · 3 years

Text

RWBY Grimm Guardians Arc 3: Separated Union Ch 10

Side White III: Realizations

Happy New Year, y’all. Fuck, I hope 2021 is better….

Welcome back to Separated Union! Here’s Side White III and here, Weiss FINALLY speaks her mind. Also, Ruby texts her. Meanwhile, Winter realizes how bad things are TRULY getting...and takes action.

As usual, please give constructive criticism and enjoy.

Disclaimer: Still own nothing.

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(7:41 PM)

“Something’s on your mind.” Willow said, combing her daughter’s hair after she showered. Weiss sighed, “That obvious, huh?” The former heiress chuckled, “A little. You know you can tell me.” The teenager sighed. She knew that she could be open with her mother about what was going through her mind right now. Weiss was...scared about the possible reactions, however. What she wanted right now was not what anyone would expect. That she was sure of.

“I hate it here.” The teenager said. The woman nodded in agreement, “Not pleased with your father’s recent development either, huh?” Weiss shook her head, “He’s attempting to control me. He already has corrupted Whitley.” She could feel her mother tense up, before noticing her gripping the comb harshly. “I’m going to kill that bastard for what he did to your brother…” Willow whispered, unaware that her daughter heard her. Weiss wisely decided to not ask her mother questions on that statement.

“In any case, we should probably leave and live somewhere else for the time being.” Her mother said. The teenager sighed, “I don’t know if that’s the right decision to make. What if we get into more danger because of that?” Willow looked at her, raising an eyebrow, “Does your worry have to do with what happened with Klein today?” The heiress paused, before nodding with a quiet “Yeah”.

Klein was...at the receiving end of Jacques’s fury today. While he was not harmed, he was certainly threatened of 1: being forced out of the building and 2: being placed in prison under false charges. And Willow had never been so furious at her husband after what happened to the butler. Weiss, on the other hand, had never been so scared of her own father. “I really think we should leave.” Her mother said, snapping her daughter out of her thoughts. “And try and get Whitley and Klein out as well.”

Weiss tilted her head up to look at Willow, “How do we know that he won’t find us?” The woman sighed, “We don’t… But you CAN alert Winter of what happened and try to do something.” “I guess…” The teenager said, knowing that the connection to Winter’s phone would most likely be secure, due to the kind of person she was. “I’ll text her after I get ready for bed.” Her mother hummed with a nod, continuing to comb the teenager’s hair, before finishing and putting the comb away.

Weiss then heard a ding, before noticing a text from Ruby on her scroll. Willow raised an eyebrow as she looked over her daughter’s shoulder, “Is Ruby okay?” The possibility of her partner being in danger was very real as the teenager opened the text in minor panic. She soon sighed with relief as she read the text, which said, “Hey~. ^^ It’s me. In Mistral right now and thinking about setting up a virtual meeting the day after tomorrow to discuss our future plans. Does 12:40 sound good?”

“Well, looks like we’ll be up then...” The heiress said. Willow hummed with a chuckle, “Say yes. This’ll help us.” Sighing, Weiss did so, before putting the scroll off to the side. “Thank you. I’m going to get ready for bed.” She said. Her mother nodded, before hugging Weiss and kissing her forehead. “Get some rest. It’s been a long day.” The former heiress said, receiving a tired hum from her daughter as she leaned into Willow’s embrace. After a few moments, Weiss then went to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

As her daughter began getting ready for bed, Willow got a text on her scroll...from Summer. Opening it, she froze as she felt her heart sink.The text read, “Ruby didn’t tell you, I’m sure. But she’s in the hospital for injuries received from an...old enemy of mine…” The text continued, “Don’t worry. We’re safe. Ruby’s healing well.” The former heiress sighed. “That kid needs help big time….” She whispered.

She hoped that Ruby wouldn’t get into any worse problems. For Weiss’s sake.

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(At the Atlesian Military Compound...)

(8:44 PM)

To say Winter was having a rough night was an understatement. She just had to deal with a certain brat named Harriet in the Ace Operatives Unit. Thankfully, Marrow was a great deal of help during that fiasco. After giving Ironwood her report on the situation, the silver haired woman immediately went to her room and shower to unwind. She had enough annoyance to deal with for a lifetime. “Gods, I hope Weiss is doing better than me at the moment.” She said, getting undressed and starting the hot water.

After finishing her shower, the eldest Schnee sibling wrapped a towel around her and her hair, before deciding to try and go through some emails. Winter picked up her scroll, only to notice a text from Weiss. She almost immediately began panicking, “Oh gods. Please. PLEASE be okay…” The elder Schnee sister read the text, which said, “Make sure Klein is safe from Father”. She then sighed. While she was glad that her sister was safe and well, she was also worried for Klein’s well-being.

Winter put the scroll down, rubbing her eyes as she thought, ‘Of course, he’d fucking try to go after Klein too…’ She would call Weiss about it tomorrow. Right now, she needed to call the family butler. She quickly dialed the butler’s personal number, before hearing, “Ms. Winter? What are you doing calling so late?” A wave of relief washed over the woman as she heard the butler’s voice. “Nothing. Just making sure you’re safe.” She explained. Winter heard Klein chuckle as he said, “You’re too kind.”

There were a couple moments of silence, before the eldest Schnee sibling asked, “Are you certain you’re alright?” “I’m safe, Ms. Winter. Trust me. I am.” The butler reassured. Winter nodded with a sigh, wiping away any water from her damp hair rolling down her face, “Okay. Weiss asked me to make sure. Could you...please give me updates on your situations?” “I’ll certainly try. I promise.” Klein said.

Winter could hear the smile in his voice. “Sounds good. Thank you.” “You’re welcome. Please stay safe, Ms. Winter.” “You too, Klein.” Winter, before the two said their goodbyes and hung up. The silver haired woman sighed, rubbing her eyes again. It was a little after 9 and she needed to figure out how to stop Jacques. If she was going to protect her siblings, mother, and Klein from her father, then she was going to need help. And not from the military.

The eldest Schnee sibling dialed a number she knew by heart, making sure the call was encrypted as she put the device up to her ear. A familiar female voice came from the speaker, “Winter? What are you doing calling so late?” “I need help, Robyn.” Winter said. “What’s going on?” The Happy Huntress leader asked, concerned. Winter raked her fingers through her damp hair, “I need to search for any info regarding my father.” The light blonde woman raised an eyebrow, “In general or…?”

“In any sense. He’s...going far off the rails now.” The silver haired woman answered. A hum was heard from Robyn, “Gotcha. I’ll see what I can do starting tomorrow.” Winter sighed in relief, “Thank you. Don’t tell this to anyone but me.” “I’m assuming you can’t trust the military with this.” Robyn stated. Winter groaned, sitting on her bed, “Not with my father and Ironwood currently being buddy-buddy.” The light blonde woman hummed, “Gotcha. I’ll try to keep this quiet.”

“Thank you.” The silver haired woman said. After a few moments of silence, she finally sighed, “I miss you.” “You too, hun. I’m sure you had a rough night.” Robyn hummed. “Get some rest. And please stay safe, okay?” Winter nodded, “You too. Ich liebe dich.” The light blonde woman chuckled, “Love you too. Good night.” “Night.” The silver haired woman said, before hanging up. Putting her scroll on the bedside table, she removed her towels, changing into her undergarments before laying down with a sigh.

“We’re never going to be free of this bullshit, are we?” She asked herself. While Winter wasn’t that big of a believer, she prayed that she would be wrong. That SOMEHOW...things would get better.

Sometimes life is a train wreck, unfortunately.

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This was a REALLY hard one for me to do. Then again, I was also busy with holidays.

YES, I LOW-KEY SHIP WINTER AND ROBYN.

But it’s done. Side White is finished. Next is Side Black III and Blake and Gambol reunite with their parents.

#rwby #rwby au #grimm guardians au #rwby fanfiction #willow schnee #weiss schnee #klein rwby #robyn x winter #robyn hill

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manikas-whims · 4 years

Note

Hi, i follow your todomomo oneshots book on ao3. You said you're taking requests. So uh can you please write Momo comforting Shouto after a mistake on his mission. Ohh and can you please make them older in this. ty

Thank you so much for this request dear anon :3

Consoling His Heart

Words: 2059

Rating: T+ (slight kissing)

Read on: AO3 | FFnet

He found her standing on the porch of their shared house, her radiant smile brightening everything around her. On sighting his approaching form, she raised an arm and began waving it, as if she was ecstatic to see him again. She was always there, bidding him farewells when he left for missions and greeting him with open arms upon his returns. Always.. And he was glad (fortunate actually) to have her as an important part of his rather dull lifestyle as the number 3 Pro Hero of Japan. She made him happy, filled the emptiness he always used to experience. She made him believe that he was more than just a man born of his father’s stubborn resolve for supremacy. He was always grateful of her. But that day, he couldn’t face her. After the offence he had committed on his latest mission, his hands were sullied by a wrong he could never wash off. And he didn’t want to tarnish her pristine skin with his touch.

“I just saw you on TV and figured you’d be coming back soon so I came outside to wait.” She told him cheerfully, stretching her arms as an invitation for a hug. But he couldn’t even meet her gaze.

Nodding his head in acknowledgement, he walked right past her inside their house, ignoring the confused expression marring her beautiful face.

Shouto Todoroki didn’t deem himself worthy of her.

Her brows knitted together in confusion due to his sudden aloofness towards her yet she shrugged it off as mere side-effects of the grueling mission he was sent on. Turning around, she followed after him into their house. She shook her head, her petal lips curving up into a fond smile. Like always, he had left his boots carelessly on the floor so she arranged them in their proper place in the shoe rack.

They’ve been in a relationship for two years now. She was the one who couldn’t bottle her feelings anymore and ended up confessing to him during their final year at UA. He was shocked at the revelation because apparently ‘he didn’t consider himself on par with her’. Whatever that means. As soon as they graduated, they joined separate agencies to work under, making it hard for them to see each-other much. And so, this year onwards, she suggested that they start living together, to which he agreed without any hesitation. The only reason they haven’t tied the knot yet is because (again) ‘he wanted her to be sure of whether she wished to spend the rest of her life with him or not’.

Frankly speaking, she doesn’t understand the point of such questions or why he wants her to reflect on her decisions again and again. He made her realize what she was capable of and for that she will always be thankful. He made her happy, made her feel strong and important, not just as a pro hero but as an individual.

Momo Yaoyorozu couldn’t imagine her life without his calm presence in it.

With one last look around the porch, she closed the door and walked towards their bedroom. She blushed at a faint memory of all the unspeakable things they’d done in that very room but quickly pushed it away.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, face as devoid of emotions as ever. But she was so used to seeing it that she easily caught the hints of self-loathing swimming in his mismatched irises. He was back at it— questioning his existence and doubting his worth.

“Shouto”, She called softly as she entered the room and approached him.

He jerked his face to glance at her before receding back into his glum state of mind and mumbled in a grave tone, “I failed.”

She was stupefied by his choice of words. Failure and Shouto Todoroki did not belong in the same sentence. The word failure had no relation to him whatsoever. For the four years that she had known him, she had always seen him learn from his mistakes and improve until he became a great hero. She was there to witness it all. She saw him become the man she came to love not simply because of his striking features but because of whom he was.

She’d been watching the news just minutes ago and media was singing praises about the success of his mission. So then, why exactly was he sitting so dejectedly?

Kneeling down before him, she cradled his face in her palms and tilted it, making his pair of gray and blue eyes meet her onyx ones. “What happened? The news said it went well and-”

“I failed, Momo.” He repeated, his jaw tightening. “I was supposed to apprehend the man running those fighting pits. Instead I nearly killed a little kid’s mother.”

She moved her fingers further up his grimy face into his equally dirty hair and began massaging his scalp. “Hey, calm down.” She said in a soothing tone, “I know you, Shouto. You can never hurt anyone.”

His lips quivered at the degree of faith she had in him. He shook his head like a child feeling the guilt of stealing cookies from a jar he wasn’t allowed to touch. “No you don’t..” His hands shot out and his long fingers wrapped around her dainty wrists, in hopes of channeling his anger at himself. “There were a lot of spectators so I called the back up team. But before they could even reach the scene, panic broke out amongst the audience because well..all of them have some sort of history in crimes. They got scared as soon as I broke in and began running about.”

Momo listened to his explanation patiently, nodding every once in a while. “The owner, he ordered his strongest fighters to deal with me. And..” He gritted his teeth in frustration, “..and I was so consumed by the thoughts of detaining the pit owner that I..I used my left side and..there was a kid. He was crying so much for his mother. But I didn’t understand. I was so consumed with rage..”

He took a long breath, averting his eyes at his dark haired girlfriend of two years, wondering if he should really tell her the remaining bit. He wanted to. Whenever his mind made him restless, he vented to her because he knew she’d have a solution to his problems. She always had. So he just needed her to listen to him once more. He knew he was being pathetic, behaving like that at the age of 20 but he needed her to listen and understand. He wanted her to be certain of their relationship. He wanted to know if she’d choose to stay even after hearing what an abhorrent deed he had committed.

“I released a large wave of fire at the three pit fighters and this lady out of nowhere jumped in front of one guy. The kid..his cries grew louder and he began running towards the scene..” Shouto gulped, his hold on Momo’s wrists tightened before going completely lax and he let go of them. “Everything clicked in that moment and I realised the lady and the man she was trying to protect were parents of that crying child. I was the bad guy there. I was fighting against his father and attacked his parents with my flames. Thanks to the backup team and police officers for showing up. The parents of that kid haven’t sustained any life-threatening injuries and will be out of the local hospital soon.” His fingers crawled up his cheeks and he removed her palms, replacing them with his own to bury his face in shame. “I almost killed them. If police wouldn’t have arrived when they did-”

The dual haired Todoroki's eyes widened at being silenced instantly by a finger on his dry lips. Momo shushed him. Casualties are unavoidable on missions like these and they hurt a lot. But to detest himself over an obvious mistake is so..stupid and yet so like him.

“You didn’t mean it, Shouto.” She said assertively , “There are so many things we can infer from this whole happening. First of all, if those two had decided to be criminals, then they should’ve considered the consequences of bringing a child in their life. But since they did have a kid, those parents should have atleast been rational enough to not bring the kid to a dangerous place like a fighting pit..”

She knew she was rambling but guys like Shouto are so hard upon themselves that they need proper clarifications. They need people like Midoriya or herself to tell them that its not their fault, that there’s no harm in letting things go instead of shouldering unnecessary blames. “Yes, you used your fire on them but it was a mere defensive measure you took amidst a battle. And they’re both still alive and recovering so be glad. If anything, this mission will be an experience not just for you but them as well. Maybe this will be the moment of their awakening. Maybe they’ll finally understand the repercussions a child suffers due to their parents' actions. Maybe they’ll actually take this as a sign and move forward to become good civilians and give their child the life he deserves..”

Shouto peeked through his fingers up at her, his eyes widened in bewilderment. “How do you do this? How do you redefine my worst aspects as if they weren’t bad to begin with? How do you make me look like this saint that I’m not?”

“You’re not a saint.” She answered, pulling his hands away from his face and entwining their fingers. “But you’re no sinner either. You’re just human.”

She smiled lovingly at him, “Humans make rash decisions. You were concentrating on the objective of your mission and wanted to eradicate the hindrances quickly. That’s all. But now you’ve learnt that being reckless can be harmful at times. So stop being so resentful towards yourself and move on.”

Shouto narrowed his eyes in confusion and gazed intensely at her, searching for that thing in her eyes that makes her so kind and benevolent. He felt the heaviness being lifted off his soul, the ache alleviated from his heart. He felt lighter— better! And it only took her a few sensible words to ease his mind of the chaos. Somehow he always lost himself to the smallest of his errs but she was right there, offering her hands to help him up. And he knew she’ll be there for him in the future too but he needed assurance. He just wanted to hear her say it again.

“Momo,” he called in a feeble tone, staring at her innocently, “Are you sure you want to-”

“Yes Shouto” she cut him off immediately, knowing very well what he was asking her for the umpteenth time since they started dating, “I want to be with you forever. I will never leave you. I will always be here with you.”

His heart brimmed with joy at her honest confession and he spoke instinctively, “I love you.”

She grinned at him, pulling him up into a standing position by tugging at their interlinked fingers, “I love you too, you adorable dummy. Now go get washed up. In the meantime, I’ll cook some soba.”

She let go of his hands but was barely able to leave the room as he snaked his arms around her hips, turning her around and capturing her bottom lip between his. He began kissing and nipping, his demeanor suddenly changing entirely with wanton need for her. Afterall, one of the major reasons for his hastiness during the mission was so he could get back to her as soon as possible and ravish her.

She slapped his arms playfully, willing him to get going already but he only released her lips to worship her alluring neck instead, whispering breathlessly, “I need help cleaning up.”

She giggled at his statement and let him carry her to the shower. He really needed to keep his personal desires in check during work so he won’t do something as precarious as he did on this mission. But for now, he wanted to pay her back just as much love as she gave him everyday. And he was way better at expressing himself with his actions.

*Send requests for SasuSaku, TodoMomo, HitsuHina, Zenyuki via asks ☺

#todomomo fanfic #todomomo fanfiction #todomomo #shouto todoroki #momo yaoyorozu #shouto x momo #todoroki shouto #yaoyorozu momo #todoroki x yaoyorozu

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nekojitachan · 5 years

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i have no idea if you're still taking prompts, but anything andreil either in the armies universe or in the way down we go universe would be gucci and i would love you forever. my life belongs to you now

Okay, so first off, @dancyon, thanks for all the messages you’ve sent me over time, the comments about the fics and so forth. I know you’ve asked if I’d ever do another story for Way Down We Go or if Mary hadn’t died, and oddly enough, I’ve had a plot idea for a while which merged the two.

And sorry for being ‘quiet’ lately, but back to trying to figure things out - one of them being my writing, and my writing in fandom in particular. I’ve been doing it for years, and while I’ve thought of each fic being a way to improve my skills, to learn something new... I have to say, lately I just feel like nothing I’m writing is worth anything, it’s just drivel and pathetic.

So I’m trying to get motivated to write again. This is something that actually got me busy at the keyboard, so I hope @dancyon that you are at least happy, since I know it’s something you’ve waited for a long time. And if it’s the last thing I do for AFTG, then it’s fitting that it’s back to WDWG, since that was my first fic for the fandom.

That said - the fic. Consider it a ‘what if’ for WDWG - if Mary had lived but sent Neil/Nathaniel off on his own at the beginning of the fic (believing she was about to die), and everything still takes place as written in the story. Warnings for things referenced in the story, language, Mary’s bad (abusive) parenting skills, and Andrew being protective of Neil.

*******

Through A Glass Darkly

*******

Mary hissed through clenched teeth as she motioned for Abramto take the exit for San Francisco. “Get off there,” she commanded, whichearned a disbelieving look from her son. “Do it.”

“But-“

“Do it,” she repeated, “and find the nearest petrolstation. Once there, put in a few li-“ dammit, she was slipping, “ah, a fewgallons and then run.”

“Mum, what’s happening?” Abram asked as he dared to glanceaway from the dark highway in front of them to give her a scared look. “That…we’re ditching the car?”

“No, you are,” she told him. “You’re going to run,Abram, going to keep going and never stop, never look back.”

“You’re not making any sense,” he argued as he shook hishead, his left eye bruised from a lucky blow that bitch had landed backin Seattle; Mary was certain he hid more injuries beneath his clothes, but he’dgotten off with less than her so he needed to move on. “We’ll-“

“No, we won’t.” Pain made her tone more waspish than usualas she fought not to curl up in a ball, to just give in to the burning agonyeating at her insides. “That prick… he got me good,” she admitted as she heldup her bloody left hand, a sardonic smile curling her thin lips when her songasped. “No,” she repeated when Abram opened his mouth, most likely to argueabout stopping to take care of the wound. “This isn’t something we fix withbourbon and stitches, I can tell, or else we’d already be in a motel by now.”No, Nathan had finally gotten to her in the end, but she’d make sure hewouldn’t get her boy. “So you listen to me, do you understand?”

“But, Mum, we-“

“Do you understand, Abram?” She’d back it with asmack if she had the strength.

It sounded as if the boy choked back on a sob, but his eyesremained dry and he gave a curt nod in the end. “Good. Next exit, then gasstation. Put in enough gas so I can drive away,” could muddy the waters, so tospeak, however much longer she had, “and then you run,” she ordered with asmuch force as she could muster. “You run and you don’t look back, you don’tslow down and you don’t trust anyone, do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a quiet voice as his hands grippedthe steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white – they were herhands, were the Hatfords’ hands with the long, slender fingers.

“You keep moving, you-“ A cough took over, filled her mouthwith blood which she spat onto the left sleeve of her shirt. “Become someoneelse,” she said once her throat was mostly clear. “Use the contacts in thebinder, get a new ID, and another one, and-“

“I know, Mum, I know. I promise. Just… just rest,” hepleaded as he took the exit a little fast.

“You’ll survive, you’re a Hatford,” she assured him as sherested her back against the seat, as she did her best to ride out the latestwave of pain. “Keep moving.”

It was quiet the next few minutes (save her laboredbreathing) until Abram found a gas station; he parked next to the farthest pumpand did his best to straighten up his appearance, then pulled on an oversizedhoodie as he went to pay for a couple gallons of gas. He returned with a bottleof water and some over the counter pain pills, which Mary choked down beforeshe forced herself into the driver’s seat while he tended to the pump.

She made him take her few belongings with him since she hadno need for them (that and the less which was found on her, the better). Hischin wavered and there was a suspicious gleam in his eyes (darkened bycontacts), but he held it together, mindful of the lessons she’d taught him, ofany possible cameras around the station.

For one improbable moment, she felt the urge to pull himclose and hug him, to not let go… but he wasn’t a child anymore, hadn’t beenone for years, and he needed to run before the prick’s people got any closer.Besides, the clock was winding down for her, what good would it do to wasteprecious moments on something so useless? “Go, and live,” she told him as shestarted the car.

He may have said something like her name or ‘Mum’, but sheslammed the door shut and was already pulling away, refusing to look back at heronly child. Teeth clenched against the pain, she drove away, determined to putas much distance between her and Abram as possible in the small amount of timeshe had left.

After that, it was fighting the agony and blood-loss to keepcontrol of the car, to remain in the lane and not attract unwanted attention.To give Abram one last fighting chance.

The last thing she remembered was seeing a sign for the exitto King City before everything went dark.

*******

She woke up to the sound of beeping and an ache in her head,to a sense of lethargy. It was so difficult to open her eyes, and there wassuch a foul taste in her mouth that she gave up and let the darkness pull herunder once again.

The next time there was still the annoying beeping noises,was still the lethargy which made it difficult to move her limbs, still theawful gumminess in her mouth. There was also some git flashing a light in herbarely open eyes, which prompted a weak moan.

“Hello? Can you hear me? Blink twice if you can.”

It took so much effort, but she did that, as well as try toswat their (was it a man?) hand away to get rid of the light. There were morewords but she didn’t understand them, not when they all blurred together, andshe fell asleep once again.

When she woke later, she was more coherent and managed tomumble out a request for water to the woman sitting next to the bed. The person(a nurse?) scrambled and held a straw to her lips (something was wrong, why waseverything so blurry, so distant?), but only let her take a couple of sips beforepulling it away. “I’m sorry, but you can’t drink too much at once.”

It took a few tries, but she (why couldn’t she rememberanything? Like her name and where she was?) managed to make hertongue, so thick and heavy in her mouth, work. “Wha… where?”

“Where? Oh.” The woman, appearing middle-aged and dressed inscrubs, her salt-and-pepper hair cut short and styled in tight curls close toher scalp and a reassuring smile on her dark-skinned face bearing only a fewwrinkles. “You’re in the Natividad Medical Center. Now let me page Dr. Carra,he’s been waiting for you to wake up again.”

What followed was more poking and prodding, with lots ofquestions and very few answers – from Dr. Carra or Beth Wilson, the nurse mostoften assigned to ‘Jane’; it eventually came out that she’d been pulled from acar wreck near King City almost a year ago, near death and with noidentification. After the local hospital had stabilized her, they’d sent her toNatividad when it became clear that she was in a coma from the blood loss andtrauma, and the staff there weren’t surprised that she’d woken up with nomemory of her past. Now they were focused on her getting better.

Oh, it wasn’t quite as simple as that, not when she’d beenfound in a stolen car, when her fingerprints were so badly damaged that theycouldn’t manage a complete enough one to search any database for her, whenshe’d been found with no ID at all, when her body was covered with scars from beforethe accident. She’d overheard a couple of nurses talk about how the police werewaiting for her to recover enough to talk to her, but Dr. Carra refused toallow them access until she showed some signs of progress.

She might not remember anything of her past, but she knewsomehow that she couldn’t let that happen, that she had to get out of therebefore the police got involved. So she faked the lack of recovery, made it seemlike her body wasn’t cooperating when it came to walking again or handlingsimple tasks… and after a few weeks (right around when Dr. Carra talked aboutsending her on to another hospital for evaluation), she timed it just right duringthe night, hit up the nurses’ locker room for a change of clothes and whatevercash she could find, and slipped out of the hospital with no one the wiser.

Perhaps she couldn’t remember her name, where she was fromand how she’d ended up in that car accident, but somehow, she knew how to sneakaround, how to steal and pick pockets, how to vanish. She put those skills touse getting the hell out of Salinas, and when the Greyhound bus stopped atArizona, her hair was dyed another color and cut into a new style.

It was a littletrickier to get into Mexico; she spent a couple of weeks picking pockets on herway from Arizona to Texas, until she had enough to bribe a truck driver tosmuggle her over the border at the Presidio Bridge. For some reason, a sense ofanxiousness left her once she was out of the country, though there was anagging feeling that she’d forgotten something, that she’d left somethingimportant behind.

Yet what could she do when she no longer remembered herpast?

It wasn’t easy, being an American woman alone in Mexico, onewithout papers at that, but Jane (as she’d taken to calling herself), realizedthat she was highly adaptable and resilient. She was also willing to dowhatever it took to not only remain alive but to stand on her own, as anyonewho tried to harm or dismiss her soon learned. Since she didn’t go out of herway to pick fights and was quick to offer solutions to deal with any ‘ruffled’feathers, she eventually was able to settle down in Monterrey as Judith Leeson,an ex-pat who worked as a bartender most nights but who also was available as atranslator for the various businesspeople who came to the city for business(legitimate or otherwise).

Whoever she’d been in the past, she appreciated the factthat she’d learned several languages, as the German, French, bit of Italian andPortuguese as well as the rapidly expanded Spanish came in very handy in hernew life.

At times, she felt the urge to move on, to start anew, butshe didn’t know what she was running from so she forced herself to remain inthe safe place she’d found for herself and to continue building up a heftysavings account while she paid attention to the customers who came into thebar, the people who hired her for her language skills, the neighbors around hersmall apartment. No detail was too tiny to ignore, and she promised herselfonce the money reached a set amount, she’d leave Mexico and start anew.

For some reason, she had a yearning to see London….

She’d spent two weeks running all over the city for someFrench prat who didn’t even like beer but was there because of the one brewingcompany, and so wasn’t in the mood to deal with customers at the moment (truthbe told, she rarely was in the mood to deal with customers). When a group ofAmericans asked Jair to switch the channel on a television from a telenovelarerun to one which gave updates on sports, she shrugged to show she didn’t carebecause it should at least keep them distracted.

For once the patrons weren’t interested in some football orbaseball recap, but that one new sport – Exy. Jane (Judith) found herselfgrowing annoyed as always whenever it was brought up, which she’d never beenable to figure out why – at least it was fast-paced, like soccer. Yet she feltanger build up inside of her whenever she heard the word ‘Exy’, whenever shesaw young people run across one of its courts, and that evening was noexception.

The commentator went on to recap what must be somecollegiate season, and her shoulders tensed and temper spiked each time thewords ‘Edgar Allan’ were brought up, enough so that Ines, one of the servers,gave her a worried look when she stopped by to pick up the drinks for hercustomers. Jane grit her teeth and forced herself to pour the shots of tequilasand beers, to make the margaritas and whatever else the guests wanted, halftempted to down a drink herself.

The one table cheered when the announcer got to the finalgame, between the Edgar Allan Ravens and the Palmetto State Foxes; all Janecared about was that it meant that the segment should soon be over. She hadjust set down a bottle of tequila when it felt like someone kicked her in thehead.

“-at this point in the game, Neil Josten switched from astriker to the backliner position. I don’t know if people are aware that heplayed as a backliner years ago when he was Nathaniel Wesninski, but obviouslyhe didn’t-“

Nathaniel Wesninski.

Nathaniel Abram Wesninski.

Abram.

Nathan Wesninski.

The Hatfords.

She was Mary Jamilyn Hatford Wesninski.

A feeling of disconnection washed over her as she stared atthe television, at the game displayed on it; a small figure in white and orangeran across a black and red court, the number ‘10’ and name ‘Josten’ across hisback, while a cropped image of his face appeared in the corner along with thebanner declaring him to be ‘Neil Josten – PSU Striker #10’.

That… that was Abram. He was a few years older thanthe last time she’d seen him, his hair color restored to a deep auburn and halffalling into his eyes – his blue eyes. There were strong echoes of Nathanin his appearance, marred by sharp cheekbones and thin eyebrows and a fullbottom lip, as well as a scar that ran across the boy’s nose and beneath hisleft eye, and another through his right eyebrow.

There was also an ‘A’ tattoo on his left cheek.

“Judith? Is everything okay?”

Mary nearly grabbed the small knife she used to cut up fruitand shoved it into Ines’ throat before she caught herself in time. “I… I’vea bad headache,” she half-lied in Spanish; her head did hurt, probably fromthe returned memories, but it was more the realization that her son was playingExy, that he’d been back at Edgar Allan of all places, right infront of the damn Moriyamas… what the hell had happened?

She was going to beat the boy black and blue once she gother hands on him. Beat him until he never dared to argue with her again, to goagainst her wishes.

Damn Exy.

It took a couple of weeks before she could leave Monterrey, finishan owed job and line up a passport which would stand up to any scrutiny as wellas find a driver with a SENTRI card who could get her out of the country (atleast she had plenty of money and contacts this time around). While she waitedfor the forger to come through, she found out that Nathan was dead, buried inthe ground (or whatever, may the prick rot in Hell) the last few years afterhe’d been killed in prison (at least Seattle had been worth something)and most of his people dead or on the run.

That Abram had somewhat listened to her, as he’d made it outof San Francisco… but eventually ended up at Palmetto State University with ascholarship to play Exy, after turning down Edgar Allan. It seemed that he’dignored her instructions to forego anything to do with the damn game andsomehow attracted the attention of the Moriyamas (according to what she couldpick up over the internet)… yet he was still alive (despite a very publicattempt on Riko Moriyama’s part to change that), and appeared to beoutside of their control.

Mary needed to reach her son, find out what was going onfrom a reliable source and get the both of them out of the country.

As soon as she crossed the border back into the States, she madeher way for one of her stashes of cash and weapons that had been left inNebraska. Even with Nathan dead, she felt as if there was a target painted onher back, now that she knew her past and had returned to the country which hadcaused her so much pain. Due to the paranoia and her lack of knowledge, she hadto waste more time backtracking and laying a false trail, ‘just in case’.

At least everything was still in the abandoned cabin in thePonca State Park, even if Mary spent the entire time hiking to it cursing inseveral languages. From there, it was driving in an old Ford sedan she boughtin Omaha to Chicago (with a few careful detours), where she could hit up an oldfamily contact for a new ID and hopefully for some of that reliableinformation.

After spending the night in a motel to clean up (and changeher hair), she set off for the French Market District to find Durand, planningto arrive soon after he opened the office. That gave her time to stop for a coffeeand a croissant at the nearby market, and she’d just finished both before sheset off to see the forger.

As soon as she walked into the man’s office, he paled andacted as if he’d seen a ghost even as he fumbled for something (a gun, mostlikely) beneath the counter. “No… this isn’t possible….”

“Yes, it is,” she assured him in French. “We firstmet almost twenty-four years ago, after I arrived in this country, at a partythat Blondel threw for Rieves. You complemented my necklace.” Which Nathanhad broke into pieces later that night in a fit of petty jealousy.

“But you’re supposed to be dead,” Durand insisted ashe set a pistol on the counter, doubts apparently put at rest. “Your son-“

“He thinks I’m dead,” Mary explained. “The last hesaw me… it wasn’t good. I barely survived and woke up without any memory untilrecently. I’m on my way to find him, after you provide me with a new IDand some information.”

“I’ll do my best,” Durand said with a slightinclination of his head after a moment’s hesitation “I’m sure he and your family,especially your brother, will be delighted to know you’re alive.”

“My brother?” Mary asked in confusion as she began to pullout a stack of money. “Which one?” Though she guessed he meant Stuart, sinceshe’d always been closer to him.

He confirmed that it was Stuart as he began to type on a laptop,then left her stunned with his next words. “He’s here in the States so it’lltake no time at all to reach him.” Durand paused to gaze at her. “Unless you’dprefer to reach out to him yourself?”

Stuart was here? Why was Stuart here? “I… yes.The Hatfords are working here now?”

Durand paused again, his expression unreadable save for aglimmer of concern in his dark eyes. “A lot has happened in the last severalyears, Mary. Nathan Wesninski is dead and his area is now run by MarcoHaywood.” Mary frowned at that then shrugged since she didn’t recognize thename. “Kengo Moriyama is dead and the organization is much stronger under thedirection of his son, Ichirou… with the Hatfords at his side instead of theButcher.”

That drew a gasp out of her – not that Ichirou had finallysucceeded his father (perhaps sooner than she’d expected) but that her familyworked for the Moriyamas. “How?”

“To repay a debt, one of a death owed, or so they thought,”Durand told her with evident pity as he turned the laptop around to face her.“Do you want to call your brother, or shall I?”

Stuart had come here because of her? The bloody fool – sowhy hadn’t he done something about Abram? Why was the boy playing Exy insteadof safe in England? “I’ll call him,” Mary gritted out as she memorized thenumber on the screen, which was different from the one back before her accidentand explained why she hadn’t been able to reach Stuart before then. “Now forthe ID. I need a driver’s license and a passport.” Once she reached Abram,she’d need a new set for him; perhaps Stuart could help her out.

Durand gave a slight nod and cited a number, which wouldburn through most of her money. Unfortunately, she didn’t see any way aroundit, not until she either hit up another stash, asked Stuart for some help or gotto Abram, who would hopefully have some money left.

It was quiet while for several minutes while Durand typed onhis laptop, until he cleared his throat. “Mary… I don’t know what all you’vebeen through, but I do know that things have changed a lot in the last fewyears. I suggest you talk to your brother and your son before you make anydecisions, the sooner the better.”

She gave him a cold look as she sat down in one of thechairs lining the opposite wall and lit up a cigarette despite the ‘no smokingsign’, and things were quiet again after that, other than when he asked her tostand so he could take her picture. While she waited for the new documents, sheused the burner phone she’d picked in Texas to search for new information onAbram.

‘Neil’ was back in the States after doing a media campaignin Japan (a fact which made her teeth grind together and her right hand ache tosmack him until he was barely conscious over daring to draw so much attentionto himself for what? Money? Adulation?), and supposed to report to the PSUcampus soon for the start of training.

The most recent pictures of the boy usually had him dressedin Exy gear and posed with Kevin Day (why wasn’t he at Edgar Allan? Did theMoriyamas own PSU as well?), but there were also ones of him in casual clothesnext to one Andrew Minyard, often with the short, impassive blond man appearingto block Abram from the photographers. Mary nearly bit her tongue in half whenshe read the caption about how the two were dating, and threw the phoneaside as she fumbled for another cigarette.

Had the foolish boy listened to her at all?

Durand tried to warn her once again to not do anythingfoolish when he handed over her new documents, but all she did was snatch themup before she slapped his payment down on the counter and storm out, determinedto reach Abram so she could pull him from the fucked-up mess he’d made ofthings.

As furious as she was, she took care not to drive directlyto the Palmetto State campus in case Durand broke faith in her (or, morelikely, someone was watching the man’s shop), timing things to arrive in SouthCarolina shortly after the Foxes’ summer practice resumed. She also held backon calling Stuart, unnerved despite herself from Durand’s repeat warnings andthe fact that her brother had gone to the Moriyamas because of her.

Why was her family so stupid?

Once on the PSU campus, she dialed the number she’d enteredin the one burner phone despite the early morning hour. It rang into voicemailbefore she hung up and dialed again, when Stuart finally answered on the secondring.

“The fuck are you?” he asked, his deep voice slurred withsleep.

Mary froze for a moment upon hearing her brother, a memorysurfacing of him cursing her out, gruff voice harsh but grey eyes pleading withher to stay, to not take Abram and leave London. “Hello, Stuart.”

It was quiet for several heartbeats, and then Stuart let outa string of virulent curses. “I will gut whoever the hell you are for this sickjoke,” he finally spat. “Gut you like a-“

“You always made me sandwiches with cream cheese andcucumbers,” she told him in a rush, well aware of how inventive he could bewith threats. “Even though Mum got on you to feed me something moresubstantial, you knew how much I loved them. And you’d slice the cucumbers allthin, even after you cut your finger so bad the one time, enough to leave ascar beneath the nail on your left index finger. You should have gottenstitches but you didn’t want Mum to know.”

Stuart drew in a sharp breath and held it for a couple ofseconds. “How?” he demanded to know. “You’re supposed to be dead, Nathanialsaid that bastard killed you.”

“He said that the prick hurt me badly in Seattle and I toldhim that I didn’t have much time so he had to go on without me, right?”

“Yeah. Did he lie, or you?”

Mary nodded even though Stuart couldn’t see her. “Neither.”When Stuart scoffed, she shook her head. “No, it’s the truth, I was bleedinginternally, had a ruptured spleen, among other things,” according to Dr. Carra,and she knew it wasn’t from the car accident, “and only the fact that someonesaw me wreck the car after Abram and I parted ways saved my life.”

“Where were you? Why did you show up now?” Stuart demandedto know as something clicked in the background – a lighter. “Off on a niceholiday?”

“Not quite,” she snapped as she tapped the fingers of herright hand against the steering wheel and squashed the urge for a cigarette.“Funny thing about almost bleeding to death and your body shutting down, itsometimes leads to a coma, of all things. When I woke up several months later,I didn’t remember who I was.”

“Convenient, that,” Stuart said with a hefty dose of sarcasmafter exhaling loudly. “What jogged the old noggin, eh? Suddenly feel the urgeto stab someone and everything came rushing back?”

“No, I saw my son playing a sport I forbade him to partakein ever again, at Edgar Allan of all places, on television. Imagine that.” Marywas just as good at sarcasm – one could call it a family trait. “Seeing thechild I spent several years on the run with back at the damn place I’d given upeverything for to keep him from, and then I find out you’re working for theMoriyamas? What the fuck, Stu?”

There was another harsh exhale before her brother answered,anger evident in his voice. “First? Nathaniel’s not a child anymore, if youhaven’t noticed. Second? You’ve been gone for over four years, Mary. Fouryears! A lot’s happened during that time, and a good bit of it because wethought you were dead. Joining the Moriyamas meant that we could finally takeout that bastard and repay him for all the grief he caused us, and-“

“What about Abram?” she demanded to know while she continuedto watch the front entrance of what her research told her was the athletes’dorm. “Was he part of the deal?” Had her brother, her family betrayed herbecause she refused to allow her son to join the Hatford organization?

There was another brief span of silence before Stuart huffedin response. “Yeah, it’s definitely you, either alive or a demon back from thedead.” Then he huffed again. “Not much of a difference, eh?” The faint bit ofhumor disappeared when he spoke next. “All I’ve done is look after that boy asmuch as I can, which isn’t half as much as I’d like, considering how much youfucked things up by taking him and running all over the damn place instead ofletting us help like we wanted.” He continued on when she tried to argue. “No,listen for once, dammit. I do what I can, but Natha- no, Neil is rightclever bastard and he’s made his own way, more or less. Got the main house totake him in, to extend its protection over him in exchange for him playing Exyand giving them part of his earnings.” The bastard sounded proud ofAbram, of all things.

“So they own him,” Mary clarified, made numb at the thoughtof how deep the Moriyamas had their hooks in her boy.

“They always owned him,” Stuart said with a mirthlesschuckle. “Thanks to the bastard. Nathaniel’s made it so he has some freedomnow, can play wherever he wants as long as he wins.”

“He’s still owned,” Mary ground out as she caught sight of ashort, lean figure in an orange shirt and grey shorts, and put the car in‘drive’. “I won’t stand for that, for him being property.”

“Mary, for fuck’s sake, what are you thinking? Everything’ssettled, don’t mess things up! Tell me where you are and I’ll come to you,okay?”

“My son’s out there, property andunprotected.” A son she slowly followed, mindful not to get too close as Abram joggedalong the deserted campus.

“For crying – he’s not ‘unprotected’!”

“What, the Moriyamas have guards on him?” She’d have to takethat into consideration when she grabbed Abram, but she didn’t spot anyone nearhim as of yet.

“No! I mean, not like that,” Stuart muttered. “Andrew’salways with him so he’s safe.”

‘Andrew’. “You know about his ‘boyfriend’.” She sneered asshe spoke the last word.

“Everyone knows about the runt, the two of ‘em are ‘out’.”Stuart sounded rather aggrieved about that.

“And you didn’t dissuade this ‘runt’ from your nephew?” Whatthe hell had Stuart been thinking the last few years? This was his way of‘looking out’ for Abram?

There was another loud scoff at that question. “Like hell Ididn’t. Thing is, your son is rather set on the ‘runt’… and I hate to admit it,but Andrew’s good for him.” He sounded even more aggrieved right then. “No one’sgonna touch Nathaniel while Andrew’s around.”

She’d see about that. “I’m not about to let my son remainproperty any longer, or in the company of a possessive thug. You need to thinklong and hard about where your loyalty lies, Stu,” Mary said before she endedthe call and tossed the phone out of the car, just in case her brother tried totrack it.

Aware that she didn’t have long, she followed from adistance until she saw Abram reach into the right pocket of his shorts, thengunned the car. Abram lunged out of the way of the vehicle, blue eyes wide withsurprise, and faltered when he caught sight of her.

Mary slammed on the brakes and scrambled to get out of thecar while Abram was stunned motionless, aware that she didn’t have much time.“Abram,” she called out as she stepped forward, the door left open and enginerunning. “It’s me.”

“You- you’re dead.” His voice could barely be heard over thesound of the car’s engine. “You can’t… I have to be imagining this.”

“No, it really is me. You were Henryk when we lived in Graz,Eike in Dresden, Charlie in Glasgow. We had to eat peanut butter sandwiches forthree weeks straight when we lived in Glasgow because the apartment didn’t haveany electricity or a stove, and Morrie gave us a deal on the-“

“The peanut butter when we got the new IDs,” he finished forher with an uncertain tone of voice. “It was that or the canned sardines, butyou were worried about the smell.”

“Yeah. I promised you some strawberries if you’d eat afterthe second week.” She hadn’t gotten him them until Paris, but Abram had chokeddown the sandwiches per their agreement.

He’d been a good boy – at least back then.

“How?” Abram asked as he took a slight step forward andignored the ringing of his phone. “I thought… you told me….”

“I know,” she assured him as she bridged the distancebetween them. “I nearly died, and I’ll explain everything later, but we have togo now, Abram. Get in the car and I’ll tell you on the way.”

Instead of listening to her, he frowned. “Go? Mum… no, gowhere?” he asked as he shook his head. “Come with me to the dorms, you can tellme everything there.”

She’d been gone too long; he’d forgotten everything,forgotten that he needed to listen to her. “I’m getting you out of here,away from the Moriyamas,” she explained as she latched on to his right wrist –was he wearing something beneath the sleeves of his shirt?

“But it’s fine with the Moriyamas,” he dared to argue. “Youneed to come with me and meet Andrew, sit down and-“

Angered with the way that he didn’t listen to her, that hedared to talk back when she’d come all this way to save him, Mary lashed out andslapped her son across the face with all her strength. “Abram, get in thedamn car,” she snapped as he went still. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

His eyes wide once more, he dared to shake his head. “Mum,I’m not going anywhere, this is my-“

She slapped him again, not once but twice. “Get in the damncar! This is for your own good!” As a startled cry of pain slipped past hislips, she grabbed onto his hair (that awful color) and yanked it hard as shestepped backwards. “We’re leaving!”

“No! Let go!” He lashed out with his arms, brought them upand out, and Mary found herself surprised both with him fighting back and withthe strength he possessed – he wasn’t a young teenager anymore but a strongyoung man who was able to knock her hands free even if he lost some hair andgained a scratch along his right cheek in the process. While she stumbledbackwards, he gave her one last (hurt) look then took off running.

“Abram!” she called out as she leaned against the side ofthe car to regain her balance. “Come back here!” However, the boy had alwaysbeen fast and dashed across the green rather than near the road, effectivelypreventing her from following in the car.

Mary slammed her aching right hand onto the hood of the caras she watched Abram vanish, furious at the boy for defying her and herself formessing things up so badly.

*******

Andrew ran his right hand over the now cold, empty side ofthe bed and swallowed a sigh; his idiot just couldn’t stay in bed on a Saturdaymorning, could he? Especially with the start of practice, when they had to getup early during the rest of the week and head off to the stadium to work out.

Andrew didn’t even want to think about when classes beganagain, when they had to be up too damn early.

That time he didn’t hold back the sigh as he sat up in thetoo-empty bed and glared across the room at a snoring, oblivious Kevin, thereason they were still on campus and not back at Columbia; the other Exyaddict should be waking up soon to go join his father and spend the day tweakinggame plans based on the last few practice sessions with the newbies (orsomething like that, Andrew hadn’t paid much attention once Kevin startedbabbling).

Hmm, there was the possibility of drenching the pain in theass with ice water if he didn’t wake up in time….

Somewhat appeased with ruining someone else’s day, Andrewhad just gotten out of bed when his phone rang; he was about to ignore it whenhe recognized Stuart’s ringtone and realized that the British bastard had tohave a good reason for calling him so early – that and Neil wasn’t insight.

Never a good sign.

“What?” he growled as he answered the call while he bent overto grab the pair of jeans he’d left on the floor the night before as a badfeeling settled in his chest.

“Is Nathaniel there?” When Andrew scoffed at the question,Stuart cursed in a fervent manner. “Fuck, you need to find him! Hedidn’t answer his phone!”

“What’s going on?” Andrew demanded to know as he yanked onthe jeans, half-hopping over to dresser where he kept his keys. “Is it one ofhis father’s people?”

“No, it’s more fucked-up than that. Mary’s alive.”

For a moment, Andrew thought that he was still asleep andhaving one hell of a messed-up dream – then he stubbed his toe against thedresser while Kevin let out a mumbled complaint before he rolled over to buryhis face in the damn fox plushie. “Mary? How the- never mind, I’ll find Neiland then you explain what the hell is going on.” As long as his loverhad his phone on him – and he better have the damn thing with him – thenAndrew would find him.

“I’m on my way, be there in a few hours. Be careful,” Stuartsaid in a rush before he hung up.

Andrew sent a hasty text to Renee as he shoved his feet intohis sneakers then was out the door, busy pulling up the tracker app on his phone.To his immense relief, it showed Neil moving at a decent pace (but not toofast, so hopefully running and not bundled up in the trunk of a car) across thewest end of campus.

By the time that Andrew was in the Maserati and out on themain street, Neil more or less had gone still – at Foxes’ Donuts. His attentiondivided between the road ahead and his phone, Andrew reached the building inunder five minutes, and somehow didn’t cause an accident on the way (somehow).

Due to the lack of students on campus that early in thesummer, he didn’t have a problem finding a parking space at the popular eateryfor once, and was out of the car barely after it stopped. He garnished a coupleof odd looks as he entered, probably for the way he yanked the door open or thefact that he hadn’t bothered to brush his hair, but all he cared about was thefigure in the hooded orange t-shirt sitting hunched over the table in the farcorner.

After quickly checking the donut and coffee shop for signsof anyone who matched Mary’s description (small, middle-aged woman), he stalkedover to Neil, who seemed to be staring into a cup of black coffee with a box ofdonuts and his phone on the table. “Where is she?” Andrew asked as he sat down– and felt a rush of rage overwhelm him when his boyfriend looked up.

Neil’s handsome face was swollen, bruised and scratched,reddened and purpled in such a way that Andrew knew it was only going to getworse in the next half an hour or so. His lower lip was puffy (but not splitfor once), as was his left eye, and a slightly scabbed over scratch ran downhis right cheek.

“I got you donuts,” Neil mumbled with a slight smile, theexpression strained and his eyes glazed as if he wasn’t quite all there at themoment.

“I’m going to kill her,” Andrew declared in German,furious that the woman who’d abused Neil for so many years instead ofprotecting him, who’d let him fend for himself with murderers hot on his trail,had hurt him yet again. “Where is she?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.” Neil went to rub at his faceand stopped just in time. “I ran and… I want to go home,” he told Andrewin a plaintive voice as he pushed the coffee away. “Can we just go home?”

Despite his anger, something pulsed warm and turgid insideof Andrew’s chest to hear Neil say those words. “Why do you think I’m here,idiot? Let’s go.” He grabbed the donuts then, carefully in case there were anyhidden injuries, gripped Neil by the right elbow to help him stand up.

He glared at anyone who glanced Neil’s way as they left, andwas mindful to check around them for signs of Mary (or anyone he thought mightbe her). “You’ll have to settle for the Tower,” he told his boyfriend as hehelped Neil into the passenger seat of the Maserati; it looked as if Neil hadjust been slapped around, judging from the way he moved – that and a bad caseof shock.

“That’s fine,” Neil murmured as he curled up in the seat asif cold.

Oh yes, definitely a case of shock, which Andrew supposedwas understandable when one’s mother returned from the dead like that. Evenhe’d be a bit nonplussed over Tilda showing up alive – and then look forward tobeing able to kill her again, but Neil had actually cared for the abusive bitchwho’d given birth to him.

For a moment, Andrew almost headed for the highway insteadof back to the dorms, but it would be safest for Neil to be surrounded byothers (even if they were the upperclassmen) than the two of them alone at thehouse in Columbia.

Renee, dressed in PSU sweats and her hair pulled back in amessy bun, was waiting for them at the front of the building when Andrew pulledin to the Fox Tower’s parking lot. Something dark flashed through her eyes whenshe caught sight of Neil, but all she did was give him a reassuring smile andhold the door open for the two of them (then ensured that it closed securely behindthem).

“I’ll be in my room when you’re ready to talk,” she informedAndrew when they reached the third floor. “Whatever you need, I’m here foryou.”

“Stuart’s on his way,” he let her know, and noticed how Neiltwitched at that. “We’re about to have a Hatford family reunion.”

“Hmm, okay. I’ll bake some scones.” Renee gave him a curiouslook but otherwise didn’t push for more of an explanation then, content to waituntil Neil was ready to talk.

Once back in their room (with Kevin still asleep), Andrewtugged Neil into the kitchen, where he put on a pot of coffee and thenmicrowaved a mug of water so he could make some tea. Once a bag was added to itto steep, he turned to his boyfriend with his hands held up.

Neil gave a slight nod and remained still while Andrewgently touched his face to examine the damage done to it, then sighed whenAndrew fetched a bag of frozen peas and tossed it to him. “Uhm….”

“Use it, see if it helps with that ugly face of yours,”Andrew drawled, furious once again that someone had hurt his boyfriend. “Andtell me what the hell happened.”

“Stuart called you,” Neil guessed as he held the bag againstthe left side of his face.

“A prize for you.” Andrew reached out to gently comb hisfingers through Neil’s tousled hair and frowned when that provoked a wince, yetNeil lightly grabbed his wrist to keep him from pulling his hand away so hedidn’t stop. “Keep talking.”

Neil took in a deep breath as if to steady himself andslumped toward Andrew, who allowed his boyfriend to lean against him, to seekthat bit of comfort. “I realized during my run that someone was following meand thought it might be one of Ichirou’s people, so I made sure to head towardthe more populated area of campus.” That explained why Neil had been close tothe donut shop. “Then she got out of the car and I��.” Neil’s breath caught inhis throat and he gave a slight shake of his head. “I remember that night soclearly, her coughing up blood, how bad she looked, the pain in her voice… if Ithought for one moment she could survive, I wouldn’t have left her.”

“You were a kid and in bad shape yourself,” Andrew remindedhim as he thought about the scrawny, battered kid dropped off at Wayward Burns.“And you were used to doing what she told you, which was to run. Did she sayanything?”

“No, just that she would explain things later.” Neil tossedthe bag aside as he turned to face Andrew. “She told me to go with her, toleave.” He shuddered as he wrapped his arms around Andrew’s waist. “When I toldher ‘no’, she started hitting me.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Andrew repeated as he hugged Neilclose to him, furious at Mary for daring to hurt her son like that but alsohimself for not being there to protect his boyfriend. “She’s never going totouch you again.”

“Drew….” Neil pulled away just enough to frown at him. “Idon’t-“

“No,” Andrew insisted as he lightly cupped Neil’s leftcheek. “Somehow she doesn’t die and the first thing she does upon seeing you isto try to drag you away from the life you fought for and then beat you? Tell methat she doesn’t know it’ll be a death sentence for you if you run,” he argued.“Not if Stuart knew to warn us. She had to call him first, and he would havewarned her about your deal with Ichirou.”

Neil shivered, most likely at the thought of how theMoriyama lord would react at the news of him breaking his word – it wouldn’tjust be Neil paying the price in the end, but Andrew and Stuart and probablyothers. “I won’t run,” Neil swore as his arms tightened around Andrew. “Everythingthat matters to me is here.” His expression was a mixture of pain and confusionbefore he tucked his bruised face into the crook of Andrew’s neck. “Why wouldshe do that to me? I was so happy to see her, and then she wouldn’t listen tome.”

Because she was an abusive bitch. Because she didn’t see herson as someone who deserved to be treated with the utmost care and respect, butas a possession. Because it had never been about Neil (Nathaniel), but Mary.

However, all Andrew did was give his lover a kiss on theforehead then lightly push him away, hand the bag of peas over with a sternlook before he removed the tea bag and fixed a mug of coffee for himself. Afterhe picked up both mugs with one hand, he latched on to the front of Neil’s shirtthen tugged his idiot toward the bedroom. “Come on.”

Neil followed without a word, his feet shuffling along thefloor in a sure sign that he was worn out with shock. Once near their bed,Andrew set the mugs down on the nightstand then helped his boyfriend remove hisshorts before shedding his own pants and pulling back the mussed bedding soNeil could all but fall down onto the soft surface. “Drink it,” Andrew told himas he handed over the tea, mindful to ensure that Neil could hold the mug,before he crawled onto the bed himself.

Neil tucked into his left side once he was settled, and theydrank in silence while he texted Stuart to let the man know that his nephew wasmostly all right but Mary was dead as soon as Andrew found her. When Stuarttexted back for him to calm the fuck down, Andrew held out his phone to take apicture of Neil’s face and sent it to the bastard.

It was a few minutes before Stuart responded with themessage that he’d deal with his sister and for Andrew to watch over Neil. When Andrewtold him he better deal with the bitch by shoving a knife in her throat, themessage was marked ‘undelivered’, as if the man had turned off his phone.

“Don’t antagonize my uncle,” Neil mumbled as he rested hishead against Andrew’s shoulder, the empty mug held between his hands.

“Don’t take away my fun,” Andrew chided before he slurpedhis coffee. “Now go to sleep.”

“Bossy,” Neil complained, yet he set the mug aside and slowlystretched out on the bed with his right arm draped over Andrew’s left leg as ifthe contact reassured him; Andrew stroked his fingers along his boyfriend’sbony hand and watched Neil fall asleep, exhausted from the morning’s shock.

Once the coffee was gone, he debated throwing the empty mugat a loudly snoring Kevin, but figured the asshole would make too much of afuss and wake Neil up so he took to playing on his phone instead.

Half an hour later, Kevin finally came awake with ahalf-snore, half-snuffle and sat up with his arms still wrapped around the foxplushie. His hair stuck up in all directions while he blinked several times,gaze distant as if still caught in a dream, and then he glanced at his alarmclock. “Shit!” He went to get up and almost fell out of the bed. “An-Andrew!Why didn’t-“ Kevin let out a yelp as a knife flew past him. “What!”

“Be quiet,” Andrew hissed as Neil stirred. “Go back tosleep,” he murmured as he stroked his fingers along his lover’s hair while heslowly climbed off the bed. “It’s all right.”

Something incoherent was mumbled before Neil curled into asmaller ball beneath the blankets; Kevin managed to gain his feet and approachedthe bed, his green eyes widening with surprise when he caught sight of Neil’sface. “Wha-ah, right,” he finished with a whisper when Andrew went for a knife.“Okay.”

Andrew jerked his head toward the door as he fetched a pairof sweatpants to wear; after grabbing some pants of his own, Kevin followed.

They took turns using the bathroom (Andrew found someamusement in reaching it first and making Kevin wait), and both had some coffeewhile Andrew started on the donuts. “What happened to Neil?” Kevin asked aftera displeased look at Andrew’s belated breakfast, busy texting on his phone(probably Wymack to let him know he was running late).

“Had a run-in with a zombie,”Andrew explained after he finished a chocolate-chocolate glazed donut. WhenKevin gave him a pained look for that, he shrugged and grabbed a cream-filleddonut. “Unfortunately, it seems his mother’s not dead after all. It’s atemporary situation, though.” As in it would be corrected as soon as he foundthe bitch.

Coffee splashed onto the floor asKevin jerked forward at the news. “What? Mary Wesninski’s alive?”

“For now,” Andrew clarifiedas he broke off a piece of the donut.

“But-“ Kevin’s hands shook as heset the mug on the counter, his expression taking on an interesting shade ofash as he wrapped his arms around his chest as if he was cold. “But she’salive! He has his mother back,” he argued in an oddly wistful tone.

“No, he doesn’t,” Andrew insistedwith a slight frown. “He has an abusive, manipulative bitch trying to worm herway back in his life and take him away from here.” He paused to throw the pieceof pastry into his mouth while Kevin’s mouth gaped open. “That means you loseyour precious striker and the Foxes’ their new vice-captain. Do you want that?”

“No,” Kevin responded in a quietvoice. “But what does Neil want?”

“He wants to stay here.” Andrewput the odd flutter in his chest down to a sudden sugar rush. “Not be draggedaway by someone who treats him like shit for daring to think for himself.”

Kevin winced upon hearing that andseemed to remember that he’d spilled coffee all over the floor since he reachedover to grab some paper towels. “She did that to him? Really?”

“Yes.” Which was why her ‘alive’status would soon be revoked. “I suggest you have your usual disgusting deadchicken embryo shake and then toddle off to Daddy’s to spend the day thinkingup new ways to annoy us for the season.” It would be best if Kevin was out ofthe way and under Wymack’s supervision while Andrew and Renee (and he supposedStuart) handled Mary.

“Why Neil puts up with you, I don’tfucking know,” Kevin muttered as he threw the coffee-soaked towels away.

“Because I’m a keeper,” Andrewinsisted as he debated which donut to eat next.

Kevin’s next words were mutteredin Japanese, which was the only reason he didn’t get a half-empty mug of coffeethrown at him – that and he listened to Andrew and fixed himself a nauseatingbreakfast shake before stomping off to get ready for the day.

Once Kevin was gone (and most ofthe donuts as well), Andrew returned to the bedroom and lay down next to hisboyfriend, who stirred a little at first but settled once Andrew whispered hisname and gave a gentle squeeze to the back of his neck. Neil tucked against hischest and phone beneath the pillow, Andrew looked forward to a short nap.

He was dreaming about him and Neilback in Racine, about the small apartment and the longing which hadfilled him (had filled Aidan) when he’d believed Neil to forever be out of reachwhen the sound of Neil’s phone ringing jolted him awake; he barely avoidedNeil’s head smacking him in the chin as his boyfriend fumbled for the devicewhile he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“Ah, Stuart?” Neil said, his voicestill thick with sleep; his face appeared even worse than earlier, now that thebruises had time to properly ‘develop’. “Okay, do you need… okay. I’ll- okay.”Now he took to frowning. “Someone will let you in.”

“I’ll send Renee down to fetch the limey prick,” Andrewoffered as he fetched his own phone, only to do some frowning of his own whenhe noticed the texts from her. “Let your uncle know that there’s been an old Forddriving around the campus.”

“Yeah, that’s what she was driving. Ow.” Neil glared at him,probably for the jab in his left side. “What?”

“You couldn’t mention that earlier?”

“You didn’t ask,” the idiot mumbled before he returned hisattention to his phone. “I know to be careful. Why do you want to talk to him?I can take care of myself! Oh fine, treat me like a child,” Neil spat before hetossed the phone to Andrew, who just managed to not say anything rightthen.

“Keep him away from Mary,” Stuart ordered before Andrew couldsay anything. “And no killing her.”

“Do you want to see what he looks like now?” Andrew ignoredthe middle finger Neil directed his way. “I’m not giving her another chance tohurt him.”

“She’s not going to get it,” Stuart promised. “I’ll deal withher, so you do your damn job and keep Nathaniel safe.”

“Hmm, maybe I’ll tie him up in bed, that’ll keep him out ofthe way,” Andrew drawled he batted Neil’s hand aside. “So much fun for me.”

“I will kill you both,” his boyfriend gritted out whileStuart made that oh-so-amusing grinding sound.

“Just so you know, I don’t give a shit if she kills you,you damn runt,” the prick managed to spit out after a couple of seconds. “Infact, it’ll make my day.”

“That’s it, you’re no longer invited to the wedding,” Andrewtaunted before he hung up, right as Stuart began a garbled stream of something.Probably some comments on how wonderful Andrew was and how he so looked forwardto them officially being family.

“I hate you, I really hate you,” Neil mumbled as he gave upon trying to take back his phone and rested his forehead on Andrew’s left shoulderinstead. “Do you have any idea how difficult he’s going to be to deal with fromnow on? If I hear him bring up the ‘C’ word again, I’m going to tell Kevin thatyou offered to train with the newbies, I swear it.”

Andrew gave a light tug to Neil’s still tangled hair at boththreats before he rubbed his lover’s nape. “Stuart adores me.” The man hadn’t threatenedto kill him in months.

Neil made a gurgling sound in the back of his throat whilehe gripped Andrew’s t-shirt between his hands. “Did you hit your head while Iwas asleep?” He leaned back enough to look up at Andrew, his gaze intentdespite his slightly swollen left eye. “Do I need to call Abby and have hercheck you out?”

“Funny.” He leaned in for a quick kiss then pushed Neilaway. “Put on some clothes, we’re about to have company.”

While his grumbling idiot went off to the bathroom, Andrew textedRenee to let her know that Stuart would be there soon, and frowned at themessage that she’d warned the Foxes to ‘watch themselves’ because of Mary; thelast thing he needed was a bunch of busybodies butting in because they wereworried about their ‘darling’ Neil.

Case in point – the rather gibberish text from Nicky whichseemed to be a declaration of help, if he needed any, and Boyd’s offer of touse his truck for ‘disposal’.

He’d just pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a shirt whenthere was knock on the front door; surprised that Stuart had gotten there soquickly, Andrew left the bedroom, quick to shove Neil behind him when his idiotboyfriend attempted to answer the door.

“What? You’re paranoid,” Neil said with a roll of his eyeswhen Andrew gave him a flat look for his lack of survival skills.

“And you invite people to kill you on a regular basis, so stayback,” Andrew reminded him.

“Whatever.” Neil followed, at least dressed in thesweatpants he’d taken with him into the bathroom, an eager expression on hisbruised face as if he was happy to see Stuart for some reason. Andrew bracedhimself for some disgusting fussing from the British man over his nephew andthen to be bitched at because of what Mary had done before he opened the door…and found a strange woman with dark hair and a surly expression out in thehallway with a blank-faced Renee all but pressed against her back.

Between the dark gleam which spoke of ‘Natalie’ in Renee’seyes and Neil’s sharp inhale (that and the way the petite woman glaredfigurative daggers at him), Andrew went out on the limb as he stepped aside(with Neil all but shoved against the wall). “Is it my birthday already? Tothink all I got you was that ‘how to leave a cult’ book; I’ll have to up mygame next time, especially if you help me bury her body since a certain someonebitches so much about a little honest work.”

While Neil choked out his name, Renee gave Mary a pushforward (knife in the small of the back? Andrew so approved, especially if itwas buried in her kidney). ��She stole Sheena’s ID when her and Jack ran out forbrunch,” Renee explained. “When the two came back complaining, I checked theTower and found her sneaking around.”

“See, I would have made it a quick death if you’d killed thosetwo,” Andrew said as he pushed Neil behind him. “Stay the fuck away from her,”he told his boyfriend in German. “I’ll snap her neck and lock you in thebathroom for the next month’s practices if you get within reach of her.”

“Uhm… she knows that language,” Neil reminded him as heslumped against the wall, his attention torn between Andrew and his mother,hands wrapped around his waist as if to keep himself from reaching foranything; Andrew grabbed his right one and tugged it toward the hem of his t-shirt,which earned him a grateful smile when Neil latched on to it for reassurance.

Meanwhile, Mary made an abortive motion as if she attemptedto lunge forward, only to be stopped by Renee. “I’ll rip out your heart with mybare hands if you touch him,” she threatened with a baleful glare beforelooking at Neil, her British accent the same as the times when Neil got drunkor was alone with Andrew. “And really, Abram? You let this wanker treat youlike that? I thought I raised you better.”

Neil scowled at his mother while he tugged Andrew closer. “Andrew’sconcerned about me, considering within five minutes of seeing you again, I looklike this,” he motioned at his face with his left hand. “You don’t know him atall, what he’s done for me.”

“He’s a controlling-“

“No.” Neil didn’t give Mary a chance to spew herhatred, nor did Renee, judging from the small grunt of pain which emanated fromthe crazy bitch a moment later. “You haven’t been around the last few years, hehas, and he’s largely the reason I’m still alive,” Neil let her know whileAndrew pondered where would be the best place to kill the bitch – in thebasement or offsite somewhere? “He’s fought for me, killed for me, even, and helistens to me. We’re equals.”

“He only makes you think you’re equals,” Mary argued,proving the whole ‘not listening thing’ to everyone in the room. “I know histype, know how he’ll make you think he’s there for you when all he’s doing istricking you into- I will rip your heart out too, you fucking slag,” shesnarled when it seemed that a certain good Christian girl had run out ofpatience.

“I told you Andrew isn’t like that, and so has your son.Just because it’s not what you want to hear, doesn’t make it untrue,” Reneesaid with a hint of exasperation. “Just accept that Neil is happy here withsomeone who loves and respects him.”

“She’s never going to do that,” Andrew stated as he slippeda knife free from his left armband. “She fucked up her life and did her best toruin Neil’s, she’s not going to accept that he managed to get it on track onceshe was out of the way.”

“Andrew,” Neil whispered with a wince, but he didn’t arguewith the statement. “Mum, I’m so happy that you’re alive, but you can’t comehere, threaten Andrew and my friends, and expect me to run away with you when I’vea life here.”

“You shouldn’t be here, you never should have stoppedrunning, never should have picked up a damn Exy racquet again,” Mary mutteredas she glared at her son. “Was it his idea?”

“Guilty as charged,” Andrew drawled as he flipped the knifeinto the air. “Running wasn’t doing him any good, and for some reason, we didn’tknow about the whole ‘sold to the Moriyamas to play their stupid game’ thing sowhy not join the local Exy team, hmm?” He did some glaring of his own when Marytwitched a little at the accusation. “Don’t go trying to cast blame on Neil orme, not when so much trouble could have been avoided if you’d just have toldhim why the hell you were on the run.” Well, other than the fact that she’d marrieda psychotic bastard.

“I told him not to play Exy,” Mary muttered. “Thatshould have been good enough.”

“You also told him you were dying, so your word is obviouslyshit,” Andrew shot back.

“I will take so much pleasure in shooting you,” Mary grittedout, which prompted a cold smile from Andrew. “Abram, you need to-“

Whatever ultimatum she was about to pull, it was interruptedby a knock on the door; Andrew swore if it was Nicky coming over because he wasbored or one of the newbies looking for Neil, he was going to start on thestabbing someone sooner than expected.

It was Stuart; Andrew nearly went through with the wholestabbing thing after all, but the bastard slipped into the dorm room during theminor internal debate and so Andrew missed that important stabbing window.

“Uncle Stuart!” Neil called out while the man took toswearing beneath his breath. “Did someone let you in?”

Stuart waved what looked to be a generic ID in his left handbefore he shoved it into the pocket of his grey sports coat, which he wore overa pair of jeans and a white dress shirt. “I, ah, managed something, and fuckme, Mary.” He gawked at his sister while she gazed back at him. “It’sreally you.”

“It’s about time you showed up, Stu. Deal with this uppityslag while I tend to Minyard, will you?” Mary snapped while Andrew went back toNeil’s side.

Stuart cast an apologetic look Renee’s way, who gave him oneof her blissful smiles in return. “Walker, would you mind backing off a little?”

“That’s not what I-“

“Of course,” Renee said over Mary’s complaints, quick toslide the knife up the sleeve of her PSU sweatshirt as she stepped away. “Ihave her gun.”

“I’ll take that before we leave.” Stuart was quick to yankMary, who’d turned as if to fight with Renee for the weapon, toward him. “Calmthe hell down, will you?”

“I’m gonna beat some manners into this daft bitch,” Marysnarled as she swiped at a faintly smiling Renee.

“No, you’re not – I told you that Neil had people watchingover him, and she’s one of them. Now, unless you truly do want to be dead, calmthe hell down,” Stuart gritted out as he shoved his sister away. “And tell mewhy you thought it was a good idea to show up here, smack the shit out of yourown child and attempt to kidnap him.”

Neil shifted about as if uncomfortable at seeing his motherput on the spot like that, but Andrew grasped his right hand while he shook hishead. “That was truth, right now,” he said in his limited Russian.

“I know,” Neil agreed, his expression a bit guiltyyet he sidled closer to Andrew as he entwined their fingers together.

“I came here to save him,” Mary said, her voice tight withanger. “To take him away so the Moriyamas can’t hurt him.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Stuart started, a pained expression onhis face. “He’s perfectly fine here. You’re gonna get him killed if you takehim away.”

“Yeah, Mum,” Neil called out. “I made a deal with the mainbranch years ago, everything’s settled now. As long as I play Exy for a decentteam and they make money from it, they leave me alone.” A bit of asimplification, but that was all Mary really needed to know.

Mary whirled around to face Neil and would have come closerif not for the knife Andrew waved in her direction. “You made a deal with them?With a bunch of mobsters? I didn’t want that for you, Abram, I wanted-“

“What?” Neil asked, his voice harsh and expressioncold. “For me to keep running until Dad’s people found me and killed me?” Sheflinched at that but didn’t look away. “Until one of Tetsuji’s people trackedme down and dragged me back to Edgar Allan?” He tugged at the collar of the t-shirthe wore to expose more of the damn tattoo on the left side of his neck andshoulder. “I spent two weeks there and it was enough of a hell to last alifetime, thanks, I can’t imagine what it would like to be there for years.Only the fact that I belonged to the main branch and not the side one ensuredthat I walked out of there in the end.” His fingers clenched around Andrew’shand as he spoke, as he no doubt remembered all the things Riko had done to himover that one Christmas break. “This might not be the life you wanted for me,but it’s the one I chose for myself and I’m happy. I don’t give a damn if youdon’t like it, and I’m not letting you or anyone else take it away from me.”

“And I didn’t nearly die so you could so be some Moriyamaproperty,” Mary argued, as if she hadn’t listened to her son at all. “I didn’tgive up-“

“Shut up,” Andrew said as he tugged Neil closer, morebehind him since the woman had a disturbing gleam in her light brown eyes(contacts) which he’d seen too many times in Riko’s to want Neil to be nearsuch mental instability. “Neil’s no longer paying for your poor life choices.He told you ‘no’, now respect it and fuck off.”

“He’s my son, you shitty bastard,” Mary growled as her handsclenched into fists and Stuart’s right hand inched toward the front of hiscoat.

“Big deal,” Andrew said with all the scorn he felt for thewoman. “Just because you gave birth to him doesn’t mean you can control himforever, especially now that he’s an adult. It certainly doesn’t mean you canbeat the shit out of him. You fucked up when you came here making ultimatumsand raised your hand to him, so go away.” Neil shifted about but didn’targue, didn’t plead for his mother to stay, while Renee focused her attentionon Mary as if waiting to see if she would need to intervene in some manner.

Before Mary could say anything else, Stuart shoved his waybetween the two of them. “As much fun as it is to see the two of you go at eachother, I’ve a feeling this will just drag on all day and I don’t have the time.”

“So shoot the two of them and let’s go,” Mary muttered asshe folded her arms over her chest.

“No,” Stuart gritted out through clenched teeth as hegave his sister one hell of an annoyed look. “Shut up and listen for once inyour damn life, Mary,” he snapped, much to the woman’s obvious surprise. “Ikeep telling you, take Nathaniel away and it’ll only fuck things up for all ofus because Ichirou Moriyama will see it as a challenge to his authority. He won’tstop until the both of you are found and killed in a very messy manner to senda message to everyone, and he won’t stop with the two of you as he makes sure thatmessage is heard loud and clear.” Stuart motioned to himself, Andrew and Renee.

“And yet you work for the man,” Mary sneered, though Andrewthought it lacked some of her usual vigor.

“Yeah, because it allowed the family a foothold in theStates and it finally allowed us a shot at your bastard husband,” Stuart rubbedin her face without remorse. “While you in that coma and then down in Mexico, ableto live your life without remembering all this shite, your family had to dealwith it.” He motioned to himself again then Neil. “We did the best we couldwith what options we had, and now I’m not going to let you fuck things upbecause you don’t like how that turned up, even if you are my sister.”

“So what, you’re gonna take me somewhere and put a bullet inmy head? You could do that to me?” Mary taunted her brother with growingdesperation. “Abram, you going to let him do that to your mother?” Her defiancefaltered when it was quiet in the room for several seconds. “Both of you arebastards.”

“Stuart didn’t say he was going to shoot you, Mum,” Neilpointed out with a palpable weariness. “And I love you… but I can’t let youhurt Andrew and the others. Go with Uncle Stuart,” he pleaded.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” Stuart assured his sister ashe rubbed the back of his neck, just as worn down as Neil by arguing with thewoman. “At least, not in the head, so don’t try my patience anymore than youalready have,” he warned her. “We’re going to leave here before you cause anymore trouble and head back home. Will wants to see you.”

Mary twitched at that as if not pleased with the thought offacing her big brother. “Do I have any say in this?”

Something cold settled on Stuart’s face. “After you hurt Nathaniel?No, not really. I love you, Mary, and I’m glad you’re alive, but right now I’mhalf-tempted to leave you with Andrew, which might solve a good bit of problemsin the end. But you are my sister so here’s your chance – come with me now, nomore fighting.”

“He’s just a kid,” Mary said with the sneer back on her faceas she glanced at Andrew. “I can handle him and the slag, now that I’m preparedfor them.”

“No, you can’t. You honestly think I’d leave familyunprotected, after everything that’s happened with you and that prick,Wesninski?” Something in Stuart’s voice or expression made Mary’s certaintycrumble after a couple of seconds.

Still, she tried one more time; she turned toward Neil, herexpression stern. “I came back for you, boy. You’re going to let him take meaway after everything I did for you?”

Neil’s fingers tightened around Andrew’s once more as his bruisedface grew blank. “I think it’s best that you go, Mum. I know you tried to lookout for me,” both of them ignored Andrew’s derisive snort, “but I’m good now.Let Uncle Will help you out.”

Something almost soft started to come over Mary’s face for amoment, and then it hardened. “Don’t come crying to me when this one breaksyour heart,” she told Neil.

“It won’t happen,” Neil assured her. “Be safe, Mum. Safe andhappy.”

“You’re a fool, Abram.” Mary turned her back toward Neil andtold Stuart that she was ready to leave, that there wasn’t anything holding herthere anymore.

Stuart gave his sister a furious look before he came over togive Neil a quick hug. “I’ll visit when I’m back,” he promised his nephew. “Takecare until then.” While a somber Neil nodded, he gave Andrew a stern look. “Watchover him.”

“Go away,” Andrew said while he made a shooing motion withhis right hand, the knife still held in it. “You’re an asshole, you won’t evenlet me stab her once.”

“Such a little shit,” Stuart muttered as he held up twofingers in a rude gesture before he finally left with Mary (after retrievingthe gun from a quiet Renee). Once the door was closed behind them, Renee cameover to give Neil a sympathetic rub on the back.

“I’m sorry, that had to be difficult,” she soothed.

“I just… I wish she would have listened to me,” Neil said asAndrew let go of his hand so he could put the knife away then gently grasp hisboyfriend’s nape. “What’s the point of getting her back when she doesn’t even seeme? I’m just… just an object to her?”

There were times when Andrew grew frustrated with how Neilexcused the abuse his mother had inflicted upon him over the years, how he overlookedthe fact that she’d waited too long to leave his abusive, psychotic father. Itwasn’t that Neil pretended none of it had ever happened or that everything hadbeen fine, it was just that compared to the other monsters in his life (Nathan,Lola, Riko)… Mary had been the one who’d tried to help him in her own fucked-upway, had hurt him the least (but still hurt him).

Had seemed to give up her life for him.

So Neil had… glossed over, in a way, the abuse he’d sufferedat her hands because she hadn’t wanted him dead (had helped keep him alive),hadn’t sold him to another person, hadn’t taken sadistic pleasure in hurtinghim. However, Andrew thought that his lover might not be so willing to defendthe woman after today.

“I don’t know her, but I think the problem is she feels sheknows what’s best for you and is determined to see it through. Her intentionsare good… but she’s sadly misinformed,” Renee offered with a kind smile. “Itdoesn’t make what she’s doing right, though. Hopefully your uncles can help herunderstand things better so you can start anew one day.”

“Maybe, but my mother’s really stubborn. I think in her mindshe gave up so much for me yet I broke her rules.” Neil’s expression becamemulish as he gazed at Andrew. “I don’t care if she feels it’s wrong, I’m happynow which is all that matters. Maybe it’s best if she just finds her own life now,too. At least I know she’s alive out there somewhere and isn’t dead because ofme.”

“Especially if she thinks it’s acceptable to smack youaround whenever she wants. I really will kill her if she touches you again,”Andrew promised, unwilling to allow anyone to hurt his lover.

Neil winced at that statement but didn’t argue, while Reneesmiled. “I did make some scones, how about I bring them over later?” When theyboth nodded, her smile deepened. “Good. I’ll see you in a little bit.” Shewaved to them before leaving.

“So much for a nice, quiet weekend,” Neil groaned as he wentto sit down on the couch; he raised his hands to his face before he rememberedwhy that wasn’t a good idea.

“Well, I highly doubt anyone else is going to come back fromthe dead in the next forty-eight hours, so we should be good on that front,”Andrew drawled as he went to sit down next to his lover, oddly drained for somereason; it might be good to eat something soon.

Neil’s lips twitched for a couple of seconds before hesmiled. “I’ll laugh if you managed to jinx us right now, you know.” Then the expressionfaded away as he tilted his head back to rest on the back of the couch. “Excepteveryone we know who’s dead are basically psychotic assholes so….”

Andrew thought about that while he tugged on the end of hisleft armband. “Ah… Seth?”

His boyfriend always looked cute when he wrinkled his noselike that. “Okay, not so much psychotic but very much an asshole, I’ll give youthat. You really want him to come back?”

“Hell no.”

“I thought not. One exception to the rule, and not a pleasantone at that.”

“I don’t know, might be fun to kill Riko again,” Andrewmused. “Always thought his death was a bit too quick.” There should have beenmore broken bones and flayed skin involved, in his opinion.

“Oh sure, you get to have all the fun and I’m stuck diggingthe grave, I’m willing to bet,” Neil whined as he entwined their fingerstogether, a sure sign that he was recovering from the whole ‘Mary’ ordeal.

“Is it me or are you becoming lazier the older you get?”Andrew asked as he rubbed his thumb along Neil’s hand.

“Says the guy who skips out on the grave digging,” Neilgrumbled while he slumped down enough to rest his head against Andrew’sshoulder.

“Just have one of the newbies do it, vice-captain. Tell ‘emit’s a cardio exercise or something.”

“Hmm.” Neil grew contemplative at the suggestion. “Hmm, thathas possibilities.”

One problem solved for the time being, Andrew enjoyed thequiet moment while it lasted (before Aaron and Nicky barged in to make surethat everything was okay, or the upperclassmen pestered them to see Neil, or something).He could only be so lucky to have another shot at Riko, but at least there wasa plan in place if it happened.

Until then, enjoy the time alone with Neil, who was going tobuy him some take-out for making up for the whole ‘no stabbing’ thing.

Or maybe not, as there was a knock on the door.

*******

#andreil #aftg #all for the game #tfc #andrew minyard #neil josten #stuart hatford #renee walker #mary hatford #way down we go #wdwg #mary's alive here #nekojitachanfics #sorry it sucks #au #protective andrew #bad-ass renee #dancyon

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